A: We drove down to the Plains of San Agustin which is west of Socorro, New Mexico in the Magdalena, Datil, area. We were down there looking for banded and moss agate, which according to my uncle Ted and my cousin Victor was prevalent in the area. My brother being an amateur rock hound had wanted to get some of this. That was a way of showing us around the area. They had relatives down in Magdalena that they wanted to introduce us to.

So we had gone down there and we got down in the Horse Springs area and had driven off onto the plains down an old rutted road for, oh, a mile or so and it seemed like a long ways. We parked the car, got out of the car and walked down a hillside.

There’s a semi-forest, I guess you could say. It had pinon trees and scrub oak and stuff like that on it and we walked—well, not scrub oak, but cedar—and walked down the hillside into an arroyo, a dry wash, and then walked south down a dry wash toward where the agates were supposed to be at.

As we came around a bend in the arroyo that had pinon and cedar trees growing, we were able to see farther ahead down the arroyo and on the next ridge line there was a large silver disc shaped object was embedded in this side of the ridge line ... there was debris and wreckage strewn about the area mainly this thing was intact. I would estimate its size from an adult perspective to something like 35 feet in diameter. I’ve heard other people who were there say they thought it was like 50 feet. But as an adult, I would say about 35 feet in diameter, quite large. When we got up to it there were four bodies there ... not human, there was two of them that were obviously dead, one of them was obviously very badly injured, and one of them apparently suffered no ill effects ... or it didn’t appear to be injured and was ambulatory, was mobile. It was just setting there next to the one...

Q: Were they right next to the vehicle?

A: Right next to it. Right under the edge of it. And this craft had apparently come in from the east and bounced off one ridge line, plowing through this arroyo area and then crashed into the ridge line and embedded itself. They were sitting back under the edge, it was kind of tilted up like this and they were sitting back under the edge here. And I’m assuming that this one creature that was all right had laid this material on the ground but it looked like unrolled tinfoil that these other three creatures were laying on. Like it was trying—like you do a person in shock, you know, a put him on a blanket, that kind of thing. And apparently it had some boxes there around it and had apparently been trying to give first aid or help these other creatures when we first got there.

As we approached, the creature drew back like this, like it was in fear, like we were going to hurt it. And it wasn’t very long, you know, we were trying to communicate with it, the adults were. It seemed to calm down and just sat there and kind of looked back and forth, watching them, apparently trying to figure out what was going on...

Q: What did it look like, a little bit more.

A: These creatures, all of them, were, oh, about four foot tall, four and a half feet tall. They had very large heads that were shaped larger on the top and they kind of tapered down, not to a real sharp point but just tapered down where they were thin. And they had very large, very large, oval shaped or almond shaped, I guess you could say, black eyes. The head... They were so shiny, they had almost a bluish tint to them when the light reflected off of them. Their skin coloration, the best way that I could describe that is it was kind of a bluish tinted milky-white. It looked like someone in shock. And the ones that were laying on the ground were really—really looked more that way, more blue in the light, you know...

Q: How about ears, nose, mouth?

A: No, there were no visible ears on the creatures except like—if you was just to cover your ear like this to where there was just a rise there and then a hole without, you know, your ear lobe and the rest of the area...

Q: How about nose?

A: It was—the nose was very, very small, almost imperceptible. It’s like two holes, straight in; and the lips were just a straight line. It was like a cut and you couldn’t see, just the lips like we have, it was just a slit. And...

Q: What hair color? Sound?

A: Pardon?

Q: What hair color?

A: There was no hair. They were completely bald.

Q: And no sounds?

A: I never heard a sound one, not out of any of the creatures including the one that was...

Q: Did you see fingers?

A: Yes, they had fingers like this. They didn’t have a little finger. They just had the thumb and three extra digits except the center digit was longer and the other two were about the same size. They were very long and slender and looked very delicate and I made the statement before and I’ll make it again, I think he would have made an excellent violinist because of the structure of their hands.

They were wearing one piece suits. All of them were dressed exactly the same. It was sort of a real shiny silverish gray color.

Q: No zippers, buttons?

A: No, I saw no zippers, no buttons.

Q: Insignias?

A: No, no insignias. The only thing that was different, you know, and they all had this, but the only that was different from the silvery gray thing, the suit, was that down like a seam line, like there was a seam on his shoulder and around the collar it was trimmed in what appeared to be maroon, like cording.

Then the suits were continuous with their footwear. We could see right this area down, it seemed to be less pliable then it was up here, like this was a stiffer area, like they were boots or shoes or something. But they were all dressed exactly the same.

Q: Okay. So you and your family are talking back and forth, wondering what was going on, what did your family say? I mean...

A: Well...

Q: ...did they say anything?

A: Yes, my brother, one of his first remarks I heard him say him say, “That’s a god damn spaceship.” You know there were bodies up there and, you know, I was told not to go up there, which I didn’t. And...

Q: How old was your brother at the time?

A: He was in his early twenties, I think, 20, 21, something like that.

Q: He was a lot older than you were?

A: Oh, yes, considerably.

When we got up there I kind of meandered off to one side. This thing was cocked up and I was standing here, the bodies were here, and everybody else was kind of down here except my cousin Victor was over here playing and looking in this gaping hole on the side of this disk. And it was shaped just like a discus except for a round dome was up on top and there was this big gaping gash in there. We could see inside and it looked like a double hull.

Q: How big—explain it? The gash.

A: The dome?

Q: No, the gash.

A: Well, it covered the greater majority from the center of the craft out. It was just like a gaping hole in there. I mean I’m thinking, you know, it’s like about 32, 35 feet in diameter so we’re talking about 17 feet maybe. Most of that one side was ripped open like that. You could see inside and you could see another double hull, like—in there. And there were just rows of components that was on there.

And there were lights that flashed on and off. Some of them were steady and some were flashing. There was a lot of debris and stuff hanging out of the hole. There was evidence that there apparently had been fire. It looked like it had been burned along the edge there. The gash...

Q: Now this wasn’t a gash that could have been caused by the thing coming in for the ground? It wasn’t at the leading edge of the vehicle?

A: No, no. This was in the side like—it almost appeared it was elliptical. It almost appeared as if something the same shape as the disk we were looking at had hit that same—you know, like it hit the disk and left an imprint that pretty closely approximated the outside diameter of the disk itself. And it appeared to be caved in looking, kind of like it hit them like this and it just crumpled and caved in and ripped it open.

Q: Okay, so you’re there, you take all this in, everybody is mystified. What were the circumstances outside? Hot, cold?

A: Very, very hot. Incredible to me, being the first time in New Mexico and coming from back east. I had dry heaves. It was like the inside of an oven. It was unbelievable to me. You know, the odd part about this was that the closer you got to it, the cooler it was. And standing under it in the shade there next to these creatures’ bodies, it was like refrigerated air conditioning. And...

Q: Did you feel air coming out of this thing?

A: No, it was just like it was (inaudible).

And I remember reaching up and putting my hand on the side of it but I think I was afraid I was going to hit my head because there was enough room for me as small child, you know, I was approximately the same size as these creatures, to walk up under there and stand there but I kind of did like that, put my hand up against this thing.

Q: What did it feel like?

