NBC-TV's prime-time movie "The UFO Incident," starring James Earl Jones in the role of Barney Hill and Estelle Parsons as Betty, first shown on October 20^th, 1975, was tastefully done. It conveyed some of the Hills' emotional problems that Dr. Simon had uncovered, which had resulted from their interracial marriage in a small New England town at a time when such marriages were less common- place than they are today. It also provided useful details for those who later would claim that they too had been abducted.

Shortly after the show aired, a young North Dakota woman named Sandy Larson contacted a local UFOlogist to report that she, her boyfriend, and her young daughter had been victims of a UFO-abduction that she claimed had occurred two months earlier.

Later, under hypnosis administered by Dr. Leo Sprinkle, Mrs. Larson described how she and her two companions had been "stripped naked and all parts of our bodies examined... even our heads were opened up and all parts of our brains looked at... We were dissected like frogs."

Yet several hours later, when the three "victims" returned home, they were none the worse for their alleged ordeal and there were no physical scars to substantiate Mrs. Larson's tale.

Then on the evening of November 5, 1975, barely two weeks after the NBC movie, six young woodcutters called Under-sheriff L. C. Ellison, in Heber, to report that they had been working in Sitgreaves National Forest, in east-central Arizona and that another woodcutter, named Travis Walton, had been "zapped" by a hovering UFO. They told Ellison they had driven off in fright but then had mustered enough courage to return, only to find young Walton gone - seemingly a UFO-abduction victim.

Not until five days later did Travis reappear, a few miles from the site where he reportedly had been zapped, to tell a story of having been taken aboard a flying saucer and given a superficial physical examination. The case was unique in several respects. Not only was it the first in which the alleged abduction was reported to law-enforcement authorities while the "victim" was still missing, but it was the first in which there were six supporting witnesses. Three months later, on February 7^th, 1976, it was announced that Travis Walton and his older brother Duane had taken lie-detector tests, administered by polygraph examiner George J. Pfeifer, which they had passed.

Seemingly this was the best substantiated of all UFO-abduction stories to date. Perhaps it was only coincidence that UFOs should kidnap Travis Walton barely two weeks after NBC-TV showed "The UFO Incident." The leaders of APRO, James and Coral Lorenzen, based in Tucson, quickly and strongly endorsed young Walton's abduction case, calling it "one of the most important and intriguing in the history of the UFO phenomena." (Several months earlier at the Fort Smith UFO Conference, Jim Lorenzen had announced that in the future APRO would focus its efforts on abduction cases and let competing UFO groups investigate the far less interesting "lights- in-the-night-sky" type UFO reports).

MUFON (MutuaI UFO Network), headed by Walter Andrus, cautiously straddled the fence with its appraisal: "Because of inconsistent factors, it is impossible to determine whether the case is authentic or a hoax." NICAP, now under new and even more conservative management, expressed the reservations of some of its investigators who warned that the Travis Walton case might be a hoax. William Spaulding of Phoenix, head of a small UFO group called Ground Saucer Watch (GSW), quickly became suspicious and promptly called the incident a hoax.

This cautious attitude in late 1975 by most of the leaders of the UFO movement to what seemed on the surface to be the best substantiated UFO-abduction case of all time contrasts sharply with the credulity that would be shown a decade later.

Spaulding's suspicions were heightened by a tape-recorded interview with Travis's older brother Duane, who had assumed the role of father to Travis after their mother's two divorces. Also participating in the taped interview was Mike Rogers, who headed the team of woodcutters. The interview was conducted on November 8^th, while Travis was still missing, by Fred Sylvanus, one of Spaulding's associates, near the site of the alleged abduction.

If Duane really believed that his young brother had been abducted by a UFO, for all he knew Travis might now be on his way back to the UFOnauts' native planet-perhaps to be dissected like a frog or to be stuffed and put into a museum. Yet never once during the 65-minute interview with Sylvanus did either Duane Walton or Mike Rogers express the slightest concern over Travis's well being?

Despite the report by Rogers and other members of his crew that the UFO had zapped Travis with something like a bolt of lightning that allegedly knocked him into the air, Duane volunteered, "I don't believe he's hurt or injured in any way". When Sylvanus asked if he believed Travis would be returned, Duane replied: "Sure do. Don't feel any fear for him at all. Little regret because I haven't been able to experience the same thing."

