The truth about the UFO crash at Roswell
July 2017 is the 70th anniversary of the supposed UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico. In July 1947 Roswell Army Air Field reported that Major Jesse Marcel had recovered the remains of a flying saucer discovered by a rancher Bill “Mac” Brazel in what is now called the Debris Field north of Roswell. A few days later it was announced that it had only been a weather balloon.
At the time of the 60th anniversary in 2007 Ufologist Magazine published my two part article “What Really Crashed at Roswell” which discussed the claims there had been a second crash site with more wreckage and alien bodies. I suggested that the US Air Force explanation, that it was really a Project Mogul balloon, is much more credible. This article can be found here and here. This post follows on from these articles and discusses some of the new developments in the Roswell case in the last ten years.
In their 2007 book Witness to Roswell Thomas Carey and Donald Schmitt now claimed there were three crash sites, the debris field at the Foster Ranch, the Dee Proctor site where Mac Brazel is supposed to have found alien bodies, and they claim to have finally found the third site in 2005 where most of the wreckage and more bodies were found, about fifty miles north of Roswell. This was not the same as the site identified by Frank Kaufmann in The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell in 1994 [1]. Everything, which had been previously published about the main crash site, was now apparently wrong.
Timothy ”Dee” Proctor was 7 years old in 1947 and he used to accompany Mac Brazel while he worked. In 1994 Dee took his mother to a location 2 ½ miles east of the Debris Field and told her, “This is where Mac found something else.” He did not elaborate and he was never interviewed by Roswell investigators. He died in 2006[2], but this is supposed to mean that Brazel found alien bodies [3].
As I mentioned here, Frank Joyce also claimed that Brazel said he had seen alien bodies, but Brazel himself as made no such claims.
Earlier books, UFO Crash at Roswell and The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, which Schmitt co-authored, give the impression that the Debris Field was an isolated place and only a few people had seen it. However, in Witness to Roswell Schmitt and Carey several other ranchers had visited the site and picked up debris. Some were even displayed at a rodeo in Capitan about 100 kilometres west of Roswell on July 4[4].
New witnesses, who come forward decades after the event, have little credibility. Schmitt and Carey cite a lot of second-hand accounts from family members who say their relatives saw alien bodies or a crashed spaceship in 1947, but they have died and we cannot verify their stories.
Jesse Marcel never claimed to have seen alien bodies, but Schmitt and Carey ignore Marcel’s own account and write,
“Our investigation has concluded that Major Marcel had to know about the alien bodies that were recovered from the crash – not secondhand by hearing about them from others in the chain of command, but firsthand from seeing them himself.”[5]
Because Dee Proctor’s mother says he told her Mac Brazel “found something else” before he died, Brazel saw alien bodies and he must have shown these bodies to Marcel and Cavitt, even though they never mentioned seeing alien bodies [6].
After Marcel’s death, some of his relatives claimed that Marcel had told them he had seen alien bodies [7]. Jesse Marcel Jr’s 2009 book The Roswell Legacy describes the material which his father brought home from the Foster Ranch and showed them, but he makes it clear his father never saw any alien bodies[8]. Schmitt and Carey suggest there are two possibilities – Marcel told those more distant relatives, but not his son or Marcel did tell his son, but he is not telling the whole story[9]. There is a third possibility, that Marcel never told them and these relatives are making it up.
There is also a problem with Jesse Marcel Jr’s recollections in The Roswell Legacy. In 1990 he was hypnotized in order to recall the night his father brought the material home[10]. In The Abduction Enigma Kevin Randle argues that memories, which have been “recovered” through hypnosis can be unreliable. He writes,
“It is a poor tool for finding the truth, it allows the subject to confabulate amazing memories and act on those memories as if they were true, and its validity is now being questioned. In fact, in many states, a witness who has been hypnotized in an attempt to learn of an event can no longer be called as a witness. Courts, and science, recognize how easily memories and events can be reconstructed or confabulated by a clever hypnotist. Even those whose memories are a search for the truth can, and do, lead the subject into memories that are not part of reality.”[11]
This means that Jesse Marcel Jr’s recollections of the material he saw could be contaminated and unreliable.
Schmitt and Carey describe the material recovered from the Foster Ranch as “memory metal”. Witnesses said it had unusual properties. It could be crumpled up and then return to its original condition[12]. It sounds like some kind of advanced alien technology. They call this metal the “Holy Grail of Roswell”. Finding some would prove something extraterrestrial had crashed[13].
A 2008 episode of UFO Hunters “The Real Roswell” featured former Staff Sergeant Earl Fulford who described how he had been involved in picking up the debris at the Foster Ranch. He said that after it was crumpled up, it returned to its original shape. In an experiment both Earl Fulford and Jesse Marcel Jr identified the material, which they had handled, as acetate. This undermines both the Project Mogul and the extraterrestrial explanation. There was no acetate in the Project Mogul balloons, but it also shows that what they handled was not necessarily some mysterious metal which was a product of alien technology.
Witness to Roswell published a 2002 affidavit by Walter Haut who died in 2005. Haut had been the Public Information Officer at Roswell Army Air Field and wrote the original press release in July 1947. When he was interviewed for The Roswell Incident in 1979, he said he had not seen any crashed spaceship or alien bodies[14]. In 1989 Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt interviewed Haut for their book UFO Crash at Roswell. He said he knew, “Nothing.” He had not seen any wreckage or bodies[15]. In his 2002 affidavit Haut told a very different story. He said he had handled some of the debris from the Foster Ranch and had seen part of the spaceship and two alien bodies in a hanger[16].
