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Aug. 11, 2021 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:16:54
Edition 565 - Tom Carey
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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet by webcast and by podcast.
My name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
Well, I'm looking out of my window again and I did my radio show until very, very late last night.
And then I had a day of preparation for the next radio show and some podcasts.
And I had to sort out, I lost my phone.
So I've had a crazy time trying to get a phone that actually works.
And it's been one of those days.
But what I haven't noticed through this day is it rained for most of it.
Again, just never stops raining.
Thank you very much for your lovely emails.
I've had some great ones from people who've never communicated with me before, but have been there for years.
It's always a lovely feeling when that happens.
Thank you.
If you want to communicate with me, best way to do it is to go to my website, theunexplained.tv.
Follow the link and send me a message from there.
And thank you very much to Adam for making the wheels turn round on the website and getting the shows out to you.
And thank you to Haley for booking the guests, including Tom Carey, who is on this edition of The Unexplained with his partner, Don Schmidt.
They've investigated Roswell and other ufological topics for years, decades between them.
They have a new book, and it's a brilliant idea, touched by Roswell, Crash Encounters of the Rich and Famous, stories connected with Roswell and ufology.
From a ton of people, including presidents like Carter and Clinton, entertainers like Ted Danson and Denise Crosby, who was Tasha in Star Trek, Jackie Gleason, a British Canadian guy who was famous on TV in the UK will tell his story.
Huey Green had a Roswell story that we'll tell in full here.
The Jackie Gleason story in full you have to hear.
We're going to tell you that one here.
People like Paul Harvey, radio icon in the States.
Larry King, of course, from Larry King Live, story about him, and so many more in this book, Touched by Roswell.
So we'll talk with Tom Carey very soon.
We've had him on the show before.
It'd be nice to have him back on again.
I want to do a shout-out, and a very important and special one now, and I hope that they're both listening.
Elizabeth in the Isle of Man.
Elizabeth, thank you very much for your email.
Thank you for telling me your story, and I will treasure the fact that you did that.
And thank you for telling me about what these podcasts that I've been doing for all these years have meant to you and your family.
In particular, your nine-year-old son, Micah, who's listening to this right now.
Micah, I'm really pleased that you enjoy this, and I'm pleased that you're interested in these things, because one of the things that it will teach you, I think, Micah, is to ask questions.
You know, not everything that people say is right.
And whether you get the truth out of them, whether you get interesting information out of them, depends on the questions you ask.
I don't claim to be an expert on that.
But if you're interested in those things, age nine, I started getting interested in broadcasting and television when I was about five.
And, you know, it's a good time to start to get interested.
So Micah and Elizabeth on the Isle of Man, you both have my good wishes and thank you so much for the email that touched me very much that I received today.
Thank you for that.
Okay, I think that's more or less done it.
Let's get to the guest now then.
Tom Carey, Stories of the Rich and Famous, connected with Roswell and Ufology in this book, Touched by Roswell.
Tom Carey, nice to have you back on the show.
Thank you for coming on.
My pleasure, Howard.
Nice to be with you.
Well, I don't know how life is treating you at the moment, Tom.
Are you keeping busy?
Does a beer visit the woods?
Chris, the answer then is yes from the sound.
Now, you know, we've talked about other projects that you were involved in, yourself and with Don Schmidt.
This book that you've both done together, I think is just such a fantastic idea to get the thoughts on the topic and reflections on Roswell, but other ufological topics, if we can call them that, from people who are very prominent and very famous.
I don't think that anybody has done that all in one place before.
So great idea.
Why did you decide, apart from the fact that it's a great idea, why did you decide to do it?
Well, last year we came out with a book called Roswell, the Ultimate Cold Case Closed.
And we had the word closed in bold red letters because we thought that was going to be our last Roswell book, right?
That would have been our ninth Roswell book.
And we thought, well, that's it.
And Don Schmidt came up with the idea because in that book, we had a chapter called Touched by Roswell.
And it was a chapter about people, not witnesses.
Like, you know, in all of our books, we go through the witness list and what happened and when it happened, where it happened, who saw it, who had what to say.
Well, this was a chapter in our previous book about people rich and famous.
By that I mean not just Uncle Harry or Aunt Louisa.
I mean somebody that everybody, most people would recognize their name.
Movie stars, movie actresses, political people, sports people, TV people, and people that a lot of people would recognize that somewhere in their life they were touched by Roswell.
Not that they were looking for it, but somehow Roswell touched them, either inadvertently or through a relative.
Somehow they were touched by Roswell.
So we had a chapter on that in a book last year, which is doing very well, by the way.
So I'm thinking, well, that's our last book.
And the book is doing so well, and they really like that chapter.
Don Schmidt had the idea, well, why not do an entire book about the rich and famous who were touched by Roswell?
And the title of the book That we're talking about today is called Touched by Roswell: Crash Encounters of the Rich and Famous.
And I counted them up.
There's 126 plus or minus one people in the book whom we discuss.
Half of them we go into great detail, and the other half, you know, because, you know, if we discussed all of them, the book would be like three inches thick.
And to tell you the truth, Tom, the fact is some people have more eyebrow-raising stories than others.
They have a connection, but the nice thing, that was something that I noted about the book.
You know, those who had short stories, but relevant stories, you didn't belabor the point.
And those where you had a bit more to say, then you went into the detail.
Well, you just said it better than I could.
That'll be a first for me.
That's exactly right.
That's exactly right.
So Don had the idea of doing a book like that.
And our publisher who did our previous nine books didn't want to do it.
He didn't want to, no, we don't want to do that.
How come?
They never gave us, you know, they never want to, they say, oh, I floated the idea up the channels and the channel came back.
The company didn't want to do it.
Because our original company was New Page Books, but it was bought out by another company called Red Wheel Wiser, something like that.
And I'm guessing that if we still had New Page, they would have done it.
But I get tongue-tied trying to say it.
Red Wheel Wiser, they didn't want to do it.
Well, you know, we both know that anything creative, you get a change of management, you get a change of perspective.
So I guess that's part of it.
But you've managed to get the book out there anyway.
Yes.
We knew Philip Mantle.
Don is a good friend of Philip's, and Philip is a publisher.
And we thought this is a book that Philip would want to do.
And he did.
And it came out July the 1st.
The book came out July the 1st.
So it's only like a little month over a little out over a little of a month.
