All language subtitles for Episode 0302

Tonight on History's Greatest Mysteries...

..the Roswell investigation
goes into uncharted territory.

Previously, a cryptic journal may hold

vital clues to what crashed
near Roswell in 1947.

It belonged to an Army intelligence
officer who inspected the wreckage

and was sure it was extraterrestrial.

It was not anything from this Earth.

That I'm quite sure of.

But the Army said it was
a routine weather balloon.

Decades later, that officer, Jesse Marcel,

said he was forced to lie.

But all I could do
was keep my mouth shut.

His family hopes a former CIA
investigator will find the truth,

which might be hiding
inside the mysterious journal.

What I'm seeing throughout
the document is consistent

with that time period.

It has been authenticated
by a forensic document expert,

but what does the strange writing mean?

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

As our mystery continues,

a famed cryptologist examines
the journal for signs of a code.

Is there a message the writer
wanted the world to hear?

And can new technology
read the words of a memo

from a photograph taken
after the Roswell crash?

If this document says "victims
of the wreck," it negates

the sceptical arguments
about the Roswell case.

And tracking down the family
of alleged eyewitnesses who say

they already know the truth.

There were little people walking
around, and there were some dead

and some alive.

What really happened at Roswell,
New Mexico, an event that has

obsessed the world?

It's difficult to determine
whether or not those are three

numerical sevens or whether they are
meant to form a capital letter M.

What's the date of that page?

August 31, 1947.

That's interesting.

Your grandpa would have been
in Roswell at that point.

He would have been in Roswell, yes.

Former CIA investigator Ben Smith
has returned to the office

of Jennifer Naso, one of America's
top handwriting experts.

Joining Smith is Jesse Marcel's
grandson, who believes his

grandfather was torn
between his duty as an intelligence

officer to keep secrets and a hunger
to tell people what he really saw.

I think my grandfather really wanted
to tell everything he knew about it.

I can't believe for a second
that he was gonna let the story

die with him.

For more than a month,
Naso has been analysing the puzzling

journal that Marcel kept
among his most valuable papers.

She has determined that the journal
was written during the time period

of the Roswell incident.

It's this great mystery.

Why did Jesse keep this journal?

What could it tell us about Roswell,
which he said was the defining event

of his life?

So what then have you learned
about the handwriting?

So I did a handwriting comparison
with the journal and the known

specimens I had for Jesse Marcel.

So here is the lowercase P formation.

OK.

Where it starts going up,
comes down, forms a loop and ends

to create the bowl of the P.

OK.

Here is the known specimen writing
I had of Jesse Marcel.

And here's a P in "Japanese."
Yeah.

And it does not have that high
approach, coming around to loop

and finishing with the P,
whereas that is seen throughout this

document,

so it's a constructural significant
difference that I'm seeing.

So this journal was not written
in Major Marcel's handwriting?

Not based on the known writing
I had for comparison.

It is astonishing news.

Jesse Marcel is not
the author of the journal.

There's no proof indicating
a hoax or a forgery.

Or that it's anything
but an important document

to your grandfather in Roswell at the time.

Right. At the time.
Yeah.

It actually raises more
questions than answers, then.

This is intriguing.

The paper and ink are from the right
period, but Jesse is not the author

of the journal, so why did he keep
it under lock and key

for so many years?

Unlocking the secrets of the journal
will take more investigating.

If it's not my grandfather's
handwriting, whose is it?

Who wrote it, and what does it mean?

Is it a code that can be deciphered?

To find out more, Ben Smith heads
to the photo archive

of a major university.

He's hoping to find supporting
evidence to verify Marcel's story

that whatever crashed at Roswell
was extraterrestrial.

I'm at the University
of Texas Arlington, where they keep

the original negative
of the infamous Ramey photo.

That photo of the press conference
staged by General Roger Ramey has

long intrigued investigators.

His colleague General Thomas Dubose
is holding up a piece of a weather

balloon, which Ramey tells reporters
is what really crashed in Roswell,

but look more closely.

In his hand, Ramey is holding
a memo, too blurry to read,

that some believe could confirm
Jesse Marcel's story

of a flying saucer.

I'm here to meet Kevin Randle
to learn about the history

of all the analyses conducted
on this photo and also to figure

out, what more can we do to decipher
the message on that memo?

