The Cash-Landrum-McDonald UFO Incident of 1980

The Cash-Landrum case of December 29, 1980 is one of the best-known UFO stories, 

made famous in the media for the alleged radiation injuries to witnesses Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and her grandson Colby. Shortly after the story became public, another UFO witness from that night came forward, but his testimony has been largely ignored. Jerry McDonald of Dayton, Texas, witnessed a low-flying triangle-shaped object, but earlier the same evening and miles away. All these years later, Jerry feels his story has not been told, so he contacted BBL to share his experience and his thoughts on the UFO’s origin. 

Before hearing his modern perspective, let’s first examine how his story surfaced in 1981.

The Original Interview

John Schuessler, then the deputy director of the Mutual UFO Network, also ran a Houston-area group, Project VISIT (for Vehicle Internal Systems Investigative Team), which began investigating the Cash-Landrum case Feb. 21, 1981 after getting a call from Betty Cash, then by visiting the sighting location a week later with Vickie and Colby Landrum.

Other than getting the witnesses’ story, the VISIT investigation produced nothing, so they turned to the power of the media. John Schuessler’s memo of March 20, 1981 states:

“Metro News Service carried a plea for witnesses to come forth. Jerry heard the plea on KIKK radio.” That was Jerry McDonald, and on March 23, David Kissinger of VISIT went to Dayton to interview him.

Jerry was an oil field worker, 23 years old at the time, and lived in Dayton in a house trailer with his wife Glenda and their baby girl. It was early Monday night, and Jerry was outside repairing the water line when he heard a rumbling noise. He looked up, maybe expecting to see the Goodyear blimp, but instead saw a strange triangular object flying above the 40-foot tall trees nearby. Jerry described and sketched the object as triangular, flying point first, the opposite side with white and blue lights near the corners, and two flaring lights that looked like the flame of an acetylene torch near the middle. In the center of the triangle, it had a brilliant red light. Jerry watched it for two or three minutes, estimating its size as 40 feet wide, its altitude at 130 feet, and it’s speed as 3 miles per hour.    

Drawing by Kissinger based on McDonalds's report.

Two days later, Jerry came down with the flu. Glenda hadn’t gone outside to see it, but she got sick too, but not their daughter. Two weeks later, on Feb. 14, Jerry was hospitalized for an air pocket in his lung which was treated by medication. An interesting detail surfaced during the interview. Glenda McDonald had also seen a UFO - two of them, but much later on the night of Feb. 14, and hers were a bit smaller, kite-shaped with lights at each corner. Kissinger closed his report by suggesting that they advertise on radio and TV to find other witnesses, and to notify the authorities about the public health hazard from the UFO. 

The problems making Jerry McDonald’s UFO with the Cash-Landrum case are numerous. He wasn’t able to pinpoint the time of his sighting, initially saying between 8 and 9 p.m., then between 7 and 8 p.m. to VISIT investigators. The Cash-Landrum sighting time is estimated at shortly after 9 p.m., so if the earlier time is correct, that’s a long while for a UFO to be prowling the Texas skies between Dayton and New Caney. Jerry reported the noise of  the UFO as a rumble that got made him look up, whereas Vickie Landrum described her object producing a roar like a hurricane. The most notable feature to Jerry was the lights on the UFO, particularly the single bright red on at its center, but Betty and Vickie described the object they saw as blindingly brilliant with no discernible features. Another big difference was the shape. Jerry’s UFO was a triangular flat wing about 40 ft wide, the Cash-Landrum object said to be a huge diamond-shaped object, more like a football shooting flame from the bottom pointed end. It’s difficult to believe they were describing the same object, but they were both UFOs, and that’s close enough for flying saucer science. 

In an undated follow-up, VISIT attempted to reconcile the different characteristics in the three UFO sightings described by Vickie and Colby Landrum, Jerry, and in his wife’s Feb. sighting. The letter included several pictures, suggesting the Jerry’s triangular pyramid UFO had really been a diamond-shaped craft viewed from below. 

The descriptions of the various witnesses have been reviewed. One of the possible configurations that fits all descriptions is given below. Please provide discussion of why and why it does not fit the object you saw.