So it's out there.
And people, I've done interviews all over the world, a number of them in the UK, by the way.
And I'm happy to do the UK.
I mean, I did an interview a couple of weeks ago in South Africa, and they say, oh, we know Roswell is well known down here.
And I'm thinking, my goodness.
Well, of course, it's not the subject for this today, but they do have their own encounters.
We don't get to hear about them so much because they didn't happen in the northern hemisphere, but they do.
Yes, yes.
So that's how the book came about, Howard.
It was a confluence of we had good results from our previous book with a chapter on this.
And then Don got the idea of, well, let's do a whole book.
And the book, I hold it, holding it in my hands.
And I'm trying to count the, there are nearly 300.
Well, there's 241 pages.
It's 241 pages.
And like I said, we have, I counted them up, 126 plus or minus one people that we've identified who have been touched by Roswell somewhere in their life.
And as you correctly stated, we go into detail on the better known ones or ones who had better stories than others who just had a brief encounter.
But that's what we did.
And the book has a fantastic cover.
It does.
That's a real eye-catcher.
I know when I did a conference about a month ago, and all the books that Philip had sent me, I sold them within 10 minutes.
The cover was really eye-catching, and I sold them all in 10 minutes.
So we have great hopes for it.
I think you said it.
It's such a good idea.
Sorry for interrupting.
It's different than our normal Roswell book in that we just don't go through the timeline.
You know what I mean?
Like, oh, on July the 2nd, 1947, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
No, this is people, famous people, rich people.
And we start out in the book with a real rich fellow, Prince Hans Autumn II of Liechtenstein, is the first person in the book that we talk about.
Why?
And why?
Well, listen, before we talk about him, can I just ask you one very fast question?
Because it comes before him.
I'm a huge fan.
In fact, I'm re-watching it now, most nights, of The Invaders.
Now, as you know, the actor in The Invaders was a very dapper guy who I don't think was very well known before that series, but people around the world sure know him now.
Your foreword is written by Roy Finnis.
I've got it here.
He says, when Quinn Martin, you know, everything on TV in those days, in the 60s and 70s, it was all a Quinn Martin production or a QM production.
He says, when Quinn Martin first sat me down, my immediate concern was that of being typecast.
You got it.
Yeah, he said I was hesitant to do science fiction, but Martin was persuasive.
This new series will be a study in paranoia.
I mean, how great to know that Roy Thinnis is still around and how astute of him to make those observations, don't you think?
Oh, listen, you're reading my mind.
You're reading my mind here.
Roy Thinnis, whom we know well, he's a friend of ours now.
But I remember that show, The Invaders.
It ran for two years in 1967 and 1968.
I was a senior at Temple University in Philadelphia, and I couldn't wait till that show came on every week because it was the only UFO type show on, you know.
And so the show, as we speak, it's still running in Philadelphia at 3 a.m. in the morning.
That's the right time.
That's the right time for it.
I love the intro, though.
All of these shows had great big American voices.
A man too long without sleep, a deserted diner.
And let me talk just a second about Roy Thinnis.
I could not figure out because he had the looks.
He was tall, blonde, had blue eyes.
I thought he was going to be another Paul Newman or another Steve McQueen, you know, something like that.
And he did his own stunts, you know, for the TV show.
He did his own athletic stunts.
I mean, he was very athletic, had all these great look, great actor.
I'm thinking, how come he never became Paul Newman or Steve McQueen?
And it was because he was right.
He got typecasted in this Invader show.
That's my own belief.
He was typecast as, oh, that's Roy Thinness from The Invaders.
And he never could really break out of that mold.
I know he was in a movie called The Hindenburg, which I liked.
He had a secondary role in that.
But I'd have to think hard for another movie that he was in.
And it was because, at least in my humble opinion, Howard, that he was typecast.
Well, it was such a powerful series.
And, you know, you don't go into this in the foreword to the book, and, you know, neither should you.
But I wonder, having made such an impactful series with the premise that the aliens, if you haven't seen this series, you've got to see it.
It's absolutely timeless.
But the aliens are here.
They've taken, as the announcer says, they've taken human form.
And they're out to take us over.
And the only person who knows about it is Roy Thinnis, David Vincent.
Was he affected by that series or was it just a job for him?
I don't think he wanted to do it originally.
He did not want to do it because certainly because he thought that he would be typecast, which is ultimately what happened.
But I forget who talked him into it, but he never, you know, a job is a job, right?
You know, so he was going to be the star, which he was.
So he reluctantly did it.
And he unfortunately became typecast, but he's remained good friends with us over the years.
And I'm thinking he's probably in his 80s, somewhere in his 80s.
And we brought him to the UFO Museum in Roswell several times.
Every year we have an honored guest during the UFO festival that they have down there every July.
And Roy has been an honored guest three times.
He broke the record.
I'd have to think hard, Howard, to identify another movie that he was in.
But I thought he'd be like another Paul Newman.
I mean, he could act.
He had, you know, he blonde hair, blue eyes, athletic, good actor.
I think he was just, it's the curse of a successful TV series like that.
And I think David Jansen, you know, The Fugitive, I think David Jansen was also affected by that.
Because you always think when you ever see them after they have that successful series and you see them in a movie, oh, that's a thing you think of right away.
Oh, David Jansen, that's the fugitive.
Oh, what's he doing in this movie?
Another Quinn Martin production.
Yes, yes.
You know, one fellow who really made it was James Garner, was Maverick, the TV show Maverick, the cowboy.
He starred in that for a few years, and they had a contract dispute, and he went into the movies and became an even bigger star.
So there's one of the exceptions.
Steve McQueen starred in one of Dead or Alive.
He was a bounty hunter on TV, and then he went into the movies and became a huge star.
But that's the exception to the rule, I believe.
I think so.
Mostly you get typecast in that if you have a very successful TV show, you become typecast with that.
Never going to be my problem.
But I know that my listener will be screaming for stories from the book, but I had to ask you about Roy Finnis because I still am a fan.
Okay.
First story in the book, as you said, was this person, this prince from Liechtenstein.
Can you give me, can you remember his name again?
Because I've forgotten it.
Prince Hans Autumn II of Liechtenstein.
He's now the head of state of Liechtenstein.
And he's the richest monarch in Europe.
And he's among the top five richest monarchs in all the world.
