Yeah, but for every expert in the affirmative you can find an expert in the negative. And I don't think Russia in the 1960s was on the cutting edge of costume technology.
But just what makes this suit so "cutting edge" anyway? That square eye cut out I pointed to earlier, the crude teeth and mouth, or the utter lack of ears?
Not to mention the white, latex looking soles of the feet. That's cutting edge?
Sorry, I love a good mystery as much as the next Fortean, but I can't see anything else here but a guy in a very dodgy suit.
Besides, we know that Patterson wanted to make a Bigfoot movie, that he ordered a Gorilla suit to achieve that, that he had wooden "big feet" made up to make tracks, that he sold memberships to a non-existent "Bigfoot Club", the he had made drawings of a female Bigfoot, that he had paid for a "Bigfoot" song to be written and recorded. All before the PGF was shot.
And that he was broke and needed something to raise more funds for the project.
And then, Patty just happens to casually stroll across his path. Never happened before, never happened again, not with all the video recorders and mobile phone and trail cameras out there. It just so happens that the one guy who is trying to film a fake Bigfoot happens to film a "real" one. And just at the right time too.
Sure I could believe that. But I don't.