Gulf Breeze Debunker Jerry Black

KY: Does the Hyzer analysis today stand as the definitive conclusion to the Ed Walters case?

JB: It depends on who you talk to. Again, the MUFON organization, under the direction of Walt Andrus, certainly did not accept the Hyzer report as being the definitive report on the Gulf Breeze case. They, until Andrus' retirement, continued to support the Ed Walters case and his photographs and claim of abduction. Most UFOlogists, including some people who have left MUFON, do not feel the case is real. Consequently, it's a divided community. The evidence is overwhelming in my opinion after 4 1/2 years of investigating the case with Rex Salisberry and his wife Carol and Zan Overall, that the Gulf Breeze photos are hoaxed. Hyzer said that on Photograph #19, the famous 'road shot,' Hyzer said conclusively in his final report that Photograph #19 was a double exposure. With his technical capability and experience, I value the Hyzer analysis. All other Gulf Breeze photographs must be considered suspicious, the whole case is a hoax from beginning to end.

KY: Ed Walters and the Gulf Breeze situation was glorified in the book "UFOs, Here's The Proof"co-authored by Ed Walters and Bruce Maccabee. What are your feelings on an investigator collaborating with a claimant in this manner, and why would Dr. Maccabee be such a proponent of Ed Walters despite the Hyzer analysis?

JB: There are some hot ethical issues involved here. In my opinion, it's wrong. In this particular case, it is especially wrong because Ed Walters had not even started his second book when Bruce Maccabee accepted a $20,000 fee for writing a chapter in the book. What we must remember here, and some people are not aware of this, that $20,000 (less $2,000 for agents fee, let's be fair) that $18,000 came out of Ed Walters' pocket. That money was taken out of his advance. Once he had accepted that $18,000, he became too close to Ed Walters to objectively investigate the case any further. When you get $18,000 from a person, you'll have some hesitancy to say anything bad about the photos or the person, it's human nature. Had I been in charge of MUFON at that time and learned that Bruce Maccabee had accepted this money, I would have taken him off the case for conflict of interest reasons. As I said, I have a post-card from Ed Walters that states that much earlier than the book, Maccabee accepted a professional fee in July of 1988 of an undisclosed amount of money, just before Maccabee was to speak at the '88 MUFON symposium in support of the Ed Walters photos.

KY: So you are saying that Maccabee's acceptance of all this money had distracted him from being an objective investigator?

JB: Totally, absolutely. That kind of money, and we don't know the real amount, would distract anyone. Maccabee has denied that he received anything other than the $18,000 from the book, there's no amount listed for this 'professional fee' that Ed Walters makes reference to in this post card. It would be fair to say this professional fee may well have been in the 10 to 20-thousand dollar range, especially when you consider that Bob Oechsler, who also worked on the Gulf Breeze case, and supported Ed Walters, personally told me that he received $5,000 for some work done on the original photographs that Ed Walters took. Now that's a lot of money for work on photographs and I don't know what he actually did, but that work was not turned over for Hyzer's consideration. Certainly that $5,000 that Oechsler took home did not advance our understanding of the Ed Walters photos. It is my opinion that Ed Walters probably made a very healthy financial donation to the MUFON general fund sometime between 1988 and 1989. I've never been able to find out from MUFON, but that is certainly my suspicion.

KY: The UFO research community is, by and large, comprised of a volunteer work force of people who pursue the UFO topic out of personal, not professional interest. Do you believe that these ethical issues that you are raising here, and the misconduct of the Gulf Breeze researchers as you charge, reflects on all of the UFO research community?

JB: Oh, certainly it does. A lot of people had lost a lot of respect for the entire UFO community when the Gulf Breeze case was touted by and supported by the entire MUFON organization, even though many people could see the discrepancies in the case and the Hyzer case, stating from the beginning, that there were signs of double exposure. Why did Maccabee's report never make mention of the double exposure potential or imply that they were double exposures? Yet Hyzer said that all ten photos he was given showed signs of double exposed. Yes, this case is an absolute embarrassment to the UFO community. Dennis Stacey, who has since left MUFON, has clearly stated that he is not supportive of the Ed Walters case and never was. Walt Andrus and Bruce Maccabee are total embarrassments to the UFO community. Was Maccabee influenced by two payments he received from Ed Walters? You'll have to be the judge of that, but as Maccabee even admits, Hyzer's credentials are far, far superior to his own. So why would Hyzer say they are hoaxed and Maccabee say they are not? Is it the money? I don't know, you1ll have to ask Bruce Maccabee.

KY: Did you ever try to do that?

