The article below is by Thomas J. Carey and Donald R. Schnitt was published by the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) in the Winter 1999 issue of their bulletin International UFO Reporter (IUR).
Author Thomas J. Carey was a CUFOS board member specializing in the Roswell incident and author Donald R. Schmitt was a longtime investigator and coauthor of two books on the Roswell incident.
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Maggie and Mack Brazel in 1951, |
Were it not for William Ware "Mack" Brazel (1899-1963), there would never have been a Roswell Incident - at least not one known to the general public. In July 1947, the 48- year-old Brazel was scratching out a living as foreman of the J. B. Foster sheep ranch located 30 miles southeast of the small cattle town of Corona, New Mexico. The family lived in Tularosa, while Mack stayed on the ranch in a shack without a telephone, electricity, or even running water. The nearest neighbor was 10 miles.
As has been reported many times before, one day he discovered a mass of material strewn over a section of the vast hardscrabble grazing grounds and thought it strange and significant enough to warrant notifying the Chaves County sheriff, probably on July 6, who in turn called the Roswell Army Air Field. He did this not just because of a sense of patriotism, but also because the material was interfering with ranch operations, as the sheep wouldn't cross the debris field.
The military, in the persons of Maj. Jesse Marcel and Capt. Sheridan Cavitt, followed Brazel back to the ranch that same day. After spending the night, they spent the next day inspecting and collecting the debris, which they took to the base by the early morning of July 8. In short order, Col. William Blanchard, the commanding officer at Roswell, issued a press release stating that a "flying disk" had been recovered. Almost immediately after Blanchard's astonishing claim, Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey, his superior in the chain of command, held a press conference in Fort Worth, Texas, in which a battered balloon-borne radar reflector was said to be the "disk" found by Brazel.
A follow-up article in the Roswell newspaper on July 9 is the only contemporary published record of what Brazel said ("Harassed Rancher Who Located 'Saucer' Sorry He Told About It"). It was based on an interview conducted in the offices of the Roswell Daily Record on the afternoon of July 8. The description of the debris he furnished sounds much like a small part of a Project Mogul balloon array, similar to that from weather balloons, which is the accepted skeptical explanation today for the event. Though Project Mogul was indeed a top-secret project, the neoprene rubber balloons and paper-backed aluminum foil radar targets used in it were not. In the article, Brazel describes a collection of "tinfoil", "tape," "sticks," and "rubber," which was so limited in size that it could be rolled up in a small bundle. But then he said the debris took up an area about 200 yards in diameter, vastly greater than the remains a Mogul array would produce.
Apparently unnoticed and certainly unappreciated by reporters at the time were Brazel's final comments. The article concluded by noting that Brazel had previously found weather balloons on the ranch on at least two occasions, and he firmly stated, "I am sure what I found was not any weather observation balloon."
Brazel concluded by venting obvious frustration, saying that with the possible exception of a bomb, he would never report another object found on the ranch. The contradiction between his mundane description of the debris and his claim that this was not a weather balloon would reverberate almost endlessly when the Roswell controversy exploded into public consciousness.
With that, Brazel and the Roswell disk faded into obscurity. It was not until 31 years later that Marcel spoke out, saying that what he found at the Foster ranch was "not from this Earth." Roswell was revisited by researchers, who produced persuasive circumstantial evidence indicating that the original Blanchard disk story was closer to the truth than the weather-balloon explanation.
What follows is an attempt to piece together the historical Mack Brazel and his role in the Roswell events. To this end, we have relied on the recollections of family, friends, and the few others who had contact with him during the critical days of July 1947. You may have read some of this information before, but in this article we refine our picture of Brazel's role and present new findings about what he may have discovered.
In preparing this overview, we have relied on the original interviews made and published by William Moore, Stanton Friedman, Kevin Randle, and Donald Schmitt when he was Randle's research partner, as well as our own recent field work.
We'll begin with his nickname. Most accounts refer to him as "Mac," partly because researchers heard the name and applied the most logical phonetic spelling. And his family tells us he was so named after former President William McKinley. However, family documents show that the spelling "Mack" was always used. Indeed, the inscription on his tombstone reads W. Ware Mack Brazel.
