Original subtitles

Tonight on History's Greatest Mysteries.

Our conclusion to Roswell, the first witness.

Previously, a former CIA operative, Ben Smith, investigates what really crashed

near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.

Not sure I buy that whole balloon theory.

Really? Yeah. The focus, a mysterious journal found among the possessions of

Jesse Marcel.

the first official to arrive at the... It is not anything from this Earth that

I'm quite sure of.

A top cryptologist believes it may contain coded messages.

To a cryptographer, this indicates a certain kind of cipher.

Perhaps details on what Marcel really saw.

He saw the spaceship.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne, and tonight, the hunt for the mysterious journal's

author continues.

Was it a fellow officer in Jesse Marcel's tight -knit group who knew

what he knew? Ben Smith is hot on the trail. Was one of these men the author

the journal? Was it written by a U .S. Army officer with inside information on

Roswell? There are some words and letter combinations I do see in agreement.

This man is at the nexus of all the secrets.

And what did Jesse Marcel tell his own family?

years before he ever went public.

He told us that they had told him to change the story.

Did an extraterrestrial spacecraft

crash near Roswell? The conclusion to our investigation begins now.

Former CIA investigator Ben Smith has traveled to Louisiana's Gulf Coast to

visit Houma, the hometown of Jesse Marcel, where he spent the last 36 years

his life.

At ease among his own people in his quiet bayou community, Smith believes

may have divulged details about the UFO crash to family and friends.

Hello, Mr.

and Mrs. Marcel.

They must have liked you. They have smiles on their face. Oh, in the book,

says, you could sell refrigerators to Eskimos.

Because I was so persuasive in making him talk about things, and she could see

that I was getting things.

And that's him and I together. I have my Nickel State University T -shirt on.

Oh, my gosh.

That's a long time ago.

Linda Corley met Marcel in 1981 when she taped an interview with him.

for her undergraduate psychology course at Nichols State University.

Marcel was retired and living with his wife, Vio.

In 2007, she turned her interview with Jesse into a book entitled For the Sake

of My Country.

I had a little cassette tape recorder, and I asked him if it was all right. He

said, sure.

Okay.

Please don't break. Please don't break.

All I can say is, the material that I picked up, I have never seen before.

And I haven't seen it before.

When I got home, I blessed all the stuff that was in the kitchen.

My son is going to be as well. He's all, you know, putting all the stuff on the

floor in the kitchen.

One thing I don't remember is whether I picked it up or you just picked it up in

my car.

I kept asking all through the interview, can't you tell me something that's not

in the book?

Linda is referring to the first book to allege a government cover -up at

Roswell.

Called The Roswell Incident, it was written by Charles Berlitz and William

in 1980.

It relied heavily on the testimony of Jesse Marcel.

I asked him that a million times, can't you tell me something that's not in the

book? And he did.

What Marcel told Linda was that his son, Jesse Jr., had described the debris

he'd handled inaccurately.

Jesse Jr., who was 11 at the time, claimed he'd picked up small support

which he called I -beams.

The most unusual part of the debris that I saw was the I -beam fragments, or

what I recall as being I -beam, because they were very light.

very strong and they had some writing along the inside surface of this and

was the thing that really set this apart from anything i'd ever seen before he

was talking about the symbols that he saw on the debris and mrs marcel

said i think i have jesse jr's drawing of that and he said well jesse got all

that wrong anyway i had a composition book and i'm like Well, here, why don't

you draw me something?

The clip I want you to hear is of what he says as he's drawing.

He didn't seem to have doubt as to his memory of that.

That's what he drew. That's the original.

And I said, now will you sign it?

And he said, yeah. I can't believe I had the wherewithal to even say that.

And then he signed it.

And he drew the beam, which you can see is not an I -beam. It's not an I -beam.

Yeah. He told me that they were pink and purple, and so I wrote that. That's my

handwriting.

So these are some of my beginning sketches from what he told me.

Yeah, that's something I could never figure out. Are we talking about wood or

are we talking about metal?

He called it wood. He was specific about that, but he said it wouldn't burn. How

did he know it didn't burn?

He tried to burn it with a cigarette lighter. He said it felt like wood, it

looked like wood, but it wouldn't burn, so it can't be wood.

It has to be something I've never seen before on this earth, that kind of

Yeah.

I asked him, why didn't you save some of it? Why didn't you do that? I would

have saved a piece of it.

His choice of words always stuck in my mind.

I sat on this premium for 32 years.

I don't want any publicity.

All I want is peace.

He said that more than once.

I just want peace. Why don't you have peace?

He could have sat on it for another 32 years. Why did he talk? It had to have

been bothering him. It had to have been something he wanted to get off his head.

Yeah, that's true.

I have three tapes that last about four hours.

And during that time, we had bonded so close together.

She said, you're welcome here anytime.

Linda says that when she went home, she couldn't stop looking at the symbols

Jesse had drawn.

I had studied writing and codes and scripts for other things. And I came

that night, and I looked up some different ancient writings.

That was exactly what he drew.

Exactly what he drew.

Linda says that what Jesse drew resembled a kind of shorthand called

notes that were first used in ancient Rome around 4 BC.

She says the symbols Jesse drew signify travel and flight.

I went back the next day.

I was invited in, cordially again.

And I showed him some of the... I mean, look, this one here, these

slashes here.

This is almost exactly what he drew.

And there's a decipher for that.

I went into detail about where this writing could have come from.

Yeah, I think I saw that. And it got pretty intense about the writing.

Now, left on good terms, come back any time you want.

And then he called.

He said, do not use what I gave you. Everything is a lie.

And the next call was, don't go to the media with it. He was so irate on the

phone. I can still see myself.

I didn't do anything. I'm not going to do that. This is for school, you know.

I'm not going to the media with this.

So I never heard from him again.

I was crushed.

What do you think?

caused that change?

Well, I think the second visit, what happened and transpired there is why he

called and said, don't use it.

Uh -huh. And the only thing that transpired in that second visit were

the ancient writings. Of the ancient writings.

Yeah. Huh.

What if he was told that writing means something to the government or whatever

and he shouldn't tell?

Uh -huh.

You know, you shouldn't have drawn it, you shouldn't have written it. You know,

what if it was something that was alien and he's too afraid to

let it out? So, you know, those are what ifs.

Because I don't know what else to think about those phone calls. What else can I

think?

Did he ever mention that he was close to anyone on base, anyone who was

especially important to him?

He talked about Cabot quite a bit.

He thought... Extremely highly of Colonel Blanchard. Colonel Blanchard had

refused to transfer him three months later and said he was more

important and needed there, but somebody else wanted him out.

And he didn't care for General Ramey. He said General Ramey knew it wasn't a

weatherman. So do you believe Jesse's story?

