Socorro, Fused Sand and Mary Mayes (Update 5)

When I was researching my book on the Socorro UFO landing, I had come across information about some fused sand that had been recovered at the site. Both Ray Stanford and Jerry Clark had reported on it. The information source seemed to be unidentified, the fused sand wasn’t mentioned in the Project Blue Book files, and the analysis of other physical evidence seemed to be about whatever you wanted it to be. Jerry Clark wrote, “If such ‘notes and materials’ exist [about the fused sand], they have never come to light. They are not in the Blue Book file on the case.”

This seemed to be more of the unconfirmed information that dot this case. We have those pesky three people (or rather the three telephone calls) to the Socorro police about the flame in the sky as noted by Captain Richard Holder. We have the car of tourists talking to Opal Grinder about low-flying aircraft that nearly smashed into them. We have the auditory witnesses, mentioned by Ray Stanford, who heard the roar of the object but who apparently didn’t see an object and whose names have been lost. Given all that, and the fact that this information, about the fused sand was not very well documented, I reported what I knew and let it go.

Dick Hall

But, as always happens, once the book is published, new information is found. This time it was spurred by a question at this blog about that particular aspect of the case, one that I didn’t think of as important. I decided that I needed to know more about this, so I went back to Stanford’s book, Socorro Saucer in a Pentagon Pantry. His entry was somewhat misleading, given the way he reported on it. Although he credited Dr. James McDonald as the source, he failed to mention it was in a letter to Dick Hall of NICAP, who provided a copy to him. Stanford wrote:

…a woman who is now [1968] a radiological chemist with the Public Health Service in Las Vegas [Nevada]… [who] was involved in some special analysis of materials collected at the Socorro site, and when she was there the morning after, she claims that there was a patch of melted and resolidified [vitrified] sand right under the landing area. I [McDonald] have talked to her both by telephone and in person here in Tucson recently. Shortly after she finished the work [on the Socorro specimens], air force personnel came and took all her notes and materials and told her she wasn’t to talk about it anymore (My [Stanford’s] emphasis. A copy in my files.)

That, of course, is not the whole story. In fact, as noted, this is very misleading based on everything that McDonald put in his letter. When you read what McDonald wrote, it tells us some more about all this. He wrote (differences highlighted in bold:

One last point: Have you ever heard of any reports that there was a patch of “fused sand” near the site of the Socorro landing? As a result of a remark that Hank Kalapaca made to me at lunch in the Rayburn building on 7/29 [I will assume here the year was 1968], I followed up a lead that Stan Friedman picked up when he spoke to a nuclear society in Las Vegas. I’m still in the process of checking it, so won’t elaborate the details here. Briefly, a woman who is now a radiological chemist with the Public Health Service in Las Vegas was involved in some special analyses of materials collected at the Socorro site, and when she was there, the morning after, she claims that there was a patch of melted and resolidified sand right under the landing area. I have talked to her both by telephone and in person here in Tucson recently, and am asking Charlie Moore to do some further checking. I must say, it’s very hard to imagine how such material could have been there not only on the evening of the 24^th but still there on the morning of the 25^th without it ever having been reported before. She mentioned it to Stan rather casually, as if she assumed that everybody knew about the fused sand. She was surprised to be told, especially by me, that nothing like that had ever before been reports. She did the analyses on the plant-fluids exuded from the stems of greasewood and mesquite that had been scorched. She said there were a few organic materials they couldn’t identify, but most of the stuff that had come out through the cracks and blisters in the stems were just saps from the phloem and xylem. Shortly after she finished the work, Air Force personnel came and took all her notes and materials and told her she wasn’t to talk about it anymore. Grand coverup? Not necessarily. The fused sand might be another matter.

By comparing the two reports, that is, what McDonald actually wrote with what Stanford provided, you can see that this information isn’t quite as strong as Stanford suggested. In fact, McDonald didn’t seem to be particularly impressed with it, but he did what all good researchers would do. He decided to see what he could learn about the witness, who isn’t named here but whose name appears in other correspondence written by McDonald, and to see if he could find additional information.

The first thing that I wanted to know, now that I had a copy of the letter, is what Stan might have remembered about this. It was, of course, fifty years ago, so his

Mary Mayes, 1959.

memory might be a little vague. He told me that as best he could recall, “Mary Mayes approached me after I lectured to a technical group saying that she had been a student at NMIT [New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology] at Socorro when she was asked to check on the soil which she had done. I told Jim [McDonald] about it as he was much closer obviously than I was. No need for me to be a middleman.”

The next question was if this Mary Mayes’ name could be verified since it wasn’t mentioned in the original letter. On November 25, 1968, Charles Moore (yes, that Charles Moore) reported that he had talked with both Raymond Senn and Sam Chavez about the melted sand. Neither of them saw any melted sand on the site and neither remembered Mayes, though in his letter, Moore incorrectly identified her as Nayes. He also mentioned a Mary Rumph, which as I have just learned from Don  Ecsedy was her maiden name. 

And, since we’re trying to get to the bottom of all this, I’ll note here that Moore wrote, “Our instrument man at the Institute, Mr. John Reiche, visited the Zamora site on the night of April 24^th, 1964. John, an active amateur scientist and rock collector, tells me that he saw nothing unusual other than a burned bush, the markings on the ground which were at that time ringed by stones. Reiche appears agnostic about the whole sighting but places no high value on Zamora’s credibility. He says that Zamora reported other highly unusual events such as deer passing through the Socorro plaza at night when no one else has ever seen such things in modern times.”