VISIT sketch: "possible configurations"

 In other words, the investigators were trying to shape the testimony to fit the hypothesis that the UFO from all three sightings were the same object. The documents related to the McDonald interview are collected in a pdf: Project VISIT file on Jerry McDonald

Jerry’s sighting, along with Glenda’s and any other allegedly related UFO reports, were not given individual case files by VISIT or MUFON, just included within the Cash-Landrum material. Comparing that to a police investigation, it’s like dropping every crime in a city into a single folder and hoping for one solution for everything. Glenda’s sighting was completely dropped, but Jerry’s sometimes appeared in UFO literature, but just in an attempt to corroborate the original Cash-Landrum case. That's caused the McDonald sighting to be ignored, and missed by researchers investigating "black triangle" UFOs.

The Original Media Coverage

The most accurate reporting of Jerry’s sighting was the earliest one published, in The Houston Chronicle, p.1A., Sept 25, 1981, “State, private agencies probing claims of UFO encounter” by Cindy Horswell.

Jerry McDonald, 24, an oilfield roughneck, also witnessed something strange that night from his home in Dayton. “I heard a sound like a rumble, and I thought it was the Goodyear  blimp,” he said. “It was kind of triangular or diamond-shaped and had two twin torches that were shooting brilliant blue flames out of the back.” He said it also had two bright lights on it and a red light in the center as it  passed about 150 feet above him.”

In The Unexplained: Mysteries of Mind, Space and Time,  vol 9, Issue 107, 1982,

Orbis Publishing Limited (UK), “Blind Terror in Texas,” John Schuessler edited Jerry’s quote to remove the “triangular” description:

Oilfield laborer Jerry McDonald was in his back garden in Dayton when he witnessed a huge UFO flying overhead. At first he thought it was the Goodyear airship, but he quickly realized it was some unidentified object. "It was kind of diamond-shaped and had two twin torches that were shooting brilliant blue flames out the back", he said. 

It took The X-Files in the 1990s to get the media interested in UFOs again. “UFO Sightings” by Marty Racine was the cover story for the Houston Chronicle’s Texas Magazine, Nov. 11, 1996. It featured coverage of the Cash-Landrum case, including an interview with Jerry McDonald about his sighting, and printed his sketch of the triangle-shaped UFO.  

Fort the entire excerpt covering the Cash-Landrum story, see:
Houston Chronicle’s Texas Magazine, Nov. 11, 1996

The same evening about 15 miles away in Dayton, Jerry McDonald, an oilfield roughneck, was fixing a water main outside his trailer when a huge black triangular craft sporting a brilliant red light and belching twin flames passed 130 feet overhead."It was there, buddy, it was there. Blew my mind, it was going so low and slow. This was no blimp. This was something out of this world. I saw something that scared the death out of me."

Later in the article, it presented Jerry’s thoughts on the origin of the object:

McDonald now thinks his UFO was a Stealth Bomber, which was developed in the late '70s. ‘I think (the military) just got caught with their pants down."

In John Schuessler’s 1998 book, The Cash-Landrum Incident, the appendix includes copies of Kissinger’s interviews of the McDonalds, and on page 78 he gives a summary of Jerry’s sighting, portraying it as a closer match the C-L UFO. 

Jerry McDonald was working in his yard between 7 and 9 p.m. when he saw an object as large as the Goodyear blimp overhead... It continued on over the vacant football field and out of sight to the west, in the direction of Huffman.

The Cash-Landrum case was examined in UFO Hunters “Alien Fallout” episode from Jan. 14, 2009. It featured a short interview with Jerry McDonald and showed him making a sketch of the object he'd seen, a clip just intended to show that someone else had seen a UFO.

Jerry McDonald Speaks Out

Those brief appearances are about the extent of the coverage of Jerry’s sighting in the media, but 

Dec. 8, 2016, BBL published the piece, “Cash-Landrum UFO Case Updates: Witness Reports,” which closed with a call for new witnesses to come forward. That evening I received an email:

My name is Jerry McDonald I am the silent witness that has was not named in the lawsuit... I believe I know what I saw that night now, and I need to tell somebody.

