As
those of you who pay attention know, I had Don Schmitt on the radio
show/podcast not all that long ago. We were talking about our investigation
into the Roswell UFO crash (among other things) from the perspective of all
that we had done. I asked him, given what we know today, if he still believed
the Glenn Dennis tale. His answer somewhat surprised me.
Before
I get into that, and as I have learned by surfing the net and watching
television, now that I have teased you with this, I will go off on another tangent.
In the end, it will make sense and it is something that I believe is necessary
when we begin to talk about Glenn Dennis.
First,
I have noticed that one of the Dennis interviews has appeared on YouTube and
attributed to the National Archives. The source, according to the notes on
YouTube, is the US government suggesting there is some credibility to the tale.
I have written to the Archives telling them that the voices you hear
interviewing Dennis are not government investigators, but are Don Schmitt, Mark
Wolf and me. A copy of the tape was supplied to the Fund for UFO Research and
it was, in turn, loaned to the Air Force during their search for any documents
relating to Roswell. When the investigation was completed, rather than
returning the tape, all the materials those Air Force officers had collected,
were boxed up and sent to the National Archives. This included material that
was clearly marked for return to those who had provided it.
To
digress, as I was going through those boxes at the National Archives, I found a
court martial of a doctor who had been stationed in Roswell in 1957, which was
completely irrelevant to the Roswell investigation. In that particular material
was a notice that the record was to be returned to the Judge Advocate in the
Air Force. Instead it was in a box that dealt with the Roswell crash. I pointed
this out to someone at the Archive, suggesting the record be returned to the
original source as was noted on the first page of the document. I don’t know if
that happened.
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| The boxes of the Roswell material at the National Archives. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle. |
The
same thing happened with the tape of Glenn Dennis. It was to be returned to the
Fund, but that never happened. Instead, it was put into some sort of video file
at the archive that was eventually uploaded to YouTube. I have attempted to get
it taken down but only because the labeling on YouTube gives the interview more
credibility than it deserves, given what we know about Glenn Dennis in 2020. I
have also tried to get the source updated so that the tape can be properly
evaluated.
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| Glenn Dennis. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle. |
When
Dennis first appeared on the Roswell scene, his name provided by Walter Haut,
it seemed that Dennis was a credible source. He told a wonderful story about
someone at the base ordering child-size coffins and later meeting with a nurse
who told him about the alien creatures. She provided a drawing to show him what
they looked like and then burned it. Dennis said that she was killed in an
aircraft accident sometime after she was transferred from Roswell.
As
many of you already know, there were no nurses killed in an aircraft accident
as Dennis had described which seems to be the first lie. He gave a name for the
nurse, but there is no evidence that a nurse with that name ever served in the
Army or in Roswell, which would be the second lie. Confronted with this fact,
he changed the name of the nurse and then blamed us, UFO researchers, for
getting the information wrong, which would be the third and fourth lies. He
then gave us a new name for the nurse, which would be the fifth lie. It was at
this point that I decided that the Dennis tale was bogus.
Don,
along with Tom Carey, believed that there was some truth buried somewhere in
the tale. In Witness to Roswell, they quoted L.M. Hall, a former Roswell
MP who
was a police office in Roswell in 1947. He told them:
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| Ballard Funeral Home. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle. |
One
day in July 1947, I was at Ballard’s [Funeral Home] on a break, and Glenn and I
were in the driveway “batting the breeze.” I was sitting on my motorcycle, and
Glenn stood nearby. He remarked, “I had a funny call from the base. They wanted
to know if we had several baby caskets.” Then he started laughing and said, “I
asked what for and the said they wanted to bury [or ship (noted added in
original)] those aliens,” or something to that effect. I thought it was one of
those “gotcha!” jokes, so I didn’t bite. He never said anything else about it.
This
seemed to be some corroboration for the tale told by Dennis, but was it enough
to overcome the lies that he had told about the nurse? And when confronted by
those lies, said that he had never given us the real name, that
The
last time that I had asked Don about Dennis tale, he said that he still believed
in it. I could tell then that he was disturbed by some of the information that
had come out in the last twenty-five years and that his resolve was weakening.
Then, when I asked Don about Dennis on the radio show, he said that he didn’t
have much faith in the Dennis tale anymore. It was an interesting revelation.
You can listen to our whole talk here:
Tom
Carey, who has been working with Don for a couple of decades listened to the
show and thought that Don had not fairly described the situation with Dennis.
He wrote to me, “On your show, Don said that ‘The Nurse’ we were looking for
actually worked at Ballard’s Funeral Home, and that’s how Glenn learned what
was then taking place at the RAAF base hospital. Wrong. [emphasis in
original]. The nurse worked at the Marshal & Marshal [actually Marshall
& Marshall] medical clinic in Roswell and accompanied one of the doctors
there who had been called out to the base when the little bodies started
arriving there. Here’s the kicker. Her husband worked at Ballard’s as an embalmer
[emphasis in original] – the same as Glenn Dennis. That’s where Glenn got his
nurse story. I came across the information by chance in the 1947 Roswell
City Directory (I have a photocopy of it) [as do I] after interviewing
someone who knew the name of the doctor from M&M who had been called out to
the base.”
There
are some wide-ranging implications in this statement, not of least of which is
the confirmation that Dennis was lying. Unlike what Dennis had said, at best,
he might have overheard a conversation, but he seemed to have no direct
knowledge from an alleged participant. According to Tom, 1LT Adeline Fanton was
the nurse he was referring to rather than the nonexistent Naomi Self. Fanton,
who was a nurse at Roswell in 1947, was dead by the time researchers began
looking for her. Dennis had no fear of contradiction given the circumstances.
The point really is that Dennis had no inside knowledge that was based on his
personal observations. Rather, he plugged himself into the tale and all he did
was divert resources that could have been better used elsewhere. Dennis should
be written out of the story completely, taking his place alongside Gerald
Anderson and Frank Kaufmann.
This
does expose one of the problems with the Roswell case. Twenty-five years ago,
the case was much more robust than it is today. There are cracks in the case
that we all have uncovered over the years. Tiny things that, by themselves,
aren’t all that important but in the aggregate, weaken the case. It just isn’t
as solid as it used to be.
If
you are interested in what is the best information available about Roswell
today, take a look at Roswell in the 21st Century. You’ll see
some of the problems and some of the best of the witnesses today.