So I'm trying to get to know him better, as you can imagine.
Well, can you tell him that I'm your good friend, too?
Yes, I will.
And what was his story then?
What's his urgical story?
His is a very interesting story.
And like I said, he's the first one we cover in the book.
In 1990, all of a sudden, we don't know how long he had been a fan of Roswell, but somehow the word got over, you know, remember I said Roswell is known around the world.
And he got very interested in the Roswell case.
So in 1990, he funded a conference in a Washington, D.C. suburb.
I forget the name of the suburb, but It was basically Washington, D.C. And he brought all of the known first-hand witnesses and some second-hand witnesses that we knew of, the best ones, you know, the best ones, not the ones, oh, I heard this.
I know that these are the top story witnesses at the time, 1990.
He brought them all together.
He paid for the venue.
He paid all of their expenses, as only one of the richest men in the world could do.
And he brought them together in Washington, D.C. to talk to each one.
He was so interested in the Roswell case.
Not only did he talk to each one, but he had each one videotape their story.
Each witness was videotaped.
And there were a total of 27 of them.
I think the conference ran about three days, but they got everybody videotaped, all 27.
And two years after that, they brought out a video, a VHS.
This is back when they had VHS instead of CDs or DVDs or whatever they call them.
In a VHS format called Recollections of Roswell.
And it's all the witnesses that he had brought together in Washington, D.C. to videotape for posterity their witness accounts.
And even to this day, Howard, I still use that video as a source document, as a source document for their stories.
So that's what he did.
He wanted to also sponsor an archaeological dig at the Roswell crash site.
And it got into the talking stage, and they agreed to do it, but something had happened that the dig could not take place.
And so when that happened, he also visited Roswell in person.
One of the witnesses invited him out to her ranch up in Capitan.
And he went personally to Roswell and New Mexico and visited some of the sites.
But when the archaeological dig could not take place, he sort of went on to other areas of UFO research.
So and he never, you know, we tried to get him again, but he had moved on after the dig did not take place.
So why do you think, you know, other than here's a wealthy man, and we know that people like Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, they like to do these kinds of ostentatious things, was that the only motivation, or do you think that he was genuinely since he interviewed all, since he got together?
No, no, no, he was genuinely committed.
No, he was genuinely interested.
I mean, he interviewed every witness himself.
He talked to every witness himself.
And he had all these big plans, but they all fell through.
So when the plans fell through, he felt that, you know, from his perspective, he felt like helpless to move forward with more research.
So he changed his focus to other, he's still interested in UFOs, but other aspects of it.
And I think he became friends with Robert Bigelow in Nevada, who had this Bigelow aerospace.
And so he became more interested in other aspects of UFO phenomena rather than just Roswell.
But Roswell was the, you know, his really, that was the first one for him.
It really caught his eye and his interest.
But when he felt that he could not fund anything further that would further the case, he felt help.
I'm just guessing now.
He felt like he couldn't do anything.
So he moved on.
And as you know, Robert Bigelow became very big in aerospace research.
And we think Bigelow knows a whole lot about where the wreckage is and where the bodies are.
So that's where Prince Hans Adam moved on to.
Well, Big Bigelow must have shared some things then, I think, with Prince Hans Adam.
Do you not think that?
Oh, no doubt.
No doubt.
Bigelow's a billionaire himself, and they were fellow billionaires.
So yes, I'm sure he did.
And to be honest with you, Howard, I've told Don, Don Schmidt, that see if you can, because Liechtenstein has a representative in Washington, D.C., and Don knows him.
And I said, boy, I'd really love to go to Liechtenstein to see the place and visit with the prince or the, I guess, the crown prince now or whatever the monarch is called.
I'd love to visit with him and see if he's still interested in Roswell.
I know he was back in 1990 when he funded that big conference.
But I'd like to go over to Lichtenstein.
Certainly with Don Schmidt, he would, you know, we'd go up and we take our wives with us to meet with the prince again.
I think that would be fascinating.
That's for the updated version of this book, I think.
If you don't mind, I'd like to go through some of my favorite people in the book.
And, you know, they're all prominent people in this book.
And we'll see how many of them we can get through.
They're alphabetical in the book, so that's how I'm going to do them.
Now, you've been on Art Bell's show.
You were on the Great Art Bell Show and the Lock Times for protracted periods in the middle of the night.
I know that because we've discussed that.
And one of Art Bell's favorite guests was the movie actor Dan Aykroyd.
Now, you feature him here.
Why is Dan Aykroyd important in this list of people?
Well, you know, Dan Aykroyd is a famous actor.
I think he was on Saturday Night Live.
He's best friends with Bill Murray, who was also a comedian on Saturday Night Live.
And Bill Murray is a famous actor, and they're still friends.
And Dan Aykroyd, at some point, let it be known that he was really fascinated by UFOs.
And he went so far as to produce a, I guess it's a DVD.
It was called Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs.
And it's a DVD.
I know that.
I don't know if it became like a motion picture or not.
But in that DVD, of course, he covers Roswell.
So, in fact, I think he's more interested in UFOs and Roswell than he is in being an actor.
He's certainly very, very knowledgeable on all this.
And you say in the book, quotes, Aykroyd dove deep into the subject with a passion on the mission to get to the truth.
Do you think he found out anything that's worth knowing?
Howard, you know, Don Schmidt and I have worked 30 years or more on this case.
And I don't know how anybody, unless they're Robert Bigelow, knows more about it.
I think Don Schmidt and I know more about the case, the totality of the case, than any other living people.
But that doesn't preclude others from knowing things that Don and I don't know, you know?
So, Dan, as far as we know, I don't see anything beyond what Don and I know, but the fact is that here's a famous actor who has almost given up his acting career to investigate UFOs and Roswell.
But as far as anything, knowing anything beyond what Don and I know, I would think not likely.
Okay, continuing alphabetically.
The fact that he's a famous Hollywood actor, but he's given it up in large part to this subject.
That's something.
So, and that's how he was touched by Roswell and certainly UFOs.
And he went so far as to put out a DVD for sure.
I'd have to read the, because, you know, there's like 126 people in here.
I don't know every detail.
I've forgotten every detail of each one.
It's 248 pages, whatever it is.
All right, let's get to the Bs now.
Dr. Werner von Braun, man with a checkered past.
He designed the V-2 rocket bomb for Hitler that, you know, targeted London.
