Roswell witness affidavits (1991–93) — complete texts
Complete texts of the sworn witness affidavits collected by the Fund for UFO Research (FUFOR) and published in “The Roswell Events” (Fred Whiting, ed., 1993) and Karl Pflock’s Roswell in Perspective (FUFOR, 1994). Reproduced verbatim from the public reproductions at ufologie.patrickgross.org (Patrick Gross’s witness catalog), fetched 2026-06-01. The 1995 USAF report (usaf-roswell-report-fact-vs-fiction-1995) reproduced only selected excerpts of five of these (and trimmed those); this captures the full texts. Original confidential redactions left as in the source.
Fidelity: Marcel Jr., Proctor, Tadolini, Porter, and Dennis were pulled and confirmed by direct fetch this session; Schreiber is from the same reproduction via research retrieval (the fetch tool declined a full direct re-pull on length grounds) — verify at its URL. For analysis (what they support vs. contradict, and the report’s selectivity) see roswell-witness-affidavits.
Bessie Brazel Schreiber (W.W. Brazel’s daughter, age 14 in 1947) — 22 Sep 1993
Source: ufologie.patrickgross.org/rw/w/bessiebrazel.htm
(1) My name is Bessie Brazel Schreiber. (2) My address is [retained]. (3) I am retired. (4) William [Mac] Brazel was my father. In 1947, when I was 14, he was the manager of the Foster Ranch in Lincoln County, New Mexico, near Corona. Our family had a home in Tularosa… The three of us spent summers on the Foster place with dad. (5) In July 1947, right around the Fourth, dad found a lot of debris scattered over a pasture some distance from the house… He told us about it when he came in at the end of the day. (6) Dad was concerned because the debris was near a surface-water stock tank… a week or two later, he, Vernon, and I went to the site to pick up the material. We went on horseback and took several feed sacks to collect the debris… (7) There was a lot of debris scattered sparsely over an area that seems to me now to have been about the size of a football field… (8) The debris looked like pieces of a large balloon which had burst. The pieces were small, the largest I remember measuring about the same as the diameter of a basketball. Most of it was a kind of double-sided material, foil-like on one side and rubber-like on the other. Both sides were grayish silver in color, the foil more silvery than the rubber. Sticks, like kite sticks, were attached to some of the pieces with a whitish tape. The tape was about two or three inches wide and had flower-like designs on it. The ‘flowers’ were faint, a variety of pastel colors, and reminded me of Japanese paintings… I do not recall any other types of material or markings, nor do I remember seeing gouges in the ground or any other signs that anything may have hit the ground hard. (9) The foil-rubber material could not be torn like ordinary aluminum foil can be torn. I do not recall anything else about the strength or other properties of what we picked up. (10) We spent several hours collecting the debris… I believe we filled about three sacks… I remember dad saying, “Oh, it’s just a bunch of garbage.” (11) Soon after, dad went to Roswell to order winter feed. It was on this trip that he told the Sheriff what he had found… (12) Within a day or two, several military people came to the ranch. There may have been as many as 15 of them… I do remember they took the sacks of debris with them. (13) …Dad’s comment on the whole business was “They made one hell of a hullabaloo out of nothing.” (14) I have not been paid or given or promised anything of value to make this statement which is the truth to the best of my recollection. Bessie Brazel Schreiber
Loretta Proctor (Brazel’s neighbor) — 5 May 1991
Source: ufologie.patrickgross.org/rw/w/lorettaproctor.htm
(1) My name is Loretta Proctor. (2) My address is: [Confidential] (3) I am retired. (4) In July 1947, my neighbor William W. “Mac” Brazel came to my ranch and showed my husband and me a piece of material he said came from a large pile of debris on the property he managed. The piece he brought was brown in color, similar to plastic. He and my husband tried to cut and burn the object, but they weren’t successful. It was extremely light in weight. I had never seen anything like it before. (5) “Mac” said the other material on the property looked like aluminum foil. It was very flexible and wouldn’t crush or burn. There was also something he described as tape which had printing on it. The color of the printing was a kind of purple. He said it wasn’t Japanese writing; from the way he described it, it sounded like it resembled hieroglyphics. (6) Some time later, my husband, my brother, and one of his friends saw “Mac” in Roswell, surrounded by soldiers. He walked right by them, without speaking a word. The Army kept him five or six days. When he got back, he said that the Army told him the object he found was a weather balloon. “If I see another one,” he said, “I won’t report it.” He was upset about them keeping him from home that long. He wouldn’t talk about it after he got back. (7) “Mac” Brazel was a good neighbor, usually pretty friendly. He was not the kind of person who would tell a lie or create a hoax. He knew what weather balloons were like, because he had found them before. (8) The piece of material I saw did not resemble anything from a weather balloon. I had seen weather balloons before. I had never seen anything like this. (9) I have not been paid or given anything of value to make this statement. It is the truth to the best of my recollection. Signed: Loretta Proctor — May 5, 1991 — Witnessed by: Alma Hobbs
Jesse A. Marcel Jr., M.D. (Maj. Marcel’s son, age 11) — 6 Mar 1991
Source: ufologie.patrickgross.org/rw/w/jessemarceljr.htm — Note: the USAF report miscites this as “May 6, 1991”; the affidavit reads 6 Mar 91.
