On June 1 1987, 16-year-old Theresa Bier, a resident of Fresno, California, disappeared while on a camping trip in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
One of the theories about how Theresa went missing may surprise some – as there are those who speculate that Bigfoot may be responsible for abducting the teen
The story – which brings together elements of the paranormal and true crime – has always peaked the interest of former Expedition X co-host Jessica Chobot who, along with 29-year LAPD veteran Robert Collier, investigates Theresa’s case as part of a three-part limited series, Bigfoot Took Her, which premieres with back-to-back-to-back episodes tonight, Wednesday, October 29 at 8pm ET/PT on Discovery Channel.
We got a chance to interview Chobot about her experiences filming Bigfoot Took Her right before the premiere in this exclusive interview.
Conskipper: Hi Jessica.
Jessica Chobot: Hi, how are you?
Conskipper: Good, good, how about yourself?
Chobot: Oh, good.
Conskipper: All right, so thanks for taking the time to speak with me about Bigfoot Took Her.
Chobot: Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for being curious about it.
Conskipper: Absolutely. So I was hoping to, first of all, kind of set the scene a little bit in terms of your background and how it kind of set the foundation for you to be curious about this particular case and the background of yourself and your career and what, you know, then led you to investigate this particular case.
Chobot: Yeah, well, so for me personally, my background stems, well, I guess you could say the reason I got into the paranormal angle of it is I just have always been interested in it since I was little and got exposed to a combination of Time-Life books and Unsolved Mysteries. Those were my two big favorites. And then while I was working in gaming media and just pop culture media in general over at a company called Nerdist, I started doing a paranormal podcast just to kind of scratch that itch on my own for fun.
And a lot of that involved true crime and while investigating true crime and subject matter to come up with for the podcast, I kept bumping into this particular case. And I never, you know, I read about it and I looked into it, but I never ended up running with it on the podcast.
So it was kind of a treat when Discovery reached out and asked if I wanted to be a part of the show. Up to that point, I had a very good relationship with Discovery because I was working on Seasons One through Seven of Expedition X. And so I’d had television experience being an on-screen investigator in the paranormal space with cryptids and whatnot for quite a few years. And so it just kind of naturally fit.
And so when they asked me to be part of this particular investigation, I was like, absolutely. And I think that I myself love paranormal and I love true crime. And that’s the first thing I thought of was it’s a pretty cool combination.
It’s an, I mean, you know, it’s an unfortunate true story, but from a story perspective, it’s an interesting, yeah, an interesting combo, I think is the best way to explain it. It’s just not something, especially because that excuse flew with the cops, I think it is really what stands out the most.
And it makes the story that much more impactful. Yeah. You know, like, well, like what was going on out there? Like, how did this guy get away with this as being his excuse?
Conskipper: I was just going to say, do you find in some communities…do you find that certain communities really latch on to these kind of legends and folklore?
Chobot: Yeah, well, I mean, I think it goes hand in hand with the location we were at for shooting the show and talking to the locals and whatnot. When you still go there to this day, there’s still Bigfoot memorabilia all over the place. I mean, it’s right, you know, it’s right in the mountains there on the edge of Yosemite, which from a Bigfoot investigator’s POV is an absolute hotbed of potential activity.
So I think it just kind of gets baked into the culture. And then on top of that, back in the 80s, when all of this went down in the first place, in pop culture, too, Bigfoot was on the forefront of everybody’s mind with Harry and the Hendersons, that movie coming out and being such a big hit.
And so I think the combination of all of that just made for the perfect storm in regards to a Bigfoot being associated with this case in such a hardcore way.
Conskipper: And what did you find? Anything new? I guess you can’t get too into it because we’d have to watch the show to find out, but did you uncover anything?
Chobot: I can talk about a little bit of it without giving too much away. First of all, let me just say, I thought going in, it was going to be a relatively cut-and-dry case. Like, I knew it was unsolved and I knew we were going in there to see what we could find out. But also, you know, hearing about it, it’s like, okay, guy takes girl by himself up into the mountains, you know, uses Bigfoot as an excuse and never gets arrested.