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The Brazel's final resting place |
In addition to the first-person interview with Brazel at the Roswell Daily Record, we know of three other interviews. The first was done on the spur of the moment by Roswell radio station KGFL announcer Frank Joyce on Sunday, July 6. Joyce made it a practice to call Chaves County Sheriff George Wilcox for news leads. It happened that Brazel was in Wilcox's office at the time, relating his discovery of strange debris. Wilcox put Brazel on the telephone, and Joyce proceeded to interview him.
The second instance was an interview conducted at the home of Walt Whitmore, the owner of KGFL. This was probably done late on Monday, July 7. The interview was recorded on a wire recorder, which was the technology available at the time. The interview was meant to be aired as a scoop, but was never played on the air. Unfortunately, the recording has been lost to us because it was confiscated by the Army on the afternoon of July 8 and never returned during their operation to kill the original disk-retrieval story and remove all contrary evidence.
The third and last interview was conducted by an El Paso radio station. We know only that it took place, and can only guess that Brazel repeated the story he gave the Roswell Daily Record.
Based on our investigations and reasonable deduction, it seems almost certain that only the Joyce and Whitmore interviews presented Brazel's story in honest, undistorted fashion. At some point on July 7-8, Brazel was placed in military custody at the base. His statements during this period are therefore suspect and may be the result of coercion. Family members believe that Brazel was frightened or bought off by the military, and that his July 8 Roswell Daily Record interview, in particular, was, at least in the main outlines, dictated to him by the Army. One of the goals of our reinvestigation of Brazel has been to determine why he, alone among Roswell witnesses, was detained by the military.
Mack Brazel's name first surfaced in public in the July 9 Roswell Daily Record article. Although the paper did not print a photo of Brazel, many other papers throughout the country did. Apparently his picture was the first Wirephoto electronically transmitted from Roswell [It was not]. When this picture appeared in the Albuquerque Journal, it alerted his son Bill Jr. to the fact that his father was the center of a large controversy and that he might need some help.
The same page of the Journal carried the debunking story from Ramey's Fort Worth office, headlined "Gen. Ramey Empties Roswell Saucer." Brazel is also mentioned by name in this article.
Mack Brazel died in 1963 at the age of 64, and his wife Maggie died in 1975 at the age of 73. Thus both were dead well before any researcher could interview them about the events in 1947
But there remain a number of family members who can fill us in on Mack's character and personality. They tell us he was a throwback to the "old-time cowboys." Frank Joyce, the KGFL announcer, described him to researcher William Moore as dirt-in-the-pores-of-the-skin type of guy." Joyce continued, "He didn't say a whole lot," and "(he) was a man of few words," but "his word and hand-shake were bond."
Mack's son Bill was interviewed by various researchers, including Moore, Friedman, Randle, and Schmitt. Bill maintained that he was able to learn very little directly from his father about the Roswell events. Moreover, Bill says that his father confided nothing about it to his mother. But Bill believes that Mack did pass on at least some fragments of the story to Bill's wife Shirley, but that she was never given all the facts. Shirley Brazel died in 1996. Randle and Schmitt interviewed her on several occasions prior to her death. It has never been clear which details of Bill's recollections of his father's Roswell adventures came from discussions with Mack or from what Shirley told him.
Bill Jr. believes that his father ". . . took the most part of what he knew to the grave with him." His father did tell him that he was upset and bitter at being "put in jail" for a week for simply doing what he thought was a "good deed." All family members interviewed by Moore gave it as a truism that Mack had been sworn to secrecy for reasons patriotic, and that he took his oath very seriously because he was a man of his word. Other relatives swear that the military threatened his family. Another family story has it that Mack was particularly incensed at having endured a "head to foot" physical examination by the military before they would release him and allow him to return home.
Mack's older sister Lorrene Ferguson died in 1983, but she confirmed for Moore her brother's extreme reluctance to talk about the events. This is also confirmed by Mack's daughter, Bessie Brazel Schreiber, who was 14 years old at the time of the Roswell events. She told Carey and Schmitt in a July 1999 interview, "We were told not to talk about this at all." She testified to her father's veracity most emphatically, saying, "If Dad said something happened, it happened! No ifs, ands, or buts about it." Mack's youngest child, Vernon, was 7 years old at the time of the incident. Unfortunately, he disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1960 and has never been heard of again. Another son, Paul, died in 1997. He was employed running a ranch in Texas for the same J. B. Foster that employed his father in 1947, but when interviewed said he had no direct knowledge of the events.