When I called Jerry, he said that he was the “silent witness” of the lawsuit, that he had been asked to be part of it but declined, otherwise it would have been known as the Cash-Landrum-McDonald case. He said at the time he was young and a bit scared - unwilling to miss work to testify - and afraid of reprisals by the government. Jerry said Dayton Dayton police detective Lamar Walker, whom he described as a good friend, was someone who the attorney had intended to call as a witness. He mentioned that Walker had seen the helicopters, but not the UFO, which was just the opposite of Jerry’s sighting. Jerry said the lawsuit was thrown out due to lack of evidence, which is accurate. 

In reviewing his sighting, McDonald described the location, saying that there's now a Walgreen’s where his trailer was located in 1980. When he was filmed for the UFO Hunters segment, they went to an adjacent property to represent the location. He pointed out that UFO literature is in error when they say he was out in his “garden.” Instead, he was outside at the time to repair a broken PVC water pipe to his trailer, and was covered in mud. McDonald described his UFO sighting, saying that the object was triangular, about 100 - 150 feet in the air and it sounded like a blimp and he imitated the sound that it made, a humming or rumbling noise. He mentioned how the Goodyear Blimp was frequently seen at Christmastime, and that they had Santa Claus’ sled and the reindeers displayed on the side (animated by its lights). His description of the experience was consistent with his original testimony, but I tried to get a sense of the kind of impression it made on him. When I asked him about its size, he said that it was not all that big, and that it was flying low and slow (so low, he said he could have shot it down.) 

Two of examples McDonald sent of UAVs resembling his UFO. 

The main reason McDonald wanted to reach me was to  express his present day thoughts on the origin of the UFO. He has come to believe that what he witnessed was an early flight test of an unmanned aerial vehicle being test flown in Texas. He told me he had found a picture online, a Lockheed Martin UAV on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, a triangular-shaped drone that resembled the object that he had seen in 1980.  “This is a prototype of unmanned drones that you will never find - the government has covered this paperwork up because of the lawsuit. These ladies are dead of their injuries and never got compensated for it, and I know exactly what I saw I know exactly what it looked like.” He is convinced the same object he saw was the Cash-Landrum UFO, and went on to say it was “jammed full of radar” and that's what had caused the “radiation burns”in the witnesses. 

The NBC show, That's Incredible!, filming in Dayton, Texas, July 1981.
In the left photo, Jerry McDonald, center, on the right, Colby Landrum at the camera.

In returning to some of the points he had made earlier in the conversation, I asked him about knowing the witnesses. He said that he and Colby Landrum still talk, and that he had seen him recently at funerals. Colby is mad and blames the Government, his phrase was, “mad they killed his grandmother.” He mentioned that when in 1981 when ABC's That's Incredible! came to Dayton film, he’d taken pictures of the crew with Colby. McDonald was also supposed to be interviewed for the show, but he got too nervous and his part was canceled. Jerry has tried to talk to Colby about his idea that the UFO was a drone prototype, but Colby is mad about the situation the entire experience, and that he wants no part of it. 

McDonald feels that he's not had the opportunity to be heard, even locally, that they “will not let the story get out." Jerry thought that UFO Hunters might have been taken off the air, because "they were getting too close." He mentioned that the show had taken core samples on Farm-to-Market Road, but wasn't sure what the results of the analysis revealed (nothing but repaving over the decades). Regarding secrecy in the Cash-Landrum case, he said that the helicopters had been out there, and that it had been covered it up in the middle of the night. 

Today and Beyond

We’ve had intermittent contact since, and Jerry recently sent me several articles and photos on UAVs that resemble the aircraft he saw that night. I asked Jerry about the color of the craft, but he was unsure of it, the lighted portions of it were most prominent in the night sky. The drawing from his initial interview lists the body as black, but can’t be sure.  Jerry thinks it could have been a joint program between that Lockheed Martin and NASA conducted from the Johnson Space Center. The published history of the development of UAV’s does not agree with Jerry’s prototype scenario, but it’s worth considering. What I feel is most import about Jerry’s story is his description of what he witnessed, a very unusual aircraft. He makes no fantastic claims about what he saw, but his testimony is just as important as that of any UFO witness. His description of the event remains unchanged, and when he sent me the copy of his 1996 triangle illustration, he said,  “This is my original drawing and I stand by it.”

Jerry remains convinced that the UFO was really a US military UAV prototype, and that by investigating it, the truth about the Cash-Landrum incident might be revealed. “My resolve is strong, now I have clarity and that’s what they were experimenting with that night and got caught with their pants down... I’m telling you brother they think these people are dead and gone and not coming back from the grave, but I’m still alive to tell about it. This was truly a government cover-up.”