Duane added: "He's not even missing. He knows where he's at and I know where he's at." An understandably surprised Sylvanus then asked where Duane believed Travis was. Duane replied, "Not on this earth." After Duane began to philosophise about UFOs, Sylvanus asked if he had "read much about flying saucers." Duane replied, "As much as anybody".

Duane went on to explain: "I've been seeing them all the time. It's not new to me. It's not a surprise." And he added that he and Travis had earlier agreed that if either of them ever saw a UFO up close "we would immediately get directly under the object... We discussed this time and time again! The opportunity (to go aboard a UFO) would be too great to pass up ...and whoever happened to be left on the ground-if one of us didn't make the grade - to try to convince whoever was in the craft to come back and get the other one."

Duane said that this explained why Travis (allegedly) had run under the hovering UFO, despite warnings from his companions, resulting in his being zapped and abducted. Duane added, "He's received the benefits for it." A much more worried Sylvanus said, "You hope he has."

During the course of my own investigation I learned that Travis, Duane, and their mother, Mary Kellett, were avid UFO buffs that frequently reported seeing UFOs. More important, I learned that shortly before the UFO incident Travis had told his mother that if he were ever abducted by a UFO she need not worry because he would come back safe and sound.

After searching for several hours in darkness, Navajo County law-enforcement officers failed to locate Travis. Deputy sheriff Kenneth Coplan drove late that night to a nearby ranch house where Mrs. Kellett was staying to break the tragic news that a UFO seemingly had abducted her youngest son. Coplan was surprised at how calmly she took the news, as he later told me.

Travis's earlier prediction to his mother that he would return safely from a UFO-abduction came true shortly after midnight on November 12^th, when he called his sister from a Heber gas station public telephone. Other than being a little groggy, he seemed none the worse for his alleged experience. There was no sign of burns or injury from the lightning-like bolt that reportedly had zapped him.

On March 13, 1976, early in my own investigation into the case, I called to talk with Pfeifer, the polygraph examiner employed by Tom Ezell and Associates, in Phoenix, who had tested and passed Travis and Duane in early February. I learned from Tom Ezell that Pfeifer no longer was employed there. Ezell told me he had been out of town when the tests were given and he offered to examine the polygraph charts and give me his appraisal of the examination and of Pfeifer's appraisal.

As we wound up our telephone conversation, Ezell casually dropped a bombshell: "Let me give you a little information that might help you. Walton was given another [polygraph] examination before George [Pfeifer] gave him one." When I asked who had given Travis this heretofore-secret test, Ezell replied, "I believe Jack McCarthy, whom I would say is one helluva good examiner, in Phoenix." Ezell had learned of the prior test from Pfeifer, who learned of it from representatives of APRO, who had arranged the second test, which Walton had passed.

The timing of my call to McCarthy on March 15 was fortuitous because he had just received from a friend a newspaper clipping reporting that Travis Walton and his brother Duane had passed Pfeifer's lie-detector test with flying colours. While the friend did not know that McCarthy had tested Travis earlier, he knew that McCarthy was the most experienced and one of the most respected polygraph examiners in Arizona.

McCarthy and his wife also had chanced to watch Travis Walton's first public response of the incident on a Phoenix television program shortly after he had reappeared. McCarthy had heard APRO's Jim Lorenzen say that three psychiatrists who had examined Travis had "concluded that he is not party to any hoax and that he's telling the truth." McCarthy had good reason to disagree.

When I told McCarthy that Ezell had informed me that he had earlier tested Travis, he acknowledged that he had. When I asked for his conclusions, McCarthy replied: "Gross deception!" I learned that shortly after Travis had reappeared; APRO's Lorenzen had called to ask if McCarthy would give young Walton a polygraph test. Lorenzen explained that the tabloid newspaper National Enquirer would pay for the test, which would be given secretly in a nearby Scottsdale hotel where Travis was being sequestered to avoid the news media and to protect the National Enquirer's exclusive rights to Walton's abduction story.

Final arrangements were worked out with APRO's Dr. James Harder. When Harder mentioned that he had subjected Travis to regressive hypnosis to try to learn more about his experiences, McCarthy asked if Travis had been given any post-hypnotic suggestions that might possibly influence the test results. The experienced examiner also asked Harder if he believed that Travis was mentally and physically able to undergo the test and he was assured that he was.