Yeah, I believe Jesse believes.

I was always a believer that Jesse believed.

Nothing stood out as phony. Nothing stood out as fake.

Did you ever feel like he had a secret that he wasn't sharing with you?

Well, he says that I'm not telling you everything.

There's still things I can't tell you. And I'm like, why? And he says, for the

sake of my country.

That's why I named the book, For the Sake of My Country.

Ben Smith has just heard a tape interview with Jesse Marcel.

In which Marcel says it was his duty to stay quiet about Roswell.

Now Smith has come to New York City to better understand why Marcel felt

pressure to keep his secret, long after he left the military.

Hi, Ben. Hi, Leslie.

Come in. Thank you.

Leslie Kane, author of the best -selling book UFOs, Generals, Pilots, and

Government Officials Go on the Record, says it's risky for members of the

military to speak openly about UFOs. For people in the military, there is this

taboo, this stigma around the topic of UFOs.

They're afraid to talk about it, that it might somehow affect their positions in

their careers.

There's the respect they have of their colleagues. Somebody might think there's

something wrong with them.

Those attitudes are still there, unfortunately.

It sounds like you're convinced there's a taboo about UFOs. That stigma is a big

factor for sort of the individual out there who has a sighting. And it's also

big factor as to why there isn't more research being done by the scientific

community because there's no money to fund projects that involve something

that's taboo, basically.

But I think it's gotten a lot better. I think the December 17th New York Times

story, 2017.

really shifted things.

In December 2017, Leslie Kane broke the story that the Pentagon was running a

secret program to investigate UFOs, although officially the military claimed

UFO research had stopped in the 1960s. The Pentagon had a secret program that

started in 2007, but sources have told me that there were programs before

that.

Kane uncovered not only a top -secret program, but actual proof that military

pilots reported sightings of UFOs more than once.

The online version of the story, which is the one that most people read,

included two official Department of Defense videos taken of objects,

unidentified objects, and they were cleared for public release.

Those videos were spectacular, and they drew a lot of attention to the article.

And as far as I'm aware, this is the first time actual government videos have

been released of UFOs.

But Kane says that before the videos were leaked, the pilots

felt intense pressure not to reveal what they had witnessed.

These are patriots. These are people who are responsible for the lives of

American citizens, highly trained, highly credible.

When they see something, they're not supposed to talk about it. There's

for them to report it.

It just, for me, it borders on just a kind of irrationality and disrespect.

They struggle with this, and they feel that their own government doesn't take

them seriously.

That's the problem.

Ben Smith sees similarities between these events and what Jesse Marcel's

says happened to him in 1947.

Jesse Marcel Sr.

told his grandchildren that Fort Worth, when it was the second press release

with General Ramey, Jesse was paraded into the room because he was the first

individual on the scene and he was in the flying saucer report the day before

and they put out this debris.

And Jesse told his grandchildren that that was not the debris that he

But he had to pretend it was during the press conference? He was told to shut

his mouth and to just play along.

That was his claim. Back in the day, that was so common that these high

military people would know a lot but feel they couldn't say it, and then

just go to their graves and that's it.

Yeah.

I have a lot of respect for the Marcells and the Roswell Witnesses. Absolutely.

When you see them talking or you hear them, They are as convincing as

and I have no doubt that they believe 100 % in what they're saying. They're

lying or anything.

They had an experience. They found something. They believe that it is what

say it is, and they are extremely convincing. You absolutely have to take

seriously, and I just wish there was more information to prove them right.

That proof could lie hidden in the journal that Jesse Marcel kept among his

prized possessions So far Smith's investigation has proven that the

authentic Dates from the time of the Roswell incident and that Marcel is not

author Smith wants to find out who wrote the journal why and

what it means Without intuition to find the information

you're useless in journalism or intelligence, right? You've got to

gut, because that's where you find the best gold. If it was easy to find,

someone would have found it by now.

Right.

To plot his next steps, Smith meets with Joe Pappalardo, a veteran aviation

journalist with a deep understanding of American military history and the

Roswell story.

So Craig, the cryptographer, had some interesting insights that I did not pick

up on.

And right away, actually, he picked up on some things that could actually

indicate code.

Craig. Oh, hi. Must be Ben. That's right. Good to meet you. When Smith took

journal to Craig Bauer, one of the nation's top codebreakers, Bauer thought

could be written in a homebrew code, a pattern of letters or words invented by

the writer.

To create something just between friends, it's not that hard to make it

hard to break.

This. potential homebrew code started just after Roswell.

In August 1947, we get this weird kind of writing. So whatever it is, it's

correlated to that strange date. Now, we still don't have the author, so we

can't quite tell what it is. I don't know. Zodiac was like that, and they

that code, didn't they? As long as it says something, you should be able to

break it.

If someone in the 509th wrote the journal, and we can identify who, it

lead us to other documents.

that allow us to interpret its meaning, sort of like a broken locket, where you

have one half and I have the other. We put them together, and it's a treasure

map. So who, in your estimation, would be someone that we'd be interested in

hearing from at the time? Who would give him this journal?

Well, as I understand, the Roswell Army Air Force Base had almost 8 ,000

personnel in 1947. It's a huge base.

But I think it would be helpful to focus my search on the 509th group and then

his counterintelligence group.

That would be the kind of person that would have information that would be

safeguarding, and they'd give it to the point man for the whole Roswell

incident.

As the intelligence officer in Roswell, Marcel was trusted with the military's

most protected secrets.

And according to his grandson, he stayed silent about what he saw in 1947 to

protect his family.

When my grandfather started talking about his experience with the Roswell

he was careful about what he told us. He didn't want to tell us something that

we could tell somebody that might lead us in a position where we could have

threatened.

Part of Marcel's job was to share valuable intelligence with an inner

officers at the 509th Bomber Group.

Smith thinks whoever wrote the journal might have been sharing something

valuable with Marcel.

I'm hoping that I can get more handwriting samples of other people in

group to see if this might have been passed to him by somebody else within

bomber group. I would suggest if they're in the 509th and if they were officers,

they may have actually served in World War II.

They hand -wrote a lot of after -action reports. If they're officers, there may

be handwriting samples that are in old World War II.

bombing records and archives, where they flew in from, the bombing assessments.

There's a lot of information.

You might actually get a little drove there. You might not, but hey, at least

it's a rock to pick over. Yeah, that's an interesting point. I hadn't

that. Cracking this part of your mystery is only one good search away. If you

found out who through a handwriting analysis, then you could find out a

bit more of the motive why.

I'm on my way to meet Jennifer Nasso, the handwriting expert.

I have with me a number of handwriting samples belonging to the people closest

to Jesse Marcel during the time of the Roswell incident.

Ben Smith has been researching Jesse Marcel's fellow officers in the 509th.

