Glenn Dennis, Naomi Self and David Wagnon

Almost from the moment that Glenn Dennis told his tale of Naomi Self, the nurse who told him about the alien bodies, there has been controversy. Although Dennis had given us the name early in our investigation, and, in fact, provided her name to almost anyone who asked for it, comprehensive searches for her failed to find her. There was simply no documentation to show that Naomi Self had been stationed at Roswell, that there had been no nurse in the US Army at the time with that name, and no evidence that she even existed in this capacity beyond Glenn Dennis’ mind.

Except for the testimony of one man.

David Wagnon.

According to what he told various researchers, and attested to in a signed affidavit, he was assigned to the medical unit, Squadron “M,” in 1947. He said that he had arrived in Roswell in April 1946, as a private first class, and remained there for two years. He said he was a technician in the base hospital laboratory. Interestingly, in his signed affidavit, he said that he recalled nothing about a flying saucer crash but said that he did remember a nurse named Naomi Self assigned to the base hospital.

In his affidavit, he wrote, “She was small, attractive, in her twenties, and, I believe a brunette. I seem to recall that Miss Self was transferred from RAAF while I was still stationed there, but I am not at all certain about this.”

In the next paragraph, Wagnon exposed the lie. He wrote, “Miss Self’s name really stuck with me because it is somewhat unusual and she was dating the local Red Cross representative, who was quite a bit older, probably in his late forties. I do not remember the man’s name, but do recall he had an office in town and was always hanging around Squadron ‘M’ and the emergency room.”

Here's the trouble with this. We know that there was no nurse named Naomi Self. Dennis said he made up the name. He told us he invented the name to protect her identity because he had promised her that he wouldn’t tell anyone who she was. This, of course, was not true. Dennis only said this when confronted with the information that none of us could find any nurse by that name in the Army in the 1940s or practicing in a civilian capacity in Roswell at that time.

Glenn Dennis

In one conversation I had with Dennis, he seemed angry that we hadn’t found the nurse. He said to me, “I gave you the name.” He was telling me that he had given me, and by extension, others, the real name and stuck with that until he was told there was no nurse in Roswell, either military or civilian by the name of Naomi Self. Then he came up with the story that he had made up the name.

I will note here Wagnon is not in the Yearbook nor did I find reference to him in the Unit History. As far as I know he provided no evidence to anyone that he was actually there in 1947, and even if he was, his recollections about Self are invented because no one by that name had been stationed in Roswell in July1947.

Dennis, in the tale he created, said that she had been a good Catholic girl. Wagnon must have missed that because he claimed, in his affidavit, that she’d had an abortion, he believed, at the Brooks Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, which is a major military hospital. Overlooking the fact that Dennis had said she was a good Catholic girl, who wanted to become a nun, the military would not have been performing abortions in 1947.

Wagnon’s tale is not to be believed. It is just another of the many that dot the Roswell landscape. It should be ignored, just as the tale of Naomi Self (or Selff as some have spelled it) should be ignored. None of this is true.