JB: No I did not. I have been in touch with him through tapes I sent through to him but never did contact him personally. He has completely denied receiving any second payment from Ed Walters. But the postcard that I have from Ed Walters clearly shows that Bruce Maccabee received a second payment - a professional fee as it were - for work done up until the time of July, 1988. I'm sure Maccabee would deny this. You see, when I sent audio tapes to Walters and Maccabee, I was very angry and stated on the tape how I knew that Walters had paid Maccabee an amount of $20,000 for writing a chapter in the book. For whatever reason, Walters may have been under the impression that the payment was not common knowledge. So I think Walters was trying to deny that he paid him $20,000 for the book effort, but on the other hand he was admitting that he did pay him a professional fee in July of 188 of an 'undisclosed amount of money.' That's what this postcard shows. It then appears that Ed Walters realized the 'professional fee' he paid in July of 1988 might come back to haunt Bruce Maccabee. He then writes a fictitious insert to show that Maccabee was paid in December of 1989. Note the paragraph on page 4 of a 12-page letter sent to me from Bruce Maccabee that states he received checks from a book agent in January of 1989. Whichever date you accept from Ed Walters' postcard as being correct, either date is at least 11-months away from when Maccabee received payments from the book agent. It appears they were not on the same wavelength, and had they got together before he sent the postcard, we may have never known of this second payment. Further, Ed Walters told Rex Sailsberry, early on in the investigation, that he had paid monies to the MUFON organization to support the Gulf Breeze investigation and had shared part of his proceeds of his book royalties with Bruce Maccabee. MUFON did not disclose this information to the general public and certainly they should have. It1s another case where Ed Walters was using his money to gain support from UFO investigators.

KY: Thankfully, interest in the Gulf Breeze UFO situation of the late 80s and early 90s have waned in recent years. While the sightings have stopped and interest in Gulf Breeze is down, a fair portion of the UFO research community stands skeptical of the Ed Walters photos today. Will Gulf Breeze ever go away and can we move on?

JB: For me, it will never go away. As long as there are people out there like Bruce Maccabee and his followers, and others who so want to believe in Gulf Breeze, it will never go away. I have spent too much time, to much money and almost lost my wife through a divorce because of the time and energy I devoted to the case and not to her. For me, it will never go away. The average man on the street who would look at all the evidence would see this case as an obvious hoax. Ed Walters told Peter Newman of WEAR TV that he knew how to double-expose film and was using this photo manipulation method as a gimmick to play games on friend's of his son. Newman had told this to other investigators besides myself. Bruce Maccabee should have gone back to check with Newman - no, he didn't do that. He simply said one word: "mistake." Then he tried to come up with another term for what Ed Walters had done with the young children; 'de-focusing.' No, it wasn't de-focusing, it was double-exposing Polaroid film, which is relatively simple to do. Maccabee had tried to maintain throughout this investigation that Ed Walters was an imbecile with a camera. He knew nothing about it, according to Maccabee. Yet others told us that whenever you saw Ed, he would have a camera around his neck. Does that imply to you a person who was not familiar with a camera? Maccabee and Andrus were both total embarrassments to the UFO community on this case. Instead of leading the MUFON organization to the correct answer on this case, instead of investigating everything that came up which didn't look right, instead of checking this out or checking that out - they were miserable failures. The UFO community will still have to live with this for many, many years to come. Did MUFON triple its membership at this time? They certainly did. They took the Gulf Breeze case and exploited it for everything they could, in my opinion. They had people coming from all over the world to the bridge in Gulf Breeze, watching for UFOs. Did they ever once tell people that the things they were seeing were not UFOs? No. They let it go on and on and they increased their membership. However, when people began to realize what was really happening in Gulf Breeze, their membership went down. And today, MUFON membership is even below where it was when Gulf Breeze started in 1987. MUFON touted that case for whatever dime and dollar they could get, in my opinion. I don't care how many friends they have and I don't care about the "Old Boy's Club." Some folks need to get off the fence, Maccabee is either right or wrong. I'm tired of the friendships in UFOlogy where people stick by one another and support bad cases due to friendships. MUFON fought through the rough times in the 70s and 80s and yet for what? To have Gulf Breeze come along and turn the organization into an embarrassment.

KY: Could MUFON have known, were there red flags that warranted caution?