So that's why he's got a checkered past.
He was, you know, he was an SS man, I understand.
He ended up, after the war, becoming the supremo of America's rocketry program, being the man behind Apollo.
And you say in the book, if I can just quote from the book here, in 1952, von Braun confided to a stenographer who was taking dictation from him that he knew of three UFO crashes, one of them being Roswell.
She couldn't remember the other two.
Now, von Braun, I interviewed Uri Geller recently, and he met Werner von Braun.
And Werner von Braun is supposed to have shown Uri Geller some exotic material, some metal material that was odd, and also taken him to a refrigerated room.
So Werner von Braun, if we are to believe all of this and the story of the stenographer, knew an awful lot.
Absolutely, Howard.
In fact, I'm surprised you know the story about Uri Geller.
Very few people know about that.
He told me himself two weeks ago.
Do you have the picture of Wernher von Braun showing Uri Geller?
He showed Geller a piece of the Roswell wreckage.
Yep, I have that picture.
In fact, it's on Uri Geller's website.
We both got it at the same place.
But Wernher von Braun is the father of the American space program.
And not to make a defense of him, he was his whole life was involved in space research.
He wanted to, you know, he, space, that was the whole thing.
And in Germany during World War II, the armaments minister Albert Speer brought Wernher von Braun onto the, you know, the team to build these V-2 rockets.
And when the V-2 finally, one was launched, it landed in Great Britain.
He was told about it as if he's supposed to be real happy.
He said, well, I'm glad it worked, but the only problem, the only problem is it landed on the wrong planet.
And so he was, you know, never in order to conduct his research, he had to join the Nazi Party.
So after the war, the race was on.
Portion of history.
Sorry, you were saying after the war, the race for space was on, wasn't it?
Well, the race for the German scientists was on between the Russians and the Western Allies.
And the race was on, and Wernher von Braun was the big enchilada, as they say.
He was the top one everyone was after.
Fortunately, the Western Allies got him, plus a number of the others.
And so he, after the war, he and the other rocket scientists under Operation Paperclip were brought to the United States and put up at Fort Bliss in an Army camp, Fort Bliss in Texas.
And that's where they got acclimated and they started work on the, they tested the captured V-2 rockets at White Sands in New Mexico, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And ultimately, Von Braun was transferred to Huntsville, Alabama to lead the space program, the United States space program.
So the interesting thing besides the quote that you gave earlier that according to a clerk typist there, her name was June.
Oh, my goodness.
I forget her last name.
I want to say June.
Her name was June.
Yeah, her name was June.
And she was taking dictation from him in 1952.
And she worked in an area where all of the scientists, they're talking about the Roswell crash just every day.
And so she picked up on all of that.
And so she asked Werner von Braun, well, what about Roswell?
And he said, well, there's been three crashes.
And he named the three.
But the only one she could remember, and this is 1997, she recalled this, the only one she could remember was Roswell.
Now, von Braun himself made two public statements that most people don't know about in his life about UFOs.
And both of them were very similar that he said, we have discussed there are extraterrestrial powers that are much more powerful than we had imagined, ever imagined.
And we don't know what their intentions are.
And that's all I can say about it.
Don't ask me anymore.
And he repeated that public statement twice.
And that's pretty, you know, and pretty much he's the top guy, right, in the space program.
And so you have him saying extraterrestrials are a fact.
They're here.
They're more powerful than we had ever imagined.
And we don't know what their intentions are.
And anything further, I cannot tell you.
Plus, he was allegedly in possession of a piece of exotic material derived from the Roswell crash.
So he'd clearly been taken into the loop.
He'd been taken into the sort of inner sanctum of the people who knew about this stuff.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, absolutely.
I was actually I was surprised to see that Uri Geller photograph where he was showing Geller a little piece of the wreckage.
Unfortunately, the photo, I don't know what you had, but mine was a little fuzzy.
I couldn't make out any detail on it.
But I can't imagine him, you know, not because they brought Geller in to try to mentally manipulate the wreckage.
That's what he was brought in to do, to try to do a mental thing.
I'm sorry.
Really?
Yes.
Boy, I had no.
We hadn't discussed that.
I didn't.
I'm hearing that from you now here.
OK, but and of course, in that era, Uri Geller was a kind of rock star, wasn't he?
Well, he's a rock star mentalist.
I mean, he would part of his show was that he would mentally bend spoons, you know, and he was brought in to to the Roswell wreckage to try to mentally manipulate the wreckage.
Because I have to tell you that the wreckage itself, there was no there was no engine.
There was no propulsion that was discernible.
So you have to think that, OK, what's making this ship go?
And it had to be something, you know, mental, some mental transmission that that they were able to effect to make this ship, you know, travel between the stars.
And so they brought in Uri Geller to see what he could do mentally with this wreckage and exactly what it was.
I couldn't tell you, except maybe to mentally manipulate it.
How fascinating.
All right.
Moving along, because I want to try and see if we can get as many of these in as we can.
There is somebody I'm not that familiar with.
I've heard the name.
Tom Brookshire, an American sporting legend, had a most remarkable connection with all of this.
And again, involving exotic material in his life.
Tom Brookshire, the late Tom Brookshire, was a defensive back on the NFL Eagle football team.
The Eagles, the Philadelphia Eagles.
He was a defensive back.
I knew him for years, not personally, but as a defensive back.
So I took my wife to Roswell one summer.
This would be 2008 to show her the so-called sites, mostly the museum.
And so we're walking around town.
And so we're walking and we come across this big football stadium, this American football.
And I'm looking through the gate and I said, boy, look at that stadium.
Boy, all those stands.
And so I hear my wife say, Tom, Tom, over here.
So I go over to where my wife is standing and she's looking at this bronze plaque that had been erected.
They put it in a little cement stand.
So I'm looking at it and it had the names of about a dozen NFL players whose names I recognized as NFL players like Roger Staubach.
And these were put in plaque as having played at least one game on that stadium turf, mostly, mostly probably in high school.
Well, the first name on that list was Tom Brookshire.
And I'm thinking, oh, my God, Tom Brookshire.
I didn't know he was from Roswell.
i made a mental note that when i got back home to call up tom brookshire so i got his name off the internet and i called him up and got his answering machine and so i said oh boy how do i introduce myself So I told him who I was and why I was calling.