Kevin.

Ben.

It's so nice to meet you.

Good to meet you too. Grab a chair.

Sure.

Kevin Randle has written more
than 80 books and is a former

intelligence officer and lieutenant
colonel in the Iowa National Guard.

Among ufologists, he's considered
one of the preeminent experts

on the Roswell crash.

The Ramey memo is an interesting
part of the Roswell incident

because it's a photo of potential
debris with Jesse Marcel.

It's important because we have
a provenance for it.
Right.

We can say, "This picture
was taken on July eight,

1947, in General Ramey's office."

We've got the time.
We know who the photographer was.

We know who all the
participants were.

On July 7, 1947,
Jesse Marcel returned

to Roswell Army Airfield
with what he thought was debris

from a flying saucer that crashed
on a remote ranch

75 miles to the west.

After viewing the strange material,
the base commander for the 509th,

Colonel William Blanchard,
decided to issue a press release.

The press release shows
up--newspapers all over

the country, obviously.

"Fort Worth Star-Telegram" gets it.

They say, "Head out to the base,
to see what's going on.

They've got a flying saucer."

News of a flying saucer set off
alarm bells at 8th division

headquarters, so the next day,
General Roger Ramey held that famous

press conference to set
the record straight.

General Ramey is the one who told
the newsman it was nothing more

than a weather observation balloon.

Of course, we both knew differently.

The only reporter in the room
is J. Bond Johnson,

and he's communicating with the general,

and he poses Marcel with it
but apparently doesn't ask him any

questions, or if he does ask him
questions, Ramey would answer them.

He told me not to say anything.

He says, "I'll handle it from now
on," and that's exactly what he did.

It was definitely not a weather balloon.

What it could have been, I wouldn't know.

Jesse Marcel's grandchildren believe
he was completely blindsided

by General Ramey's press conference.

I see my grandfather holding up

something that he knew that wasn't what he found.

He was adamant that this was not
what he saw in the debris field.

The controversy over what crashed
near Roswell has made this photo

the subject of intense scrutiny.

You know what we ought to do is take
a look at the thing,

give you an idea of exactly
what we're talking about so that

you can see what's been done.

Yeah, let's do that.

People have been looking at this
document for literally decades

trying to determine what this memo says.

The problem with the Ramey memo
is it's taken at a slight angle.

It's crunched in his hand,
so it's got some folds in it,

so we're trying to interpret
the negative in such a way

that we don't read into it
what we want to read into it.

Right here by the thumb
is the words "Fort Worth, Texas."

At Fort Worth, Texas, yeah.

Very critical given
the time of the photograph.

You move down here, toward the very
end of the--the memo,

toward the very end and to the right
side, you can see it

says "weather balloons."

Oh, yeah. Look at that.
As well.

You really can.
Weather--weather balloons.

So that gives us an idea
what the document is about.

It's not the laundry list.
It's not a grocery list.

It has to do with what's
going on there in Roswell.

The other thing that is important
is right down here,

we have one word.

Now, if we can determine what that
word is, that might tell us something.

If it's Ramey, then this
is a document that was prepared

by General Ramey, and that provides
us with a little bit of information about it.

Some people interpret it as "Temple."

Oddly, Temple was a codename of J. Edgar Hoover.

No case ever ends for the Federal Bureau

of Investigation until it is solved
and closed with the conviction

of the guilty or the acquittal of the innocent.

It would not be surprising
if the memo referred to

J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary
37-year director of the FBI.

No clue, no matter how seemingly unimportant,

can be overlooked.

He'd been pushing for the FBI
to have access to the Army's

investigation of Roswell
but had been turned down.

In a note dated July 15, 1947,
just days after the crash,

Hoover contemplated the idea
of creating a special FBI unit

to investigate UFOs.

"I would consider it," Hoover wrote,
adding that, "We must insist on full

access to the disc recovered."

But the important part of this
is this sentence right here.

It could be "victims of the wreck."

"Victims" take us in one
direction, suggest something.

Could be "viewing of
the wreck," totally different?

If there's victims, that
implies a flight crew,

and a flight crew implies an alien
spacecraft because there's no flight

crew in a weather balloon.