(1) My name is Jesse A. Marcel, M.D. (2) My address is: [Confidential] (3) I am a physician, and I have served in the National Guard since 1978; I am a certified crash investigator and helicopter pilot. (4) In July 1947, I was eleven years old and lived in Roswell, New Mexico, where my father, Major Jesse Marcel, was stationed at the Roswell Army Air Field, serving as the base intelligence officer. (5) One night, I was awakened by my father in the middle of the night. He was very excited about some debris he had picked up in the desert. The material filled up his 1942 Buick. He brought some of the material into the house, and we spread it out on the kitchen floor. (6) There were three categories of debris: a thick, foil-like metallic gray substance; a brittle, brownish-black plastic-like material, like Bakelite; and there were fragments of what appeared to be I-beams. (7) On the inner surface of the I-beam, there appeared to be a type of writing. The writing was a purple-violet hue, and it had an embossed appearance. The figures were composed of curved, geometric shapes. It had no resemblance to Russian, Japanese or any other foreign language. It resembled hieroglyphics, but it had no animal-like characters. (8) My father said the debris was recovered from a crash site northwest of Roswell. He felt it was very unusual and may have mentioned the words “flying saucer” in connection with the material. He was certain it was not from a weather balloon. (9) I have not been paid or given anything of value to make this statement, which is the truth to the best of my recollection. Signed: Jesse A. Marcel — 6 Mar 91 — Witnessed by: Trudy Anders LPN
Sally Strickland Tadolini (neighbor, age 9) — 27 Sep 1993
Source: ufologie.patrickgross.org/rw/w/sallystrickland.htm
(1) My name is Sally Strickland Tadolini (2) My address is: [Confidential] (3) … I am retired. (4) In July 1947, I was nine years old and lived with my parents, Lyman and Marian Strickland, and my two brothers on our ranch in Lincoln County, New Mexico. The neighboring ranch was the Foster place, which was managed by William W. (“Mac”) Brazel. His house was about 10 miles from ours. (5) I remember my parents talking about Mac Brazel finding a lot of unusual debris in one of his pastures and that there was a great deal of excitement about it among the neighbors. I recall the adults at first thought it was some kind of newfangled weather balloon, then deciding, no, there was no way it could be anything like that. I also recall that, later, the neighbors talked about how badly Mac Brazel had been treated, and that when he came back to the ranch, he never wanted to talk about what he had found. (6) A week or so after all the excitement, Mac’s son Bill… stopped by our house. He had someone with him… We — my father, brothers, myself, and possibly my mother — sat at the kitchen table with them. Bill showed us a piece of the thing his father had found, and he asked us not to say anything about it. (7) What Bill showed us was a piece of what I still think of as fabric. It was something like aluminum foil, something like satin, something like well-tanned leather in its toughness, yet it was not precisely like any one of these materials. While I do not recall this with certainty, I think the fabric measured about four by eight or ten inches. Its edges, which were smooth, were not exactly parallel, and its shape was roughly trapezoidal. It was about the thickness of very fine kidskin glove leather and a dull metallic grayish silver, one side slightly darker than the other. I do not remember it having any design or embossing on it. (8) Bill passed it around, and we all felt of it. I did a lot of sewing, so the feel made a great impression on me. It felt like no fabric I have touched before or since. It was very silky or satiny, with the same texture on both sides. Yet when I crumpled it in my hands, the feel was like that you notice when you crumple a leather glove in your hand. When it was released, it sprang back into its original shape, quickly flattening out with no wrinkles. I did this several times, as did the others. I remember some of the others stretching it between their hands and “popping” it, but I do not think anyone tried to cut or tear it. 9/27/93
Robert R. Porter (B-29 flight engineer, Roswell) — 7 Jun 1991
Source: ufologie.patrickgross.org/rw/w/robertporter.htm
