Burned by a UFO: The Cash-Landrum Incident

-Create your website today at https://hostinger.com/WHY and use code WHY for 10% off. -One scam can cost you everything — protect yourself now. The first 100 users get 20% off with code thewhyfiles at https://coveron.com/thewhyfiles -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://whyfileslovesgold.com or call (888) 949-9172 now. -Ready to reach your goals? Visit https://hims.com/thewhyfiles to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. On a December night in 1980, Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum, and six-year-old Colby Landrum took a back road home through the East Texas pines. A blazing, diamond-shaped craft dropped over the road in front of them, pouring fire onto the pavement. When it lifted away, a swarm of twin-rotor military helicopters closed in around it. Within hours, the three witnesses were sick, and within days, their hair was falling out. The doctors had no answers, and the military denied everything. So Betty and Vickie did something no one had done before: they sued the United States government over a UFO. What flew over Farm Road 1485 that night? And why is one key page of the Army's own report still blacked out? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:25AJ Gentile?

  Betty Cash stood in front of her car staring at the object blocking the road. It was as big as a building and it was hot, throwing off flames that she could feel through her coat. It was so loud Betty didn't realize Vicky was screaming for her to get back in the car. Betty grabbed the door handle and pulled her hand back. It was too hot to touch. She used her coat to open the door. Betty, Vicky and Vicky's grandson Colby watched the object lift up and fly away. They were terrified but glad it was over. But in a few days, all their hair was falling out.

• 1:08AJ Gentile?

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• 2:25AJ Gentile?

  On Monday night, December 29th, 1980, Betty Cash wanted to play bingo. Betty ran a truck stop restaurant outside Dayton, Texas, about 40 miles outside Houston. Vicky waited tables for her. Vicky's grandson Colby was six. They drove to the bingo hall in the next town. Closed for the holidays. They drove to the one after that, closed. So they ate supper at a truck stop and took the back way home, down Farm Road 1485 through the pines, with Colby on the front seat between them. A little after nine, Vicky pointed at a light over the trees. Betty figured it was a plane on approach to Houston Airport, so she kept driving. Then the light slowed down, dropped and stopped over the road ahead of them, right at the treetops. Betty hit the brakes before they drove under it.

• 3:09AJ Gentile?

  It was too bright to look at, brighter than the sun. Betty never saw a shape. Colby did. He said it was a diamond, a big diamond standing on its point. Betty said it was as big as a water tower and it roared like a jet. There was also a high pitched sound under the roar like a shriek. Then fire came out of the bottom. It shot a cone of flame straight down at the road. The fire varied in intensity, which caused the object to bob up and down in the air. It seemed like it was struggling. The heat came through the windshield and the inside of the car got hotter and hotter. So Betty opened her door, got out and walked around to the front of the car to see it better. Vicky got out too, with one arm around Colby, and Colby lost it. He screamed and cried and dragged her back to the car.

• 3:54AJ Gentile?

  He got in and crawled down onto the floorboard and she held him there. Vicky told the boy not to be afraid, that it was okay to look, because if anything came out of it, it would be Jesus. Colby wouldn't look.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  Nothing calms a six-year-old down like, "Don't worry, the giant burning diamond is Jesus."

• 4:12AJ Gentile?

  Betty stood at the front of the car for 15 minutes, maybe longer. Vicky was screaming at her to get in as the heat came down in waves. Betty didn't move, she just stood there and stared into the light. When she finally went for the door, the handle was too hot to touch. She pulled her coat sleeve down over her hand and got it open that way. The ring on her finger left it burn on her skin. She got in and the car was dead. The engine stopped at some point, but none of them noticed when. Vicky had her hand pressed flat on the dashboard and the vinyl was warm and soft enough to take an impression of her fingers. Then the fire surged one more time and the object went up over the trees and off to the southwest. Betty turned the key and the car started. Colby came up from the floorboard. And that's when they saw the helicopters.

• 4:57AJ Gentile?

  Not one, not a few. They came in from every direction and closed on the craft as it climbed. Big helicopters with two rotors. Betty started counting. She stopped counting at 23.

• 5:15AJ Gentile?

  Betty drove seven miles to the stop sign at Farm Road 1960 with the window down and the sky full of helicopters. They came past the car, over the car, and then across the road. They were so close together she thought they would crash. The bright object was still up there over the trees and the helicopters followed it. The helicopters glowed from the bright light reflecting off of them. Vicky thought the craft was in trouble and the helicopters were trying to help it, or guard it. The big ones had a rotor at each end and a cabin as long as a bus. Those were CH-47 Chinooks, the Army's heavy lift helicopter. They kept driving toward Dayton. Behind them, the craft was a red glow in the rear window, and then it was gone, with the helicopters after it.

