Sheriff wonders about '72 monster

BY NICK VOGEL

PEKIN, Ill. -- Thirty-four years ago in Tazewell County, 100 armed men walked the woods around East Peoria's Cole Hollow Road in search of a monster.
The search was called off when one of the men accidentally shot himself in the foot. The creature was never found.

The monster hunters were looking for was dubbed the Cohomo Monster, a beast thought to be lurking in Tazewell County in the summer of 1972.

James Donahue, Tazewell County Sheriff in 1972, still remembers the infectious hysteria of that summer.

''At the time it was a very big deal,'' Donahue recently told the Pekin Daily Times. ''Several people indicated they'd seen a monster up in that area. It was described as something like Bigfoot. All the neighbors showed up.''

The former sheriff won't dismiss the monster idea entirely. Although he has no idea what it may have been, Donahue says he thinks somebody may have seen something.

Invented to scare friend:

On Tuesday, July 25, 1972, Creve Coeur authorities reported that a witness saw something big swimming in the Illinois River. The following evening, more than 200 phone calls about monster sightings jammed the switchboard at the East Peoria Police Department. More sightings continued until the scare died down.
In 1991, the Peoria Journal Star received a call from Randy Emert, who made one of the first sightings as a teen. He said that he made the whole thing up. Emert told the paper that he and his friends made the story up to scare a friend who worked late nights at a gas station.