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.”

Skeptoid Challenges the Cash-Landrum UFO Incident

On December 4, 2018 Brian Dunning presented an episode of the Skeptoid Podcast,  The Cash-Landrum UFO Incident, a skeptical evaluation of the case. Dunning does a fair job of examining the case, and he’s clearly done a lot of reading on the case. The printed version of his program includes a list of Dunning’s sources, which includes documents hosted at Blue Blurry Lines.

Brian Dunning reaches the conclusion that the medical problems reported by the witnesses were not due to radiation poisoning from a UFO, and he suggests the witnesses were made some false or exaggerated claims. He also charges the primary UFO investigator of the case, John Schuessler, with cherrypicking data presented as evidence, saying he included “the bits of reports that supported his thesis... and ignored the bits of reports that did not...” Dunning’s argument is worthy of an examination, and a response.

Dunning’s summary of the sighting by Betty Cash, Vickie and Colby Landrum itself is good, as it reflects how the case initially presented. He stumbles a bit when describing how the witnesses reported the case, but that’s understandable. It’s an interesting detail, and the delay in the start of the investigation may be the reason behind why evidence and answers are so elusive in the C-L case. A short summary of how it began:

 Betty Cash and Vickie Landrum said they didn’t immediately connect their illness with the UFO, and were afraid of being called crazy, so they didn’t report their sighting.  At the end of January 1981, once the UFO story had been revealed to Betty’s doctors, Vickie Landrum reported the story to her neighbor, Dayton Police Chief Tommy Waring. It took Waring two or three days to locate the number for the the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) in Seattle, Washington. Vickie reported the sighting on Feb. 2 to Robert Gribble, who passed the information on to UFO organizations, but problems arose, and it was several weeks before an investigation began. 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). Schuessler began investigating the Cash-Landrum case on Feb. 21, 1981 after getting a call from Betty Cash, then by visiting the sighting location a week later with Vickie and Colby Landrum. 

Photos of witnesses displayed on Hangar 1

Photograph of Betty Cash's back, showing cellulitis.

Dunning next discusses the alleged radiation injuries, and talks about how Dr. Gary Posner had seen the C-L case presented on the 1981 episode of NBC’s That's Incredible! 

where “Betty's arms [showed] discrete, round, sunburn-type rashes...” Dunning says Schuessler never mentioned these particular injuries in his book, but that’s not unique. Betty Cash’s alleged radiation burn to her finger beneath her wedding ring was not mentioned by Schuessler in the book, and not in the hospital reports reproduced there or anywhere else. Dunning’s right though, about the hospital diagnosis. While Betty’s combination of symptoms did seem to puzzle her cardiologist and the Parkway Hospital doctors, the diagnosis was of earthly ailments.
See the BBL report, Betty Cash’s Medical Records for further details.

Weekly World News, March 24, 1981

Dunning also mentions Vickie Landrum’s complaints, and notes that her hair and fingernail loss were not documented with photographs. That’s true. There are drawings of Vickie’s fingernails, but no photos, and the pictures of her closest to the incident do not reflect significant hair loss. 

Dunning also cites the letter from Dr. Peter Rank to John Schuessler, stating:

I think it is important to assure Betty that on the basis of the medical information you have provided me, that there are no signs of serious injury to date. You may also reassure Vicki that her cataract was probably a pre-existing condition and not necessarily related to her incident.  

Dunning’s use of the quote by Dr. Rank is damning, but it cuts both ways. Yes, Dr. Rank was a radiologist, and Schuessler’s primary source supporting radiation burns in the case. However, Dr. Rank only examined Betty Cash’s medical records and looked at photos of the witnesses, he never conducted a physical examination of Betty Cash, or of Vickie and Colby Landrum.