A: It was ice cold. It felt like it just came out of a freezer.

Q: Was it smooth? Was it rough?

A: It was very smooth. It had a very smooth texture to it. It was obviously made out of metal. It was very solid and it was very cold, ice cold.

And there was a smell in the area. It smelled volatile, acrid, like acetone. And that seemed to be coming out of that gash, that smell. But the closer you got to this thing, the cooler it was so, you know, I kind of remained there.

And I guess that while they were over here, my father and my uncle Ted and my brother. Uncle Ted was trying to talk to this thing in Spanish and of course it didn’t understand a word he said. And dad tried to talk to it and then they tried, you know, sign language and that didn’t work.

And I don’t know, for some reason, I just—I reached down and touched it, this one that was laying next to me. When I touched it I realized and I jumped back. It scared me. It startled me because I suddenly realized that these weren’t dolls. I thought they were plastic dolls. And I—you know, it was still in my mind that these were dolls until I touched it and then I realized, you know, this was a dead thing.

I’d seen dead relatives before and unfortunately made a mistake one time in touching a relative that was in a casket and I just knew this was a dead thing and it scared me, and I ran around behind my father and my uncle and this thing was sitting there on the ground and it kept looking back and forth. And it just had its hands like this in its lap, and just kept looking back and forth between the three of them and—like it was trying to understand.

And all of a sudden it just turned and looked right straight at me between my uncle Ted and myself. And this is when—it was just like an explosion of things in my head, things... I started, you know, feeling, just terrible depression and loneliness and fear and just, you know, awful, awful feelings that just suddenly burst in to my mind there. I don’t know if that meant that it was communicating with me and I was the only one there that it could communicate with because I was a kid. I don’t know.

I turned and ran and I ran across the arroyo and up on the area that it had bounced off of during the crash. I was just standing there looking down at this scene, you know, at my family, and off in the distance I could see cattle grazing. I could see a windmill and could see dust trails out on the plains out there.

And, oh, I was there for a while and then I came back down. I guess we were there—Victor was, when I got back down there Victor was up in the craft and Ted yelled at him to get out of there and Glen went over and grabbed him by the belt and jerked him around...

Q: That’s your brother?

A: Yes.

And jerked him off, says, “Get out because this thing may explode and kill us all,” you know, and then of course he went prowling around in there.

I was kind of standing off to one side looking. That’s why I knew that there was—I can look off these rocks that I was standing on and look right into this thing. That’s why I knew, you know, about the lights and the components and stuff.

And then I heard other people talking. I turned and there was a group of people coming up the arroyo from out on the plains from the south. They had come up there and of course they walked up and was talking.

Q: How many?

A: There was an older man and five younger students.

Q: Boys, girls?

A: Three boys and two girls. And they were all, you know, introducing, talking to my father and my uncle and my brother...

Q: What did the older one look like?

A: He was a very tall man, a very big man. He was wearing a pith helmet when he first came up, one of those kind of explorer helmets. And he was bald and I know that because he had taken it off and he had, you know, wiped it with a handkerchief and put it back on. He was a balding man. And he had a round face. He was very ruddy complected. A big man, and he apparently was a doctor because they kept calling him doctor and it was my understanding that it was an archeological group that was out there on some kind of summer thing. And they talked and he apparently was able to speak several foreign languages and he tried to talk to this creature several times in different languages, again to no avail.

Q: How did they happen to be there? Had he seen the thing...

A: Well, they claim that they saw—they said they saw this thing come down the night before in flight, you know, and they thought it was a meteorite and they had talked about well, early in the morning, you know, we’ll go over and see this, where this meteor came down, because that’s what they thought it was.

And when the sun came up the next morning, you know, and they got about their business, got up and somebody looked over and said, you know, they saw this shiny metal and stuff across the plains there and they realized it wasn’t a meteorite, it may have been an airplane that had crashed so they all decided to go over there and see if there was anybody left alive, you know, that was hurt that needed help.

Q: They had driven over?

A: No, they walked over apparently, the way I understand it. And it’s quite a ways across that plain so it had to take a very long time to do this or they may have had a vehicle, I don’t know. That’s an assumption, I think, on my part, where they walked.

Q: Okay. So they’re around...

A: But they came across...

Q: ...with the family...

A: ...the plains. I don’t know why I said that. I’m not sure if they drove or not. I didn’t hear any cars.

Q: And then somebody else shows up?

A: Yes, they were down just, oh, 15 maybe 20 minutes tops, you know. And they were picking up things, some of the students. And this Dr. Buskirk, that they called him, this one girl went up and said, “Look, doctor, wouldn’t this make a beautiful ring?” And she was holding what looked like a red rod, a red tube that was some kind of silvery-red.

And he kind of snapped at her, you know, “Put that down because you don’t know what that thing is. That thing could hurt you. Don’t pick this stuff up.”

And she kind of said, “Well, yes, okay, doctor.” And then he went back to what he was doing and she walked away and put it in her pocket.

And a lot of them were doing this, sort of picking up things and feeling things. I was picking up things and feeling things. It was all kinds of material and metal, stuff like that. I heard it, well, we all heard it, the sound of a motor coming, like a truck. And I went back up the incline area to the ridge line and I could see out there, there was a truck coming up. It was an old pick-up truck. It was sort of a beige color, a tan colored van with an antenna on it. And it stopped and this guy got out and he’s wearing brown clothes. He’s got boots on and he’s wearing a straw hat, just like the kind that Harry Truman always wore, and he had wire rimmed glasses. He was a big man and he looked exactly like Harry Truman to me. You know, I’d seen him in the Movietone News...

Q: He was president then.

A: Yes, I was well aware who Harry Truman was. Everybody was. He was kind of a hero, you know, and he just kind of looked like him except bigger, bigger. You know, I don’t think he—and he didn’t look as old either. His hair was kind of light gray.

And he walked over there and they got to talking, you know, with everybody and he told them that he worked out on the plains out there and that he made maps and that he had seen the wreckage from out there on the plains and he saw the people and he thought it was a plane wreck and, you know, that something was going on and he came over to see.

And he hadn’t been there but just a very, very few minutes when we heard all kinds of motors and engines straining and stuff. And here comes a military car with a big white star on the side of it followed by a six-by which is a military truck with a kind of canvas wagon, kind of a canvas thing over it and it’s full of soldiers. They’ve got guns. And right behind them is what we call a four-by which is like a medium sized jeep/truck situation and it had two big high whip antennas, all kinds of radio gear in the back and a guy back there with ear phones and stuff on and he’s, you know, working these radios. And they all pulled up and stopped.

Q: Which direction did they come from, do you know?

A: They came from the north, from the Horse Springs area, right...

Q: So they could have come off the highway there...

A: Oh, yes. I’m sure that’s exactly how they got there. They come off the highway, the same way we did. Well, in the meantime, when they stopped, this black soldier, this sergeant, the reason I know he was a sergeant, my brother told me he was, and he got out of this car and then a guy got out on the other side and he was a, Glen said he was a captain, he told me later he was a captain and this guy had orange and red hair. So all the soldiers and them came running over there pointing guns at people, telling them, “Get away, get away, get away,” you know? And when this creature saw these people, the military, he went nuts. He went into an absolute panic, worse than what he did when he saw us.

