The Cash-Landrum Incident

On December 29th 1980 two Texan women and a child were driving home along a quiet tree-lined country road after eating in a restaurant. They saw a light in the sky which they assumed was an aeroplane heading for the nearby airport. As they got closer they noticed that the light came from a huge diamond-shaped craft which was flying slowly at treetop height. Flames and heat were expelled from what appeared to be an exhaust at the bottom of the craft.

Fearing that they would be burned by the exhaust heat, Betty Cash the driver stopped the car in the road. The two women got out of the car to get a better view of the craft but the child Colby Landrum was frightened so his grandmother Vickie Landrum got in the car again to comfort him. Betty stayed outside, in her own words 'mesmerised'. She described the craft as very bight, metallic, as large as a water tower, with blue lights ringed around its centre. As the flames periodically flared more brightly the object rose and when they died down it sank towards the ground. The heat made her nearby car hot.

Eventually the craft rose higher in the sky and was surrounded by over 20 helicopters, some of them twin-rotor Chinooks. Betty noticed that some of the helicopters had United States Air Force markings. The craft then flew away. The whole sighting had lasted about 20 minutes.

Betty Cash got back into her car and drove her friends home. That night they all experienced sunburn-like symptoms including nausea and weakness.

Over the next few days Betty's symptoms worsened into fatigue, blisters and hair loss so she was admitted to hospital several times over the next few weeks. Eventually the hospital doctors concluded that she had been exposed to radiation and accordingly treated her for radiation sickness. After her final discharge from hospital she went on to suffer further ill health including weakness, skin ruptures, hair loss and after 3 years breast cancer.

The other two passengers in the car suffered from much less severe but similar symptoms to Betty.

After the events several other witnesses came forward to confirm that they had also seen military Chinook helicopters in the area on the night as claimed by the witnesses.

In 1981 Betty Cash and Vickie Landrum began a civil court case for damages, which was dismissed in 1986 after officials from the US Air Force, Navy, Army and NASA all testified that the US military had no craft of the type described by the two women, and that any helicopters seen were not flown by military personnel.

UFO sceptics have repeatedly and suspiciously tried to debunk this case. If there is government cover-up of all matters UFOs, then the physical injuries sustained by the witnesses and their subsequent radiation sickness are difficult to fake and dangerous evidence. What would be the motives of these people, who are of good character, to invent the entire story? Why did Betty's hospital doctors diagnose radiation sickness? Were they all making it up too?