Larry Sanders, 55, was convicted Wednesday of murdering his friend, Jimmy Knighten, in July 2022 because he thought Knighten was trying to feed him to Bigfoot, KXII reported.
Sanders claimed he had seen a 12-foot-tall sasquatch downstream and became convinced that Knighten was planning to drown him to feed to the creature, KXII reported. Sanders maintained Knighten’s persistence for him to get a particular fish aroused this paranoia, the outlet noted. The two at some point got into a physical altercation that ended in Sanders strangling Knighten to death, KXII reported. (RELATED:‘Devil Monkey’: Some Guy Allegedly Recorded Bigfoot And It’s Outright Creepy As Hell)
A Pontotoc County man who told investigators he killed his friend during a fishing trip because he thought the man was summoning Bigfoot to kill him was found guilty of murder this afternoon. https://t.co/W5PRjRcH5A
— KXII News 12 (@KXIITV) April 17, 2024
Sander’s defense team maintained that Sanders simply sought to control the situation and did not have the “element of malice aforethought” to kill Knighten, KXII reported. This element was critical in Sander’s case. “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,” District Attorney Erik Johnson told the outlet.
Sanders testified that he was not the aggressor in the fight. “He [Knighten] attacked me,” Sanders said, according to The Oklahoman. “I acted out of survival mode.”
Sanders confessed to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation that he raised his hands in victory after killing Knighten to allegedly show the watching sasquatch that “evil is weak,” the outlet noted. The defense further argued that Sanders could have been suffering from a meth-induced psychosis during this period as he had taken methamphetamine just three to four days prior to the murder, the outlet reported.
“Yes, there was monsters in the wood that night, but it wasn’t Bigfoot, it was Larry Sanders,” Johnson told KXII. Sanders will be sentenced on June 18 and could face life in prison, the outlet noted.