Q: Did he move around or just his eyes or...

A: He just, he just...

Q: Oh, okay.

A: ...went crazy. And it was like...

Q: Like he was scared?

A: Yes, like he was looking for a place to run and hide.

Q: But he never got up?

A: He never got up. He never left the beings that were next to him.

And this red headed officer, this guy was a real butt hole. He made all the threats. He threatened to have people shot.

Q: Everybody?

A: He went, “Get away, get away,” you know, “We’ll shoot. Get away from there. This is a military secret.” You know, just screaming and hollering. He told my uncle and my father that if they didn’t want to spend the rest of their life in prison they would never say anything about what they saw there, if they ever wanted to see us kids again, they’d take the kids away. They’d never see the kids, you know, meaning me and Victor. That we’d better keep our mouths shut because if we did not, this is what was going to happen. They were threatening people and pushing people...

Q: The students as well and Dr. Buskirk?

A: Oh, yes. They were hustling everybody. And one of the soldiers pushed my uncle. He had a rifle like this and he shoved him back like that. Well, that was something you didn’t do to my uncle Ted. Ted had a violent temper. And he grabbed the rifle and reached over top and smacked this guy and dropped him right there. And Ted would go out and fight, heck, this guy’s a cowboy. He’ll hit you in a minute.

And of course when he did that there was bolts opened and I guess cocking, they were cocking their rifles. They were pointing guns at people and everybody Buskirk and Glen and dad grabbed him, you know, pulled him back and got him away. “No, don’t, Ted, they’re going to shoot. Don’t do that.” You know, trying to stop this. And I think we came very close to having someone shot.

Then they really started threatening, you know, and they...

Q: Did the redhead do all the talking, pretty much?

A: Pretty much. Except once in a while the sergeant would, you know, chime in and make statements like that to other people in response to the redhead. But mainly it was the redhead...

Q: Was there a name tag?

A: Yes, sir, there was. His name was Armstrong. And I’m not sure if I know that from having read it or know that from remembering it and now being able to read it in my memory, or if someone said that to me. But his name was Armstrong, it was right here on his uniform.

Q: But he chased you guys away pretty quick?

A: Yes, yes, he did.

And they herded us up like cattle and we were just up the arroyo, back in the direction we came from, over the protest of this Dr. Buskirk who said, “No, no, we’ve got to go the other way. We came from over there.”

“I don’t care where you came from, get your ass up the arroyo.”

And they ran us up the arroyo and...

Q: So you get to your car again?

A: Oh, right.

Now they took us up the arroyo and just over the hill we came down, they broke us off and moved us up the hill.

Now this whole time, no one has ever frisked us down, no one has ever checked our pockets to see if we picked up any of this material and this girl, Agnes, still had that stuff in her pocket and some of the other students had stuff. To my knowledge, up to that point, they had not been searched. Whether they did so afterward, I don’t know. They never searched us, ever. They ran us back up the hill and when we got to where the car was parked, where dad had parked the car up there, there’s a jeep with a guy sitting in the back and there is a mounted machine gun in the back of this jeep and all of these soldiers.

The jeep pulls out, we’re told to get in the car, we follow the jeep, and the soldiers go with us all the way back out to the highway. When we get back out to the highway, they set us right there. They wouldn’t let us out of the car. They wouldn’t let us move forward. I don’t know whether they were making a decision or what.

When we got out to the highway, this place was absolutely full of military personnel, military equipment. There was airplanes sitting out there that they had landed on the highway.

Q: Did you see any airplanes when you were back at the site?

A: Yes, there was airplanes in the sky but nobody thought much about. You know, I didn’t think anything about it. I was used to airplanes being in the sky, having been raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, the home of the Norden bombsight, you know, the sky was always full of military aircraft at night.

And when we get back on to the highway, there’s observation aircraft, you know, high winged aircraft, and there’s one, of what I know now to be a C-47 setting there. And how we didn’t hear that land is beyond me and how he landed—well, of course, I guess you could land it if you’re a good pilot out there as there were no poles or anything.

And it was—they had torn the fence down on the north side of the highway and all this equipment was setting back up there. The plane was up there and they were taking stuff out of the plane. There was military ambulances and there were trucks with—like wreckers, cranes on them. And there was tankers, like maybe had fuel or water in them. There was just—everywhere you looked there was military.

Q: A major recovery operation?

A: Yes, it looked like an invasion force. It really did.

And they were all wearing these light khaki uniforms. They didn’t look like, you know, olive drabs. They were light khaki and they all had the same patch over their—that kind of blue funny patch with the circles on it, was on his shoulder.

And a lot...

Q: Do you have a clue as to where they came from? Did your brother or your uncle?

A: No. I don’t know where they came from. No, I don’t think anybody ever ascertained that.

There were a lot of MP patches and some of them were wearing nightsticks off of these webbed utility belts. They had night sticks and they had .45’s in holsters, you know, the automatics, full holsters. And these were the people that were giving most of the orders.

They had the road barricaded off out there and we sat there for a very long time and, you know, we were getting thirsty and everything and we asked if we could go back to Horse Springs to get some water.

“Oh, no, no. You can’t through there.”

And right after that, they said, “Now you just turn around and you head out of here now and you go to Socorro,” and this is the redhead again, “Keep your mouths shut. Just keep going and don’t look back.”

Well, as we drove away, you know, dad, “The hell with it, we’ll go to Magdalena. We’ll get water in Magdalena.” You know, because that’s where John Trujillo lived, a relative of Ted’s.

And so as we drove away, I was looking out the back window and I could see Dr. Buskirk and these kids and that guy, the guy in the pick-up was standing there and this Dr. Buskirk was doing just like this in this redheaded officer’s face and he kept pointing back behind him and I guess that meant, you know, we’ve got to go back that way and he was fed up with this guy or something and he was shaking his finger in his face when they were yelling at each other and that’s pretty much the last I saw of the whole situation. I don’t know what happened after that because we just kept going.

Q: You started getting calls from the base mortuary officer is that right, some time in the afternoon on some day in July [1947].

A: Right after noon, yeah.

Q: Do you recall, was that before the story appeared in the [Roswell Daily] Record?

A: I don’t know. I’m sure it was. I can’t honestly say, but I don’t think the paper came out until the next day, I don’t think. I’m just assuming that.

Q: I understand. When things like that happen to me way after the fact I try to remember, and I wasn’t sure if you had any recollection or not. It was the base mortuary officer who called you, not any of the MDs out there.

A: No.

Q: He was just, the mortuary officer was just the guy...

A: We used to have a standing joke. What did you do that was so bad they made you the mortuary officer.

Q: Exactly.

A: He wasn’t a doctor or anything, but he was an officer and he was probably some old boy they was trying to figure out something to do with.

We used to all have them come in, even the officer himself, say, “God, I didn’t know I screwed up that bad.”

Q: Was this a guy you’d worked with before? Somebody you knew real well?

A: No. Those guys come and go.

Q: I realize that. You don’t remember what his name was or anything like that?

