THE ROSWELL CRASH: VOICES FROM 1947
by Spartacus 01
The Roswell incident of 1947 remains one of the most intriguing and debated events in modern history. What started as a seemingly straightforward military announcement about the recovery of a “flying disc” quickly turned into a decades-long controversy after officials changed the story, claiming it was just a weather balloon. However, what truly keeps Roswell alive in the public imagination are the numerous witness testimonies that emerged over the years. Many of those who claimed to have seen the debris — or even the bodies — describe something far more unusual than a conventional military device. Their accounts, often consistent despite the passage of time and the social pressure to dismiss such stories, raise questions that the official explanations have not entirely resolved. While some may attribute these accounts to misinterpretations or flawed memories, the persistence and detail of these testimonies make it hard to completely dismiss the possibility that something truly extraordinary occurred.
THE CORE STORY
"On July 4, 1947, Mack Brazel, a rancher living southeast of Corona, New Mexico, was out checking his pastures when he stumbled upon something unusual. The ground was covered with metallic debris, unlike anything he had seen before. Curious, he picked up a few pieces and decided to show them to his neighbors, Floyd and Loretta Proctor. Loretta described the metal as incredibly strong, very light, and resistant to fire—remarking that it seemed like plastic but much tougher. The Proctors advised Brazel to inform the sheriff about his find. After discussing it with a few people in Corona, Brazel was convinced that notifying the authorities was the right move.
On Sunday, July 6, Brazel made the three- or four-hour drive to Roswell and brought a box of the strange metal pieces to Chaves County Sheriff George Wilcox. At that point, no one — not Brazel, nor Wilcox — knew exactly what it was, yet they just knew it was unusual and not something they could identify. Therefore, Wilcox figured the best thing to do was call the military. So, he reached out to Major Jesse A. Marcel, the intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group. Marcel later recalled, “I was having lunch when the sheriff from Roswell called me and said he needed to talk. He said a rancher had come to town with something weird. I said, ‘I’m all ears.’ Then he told me about the crash and said the rancher didn’t know what he had found, but it might be worth looking into.” Consequently, Colonel William Blanchard, who was the commanding officer of the 509th, told Marcel he should go investigate, and he also mentioned that Marcel had access to some Counter Intelligence Corps agents, so he suggested he take one along. Eventually, Captain Sheridan Cavitt, the senior CIC officer in Roswell, ended up going with him.
Marcel said, “Cavitt drove a jeep carryall, and I drove my staff car. We followed the rancher’s pickup truck across open land — he didn’t use any roads to get there. We arrived at his place around dusk, so it was too late to do anything that evening, and we spent the night there.” The next day, Monday, July 7, Marcel saw the debris field for the first time. To him, it was obvious that “something had exploded above ground and fallen.” So, he, Cavitt, and Brazel walked the site and figured out the path the debris had taken. “You could tell where it started and where it ended — it was thicker at the beginning and then gradually thinned out going southwest.” Subsequently, they inspected the whole area. Marcel said, “It was scattered over a wide area — probably three-quarters of a mile long and a few hundred feet wide.” He also said, “We found some metal, small pieces. We picked it up.” According to him, it was clearly something manufactured. “I wanted to see if the stuff would burn, but all I had was a cigarette lighter. I tried to light it… but it didn’t burn.”
Marcel also described some I-beam-like pieces that he said were “solid members that you couldn’t bend or break, but they didn’t look like metal.” He remembered them as being maybe three-eighths of an inch by one-quarter of an inch thick, and they came in a variety of sizes — though none were very long. The biggest one, he said, “was about three or four feet long” and completely weightless. “You couldn’t even tell you had it in your hands,” he recalled. Additionally, he told Leonard Stringfield, a UFO researcher from Ohio, that he had found many small metal fragments, along with what looked like “parchment.” The fragments, he said, were up to six inches long but as thin as tinfoil. What made them stand out was their incredible strength. In later interviews, Marcel gave more details about the materials he had seen. When someone asked him whether there had been any markings on the debris, he said, “Yes, there were. Something undecipherable. I’ve never seen anything like that myself. I don’t know if anyone ever managed to figure out what they meant.” Moreover, he added that some of the I-beam-like pieces had small markings along their length. “Two-color markings… like Chinese writing. Nothing you could make any sense out of.”