Who's Who in the Cash-Landrum UFO Case

 Cash-Landrum UFO Case: Mini Bios of the Witnesses & Key Players

This is intended as an aid to identifying the chief participants in the Cash-Landrum case, with a special effort to include people that might have been called as witnesses in the courtroom.

This preliminary list groups the players in broad categories. Photos are not always contemporary to the events; some cannot be located, so place holders or illustrations are used instead.

Primary Witnesses

Betty J. Cash  (Feb. 10, 1929 - Dec. 29, 1998) 
Betty J. Collins from Jefferson (near Birmingham),  Alabama
Mother of two (known) children Mickey Joyce and Toby Howard. 
Married James F. Cash 10/4/1958, divorced 9/12/1980, received sole ownership of truck stop restaurant and attached grocery store.
Betty had heart surgery in 1977, recovered but was treated for heart pains in 1979 and continued to take medication. Betty received her new Cutlass Supreme as a Christmas present in 1979.

Betty’s family most involved in the case:
Jesse L. Collins, brother BC stayed with him after leaving hospital
Pauline Collins, mother, carried BC to Alabama to care for her.
Toby Howard, son. First to examine BC’s symptoms,
Mickey Joyce Foster, daughter. Could not recognize mother in hospital.

Vickie Landrum (Sept. 19, 1923 - Sept. 12, 2007)
Vicie Marzelia Holifield originally from Laurel, Mississippi.
Husband: Ernest Wilson Landrum Sr., children, Ernest Jr., Gloria Jean, David, Paul, and Jayne. 
Employed as a clerk, school meals assistant and waitress, also did work for neighbor Martha Thompson.

Colby Lee Landrum (Jan. 29, 1974 - )
From Dayton, Texas, son of Paul A. Landrum and ex-wife Peggy Sue.
After their divorce in 7/29/1976, Vickie became Colby’s his legal custodian.
At the time of the encounter, he was a month shy of his 7th birthday.
Grade school student at time of incident, active in sports.

Secondary Witnesses

There is much uncertainty concerning the number and quality of the secondary witnesses. 

Nellie Zedick (possibly Zitick), son John and his wife Toni were reported in the WWN as witnessing a UFO. By April 1981, they refused to talk about it, effectively retracting the report. Not included in VISIT/MUFON case reporting.

MUFON arranged for media announcements pleading for additional witnesses to come forward to help the victims. Several people responded, though some had UFO stories of other times and places. The key respondents in the case literature:

Jerry McDonald first witness to respond, reported seeing a large triangle shaped craft over Dayton earlier in the evening of the Huffman encounter.

L.L. Walker (off duty Dayton policeman), and his wife Marie claimed seeing a group of military helicopters in the Huffman area several hours after the incident.


  
Several others responded, most of whom only claimed to see helicopters, some unsure of the date. Several of these witnesses wished to remain anonymous. Some of them do not appear in later case reports. 
Link to witness map with names and approximate locations.

Medical Treatment and Analysis

Parkway General Hospital in Houston, Texas was where Betty Cash was treated after the incident.

Dr. V. B. Shenoy, Betty’s cardiologist whom she regularly visited for care. He was called in to see her  her hospitalization, and he was the first one to hear about the UFO story.




Dr. Steve Chandler, Liberty, TX optometrist, treated Vickie Landrum at his office. She and Colby received no other professional medical care after the incident.

Dr. Peter Rank, Chief of Radiology at the Methodist Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. MUFON medical consultant. Offered opinions on the case based on photographs and medical records. He did not examine the witnesses. Rank also participated in the DAIG investigation.

Richard C. Niemtzow, MD, Radiologist, Ex-VISIT member, medical consultant to APRO and MUFON. Participated in the DAIG investigation by offering opinions on the medical claims (and also MUFON article with his analysis). He did not examine the witnesses.

Bryan A. McClelland, MD, became Betty Cash’s doctor in Alabama around 1983. He practices family and geriatric medicine, but is often misrepresented in the media as an original caregiver and radiologist. 