• 5:59AJ Gentile?

  Not far away, a mother and her daughter watched helicopters come in from every direction with their searchlights on. They were closing on a big glow over the trees. 20 minutes later, Betty drove into Dayton and there were helicopters there too. Just before 10, Betty dropped Vicky and Colby off at their house. She drove home and called her son to tell him what she saw. Then she sat down in a chair. And once she sat down, she couldn't get back up.

• 6:30AJ Gentile?

  After about a half hour in that chair, Betty's skin burned like the worst sunburn she ever had. Large blisters came up on her scalp and neck. Then they burst and clear fluid ran down her face. By morning, she was still in that chair. Her eyes were swollen shut and her hair was coming out. At Vicky's house, Colby threw up in bed. And Vicky threw up. They took turns vomiting all night. Vicky blamed the food at the truck stop. At breakfast, Vicky and Colby were both sunburned. At least that's what Vicky thought it was. But it was a cloudy day. She told Colby not to tell anybody what happened because they'd never believe him. Betty felt the same way. She wouldn't see a doctor because she didn't think a doctor would believe her. She was worried people would just laugh.

• 7:14AJ Gentile?

  So Vicky came, got her and brought her back to her place. Even though Vicky was now almost blind, she nursed Betty for three days. When Vicky's husband asked what was wrong, Vicky told him, "Blood clots, nothing to worry about." But Betty got worse. On the fourth day, Betty's daughter-in-law drove her to the hospital. They admitted her as a burn patient. Betty told them she wasn't burned, but she didn't say anything about what really happened. Then Betty's daughter came to see her.

• 7:41Speaker 03

  I walked in and walked right back out. I thought I was in the wrong room. That wasn't my mother's face. It was swollen and red and her eyes were shut. It looked like she'd been under a sun lamp. When I rubbed her forehead, water just squirted out. I'd never seen anything like it.

• 8:02AJ Gentile?

  The doctors sent her home after 17 days. Six days later, she was back and now her hair came out in clumps.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  It was as though my doctor was afraid. He told me I was going to go home, but he never did tell me what was wrong with me. They had me washing my scalp in iodine every day. My hair was coming out in my hands and nobody would say why.

• 8:28AJ Gentile?

  For a month, the doctors didn't know about the incident on the road. Then Colby came to see her in the hospital and told the doctor what happened. The doctor said he might have tried a different approach if he knew what happened. But he admitted he never treated anyone who encountered a UFO. He was being serious. Nobody official called, no sheriff, no base, no agency. So five weeks after the incident, Vicky called a UFO hotline. She asked the stranger who answered one question, "Could the craft have made Betty sick?" The hotline passed the case along and the first UFO investigator who took it up, sold it to a tabloid. The Weekly World News ran it. And if you remember Bat Boy, that's the paper. The headline was, "Three Survive UFO Attack." The tabloid's writer said he had a source.

• 9:13AJ Gentile?

  The craft was in radio contact with the military that night. It was experiencing difficulty and it required air assistance.

• 9:22Speaker 03

  I'm not one to believe in flying saucers or nothing like that. It's something the military is up to. There wasn't no sun out that day, it was real cloudy and we come home burned. My grandbaby's hair is coming out. 23 helicopters don't just get lost. Someone knows where the helicopters came from.

• 9:43AJ Gentile?

  She was right about that.

• 9:49AJ Gentile?

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• 10:31AJ Gentile?

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• 11:13AJ Gentile?

  The reporter at that paper phoned a NASA engineer in Houston, a man who worked on the space shuttle by day and ran a UFO investigation group at night. His name was John Schusler. John came out to Dayton and went over the car. There were hand-shaped prints in the vinyl on the passenger side of the dash. The plastic on the steering wheel crumbled, and Betty saved the pieces. Then he took Betty back to the road. Along the stretch where they stopped, the pine trees were brown and dead, and the pavement looked like it melted and set again. Betty was down to 94 pounds, and she threw up for months. She couldn't take a warm bath because blisters came up in 15 minutes. She couldn't stand in the sun or in front of a stove. Her hair was mostly gone, so she wore a wig in public.

• 11:56AJ Gentile?

  Vicky's eyes teared for three months, and she saw everything through a film like plastic. Vicky's fingernails came off. She saved them in a bag for doctors or scientists or anyone who could help. Colby got a bald spot on his head. He couldn't control his bowels. Doctors told Vicky that within eight years, the boy might come down with leukemia. Betty couldn't work. The restaurant closed, and her mother took her home to Alabama. That spring, a radiologist read Betty's chart. He wrote that Betty lost the nails on four fingers of her right hand at the same time. He wrote that her eyelashes were still there, and he wrote the word "ionizing", and we associate that word with radiation.