This, is, of course, disturbing. It suggests something about Zamora that had not been mentioned by anyone else over the years, and while this letter, from Moore to McDonald has been available to researchers for a long, it seems that information from it had been overlooked.

One of the landing pad impressions found by Zamora. Photo courtesy USAF.

Moore goes on to say, “Reiche has also told me that the markings on the ground (presumably made by the support gear of the flying object) seems ‘wrong’. The soil on the sides of the indentations was loose and appeared as though it had been moved by a shovel; it did not appear to have the character that it should have, had it been made by the intrusion of a load bearing support.”

Which is another bit of information that hasn’t seen much in the way of publicity. While it seems that Reiche doesn’t care about any agenda, only the truth, it is also clear that he has raised some questions about Zamora and about the landing gear traces. I haven’t seen much like this in the research that I had conducted until now. But I will note that some of that loose dirt seemed to be explained by the landing gear sliding in the dirt as the weight was applied to the landing pad and the dirt shifted under the added weight.

Charles Moore at the Institute Library. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle.

As for the melted sand, Moore wrote, “As I told you earlier, I screened the dirt in the arroyo bottom in an effort to find any evidence of fused material and found nothing that suggested the spalling off of rhyolite, melting of any vesicular lava nor the fusing of any sand. While it is true that the arroyo is subject to washing during summer thunderstorms, the fragments of the burned bush are still there, and I examined carefully the vicinity of the roots of the burned bush but found no evidence of fusing heat.”

We now have evidence that suggests Mayes’ tale might not be true. Although Moore called her Nayes in his letter, it would seem that if Senn heard the name Nayes, he would have mentioned that he knew someone named Mayes. Instead, he denied knowing her.

To complicate the issue, McDonald asked Mayes about these negative results. He talked to her on the telephone and then in person. He said that she had “remarried as Mrs. Mary White.”

According to McDonald’s letter to Moore dated April 2, 1970, mentioning the investigation, he wrote:

She [Mayes/White] seemed to be quite astonished that Senn said he did not know her, and she said not only had her family known him for many years, but she, herself, had “stood up for him” at his wedding… I had frankly tended to dismiss her story on the basis of what you’d turned up and Senn’s not knowing her. She again went very briefly over it - - where the fused sand lay relative to the impression, etc. No signs of evasive coverup or backtracking to mend her story. And reexpressed surprise at Senn’s saying he didn’t know her.

I pointed out that Reiche saw nothing like that when he was there, and she seemed genuinely puzzled.

Don Ecsedy tells me that there was a fellow namd Rumpf at Senn's wedding and is mentioned on the documentation available on line. So it seems possible that Mayes was at the wedding but that Senn knew her as Mary Rumpf rather than Mary Mayes. But I also have to wonder why, when McDonald asked her about this, she didn't mention that she was Mary Rumpf at the time. It would have cleared up this one point of disagreement and that she didn't seems curious.

There are more technical aspects to this claim of melted sand. According to a report from McDonald to Colonel L. DeGoes (apparently an officer assigned to ATIC at the time), “Charlie [Moore] took to the lab at NMIMT specimens of vesicular lavas that are abundant near the site and also a sample of a rhyolite present in abundance. A welding torch melted the vesicular lava to a smooth obsidian-like form, without sputtering. The torch would not melt the rhyolite, but it flaked off. A thorough search by Moore and a graduate student failed to turn up any sputtered-drop spherules in the dirt near the center of the site.”

But here’s the rub. Moore told McDonald that he had gotten to know Zamora and according to that same report by McDonald:

It came out a few weeks ago in the course of a rather careful recheck done by C.B. Moore of NMIMT at Socorro. Charlie has been out to the site with Zamora and… Zamora happened to volunteer the information about a “bubbly lava” rock one side of which had melted down. It was something like a foot across… and was located near the geometric center of the four leg holes i.e., right in the most heavily charred by the flame of the object in takeoff. Zamora said “some official” took it away that night… Holder makes no mention of such a rock…

Going through the entire Blue Book file on the case, there is no mention of the fused sand by anyone who was on the scene. From the moment that Zamora saw the thing in the arroyo there were people on the site. Holder even had military

Although this picture has been published suggesting it is Mary Mayes on the scene, this photograph was staged some time later with Zamora looking on.

police from White Sands cordon the area, take measurements and preserve the scene. Although it is not clear if the MPs were there overnight, but next day, there were any number of people on the scene, but no one mentioned Mayes and her colleagues being there. They would have needed some guidance to find the right place, so they would have had to come into contact with the Socorro police or the government officials (Holder and FBI Agent Byrnes). Photographs, taken the evening of the 24^th and at other times give no hint of the melted sand, and those taking samples, from the damaged bush, from the soil around the landing area, and from other parts of the arroyo have nothing to suggest a high heat that would melt the sand.

Here's something else. According to Stanford, when he was on the site with Hynek and Zamora, he, Zamora, spotted a rock with what looked like metal scrapings on it. He pointed it out, but it seemed that no one cared about these possible metal sample from an alien spacecraft. Once the site was cleared, sometime that afternoon, Stanford returned and retrieved the rock and its metallic samples. This does not seem to be the same rock that was near the melted sand that Mayes mentioned and that Zamora seemed to confirm existed some two years later but I wonder if Zamora wasn’t confused by the disappearance of the rock taken by Stanford.