The previous press release put out
the day before didn't mention

anything about victims.

If this document says "victims
of the wreck," it negates an awful

lot of the sceptical arguments
about the Roswell case.

I think there's some new technology
we can bring to get down

to the micron level

and really bring out the text to
decipher the meaning of the memo.

Anything like that would be great
because what we need to know

is what it says.

The photo archive at the University
of Texas at Arlington

holds 4.5 million negatives, most
of which are stored at 38 degrees

Fahrenheit to prevent
them from deteriorating.

So why does the Ramey photo
negative need to be stored

in cold conditions?

It's in that very vulnerable time
period from the 1930s

to the 1950s or so.

Those acetate negatives
in particular, stored in regular

room temperatures, will deteriorate.

Alright.

Here it is. OK.

It has--it's identified
as Brigadier General Roger Ramey,

left, and Colonel Thomas J. Dubose

looking over the wind forecasting device.

Wind forecasting, aha.
Yes, yes.

There are also pictures of weather
balloons that are included in this

series of negatives.

Right.
Because that's what they were saying it was.

Right. Fascinating.
Yeah.

Wow.

So the memo is just, what,
a quarter of an inch long?

About that, and it's folded,
so you can't see the whole thing.

Yeah.
I'd like to actually bring in some analysts

with some new technology called
GIGAmacro photography.

Using a microscope to actually look
at the sublevels of the negative.

It will be the most powerful
microscope ever used to read

the words in the memo,
and if Ben Smith can bring

into focus the word "victims," it
could expose one of the greatest

cover-ups in history.

Ben Smith has gotten exclusive
permission from the University

of Texas photo archive to analyse
the negative of a 70-year-old image.

It was snapped at the Army press
conference where Jesse Marcel said

he was forced to go along
with a cover story that a weather

balloon, not a flying saucer,
crashed near Roswell.

General Ramey is the one who told
the newsman it was nothing more

than a weather observation balloon.

Of course, we both knew differently.

How's it going?
Good.

Smith has travelled here
with Gene Cooper, an expert operator

of the GIGAmacro, a powerful
microscope that will be used

to try to read the blurry memo
in General Roger Ramey's hand.

This Ramey photo is a piece
of history that you won't

find anywhere else. I'm excited
I get to see it with my own eyes.

I don't get to touch it,
but I do get to use the latest

technology to peer into it
at the molecular level to see

if we can decipher whatever
message is in that memo.

My goal is to read the memo
in General Ramey's hands.

This will spark a lot
of controversy, but if we can figure

out what it says, we can perhaps
solve the Roswell mystery.

So what we're gonna do is we're
gonna get down into the grains of the emulsion.

We're gonna go up to 80,000 DPI
with the camera system

that we have here.

It's gonna take a series of focal
stacks, which is bringing all those

depths of field into view.

We're gonna merge all those together.

We're gonna then do it over
the entire area of that memo

and then see what we find.

And nobody's done it to this photo yet.
No.

No...No. I believe that the last
scan, done in 2015,

was around 1,000 DPI,

and what we'll be doing today
is in the neighbourhood of 60,000

to 80,000 DPI.

Wow...Wow.

So we really might be
able to read this thing.

That's what we're hopeful of,
and I'm excited to get

in there and see what we can find.

Oh, yeah. This is gonna be great.

To try and read the memo,
Gene Cooper will focus

in on hundreds of micro images
and then begin the painstaking job

of stitching them together into a mosaic.

While Cooper works, Ben Smith
travels back to Roswell to follow up

on an intriguing lead.

Is there any other information
to help me in my investigation

to get to that ground-level truth?

Local residents have been reluctant
to give Smith the names

of acquaintances that claim to know
more details of the Roswell story

than Jesse Marcel ever divulged publicly.

Why the hesitancy to share with me his name?

It's privacy.

We're still protecting the people
that--who have been most affected.

When the government says you don't
talk about something,

you didn't talk about it.

Smith has located Barbara Duggar,
granddaughter of Sheriff George

Wilcox, the man who first alerted
the military that some strange

wreckage had been found in the field.

Sheriff Wilcox is the fourth person
in that inner ring of witnesses

with firsthand knowledge
of what was on that debris field.

