This summarized account is the basis for the alleged “flying saucer” crash site north of Roswell.* The exact location is not known since the witness, Mr. James Ragsdale, in two separate sworn statements, has described two different sites, many miles apart.[107] This account was excerpted from an interview with Mr. Ragsdale by author Donald Schmitt. A transcript of the complete interview is included in [Appendix C].
* In The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell (Avon Books, 1994, p. 131), the authors provided a corroborating account for this testimony from a 96-year-old man who was in ill health, whose interview was not tape recorded, and has since died. According to the book, the man’s “wife and daughter said that he was easily confused” and “memories of his life were jumbled and reordered.”
The Account
James Ragsdale
“They was using dummies in those damned things”[108]
Testimony attributed to Ragsdale, who is deceased, states that he and a friend were camping one evening and saw something fall from the sky. The next morning, when they went to investigate, they saw a crash site:
“One part [of the craft] was kind of buried in the ground and one part of it was sticking our [out] of the ground.” “I’m sure that [there] was bodies ... either bodies or dummies.” “The federal government could have been doing something they didn’t want anyone to know what this was. They was using dummies in those damned things ... they could use remote control ... but it was either dummies or bodies or something laying there. They looked like bodies. They were not very long ... [not] over four or five foot long at the most.” “We didn’t see their faces or nothing like that ... we had just gotten to the site and the Army ... and all [was] coming and we got into a damned jeep and took off.”
This testimony then describes an assortment of military vehicles used to recover the “bodies”: “It was two or three six-by-six Army trucks a wrecker and everything. Leading the pack was a ’47 Ford car with guys in it.... It was six or eight big trucks besides the pickup, weapons carriers and stuff like that.” Ragsdale also said that before he left the area he observed the military personnel “gathering stuff up” and “they cleaned everything all up.”