Somewhere in the Skies - If Anything Happens to Me, Investigate

Episode Date: March 4, 2019

On episode 98 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan looks into the dark and disturbing topic of deaths within the UFO research community. Throughout the years, several individuals investigating UFOs and various other fringe topics were found dead in the most mysterious and tragic of ways. Were these simply suicides or unfortunate fatalities? Or was there a more nefarious and conspiratorial angle to their deaths? The stories of Max Spiers, Morris K. Jessup, Dorothy Kilgallen, Frank Edwards, Ron Rummel, and Phil Schneider are explored in great depth. Are these stories just fuel for conspiracy theory, or could they possibly beg the question; if you dig deep enough into UFOs, do you risk being monitored, targeted, and permanently silenced for knowing, and possibly divulging too much? Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies To watch ROSWELL: MYSTERIES DECODED for free, CLICK HERE  Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is part of the eOne podcast network. To learn more, CLICK HERE SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is sponsored by HelloFresh. To receive 50% off your first order, use promo code: SOMEWHERE50 at checkout by visiting www.HelloFresh.ca Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey y'all, Ryan Spreck here. As you all know, the Somewhere in the Sky's podcast is always free to consume, but it isn't free to create. That's why I've started the Somewhere in the Sky's Patreon campaign. On a monthly basis, you give what you think the show is worth. You'll be helping the show continue, grow, and to be something truly communal. And remember, there are rewards for each level of contribution, and the list is only growing.

So please, help Somewhere in the Skies now by becoming a page. To contribute and to learn more, visit www.pateron.com backslash Somewhere Skies. Thank you for your support. And now on with the show. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan's Bread. If anything happens to me, investigate. This was a text sent to Vanessa Bates by her son in July of 2016. Several weeks prior, Max Spears was scheduled to speak at a conference. in Warsaw, Poland.

The topics of his presentation would center around several conspiracy theories he believed he'd uncovered, which included alleged government cover-ups of UFOs, mind control, and underground bases housing clandestine military experiments involving aliens. It was the perfect mix for any conspiracy theorist and for those who had gathered in Warsaw to hear Spears speak. But they wouldn't get that chance. and Spears would leave behind yet another conspiracy theory to plague the paranoid minds of his supporters up until today. Max Spears died on a sofa only days before his presentation.

The sole witness was Monica Duval, thought to be a close friend and possible romantic interest of Spears. He'd been staying at her flat in Warsaw preparing for the highly anticipated talk he would be giving, but she found spears that morning face up, a dark black liquid seeping from his mouth that he had seemingly vomited up during the night. Finding him in this horrifying state, Duval called for an ambulance, but when the paramedics arrived,

they were unable to revive him, and he was pronounced dead on the scene. Word got back to Vanessa Bates back in England, that her son was dead. Meanwhile, Polish authorities perform no autopsy or post-mortem on Spears. This was the first warning sign that something was off. The body was then handed over to British authorities.

Mysteriously, they ruled that Spears had died of natural causes, despite the strange black liquid that Deval had claimed he'd vomited up that fateful night. This was the second warning. Vanessa was then given possession of Max Spears' cell phone and computer, and she claimed that both had been wiped completely clean. Not a single file, text, phone number, or anything could be found on any of his devices. It was as if his digital footprint had been erased. This was the third and final warning for Vanessa that she had to heed her son's last words to her.

Quote, your boy's in trouble, if anything happens to me, investigate. And so she did. and upon learning of how deep her son had truly gone down the rabbit hole in terms of his UFO and conspiracy work, she began to truly wonder if he'd gotten too close to the truth, or perhaps too far from reality. More on my experience at the end of the show. Right now, I want to talk about the notion of targeting UFO researchers. I remember early on in my UFO research and investigative work, I was sitting at a bar with my father in Syracuse, New York, and after a few beers,

we were getting pretty deep into Roswell and Rendlesham, and particularly into the government cover-up aspect to UFO history and lore. The more cases I brought up, the more I could see my father looking rather concerned. Or maybe it was just the beer. But what he asked me stuck with me up until today. He asked me if I ever worried about the government. coming after me, or even more nefarious, silencing in me for possibly coming too close to the truth about UFOs. And I remember my knee-jerk reaction was to laugh it off. I mean, I'd been asked this

many times in the past by curious minds, but when it came to my own father, staring at me with a straight face and asking me that, I could tell that it wasn't an innocent inquiry. My father was legitimately worried for his son's safety because of the work he was doing. A worry I'm sure Vanessa Bates also had for her child. But unfortunately, her greatest nightmares had come true. I tried to ease my father's fears by stating that no UFO researcher had ever been killed or possibly murdered in the pursuit of finding the truth or uncovering a grand conspiracy or cover-up of the UFO phenomenon. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. after that night in the bar.

