Roswell 1947 - Documents on the witnesses

AFFIDAVIT

(1) My name is Lydia A Sleppy

(2) My address is: XXXXXXXXXX

(3) I am employed as: ____
I am retired: 9/30/77 from State of California, Dept. Parks & Recreation

(4) In 1947, worked at KOAT Radio in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My duties included operating the station's teletype machine, which received news and allowed us to send stories to the ABC and Mutual networks, with which KOAT was affiliated.

(5) In early July 1947, I received a call from John McBoyle, general manager and part-owner of KSWS Radio in Roswell, New Mexico, which was associated with KOAT. I do not remember the exact date, but it definitely was a weekday (I never worked weekends) and almost certainly after the Fourth of July. The call came in before noon.

(6) McBoyle said he had something hot for the network. I asked Karl Lambertz, our program director and acting manager (KOAT owner and manager Merle Tucker was out of town), to be present in my office while I took the story from McBoyle and put it on the teletype. Using the teletype, I alerted ABC News headquarters in Hollywood to expect an important story, and Mr. Lambertz stood behind me while I typed.

(7) To the best of my recollection, McBoyle said, "There's been one of these flying saucer things crash down here north of Roswell." He said he had been in a coffee shop on his morning break when a local rancher, "Mac" Brazel, came in and said he had discovered the object some time ago while he was out riding on the range, and that he had towed it in and stored it underneath a shelter on his property. Brazel offered to take McBoyle to the ranch to see the object. McBoyle described it as "a big crumpled dishpan."

(8) As I typed McBoyle's story, a bell rang on the teletype, indicating an interruption. The machine then printed a message something to this effect: "THIS IS THE FBI. YOU WILL IMMEDIATELY CEASE ALL COMMUNICATION." Whatever the precise words were, I definitely remember the message was from the FBI and that it directed me to stop transmitting. I told McBoyle the teletype had been cut off and took the rest of his story in shorthand, but we never put it on the wire because we had been scooped by the papers.

(9) I never again discussed the matter with McBoyle, but the next day, he told Mr. Lambertz the military had isolated the area where the saucer was found and was keeping the press out. He told Lambertz he saw planes come in from Wright Field, Ohio, to take the think away. He also said they claimed they were going to take it to one place, but the planes went to another. Either they were supposed to have gone to Texas but went to Wright Field or vice versa.

(10) I have not been paid or given anything of value to make this statement, and it is the truth to the best of my recollection.

Signed: Lydia A. Sleppy
Date: 9-14-93

Signature witnessed by:
Ada A. Somers

[...]

During that same time in New Mexico, a woman with a responsible position at a radio station received a call from the station manager. He had been out checking reports of a UFO which had crashed in a field and was trying to track down the rumor that pieces of the object were supposedly stored in a local barn. In his excited call to the newsroom, the station manager verified the UFO crash report, and also claimed he had seen metallic pieces of the UFO being carried into a waiting Air Force plane which was destined for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

As the woman began typing out the fantastic news over the teletype to their other two radio stations, a line appeared in the middle of her text, tapped in from somewhere, with the official order: “Do not continue this transmission!”

[...]

"We were Mutual Broadcasting and ABC, and if we had anything newsworthy, we would put it on the machine, and I was the one who did the typing. It was in my office. Mr Tucker was in Washington DC trying to get an application approved for a station in El Paso, when this call came from John McBoyle. He told me he had something hot for the network. I said, "Give me a minute and I'll get the assistant manager," because if it was anything like that, I wanted one of them there while I was taking it down."

"I went back and asked Mr. Lambertz - he came up from the big Dallas station - if he would come up and watch. John was dictating and he was standing right at my shoulder. I got into it enough to know that it was a pretty big story, when the bell came on. Typing came across: "This is the FBI, you will cease transmitting."

"I had my shorthand pad, and I turned around and told him that I had been cut off, but that I could take it in shorthand and then we could call it in to the network. I took it in shorthand, as John went on to give the story. He had seen them take the thing away. He'd been out there [presumably at the Foster ranch] when they took it away. And at that time, if I remember correctly, John said they were gonna load it up and take it to Texas. But when the planes came in, they were from Wright Field."