In the video above Tim Printy provides a demonstration of how easy it was to decipher the writing on the placard on the “Roswell slide”. Note that there is no manipulation of the image going on here other than an enhancement of the original – which in this case is the “drum scan” provided by slides promoter Adam Dew on his own website. And here is Lance Moody showing the same results from the process, which he explains in the video.
The Roswell slides promoters seem to be obsessed with the idea that real researchers are all convinced that the "being" depicted in the Roswell slides is a mummy. Yes, that is a possibility that many have raised, but no-one has yet put that forward as a final conclusion (although I am still happy to take orders for my "It's a mummy, dummy" merchandise!).
So while no firm conclusion has yet been put forward publicly by the skeptics (as opposed to the promoters, who have positively asserted it to be a space alien from the supposed Roswell crash), could it have been a mummy? Is that prospect so far-fetched?
Well, no... as anyone who isn't a Roswell-is-aliens true believer (or a con man looking to soak money out of said true believers) would understand. Mummies were fairly common sideshow and carnival attractions back in the 1940s. For example, here is a newspaper article from the Hanover Evening Sun in late August, 1947, for a fair in Hannover, Pennsylvania (courtesy of Tim Printy):
Is this or something like it the Roswell slides being?
You'll have to wait until May 4th to find out for certain. But one thing is for sure - when the slides promoters tell you that it absolutely can't be a mummy, they clearly don't know very much about mummies, or history.
Much has been made by the Dream Teamers of a military witness who confirmed for them that he saw the same body that is depicted in the two "Roswell slides," and that it was at Roswell in 1947 and it was alien.
Here is Adam Dew, the filmmaker behind all of this, talking about the "slides" on WGN 9 News in Chicago. The relevant part is at 4:42 when Dew states, "We did show them to a Roswell military veteran who was on site in 1947 who says he saw bodies and he says that the slides look like what he saw in July of 1947."
In the trailer for his Kodachrome documentary, Dew refers to the witness as a "Lieutenant." At 2:38 Dew states: "And then there's this guy, who was an army lieutenant at Roswell air force base in 1947."
That veteran does indeed exist. A source provided me with the name - Eleazar N. Benavides. He currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. If you go to Google you can track him down and see a photo of where he lives, which matches the location you see in the film trailer above (apparently interviewing witnesses standing in their driveway is Dew's style).
Thanks to researcher Tim Printy, who is part of an ad hoc, sub rosa group of skeptics who are looking into the slides (of which I am also an associate), here is a photo of a much younger Mr. Benavides in the Roswell base yearbook from 1947.
As you can see, at the time of the Roswell Incident, Benavides was indeed stationed at Roswell, so that much is true, but he was a Private First Class in the 390th Air Service Squadron. He was not, as Dew erroneously claims in the trailer, a Lieutenant.
In fact, he is also not a new "witness." He is the "Pfc. Benjamin" referred to in the book Witness to Roswell by Roswell slides promoters / "Dream Team" members Tom Carey and Donald Schmitt (see. pp. 209 - 217 - "Eli Benjamin" was a pseudonym used by the authors). He can be seen in an episode about Roswell on the short-lived Sci-Fi Investigates series in this clip:
Benavides is repeating the same sort of story that "witnesses" to the "creature" have repeated before. Is he lying, as other "witnesses" like Glenn Dennis were, or did he actually see a body that had been injured somehow, and after all of these years (and no small amount of prodding from Roswell researchers) he has conflated what he saw at some point in the past into the Roswell space aliens narrative? Who knows, although history and hard experience tells us that the former is by far the most likely possibility. The idea that he would be afraid he was going to lose his pension (ergo the pseudonym), but was willing to show his face on national television (and now in Dew's film) seems... well, let's just say that it requires a great deal of "belief suspension" to buy it. But it sure adds to the mysterious and secretive nature of the story that the Roswell myth-makers have used over the years.
Either way, Benavides, aka Benjamin, is the man that the Dream Team is hanging their hats on as a witness to validate the space alien nature of the "Roswell slides." Without him, they just have a couple of slides. Make of that what you will.
Meanwhile, the work of skeptics continues in terms of debunking this con. Perhaps we should schedule a big reveal with the real story... on May 5th.