But just to make sure he called me back, I said, Oh, by the way, Tom, you were a great defensive back in your day, but you couldn't cover number 23 for the Cleveland Browns.
Please call.
And within 10 minutes, he called me back and he says, Carrie, what are you talking about?
I could, too, cover the guy's name was Ray Renfro.
He was a player for the Browns.
He says, I could cover Ray Renfro.
I said, well, in this one game, he scored a touchdown on you.
He said, well, that was one game.
So anyway, we wound up talking for an hour and a half.
And he told me what his involvement was.
He said he was 16 years old in 1947, a three-sport athlete in high school.
And in the summertime, he worked at his father's gas station, his service station, petrol, and pumping petrol or pumping gas.
And he got to know a lot of the fellas from the Roswell Air Base south of town who would bring in their cars to fill up their gas.
And he said, all of a sudden, the base went into this lockdown in the summer of 1947.
He said, went into lockdown.
Nobody was getting in.
Nobody was coming out.
It lasted about a week, and he couldn't, what's going on here?
So when the base opened up again, the fellows that used to come to the gas station, they wouldn't talk to him anymore.
They wouldn't, they said, fill up, you know, but nobody would talk to him.
They wouldn't talk.
And he said, ever since that, that lockdown, the base and the air and the town distrusted everybody, one another.
They never trusted one another again.
And so he said, oh, boy.
And so one day, at the same time, some of his football buddies from Roswell High School stopped at the gas station.
They said, hey, Tom, do you see what, do you know this funny metal that Roy Tyner has?
Roy Tyner was a welder in town that had a shop around the corner from Tom Brookshard's father's gas station.
He says, yeah, he's got this funny piece of metal that does tricks.
And he says, well, what are you talking about?
I said, well, let's go see.
So they all go around the corner to Roy Tyner's shop.
So in they go and Roy says, get out of here, you guys.
Can't you see I'm busy?
And he said, we want to see this.
We want to see that piece of metal that you have.
We're not leaving until you show us that piece of metal.
So Roy figures, well, I'm not going to get rid of him.
So he goes over, he gets the piece of metal out of a drawer, wads it up in his hand into a fist.
So he's got it in his fist and he goes over to the boys and he puts his arm out towards them shoulder high with his fists clenched.
So he opens up this fist and out floats this piece of metal.
It looked like aluminum, but it was very thin, very light.
Instead of falling to the floor, it's just floating there in the air.
Just floating.
And so one of the boys says, do that again, Roy.
So Roy grabs the piece, puts it in his hand, wads it up and holds his arm out again and lets it go.
And there it is.
It's just slowly floating in the air and not falling to the cement floor.
And so he grabs it.
He says, okay, guys, seen enough.
Now get out of here.
So Tom says, let me see that.
Wait a minute here.
Let me see that.
So Tom actually held the piece in his hand and he's crunching it up and doing all that stuff.
And it just keeps going back to its original shape and what have you.
And he says, where did you get this?
And so Roy Tyner says, I got it from a friend of mine from a site north of town where a flying saucer just crashed.
And so I said, oh, okay.
You know, and so out they went.
Out they went.
And so Tom told me that story himself.
And he also gave me several leads of people to interview that he knew personally.
And he was a great, great, it's like we were old friends talking, you know.
And unfortunately for Tom, he died two years later in 2010 with gallbladder cancer.
From diagnosis to death was like only six months.
And so he died in 2010.
But he had a first-hand encounter with the Roswell case, not only because he lived in Roswell, because he actually handled some of the metal.
He gave us some witnesses, one of whom led us to the famous Roswell nurse that we had been looking for for years.
So that's Tom Brookshire.
Well, that's a great story.
In fact, I think that is probably the best story in the book.
It's one that I hadn't heard of.
A sporting legend in the United States, largely unknown here in Europe.
That's a great story.
His number was retired by the Eagles.
He was that good.
He was on the way to a Hall of Fame football career when he broke his tibia.
That's the big bone in your lower leg.
He broke it badly, and it ended his career in 1961.
He went on to become a NFL broadcaster of their NFL games on Sunday for the decade of the 1970s.
And after that, he started the All Sports 24-7 All Sports Talk Radio format in Philadelphia.
He's still going on.
So he's in the Eagles Hall of Fame, of course, but he's also in the Philadelphia Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame.
I never knew.
So he was doing ESPN before ESPN.
I want to move forward because we're only up to the C's now.
You talk to a couple of, or you talk about a couple of the astronauts.
Edgar Mitchell, who's been on my show, sadly no longer with us.
Gordon Cooper, strong belief that, and I'm quoting here from the book, Gordon Cooper, Apollo astronaut, strong Belief that UFOs represented devices from advanced civilizations, not from Earth.
Now, that is not the NASA official view, is it?
By any stretch of the imagination, right?
Gordon Cooper, as far as I remember, I don't think he ever made it to the moon, but he was one of the early astronauts in the command module, Gemini.
He was on the cover of Time magazine, very famous astronaut, but he never made it to the moon.
But he had his own UFO sightings, you know, several of them, and he was certainly committed to that UFOs are extraterrestrial.
And I'm just looking at now.
I'd have to read this little thing from him.
He says, he says, quote unquote, I think definitely there was something other than a weather balloon that crashed at Roswell.
I think the truth has been very submerged in all of the lies that have been told.
I had a good friend at Roswell, a fellow officer.
He had to be careful about what he said, but he said that it sure wasn't a weather balloon like the Air Force cover story.
He made it clear to me that what crashed was a craft of alien origin and that members of the crew were recovered.
So he himself was not personally involved, but he had friends who were.
And so he knew about Roswell.
He was committed to UFOs being extraterrestrial entities, but he knew from friends of his that were there about Roswell.
And I think that's pretty convincing.
Have you heard in your time researching all of this the stories of some of the Apollo astronauts who, well, legend has it, claim to have seen something on the moon, strange craft, lights.
The thing about that, Howard, is that the most famous one is Buzz Aldrin.
And when Buzz Aldrin came back from the moon, he told the story that when they landed on the moon, they were waiting for them.
He could see them up on the ridge.
You know, they landed, I think, in a crater, large crater.
But up on the ridge, he said there were machines.
There were entities waiting for them.
And I'm thinking, oh my goodness, this guy's an astronaut.
And he's saying this.
Well, at some point, they got to him.