Wilcox got to see the debris himself
when rancher Mac Brazel brought some

to the sheriff's office.

Smith wants to find out what else
Wilcox might have told his family.

If you could, I'd like to hear
about your connection

to Sheriff George Wilcox.

I am Inez Wilcox and George
Wilcox's granddaughter.

My grandfather, George Wilcox,
was a very kind and loving man.

He tried to help the people that
didn't have anything 'cause,

you know, Roswell at that time
wasn't a real prosperous city.

And when did you first hear
about his connection to the events

of July 1947?

In 1969, I was at my grandmother's house,

Inez Wilcox, and it was the same day
that they had landed on the moon,

and that's when my grandmother
told me about the Roswell incident.

And what did she say?

My grandmother got up from her seat,
and she closed the door.

She locked it, she put the blinds
down, and I looked at her,

and that was not her behaviour.

She was very positive,
very beautiful and wonderful,

and she said, "I have something
that I must tell you,

and you must promise me that you will never,

ever, ever tell this story to anyone.

If you do, we will all be killed,"
and she started telling the story

to my sister Phyllis and I.

According to Barbara Duggar,
when her grandfather got

to the crash site, it was already
surrounded by the military,

and they weren't happy to see him.

My grandfather went out
to see what had happened.

When he got there, he saw the spaceship.

The flying saucer had
crashed outside of Roswell.

There were aliens.

And then she talked about the aliens
and how they were dressed. Yes.

How--how were they dressed?

Well, they had on a silk suit,
and they had the big eyes.

She said there were little
people walking around,

and there were some dead and some alive.

I mean, I just sat there and leaned
back in my chair and thought.

Barbara Duggar believed,
even more than the spaceship debris,

it was the arrival of aliens
on Earth that the military wanted

to keep secret.

Then the military came and told him
to go back to the office

because there would be
a lot of interviewing.

They surrounded the courthouse.
They came in.

They roughed George Wilcox up
in front of Big Mom,

and she said a redheaded colonel
came into the office and told

Granddaddy--got him and told him,
in no uncertain terms,

if they told the story
of the Roswell incident,

that their family would be killed
and all their grandchildren.

I mean, they threatened him,
and I said to her, I said,

"You really believe, Big Mom,
that the military is going to come

and kill all of us?" And she said,
"Yes, and they will."

It sounds like it really
affected your grandmother.

Yes.
She knew that they meant business.

My grandmother, Inez Wilcox,
and George Wilcox had been harassed,

they had been threatened,
and their lives had been changed.

My grandfather went crazy,
and my grandmother had to go

through a lot of hell because of that.

How do you connect your
grandfather's mental illness

to the events of Roswell?

What leads you to this conclusion?

My grandfather was perfectly normal.

He wouldn't have been sheriff
of Roswell if he weren't.

Right.
He was well-respected from what I've read.

And after that, he was not normal
ever again, ever again,

and if somebody from the government
doesn't like it, well,

that's just too dang bad.

It is real.
The Roswell incident is real.

It's a powerful story.
Thank you, Ben.

And I will weigh it with the rest
of my investigation,

and hopefully we can get to truth.

People in America and the world need
to know that the Roswell incident

is real and the government
can't say it's not true.

"It's an air balloon. It's a weather balloon."
It isn't. It was real.

So we are on our way
to the second debris site.

What we call the impact site.

The impact site.
Yes.

After meeting with the granddaughter
of a key eyewitness...

When he got there, he saw the spaceship.

..Ben Smith wants to find physical
evidence from the crash in Roswell,

so he's linking up with UFO
researcher and author Don Schmitt,

who claims to have interviewed 600
eyewitnesses connected to the event.

So who are our primary witnesses
that identified this site?

Initially, it was the family
of Sheriff Wilcox when they were

describing his coming out north of town.

It was Schmitt who first took
Ben Smith to the debris field west

of Roswell, the site
where Major Jesse Marcel collected

pieces of what he saw.

This is where it all began back in 1947.

But today, they are on their way
to a different location referred

to as the impact site,
which is north of Roswell.

"40 miles, 40 miles north
of Roswell," that was the drum beat

we were hearing for years.

Schmitt believes that a spacecraft
initially hit the ground

at the debris field, where pieces broke off,

but then it skipped 25 miles
to this impact site,

where it finally came to rest.

