I
know that this might seem to be piling on, but in the last couple of weeks, I
have been asked about the story of Lee Reeves who supposedly accompanied Dan
Dwyer out to the crash site where the alien creatures were found. Reeves’ tale
appears in Witness to Roswell where
it says, “When the call came in to the fire station that there had been a crash
north of town, Dan Dwyer and Lee Reeves were dispatched
with the station’s “tanker”
(a pickup truck with a large, cylindrical water tank in the back) to the crash
site. Arriving before the military could secure the site, Dwyer and Reeves got
to see what had crashed. It wasn’t an airplane at all, but an egg-shaped vessel
of some sort that they did not recognize. And the bodies! ...”
 |
| Dan Dwyer and members of the Roswell Fire Department. |
From
that point, Carey and Schmitt described, from Dwyer’s point of view (which is
not to say they were quoting him, only using information that had been supplied
by Frankie Rowe about what her father had said), that the creatures were small
and that eventually Dwyer saw one that was still alive. When he got home that
night, he told the family what he had seen and was asked what the creatures
looked like. His “answer was succinct, ‘Child of the Earth,’” which is another
name for the Jerusalem Cricket. That statement has an endnote that says, “Son
(anonymity requested) of Dr. Foster’s housekeeper (anonymity requested),
personal interview, 1992.”
That
endnote tells us nothing and seems to reference a tale told later in that
chapter of the book. It is clear from my interviews with Frankie Rowe that it
was her father, Dan Dwyer, who made reference to the Child of the Earth. The
description of seeing the two dead aliens and the single survivor is also from
Frankie Rowe.
 |
| Frankie Rowe |
Lee
Reeves, according to the information that I have, died in 1971 and therefore is
not an original source for this information. He had been a laborer at the Malco
Refinery in 1947, but he was also a member of the Roswell Police Department and
had worked as a fireman at the Orchard Park prisoner of war camp south of
Roswell and for the city of Roswell Fire Department at some time, so he did
have a connection there.
The
trouble arises when the testimony of J. C. Smith, a firefighter in Roswell in
1947 is recalled. He was first interviewed by Karl Pflock and Smith made it
clear in that interview that the Roswell Fire Department had not made a run out
to the crash site, even in a piece of make-shift firefighting equipment.
Later
when Tony Bragalia and I interviewed Smith separately, he made it absolutely clear
that the fire department had not gone to the crash site. When I asked Smith if
he had known Dan Dwyer, he said that he had and that Dwyer had gone out in his
personal car. Smith told me that an Army colonel had come into the fire station
and told them that they didn’t have to worry about the crash. They, the Army,
would take care of it.
Dwyer,
however, drove on out on his own, according to Smith, and not in one of the
fire station’s vehicles and not with someone else. There was no discussion of
Reeves at all until his story surfaced sometime in the last decade or so and
was apparently relayed by his son, though there is nothing in the Carey and the
Schmitt book to tell us that. It is my deduction given the information
available.
Where
does that leave us? Well, with the Dan Dwyer story, we learn from family
members that he did go out there and said that he did see the bodies. We learn
from J. C. Smith that Dwyer did go out there, but in his own car. We learn from
the fire department records that there is nothing to suggest that any of the
fire station’s equipment was dispatched on a run outside the city limits in the
time frame necessary to corroborate the Reeves’ part of the story. Given the
nature of the log, had some of their equipment been dispatched, there was no
reason not to mention it. And we see that the Reeves’ tale is contradicted by
the first-hand testimony of J. C. Smith.
It
is my guess that the Reeves’ tale was told by one of the Reeves children or
grandchildren, most likely Lewis Lee Reeves. When confronted with this sort of
problem, the best case scenario is to rely on the first-hand testimony, which
is Smith and which was told some sixty years after the event (which doesn’t
make it true, only that it is of a better quality). The second-hand testimony
is not properly sourced, is clearly not from a first-hand source, and is in
conflict with other information and documentation. It now falls into the category
of a “friend of a friend” tale and we all know how that works out… (and to
prevent someone from stating the obvious here, I realize that it is technically
the son of the man, but then, given the way the information is published, we
really don’t know that either.)