He's gotten writing samples for six individuals, an inner circle that must

known details about what really crashed at Roswell.

If it didn't belong to Jesse and he kept it in his most prized possession, it

had to belong to somebody important to him.

Now the question is, does anybody's writing match the journal?

Come on in.

I'm back with more work for you. Tell me what you have.

I took the journal to a code -breaking expert.

First of all, he took a look at the journal, and to his eyes, a few things

immediately popped up.

that suggested there might be some kind of code.

Now, he ran the numbers and was not able to find any coherent message that does

not correspond to a letter.

So his next best guess was that maybe there was some kind of encryption system

that only the author knew of.

So that gets back to the question, well, who wrote it? Who's the author?

Who is the author?

So I have brought a number of handwriting samples.

from key individuals at the Roswell Army Air Force Base.

Let me start with Colonel Blanchard, who was Jesse Marcel's direct

commanding officer and the head of the 509th Bomber Group.

In 1947, Colonel William Butch Blanchard was commander of the 509th Bomber Group

based at Roswell. A highly decorated World War II hero, who had helped plan

Enola Gay's bombing of Hiroshima, Blanchard was in charge of America's

nuclear attack force.

It was a job in which he would certainly know about any top -secret operation

involving his air base.

The officer he might have been closest to was Jesse Marcel.

The Blanchards and the Marcels were regular bridge partners.

We have Walter Hott, the press corps officer.

who organized the press releases and wrote the infamous Flying Saucer press

release. As the base public information officer, Lieutenant Walter Hout was

ordered by Blanchard to draft that famous press release that a flying disc

been recovered.

In his later years, Hout came forward to say he believed Marcel had been telling

the truth and went so far as to say that he himself had glimpsed bodies of

aliens.

We have Bob Shirky.

Lieutenant Robert Shirky was assistant group operations officer for the 509th.

If the debris was extraterrestrial, Shirky would have been in charge of

arranging its transport to the Army's top -secret research facility, Wright

-Patterson.

After retiring from the military, Shirky later claimed that Jesse Marcel was

telling the truth.

And over here we have Edwin Easley.

Edwin Easley was the provost marshal at the 509th bomber crew.

Major Edwin Easley was in charge of base security.

He would have been responsible for safeguarding the debris and controlling

personnel had access to it. In this capacity, it's not unreasonable to

knew what the crates contained.

He would have been responsible for organizing the cleanup effort to pull in

collect the debris.

We also have...

Patrick Saunders.

Patrick Saunders was the office administrator for Colonel Blanchard. So

would have been involved in all the record keeping and issuing the orders.

Patrick Saunders was Colonel Blanchard's top deputy.

He had flown 37 combat missions in World War II and had just as many medals as

his boss.

As Colonel Blanchard's number two.

He would have been in the room when Jesse Marcel returned from the debris

and debriefed the colonel.

If there's anybody at the 509th Bomber Group who knows everything, it's this

guy, Patrick Saunders. So if this handwriting matched, it would mean

to the journal, because here is a man who had access to all kinds of secrets,

who may have wanted to confide something in Jesse Marcel.

Okay, so we'll compare.

these writings to the journal.

So what I notice right off the bat with the Blanchard signature, that's all the

writing that we have, correct?

Right. Just having the one signature to compare to an extended body of text

writing poses a big limitation to the examination.

From what I see in the Patrick Saunders writing, while there's a bit more

than just one signature, it's really just the one sentence.

And so the limitation is still the lack of quantity of known writing.

It's a bit of a blurry copy, and so it's hard to tell the pen movement and some

of the fine and subtle features of the formations of the letters might be lost

in the image quality of that copy.

Looking at the Walter Haught handwriting and the Bob Shirky writing, this is a

more extended sample of writing.

So there's going to be a lot more information, a lot more characteristics

I'm going to be able to compare to the journal.

Well, even if you can provide any, even if it's the slightest new piece of

information on one or the other, could help me eliminate one person from the

group closest to Jesse Marcel. And if I have to, I may have to expand the search

and move out from there to identify who could have given him this journal.

Smith will leave the journal which was so precious to Jesse Marcel in Nassau's

hands, hoping she can uncover its author.

As the search for the journal's author escalates, Ben Smith returns to Jesse

Marcel's hometown of Houma, Louisiana.

Marcel's granddaughter, Denise, has convinced the extended Marcel family to

divulge some of the strange things Jesse told them.

So how is everyone related to Jesse Marcel?

He was my brother -in -law's uncle.

Okay. But I always called him Uncle Jesse.

You know, we're all cousins.

Yeah.

My grandmother and Jesse were brother and sister.

Oh, wow.

Okay. So do you remember speaking to him a lot?

Yes. We were very close.

We lived next door to him for 10 years. I went over there a lot.

Smith wants to know what they know from the lips of Marcel himself.

Their memories seem clear.

Wallace, how old were you when Jesse shared his story with you? I was a

teenager. You were a teenager?

Mm -hmm.

I want to say that was in 1957.

1957, just 10 years after Roswell.

Yeah.

Okay. I was 12, 13 years old, something like that. Yeah, okay.

He told me, don't believe everything the government tells you.

And he started telling me the story about the crash in Roswell and that they

forced him to lie about it.

This means that two decades before he told the world an extraterrestrial

spacecraft had crashed, Marcel told the same story with the same details to the

people he trusted.

What details did he describe? Did he mention a UFO crash?

He did tell me a UFO crash. He was telling me about what it looked like.

I put two and two together and figured.

He keeps telling me that we got people from outer space coming here.

Okay. And what was your reaction then? What did you think?

Looking up at the sky at night.

Did you believe him?

Of course I believed him. Yeah. Because I don't think Uncle Jesse would have

lied to anybody.

Right. He wasn't that type of man.

Wallace remembers talking to Jesse.

I don't remember talking to him. Okay. But Jesse told my dad stories about the

Roswell incident.

And those stories went further than anything Jesse Marcel ever said in

The thing that interests me the most was that Jesse drew a picture of an alien.

Jesse drew a picture of an alien?

Yeah. He hand -drew a picture of an alien.

Huh. Yeah.

My dad lost that picture.

But later on in life, he wrote what the picture looks like.

That Jesse drew for me.

It looked like the picture that Jesse drew.

Yeah. That's the first time I'm hearing any stories about Jesse himself drawing

or referencing an alien.

I don't remember my dad ever saying that Jesse saw an alien.

Okay. Maybe somebody told him about this.

Wallace.

Do you think that extraterrestrials crashed in 1947?

Yeah.

Okay.

Did Jesse ever tell you, June, about his experience at Roswell?

Yes. He did? He did.

I think probably 74 to 76, somewhere in there, when he started.

talking to me about it.