Captain Cavitt, on the other hand, initially denied that he had even gone to the site. In his first interviews with UFO researchers Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt, Cavitt said he didn’t know why Marcel had claimed he went with him. However, later, when he was interviewed by an Air Force colonel, Cavitt not only confirmed that he had been at the site, but also said that as soon as he saw the debris, he knew it was from a weather balloon. Nevertheless, he never explained why he had not told Marcel this at the time, or why they had spent an entire day collecting pieces of what he supposedly recognized right away.
It was obvious that the debris wasn’t from any kind of aircraft, missile, or weather balloon. Marcel said, “I’d never seen anything like that. I didn’t know what we were picking up. I still don’t know. Even today, I have no idea what it was… it couldn’t have been from an aircraft, or from any kind of weather balloon or experimental balloon. For one thing, if it had been a balloon, it wouldn’t have been porous. But this stuff was porous.” Marcel explained that he had seen rockets launched from White Sands, and this material definitely didn’t come from any rocket, missile, or aircraft. They gathered as much as they could carry, yet much of the wreckage remained scattered across the field. Although he and Cavitt had moved some of the wreckage to the center of the field, much more remained “scattered all over.” Marcel sent Cavitt back to the base while he stayed behind to gather more. He filled up his staff car with as much as it could hold. Still, he said, “We only picked up a very small portion of it.” Before heading back to the base, Marcel made a stop at his house. He said that he had been so impressed by what they had found that he wanted his family to see the debris, even if it meant waking them up.
Jesse Marcel Jr. remembered being woken up by his father that night, feeling confused and disoriented. His father was standing over him, urging him to get up. He got out of bed and followed him outside, where they carried a box filled with metallic debris. Once inside the house, they spread the pieces across the kitchen floor, trying to fit them together like a giant puzzle. The debris covered most of the floor, from the back door to the entrance of the living room, stretching from the stove on the left to the sink and refrigerator. Jesse Jr. described the materials: lead foil, I-beams, and a small, black plastic-like substance that was thicker than the foil and much stronger. He said it reminded him of “Bakelite.” As they were examining the pieces, Marcel’s wife, Viaud, picked up one of the beams and pointed out that it had strange markings on it. Jesse Jr. remembered seeing “purple, strange symbols” — different geometric shapes, including leaves and circles. The symbols were shiny purple, small, and less than the width of a fingernail, scattered across the beam. Marcel Sr. told him it was from a flying saucer, and when Jesse Jr. asked what a flying saucer was, his father explained it was a ship, sounding excited. After they finished inspecting the debris, Jesse Jr. helped his father put the pieces back into the box and carry it out to the car, where Marcel was heading to the air base.
Early the next morning, Marcel met with Colonel Blanchard and showed him some of the debris they had collected, explaining that it was unlike anything he had ever seen. Later that day, Blanchard sent Marcel to Carswell Air Force Base to speak with General Ramey, the commanding officer of the Eighth Air Force. Marcel’s orders were to fly the materials to Wright-Patterson Air Field in Ohio, but when he arrived at Carswell, General Ramey was absent. Robert Porter, a crew member on the flight to Fort Worth, said there were only four small packages. After the preflight check on the B-29, a staff car from Building 1034 delivered the material, which was handed up to Porter through the hatch. The largest piece was triangular, about two-and-a-half to three feet across and three to four inches thick, while the other three packages were about the size of shoeboxes and felt empty.
Once the packages were loaded, they were moved to the back of the forward compartment, where Porter could no longer see them. When the plane arrived at Fort Worth Army Air Field, the crew was told to stay with the aircraft until a guard was posted, after which they were allowed to eat. The material was then transferred to a B-25 and flown to Wright Field. When the crew returned, they were told the debris had been nothing more than a weather balloon and instructed not to discuss the flight with anyone. Years later, Walter Haut, the public relations officer at Roswell, spoke with Marcel, who shared that he had taken some of the debris into General Ramey’s office to show him. The material was laid out on Ramey’s desk for when he returned, and Ramey wanted to see the exact location where it had been found. The two went to the map room, but when they came back, the wreckage on Ramey’s desk had been replaced with a weather balloon.