And that's when I flipped on the researcher mode and started digging. And I soon realized that easing my father's fears was the least of my worries. I was faced with the possibility that maybe I was wrong. And maybe some who knew too much about UFOs were, in fact, being surveilled and targeted. Their suspicious deaths left me wondering if this was just the theories of those seeking importance and relevancy where there was none, or if they'd actually been killed to keep the truth hidden from the public about UFOs.

Morris Ketchum Jessup died April 20th, 1959. In 1955, a book swept the UFO and intelligence communities by storm and instantly became a national bestseller. The case for the UFO, written by Morris K. Jessup, was an in-depth look at the UFO, the UFO phenomenon. To this day, it remains an extremely comprehensive case study. Having begun his work as an instructor of mathematics and astrophysics, Jessup would eventually receive his doctorate in astrophysics from the University of Michigan. He would go on to study ancient ruins,

such as Easter Island and the megalithic stones of Peru. As time progressed, he even began to look into the enigmatic subject of UFOs. to practically become a slave to it. And get into it, you recognize the lengthen of the amazing. In 1956, Jessup planned to travel to Mexico to survey meteorite craters. But when word got out that he had been writing books about UFOs, the University of Michigan, the primary source of funding for Jessup's expedition, wasn't exactly thrilled.

The university quickly pulled the funding and the trip. Never happened. Time progressed, and by 1958, Jessup had separated from his wife, stopped writing books, and moved back to his hometown of Indiana. He began to suffer from a deep depression. In April 1959, he contacted his longtime friend, popular radio show host, Long John Neville. Jessup sent Nebel an extremely dark letter that Nebel would later claim was a straight suicide note. Nebel hoped that the 59-year-old Jessup wasn't actually planning on going through with it. But on April 20, 1959, Jessup was found at approximately 6.30 p.m. at his home in Florida, having wired a hose from his exhaust pipe into the window of his car.

The cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning, but a few things stood out about the suicide. First, the opening in the window of Jessup's car door, where the hose had been inserted, was stuffed with wet rags to keep the carbon monoxide from seeping out. But there was no source of water in the car that Jessup could have used to dampen the rags. Granted, Jessup could have wet the rags before he got in the car, but it seems suspicious nonetheless. Even more suspicious, however, is the fact that, contrary to Florida law, no autopsy was performed. formed on Jessup to determine the cause of death. Even if it were a suicide, there wasn't even a hint of interest in looking deeper into the death. Was something being hidden and completely overlooked?

Some believe Jessup was murdered. Richard Ogden, a UFO researcher, was the first to question the suicide, claiming that Jessup was receiving more information about UFOs than he was letting on. and at a time when he was extremely vulnerable, someone sent Jessup instructions on how to properly commit suicide. Dorothy Kilglin died November 8, 1965. As the most famous syndicated female journalist of her time, Dorothy Kilglin was used to controversy.

She was constantly rubbing elbows with the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, the Hollywood elite, and the political celebrities that would find fame of their own in the most scandalous of ways. This often left Dorothy, prone to threats by those of whom she may have shed a not-so-bright light on. Hi, darling. Hi, sweetie. Well, judging from that pile of notes, it looks as though you have some exciting things to talk about today. Indeed, I do.

And I'm looking forward to sharing them with our listeners. I know you've got lots of fascinating information, too, but first I hear from a friend. end of ours. But 1965 would prove to be the darkest year for the journalist, the year when she herself became a tragic headline. One would find it difficult to rank the contributions Kiglin made to the world of journalism, but there is no doubt that some headlines she held spread across both America and Britain took precedence over others and put her vastly ahead of her journalistic counterparts. The first was the 1954 murder trial of Dr. Sam Shepard. Koghling questioned the guilty verdict in a syndicated column of hers, stating that the prosecution didn't prove that he was guilty any more than they proved there are pin-headed men on Mars.