A: No. I’m like Bob [Shirkey]. I think if I would see it or heard it or something I might. Those guys, they were in and out. The mortuary officer, usually they would appoint some sergeant or somebody. The only time the doctors were involved is when you’d have an embalming inspection or dress inspection where the doctors came in and examined the body to make sure everything was right. You had another inspection to make sure their dog tags, make sure all the medals and everything...

They always had two crews of inspectors. The doctors were only involved in the cause of death or the autopsies or identification process, dental charts and all that. After they did their work, then a doctor would always come in and make sure the body was embalmed because [they] know more about it than the other people. But they were involved before. You know.

Q: The reason they contacted you was because Burt Ballard’s funeral home up here had a contract with the base, right?

A: Yeah.

Q: You worked for Burt for a lot of years, didn’t you?

A: Yeah, a long time.

Q: When did you first go to work for him?

A: I went to work for him, I was hanging around the funeral home when I was like a freshman in high school. I’d want to make some extra money. “I’ll give you 50 cents to wash the hearse.” I knew his daughter real well. We were all in school together. That’s where I really got involved in the funeral home. I just kind of worked my way in it.

Q: He basically taught you the trade and all that.

A: Oh, yeah. My folks weren’t in the funeral business.

Q: The reason I was curious about it was because when I went back... I’m one of these guys that goes to Washington and then gets fed up and leaves and swears I’m never going to go back, and then I go back anyway. But the last time I went back and did that, I shared a townhouse with a guy for awhile who was a mortician from Michigan. But he had to go through all this formal training and all this rigmarole...

A: No. That started in (inaudible). Maybe you don’t want to hear this, but I was in the 9th grade, and this teacher was going around and wanted us to write a composition on what we wanted to be when we graduated from school. What were our future plans. I was kind of a wise guy, I guess I must have been, but I said undertaker, and I don’t even know why. All the girls squealed, so I got a little attention. Then she said okay, if that’s what you want to do then you’ve got a week, you bring me your composition. I want to know why you want to be an undertaker.

So I went to the funeral home. They didn’t have any books in those days or anything, but that’s where I went. That’s why I got involved in it, started.

Q: How long were you in that business before you... I know you ran the Wortley Hotel up in Lincoln [N.M.].

A: Oh, that was after I retired.

Q: Oh, I see, you retired from the mortuary business...

A: Oh, yeah. I was in the funeral business 33 years.

Q: All the time with Ballard?

A: Oh no, I had my own funeral home over in Las Cruces [N.M.], and one in Socorro [N.M.].

Q: Oh, okay.

Speaking of that, do you know Norman Todd or his family?

A: His dad and I took the state board together. He was at Clovis [N.M.]. Norman’s his son isn’t it?

Q: Yeah. He’s a lawyer over in Las Cruces [N.M.]. His...

A: Wasn’t his dad the funeral director in Clovis [N.M.]?

Q: I think so. The reason I know him is because Mike Cook, who is Steve Schiff’s press secretary, and he have been friends ever since they were in kindergarten together. It turns out that Iris Todd, I guess his stepmother, is the niece of Loretta Proctor. So talk about small world.

You got these calls from the mortuary officer who was asking you all these questions. We don’t have to go back through all of this. Then at some point you decided to go out to the base. What took you to the base?

A: At some point I didn’t decide, that’s not correct. Somebody wrote that, but I don’t think it’s right. The way I ended up out at the base later, we had the ambulance service. The way I got it, the ambulance service, I got a call, was an airman that was hurt. I took him to the base. The best I remember, he wasn’t on a stretcher or anything because we walked up the ramp and he sat up in the front seat with me. So he weren’t real bad and weren’t dying. Anyway... This guy walked in, I walked him in. Where I usually park the ambulance, there was a field ambulance there. I had to go back up to the front. The airman and I walked up the ramps. That’s why I went to the base.

Q: The hospital in those days was apparently a complex of buildings, right?

A: Yeah. Kind of like Bob [Shirkey] said, like the officer’s club. They’re all wooden barrack types.

Q: So the building that’s out there now, the rehab center is a completely new building and had nothing to do with that.

A2 [Bob Shirkey]: No. Think of a long walkway, like a tunnel, attached to the front of a series of...

Q: I know just what you’re talking about.

A: ...with a little of breezeway between each building, the best I remember it. Isn’t that right. Bob?

A2 [Bob Shirkey]: Yeah. Here was the building and you came out the front door and you went down this walkway, which I just said, like a tunnel. You could see from one end to the other, but all these separate buildings which were different wings of the hospital.

Q: This was the infirmary where you took the airman, right?

A: There were some ramps there, I think the old ramp’s still there. It was. Anyway, that’s the kind of buildings they were. You don’t see it today, no.

Q: I knew that the building, most of it, was new, but I wasn’t sure if they’d built onto it...

A: That had been worked over two or three times.

Q: When you look at it looks like it’s been one of these things where they’ve added things to it.

So you pulled around behind the infirmary, basically.

A: It was a pretty tight squeeze in there. You couldn’t get very many cars in there.

Q: How many of those ambulances were back there?

A: There were three old box ambulances. I call them box ambulance. I guess you call them... I wasn’t in the military so I don’t know what all the terms were.

Q: Like these old field ambulances.

A: They’ve got the old square field ambulances, you know.

Q: The airman walked up that ramp with you. Both of you guys went into...

A: The airman and I both went in.

Q: Did he see that stuff in...

A: He wasn’t paying any attention because he had, I had a tourniquet and towel over his busted nose, and he went right on in.

Q: Got himself into a little trouble in town, did he?

A: Rode an old motorcycle. The reason I remember it is because he had an old Indian motorcycle, and I’d just bought one. I paid $40 for one and he [rode] one, and I didn’t have any fenders, and I was thinking of maybe of...

Q: So you took him in there, and then basically after you got him taken care of you figured you’d go look up your friend, the nurse.

Let’s get that straight.

A: Stan Friedman, I think, somebody thought that I was having a relationship with this nurse. I was not. This girl wouldn’t even think about going with me, and she was going strictly, when she got her time paid back to the service she was going into an order of the nuns, sisters, and she was going to be in education and later on she changed to the nursing deal. The only reason she was in it, because her folks were in debt and she went in the service to get her education. She got her education and then she was going to pay back the church what they owed her. Her whole thing in life was, from the day she was born, her life was planned that she was going to be in an order.

Q: Did she ever tell you which order that was?

A: It was in St. Paul, Minnesota. That’s all I know.

Q: That’s where she was from.

A: That’s where she was born and raised. She never went out of the city until she went to... My understanding was she never went anywhere and she never lived anywhere. She was raised up from the time... Strictly raised by the church. That was the only life she ever planned. She wouldn’t date a man if her life depended on it. She’d get around and talk and everything, but there was no way. But everybody said I was going to marry her and... That’s bull shit.

Q: The implication was that she was cute and...

A: She was cute. I could have been interested. If I wouldn’t have played second fiddle to the Catholic church, because that’s what she would have been.

Q: How did you get to know her, just being out there on the base?

A: The ambulance service. You go out there, and you’ve got your splints on a guy, you’ve got first aid, whatever, you can’t just throw them off of your stretcher. You maybe help them... Sometimes you’re out there two hours or three. Then while you’re waiting to get your equipment back you sit in the coat room with the doctors and with the nurse’s quarters. That’s where we always had our cokes and stuff.