Basically, what they're telling you, too, he found wreckage.

He said it was not of this world.

He described the metal, saying that you could crumble it up in your hand, but it

would automatically go right back like it had memory.

Okay. He used the word memory. Mm -hmm. Okay. And my daughter, who was 10 at the

time, approached him and asked him, Uncle Jesse, were there any bodies?

And he looked at her, and she says his eyes kind of glazed over, and he said,

there are things that this world is not ready for.

That's what he told your daughter. There are things this world is not ready for.

Right.

In front of family members, Jesse displayed emotions he kept hidden from

outside world.

He seemed angry at times about the government.

He told us that...

They had told him to change the story and that it was not UFO wreckage, it was

the weather balloon.

I think it bothered him a lot, you know, that he was told to shut up about it.

It was a very notable event in American history, and he couldn't talk about it,

you know, and it was him that found it, you know, and then had to lie.

Right. You know, so that tore him up. It really did.

I think he needed to express himself about it. So back in 78,

79, he got sort of emboldened about it and decided he was going to talk.

Yeah. But you heard all of these stories before there was any big media...

Absolutely.

...sensation about the story. Absolutely. He was...

Being open with family about it. My family members were aware of that. It

upset him a lot that people thought that he was making it up.

And he got some ridicule.

Well, I know it wasn't from our family that he got that from.

Outsiders would ridicule him and call him Crazy Jesse.

Oh, really?

Because of when they started hearing about Roswell.

It must be hard for an intelligence officer, a decorated veteran, to be

ridiculed by his neighbors and his community.

I think that would have been hard for him.

All the reports have been lost. All of the original files have been lost. So at

this point in time, it really is Jesse's word against the government's word,

right?

Part of my investigation, and it's just a part, is to see, can we find any proof

anywhere that this happened?

Yeah.

June, did Jesse ever hint that he might have

something more, more information, more details, or maybe something hidden in

house?

What he told me is he came home to Roswell.

He had some wreckage in his car.

He pulled it out and brought it inside and showed his family.

But what other things he might have done, I don't know. He did not ever tell

me that he had anything, you know, of the wreckage or anything like that.

No.

After meeting with the Marcel family in Jesse's hometown of Houma, former CIA

investigator Ben Smith and Jesse's granddaughter Denise get the opportunity

meet someone outside the family who claims Jesse shared with him

details of the Roswell incident.

Secrets that might lie hidden in the coded writing of the mysterious journal.

He started off by saying, look, you know, this thing that happened to me was

real. Calvin Parker.

says he was introduced to Jesse Marcel by a mutual acquaintance.

Your granddaddy said that they staged the site away from the actual site to

the general public away.

They took weather balloons out to the field and tried to distribute little

pieces around so that people could find them. That I have never heard.

Parker claims that Jesse Marcel told him about an elaborate military operation

to retrieve alien bodies.

and orchestrate a cover -up to make it look like a weather balloon had crashed.

The first time he mentioned it, he said there was actually bodies out.

He said that he saw some?

Exactly. The special unit got the bodies. He wasn't part of that.

They took them back to the base at Roswell.

And he described all of this to you?

He described every bit of it to me. It's so interesting. These are details that

I've not heard before. Yeah, I've not heard this either. That he didn't tell

Linda. Corley, that he didn't tell his family members.

That's pretty... Well, he felt like he could talk because I told him as long as

he was alive, I would never say nothing about it, and I didn't.

Out of my surprise, he told me, he said, I've got something that I want to show

you.

He said, I have evidence.

I have proof.

He has proof.

Jesse said he had proof.

I said, oh, I'd love to see it.

So he told me there's a screwdriver in the kitchen drawer. Go get it.

Go down to a hot water heater and take the top off and bring it up here to me.

Calvin Parker says that Marcel told him he'd kept pieces of debris from the

Roswell crash and hidden them inside a water heater in his home.

I was fixing to unscrew it. I was going to look at these. So you actually

touched it and put the screwdriver to it? Oh, I was ready to when somebody

showed up at the door. Oh, my gosh.

I don't know who this was knocking at the door, but he didn't want to talk

it in front of me.

So I didn't feel real welcome there, and I got up and left.

I was planning on coming back the next day, but I had to go to work.

I went offshore for 160 days, and I got back.

And I couldn't wait to get back over to see him get that debris.

I went to the house, and I found out he had passed away.

It broke my heart.

Did your father ever talk to you about the water heater, about hiding debris?

No, this is literally the first time I've ever heard this story.

If anything, I always was told that my grandfather didn't keep anything.

Did he ever say why he hadn't ever brought it out earlier? That would have

helped. prove his story that he wasn't making it up. And it's like, hey,

I really do have proof.

So I'm wondering, I'm curious as to why he decided to show it to you at that

point. Well, he was real loyal to his country. He was military.

You follow orders when the military gives you orders.

And I think there was a reluctance there against his conscience about coming out

against the order that he had had. Right.

He told me that when he took this material, it was a real trip for him to

it hid.

But he knew that he'd never get to see it again when they got to Roswell.

So he, for lack of a better word, had to steal it. Yeah. He stole the cleanup

effort. The man was on his deathbed. Right. You could tell physically that he

was having to take something.

Yeah. But mentally, he seemed to be intact. He seemed to be all there.

He didn't want to die on his conscience.

From a security standpoint, it makes sense that Jesse Sr.

would anticipate continued scrutiny on his family. Yes. And that he might want

to introduce somebody without who believes, who we can identify with, but

without that public presence. Right. Someone like Calvin.

Right.

There could be some debris left around.

Probably right there in that house somewhere, but still there.

You think the debris could still be at the house? I know it could be.

The house is just down the road from here. Yeah, there's no doubt in my mind.

I've been to the debris field.

I've been out there searching, and it's hard to find anything.

But here, actually, is a fresh lead in the investigation that I haven't

encountered yet.

It could mean everything. This is probably the best.

chance we have of finding anything left of that crash site.

Thank you for taking the time. This has been wonderful. Thank you.

It's been my pleasure. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

Order of business number one is get to that home and see what we can find.

The trickiest part about the debris field is that Even if we find a piece of

metal, we have no idea how it got there. So many people have been there over

time, before and after. It could have arrived there in any number of ways.

But if we find something hidden on the inside of a water heater, we know your

grandfather put it there. Right.

If they could find a piece of debris taken from the crash site, it would be

astounding development in the saga of Roswell.

Smith and Denise Marcel will try to get inside Jesse Marcel's old house, which

is only a short drive away.

We're coming into this cold.

The person doesn't know us. We don't know them. Right.

We just have to be prepared for the gamut. I gotcha.

Okay. Tea and cookies versus shotgun kind of thing. Okay.

I have no idea.

Let's not say that we're UFO researchers.