And whenever he was asked again about it, he always did a dance.
I don't know if it was the Macarena or the Charleston, but he would dance all around the question.
So they got him not to talk about it again.
But having been in my life an accident investigator in another life, it was always drilled into me that get the statements of the people as soon as you can, because the first statements tend to be the correct ones, because later on they tend to either modify them or think about them, or somebody says, well, don't say that.
But get the statements as soon as you can right after the event.
And in Buzz Aldrin's case, that's what he said.
They were waiting for them to land on the moon, and he said they were there.
And later on, he just did an about face.
But I believe the first statement was right.
Just like the Air Force's first statement that the Roswell Army Airfield had recovered a crashed flying saucer.
That was their first press release.
That was the right one.
They had another think about that.
They became weather balloons and not for the first time in history.
Into the Ds.
Sam Donaldson, very well known on television in America, ABC News journalist, very well respected.
I knew nothing of this.
It's in your book.
The family who owned a ranch.
Basically, where a lot of the debris, the wreckage is said to have come down, was the Brazil family, wasn't it?
And Sam Donaldson has a connection to that family.
Yes.
Sam Donaldson, we tried, we knew he had a ranch in New Mexico.
And he is right next door to a woman.
Her name was Loretta Proctor.
Her son was with Mac Brazil, the rancher, the sheep rancher, who discovered the wreckage, and it was on his ranch.
Loretta Proctor was a famous witness, and her son, Timothy D. Proctor, always avoided us.
So we never did get to interview him personally.
But Sam Donaldson, he's looking to buy a ranch in New Mexico.
He met with Loretta Proctor, and she said he knew all about Roswell.
He knew all about, he asked her all the questions that an investigator would ask about the case.
But she wouldn't sell him her ranch.
So he bought a ranch very close to hers, which he owns.
He has to this day.
And Don Schmidt ran into him at, I don't know if it was an airport or someplace.
And we tried to get him to come to the UFO Museum as a guest of honor.
Like we asked various people every year to, you know, one per year to be a guest of honor.
We asked Sam Donaldson, and he said, well, maybe in another lifetime.
So he was also a graduate.
Remember, I mentioned the football stadium?
He was also a graduate of the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, really, to which that football stadium was attached.
So he graduated from, we call it NMMI, the New Mexico Military Institute.
And so he has a ranch right next door to where Loretta Proctor had hers.
But we just couldn't crack him to come visit the museum.
He's definitely got a connection to it all, as you've just said, and may have heard some stories that you and I have not yet heard.
Jackie Gleason, famous, internationally famous American entertainer, funny man, amazing character.
There is a story, he's in your book, there's a story that Jackie Gleason was taken to see the wreckage.
I'm guessing that you, I hadn't had time to read that bit of the book, but I'm guessing you tell that story.
Yes, in detail.
Yes, Jackie Gleason, what a, you know, he was called the Great One.
And people today, if you're a hockey fan, the Great One was Wayne Gretzky.
And if you're a political person, Sean Hannity calls Mark Levin, the conservative commentator, the Great One.
But the first great one was Jackie Gleason.
And he was an actor, started out as a comedian, a film actor, TV actor.
He even had an orchestra.
He was a composer who had long-running number one album hits.
I mean, most people don't even know that, but he was just a great all-around entertainer.
And he had this one thing, though.
He was very interested in the paranormal, especially UFOs.
And most people remember him from the Honeymooners TV show, which ran a long time.
And he had this famous supporting role as Minnesota Fats, as a pool shark in the 1961 movie The Hustler.
So he's most noted for that, but he had so many other things.
And he is very interested in the paranormal, especially UFOs.
So when he moved his TV show in 1964 from New York City down to Florida, Miami, Florida, because he wanted a change of scene.
And so he moved it to Florida.
And he built a house overlooking a golf course because he's an avid golfer.
Besides his paranormal interest, he was an avid golfer.
But he built the home in the shape of a flying saucer.
It was circular shaped like a flying saucer.
And it was said that he had over 1,500 UFO books in his house.
So he was really into that stuff.
So in 1973, Richard Nixon is the president, and he's an avid golfer himself.
He had a West Coast vacation home in San Clemente, and he had an East Coast vacation home in Keebis, Cain, Florida, not too far from Jackie Gleason.
And somehow they both found out about each other, and Jackie invited him up to the golf course over which his home overlooked.
And he and Nixon became golfing buddies.
Well, you know what golfing buddies do if you're out there on the greens.
You're talking all the time to one another.
And no doubt at some point, Nixon found out about Gleason's interest in UFOs.
So one day they, you know, they say, well, see you later, Mr. President.
See you, Jackie.
Well, that evening, there's a knock on Jackie Gleason's door.
It's the president of the United States, Richard Nixon, by himself.
There's no security around him.
And he says, Jackie, come with me.
And so out they go.
Nixon's driving.
He doesn't even have a driver.
He's driving himself.
So he drives to Homestead Air Force Base outside of Miami, Homestead, Florida, Homestead Air Force Base.
And in they go.
The guard recognizes both of them.
So they go on through.
So Nixon goes into this concrete subterranean building.
He says, follow me, Jackie.
So they're walking down a hallway, and Jackie sees all this strange wreckage pile up in the hallway.
And he says, oh, my God, what is this stuff?
So just, so he's just, come on, Jackie, follow me.
And then they go to a room.
And on four gurneys, according to Jackie, we get this story from Jackie's wife, Beverly McKittrick.
Jackie never goes public with this story.
We get it from his wife.
And she said, they went into this room.
There were four gurneys.
And on each gurney was a small, two and a half foot little creature.
It had a frail body, a small head, but it had these large ears.
So we know this is not the Roswell crash.
This is not the Roswell crash, but it's some other crash that, according to Beverly McKittrick, her husband told her that it happened near Homestead Air Force Base or in Florida.
So we put it in the book because it was such a great crash story from a famous person.
That's why we put it in the book.
And his wife said he came home that night around midnight.
He was all, he was really upset.
He was really upset.
And so he started telling her the story.
And she's saying, I don't believe this.
I don't believe this.
And he just glared at her, steely eyes.
He says, you've got to believe me.
And this is what Jackie experienced.
And he said, and he never went public with it.
It was his wife who did after he passed away.
What an astonishing thing.
And also it tells us, if the story is 100% to be believed, that Richard Nixon was more into this and was more in the loop on this.