While Marcel was at the Fort Worth base, Major Charles A. Cashon, the public information officer, took two photos of him crouching near the remains of the weather balloon. Marcel briefly left the general’s office, and during his absence, reporter J. Bond Johnson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram interviewed General Ramey. Johnson later reported that Ramey explained the debris wasn’t from a flying disc, as initially reported, but from a weather balloon that had crashed. That evening, Ramey held a press conference in his office. Marcel, present at the conference, had been instructed not to speak to reporters, despite their numerous microphones and questions. Marcel recalled, “They wanted to interview me, but I couldn’t say anything… until I talked to the general. I had to go under his orders.”
Also at the press conference was Warrant Officer Irving Newton, a weather officer at Fort Worth, who had been called into Ramey’s office to identify the debris. Newton was briefed by a colonel who told him the officers from Roswell believed they had found a flying saucer, but the general thought it was a weather balloon. When Newton arrived, he saw a rawin-type weather balloon in a damaged state, spread out on the floor. Newton recalled that Ramey asked for his opinion, and he explained that the general seemed to mock Marcel for bringing the weather balloon all the way from Roswell. After Newton identified the debris as a balloon, Ramey canceled the special flight to Wright Field. However, an FBI document from 6:17 p.m. on July 8 noted that “Disc and balloon being transferred to Wright Field by special plane.” The FBI report also mentioned that Major Curtin had stated that the object resembled a high-altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector, although their conversation with Wright Field hadn’t confirmed this. A final photograph was taken of Newton crouched by the debris, where Marcel had been photographed earlier. The image appeared in only a few newspapers. After the press conference, Marcel said the general told him to return to Roswell as he was needed there, so Marcel left Ramey’s office, stayed overnight in Fort Worth, and returned to Roswell the following day.
Even though Ramey had ordered the special flight canceled, it seems there were still flights to Wright Field, which was the main research and testing center for the Army Air Forces. If something truly unusual had been found, Wright Field was where scientists could examine the material. Brigadier General Arthur Exon, who was a lieutenant colonel at the time, confirmed that the debris did make it to Wright Field. Exon recalled that they heard the material had arrived, and extensive testing was done, including chemical analysis and stress tests. He said, “I don’t know how it arrived, but the boys who tested it said it was very unusual.” Exon also supported the descriptions given by Marcel and others, describing some of the material as flimsy but tough, almost like foil but much stronger. He added, “It had them pretty puzzled.” When asked about the weather balloon explanation, Exon said, “Blanchard could have cared less about a weather balloon.” The idea that the balloon story was a cover-up was confirmed by Brigadier General Thomas DuBose, who was the chief of staff of the Eighth Air Force in July 1947. DuBose stated, “[It] was a cover story. The whole balloon part of it. That was the part of the story we were told to give to the public and news and that was it.” The military attempted to convince the media that the object found near Roswell was just a weather balloon, but the officers who were in the know, including those in Fort Worth, at Strategic Air Command in Washington, and at the highest levels of the Army Air Forces, all agreed that the debris wasn’t from any conventional weather balloon.
CORROBORATION BY OTHER WITNESSES
A significant testimony comes from Frank Joyce, one of the first journalists to get involved with the Roswell events. In July 1947, Joyce worked as a radio announcer for KGFL in Roswell and was directly involved in broadcasting the first news about the mysterious object. He received a phone call from Major Jesse Marcel, who confirmed the discovery of an unidentified object. Joyce initially treated the news as a major story, discussing it openly with Marcel and sharing the information on air, which led to growing media interest. However, Joyce later recalled being contacted by military authorities, who ordered him to retract the original story. He received an intimidating call from a high-ranking officer, who insisted he change his version of events to align with the new official narrative of a weather balloon. Joyce claimed he was pressured heavily to comply, with threats of serious personal and professional consequences if he didn’t back off from his initial reporting. This experience left Joyce so shaken that he remained silent about the incident for many years.
A particularly important part of Joyce’s testimony involves his interaction with Mack Brazel. Joyce recounted that Brazel first gave an interview to the local radio, conducted by his colleague Walt Whitmore, the station’s owner. In that interview, Brazel provided a version of the events that differed from the story he later shared with the Roswell Daily Record on July 9, where he claimed to have found remnants that resembled pieces of wood and tinfoil. According to Joyce, the radio interview was never aired. Shortly after the recording, Joyce received a call from military authorities who ordered him not to broadcast it and to destroy all evidence of it. Joyce also mentioned meeting Brazel again on July 9, when he found the rancher visibly shaken and scared. Brazel confided that he had been detained and threatened by the military, adding that he would never speak publicly about the incident again. Joyce saw this as a clear sign that Brazel had been under intense pressure to change his version of events.