Rank, P. "Personal correspondence to John Schuessler." The Cash-Landrum UFO Case Document Collection. Blue Blurry Lines, 29 Apr. 1981. Web. 29 Nov. 2018. https://app.box.com/s/zvelar3gubgiee5zwgi3

Drawing signed by Betty Cash & Vickie Landrum

Dunning discusses Betty Cash telling the Air Force that the helicopters she had seen carried military markings, while in earlier interviews she said she had seen none. When interviewed as Bergstrom AFB on August 17, 1981, Betty was asked to draw a picture of the UFO, and write out the markings she claimed to see on the helicopters. She printed the words, "U. S. Air Force." Interestingly, the Bergstrom interview is downplayed by Schuessler, and only mentioned in a negative way, that the witnesses were treated unkindly and mocked. The transcript of the interview does not reflect that, and instead has value as direct testimony from all three of the witnesses away from UFO investigators. 

Dunning does not try to tackle the issue of the UFO itself (or the associated helicopters), and I can’t fault him too much for that. In fact, he was a bit too soft. Despite the claims that the sighting occurred in a remote area, it was by no means unpopulated. There was at least one trailer home nearby, and there were other homes down the road in both directions. After the initial sighting, the witnesses drove by a fishing camp, a church, then thorough Huffman, and claimed to be able to see the UFO and helicopters from several points along the way. With the sights and sounds they claimed, it’s difficult to understand how many more people were not alarmed.

Map of the Cash-Landrum sighting route

In his conclusion, Dunning seems sympathetic to the witnesses, and allows that they may have indeed seen something that night, but does to believe it to have been extraordinary, just another of many sincere, but mistaken reports of UFOs. It’s his opinion that they wrongly connected their health problems with the experience, and sincerely believing they were wronged, exaggerated their story. And he includes the possibility they went further, such as faking sunburn from the UFO.

It could be. Having a UFO terrifying experience could have been so stressful that it worsened existing health problems in the witnesses. If we want to examine a hoax scenario, a more plausible scenario might be that Betty Cash was genuinely ill and that Vickie Landrum faked her injuries in order to support her friend and try to get her help, including financial support. Betty Cash was a cardiac patient, she’d had surgery a few years before and was taking several medical prescriptions to manage her health. She’d recently been divorced, and as she told the officers in the Bergstrom interview, her business had failed and was closed. Before the UFO, Betty Cash was going through a very rough patch. 

Brian Dunning noted that “Most of what's known about this story stems from the efforts of John Schuessler,” and that’s been the cases’ biggest asset and liability. Schuessler campaigned to get the story covered by the media and supported the legal case suing the US government for damages related to its alleged involvement in the UFO incident. Due to Schuessler’s role as the gatekeeper of the case, he shaped the information released and took a central role in how newspapers and television shows portrayed the story. It caused a simplified, one-sided version of the story to be told one with heroes and villains, the witnesses as poor victims, the government as the evil keeper of secrets, and the valiant UFO researcher bravely fighting for justice. As Dunning says, “a legend.”

The documents presented here at Blue Blurry Lines are intended to strip away the mythology of the Cash-Landrum case and allow for an unbiased examination of the events. We may never know exactly what happened, but we can at least get closer to the truth. 

The $20 Million Cash-Landrum UFO Story

The Cash-Landrum UFO case publicity made a splash in 1981, but had a second wave starting in 1983 after the filing of the lawsuit against the US Government for 20 million dollars in damages. The suit stuck to the details of original incident, avoiding later embellishments such as the legend of the scorched road being removed and replaced by men in unmarked trucks.

Despite the resolve of Betty Cash and Vickie Landrum, there was not sufficient evidence to take the case to trial, and as attorney Peter Gersten later revealed, it was a bluff: 

“The lawsuit was brought in hope that behind the scenes the government would say, `Let’s keep this quiet, we’ll take care of the medical expenses and make sure nothing else happens’." 

