Roswell: The Ultimate Cold Case

Eyewitness Testimony and Evidence of Contact and the Cover-Up

Thomas J Carey & Donald R Schmitt New Page Books 2020 Pb, 276pp, £16.99, ISBN 9781632651709

Seventy-three years after the alleged UFO crash in the desert outside Roswell, New Mexico, it is difficult to believe that anything less than an official acknowledgment by the US government and/or the release of incontrovertible evidence would provide researchers with a publication-worthy development, especially in light of the already copious literature on the subject.

Unhappily, this has not prevented Thomas Carey and Donald Schmitt from going over the same old ground yet again. Their gimmick is the presentation of the accumulated research and resultant speculation as evidence in an imaginary trial, and that “beyond a reasonable doubt” an alien spacecraft crashed in the New Mexico desert in 1947. This loosely legal apparatus apparently attempts to approximate Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History, which, in contrast to Carey and Schmitt’s, masterfully dispenses with the vast web of conspiracy and distortions of fact that surround the assassination of President Kennedy. Also in contrast, Bugliosi is a skilled lawyer, and disciplined enough to maintain his premise; Carey and Schmitt, perhaps aware of their lack of expertise, quickly abandon their weakly argued “legal” framework. Indeed, they lose steam roughly midway through, in large part due to a frustrating lack of worthwhile new material. They grasp at straws, padding their manuscript with bizarre chapters on persons, no matter how superficially affiliated, who have been “touched by Roswell” – such as actors who have portrayed characters in on-screen adaptations – as well as a smattering of obligatory deathbed confessions and new “witnesses”.

This is a frustrating and altogether unnecessary book.

Eric Hoffmann

★