Part 26 of a series reassessing the documentary record behind the 1933 Magenta narrative. TL;DR Frank Scully published stories about recovered saucers and small bodies in 1949, months before the two March 1950 FBI memos. An Air Force message from January shows investigators following a published version of the rumor. The March 31 memo names Silas Newton as a storyteller. The March 22 Hottel memo traces a similar account through a police investigator, Karl Howe. Howe’s informant remains uniden...

Part 17 of a series reassessing the documentary record behind the 1933 Magenta narrative. TL;DR: Aztec’s public source trail runs through Scully, Newton and GeBauer; Cahn reported ordinary aluminum in Newton’s alleged saucer sample, and Newton and GeBauer were convicted in an oil-fraud case. Only the 31 March 1950 FBI memo explicitly names Newton; the informant behind Hottel’s 22 March memo remains unidentified. The FBI’s Newton-file description says he revised his claim in 1952, denying firs...