Houston Chronicle, Texas Magazine, Page 8, 2 Star Edition, 11/17/1996

 See this earlier article for more on the lawsuit: Cash-Landrum UFO Case: Legal Rumors

Tabloid News

The article below on the Cash-Landrum lawsuit was sent to me by Martin Kottmeyer from his clippings of UFO stories from the 1984 period. It's typical of the coverage at the time and likely came from the tabloid National Examiner. It’s a good summary of the story, but has a few notable variations from canon. Quotations in newspapers, especially tabloids can’t be trusted for fidelity, but it’s interesting that Vickie refers to helicopter searchlights, something absent from earlier accounts. Betty Cash had breast cancer, but said, “The doctors told me radiation definitely caused my cancer.” The tests run during her original hospitalization were negative for radiation exposure.

The other point of interest is Vickie’s reference to the “Pentagon man,” which eventually evolved into a veiled death threat: “He questioned me and I answered him, and then he told me that people had died for less than what I was trying to do.” Vickie Landrum from her appearence on “Sightings” TV episode, segment: “Physical Effects,” July 31, 1992.

The Cash-Landrum case occurred at the same time lore surrounding Roswell was being developed, and distrust of the Government and the belief in a “Cosmic Watergate” UFO cover-up was central to them both. Without a villain to explain the lack of evidence, about all that is left are stories.

Also pictured, UFO sketch by Betty Cash.
Click here for larger version.

Cash-Landrum UFO: A Fresh Look by George Wingfield

"There was no evidence presented that would indicate that Army, National Guard, or Army Reserve helicopters were involved." 

That was the conclusion  of Lt. Col. George C. Sarran's report of his investigation for the Department of the Army's Inspector General’s office on the allegations of U.S. military helicopters being present during the Cash-Landrum UFO encounter.
(For further details, see, The DAIG Investigation of the Cash-Landrum UFO Incident )

This guest article by veteran UFO researcher, George Wingfield, provides a good look into the political backdrop of the Cash-Landrum UFO story, and examines the military forces that could have been involved. Also, he tries to offer a purpose and function for the UFO in this case.   

A Fresh Look at the Cash-Landrum Incident by George Wingfield

Having looked at Curt Collins' findings on George Sarran’s memo about 100 helicopters at Robert Gray Army Airfield, I accept that this was not the smoking gun that it appeared to be.  There is no reason to think that George Sarran was being untruthful in saying that the DAIG investigation, 18 months after the event, had failed in its quest to find whether any Army or USAF (or other military unit’s) helicopters were those seen by Betty Cash and the Landrums during the infamous incident.

However, there are very good reasons for thinking that the helicopters were real and were indeed ones belonging to the US military.  This fact probably had to be covered up because this exercise required the very highest level of secrecy without which its whole purpose would have been lost.  Only the helicopter crews and the senior officers who ordered the exercise would have had the slightest idea about its purpose.

To make any sense of the episode one cannot afford to ignore the grave international political situation that had consumed the attention of the United States, the President, and the US military for all of the year 1980.  This was of course the Iran hostage crisis which blighted Jimmy Carter’s presidency and concentrated minds both in government and in the military to find some way of rescuing the 52 Americans who were eventually held for 444 days.

Operation Eagle Claw used eight RH-53 helicopters and several C-130s in an attempt to rescue the hostages on April 24, 1980. It failed miserably with the loss of several aircraft and the lives of eight servicemen.  Subsequently the crisis deepened.  A second rescue attempt, Operation Credible Sport, was planned using highly modified YMC-130H Hercules aircraft, one of which crashed during a demonstration flight at Eglin AFB on October 29, 1980. This project was abandoned shortly afterwards and it was on November 2, 1980, the Iranian parliament set forth formal conditions for the US hostages’ release. At just this time Ronald Reagan was elected President, although obviously he would not take up office until eleven weeks later.