They had the much more spectacular,
the much more sensitive impact site

just north of town, and this
is where it was much more than just

debris and strange wreckage.

There were also remains.
There were also bodies.

The third member of the team
is Frank Kimbler, a veteran

geologist based at the New Mexico
Military Institute.

Well, I've been wanting to go out
to this final impact site

for a couple of years.

Kimbler has combed every inch
of the debris field,

searching for pieces of wreckage,
but this is his first visit

to the alleged impact site.

I like science fiction,
but I also like science fact.

I actually lived here for six months
in Roswell before I even visited

the UFO museum.

Then I went down to the museum,
and I said, "You know what?

There's no physical evidence,"
and that was the whole

gist behind this.

If Kimbler can find traces that
a spaceship crashed here,

it would mean Jesse Marcel was right
about the source of the wreckage

at the debris field.

I'm excited about this site
because it feels fresh.

It's on private property.

It's not known to the public.

It's not marked on any tourist map.

It's been protected all this time.

The debris field was always conceded.

That was the one thing that even
the press release was based on.

Mac Brazel, the strangeness
of the debris, the unusual

characteristics, the qualities
of that wreckage.

They've got the debris field.

It's scattered debris.

It's clearly, to them, something
that's not terrestrially oriented.

They don't know where it's from,
but they're looking for something

else, and it was on one of those
flights that they found the rest

of the wreckage.

At the very time that the rancher,
Mac Brazel, has led

Major Jesse Marcel,
as well as Captain Sheridan Cavitt,

back to the debris field,
so while they are investigating that

location, the debris field,
the military is alerted

to the additional site
just 40 miles north of town,

which we would learn was the impact site,

the remains of the craft
and the bodies recovered.

Don, you know that story
about the McKnights going over

to the Ball family ranch before
the military came out.

Yes, yes.

And basically said, "Hey, do you
want to come over and see the little people?"

Right. That was the talk back then.
"The little people."

Little people. Yeah.
The little people, the little men.

According to the alleged
eyewitnesses, several members

of the alien crew were badly injured or dead.

Would this have been before they
made the press release or after.

Before. Because given the crash
happened--this was the late evening

of July 2nd, so there's a full four
to five days before the military

actually is able to seal off
the areas, come in and conduct

the recovery operation.

The story of a man named Frank
Kaufmann has never been verified.

He claims he was a civilian attached
to a military unit assigned

to recover alien bodies and
the spaceship at the impact site.

Kaufmann gave this interview in 1995.

There was a lot of erratic movement
on the radar screen.

Then all of a sudden
there was kind of a flash,

and it just disappeared.

Something just went down.

After spotting an unidentified
aircraft, they headed

to the location where it had
disappeared from radar.

We got to where it was,
and we learned right then

and there it wasn't a plane,
it wasn't a missile.

It was kind of a strange-looking
craft, and it was open

and--kind of halfway.

Witnesses not only observing
the egg-shaped craft about the size

of a Volkswagen Beetle,
seeing a number of bodies.

One body was thrown up against the wall.

The other one was--was half
in and half out of the craft,

and when we got in close,
we noticed that there

were about three others inside the craft.

According to Kaufmann's story,
the convoy loaded up the ship

and the alien bodies into trucks
and headed back to the same base

where Jesse Marcel had brought his debris.

If there was the remains
of a craft and bodies,

where would that be located?

If a flying saucer with alien bodies
was recovered at Roswell,

Ben Smith hopes that there
still could be evidence at the site

where the object might have come to rest.

The search for the Holy Grail,
as we would call it, continues.

Yeah.

The debris field is where
Jesse Marcel found pieces

of wreckage, but according
to Don Schmitt, it is not

where the object finally came to rest.

He believes it hit the debris field
and skipped like a rock to land

at what he calls the final impact site.

It's the only wooden windmill on this ranch,

40 miles north of Roswell.

Schmitt says eyewitnesses remembered
certain landmarks here,

including a windmill and a water tank.

Piece of the windmill.
Piece of the original windmill.

Holy cow.
There it is.

Wow. I mean, this thing
is a historical relic now.

And we can see--it is a relic.
Yeah.

