Carol and Rex Salisberry
State Section Directors for
Pensacola MUFON
Interview, questions and answers bearing on recentinvestigation of the Walters' Case.
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We
wish to release to the public a progress report on our work involving
the reopening of the Walters' UFO case. First, two voice
stress analyses have been made on a tape recording of the
telephone conversation among Mayor Ed Gray, Chief Jerry Brown,
Craig Meyers, Mark Curtis and Tommy Smith on 15 June 1990. These analyses both
indicate that Tommy Smith was telling
the truth in all respects regarding the allegations which
he made concerning Mr. Walters and the UFO case.
Second, we
have investigated the writing on the model which Mr. Menzer found
in the attic above his garage and have determined that the
paper used in the model could not have been made from a house
plan that Mr. Walters claims to have drawn in September 1989
for the Lynn Thomas family. This second point has been independently
verified by others including Mr. Phil Klass.
Third, we have conducted analyses of Photos 14 and 19 in the Walters' book and have concluded that there is a very high probability that the reflections shown in these photos could not have been made by a hovering object as described by Mr. Walters and validated by Dr. Maccabee. It is a virtual impossibility for the reflections to have occurred as depicted in the photos. It is, however, very easy to have created these photos by using a small model and double exposure camera techniques as demonstrated by Mr. Mark Curtis of WEAR-TV. With Photos 14 & 19 shown to be probable fakes, scientific and intellectual integrity dictate that other photos depicting the same models should be considered as highly suspect. This includes the " Believer Bill ", the " Jane " and the so called "Tommy Smith " photos ( the voice stress analyses indicate that Tommy Smith did not take these photos).
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Question 1: Are you making this disclosure on behalf of MUFON, or is MUFON intending to release your information through a press conference or other means?
Answer: We are providing this information of our own volition and are not speaking for MUFON. We don't know at this point what MUFON intends to do.
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Question 2: Why are you making this disclosure without sanction a of MUFON?
Answer: Over the past several weeks, many people have advised us of their opinions that MUFON will not acknowledge or release any information from our investigation which tends to disprove the Walters' case. WE have continued to believe in the objectivity of MUFON and believed that they would accept the results of our work at face value. However, in the past few days we have come to believe that others may be correct in their assessment of the situation.
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Question3: What has caused you to change your opinion in this regard?
Answer: We first provided Mr. Andrus, International Director of MUFON, with our preliminary analysis by telephone on 9 Sept, 1990. At that time we described for him a simple demonstration that he could perform to convince himself that we were correct. It was decided at the time to seek additional analysis from other experts to support our own work. We did this and sent Mr. Andrus an Interim Report on 23 Sept, 1990 which contained additional expert analysis confirming our conclusions. We talked with Mr. Andrus by telephone in late September and learned that he had not even done the simple demonstration that we had suggested to him. This tends to make us believe that he isnt giving serious consideration to our analysis or the supporting analysis of other experts. Also, we have now learned that elements of MUFON are attempting to discredit us as " debunkers " which we deem eminently unfair in consideration of the large amount of time and effort we have devoted to objective reassessment of this case.
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Question4: Can you describe the simple demonstration for us and could our readers do the demonstration for themselves?
Answer: Yes, it is very easy
to do. It is basically a demonstration to show what
the reflection in Photo 19 should look like when reflected
from the flat road surface. The data to use can be taken from Dr.
Maccabee's article in the 1988 MUFON Symposium Proceedings.
These are as follows: distance from the camera to the
object is 185 (+/- 5) feet; the diameter of the light ring
at the bottom of the object is 7.5 feet; the height of the
object above the road is about 3 feet; and the height of the camera
is about 5 feet. You then set up a scale of 1 inch = 1 foot
to do your demonstration. For example.... Cut a circle of
white paper 7.5 inches in diameter, place the white
circle on a flat service and move away 185 inches to simulate
the camera location, then raise your eye level to 5 inches above
the elevation of the white circle, and you can see how
the reflection should look. If you look at this photograph
which we took of our own demonstration you can see that the
reflection should appear as a narrow horizontal line and not as
the much taller reflection as shown in Photo 19 of Walters'
book. Walters' photo depicts the reflection as " hanging
in mid air " instead of flat on the road as should be expected.
It could be argued that the Walters' camera might have
been higher than the 5 feet which we have used, but we have
shown that the camera height would need to have been about 45
feet in the air to produce the reflection in Photo 19. If
you will look at photo 19 in Walters' book, you can
readily see that the higher elevation was not possible. Also, here
is another photo which we took of our demonstration to show
the results of the higher camera height, and you can see that
the image of the reflection now approximates those in
Walters' photos. This next photo shows the result if the road
surface had been slanted up by about 14 degrees under the object.
You can again see that this approximates the reflections
in Walters' photos. The point here is that there is a
strong indication that a small model and double exposure camera techniques
were used by Walters' to take photos 14 and 19. There
is strong support for this in the work done by Mark Curtis of
WEAR TV. He made the same mistake in setting up his model
which produces the same " impossible reflection " results as
shown in Walters' photos.
Your readers can get an idea of what we are talking about here by observing the reflections of car headlights on the road as they drive at night, or by noting shadows on the ground in the early morning or late evening.
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