• 12:40AJ Gentile?

  A different UFO investigator asked him about a theory, a secret military drone with 23 helicopters out looking for it. The radiologist wrote back, "It then becomes the matter of litigation against the US government." No comment. He also wrote a number. "It takes about 200 rems to the skin to make the hair fall out. A chest X-ray gives you about 1% of that." A nuclear specialist went further. "Two to 300 rems, whole body. That's close to a lethal dose. It didn't kill them, but it was more than enough to earn their lives." So Betty decided someone had to pay, and that someone would be the United States government.

• 13:24AJ Gentile?

  Betty needed someone in the government to say what burned her. So that summer, she wrote her senators and her congressmen. One of the senators wrote back. He said the Air Force would be most willing to assist her in any way possible.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Any senator left out that the number of possible ways was zero.

• 13:40AJ Gentile?

  The letter gave an address. It was a base outside Austin. August 17, 1981. Betty, Vicky, and Colby sat down in the law library at Bergstrom Air Force Base. Three Air Force officers sat across the table. Colby was seven now. The officer running the meeting made one thing clear.

• 13:59Speaker 04

  We're an agency that has not investigated UFO sightings in almost 11 years. Congress ordered us to stop. I'll send a report up to Washington, to the office that used to handle these things. But I want you to understand, I am without any power at all to do anything here at this level.

• 14:20AJ Gentile?

  They talked for hours, anyway. Betty told them the whole story, and she told them what was printed on the side of the helicopters, "United States Air Force." The officers asked for a drawing, so Betty drew the diamond Colby saw, and Vicky drew the flames coming out of the bottom. Both women signed it. Vicky brought the bag with her fingernails in it, but nobody took it. And Colby asked the Air Force about a helicopter he saw land in Dayton. Vicky didn't care about UFOs. She wanted to know who was responsible for them being injured. The officer said, "I'm afraid I can't answer that," and gave them a form to fill out, standard Form 95. It's the form you fill out when an army truck hits your car. The officer said, "Write down what the government did to you, write down what it owes you, and get yourself a lawyer."

• 15:03Speaker 02

  The Air Force said, "We didn't do it. Here's the form to sue us." It sounds like a dare.

• 15:10AJ Gentile?

  It's the Federal Tort Claims Act. If the government hurts you, you file a claim.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  And then what?

• 15:15AJ Gentile?

  And then they decide whether they hurt you.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, see, the whole racket in one sentence.

• 15:21AJ Gentile?

  Vicky filed the form. She said finding out who did this might take her a lifetime, but she was going forward, anyway. Three days later, the Air Force responded. Not with a search, with a memo.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  They didn't search. They wrote a memo about why searching wasn't necessary. It's the most Air Force sentence I've ever heard.

• 15:39AJ Gentile?

  The memo said Houston Airport's radar would have seen 23 helicopters, and the airline pilots landing that night reported nothing. A month later, the state of Texas sent a man to investigate the scene. He drove that stretch of 1485 with a Geiger counter, took soil samples. He found nothing unusual. Then he added one interesting line. "A sealed source or a machine that makes radiation leaves nothing behind on a road." So the military wasn't off the hook yet. That November, the case went on national television. Vickie Landrum was hypnotized on camera for "that's incredible" in front of a studio audience. Under hypnosis, she saw something new on the object.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  Oh, Lord. It's so bright. It's so hot. Colby's crying. Betty's out there by the car, and she won't come back. Betty, get in the car! It had some... blue on it? They looked like, uh... looked like little lights. And there's a smell, like lighter fluid. It's burning my eyes.

• 16:47AJ Gentile?

  Millions of people watched a grandmother from Dayton, Texas, tell them the United States military gave her, her grandson, and her friend radiation burns. Vicky said that after that appearance, somebody threatened them, but she wouldn't say more than that. A congressman saw the TV show, too. He wrote to the Pentagon and asked a simple question. "Were those our helicopters?" The question went to the Air Force, which found no twin rotor helicopters in its inventory. They passed the question on to the Army. So the Army gave a Colonel one job: find the helicopters. He could pull any flight log in the state. So he ran a search for Chinook helicopters in the area. He found them.

• 17:31AJ Gentile?

  The Colonel's name was George Saran. He worked for the Department of the Army Inspector General, the DAIG. In March 1982, he called John Schusler, and the first thing he told him was the rule he worked under. The Army had no opinion about the unidentified object or about UFOs in general. He was investigating an injury claim, and that's all. But he promised that if Army helicopters were involved, and it was their fault, then the Army would take responsibility. His own guess, before he saw a single log, was that this was a helicopter in trouble. So he started checking every command with helicopters in Texas, from Fort Hood down to every Army repair depot on the coast. John gave him a lead. The Colonel wrote it in his notes. "100 helicopters, Robert Gray Airfield came in for effect."

