The Roswell Slide Debacle
In 1998, a box containing four hundred Kodachrome slides was discovered by a cleaning woman in an Arizona home being prepared for an estate sale. The home had belonged to a deceased couple, a former petroleum geologist named Bernard Ray and his wife, Hilda Blair Ray. The cleaning woman (variously identified as “Catherine” and “Cat”) took a cursory look and then stored the box in her own garage. When she discovered the box again ten years later, she found two slides of particular interest: blurry but fascinating images of tiny dead bodies laid in careful repose. With help from her brother, “Catherine” contacted filmmaker Adam Dew, who wondered whether the diminutive bodies could be Roswell, New Mexico, aliens. Dew brought the slides to a pair of Roswell researchers, Donald Schmitt (who, in 1995, admitted to fabricating Roswell research and his own credentials; see chapter one) and Tom Carey. Schmitt and Carey worked with Kodak to confirm the slides’ year of origin, which was determined to be 1945–50. The Roswell crash occurred in 1947.
In 2014, Schmitt and Carey announced that the pair of images were priceless additions to human understanding not just of Roswell, but to an understanding of our place in the universe. UFOlogists Richard Dolan and Jaime Maussan joined Schmitt and Carey to vouch for the slides.
Who were the Rays, and could they have had connections to the Roswell incident? In 1947, Bernard Ray pursued petroleum-exploration research near Roswell. In the community of petroleum geologists, he was well known and highly regarded. Hilda Blair Ray was an attorney and a private pilot. A combination of factors—the slides, Ray’s work and his proximity to Roswell, and Blair’s status as a flying attorney—has encouraged speculation about clandestine government work, secretive legal shenanigans, and the couple’s ability to travel quickly. What looks like coincidence to some is regarded as cover-up conspiracy by others.
The story put forth by Schmitt and Carey interested journalists, who got good copy when Schmitt described the slides’ discovery as “certainly . . . the most important event in our lifetimes, because we are demonstrating, not only photographic evidence, but we are also demonstrating what all of these witnesses have reported to is over all of these years.” Interested parties were invited to pay twenty dollars to log into the live Web “reveal” of the slides, on May 5, 2015. Of course, the reliability of Schmitt’s assertion hinges on one’s willingness to disregard Schmitt’s erroneous past claims, and to accept that the Rays had special insights into Roswell. Then there is the quality of the images. To the untutored eye, the frames appear unacceptably fuzzy, dominated by a dark, indiscernible mass situated diagonally at the intersection of what might be machined latticework. Whoever made the shots was an inexpert photographer, or in a terrible hurry.
Independent postings that appeared later include digitally “cleaned up” versions of the two photos. The figure in the improved images reposes, belly up, on a thin glass shelf attached by brackets to a lightweight metal strip. The strip has graduated, punched spaces that allow shelf adjustment. Reflections reveal that the shelf is inside a glass case. The alien physiognomy conforms, in a basic “big head” way, to the original Roswell witness reports. However, the figure appears to be considerably smaller and lighter than the “standard” Roswell humanoids. The shelf appears capable of supporting a few modest knickknacks and pictures, and little more.
Propped against the tiny legs is a rectangle of paper, out of focus and undecipherable, but likely an identifier. (Defenders of the Roswell-slide theory claim that the “paper” is a reflection of an overhead light fixture.) In the background at frame right we see the slightly out-of-focus lower legs of a woman and the hem of her dress. The presence of the woman, and the photos’ downward visual perspective, add to the impression that the wizened brown figure is very small. Further, the woman faces in toward the glass case, as if observing a museum display
An independent body calling itself Roswell Slides Research Group cleaned up the images further to get a read on the printed paper. The paper said:
MUMMIFIED BODY OF TWO YEAR OLD BOY
At the time of burial the body was clothed in a slip-over cotton shirt. Burial wrappings consisted of three small cotton blankets.
Loaned by Mr. S. L. Palmer, San Francisco, California
In a statement dated May 12, 2015, co-promoter Tom Carey insisted that the Roswell Slides Research Group’s enhancement “was faked.” But just a day after that, blackvault.com administrator John Greenewald quoted from a 1938 National Park Service publication discussing the Mesa Verde Archaeological Museum in Mesa Verde, Colorado: A splendid mummy was received by the Park Museum recently when Mr. S. L. Palmer Jr. of San Francisco returned one that his father had taken from the ruins in 1894. The mummy is that of a two year old boy and is in an excellent state of preservation. At the time of burial the body was clad in a slip-over cotton shirt and three small cotton blankets. Fragments of these are still on the mummy. [Mesa Verde Notes, September 1938, Volume VIII, Number 1.]
Roswell Slides Research Group historian and self-described “armchair researcher” Nab Lator discovered that the mummy remained on display at Mesa Verde from 1938 to June 1947. At the latter date, and with the permission of S. L. Palmer, the mummy was sent for display to the Montezuma Castle National Monument Museum, in Camp Verde, Arizona. And that is fitting, because it was at Camp Verde, not Mesa Verde, that Palmer discovered the mummy.
Records confirm that the mummy was displayed at Montezuma Castle throughout the 1950s and remained at the facility until at least 1971. No documentation of further movement has been found.
On May 15, 2015, Don Schmitt issued his “sincerest apology” for being “overly trusting.” In other words, Schmitt was not at fault. He was led astray by others.