Encounter in the Desert: The Case for Alien Contact at Socorro

Introduction

Anyone who has been interested in UFOs for very long is aware of the landing that took place in Socorro, New Mexico, in April 1964. It was national news the day after police officer Lonnie Zamora reported the sighting. He saw the craft on the ground and there were reports that he had witnessed two people, two beings, or small adults standing near the object before it took off moments after he arrived on the scene. Zamora’s sighting was one of the best of 1964 and might be considered one of the best ever reported to Project Blue Book. It is one of the few in which the witness claimed to have seen alien creatures that was not immediately written off as a psychological problem, an illusion, or some sort of a hoax.

Those who write UFO books often mention the sighting, providing little in the way of new and additional information or personal analysis of the data. Their research into the case is usually superficial, based almost solely on what other UFO researchers had written before them, and often the Socorro landing is only mentioned in passing rather than described in depth. It is a well-known sighting that suffers from too much rumor and too little fact, but it is one that helps make the case for alien visitation that much more plausible.

I knew of the sighting, and I have been in Socorro a number of times, mostly in my research into the Roswell UFO crash, and I did have occasion to speak to some of the locals about the sighting. Because this was always of secondary importance to me, the conversations were just that: conversations rather than serious research. I never took it much further and made few notes. I was interested in a distracted sort of way.

That changed when Ben Moss and Tony Angiola were guests on my radio show, A Different Perspective, ¹ which airs on the X-Zone Broadcast Network. They have spent the last couple of years investigating the case, had access to some little-known or unknown documents, and had talked with the only living person who had investigated the case in 1964: Ray Stanford.² They mentioned some things that I hadn’t heard or read elsewhere, and that was quite intriguing to me. They talked about the symbol that Zamora had seen on the side of the craft, they talked about a picture taken in the months after the landing that might show craft similar to that seen by Zamora in the New Mexico sky, and they said that they had seen the real Project Blue Book file on the case—which didn’t exactly match what was eventually released to the public after Blue Book operations were suspended in late 1969. All of this was news to me, and I wanted more information about it.

After the show, I emailed Ben to ask for that additional information. He responded with a DVD of the presentation that he and Tony had made to the MUFON Symposium in Orlando during summer 2016. It was an abbreviated version of their longer lecture given at other venues. Though it seemed to answer some of my questions, it opened up others. I asked about that Blue Book file and was told that Rob Mercer of the Miami Valley UFO Society was the one who had found it. They said that he pulled the file from a box that he had bought at a garage sale and those documents were definitely from Blue Book.

I found it difficult to believe that a box of files from Project Blue Book would be sold at a garage sale, but I have learned that you just don’t reject data because it seems a little strange or nearly unbelievable. Besides, Ben had given me the contact information for Rob and he responded quickly. Email and the Internet are wonderful ways of investigating a case in the 21st century. Responses come in a matter of hours instead of days or weeks, or at the cost of huge telephone bills.

Rob’s tale of how he had found the Blue Book files was even stranger than I had thought. He hadn’t found them at a garage sale; he found them for sale on Craigslist because he had been told that UFO-related materials sometimes were put up for sale there.³ The man who was selling the files hadn’t bought them at a garage sale, specifically; he had bought a load of lumber at the garage sale and had found the box hidden, or forgotten, behind the lumber as he cleaned out that part of the garage. After listening to the man’s description of what he had found, Rob bought the box and, to his delight, it contained precisely what had been claimed. It held files and other documents that related to UFOs and Project Blue Book. He looked through it to make sure that none of it was classified and none of it was.

In a nice piece of detective work, Rob found the man who had collected the files. He had been a member of the Project Blue Book staff in the late 1960s as Blue Book came to an end. He was First Lieutenant Carmon Marano, and as they were closing the Blue Book offices, he was cleaning out desks and thought that the documents shouldn’t be just thrown out. Instead, because they weren’t classified, and because they were destined for the garbage heap, he took them home. But that wasn’t all. He told Rob he had other boxes of similar material and if Rob wanted them, he could have them as well. Marano said that he hadn’t looked at them since he saved them back in 1969 and that he had no real interest in UFOs. He hadn’t volunteered for Blue Book, it had just been an Air Force assignment, given to him, I suspect, because of his physics background. In fact, his ignorance about UFOs was so complete, he hadn’t actually heard about the Roswell case even at this late date.⁴

Much of that material sent to Mercer, which included movie footage, color slides and photographs, audio tapes of interviews, and many case files from the Blue Book investigations that extended back to its original conception as Project Sign, was in those boxes. Rob could compare much of it to actual Blue Book files and saw that there were some, but mostly minor, differences. There were handwritten notes that didn’t seem to have been included in the official files, for example.