Joyce’s account was later corroborated by his colleague, Walt Whitmore, who confirmed hearing about the incident from Joyce, who had spoken directly with Sheriff Wilcox and Mac Brazel. Intrigued by the story and eager for an exclusive interview, Whitmore went to Brazel’s ranch on July 7, meeting him after his visit with military officials at the crash site. Whitmore invited Brazel to come with him to Roswell for a radio interview. However, being aware of the growing media interest, Whitmore decided to take an unusual approach. According to his son, Walt Whitmore Jr., and his collaborator Judd Roberts, Whitmore brought Brazel to his own home in a quiet part of town, offering him a safe place away from the pressure. Whitmore’s goal was to give Brazel a secure environment where he could freely share his side of the story without interference. But this arrangement didn’t last long, as the military quickly traced Brazel to Whitmore’s house. Whitmore testified that soldiers came, took Brazel, and essentially arrested him, subjecting him to long interrogations, medical checks, and heavy pressure to change his original account. Whitmore also claimed that on the evening of July 9, he received a special phone call from Washington, ordering him not to air the interview, or else he would lose his station’s license. After that call, military personnel raided the offices of local newspapers and radio stations, confiscating anything related to the incident. The culmination of this was Brazel’s return to KGFL, where, under armed escort, he appeared at the radio station, but with an entirely different story than the one he had originally shared.
The testimony of Bill Brazel — Mack’s son — adds further weight to the accounts given by Frank Joyce and Walt Whitmore. In fact, Bill’s recollection supports the idea that his father was taken into custody and pressured into changing his original story. According to him, Mack had initially shared a very different version of what he had found in the desert, but after being held by the military for several days, he came back deeply shaken and unwilling to talk about the event ever again. Bill said his father had been interrogated multiple times and warned not to say anything. This lines up with what Joyce remembered from seeing Mack on July 9 — scared and clearly under pressure — and with Whitmore’s account that the military had tracked Mack down after he gave a radio interview and essentially took him away.
But Bill’s involvement with the case did not end there. In fact, he also claimed that he had managed to recover a few small pieces of debris that had somehow escaped the military’s cleanup operation. His description of these fragments closely matches what Jesse Marcel and his son reported. Bill talked about small, grayish pieces that felt as light as balsa wood but were unusually strong. One piece was around six inches long and slightly flexible, while others looked like thin sheets of a strange metallic material. One detail he recalled in particular was how some of these metallic sheets would return to their original shape after being folded — a property that seemed completely beyond anything known in 1947. Eventually, though, Bill’s possession of these fragments attracted attention. After casually mentioning them to some people in Corona, word got back to the military. Officers showed up and made it clear that he had to hand everything over. Bill understood the situation and complied without argument.
Another key figure in the Roswell story was Sheriff George Wilcox, who was quickly pushed aside once the military got involved. After the debris field was cordoned off, Wilcox and his team were kept out of the investigation. His two deputies were even denied access to the main site, though they managed to explore the surrounding area. By the time the case was reopened decades later, Wilcox had already passed away. But his children and grandchildren shared what they remembered about his experience. One of his daughters, Phyllis McGuire, recalled that military officers showed up at the sheriff’s office in a hurry and gave no explanation for what was going on. Curious about what had happened, Phyllis kept asking her father questions, but her mother, Inez Wilcox, told her to stop. According to Inez, the military had explicitly instructed Wilcox not to talk about the matter. Another family member, Jay Tulk — the husband of Wilcox’s daughter Elizabeth — remembered seeing numerous military vehicles parked outside the sheriff’s office shortly after the soldiers arrived in town. The whole experience seemed to leave a deep impact on Wilcox. He lost interest in his job and eventually decided not to run for re-election. This change in behavior was confirmed by one of his former deputies, Tommy Thompson, who described Wilcox as noticeably depressed after the summer of 1947.