JB: MUFON totally ignored the red flags. Let me give you an example of one red flag and how stupid Maccabee was and how stupid Andrus was, along with all of the other junior investigators in the MUFON organization: finally someone decided to give Ed Walters a sealed 35 mm Nimslo camera, sealed with wax, and put a roll of film in, take a couple of pictures on the front end and right in front of the press they hand the camera to Ed Walters and ask him to take a picture of a UFO the next time he sees one. Well, ten days later, Ed comes back with his wife and hands the camera, in front of the media, to Bruce Maccabee and the MUFON organization. Walters said: "It must have been a mother ship, everybody in Gulf Breeze must have seen it." Ed's wife said: "No, it was much smaller than that." Well the press and everybody else was eagerly waiting for Maccabee to have the film developed. When it was developed, Maccabee said the object was no longer than 40-inches long, a few inches wide, and no farther than 60-feet from the camera. How can a man take a picture of an object that close to the camera and say: "It must have been a mother ship." The only way he could and did say that, was because Ed, for the first time, could not see how the picture looked on the film before it was handed over to MUFON. And more importantly, where were these large UFO objects that Ed had been taking up until that time? This was the first time that we had a small UFO object photographed by Ed. Where are the larger UFOs that were allegedly seen and photographed constantly? I believe Walters took the camera and said to his wife: "what are we going to do now? We can take a picture of our model but I don't know how it's going to show up on film." So I think Ed took pictures of their model and agreed to say it was a large mothership while his wife Carol would agree to say that it was a small object. And what was Maccabee's reply to the photograph? "Oh, it was just a probe." The first and only probe that Ed Walters ever photographed. And what was Maccabee's response to those like myself who questioned Ed Walters mistaking the small object for a UFO mothership? Why would Maccabee believe Walters would say 'mothership' when the object was determined to be 36 to 40 inches long at a 60-foot distance? What did Maccabee say? He said: "There were some trees in the way and he mistakenly thought it was much larger." Have you ever heard such an idiotic answer to a question?

KY: You obviously charge that the Gulf Breeze case is fraudulent and you seem to be suggesting that the UFO community, in large part, disregards the glaring ethical issues brought on in the wake of the fraudulent case. Most recently in a posting to UFO Updates moderated by Errol Bruce Knapp, list member Royce J. Myers III of UFOWATCHDOG.COM said: "I just wish some people out there weren't so selective in the frauds they choose to either expose or support. A fraud is a fraud is a fraud." Let me ask you, Jerry, if you think the Gulf Breeze proponents have been given a free pass by the UFO research community, and why are some so willing to selectively disregard all the contrary evidence in the Gulf Breeze case?

JB: Maccabee and Andrus allowed rookie investigators, Charles Flannigan, Don Ware and others, to run with the case and use their own judgment. MUFON itself, I believe, wanted this case to be real. With their top photoanalyst receiving payments from the claimant and subsequently supporting the case, then these rookie investigators who are looking to their leaders for support - well what are they thinking? What do they feel? One example is Mr. Don Ware, who I talked to on the phone, he became too closely involved with Ed Walters. I think that is the case with a lot of investigators from MUFON. When I talked to Don Ware and told him about all the red flags and what was going on, he became real quiet and said: "Jerry, I don't care what evidence comes out. Ed will still always be a friend." He had got to close to Ed Walters. You can't do that. You can't get that close to a claimant where he's your buddy or your friend, you're not going to investigate sincerely. Just like when Ed Walters was supposed to take a polygraph test, he allegedly missed the test session. Ed then goes out and takes his own polygraph test some two weeks later and presents it to MUFON and presents a piece of paper from Harvey McLaughlin -a polygraph expert- that said he passed two polygraph tests. Why didn't rookie investigator Charles Flannigan, who set up the test, force Ed Walters to take the test again another day since he didn't show up for the original test? That was never done. Charles claimed he was intimidated by Ed Walters, he felt like it would besmirch Walters' reputation to ask that he take another test. Ed Walters' self-sponsored polygraph is invalid and unacceptable. Any polygraph expert, any police officer, an FBI or CIA agent worth his salt will tell you that a two-party self-sponsored polygraph test is an invalid test. The Ramsey's, whose young girl was murdered in their home, tried that with the FBI and the FBI told them it was not acceptable. So when you ask me why MUFON continued to support the case, it was due to the terribly misguided leaders that enabled this travesty.

KY: Do you have any final thoughts to the folks who might be uncertain about the truth of Gulf Breeze?

