Man claims Bigfoot abducted girl while camping.

Fresno, Calif.

A suspect who claims the legendary apeman Bigfoot abudcted a teen age girl was freed from jail three days before the scheduled start of his trial on child-stealing charges.

Fresno County authorities said they were forced into letting Russel Welch, 44, back on the streets to "avoid double jeopardy if they later choose to charge the man with murder."

Welch is accused of abducting Theresa Ann Bier, 16, last June. The two went camping in the Central Sierra and the girl did not return.

Welch told authorities that the legendary apeman, also known as Sasquatch, had taken the girl. Detectives say Welch apparently sincerely believes in Bigfoot creatures and claims to have had continued contact with a tribe of them.

Deputy District Attorney Elvoyce Hooper Friday offered Welch a one-year term on child-stealing charges if he would sign a waiver allowing for a murder trial in the event the girl's body is found.

But Welch's public defender, Mel Rube, refused to sign a waiver and Hooper said he was forced to drop the charge in case authorities later want to charge Welch with murder.

If the body is not found, Hooper said, he will probably refile the child-stealing charges, with a maximum penalty of four years in prison.

Welch had been scheduled to stand trial Monday. Rube denies his client had anything to do with the girl's disappearance but would not say if Welch is still contending that Bigfoot took the girl.

The double jeopardy statute prevents a suspect from being charged twice for the same crime.

Note: This article was originally written on September 30, 1987. You can find a scan of the article here.

Sadly, Theresa Ann Bier has never been found. Below is some information I was able to get off a missing person's database.

Missing since: June 1, 1987 from Fresno, California.

Date of Birth: April 16, 1971

Age at time of disapperance: 16

Height and Weight: 5'5", 110 pounds

Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Brown hair, hazel eyes. Bier's upper front teeth protrude. She has a surgical scar on her lower leg due to a childhood fracture. Bier's nickname is Sam.

Clothing/Jewelry Description: White t-shirt, jeans and laced sandals.

Bier resided with her family in Fresno, California in 1987. She was last seen during a cammping trip with Russel Welch on June 1, 1987 in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Bier and Welch, whose nickname is Skip, camped in the area of Shuteye Peak, approximately 25 miles northeast of Bass Lake. He was 43 years old at the time. They were reportedly searching for the legendary creature known as Sasquatch or Bigfoot. Welch considered himself a "student" of the legend. Bier disappeared during the trip and has never been heard from again.

Authorities questioned Welch when he returned to Fresno several days later. He initially claimed that Bier ran away from him on June 1, then he changed his story. Welch eventually stated that Bier had been forcibly taken by Bigfoot. Welch was charged with her abduction, but the case against him was dismissed due to lack of evidence in October 1987, more than four months after Bier disappeared. Searches of the Shuteye Peak area produced no clues to her whereabouts. Foul play is suspected in Bier's case.

If anyone has any information regarding the disappearance of Theresa Ann Bier pleace call the Fresno Police Department at (559) 621-7000.

Are aliens about to invade Australia?

A mass of UFO sightings has Territorians wondering if we are on the brink of an alien invasion.

There have been seven separate Top End UFO sightings reported in the past week. Hardly a night has passed without a sighting of some "unexplained phenomena" since the first sighting last week.

Almost all of the sightings have been in Darwin's rural area.

The first sighting was reported by a woman who wanted to be identified only as Shirel on April 21.

She said she saw the strange lights from her Humpty Doo home hovering over Howard Springs.

"The lights were really low in the sky, really bright, with flashing dots," she said.

"Three of them formed a semi-circle and they hovered over the area for at least half an hour."

here were three separate sightings on Friday night including British backpacker Kylie Myers who said she had "never believed in anything like UFOs" before her strange encounter.

The 27-year-old tourist said she turned into a "believer".

Ms Myers said she stopped her car on the side of the road to grab her camera from the glovebox, but the light disappeared.

"It was pretty spooky."

There were more sightings at Coolalinga on Saturday, Acacia Hills on Sunday and again in Howard Springs on Tuesday.

But astronomer Geoff Carr yesterday told the Northern Territory News he was "far from believing any of this UFO stuff".

"Unless aliens have found a way to travel faster than light speed, it's a doubtful thing to believe they came to visit us," he said.

Mr Carr said he believed 99.9 per cent of all the UFO sightings could be explained as simple weather phenomena.

Link to the original article can be found here.

Physics teacher reports encounter with UFO

A California college physics teacher watched a triangle-shaped UFO that came within several hundred feet and then silently moved away at 9 p.m. on April 15, 2010, in Ventura, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) database.

The instructor first heard a screech sound, then watched the object move quickly across the sky.

"At first it looked like it was a large bird high in the air as the front and two sides were heavily darkened against the mostly dark sky," the witness stated. "It was moving toward me and over a period of about 2 seconds it became clearer and resembled a hang-glider. It was descending and moving toward the east and seemed to be gliding smoothly, making no sound that I could hear."