THE SAUCER AND THE BODIES
Other witnesses also recalled unusual military activity during that time. Joe Briley, who took over operations at the Roswell base starting in mid-July 1947, told researcher Kevin Randle that Colonel Blanchard had personally gone to the crash site. Briley also said that the famous press release — the one announcing the recovery of a “flying disc” — had been abruptly shut down by “people from Washington” who arrived at the base shortly afterward. This sudden federal intervention was also mentioned by pilot Robert Shirkey, who said he saw around ten military police officers loading debris onto a plane while he watched from the operations office. According to him, all of those MPs were transferred to other bases within the following month. That account was echoed by Thomas Gonzales, who in 1947 was a sergeant in Roswell’s “T-Squadron” bomber group. He, too, was transferred just days after taking part in the security cordon placed around what he said was the wreckage of a UFO — a craft he described as resembling a flying wing. Gonzales also claimed to have seen the bodies of “small men” who looked human-like, recovered from the crash site near Brazel’s ranch.
According to many American UFO researchers who delved into a wide range of sources, all those who had been involved in guarding the Roswell crash site received financial compensation — more than a dozen military police officers were each allegedly paid $10,000 for their service, an extraordinary amount of money for 1947. This information appears to be supported by the account of Sergeant Melvin E. Brown, who spoke to his family shortly before his death. Brown had been a sergeant with the 509th Bomb Group at the time of the incident. Later, he was transferred to England, where he married a British woman and eventually settled in the outskirts of London after leaving the military. On his deathbed in 1982, Brown revealed the existence of a secret bank account — a trust fund tied to a place called Roswell — containing a large sum of money he claimed to have received for participating in a top-secret mission. He urged his family to try to locate the money. However, the search led nowhere: there was no record of a special family account or one registered under his name. Despite his illness — Brown was dying of cancer — his family insisted that his mind remained perfectly clear until the end.
Over the years, he had occasionally shared fragments of a strange story with his wife and daughters, but in his final moments, he felt compelled to reveal everything. “As he was telling us, it seemed like he was already beginning to regret it,” said his daughter, Beverly Bean. According to her, Brown described how all available men at the Roswell base were suddenly ordered onto military vehicles and sent into the desert, tasked with guarding the crash site of a flying saucer. They were instructed to “look without seeing” and warned not to touch anything. Despite this, Brown and a fellow soldier lifted one of the covers draped over a military truck — and what they saw shocked them. Inside were several bodies: small beings, less than a meter tall, with oversized heads, slanted eyes, and yellowish skin. Beverly Bean publicly shared her father’s story in 1986 during a long-form documentary on the Roswell incident by filmmaker Mark Wolf. Melvin Brown’s widow, however, declined to speak out, reportedly out of fear that doing so could jeopardize her pension.
Just like in the case of Sergeant Brown, it was Captain Oliver “Pappy” Henderson’s family who eventually disclosed his connection to the Roswell affair. Henderson was a pilot stationed at the Roswell base and had a notable military career. He had flown bombing missions over Europe during World War II and later took part in atomic tests in the Pacific. But his life took a dramatic turn when he was ordered to transport pieces of the wreckage and alien bodies recovered after the incident. For decades, Henderson remained absolutely silent, but everything changed in the early 1980s, when a local newspaper article caught his attention and led him to confide in his wife, Sappho. He told her that he had been the pilot tasked with flying the wreckage of the flying saucer and the extraterrestrial bodies to Wright Field.
According to what he said, the beings were small in size, with heads much larger than their bodies, and they wore suits made from a material he had never seen before. He also mentioned that the bodies had been preserved in dry ice during the transport. In 1981, Henderson shared a similar account with his daughter, Mary Kathryn Groode, and confirmed to her that he had personally seen both the wreckage and the alien beings. Mary later recalled that her father used to talk about flying saucers during the nights they spent stargazing together. Another key moment came in 1982, when Henderson openly told a few of his old military colleagues that he had taken part in transporting the wreckage. He described the bodies as “small and different.” While his former companions were initially doubtful, they soon realized he wasn’t making it up, and that he was being completely serious. Additional support for Henderson’s account came from Dr. John Kromschroeder, a dentist and close friend. Back in 1977, Henderson had shown him a piece of metal that he claimed came from the crash site. Kromschroeder described it as shiny gray, similar to aluminum but much lighter, rigid, with sharp edges, and completely unbendable — a description that matched those given by Jesse Marcel Sr., Bill Brazel, and other witnesses. After Henderson passed away, his wife Sappho firmly refused to let investigators examine his personal papers and belongings, which were stored in two large storage units packed full of cardboard boxes.
