Mangled by UFO's

Amarillo Globe-News, Amarillo, Texas

Cattle mangled by UFO's ?

About the same time law enforcement officers in the Hereford area were trying to find how cattle were being mutilated last summer, several head of cattle were found in the same condition in Northern New Mexico.

Since then:

Three persons in New Mexico have come up with evidence that they claim shows flying saucers might be involved.

Apache Indians in the area near Taos are "hopping mad" because their cattle were among those mutilated.

The sheriff at Hereford, when asked about UFO connections to the mutilations in his county, quipped that whoever mans the UFO "must not be all bad" it they like beef.

Federal and state agencies have officially taken a "hands-off" approach to reports that the New Mexico mutilations and UFO sightings are connected. But a former government scientist, a New Mexico State Police officer, and a private scientist say they are going to continue their "unofficial" investigation into the incidents.

The three men are cooperating in the research of a possible connection between metallic, organic material found on cattle in a remote, mutilation-prone area northwest of Taos and powder scooped up by persons who claim they saw a UFO just outside of Taos last July.

The New Mexico incident was made public this week when tests by a private Albuquerque laboratory showed the material on the cattle hides and the material found near the reported UFO sightings were almost identical.

The analysis was conducted by Bob Schoenfeld of Schoenfeld Clinical Laboratories in Albuquerque.

The tests were run on a request from Howard Burgess of Taos, a retired Sandia Laboratory scientist who has been investigating reported cattle mutilations and UFO sightings in northern New Mexico for several years.

Burgess said he first discovered the metallic substance oh the cattle on the night of July 5.

A rash of cattle mutilations prompted Burgess to conduct ultraviolet light tests on a herd of cattle from the Manuel Gomez ranch near Dulce, on the Apache Indian reservation.

Manuel Gomez's son, Edmond, told the Globe-News last night that his father has lost between 15 and 20 cows, calves and bulls to mutilations. He said he has heard of no more mutilations in the area since the wave of reports last summer.

The mutilations in northern New Mexico occurred at the same time a similar "mutilation epidemic" was under investigation in the Hereford area.

The cattle mutilations in New Mexico, like those in the Hereford area, were reported to authorities in the span of a few weeks last summer.

Since then, reports of mutilations to authorities in both areas have all but ceased.

Deaf Smith County Sheriff Travis McPherson of Hereford said the only recent mutilation he is aware of occurred last Saturday on a ranch about 22 miles north of Hereford.

In the latest mutilation, as in those In both Hereford and New Mexico last summer, the mutilators cut away sexual organs of the carcass, McPherson said.

Texas and New Mexico ranchers reported that udders, rectums, tongues, ears, testicles, and sometimes tails were cut away with what appeared to be a very sharp and precise Instrument.

Gomez said whole reproductive tracts were missing from some of his animals.

McPherson said there were no reported UFO sightings at the time of the mutilations last summer, but he saw "If those UFO's have got a taste for beef, they must not be all bad."

Burgess said he has no doubt the Taos residents saw something in the sky last July, about four days before his ultraviolet test of Gomez's cattle, but he said he is not making any guesses or offering any theories on a connection to the mutilations.

"We went out and talked to each witness separately." Burgess told the Globe-News, "and each story checked out. The whole neighborhood saw the UFO."

But Burgess said the people were "too scared" to report the sighting last July and only recently went to authorities with their story.

When they went, Burgess said, they took a fruit jar full of a powdery substance one of them scooped off the windshield of a truck parked beneath the UFO.

He said the residents saw a gray, slivery substance floating down after the UF0 disappeared and that "fortunately, one of them had the presence of mind to gather some up in a fruit jar."

When Burgess and State Police Trooper Gabe Valdez heard of the strange powder, they immediately thought of the substance on the cow hides they had examined last July.

They received permission to borrow the Taos sample, for another analysis and took it to Schoenfeld in Albuquerque.

Schoenfeld told the Globe-News that the substance he tested was of the same chemical composition as the substance on the cow hides he analyzed earlier.

He said the material he tested was similar to "slivers or chips of gray paint" and that It contained an "extremely high" amount of potassium and magnesium.

He said the substances were "fairly ubiquitous around the world" but the potassium content was about 70 times more than the normal amount for earth samples in the Taos area.

A test under a mass spectrometer revealed the substance was similar to Teflon material in its composition.

Schoenfeld said the samples from Taos and the samples from the cow hides both proved to be organic matter, "as opposed to a metal compound such as used on aircraft."

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Nuclear Era