The Trickster and the Paranormal

by George P. Hansen

  Among those few individuals who scientifically study UFOs, there is some reluctance to dwell upon the fraud issue for fear of it tainting the rest of the field and dissuading others from taking it seriously. As a result, the proponents’ histories give a distorted picture. On the other hand, those of debunkers are often so casually done as to be misleading and unreliable.

  The paranormal, by its nature, is enmeshed in frauds and hoaxes, especially in cases with high public visibility. Nowhere is this better seen than in ufology. The field is a gold mine for researchers who understand this, and a cesspool for those who do not.

  Its entire history is permeated with fraud and con artists, and it makes the physical mediumship of nineteenth-century Spiritualism pale by comparison. Furthermore, I have never encountered an area in which it is so difficult to obtain reliable information. It is nearly impossible to convey the extent of these problems to someone who has not been involved. It takes several years of relatively intense reading and research to appreciate the field’s complexity.

  The following example is one that I investigated. The hoaxers have not yet admitted to their handiwork, but sufficient evidence has been presented on both sides for a reasonable person to draw conclusions. However, exposes of hoaxes are often not satisfactorily convincing for everyone. Even a full confession by perpetrators can be inadequate to convince die-hards that they had been hoodwinked, and I expect the following case to continue that pattern.

  The Linda Napolitano (Cortile) Hoax—A Case Study

  The purported UFO abduction of Linda Napolitano3 is truly exotic, even for a UFO abduction. Government agents were involved; the UN Secretary General was a key witness; Linda was kidnapped in the interest of national security; the CIA tried to discredit the case, and the ETs helped end the cold war. Or so the story goes. The most complete version of the tale is reported in Budd Hopkins’ book Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions (1996), and three years prior, two colleagues and I released a 25-page critical report. It was widely printed in UFO periodicals and posted on the Internet.5

  The chief investigator of the case, Budd Hopkins, is the most active spokesperson advocating the physical reality of UFO abductions. Prior to the Napolitano affair he had published two books on the topic and made innumerable appearances on radio, television, and at conferences. He is so famous that characters in books and television shows have been based on his life. Hopkins is an artist by profession but devotes a considerable portion of his time to ufology, and though he is not a trained scientist, he works closely with academics. He has collaborated extensively with David Jacobs, professor of history at Temple University, and his most illustrious supporter and colleague is John E. Mack, M.D., former head of the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School and a Pulitzer Prize winner.

  From the time he first went public with the Napolitano case, Hopkins made it clear that he considered it to be the most important evidence for the physical reality of UFO abductions, and in his book, he compares it to a flying saucer landing on the White House lawn. The case’s significance is strengthened by the support it received from leaders of the two largest UFO organizations in the U.S., the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) and the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies. Not only the magnitude of the claims, but also their endorsement by the field’s leadership, have profound implications for understanding the nature of ufology and the UFO phenomena.

  Several independent parties investigated the affair, and the available written material now provides a variety of perspectives. In addition to our own work, journalist Patrick Huyghe wrote an extensive article on the case for the April 1994 issue of Omni magazine, and Jim Schnabel’s book Dark White (1994) covered the affair; both of these are critical. Entertainment writer Greg Sandow supported Hopkins in a two-part article for the Spring and Summer 1997 issues of International UFO Reporter.

  Linda Napolitano is a vivacious New York City housewife with a husband and two sons, and at the time of her celebrated abduction she was in her early 40s. In mid-1989 Linda joined Hopkins’ support group for UFO abductees. She was just another member, but that soon changed. On November 30, 1989 at approximately 3:16 a.m., a large, brightly lit spaceship was witnessed hovering over her apartment building in lower Manhattan, and Linda and three small beings were seen floating up into it. At that very time, the UN Secretary General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, and his two bodyguards, “Richard” and “Dan,” were passing by in a motorcade a few blocks away en route to a heliport, and as the spaceship appeared, their car stalled. The three watched as Linda ascended into the ship; afterward, the craft flew over the Brooklyn Bridge and plunged into the East River. Then, Richard, Dan, and the Secretary General were also abducted by the aliens and taken to a beach where they met Linda. After about an hour, all were returned to Manhattan, and later in the day Linda called Hopkins. He put her under hypnosis, but apparently she remembered little of the event.

  The story became more exciting when in February 1991, over a year later, Richard and Dan sent Hopkins a letter describing their experience. They were severely traumatized but were still concerned about the fate of the woman they had seen taken into the craft. A few days after Hopkins received that letter, the two visited Linda in person, but they declined to meet directly with Hopkins. In April of that year, Richard and Dan kidnapped Linda. They forced her into a Mercedes, and Linda noticed that it was accompanied by a Rolls Royce; later under hypnosis she was able to recall part of its license plate number, and it was eventually traced to a diplomatic mission at the UN. During the kidnapping, they drove around New York for several hours; Linda was questioned and then released. In October Dan kidnapped her again, took her to a beach house on Long Island, and tried to kill her. But at the last moment Richard miraculously saved her. Dan was put in a mental institution, but he escaped, and Richard again rescued Linda from his clutches. Other sinister figures followed Linda, and the situation became so ominous that Hopkins raised money to hire a bodyguard for her.

