ufo - UFOS at close sight: Roswell 1947, the witnesses, Beverly Bean

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Biography:

His social security number was 558-16-4292 and his Service Number was 6 578 751. In 1947, Melvin Brown was a Sargent and Cook at the Roswell Army Air Field.

Although Melvin Brown's official military occupation was a cook and baker, it is said that he was also a decorated WWII veteran, including a Bronze Star, and that his service papers further list him as an expert marksman.

Melvin Brown has never said or written anything publicly related to the Roswell incident. However, his daughter Beverly Bean reported what he said, allegedly, about the incident in the family circle.

There is a Melvin Elmore Brown (Melvin E. Brown) who would have been 30 at the time of the incident. He was born on October 14, 1973, and died in February 1986. He is said to have been born in California; which his SSN confirms.

Affidavits:

Investigators notes, interviews and comments:

Leonard Stringfield:

[...]

[...] Avoiding details, it seems goes with the business of covert work if one must talk at all. And so it was with another source who managed to whisper a few words on his death bed about his stealthy activity at Roswell in 1947.

The source, Bev, is British; her father, a former American serviceman, a staff sergeant who served and took up residence in England following duty in the Pacific theatre, WWII, and notably with the 509th Bomb Group, Walker Field, Roswell. According to records, he was at Roswell during the same time as Major Jesse Marcel and Captain O.W. Henderson. Bev, referred to me by Timothy Good, British author of Above Top Secret, is by the tone of her letters and phone calls sincere in trying to verify her dad's alleged participation in the Roswell retrieval case. She sent me copies of all his military records which confirmed his assignment at Walker Field in Roswell. These included orders cut for hospitalization at the base for both he and Major Marcel and his pass to the base's Non-Com Club dated July 1947.

As a child, Bev recalls her dad talking about his hush-hush work at Roswell and whenever he described the nondescript bodies her response was to giggle. The subject never came up much she said until she was a teenager. Once, she recalls, he had read a feature story in a newspaper about a UFO crash and looking grim he told about his experience of standing guard where the bodies were stored and cautioned all family members to keep it quiet lest he get into trouble. According to Bev's long letter and attached military records, she recalled the following:

... He stood guard once outside a hangar where a crashed saucer was stored. He couldn't see anything as it was all packed up and ready to be flown out to Texas the next day. We disagree on the number of bodies he saw. I'm sure he said two, but one of my sisters said three... All available men stood guard duty around the site where a crashed disc had come down and they couldn't understand why they had to be kept cold, as there were trucks of ice... Although he and others were told they would get into trouble if they saw too much they did look under the cover and saw two small dead bodies. They said they were like us, but not like us. They were smaller than a normal man with large heads and slanted eyes. He also said they looked yellowish, a bit Asian... I remember when I got older and asked for more information he got angry and said "that's all I know and I shouldn't have told you that much." Whenever he talked about it he always looked worried...

His last words, according to Bev, before he died in a hospital in February 1986 were about Roswell.

Behind scenes, several months after my initial contact with Tim, another door opened for me. Don Schmitt, Director of Special Investigations for CUFOS, also had been quietly digging into the Roswell affair, with telling results. Of special interest, I learned, new information had surfaced which not only tied in with Tim's experience, but also with that of a former GI, who, living in England with his British wife and family, had been a part of the 509th retrieval team at the crash site. Of note, he told one of his daughters that he had seen three recovered bodies. (See Case 11, in my Status Report V: Walt Andrus also met with the English widow and her two daughters in London on July 15,1989.)

UFOBBS:

5.10 Melvin Brown's Daughter

(Sergeant Melvin Brown was a cook at Roswell AAF in 1947. One day, he was called out to help guard material retrieved from the Foster Ranch. His daughter Beverly was interviewed by Stanton Friedman in 1989.)

When we were young, he used to tell us stories about things that had happened to him when he was young. We got to know those stories by heart and would all say together, "Here we go again."

Sometimes, but not too often, he used to say that he saw a man from outer space. That used to make us all giggle like mad. He said he had to stand guard duty outside a hangar where a crashed flying saucer was stored, and that his commanding officer said, "Come on, Brownie, let's have a look inside." But they didn't see anything because it had all been packed up and [was] ready to be flown out to Texas. He also said that one day all available men were grabbed and that they had to stand guard where a crashed disc had come down. Everything was being loaded onto trucks, and he couldn't understand why some of the trucks had ice or something in them. He did not understand what they wanted to keep cold. Him and another guy had to ride in the back of one of the trucks, and although they were told that they could get into a lot of trouble if they took in too much of what was happening, they had a quick look under the covering and saw two dead bodies, alien bodies.

We really had to giggle at that bit. He said they were smaller than a normal man, about four feet, and had much larger heads than us, with slanted eyes, and that the bodies looked yellowish, a bit Asian-looking. We did not believe him when we were kids, but as I got older, I did kind of believe it. Once I asked him if he was scared by them, and he said, "Hell no, they looked nice, almost as though they would be friendly if they were alive."

Note: this "UFOBBS" File is actually the exact copy of the information in the book "Crash at corrona", by Stanton Friedman, Marlowe publishers, page 128, 1992.

Timothy Good:

According to Timothy Good, Beverly Bean told that Melvin Brown saw an article about the Roswell incident in the newspaper London Daily Mail in the late seventies, and told his family: "I was there!"

