August 29, 2022

Gerald the Bigfoot Goes Missing in Bernardston

On the night of April 22, 2020, thieves stole a large statue of Bigfoot from the Brimfield, Massachusetts lawn of Tod Disotell. Disotell, an anthropologist at UMass Amherst, had appeared on the TV show 10 Million Dollar Bigfoot Bounty and liked to decorate his Bigfoot statue with surgical masks and messages about COVID social distancing. 

Security camera footage showed two showed two hooded figures cutting a chain before absconding with the statue. Happily, police located the statue a few days later in downtown Worcester. Bigfoot was returned to Disotell's front yard. The thieves were never apprehended.

Sadly, Bigfoot thieves have struck again, this time in Bernardston, Massachusetts. On June 22, they stole an 18-inch concrete statue of Bigfoot from the front lawn of Sarah Gray. The statue, which she named Gerald, was a 2021 Christmas gift from her husband and children. 

Photo from The Greenfield Reporter

The Greenfield Reporter has the scoop:
“I was out doing errands and I came back and realized that he was missing from our front yard, off of our stump out here,” Sarah said in her kitchen on Friday. She posted a picture of the statue to Facebook to explain it had disappeared and ask for help finding it. That post got 250 shares and she placed near the stump a large sign asking for the statue’s return, but Gerald remains missing.

“We don’t know what happened. I don’t know if somebody thought he was maybe free,” she said.

Sarah said she did not report the incident to the police because she does not want to burden them with such a matter.

“It was upsetting, but I didn’t want to really involve the police and make a huge deal out of it,” she said. “But for me, it’s very sentimental. I have no hard feelings toward the person that took him or whatever – I would just like my Bigfoot back.”
The Reporter also notes that various friends have shown Gray photos of Bigfoot statues they have seen, but none were Gerald. 

If you've stolen Gerald, please return him! Alternately, if Gerald simply ran off on his own, I hope he returns back to Bernardston and the family that loves him. 

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