The UFO Investigation

National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) was a national UFO hotline run by Robert Gribble. He took the initial report from Vickie Landrum and passed it along to UFO groups to investigate.

APRO, the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization based in Tucson, Arizona was  started in 1952 by Jim and Coral Lorenzen. Once the most prominent UFO organization, they suffered a serious blow when members withdrew to form the rival organization, MUFON. APRO was the first group to be contacted about the case. APRO dissolved in 1988.

William S. English, APRO member (banished) First UFO investigator to contact the witnesses, shortly thereafter, he sold the story to tabloid, The Weekly World News.

William L. Moore, APRO chief investigator. Known for his Roswell work and his 1989 MUFON speech claiming to have worked as a double agent in a US government sponsored disinformation operation. Moore promoted C-L UFO as a US government secret experiment gone wrong.

Richard C. Doty former AFOSI officer. Bill Moore associate and source. Had previously sent hoaxed material to APRO, the “Weitzel” letter. Background of the Moore-Doty "disinformation" activities.

The Weekly World News was the first to break the story, based on a tip from Bill English. Dick Donovan wrote the story based in part on taped statements made by the witnesses.

Cathy Gordon was the first mainstream newspaper reporter to cover the story for the Courier in Conroe, TX. She had the first detailed interviews with the witnesses, perhaps presenting the earliest, purest account of the story. She also covered developments in the case throughout the legal struggle.

MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network was founded in by an APRO splinter group in 1969, dedicated to “the scientific study of UFOs for the benefit of humanity through investigations, research and education.”

John Schuessler, aerospace engineer, founding member and deputy director of MUFON, and also leader of a small independent UFO research group, VISIT.

Project VISIT (Vehicle Internal Systems Investigative Team) was a group of select individuals, primarily Aerospace professionals contracting for NASA. Other members participated in the original VISIT investigation, chiefly, Dave Kissinger, Don Tucker and Bill Eatwell.

Alan Holt M.S. Physical Science (astrophysics) joined in the initial interviews of Vickie and Colby Landrum and the first trip to the event location. He went on to write an analysis of Extraterrestrial space ship propulsion, which included his theory on the Cash-Landrum UFO.




Allan Hendry investigated case in April 1981, contracted by FUFOR (the Fund for UFO Research) to search for the origin of the military helicopters. He also conducted probing interviews of the adult witnesses by phone.

Dr. Ronald Leo Sprinkle  Professor specializing in using hypnotic regression to investigate alien abduction cases. MUFON & APRO consultant. (Hypnotized Vickie Landrum for That’s Incredible! & National Enquirer)

That’s Incredible! filmed a recreation of the incident and interviews with the witnesses in July 1981. In November, they broadcast a studio appearance of Vickie telling the story under hypnotic regression. The publicity from this broadcast led to the DAIG investigation. 

Bergstrom Air Force Base, near Austin Texas. At the suggestion of Senator Lloyd Bentsen, the witnesses traveled to meet with Air Force officers, gave a detailed interview about the incident and were given damage claims forms. The transcript from this interview is a valuable case record.

The Texas Department of Health and their Radiation Control Bureau investigated the possibility of trace radiation at the encounter scene. The investigation was led by Charles R. (Russ) Meyer. The results were negative, and their offer to examine the medical records were denied.

DAIG Investigation. (Department of the Army Inspector General)  In 1982, after it was determined that the Air Force did not own for the helicopters in the incident, it became an Army investigation, led by Lt. Colonel George C. Sarran. His report stated that there was no evidence of military helicopters being involved. 

The Legal Case

Peter Gersten, the flamboyant “UFO Lawyer” accepted the case pro-bono, primary duty was preparing the legal documents. Most court filings or appearances were handled by Houston attorneys


 

Bill Shead and Rhonda S. Ross, Co-counsels in Civil Action No. H-84-3488 

Frank A. Conforti, Assistant United States Attorney, for the Defendant (United States Government) in the civil suit.

Judge Ross Sterling dismissed the case Aug. 21, 1986 without it going to trial. Two key factors: lack of evidence, and statements by the US military stating they did not operate a vehicle resembling the UFO, figured largely in his decision.


This takes us through 1985, which effectively ended the legal struggle. No further witnesses or evidence after that date have been shown to be solid. As John Schuessler said in 1986,

 "The case is closed! Unless……."