Like, what’s going on? I think it was going to be a three-step process of, ‘okay, we’re going to be investigating those beats, right? Oh my gosh. There were so many additional twists and turns that we were not expecting.
At one point, a group of serial killers known as the Speed Freak Killers ended up making an appearance in the storyline because they were…potentially involved.
They were working in the area at the time. And we talked to a guy that had been investigating their MO and helping other investigators try to find bodies. And he was actually in touch with one of the guys from the Speed Freak Killers that is still alive, you know, and blatantly asked him about Theresa being involved or Theresa being one of the victims.
And, you know, so that was a whole separate ball of wax that we were not expecting to run into. And then we also ended up finding out at one point that when Skip, the last guy to have seen Theresa and who’s the one that took her into the mountains, when he came back from the mountains, he immediately went to his mother’s house and like hid out in his mother’s house for a while. And so we had figured out which house was his mother’s house and went and knocked on the door and talked to the homeowners and asked if we could investigate there.
Because we had heard from a witness that when his mom at one point wanted to do, dig up the yard to like replace a septic tank or something, she wanted to do some yard work and was going to dig around the house. He, Skip, started freaking out, like freaking out and like having a fit that they were digging around the house. So, you know, we wanted to go and check that out and investigate that.
And then also just to go into the locations where Skip had said he had taken Theresa and where these Bigfoot sightings apparently occurred, the environment in and of itself lends itself to danger. Because you walk out there, it’s very remote. You’re deep into the woods and there’s rock slides all over the place and uncovered mines, like small uncovered mines that are just still like laying open.
So then you wonder, well, did he kill her or was there an accident? At what point was he actually involved or did something else happen? You know, there’s just so many different potential outcomes that what I thought was going to be cut and dry was definitely not cut and dry.
Conskipper: Were you worried for your own safety just walking around? Because like you said, the terrain itself isn’t particularly safe.
Chobot: Oh yeah, I got verbally upset. (laughs)
Conskipper: I would imagine I would have too. (laughs)
Chobot: Yeah, we were climbing and we were still, we were good.
Like we had proper climbing, semi-proper climbing gear on. That’s the thing too, is that it’s tricky because you think you’re going to be climbing over really easy-to-climb boulders, essentially a bunch of bouldered rock that is gathered at the bottom.
So it doesn’t look terribly difficult or high. And then you get halfway up and you realize that you have been kind of climbing, but also getting nowhere. And so we got really, really hot, really, really tired, a little lost.
You would just think, oh, climb to the top of this mountain. You’ll be able to see over the top of the trees and see where your path is. Nope.
It made everything worse. And also I’m really, really scared of heights, like really bad. And so that was just an added element of “this is awful. What did I lock myself into?”
And yeah, so I might have had a few choice words that might or may not make the cut. (Laughs)
Conskipper: How do you map out a particular course when you’re dealing with terrain like that? Because it seemed like it was a massive amount of woods, like a lot of acreage, I imagine, you have to cover.
Chobot: Well, we actually had access to the police reports. And I believe, I mean, it’s been a while since we shot the show, but if I’m remembering correctly, I believe in the police reports, they had actually put down where Skip had said he had specifically taken Theresa. It was this canyon…And so we were able to find out through the locals where the spot actually was, because there are hiking paths out in that direction.
So you can get there. But it’s just, it’s like, yeah, you’ve got to be prepped. So we figured out where he supposedly took her. There were two spots out there actually, one where this canyon was, and then another that he had shown to police where he said they camped, but that police went to when they were investigating and it looked like it had actually been a set-up, like a set-up scene. And that had been a fake campsite that Skip had come up with. So we went to both of those locations to take a look.
Conskipper: How would you describe the local community, the people in the town? How were they when you went to do this documentary? Were they receptive or were they a little bit closed off to you? Or did you have to win them over?
Chobot: Yeah, I wouldn’t say closed off. I’d say trepidatious. You know, I think the fact that, you know, because we didn’t hide anything.