Q: So you’d just shoot the breeze with whoever’s around.

A: You get to know these people. That’s the only way. See, she’d only been there less than three months. Of course, I’m a crazy son of a gun... Nearly everybody remembered her. She was a good looking little thing, a beautiful little girl. We thought she was kind of lonely.

Q: As you well know, there’s been a major effort to try to find her.

[Skip in tape]

A: She was out here less than three months.

Q: So you went back there. Tell me what happened.

A: I started back there, and that’s when I got in trouble. I saw this officer standing there, and I saw this debris in the back of the ambulance. Two of them was full of debris. Like Bob [Shirkey] saw a bunch little stuff, and there was a couple of pretty good sized.

Q: Two of the three ambulances had stuff...

A: One of them’s door was closed, but the other two... There was two MPs standing right out, kind of just leaning up against the back of those. I remember.

Q: Did they challenge you when you tried to go in?

A: No... Evidently because I drove up with that airman, and they just figured whatever.

Another thing, when I was there, all the people that was there, that nurse was the only person I saw that was permanent station. Everybody else was all new in that whole hospital operation. Even in the coke room, there wasn’t anybody in there that I knew. I started back and got to the door, and I saw this...

(Pause)

We’ve been friends for years, but I don’t want to talk with him around.

Q: So the stuff you saw, you said it was not aluminum...

A: ...looked like hot stainless steel when it got hot. When you put flame on stainless, see, I do sculpture work and all that, and I know what the stuff looks like.

Q: Oh, you’re a sculpture? I didn’t know that?

A: Yeah, I’ve been doing it for years. I had my own foundry... I did. I don’t do it any more. I have my stuff done. But anyway, this stuff was a blue purplish, it looked like hot stainless steel, is what it looked like. Steel that got hot. It didn’t look like aluminum, it wasn’t even melted like aluminum. I don’t even think it was melted, just like a bunch of fragments.

Q: But there were some bigger things in there besides the fragments, right?

A: Yeah. There were was two pieces.

Anyway, do you want to go back to the nurse?

Q: Yes, please.

A: I started back, see, and this captain was standing there, and naturally, I just thought we had a plane crash. When we had that, we used to fill up the ambulances and everything else. It would (inaudible) for you to have a hand here or an arm or a foot or something. You know what I’m talking about. Then you’ve got to get in and take all that stuff and separate it and put those bodies back together with identification. That’s what you’ve got to do. I thought we had a crash.

I saw this guy, I didn’t know him. He was standing there at the door.

Q: Just inside?

A: Just kind of standing like in between the door of this room up there. I was going down the hall. I said, “Sir, it looks like we had a plane crash. Do I need to go in and get ready for it?”

Q: This was an officer?

A: Yeah, he was a captain. I remember the bars on his [inaudible]. He said, “Who are you?” I told him I was from the funeral home, and he said, “Wait right there, don’t move.”

Then he came back, that’s when the two MPs came up. When the nurse came out, we started down the hall and that’s when somebody in the back of us said, “Bring that son of a bitch back.” That’s when the redheaded captain asked where the sergeant came in right there. Then they took me on out. As I was going down the hall, she came out of, like Bob said, out of this room, and there was two guys in back of her, and they all had towels over their face.

She saw me and she said, “Glenn, what are you doing here? Get out of here, you’re going to get in a lot of trouble. How did you get in here?” She said that two or three times. She was sick.

Q: This is when you were talking to that first officer?

A: Yeah. He just told the MPs to take me back to the funeral home.

Q: He had just told them that, and then she appeared at that point?

A: He told them to take me to the funeral home, and we started down the hall, back out the hall, and that’s when she came out of another room with these other two guys. What happened, she told me the next day, they were all sick because those little bodies were in those sacks, and two of them were very mangled and the smell was horrible and one was whole and two of them were very badly mangled.

Q: Did you get a whiff of that stuff yourself?

A: No, evidently not. If I would have, I would have known what it was. I worked on a hell of a lot of stuff.

Q: In that tape you talked about working on floaters and all that kind of stuff.

A: You know.

Q: I haven’t had professional experience in it, but I’ve been involved in it.

A: In New Mexico you’ve got this hot 100 degree stuff, and you’ve got bodies out there two or three days, and (inaudible).

Q: This red headed guy, what was his rank, do you remember?

A: I think he was a captain. It seemed to me like he had on some bars.

Q: When he first appeared and started getting, essentially, pretty rough, was the sergeant around at that time, or did he show up...

A: He was kind of beside of him. I think they were standing there.... Yeah, they were definitely standing there together. I don’t know if they walked in together, because I didn’t see them until they turned me around.

Q: Was there a lot of activity at that time? Were there people...

A: People were [fastened] everywhere. And the odd part of it was, there wasn’t anybody, wasn’t any of our regular people. These were all people that I’d never seen before. That’s why I got in so much trouble. I’d never seen these guys.

Q: These were not any of the guys that would ordinarily recognize you as somebody who would...

A: And they sure as hell didn’t want me there, you know that.

Q: When he says, “Get him out of there,” the redhead, did he make any threats to you himself? Did he say, “Don’t say anything about this, forget it...”

A: He said, just like that. He says, “Now listen, Mister, you don’t go back into town starting a bunch of damn rumors.” This guy swore as much as I do. Anyway, he said, “Don’t start a bunch of damn rumors, because nothing happened out here. There’s no plane crashes. Nothing’s happened. You don’t go in and start.” Then he told the MPs, “Get the son of a bitch out of here.”

That’s when I said, right then, I said, “Look, Mister, I’m a civilian, and you can’t do a damn thing to me, you go to hell.” That’s when he said, “Listen, Mister, somebody will be picking your bones out of the sand.”

Then the black sergeant said, “Sir, he would make good dog food,” or something like that. I remember the dog food.

The next morning at 6:00 o’clock the sheriff was out at my dad’s house and told my dad, “Glenn may be in a lot of trouble with the base, and tell him to keep his mouth shut.”

I never told my story to anybody, but my dad came up, I was living in a room at the funeral home. He came up and got me out of bed and wanted to know what I’d done. He was a very patriotic old man, and he said, “If you done anything against our government, I’ll take care of it.”

Q: When was this?

A: The next morning.

Q: You were saying what the heck? What’s going on?

A: Yeah. I said, well hey... He said, George Wilcox—the sheriff and my dad were real good friends, and he said George tells me you’re in a lot of trouble out there. He wasn’t going to leave, and I told my dad the story. He got all upset because they threatened me and all this kind of stuff.

I didn’t see the nurse, then, until the next day. After I saw her, then I kept calling. When I got back to the funeral home I started calling, because she was in trouble and so was I.

Q: It was the next morning after you’d been hustled out of there that your dad came by to see you.

A: Yeah, 6:00 o’clock in the morning.

Q: He’d been called by the sheriff...

A: The sheriff went to my mother and dad’s house, and at 6:00 o’clock... My dad always got up early, sat and had coffee. He was an old carpenter and building contractor. He and George were old friends because he used to go hunting, and dad was making gun stocks, so they were good friends. They used to play some kind of domino games or 42, whatever you call it. They were good friends.

