Project Blue Book desk file, Socorro (217 pages)

The hoax ~hesia 1~, of course , one that suggests itselt immediately •
. It is Quintanilla's and mr opinion that both Chavez and FBI agent Byrnes
mat have been in on the hoax if we adopt t he hoax hypothesis. They
testified that there were no tracks in the i mmediate neighborhood and
ao that the hoa.xaters t:Ust theiT'.selves ha.ve arrived and left by balloon!
Bad it been a hoax, certainly some paraphernalia s hould have been left
around it the pranksters beat a r..aety retreat. These gentlemen said t r.,t
nothing . ot that short 1l8.S flund. ·
Tbe vind vas blcVing strongly from the south, yet the object \IUS reported 1
to have gone on directly west. This would hardly fit a balloon, unless,
ot course, the directions are wrong. I questioned and requestioned the
pe<~ple on this point and couldn't shake them from that.
Pranksters could have hidden behind the knoll directly to the south,
particularly bad they lain prone. The dynamite aback is too SI!Id.ll and
too tar away to have risked hiding behind it.
Opal Grinder does have a high&school student ·working for him, and I talked
with him at length. Teenagers generally hate Zamora's guts 1 but it 'WB.S
added that they bate all "fuzz" and that _if they w.nted. to get even with
Zanora, they would s imply beat him up or do something more direct, like
letting the air out of his tires or something with ~~ate results rather
tban resott to an involved. hoax. Opal Grinder 1 of course, would have to be
1n on .the hoax, also. He again told me t he story or the too.rist who said
that he had -sighted a strange object crossing directly in front or him
on the road and landing in the gully, and toward which an instant or so
later, he sav a police car going. I checked out the time on that, ar.d it
f'its. 0}&1 Grinder 'a wife was just preparing to get to the bank before it
closed at six (apparently she takes the veek's loot to the bank on Friday's
Just before they close). The sighting as you know, was supposedly at 5:45
P. M.
Sorr.e ot the high school students · do have wa.lkies-talkies, but t he hoax hypothesis
doea involve Chavez, Opal Grinder, and FBI agent Byrnes; the reported tourist
vruld have to be mythical.
Zamora knev exactly where the dynamite shack was, beca:ase this is precisely
- vby he lett the roa.d when he heard the noise. He thought there had been an
explosion in the dynamite shack.
The dynamite shack doea not ste.nd. on legs as I rave inspected it closely
and have taken photographs. The ~hack and the reported UFO rust be considered
dietinot.
furthermore, I doubt ver,y ~ch whether a hoax c~~ld have been kept secret this
long. If a hoax comes off well, perpetrators like to gloo.t abit, and there
would have been no point about getting even with Zamora if they couldn •t have
gotten some kudos out of it. La Paz once told me of an instance in vhich some
college students \lanted to get even with a geology professor so they planted .
. a nmeteor1te" and contrived an explosion at some distant part ot t he state,
and had this poor professor running around ragged claslng a meteorite. The
perpetrators 1 however 1 were caught and expelled f'ro 1~ school because t hey si1nply
couldn't keep t heir secret. They "confided" to friends who in turn confided
to others, and there you are.Rob Mercer