McCarthy spent approximately two hours with Travis, briefing him on the polygraph test procedure, going over each question to be sure Travis felt able to answer with an unequivocal yes or no. When McCarthy finished around 4:00 P.M. he reported his findings to National Enquirer reporters and APRO's Harder:

"Gross deception." Further, McCarthy reported, Travis was resorting to tricks, such as intentionally holding his breath, in an effort to "beat" the test.

While Harder telephoned Lorenzen to report the bad news, the National Enquirer reporters asked McCarthy to wait and adjourned to another room. When they returned they asked McCarthy to sign a hastily typed "secrecy agreement," which he did. Because the secrecy agreement was hurriedly typed, it was erroneously dated February 15^th, 1975 instead of November 15^th, and thus was not legally binding. Yet McCarthy held his tongue until I called on March 15^th, 1976 and said that Ezell had told me he had earlier tested Walton. McCarthy was too honest a man to deny it.

Several weeks after Travis had flunked the McCarthy lie-detector test, the National Enquirer ran a large feature story about his "UFO-abduction." The article headlined the fact that the six woodcutters had taken polygraph tests while Travis was still missing to determine if they might have killed him and hidden his body. Five of the six passed the test. There was no mention of McCarthy's test that Travis had flunked badly.

On March 21^st, less than a week after I had talked with McCarthy, I talked by telephone with APRO's Lorenzen. Without revealing what I had just learned and after we had discussed the test given by Pfeifer, I asked Lorenzen, "Do you know if Travis has taken any other polygraph tests?" The APRO official replied, "No, never." I opted not to challenge his veracity-yet.

The next day, March 22^nd, I called Ezell back to get his appraisal of the Pfeifer test that Travis and Duane reportedly had passed. Ezell told me that after careful examination of the polygraph charts it was his opinion that it was impossible to tell if Travis and Duane were responding truthfully to test questions. More important, Ezell told me, was Pfeifer's notation on the charts that he had allowed Travis to "dictate" some of the questions he would be asked. This, Ezell assured me, was a violation of one of the basic principles of polygraphy.

Thus, the results of the lie-detector test that Travis had flunked, conducted by the most experienced polygraph examiner in Arizona, were being withheld from the public by the National Enquirer and by APRO. But the results of the Pfeifer-administered test that Travis had passed, which Ezell now had disavowed, had been carried by the wire services and published in many newspapers. Therefore, millions of newspaper readers could readily conclude that the abduction tale was true.

My continuing investigation provided useful insights into Travis Walton and members of his family. For example, I discovered that about five years before the UFO incident, on May 5^th, 1971, Travis Walton and Charles Rogers, brother of the woodcutters' crew chief, had pleaded guilty to charges of burglary and forgery. They had broken into the offices of Western Molding Co., stolen company checks, forged signatures and cashed them. After agreeing to make restitution, Travis and Charles Rogers were placed on probation for two years. After living up to the conditions of the probation under the terms of Arizona law, they were allowed to "cleanse the record" by appearing in court and pleading "not guilty" to the charge to which they had originally pleaded guilty.

From Mrs. Richard Gibson, of Heber, I learned that her father-in-law earlier had taken pity on Mrs. Kellett and her family and allowed them to spend the summer rent-free in his small ranch house a few miles from the alleged UFO abduction site (Mrs. Kellett was living there at the time of the incident even though it was then early November). Mrs. Gibson told me that in return for this kindness, members of the Walton family repeatedly perpetrated hoaxes on the Gibson family.

On one occasion, she told me, "they called and said, 'Somebody has killed a whole bunch of your cows. They are dead all over the meadows here.' "But when the Gibsons drove up from Heber, they found "there wasn't one dead cow... It was a complete hoax." In view of Mrs. Gibson's first-hand experience with the family, I was not surprised when she said she suspected the UFO abduction was also a hoax.

If the UFO abduction story was a hoax, as I now suspected, what was the motive? Was it simply a prank concocted by young men for laughs? Crew chief Mike Rogers unwittingly provided an important clue to a more likely motive during his taped interview of November 8^th with Sylvanus when he said: "This contract we have (with the U.S. Forest Service) is seriously behind schedule. In fact, Monday (November 10^th) the time is up.