Marano said that he had originally collected the material, while assigned to Blue Book, so that he would be able to brief the press or have something to show reporters when they visited the Blue Book office. Other files seemed to be the working papers of other officers who had held positions at Blue Book in the past and who might have been thinking along the same lines as Marano. These, then, weren’t the official files, but had been created from those official files and had been preserved not in the official file cabinets, but in the desk drawers of the officers who had used them.

The other point about these files is that they hadn’t been redacted. When the Project Blue Book files were sent from Maxwell Air Force Base, where they had first been housed after the closure of Blue Book to the National Archives, Air Force officers went through every case file and removed the names of the witnesses. Even the master index, which had contained the names of the witnesses, had been redacted, but the names were intact in the copy of the index Rob had found. The Air Force had removed the names of the witnesses, suggesting that the witnesses had been told their names wouldn’t be released publicly so they could speak freely about their sightings without fear of being bombarded by UFO researchers attempting to find out more or ridiculed by their neighbors who thought they were crazy. That seems reasonable to me, though I suspect some will claim cover-up. The mere fact that Rob had a master index of all the files that held the names of all the witnesses was, in and of itself, an important find.

When I talked with Marano, he told me that there had been nothing classified about the Blue Book files he had saved and that almost all of the Blue Book files were unclassified.⁵ When I went back and looked at the Socorro case, there was nothing to indicate that any of the statements or other documentation collected by a variety of military investigators and by their chief scientific consultant, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, had ever been classified. The documentation was available for review by reporters; I wondered if someone had shown up at the Project Blue Book office in the late 1960s and asked to see the files if they would have been let in. You couldn’t just walk in off the street, but it seemed that if you had attempted to make an appointment, it might just have been granted especially if you could provide some legitimate reason, such as writing a magazine or newspaper article. A few old-time UFO investigators seemed to have been able to get an appointment and had the chance to look at the files before Blue Book closed.

My interest, however, was what was in those files about the Socorro landing. Rob had scanned that entire file and sent me copies of it. When I compared the two, there were some variations between the official files and what Rob had found. They weren’t big variations and may not be overly important ones, but there are these discrepancies.

My sources for this book include Ben Moss, Tony Angiola, Rob Mercer, and Carmon Marano. I interviewed them all at the end of 2016, and I exchanged emails and other information with them. I even loaned Ben Moss my copy of the Blue Book microfilm that contained the Socorro case so that he could make his own analysis. I had questions, and they all had some of the answers. But they weren’t my only sources. As I had in the past, as I worked on other books and as I wrote my blog postings, I gathered additional information from sources in Socorro and throughout the world. The Internet is a wonderful thing when you are trying to reconstruct an event that is now half a century old.

I have said many times that over the years, I had accumulated a complete set of Project Blue Book files. Once the information left Maxwell AFB, and once the names had been redacted, it was all microfilmed. As I understand this, back in the early 1970s, Jack Webb of Dragnet fame was developing a television program he called Project UFO . He wanted the Blue Book files to use as the basis of his fictionalized account of the UFO investigation and paid for the microfilming process. Once that was completed, the National Archives sold rolls of the Blue Book microfilms to anyone who wanted them. There were 94 rolls, originally sold for 10 bucks a roll. I didn’t buy them all at once—just what I needed for research—until I realized I had most of them. At that point I made arrangements to gather the rest of them. Thus I have a complete set of the Blue Book files and even have a microfilm reader (though it has no capability to make a hard copy).

But even without that, in the world of the 21st century, you can find nearly everything online. Some of it costs money and some of it requires that you sign up, but much of it is free, and the Blue Book files fall into that latter category. Many of the files can be found on the NICAP Website and nearly everything else at Fold3. From my research, it seems that not everything is available at Fold3, but what is left out seems to be rather trivial. I’m not sure why some of it was skipped, but there are a few holes in that information.