But even though Henderson’s account helps clarify how the wreckage was transported, the testimony of Vernon and Jean Maltais complicates things for those who believe the military were the first to discover the bodies. In 1978, the couple told UFO researcher Stanton Friedman that their friend, a civil engineer named Grady “Barney” Barnett, had shared an extraordinary experience with them. According to what Barnett told them, he had personally come across the crash site of a flying saucer and had seen the bodies of alien beings. Despite how unusual the story sounded, the Maltais had no reason to question its veracity. At the time of the alleged events, Barnett was living in Socorro, a small town located in the Rio Grande Valley, between Albuquerque and El Paso, not far from the Mexican border. He worked for the U.S. Soil Conservation Service and was known for his upstanding character. A World War I veteran and a former commander of the American Legion, Barnett had a solid reputation as a model citizen. Investigations carried out by UFO researcher William Moore supported this view of him, and so did the testimony of Holm Bursum, a former mayor of Socorro. Bursum stated he was convinced Barnett could never have made up such a story.
Barnett told Vern Maltais that one morning in 1947, while conducting land surveys near Magdalena, a small town west of Socorro, he noticed something glinting in the distance. At first, he assumed it was the wreckage of an aircraft that had crashed overnight. Curious, he made his way toward the site, which was about a mile and a half away. What he found, however, wasn’t any conventional aircraft. It was a metallic, disc-shaped object, roughly 25 to 30 feet in diameter, with a surface that reminded him of stainless steel. The structure appeared mostly intact, showing no obvious signs of an explosion or fire. Shortly after his arrival, Barnett was joined by a group of individuals who introduced themselves as archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania. They too had noticed the object and had initially assumed it was the scene of a plane crash. But what they found next was even more shocking: scattered around the craft were several bodies. Barnett didn’t say exactly how many, but he described them as humanoid in shape yet clearly not human. Their heads were bald, round, and oddly shaped, with small eyes set in unusual positions. They were very short in stature, but their heads were disproportionately large. All of them were wearing the same kind of one-piece gray suit — no buttons, belts, or zippers — and based on what he could tell, they all appeared to be male. As Barnett and the archaeologists stood there, stunned by what they were seeing, a military truck arrived. An officer and a driver got out and quickly took control of the situation. Soon after, more soldiers showed up, cordoned off the area, and ordered the civilians to leave immediately. They were also strictly warned not to speak to anyone about what they had witnessed. If these accounts are genuine, they suggest that civilians were the first to lay eyes on the remains of the extraterrestrial occupants.
One of the most debated aspects of Barney Barnett’s story is the precise location of the crash site. According to what Vern Maltais recalled, Barnett had mentioned Magdalena as the area where the incident took place. However, Barnett’s wife, Jean, remembered things differently. She was certain that he had never referred to Magdalena, and instead believed the event had occurred farther south, closer to Socorro, in the Plains of San Agustin — a wide, arid basin west of town. James “Fleck” Danley, Barnett’s former supervisor, confirmed this version, claiming that Barnett routinely worked in that region. Despite these inconsistencies, William Moore and Stanton Friedman didn’t abandon the story. In fact, Friedman suggested that two UFOs had collided with one another: one exploded in midair, scattering debris across Brazel’s ranch, while the other managed to stay airborne just long enough to crash in the Plains of San Agustin. Moore, on the other hand, never fully accepted the idea of two separate crashes. Instead, he proposed that a single craft had been struck by lightning, shedding parts of its structure over Brazel’s ranch, and then continued flying for a short distance before ultimately crashing in the Plains of San Agustin.
However, not everyone was convinced by the earlier theories. In 1985, William Moore himself reconsidered his position. While he continued to support the idea that a single craft was involved, he stopped believing that the craft had crashed in the Plains of San Agustin. Instead, he proposed that it had crashed much closer to Brazel’s ranch, and suggested that Barnett’s discovery might have taken place much closer to the debris field than previously thought. This view was later adopted by Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt. According to their analysis, the Plains of San Agustin couldn’t have been the site where Barnett found the crashed saucer. To support this argument, Randle and Schmitt pointed to the testimony of Dr. Herbert Dick, an archaeologist who had been working in the Plains of San Agustin during July and August of 1947. He stated that he had no memory of any unusual activity taking place in the area during that period and added that, if he had remembered it, he would not have tried to hide it, as he had no sympathy for the U.S. government. They also referenced Francis Martin, a well-known local bar owner, who said he didn’t recall anything unusual happening in the region during that period. Given this information, Randle and Schmitt proposed that Barnett’s discovery may have occurred on July 8, much closer to the debris field. To support this idea, they cited multiple testimonies from military personnel who reported a series of aerial search flights over Brazel’s ranch, which eventually led to the discovery of the main wreckage site a few miles away from the debris field.
