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This Project Blue Book file on the Socorro, New Mexico sighting of 24 April 1964 compiles an Air Force record card and a large set of press clippings. The clippings cover policeman Lonnie Zamora's report of an egg-shaped object with four landing marks and scorched brush, plus J. Allen Hynek's investigation and follow-up reports from La Madera, Edgewood and elsewhere. An Air Force summary says soil and brush analysis found no foreign material, radiation or propellant, that the case remains open, and that later related sightings were explained or found to be hoaxes.
“Los Angeles Times”3 pages
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As far as kids having it in for Zamora, there is ample evidence that this is the case. But it was also pointed out to me by Opelgrinder (sp.?) and his assistant and by several others, that it is a national phenomenon for teenagers to hate "fuzz" and the statement by Wesley Johnston, a high school senior who works at Opelgrinders is particularly significant. He said that many of the high school kids didn't like Zamora, but that he, Zamora, was not important enough to do anything about it. He said that if the kids wanted to get even with Zamora they would simply thrash him or do something to his car, but that an elaborate hoax would not be the way they would get even with him. One should remember that the time of the sighting there had been no talk in the Socorro region of unidentified flying objects. This would not have suggested itself as a means of getting back at Zamora. Apparently the Socorro teenagers are much more direct in their methods of reprisal for the "fuzz." As far as the cardboard is concerned, Menzel's conjectures here fall completely flat. The cardboard was portions of very old and weathered corrugated paper from a packing box. There are many samples of this all over the region. There is a city dump not too far away, and when the wind, which blows tumbleweeds all over the place, gets hold of some of this stuff, it scatters the papers pretty well all over the whole region. Many of the bushes, I noticed particularly this time, have papers caught on their underneath side. In any case, some this paper was still there, and I shall send Menzel a sample of what this cardboard really looks like. I would say that the cardboard had been there through many rains and had suffered successive dryings. The original piece I picked up was definite/charred, This was the piece I sent to you along with soil samples, you will remember. One rather interesting item is that the burning bush has recently exuded some sap, and one of the movie people took this to Los Angeles to
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 168 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.