I mean, you see by the condition
of the wood, and that was the one

crucial element in the description
of the witnesses, that it was

a wooden windmill.

How tall would that windmill
have been, you think?

15 feet.
OK.

So it wasn't where you would think,
you know, a towering structure,

because as you see what--the
prevailing wind, it didn't take much

to keep those blades going.

You see the empty bed
where the metal water tank existed

back in 1947, so you see,
by its circumference.

Yeah. Yep.

It was about eight feet high, as it
was when we were first out here.

As I look around, I see
the Capitan Mountains,

the same mountains we could see
from the debris site that

Mac Brazel identified.

So coming about 25 miles from that
direction parallel to the Capitans

almost, coming towards Roswell.
Yes.

OK. So if we have the windmill right
here--so let's walk back

towards the Brazel debris site
100 feet, and we'll set you up

to begin your survey.

That'll work.
Alright. Sounds good.

Yeah.

I can't wait to take out a metal
detector and see if we can find

something out here.
It would be great.

For Kimbler, this is virgin ground.
He has never explored it before.

It's a fresh chance to uncover evidence.

Well, I don't know.
Piece of old wire.

See, that's the thing about this.

I think we're too close
to the windmill, and we're gonna end

up with a lot of--we're gonna end up
with a lot of trash on the--in

that general vicinity.

If you've got the evidence,
if you have a piece of a UFO

in your hand, and you can prove that
it's of extraterrestrial origin,

it's history making.

That is a quest like looking
for the Holy Grail.

Oh, look at this.
That was right on the surface.

I wonder if that's it. That's a
bullet casing, and that's a--that's

a high-powered one too.

Today, Kimbler is looking
for metallic debris.

Alleged eyewitnesses say that
when the military first came to this

site, they tried to clean up any
evidence of what crashed.

You find something?
Yeah. We need to dig this one up.

So it's right there. Right there.

X marks the spot.

Deeper than I thought it'd be.

Oh, here we go.
Did you find it?

What's that?

It's a little sharp.
Feels--looks corroded.

It's--I don't know what that is.

It's heavy.

It is a little green,
so maybe a little copper in there.

Copper, it's been buried
for a little while.

Let's just bag it up.
So mark the waypoint.

Now we got the exact location.

We can plot this on Google Earth.
Uh-huh.

We'll know exactly where we are
and where the piece was found.

Had this site not existed,
if witnesses had not described this

location with bodies
and a spaceship, then we might not

have the Roswell conspiracy
that exists today.

I don't know what to make of it just
yet, but there are supporting

details that suggest something
bigger happened here.

Ben Smith will have this piece
of metal tested to see if it

could be a bullet casing
from the 1940s or possibly a kind

of material mankind hadn't yet manufactured.

Meanwhile, progress has been made
on another important test.

At the University of Texas,
Gene Cooper has been taking

history's closest look
at the negative from the famous

photo using a GIGAmacro microscope

to focus on the memo held
by General Roger Ramey.

Gentlemen.
Hey.

Hey.
Hello.

How's it going?
Good.

How's the analysis going?
We've been busy here.

Gene Cooper's goal is to create

the most high-resolution image possible.

The GIGAmacro's lens is so powerful,
it can capture the grains

of a negative at 80,000 dots
per square inch.

We shot probably around
3,000, 4,000 images total.

Wow.

It's a combination of focal stacking
and then image mosaic stitching

to put it all together.

Nobody's ever tried this before.

We will have created the clearest
resolution in the history

of this iconic photo.

The question is, will
we be able to read it?

And will we find the smoking gun
that proves the eyewitnesses right?

So in this case, we're
looking at the very top of

the acetate base of the negative.
Mm-hm.

And on there, you'll see different
scratches and different artefacts,

so this one that's right next
to a key point, a letter there.

This little dot here?
That little dot there.

You can see it there.

You'd normally see it on a regular
scan, but when I actually focus down

into the negative, it disappears.

Oh, perfect.

And not by any, you know,
cloning or copying material from one

location to the other
or anything like that

digitally, purely optically.

We can start enhancing it to bring
out and take a closer look

at each of the individual
letters and phrases.

The memo is one of the most
controversial parts

of the Roswell story.

A lot of ufologists believe that it
contains a reference to victims.

