Philip Morris
In 2002, Philip Morris, owner of Morris Costumes (a North Carolina-based company offering costumes, props and stage products) claimed that he made a gorilla costume that was used in the Patterson film. Morris says he discussed his role in the hoax "at costume conventions, lectures, [and] magician conventions"[235] in the 1980s, but first addressed the public at large on August 16, 2002, on Charlotte, North Carolina, radio station WBT.[236] His story was also printed in The Charlotte Observer.[237] Morris claims he was reluctant to expose the hoax earlier for fear of harming his business: giving away a performer's secrets, he said, would be widely regarded as disreputable.[238]
Morris said that he sold an ape suit to Patterson via mail order in 1967, thinking it was going to be used in what Patterson described as a "prank".[239] (Ordinarily the gorilla suits he sold were used for a popular sideshow routine that depicted an attractive woman, supposedly from some far-flung corner of the globe, being altered by a sorcerer or scientist into a gorilla or otherwise apelike monster.) After the initial sale, Morris said that Patterson telephoned him asking how to make the "shoulders more massive"[240] and the "arms longer".[241] Morris says he suggested that whoever wore the suit should wear football shoulder pads and hold sticks in his hands within the suit.