The Nuns Diaries and the Anatomy of an Investigation

As I was looking for something else, I stumbled across a diary page that had been given to me some twenty years ago. It was one of the very few documents that suggested that what fell outside of Roswell was something alien or that was what I had been told it meant. The two entries that were relevant said, “7-4-47 Object down – 2317 – Radar Target Gone,” and “7-5-47 Found Wreckage 0200…”

Diary page suggesting the UFO crash.

I also interviewed a former member of the 1395^th MP Company who had been stationed in Roswell in July 1947. Leo Spear told me on June 3, 1994, that he was a PVT E2 (according to him but the Yearbook identifies him as a PFC) in July 1947, but that he had been with the military police company. He had not been assigned to guard duty involving any of the material recovered, but did talk about it with his friends who had been involved. He said, “…it was the next morning when they came in with a cock and bull story… they said, ‘You know what? They brought in some stuff from a UFO. And that it had crashed north of Roswell.’”

Yes, he did say UFO but then, in 1994, that is not surprising and I would suspect that in 1947 they had said flying saucer. To me it wasn’t much of a problem. The important point here is that he said that he thought they were crazy until the next day when he saw in the newspaper that they had picked up pieces of a flying saucer. He realized that it wasn’t a cock and bull story, but that something had happened.

There was also Corporal E.L. Pyles, who said that while he and a friend were out walking on the base when they saw something streak across the sky. He did say that it was in a downward motion, and according to the information he had given Don Schmitt, this was during the first week or so of July 1947.

This fits, generally, with what William Woody had said. Woody told me that it was a white light with red streaks in it. He said that it glowed brightly and unlike the other meteors he’d seen, it took a long time to fall. Given what we had been told, and with the documentation that we had been given, we dated this to July 4, 1947. Woody did say that a few days after seeing the object he and his father had attempted to go find it, but the roads to the west of the main highway north out of town were blocked by military vehicles. This helped establish the time frame for the sighting.

The nun’s story came from a man who said he was a former officer in the Special Forces, meaning the Green Berets, and he had talked with a nun or a former nun in Roswell, who had seen a diary enter. According to what we were told, the nuns’ diary entries dated the event to July 4, sometime prior to midnight. I believed, back in the early 1990s that Don Schmitt, chasing the diaries, had actually seen them. He says now that he did not.

Look where we are on this. I have a document that was allegedly created in 1947

Leo Spear from the
509th Yearbook.

giving me times and a date. I have testimony from two men who saw an object in the air in the right time frame. I have testimony from another man who reported that friends in the 1395^th MP Company had talked about recovery of a flying saucer and was able to date it in the right time frame. And I have others who mention the nuns’ diaries, at least two of whom claimed to have seen them, giving me a time and a date for their observations. All this seems to be pretty strong evidence… but let’s now look at it with our different perspective of twenty years.

The document was given to me with instructions not to show it around because it was still considered classified, so I didn’t mention it. I thought that it was unnecessary because of the other evidence. That document, unfortunately, came from Frank Kaufmann and it is not the only document he had altered or created. He supplied other documents that seemed to corroborate his tale, including his official Army discharge papers that listed him as a master sergeant with some specialized intelligence training. We all now know that many of those documents had been altered or created out of nothing at all. When we received his official records from the Army, we learned that he had been a staff sergeant and his training had been as an administrative specialist and a clerk/typist. There was nothing to suggest he had ever been involved in any intelligence functions, and no reason to believe the documents he gave me had not been created by him to support his tales. The diary page was just one more fake and that the supporting evidence could be rejected.

Corporal Pyles was reported by Karl Pflock as being unable to remember what month he had seen the object, though he did put it in 1947. In what I think of as an incredibly inept bit of copy editing, in the paragraph that followed the one in which Pyles couldn’t give a month of the sighting, he said, according to Pflock, “A ‘few days later,’ he saw the ‘RAAF Captures Flying Saucer’ story… and he wondered if what he and his friend had seen had anything to do with it.”

That seemed to date the event to the first week in July, just as the information from Leo Spear had done. Spear, of course, hadn’t seen anything, and Pyles had just seen a streak of light in the night sky. Pyles told Pflock that it was before midnight, which is an interesting detail for him to remember when he had suggested he couldn’t even remember the month.

Pflock, in his book, suggested that William Woody might have seen the same object as that seen by Dan Wilmot at about 10:00 p.m. on July 2 when the Wilmots had their sighting as reported in the Roswell Daily Record. There is nothing to tie the reports together, other than both Wilmot and Woody said the object was moving toward the north. Of course, there is nothing to suggest that what Woody saw was what crashed either other than proximity in time. But it does add an element of documentation to the whole case, even if we don’t know if the object seen was the one that crashed or even anything of alien origin.

Finally, we return to the nuns’ diaries. As near as I can tell, based on the credibility of the witnesses, meaning that the Green Beret officer was not, and I saw nothing to suggest the nun or former nun was what she claimed to be, the diaries do not exist. I was told about them, told what they said, and was told by some that they had seen the diaries themselves. Given the other information I had at the time, there was no reason to reject the evidence. With the collapse of some of that information, I simply do not believe this anymore.

So, where is this once strong bit of the Roswell UFO crash tale? Well, the documentation is reduced to a newspaper clipping about Dan Wilmot that might have nothing to do with the crash. Both the diary page submitted by Frank Kaufmann and the alleged diary pages written by the nuns are either faked or nonexistent. Since the nuns were never interviewed and their diaries never found, anything said about them can be properly rejected. It is as if it never existed because it probably never did.

On the other hand, we have two men who saw something strange in the sky in early July 1947. The descriptions offered, decades after the fact, match generally, which means it could be the same object. It was traveling generally to the north, and the debris found by Mack Brazel was to the north of Roswell. We can suggest that this is the object that crashed, but the links are fairly weak, but at least they are something.

This once strong aspect of the case has been reduced to some testimony offered decades after the fact, a newspaper clipping, and an MP who remembered his pals talking about picking up pieces of a flying saucer but who had seen nothing himself. It is just not very persuasive evidence when stripped to its bare bones and we are left with very little to bolster the case.