So the question is, can
the GIGAmacro identify that word?

I mean, right away,
I notice our word "victims" looks

like it starts with a P.

Is that--are you--do
you see that too?

Yeah, I-when he first brought it up,
I thought the word became "pending."

This extraordinary high-resolution
version produced by the GIGAmacro

shows the photo in greater detail
than anyone has ever seen before.

What about, yeah, the signature?
Can we see the signature line?

This is the signature line.

R-A-M-E-Y.

The Y is way separated from the word.

Could that be, like,
a slight rise in the paper

or something, like an optical illusion?

I don't know, like a...

It could, in fact, be an optical illusion,

based on the way the camera was held
and the lens of the camera

and the lighting conceals things from us.

Right, right.

So do we have any samples of actual
teletype or fonts from the age?

Yeah, we did look up--there
was a font case that did match,

and it actually looks
something like this.

Actually, that's really
fascinating because I,

for some reason in my mind,
expected the letters to be

of varying widths and sizes a bit
like they are in modern fonts.

So go back to that Ramey photo.

Yeah, the uniform size
of each letter really makes

for more possibilities, actually.

We're getting closer now to clarity.

We can start to feel,
but it still feels fuzzy,

like we're groping for
the answer that we want.

Is this about as far as you can
go with magnification

without just losing everything?

You are, at this point,
seeing the grains of the emulsion

layer of the silver halides,

and there's nothing more to see beyond that.

I was a little disappointed
there wasn't perfect clarity in that

image, but using those new details,
I think there's enough

there to continue pushing forward

to identify the different letters
in that memo.

They have come closer than anyone
ever has to reading the words

in the infamous Ramey memo,
but if it does say "victims

in the wreck," Ben Smith will have
to find another way to prove it.

Ben Smith believes Jesse Marcel
knew far more than he ever

admitted in public.

I was familiar with all
materials used in aircraft.

This was nothing like that.

As an intelligence officer,
Marcel knew that he was duty-bound

to keep classified secrets for life.

It's curious.

Jesse said the wreckage he found
was extraterrestrial,

but if he thought it was
an alien spacecraft,

why didn't he mention its crew?

Does the journal Marcel kept
close his whole life contain

the rest of the story,
including details of a cover-up?

What Smith knows so far is that
Marcel didn't write it himself

and it is a jumble of disconnected
phrases that might be code.

"When down in the mouth, remember Jonah.

He came out alright."

If this journal is related
to the events of Roswell and you're

writing it to conceal your thoughts,

it's an interesting quote to start
off your code.

How did it go out there?
It's been interesting.

To discuss how to push the journal
investigation forward,

Ben Smith is meeting with Joe Pappalardo,

an aviation expert and author of

"Spaceport Earth.
The Reinvention of Space Flight."

Pappalardo is well-versed
in the Roswell story.

I went to a former Secret
Service authenticator.

Uh-huh.

She cut her teeth tracking
threats from crazy people

and nefarious people.

To link the letter to the person
writing it to build

a criminal case or.

Yeah, basically.

That had to hold up in court,
so she's the real deal.

Yeah.

The first question we started out
with was, "Is this an authentic

document?" The paper itself
dates to prior to 1950?

OK.

So she actually looked at the ink,
which suggests that it was written

before there were ballpoint pens,
so again, before 1950.

Another feature she identified
was this watermark.

This watermark belongs to a paper
mill located in Juniata,

Pennsylvania, Juniata County,
which is actually next

to Harrisburg, where Jesse went
to intelligence school.

Now, I don't know yet
whether that's just a coincidence,

but it's pretty exciting that
at least the journal itself

and the ink and the paper
are all legitimate.

No matter what else this says--this
journal could say anything

or nothing, but at this point,
it has told you something important,

which is the Marcel family
is acting in good faith.

If you had found that the paper
and the ink didn't match

chronologically, you'd have to doubt
every other part of this story,

so this is the foundation by
which the rest of the investigation

into this piece of evidence is grounded.

Yeah.

Now, the sample size of Jesse's
handwriting is actually pretty

small, but she felt fairly confident
that the handwriting in this journal

did not match Jesse Marcel's.

Hmm. That's even more intriguing.

If it's not his, why did he keep it?

