The Montana ghillie-suit Bigfoot hoax death

Kalispell sits in Flathead County, Montana. South of town, U.S. Highway 93 runs toward Somers. On a late summer night in 2012, a man walked out onto that road hoping to create a Bigfoot sighting.

Sunday, August 26, 2012. About 10:30 p.m. Randy Lee Tenley, 44, of Kalispell, stood in the right-hand lane near mile marker 106.9. He wore a military-style ghillie suit. Full-body clothing designed to resemble heavy foliage. Snipers use it as camouflage. Local reporters said this one was apparently store-bought.

His friends later explained the plan. He meant to induce a sasquatch sighting by using the suit along the highway. Passing drivers would think they had seen Sasquatch. They would call it in.

A 15-year-old girl from Somers was the first to hit him. A second car hit him as he lay in the roadway. In the version reported by NBC Montana, another car swerved, and a third, driven by a 17-year-old Somers girl, ran him over. He died at the scene. The highway was closed for two hours while firefighters directed traffic.

Not one caller reported a creature. Dispatchers received no calls about a sighting. Only the crash report.

Trooper Jim Schneider of the Montana Highway Patrol worked out the motive through interviews with friends. "He was trying to make people think he was Sasquatch so people would call in a Sasquatch sighting," he told the Daily Inter Lake. "You can't make it up. I haven't seen or heard of anything like this before. Obviously, his suit made it difficult for people to see him." Sgt. Steve Lavin, a patrol spokesman, put it simply. "This is a first for me after 20 years on the highway patrol."

Alcohol may have been a factor. Police could not say which impact killed him. Accounts also differ on the details. AP described two cars. NBC Montana described three. Some wire copy said friends told Schneider he had attempted a similar hoax before, but never along the highway.

Benjamin Radford, writing in his Live Science column, used the death to argue about the prevalence and dangers of Bigfoot hoaxing, and the risks of shooting at a supposed Bigfoot. Whether Tenley had pulled similar pranks was unknown, but Radford thought a first-ever attempt "seems unlikely." Loren Coleman, writing on Cryptomundo, offered sympathy to the family and to the teenage drivers. He also took issue with Radford for calling the Patterson-Gimlin film "widely considered a hoax."

The story travelled around the world on the wires, from Ireland to South Africa. Wikipedia's Bigfoot article now lists it among documented hoaxes, citing the Los Angeles Times and Skeptical Inquirer. Troopers summed up the case in a single line. The camouflage played a big role in his death.