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What crash landed in Roswell, New Mexico — and where did it come from? CASE DETAILS  Roswell, New Mexico is a small desert town southeast of Albuquerque. It’s a stormy summer night in the small town of Roswell, New Mexico, when a large glowing object zooms out of the night sky at a high rate of speed, followed by a thunderous explosion in the desert outside of town. A day or two later, as Mack Brazel is guiding his horse around the sheep ranch where he works most days as foreman, he comes down into a shallow valley and a chill creeps over him. He sees a huge field of strange metal shards spread out for almost a mile on a swath of blackened charred brush. At first, he thinks it must be an airplane crash, but he sees no people in distress. As he looks closer, the fragments of incredibly lightweight gray metal don’t look like anything he’s seen before — sheets of a thin, unbreakable metal that, when crumpled, seem almost liquid. He picks up a lightweight I-beam with iridescent violet symbols that resemble petroglyphs. What in the world?  At the crash site, Mack Brazel found thin metal shards that were unlike any material he’d seen before. Mack drives his strange debris over to the local sheriff in Roswell who decides it’s interesting enough to notify the nearby military base. The base commander sends the Bomb Group’s Intelligence Officer, Major Jesse Marcel, over to accompany Mack Brazel back out to the crash site. They gather as much debris as they can load into the Major’s Buick and Mack’s truck and head to the base. But Major Marcel makes a stop at home first — he wants to show his family the baffling materials. His young son, Jesse, Jr., is enthralled by the mysterious metals that his father describes as “not of this earth.” The base commander, in charge of the only nuclear bomb group in the country at the time, claims there aren’t any aircraft missing, but starts a crash retrieval operation. Within hours, he sends out a news release that a UFO has been recovered in the desert near Roswell. Then, all hell breaks loose. News media from around the world swamps the town with calls. The Department of Defense in Washington D.C. and the FBI quickly shut the story down with a hasty explanation that the crash was simply a weather balloon. But those who witnessed the retrieval first hand and participated in transporting the mysterious remains refuse to buy the official story. They know what they saw in those hectic and secretive days.  In 1988, researcher Don Schmitt and Army Lt. Col. Kevin Randle took over the investigation. Yet, the witnesses say they were also made well aware by military officials that what they witnessed was of the highest national security and must never be revealed to even their closest loved ones. It’s implied that the highest price will be paid if anyone reveals what they witnessed at Roswell. Years of secrecy pass as most witnesses spend the rest of their lives fearing for their safety and that of their families if they reveal what they know.  One army major, who worked at the air base in 1947, wrote this intriguing note to his family inside Randle and Schmitt’s book about the crash. But in 1978, decades after his honorable discharge from the military, retired Major Jesse Marcel’s few comments to friends about having seen a UFO come to light. In a videotaped interview, Marcel finally begins revealing his story and becomes the first eyewitness at Roswell to come forward publicly. Other witnesses follow suit, and news of the miliary cover-up puts Roswell back on the map. In 1988, Don Schmitt, a researcher with the renowned J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies and retired Air Force, and Army Lt. Col. Kevin Randle join forces and eventually take over the investigation into Roswell’s UFO mystery. They’re the first team of science-minded non-active military investigators to take a deep look at the Roswell crash sites and conduct a search for witnesses to the events. They eventually track down and interview over 600 people connected to the case and, in the process, bring forth stunning new witness testimony that creates more questions than answers. If you have information regarding the Roswell UFO mystery, submit a tip to unsolved.com. Unlock more content at www.netflix.com/tudum/unsolved-mysteries. |
