Roswell and the Disappearing Debris

I have never been a big fan of the paranoia that runs through the UFO field. I don’t believe Men in Black are stalking UFO witnesses or investigators. I don’t believe that black helicopters routinely inspect witnesses and investigators. I just don’t buy into all the paranoia that runs so deep.

But there are questions. Frank Kimbler (photo courtesy Alejandro Rojas of Open Minds), who teaches at the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, and who has spent time inspecting the terrain around the various debris fields and crash sites, has had some luck in finding strange debris. I say strange simply because it is not readily identifiable. He has just some scraps that he, as a geologist, was unable to identify with the equipment available to him. Doesn’t mean what he has is of alien manufacture or extraterrestrial origin. Just that it is a little odd.

On September 2, 2010, I received an email from Frank about a metal fragment he’d sent to Arizona State University for analysis, which is to say that I was just one of a couple of dozen recipients of the email. Frank send his concerns about his fragment to many of us.

Frank had received an email from Dr. Lynda B. Williams, a research professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration at ASU. She wrote that she had received his FEDEX package and that she had opened it on the lab bench, but found nothing inside.

She wrote, “I was expecting a 2mm foil and a standard. There is nothing in there but a black felt with gray sponge layer on top of a thin grey [yes, she used both spellings] sponge layer attached to white cotton. Which layer had the sample on it? I’m sorry, but its just not there!”

Frank wrote back:

The AH- 1 metal fragment was well packaged and I can't believe that it is lost. I did not forget to include the fragment. I can assure you it was in the small round box, directly on the top in plain sight in the box.

This UFO evidence stuff is an interesting game to play. Seems to be a great deal like cat and mouse, cloak and dagger and chess all wrapped in one.

I hate to say this but I was warned and should have never trusted sending an

alloy fragment to anyone, universities, or private labs I should have hand delivered it to the SIMS lab. So its my word against everyone else's; and its my fault. The stupid mistake I make will not happen again.

The metal fragment was in the round plastic box. The round plastic container has a small metal fragment about 1.5 x 2 mm in size. It was directly on top of the black material and visible just about dead center through the plastic top. The plastic container was wrapped in a small amount of bubble wrap and taped at both ends and placed in small brown padded envelope which was also taped and stapled at the top; this was placed in a Fed-EX mailer. Very static sensitive as I mentioned in the note in the package. There was no standard because it takes weeks to get those from ALCOA.

No other fragments will be sent to anyone. All specimens will be delivered by me, under private armed guard if needed, every step of the analysis will be supervised by me and a trusted scientist or individual.

 

He signed his name.

 

No, I have no explanation for this. I know that Frank would not be engaged in some sort of hoax to elevate the importance of his work. I don’t know how any governmental agency, if a governmental agency was involved, could have pulled this off. It is one of those mysteries that dot the landscape. (Debris photo courtesy of Frank Kimbler.)

I do know that back in 1990, after Mark Wolf, Don Schmitt and I had interviewed Glenn Dennis on tape for the first and second times, that Wolf gave me one set of interviews and he took the other set. He said that the package that contained his video tapes had been tampered with, but nothing was missing. He thought it strange simply because, on other assignments and documentaries, when they had transported video tapes, nothing had been disturbed. However, all the tapes were there and I had the duplicate (or rather the other interview) with me so it wasn’t as if anything was lost.

Make of this what you will. The sample has vanished from the closed package. Dr. Williams didn’t mention that she thought there had been tampering and she wasn’t looking for that. I do know that I have received some FEDEX packages in pretty sorry shape.

One fact remains. There was nothing in the package, and unless Frank is engaging in some kind of scheme, I have no explanation for this.

How I Learned about the Roswell Mortician

Not all that long ago someone asked how I had learned of Glenn Dennis (seen below), the Roswell mortician. The correspondent suggested that he had searched the literature and couldn’t find out how I had learned of him, or how Stan Friedman had learned of him.

Stan, I believe, and he’ll be quick to correct me if I’m wrong, learned about the mortician through a friend of the mortician. I’m not sure if it was Robert Shirkey, a Roswell resident who had been a member of the 509th Bomb Group in 1947 or someone else. The point is that someone in Roswell gave Stan the name and he went in search of him.

I, on the other hand, had been told of a mortician and was given a name. The name I had belonged to a man who lived in Albuquerque and who worked at the main library there. I found the guy and talked to him but he had never lived in Roswell and had never been a mortician.

On that same trip to New Mexico, Don Schmitt and I visited with Walter Haut. We were sitting in the living room of his house and I was asking questions, trying to get a name for the mortician.

Walter said, "I know the name you’re fishing for. It’s Glenn Dennis."

So I learned of Dennis from Walter Haut.

Not long after that, while in Roswell to tape the documentary, UFO Secret: The Roswell Crash, Mark Wolf, with the help of Walter Haut encouraged Dennis to accompany them on a trip out to the Debris Field near Corona. On that trip, Wolf learned more of the Dennis tale and encouraged Dennis to tell it on tape.

The first of the interviews was done by Wolf late one evening. After we had him on tape, Dennis thought that he would like another interview done with him dressed in a suit and the ever present New Mexico string tie. I conducted that interview, following the lead that Wolf had established.

That should answer the question about how I learned of Glenn Dennis. I asked Walter Haut and he told me.