I have been able to gather additional information about the Socorro landing through email with some of those who live in Socorro. All of it is relevant to the discussion of the case, but what is truly amazing is that I was able to accomplish this while sitting at home. Sure, you can start to yell about armchair researchers, but I have no need to visit the archives of newspapers because they are online, I have no need to travel to the National Archives to see the Blue Book files because they are online (and I already have a copy), and I have been able to locate other information about the men involved by searching their names online. I have, on my blog and on my radio program, A Different Perspective , discussed some of this, and there are those who have contacted me because they knew of my interest. They have emailed me documents, photographs, and other information about the Socorro landing that in another time would have taken weeks to arrange through telephone calls and snail mail—or that might have just never been found. I have been able to accomplish this because of the Internet, modern communications, and email.

I suppose that I should point out that I have access, in my armchair, to dozens of other relevant sources. Over the years, I have collected a complete set (or nearly so) of The A.P.R.O. Bulletin , the NICAP U.F.O. Investigator , all of MUFON’s Skylook (their original publication) and the later MUFON UFO Journal through 2009, the International UFO Reporter , copies of the magazines that were devoted to UFOs, and, of course, dozens of UFO books (some in foreign languages). I should also mention here that Isaac Koi and others have been putting a great deal of information online as well. There are literally dozens of old UFO periodicals, newsletters, and other materials available through those efforts as well, much of it uploaded with a search engine to help in research. This is not to mention I have met many of the people in the UFO field so that when I have specific questions, I can ask them through email and usually have a response in a matter of hours (and sometimes minutes). In other words, having done the original legwork on the scene, I now can relax at home and pull up the information on my laptop, search through the other material, or call or write a friend.

And, yes, in case you are wondering, I have been able to interview some of these people face-to-face via Skype. But there is one difference, which I mentioned earlier: I have been to Socorro; I have talked to people in Socorro and have been to the scene of the landing. It is just that in the 21st century, the investigation is easier because of the access to so much data on the Internet.

I add one other comment here: As you read the book, you will find some duplication of material. I have done this because I wanted to show that I was aware of what some others have written about the case, and to put the record straight it was necessary to revisit some of that material. There isn’t all that much duplication, but there is some. Be aware of it and be aware of the reason for it.

This, then, is a work that was literally years in the making. Some of it was gathered specifically because it related to the Socorro landing, but much of it was collected because of the value it held to UFO research in general. That it also helped in the research into the Socorro case is serendipity. This book exists simply because of all that research that began during my teenage years. The experience I gained has enabled me to put it all into perspective. This is the result of all that and is the best information available at this particular point in time.

Chapter 1:

The Beginning

In April 1964, the U.S. Air Force still investigated UFO sightings as required by regulation and military mission.¹ The command structure—those who worried about such things—weren’t happy about the UFO situation, wished that it would just go away, and hoped that civilians would forget about flying saucers as they became bored with the topic.² Unfortunately, as had happened several times since 1947, a UFO report would gain national attention, renew interest in flying saucers, and in this case result in a large-scale investigation that would eventually involve an Army captain and others from the U.S. Army, an FBI agent, the Air Force scientific consultant to Project Blue Book and one of the sergeants assigned there, members of the Socorro, New Mexico, police department, and the New Mexico State Police. There would be physical evidence that included landing gear traces and damage done as the craft lifted off, and the description of an insignia on the craft that would become a hot point of debate in the years that followed.

The main player was Socorro police officer Lonnie Zamora, a veteran of the Korean War who would serve for 23 years in the New Mexico National Guard and who remained a police officer for 10 years after the sighting. He would eventually be chased from his job on the police force by the ridicule directed at him after his flying saucer sighting became public. He remained in Socorro and took another job with the city as a landfill supervisor until he retired.³ He was reluctant to speak with anyone about the sighting because of the pressures he felt but seemed to have been a kindly, friendly man with a good reputation in town and who hosted barbeques at his home—with the only requirement that they not talk about UFOs.⁴ It could be that he still thought he might have observed a black project from either Holloman Air Force Base or the White Sands Missile Range, but the more likely reason was that he resented the way he had been treated by those who did not know him, by the news media that was too sophisticated to believe in alien visitation in any form, and by many of those who came to investigate the sighting in the weeks, months, and years that followed.⁵

The event began innocently enough late in the day of April 24, while Zamora was on routine patrol.⁶ He spotted a new, black Chevrolet driven by a teenager he thought he recognized and who he thought was speeding. He followed that car, keeping his distance and trying to determine the exact speed without being seen by the driver. Before he could close the distance between his patrol car and the speeder, about a minute into the chase, he heard a roar that sounded like an explosion to the southwest. Thinking that noise came from the location of a dynamite shack, Zamora turned away from the chase and drove toward the shack that he knew was on the southside of the town. He thought that it might have blown up.