Zamora, and others, thought that the Air Force had retrieved the melted sand sometime later and that it was taken to a secret lab for analysis. Again, there is no testimony anywhere in the Blue Book files to confirm that this melted sand existed or that there was any analysis done of it. There are, in the documents I now have, a suggestion that Holder had written a five-page report, but I have not located it yet.

To recap what we’ve learned here. Mayes told Friedman about the melted sand some two years after the landing and that she had analyzed it. Friedman passed the information to McDonald, who followed up on it. Mayes said she was at the scene the next day, April 25, but that seems to be unlikely given the statements of others. At any rate, she claimed to have found an area of melted sand near the burned bush and recovered it, taking it to her lab for analysis. Once that was completed, the Air Force arrived, confiscated all the material and her notes, and told her not to talk about it. She had nothing to prove any of this, though there are those who accept the story without question.

Apparently, no one who was on the site on the evening of April 24^th, who examined the burned bush carefully, who studied the landing gear impressions, and made measurements, noticed the area of melted sand near the bush and therefore none reported it. Other examinations of the site, in the months and years to follow found no evidence of heat high enough to fuse the sand, or any other indications of fused sand. It would seem, if we accept Mayes as telling the truth, that she collected the entirety of this evidence.

We have found, or rather Don Ecsedy Reported, that Mary G. Mayes is listed as a junior in the University of New Mexico 1959 Yearbook (page 42). He also reported that she had two years of college in Texas, but then she seemed to have claimed that she had attended NMIMT at some point so that she was familiar with the Socorro area. She told McDonald that she was a doctoral student at the University of New Mexico. She drops out of the picture after telling her tale to Stan and the beginning of the investigation by McDonald. In a letter dated March 13, 1969, McDonald wrote, “You 11/25 letter, for which thanks, indicated that neither Senn nor Chaves could in any way confirm the statements made to me by Mrs. Mary Nayes (sic) concerning the ‘fused sand.’ That certainly tends to cast strong doubt on her account. I have written to her but she has never replied, which may be further indication of something seriously amiss there.”

This was, of course superseded by his April 2, 1970 letter that actually explains nothing, other to reaffirm her original story. In the long run, no one can place her at the scene, no one saw the fused sand she talked about and she had no documentation to back up what she had claimed. All of this might have gotten more attention than it deserved, though there are still some avenues to pursue. (I will note here that Rumpf/Mayes/White died in 2007.) For those who wish to know who is Colonel DeGoes see:

 ftp://rock.geosociety.org/pub/Memorials/v29/degoes.pdf. 

Overall, this might be as far as we can take this, which is farther than I thought we could get. I have a couple of inquiries out that might pay off, but then again, we are pursuing something that is now over half a century old. Time might just be the one hurtle that we are unable to leap.

Lonnie Zamora as the Hoaxer*

We have talked about the possibility of a hoax in the Socorro UFO landing case. We have, or at least I have, thought that the idea of a student hoax has been rejected as implausible. There were way too many moving parts that required way too many unpredictable actions to be a reasonable scenario. From the very beginning, it required Lonnie Zamora to react in a way the students needed him to react so that he would find his way to the location of the landing.

Socorro, New Mexico. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who seemed to have liked Zamora and thought of him as a good police officer also paid him a left-handed compliment. Hynek, according his “Report on Socorro New Mexico Trip” found in the Project Blue Book files, “That Zamora, although not overly bright or articulate, is basically sincere, honest, and reliable. He would not be capable of contriving a complex hoax, nor would his temperament indicate that he would have the slightest interest insuch (sic).”

Hynek seemed to be indicating that Zamora, on his own, couldn’t have pulled this off. He would have needed help which is suggestive of a conspiracy involving at least one other. Philip Klass thought that it was the mayor of Socorro who had a financial motive and the intelligence to set this up. Research by others, including Paul Harden, proved that this was not the case.

But then I got to thinking about it.

The hoax scenarios, as they have been developed over the years, are way too complex. They involve balloons, which should have been recognized as such, several different people who left no trace of their presence at the landing site, and no way for them to escape before the arrival of others on the scene to spot them. Sergeant Sam Chavez of the New Mexico State Police arrived within three minutes of receiving the call from Zamora but, unfortunately not long after the craft had disappeared.

All this presupposes that Zamora related, accurately, what he had seen. It presupposes that he didn’t embellish in any way, and it presupposes he wasn’t clever enough to have pulled it off, just as Hynek suggested.

Let’s look at this from, well, a different perspective.

According to what we know, no one else saw the landed craft. No one else saw it lift off and disappear in seconds. No one else saw the little beings near the craft. All of this came from Zamora and if he wasn’t telling the truth about it, well, then, the hoax becomes easier to accept. Just assume that he hadn’t really seen all these

Lonnie Zamora

things, and some of the arguments about the alien nature of the craft and its capabilities are no longer relevant. The whole thing becomes much simpler to explain in terrestrial terms.

Chavez said something during his interviews with the Lorenzens, when viewed in this light seems strange. According to The A.P.R.O. Bulletin of May 1964 (page 3, second column), “Sgt. Chavez also told the Lorenzens that he had looked into Zamora’s car to see if there were any implements of any kind with which the indentations and fire could have been effected. There were not. Mrs. L asked Chavez why he did that. Chavez admitted that Zamora’s story had been so strange, and he followed the regular procedure to establish evidence.”