Jesse Marcel stayed silent
for more than 30 years,

working as an ordinary TV repairman
in his home town of Houma, Louisiana.

We left Roswell perhaps around
3:30 or 4:00 in the afternoon.

It is very difficult.

In fact, with just verbal directions,

we never would have found it.

In 1980, he returned to Roswell
and gave that bombshell TV interview

in which he claimed before the world
that he'd been forced to lie

about what he'd found in the debris field.

I had never seen anything like that before.

As of right--as of now,
I don't know what it was.

After Marcel went public,
several retired officers

from the 509th spoke up
to support his story of a cover-up

and added the extraordinary claim
that the Army had recovered

a spaceship and the bodies of aliens.

Some of that testimony was recorded
by ufologists in a 1991 document

called "Recollections of Roswell."

I had learned first
that the sergeant of the guard

with a series of airmen went out,
and they surrounded the site.

Robert Shirkey was assistant
operations officer for

the 509th bomber group.

Then they swept the area and picked
up everything they could.

The bodies were brought in,
and everything was laid out

in hangar 84.

Hangar 84 has figured prominently
in the stories of alleged

eyewitnesses who say it's
where the secrets of this

extraterrestrial crash were hidden.

I received a telephone call
from the mortuary officer out

at the Army Airfield Base.

Glenn Dennis was the mortician
at the Ballard Funeral Home,

which provided services
for the Roswell Army base.

He was inquiring about,
what would be the smallest possible

casket that we could get that
would be hermetically sealed?

Dennis says he assumed there'd been
some kind of deadly accident

involving children, so he delivered
three small coffins to the air base.

And I had this friend,
this lieutenant nurse that

I knew quite well.

She said, "How did you get in here?

What are you doing in here?" And
she said, "You're gonna get in a lot

of trouble?" She said,
"Would you please leave?

And get out of here in a hurry."

By the time I had turned around,
there was another officer said,

"Hey, wait a minute," and I said,
"Looks like you had a crash.

Where was the crash?" And he said,
"You get the hell out of here,

and you didn't see anything,
and you don't talk to anybody."

Like Marcel, Walter Haut,
also with the 509th,

felt intimidated to stay silent.

This is censorship, pure and simple.

And I don't like it.

For many years, Walter Haut,
the 509th's public information

officer, claimed he simply did
as he was told and issued that

famous press release, but later,
Haut told ufologists that

what Marcel said was true and only
a fraction of the story.

He had personally seen the alien
bodies inside Hangar 84.

Some type of craft from outer space.
From where, I do not know.

Before he died, a pilot named
Oliver "Pappy" Henderson,

who was stationed at
Roswell Army Air Base,

in July 1947, made a shocking claim
to his wife and daughter.

According to their testimony,
Henderson told them

that he was the one who flew
the small coffins from Roswell

to Wright-Patterson, even glimpsing
the alien bodies inside.

Could these stories be validated
in the journal that belonged

to Jesse Marcel?

There is no way of knowing
until it is deciphered.

One question that I'm
considering was, was this handed

to him for safekeeping?

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

in the 509th group to see if this
might have been passed to him

by somebody else within the bomber group.

It's written by the same person,
and for me, that raises another

question why the marked shift?

There could be stress involved,
but could stress also mean

there could be a distress signal?

I don't know if you remember Vietnam
vets blinking into the camera

with Morse code to relay a message
while they're talking.

The order of these quotes is nonsensical.

It's not clear why they held
meaning for the writer.

Maybe there's no meaning at all,
but it was just a mnemonic device,

a particular quote recalls
a memory or a detail.

Think motive too.
Who would give that to him?

You can understand that
if you're a tight-knit group,

and you're in the middle of nowhere,
and you work in an air wing

with nukes, it's a pressure cooker.

They know that they could trust
each other with secrets.

Someone might choose him
because he was the fall guy

for the incident, so if you're gonna
give your encoded journal

or what have you to one figure
from the whole Roswell thing,

you would likely trust him to do it.

Right.

Next on Roswell: The First Witness,

first, Roswell was a flying saucer,

then they said a weather balloon,
and now this...

In 1947, it was the
misidentification of these

radar reflectors that is most likely
the famous flying disc.

Why do some people find it hard
to believe them?