Bigfoot 'Body' Sells for $250,000 on eBay

Someone's just paid a lot of money for a smelly rubber Bigfoot costume.

As reported here on Monday, it's not just any Bigfoot costume — it's the one that Clayton County, Ga., hoaxers Rick Dyer and Matt Whitton filled with animal parts and froze over the summer in an effort to convince the world they had an actual dead Sasquatch.

"Neither of them are going to make a penny off of this auction," explains Joshua P. Warren of Asheville, N.C., the paranormal entrepreneur who put the "body" up for sale on eBay.

• Click here to see the eBay auction page.

• Click here, here, here and here to see some amusing imitations.

The winning bidder put up $250,203 by the end of the auction, which closed about 12:30 a.m. EDT Friday.

"My arrangement is with the people who control the body," Warren told FoxNews.com. "Money from this auction is going to hopefully resolve the legal conflicts."

Warren wouldn't go into detail, but confirmed that there was at least one civil lawsuit related to the hoax, "and criminal charges being pursued as well."

• Click here to see more photos of Bigfoot and the press conference.

• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Natural Science Center.

In mid-August, Dyer and Whitton arranged to sell the frozen specimen to California Bigfoot tracker Tom Biscardi for a reported $50,000.

But Biscardi had a third party, or "investor," put up the cash — Indiana resident William Wald Lett, Jr., who hauled the "body" and the freezer back to the Muncie area at the same time Dyer and Whitton were flying to California for their now-infamous press conference with Biscardi on Aug. 15.

Thirty-six hours later, when the "corpse" had thawed out enough to reveal it was a fake, Lett was out $50,000 and had nothing but a rubber costume full of rotting meat to show for it.

"Rick told me he got a whole hog and stuffed it down the costume's torso," Warren told FoxNews.com. "He then put a cow head in each shoulder and pig legs in the elbows, then added cow eyeballs and teeth and a pig's tongue."

Warren's eBay auction page explains that the animal parts have since been replaced with "non-organic" materials.

Within days of the hoax being exposed, Lett had filed a criminal complaint in Clayton County wanting his money back.

Biscardi said he'd been a victim, but Dyer and Whitton insisted he'd known it was fake all along.

"Tom Biscardi won't get any [of the auction] money," Warren said. "All three have said they want to put this behind them, and Matt Whitton wants his job back as a [Clayton County] police officer."

After everyone's debts are paid off, the remainder of the auction money will go to Warren's own Hoax Research Center, which he says is a nonprofit entity.

He still doesn't completely understand why Dyer and Whitton thought they could get away with it.

"They didn't think it was going to be exposed this soon," he said. "I think they wanted something to be autopsied for a movie or a live TV show."

But does Warren himself believe in Bigfoot?

"I really do not believe that there is a physical, biological 800-pound ape-like organism running around out there in North America," he answered. "There is no biological basis for that.

"But apparitions are a genuine human experience. I do believe that Bigfoot could exist as some sort of phantasm or interdimensional being."

As for this particular hoax, "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping it was real when I heard two guys had found a body," said Warren. "But once again it was not to be true."