A: No, I wouldn’t have even talked to him about it. He brought it up and wanted to know whatever happened on the UFO business.

Q: It was at his initiative.

A: I didn’t bring it up. I told him I didn’t know any more about it than he did. He said well that was strictly out of my field, and I didn’t want to get involved in it. That was about it. But he brought it up. I didn’t ask him.

Q: He was just curious about what happened.

A: Wanted to know whatever happened to it.

Q: That’s about all I’ve got.

A: I remember that he saw—one time I went to visit—and I don’t remember whether it was before my husband and I married or after, I don’t recall the date. But he said that he saw a UFO fall. He was out working in the field and I understood that he was out on the St. Agustin Plains and he went over that way and it fell and he got nearly to the site and there was a group of people on a geological—archeological hunt and they were over there. I don’t remember how many people he said.

But they got nearly up to the UFO but it was close enough that you could see some creatures. He said they didn’t look like human beings out there.

And along came government cars and trucks...

Q: Now, by government you mean...

A: I guess it was government. You know, as I said it was a long time ago. And someone came along and I understood it, I don’t know whether it was army or what. I think he just termed it government trucks and they told him to go on back and forget they ever saw anything, and that’s all I recall.

A: ...he [the eyewitness] had been coming back from one of his field trips, he’d run onto a flying saucer that had burst open and there were four beings on the ground and that he was surveying the site, archeological group from the University of Pennsylvania, telling us that there were about four or five people with this group.

As they were just starting to look things over really closely, the military moved in and gave them a briefing not to say anything about it and keep quiet and it was in the national interest to get out of there.

Q: What was his feeling about what it was that he had experienced?

A: He had no qualms about what it was. He said it was a vehicle from outer space. There wasn’t any question. The beings on there were nothing like, not exactly like human beings....

Q: How did you...

A: ...similar but not exactly.

Q: How did he describe them?

A: He described them being about three and a half to four feet tall, very slim in stature, and with—their heads were hairless, with no eyebrows, no eyelashes, no hair. Sort of a pear-shaped head with the top of the head being smaller—larger, I mean.

Q: Any other characteristics about their appearance?

A: Only one thing that he mentioned. The hands were not covered, they had four fingers.

DS: So you were actually out there.

JR: Yeah.

DS: Do you remember the name of the ranch it was on?”

JR: It was on ... Fisher?

DS: Was it north of here.

JR: Yes ... back out here.

DS: Northwest ... Just take your time.

JR: It was Foster. (Some discussion with his wife about who owned the ranch) ... Let me see what you’ve got (referring to the photographs). That’s the place right there (identifying the location from the pictures).

DS: What area?

JR: It seemed to me that that place belonged to ... Fisher, but it sold to somebody else ... somebody else bought that... That’s how come I was out in that area. And we was out there and she’s dead and all the guys I showed the stuff are all dead. It’s amazing what all went on...

Discuss our book and the Museum.

DS: showing one of the pictures ... so you think this looks like

JR: That looks like the place.

DS: As far as the ranches go, driving around at that time, it could have been most any ranch, right? This would have been in ’47 ... You were with this woman?

JR: Yeah. We were camped out out there.

DS: You were camping?

JR: Yeah... I would say half of it ... I would say that only about half of it ... just half of a ... you really couldn’t tell what it was ... what you could still see, where it hit ... I think it was two spaceships flying together and one them came down and the other one picked up what they could and got out of there.

DS: Is it possible that because it was hit by lightning that it broke up and part of it went down ... (discussion of the Mac Brazel sighting)

JR: ... but it was either dummies or bodies or something laying there. They looked like bodies. They weren’t very long ... over four or five foot long at the most. We didn’t see their faces or nothing like that but we had just got to the site and heard the army, the sirens, all coming and we got into a damned jeep to take off. We had to hold a fence up to go onto another ranch to come out from there.

DS: How far would you say this from town here?

JR: Thirty miles ... forty miles.

DS: In a northwesterly direction?

JR: Right up here. (Discuss the pictures again.)

DS: Were there any buildings?

JR: No. You couldn’t see nothing. You go up on top of the hill. It was a hill ... (referring to the pictures) you could see the stuff right here.

DS: The object ... the craft ... what was left of it ... in these photos ... where was the object?

JR: Along this right here ... It looked to be about half of around (?) because around the edges ... I had two great big pieces. That’s what they got when they stole the car ... you could take that stuff and wad it up and it would straighten itself out. I never seen anything like it. Looked like something between a plastic ... looked like carbon paper...

DS: That was the color of it?

JR: Yeah. Carbons. That was the color of it. Sure was ... between plastic and ... hell I don’t know ... let’s see how to describe. One piece we had you could take it and put it in any form you wanted and it would stay there ... you could bend it in any form and it would stay ... it wouldn’t straighten back out.