Q: So the sheriff went by to see your dad...

A: Dad said he was there at 6:00 o’clock.

Q: The sheriff came by early in the morning and then your dad immediately came from home and came to see you.

A: After George Wilcox left, my dad came up to the funeral home and wanted to know what I did.

Q: Did your dad say why the sheriff... Had the sheriff been contacted by the base, or...

A: No, he just said, he was concerned about what I’d done, how I’d got in trouble.

Q: Do you remember what he told you about what Wilcox told him?

A: He just said George said I was in trouble at the base, and what did I do.

Q: Then after having this rude awakening, you then... Did you call the nurse?

A: Well, yeah, this was in mid-morning. I remember I finally, I waited until kind of, well, it must have been 9:00 o’clock or so, and I called. I knew the work station that she always worked at. She was a general nurse. They didn’t specialize. Just orderlies and everybody was on general duty in those days. I was informed that she wasn’t there, she wasn’t working. She wasn’t working that day.

Q: It was one of the other nurses that you talked to?

A: Yeah, it was an old girl by the name of Wilson, Captain Wilson. I asked her, I said “what happened?” She said, “Glenn, I don’t know what happened, but she’s not on duty. I’ll try to get the word to her that you want to talk to her.” She was wanting to talk to me, but she was sick. She was in total shock.

Q: Did she tell you that later, that she was sick?

A: I knew she was sick. She came out with that towel. She said, she and the two doctors were sick. Then at the Officers’ Club, she said I want to know what happened to you, and I’ll tell you what happened to me. The only way we ever got to the Officers’ Club, the old regular group said you don’t go anywhere, you keep your mouth shut, [inaudible] said that. The old group, they would have known us. It probably wouldn’t have mattered. But these people, hell, these people didn’t know us. And of course I had a pass, and I had an associate membership to the Officers’ Club, the funeral home did, so I could go as I pleased. I had free access to the base.

Q: Did you meet her at the club?

A: She said she’d meet me over there. She was sick. She said I’ll meet you there.

Q: When you got there, she was at the club?

A: She was walking up when I drove up. She walked over. It wasn’t very far from the hospital.

Q: She walked from the hospital or...

A: From the nurse’s quarters.

Q: Let me back up to the event with the MPs. They physically hustled you out of the hospital...

A: Well, they didn’t carry me out, they said, “Come on, we’re taking you back,” one on each side. They didn’t have their hands on me or forcing me.

Q: I’ve forgotten which one of the accounts has them lifting you right off your feet and all that kind of stuff.

A: No. They may have got me by the elbow, but that was that. They were nice guys. They were doing what they were told to do.

Q: They got you to the ambulance. Did they follow you back to the funeral home?

A: One followed me in a pickup and the other one sat in the seat with me.

Q: Oh, I see, he actually rode with you in the ambulance.

A: He rode with me, and the other one drove a pickup and picked him up. They had a pickup.

Q: Did the guy riding with you say anything about what was going on?

A: He said he didn’t know what was going on. That was the first thing I said, “What in the hell’s going on?” You know. He said, “You know more about it than we do,” something similar to that. I don’t know the exact words, but he didn’t know anything.

Q: Now we’re back to the Officers’ Club and you met her there. When you saw her, how did she look?

A: Like a nervous wreck. Her hair wasn’t combed or nothing. She said she’d been sick all night crying and everything else, and she was still crying. She was hysterical. She put her hands over her face and said I can’t believe it. The most horrible thing she’d ever seen. She was really in bad shape.

Q: You called her and wanted to get in touch with her to talk with her about what happened.

A: I was curious.

Q: Did she seem reluctant at first to talk to you about it?

A: No, she said I’ve got to talk to you. I want to know what happened to you. She said I’ve got to talk to somebody, and that was it. You know, I’d see her a lot. I knew all those old girls out there, you know.

Q: Did she give you any indication or any reason to believe that she had been told to keep her mouth shut about it, or...

A: Well, yeah, because I’ll tell you what. She had this drawing on the back of a prescription pad, these little bodies, it was on the back, a little small thing on the back of a prescription pad. She said, “I’m going to show you something, and you have to give me your sacred oath that you won’t tell anybody when you got this and you won’t ever mention my name, because I will get in a lot of trouble.” That’s what she said. “I will get in a lot of trouble.”

Q: She didn’t say specifically that somebody had...

A: No, she just said, “I will get in a lot of trouble.” She said, “Will you do that?” I said, “Sure.”

She showed me that. And she had it written on the back like I had it on the back of that, you have my drawing, where I said note, and all that. That’s what she said.

Q: She let you keep that, she gave it to you?

A: Yeah, she said you look at it and you throw it away. I never did. I went and took it back and put it in my personal file.

Q: Which subsequently got tossed, apparently.

A: Well, all the files got tossed.

Q: What happened?

A: Well, the funeral home, I hired some guys, the manager up there now [was there] before I left, and Raymond said that he doesn’t know, because when he was working up there was another manager, and he said he thought Joe [Lucas] told (inaudible). Of course Joe and I weren’t very good friends and we’d had some problems over the funeral business, and he said Joe found my files. He said I know he went through everything you had.

He and I had a partnership in a business, and I put up all the money and it went sour and so we had problems.

Q: You and Stan Friedman actually made an effort to try and find that, didn’t you?

A: We went down there. The old file was right where I said it was, it was still there. But it was, Stan will tell you, we went down in this old basement, and I knew exactly... See, I kept files on every case that I was involved in, murders, anything that I went to court on, that I was a witness on, I kept all that. I called those my personal files. If I ever had to go back with the insurance companies or anything, I had it all right there. That’s why I had those.

Q: You found the filing cabinet but there was nothing in it?

A: No. We went through it. There wasn’t a thing in it. Stan and I both.

Q: They’d stripped it out, or was there other stuff in there...

A: There wasn’t anything in there.

Q: After all of that excitement, then what? Did it just kind of evaporate?

A: It just kind of evaporated. Then of course two or three days later, I was concerned about her because she was sick. I took her back to the nurse’s quarters and let her out. I called back the next day and they said she wasn’t on duty, and I called the next day and they said she wasn’t on duty. Then I went out there, for some reason, I don’t recall. I went out there and I asked about the lieutenant, and they said she’d been transferred out. They said, “She was transferred out yesterday.” Well, that was the day after I saw her. They got her out the next day.

Q: Who told you she’d been transferred out?

A: I don’t know. Some nurses...

Q: It wasn’t anybody that you remember?

A: No.

Q: Did they tell you where she’d been shipped to?

A: They didn’t know. They said she had been transferred, and that’s all they knew.

Q: But then you heard from her subsequently.

A: About three or four weeks later. I got a card addressed to Ballard Funeral Home. It was from her, and inside it just said, just a short note, she said we will correspond later to see what happened to each other, something similar to those words. She said the only way you can contact me is through this APO number, and there was an APO number. It was a New York APO number.

Q: So she’d gone to Europe or some place.

A: Then right on the bottom she says, “I’m in London.” That was it. I wrote a note, just a note, that said if you feel like it and you get time, then I would love to know and we’ll correspond. Mine came back. That was about three or four weeks later. Mine came back.