We were very honest with them and said, well, we’re out here not only to investigate this murder, this missing person, but also Bigfoot’s tied to that. And as much as the town still believes in Bigfoot and has Bigfoot memorabilia all over the place, you know, to bring that up in a conversation, obviously, is a tough door to open with strangers. We never got a hard no when we talked to folks, but they were definitely cautious at first. But we also want to, and that goes for both sides of things, but people that truly do believe in Bigfoot in that area and like hardcore think he exists out there. You know, we want to hear their actual point of view on that as well.
So we went in there trying not to scratch any possibilities off the list until we absolutely felt like we had enough evidence to do so. It was also helpful because my co-host, Rob Collier, he is a 29-year LAPD vet. And he was also good at being able to, you know, he’s trained to do those types of interviews and to do that kind of research.
So where I bring in the paranormal POV, in a lot of ways, he brings in a really good cop background and instincts and techniques and approaches. And so I think the combination of both of those was really, really beneficial to us.
Conskipper: And how would you describe Rob as a personality in terms of how you were able to work with him?
Chobot: Oh, I mean, I can get along with pretty much anybody. He’s a piece of work. He’s hilarious. I actually had a great time with him because he’s also, you know, a Bigfoot investigator on his free time. So he was like a perfect combo of police, like hardcore, pragmatic police guy mixed with cryptid Bigfoot investigator.
And he definitely, like, I’ve heard all different types of people’s POV on what Bigfoot could be. I think from Rob’s perspective, it’s the best one where it, you know, it can always be a misidentified animal or an animal that we just haven’t been able to gain access to yet that is just really terribly elusive. Like he sees it as like, this is an animal, not this is like some sort of time travelling, dimension-jumping alien being.
Not that I have problems with that point of view. It’s just that it’s going out there and having to have boots on the ground in locations like this, you kind of need to lean into the more pragmatic practical approach.
So he was a great blend.
Conskipper: Was that the first time you had worked with him?
Chobot: Yeah, it was the first time I worked with him. He knew me from previous jobs just because of the paranormal work that I’ve done in the past.
He totally cracked me up. I started calling him “Robocop”, which he absolutely love-hated. So make sure if you ever talk to him and or see him online, drop that in the comments and he’ll get a big kick out of that one.
Conskipper: So what did you find about Theresa, what kind of person was she and so forth, as you went through the investigation?
Chobot: Yeah, I mean, honestly, it sounded like she was just like a really nice girl that was unfortunately stuck in really bad circumstances. She didn’t have the best family life.
When she went missing, she was living with, I believe her uncle, this guy by the name of Blind Johnny, who was mixed up in drugs and drug trafficking. And that’s how she ran into this guy Skip (Russell “Skip” Welch), the one that she ended up going to see Bigfoot with. You know, it just doesn’t seem like she ever really had a shot.
And then when she did go missing and all of this made the news, it’s kind of a catch-22, right? Same reason for us in the sense that the newspapers and the news reports focused so much on the fact that, you know, Skip, one of the main suspects had said she went off with Bigfoot or Bigfoot took her. But that’s all they really focused on. In the mix, and we mentioned this on the show as well, in that mix, you know, Theresa’s voice kind of gets lost.
You know, she’s this young girl who got kidnapped and is now missing and unfortunately probably passed away. And it gets kind of lost in the sensationalism of the story. The flip side to that, or I guess the silver lining, if you could call it that, is that it keeps the attention on the story.
And so then you do get people looking at the case over time and then going back and trying to investigate. And hopefully something eventually bubbles up to the surface. So that’s what I mean by catch-22.
But I really do hope, and one of our main goals while we were shooting this, was to be very sensitive to the fact that we were talking about a real person who went through something horrible and who still had family members that were alive that we spoke with that were very obviously still traumatized by all this. So we really wanted to make sure, like, we did Theresa right.
Conskipper: I don’t know how much you can say in terms of what resolution or anything that came to it. But is there, like, maybe…
Chobot: I can’t give too much away. But we did find some things that I think… You know, I mentioned a little bit about it earlier with the Speed Freak Killers and whatnot. But we found some connections that we were not expecting to find.
