Roswell Slides (2015)

The claim

In 2015, a set of Kodachrome slides attributed to geologist Bernard Ray and his wife Hilda Blair Ray surfaced as purported images of a small humanoid body recovered after the 1947 Roswell incident. The slides had reportedly been kept in a Sedona-area estate and attic for years before passing to video producer Adam Dew. Donald Schmitt, co-author with Kevin Randle of the Roswell books of the early 1990s, was among those who had seen them, and Tom Carey, Richard Dolan and Anthony Bragalia promoted them. Jaime Maussan, the Mexican UFO promoter, hosted the public reveal on May 5, 2015 at Mexico City's National Auditorium, an event that required a paid login and was widely described as underwhelming. The IBTimes coverage of the reveal presented the images as new evidence.

The placard

Within days, online researchers working through the Roswell Slides Research Group (RSRG) posted the image of a placard visible in one slide. After deblurring with SmartDeblur software, the placard appeared to read "Mummified body of two year old boy." Dew later posted a high-resolution scan, which supported the reading. David Clarke's May 2015 post and Jason Colavito's account both treat the placard as decisive.

The object was a mummified human child, not an alien. Critics traced it to a remains discovery in 1894 and a display at the Mesa Verde museum; the account was later linked to National Park Service records obtained by FOIA, which identify the remains only by the catalogue reference "MOCA 1352." Those details come mostly from the researchers who did the identification, so they are best read as well-supported but not independently audited.

Retractions and aftermath

Anthony Bragalia apologized publicly around May 9-10, 2015, saying he had been fooled, that he had taken no money from the affair, and that he would donate to a charity for American Indian children. He apologized to Native peoples of the Southwest for helping to disturb a child's remains. Tom Carey issued a statement on May 12 in which he said he was in disbelief but still hoped for something unexpected. Don Schmitt apologized on May 14, saying he now accepted the image as a mummy. Richard Dolan accepted the findings without apology. Adam Dew publicly accused RSRG of faking its results, then deleted the accusations and went quiet for about three weeks. Jaime Maussan held out hope.

The episode is sometimes cited as a case study in how quickly a crowd-sourced analysis can overturn a promoted claim, and as a rare instance of ufologists retracting a headline claim in public.

Assessment

The identification of the subject as a mummified child is well supported by the placard reading and by archival records. No evidence has been presented that links the slides to Roswell, to a 1947 recovery, or to any non-human body. The provenance of the slides, which passed through several private hands before reaching promoters, was never fully documented, and some claims about who the photographer was remain unverified. The case is therefore best filed as a debunked claim whose history is more notable for what it reveals about ufology's promotion practices than for anything it shows about the Roswell crash.