Suspicious Deaths, Journalists and UFOs: A Sinister Situation

UFOs, journalists and suspicious deaths: Is there a connection? Yes, there is. It’s a subject that is rarely looked at. And that’s why I’m talking about it today. We’ll begin with a legendary journalist from the 1950s-1960s. Her name was Dorothy Kilgallen. I spent about three weeks looking into Dorothy Kilgallen’s life and career, all of which was fascinating. Her marriage, in 1940, to a Broadway producer named Richard Kollmar was hardly what could be termed a gratifying one – in any sense of the word. They were poles apart: emotionally, and, as Kilgallen came to realize, sexually, too. The pair divorced. Kollmar remarried in 1967 to a fashion-designer, Anne Fogarty. Kilgallen, as a result, took on a wealth of lovers. Kollmar died in January 1971 at the age of sixty. I read the FBI’s file on Kilgallen from front to end, which, I can tell you, was no easy task. It was a combination of copies of Kilgallen’s newspaper articles and FBI memoranda. The file dated back to the 1930s and was packed with entertaining material. It was also packed with government secrets that Kilgallen had an impressive knack of getting hold of from insider sources. For example, an FBI document of March 27, 1945 quotes Kilgallen as saying that “…Marshal Tito, the Yugoslav leader, has agents in this country who beat and terrorize Yugoslav who disagree with his policies.” 

On July 18, 1950 the FBI one of J. Edgar Hoover’s Special-Agents wrote that, “…in the Journal American on May 12th had contained information indicating that an Israeli Intelligence official had been traveling in the United States incognito.” This was a far cry from mere Hollywood gossip. No wonder Hoover had a file created on someone who seemed to know everything of a secret and scandalous nature. And, Let’s see what else Kilgallen was probing into in the years before her death. Also, Dorothy was someone who was deep into the JFK assassination of 1963. No wonder there was an FBI file on her. Now, let’s go to the UFO phenomenon. There’s little doubt at all Dorothy Kilgallen had an interest in the UFO phenomenon; I quickly realized that when I began looking. In 1954, she said, in a press article, that: “Flying Saucers are regarded as of such vital importance that they will be the subject of a special hush-hush meeting of the world military heads next summer.” It has to be said, though, she was really thrown into the controversy of alien life in a definitive out-of-the-blue style in May 1955. That was when Kilgallen took a vacation to the United Kingdom and things got very strange. 

As both a definitive bon viveur and an investigative journalist, Kilgallen was an expert at quickly cultivating friendships with influential characters – and plying them with booze to hopefully loosen their lips. She certainly did that while on the trip across the pond. Kilgallen was invited to two parties while in the U.K., both in the bustling city of London. Both soi·rées saw her rub shoulders with some of the most influential figures in politics, entertainment, and the U.K. military. For Kilgallen, they were fun nights on the town. Until, that is, things became so much more: celebrity secrets became whispers of dangerous UFO secrets. May 22 was the date when Kilgallen prepared an amazing story for the U.S. media, and specifically for International News Service (INS): “I can report today on a story which is positively spooky, not to mention chilling. British scientists and airmen, after examining the wreckage of one mysterious flying ship, are convinced these strange aerial objects are not optical illusions or Soviet inventions, but are flying saucers which originate on another planet. The source of my information is a British official of cabinet rank who prefers to remain unidentified.”

Kilgallen’s informant – evidently, someone powerful in the U.K. government – agreed to talk to her and reveal what he knew. The man didn’t say much, but it was still enough to turn heads and open eyes. His words: “We believe, on the basis of our inquiry thus far, that the saucers were staffed by small men – probably under four feet tall. It’s frightening, but there’s no denying the flying saucers come from another planet.” Kilgallen wasn’t done: “This official quoted scientists as saying a flying ship of this type could not have possibly been constructed on Earth. The British Government, I learned, is withholding an official report on the ‘flying saucer’ examination at this time, possibly because it does not wish to frighten the public. When my husband and I arrived here from a brief vacation, I had no premonition that I would be catapulting myself into the controversy over whether flying saucers are real or imaginary.” So, who was Kilgallen’s anonymous informant? To answer that question we have to turn our attentions to Timothy Good, a longtime, and well-respected, UFO investigator and author; and to a man named Gordon Creighton who, for years, was the editor of Flying Saucer Review magazine. Good, who followed the Kilgallen story, said that the conversation “was alleged to have taken place during a cocktail party given by Lord Mountbatten, but I have been unable to substantiate this with Mollie Travis, Mountbatten’s private secretary at the time.”

Things got even more intriguing when Kilgallen got her hands on an advance copy of the controversy-filled Warren Report that investigated the death of JFK. How she got a hold of that is still a much-debated issue for those who haven’t given up on the matter of who was behind the president’s killing. Kilgallen even managed to secure an interview with Ruby, himself. Kilgallen was no fool: she knew that, by that time, her life was in a fair degree of danger. Kilgallen’s hairdresser, Marc Sinclaire, made no bones about it: “Her life had been threatened.” The threats became more and more. Then, on November 8, 1965, Kilgallen was found stone cold dead. The fact that Dorothy was tangling with both UFOs and the JFK killing made her a “person of interest,” as some might say. Now, let’s go further ahead and to a journalist and author named Jim Keith.