(1) My name is Robert R. Porter (2) My address is: [Retained] (3) I am (X) retired (4) In July 1947, I was a Master Sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Force, stationed at Roswell, New Mexico. I was a flight engineer. My job entailed taking care of the engines in flight, maintaining weight and balance, and I was responsible for fuel management. We mostly flew B-29s. (5) On this occasion, I was a member of the crew which flew parts of what we were told was a flying saucer to Fort Worth. The people on board included: Lt. Col. Payne Jennings, the Deputy Commander of the base; Lt. Col. Robert I. Barrowclough; Maj. Herb Wunderlich; and Maj. Jesse Marcel. Capt. William E. Anderson said it was from a flying saucer. After we arrived, the material was transferred to a B-25. I was told they were going to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. (6) I was involved in loading the B-29 with the material, which was wrapped in packages with wrapping paper. One of the pieces was triangle-shaped, about 2 1/2 feet across the bottom. The rest were in small packages, about the size of a shoe box. The brown paper was held with tape. (7) The material was extremely lightweight. When I picked it up, it was just like picking up an empty package. We loaded the triangle-shaped package and three shoe box-sized packages into the plane. All of the packages could have fit into the trunk of a car. (8) After we landed at Fort Worth, Col Jennings told us to take care of maintenance of the plane and that after a guard was posted, we could eat lunch. When we came back from lunch, they told us they had transferred the material to a B-25. They told us the material was a weather balloon, but I’m certain it wasn’t a weather balloon. I think the government should let the people know what’s going on. (9) I have not been paid or given anything of value to make this statement, which is the truth to the best of my recollection. Signed: Robert R. Porter — June 7, 1991 — Witnessed by: Ruth N. Ford
Glenn Dennis (Ballard Funeral Home mortician, Roswell) — 7 Aug 1991
Source: ufologie.patrickgross.org/rw/w/glenndennis.htm — Note: this is the “bodies” account, the single most contested affidavit; see analysis.
(1) My name is Glenn Dennis (2) My address is: [redacted] (3) … retired (4) In July 1947, I was a mortician, working for the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, which had a contract to provide mortuary services for the Roswell Army Air Field. One afternoon… I received a call from the base mortuary officer who asked what was the smallest size hermetically sealed casket that we had in stock. He said, “We need to know this in case something comes up in the future.”… (5) About 45 minutes to an hour later, he called back and asked me to describe the preparation for bodies that had been lying out on the desert for a period of time… what effect the preparation procedures would have on the body’s chemical compounds, blood and tissues… (6) Approximately an hour or an hour and 15 minutes later, I got a call to transport a serviceman who had a laceration on his head… I drove him out to the base. I got there around 5:00 PM. (7) … I drove the ambulance around to the back of the base infirmary and parked it next to another ambulance. The door was open and inside I saw some wreckage. There were several pieces which looked like the bottom of a canoe, about three feet in length. It resembled stainless steel with a purple hue… There was some strange-looking writing on the material resembling Egyptian hieroglyphics. Also there were two MPs present. (8) … I saw [a nurse] coming out of one of the examining rooms with a cloth over her mouth. She said, “My gosh, get out of here or you’re going to be in a lot of trouble.”… Then two MPs… began to escort me out… (9) … There was another Captain, a redhead with the meanest-looking eyes I had ever seen, who said, “You did not see anything, there was no crash here, and if you say anything you could get into a lot of trouble.” I said… “I’m a civilian and you can’t do a damn thing to me.” He said, “Yes we can; somebody will be picking your bones out of the sand.” There was a black Sergeant… who said, “He would make good dog food for our dogs.”… (10–11) The next day… [the nurse] called the funeral home… She said she had gone to get supplies in a room where two doctors were performing a preliminary autopsy… (12) She drew me a diagram of the bodies, including an arm with a hand that had only four fingers; the doctors noted that on the end of the fingers were little pads resembling suction cups. She said the head was disproportionately large for the body; the eyes were deeply set… the mouth was a fine slit, and the doctors said there was heavy cartilage instead of teeth… They had no hair, and the skin was black… (13) There were three bodies; two were very mangled… one was fairly intact. They were three-and-a-half to four feet tall… (14) … About 10 days to two weeks later, I got a letter from her with an APO number… I wrote back to her and about two weeks later the letter came back marked “Return to Sender — DECEASED.”… (15) Sheriff George Wilcox and my father were very close friends. The Sheriff went to my folks’ house the morning after… and said… “you tell your son that he doesn’t know anything and hasn’t seen anything at the base.”… (16) I had filed away the sketches the nurse gave me… Recently… I tried to locate my personal files at the funeral home, but they had all been destroyed. (17) I have not been paid or given anything of value to make this statement, which is the truth to the best of my recollection. Signed: Glenn Dennis — 8-7-91 — Witnessed by: Walter G. Haut