Bigfoot News January 26, 2012: Interview with Justin Smeja

The following is an interview with Justin Smeja, the man who shot and killed two Bigfoots in Sierra County in the Sierra Nevada of California on October 10, 2010. For the full story on what has come to be known as the Sierra Kills as it was first published on this blog, see here. The interview was recorded via notes taken during but mostly shortly after the interview, and memory was added to it. It was not tape recorded.

Robert Lindsay (RL): Hello there. Let’s talk about some of the discrepancies in the Sierra Kills and some of your other stories, OK?

Justin Smeja (JS): Sure, fire away.

RL: Ok, first of all, where did the Kills take place? You have said two different places – the Sierra Buttes and Mount Haskell.

[Quite a bit of conversation follows, after which we eventually figure out that the Kills took place somewhere in the vicinity of Bassetts and Mount Haskell, but a better location cannot be pinpointed at this time.]

RL: Originally in conversations with Ken Walker, you said that the Kills happened at 8,200 feet. Then you changed your mind and said it was 7,200 feet. Which was it?

JS: It’s 7,200 feet. I know because I have measured it precisely. I originally thought it was 8,200 feet because I was just guessing. I had no idea what the elevation was at first, so I just guessed. Later I went back and determined the exact elevation.

RL: In an earlier conversion with Ken Walker, you said that you shot these things in your “hidey-hole,” a perfect spot for bear and mountain quail that you were never going to show to anyone. Did you take researchers to this site that you said you would never reveal to anyone?

JS: I did.

RL: And you’re not worried that you have blown your secret hunting spot by showing it to too many people?

JS: Not really. I’ve only showed it to a few people. Hardly anyone knows about. I’m not worried.

RL: Ok, this spot is described as a place between two valleys where you have to go on the road to get from one valley to the next, so the wildlife is pretty much forced onto the road. Is that a correct description?

JS: It is. There is one large valley, and then there is a meadow a bit away from it. You could go from one to the other without using the road, but the terrain there is so steep that most wildlife will just use the road as the path of least resistance. It’s very, very steep there. It’s hard even to walk around away from the road.

RL: What was it like when you were driving down this road?

JS: Well, we kept seeing large scat piles on the road that did not look like any scat we had seen before. Just one after the other on the road. It wasn’t bear, and it wasn’t mountain lion. It didn’t make any sense. With the scat piles, well, you see, it’s not just the Bigfoots who are going to be forced onto that road. All wildlife is going to use the road. We saw sign from all sorts of wildlife along that road.

Then we came to the spot I describe, and you go around a blind corner. Then the road ends a ways away and trails off into a meadow.

RL: Original reports said the Bigfoot was in the road. Was it?

JS: Not really. It was in the meadow about 80 yards away from us forward and a bit to the left. It was in the meadow where the road ends.

RL: And when you first saw it, you thought it was a man in a suit, and people were making a movie nearby. But then you shot it. People are attacking you for shooting what you thought might have been a human. But I heard that as soon as you saw the face, you knew it was not human, right?

JS: That’s right. I knew it wasn’t human. At first I thought it might be a man in a costume, but then I saw the face, and I knew it wasn’t.

RL: You would not shoot something if you thought in your mind it might possibly be a human, right?

JS: That’s right.

RL: What did the Bigfoot look like? Can you describe it?

JS: Well, honestly, it looked like a man in a monkey suit. That’s the best way I can put it. And it had a coned head, a tapered head.

RL: You were not able to determine the sex of the creature by looking at it? Did it have visible breasts?

JS: I couldn’t tell the sex of it, and I didn’t see any breasts.

RL: You can’t tell us the sex of the animal because that is covered by the NDA, right?

JS: Yes, I don’t know why that is covered, but it is.

RL: The gender of the animal was determined through genetic testing? I believe DNA testing can tell us whether something is male or female.

JS: Apparently, yes. Everyone automatically assumes it was a female because it had two kids with it.

RL: Do you have any idea why it was waving its hands over its head?