Melvin Brown said to his family that the newspaper article told essentially a true story. Tim Good adds that Brown was sent to the location where alien bodies have been found and he was told not to look and not to speak of the remains and bodies which were put on refrigerated trucks. Brown is said to have been ordered to drive one of the truck, accompanied by another soldier, back to RAAF and "take this stuff to a hangar." Good writes that despite the orders, Melvin Brown lifted a cover on the back of the truck and saw "two or possibly three bodies."

The book "Alien Contact" by Timothy Good, includes more Beverly Bean statements and some of Melvin Brown's military records.

Stanton Friedman and Don Berliner:

Stanton Friedman says he interviewed Beverly Bean on 1989. She told him that her father...

Donald R. Schmitt:

("Jointly sponsored by Donald R. Schmitt & Baraka Foundation, UFO Crash At Roswell tells the Roswell story through the words of the eyewitnesses.")

CSICOP - Kal H. Korff:

In a CSICOP article Kal K. Korff writes that Sergeant Melvin E. Brown is "touted as a "witness" who saw alien bodies by Roswell authors Friedman, Randle and Schmitt, and Michael Hesemann and Philip Mantle (Beyond Roswell)."

He adds that Melvin Brown cannot be considered a witness since he died in 1986 and was never interviewed by UFO researchers. Indeed, the only "proof" one has that Brown was a "witness" comes from his daughter, Beverly Bean, who first made the claim years after his death. No other member of Brown's family supports her claim. Kal K. Korff writes that he had checked Melvin Brown's military file and that they revealed that "he was a cook who held no security clearance and never pulled guard duty."

The Skeptical Enquirer article adds: "Also noted in the book are the blatant contradictions and changes in Beverly Bean's various accounts."

Kal H. Korff:

In his book, Kal H. Korff insists that no researcher can claim that Sgt. Melvin Brown said anything since he died in 1986 and nobody interviewed him. He says that researchers have wrongly attributed statements to Melvin Brown, which are really statements attributed to Melvin Brown by his daughter Beverly Bean.

Kal H. Korff says that Beverly Bean contradicts herself in the sense that she told Timothy Good that her father first spoke of alien bodies he saw at Roswell when he stumbled upond the Daily Mail article, whereas she told Stanton Friedman that her father told her that he saw a man from outer space when she was a kid. To Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt, she said that her father told her about seing aliens at Roswell while the family was watching the moon landing on TV in 1969.

Kal H. Korff says that Sergent Melvin Brown was only a cook and could not have been involved in such a situation. He adds that "Pro-Roswell authors" have conceiled that the description of the alleged alien beings skin is yellowish-orange, "because it does not "jive" with the descriptions of their other "witnesses," who have consistently stated that the aliens skin was gray."

Karl T. Pflock:

The researcher first says that Melvin Brown, a cook in Roswell in July 1947, told his daughter Beverly Bean and her family that he had been posted as a guard on July 8, 1947, both at the scene of the crash and at a hangar. That night, when Brown and his squadron commander looked into the hangar, they only saw a sealed crate.

Further on, Pflock says that according to a narrative attributed by his daughter Beverly Bean to the late Sergeant Melvin Brown, the strange bodies found at the crash site were placed on ice and returned to the base in the afternoon by truck. Bean said his father was a member of the recovery team on the crash site. He allegedly returned to the base in the back of a truck, where he had seen the bodies, disobeying commands by lifting a tarpaulin. Bean said that at the base, her father was stationed in a detachment as a guard where the bodies had been temporarily stored.

Further on, Pflock repeats this, commenting that no other testimony or evidence corroborates it, and that, moreover, the description of the bodies which Beans attributes to her father is incompatible with that of other alleged witnesses. He concludes that the testimony, although interesting, does not provide guarantees to those who want to believe that bodies have been found.

Thomas Carey and Donald Schmitt:

The authors say one of the earliest examples of a deathbed confession about the Roswell incident was made by late Seargent Melvin E. Brown, who was with K Squadron at the time of the incident. He took the first manned landing on the moon in July of 1969 as an impetus to tell his family the truth about Roswell, but they were reluctant to believe him.

His wife and two daughters remembered his stern warning not to tell anyone else because "Daddy will get into trouble." His family still fears government reprisal should they say too much.

Brown was on his deathbed in 1986 just outside London, England, and his daughter Beverly Bean said that her father then talked about Roswell exclusively. He reiterated over and over that "it was not a damn weather balloon." Brown's wife and oldest daughter still refuse to discuss the matter. Beverly Bean, however, wanted everyone to know what her father had told her with his own dying words, i.e.:

The authors say their source is an interview of Beverly Bean, in "Recollections of Roswell Part II", Fund for UFO Research, Mt. Rainier, MD: 1992.

Name:	Brown, Melvin C.
Date of birth:	Unknown
Nationality:	American
BRONZE STAR MEDAL (BSM)
Rank:	Sergeant
Unit:	Company K, 180th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division "Thunderbird", U.S. Army
Action:	For action performed on 21 September 1943, near Oliveto Citra/Province of Salerno, Campania region, Italy.
Details:	Citation unavailable.
Information source(s):	- Fisher, G.A., The Story of the 180th Infantry Regiment, Newsfoto Publishing Co., San Angelo, Texas, 1947

Version:	Created/Changed by:	Date:	Change Description:
1.0	Patrick Gross	April 14, 2017	First published.
1.1	Patrick Gross	May 2, 2017.	Addition of the Len Stringfield March 1989 article.

Roswell 1947 - Documents on the witnesses

Beverly Bean