  Despite the wild activities, Hopkins had no direct evidence for any of this. He relied on Linda’s reports and letters from Richard and Dan, but the only way he could contact the two was via a mail drop, or through Linda who met with them and spoke to them on the phone. Richard and Dan sent Hopkins letters and audiotapes, and they even sent him presents. But they steadfastly refused to meet with him, and they never have. Hopkins also received letters purportedly from Perez de Cuellar, but Hopkins never verified their authenticity, though he was convinced that they were genuine.

  The story grew even more intriguing when Linda’s niece, Lisa, a doctor of podiatric medicine, took an x-ray of Linda’s head, because it was suspected that the aliens had implanted a device. The x-ray showed a small object with a curly, wire-like protuberance in Linda’s nose, but the circumstances were odd. Lisa used a machine designed to x-ray feet, and in his book Hopkins quotes her as saying that she had never x-rayed anyone’s head before and was not sure “how much to raise the amperage and kilowatts.” It is unclear whether Hopkins ever met Lisa or only spoke with her on the phone or whether he verified that she had a medical license. Unfortunately, before he saw the x-ray, the aliens apparently abducted Linda and removed the object because a later examination found no trace of it.

  In November 1991 Hopkins received a letter from Janet Kimball (a pseudonym), a retired telephone operator. She was driving home from a retirement party for her boss on the morning of November 30, 1989. As she crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, her car stalled, and her lights went out. She saw an extremely bright object above Linda’s apartment building, and even though she was over a quarter mile away, it was so brilliant that she had to shield her eyes. Janet saw a woman and three beings float up into the object, which then flew away. Other cars had also stopped on the bridge, and some of the people got out and ran around screaming. Janet, though, had the presence of mind to rummage through her purse to find her cigarette lighter in order to illuminate her watch and check the time.

 
Janet had also written to Hopkins in July, almost five months earlier, but received no reply (Hopkins typically had a large volume of unopened mail from readers of his books). The second time she wrote she marked the outside of the envelope “Confidential Re: Brooklyn Bridge.” This odd marking attracted Hopkins’ attention, but apparently not his suspicions. He interviewed Janet only once in person, and in a restaurant, away from her family members who may have given inconvenient information. She agreed to talk with another investigator, but backed out. As far as can be ascertained, Hopkins didn’t even verify that the retirement party occurred on the date and time she claimed.

  Linda’s saga had romance. Richard’s heroic efforts to rescue Linda led him to fall in love with her, and the two came to realize that they had been abducted together many times since their early childhood. As they grew up, the aliens arranged sexual liaisons, and Richard believed that he had fathered Johnny, one of Linda’s children.

  Hopkins began touting the case in 1992, and it got mentioned in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Omni magazine, and Paris Match. He also published short articles on it in UFO magazines. In the middle of that year I became involved when Richard Butler and Joseph Stefula, whom I had known through a local UFO group, asked me for assistance. Butler had had abduction experiences, and he attended Hopkins’ support group for abductees. There he had met Linda, who told him her story and asked his advice about threats from Richard and Dan. Butler called on Joe Stefula because the two agents apparently worked for some government office. Stefula was a Chief Warrant Officer in the U.S. Army (retired) and former operations officer for criminal investigations at Fort Dix, New Jersey. He had numerous contacts in law enforcement agencies, and he also had a long interest in UFOs.

  A number of elements raised suspicions. The story was outlandish on the face of it. No credible, multipli-witnessed abduction had ever been documented. The purported involvement of the UN Secretary General made the claims even more unlikely. Anyone familiar with ufology knew the field to be rife with fraud and hoaxes, and the implausible aspects alone should have been cause for grave concern. An added twist came when our colleague Vincent Creevy told us about the science fiction novel Night eyes by Garfield Reeves-Stevens. This was first published in April 1989, and it contained many striking parallels with Linda’s story (including alien-arranged sexual liaisons between a government agent and the female protagonist), suggesting that the hoaxers had based some of their ideas on it. In fact, Hopkins admitted in his book that, before the Linda case, he had never heard of such alien match-making,9 and the fact that it had been portrayed previously in Night eyes further suggests that the hoaxers borrowed ideas from that book.

  Small details of the case also provoked questions. Why had Richard and Dan written to Hopkins before they contacted Linda? They knew the location of her apartment but would have had no reason to think Hopkins was involved. A most amusing detail was that Linda had not reported the kidnappings or the attempted murder to law enforcement authorities, even though she had made the allegations publicly in front of media representatives and hundreds of other people at the 1992 MUFON convention. Hopkins had amassed a great deal of material from Richard and Dan that could help police identify them. In fact, Hopkins even had a picture of Dan. If the two existed, they could almost certainly be found. However, if Linda was lying and filed her claims with the police, she could be criminally prosecuted. Her failure to make the allegations official made the case extremely dubious.

