The Portage County UFO Chase

by Charles Lear

In 1966, there was a UFO case that involved a chase and sightings by multiple police witnesses. In addition to their testimonies, there was a reported radar confirmation and a possible pilot witness. Faced with all this evidence, the initial Air Force investigation consisted of two phone calls to a single witness. Based on interviews lasting a total of around four minutes, the conclusion was that the officers had seen a satellite and chased the planet Venus. The case was re-evaluated after a more thorough investigation, thanks to the efforts of an outraged congressman, and the conclusion was . . .  that the officers had seen a satellite and chased the planet Venus.

On the morning of April 17, 1966, two sheriff deputies, Dale Spaur and Wilbur “Barney” Neff, chased a UFO from Portage County, Ohio, for 86 miles all the way into Pennsylvania. They chased the object at speeds ranging from 80 mph to 105 mph and, according to them, there were times when the object actually stopped and waited for them to catch up to it. Other law enforcement officers witnessed the object after being alerted by radio communications between the deputies and their dispatcher.

The strangeness began at 4:30 a.m. A call came over the radio informing the deputies that a woman in Summit County had reported seeing a bright object that flew low over her property. She said it was moving towards Portage County. Spaur and Neff laughed it off and went on with their schedule of spot-checks.

At around 5:00 a.m., they saw an abandoned vehicle on Route 224 near Ravenna, and got out of their car to investigate. According to Spaur, he was in the habit of looking behind him to make sure no one was sneaking up on him.  He turned around and saw a light over the trees of a nearby hill. He alerted Neff, and as they watched, it moved over the police car and hovered. They could now see it was an object 35 to 40 feet wide, with a bright, white glow that lit up the area around the car. It hummed “like a loaded transformer.”

Thinking it best to get something between them and the object, they got into the car. The object moved off towards the east and then stopped about 100 feet away as if it was waiting for them. They contacted their dispatcher, Deputy Robert Wilson, and told him they were looking at what might have been the object reported earlier. Wilson asked Spaur if he had his .44 Magnum with him. Spaur confirmed, and Wilson suggested he take a shot at the object. Spaur considered this briefly and decided it was unwise to risk antagonizing whatever might be controlling such a large object.

Wilson realized Spaur was serious and asked Sergeant Hank Shoenfelt for advice. Shoenfelt got on the radio and told them to maintain visual contact while he arranged for a car to be dispatched. He said he would send along a camera in order to take a picture of the object.

Spaur acknowledged, put the car in gear and moved slowly towards the object. The object responded by moving away at a similar speed. Spaur told Shoenfelt what was happening and asked if they should keep up with it. Shoenfelt confirmed and repeated that there was a camera on the way.

Spaur accelerated and the object did as well. Soon they were after it at 85 mph. They noticed that the object tilted its leading edge down as it moved, and the light below it remained perpendicular to the object and followed on the ground behind it. As daylight came on, they could see more details. The object had a definite outline and a metallic top with what looked like an antenna.

Whenever Spaur slowed down to negotiate in traffic, the object slowed down, let him catch up, and then accelerated. Before long, the deputies were in another county. They were out of their jurisdiction and headed for the state line.

They approached Unity, Ohio, on Route 14, and patrolman Wayne Huston of the East Palestine police force was waiting for them after hearing them on the radio. He called Spaur and asked him where to look for the object. Spaur told him to look to the northwest; Huston did so and saw the object heading towards him. It passed over him at 80 mph, followed by Spaur and Neff. Huston got into his car and joined the pursuit.

In Pennsylvania, Conway Patrolman Frank Panzanella spotted the object while on his way home after a night on duty. He pulled over and got out of his car to look at it as it hovered nearby. The cars from Ohio came up behind him and stopped. Huston, Spaur and Neff got out and ran towards him. They asked Panzanella if he was seeing the object and he reluctantly admitted he was.

The object moved straight up, hovered, and a commercial airliner flew under it. Panzanella called the Rochester base radio station and asked operator John Bieghey to call Greater Pittsburgh Airport and see if they had the object on radar. Bieghey complied and reported back that they had it on radar and were sending two planes up to intercept. As soon as the planes were mentioned, the object shot upwards until it was out of sight.

The Ohio officers headed back towards Portage County, and Panzanella got a call from Bieghey; the U.S. Air Reserve at the airport had requested that the officers give them a report on the object. Panzanella contacted the Ohio officers, relayed the message, and a report was given to the Air Reserve office. From there it made its way to the office of Project Blue Book at Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio.

Spaur was interviewed by the head of Blue Book, Maj. Hector Quintanilla, the next morning. Quintanilla started the conversation with, “What was this mirage you saw?” The interview lasted 2½ minutes. Quintanilla called again on April 21, and that interview lasted 1½ minutes. Spaur sensed that Quintanilla wanted him to say he’d only observed the object for a matter of minutes. He noted that Quintanilla broke off the conversation when he told him he’d seen it for much longer.

Civilian investigators were far more thorough. Two members of the Akron Flying Saucer Investigating Committee, A. E. Candusso and Larry Moyers, brought a Geiger counter. They checked the area of the initial sighting for radiation and found nothing unusual. Three members of the Cleveland Ufology Project visited the Portage County Police station to interview Spaur and Neff, and William Weitzel, representing the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, was there as well. Weitzel was the chairman of the Pennsylvania NICAP Subcommittee, and he wrote up a narrative account that can be found on the cufos.org website. Reports and documents relating to the case can be found at the nicap.org website.

On April 22, Quintanilla called Sheriff Ross Dustman at the station and gave his evaluation. He told the sheriff that the deputies had seen an Echo satellite moving to the southeast. Venus was also in the southeast. According to Quintanilla, they mistook Venus for the satellite and proceeded to chase after it all the way into Pennsylvania. According to Weitzel’s account, Dustman laughed out loud when he heard the explanation.

The congressman representing Portage County, William Stanton, was preparing to be interviewed about the case for the Record-Courier, and he wanted to know the facts. Weitzel sent him a letter, and the congressman forwarded it to the Air Force and asked for an explanation. After two weeks of waiting for a reply, he went to the Pentagon and spoke to Lt. Col. John Spaulding, Chief of Community Relations Division, USAF. Spaulding admitted that not sending someone to Portage County had been an “error” and promised someone would come within a week.

That someone was Quintanilla and he interviewed Spaur in an office at the county courthouse. Spaur asked Weitzel to tape the interview. Spaur filled out a report and was interviewed alone with the tape running. After this was done, Quitanilla repeated his original evaluation and stubbornly stuck to it, despite long-term attempts by Weitzel and others to reason with him.

Spaur was encouraged by NICAP to speak out about the case, and he did so as other witnesses went silent. He was hounded by the press and ridiculed. The pressure took its toll, and Spaur ended up losing his job, his wife, and his children. He ended up working in a coal mine in West Virginia.

This case came just after Quintanilla had been called to appear at hearings before Congress. These were convened in the wake of Blue Book Scientific Consultant J. Allen Hynek’s explanation that swamp gas might have been the cause of UFO sightings in Michigan. The Air Force was moved by the hearings to fund the Condon Committee study that led to Blue Book’s demise in 1969. It’s likely that Quintanilla didn’t lose any sleep.