I believe that one cannot understand the strange Cash-Landrum affair without first setting the scene.  New urgent plans for the military to rescue the hostages in Iran were still being prepared as from October 1980 since few believed that the Iranians would keep their word on any agreements that had been reached.  These new plans resulted in the formation of the 160^th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), the ‘Task Force 160’ that is referred to in John Alexander’s book UFOs –Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities.  The 160^th and US Navy SEALs are most likely to have been the occupants of the helicopters involved in the Cash-Landrum incident.

There is known to have been a second projected rescue plan, known as Project Honey Badger, by the 160^th to rescue the Iran hostages in early 1981. This was called off when President Reagan came into office and the hostages were released on January 20, 1981.  However, it is known that the Honey Badger exercises continued until well after the 1980 US presidential election. “Numerous special operations, applications, and techniques were developed which became part of the emerging USSOCOM repertoire”  --according to Wikipedia’s entry on Operation Eagle Claw.   I suggest that Honey Badger was what produced the Cash-Landrum incident which had near fatal results for Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum, and her grandson Colby.   

If that were the case, we need to explain what the flaming object was that descended on the country road near Huffman, TX.  My suggestion is that it was some kind of “THW”.  That is my unofficial acronym for “Trojan Horse Weapon” and something of this kind was going to be needed for the hostage rescue mission to have any chance of success.

Illustration from a TV re-enactment of the event.

Everyone is familiar with the story of the great wooden horse which the Greeks left outside the gates of Troy during the Trojan War (c. 1200 BC). The Trojans were very puzzled as to what this was but, thinking the Greek forces had sailed away, they took it inside the city anyway.  Inside the horse Greek soldiers were hidden and in the dead of night they climbed out and opened the city gates for their returning comrades to rush in.  This clever deception allowed the Greek army to destroy the city of Troy and bring the lengthy Trojan War to an end.

Any modern THW would have to be a totally unfamiliar object and one whose purpose was not obvious to the people it was intended to fool. Its objective would be to deceive, distract, and possibly even disable the enemy defenders at the position attacked. I don’t suggest that it was meant to look like a UFO but this THW would have to descend from the sky at night, land close to where the rescue operation was going to take place, and completely distract the Iranians guarding the hostages.  If it worked, the hostages could be rescued from the large building where they were being held in Tehran.  Task Force 160 men would descend onto the roof of the building from helicopters and blast their way into where the hostages were being held.

It may have been planned as a similar sort of mission to Operation Neptune Spear which was sent to Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011 to kill Osama bin Laden. That was an easier proposition in that there were no hostages to rescue and few armed defenders in the bin Laden compound.  Even so, it involved several helicopters and a staging point in the desert for refueling of the aircraft and a holding position for the back-up CH-47 Chinooks. 

If the Cash-Landrum “UFO” was indeed a THW we can only guess at the role it was meant to play.  It may have been, primarily, an experimental nuclear lighting device powered by a small reactor that could have weighed 10 tons or more. Output would have been used to produce an exceptionally intense light source (or sources) for, if need be, an hour or more.  If it could be made to work as planned, it could have been flown into Tehran slung under a Chinook helicopter, and fired up when it was landed near the Teymour Bakhtiari mansion in Tehran where the hostages were being held as from November 1980.  The device’s intensely brilliant light(s) would blind any Iranian guards or soldiers who tried to resist the rescue mission which would have been carried out by Navy SEALs wearing special goggles to shield their eyes from the intense beam.  

A number of Task Force 160 helicopters could have carried such an operation and taken the rescued hostages to a waiting US Navy ship out at sea.  Such a THW –presumably unmanned—might have been intended to descend under its own power or else be lowered by cables from a Chinook helicopter high overhead.  During the Cash-Landrum incident the mystery object was said to be belching flames downward but whether that was from a descent rocket engine or simply part of its fearsome THW display is unclear.  It is most unlikely that any THW like this could fly the 400 miles between the Persian Gulf and Tehran under its own power and so it would have to be taken there inside a large aircraft --or else slung under a large helicopter-- before being deployed.    

