Maurizio Baiata

I heard about it and read about it, but I had to see it myself. Sure, they said Roswell is in the middle of nowhere. But when you actually find yourself in the flat, barren New Mexico desert and the only passers-by are tumble weeds, you feel an uncomfortable sensation. What if the engine went down and we all got lost? How far would the UFO knowledge of our car full of tourists get us without food and water? Would anybody whisper a prayer over our unmarked tomb? Thankfully, we did not find out. We actually enjoyed a joyful trip toward a small town that in 1947 was the theatre of the most famous and still highly debated -and denied by the Pentagon – UFO crash of all time. For me, even if I was doomed to have my bones scarred on the desert sands in New Mexico, death would have been sort of a sweet consolation because it would have marked the end of my UFO career where “it” all began.

Debbie Ziegelmeier, Jesse Marcel Jr., M. Baiata, Chuck Zukowsky (Photo: Maurizio Baiata)

As you may know, I’m originally from Italy and I suffer from a disorder that I call the “gladiator syndrome.” In Ridley Scott’s movie, the Gladiator’s Master, Oliver Reed chose magniloquent words to describe the glorious ways they were going to die for the bloodthirsty Roman people – honoring the then-capital of the known world with the pride of being a slave, ready to die and finally free themselves from the chains. Today, Rome is a significant example of a melting pot where 6 millions of  of people fight their way to a better life, just as they crowd the perennial amphitheatre. Roswell does not have a Colosseum like Rome, not even a mini replica that you would find in Las Vegas. Roswell has only the Main Street, but it does have a museum (the International UFO Museum and Research Center) that for me is the inner sanctum of the entire history of the UFO phenomenon – and a must-see for everyone. The city itself offers no grandeur, no multicolored lights on an almost-anonymous boulevard. But there are lots of people, nice people who come from so many different continents and distant parts of the United States.

I have always been convinced that the Roswell incident really did occur in July, 1947 and that the U.S. military decided then – and still believes – that the best way to handle the delicate matter is to bury it. They have hoped that the sand of the desert will cover it forever, until no trace of it is ever visible. But there were too many implications and too many people involved, few still alive. These folks are the last and proud survivors of a vast list of witnesses whom it is impossible to convince that Roswell is a myth, or a legend. Roswell will persist, even if the importance of the Annual Festival that draws thousands of people subsides. The UFO incident and celebrations surrounding it give Roswell a folklore image. Is this detrimental for mainstream ufology? No way.   Julie Shuster, executive director of the Roswell’s International UFO Museum and Research Center, firmly believes in the future of the institute and of a town visited each year by almost a half million souls. She foresees a new and larger location for the museum. And once you enter the library of the museum, with its long walls covered by thousand of books, magazines and videos, you understand how precious this historic heritage is – and why this is the real Mecca of ufology. My pilgrimage started in Phoenix, Ariz. and I arrived at the Albuquerque (New Mexico’s capital) airport on July 1 in the late afternoon. There, I met Paola Harris (OM contributing writer), Col. Jesse Marcel (son of the late Maj. Jesse Marcel), Jr., Nick Pope (British researcher) and Alejandro Rojas (then MUFON public relations representative and now in the OM Editorial staff). Thankfully, at Paola’s advice, we had something to eat at the airport, because it’s a long way to Roswell. The only place I would recommend stopping on the way is at a small “town” called Cline’s Corners – which of course was desolate that night and closed for the Fourth of July weekend. Tired and somewhat exhausted, we arrived in Roswell around 10 that night. The next morning would bring a stop at the debris field at Foster Ranch, which many of us were looking forward to.

The Foster Ranch

Our tour guides were two expert independent researchers, Debbie Ziegelmeyer (MUFON Missouri State Director and STAR investigator) and her brother Chuck Zukowsky (MUFON field investigator). So, at approx. 75 miles north to Roswell, we headed to the Foster Ranch, the presumed location where William “Mac” Brazel (1899-1963) found debris that may be associated with a UFO incident in July, 1947. Also with us were Col. Jesse Marcel Jr. and a camera operator, Matt Morgan, from Los Angeles. Now 72, Col. Marcel, Jr. saw for the first time the sites where his father, Maj. Jesse Marcel, Sr. and CIC Capt. Sheridan Cavitt, found UFO debris at Foster Ranch. The trip was coordinated by Paola Harris, and we were all aboard Chuck’s powerful Nissan 4×4. Chuck and Debbie know this place well, as they participated in two digs at Foster Ranch, in 2002 and 2006. These digs were performed under the supervision of Dr. Bill Doleman, archeologist at the University of New Mexico, and sponsored by Sci-Fi Channel and NBC Television. Data and materials recovered then are still under scrutiny, and Dr. Doleman is convinced that a third dig is fundamental to establish if that section of the Foster Ranch is indeed a crash site. It was a two-hour drive from Roswell to get to the Foster Ranch. The route was first traversed on asphalt roads, then on dirt roads and then on paths recognizable only to our guides’ trained eyes. To my eyes, an to anyone willing to go for this “adventure” it is clear that there’s no way an ordinary car would make it through the last 2-3 miles of stony grounds that lead up to the presumed UFO debris field.