JB: You really need to take a second look. Don't just believe what someone else might have to say, do your own research. I'm happy to speak with anyone, if they want to write or call me, I always provide contact information. Remember, the Hyzer analysis is conclusive. Walt Andrus said that the Hyzer report was merely an opinion. That is a lie. It is not true. The Hyzer report, as a top-notch non-agenda photoanalyst, stands. I referred Hyzer to Rex Salisberry and Walt Andrus, the only two people who were to have contact with him. Once Hyzer made his analysis, Bruce Maccabee, Charles Flannigan, Jeff Sainio, all tried to contact Hyzer. I had told Walt Andrus that he would not speak with anyone aside from Andrus and Salisberry. Were these people deaf, did they not understand? After Hyzer presented his preliminary report saying that all photographs showed signs of double exposure, Charles Flannigan sent a note to Hyzer saying that Hyzer didn't understand the whole case. Hyzer, who told me that, asked "what did he mean?" The point was, he wasn't supposed to understand the whole case. Was he supposed to understand that Ed Walters, through Charles Flannigan, was a nice guy? A good guy in the community? What was he supposed to understand? All Hyzer was supposed to do was the job he did: analyze and present his report of the pictures. And yet those I just mentioned embarrassed themselves by presenting questions, doubts and criticism to Hyzer of his report when they were not even supposed to contact him. The Hyzer Report stands as the final word on Gulf Breeze. Photograph #19 has been conclusively found to be, by Mr. William G. Hyzer and his son James B. Hyzer, to be a double-exposed picture. And as I said to Rex Salisberry, "I suppose that means all the other pictures are hoaxed." He said no, that all of the other pictures are highly suspect. To show how Hyzer would try to stay on an even keel with both sides, Hyzer would not present me with a copy of his preliminary or final report until months after both were completed. I obtained his services. I was hurt that he would not present me with a copy of his preliminary report or his final report at the times they were drawn up. He gave one to Rex Salisberry and he gave one to Walt Andrus. Immediately after Andrus had received the report, Ed Walters had sent a certified letter to Hyzer saying that he did not have any permission to use the Gulf Breeze photos in any journals. Mr. Hyzer wanted to make sure that he played the game fairly, that he did not give me a copy of the report so that no one could accuse him of impropriety. There are many, many red flags that came up throughout the investigation of Gulf Breeze that MUFON investigators totally ignored.

KY: In closing, let me ask about the model found in the house. Gulf Breeze proponents claim the model was planted to tarnish Ed Walters. What is your take on this issue?

JB: The model was found in Ed's home some six months after he sold the home to Bob Menzer and his wife, Menzer found the UFO model in the attic crawlway under three inches of insulation. Supporters contend it was planted there. What is wrong with that theory? First of all, for someone to get caught breaking and entering in a home would be quite a crime. Secondly, Menzer found the model only after his third trip into the crawl space, and he was looking for a shutoff valve for the water so he could install an ice maker in his refrigerator. But supporters of Ed Walters would have you believe is that someone broke into the home, taking the chance they would be caught, to hide the model under three inches of insulation and hope that someone would find it and discredit Ed Walters. But what I had realized after talking with Bob Menzer is that he would have never went into the attic crawlway space if he knew the shutoff valve was in a small black box in the front yard. So what you are being asked to believe is, before the house was sold to Menzer and his wife, that someone hid the model in the attic knowing that someone would go up there looking for something. But in reality there was nothing in that crawl space. Under normal circumstances Menzer would have never found that model. We feel that there were numerous models made by Ed Walters so he stuck that particular model under three-inches of insulation to hide it, and perhaps forgot about it. But that theory beats the ridiculous story that someone broke into the house to hide it in a place where it would later be found.

JERRY BLACK WELCOMES ALL INQUIRIES AND CAN BE CONTACTED TOLL FREE AT 1-877-731-8400 or write to: JERRY BLACK, P.O. Box 125, Blanchester, OH 45107

COMMENTARY ON "AN INTERVIEW WITH JERRY BLACK" by Bruce Maccabee July 2003 at PROS.

Rebuttal by Eric Byler - Assistant Director of Oregon UFO Research.

Being very familiar with years of angry name calling and 2nd grade level investigative skills from Jerry Black, I was more interested in finding out who Kenny Young was. With a rich history of Blacks bridge burning abilities with MUFON head quarters I was curious as to who this person was who was again giving Black a stage while apparently agreeing with his assertion that MUFON was basically damaged goods because of the Gulf Breeze case.

I was shocked to find out that Mr. Young was in fact the Northern Kentucky State Section Director for...surprise...MUFON, the very organization he was bashing. I contacted Kenny to speak with him about this case and it became very apparent fairly quickly that his knowledge of MUFONs investigative findings was minimal and appeared to be of such a basic nature as to be embarrassing. It struck me as completely inappropriate for a person representing a UFO organization to bash a case and his own organization without first doing his homework.