Brazel's friends and neighbors had much to say, particularly about his "change of life" after his return from military custody. According to his nearest neighbor, Floyd Proctor (d. 1987), when interviewed by Moore in 1979, Mack was in a state of excitement and very talkative about his discovery when he saw Proctor a day or two prior to his trip to Roswell and the sheriff's office. According to Proctor, Mack "just wouldn't shut up about it." Proctor's wife Loretta said Mack was returning her 7-year-old son Dee, who had been visiting the Foster ranch that day. He had brought a small piece of the wreckage with him to show the Proctors, who encouraged him to report it to the authorities for the $3,000 reward offered for proof of "flying disks."
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Floyd and Loretta Proctor, |
Proctor confirmed for Moore that Brazel had been kept in military custody for about a week, after which he would not talk about the event, preferring instead to change the subject or briefly repeat the balloon story if pressed. Proctor also described being in Roswell with another neighbor, L. D. Sparks, during the period of Brazel's detention. Brazel was surrounded by about half a dozen military escorts as he walked down the street. He was behaving strangely, according to Proctor, and pretended that he did not recognize Proctor and Sparks when they passed. This episode was corroborated in a 1988 interview we conducted with Sparks in his Roswell home, and also by Leonard Porter and Bill Jenkins, two other neighbors of Brazel who were there at the time.
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L. D. Sparks, who saw Brazel under military custody in 1947. |
In a 1998 interview, former real estate salesman Howard Scoggin of Las Cruces, New Mexico, described a 1959 encounter with Mack Brazel. Scoggin had gone to a local restaurant for lunch with a friend who pointed out Brazel sitting alone at another table. Against his friend's advice, Scoggin got up and approached Brazel, and asked him about the 1947 incident. Without saying a word, Brazel clenched his fist tightly, grimaced, and contorted his face, and then slowly rose out of his chair. Fearing for his personal safety, the surprised Scoggin backed away, while Brazel slowly stalked past him and out of the restaurant, leaving his food on the table. It was like watching one of those werewolf movies, when the star turns into the monster," said Scoggin almost 40 years after the encounter.
A former ranch hand of Brazel's, Ernest Lueras, was recently interviewed by the authors at his Corona filling station. Lueras recalled a time when he and Mack drove from Corona to Tularosa, a drive that on today's modern roads takes three hours to complete. The trip was made sometime after the 1947 events but before Mack left Corona for good to open his own business in Las Cruces (a meat-packing enterprise). The reason Lueras recalls this drive so vividly after all these years is Brazel's very odd behavior. After making several attempts at conversation, Lueras finally gave up. The rest of the trip was made in total silence. Lueras was nonplussed, and did not know what to make of the silent treatment from his boss. Today, Lueras states his belief that 'They (the military) really messed him up."
As related by William Moore in The Roswell Incident, Mack told friends and family that the debris came from an airborne explosion not a crash~because it consisted of separate pieces spread over a large area. Vegetation in the area of the debris was singed. The debris was like nothing he had ever seen before: "very odd... the strangest stuff he had ever seen." The metal was different from any metal he was familiar with because he could not cut, scratch or whittle it with his knife.
Strange writing or symbols on some of the Roswell debris have been described by other witnesses, such as Maj. Marcel and his son, Jesse Marcel Jr. Mack told friends and family about seeing similar markings, including Bill Jr., Mack's older sister Lorrene Ferguson, and Proctor. Bill recalled his father describing the writing as like "figures," and thought his father meant it resembled the ancient Indian petroglyphs or rock figures common in the Southwest. On the other hand, Ferguson and Proctor recalled Mack's description as being more like the "wiggles" one finds on wrappers of Chinese or Japanese firecrackers, and that they were in various pastel colors.
Of great importance is Bill Jr.'s statement that his father told him the Army had admitted they had definitely established that "it wasn't anything made by us." Mack may well have been told this during his detention as a means to convince him of the need for his cooperation. However, there is nothing in the record to indicate that either Mack, his family, or friends ever raised or broached the topic of bodies.