If this scenario is correct, the operation that resulted in the Cash-Landrum fiasco was a dress rehearsal for the hostage rescue mission, probably flown from a US Navy carrier in the Gulf of Mexico.  The nuclear lighting device when fired up, intentionally or otherwise, presumably went out of control and it had to be put down on a road in Texas with the resulting radiation burns to the two unfortunate women who were in the car that stopped near it.

If this operation was as I have suggested, it was most certainly Top Secret --to the very highest level of security.  Whether or not such a Project Honey Badger rehearsal was sanctioned by President Carter in the last days of his presidency, we cannot tell.  It may well have been solely authorized by some senior figure in the Pentagon.  When it failed, all traces of the operation had to be concealed and it does seem quite likely that someone in the military may have promoted the wild idea that this was a UFO incident simply to prevent the real explanation becoming public knowledge.

This also raises the intriguing question of whether the “UFO” which landed in Rendlesham Forest and was approached by Jim Penniston and John Burroughs could have been a similar --or identical—Honey Badger THW being given a dress rehearsal test.  This is pure speculation but it seems no less likely than an alien spacecraft landing by mistake in Rendlesham Forest at the very same time as the Cash-Landrum episode in Texas.   If there ever was a US Trojan Horse Weapon being tested in December 1980, it never had to be used in anger since the Tehran embassy hostages were freed just three weeks later when President Reagan came into office.

George Wingfield has been researching and writing about the UFO phenomenon since 1987 and has contributed to numerous books and magazines on the topic. George is the co-author of  UFO: Strange Space on Earth with Paul Whitehead.

    

Cash-Landrum UFO Case: Legal Rumors

Since the very beginning, rumors swirled around the Cash-Landrum case. An early one was about the Government quietly paying medical expenses for the witnesses, and a later one claimed the USG offered to settle with them out of court. 

“In February of this year, there was a rumor going the rounds to the effect that the U.S. government was paying all of the medical expenses of Betty Cash and Vicki Landrum, two of the three principals in the ‘Cash-Landrum’ case of December 29, 1980. ...After hearing the rumor, APRO checked with Mrs. Landrum by telephone and she confirmed our initial suspicion that the information was an unfounded rumor.” Rumors Permeate Cash-Landrum Case APRO Bulletin Vol. 30 #6 June 1982

The APRO article was correct, but  reporting the rumor also helped spread it further.

What Deal?

Highly recommended!

In Project Beta by Greg Bishop,  2005,  he provides a brief summary of  the Cash-Landrum UFO case, discussing it primarily in terms of how Paul Bennewitz perceived that it was connected to an alleged U.S. cover-up of an alliance with space aliens. Of the C-L court case, he says,

Early in the legal battle, the Air Force quietly offered to pay medical expenses if Cash and the Landrums agreed to sign a nondisclosure form promising not to discuss the case anymore. Their lawyer, Citizens Against UFO Secrecy president Peter Gersten, advised them against this, and tried to fight the Air Force to disclose the existence of the craft. When it became clear that the case was going nowhere, Cash and Landrum decided to accept the original deal, but the Air Force reply was a cold and confusing “What deal?” 
 Project Beta pg.170

Greg’s otherwise excellent book seems off the mark on this one point. I'd suggest that his sources mislead him in this instance with some inaccurate information. Primary sources in the case are very difficult to obtain, and almost all information on the C-L case is second-hand. 

Written for the witnesses.

The gate-keeper of the case, John F. Schuessler in his book, The Cash-Landrum UFO Incident (1998) devotes pages 187 to 223 to the legal case in great detail. The thrust of Schuessler's book is that the witnesses are victims of a government cover-up, but there is no mention of an out of court settlement with the government. 