After a couple of e-mails attempting to educate him on the volumes of investigative papers available I finally gave up as it became clear he had no intention of reading any of it. In one e-mail I sent him fifteen pages of documents he knew nothing about...those fifteen pages being less than one percent of solid available investigative history about the case. After receiving those fifteen pages his reply, without so much as reading a single page of it was..."This 15-page (printed up) deal is way overboard. I have a feeling you have too much time on your hands and need to get other things to do. I will save your 15-pager for a rainy day, maybe use it for toilet paper when I run out." He also went on to say that "courtesy of Jerry's knowledge of the Gulf Breeze UFO story, received a great deal of information on this case."

For a MUFON section director to read none of the original investigative findings of one of the biggest cases in UFO history while going on a MUFON attack based on what he has learned from Jerry Black alone tells columns about Kenny Young. I seriously doubt MUFON headquarters are aware of his actions.

Another person involved with the original photographic evidence had a word or two about the Kenny Young, Jerry Black Attack as well. MUFON head photo analyst Jeff Sainio commented..."I too received a fair amount of Black's irrationality. Rather than evidence-based thinking, he preferred authority-based ("it's true because Jesus tells me so") thinking. Photo/videoanalysis involves the most (so far, barring hold-in-your-hand evidence) solid, non-psychological evidence, which is why I try to stick to this portion of the field.

I'll otherwise avoid the personal attacks & give my view of what I saw. First, note there is no "GB case." There were dozens of events involving perhaps at least a dozen people I dealt with, and that's only the photo/video side. Lumping them all together is absurd.

The early evidence was quite poor, not surprising given the equipment inadequate for the situation and Ed's total lack of photographic expertise, which is perfectly normal of a random person. This early evidence was 'pretty' but of marginal analytic value.

Humans in their attempts to understand the world, want binary answers like "real" or "fake." They leave out the vast majority of case conclusions which are "honest misidentification" and "inconclusive." (Most GB evidence is clearly not mis-ID.) Ambiguity is simply no fun for an answer, but is an extremely common scientific result. Poor evidence usually yields an inconclusive result.

In the 10 years since this case, hundreds of unrelated cases have taught more of what I believed then, in terms of human behavior:

1. The average faker has NO expertise, and Bruce or I (or any analyst who can actually put their conclusions in QUANTITATIVE terms like graphs or formulae or contrast numbers rather than off-the-cuff conclusions) can easily detect them. A TV ad technician or professional photographer could do better, but would need to hide their background.

2. Fakers are uncooperative. They won't do reference experiments or work with analysts, just like crooks first say "I want a lawyer." Fakers want money/fame/sex/attention and boring analysts provide none of these, only the risk of exposure. We ask witnesses to do REALLY silly things & don't explain why. I analyzed Ed throwing a basketball & putting his briefcase on a dock. The basketball verified motion-blur, and the briefcase showed depth-of-focus versus the opposite shore. He didn't know that. A faker fears exposure, a witness doesn't fear the truth. Nobody in GB refused to do a reference experiment.

3. Fakers use a trusted MO, much like crooks. Billy used balloons/strings/models. (Anybody saying that a 1-armed man can't do this/that has never been around a 1-armed man; I played wallyball [volleyball in a racquetball court], a very fast game, with a 1-armed teammate [lost an arm escaping Vietnam] who was as good as anybody in the league. If you need serious proof, watch the black-and-white movie FREAKS [about a circus freak sideshow] and watch the man with no arms and no legs, pull a cigarette out of the pack, whip out a match, and light/smoke the cigarette. Unaided.) Ed, in contrast, used Polaroid, 35mm, videocamera, videocamcorder, in dusk/dark/daylight. His video showing an object over "Chicken bone beach" (the best name I have for it) shows un-pretty results that I've failed to get onto TV (beautiful evidence to an analyst isn't pretty to a producer) but the producers admitted they'd be hard-pressed to make this video using their multi-million dollar studios. This is BEFORE the analysis of the vertical-sync signals that show the tape wasn't made in a studio, but by a cheap (well, remember, the LENS of a broadcast camera can run $10,000) camcorder. Ed somehow used different MOs with a variety of (cheap) media and still managed to get results unduplicated without Spielberg-level equipment. Not bad for a carpenter.

I find little evidence, less analysis, lotsa ad homonym below (referring to Kenny and Jerrys attack on Gulf Breeze and MUFON). I too remember Jerry saying he had basically no understanding of the science. So why are the 'non'-est of the non-experts getting all this attention? Is this an indicator of the desperation involved?

If you would like to contact Kenny Young, his e-mail is ufo@fuse.net