Q: That was the one that was marked deceased?

A: Yes. It said return to sender, [addressee] deceased.

Q: Then what did you do?

A: (inaudible)

Q: You didn’t try to follow up or see if there was any possible...

A: No. I asked (inaudible), at the time we called her Slatts Wilson, a big tall nurse, 6'2, 6'3, big tall skinny girl. We called her Slatts. Everybody called her Slatts. She’s the one that told me she’d heard that there was a plane crash and she was the nurse that went down on a training mission. She said that’s strictly rumor, I don’t know anything about it. That’s what I...

Q: No one’s been able to turn that one up at all.

A: I guess maybe I should never even mention this. I know no one believes this damn story. Nobody believes this story.

Q: I don’t know if that’s true.

A: Anyway, it was a hell of a story. I told (inaudible). I said I told the woman, I don’t want to give you her name, because I told the lady I’d give a sacred oath and I didn’t want to get involved. Well, it’s been 45 years, almost 40 years, and I haven’t heard anything. He said I will do it confidentially and nobody else will have this name. Well, that’s where he broke his promise after that. I got all over him about it. I called him and I was madder than hell. He said well, Bob Shirkey was the one that told everybody, that he was sitting in the back of us. Bob brought Stan [Friedman] up there when he interviewed me. He said, Bob Shirkey was the one that let out her name. To this day, Stan Friedman (inaudible) still says he did not put her name out. I’ve been on several shows, not several, but two or three interviews, and I’m not going to mention her name. If somebody says is this her name? I’m not going to say it is or it isn’t. I told Stan ... I was madder than hell about it, because I did give my word.

Q: There’s another side to that, too, from the standpoint of those who are trying to get some answers. By not having her name around, it makes it easier to cross-check the stories that you get from people. You have... It’s a question of honor, and that’s very sound. I applaud you for that. There’s not too many people around these days that are concerned about that kind of thing. And it’s also, from an investigator’s point of view, an advantage, too.

A: I’ve never read this stuff, I’ve never watched the videos, I’ve never read any books, I haven’t even read Stan’s books, I haven’t even read [Kevin] Randle’s only what they say about me. Friedman is a lot more accurate, but see...

Q: You mean about...

A: About me. I’ve read that. That’s the only thing I’ve read. I’m not a UFO guy. I’ve got another life besides UFOs. But anyway, Stan Friedman’s story is pretty well right. But Randle and them was always said I got curious. I didn’t get curious. I went out there on a call, just like I told you.

Q: The section of their book that refers to you is really kind of cryptic, anyway.

A: They said the book was already published. Now they had a copy... Friedman sent them a copy of my tape. They had the (inaudible). Hell, they had my tape. They just made that up. Somebody did.

Q: I was puzzled by it when I read their book. That whole section where they refer to you, and it’s all very mysterious, and your name is not referred to in the table of contents, but you’re in the list of people that’s been interviewed, but you’re not one of the key people lists...

A: They never did interview me.

Q: They never talk to you at all?

A: Not personally. They didn’t interview me until a long time later, a year or so later. They only had Stan’s tape.

Q: So when they were actually writing their book...

A: The book was already published.

Q: When they were doing the writing, they were working from Stan’s tape.

A: Evidently.

Q: Who was actually the first UFO investigator to get in touch with you?

A: Stan Friedman. When they had Unsolved Mysteries here and different ones. There was a lot of people... I’d get different ones. I had different people come and say we want to talk to you about the UFOs, and I said I don’t have anything to say, I don’t want to talk about it, and I never did. I’ve talked to very few people since.

Q: How did Stan come to find you?

A: One of the guys that I went to school with, high school, and Captain Harry Blake, he’s a general now, (inaudible).

Q: Is he still on active duty?

A: No, he’s retired. He was just a general in the military school, National Guard, I don’t know. He never was really a good friend of mine. We lived across the street from each other when we were kids.

Q: So that’s how Stan found you. He was the first guy to talk to you.

A: Bob Shirkey brought him up there to see me.

(Pause)

Q: There’s a reference in here to you having some years later, I think, talked to a pediatrician that you knew? A guy that was stationed...

A: I can’t find his picture, and I don’t remember his name. I ran into him when I was fishing up in Colorado and we ran into each other.

Q: This was a guy who was at that time stationed here?

A: He was here, and they called him in. He said that was out of his field and he didn’t want anything to do with it.

Q: They actually called him in and asked him to take a look at what had been retrieved or...

A: He said they called him in. I don’t know. He said, “But I said that was out of my field and I didn’t want anything to do with it.” That’s what he told me, now.

Q: Did you get the sense that he knew more than he was telling?

A: I would say so, yeah. I’m sure they did. A lot of those guys out there did.

Q: You don’t remember his name?

A: I don’t remember it. But I did run into him. Somewhere I’ve got his name.

Q: Have you talked with anyone else? Had you during that time before you got into all this...

A: No, I wouldn’t have even talked to him about it. He brought it up and wanted to know whatever happened on the UFO business.

Q: It was at his initiative.

A: I didn’t bring it up. I told him I didn’t know any more about it than he did. He said well that was strictly out of my field, and I didn’t want to get involved in it. That was about it. But he brought it up. I didn’t ask him.

Q: He was just curious about what happened.

A: Wanted to know whatever happened to it.

Q: That’s about all I’ve got.

A: I remember that he saw—one time I went to visit—and I don’t remember whether it was before my husband and I married or after, I don’t recall the date. But he said that he saw a UFO fall. He was out working in the field and I understood that he was out on the St. Agustin Plains and he went over that way and it fell and he got nearly to the site and there was a group of people on a geological—archeological hunt and they were over there. I don’t remember how many people he said.

But they got nearly up to the UFO but it was close enough that you could see some creatures. He said they didn’t look like human beings out there.

And along came government cars and trucks...

Q: Now, by government you mean...

A: I guess it was government. You know, as I said it was a long time ago. And someone came along and I understood it, I don’t know whether it was army or what. I think he just termed it government trucks and they told him to go on back and forget they ever saw anything, and that’s all I recall.

A: ...he [the eyewitness] had been coming back from one of his field trips, he’d run onto a flying saucer that had burst open and there were four beings on the ground and that he was surveying the site, archeological group from the University of Pennsylvania, telling us that there were about four or five people with this group.

As they were just starting to look things over really closely, the military moved in and gave them a briefing not to say anything about it and keep quiet and it was in the national interest to get out of there.

Q: What was his feeling about what it was that he had experienced?

A: He had no qualms about what it was. He said it was a vehicle from outer space. There wasn’t any question. The beings on there were nothing like, not exactly like human beings....

Q: How did you...

A: ...similar but not exactly.

Q: How did he describe them?

A: He described them being about three and a half to four feet tall, very slim in stature, and with—their heads were hairless, with no eyebrows, no eyelashes, no hair. Sort of a pear-shaped head with the top of the head being smaller—larger, I mean.

Q: Any other characteristics about their appearance?

A: Only one thing that he mentioned. The hands were not covered, they had four fingers.

DS: So you were actually out there.

JR: Yeah.

DS: Do you remember the name of the ranch it was on?”

JR: It was on ... Fisher?

DS: Was it north of here.

