Who Was Theresa Bier?
Bier lived in Fresno, Calif., with her uncle, "Blind" Johnny Richmond, and his 17-year-old girlfriend, Tammy. Richmond, who was Bier's mother's half-brother, became Bier's guardian after her mother abused her; she had already lived with various other relatives. He was known as Blind Johnny because he claimed he lost his eyesight during a game of Russian roulette when he was 18. Tammy says in the 2025 series Bigfoot Took Her that Richmond was also abusive and forced young girls to run drugs.
Richmond's biological daughter, Mandy, who was five years younger than Bier, lovingly described her cousin as "an oddball" and "a dork."
"She was just happy," Mandy says in Bigfoot Took Her. "Not girly…super tomboyish. Climbing trees, not caring about getting dirty."
But Mandy also explained that there was something "simple" about Bier.
"If someone wanted to manipulate her, they probably could," she says. "If you told her the sun was purple, she'd probably believe you. She could be convinced to do anything."
Who Was Russell "Skip" Welch?
Welch was a housepainter who was better known around Fresno for his obsession with Bigfoot. He was also purportedly addicted to methamphetamine and known for taking young women and girls up into the mountains, ostensibly to look for the creature.
Fresno County, located in California's Central Valley, is a hotbed of Bigfoot sightings thanks to its proximity to the Sierra Nevada mountains. In 2018, a farmer in East Fresno County claimed he saw a whole Bigfoot family running across his farm, with one carrying a pig over its shoulder. It was the third reported sighting in that same area in five years. In the 1980s, Welch claimed to see Bigfoot all the time.
His favorite place to spot them was a place called Ghost Canyon, which required an eight-hour hike to visit. In 1986, Michelle Ryan-Turner and her friends, Sam and Corky, accompanied Welch to Ghost Canyon and returned with a terrifying tale she told in Bigfoot Took Her. Ryan-Turner said that after she told him she'd encountered an "evil" face, Welch yelled at her to get into her sleeping bag. Later, she said she was told by Sam and Corky that the demon "went into" her and that she nearly ran right off a cliff before they stopped her. However, she added that she presumed the experience was due to her being drugged.
How Theresa Bier Disappeared
Bier was last seen on June 1, 1987, when she headed into the mountains with Welch to go Bigfoot searching, though she told Richmond that Welch was taking her to school. However, when Bier's school informed Richmond that she was absent that day, he reported her missing.
When Welch returned three days later, he told authorities that he and Bier experienced several sightings before Bier wandered off to try and find Bigfoot on her own on June 2; he said he looked for her for two days. Welch was charged with felony child stealing, to which he pleaded not guilty.
Welch led police to a campsite on a mountain called Shuteye Peak with a purse, some photos and a few items of Bier's clothing, but that site was later found to be staged. The actual site was 20 miles away in Ghost Canyon, where nothing was found other than Welch's shirt with drugs in the pocket.
"We also didn't find any evidence of any super-being, subhuman or any unknown creature," said police detective Doug Stokes.
During that fall, Welch was released, and the abduction charge was dismissed, but not because he was no longer a person of interest. If Welch was tried for abduction and then Bier's body was later found, he could have not been tried for her homicide. He had been offered a lighter sentence (one year) for the child stealing charge but only if he waived his right to claim double jeopardy in the future. Welch refused.
Bier has never been found, and Welch died in 1998 in Fresno.
Where the Case Stands Now
Bier is still officially a missing person, but Bigfoot Took Her offers a few more recent perspectives from people related to the case. Welch's daughter, Chandra Welch, and her ex-boyfriend, Kenny Cook—both of whom have been to Ghost Canyon with Welch—say they don't think he killed Bier.
"I still don't believe in my heart of hearts that he came [to Ghost Canyon] and killed that girl," Cook said. "That being said, if she fell down a hole, he would assume Bigfoot got her, and he would go to his grave believing that."
While Chandra allegedly once told Ryan-Turner her father would lure young women and girls into the mountains to sexually assault them with the aid of drugs, she described her dad in Bigfoot Took Her as a "hippie" who tucked her in every night until she was 12.
"He was just a great guy," she said. "He was not a bad man at all. Maybe he used really bad judgment, but he's not a killer."
Chandra says she was under the impression that her father was helping Bier escape her abusive, drug-addicted uncle, and she says he eventually told her he had last seen Bier "talking to two guys on motorcycles." Chandra's theory was that those men were the serial killer duo known as the Speed Freak Killers. Between 1984 to 1998, Loren Herzog and Wesley Shermantine killed at least four people throughout California and the rest of the American West, and Bier fit their victim profile. However, Shermantine told private investigator Rob Dick that she "[didn’t] ring a bell."
Bigfoot Took Her also features Jay O'Connell, a local Fresno historian and author of Meth, Murder, and Bigfoot: A California Crime Saga. He describes a large boulder in Ghost Canyon Welch viewed as a "sacrificial rock" and says Welch was interested in dark magic.
Welch's nephew, James Welch, claims his uncle confided in him about how he would take "young girls" to Ghost Canyon "because if he didn't do that, then a Bigfoot would chase him off the mountain." He said he would throw bodies into a thousand-foot-deep mine or bury them in a creek as sacrifices to the creature.
We may never know exactly what happened to Bier, but we can probably assume she was the victim of something much more terrifying than Bigfoot.
