According to what he told John Carpenter, there were three dead creatures and one that was alive. In a variation of a theme, Johnson said that the aliens were wearing “what looked like a complete fabric covering over their bodies.” It was silver colored.
He said the creatures were short, just over four feet tall and maybe weighed ninety pounds. Their heads were covered by some kind of a hood but he could see two oval-shaped eyes, two holes where the nose would be, only lower on the face. He said that there might have been glass or plastic or something covering the eyes. They were a dark color that was so black that it looked to be slightly blue (This, I suspect, was an attempt to validate the information provided by Gerald Anderson, discussed in a later chapter).
He said that the suit covered everything so that he couldn’t see the skin or if there was hair on the head. He didn’t see enough, or remember enough to described hands or feet. He also said he saw nothing that resembled blood. I suppose it’s unnecessary to point out that his description of the clothing does not match, even closely, that described by Anna Willmon.
Johnson said that he, along with the men he had taken with him, were the only people there the first night. He said that they didn’t sleep, not with the alien creature walking around, though at some point it did lay down. He said that he wasn’t sure if the alien had gone to sleep or not but thought it had remained awake because it seemed to be moving restlessly all the time.
According to Johnson, the bodies, and the living creature were taken from the site early the next morning. According to Johnson, the bodies, and later the craft, were taken to Wright Field, now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. He had no direct knowledge of this, but it was what he had been told, or what he learned later.
Once his tour at the site was over, he, along with the others, were taken back to Roswell. Johnson said that he hadn’t told his first wife about the crash because he was under orders not to. Under questioning it became clear that he was referring to a fairly standard warning given to all soldiers who hold a top secret clearance. Sharing information with those not authorized to have it could result in a big fine and up to twenty years in prison.
He did say, however, that every so often he would get a call reminding him of his obligations. They would tell him that he knew the rules and that he had children.
Evaluating the Tales
If we look at these stories with a skeptical eye, we would have to note that a number of them are second hand. We can’t interview those who witnessed the event, but must now rely on the statements of friends and family. Such statements are open to interpretation and misunderstanding. Even members of the same family don’t agree on all the details. Beverly Bean believes her father said there were two creatures on the site but her sister remembers that he said three.
Of course it can be suggested that such a disagreement in the details is of little overall significance. What is important is that all these witnesses suggest that bodies were recovered and at a minimum, one of the creatures survived long enough for the Army to arrive.
There are differences in the descriptions of the alien creatures, but again, we are working from the memories of men and women who are very old or from what family members claim they were told. And, it is necessary to point out that some of these discrepancies can be explained by points of view. One soldier saw three alien creatures and another saw four. It could be that the first simply didn’t observe the fourth based on where he was and what he was doing at the time. It could also mean, as has been suggested by others, that there were more than one site. Skeptics make much of the numbers game, but in the end, it is a trivial detail that actually means nothing.
No, the important point, from a skeptical point of view is that Robbins, Rowe, Bean and Kercher, are relating what others told them about the crash. They did not witness it themselves and there is no documentation to back up their claims. Yes, we can, and have verified, that the soldiers who told the original stories were assigned to Roswell, or in Rowe’s case, was a fireman in Roswell, but all that does is give their fathers or husbands the opportunity to see what he claimed to have seen. It doesn’t prove the story valid.
So, we move onto the first-hand accounts. All four were elderly when they told their stories. All were assigned to the base at Roswell in some capacity, or in the case of Willmon, lived in the area. Gonzales is in the Yearbook that Walter Haut produced in 1947 and Army Records Center supplied documentation that clearly puts Johnson there at the same time and, more importantly, shows his assignment to the military police company. Only Jorgenson’s connection is troublesome.
However, in each case, the witness appeared long after all the initial interest in the case. Gonzales was in Roswell and walked into the UFO Enigma Museum to talk with John Price. Jorgenson was in Roswell and walked into the International UFO Museum. Willmon’s name was given to me by another source, who also told me that her story had once been more robust and interesting. Johnson said that he’d had both heart attacks and a stroke so that his memory wasn’t as good as it once had been. To complicate matters, Stan Friedman sent Johnson copies of his reports and books before Johnson was properly interviewed the first time so that a case can be made that Johnson’s memory was contaminated (again, this idea of the dark blue eyes comes to mind).
But here is the other thing. All these witnesses were either low-ranking enlisted men or members of the civilian world outside the base. All tell similar stories, meaning they talk of a crashed saucer with the details matching in many respects, and all suggest that one or more of the creatures survived.
I, at one time, tried to find all the members of the 1395th MP Company. I went through the Yearbook and then matched the names to telephone numbers thanks to computer programs and free white pages sites. One of those I found was Leo Spear, who I interviewed in June 1994.
Spear himself hadn’t gone out but he was in the barracks when some of the others came in. He told me, “I can’t remember if it was the evening shift or if it was the next morning when they came in with a cock and bull story [Here the skeptics could lift a quote out of context to change the whole meaning of what Spear said]… these guys come in but they said the truck come in and they brought in some stuff from a UFO… that crashed north of Roswell. And we thought they was BS-ing until we read the article about it…”
The timing seems to suggest that those MP s who went out to guard the site had gone out the day before the article appeared in the newspaper. They had come back late that evening when Spear and the others thought they were making up the tale. When they saw the article in the next day’s newspaper, they changed their tunes.
Of course the Provost Marshal, Major Edwin Easley, who would have been the top cop on the post at the time never told me much about the crash when I interviewed him. He did suggest that something extraterrestrial had fallen and made a cryptic comment to his family just before he died. He said, “Oh, the creatures.” Certainly not much in the way of confirmation but just as clearly not a rejection of the idea that something alien had crashed.
There is one other aspect that should be mentioned here because the skeptics will certainly notice it. Anna Willmon talked of a site much closer to Roswell than Johnson talked about. Jesse Marcel said nothing about alien creatures but did talk of a large field of strange metallic debris. What this suggests is that all these people are talking of a single event, but one that they witnessed on different sites. Willmon’s description suggests something more akin to an escape pod than an interstellar craft. And that might just explain some of these discrepancies.