Jesse Marcel Jr. at the Foster Ranch’s barn (Photo: Maurizio Baiata)

Our first stop was at the barn and corral on the Hines property – where Maj. Marcel, Sr., Capt. Cavitt and rancher Mac Brazel spent the evening of July 6, 1947. They reported that they stored some of the wreckage in this barn, and the next morning they handed it over to Col. William Blanchard, commanding officer of the Roswell Army Air Base. We continued into the heart of the ranch and arrived at a point of reference, the remains of an antique windmill, 75 miles north of Roswell. By using this landmark, Debbie and Chuck were confident how to approach the site where a manta shaped flying object is believed to have initially descended and impacted the ground, creating a gouge and leaving on the terrain a large quantity of strange debris. There are multiple questions on how that machine was able to ascend again and continue its flight for a few more miles before it reportedly crashed. But for sure, one theory places the final point of impact near Corona, which is over the Capitan Mountain Range, in Lincoln County. Another theory places a second crash site in the Plains of San Augustin, but that is a totally different, even if related story, with different dynamics and witnesses.

The debris field in the Foster Ranch is a fascinating sight in a high desert country. The terrain is very rough, punctuated by burnt cactuses due to a fire that swept the area a couple of years ago. Surely, this is not a place you would choose for camping or for hiking in the immediate vicinities, being the Capitan Mountains the only appealing natural scenario around for miles. But in the 1940s, the site was actually good pasture, and Mack Brazel was looking for his sheep that July morning in 1947, after a fiery thunderstorm that hit the area the night before.

If this was the right place where the first impact occurred, where Maj. Marcel, Sr. and Cavitt were guided by Mack Brazel, one has to wonder how they made it to the site. Col. Jesse Marcel Jr. distinctively recalls his father came home that night with his Buick sedan loaded with debris, even in the passenger seats. A Buick sedan would have found the terrain no easy task – pasture or no pasture. I’ve asked Chuck Zukowsky’s opinion and according to him, “one story is Cavitt, Marcel and Brazel were on horse back from the Hines house. They brought debris back to the house and stored it in a shed (which is no longer). From the Hines house they loaded their cars and drove on the county/dirt road”. This version makes sense to me, now, after I’ve visited these places. Or did they perhaps load all of the fragments on CIC Capt. Cavitt’s Jeep and then into Maj. Marcel, Sr.’s Buick before he arrived at his home to show the fragments to his wife and 12-year-old son later that night? I calculated an area of approximately 600 yards in length and 300 yards in width, half-surrounded by a shallow cliff of approximately 180-200 feet. Based on testimony from witnesses, this was the first peak where the UFO impacted, but the gouge does not exist anymore. The military were apparently very meticulous in their objective to recover every single piece or fragment of debris, and they may have subsequently filled and leveled the terrain to perfection. ‘They vacuumed everything,” Col. Marcel, Jr. said as he walked on his shaky legs, which were protected and reinforced by braces. But he was tireless and we spent more than 2 hours together, just strolling, talking and wondering. Our eyes, the whole time, were attracted by the sloping landscapes of the Capitan Mountains and the clear, magnificently blue sky. The morning was not too hot for early July. I recorded conversations between myself, Debbie, Chuck and Col. Marcel, Jr. for future reference. There were many questions I needed to ask, and all of the answers were fixed in a distant past. They drew upon the memories of an event that took place 60 years ago.

The “Alien dummy” of the Roswell UFO Museum (Photo: Maurizio Baiata)

The debris field is still there if you want to go and take a look, but you have to be armed with good patience. You won’t see anything patently alien in there. You may simply breathe some of the same air that Mack Brazel breathed in this high Roswell desert the morning of July 3, 1947, when he found his pasture covered by strange fragments, and shortly after he had the poor idea to inform George Wilcox, then Chaves County Sheriff, about his finding.  After Wilcox found out, it wasn’t long until the military was on-site to take care of the situation. They were acting under direct orders of Col. William Blanchard, base commander of the Roswell Army Airfield, who probably did receive instructions from high headquarters, Gen. Roger Ramey in Fort Worth, Texas. So, the Pentagon handled the situation almost to perfection and in order to accomplish its task everybody had to be silenced, one way or another. It seems that for each man of the contingent who operated the cleaning of the Foster Ranch there was a huge amount of money for that time, ten thousand dollars: You keep your mouth shut forever with no argument at all. Brazel had hoped to receive a reward, because those were the days of the first flying saucers over the American sky, and if you were lucky enough to find something odd from one of those machines, a cash reward could be expected. Instead, he was unable to maintain possession of anything he found. The military confiscated everything, from him and from all the other witnesses, including the Marcel family. My reward came 63 years later. I was finally there, in and around Roswell, for the first time in my life. The side trip to Foster Ranch helped me to fulfill one of my Gladiator Dreams:  Walk the same walk that Maj. Marcel, Sr. purportedly took decades earlier. Meeting the major’s son, and the others who participated in our visit to Foster Ranch, made the trip to Roswell even more impactful.

By Maurizio Baiata (May 2009)