Jim Keith was a noted conspiracy theorist who died under extremely weird and dubious circumstances in September 1999 after attending the annual Burning Man event in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. Keith had headed out to the annual Burning Man festival in Black Rock, just north of Reno, Nevada, a day before the event began. While on stage, Keith lost his balance and fell to the ground. At first, Keith thought he had just badly bruised his leg. By the morning, though, Keith was in such agony that he had to call for paramedics, who were quickly on the scene and took him to the Washoe Medical Center, in Reno. Keith was told he had fractured his tibia and that he was to be prepped for surgery – which would require him to be anesthetized. This was when things got really strange. Keith put a call through to a friend in the conspiracy field – George Pickard – and told him that one of the attendants at the hospital had the same name as someone he had debated on the matter of the black helicopters, and just a few months earlier. Coincidence? Who knows? As the time for surgery got closer, Keith got more and more anxious. He said to his nephew, Chris Davis: “I have a feeling that if they put me under I’m not coming back. I know if I get put under, I am going to die.” 

That’s exactly what happened: a blood-clot took Keith’s life. The field of conspiracy-theorizing was both stunned and suspicious by this very untimely and tragic state of affairs. An unfortunate event or a well-orchestrated murder by culprits unknown? That was the question which was specifically asked most frequently in the immediate wake of Keith’s death. It’s a question that still gets asked today. UFO authority Greg Bishop says: “I would prefer to think that there was no connection to the weird computer problems,” which was a reference to a series of hacking of Keith’s computer that he, Keith, experienced just days before he died and while he was investigating the 1997 death of Princess Diana of Wales. Now, to the matter of what is know as the Octopus. You’ll find out what that is right now. It was the summer of 1991 – specifically August 1 of that year – when the body of a middle-aged man was discovered in a hotel room in the Martinsburg, West Virginia Sheraton Inn. His body was lying in the shower. It was a grim sight for the maid that made the discovery. The man, it seemed, had committed suicide: his wrists were cut deep, something which effectively meant that without anyone to help him, the man was doomed. And, he was. It didn’t take more than a few moments for hotel staff to figure out who, exactly, the man was. He was identified by the person on the front-desk as Danny Casolaro. He was an investigative journalist of the Woodward and Bernstein variety.  

Casolaro’s death was a big tragedy for his family and friends. Suicide is always a terrible tragedy – and not just for the victim, but also for those left behind who have to pick up the pieces. But, was Casolaro’s death really just the suicide that it appeared to be? The investigation continued to grow – and to the point where it wasn’t just the local police looking into the death, but also conspiracy theorists. The latter group had a very good reason for looking into Casolaro’s out of the blue death. For around a year and a half leading up to the point of his reported suicide, Casolaro had been looking into a powerful group of people who sound very much like candidates for a New World Order. Casolaro termed this group, “The Octopus.” Appropriately, but unfortunately and tragically, the Octopus soon got its tentacles into Casolaro and dragged him down to an untimely death.

The more and more he dug, the more and more Casolaro found that the Octopus had played major roles in major, historic, world-altering events. The long list included the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 – which came very close to seeing civilization come to and in a fiery, nuclear inferno. Watergate, which led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, was an Octopus operation, Casolaro was told by shadowy sources – or, at least, they played significant roles in helping to leak data that would be damaging to the disgraced president. The December 1988 destruction of a Boeing 747 Jumbo jet over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland was also said to have been the dirty work of the Octopus.  If that was not enough, the Octopus also had a significant input into what was afoot at the world’s most well-known, secret base: Area 51: what else?How about Roswell?

So, Casolaro learned, a top secret program was afoot at Area 51 to create lethal viruses – ones which were so powerful they had the ability, if released en masse – to wipe out massive percentages of the human race. Rumors reached Casolaro to the effect that this particular program was part of an ongoing plan to, one day, depopulate the planet and have the surviving population placed under unrelenting control of a powerful elite. On the Area 51 angle, things got even more controversial. Casolaro was told that a secret group, known as Majestic 12, oversaw at Area 51 the wreckage and alien bodies said to have been found in New Mexico in the summer of 1947 – the legendary Roswell affair, of course. For the record, the Majestic 12 issue has been an integral one to the field of Ufology for decades. For some UFO investigators, Majestic 12 is the real deal. For others, though, it’s nothing but government disinformation designed to confuse the Roswell incident even further. The above is just a start of things: In further articles I’ll share with you information on other journalists who died in suspicious situations and who were looking into the UFO phenomenon. The mystery goes a long, long way. Anyone looking to follow the whole thing? You might be surprised about what you find. And, you might find yourself in danger, too.But, the results might be titanic.