UFO Crash Investigation Lands Researcher in Jail
UFO CRASH AT SOUTHAVEN PARK, 1992NEWSPAPER; SOUTH SHORE PRESS
ISSUE; Vol X, No. 7
DATE; Tuesday, May 25, 1993
A local investigative group that has been researching accounts of unidentified objects on Long Island for the past five years released a report (with photos and a video tape) yesterday that claims an alien space craft crashed into a remote area of Southaven Park in Shirley just before Thanksgiving last year. The incident happened just after 7:00 P.M. on the night of November 24, according to John Ford, chairman of the Long Island U.F.O. Network, who said that it has taken his group six months to do a thorough investigation.
It was just recently, though, that his group was able to acquire the video and the photos. "We knew that something crashed into the park that night and we have, bit by bit," said Ford, "been able to finally put the picture together." Several motorists who were traveling along Sunrise Highway that night, according to Ford, contacted his organization and described what they thought was a plane that was going down into the park. And many local residents whose homes border Southaven report that they heard loud rumbling sounds and saw strange lights.
"Eyewitness accounts have confirmed that a fire was reported immediately after," noted Ford. "In addition, the roads around the park were blocked off to travel by county and park police. The next day, and for a few days after, the park was closed to the public."
One local resident who lives near the park said that for a five to six day period after the incident, his house experienced numerous power surges and the phone would ring strangely without anyone on the other end.
"I ride horses in the park so I'm pretty familiar with the activities there," said the 45- year-old man who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of his job ("they would fire me if they thought I believed in flying saucers").
"For the next few days there were a lot of military helicopters going over the park
and I couldn't get in."
Records show that Southaven Park was closed between November 25 and 28. According to park officials, the park was closed to the general public that week because it was reserved for duck hunting. Although some of the area fire departments were initially called, they were turned back and the fire was handled by the federally controlled Brookhaven National Laboratory Fire Department, said Ford. Ford's group finally gained admittance into the park a week later.
"We found an area that was burned out and some trees were bent over," Ford recalled. "A section looked like it had been plowed over by machinery." But two things were of particular interest to Ford. "We were getting a higher than normal radiation reading in the area, higher than regular background radiation, and the fence line in that area," said Ford, "had no magnetic reading."
Ford explained that metal fences maintain a magnetic charge from the Earth.
"Something had stripped away the magnetic charge of the fence."
Last week Ford received what he had been waiting and hoping for: a video film of the crash.
"I can't say where I got it from because these people who supplied the tape are afraid that the government will go after them.
" Because of the poor quality of the tape, Ford has been working with video specialists to try and enhance the quality of the picture and to produce stills. The video, a copy of which was given to South Shore Press, shows people examining a bright reddish, metallic-type object about four-square feet that appears to be emitting a white, cloudy gas, and a hissing sound can be heard
a sight and sound that resembles dry ice that has been exposed to warmer temperatures.
The next shot shows what appears to be a person trying to lift up a body near a tree, but the poor quality of the film makes positive identification impossible. In a final scene, three uniformed men (wearing dark jackets and rounded caps similar to federal swat teams) are seen placing a large shiny spread (similar to mylar) over something on the ground. Ford makes no apologies for the poor quality of the video:
"Things are happening fast and the guy who took the shots doesn't want to be too obvious." And he confesses that it is hard to get people to come forward and admit what they've seen.
"One of the major problems in researching UFOs is that people are afraid of sounding like lunatics when describing strange, unexplained events."
But an even greater fear, notes Ford, is the government.
"You get involved with things that the government doesn't want people to know and they can make life pretty tough for you."
What are Ford's conclusions about the Southaven incident? "We are still very actively investigating this event. We believe that an extraterrestrial craft, with aliens, crashed that night in the park
and we are out to prove it."
The Long Island U.F.O. Network has a 24-hour hotline number (286-3212) to which Ford encourages people to call if they have any information on the (Southaven) incident or any other (unexplainable) phenomenon.
Skeptics UFO Newsletter -7- Jan. 1998
UFO Group Leader, Accused Of Plan To Kill Local Government Officials, Sent To Mental Institution After His Two Partners Plead Guilty.
John Ford, the 49-year-old founder of the Long Island (N.Y.) UFO Network (LIUFON), who in mid-1996 was charged with plotting to kill several local government officials because he believed they were covering up three crashed-saucer incidents on Long Island, has been found to be "delusional" and has been sent to a New York state psychiatric center. If/when Ford is judged competent to stand trial, he faces the prospect of a 25-75 year jail term.
Two of Ford's partners in the plot to poison Suffolk county officials by inserting radium into their food and toothpaste earlier pleaded guilty to participating in the plan. Joseph Mazzuchelli was sentenced to 3-9 years.
