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This Black Vault release compiles 1964 newspaper and wire service clippings plus a Project Blue Book summary on the Socorro, New Mexico sighting by policeman Lonnie Zamora on April 24, 1964, when an egg-shaped object left four depressions and burned brush. It covers J. Allen Hynek's site visit, APRO and NICAP comment, and related New Mexico reports at La Madera, Edgewood and Albuquerque. The Air Force summary reports that soil and brush analysis found no radiation or propellant, and the case remained open.
“R.G.”1 page
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It surely would have leaked by now. He told me of an elaborate hoax that was played on one of the geologists at Ohio State University when he taught there. The students had it in for this guy and contrived an explosion in and the crater which it produced an nearby town was reported then as a meteorite crater. It had everybody excited for a while and would have succeeded except who got away with it were so pleased with themselves that they began to brag a bit and got caught. I do not believe that the Socorro high school students could have kept a secret this long. Furthermore, it would seem that any youngsters that hated Zamora sufficiently to have gone to all this trouble to perpetrate a hoax would now be very envious of the glory he is getting in a movie and all the publicity he has received and would certainly burst his bubble right now. Finally, there is the matter of the tourist who reported a strange object to Oelgrinder. This could not very well have been part of the hoax since the tourist was a complete stranger just passing through. Furthermore, if Zamora is to believed at all, the object rose vertically and took off horizontally to the west and was observed as it passed well over the dynamite shack and disappeared over the pearlite mill. This is entirely too big a hoax for high school students to perpetrate. Perhaps I spent too much time on this matter, but the letter was a very convenient device for re-discussing the whole situation. Sgt. Chaves indicated that Menzel should have been a science fiction writer. Actually Lyle Boyd has done some of this, and I believe also Menzel has. I left Albuquerque in the late morning on Saturday and arrived in Socorro abbut 1:00 P. M. Raynor, Shrode, and I visited the site and took some more samples, particularly of the sap, and I took a few more pictures, particularly of the dynamite shack to show Menzel. Then I went back to the radio station
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