Another important and fascinating testimony related to the appearance of the bodies is that of Glenn Dennis. In 1947, Dennis was just 22 years old, working as a mortician at Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell. The funeral home had an agreement with the nearby military base to provide services in the event of deaths, including plane crashes. On the night of July 8th, Dennis received a strange call from the base. A military mortuary officer on the line asked how many small-sized caskets the funeral home had in stock. Dennis replied they only had one, but more could be ordered from a supply depot in Amarillo, Texas the next day. Curious, Dennis asked if there had been a plane crash, but the caller brusquely cut him off — he was only interested in supplies. Roughly an hour later, Dennis got a second call. This time, the officer asked a series of hypothetical questions about how to treat bodies that had been exposed to the elements in the desert for several days — what chemicals to use, how the organs might decompose, and how to preserve blood. The bizarre nature of the questions only deepened Dennis’s suspicion.
Later that same evening, Dennis accompanied a wounded soldier to the base hospital in a Ballard Funeral Home ambulance. Once inside, he noticed two uncovered military ambulances parked nearby, closely guarded by the Military Police. Inside those vehicles were what looked like metallic debris, shiny like aluminum and etched with unusual symbols that reminded him of hieroglyphics. While heading toward a vending machine, Dennis ran into an officer and casually asked whether there had been an aircraft accident, even offering his help. But the officer reacted with unexpected aggression. Moments later, Dennis was escorted off the base by two MPs despite his protests. As he was being led out, he passed a nurse he knew from town. She was just exiting a room with a cloth over her face, visibly shaken. Recognizing him, she whispered that he was in serious danger, warning him he could be shot for asking questions. Dennis then noticed two other staff members exiting the same room, also wearing cloths over their mouths.
Before leaving the base, Dennis was taken to a small room where he met two men he didn’t recognize — a red-haired captain and a stern-looking Army sergeant. What followed was a chilling encounter: Dennis was explicitly threatened. If he ever spoke about what he had seen or heard that night, they told him, he would be in grave danger.
The following day, Dennis met the nurse for lunch at the officers’ club. She was visibly shaken, pale, and clearly frightened. Over the course of their conversation, she confided something astonishing: she had assisted in the autopsy of three humanoid beings recovered from the desert. Two of the bodies, she said, were in poor condition — damaged both by the crash and what appeared to be scavenging animals. The third was in better shape, and what she saw convinced her that the beings were not human. She described them as small in stature, significantly shorter than the average adult, with unusual arm proportions — the upper arm was oddly short compared to the forearm. Their hands had four fingers, with no thumbs; the two central fingers were longer than the others. The beings’ heads were disproportionately large, their eyes wide and recessed, with almost no visible ears or noses. The bodies emitted a foul, overwhelming odor, so strong that the air conditioning in the facility had to be shut off to contain the stench. Eventually, the autopsies were moved to a separate hangar on base.
The nurse told Dennis that the medical staff had struggled during the procedure — several became physically ill. She also revealed that the two men Dennis had seen the previous evening — the red-haired officer and the stern sergeant — were actually pathologists flown in from Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. That lunch would be the last time Dennis ever saw her.
In the days that followed, when he tried to reach her again, he was told repeatedly that she was unavailable. Eventually, he was informed she had been transferred. Then, about ten days later, Dennis received a brief letter from her, sent from a military post office box. Through contacts at the base, Dennis learned the letter had originated from England. He quickly wrote back, but two weeks later, the letter was returned unopened, stamped simply: “Deceased.” Subsequent inquiries on Denniss’ part yielded a tragic story: the nurse had been transferred overseas and allegedly died in a military plane crash during an operation. She had been only 23 years old, deeply religious, raised in a strict Catholic family, and had enlisted in the Air Force to support her education. She had been stationed at Roswell for less than three months.