• 18:14AJ Gentile?

  Robert Gray is the airfield at Fort Hood. Fort Hood said it flew one helicopter that day. It went to Houston and back, and it was on the ground right before 8:00 that night. One, not 100, not 23, one. Then there was Ellington Field on the other side of Houston. The eight Chinooks there belonged to the Texas National Guard, but the commanding officer said none of them left the ground that day. Guard units fly on weekends. A Monday night was unusual. He was 99% sure, and he said the flight records would prove it.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  99% sure? The other 1% is where I live, Ewan.

• 18:50AJ Gentile?

  But John kept a log of his own. On a Monday that March, three Chinooks flew out of Ellington. Colonel Saran admitted there were exceptions. Then there was the guard pilot. In the spring of 1981, the guard put a Chinook on display at a livestock show in Dayton, and Vicky went to see it. She got a pilot talking. He told her he flew that night on an emergency call from the county sheriff. Then he stopped. He told her national security kept him from saying more. Saran found the pilot, and the pilot told the Colonel flat out that he wasn't flying that night. He said all he told Vicky was what he heard on the news, that helicopters answered a sheriff's call. So Saran called the sheriff.

• 19:31AJ Gentile?

  The office changed hands on New Year's Day, three days after the incident. Nobody who worked there that night was there anymore. And the new people said they didn't know the names of the former employees. None of them. Nobody could remember any emergency or any reason to ask for a helicopter.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Three days in a whole sheriff's office, forget I worked there, huh? My divorces have better record-keeping.

• 19:53AJ Gentile?

  In April, the Colonel wrote the result in his log. "Numerous inquiries, all feedback negative." Then in May, Saran came down to Texas in person. He sat with Vicky at her house and got Betty on the telephone from Alabama. He brought three men from the Pentagon to read the medical file, and two of them were doctors. Years later, one of them summed up what the three of them concluded. WTF. We had no idea what this was. Colonel Saran took down what Vicky told him about herself. Sores, hair falling out, blackened fingernails, constant diarrhea, loss of appetite, diminished eyesight. And then he wrote, "The medical evidence of degradation of health seems almost irrefutable." He had one witness left. A policeman saw everything.

• 20:40AJ Gentile?

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• 22:00AJ Gentile?

  An off-duty Dayton policeman and his wife drove down Farm Road 1960 that night, eight miles from town, and helicopters came over them. They had twin rotors. They flew in groups of three in a V four or 500 feet up. Their searchlights swept the ground. The Colonel wrote down that the policeman said it was like they were looking for something. The policeman counted 12, and his wife saw the same thing. Neither of them saw an object. The policeman and his wife had no connection to Betty or Vicky. They saw what the women saw: Chinooks low over the same highway where the woman pulled over to watch. The day after Colonel Saran saw the policeman, an Army medevac pilot in Houston told him about a Quick React Force. For 18 months, it moved in and out of Louisiana and Texas

• 22:44AJ Gentile?

  at practice raids modeled on the hostage rescue that failed in Iran. The helicopters flew off a small carrier in the Gulf of Mexico. They were fueled from fuel bladders, which were big rubber tanks set out from the ground inland. The pilot said it was secret and not announced. The day after that, a Houston police captain talked to the policeman. The captain flew helicopters himself. He said he had no doubt the policeman saw CH-47s, probably that Quick React Force. They could refuel from those bladders or from what he called “a flat-top in the Gulf.” Saran wrote it down and called John.

• 23:18Speaker 05

  We may have uncovered a bucket of worms. Everybody keeps telling me nothing flew that night. Now I’ve got a secret unit nobody announced, and a police captain who says your policeman saw Chinooks. If those were the helicopters over that road, they won’t be in any log I can pull, and I’ve pulled a lot of logs.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, bucket of worms. Don’t tease me, Colonel.

• 23:43AJ Gentile?

  And while the Colonel looked at the bucket of worms, John went back to the road. The stretch was gone. There was fresh asphalt where the car stopped, where the pavement melted and set. The center stripe was crooked where the new lane met the old one. Unmarked trucks came one night, cut the section out, hauled it away, and laid new road before the sun was up. No county road crew works that fast.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  The only time the government works overnight is when it’s removing evidence.

• 24:10AJ Gentile?

  Well, that’s a-

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Right, right, right, right. It’s day on the FBJ Epstein way.

• 24:14AJ Gentile?

