David Paulides is a former police officer who is now an investigator and writer known primarily for his self-published books dedicated to proving the reality of Bigfoot, and establishing the Missing 411 conspiracy theory. Missing 411 is a series of books and films, which document cases of people who have gone missing in national parks and elsewhere, and maintain that these cases are unusual and mysterious, contrary to data analysis which suggests that they are not actually statistically mysterious or even unexpected. Early life and career In his online biography page, Paulides states that he received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of San Francisco, and in 1977 he began a 20-year career in law enforcement, transferring in 1980 to the San Jose Police Department, working in the patrol division on the SWAT Team, patrol, and Street Crimes Unit, and a variety of assignments in the detective division. While working as a court liaison officer in December 1996, Paulides was charged with a misdemeanor count of falsely soliciting for a charity. Investigations After leaving the police force, Paulides wrote books on the topic of Bigfoot, as well as on the disappearances of people in national parks and elsewhere which he attributes to unspecified, unknown causes. Bigfoot or Sasquatch In his pursuit of Bigfoot, Paulides self-published two Bigfoot-related books and founded the research group North America Bigfoot Search, for which he serves as director. Paulides has said North America Bigfoot Search was instrumental in the genesis of a paper published in 2013, which claimed that Bigfoot was real: "The world needs to understand that North America Bigfoot Search was the organizer of the study. We orchestrated the search that led to picking Dr. Ketchum to conduct a study of bigfoot DNA." The resulting paper documented the analysis of 111 samples of hypothesized Bigfoot DNA and was written by 11 different authors. On November 24, 2012, DNA Diagnostics, a veterinary laboratory headed by Ketchum, issued a press release prior to peer review claiming that their DNA sequencing study confirmed the existence of a hominin hybrid cross between modern humans with an unknown primate. Two months later, in the inaugural issue of DeNovo: Journal of Science, the paper was analyzed by Sharon Hill of Doubtful News for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Hill's report concluded that the paper was of poor quality, stating that "The few experienced geneticists who viewed the