Going back, and looking specifically at the descriptions of the landing marks, it seems that the various witnesses talked mostly about how the soil had been scraped to one side or the other. That seemed to indicate that something heavy had set down, but in the process, as the weight was applied, the landing pads shifted slightly. It didn’t seem as if they had been scraped out in the way it would look if a shovel had been used but more as if it was the result of something having landed there.

Ray Stanford reported in his book, Socorro Saucer in a Pentagon Pantry, in the caption on page 37, “The southwest imprint photographed on the morning after by New Mexico State Police Sergeant Samuel Chavez, giving the distinct impression of having been gouged into the earth by great weight from above.”

One of the landing pad traces.

And, finally, Hynek wrote in a letter to Dr. Donald Menzel of Harvard, on September 29, 1964: “…I have the word of nine witnesses who saw the marks within hours of the incident, who tell me that the center of the marks were moist as though the top soil had been freshly pushed aside.”

But we have to remember here that those nine people only saw the landing impressions and the burned vegetation. There might have some embellishment simply because it seems that no one really saw the bush smoking after the craft took off. Oh, it seems to have been reported that steam or smoke was rising from that bush by Chavez, but it is one of those things that is hard to pin down in the world today.

Although many rejected the idea that Zamora had created the hoax on his own for some unknown reason, the Zamora hoax explanation is by far the simplest. It eliminates the need for a balloon either hot air or helium filled, it eliminates the need for other participants to create the illusion of something landing there, and it explains the lack of physical evidence that the hoax scenario should have left behind. If Zamora had done it, he just needed his shovel and a tape measure. Then he called the station to make his report and request that Chavez come out to meet with him. This also explains why none of those other people who said they had seen something ever came forward. All the rest of it, from the alien creatures, the banging of the hatch, the red symbol… all of it was so much window dressing created by Zamora.

And while that theory is applauded for its simplicity, it fails when other facts are figured into it. We can begin with the three telephone calls into the police station. Again, we know little about them, we don’t know who made them, but they are documented in the records gathered that night and in the report filed by Richard Holder. It would mean that, at the very least, one other person had to be involved. He or she could have made the three telephone calls though it is more likely to have been three people.

It would have involved Opal Grinder who said that he had talked to the tourists from Colorado who mentioned the low flying aircraft. That adds another person to the conspiracy which is, of course, another person to spill the beans on this unless, of course, Grinder was the one who made the telephone calls to the police.

We also have to wonder what inspired Zamora to create the hoax. The Project Blue Book files confirm that there were no other reports of UFOs in New Mexico at the time and there had been very little publicity about them anywhere prior to Zamora’s sighting. In fact, from Hynek’s “Report on the Trip to Socorro – Albuquerque, March 12 – 12, 1965, we see, “One should remember that before the time of the sighting there had been no talk in the Socorro region of unidentified flying objects.”

Hynek also mentioned, “No paraphernalia of a hoax was ever found. It would be rather hard to have done away with all the tell-tale evidence, such as tubes of helium, release mechanism, etc.”

And one thing that might argue the loudest against Zamora doing it on his own was that the impressions on the ground, when corrected for the terrain features are symmetrical and the burned bush seemed to be located at the precise center where you would expect the rocket or jet used to lift it would be situated. That seems to be much too sophisticated for Zamora to have pulled off. It is one of those things that he might have lucked into, but it does seem to argue against a Zamora alone hoax.

I’m not a fan of the Zamora hoaxed the sighting without any real motivation and no real inspiration. Again, Hynek mentioned there had been no UFO sightings reported around Socorro prior to Zamora’s sighting, but afterwards, there were many (some of which were hoaxes). The sightings for April 1964 from other parts of the world are fairly mundane and didn’t receive much in the way of publicity if any at all. Had Zamora’s sighting come in the middle of the wave, it might be that these other reports suggested the idea to him.

I like this idea, that Zamora hoaxed it by himself because of the simplicity of it. However, when we add in other factors, all the factors, it seems that the theory is flawed. Hector Quintanilla suggested the solution for the case would probably be found in Zamora’s head, and had he hoaxed the thing, then Quintanilla had it right. But Zamora never suggested to anyone that he had made up the story, his friends and his actions that night seem to argue against hoax, and there is no real motivation for him to have created the hoax that included the landing site.

And any theory, or solution, that has to discount some of the evidence to work is no real solution. In this case there are too many factors that argue against a Zamora designed hoax, not the least of which is the physical evidence and the other, unidentified witnesses. If we can come up with a theory that explains all that, then we have something. Until that time, the case remains, “Unidentified.”

(Blogger’s note: I thought it important to say that in one aspect of my training as an intelligence officer, we were taught that you needed to review all possible scenarios when assessing a situation. In one example of that, I was analyzing the military and political situation on East Timor. In one of the most ridiculous scenarios, I had to determine the possibility of the United States and Australian peacekeeping forces engaging in some sort of conflict. The possibility of that happening was almost zero, but, given that armed military forces were occupying the same terrain, there was the possibility that something would go horribly wrong. Didn’t mean that it would, it was just one of the possible outcomes. I mention this because the idea that Zamora invented the whole tale it practically zero, but it is one possibility. I say this because I don’t believe it happened that way, but I do like the simplicity of that solution.)

*I had thought that "hoaxster" was a proper name for someone who had created a hoax... I just liked the sound of it better. But, after a number of people suggested that the word was not correct, I tried to look it up in my whopping, huge dictionary, but it wasn't there. So, I corrected it.

