An Oklahoma man has been convicted of first-degree murder after strangling his friend that he claimed was "trying to sacrifice him to bigfoot."
Larry Sanders, now 55, and his friend Jimmy Knighten, who was 52 at the time, were fishing in Ponotomac County on July 9, 2022, when the murder took place.
Sanders claimed that he saw three creatures that looked like Sasquatch downstream and began strangling Knighten, believing he was planning to kill him and sacrifice him to the cryptids.
"So, his statement was that Mr. Knighten had summoned ‘Bigfoot’ to come and kill him, and that’s why he had to kill Mr. Knighten," Sheriff John Christian told local station KTEN.
Sanders claimed that Knighten had "howled" into a drainage pipe before pointing out a fish and demanding that he get it. When he said no, his friend kept insisting.
Local news outlet KXII reports:Sanders told the courtroom that he began to feel suspicious and believed Knighten was planning on drowning him and floating his body downstream to feed him to the Bigfoot.
Later on that afternoon, Knighten and Sanders got into a physical fight.
The defense team argued that when Sanders strangled Knighten, he was trying to take control of the situation, not kill Knighten.
The state argued that Sanders made sure Knighten died by waiting to let go of the chokehold until he turned blue.
Knighten's body was not found until the next day.
Sanders waived his right to a jury trial and claimed he had acted in self-defense.
During the trial, a forensic psychiatrist testified that Sanders was under a meth-induced psychosis at the time of the killing.
"Yes, there was a monster in the woods that night, but it wasn’t Bigfoot, it was Larry Sanders, Pontotoc County District Attorney Erik Johnson said, according to a report from Fox News.
Sanders' daughter, who was dating Knighten's son at the time, testified that her father confessed to the murder at least five times. He also confessed during an interview with the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation agents.
District Attorney Johnson told KXII, "In a first-degree murder case in Oklahoma, as in most other states, you have an element of malice aforethought, meaning that you have to have specific intent to cause the death of another."
"We were able to prove that Larry Sanders caused that death, and the issue of malice aforethought was what this case truly hinged upon."
Sanders is now facing life in prison without the possibility of parole. He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 18.