  Saran went back to Washington and sent his last requests out: to Special Ops, to Air Force, the Navy, and CIA. Then he wrote in his report this: “Ms. Landrum and Ms. Cash were credible, the DA IG investigator felt.” And the next three and a half lines are blacked out. The Army blacked out whatever the Colonel felt before it let anyone read the page. The sentence picks up again on the other side of the bar: “There was no perception that anyone was trying to exaggerate the truth.” You can read that page today, the redaction is still there. Colonel Saran’s last call to John was in June.

• 24:48Speaker 05

  Obviously, something happened to the ladies. But an operation that size would have been big time. And big time doesn’t stay hidden.

• 24:58AJ Gentile?

  And the Army still couldn’t find one helicopter. So Betty, Vicky, and Colby did what the Air Force told them to do. They got a lawyer. Peter Gersten was the man who sued the CIA and pried 900 pages of UFO files out of it. Then they filled out the form and asked what the government owed them. Betty wrote $10 million. Vicky wrote $5 million, and Colby $5 million. $20 million. In March 1983, Betty had cancer, and the doctors took her right breast. In May, the Air Force said, “No, it wasn’t their fault. They claimed no responsibility.” That same month, Betty had a heart attack. In June, they took her left breast.

• 25:37Speaker 06

  Betty further maintains that she had no cancer history previous to the alleged encounter. Her records do confirm, however, that she does now have the disease.

• 25:47AJ Gentile?

  In September, the Air Force said no again in a letter from the Pentagon. They said, quote, “There was no evidence of involvement by any military personnel, equipment, or aircraft.” That same letter called it “an overflight of an unidentified flying object.” So they sued. The suit was filed in January 1984, and the complaint listed everything that happened to them. For the boy, it listed “extreme anxiety and fear at the sight of helicopters.” And it said the government owned and operated military CH-47 double-rotary type helicopters and an experimental aerial device of a hazardous nature. Again, the government said no. There were no helicopters and no experimental aircraft.

• 26:28AJ Gentile?

  But that wasn’t true, because three days later, the world would learn about Project Snowbird. Three days after the suit was filed, Bill Moore went on the radio and told the country what was over Farm Road 1485. It was ours. Moore was a UFO researcher, and he got his information from a contact inside Air Force counterintelligence: Richard Doty. If you watch his channel, you know that name. Doty was a special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Doty sat down with Moore back in December 1981, a year after the Cash-Landrum incident. He told him what the object was. It was a joint Air

• 27:11AJ Gentile?

  Force and NASA project, a test aircraft with a nuclear reactor for an engine. It flew out of Ellington Field in Houston toward Fort Hood. First, the navigation went, then the reactor. It went down over the pines and hovered over the road until help came. The helicopters were the escort, and then they were the rescue. Every one of those Chinooks was there for the machine. Doty said six other civilians saw it that night, and all six were found and debriefed. Not Betty, Vicky, and Colby. Doty said they were left alone on purpose to “provide effective cover.” Three people running around Texas talking about UFO were better for the program than three people who got a visit from Men in Black.

• 27:52AJ Gentile?

  The project was called Snowbird. The name comes from the MJ-12 papers, the leaked government UFO files. It says “Snowbird is the program for test-flying recovered alien craft.” And according to Doty, what burned Betty and Vicky was a Snowbird craft. Moore bought it. His logic was simple: You don’t send out Chinooks loaded to the gills with personnel to chase a light in the sky. You send them to protect a project. Now, the government already had a nuclear airplane program. It started in 1946, but the program ended in 1961, because one crash could spread radiation over everything underneath it. This was starting to sound familiar. Moore said the proof was coming. Back in 1983,

• 28:31AJ Gentile?

  Doty even gave the family’s lawyer a tip. The craft was written up in Aviation Week. Then the government answered the suit, not with a denial, with a confirmation. The government’s answer began like this: The United States admits that it owns and operates CH-47 helicopters. Betty already knew this. She was sick, but she wasn’t crazy. But now, she gets to have her day in court. The family asked for the Ellington flight records, the ones the guard commander said would prove none of his Chinooks flew. The government said the documents were destroyed.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, there it is.

• 29:13AJ Gentile?

  Then the government filed four pieces of paper: one from NASA, “No such object,” and “its one Chinook was in a hangar.” One from the Air Force, “No such craft.” One from a Navy admiral who never saw anything like it. And one from the Army, which said nothing about helicopters at all. The Army, the people with the Chinooks.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Yes, the Air Force, Navy, all under oath saying not us. And the Army says nothing?

• 29:36AJ Gentile?

  Uh, nothing about helicopters.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, and three guys say I didn’t do it. And the fourth guy says nice weather, the fourth guy did it. That’s every Columbo. No Scooby Doo.

• 29:47AJ Gentile?

  And the government had a backup argument: Admit it was a military operation but deny fault. The lawyer for the government said the military doesn’t have to warn civilians about anything because it might cause a panic. And failing to warn the public isn’t negligence. In a footnote, he added, “By the way, defendant does find it revealing that the object is termed a UFO by plaintiffs.”