These maddeningly fragmentary descriptions are all we can gather from Brazel's family and friends, conveyed to them at first enthusiastically, and later most grudgingly. What-ever it was that fell on the ranch, Brazel packed a small amount of it in a box and delivered it to the Chaves County sheriff. When the military was advised of the discovery, they found it so provocative that they immediately dispatched two senior officers to follow Brazel to the remote site to investigate - on Sunday of the Fourth of July week end.
Significantly, those officers were the head intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group and the officer in charge of the Counterintelligence Corps unit at Roswell. They were not accompanied by any other enlisted personnel, another fact underscoring the extraordinary importance and sensitivity the military lent to Brazel's story. A fair speculation is that the Foster ranch discovery was not the first anomalous debris to be found in the Roswell area. This would explain the quick, high-level military response to Brazel's account.
Joyce was not interviewed until 1982 when Moore, following a tip, located him in Albuquerque. In 1947, Joyce was a 24-year-old announcer for KGFL in Roswell. He was also a stringer for the United Press wire service, meaning that he would place interesting stories on the press wire for national pickup. It was in this capacity that he got into trouble with the Army Air Force for placing the Blanchard "captured disk" release on the UP wire. This made the claim an international sensation, instead of a story confined to Roswell. Joyce left town in 1948, never to return, and settled in Albuquerque where he worked in radio and television as a news and features announcer for over 40 years.
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Frank Joyce today. |
Joyce said the Blanchard press release was delivered to him by hand by Lieut. Walter Haut, the Roswell public information officer. At the time of the interview with Moore, Joyce was still leery of talking about his involvement in the 1947 events, citing his reluctance to reveal information about what seemed a top-secret topic that could harm national security if disclosed, as well as concerns about his job as a media personality. So it would seem that, understandably, Joyce told the truth to Moore then, but not the entire truth.
According to Joyce, he had been "spinning records" and reporting the local news on his Sunday afternoon radio show on July 6. As was his habit, he called Sheriff Wilcox while a record was playing to inquire about newsworthy items. Wilcox put Brazel on the telephone and Joyce interviewed him off the air. Joyce then suggested to Wilcox that the military be contacted, and Wilcox followed the advice.
Curiously, Joyce went into detail for Moore about what Brazel did not tell him he found during that first interview, such as "balloon parts" and "balsa parts." But there is nothing about Brazel's description of what he did find, which must have formed the substance of the interview. Instead, Joyce talked about Brazel's frame of mind during the conversation, characterizing him as "terrified," but without elaboration or explanation.
He then discussed a second interview that he had with Brazel. We didn't mention this earlier because, unlike the other four interviews discussed previously, this second interview with Joyce is the only one where Brazel admitted he was coerced. Joyce described how Brazel came into the radio station a few days after the Sunday phone call to change his story. Upon hearing the new version, Joyce confronted Brazel off the air. "Just a minute!" said Joyce, "You know that this story that you've told me now in no way matches the story you told me on the phone." After a pause, Brazel leaned closer and told Joyce, "Look, son. You keep this to yourself. They told me to come in here and tell you this story or it would go awfully hard on me and you" (emphasis added per our interview with Joyce in 1998).
Moore asked Joyce if Brazel had mentioned bodies to him on the phone. Joyce's cryptic response was, I can't go into that. I don't want to say." Moore pressed for more, but Joyce concluded by saying, "I think I've said all I want to on that. I made up my mind a long time ago that I would only go so far with that part of the story. That rancher apparently died with what he knew.... Whatever that thing was, the rancher saw it all, and it didn't originate on this planet. What I heard later about the Air Force having bodies of little men from space... was totally consistent with what I had heard at the time." We have to wonder about this last statement. Heard from whom at the time?
It is interesting that when this interview was done, the topic of bodies at Roswell had never been raised. The only flying-saucer account that mentioned bodies and seemed to fit the Roswell/ Corona timefrarne was that of Barney Barnett (d. 1969), who placed a crash with bodies on the Plains of San Agustin, 150 miles west of Roswell.
Although Moore wrote extensively on Roswell after this interview, he apparently never interviewed Joyce again, as the information in his articles from Joyce remained essentially unchanged.