JS: I’m not sure. Maybe just to say, “Here I am. I’m not dangerous. Don’t shoot me.” Maybe something like that. Hard to say.

RL: Ok, when the thing took off in the brush after you shot it, it crashed down at one point and apparently died. You said it sounded like a car crash when it went down. People say in order for it to sound like a car crash, it would have had to have gone off a cliff or a ledge. What do you say?

JS: Well, we think it hit a tree and knocked the tree over. We later found that there was a tree that was apparently falling over and something had knocked it over all the way at about the 4-5 foot mark. What’s left is a stump at that level and then the fallen tree lying on the ground. The loud sound may have been the sound of a tree falling in the woods.

RL: People say that you shot the little one due to your blood lust being aroused after you shot the first one. Hunters are susceptible to blood lust and shooting a second animal after shooting a first one. Is that what happened? Did shooting the first one arouse your blood lust and result in the shooting of the second one?

JS: Yes, that’s what happened. Definitely. Blood lust is a good reason for the second shooting. As good a reason as any really.

RL: Ok, the little one. There was quite a scene when you shot the juvenile. I assume from reading about the scene and how upset and freaked out the driver was that shooting the baby was traumatizing to both you. Why was it traumatizing? Was it because it looked so human?

JS: I would say yes. It looked like a little Black kid. If you take a cross between a little Black kid and a chimpanzee, that’s what it was.

RL: What did the driver think it was?

JS: I think by then he thought it was a Bigfoot. He had heard about Bigfoots before, and he knew quite a bit about them. He was ready to believe in them, and he thought I had just killed a couple of Bigfoots, as crazy as that sounds.

RL: In the original story via Taxidermy.net, people said that the driver took your gun away from you and said, “That’s it! That’s the last one of these things you are going to shoot today. No more!”

JS: Yes. Well, I’m not saying it went down that way or not, but I don’t remember it going down that way. Let’s put it that way.

RL: But whether he actually took the gun away or not, that was his attitude, right? “That’s it! That’s the last one of these things you are shooting today! No more!”

JS: Oh definitely. That would describe his attitude perfectly.

RL: Have you heard the recent news about a leak from the Copyright Office about a film and two articles by Ketchum that describe Bigfoots as some sort of tribe of wild humans running around in the woods?

JS: Yes, I have heard it, but I don’t know what it all means, honestly.

RL: Well, if they are just a tribe of people, then what did you do that day in the Sierra Kills?

[A bit of beating around the bush as he really doesn't want to completely answer the question. I keep pushing, and finally I get an answer.]

JS: [A firm, confident, no-nonsense tone with little emotion and no anxiety] That means I committed homicide.

RL: How do you feel about that possibility? Are you worried about going down on a homicide charge?

JS: No, not really.

RL: What do you think these Bigfoots are? Do you think they are people? Do you think they are some weird tribe of humans like us?

JS: To me, they’re not people. Whatever they are, they are not like us. They are not us. As far as I am concerned, they are animals. We are people, and they are animals.

RL: Do you talk to Dr. Melba Ketchum (who is running the DNA study on his sample)?

JS: You know, I hardly talk to her at all. I think I have spoken with her two whole times. And they’ve hardly told me anything. They don’t communicate with me at all. But after I did that radio show, Ketchum called me and got mad at me for doing the show. She said I was jeopardizing the study.

RL: She more or less told you to STFU?

JS: Pretty much, yes. No more talking to the media. She said, “Why did you do this? You can’t do this sort of thing until we publish! No more radio shows!” I thought it was strange because I did not give up any privileged information, but that was her attitude.

RL: Did you receive a recent announcement that was supposedly sent out to all successful submitters a couple weeks ago that may have said something along the lines either that the Ketchum study is under press embargo or is in the pre-publication period after acceptance and for everyone involved in the study to shut their traps until publication?

JS: I got nothing. I got no such notice. They simply don’t communicate with me at all, understand?

RL: People say that after a month in the woods, there is no way that there would be hardly anything left of the body. Most of the body would still be there. Is that true?