We haven't done any work on it since Wednesday because of this thing (UFO incident) and therefore it won't be done. I hope they take that into account."

My further investigation revealed that Rogers was sorely in need of an "Act of God" or its practical equivalent, which the alleged UFO-abduction, it was hoped, could provide. In all probability, the inspiration for the hoax was provided by the NBC-TV movie about the Hill case, which Rogers admitted to me he had seen the same night that he wrote a letter to the U.S. Forest Service attempting to explain why he was so delinquent on his contract. In that letter, as I would later discover, Rogers had resorted to deception and falsehood.

More than a year earlier, on June 26, 1974, Rogers was one of three bidders to the Forest Service for a contract to thin out small trees in an area known as Turkey Springs. When the bids were opened, Rogers discovered that he had won the job, but his bid of $27.40 an acre for the 1,277-acre site was less than half his price quoted by one experienced competitor and 27% below that of another. Clearly, Rogers had bid too low. Rogers was committed to complete the job within 200 "working days," which took into account that mountain snows typically arrive by early November and extend into May. The contract later was reduced to 1,205 acres, with no reduction in time.

By early August 1975, the 200 working days had expired and Rogers had completed only about 70% of the job, leaving 353 acres still to do. To avoid a contract default, Rogers had requested and been granted an 84 working day extension, to November 10^th, 1975. During the previous year, Rogers and his crew had averaged slightly more than four acres a day. If he could maintain the same average, he could finish the Turkey Springs job by November 10^th - providing the first snows had not arrived. But in return for this time-extension, Rogers would be penalised $1.00 an acre on his original, already too low, price.

Under the standard Forest Service policy, 10% of Rogers payments were withheld until the job was completed satisfactorily. If he failed to complete the Turkey Springs job by November 10^th, then this "10% retention" fund - which amounted to about $2,500 - could be used to pay another contractor brought in to complete the job. Thus, if Rogers failed to complete Turkey Springs thinning by November 10^th, he had serious problems. He could request still another contract extension, which might be granted, but his payment per acre would be reduced still further. And because of the long winter, it would not be until the following summer that he could hope to complete the job and collect his $2,500 retention fund.

As of October 16^th, Rogers had used up roughly 80 percent of his contract extension time, but he had completed only 37% of the remaining 353 acres. There was no possible way in which Rogers could hope to complete the balance in the several weeks remaining. This was obvious to the Forest Service inspector, Tom Hentz, who visited Turkey Springs and he so, reported to Maurice Marchbanks, the Forest Service-contracting officer, on October 16^th. Rogers already had one contract default on his Forest Service record and did not want another that could cost him his $2,500 retention fund on a job for which he had bid too little. More important, another default might disqualify him for future Forest Service jobs.

On the same night that Rogers saw the NBC-TV movie about the Hills UFO abduction, he wrote a letter to his Forest Service-contracting officer saying: "I cannot honestly say whether or not we will finish on time. However, we are working every day with as much manpower as I can hire. I will not stop work until the job is finished or until I am asked to stop. I have had considerable trouble keeping a full crew on the job. The area is very thick and the guys have poor morale because of this... We will keep working and trying hard."

What Rogers failed to tell his contract monitor was that the principal reason he was so delinquent on the Turkey Springs job was that he was using his crew to work for other Forest Service contractors who had not underbid their jobs and who therefore could pay Rogers more than he could earn on his own job. Rogers inadvertently admitted this to me during one of our many long telephone conversations.

Forest Service contracts, like most contracts, have "Act of God" provisions, which provide relief to a contractor in the event of entirely unforeseen occurrences of grave consequence. If a UFO should abduct a member of the Rogers crew near Turkey Springs, it would be understandable if Rogers and other members of his crew were fearful of returning to the area. It could be hoped that the Forest Service would consider this an Act of God, would give Rogers an extension without price penalty and would not use his $2,500 retention-fund for another contractor. And thus Rogers would avoid another black mark on his Forest Service record.

Fortunately for Rogers, a member of his crew was a UFO buff who was sufficiently familiar with the subject to be able to invent an account of what had happened to him aboard a flying saucer. But the incident would have to occur near Turkey Springs so that crew members later could claim to be afraid to return to their there. If Travis were abducted by a UFO near Heber or during the drive back to Snowflake, that would not provide a reason the crew to refuse to return to Turkey Springs. If Travis really was abducted, it is clear that the UFOnauts selected the site to meet Rogers's Act-of-God requirements for his seriously delinquent Forest Service contract.