Her comments about men on Mars would stretch even further when she would veer her focus towards the topic of UFOs. That same year, she touched on many reports of sightings, crashes, and retrievals, supposedly occurring in Britain at the time. The byline of her first UFO-related article stated, quote, Flying saucers are regarded as of such vital importance that they will be the subject of a special hush-hush meeting of the world military heads next summer. In a separate article that ran in the New York Journal, American, the Cincinnati Inquirer, and the Washington Post,

Kogelan stated that British scientists and airmen, after examining the wreckage of one mysterious flying ship, are convinced these strange aerial objects are not optical illusions or Soviet interventions, but are flying saucers which originate on another planet. Kowkeland claimed that her source of this information was a British high-ranking official preferred to remain anonymous. She quoted this official as telling her that, quote, On the basis of our inquiry thus far,

the saucers were staffed by small men, probably under four feet tall. It's frightening, but there is no denying that the flying saucers come from another planet. End quote. After close examination, Gordon Crichton, editor of the Flying Sasser Review, alleged that the information was given to Kilglin by Lord Mountbatten of Burma while they attended a cocktail party. The third topic of great interest that Kilglin found herself tangled up in

was the John F. Kennedy assassination. Soon after the death of Browell... President Kennedy, Kilgolin claimed that she had interviewed Jack Ruby inside the Dallas courthouse after he had shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald. The contents of this interview were never made public and instead only stirred the conspiratorial pot, as Kilgolin would eventually suggest that the CIA had hired members of the mafia for assassinations on both Fidel Castro and President Kennedy. Perhaps foreshadowing her own demise, Kilgolin was once quoted as saying,

This story isn't going to die as long as there's a real reporter alive, and there are not a lot of them alive. It was on an autumn morning in New York City when Kilgolin's body was found in her brownstone apartment. She had apparently succumbed to a fatal dose of sleeping pills and alcohol, eerily of a same fashion as that of Marilyn Monroe, with whom Kilgolin had publicly become a close friend.

of. Many believed it to be an accidental suicide. Others believed she was permanently silenced for the wealth of information she was bringing forward about the aforementioned topics. Either way, the medical examiner who handled her death left a subtle but mysterious note, typing simply circumstances undetermined on her death certificate. Frank Edwards died June 22nd, 1967. Frank Edwards had always had a knack for radio, and it showed. Beginning his career as a broadcaster in 1924, he would go on to be a White House correspondent from 1949 to 1954. In a 1953 poll, Edwards was cited as one of the top three broadcasters in the nation. Delving deep into many different topics, his true UFO colors began to show as his broadcasts posted more and more topics that bordered the

Fringe, primarily that of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. This is Frank Edwards reporting. How real are the flying saucers, officially called unidentified flying objects? On December 24, 1959, the Inspector General of the Air Force notified all airbase commanders that flying saucers are a serious problem. The government of the United States has issued orders advising the military how to recognize the UFOs, how to report them, and how to handle fragments of them. Slowly but surely, the irrefutable facts about UFOs

have filtered through the veil of censorship in this and other countries. Slowly but surely, the nature and extent of this remarkable phenomenon has become public knowledge. By patiently piecing together these bits of evidence, as they become available, by carefully weighing the guarded statements of scientists and military agencies involved in the study of unidentified flying objects, we shall see that they are indeed serious business.

By the mid-1960s, Edwards' radio show, strangest of all, was heard on hundreds of radio stations across the country and soon hit newspaper syndication, creating a whole new column for Edwards that spanned across 300 different American newspapers. He was now the most outspoken. spoken radio broadcaster turned writer on the topic of UFOs. And it didn't stop there. Edwards would rack up an exceptional writing resume,

authoring a respectable seven books on different types of phenomena. Among the most notable of his books were Flying Saucers, Serious Business, which was published in 1966, and Flying Saucers, Here and Now, which was published in 1967. In a paper titled Controversial Deaths of UFO Investigates, researchers, and authors, Peter Robbins acknowledged Edwards' interest in the UFO phenomenon seeding in the late 1940s and peaking in 1953, the year in which Edwards received an advanced copy of the Flying Saucers Are Real by decorated marine pilot Major Donald Kehoe. In the book,

Kehoe comes to the controversial conclusion that the extraterrestrial hypothesis is the most likely answer to the UFO phenomenon, and that military officials know this but refuse to acknowledge it. Kehoe and Edwards connected on this theory, and Kehoe soon became irregular on Edwards' radio programs. Edwards took on a very integral role as the member of the Board of Governors for the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, or Nightcap, from 1957 until his death. As part of the organization, he would eventually attend a special meeting in New York City called the Conference of Scientific Uphologists. The first morning at the conference found the organizers standing before more than a thousand people

to announce that Frank Edwards had passed away, a few minutes before midnight the night prior. The importance of noting that it was before midnight stems from many believing that Edwards had all too coincidentally died on the anniversary of the famous Kenneth Arnold's sightings of 1947. Although it wasn't the exact anniversary, it was spared only by minutes. This began to fuel the fires of suspicion among many in the room that day. Those who were close to Edwards stated that his health had never been poor. Suspitions only grew when Edward's obituary in the New York Times read that he had apparently died of a heart attack. the word apparently being noted.