Lonnie Zamora, Lance Moody and purrgurrl

I was going to provide these answers to Lance and purrgurrl in the comments section but they really are a little too complex for that. Besides, there are a couple of other points to be made as well, so I thought I would expand the conversation a little bit.

First, for purrgurrl, I will note that the point about Zamora’s glasses is irrelevant. According to the timeline, and according to what Zamora told investigators, after he had made a close approach to the object, after he had seen the two figures close to the object and they had disappeared, the object, whatever it was, began to roar. Zamora said that he could feel the heat, and then turned to run, fearing an explosion. It was at that point, as he bumped into the rear of the police car, he lost his glasses. The point is that the majority of his observations, and in fact all the important points of the observation, were made while he was still wearing his glasses.

Second, is Lance’s point about one of the sentences in my rebuttal to the idea that this was a hoax created by local college students. Particularly, Lance objected to the line, "There were other witnesses who called the police station as the object passed overhead."

He then added, “No. There was an unnamed person on the phone who SAID they saw what you claim.”

This is splitting a fine hair here, and I had reported in the book, Encounters in the Desert, and in other places, that there was a problem with these people. Three of them had called into the police station but Nep Lopez, the police dispatcher didn’t take their names nor did anyone follow up on the telephone calls after Zamora’s report. We know about this because Captain Richard Holder, who was on scene literally within minutes (well, maybe an hour and twenty minutes) mentioned it in his report written about one in the morning on April 25, or, within hours of the sighting. These three people mentioned they had seen a flame in the sky and called the police prior to Zamora’s report but said nothing about a huge balloon envelop or some sort of apparatus (basket?) hanging beneath it.

So, yes, there were THREE unidentified people who SAID they saw something in the sky. And there were the Colorado tourists who told Opal Grinder, the service station manager, they had seen something so close that they believed it was going to strike their car. Before Lance jumps in here, let me point out that we don’t know who the tourists were and the story is what, second hand, at best. All this does is support the idea that something was in the sky and others beside Zamora saw it, whatever the source of it might have been but we don’t know who they are and I would ignore it completely except for that note in Holder’s report.

Finally, Lance wrote that my point about the flame being upside down was poor, but I think he might have misinterpreted what I meant. The flame of a hot air balloon points up, into the envelop, to keep the hot air, well, hot. If the flame pointed down, into the basket, it would burn the people riding there. If it wasn’t pointed down, then there would have been no way for it to have burned the bush and the surrounding vegetation, which was observed by Sam Chavez, among others who visited the site after the object, craft, balloon, hoax, whatever, had lifted off.

And I wanted to get into the hoax idea a little deeper because I don’t think this had been thought through completely. In what might be considered a red herring, we’re told that Zamora was enticed toward the landing site by a young speeder. There are two problems with this. First is if Zamora hadn’t broken off the chase to investigate the roar that he thought might have been a dynamite shack explosion, he wouldn’t have gotten to the site of the landing. Instead, he would be taken away from this as he chased down the speeder.

But let’s say the speeder’s job was to lure Zamora to a point where he would be able to see the object on the ground. Then, we must wonder if Zamora would have stopped or would he have continued the chase. If the speeder stopped near the landing site, then Zamora would have had the name of the speeder and that would have led police, the Air Force and the FBI to that second witness who then would have had to lie, or admit the hoax. Either way, the hoax would fail at this point. (Do I need to point out that lying to the FBI is apparently a crime, though I don’t know when that law was passed… Okay, I looked it up and it seems that the law, as used today, was adopted in 1948.)

The point here is that there were too many ways for all this to fail because the object, whatever it was, had to be on the ground already. In Tony Bragalia’s scenario, it was not a hot air balloon but another type of balloon which wouldn’t have created the roar. That had to be created by something else because without

Hot air balloon with the passenger below
the burners which pump hot air into
the balloon envelop.

the roar, Zamora would not have driven to the scene of the landing. Of course, for it to have been some other type of balloon you have to wonder what induced three people to call the police about seeing the flame in the sky.

All I’m really saying here is that the hot air balloon explanation fails because the balloon would have had to move into the wind, the huge balloon envelop would have been quite distinctive, the flame would have pointed up, into the balloon envelop rather than down to burn the bush and soil and it wouldn’t have left the landing indentations that were found.

I’m saying that Bragalia’s hoax scenario fails because there were simply too many moving parts to make it work, his theory provides for no explanation for the telephone calls into the police, or the tourist car from Colorado, he provides no names of the participants and no explanation on how all of this was accomplished. The statements he gathered were from those who weren’t there at the time and are based on second-hand testimony at best but do nothing to validate the hoax claim. The single first-hand testimony comes from an anonymous source who really admitted to nothing.

But, do not misunderstand what I’m saying here. I’m not saying that this proves the landing was of an extraterrestrial craft, only that there is no solid explanation for the sighting. There might be a reasonable terrestrial explanation but to date that hasn’t been offered. As I have said in the past and I’m sure I will be repeating in the future, this case is the very definition of “unidentified.” We don’t know what it was.

Socorro, New Mexico and Lonnie Zamora - Revisited 2016

On April 24, 1964, Lonnie Zamora, a police officer in Socorro, New Mexico, spotted a landed object and two small humanoids standing near it. According to the Project Blue Book files, Zamora was chasing a speeder when he heard a loud roar and saw a flash of light in the southwestern sky. Fearing that a dynamite shed on the edge of town might have exploded; Zamora broke off the chase and headed in that direction. 