The witness then described the object as it reached its closest point.

"It was an equilateral triangle and had three circular areas symmetrically placed near the tips. There was a slight contrast between the gray triangular area and the circular areas, as the circular portions had a very faint glowing quality to them."

The object appeared to be two dimensional during this 8-second sighting.

"As it silently continued moving away from me, the craft seemed to have only 2 dimensions. It looked completely flat like it was a projection. It began to gently ripple with smooth wave patterns and disappeared within a little over a second after doing so. The total event lasted around 8 seconds"

Link to the MUFON report and original story can be found here.

Was the old Save Mart in Chowchilla haunted?

There are rumors that the old Save Mart in Chowchilla was haunted. An employee stated that when she used to work there late at night she would feel some sort of presence watching her as she cleaned up the aisles. Sometimes she would also feel the same presence following her when she went into the break room. And another employee who worked the day shift also felt something watching him, but only when he was in the break room.

When the store was finally closed and no one in the building, people outside would report seeing someone walking around the store after midnight. Also, shadowy figures would be seen late at night, once again when the store was closed.

Some customers would also report that they would hear whispering voices around them, even when no one was near enough to make any sound.

The building was closed sometime before 2008 when a new Save Mart was built on Robertson Blvd. As far as I know the new building has no paranormal activity. As for the old building, it is still closed and is not in use. One has to wonder if the ghosts still wander the building, unaware that there is no one else there?

UFO filmed over Sacramento airport

This video was reportedly recorded on April 23, 2010 near the Sacramento International Airport. For reasons not stated, the person was recording planes taking off when they saw a strange light near a plane. The light shot off the opposite way at a high speed.

Given the quality of the video, it's hard to say what is is. I'd still like to know what the person was filming airplanes at the airport to begin with. But whatever it is, it's part of an ever increasing amount of UFO sightings in Sacramento.

Women claims to have been impregnated by aliens

Not really sure what to make of this video. Most of it is text book alien abduction. Being taken aboard a strange craft by strange beings and having medical experiments performed. The markings on the body were strange, but there have been cases before that are similar.

But when the video shows what is supposed to be both photo and video footage of the alien craft, that's where I start to question things. The video is taken from a cell phone, and despite the narrator's claim, it is not of high quality. As for the photos, they could be easily photoshoped.

But then there's the photo of one of her proposed abductors. The thing looks like it was molded out of clay, and very badly at that. But the kicker here is the supposed fetus. It looks mighty similar to a squirrel.

I'm going with hoax here. Everything up to the fetus could have been real. But they had to cross that line into complete bullshit with that one. There was video recorded of the abortition? Why? And if this thing wasn't human, why wasn't a DNA test done on it to verify it? Just because you claim it to be an alien-human hybrid does not make it so. Thankfully the news hasn't picked up on this and given these people any more attention.

UFO follows traffic on I-5 near San Clemente

A California witness traveling south along I-5 near San Clemente at 8:45 p.m. on April 20, 2010, watched a "slender triangle-shaped object" moving above her car, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) database.

The witness could not judge the size of the object.

"It was either really high and very large or really low and not that large. If I put my arm all the way out it was the slightly larger than my hand."

She followed the object for 10 minutes before it moved out of view.

She said the lights on the object were light blue and the bottom or belly "of the object appeared to be rounded."

At 9 p.m., the witness had a second strange encounter with odd lights in the sky. This object was about 100 yards above the freeway.

"When I got closer I realized it wasn’t moving and it was only about 100 yards above the freeway. It was a solid white light approximately the size of my thumb at arms length just floating about the freeway. As I drove past it I was able to look out the drivers side window and see nothing attached to it. It was just a single bright floating light."

Click here for the link to the original story as well as the MUFON report.

Could this be similar to what has been seen on Coalinga/Kettleman City portion of Interstate 5? Granted most of the sightings turned out to be crop dusters, but there was still that one incident with the red strobing lights. There must be something about Interstate 5 that UFO's must like.

Giant leech with big teeth found in the Amazon

Tyrannobdella rex, which means tyrant leech king, is less than two inches long and lives in the remote parts of the Upper Amazon.

It has 8 large teeth lining a single jaw and was discovered three years ago in Perú when a 44.5mm leech was plucked from the nose of a girl who had recently been bathing in a river.

Although there are 600 to 700 species of described leeches, it is thought that there could be as many as 10,000 species throughout the world in marine, terrestrial and fresh water environments.

This species is most closely related to Pintobdella chiapasensis, a leech from Chiapas in Mexico that is typically hosted by tapir but also infests cows.

It is from the leech family Praobdellidae, found in Mexico, Africa, and the Middle East, all of which share this feeding behavior and which can pose a risk to human health in certain parts of the world.

Mark Siddall, curator in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History, said: "The earliest species in this family of these leeches no-doubt shared an environment with dinosaurs about 200 million years ago when some ancestor of our T. rex may have been up that other T. rex's nose."

Original story can be found here.