• 30:09Speaker 02

  A footnote. The lawyer couldn’t fit all the smug in the body of reefer.

• 30:14AJ Gentile?

  In September 1985, the lawyers argued it in front of the judge. The government’s lawyer told a magazine, “Whatever they saw and whatever happened is not the issue.”

• 30:23Speaker 02

  It’s a lawsuit about what happened. It’s the only issue. It’s the entire issue. Hello, lawyers.

• 30:30AJ Gentile?

  But Betty wasn’t in the courtroom. She was in a hospital in Alabama still fighting cancer. Betty’s lawyer, Peter Gersten, stepped away. The new lawyer asked for time to take depositions, and the court stopped all discovery until it ruled. Then in August 1986, it ruled. Case dismissed in one paragraph: 11 lines and no reasons. Nobody testified. No judge ever met Betty Cash or Vickie Landrum or the boy, and the clerk stamped the file closed. Betty wasn’t satisfied.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  I’m mad. I’m mad as hell and disappointed with the government of our United States. They took my health, my hair, and my business. And they won’t even tell me what did it. Somebody in this government knows what was over that road that night. I’ll fight until they lay me in my grave.

• 31:22AJ Gentile?

  Case closed. The government said nothing happened. But in 1988, a CIA-funded psychic spy program aimed a remote viewer at the object over Farm Road 1485. So the government didn’t believe the story enough to pay for a woman’s cancer treatment, but they believed it enough to spend millions on psychics to look into it. To this day, they’re the only three people who’ve sued the government for injuries caused by UFO. Betty Cash died on December 29, 1998, exactly 18 years after the event. Vicky died in 2007. She never changed her story. Her obituary lists her hobbies. Bingo is first. Four years later, the CIA released six pages of handwritten notes in pencil by an officer at the National

• 32:07AJ Gentile?

  Security Agency. They’re about the case. CE3 Texas, much medical data, hair on woman fell out, low-level ionizing radiation. And in 2022, the Defense Intelligence Agency released a paper from the Pentagon’s secret UFO program. It cited the case about seven times. Whether the craft was a military project or UFO isn’t the point. The primary job of the government is to protect its citizens. And in this case, our government failed.

• 32:36Speaker 07

  I tried to go to church, and the pastor asked me to come.

• 32:46AJ Gentile?

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• 33:31AJ Gentile?

  Plus, you get 24/7 access to your care team and in-app support like meal plans, recipes, and fitness content, so you're not doing this alone. Ready to reach your goals? Visit hims.com/theyfiles to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. That's hims.com, H-I-M-S dot com slash the Y files. Hims.com/theyfiles. Weight Loss by Hims is not available in all 50 states. Wegovy is a registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wegovy clinical study information, and restrictions, visit hims.com.

• 34:10AJ Gentile?

  Three people stopped under something on a farm road, got sick, and spent six years trying to find out what happened. Doctors can't explain it. The government changes the story, the people sue, and lose. The Cash Lander MUFO case is one of the most famous in history. But how much of it is true? Well, the injuries are true. So the questions are, what burned them? And where did the helicopters come from? We'll start with the burn. The legend is built on one word: radiation. Betty was admitted as a burn patient, and the first diagnosis the doctor wrote was cellulitis, a skin infection. Her hair came out about four weeks later, in patches, and a biopsy called it Alpecia Eriata. Her blood counts were normal. Now the math. The radiologist who wrote "ionizing" also wrote that the damage was confined to the

• 34:55AJ Gentile?

  skin, and that heat, ultraviolet, or microwave could have done it. The nuclear specialists, 200 or 300 REMs, that's a dose where people start dying. Betty got sick in 30 minutes, and the vomiting lasted for months. Radiation that does that kills you in days. Betty lived 18 years, so it wasn't radiation. There's another answer nobody chased. An Air Force radiation doctor on the case wrote that the burns were compatible with an exposure to a chemical substance rather than radiation. The colonel checked whether any helicopters sprayed anything that night, and the Army's computers showed nothing. Obviously. But nobody ever ran a toxicology test, so we don't know.

• 35:37AJ Gentile?

  Something burned three people on that road, and a car, and a bunch of pine trees. It peeled their skin and took their hair, and nobody could explain why. The government argued that there would be residue on the road, but there wasn't. Now, sure, there wouldn't be residue if they paved over the road. We'll get to that in a sec. But for now, what burned them stays open. Now the helicopters. 23 was already the number on Vicky's call to the hotline, before any investigator even talked to them. A veteran Chinook pilot from the Army commented on the case, and he said, "12 Chinooks in one place is a big operation, and 23 would have been their entire inventory." The policeman and his wife are in the Army's own file. 12 Chinooks in threes with the searchlights on.