Joyce was approached again in 1989 by the team of Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt. Joyce was still nervous about talking and refused to allow the interview to be taped. He repeated much the same story he had given Moore seven years before, but provided a few minor additions. Joyce said that Sheriff Wilcox was not impressed with Brazel's story and did not believe it. Because of this, Brazel asked Joyce for advice, and Joyce told him to call the air base. This is a minor change from his first version, where Joyce claimed he told Wilcox directly to call the base.
Joyce told Randle and Schmitt that Brazel had related "everything" on the telephone, but, as in the Moore interview, then refused to say more or answer specific questions about what it was that Brazel had found. Now he added that when Brazel visited the radio station several days later, there were several military men waiting outside in the lobby. And in this retelling, Joyce added a new and extremely provocative detail. "As he was leaving, Brazel turned and said, 'You know how they talk about little green men? Well, they weren't green.'"
Randle and Schmitt interviewed Joyce again in 1990. Joyce appeared to be more open and forthcoming, but little new was learned, although Joyce again reiterated that Brazel had told him the "whole story" during that first phone call. And he ended his account with Brazel uttering the same "little green men" line.
Joyce was interviewed four more times by Randle and Schmitt between March 1991 and September 1992. He added details to his previous accounts, such as where Brazel was standing during the discussion at the station, and how he (Joyce) conducted himself during what seems to have been a very lively discussion between the two men. He added that Brazel had said nothing during the telephone conversation about his family being at the ranch (an important point, given later claims by Bessie Brazel Schreiber about her presence there). Also, the size of the debris field Brazel described in the telephone conversation was much larger than that conveyed during the later meeting.
And when Joyce retold the part where he confronted Brazel about the discrepancies between the first and second accounts, he now quoted himself as specifically saying, "The story is different, especially about the little green men." To which Brazel replied, "Only they weren't green."
Researcher Karl Pflock interviewed Joyce in 1992 and got the same account. Joyce repeated this version for the Albuquerque Journal during the 50th anniversary of the Roswell Incident, capping the "little green men" statement with, "And that is Gospel."
So there has been an evolution over the years from "I won't talk about it," to "The stories about bodies are consistent with what I heard at the time," to "Brazel said, 'You know how they talk about little green men?"' to Joyce asking, "What about the little green men?" This evolving testimony took 10 years for Joyce to produce the current, and presumably final, version. Interestingly, Joyce says he did not speak about Roswell at all for 20 years after the event. Why has he slowly revealed more that he knows? Are the changes in his original account believable? Perhaps he feels more secure as the years have passed and the Roswell Incident has become known to a wide public. In our judgment, the trend in Joyce's story has been in the direction of a more complete recounting of his exchanges with Mack Brazel, rather than confabulation or falsehood. We conclude that Joyce is a credible witness, whose story is substantially correct.
Given Joyce's testimony, we must seriously consider the idea that Brazel saw bodies associated with the crash. Maybe the military showed Mack a body to convince him to keep quiet. But that doesn't make sense. Why show the find of the millennium to a civilian? So despite all the interviews with Joyce, we felt another was important to clarify this matter.
In May 1998 we visited Frank Joyce. After preliminary niceties, Joyce turned into a man on a mission. "I'm going to tell you fellows something I've never told anyone. Don't stop me once I get started, or I might realize what I am doing and shut up."
"When Wilcox put W. W. (Joyce calls Brazel "W. W.") on the phone, I could tell right away that here was a very distraught man on the other end of the line. He started in complaining about a lot of stuff scattered all over his ranch, and that the sheep wouldn't go around it to get to their usual watering place."
The following is a reconstruction of the original telephone conversation between Brazel and Joyce, based on Joyce's comments to us in this interview.
Brazel: (angrily) Who's gonna clean all that stuff up? That's what I wanna know. I need someone out there to clean it up.
Joyce: What stuff? What are you talking about?
Brazel: (soberly) Don't know. Don't know what it is. Maybe it's from one of them flying saucer things.
Joyce: Oh, really? Then you should call the Army air base. They are responsible for everything that flies in the air. They should be able to help you or tell you what it is.
Brazel: (At this point, according to Joyce, Brazel really started "losing it.") Oh, God. Oh, my God. What am I gonna do? It's horrible, horrible, just horrible.
Joyce: What is? What's horrible? What are you talking about?
