Aztec “crashed saucer” — the story that ended in a fraud trial
In 1949 the Variety columnist Frank Scully told his readers, and in 1950 the buyers of his best-seller Behind the Flying Saucers, that in March 1948 the military had recovered a 99-foot disc with sixteen small humanoid bodies after it landed in Hart Canyon, north-east of Aztec, New Mexico. His sources were Silas Newton, an oil promoter, and a “Dr. Gee”, Leo GeBauer, who were selling devices they said could find oil because they used technology from the saucer. In 1952 the San Francisco Chronicle reporter J. P. Cahn obtained a sample of their “saucer metal”, had it tested and found ordinary aluminium; his True magazine article exposed the scheme, and one of their victims pressed charges. Newton and GeBauer were convicted of fraud in 1953. The story was dropped for twenty years, then revived from the 1970s by writers who dated the crash to March 25, 1948; a 1950 FBI memo by Guy Hottel, about three saucers said to have been recovered in New Mexico, is often tied to it, but the FBI calls it an uninvestigated second- or third-hand claim. It belongs here as one of the first “crashed saucer” stories, and one of the few that ended in a courtroom.
Explanation
A hoax. The story came from two confidence men, Silas Newton and Leo GeBauer, who used it to sell “doodlebug” oil-finding devices said to be built on saucer technology. The journalist J. P. Cahn exposed it in True magazine in 1952 (their “alien metal” was ordinary aluminium), and both men were convicted of fraud in 1953. No contemporary record of a crash or a recovery exists, and the local sheriff, newspaper editor and landowners denied that anything happened.
What was seen
Shape: A disc 99 feet across with sixteen small bodies inside, according to the story
Witnesses: None independent: the account came from Newton and GeBauer through Frank Scully
Duration: —
Sources
- The Guy Hottel memo of March 22, 1950, from the FBI Vault (The Black Vault)
- Christian Science Monitor — FBI UFO memo is the bureau’s most viewed public record (2013)
- Skeptic’s Dictionary — the Aztec crash hoax
- Wikipedia — Aztec crashed saucer hoax
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