ustxtxb_obs_1973_09_21_50_00013-00000_000.pdf

MEXICO CITY OTEL U MA Calle Orizab 16 Mexico 7, D.F. Repres. Wolfe International New York A truly distinguished hotel located within strolling distance of the best of Mexico City . . . key business areas, superb restaurants and exciting night spots. E SWB U.S. $7.60$9.00 DWB. U.S. $9.00$10.00 150 Rooms, Group Rates Available. port windows seem to be circles of fossil in the rock. Whatever is on the stone, the plot thickened when Watts’ metal detector was held over the grave and registered the same readings as it did over the metal found at the well site. This was enough for Hayden Hewes of Oklahoma IUFOB fame to tell Case and the world \(thanks to the Times Herald and than ever that a UFO crashed here and that the pilot \\ was killed and buried in this cemetery. Our attorneys are already checking to learn how we might have the body exhumed.” Hewes, a dramatic fellow in white boots took his metal samples and materialized back to Oklahoma. The trustees of the cemetery, taking Mr. Hewes at his word, called out Wise County Sheriff Eldon Moyers to stand guard at the cemetery. Then they retained Decatur attorney Bill Nobles to fight any attempt to remove the body. BUT IS THERE a body, earthly or unearthly, beneath that makeshift stone which was there one day and gone the next? Cemetery records only show that a man named C. A. Carr owned the plot. Carr’s descendants cannot be found, so we don’t know if Carr is buried there or somewhere else. Lynn McCrary, a welder, is president of the cemetery association, and he says a lot of people are buried in unmarked or unidentified graves. During the 1890’s, people around here were dying from spotted fever and yellow fever, and many were interred quickly with no record. The stone itself, the one with Case’s spaceship carving, had been in the cemetery for at least 49 years, according to H. R. Idell, the town marshal. Where it came from, and where it went the other day, the marshal doesn’t know. It is all very mysterious, he says, and has been since the day back in 1946 when he cleaned out Brawley Oates’s water well, the well in cosmic. question. The marshal came up with some melted metal which struck him as strange, and he says it resembles the stuff Case and the UFO diggers have found. The reason Brawley Oates wanted the well cleaned was that he and his family wanted to drink from it. It had not been used in years. Well, they did drink from it, for 12 years. Then they quit. There was something about it that made them uneasy, an accumulation of misfortunes that may or may not have had anyting to do with the well and its water. First the youngest daughter, Sarah Lenore, died at the age of nine months, of a sickness the doctor could not pinpoint, although a polio epidemic was going on at the time. Then Brawley and his wife Bonnie developed arthritis, which in Brawley’s case took on monstrous proportions when it was complicated by goiter. Brawley’s hands and feet are so swollen and misshapen he has to sit in the service station and let his customers wait on themselves. The other day, during all this flap about the spaceman and the well and the grave, some sightseer who gassed up at Brawley’s pumps wondered aloud if maybe it wasn’t radiation that had caused Brawley’s medical problems. This is an example of how the story of the Aurora spaceman has gained momentum. Momentum and mutation. Out of a meaningless mosaic of fragments, Bill Case has fashioned a fantastic feature story, which, coming as it has during the dog days of summer and Watergate, has been welcomed by readers around the world, as well as by those in Dallas and Fort Worth. The Times Herald has recognized this, and has allowed Case wide latitude. Since March, Case and the spaceman have been in the paper almost every other day, often on the front page. Each new development \(and most of them are generated by Case with the earnestness of straight news, as if it is indeed a fact that men of science are taking seriously. CASE HIMSELF is an old pro, especially with adjectives. “Highly sensitive” is one phrase that runs through his accounts of Watts’ divining. This kind of emphasis tends to imbue a hundred and fifty dollar instrument with more savvy than it has. The same with Case’s reporting of the laboratory tests on the metal dug up. It has not undergone mere identification, but “intensive analyses.” When he brings up the treasure hunter, Case is careful to point out that Kelley is a “scientific” treasure hunter. The airship on the tombstone was “laboriously carved” into the rock. The other day, on page one of his paper, Case reported that scientists had analyzed metal fragments from the well, and that they had concluded that it was an alloy which could not have been produced on earth until the 20th Century. This is indeed earth-shaking news, as long as you forget that 1897 was but three years removed from said century. Or as long as you don’t want to know the identity of the scientists who intensely analyzed the metal. Case identifies them only as people from one of the nation’s leading aircraft manufacturers. He has to protect their names, he says, because as he puts it, “You know what the government’s attitude toward UFOs is.” To lend even more credence to this posture of scientific inquiry, Case announced in the Times-Herald that Dr. J. Allen Hynek, chairman of Northwestern University’s astronomy department, would take leave of Evanston, Ill., and descend upon Aurora “to evaluate the evidence.” Dr. Hynek was quoted as saying, “We have been following the scientific search of this site and the cemetery with great interest. Now looking at this most recent evidence it highly suggests the actual crash of an aerial object did occur. “In view of both the identification of the metal and the testimony of some of the most highly respected members of pioneer families in the area who have given details of the reported crash, the likelihood that this is a hoax seems more and more improbable.” When I read this in the Times Herald it set me back some. Dr. Hynek’s reputation is above reproach. Yet I could not help noticing that he talked the way Case writes. My fears about Dr. Hynek’s rationality were laid to rest. The good astronomer did not show up at Aurora. Case says it was because Dr. Hynek was sidetracked by MUFON’s annual symposium in Kansas City, at which he was a speaker. It’s hard to say what happened, whether Case was accurately quoting Dr. Hynek’s interest and the doctor then cooled and backed out, or whether Dr. Hynek was merely courteous to Case and Case mistook it for a committment. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Hynek left the country for Africa, London and New Zealand, and I haven’t been able to catch him. Here Coral Lorenzen enters the picture. Sept. 21, 1973 13