The story of how it was made was told to researchers in the 1990s and appears in the 1999 book Nessie, the Surgeon's Photograph Exposed. According to that account, M. A. Wetherell, who had been ridiculed by the Daily Mail over his fake footprints, plotted with his son Ian, his stepson Christian Spurling, who made the model, and an insurance agent, Maurice Chambers. Ian Wetherell took the pictures near the Altsaigh Tea House. When they heard a water bailiff approaching, Wetherell sank the model with his foot. Chambers passed the plates to Wilson, who is said to have enjoyed a practical joke, and Wilson sold the picture to the Mail.
A 1975 Sunday Telegraph article had already described the photograph as a fake, but it was forgotten. Analysis in 1993 of the uncropped image found that the creature was only two to three feet long. The model itself is presumably still somewhere in Loch Ness.
This record is kept for the history of the hoax. There is no evidence the picture shows any animal.
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