There was another potential motivation for Rogers and his crew. As a UFO buff, Travis would certainly have read many UFO articles featured in the National Enquirer. Almost certainly he would have known that this tabloid was then offering an award of $100,000 for convincing evidence of even one extraterrestrial visitor and a consolation prize of $5,000 to $10,000 for the most impressive UFO case of any year. That could help compensate Rogers and his crew for his original too-low bid. Perhaps the tale could be sold to Hollywood for a movie, providing added incentive (In June 1987, I learned that a Hollywood producer had plans to make such a movie and that the script would be written by Tracey Torme, who ardently believes in UFO-abductions).

The National Enquirer did select the Walton case as the most impressive UFO incident for 1975, giving Rogers and his crew a $5,000 prize, which was announced in its July 6^th, 1976, edition. Its feature story announcing the award contained endorsements of the case by Hynek, Harder and Sprinkle, but made no mention of the McCarthy lie-detector test that Travis had flunked. Sprinkle's endorsement said: "It's probably one of the most spectacular abductions that has ever been reported anywhere... Thanks to the many witnesses and the polygraph examinations of those witnesses, we have pretty good reason to take the Walton case at face value." Harder was quoted as saying, "Beyond any reasonable doubt, the evidence is as valid as any that would be accepted in an American criminal court".

Harder's reference to "criminal court" was more appropriate than perhaps he realised, considering Travis Walton's problems five years before the UFO incident. Another member of Rogers's crew, Alan Dalis, would later plead guilty in Mariopa County Superior Court to three armed robberies to support his hard-drug habit and would be sentenced to serve three five-year concurrent sentences.

Shortly before the National Enquirer's July 6th issue hit the stands I decided the time had come to make public the results of my investigation. My conclusion that the incident was a hoax and the evidence to support that conclusion were offered to the Phoenix newspaper Arizona Republican, which carried a feature story on my findings in its July 12^th edition. But the wire services, which had carried so many earlier articles on the Walton incident, ignored the new information.

However, NICAP published highlights of my findings and MUFON and Spaulding published my entire White Paper. APRO informed its members briefly and tried to explain why its leaders had gone along with the National Enquirer's desire to cover up the results of the McCarthy polygraph tests.

Rogers promptly proposed new polygraph tests for all members of his crew, as well as for Duane Walton and Mrs. Kellett, which I would pay for if they passed and which APRO would fund if they failed. I readily agreed. But in subsequent negotiations over arrangements for the new test, Rogers and APRO's Lorenzen tried to trick me into having the new tests performed by a polygraph examiner with whom they had already secretly made arrangements. The polygraph examiner was a man who claimed to have run tests that showed his household plants had "feelings" and reacted negatively when he killed brine shrimp in another room.

When I discovered this effort to trick me, I refused to accept this particular examiner. Rogers flatly refused to agree to new tests unless they were conducted by the man whom they had earlier and secretly, selected. So Rogers terminated further negotiations for new lie-detector tests.

Shortly afterward, Travis Walton and Allen Hynek were interviewed on the ABC-TV network talk show "Good Night America." When Hynek was asked for his opinion of Walton's abduction story, he offered a qualified endorsement: "It fits a pattern, see. If this were the only case on record then I would have to say, well, I couldn't possibly believe it. But at the Centre for UFO studies now we have some two dozen similar abduction cases currently being studied. Something is going on!" Hynek was correct, but not in the sense he intended.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinarily convincing evidence to support them if they are to be accepted as fact. Hynek and growing numbers of UFOlogists were mistaking the repetition of extraordinary claims for extraordinary convincing evidence to support those claims. In so doing, they were demonstrating the validity of Francis Bacon's sage observation:

"A credulous man is a deceiver."

The trickery, subterfuge and outright falsehoods used by Rogers in dealing with the U.S. Forest Service and in our negotiations for new polygraph tests convinced me that he would not hesitate to resort to a UFO-abduction hoax if it would serve his needs (The sordid details are covered at considerable length in my earlier book UFOs: The Public Deceived).