JS: No it’s not. I kill animals all the time, and we take the gut pile – the leftovers – everything that’s not edible – and dump it out in the woods. If you go back a month later, there is almost nothing left. There will be bits of flesh and definitely some hair, and there should be some bones. The scavengers, especially the coyotes, they just destroy anything in the woods. Nothing lasts.

RL: So what you found after you went back there on November 13 (about a month later) was what you would expect to find after a month in the woods?

JS: Pretty much, yes. The only thing was that there should have been some bones, and we found no bones. I have no explanation for that.

RL: Do you think the Bigfoots buried the body or bodies?

JS: I doubt if they buried the big one, because we would not have found anything left at all if they did. Maybe they came back later and took the bones – I have no idea.

RL: Yes, they don’t always bury their dead. We have cases where Bigfoots have been found dead, rotting and decomposing in the woods. There is a case from Happy Camp in the 1960′s of a badly decomposed Bigfoot found by Indian girls, another more recently of a from British Colombia of a Bigfoot dead maybe 10 days or so found by a trail with other Bigfoots still present and a third case from 1962 on the California-Oregon border near Applegate of a tree that fell on a female Bigfoot and killed her.

They usually bury their dead, but not always. You know, we humans don’t always bury our dead either. Even nowadays, there are a lot of bodies just found out in wherever, often in wild places, in various stages of decomposition.

JS: Yes of course. Neither we nor the Bigfoots always bury our dead. I think maybe the remaining Bigfoots did not want to go back to the Sierra Kills site due to what happened to the two that got shot. I know if my brother was shot dead in downtown Sacramento, I would not want to go back there. That place would be jinxed for me.

RL: You are aware of rumors that the two bodies from the Kills were recovered and are being hidden, right? More particularly, that they are being hidden possibly with Wally Hersom?

JS: Yes, I have heard those, and I don’t know what to think of them. I’m certainly not hiding any bodies, that’s for sure. Whether others went out there and found the body or bodies and took them away without telling me – well, it’s possible.

Let me tell you this. If Wally or anyone else was hiding bodies and I knew about it, well…right now, I would be on the phone to them demanding shut up money. And unless they paid up, I would go to the media and tell that they are hiding bodies.

And right now, I need money something awful. I am two months behind on my house payments. There’s hardly been any work at all. All I need is $2,000 – that alone would help me out. Since I’m broke, and no one is paying me any hush money, and I am not spilling the beans about hidden bodies, you can infer that I’m not in on any plot to hide bodies. I wish they had bodies! Believe me! I would be demanding hush money – you know I would!

RL: Can you give us some details about what happened in around December 10 when two California Department of Fish and Game officers came to your door? Did it go down the way I described on my blog?

JS: Yes, exactly. Everything you wrote is correct.

RL: There is one problem though. I ran this story by my sources in the DFG, and they said it can’t be true because you said you talked to a DFG sergeant, and the DFG doesn’t have sergeants.

JS: [Gets angry.] See? This is what I hate! No one believes me! No matter what I say, people say I’m lying! Yes! He was a sergeant!

RL: Ok, so one of the guys who came to the door was a sergeant?

JS: No. The sergeant was one of the guys who was at their office a few days later when we got an attorney and called up the office to set up a meeting with them. The man at the desk identified himself as a district sergeant. I heard it with my own ears. Also, Bart Cutino was with me at the time, and he witnessed the whole thing.

RL: You got an attorney?

JS: Well, we got someone in the Bigfoot community who said he was an attorney, and he was pretty much going to provide us advice and representation for free. That was what Bart arranged.

RL: Ok, so these two guys came to your house in DFG uniforms asking to search the place. Is it possible that you were punked or hoaxed – that someone in the community made up some fake DFG uniforms and pretended to be DFG officers in order to freak you out or to pull off a hoax?

JS: [Determined, sure tone.] No! No way. That’s not possible. Forget it.

RL: Did one of these officers actually say, “We are here to investigate the killing of two Sasquatches in Northern California in October 2010?” It’s absolutely incredible that a government official would actually say such a thing.

