Roswell Archeologists The Continuing Search for the Roswell Archaeologists: Closing the Circle by Thomas J. Carey IUR, Volume 19, Number 1; January/February 1994 (IUR, International UFO Reporter, Copyright 1994 by the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, 2457 West Peterson Ave., Chicago, IL 60659, published bimonthly with a subscription rate of $25/yr.) In the November/December issue I examined and rejected the Barney Barnett story of archaeologists at the site of a downed UFO on the Plains of San Agustin in July 1947. There is no corroborating testimony for this event. But by rejecting the Barnett story, should we altogether reject the notion of archaeologists as witnesses to a 1947 crash/retrieval in New Mexico? Not just yet. In their 1991 book UFO Crash at Roswell, Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt devoted an entire chapter (pp. 113-117) to the search for the Roswell archaeologists. In addition to discussing the Barney Barnett story (which they have since rejected along with a Plains of San Agustin UFO crash), the authors mention three other accounts, one firsthand and two secondhand, describing apparent archaeological witnesses to UFO crash/retrievals. If not for these, I would have to conclude that the search was over and go home. The remainder of this article focuses on these additional archaeological witnesses as well as the case for a crash/retrieval in southeastern New Mexico during the first week of July 1947. CACTUS JACK A secondhand source named Iris Foster came forward as a result of seeing the Unsolved Mysteries show that featured the Roswell case and was interviewed by Randle and Schmitt for their 1991 book. The former owner of a cafe near Taos, New Mexico, she related that during the early 1970s (well before the publication of The Roswell Incident in 1980 by William Moore and Charles Berlitz) a fellow known locally as Cactus Jack used to frequent her establishment for coffee. He told a tale of being "out there when the spaceship came down" and seeing a "round object but not real big" and dead alien bodies "laid out." He described their blood as being "like tar" which stained their silver uniforms. I interviewed Iris Foster in 1991, 1992, and 1993 to learn more, if possible, about Cactus Jack. He was, according to Foster, "like a character out of a grade-B Western" with white hair and beard who could have passed for a prospector or a pothunter (an amateur archaeologist) as far as she knew. His real name was Larry Campbell and he lived out of a camper when she knew him in Taos. She did not know the where or the when of his story but assumed that it happened a long time ago, most probably in the 1940s, so it is merely an assumption that he may have been talking about the Roswell events of July 1947. In talking with Foster, I learned that she had a sister, Peggy Sparks, also of Taos, who remembered Cactus Jack. She recalled that he appeared to be in his late 50s when he was a customer at her sister's cafe. This means that he would have been in his mid or late 30s in 1947 and, were he alive today, would be in his late 70s or early 80s. In fact, Sparks stated further that Cactus Jack may indeed still be alive because, according to a lawyer friend in Taos, he was last seen in 1990 in the town of Las Vegas, New Mexico. She understood that he was burned in a fire in his camper and wound up in a state-run nursing home there. Using various techniques, I identified not one but two "Cactus Jacks" residing in the state of New Mexico: One living "somewhere in New Mexico" according to his Albuquerque dentist son, and the other currently incarcerated in a federal prison near the Texas border for drug running. Unfortunately (or fortunately), neither's real name was Larry Campbell. As I later found out, the name Cactus Jack is commonly used in the Southwest to describe any number of scruffy-looking characters who look like they just stumbled out of the desert or from under their favorite rock, take your pick. My own mental image of Cactus Jack falls somewhere between Walter Brennan's portrayal of Granpappy Amos on the old The Real McCoys TV show ("Li'l Luke! Li'l Luke!") and Roy Rogers' hirsute sidekick, Gabby Hayes ("You, betch'm, Roy!"). Following up on the lead that Cactus Jack may have been burned in a fire in 1989 or 1990, Kevin Randle spent a day in Las Vegas, New Mexico, checking the local newspaper for a death notice or a reference pertaining to such a fire. Nothing. After several failed attempts, I was finally able to get someone at the state-run nursing home in Las Vegas to check their records to see if a Larry Campbell was ever a resident there. After a few minutes' wait, they responded that they had no record of such a person there. There matters lay for the better part of last year until, following a talk on Roswell that I gave in Alamogordo in November 1993, a member of the audience came up and introduced himself as someone who might be able help me find the Roswell archaeologists. Although he was not specific, he said that he had sophisticated sources and databases at his disposal that might be brought to bear in the search. Not wishing to give away the store by divulging any of the archaeologists on my hot list, I gave him the task of trying to locate or otherwise determine the current status of the elusive Cactus Jack/Larry Campbell. There is nothing to report as yet, but one can hope that something will turn up one way or the other. Realistically speaking, however, Cactus Jack is an investigator's worst-case scenario and a long shot at best: no known residence, no known employer, no known friends or relatives, nothing. Chance may intervene as it has already done elsewhere in this endeavor, but I do not expect further developments in the Cactus Jack saga. THE DYING ARCHAEOLOGIST After viewing the Unsolved Mysteries TV show in the fall of 1989 that featured the Roswell incident, a former nurse at the St. Petersburg (Florida) Community Hospital named Mary Ann Gardner called the show to relate a story that was told to her in 1975 by a terminally ill cancer patient who was in her charge at the time. Up until the time that she saw the Unsolved Mysteries show, the startled nurse had considered the dying woman's story as nothing more than a medication-induced flight of fancy, but the woman' s story bore enough resemblances to the story on Unsolved Mysteries that she decided to call the show with it. According to the dying woman (Gardner cannot recall her name after so many years), she was a friend of someone who was part of a group which was out rock hunting or looking for fossils. The woman related that she was not supposed to be with them but went along anyway. Gardner referred to the group as archaeologists but, based upon the available testimony, they would more likely have been geologists or paleontologists interested in rocks or fossils - not archaeologists who are interested in artifacts. Whether they were professionals, amateurs, or students cannot be ascertained from what is currently known. Also unknown is the time frame of the story, but Gardner's sense was that it must have happened in the late 1940s because the woman did say that she was a student at that time. The woman appeared to be in her 70s in 1975, which would mean that she would have been in her 40s if it occurred in the 1940s. To continue, as the group was exploring the landscape, they came upon a crashed craft of unknown type with bodies lying about. "They were little people!" She described them as being small in stature with "big heads and slanted eyes" and wearing silvery flight suits. While the group was examining the bodies, units of the U.S. military arrived on the scene, secured the area and swore everyone to secrecy - echoes of the Barney Barnett story. Even as the woman was telling the story in 1975, according to Gardner, she kept looking around apprehensively to****** Source document truncated at this point - sorry. Does anyone know where I can find the end of this piece? - hal@ecafe.org.