Brazel: The stench! Just awful.
Joyce: Stench? From what? What are you talking about?
Brazel: They're dead.
Joyce: What? Who's dead?
Brazel: Little people.
(At this point, Joyce thought to himself, "This is crazy!" He decided to play the role of devil's advocate to a story he did not believe.)
Joyce: What the...? Where are they? Where did you find them?
Brazel: Somewhere else.
Joyce: Well, you know, the military is always firing rockets and experimenting with monkeys and things. So, maybe...
Brazel: (Shouting) God dammit! They're not monkeys, and they're not human!
With that, Brazel ended the conversation.
Joyce continued, "A day or so later W. W. called me at the station to tell me that he didn't have the story quite right the first time. So, I invited him over to the station. When he arrived, I could see the military waiting for him outside in the lobby, and he appeared to be under a great deal of stress. He then told me the new story, and that's when I challenged him about it and made the little green men comment, referring back to our original telephone conversation. That's when he replied that they weren't green, and out he went.
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KGFL as it appeared in the 1940's (left); |
Did Brazel find bodies? Even though we consider Joyce to be a credible witness, his testimony needs independent corroboration, particularly with such an important claim. It is one thing to say, as Marcel said many times, that the debris was "not of this Earth." But adding bodies - also not of this earth - raises the stakes immensely.
Just before she died in 1985, Wilcox's widow Inez stated that her husband was informed about the incident by "someone who came into town." Then her husband "Went out there to the site. There was a big burned area, and he saw debris. It was in the evening. There were 'space beings.' Their heads were large. They wore suits like silk."
Recall that the family and the neighbors and friends of Mack Brazel were told nothing about bodies by Mack. On the other hand, there exists a collection of testimony to the effect that alien bodies were recovered. Some parties state this plainly, others are circumspect. A review of all this testimony is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that Joyce's version of Brazel's statements finds considerable support, including new information that we have uncovered. Here are two examples.
We have located a woman currently living in Ruidoso, New Mexico, who recounted an intriguing story involving her ex-husband, who had been an enlisted man stationed at Roswell. It was the summer of 1947, and she remembers him coming home one evening in a state of high excitement. She tried calming him down, and it was then that she noticed an unusually foul smell coming from his uniform. After she got him calmed down, she was able to get from him that he had been sent on a detail to a ranch "up near Corona" where some bodies had been found. She immediately washed his clothing and he took a long shower to remove the smell, which lingered.
We are in contact with the family of the late Meyers Wahnee, who was a pilot and air crew commander of the 714th Bomb Squadron, 448th Bomb Group. His picture is stamped on the back, "Official Photo, Air Force Photo Services, Roswell, New Mexico." The "Chief," as he was called, told his family of the 1947 Roswell events during the last year of his life (he died in 1981). He told them that the incident was true and that he was involved. He said that there were three separate sites. Bodies were found and first flown to Texas. Of special interest to us here, besides his mention of a third site, is his testimony to his wife and two children about "decomposing body parts" found among the debris at the Foster ranch. "It really happened," he told them. We can speculate that he felt free to talk about the events in 1981 because Roswell had become widely known.
Finally, there is this bit of evidence. Five years ago, the 81-year-old Loretta Proctor became extremely ill. With a life-threatening blood clot in her neck, her reclusive son Dee felt compelled to drive her to a remote location on the former Foster ranch where he told her that Mack Brazel had found "something else." This site is located ahout 2.5 miles east-southeast of the debris field. Loretta Proctor eventually recovered, but what was it that would cause a son to risk the health of his mother to embark on such a dangerous and uncomfortable trek? The question now seems to us to have been answered. Loretta will not volunteer anything beyond the "something else" statement for now, and Dee, who is now 59, will not talk to anyone.
Clearly, in light of the new information presented here regarding Mack Brazel's role, there are more questions that require answers. We are confident our investigation is heading in the right direction, whatever the outcome. The reticence of some witnesses only adds fuel to the suspicion that something more was involved than debris.
Like so many others involved, former KGFL owner Walt Whitmore took secrets to his grave. Near his death, Joyce visited him and the talk turned to Roswell. Joyce asked the critical question: Were there bodies? Whitmore replied, "Some things are better left alone." And he would say no more.