• 36:20AJ Gentile?

  But the colonel's report puts them at 12:40 in the morning, three and a half hours after Betty and Vicky were there. The mother and daughter who watched helicopters chasing a glow put them at 9 o'clock. That's the right time. But they never gave their names, and nobody else backs them up, so we only have what Betty and Vicky said. And the colonel checked every unit in range, plus the Marines and the oil companies. He couldn't find one Chinook that flew that night, or any helicopter in trouble anywhere in the whole state. The raid practice in the Gulf is a story a pilot told, and it's only in John Schussler's log of the colonel's calls. The colonel's own finding was that those units were at Fort Bragg, Fort Devens, Panama, and Europe, and none were involved. Nobody ever looked for the object itself. And the rest goes fast.

• 37:05AJ Gentile?

  As the story grew, some new details came in. The diamond, Colby saw it, Betty never did. But eight months later, she drew it and signed it anyway. The car is also a problem. The crumbling steering wheel isn't in John's report. He found the paint and the plastic in good condition. The blue lights came out of a hypnosis session, and they match a drawing Colby made of the object with a light bright. And the words "United States Air Force" were read off the side of a helicopter at night by a woman about to file a claim with the Air Force. A light bright isn't great evidence.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, a light bright is still more detailed than the videos they release.

• 37:40AJ Gentile?

  True, but still, the Air Force doesn't use Chinooks. The Army does. Most of the story traces back to one person: John Schussler. His own report from his first walk on that road says he found no marks. The melted road shows up in his telling after the county repaved the strip in 1982. The unmarked trucks part of the story show up in 1991 on Unsolved Mysteries. The 100 helicopters in the colonel's notes came from John Schussler also. It was a Fort Hood spokesman describing training where 100 helicopters come home at once for effect. The destroyed flight records are his interpretation of the court file. The nuclear aircraft out of Ellington came from Richard Doty, told to Bill Moore. And so did the six other witnesses who got debriefed.

• 38:24AJ Gentile?

  Nobody ever found the Aviation Week article, but if you know Doty, you're not surprised. In 1989, Moore stood up at a UFO conference and admitted he was working for the Air Force. Doty fed him disinformation, and Moore spread the disinformation around the UFO community. Because I was in a position to observe much of this process as it unfolded. And I was providing regular reports on its effectiveness to some of the very people who were doing it. The MJ12 document that named Snowbird is a fake. I have an episode that debunks it. But Doty put it in a book anyway. The tabloid story doesn't name a source. The pilots, the police, all come from Schussler.

• 39:06AJ Gentile?

  The pencil notes, the psychic session, and the Pentagon Papers, those are real. But their source was Schussler. The Pentagon's 2024 History of UFO Programs doesn't mention the case at all.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  The government investigated the government using a file from a guy who was investigating the government.

• 39:23AJ Gentile?

  Pretty much.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's kind of how Wikipedia works.

• 39:26AJ Gentile?

  The government never said those women weren't burned. It only said whatever burned them wasn't ours. The skeptics never said nothing happened. They only said it wasn't radiation.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Not radiation, not ours, not aliens. Human, you're one knot away from lizard people, so I'm just gonna wait here.

• 39:43AJ Gentile?

  These aren't clarifications, not a debunk. Something real hurt three people that night. Betty never cared about UFOs. She didn't want to convince anyone of anything. All she wanted was justice for herself, Vicky, and Colby. She didn't get it. Colby's still waiting. He's 52 now. He doesn't want money. He wants answers, and he wants an apology.

• 40:03Speaker 05

  Whatever it was, was being controlled by our people. And there's a record of it somewhere. I just want someone to say, "Look, man, this is what happened. You're not crazy."

• 40:15AJ Gentile?

  Somebody did say it once. In 1982, the Army's own colonel wrote that Betty and Vicky were credible, and that nobody was trying to exaggerate the truth. And then he wrote, "The DAIG investigator felt," and the Army blacked out the rest. Three and a half lines, maybe four. Nobody's ever appealed the redaction. Nobody's ever asked the colonel on the record. So what did an Army investigator feel about two women he believed that the Army decided you weren't allowed to read? I don't know. Neither does anybody else. Those four lines are the only thing in this case the government ever hid on purpose. And it's still hiding them.

• 40:59AJ Gentile?

  Thank you so much for hanging out today. My name is AJ. That's Echo Fish.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm gonna go file a standard Form 95 for emotional damages.

• 41:07AJ Gentile?