JR: Yes ... back out here.

DS: Northwest ... Just take your time.

JR: It was Foster. (Some discussion with his wife about who owned the ranch) ... Let me see what you’ve got (referring to the photographs). That’s the place right there (identifying the location from the pictures).

DS: What area?

JR: It seemed to me that that place belonged to ... Fisher, but it sold to somebody else ... somebody else bought that... That’s how come I was out in that area. And we was out there and she’s dead and all the guys I showed the stuff are all dead. It’s amazing what all went on...

Discuss our book and the Museum.

DS: showing one of the pictures ... so you think this looks like

JR: That looks like the place.

DS: As far as the ranches go, driving around at that time, it could have been most any ranch, right? This would have been in ’47 ... You were with this woman?

JR: Yeah. We were camped out out there.

DS: You were camping?

JR: Yeah... I would say half of it ... I would say that only about half of it ... just half of a ... you really couldn’t tell what it was ... what you could still see, where it hit ... I think it was two spaceships flying together and one them came down and the other one picked up what they could and got out of there.

DS: Is it possible that because it was hit by lightning that it broke up and part of it went down ... (discussion of the Mac Brazel sighting)

JR: ... but it was either dummies or bodies or something laying there. They looked like bodies. They weren’t very long ... over four or five foot long at the most. We didn’t see their faces or nothing like that but we had just got to the site and heard the army, the sirens, all coming and we got into a damned jeep to take off. We had to hold a fence up to go onto another ranch to come out from there.

DS: How far would you say this from town here?

JR: Thirty miles ... forty miles.

DS: In a northwesterly direction?

JR: Right up here. (Discuss the pictures again.)

DS: Were there any buildings?

JR: No. You couldn’t see nothing. You go up on top of the hill. It was a hill ... (referring to the pictures) you could see the stuff right here.

DS: The object ... the craft ... what was left of it ... in these photos ... where was the object?

JR: Along this right here ... It looked to be about half of around (?) because around the edges ... I had two great big pieces. That’s what they got when they stole the car ... you could take that stuff and wad it up and it would straighten itself out. I never seen anything like it. Looked like something between a plastic ... looked like carbon paper...

DS: That was the color of it?

JR: Yeah. Carbons. That was the color of it. Sure was ... between plastic and ... hell I don’t know ... let’s see how to describe. One piece we had you could take it and put it in any form you wanted and it would stay there ... you could bend it in any form and it would stay ... it wouldn’t straighten back out.

DS: You picked those up from the ground?

JR: Yeah.

DS: You threw them in the jeep ... stuffed them in your clothes...?

JR: Yeah and then we heard all of them coming...

DS: How many vehicles ... how much commotion did you hear as they came in?

JR: Oh my God it must have been ... it was two or three six by six army trucks, a wrecker and everything ... and leading the pack was a ’47 Ford car with guys in it ... MPs and stuff in it ... we had the windshield down on the jeep and we stayed in the weeds and stuff ... and we came on back down to where we was camped at.

DS: So you watched for a while?

JR: Yeah. Sure did.

DS: What was their...

JR: They cleaned everything all up. I mean cleaned it. They raked the ground and everything. I mean they cleaned everything.

DS: You didn’t stay there that long?

JR: No, but they had a truck. I would say it was six or eight big trucks besides the pick up, weapons carriers and stuff like that.

DS: What kind of guard did they have. Did they surround certain areas...

JR: They had MPs all ... they got way out in the field. They had people all along this ridge ... they drove up in here. We was back over here. This grass here...

DS: So if you were back here, could you see the activity down here?

JR: You couldn’t see too much of what they ... you could tell ... As soon as they got there they began gathering the stuff up ... we were hidden in what you call buffalo grass...

DS: Did you see any behavior around the bodies.

JR: Huh-uh.

DS: You couldn’t see down to that level?

JR: Yeah.

DS: Did you see any activity near the craft?

JR: No.

DS: The angle of the craft ... was it flat was tipped...

JR: One part was kind of buried in the ground ... and part of it was sticking out of the ground ... about like that (DS: about a 30 degree angle?) Yeah ... and I’m sure that was bodies ... either bodies or dummies...

DS: Why do you say “dummies?”

JR: The federal government could have been doing something because they didn’t want anyone to know what this was ... they was using dummies in those damned things ... they could use remote control.

DS: So you thought that it could have been an experimental craft?

JR: After I came to town showed Frank Willis and his son (he’s dead) ... the Blue Moon beer joint over on the old Dexter highway. We was there until two o’clock in the morning ... I had the jeep behind my car.

DS: Did you still have the scrap in the jeep?

JR: Yeah. I showed it to him. He said I would just keep my mouth shut ... he said hell there is no telling where that come from.

DS: So you didn’t think it was from outer space?

JR: No. We didn’t even think about outer space back then...

DS: When was the first time that you thought that maybe this was something more?

JR: It was about three weeks ... it came out that a spaceship had crashed at Roswell ... about three weeks. But it could have been out longer than that there but see I worked in Carlsbad...

DS: But you first saw there had been a newspaper article about three weeks after...

JR: Oh hell it was two or three weeks before I caught up on it ... a spaceship ... what I hear is they guarded that place for a long time out there ... because me and another fellow went out there and you couldn’t get ... they had the roads sealed off ... it was a month or so after...

DS: And they still had it cordoned off.

JR: The MPs and stuff were still on the road. They wouldn’t let nobody go out there...

DS: If a person were to drive out there today ... going north out of town ... are we talking 285?

JR: No. Highway 48. You go out 48. You go out here to the truck route, hit 48 and ... and it’s about forty some miles out in there ... (And no talks about the car being stolen in 1951 when the car with the debris was stolen...) ...I would say 18 inches and 30 inches long ... strips off the edge of it ... it was a heavy material but it didn’t have no ridges ... it was put together with some kind of solder like stuff ... no bumps, no nothing in it ... it wasn’t ... it was about as heavy as duraluminum ... it wasn’t as brittle ... you could take a small piece and it was flexible ... (then discuss the stealing of the car with a wrecker and the material was locked in the trunk of the car. And then discuss the break in of the house where the last of the pieces were stolen about eight years ago ... 1985).

DS: Was there a storm that night?”

JR: Yeah. There sure was. It was a whale of a storm.

DS: Did you hear anything unusual? Did you hear ... between the cracks of thunder...

JR: Well, it lit up the sky when it came down. It lit up the damned ... we thought at first that it was falling star or something. And electric lightning ... man it was something.

DS: You heard something and you saw something...

JR: Yeah, sure did ... because we were laying there in the back of the pick up ... the whole sky lit up ... we thought it was a star falling.

DS: Did you then go to check it out...

JR: Sure did. The next day, sure did. We drove right up on it. She picked up a piece of it and we had the jeep parked a little ways away from there and throwed a piece of it up there somewhere and I have tried and tried to find where she had throwed that piece ... she had a piece but when she saw the army coming she throwed it out ... she saw them a coming and she throwed it out ... I doubt that I could even go back to the place it’s been so long. (Now begin to talk about the car wreck that nearly killed him.)

Remainder of the tape is discussion about the car wreck, the ranchers in the area, and the murder of Mrs. Ragsdale’s brother.