JS: It is. But that wasn’t the first thing they said. Originally, they just came to the door and kept saying over and over that they wanted to search the house. They were very persistent. They wouldn’t tell me why they wanted to search the house, but we all knew why they wanted to.

Then one guy said, “We are here to investigate the killing of two Sasquatches in Northern California in October 2010,” and what was funny was the other guy looked at him like, “Oh man! You just said something you shouldn’t have said!” You knew when people get that look on their face when they are trying to let you know that you said something you shouldn’t have? That was the look he had. Funny.

RL: Ah, that’s very interesting. So what was the result of your communication over the phone with the sergeant at the office?

JS: Well, a day or two days later, a captain called me back and said, “We are going to drop this for now. We are not interested in pursuing this at the moment. But we are definitely going to be watching you, keeping an eye on you, OK?”

RL: What do you think the DFG was looking for when they came to your house?

JS: I think they thought I had a body. They were going to search the house and try to find a body.

RL: What were they going to do with it?

JS: [Nervous laugh.] Who knows? Maybe take it away? Maybe give to the M.I.B’s (Men in Blacks)? I don’t know.

RL: Do you believe that there is a coverup of Bigfoot evidence by the government?

JS: Not really. I don’t believe in a coverup. That goes too far.

RL: But there must be, right? I mean think about it. In the last 45 years, how many of these things have been hit and killed by cars, shot by hunters, killed by government people, found dead in the woods and investigated by government people? It must have happened. It had to. If there’s no coverup, then there’s no Bigfoot. It’s that simple.

JS: Well, if you believe in Bigfoot, you pretty much have to believe in some sort of a coverup because as you say, these things are just animals, and they do get killed sometimes, and government officials are obviously on the scene in some of these cases. Several were airlifted out after the Mt. St. Helens eruption. But I am not sure if the coverup is all that organized. It might be more disorganized.

RL: I think what happens is they just keep calling their supervisors. That’s what you do when you come across a situation that you have no idea how to deal with.

For instance, there is a case on record of an Ohio police officer who came across a Bigfoot hit and killed by a car. When he got there, the Bigfoot was by the side of the road. He called for backup, and more of his officers came. They cordoned off the scene, but they didn’t know what to do.

So the next level up was apparently called. He said the next people who showed up were state police. They walked around for a while but didn’t seem to know what to do either. A little while later, the National Guard showed up, having apparently been called by the state police.

They didn’t know much what to do either, and a bit later, a black van showed up with two uniformed US military officers. They didn’t say a word, but somehow they got the Bigfoot into the van and drove off. The officer who showed up first on the scene never heard anything more about it. This is probably how these coverups occur. If you go high enough up in government, there is a plan for dealing with these things. But at low levels, no one has a clue.

JS: You’re right. In a bureaucracy, when you come across a situation that you have no known plan for, you are just supposed to call your superiors, the next level up.

RL: Right. You don’t strike out on your own and, say, call the media. That’s a no-no, and it’s a career-ender.

JS: Sure.

RL: Is there anything you are mad about or upset about regarding this whole business?

JS: Well, the one thing that really gets me is so many people don’t believe me. All these people keep coming up to me and acting all friendly and saying, “Tell me your story. Tell me your story.” So I befriend them and tell them whatever they want to know from me, and then they leave, and a while later, I hear they are running around saying that they don’t believe anything I say and what a big liar I am.

When we went to the Sierra Kills site, Dr. Jeff Meldrum and Dr. John Mioczynski were there, and they were very, very friendly. We were there for three days camping out, and everyone was saying, “We believe you. We believe you. Yes, yes, yes.” Then some of them turned around as soon as I was gone and said what a big fat liar I was and how they don’t believe me. This is what Meldrum and Mioczynski did to me. Especially Meldrum. He was really two-faced to me. Everyone says he’s such a great guy, but I don’t think so. I don’t like him very much.

All that two-faced stuff – it’s distressing. It really gets on my nerves.