  This has been The Y Files. If you had fun or learned anything, do him a favor, like, subscribe, comment, share. I know, you pull the string and the words just come out. Anyway, do him a favor, hit those buttons, it really helps the channel. Like those topics we cover on the channel, this was recommended by you, by lots of you. If there's a story you'd like to see or learn more about, go to theyfiles.com/tips, send in a tip, email us, catch us on Discord, in the comments, and wherever, you know where to find us. If you enjoy the stories I tell at The Y Files, check out my other show called The Basement. It's a conversation show where I chat with the interesting people behind the episodes. Some you know, some you don't, but they're all people I find fascinating, and I think you will too. And if there's someone you'd like to see on the show, let me know. I'm always looking for good guests.

• 41:49AJ Gentile?

  And if you're looking for books mentioned in the episodes or by a guest, we keep them all on a website called The Library, link below. Should be there by now. Or go to theyfiles.com, it might be there. Might not. Don't quote me on it. Remember, The Y Files is also a podcast. You can take us on the road and listen 24/7. I upload at least twice a week, episodes, campfire stories, interviews. It's called The Y Files Operation Podcast, and it's available wherever you get your podcasts. Speaking of 24/7, make sure you check out our 24/7 stream on The Y Files Backstage. Over there, we run episodes back to back with some wacky content in between. And the live chat is more fun than the videos. Check it out. Special thanks to our patrons who make this channel possible. Every episode of The Y Files is dedicated to my Patreon members.

• 42:32AJ Gentile?

  I could not do any of this without your support, so thank you. And if you'd like to support the channel, keep us going, join this great community, become a member on Patreon. For as little as $3 a month, you get access to perks like videos early with no commercials, exclusive merch, and two private live streams every week, all just for you. The whole Y Files team is on the stream, so you get to meet me, Hybrid, Victoria, Gino, Jen, Mary Jane, anybody I'm missing, I apologize. But you get to see all of us, our faces. And you can turn your webcam on, hop up on stage, ask a question, tell a joke, talk about anything you like. I think it's a great way to get to know us as people. It's the best perk there is. But a great way to support the channel is grab something for the Y Files store.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, great, I'm gonna see you when these feasible coffee lines you can stick your alien fist in there. Don't worry, Richard Doty is not gonna come and judge you about your fist. Oh, grab a hoodie, I saw my face on it. Okay, what are you, Squeezie? Ah, look at it. Squeezie animal, tell you, hell of a shit, Twitter.

• 43:29AJ Gentile?

  But if you're gonna buy merch, make sure you become a member on YouTube. I know, another membership, but I promise it's worth it. YouTube members get 10% off everything in the Y Files store forever, and it's only three, so I think it's only $3. So if you're gonna spend $40 in the store, become a member, pays for itself, and then just cancel, I don't mind. I don't keep that money anyway. It goes to the team, I don't touch it.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, keep that secret, I'd close to the old dorsal fin, eh?

• 43:54AJ Gentile?

  Those are the plugs, and that's gonna do it. Oof. Horse tonight, this morning. Long, it was a long one. I appreciate you hanging in there. Until next time, be safe, be kind, know that you are appreciated.

• 44:18Speaker 05

  I played for Libya in Area 51. A secret code inside the Bible said I was. I love my UFOs and paranormal fun as well as music. So I'm singing like I should. But then another conspiracy theory becomes the truth, my friends. And it never ends. No, it never ends.

• 45:00Speaker 05

  I fear the crackhead and got stuck inside Mel's hole with MKUltra. I'm being only too aware. Did Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing alone on a film set? Would the shadows be over there? The Rockwell aliens just fought the smiling man, I'm told. And his name was Cole. And I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish. Head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ2. And one more zombie beat all through the night. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth.

• 45:44Speaker 05

  So one more zombie beat all through the night.

• 46:06Speaker 05

  The Mothman sightings and the solar storms still come to have got the secret city underground. Mysterious number stations, planet circle to Project Stargate. And what the dark watchers found. In a simulation, don't you worry though. The black night said a lot, it told me so. I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish. Head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ2. And one more zombie beat all through the night. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth.

• 46:50Speaker 05

  So one more zombie beat all through the night. Head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ2. And one more zombie beat all through the night. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth. So one more zombie beat all through the night.

• 47:25Speaker 05

  Girlie loves to dance. Girlie loves to dance on the dance floor. Because she is a camel and camels love to dance. When the feeling is right on wasting time.

• 48:03Speaker 00

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• 48:27Speaker 03

  Want to be the one who's always in the know about the game, the scores, the plays? Here's a tip, the Apple Sports app. Just pick your favorite teams and get automatic live updates without even knowing their schedules. And when your team scores, it shows up right on your iPhone lock screen, making it easy to check in anytime. So rule the group chat and download Apple Sports for free on the App Store or find it on your new iPhone. Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com.