DS: You picked those up from the ground?

JR: Yeah.

DS: You threw them in the jeep ... stuffed them in your clothes...?

JR: Yeah and then we heard all of them coming...

DS: How many vehicles ... how much commotion did you hear as they came in?

JR: Oh my God it must have been ... it was two or three six by six army trucks, a wrecker and everything ... and leading the pack was a ’47 Ford car with guys in it ... MPs and stuff in it ... we had the windshield down on the jeep and we stayed in the weeds and stuff ... and we came on back down to where we was camped at.

DS: So you watched for a while?

JR: Yeah. Sure did.

DS: What was their...

JR: They cleaned everything all up. I mean cleaned it. They raked the ground and everything. I mean they cleaned everything.

DS: You didn’t stay there that long?

JR: No, but they had a truck. I would say it was six or eight big trucks besides the pick up, weapons carriers and stuff like that.

DS: What kind of guard did they have. Did they surround certain areas...

JR: They had MPs all ... they got way out in the field. They had people all along this ridge ... they drove up in here. We was back over here. This grass here...

DS: So if you were back here, could you see the activity down here?

JR: You couldn’t see too much of what they ... you could tell ... As soon as they got there they began gathering the stuff up ... we were hidden in what you call buffalo grass...

DS: Did you see any behavior around the bodies.

JR: Huh-uh.

DS: You couldn’t see down to that level?

JR: Yeah.

DS: Did you see any activity near the craft?

JR: No.

DS: The angle of the craft ... was it flat was tipped...

JR: One part was kind of buried in the ground ... and part of it was sticking out of the ground ... about like that (DS: about a 30 degree angle?) Yeah ... and I’m sure that was bodies ... either bodies or dummies...

DS: Why do you say “dummies?”

JR: The federal government could have been doing something because they didn’t want anyone to know what this was ... they was using dummies in those damned things ... they could use remote control.

DS: So you thought that it could have been an experimental craft?

JR: After I came to town showed Frank Willis and his son (he’s dead) ... the Blue Moon beer joint over on the old Dexter highway. We was there until two o’clock in the morning ... I had the jeep behind my car.

DS: Did you still have the scrap in the jeep?

JR: Yeah. I showed it to him. He said I would just keep my mouth shut ... he said hell there is no telling where that come from.

DS: So you didn’t think it was from outer space?

JR: No. We didn’t even think about outer space back then...

DS: When was the first time that you thought that maybe this was something more?

JR: It was about three weeks ... it came out that a spaceship had crashed at Roswell ... about three weeks. But it could have been out longer than that there but see I worked in Carlsbad...

DS: But you first saw there had been a newspaper article about three weeks after...

JR: Oh hell it was two or three weeks before I caught up on it ... a spaceship ... what I hear is they guarded that place for a long time out there ... because me and another fellow went out there and you couldn’t get ... they had the roads sealed off ... it was a month or so after...

DS: And they still had it cordoned off.

JR: The MPs and stuff were still on the road. They wouldn’t let nobody go out there...

DS: If a person were to drive out there today ... going north out of town ... are we talking 285?

JR: No. Highway 48. You go out 48. You go out here to the truck route, hit 48 and ... and it’s about forty some miles out in there ... (And no talks about the car being stolen in 1951 when the car with the debris was stolen...) ...I would say 18 inches and 30 inches long ... strips off the edge of it ... it was a heavy material but it didn’t have no ridges ... it was put together with some kind of solder like stuff ... no bumps, no nothing in it ... it wasn’t ... it was about as heavy as duraluminum ... it wasn’t as brittle ... you could take a small piece and it was flexible ... (then discuss the stealing of the car with a wrecker and the material was locked in the trunk of the car. And then discuss the break in of the house where the last of the pieces were stolen about eight years ago ... 1985).

DS: Was there a storm that night?”

JR: Yeah. There sure was. It was a whale of a storm.

DS: Did you hear anything unusual? Did you hear ... between the cracks of thunder...

JR: Well, it lit up the sky when it came down. It lit up the damned ... we thought at first that it was falling star or something. And electric lightning ... man it was something.

DS: You heard something and you saw something...

JR: Yeah, sure did ... because we were laying there in the back of the pick up ... the whole sky lit up ... we thought it was a star falling.

DS: Did you then go to check it out...

JR: Sure did. The next day, sure did. We drove right up on it. She picked up a piece of it and we had the jeep parked a little ways away from there and throwed a piece of it up there somewhere and I have tried and tried to find where she had throwed that piece ... she had a piece but when she saw the army coming she throwed it out ... she saw them a coming and she throwed it out ... I doubt that I could even go back to the place it’s been so long. (Now begin to talk about the car wreck that nearly killed him.)

Remainder of the tape is discussion about the car wreck, the ranchers in the area, and the murder of Mrs. Ragsdale’s brother.