Vickie Landrum talks about Settling

Vickie Landrum from Sept. 1985 interview with Chris Lambright

In September 1985, UFO researcher Chris Lambright had a far-ranging conversation on the case with Vickie Landrum in her home. While it was not a formal interview, he videotaped it, but unfortunately the audio quality is poor due to excessive background noise.  Chris shared a copy of this unique  recording with me. In it, Vickie talks about her many frustrations about the case at length, but makes no mention of being offered and denied a deal, but the subject of a settlement does come up.

Lambright asks Vickie about their legal battle, and if she would settle out of court. Vickie says she wants to get the best care for all of them, but to not let America know about what really happened would be a disappointment. Accepting a settlement would be a hard decision, and she felt to do so would “let American people down.” She really seemed to want a public court hearing, in part for the "people who stood by me."

If there had been a settlement offer that had been retracted, Vickie would have mentioned it.

How it ended

Damage claim forms against the Air Force were picked up in Aug. 1981, but not filed by Peter Gersten until near the 2nd anniversary of the case on Dec. 1982. The claim was denied in May 1983. (Appealed, denied again.)

In January 1984, Civil Suit against the U.S. Government,  H-84-348 was filed,  followed by much contention and publicity.

"UFO Lawyer," Peter Gersten

The August 1985 MUFON Journal reported that Peter Gersten stated that chances of his winning the case in court were "slim and none.”

The case was finally dismissed without going to trial  August 21,1986. This was due in part to sworn statements by military branch representatives that the U.S. did not own or operate a vehicle like the UFO described.

Not one of ours they said.

There were some strange turns in the legal case, but that’s a much longer story for another time.

Book Coverage of the Cash-Landrum UFO Case

The Cash-Landrum case has been discussed in a great many UFO books, but most often as just a brief summary with no independent investigation or analysis. The majority merely repeat material from the John Schuessler reports. Below, we’ll list some of the works that do better, along with volumes notable for other reasons. 

Age of the UFO Peter Brookesmith editor (1984)

This book is an essential for the case. It collects three 1982-3 magazine articles written for the UK magazine, The Unexplained Mysteries of Mind, Space and Time by John F. Schuessler and features his color photographs of the scene and the witnesses. There's information in these articles not appearing anywhere else including Schuessler's later book. The color photographs alone make this worth having, but the case details and variations of  witnesses and testimony make it a must for students of the case.

Clear Intent: The Government Coverup of the UFO Experience by Lawrence Fawcett, ‎Barry J. Greenwood (1984) 

(Reprinted as UFO Cover-Up: What the Government Won't Say) 

Fawcett and Greenwood's chief interest in the case comes from the involvement of "mystery helicopters" that were so often associated with cattle mutilation lore. A historically important book, and the first one to discuss the C-L case.

Above Top Secret by Timothy Good (1987)

Good's book (and some of his later ones) tie the C-L case into 90s conspiracy lore, repeating some of the material that was presented in the TV special UFO Cover-Up? Live.

The UFO Phenomenon, Time-Life Books (1987)

Very brief coverage of the C-L case. This one is chiefly worth mentioning due to artwork featured in the two-page spread, and for the extensive newspapers advertising that spotlighted the case.

The Spectrum of UFO Research, J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, Mimi Hynek, ed. (1988)

John Schuessler's first lecture on the Cash-Landrum case from Sept. 1981 is presented, and it serves as as an excellent introduction to the case, telling the story of the events, and discussing the early months of the investigation. The narrative of the encounter is followed by speculation about the injuries and their source. Includes photographs, the Q & A session that followed Schuessler's lecture, and his 1988 update on the case.

http://www.cufos.org/books/The_Spectrum_of_UFO_Research.pdf

The UFO Encyclopedia: UFOs in the 1980s by Jerome Clark, (1990)
Clark's entry on the case is a good summary of John Schuessler's early material on the case, chiefly his report presented at the 1981 CUFOS conference.