Oh, absolutely.
And maybe other presidents.
Yes.
We know that Harry Truman, of course, was the president when it happened.
So we're often asked, well, which presidents know about this other than just the name?
And certainly Richard Nixon is one.
And Ronald Reagan would be another.
George Herbert Walker Bush would be another.
Trump, I don't know.
I don't know.
Obama knew about it because when he got off the plane, he was on a campaign trip in 2008.
He got off the plane in Roswell.
And as soon as he got off the plane, the first words he spoke were Gort, Klatu, Murata, Nikto.
So he knew his stuff.
So some presidents have known more than others, and that's reflected in the book, too.
There's a story about Roswell that is probably my favorite story, and that's because it's a not very well-known story, and I'm a Brit.
Now, I'll just explain to listeners, maybe in America here who's not going to know this guy.
But I grew up with a guy on television.
His full name, Hugh Hughes-Green, a British-Canadian guy.
He was a child entertainer who had his own talent shows when he was a teenager.
He was basically making a living for his family.
This guy was a prodigy.
He was astonishing.
Huey Green was the man who created a TV show in the UK called Opportunity Knox, where people got the chance to, and some of these people became megastars, perform, and people voted on them.
And he always used to say, now it's your vote that counts, friends, because he'd got that kind of Canadian style to him.
And Huey Green, a lot of people didn't like Huey Green, and he ended up effectively being removed from British television because he did a couple of jingoistic broadcasts telling the nation to pull itself together.
And, you know, some people saw that as being a shame.
Now, I'm not saying that Huey Green was a nice man because, you know, history shows another side of him, but he was a talented man.
There is a story that I only discovered recently, and it's in your book, that Huey Green was driving in America at the time of Roswell and actually heard those precious first radio reports because he was a young guy who had a lot of money in 1947.
He heard those radio reports in his car.
I am so glad you brought this up.
It's one of my favorite stories.
I wrote the chapter on this because I insisted that we do this.
Here's why.
In the first Roswell book, The Rod called The Roswell Incident in 1980 by William Moore and Charles Berlitz, first book ever about Roswell, there's a picture of Huey Green in there, and it tells the story of Huey Green was driving from California to Philadelphia when he heard, as you said, the stories, the news flashes of this crash of a UFO near Roswell.
And by the time he got to Philadelphia, the story was no longer in the news.
And I wanted to know, because the picture of Huey Green, he's in a, it looks like an RAF uniform, but it's really an RCAF uniform, the Royal Canadian Air Force.
And I think, wow, this guy was in the Air Force.
Why is he coming from...
He was a war hero.
He was involved in, I think, ferrying planes from North America to the UK during the war.
Yes.
He found himself.
He was in an entertainment troop in Canada when the war started that involved Great Britain.
So he was more or less stuck in Canada.
He joined the Royal Canadian Air Force.
And as you say, they ferried aircraft back and forth from Great Britain and Canada.
And that's how he got to wear that uniform.
And so why was he coming from California to Philadelphia?
Turns out, and I didn't know this at the time of the 1980 book, he was an actor.
He was in a movie.
He had just completed a movie called If Winter Comes.
And I didn't know that until one night I'm watching Turner Classic movies, and they're scrolling at the characters at the end, and there's the name Hugh Green.
I think, oh, my goodness, that must be Huey Green.
And so the next time that movie was on, I watched it.
And sure enough, it was Huey Green from Roswell fame, in my mind.
So I did some research on him, and he had just completed the movie If Winter Comes, which was completed in July of 1947 in California, in Hollywood.
So he was driving from Hollywood to Philadelphia to return to England with his wife, who was a Canadian, and they were moving back to England.
And that's why he was driving coast to coast.
Now, the kicker on this story is that one of the witnesses that we had was a fellow by the name of Elazar Benavidas.
He had just joined the Roswell Air Base in 47, and he took pictures down.
And one of the pictures he took in 1947 was of the Plains Movie Theater, which was the big movie theater in Roswell.
And on the marquee, and you can see this in the book, the movie that was playing when he took this photo was If Winter Comes, the exact movie that Huey Green was just finishing up in Hollywood.
And the other kicker to this is that the Plains Theater itself is now the home of the International UFO Museum dedicated to the Roswell case.
Synchronicity.
But, you know, Huey Green was a huge character on TV here.
And whatever people thought of him, and he was abrasive to some people, and some people did not like him.
other people owe him their careers because he gave them a break in TV.
He was decades ahead of his time in television.
He was an amazing entertainer.
And I was amazed, and I'm delighted to talk with you about this story, that he was, it seems, connected with this.
And we always talk about the way the Roswell story changed.
The first newspaper report, the first radio reports were very different from what was said by the time the top brass got involved and quieted the story down.
So Huey Green seems to have been part of this.
Now, I think we can only probably pick one more story from here.
And you've got so many people.
You've got Larry King, who's a hero of mine.
Paul Harvey, the man who used to do those wonderful radio talks.
I'm Paul Harvey.
G'day.
You know, he's in the book.
You've got Bill Shafner and Leonard Nimoy and Ozzy Osborne.
Maybe I should let you pick one then, because, you know, Elvis Presley's in there too.
Just as a final one here in the book, and I recommend this book not only for what you've written, because it's like no other book on this subject that I know, but also the great photographs that you've got in it.
But I'm going to let you pick one final famous person who's got a connection.
Well, Larry King, you mentioned Larry King.
Larry King was personally interested in Roswell.
He had us on his show several times.
And the one that I remember, Howard, was July the 4th, 2008, because I was down in Roswell and Don had been called home to Wisconsin for something.
So by the time the show aired, I'm there in the main hangar in Roswell, where all the wreckage had been brought in 1947.
It was like 110 degrees outside.
And inside, when they put the Klig lights on, it was like 150 degrees to me.
So I took off my coat, and I'm sweating like a pig.
And we get to think, okay, you're on.
And so we're on the show, and they have Don piped in by satellite.
And so we had Mickey Rooney's wife was on, Jan.
She had a connection to Roswell.
And the science guy, Bill Nye, was the other guy on.
And so King asks me a question.
So I take time and I answer it.
So I figure, well, the next question is going to go to Don Schmidt, right?
So after I answer the question, I sort of tune out because I'm expecting the next one to go to Don.