Edward Zabo, a Defense Dept. employee who obtained the radium, is slated to be sentenced in early March [SUN #40/July 1996]. The evidence included a tape recording of Ford and associates discussing their plan which was covertly recorded by a person who had been asked to participate but who instead gave the tape to law enforcement officials.
Ford claimed that in 1989, the U.S. had forced down and recovered an ET craft near Moriches Bay, L.I., that in 1992 an alien craft had crashed in Southaven Park, and that a third had crashed later near the Pine Barrens area. He publicly accused local government officials of collaborating with the federal government to cover up the incidents.
In an article in the November 1996 issue of the MUFON UFO Journal, Ms. Elaine Douglas charged that Ford was the "first UFO investigator to be seriously persecuted by the authorities." (Douglas is MUFON's state director for the District of Columbia and co-director of "Operation Right To Know." The latter, which periodically stages public demonstrations, describes itself as "the only UFO organization with guts."
It has scheduled a march on the White House to "End UFO Secrecy" for July 5, 1999.) In her MUFON article, Douglas announced the formation of the John Ford Defense Committee and sought contributions. SUN eagerly awaits the reactions of Douglas and MUFON to recent events.
Some of Ford's own comments, contained in a 102-page handwritten "Statement to the Media," were quoted in a lengthy feature article recently published in the Jan. 11 issue of The Washington Post. Ford claims he had been a CIA agent for the last 30 years, but was not paid so there would be no record of his employment in the agency's files. Further, that Mazzuchelli was an officer of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency.
Another Ford claim is that the AIDS and Ebola viruses were brought by ETs to kill off peoples of sub-Sahara Africa. In a letter to LIUFON vice president Steve Iavarone, Ford predicted that after a few months at the Mid-Hudson Psychiatric Center he would return and that all charges against him would be dropped. Ford concluded his letter with UFOlogy's popular slogan: "THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE..."
In June 1996 Ford was arrested on charges of conspiracy to murder local Republican officials John Powell, Fred Towle and Anthony Gazzola by doctoring their toothpaste and their cars with radium. Ford was right about his phone being tapped - the main evidence against him was a taped phone call to a police informant.
People who have heard the recording say that Ford and the informant discuss the radium poisoning scheme and then laugh heartily as if it were a joke. Arrested with Ford was Joseph Mazzachelli, and the next day a third suspect, Edward Zabo, was arrested in Medford, New York. Zabo was an electrical inspector at military contractor Northrop Grumman.
The three men were all members of the Long Island UFO Network. The group has accused the government of covering up sightings of extraterrestrials. Zabo, a former Defense Department employee, had provided the radium, and Ford was supposed to plant it.
The intended victims of the plot could not say why the three wanted to kill them. Mazzachelli was a convicted burglar, and Zabo had been arrested twice for driving while intoxicated and may have had some tax troubles. In the raid on Ford's home in Bellport, police seized dozens of weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Friends said Ford was a gun collector. Police also found what they and the media described as "militia" literature. However, actual militia ties are dubious.
In 1997, a Suffolk County Court judge ordered that Ford be sent to an upstate New York mental hospital, where he remains today. Three psychiatrists and a psychologist, two hired by District Attorney James M. Catterson Jr.'s office, examined Ford and all four concluded that he was not competent to stand trial.
Robert H. Berger, director of Forensic Psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital Center, said that while Ford seemed to understand his legal predicament, he thought the criminal case against him was in reality an intelligence operation being run by the CIA together with the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.
Responding to an article about himself in Saucer Smear, Ford wrote:
My case is a frame-up and a smear tactic to destroy my UFO organization and to neutralize my effectiveness.
The main reason I'm sitting here is due to the fact that I had information indicating that the 1995 East End Forest Fires had been deliberately set to cover up the crash of a large disc near Suffolk Community College, south of Riverhead (Long Island).
The County was asked to set fires near the crash site, to keep people out of the area; but dirty politics being the case, the Republican leadership, in an effort to gain control of Pine Barrens properties, set Forest Fires South of Sunrise Highway in populated areas near the coveted land.
I was able to document some of this. While doing so, I was targeted for elimination by the politicians. I had several attempts on my life fail, due to the intervention of Israeli intelligence, which protected me for some 3 1/2 months.
Yes, it's true what I said. There is a heavy intelligence presence involved in my case. The man to talk to about it all is Preston Nichols.... He can give you a briefing on the various aspects of the case...
Preston Nichols, also a LIUFON member, is the same Preston Nichols of Montauk Project fame.
What happened here? Was Ford getting too close to something he shouldn't have, or had he been delusional for years?