Zamora then saw what he would later describe as a brilliant blue cone of flame above the horizon to the south-southwest, more or less in a line with the dynamite shack. He couldn’t tell how large the flame was and he didn’t see any sort of a craft or object above it, but he did note that the top of the flame was flat. He couldn’t see the bottom of the flame because it was behind a hill. The sun was in the west and that was obscuring his vision as well. He turned onto a gravel road and could still hear the roar overhead. He had his windows open, and he said that there was a car in front of him but he didn’t see any reaction from that driver to the noise. Zamora didn’t know if that driver heard the roar or not.

Zamora turned off the road and attempted to drive up one of the hills but the tires dug in and spun, and the car stopped. He backed down, tried again, failed, and then, on his third try, he made it. He turned onto a gravel road heading to the west. From the top of the hill he could no longer see the flame and he could no longer hear the roar.

Zamora stopped and, below him, in an arroyo about 150 to 200 yards away, saw a shiny, metallic object that he thought might be a white car lying upside-down. From his vantage point he saw two figures, two people, dressed in white coveralls—or, as he described them, kids who might have flipped their car. He thought they might be inspecting it as if there had been some kind of trouble. He said, The only time I saw these two persons was when I had stopped, for possibly two seconds…. I don’t recall noting any particular shape or possibly hats, or headgear. These persons appeared normal in shape—but possibly they were small adults or large kids.⁷ One of them, the one closest to him and standing near a large creosote bush, turned toward Zamora and seemed surprised to see him. Zamora would say that the figures were about the size of boys and that they looked to be normal.

The object itself, according to what Zamora would later say in his interviews with various authorities, was white against the mesa background, but not chrome.⁸ To him it looked as if it had been made of aluminum. It seemed like an ‘O’ in shape and at first glance took it to be overturned white car. Car appeared turned up like standing on radiator or trunk.⁹

Zamora now believed that he was seeing people who were in trouble and began to drive toward them with the idea to help them.¹⁰ He drove down into a dip and lost sight of the object momentarily. He radioed the dispatcher that he was at the scene of a traffic accident. He stopped his car again and got out, dropping the microphone, which momentarily distracted him. He picked it up, put it back in the slot, and got out of the car so that he could walk down to the object.

Zamora would write in his police report of the incident that he had hardly turned around when he heard a roar. It wasn’t a blast but a loud roar. He dove to the ground, his head away from the object in case it blew up. He wrote, Started low frequency quickly and then rose in frequency and in loudness…. At the same time of the roar [I] saw flame. Flame was under the object. Object was starting to go straight up…. Flame was light blue and at the bottom was sort of orange color…. [I] thought from the roar, it might blow up….¹¹

As soon as he saw the flame and heard the roar, Zamora jumped to his feet and ran from the object. He bumped his leg on the patrol car’s rear bumper and lost his glasses. He left them there and ran to the north to put the car between him and the object. As the craft climbed, he got a look at it from another angle. He said, [The] object was oval in shape. It was smooth—no windows or doors…. Noted red lettering of some type. Insignia was about 2½’ high and about 2’ wide I guess. [It] was in middle of object.¹²

The Socorro landing site within days of Lonnie Zamora’s observation. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.

Zamora climbed to his feet, and dodged around the car for the protection it would offer. In one of the official reports, he said:

After [I] fell by [the] car and glasses fell off [I] kept running to north, with car between me and object. Glanced back a couple of times. Noted object to rise about level of car, about 20 to 25 feet [I] guess—took, I guess about six seconds when object started to rise and I glanced back. I guess I ran about halfway to where I ducked down, just over the edge of the hill. I guess I had run about 25 feet when I glanced back and saw the object about level with the car and it appeared directly over the place it rose from.

I was still running and I jumped just over the 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 the