‘PARALLEL’ LIFE OF ‘UFO NUT’
‘Obsessed’ ex-lawman chasing clues along ‘37th’
The rancher called Chuck Zukowski in a panic.
“I think it’s happening again,” the farmer named Miller said nervously on Aug. 8, 2011.
“I’ll be right there,” Zukowski reassured him.
The 58-year-old alien investigator threw on his tactical vest, jumped into his black Ford truck and sped over to Miller’s farm two hours away in Trinidad, Colo.
The spooked cattleman greeted Zukowski with a solemn stare and pointed toward the carcass of a cow plopped in the dirt.
The mutilated red angus was missing its ears, tongue and genitals, similar to the two previous incidents at Miller’s ranch.
Each body part was dissected in a clinical way, leaving cauterized surgical wounds, but the earth surrounding it was left completely undisturbed.
Zukowski had no doubt that this was the work of aliens. And they were once again operating on the 37th parallel.
“I started to realize the cattle mutilations, UFO sightings and major events like Area 51 all lined up,” Zu-kowski said, refer-ring to the 37th degree of latitude, which forms thee borders between Utah and Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico, and Kansas and Oklahoma.
The true believer had investigated more than 1,000 paranormal incidents over 30 years — and 200 of them landed on the 37th parallel.
“It’s America’s paranormal highway,” the self-described “UFO nut” proclaimed.
Zukowski believes the aliens have a predilection for places with a close proximity to underground water and a high level of hydrogen, which they use for energy.
He became fascinated with ETs as a kid, but began to get serious about his “research” in the late 1980s.
On weekends, he’d pile his three kids and his wife, Tammy, 56, into a beat-up RV to go UFO hunting. Like the “Ghostbusters,” Zukowski is always fully strapped for action.
“I never go anywhere without a tactical vest, a gun, a full-spectrum camera, a handheld metal detector, binoculars, a range finder and glass tubes for samples,” boasted Zukowski, who also works as a microchip designer.
When he moved his family out to Colorado Springs in 1998, he latched on to the phenomenon ofo mutilated animals. “They all look as if someone has cut them up with a surgical knife,” he said.
Zukowski sharpened his investigative skills while working for the El Paso County, Colo., Sheriff’s Department, earning him the nickname “Mulder of El Paso,” after the “X-Files” character Fox Mulder.
But eight years later, he was booted from the squad for his paranormal leanings.
“They thought it hurt the integrity of the department and were embarrassed,” he said.
Not so for writer Ben Mezrich, whose book “The Accidental Billionaires” was adapted into the movie “The Social Network.”
When Mezrich caught wind of Zukowski’s quest “to find the truth,” he flew to Colorado to meet the subject of his forthcoming book “The 37th Parallel: The Secret Truth Behind America’s UFO Highway” (Atria Books) out Friday. The movie rights have been snapped up by New Line Cinema.
“He swept me up from the airport, gave me a bulletproof vest and a gun and said, ‘Lets go investigate UFOs!’ ” Mezrich said of his first encounter with Zukowski. “I was blown away by his obsession.”
Lots of people ridicule UFO researchers, but Mezrich was infatuated with Zukowski’s commitment to finding aliens.
For the following six months, Mezrich dove headfirst into Zukowski’s theory.
“Over the course of my research, I’ve determined it’s incredibly likely that we have been visited by aliens at least once,” he said.