One man is in jail after a Boundary County icon, Biggie, was destroyed at the Good Grief Grill and Grocery.

For several years, the 8-foot-tall Bigfoot sculpture waved to those passing by the home of Robert McRay on Highway 95 near the Mt. Hall Junction.

When the former "Conan the Adventurer" actor and master sculptor returned to California, he left "Biggie" in the care of Kathryn Ray. The icon was poised outside her iconic Good Grief Grill and Grocery near Eastport.

People from around the world stopped regularly to have their picture taken with the friendly looking monster.

On the evening of Jan. 3, one late-night group of passers-by went a little too far, and as a result, one of them is now sitting in jail.

Ray noticed that the statue she calls "Biggie" was missing when she went to the Good Grief early Wednesday morning. The base and two feet were there, but the rest of him was gone.

Before calling the sheriff's office she had walked her dog up a remote Forest Service road in Addy.

It was on that snowy road, she said, that she came across a young man and woman standing outside a red Dodge Durango truck with Washington plates. They were hopelessly stuck and partially hanging over an embankment.

Not suspecting that they had anything to do with the mysterious disappearance, she gave them a ride to a home near Good Grief so they could call for help.

At 8:10 a.m., she called 911, and sheriff's deputy Sgt. Bobby Goad was sent out to look into the matter.

According to Goad's report in court records, he arrived at Good Grief a short time later and, after talking with Kathryn, went to where she told him she met up with the two. Goad took Ray's brother, retired sheriff's deputy Tim Day, who knew the area, along with him.

He found Darrell L. Curtiss Jr., who had celebrated his 22nd birthday the previous evening, his girlfriend and his parents working to free the Durango.

Goad quickly noticed grains of blue foam around the pickup, and asked them if they had anything to do with the theft of Bigfoot.

Almost immediately, Curtiss fessed up, saying that he and two male friends had been riding around and drinking at 10 p.m. when they spotted Biggie and decided that they would like some pictures. Curtiss told Goad he tried to hang off the sculpture, but it immediately broke off at the ankles.

With Bigfoot on the ground, Curtiss said, he panicked, and instead of leaving a slightly shorter Bigfoot lying in the lot, broke it into pieces and loaded him into the pickup, then went looking for a suitable place to ditch the body.

The remote Forest Service road seemed a good idea at the time.

"They had the unfortunate luck to drive up the Forest Service road I walk my dog on every day," Ray said.

Confession in hand, Goad asked Curtiss where Bigfoot was, and Curtiss led him a short distance away to a heavily treed area where all the dismembered parts of Biggie, save a single finger, were found, recovered and returned to the rightful owners.

After disposing of the evidence, Curtiss said, the three men got stuck trying to turn around. His two companions hiked out, and he called his girlfriend, the owner of the truck, who joined him, and with him spent a restless night trying to free the pickup.

After Ray found them and gave them a ride, he called his parents, who drove out to help free the truck.

Curtiss insisted that he was solely responsible for Bigfoot's dismemberment and theft.

He was charged with grand theft, a felony, for taking the body parts away, and for malicious injury to property, a misdemeanor, for breaking the body into parts. He remains in custody at the Boundary County Jail in lieu of posting $5,000 bond.

Ray has been trying to reach Bigfoot's sculptor, McRay, ever since the theft, both to let him know what befell his creation and to see if there's any hope the piece of art can be restored.

She's broken hearted because she was only baby sitting Biggie, but the six months McRay expected to be away stretched much longer, and she and Biggie became attached.

"I don't really see how Biggie can be fixed," she said, "but Bob is pretty amazing, so I do have hope."

Goad's report lists the value of Biggie as "over $1,000" because, Ray said, no one knows how to put a price tag on McRay's works of art, most of which are consigned at many times beyond that price.

McRay made Biggie for himself, stood him in his own front yard in Boundary County through the years he lived here to wave "hello" to everyone passing by, and left it in the care of a trusted friend and in a place he loved when he moved away.

"I am grateful Deputy Goad found Biggie, brought him home and found out who took him," Ray said.