Oh, yeah, no. We're researching local family history. Okay. You used to live

the house. Okay. The Marcel family in particular.

And we can get into the UFO stuff later once we feel comfortable that's not

going to put them off. That sounds like a really good idea.

This is the part that makes me nervous but also gets me excited.

Yes, I know what you mean.

Matt, nice to meet you. Hi, I'm Denise.

Oh,

Denise used to live here. Well, her grandfather used to live here. My

grandfather used to live here.

Would you mind if she walked me through a little bit of the property to show me

where things were?

The owner is reluctant to let them enter.

And so for now, it's impossible to verify Parker's claim.

in southern New Mexico on my way to the home of a guy named Chuck Wade.

Now, Chuck Wade claims to have a piece of debris recovered from a potential UFO

crash site.

Ben Smith couldn't get access to Jesse Marcel's former house to verify whether

it contained Roswell crash debris.

Now Smith is following up another leak and meeting with a man named Chuck Wade,

who is convinced he has UFO debris from a spacecraft in a crash.

in 1947.

Hey, how you doing? Good, how are you, Chuck? Yeah.

Did your dad have a relationship with Mac before that July?

Oh, yeah.

If you're the guy that owns the bar, everybody knows you. Yeah.

Yeah, Dad owned that bar for many, many years. Uh -huh.

And I just love to be there and listen to stories.

I was seven years old the year that the Roswell incident happened there next to

Corona.

Chuck Wade's father, Jesse Wade, owned the bar in Corona where rancher Mack

Brazel first came to show his neighbors the strange debris he'd found while

herding sheep.

Although it is known as the Roswell incident, the small farming community of

Corona was the closest to where Mack found the debris.

Matt Brazel found something that he didn't know and recognize at all on the

foster ranch.

So he came to Corona and asked my father to go out and see what in the world it

was, because he, Matt, just flat didn't know.

But Dad was busy, and he was just himself in the bar, so Dad chose not to

the bar.

Dad regretted that, I'm going to say, immensely.

He always say, I wished I'd went with Max if he was out there. Right.

Chuck Wade also wanted to see what was out there.

After running his own construction company, Wade has devoted most of the

years to researching UFOs.

So tell me a little bit about some of the sites and debris that you recovered.

I think it could inform.

My investigation of Roswell... Have you all studied the crash on the plane to

San Augustine?

No. Wade has come to a startling conclusion.

Roswell was only one of a series of UFO crashes that took place in southern New

Mexico during that time.

According to Wade, there were seven UFO crashes in total. Five of them occurred

during the first week of July 1947.

The first one there was...

August 1945.

This is not here the night of the 1st or the 2nd of July 1947.

This D3, 4, 5, and 6 was about 11 o 'clock on July the 4th of

1947. And this one up here was in March 1948.

Chuck Wade has a theory about what caused the spaceships to crash.

What happened, folks, is...

Whenever they put in Los Alamos National Laboratory, they installed three major

high -powered radars to guard the skies over Los Alamos.

Wade, who supervised construction of dozens of air traffic control towers

the U .S., believes powerful radar signals emitted from the Los Alamos

site caused short circuits in the spaceships.

It electrified that craft, and it came down in flames.

Of what he claims are seven UFO crashes, Wade became obsessed with one in

particular, which he believes crashed on the plains of St. Augustine 48 hours

before the Roswell crash.

New Mexico is basically square.

Corona is basically really close to the center of the state.

What we call the Roswell incident happened about 30 miles southeast of

The plains of St. Augustine is over here.

About 200 miles.

Chuck started going to UFO conferences.

One of the speakers had discovered some pieces of debris, and he wanted to go

look for more debris.

Chuck said, well, he would help him with that, and he'd get some guys to come

and help dig.

So they did.

That was in 2004.

And they found some stuff.

I'd love to see it if I can. Well, I think it's right around the corner here.

The waves have several fragments.

Can you tell me what I'm looking at here?

These here are the foils.

And then these here have got...

Whenever the head is squished, but all these are holes.

Actually, can I remove the glass for a closer look? Sure, be glad to.

Did you take this to the government at all?

I don't have any reason to do that.

Well, just curious, you know.

As long as you find a UFO.

I don't know what the government would say, to be honest.

I believe they said they didn't exist.

That's true, the official position is.

They don't exist, but things are starting to change. There's a good

but no, how to avoid the government as best I possibly could.

There is a huge, monstrous, gigantic cover -up on the Roswell incident.

No one in Corona was allowed.

They were ordered not to talk about that crash.

Yeah, there's a lot of mistrust in the community among...

UFO researchers or the federal government. I think a lot of it stems

reaction or overreaction in 1947.

They found something on the Foster Ranch.

They didn't know what it was or where it came from.

I think Jesse Marcel is telling the truth 100%. I see no reason for him to

other than tell the truth.

The Roswell incident was from outer space, and there's not a chance there's

damn bulletin that we made.

Now, this one's pretty fascinating.

Can I take a piece with me to get it analyzed myself?

What do you think?

It's okay with me.

Do you mind if I take this one here?

Oh, sure, sure.

We'd be glad to.

Any of them that you want, we'll be glad to take a piece off.

I want to know where it came from. Why is it here? Why don't they tell us about

it?

That is pretty hard to cut, actually.

Smith plans to get this piece of metal tested to see what elements it's

of and if there is anything about it that can suggest where it came from.

I'm just outside Denver, Colorado, on my way to meet David Soucy, our crash site

expert.

David Soucy is a former accident inspector.

for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Susie has investigated hundreds of crash sites.

So when Ben Smith took him to the debris field, where Jesse Marcel first saw

what he believed to be pieces of wrecked spacecraft, Susie started by measuring

wind currents.

Susie's gut reacts.

Whatever crashed here wasn't lightweight.

This contradicts the U .S. military story that what crashed at Roswell was a

weather balloon.

or part of the top secret lighter than air project Mogul. I'm not sure I buy

that whole balloon drag theory.

Really?

David collected all kinds of data from the debris field. Wind, geographic

features, weather.

I'm hoping that he can eliminate one aircraft or another.

Smith wants David Susi to compare his initial findings with the deep earth

analysis. done by Canadian geophysicists Colin Miazga and Eric Johnson when they

visited the debris field late last year.

Susie has been communicating with them online.

I understand you did ground -penetrating radar as well?

Yeah. Okay. The geophysicists used ground -penetrating radar and gamma -ray

technology to identify strange anomalies in the Earth.

Look at that.

Wow, that is...

Interesting. A kind of scarring that couldn't have come from a deflated

crash. This is the radar.

It doesn't make sense. I can't understand what that would be.

Hey, Ben. Hey, David. How are you doing? Good, how are you? Yeah, well, come on

in. Oh, man, I have been dying to see what you've done with that data.