As he approached an arroyo, he saw what he first thought was an overturned car. He stopped his patrol car and saw, near the object, “two people in white coveralls…” 

Blue Book files recorded the story and Captain (later lieutenant colonel) Hector Quintanilla, provided a perspective on this situation from the Air Force point of view. As the chief of Blue Book at the time, he not only had access to all the classified files but he was running the Project Blue Book investigation of the particular case personally. Quintanilla in his unpublished book about UFOs, wrote: 

 All hell broke loose on April 24, 1964, and I started smoking again. On that date at approximately 17:45 hours, at Socorro, New Mexico, police officer Lonnie Zamora was headed south chasing a speeding automobile when he suddenly heard a roar and saw a flame in the sky to the southwest. He decided to let the speeder go in favor of investigating the flame, because he knew there was a dynamite shack in the area and it might have blown up. He turned onto a gravel road that led by the shack.

As he was driving slowly along the road, Zamora saw above a steep hill just ahead a funnel-shaped flame, bluish and sort of orange. The base of the flame was hidden behind the hill, there was no smoke connected with the flame. He had trouble getting the car to the top of the hill because of loose gravel; he had to try three times before he made it. As he reached the top of the hill, he saw a shiny object to the south, this side of the dynamite shack, about 150 to 200 yards away.

It was off the road to the left in the arroyo, and at first glance it looked like a car turned over, but when he drove closer it appeared to be aluminum clay, not chrome, and oval-shaped like a football. Zamora drove about fifty feet along the hill crest, radioing back to the sheriff’s office, “10-44 (accident), I’ll be 10-6 (busy out of the car), checking a wreck down in the arroyo”. From this point, seated in the car, he could not see the object over the edge of the hill. As he stopped the car, he was still talking on the radio, and while he was getting out he dropped his mike. He picked it up and put it back and started down towards the object.

Just then he heard a very loud roar, not exactly like a blast, but also not steady like a jet engine. It was of low frequency at first and then became higher. At the same time he saw a light blue flame, sort of orange at the bottom. Zamora believed the flame came from the underside of the object; he could see no smoke but he did see some dust in the vicinity. He panicked, thinking the object was going to blow up. The following is his report of what he experienced (with slight rearrangements for the sake of clarity) [parenthetical statement in original].

As soon as I saw flame and heard roar…ran away from object but did turn head towards object. Object was in shape [sic]. It was smooth—no windows or doors. As roar started, it was still on the ground.

Noted red lettering of some type like______________________. Insignia was about two and one half inches high and about two inches wide, I guess. Was in the middle of object, like  ______________. Object still like aluminum white.

(Running), bumped leg on car back fender area. Car facing southwest…fell by can [sic] and (sun) glasses fell off, kept running to north, with car between me and object…rose to about level of car, about twenty to twenty-five feet, guess. Took I guess, about six seconds when object started to rise and I glanced back… it appeared about directly over the place where it rose from.

I was still running… (then) about fifty feet from car. I ducked down, just over edge of hill…I stopped because I did not hear the roar. I was scared of the roar, and I had planned to continue running down the hill. I turned around toward the object and at the same time put my head toward ground, covering my face with my arms…when the roar stopped, heard a sharp tone whine and the whine lasted maybe a second. Then there was complete silence about the object.

That’s when I lifted up my head and saw the object going away from me…in a southwestern direction…It did not come any closer to me. It appeared to go in straight line and at same height—possibly ten to fifteen feet from ground, and it cleared the dynamite shack by about three feet. Shack about eight feet high. Object was traveling west fast. It seemed to rise up and take off immediately across country.

I ran back to my car and as I ran back, I kept an eye on the object. I picked up my …sunglasses, got into the car, and radioed to Nep Lopes, radio operator, to look out the window to see if he could see an object. He asked, “What is it?” I answered, “It looks like a

balloon”. I don’t know if he saw it. If Nep looked out his window, which faces north, he couldn’t see it. I did not tell him at the moment which window to look out of.

As I was calling Nep, I could still see object. The object seemed to lift up slowly, and to get small in the distance very fast. It seemed to just clear the Box Canyon or Mile Canyon Mountain. It disappeared as it went over the mountain. It had no flame whatsoever as it was traveling over the ground, and no smoke or noise.

Feeling in good health. Las drink—two or three beers over a month ago. Noted no odors. Noted no sounds other than described. Gave direction to Nep Lopes at radio and to Sergeant Chaves (of New Mexico State Police at Socorro) to get there. Went down to where

the object had been, and I noted the brush was burning in several places.—I got my pen and drew a picture of the insignia on the object.

Then Sgt. Chaves came up, asked me what the trouble was because I was sweating and he told me that I was white, very pale. I asked the Sgt. To see what I saw and that was the burning brush. Then Sgt. Chaves and I went down to the spot and Sgt. Chaves pointed out the tracks.

When I first saw the object (when I thought it might be a car) I saw what appeared to be two legs of some type from the object to the ground. At the time, I didn’t pay much attention to…the two legs. The two legs were at the bottom of the object, slanted outwards to

the ground. The object might have been about three and a half feet from the ground at the time…

Lonnie Zamora experienced an event which left quite an impression on him. He was a serious officer, a pillar of his church, and a man well versed in recognizing airborne vehicles in his area. He was puzzled by what he saw, and frankly, so am I [emphasis added]. And yet, I’ve always had some doubt about this case, even though it is the best documented case on record. In spite of the fact that I conducted the most thorough investigation that was humanly possible, the vehicle or stimulus that scared Zamora to the point of panic has never been found.