Haut did not write this affidavit. It was based on statements he made when he was interviewed by two Roswell researchers Wendy Connors and Dennis Balthaser. Kevin Randle commented,
“Anyone listening to the taped interview conducted by Wendy Connors and Dennis Balthaser in 2000 realizes that Haut is lost. He contradicts himself inside of single paragraphs and sometimes single sentences.”[17]
“The Connors/Balthaser interview contained some very disturbing statements by Haut. He was either badly confused, he was deeply conflicted about revealing a secret he had kept for more than sixty years, or he just couldn’t keep his new story straight probably because of his advanced age. He left a somewhat rambling mishmash of contradictory information in various statements he made after 2000.”[18]
In this interview Haut claimed to have seen several bodies, one body and then claimed not to have seen anything[19]. It sounds like he was getting old and confused and losing his memory. Donald Schmitt and Thomas Carey then wrote the affidavit based on the interview and Haut signed it [20].
Around 2014 a story emerged that two Kodak slides from the 1940s showed an alien body about three feet long in a glass case. In 2015 Tony Bragalia said about the body on the slide,
“This humanoid is not a deformed person, mummy, dummy, simian or dead serviceman. It is not a creature that finds its origin on Earth. And given that the slides of this creature were taken the very same year as the Roswell UFO crash; that the appearance of the creature matches the reported appearance of the Roswell crash aliens; and given that the person who was in original possession of the slides was a geologist working in the New Mexico desert throughout the 1940’s, it is not a jump or stretch to conclude that these slides indeed show the corpse of one of the creatures found fallen at Roswell.” [21]
However, when the slides became available online and deblurring software made them clearer, the caption on the display case could be read, “Mummified body of a two year old.” [22] They turned out to be photos of a mummified Native American boy which had been discovered in 1894 and had been on display in a museum in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado [23].
In a 2016 book Roswell in the 21st Century Kevin Randle, who had been one of the leading proponents of the Roswell UFO crash, was now more skeptical and critical of the evidence. He agrees that Jesse Marcel appears to have embellished his war record [24] and his memories are “not completely reliable” [25]. He said that Glenn Dennis’ credibility has been destroyed [26] and “we must reject this testimony”[27]. Randle no longer found the witnesses to alien bodies convincing,
“We just have the stories told about the bodies, few of them told by first-hand witnesses. Those who have claimed to be first-hand-witnesses have nothing to prove they were there or that they saw anything extraordinary. They have no diaries, no journals, no letters from that time which would add a note of credibility to what they have claimed.
This is not to mention that many of those who originally claimed t have seen bodies have had their credibility challenged. Some have been caught in forging documents, changing the story to fit the new evidence as it is uncovered and making up their involvement. There are no solid first-hand tales with some form of documentation. All we have is the tales often with no corroborating testimony to go with it, or that all those who might have seen the same thing no longer available for interview.” [28]
When Randle examined the earliest and most reliable evidence, he concluded, “Based solely on this information and documentation, it would appear that the recovery was of a balloon and rawin radar target. The photographs of the debris in Ramey’s office establish that. It is only when testimony, gathered decades after the fact come into play that we move in another direction.” [29]
Randle still did not accept the Project Mogul explanation [30]. Nevertheless, he wrote, “As for me, I find myself drifting toward those who reject the extraterrestrial .”[31]
Kevin Randle’s change of mind is a major blow for Roswell. He had written several books on Roswell, yet he came to the conclusion that the evidence that the evidence that he had once relied upon and used in his books was unreliable.
Finally, a 2017 episode of History’s Greatest Hoaxes “The Alien Autopsy Film” on Ray Santilli’s video described how it was filmed in a flat in Camden, London. John Humphreys, a special effects artist, says he used chicken and sheep organs for the alien’s insides.
[1] Thomas Carey and Donald Schmitt, Witness to Roswell, New Page Books, New Jersey, 2009, p 138-139
[2] Ibid., p 47, 139, 203-204
[3] Ibid., p 83
[4] Ibid., p 48-49
[5] Ibid., p 82-83
[6] Ibid., p 83
[7] Ibid., p 84-85
[8] Jesse Marcel Jr and Linda Marcel, The Roswell Legacy, New Page Books, New Jersey, 2005, p 73, 119
[9] Witness to Roswell, op cit., p 73. 119
[10] Thomas Carey and Donald Schmitt, The Children of Roswell, New Page Books, New Jersey, 2016, p 115-120
[11] Kevin Randle, Russ Estes and William Cone, The Abduction Enigma, Forge, New York, 1999, p 338
[12] Witness to Roswell, op cit., p26, 263
[13] Ibid.
[14] The Roswell Incident, op cit., p 76
[15] UFO Crash at Roswell, op cit., p 139-140
[16] Witness to Roswell, op cit., p 251-254
[17] Kevin Randle, Roswell in the 21st Century, Speaking Volumes, Florida, 2016, p 215
[18] Ibid., p 216
[19] Ibid., p 218-219
[20] Ibid., p 215, 218
[21] Ibid., p 177
[22] Ibid., p 189
[23] Ibid., p 197-198, 395
[24] Ibid., p 163
[25] Ibid., p 164
[26] Ibid., p 245
[27] Ibid., p 214
[28] Ibid., p 104-105
[29] Ibid., p 236
[30] Ibid., p 370-371
[31] Ibid., p 247
Malcolm Nicholson 