If this weren't enough to question this sudden tragedy, Long John Nebel would take to the airwaves to explain that he had been shown two unsigned letters prior to the conference. These letters both stated that Edwards would not live to see the end of the conference. Whether these letters were a warning or a threat remained in debate, murder was resting lightly on everyone's lips, but quickly became heavier when Nebel related a phone call he had received from UFO author, Gray Barker, days before the conference as well. In the phone call, Barker told Nebel, quote, John, something happened a few minutes ago that really shook me up.

I got a phone call from a man who said that Frank would not live to see the end of the conference. That's all he said before he hung up, end quote. Barker had been known to stretch the truth a bit during the golden, age of the saucer craze, but Nebel was always a straight shooter. He wouldn't have broadcast these events on his show if he didn't believe there was truth to it. And with a sheer amount of coincidences occurring that fateful night, it's hard to believe that Edwards died completely of natural causes. Ron Rommel died August 6, 1993. Ron Rommel spent his years after being a U.S. Air Force Intelligence agent in ways that most former intelligence...

agents would avoid. Under the pseudonym Crestin, he created and published a comprehensive magazine known as the Alien Digest. The magazine, circulating nationally, touched on many controversial aspects of the UFO phenomenon, including the alien human hybridization theories brought forth by several abduction researchers and abductees. Rommel even begged the question of whether aliens were guilty of a more sinister act. as harvesting humans for their organs. As time progressed, Ramel's subscription base began to grow. Some believe he was treading rough waters, as his theories became not only more elaborate, but he started to dig deeper into the black budget projects around Dulce, New Mexico,

and other underground military bases that were supposedly housing aliens working alongside humans. In August 1993, Ramel's death put an end to his investigation. and silenced him for good. Rameau was found dead in a park in Portland, Oregon, having suffered from a fatal gunshot wound to the head by shooting himself through the mouth. A bloody tragedy, to say the least. But one thing seemed to be missing from the barrel of the gun.

Blood. Ramelle was found with a gun next to his hand, but even more mysterious than the lack of blood was the lack of fingerprints. None were found on the gun. Also, Ramel's handwritten suicide note that eventually surfaced was clearly written by a left-handed person. Ramel was right-handed. Perhaps an autopsy could have helped to answer some of the questions about this apparent suicide. But just like Jessup before him, no autopsy was performed, and Ramel's body was cremated less than 24 hours later.

Even more interesting was what Ramel was working on at the time of his death. According to a Fox News broadcast covering his death, it was rumored that he was working on an investigation into the deaths of over 30 British scientists who had allegedly committed suicide and all of whom had ties to top secret projects with British defense. Ramel's death would prove to be one of the more questionable, but even more questionable would be the death of someone he was working closely with, and would suffer the same murky and suspicious fate not three years later. Phil Schneider died January 17, 1996, a self-taught geologist and explosives expert.

Phil Schneider would come forward with a story so controversial that even the claims of former whistleblower Bob Lazare paled in comparison to the accusations Schneider would reveal to the public. It wasn't Area 51 that Schneider was speaking out about, but more than 13 underground facilities throughout the country that he had allegedly been stationed at to work on many different projects, including structural engineering. Perhaps the most popular of these bases

was the rumored bioengineering facility in Dulce, New Mexico. While working there, Schneider claimed that he witnessed gray humanoid aliens working alongside humans on different levels of the facility. An incident occurred in 1979, causing a shootout amongst the aliens and humans. Supposedly, over 60 members of the Secret Service, FBI agents, and Black Berets were killed. Countless gray aliens had perished as well. During the shootout, Schneider claimed that he was injured by the blast of a beam weapon by one of these aliens, which left a huge scar on his chest.