During the course of the investigation and immediately thereafter, everything that was possible to verify was checked. The communications media must have been waiting for a case like this, because immediately after Zamora reported his sighting all hell broke loose. The telephone at my house was ringing off the hook. I went to my office so that I could direct the investigation from there and at the same time contact Kirtland, Holloman, and White Sands via our telephone communications system. As I walked into our building, and turned into the hallway towards my office, I could hear the telephone ringing, ringing, ringing. The operator informed me that I had ten or twelve calls waiting for me. I decided not to accept the calls until after I had talked with my UFO investigating officer at Kirtland. Major Connor was my primary investigator at Kirtland, but he was inexperienced.

Fortunately, my chief analyst, Sgt. David Moody was on temporary duty at Kirtland. I asked Major Connor to get in touch with him and for Moody to get in touch with me regardless of the hour. It was hours before the investigation could be organized and on its way. A Geiger counter had to be found and the base photographer had to be called. The staff car, which had been provided for the

investigation, had a flat tire midway between Albuquerque and Socorro. Socorro is located fifty-five miles south of Kirtland Air Force Base.

The Stallion Range Officer had already conducted a preliminary investigation and had also interviewed Zamora. This information was turned over to the Air Force investigators as soon as they began their interview with Zamora.

Connor and Moody kept in touch with me and provided me with good information, but there was nothing from which we could draw a definite conclusion or a decent evaluation. The news media was on SAFOI’s back and SAFOI was on my back. I didn’t have any idea as to what Zamora saw and reported, but by God, I was going to find it. Because of the pressure from the news media, I decided to send Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Project Blue Book consultant, to Kirtland to help with the investigation. I felt that Hynek could concentrate on Socorro while Connor and Moody could check all other activity at the other bases in New Mexico.

In the meantime, Marilyn Beumer Stancombe, my secretary, and I began checking for some sort of positive activity. Radiation had been checked by Connor and Moody and the readings were negative. I checked the Holloman AFB Balloon Control Center for balloon activity. All local weather stations and Air Force bases in New Mexico were checked for release of weather balloons. Helicopter activity was checked throughout the state. Government and private aircraft were checked. The reconnaissance division in the Pentagon was checked. I checked with the immigration division hoping they might help. Finally, I was at my wits end, so I told Marilyn, “Get me the White House Command Post”. She looked at me with those beautiful blue eyes of hers like I was nuts. I said, “Yes, Marilyn, the White House Command Post”.

She never asked me a question, she just started dialing. I was afraid she would ask me how she could reach them, but she didn’t. It took her five or six calls, but she got me the Command Post. A Major General answered and I explained to him my situation. He was very sympathetic, but off hand he couldn’t recall any type of activity in my area of interest. However, he’d check and call me back.

Fifteen minutes later the General called back and told me that the only activity which he had was some U-2 flights. That was no help, so I thanked him for his cooperation and put my thinking cap on again.

It took days for us to check all of these agencies and activities. I finally received Dr. Hynek’s report; it was one of his typical reports which contained few technical details and added practically nothing to what had already been submitted by Connor and Moody. Actually, Hynek added very little to the investigation, however, his typical press interviews added more flame to the fire. The more press coverage the sightings got, the greater the number of sightings which were reported throughout New Mexico.

I was determined to solve the case and come hell or high water I was going to find the vehicle or the stimulus. I decided that it was imperative for me to talk to the Base Commander at Holloman AFB. I wanted to interview the Base Commander at length about special activities from his base. I needed help to pull this off, so I called Lt. Col. Maston Jacks at SAFOI. I told him what I wanted to do and he asked, “Do you think it will do any good?” I replied, “God damned it Maston, if there is an answer to this case it has to be in some hanger at Holloman”. He went to work from his position at the Pentagon and the approval for my visit came through. Colonel Garman was the Base Commander during my visit. He was most cooperative and told me that I could go anywhere and visit any activity which interested me. I went from one end of the base to the other. I spent four days talking to everybody I could and spent almost a whole day with the down-range controllers at the White Sands Missile Range. I left Holloman dejected and convinced that the answer to Zamora’s experience did not originate and terminate at that base.

On my way back to Wright-Patterson, I hit upon an idea. Why not a lunar landing vehicle? I knew that some research had been done at Wright-Patterson; so as soon as I got back I asked for some briefings. The briefings were extremely informative, but the Lunar Landers were not operational in April 1964. I got the names of the companies that were doing research in this field and I started writing letters. The companies were most cooperative, but their answers were all negative.

It was now time for me to pass judgment on the case after a careful review of all the information at hand. I hate to use the word “judgment”, but that is exactly what it boils down to. As President Truman used to say, “The buck stops here”, and in the world of UFO’s my desk was the end of the line. It was time for the Air Force to make a formal decision on the sighting of Socorro, New Mexico. I reviewed the Air Force Materials Laboratory Analysis of the soil samples which were gathered at the alleged landing area. Conclusion: no foreign residue. Laboratory analysis of the burned brush revealed no chemicals that could have been propellant residue. Radiation was normal for the alleged landing area and for the surrounding area. There was no unusual meteorological activity, no thunderstorms; the weather was windy, but clear. Although we made an extensive search for other witnesses, none could be located. There were no unidentified helicopters or aircraft in the area. Radar installations at Holloman AFB and at Albuquerque observed no unusual blips, but the down-range Holloman MTI (Moving Target Indicator) Radar, closest to Socorro, had been closed down for the day at 1600 hours. All the findings and conclusions were negative. The object was traveling at approximately 120 miles per hour when it disappeared over the mountains according to Zamora’s best estimate.