Despite the dramatic nature of his account, Glenn Dennis’s credibility has often been called into question, particularly due to the mysterious nurse he claimed had confided in him following the events at the Roswell base hospital. For years, Dennis refused to disclose her identity, stating that he had sworn a solemn oath never to reveal her name. It was only later, under mounting pressure from researchers hoping to corroborate his story, that Dennis reluctantly offered a name: Naomi Maria Selff. However, extensive investigations into military and medical archives yielded no evidence that any such person had ever served at Roswell Army Air Field, nor was there any record of her death in England as Dennis had claimed. Eventually, Dennis admitted the name was fabricated, explaining that it had been a necessary deception to protect the woman’s true identity. Still, this admission casted serious doubt over his entire testimony, leading many to dismiss his story altogether.
Yet the mystery of the nurse’s identity did not end there. Among several possible candidates, the most compelling match to Dennis’s description may have been 1st Lt. Adeline “Eileen” Fanton. A young, petite Army nurse stationed at Roswell in 1947, Fanton fit the physical profile Dennis had provided. Moreover, military records confirmed that she had indeed served at the base during that time and was later discharged a few years afterward, reportedly due to a psychological breakdown. Her name surfaced after another base medical technician, David Wagnon, identified her photograph as the woman he remembered from that period. In addition, two other witnesses — Sgt. LeRoy Lang and Bob Wolf — independently recalled seeing Dennis with a base nurse who matched Fanton’s description. These connections, combined with Fanton’s presence at the base during the critical period, suggest that she may have been the real Nurse X.
That said, other plausible candidates have emerged over the years. One was Miriam “Andrea” Bush, a short, dark-haired civilian who worked as secretary to the hospital administrator. According to family members, Bush returned home one evening visibly shaken, describing small humanoid bodies she had seen at the hospital and warning her family never to speak of it again. Like Dennis’s mysterious nurse, she withdrew from public life and later died under disturbing circumstances in what was officially ruled a suicide. Another candidate was Mary Lowe, a former Army nurse who, according to a coworker, once confessed to having witnessed the alien bodies at the base hospital. When interviewed in 1999, Lowe denied having been stationed at Roswell, claiming instead to have been overseas. However, her military records showed that she had been discharged in 1946 for marrying an enlisted man, contradicting her own story and casting further doubt on her denials. When UFO researchers later mentioned the name “Mary” to Dennis, he immediately identified her as Mary Lowe and said, “Yeah, she knows everything,” only to retract the statement the following day. His sudden reversal added to the intrigue, but also to the confusion.
Given these overlapping threads, it is possible that Dennis may have known all three women — Fanton, Bush, and Lowe — and deliberately fused their identities into one composite figure. His intention may not have been to deceive, but rather to obscure specific identifying details in order to protect all three. Even if “Naomi Selff” never existed, and even if the true identity of Nurse X remains officially unconfirmed, multiple women working at the base during that period matched Dennis’s description in striking ways. Furthermore, testimony from other witnesses, as well as official military documents support his account of sudden personnel transfers and vanishing medical staff at the Roswell base hospital. In that light, Dennis’s evasiveness may be understood not as a flaw in his testimony, but as the result of a sustained effort to shield individuals he believed to be in danger.
CONCLUSION
After decades of investigation, the Roswell incident continues to resist a straightforward explanation. Each new piece of testimony or uncovered document seems to add yet another layer of complexity to the story. Whether the strange metallic debris found by Mack Brazel truly belonged to an alien spacecraft or was part of a secret military project is still a matter of debate — but the details presented by those directly involved certainly make the extraterrestrial hypothesis hard to dismiss. Some of the most compelling accounts come from individuals like Jesse Marcel, Bill Brazel, Glenn Dennis, and others who witnessed the aftermath firsthand, describing materials and circumstances that seem far from ordinary. Despite the military’s persistent attempts to steer the narrative towards the weather balloon explanation, ongoing statements from former military personnel, civilian witnesses, and researchers consistently point to something much more unusual. The way information has been controlled and the numerous contradictions in official accounts only deepen the suspicion that the full truth remains guarded.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- The Roswell incident by William Moore and Charles Berlitz
- UFO Crash at Roswell by Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt
- Crash at Corona by Stanton Friedman
- The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell by Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt
- Roswell UFO Crash Update by Kevin Randle
- Roswell in the 21st Century by Kevin Randle
- Understanding Roswell by Kevin Randle
- Roswell Mortician Glenn Dennis’s Story, ‘Nurse X’, and Much Other Testimony about Small, Non- Human Bodies by David Rudiak