Well, I didn't know it at the time.
They had lost the satellite feed to Don.
So King asked this long question and he goes, how about that, Tom?
I said, I'm sorry, Harry.
You know, I was so embarrassed.
I was so embarrassed because, oh, I'm sorry.
Could you repeat that question?
But we lost Don for the rest of the show.
I don't know what happened.
And so I debated the science guy.
And unfortunately, how do you debase somebody who doesn't know the subject?
He was talking about the Thomas, he was conflating the Thomas Mantel case from 1948, who was killed chasing a sky hook balloon in Kentucky with the Roswell case.
How can you debase somebody who doesn't know what he's talking about?
I mean, he's got the wrong case.
So I just remember that because it was so hot in that hangar.
And one of the key witnesses that we brought in was an actual airman who was involved in cleaning up the crash site in 1947.
Unfortunately, by the time they brought him in with the heat, he didn't know what day it was.
And so Larry King asked him a question, and Larry, who's very experienced, he detected like in about five minutes, this guy doesn't know where he's at.
So that's how the show went.
And Jan Rooney's father was a colonel at Wright-Patterson at the time.
He was sent to New Mexico because something had happened down there in the desert, according to her testimony that night.
So it was just one of those things where everything was going wrong.
But Larry King himself had a deep interest in Roswell.
He says it's a case, according to Larry, it was the case that never goes away.
And that's true.
And that reflects very much upon the book, too, which is, like I say, a wonderful book.
And I'm very jealous that you met Larry King.
I'm very sorry that we've lost Larry King.
We're losing so many of these good people.
You know, my memories of Larry King traveling all over the world, as I did for a phase of my career, being in airport lounges from Hawaii to Los Angeles to Cape Town to Australia.
I used to do, when I was working on one show in London, I used to do a long time ago, my life is very quiet now, but I used to do 60,000 miles a year.
And I'd be in an airport lounge somewhere with a cup of coffee or a beer.
And, you know, you'd never feel, you'd never feel lonely or away from home because there was Larry King on CNN.
So that's what he means to me.
My listener's not going to forgive me if I don't ask you to quickly tell us why Elvis Presley is in this book.
We like to use Elvis Presley as a tease.
What I will tell you, it's because of his personal jet aircraft, the Lockheed Electra, fire engine red, all red velvet inside.
Don Schmidt and I were down in Roswell one day.
I wanted to take a picture of where the bomb pit number one was, where they loaded up the little bodies in a wooden crate up into the bomb bay of a B-29 to fly out of Roswell.
Well, the bomb pit where they used to load the atomic bombs was cemented over, But they still had the area was now a cemented cul-de-sac.
So we went over there and I snapped a couple pictures of this cul-de-sac where the bomb pit was.
And we're walking back to our car and we saw this red aircraft parked very near this bomb pit.
And we said, oh my God, let's go over and take a look at that.
And it was just fantastic.
We said, that has to be the personal plane of somebody famous.
So one of us suggested, well, probably Elvis Presley.
Well, we went up to the administration office of the airport there.
And they said, yeah, that's Elvis' old personal plane.
And it's been there for 35 years.
So that's where Elvis, after he passed away, they brought his personal plane.
They parked it right next to where the little alien bodies had been loaded up back in 1947 to be flown out of Roswell in the Bombay of a B-29.
It was bright red, red velvet, and it was there for 35 years.
It finally was sold in 19, I'm sorry, in 2017, four years ago, for $40,000.
But it was parked for, like I said, for $35,000.
Elvis didn't know it, but his personal plane had a big contact with Roswell being parked right next to a famous location on the old base.
Well, that story alone warrants and merits being in the bottom of the picture.
Here's the other thing about that, Howard, is that if you look at the bomb pit area where I did take a photograph, you can see Elvis' plane in the distance.
I didn't know it at the time I took the picture, but you can see his plane in the distance when I'm focusing on the bomb pit.
And I have a big red arrow pointing to it in the book.
She, you know, we've been on a hell of a journey from Roy Thinnis to U.S. presidents to astronauts to Dan Aykroyd to Jackie Gleason on that fantastic story.
Huey Green, well known in the United Kingdom.
So many people.
And we haven't even covered, I think, a quarter of the people in this book.
It's called Touched by Roswell, Crash Encounters of the Rich and Famous.
There isn't another book like this.
And it's, you know, I had a chance to speed read it today, so bits of it I missed.
But I can tell something that's really well put together.
And this is.
One quick last question then, Tom Carey.
You and Don Schmidt have worked together for how many years?
I joined the team when it include Kevin Randall in 1991, but I've been working exclusively with Don since 1998.
So I don't know.
So totally it's 30 years, but since 1998 with Don, I don't know how many years that is, but it's a lot.
Well, 23, I think, exclusively with Don.
I think.
Even I get confused these days.
Yes, we think we've moved the case from the 50-yard line down to the one-yard line.
The only thing we're missing is a piece of physical evidence, and we have gotten some information quite recently about a piece of physical evidence.
So we'll hold that one as a tease, but we've just learned about it.
Are you going to go and try and see it?
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
It turns out that the possessor of the piece we've already known about for years, but we have another witness who actually witnessed this person telling him about this piece as he had the piece in his hand.
So we've got to get this fellow to open up because we know he's got it.
There's no doubt that he has a piece.
He can't keep this secret forever.
Good luck with that.
Tom, thank you so much for giving me time.
Give my best to Don Schmidt, who I've spoken to before, and I wish you every success with this book.
I think you should do an audiobook version of it, the two of you.
That's a good idea.
That's a good idea.
We will bring it up with Philip.
Maybe we can channel the spirit of Art Bell to do it.
Pleasure to speak with you again, Tom.
My pleasure, Howard.
Tom Carey.
And of course, his writing partner, Don Schmidt, famous in ufology, famous in investigation of Roswell.
I hope you enjoyed that.
Some amazing stories in there.
I'd never heard the Jackie Gleason story in so much detail before.
It's all in this book, Touched by Roswell.
It's a lovely book, Crash Encounters of the Rich and Famous.
More great guests in the pipeline here at the Home of the Unexplained.
So until next we meet, my name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained Online.
And please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
And if you can find a way to maybe donate to the online show for the upkeep of all of it, then that would be fantastic if you can.
If you can't, then please just enjoy the shows.
Take care.
Thank you.
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