By Charles Lear
The April 24, 1964 sighting of a landed UFO with two beings standing next to it by Socorro, NM Police Sergeant, Lonnie Zamora has been written about extensively and remains a fascinating mystery to this day. What’s particularly interesting about this case is how many people investigated it. Representatives from the Socorro Police, New Mexico State Police the F.B.I. and Army were first on the scene followed by the Lorenzens from the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, members of the Air Force and J. Allen Hynek as part of Project Blue Book, and Ray Stanford for the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. Besides the testimony of Zamora, there was trace evidence to examine, witnesses to a similar craft to interview, and reputed witnesses to the very craft Zamora reported who were searched for but never found. Despite the thoroughness of the inquiries and analyses by so many experienced investigators, no one was able to come up with an agreeable Earthly explanation.
According to Zamora’s written report, he was chasing a speeder around 5:45 PM in the southeast section of Socorro when he heard what he described as a roar and saw a flame to the southwest. Just over a nearby hill was a dynamite shack and Zamora was concerned that it might have blown up, so he broke pursuit and went to investigate. As he drove he saw a funnel shaped, narrower at the top, blue and “sort of orange” flame slowly descend behind the hill. He turned onto a dirt road, made it up a hill after three tries, and, after looking around for 15-20 seconds, saw what he thought was a car standing on end in a gully. As he got closer he noted two figures in what looked like white coveralls standing next to the “car” and as he drove quickly towards them to help, one of the figures turned towards him and seemed startled. Zamora was focused on the road and radioed that there had been an accident. When he was close to the site, he went to get out of the car and dropped the mic as he was doing so. He turned to replace it in its holder and, as soon as he turned away from the car to head down into the gully, he heard a roar, and saw flame coming out of the bottom of a white object shaped like an oval on its side, which was rising up slowly. He described the roar as not being like a jet, going from lower pitch to higher pitch and increasing “from loud to very loud.” During this time he noted a red insignia like an arrow under a crescent in the middle of the object. Fearful of an explosion, Zamora ran behind his car, bumping his leg on it and dropping his sun glasses, and kept on running to duck down just over the edge of the hill. He glanced back at the object as he did so and saw that it was completely out of the gully and level with his car. He had intended to keep running down the hill when the roar stopped and was replaced by a whine that went from high to low pitch for about a second. The object then moved away towards the southwest in complete silence, with no flame, in a straight line maintaining a height of 10-15 feet, which Zamora estimated in relation to the dynamite shack, which it had cleared by around 3 feet. According to Zamora the object moved quickly away and then ascended as it took off “across country.” Zamora later recalled seeing legs when the object was landed, that held it about three feet off the ground. Most likely, as he was thinking he was looking at a crashed car at the time, he was unable to put what he was seeing into a proper context. He radioed headquarters and asked the operator, Nep Lopes to look out his window and tell him if he could see what he was looking at. Lopes saw nothing and Zamora gave directions to him and Sergeant Sam Chavez of the State Police who monitored the same frequencies as the Socorro Police.