General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Sasquatch

Sasquatch is a three-episode American true crime documentary series that premiered on Hulu on April 20, 2021, in which investigative journalist David Holthouse reopens a twenty-eight-year-old report of a triple homicide in Northern California that locals attributed to the legendary ape-like creature Bigfoot, also called Sasquatch¹. Directed by Joshua Rofé and produced by Duplass Brothers Productions, the series uses the monster story as an entry point into the cannabis economy and violence of the region known as the Emerald Triangle²^•³.

Key fact	Detail
Format	Three-part documentary series, TV-MA, one season, Hulu original¹
Premiere	April 20, 2021, on Hulu; first episode screened at SXSW 2021⁴^•⁵
Central subject	David Holthouse, an investigative journalist of more than 25 years with a background in gonzo journalism⁶
The case	A fall 1993 report that three men on a Mendocino County cannabis farm were killed and torn apart by a creature; the crime was never reported to police⁷
Director and producers	Joshua Rofé, director; executive producers Mark Duplass, Jay Duplass, Mel Eslyn, Rofé, and Holthouse⁸
Reception	93% Tomatometer and 54% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes⁸

Spoilers

The story the series investigates

In the fall of 1993, Holthouse, then 23 years old, was visiting a weed-growing friend in Mendocino County when two terrified men arrived at the house claiming that three field workers at a nearby cannabis farm had been found torn limb from limb, their heads ripped from their torsos and their parts strewn around the campsite. The men insisted this was no drug heist, and the rumor took hold that Sasquatch was the killer. The crime was never reported⁷^•². None of the crop was stolen or destroyed apart from stalks crushed as the men were killed⁹.

Decades into a career that had included high-risk investigations of neo-Nazis and, most personally, the man who sexually assaulted him as a child, Holthouse decided to find out what, if anything, had happened that night⁷. His reporting moves from Sasquatch believers and self-described Sasquatch hunters into the region's drug underworld, where some informants appear only blurred with altered voices, and the name of the alleged killer is glitched out of the audio and covered with the on-screen text "ALLEGED KILLER"¹⁰. The series concludes that the terrors of the backwoods are human rather than monstrous, touching on the War on Drugs, racism, xenophobia, and the exploitation of immigrant labor⁷^•¹⁰.

The setting is the Emerald Triangle, a swath of Northern California wilderness across Mendocino, Humboldt, and Trinity counties known for its natural beauty, marijuana production, and Bigfoot sightings². Most accounts place the 1993 farm in Mendocino County; The New Yorker describes the killings as having occurred in rural Humboldt County³.

Production

Origin of the project. In February 2018, director Joshua Rofé, who had just made the docuseries Lorena about the Lorena Bobbitt case, wanted a subject about which no publicly available information existed. His friend and producer Zach Cregger recommended the podcast Sasquatch Chronicles, a collection of interviews with people recounting encounter stories; Rofé, initially uninterested, listened to eleven episodes in four days and was struck by the visceral, authentic fear in the callers' accounts⁹^•⁵.

Rofé then texted Holthouse, a colleague, asking whether a murder mystery wrapped up in a Sasquatch story might exist. Holthouse replied, "I love it. I got one. I'll call you in five," and recounted the story he had heard in person in 1993 of a sasquatch killing three people on a weed farm in Northern California⁶. Rofé has said he was not hung up on whether Bigfoot exists; the fear in the encounter stories and the human world behind them became the subject⁹.

The creature behind the title

The Sasquatch, interchangeably known as Bigfoot, is a folkloric hairy biped of the Pacific Northwest; the Washington Post notes the name Sasquatch is taken from indigenous cultural phrases, while Bigfoot comes from supposed footprint evidence¹¹. One account traces the name to the Vancouver Island Salish word Sasquits, from the original se'sxac, meaning "wild man"¹². A US Patent and Trademark Office filing summarizing the series states that it describes marijuana farmers telling stories of Bigfoots harassing and killing people in the Emerald Triangle from the 1970s through the 1990s, and specifically the alleged murder of three migrant workers in 1993¹³.

Reception and availability

The first episode premiered at SXSW 2021, and the full series arrived on Hulu on April 20, 2021⁵^•⁴. Reviewers noted the bait-and-switch structure: the series opens as a monster mystery and becomes a character study of Holthouse and an investigation of a lawless rural economy. RogerEbert.com called it a true-crime documentary of a rare breed, nerve-racking, dangerous, and truly scary¹⁰. On Rotten Tomatoes the series holds a 93% Tomatometer and a 54% Popcornmeter⁸. It streams on Hulu and Disney+⁸.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Documentary, docudrama, and lifestyle series › True crime and investigative docuseries › Premiered 2006 to 2022

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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