The Cash - Landrum UFO Incident
Diamond in the Sky
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After the UFO Sighting
Cash and Landrum wanted the government to admit its involvement and to pay for the medical expenses they had incurred. Betty Cash contacted her Senators, John Tower and Lloyd Bentsen, and on Bentsen's recommendation, she met with Air Force lawyers at Bergstrom AFB in Austin, Texas to file a claim. There is a transcript of a tape that was made of this meeting in the possession of CUFON.
A man named John Schuessler, who works as a senior executive for a major aerospace firm, is the foremost civilian investigator of the Cash-Landrum incident. Among other things, he has managed to reconstruct the probable flight path of the UFO. It was first sighted that night in central Louisiana, then sighted along a path that ran straight west through Louisiana into Texas, then southwest toward Houston and out across the Gulf of Mexico. It was accompanied the entire way by a large flotilla of helicopters.
John Schuessler is an engineer who has worked on NASA's Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle programs, making him a genuine expert in manned space-flight. In his opinion, the Cash-Landrum UFO was a very extraordinary craft. He went out to the spot on State Road 1485 where Betty Cash and her friends had their encounter to find out if there was any radiation. To his surprise, there was none; even though the asphalt was literally charred in a large circle at that very spot, indicating tremendous heat. From this he concluded that the witnesses were exposed to high intensity electromagnetic, rather than nuclear, radiation. Dayton, Texas police officer L.L. Walker and his wife Marie stated that they saw Chinook helicopters in the same area four or five hours after the Cash - Landrum incident. Some combination of microwave, ultraviolet and infra-red radiation seems probable. The question is, what kind of craft or propulsion system emits lethal amounts of such radiation? Schuessler says he does not believe human technology has produced such a craft.
New York attorney Peter Gersten, now director of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy, filed a twenty million dollar lawsuit on behalf of Cash and Landrum, but in August, 1986, U.S. District Court Judge Ross Sterling dismissed the case after Army, Navy, Air Force, and NASA expert testimony proved to the Judge's satisfaction that no such device as that seen by Cash and Landrum was owned by, or was in the possession of, any branch of American government or military.
Betty Cash passed away on Dec. 29th, 1998, 18 years after the UFO incident. Although the incident caused her endless health problems, it probably did not directly lead to her death. Vickie and Colby Landrum are still alive, but their current health does not seem to have been affected by the incident.
Since the mid-1980's, many American UFO researchers have been mired in endless quarreling over the Roswell Incident, MJ-12 and other quagmires, with little to show for it other than bitterness. In doing so, they've overlooked or ignored one of the most significant cases ever to come to light.
If all the energy and time spent on those ugly battles had been devoted to finding out who or what was behind the Cash-Landrum incident, we might know what the U.S. Government really knows about UFOs and perhaps be closer to solving the UFO mystery. We might also have found better ways to treat the health problems of the three victims in the case - Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and Vickie's grandson, Colby Landrum - and alleviate their suffering.
Since 1975, I have been fortunate enough to study UFO reports in the United States and ten other countries, speaking to at least 1,800 people who had sightings or encounters. Since 1981, I have concentrated mainly on one country, Brazil, because so many harmful things happened to people in UFO encounters there, and that aspect of the phenomenon particularly interested me. Nearly every one of the several hundred Brazilians I have interviewed feared for their lives during their UFO experience. Some were even injured, several permanently, and a few died.
However, as intriguing as all of those cases were, none of them quite matched what happened to Betty, Vickie and Colby when they encountered an unidentified flying object on a lonely Texas highway one night in December 1980. They too felt terrorized during the incident, and feared the world was coming to an end.
This is a unique case, one of extremely high strangeness with multiple witnesses, serious medical effects, military involvement, and government cover-up. The helicopters add another important piece to the puzzle. Twenty-three Army helicopters accompanying the UFO indicates a major mission requiring a great deal of planning and coordination -- that is, it was known in advance that the UFO would fly over Louisiana and Texas that night. But who was flying it, and why? So far, there are no definite answers. It is clear that the incident happened, however; and it suggests that the U.S. military is knowingly involved with operational alien technology.
On that dark night in 1980, a large strange machine swooped down from the sky and then hung noisily just above the highway in front of Betty, Vickie and Colby, blocking their way for fifteen minutes. By the time it left, it had exposed them to emissions of some kind that seriously damaged the health of all three.
Their suffering was compounded by the fact that when the UFO went away, it was pursued by nearly two dozen military helicopters - meaning the government was involved with the mysterious object and knows what it was and where it went. Yet, despite the fact that other people saw or heard the choppers, the government denies any of its helicopters were in the area that night.
I am very familiar with the Cash-Landrum incident. I had a number of lengthy interviews with Betty and Vickie and found them to be very credible people, as have all other investigators who have looked into the case. Even an Army colonel who investigated their claims for the Pentagon found them to be credible. I also talked to other people who helped authenticate their claims, and I saw both women not long after the encounter, when they had lost much of their hair and were still trying to recover from skin and other health problems caused by the encounter. I have no doubt that what they say happened did happen.
We are fortunate that John Schuessler headed the investigation of this case. He is one of the most capable, serious, resourceful, and open-minded researchers in American ufology, a patient and objective man who is not prone to jumping to conclusions or embracing lunatic theories. For several years after the incident occurred, John shared with me virtually everything he learned about this case, and I'm still amazed at the extraordinary pertinent data that was accumulated. The result is this is one of the most thoroughly investigated cases in ufology. This case is significant because of the huge size and shape of the craft and its strange behavior over the highway, the serious detrimental effects of its presence had on the three main witnesses, the fact that the government was very much involved in this incident, and that those who knew about it chose to cover it up.
The Cash-Landrum incident has to be one of the most thoroughly investigated cases in the history of ufology. I myself spent hundreds of hours interviewing Betty, Vickie and other witnesses and studying the case, but my efforts pale when compared to what John Schuessler has done. He has devoted years to investigating every aspect of the case - the encounter itself, tracking down other witnesses, checking the medical records and histories of the three witnesses, consulting medical authorities, helping Betty, Vickie and Colby get medical and legal help, probing the military and government angle, and, most important, keeping the case alive when others had abandoned it. The case remains one of the most important in the history of ufology. It has never been resolved. Someone in the U.S. knows exactly what happened to Betty and Vickie and Colby but they have remained silent despite all the suffering - and ridicule - those three endured.
Bob Pratt
Lake Worth, Florida.
Other witnesses
There were also others who witnessed the incident near Huffman, Texas. An off duty Dayton policeman and his wife were driving home from Cleveland through the Huffman area the same night. They observed a large number of double rotor Being CH-47 Chinooks, a special kind of the craft used by the Army and the Marines.
A man living in Crosby, directly under the flight path, also reported seeing a large number of heavy military helicopters flying overhead.
And Oilfield laborer Jerry McDonald was in his back garden in Dayton when he witnessed a large UFO flying over his head. At first he thought it was the goodyear airship, but quickly realized it was something else. "It was kind of diamond shaped and had two twin torches that were shooting brilliant blue flames out the back", he said. As it passed about 45 meters above him he saw that it had two bright lights on it and a red light in the center.
But the US army's Fort Hood press officer, Major Tony Geishauser, told the Corpus Christi Caller that no Fort Hood aircraft were in the Houston area that night.
"I don't know any other place around here that would have that number of helicopters," he said. "I don't know what it could be.... unless there's a super secret thing going on and I wouldn't necessarily know about it."
All other bases in Texas and Louisiana denied they were responsible for the helicopters seen at the incident.
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