Well, there's a lot to look at, probably more than you want to see.

The first thing I want to start with, this is an overview of the entire site,

the entire area.

That is the reported trajectory.

That's where they found the debris.

Yeah. And then from there, it spread, they said, as much as a mile in this

direction off of that.

A bunch of other interesting stuff that we can get through.

And now this is what's really interesting. This area really intrigues

down in the bottom here because the gamma readings are not consistent with

ground -penetrating radar.

Never seen that before.

Huh. Doesn't make sense to me.

You might have to walk me through the actual readings. All right. I'm having a

hard time visualizing. Let's do that.

These red areas indicate that ground -penetrating radar says it's extremely

dense, which is where the rocks are and that sort of thing. Here's an example of

a dense area.

And in this dense area, you would expect to see low gamma rays because it's not

coming through. It's blocking the gamma. So let's look at that spot here. Gamma

rays are indicated by yellow or green.

If there's less gamma, it's blue.

And sure enough, here's this light blue where the rocks were, and then here's

the same thing here. It almost matches perfectly with the DPR. Yes. You could

look at any of these spots, any of these blues here, and it aligns with these

reds here.

Got it.

This spot, now that we're just a little above the green line, we were looking

here before, below the green line, but now above there, that's red.

Let's take a close look at it.

See all the red?

All the red?

It's dense, it's hard, it's solid.

which would block gamma.

So now I'm going to flip this, and I'm going to think, well, we're going to

a blue spot there. But instead, look what we find.

The opposite of what I would expect.

Right. And not only what I would expect, but what we witnessed right here.

That was consistent with tight compaction and blocking the gammas.

it's yellow.

The highest. Not only is it high, it is the highest right there.

It's something that it doesn't make sense to me. Have you ever seen that in

wreck? No, no, I have not. I've not seen this before.

There's something there. There's something unique about this spot above

green light. As an accident investigator and what I've been doing my entire

life, there's something under the ground there. There's something making these

changes, these readings different.

So what could make that kind of contrast, the high density with high

The only thing I can think of is that in ground -penetrating radar, a rubber or

polyethylene in rubber can create that illusion of high density.

But it would also allow gamma to come up through it because it's not going to

block the gamma rays.

After analyzing the data, David Susi can no longer rule out the possibility that

it was a Mogul balloon that went down at Roswell.

So, I mean, a Mogul balloon was made of something like neoprene. Exactly.

So, to me, that explains it. To me, that is what I would be looking for. That's

the assumption I would make and go out and try to find that.

Susie admits that his analysis is just an educated guess.

And even that is based on a 1995 government report which provided no

evidence, but asserted that a Mogul balloon crashed at Roswell.

A report millions of Americans still don't believe.

If this group of 100 demonstrators is correct, the U .S. government is

up the most important secret of all time.

Alien beings who have made contact with earthlings.

They said, well, what about the bodies?

How could so many people have come forward and say, well, I was a kid, I

this, and I saw these bodies, and I saw this stuff.

Some Air Force guys came out and picked up stuff in the desert. How do we

explain that?

At that infamous 1997 press conference, where the Air Force doubled down on its

claim that what crashed at Roswell was a mogul balloon, it also issued a

remarkable second report that some believe undermined its entire

We're confident once the report is out and digested by the public that this

be the final word on the Roswell incident.

This second report offered what the Air Force hoped was a logical explanation to

appease those Americans who found alleged eyewitness stories about aliens

Roswell both believable and compelling.

Bodies observed in the New Mexico desert were probably test dummies that were

carried aloft by U .S. Air Force high -altitude balloons for scientific

research.

Additional research uncovered information which explained some of the

alien bodies associated with the Roswell incident.

The second report, called Case Solved, was accompanied by a short film produced

by the Air Force.

The project's main objective was to study methods for returning a pilot or

astronaut safely to Earth by parachute if forced to eject at extremely high

altitudes. For these tests, dummies were transported up to 98 ,000 feet by

high -altitude balloons.

The Air Force contended that anyone who thought they'd seen the military

recovering alien bodies were actually witnessing exercises that involved

dropping anthropomorphic dummies from high altitude balloons.

Many of the dummies landed outside the confines of military reservations and

were regularly observed by local civilians.

Critical examination of alleged alien sightings consistently matched the

physical characteristics of these dummies as well as where and how they

used.

I think it's logical to assume that the people there

saw Air Force ambulances come out, they saw gurneys come out, they saw body bags

come out because the dummies were put in the body bags to protect them. And when

you put all that stuff together and spin it, you find that it fits perfectly

with many of the occurrences in Roswell during that era.

At the press conference, the problem with the Air Force's explanation was

obvious to reporters.

If dummy drop exercises didn't take place in 1947, they only started in the

early 1950s. They're talking about 1947.

You're talking about dummies used in the 50s almost a decade later.

Well, I'm afraid that's a problem that we have with time compression.

I don't know what they saw in 1947, but I'm quite sure it probably was Project

Mogul. UFO author and researcher Don Schmidt believes the Air Force was...

Disrespectful, writing off alleged eyewitnesses as having aging and faulty

memories. Oh, it's time compression.

New malady, not even in the medical books.

Created by the Pentagon.

The older you get, you start to not only compress the years, but also the

decades. The problem with that, all the personnel who were here in 47, who were

involved, were no longer here in 52.

So how could they be mistaking wooden crash dummies in 52 if they weren't even

here?

Colonel, let me just go back one more time. You say this is case closed and

people should not believe it, but with the major hole, though, you're saying

that they're wrong about the date. What explanation can you give them other than

just saying, well, we just think they're just mistaken by six years?

Ma 'am, I have no other explanation.

I'm sorry. I just have no other explanation. I'm looking at the facts as

studied them.

And I have no other explanation for that but what I've already given.

Yes, sir.

Because we've reviewed all the relevant information, and we have finished this,

and we're not going to revisit it. How do you know that you're not being used?

How do you know that you know the full story?

You're confident that you're not part of any cover -up, wittingly or

unwittingly?

I'm totally confident. But I think Colonel Weaver, you might have seen him

earlier, said it best.

We can't even keep single secrets.

How could we have a conspiracy or a cover -up?

Well, that happened in 1953. How could anybody mess that up from 1947?

People's memories fade over time.

We think that this answers lots of questions, and it answers them logically

with integrity.

I'm excited to hear about your findings.

So there are two styles of uppercase W's that I notice in the journal.

Ben Smith is with forensic handwriting expert Jennifer Nasso, who has been

analyzing writing samples from some of the officers in the 509th Bomber Group.

She is checking to see if they could have written the puzzling journal that

belonged to their colleague, Jesse Marcel.

Colonel William Blanchard, commander of the Roswell Air Base.

would certainly have known about any top -secret operation in his sector.