Left at East Gate: A First-hand Account of the Rendlesham

 by Larry Warren and Peter Robbins (1997)
This book only mentions the case in passing: "The Cash-Landrum UFO incident occurred in Texas within twelve hours of the third night's incident at RAF Bentwaters. Two women — Vicky Cash and Betty Landrum — and Betty's grandson, Colby, saw a huge, toplike UFO..."
This (now-discredited) book gives us a brief detour from Rendlesham to Huffman Texas. Since the events happened so close in time together, they’re frequently mentioned in the same breath, but there's no valuable similarity or tangible connection between them.

In 1997, Physicist Peter A. Sturrock of Stanford University directed an independent scientific review of UFO cases conducted by an international panel of scientists. Three of “the usual suspects” participated, Hal Puthoff, John Schuessler, and Jacques Vallee. Sturrock published a paper on it in 1998: “Physical Evidence Related to UFO Reports: The Proceedings of a Workshop Held at the Pocantico Conference Center, Tarrytown, New York, September 29 – October 4, 1997.” The Cash-Landrum case was presented in “Physiological Effects on Witnesses,” later presented as chapter 15 (pp. 100-104.) of Peter Sturrock’s 1999 book on the study, The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence.

The Cash-Landrum UFO Incident by John F. Schuessler (1998)
This book was self-published by the investigator and had a relatively small pressing, and is now out of print. The most valuable thing it offers are reproductions of case documents, witness testimony and photographs. It would be great to see this released as an ebook where the photographs could be seen at a higher resolution and in color. While book is imperfect, and far from objective, bit it’s an important resource.

Project Moon Dust by Kevin D. Randle (1998)
In chapter 11, Randle has a rare skeptical analysis, a ten page section titled, "December 29, 1980: The Cash-Landrum UFO Encounter." Kevin Randle is a retired Lieutenant Colonel, and his service and his experience as a helicopter pilot helps provide an understanding of the alleged military involvement in this case. More coverage on this book at: Kevin Randle on Cash-Landrum: A Military Perspective

Pentagon Aliens aka Space Aliens from the Pentagon by William Lyne (1999)

Lyne's is an odd one, and is included for his brief interview with Vickie Landrum. There are some odd and interesting case details mentioned in the book, ones that can't be verified - or trusted.


UFOs, Angels and Stories of Faith and Courage by Edward Wesley Graves (2000)

Graves’ book is noteworthy in that it's the only one to depict the witnesses on the cover. Shortly after Betty Cash's death, he contacted Vickie Landrum  and spoke to her family, who believed the UFO was an "atomic plane."

The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence by Peter a. Sturrock (2000)
This is a frustrating one, as it summarizes Schuessler's presentation of the case to the Sturrock panel, yet doesn't actually present it. A bit like somebody reciting what was in yesterday's newspaper, and it leaves you with the feeling you are missing something.

The UFO Evidence: A Thirty-Year Report by Richard H. Hall (2001)
Hall does an excellent job of summarizing the case as known without sensationalizing it or playing it for emotion. I liked it well enough, I've used it as the official BBL summary of the case, as The UFO Story.


Hunt for the Skinwalker by Colm A. Kelleher and George Knapp (2005)
This book just gives a recap of the C-L case from previous sources as an example of human effects from unexplained encounters to bolster the Skinwalker story. No new information.

Project Beta by Greg Bishop (2005)
Bishops book is very interesting. There's a C-L connection to the Paul Bennewitz saga, but it's uncertain if it was just speculation by Bennewitz, or if it was the result of manipulation by Richard Doty and Bill Moore. Bennewitz thought the C-L UFO was a joint US-alien venture, part of the lore that became Dulce and the dark UFO mythology. The C-L coverage is very short, and unfortunately, does some harm by repeating some untrue rumors and speculation as if they were facts.

Need to Know: UFOs, the Military, and Intelligence by Timothy Good (2007)

More on Doty-style Cash-Landrum info, trying to tie things to the Bennewitz backdrop.

Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion by Paul LaViolette (2008)
"Evidence that the Air Force was test-flying an antigravity craft surfaced on the night of December 29, 1980. Betty Cash, age fifty-one  her friend Vickie Landrum, age fifty-seven, and Vickie's seven-year-old …"
LaViolette's book is a mentioned just as example of the case being used as means to further someone's agenda or prop up a conspiracy theory.

UFOs and the National Security State: The Cover-Up Exposed, 1973-1991 by Richard Dolan (2009)
"While, across the ocean, the Rendlesham Forest was the scene of dramatic UFO activity, Betty Cash,Vickie Landrum,and Vickie's grandson Colby Landrum were driving in the State of Texas, on the Cleveland Huffman Road on the way to the town…" There’s nothing original in Dolan's coverage. His depiction of the events is used to illustrate his conspiracy theory premise of colossal sinister UFO cover-up.

Texas UFO Tales: From Denison 1878 to Stephenville 2008 by Mike Cox and Renee Roderick (2010)
Texas UFO Tales was a pleasant surprise. A lot of regional UFO books are cranked out quickly, and that may have been the intent here, but someone goofed up and got a good researcher. The coverage of the C_L case is very good and you'll only find some of the data by digging as deeply yourself. It's the only book to date to include the testimony from the Bergstrom AFB interviews with the witnesses.

UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities by John B. Alexander (2011)
“Cash-Landrum... is a very solid case, in which the observations and facts just don't make sense or support any prosaic hypothesis." Alexander's coverage of the case is brief, but well worth reading as he participated in the DAIG's investigation of the case led by George Sarran. Alexander's conclusions on the case are among the most interesting, that the events were real, but perhaps not the kind of real we are used to! 

Confessions of a Professional Smart-Ass  by John Kelso (2013) "John Kelso has been writing a humor column for the Austin American-Statesman for more than thirty years...”This book features a four page section on the author's memories of covering the Cash-Landrum sighting for the paper. His piece was one of the few articles to approach the case with skepticism. UFO mavens would be better off reading his original article (which I may be able to reprint someday). The book is just a short recap of the case with some Kelso flavor, and leaves out the interesting details in his article. About all the only thing new here is his negative impressions of the town of Dayton. While he cracks wise in his memoirs, he admits he didn't know just what to make of the story.

Forbidden Science - Volume III by Jacques Vallee (2016)

Vallee's journals for the years 1980 - 1989 contain several mentions of the Cash-Landrum case, usually second-hand information with a mixture of fact and speculation. However, the discussion was with people such as Dr. Kit Green and Dr. Richard Nimetzow, so gossip at an elite level of ufology.
 

Fact, Fiction, and Flying Saucers: The Truth Behind the Misinformation, Distortion, and Derision by Debunkers, Government Agencies, and Conspiracy Conmen by Stanton Friedman & Kathleen Marden (2016)

Chapter 8 spotlights the Cash-Landrum UFO case, but it’s there mostly as part of an attack the character of the late Phil Klass. If you crawl the footnotes, you’ll find a few references to Blue Blurry Lines, cited as a source. 

UFOs, Chemtrails, and Aliens: What Science Says, by Donald R. Prothero, Timothy D. Callahan (2017)

In the 5-page section, "Radiation Sickness, Melting Vinyl, and Scorched Asphalt: The Cash–Landrum Incident”(pp. 104 - 108), the authors discuss the case and come to a skeptical conclusion, based chiefly on the 1981 interview of the witnesses at Bergstrom AFB, Brad Sparks’ analysis of the reported injuries, and Robert Sheaffer’s article “Between a Beer Joint and Some Kind of Highway Sign” which in turn was based on the BBL report disclosing the unpublished case documents held by the Texas Department of Health. The authors conclude that “as a source of physical evidence, that Cash-Landrum incident is inconsequential." 

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There will be revisions from time to time, to add other titles and to comment on why they are worthy of inclusion. 

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