  We contacted Hopkins during our investigation, and he agreed to a meeting with us, and he invited others to attend including Walter Andrus, the head of MUFON, and Jerry Clark, vice president of the Hynek Center. A few weeks before that meeting, we toured Linda’s neighborhood in order to become more familiar with the location of the events. Her apartment complex had a guardhouse that was manned 24 hours a day, and video cameras were positioned at various locations around the complex. We discovered that the New York Post had a loading dock two blocks away that was open until 5:00 a.m. We talked with the guards and people at the loading dock and others in the vicinity, but no one knew anything about the UFO event. According to Hopkins’ witnesses, the ship was extremely large and bright. So it seemed odd to find no one who had heard of it.

  The meeting revealed much about Hopkins’ methods and the mentality of ufology’s leaders. We asked Hopkins if he had checked with the apartment complex guards or with the New York Post loading dock personnel to see if they remembered seeing a UFO. He hadn’t. We learned that Hopkins didn’t even know the weather conditions the night of the abduction. He had done nothing to verify the most rudimentary facts. During questioning, Linda admitted that she had lied about several aspects of the case, and Penelope Franklin, one of Hopkins’ closest collaborators, staunchly supported her in doing so.

  Stefula brought along a colleague who had years of experience in dignitary protective services. He made an independent, detailed presentation on motorcades carrying important political figures. He explained that in such operations checkpoints are established, and if they are not passed on time, several authorities are notified. If even one car stalls, a whole network of people is informed. At the end of his presentation he suggested that Hopkins ask Richard and Dan the meaning of several specialist terms. If they were whom they claimed, they would know the definitions. Hopkins apparently never asked them the meaning of the words.

  At the meeting we played our trump card. We suggested that Linda report the kidnapping and attempted murder to the police, and we stated that if she didn’t, we were prepared to file a request for a federal investigation. We explained that Linda had publicly alleged that federal officials had committed crimes, and that anyone could now make such a request. At that, Hopkins, Jacobs, Andrus, and Clark all appeared to panic. They said that a worldwide government conspiracy may be attempting to suppress knowledge of earth’s visitation by ETs. If the crimes were reported, we might never learn the truth about the Napolitano affair. In fact Clark committed his position to writing and said that the case “involves a political figure of international stature … banging on the wrong doors could alert the relevant agency that two of its agents were leaking a huge secret.” This reasoning was silly, but revealing. Even if there was such an effective, orchestrated conspiracy, Hopkins had already widely publicized the case, including the alleged crimes, and any report from us would amount to nothing. If Linda’s claims had merit, there was a chance for a conspiracy to be exposed. Government agencies commonly investigate each other, and there are often bitter rivalries among them. There was nothing to lose. The attitude of the leading ufologists struck me as exceedingly odd, but because they had been given inside information by Hopkins, a few days later I called Andrus, Clark, Jacobs, and Mack to be sure that they believed Linda’s story about the kidnappings and attempted murder. All assured me that they accepted her report.

  Stefula, Butler, and I wanted a simple test of Linda’s honesty. Would she stand by her claims when there were real penalties for lying? To force the issue, and up the stakes, I wrote to the office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Treasury and Stefula called the Secret Service requesting an investigation of Linda’s allegations. Eventually the Secret Service interviewed Hopkins and Linda. I don’t know exactly what transpired during that interview, or what Hopkins and Linda told them, but as far as we could tell, the Secret Service took no further action. I can only surmise that Hopkins’ and Linda’s claims did not warrant an investigation and that they tried to avoid one. In any event, Hopkins was furious, and I received a letter from the Hynek Center rebuking me and bitterly complaining that I had provided law enforcement the name, address and phone number of one of their vice presidents who had been given secret information about the alleged crimes. I didn’t understand their anger, but I gather that their private mythology had just collided with real-world considerations, and that was none too pleasant for them.

  In January 1993 we released a report on our findings, and Hopkins and his supporter
s wasted little time in replying. The March/April 1993 issue of the Hynek Center’s magazine International UFO Reporter was almost entirely devoted to personal attacks on us. Hopkins made a number of false statements about us, and though we informed him and the magazine of them, no apology or correction ever appeared. Nevertheless, I found his vehement denunciation, including profanity, quite hilarious. And one of my favorite passages read: “And then there’s the third and strangest member of the New Jersey trio, George Hansen. In my brief meetings with him, certain personal characteristics were immediately obvious. First of all, George is the epitome of the fanatic college debater who will use any tactic to win, no matter what the human cost. His ego is always on the line, and apparently he would rather destroy an innocent person than lose what he perceives to be the abstract argument. He has learned to wear the protective paraphernalia of written academic discourse as a coat of chain mail to conceal the inner man. All this, because the soul of George Hansen is, essentially, the soul of a hater.” I bought copies of the magazine and gave them to friends.