When we look at the Blanchard, there are some dissimilarities, but it's really

not a whole lot to go on.

So your professional judgment would be there's not enough data yet to confirm

one way or the other? Right. There would be no conclusion as to whether or not

he authored the journal based on just the one signature that we have.

Right.

So in the Walter Haught handwriting, I noticed that it's what we call a

combination style of writing.

Lieutenant Walter Haught was the public information officer for the 509th who

was ordered by Colonel Blanchard to draft that famous press release that a

flying disc had been recovered.

Where it's not all cursive, it's not all hand printing, so some letters have

connecting strokes while others do not.

Right away, that's the difference between what I see in the all -cursive

of the journal.

So here's the word and in the journal. See the formation of the A? It starts up

around 2 o 'clock and then comes counterclockwise and forms this other

When we look at the and in the Walter Haught handwriting... Oh, totally

different.

So already I get the sense...

that this journal was not written by Walter Hott. The characteristics that

noting thus far are not similar to what I'm seeing in the journal. Yeah.

The next sample would be Robert Shirky. Yep.

Lieutenant Robert Shirky was assistant operations officer for the 509th. He

said Jesse Marcel was telling the truth and claimed he'd seen debris flown out

of Roswell and believed... It was extraterrestrial.

So here we have the word July in the journal.

And just note the formation of the uppercase J.

Here in the word July, look at the formation of the J compared to the known

writing and the questions.

So already again, I see enough deliberate contrast and strokes that

to pop as different.

handwriting style.

And what we're looking for is a pattern of writing.

Edwin Easley creates this drag stroke.

Being, yeah. It's a long, exaggerated drag stroke.

Major Edwin Easley was in charge of base security.

He would have been responsible for safeguarding the debris and controlling

personnel had access to it.

And you see that again. You see that repeated throughout.

Whereas in the journal, you just have the I dot above the letter.

So you do have some dissimilarities in this writing sample as well.

Shoot. Well, that leaves us Patrick Saunders.

Patrick Saunders was Colonel Blanchard's number two, his top deputy.

He would have been in the room when Jesse Marcel returned from the debris

to brief the commander.

There are some words and letter combinations I do see in agreement.

So one of the words in common between the question and the known is the word

anything. And if you look at the writing in the journal, there is a pen lift

after the Y between the Y and the T.

And you see that again here. Right.

The Y terminates. Pretty distinct, too.

And the same thing here.

And in the known writing, you do see that combination.

as well, or that pen lift between the Y and the T. Yeah. I would describe that

as more of a general characteristic, but right now it is a similarity.

Also,

when you look at the letter formation, the termination of the Y in all three

anythings in the journal terminates downward. There is no upward loop

Yeah. It terminates downward.

If you look at the height ratios between the T and the H, Here you see the H is

much taller than the T. You see that throughout the questions, the H and the

And you also see that the H in the knowns is also taller than the T.

So do you see enough then to exclude this as a candidate, or is it still a

viable option? I don't see enough right now to exclude this person as a

candidate.

Of all the samples, with the Pat Saunders one, there's potential.

This man is at the nexus of all the secrets.

Because Patrick Saunders would have touched every document, overheard every

phone call, would have seen everything Colonel Blanchard's seen, and if he is

the author of the journal, then I really think we're on to something.

He was the base commander's number two.

his right -hand man.

But who is Patrick Saunders?

What was his role in the Roswell incident?

What did he believe?

And if he wrote the journal Jesse Marcel kept close for decades, what secrets

did the two men share?

Investigator Ben Smith has tracked down two of Saunders' five children.

So you were three years old in 1947, and you were living in Roswell at the time?

Yes, we were living in Roswell.

On base.

On base.

Yes. We lived there until about 1950.

And can you tell me a little bit about your father?

Well, my dad was a very proud officer.

He was a very personable man.

And while he could be serious, he could also be lots of fun to be with.

Can you tell me a little bit about his role at the Roswell Army Air Force Base?

He was in charge of assigning the troops to the cleanup effort

at crash sites.

He was involved in the first meeting they had after the crash with Colonel

Blanchard.

And what was your reaction when you first found out about your dad's role at

Roswell Army Air Force Base at this time?

You know, I wasn't even born when it happened.

Years later, I hear my sisters asking him questions and things like that, but

just thought everybody's dad was cool like that.

Do you know if he ever saw or handled the debris or any

intelligence reports about descriptions of the debris?

said he knew it wasn't a weather balloon.

So your father said it was definitely not a weather balloon?

Absolutely. That's one of the things I remember him telling me more than once,

and that he knew about weather balloons because he dealt with them with spying

over Russia.

He did tell me that the debris helped to develop the stealth jet fighter.

and that there was a similarity between the jet fighter and the thing that

crashed at Roswell.

That is fascinating.

Patrick Saunders' daughter says her father gave her a well -known book about

Roswell incident and wrote comments in the margins.

He wrote down page numbers, and then he highlighted sentences that he thought

were very important.

On page 142...

He highlighted Patrick Saunders was a major and assigned as the base adjutant.

His job would have required him to accomplish paperwork surrounding the

assigning of the troops to clean up the debris.

Did he ever share any names about who might have cleaned it up?

No, he just mentioned that he changed the serial numbers and he changed files

or destroyed files about it.

Really? Mm -hmm.

So your father...

In some ways was involved then with the cover -up and changing the serial

numbers of the soldiers. The men who cleaned up the debris. Wow.

And he also destroyed files.

Mm -hmm.

Hmm. Or changed them.

A key figure to the whole question, Jesse Marcel Sr., did confirm there was

cover -up, that he was not holding the actual debris in the original press

photo.

Yes, he was concerned about Major Marcel and the things that he was saying.

He didn't say he shouldn't have said them. He just showed a voice of concern

about talking about these things.

You know, Jesse Marcel seemed a little bit distraught by the fact that he had

retain his secret and lie to the public for the good of his country, what he

believed was important to national security.

Did you ever get a sense that your father was disturbed by the official

government line about what was recovered there?

I think it was hard for him to keep the secrets that he knew.

Even if other people were talking about them and writing books about it, I think

he struggled with that.

He took his role as officer in the Air Force and...

ensuring national security.

He took that very seriously.

So, yeah, he did what he had to do and was instructed to do and

made no apologies.

You know, we were warned not to talk about Roswell outside the family.

And we generally didn't talk about it.

This is the first time I've really talked to people about what he said.

Some of the threats that others have described were pretty intimidating,

Threats to your career, threats to your safety, threats to your legacy, and

perhaps even your family.

Your entire family was at risk.

So do you think he was protecting you from the secrets that he knew?

Absolutely.

