On the evening of Monday, December 29, 1980, Betty Cash, the owner of a small restaurant in Dayton, Texas, wanted to play Bingo. She and Vickie Landrum, who was a waitress in Betty's restaurant as well as a friend, took along Vickie's seven-year-old grandson and ward, Colby Landrum, and drove to Cleveland, Texas. When they got to Cleveland, they found that there was no Bingo that night, possibly due to the Christmas holidays, so they decided to drive to New Caney, where there was also a week-night Bingo game.
They had no better luck in New Caney. Apparently, Bingo was played there on Tuesdays, not Mondays. At about 8:00 P.M., they stopped and ate dinner at a truck stop and then headed towards home on Farm Market Road 1485, a back road through a piney woods area of Mongomery County.
They had gone about twelve miles when someone, possibly Colby, pointed out a light in the sky. Suddenly, over the trees came a brilliantly lit diamond-shaped object of some sort with fire shooting from its bottom.
The object hovered about sixty feet over the road, and Vickie screamed for Betty to stop the car, afraid that they would be burned to a crisp if they drove under the object. As Betty stopped, Vickie put her hand on the dashboard, and something, perhaps intense heat from the object, caused her fingerprints to be permanently imbedded in the dash. The trees that the object had passed over were not on fire, but Betty later described them as "very brown".
Betty put the car in park, but left the engine running, and got out to watch the object, which she said was "as big as a water tower." She took a few steps toward the object, but the heat and intense light were too much to bear for long. When she tried to open the door to get back in the car, the door handle burned her, so she used her leather coat to protect her hand.
The car engine had died, and she apparently had some difficulty starting it again. Once the engine started, she immediately turned on the air conditioner to cool the interior of the car, which had become uncomfortably warm. The object was about 130 feet away, and about 70 feet high, periodically gaining altitude by ejecting a fiery exhaust.
| Finally, the object passed over the road, and they could see that it was being followed or escorted by at least twenty helicopters, most of which they identified as being Boeing CH-47 Chinook twin rotor models. They drove on, but they were able to see the object and the helicopters again before they got home. |
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All three witnesses suffered skin irritation, diarrhea, hair loss, and eye irritation. Betty's symptoms were the most severe, apparently because she was outside the car longest and had gone nearest to the object. She became ill within thirty minutes after the incident, and had to be hospitalized on January third. She was treated as a burn victim. She had severe headaches, swelling, large liquid-filled blisters on her skin, and she lost large patches of skin and clumps of hair. Physicians who examined her said her symptoms resembled those of radiation exposure.
Cash and Landrum wanted the government to admit its involvement and to pay for the medical expenses they had incurred. Betty Cash contacted her Senators, John Tower and Lloyd Bentsen, and on Bentsen's recommendation, she met with Air Force lawyers at Bergstrom AFB in Austin, Texas to file a claim. There is a transcriptof a tape that was made of this meeting in the possession of CUFON.
The case was eventually investigated by John Schuessler, Deputy Director for Administration for MUFON, and a Project Manager for Space Shuttle Flight Operations for the McDonnell Douglas Corporation. He found no radioactivity at the site, but he did find an area where the asphalt was melted.
| In 1982, Army Lt. Col. George Sarran looked into the case for the Army, and although he was convinced of the sincerity of Cash and Landrum, he could find no evidence that Army helicopters were in the area at the time. There are no bases in that area, either Army, Air Force, or Air National Guard, from which so many Chinooks could have come. | Dayton, Texas police officer L.L. Walker and his wife Marie stated that they saw Chinook helicopters in the same area four or five hours after the Cash - Landrum incident. |
New York attorney Peter Gersten, now director of Citizens Against Ufo Secrecy, filed a twenty million dollar lawsuit on behalf of Cash and Landrum, but in August, 1986, U.S. District Court Judge Ross Sterling dismissed the case after Army, Navy, Air Force, and NASA expert testimony proved to the Judge's satisfaction that no such device as that seen by Cash and Landrum was owned by, or was in the possession of, any branch of American government or military.
This article was previously published in 2000. It has been revised slightly by removing dead links and adding new ones as needed.
Due to past abuses, I do not allow articles to be reprinted on other sites. You may use the first paragraph and provide a link to this page for the rest of the article.
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