Robert Todd is Gone

Robert (Bob) Todd
11/20/1953 - 3/22/2007

Matt Graeber, a UFO researcher from Pennsylvania reports "Robert Greer Todd - Expert government document procurer and analyst, UFO researcher and key-source of verifiable information on the1947 Roswell incident passed away on March 22, 2007 at home in Ardmore, Pa. after a lengthy illness. Todd was 53 years old and is survived by his brother Barry, sister Marjorie and life-long sweetheart Mary Zayas."

Graeber noted that, "Bob Todd's marvelous and detailed investigations were deeply appreciated and remarkably influential in the efforts of the late Karl Pflock and other top Roswell researchers over the years. Bob's clarity of thought and down-to-earth insights will be missed by many contemporary Ufologists as well as those who will be coming along in the future.

"Though often disliked because of his rock-solid objectivity, Bob Todd did not dismiss the reality of phenomenon's impact upon the observers. In fact, though few knew it, Bob had his own unexplainable UFO sighting while on a coffee break at his place of employment."

While I would disagree that Todd had a "rock-solid objectivity" and that his opinions were often colored by his beliefs, we all suffer from that affliction. Todd was often abrasive and resorted to inventing derogatory names for those he disliked. He seemed to believe that he held the keys to understanding UFOs and the rest of us just didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand.

Which is not to say that he didn’t contributed to the UFO field by finding little known and obscure documents that helped us all understand more about the field. It was his interpretation of those documents that I sometimes find less than objective.

It was also Todd who released all of Major Jesse Marcel’s service record into the public arena, and I have never understood how he obtained it. Privacy Act requirements suggest that only Marcel himself, or members of his immediate family upon Marcel’s death would have been able to get it, yet Todd did. And his interpretation of some of the information in that record, which Todd believed proved Marcel untrustworthy, is in error.

But the sad thing here is that Todd, like so many others in the field, is now gone at a much too young age. While he and I clashed over the Roswell case, and I found many of his conclusions to be off the mark, his work in finding and obtaining government documents, including the all important leads into Project Moon Dust, was invaluable. It provided us with more information about the government’s study of UFOs, which is not what officials would like us to believe.

Bob Todd, dead at 53.