He said that the world wasn't ready to know the truth about what happened at

Roswell. And I asked him what he meant by that, and he said, well, it would

cause social upheaval and problems.

Why? They weren't sure whether the beings were friendly or not.

By the term beings, she said she understood her dad was referring to

extraterrestrials. the aliens who had sent the spaceship that crashed at

to Earth.

Knowing your dad, what do you think happened at Roswell in 1947?

Knowing my dad, if it was nothing or a weather balloon, he would have just said

what it was and let's move on.

Do you feel like he had answers to who these possible beings were and where

came from and what they wanted?

I think he was full of questions about them.

I don't think he had come up with all the answers about what they found at

Roswell.

I think a guy by the name of Patrick Saunders could have written this

Wow. That actually got me pretty excited.

That is interesting because it's a whole new person to take a very close look

at. That opens up a whole other sort of avenue, doesn't it? It really does.

The real possibility that one of Jesse Marcel's fellow officers in the 509th,

Patrick Saunders, wrote the journal that was in Marcel's possession is an

incredible twist in Ben Smith's investigation of what happened at

Now, Smith wants to go over the results of his investigation with Joe

Pappalardo, the veteran aviation journalist he has been consulting with

start.

No explanation is going to be complete without a physical component, probably.

Please tell me you found a spaceship.

Oh, dude, I wish I could tell you that I came back with the smoking gun to prove

that it's definitely a Mogul balloon or definitely an extraterrestrial

spacecraft. I haven't found anything definitive.

Either way, and that is frustrating.

Well, if it was easy, it would be cracked by now, so I'm eager to hear

have actually having covered.

Chuck Wade claimed that he had a piece of alien spacecraft.

The lab, unfortunately, could not find anything extraterrestrial about the

metal. For me, it doesn't really impact the Roswell question. Either way, it was

collected on the plains of San Agustin some distance away, except that it's a

knock against the established evidence of ufologists.

So in terms of the probable crash site, I knew you were going to bring some

pretty cool technology to investigate that. Did you find anything that would

lead you to think that something happened there? We found a pretty

magnetic signature close to what would have been described as the impact

identified by a witness account. We took some soil samples, but we couldn't

actually find when or why this anomaly was created.

We haven't found any evidence that definitively proves.

Something extraterrestrial crashed here. Did you find anything that would

indicate that something else crashed?

To the south of the established debris field, the FAA crash site investigator

found a strange contrast in data that we don't know what it means. It's not

metal because our magnetometer didn't pick up any metal.

There might be something that could be some kind of plastic or neoprene layer.

That would buttress that.

argument that a balloon crashed there and here's an actual physical remain

it that would be about as close to a smoking gun as someone who doesn't

in ufos like myself would cling to desperately probably yeah well uh a lot

the facts are fuzzy still and i'm still trying to piece the puzzle together

But I feel confident that the government lied to the American people about what

it collected at that debris field. There were others like Jesse in that unit at

the 519 group who had some of the same ideas.

I've spent a lot of time now with the Marcel family, and I think at the very

least what they wanted was vindication.

Jesse Marcel's three grandchildren have been eagerly awaiting the results of Ben

Smith's investigation and want to know.

what he has found out about the strange journey.

Thank you guys for making yourselves available to chat with me. I wanted to

circle back with you and share some interesting turns in the case and some

unexpected surprises.

There's one thing that's still missing from the investigation, and that's

evidence. I mean, there's a piece out there somewhere.

Well, we didn't find anything yet. Sure. Jesse, you were there with me in

Pennsylvania when we went to the code breaker.

Without the key, the other half of the puzzle...

We can't crack that homebrew code.

So what's left is to keep looking for that other half. But that makes an

interesting challenge because we didn't know who wrote it.

I refocused my efforts back on the inner circle at the 509th group to see if I

could identify who might have written the journal.

I collected a few more handwriting samples. There was one individual who

actually...

With the short sample that we had matched to some degree that we couldn't

it out. Oh, interesting.

This would have been the base adjutant at the 509th group.

The second in command, a guy named Patrick Saunders, he was really close

Colonel Blanchard. So close, in fact, that Colonel Blanchard was his best man

his wedding.

Oh, wow.

For me, as an intelligence officer, if I'm looking for somebody with access to

information, this guy is as close as it gets. Definitely.

This is very exciting.

Did your grandfather ever mention that name to you?

I don't recall that name coming from him.

Obviously, they had a relationship for grandpa to have ended up with that

journal. I was able to track down his children.

A lot of the things Patrick Saunders told his children matched.

what Jesse Sr. told you three, that it was something not of this world, and

there was a cover -up. Okay.

He even mentioned that he was directly responsible for organizing the cover -up

by changing the names and the personnel records of people involved in the

cleanup effort at the debris field.

Oh, my gosh.

Another echo in Patrick Saunders' story with his family is he said almost the

exact same thing, verbatim. The world isn't ready for this kind of

And, Denise, you were with me in Houma. Your cousin mentioned the same thing.

Yep, exact same words.

His eyes kind of glazed over, and he said, there are things that this world

not ready for.

I wonder if they discussed it to come up with almost like the same terminology.

This is just so completely amazing.

I think you're closer to the truth now than we've ever been or anybody's ever

been. Sounds like it.

Another interesting comment Patrick Saunders made was actually about Jesse

He thought that Jesse had gone too far, that he had said something he shouldn't,

he had told the public too much.

When Grandpa came out in 1978 and told the story about what had happened, I

wonder if that...

I wonder if that worried him a little bit. Because I know it would worry me if

was trying to keep something covered up and this man just came out and said, no,

what everybody saw was something from here. Yeah, that duty to keep quiet is a

pretty powerful commitment.

I think he was courageous for coming out and telling it because he was going

against the protocol.

He felt that everybody deserved to know what the truth was and that the cover

-up needed to end.

We started this journey together trying to figure out the journal and to prove

with evidence that your grandfather was telling the truth.

Now, we didn't quite get to either of those ends. How do you feel about this

investigation, and what does it tell you about your grandfather?

If anything, you've added more credibility to those stories, and I

getting closer than ever to resolving this.

And I'll just echo that. I think that...

Everything that you've come across has actually more or less confirmed for me

that Grandpa and our dad were telling us the truth and that they did want

everybody to know what really did happen.

I looked at the journal recently and I found a quote that really captures sort

of the investigation.

And the quote was, keep your eye on the donut and not the hole.

If we just focus on the lack of evidence, the hole in the center, we

the evidence that we have found.

I think that this journal has more secrets to give, more evidence to

point me to, than what I've found so far.

And I'm reluctant to simply put it away.

To some, Jesse Marcel is a courageous truth -sayer.

To others, a man who let his imagination get the best of him.

Either way, He believed he'd witnessed an extraordinary event, and he was not

alone.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.