I labeled the case “Unidentified” and the UFO buffs and hobby clubs had themselves a field day. According to them, here was proof that our beloved planet had been visited by an extraterrestrial vehicle. Although I labeled the case “Unidentified” I’ve never been satisfied with that classification.

Zamora apparently wasn’t the only witness to the craft. The Blue Book files provide indications of additional witnesses. Opal Grinder, owner of a Socorro service station reported that a tourist had said something about jets flying very low over the town. That tourist has never been found and interviewed so any description of the craft and the incident is second hand at best. It might have provided some important corroboration for the case if the man and his family could have been located. As it is, it is simply an

One of the landing gear impressions. Photo
courtesy of the USAF.

interesting anecdote with little value as evidence. 

There are, however, two other witnesses who have been named and have been interviewed by reporters and UFO investigators. According to an article published in the Dubuque Telegraph-Herald on Wednesday, April 29, 1964, Paul Kries, who was 24 and Larry Kratzer who was 26, had been in Socorro the previous Friday when the object took off. They had been traveling along the highway. 

Kratzer told the reporter, “We saw some brown dust, then black smoke – like rubber burning – then a fire. The smoke hid the shiny craft as it flew away.” 

Then they began to talk about things they couldn’t have seen, but might have heard on the news or read in the newspapers. Remember, they were talking some five days later, after there had been a great deal published and broadcast about the sighting including the CBS Evening News.

Kries said that federal agents had cordoned the area and that government sources had denied they had anything like the observed craft near Socorro. Kries also said that there were four depressions, about twelve feet apart, left by the object. He also claimed that there was a large burned patch on the desert and that the exhaust had melted a pop bottle when it took off. Neither of these things is true. 

Sometime later, an Iowa UFO researcher, Ralph DeGraw interviewed the two men, but he was not impressed with their story. He said that it seemed to be in conflict with what Zamora had described. He believed their testimony was not trustworthy. 

The descriptions offered by Kries and Kratzer, of what was found on the landing site seemed to imply that they had been there and seen it. They suggest the area was condoned, which could be suggested by the police officers and police cars parked around it. They talked about the landing traces left by the craft as it took off, implying they had seen that as well. 

However, there is no evidence that any civilians were on the scene that night. Almost all the testimony that was offered by Zamora, Sergeant Sam Chavez of the New Mexico State Police, FBI agent Bynes and Army Captain Richard Holder and some later filtered through Col. Eric Jonckheere seemed to suggest no civilians there, though it is possible that some of the military men might have been in civilian clothes. The descriptions given by those who were there is based on the documentation available in the Blue Book files differs from what Kries and Kratzer said. 

Their description of the landing marks were nothing that new. It could have been picked up by anyone who had watched the story unfold for the last couple of days and they didn’t say anything until a week or so have passed. There had been plenty of stories about what was seen on the alleged landing site. 

While it would be nice to have additional witnesses to the case, and these two men claim to have been on the scene, there are many problems with them. Had they left it with having seen something in the sky, as they drove by, it would be one thing, but it seems they were suggesting they were at the landing site. It might be the way the story was written, or it might have been they incorporated the additional information they read in the various newspaper accounts without thought about ramifications. They might just have been trying to give the reporter the impression of something other worldly, but it is clear from the evidence found in the Blue Book files that neither of these men had walked the field. 

In the end, the Air Force which is to say Quintanilla listed the case as an “unidentified.” Quintanilla said that he didn’t like that solution, or more properly the label he had applied to it, probably because it would delight those who believed that some UFOs represented alien visitation. As he said about the case later, “Although I labeled the case ‘Unidentified’ I’ve never been satisfied with that classification.”

This then is what I think of as a fairly neutral representation of what happened in Socorro because I draw heavily on the obviously biased account presented in both the Blue Book files and that written by Quintanilla himself. Had he had any solution to provide, no matter how off the wall, he would have provided it.

Over the last couple of years I have written about this case a few times. Once to expose the Phil Klass ridiculous suggestion that it was a hoax created by the mayor to make some money. Klass expanded on this notion and unfortunately others, in the interest of seeming to be unbiased reported the story. It wasn’t true. This tale and others can be found here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/10/lonnie-zamora-socorro-ufo-and-new.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/11/socorro-ufo-landing-and-new-witnesses.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2011/09/philip-klass-and-socorro-ufo-landing.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-socorro-landing-and-corroborating.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2012/08/tony-bragalia-and-socorro-landing.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/11/socorro-ufo-landing-part-one.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/11/socorro-ufo-landing-part-2.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/11/hector-quintanill-and-socorro-ufo-part.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/11/socorro-ufo-landing-analysis.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/11/socorro-ufo-landing-analysis.html 

I have also attempted to append the various comments made to the Best UFO Cases posting that sort started this latest discussion. To do that I have had to copy them all and repost them which, unfortunately, puts them under my name… I will attempt to get the name of the author of the posts placed with them but if I fail, please don’t accuse me of plagiarism even though that is a hot topic at the moment.