He would later take the position that his contact with the beam weapon was the cause of a cancer he would be diagnosed with years later. 66 secret service agents, green berets, black berets, crack troops lost their lives because the government, our United States government lied, did not tell us anything. about the alien threat. There's a war underneath there, and I'm talking dead serious.

It's been going on since that time. Since late August of 1979, our military, the Russian military, basically the militaries of the world, have been in constant conflict with the outer space alien. The rumored event at Dulce had been twisted, poked and prodded throughout the annals of UFO lore. But Schneider would maintain a core group of accusations

in lectures he gave across the country for years to come. Some of these accusations were sensational at the very least, and some more sobering. Schneider claimed that our stealth technology was being back-engineered from crashed UFOs. AIDS was a population control method initiated by the National Ordinance laboratory, and that both the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City tragedies included nuclear detonated devices. Whether you believe the claims made by Schneider at his lectures or not, one thing was for certain. His death would raise just as many questions as his vast array

of accusations. Claiming that numerous attempts had been made on his life, including an incident in which someone removed the lug nuts from the tires of his car, he was able to outsmart those who wanted him gone. But when a concerned friend of his hadn't heard from him in a few days, he went to his house and saw his car there. Mail piled up in front of the door, and no answer after incessant knocking on the door. The police eventually showed up and forced their way in.

The smell was unbearable when they found Schneider's body, later concluding that he had been dead for at least five days. Word spread of his death, and the detective on his son, determined that the cause of death was a stroke. But, as the days progressed, more and more grisly details emerged, including evidence that a rubber tube or a catheter was found beneath the flaps of skin in Schneider's neck.

It had been wrapped around his neck three times before it was double-knotted. The failure to discover this evidence during the initial investigation was an inexcusable oversight by the police. And the medical examiner redacted the original cause of death and concluded that Schneider had committed suicide. Schneider's widow, Cynthia Dreher, was furious. She demanded that the police began a murder investigation and claimed that Schneider would never have taken his own life as his religious beliefs denounced the action. And he had plans to write a tell-all book about his many claims. But the investigation never came to fruition.

Even more suspicious was that only days after Schneider's death, Dreher claimed that intelligence agents had searched the premises thoroughly, seizing many assets, including personal photos that have been tucked away for years. Schneider's death sparked much debate in and out of the UFO community, but one thing was for certain. When you speak about highly sensitive material, no matter how outlandish, someone is always. listening and not always with the best of intentions. The often dark and morbid stories of those who've just heard can easily fuel conspiracy theories. They are tantalizing, disturbing, and most definitely mysterious. And this is the perfect formula to create speculation.

But with speculation comes a responsibility for those telling the stories. To focus not on the grisly deaths, but perhaps to shine a light on the lives of those lost. Humanize them. Each of the individuals above pursued a truth that many of us seek to a mystery that will continue to elude us every step of the way. And I commend them greatly for that. I'm sure none of them were perfect by any means, but they each had family, friends, support, and probably detractors, but they were somebody. And in the memories of those who cared for them, they remained somebody as well.

And for Vanessa Bates, mother of Max Spears, the questions left behind were as painful as the loss of her son and the mysterious circumstances of his death. He was a very special person indeed from the time he was born, just special because he is my son. He never mind all the rest. Part of the world that he was part of, he saw a lot of good and a lot of light.

He believed we were in an era of enlightenment and that it was almost like a renaissance happening here. There were those who would not wish for this to be so, that the last thing that they wanted was enlightenment and they wanted to keep people closed and in place. And that is what he saw as the darker side. He thought that possibly the more he spoke out, the more dangerous it became. He said, if I don't survive this, mum, then you have to make sure that you look into it.

I don't even know if it was the people or if it was going to Poland. I don't know the answers, but something changed. Somehow he got connected with the darker side. I want to know what happened to my son. Massive, massive gaps. are extremely painful for me every morning that I wake up. I worry about what happened to him. I don't know. I have no answers.

It's more important to me. I never thought that I'd be in a position to be even talking about it, but it's more important to me to know what happened, whatever it is, than not knowing. But Vanessa Bates remembers the light in Max's life, the good times, and the joy he brought her. And I'm sure in many different ways, Morris Jessup, Dorothy Kilgoan, Frank Edwards, Ron Rommel, and Phil Schneider did the same for those they encountered in their own lives. And whether they like it or not, they will go down in the annals of UFO lore, both for their tragic ends, but also for the legacies they left behind.

Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions in association with the Entertainment One Podcast Network. To learn more, visit Entertainment One Podcast.com.