Ufology Research

Some additional June UFO reports:

From Quebec (again), a gold metallic disc was seen by a witness in Mascouche, Quebec, on June 3, 2009, at 3:00 pm. It was seen to appear and hover over his house for only about 5 seconds, then vanished. OVNI-Alerte is awaiting more information.

Then a detailed report from two witnesses in Sherbrooke, Quebec, regarding a sighting on June 5, 2009, at 9:20 pm. While driving, they saw two stationary lights in the sky that were joined by a third. The first two were green and red while teh other was flickering white. When they got closer, they could see the lights were on the corners of a gray triangular object moving at a low altitude. They tried to follow it, but it moved away at high speed and was lost to sight within a minute.

Out west, in the Whiteshell of Manitoba, on June 13, 2009, some campers were taking photos of a lake at about 10:00 pm. In one photo, a bright "rod" or "orb" was discovered when the photos were reviewed. I looked at the photo and saw quickly that it was an insect that had flown in view during the brief exposure.

On June 23, 2009, in Rimouski, Quebec, at about 11:15 pm, a witness reported seeing a large fireball, moving slowly through the sky. Francois Bourbeau was checking into this.

Finally, at about 6:00 pm on June 26, some tourists were at the base of the Skylon Tower at Niagara Falls. They took photographs from the ground up towards the top of the tower, and in some photos is a bright irregular object. No object was seen visually when the photos were taken. This case was posted to MUFON, with the photos.

I received a detailed report from a witness regarding something odd seen just north of Winnipeg, Canada, on May 31, 2009.

The witness noted:

We have a very large, south-west facing family room window in our home [just northeast of Winnipeg] We have a very good view of aircraft coming in for landing in Winnipeg, and the lights are quite relaxing to watch in the night sky. We have recently been enjoying the "bare window" look (no blinds or curtains).

On the night in question, I was relaxing watching TV, and a distant light caught my eye in the window - as it often does with the jets coming in for landing. As I watched it this time, it seemed to approach unusually quickly, and then slow down as it passed by in the sky to the south west. I also noticed this wasn't the usual configuration of lights - this was not the usual front-facing bright landing lights, and there were no wing-tip or tail-top marker lights.

As it passed by, it appeared to be an illuminated (though not brightly) upside-down cone shape (i.e. pointy part toward the bottom). The cone was not a "fat" cone like a badminton birdie - it was narrower, maybe about 30 degrees. It also appeared to be casting light upwards (as that illuminated the few low clouds in some spots as it passed by). The lights being cast upward appeared to be from a rotating source. There was no sound.

I watched it proceed off to the west - roughly following the path the perimeter highway takes. And of course, roughly heading in the right direction for an airport landing. With the direction it traveled and even the rotating appearance of the lights, I considered the possibility of mis-identifying an aircraft or even helicopter (although that would not explain the cone shape I saw). Maybe a helicopter could explain the rotating appearance of the lights, but what kind of helicopter casts light upwards?

Since that night, I have seen many, many aircraft coming in for a landing (just as I always have) and they always have the familiar forward facing bright light and flashing markers lights becoming visible as they pass closer by. None have had a cone-shaped appearance, and none have cast lights toward the sky.

That's what I saw.

The witness wanted to know if I had any ideas what this could have been. The witness was not sure of the exact time of the sighting, but thought it was mid-evening.

The witness' suggestion it was a helicopter is a possibility, though few will fly here at night. A better possibility is that this could have been a mosquito-fogging aircraft of some sort, as they have been up for more than a month. Its light configuration doesn't make much sense, though.

Clearly an unidentified flying object.

In honor of the recognized start of the “age of flying saucers” on June 24, 1947, today was designated World UFO Day. On that date, pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing several crescent-shaped metallic disks flying at high speed over Mount Rainer, and said they moved like “saucers skimming across water.” Hence, “flying saucers” was born!

With this in mind, here are my pick for the top five most interesting UFO cases. I was looking for an indescribable something that made a particular incident stand out, or had a subtle difference that piqued my curiosity just a little bit more than others.

Papua New Guinea, 1959
On June 26, 1959, Father William Booth Gill was an Anglican priest working as a missionary in Papua New Guinea. He and other missionaries and villagers saw a disc-shaped object with four “legs” on its underside, about 35 feet across and only about 300 to 400 feet away in the sky. On the upper surface of the saucer, four humanoid figures could be seen.

Belgium, 1989-1991
A remarkable series of UFO sightings occurred in Belgium in 1989-1991. It involved multiple witnesses, military and government investigations, countrywide skywatches and both photographs and videos of unusual lights moving n the night sky. The number of reports is staggering: about 3,500 sightings, about a quarter of which were investigated by ufologists.

Trindade Island, 1958
Off the coast of Trindade Island in the Atlantic, the Brazilian Navy ship Almirante Saldanha was anchored and Almiro Barauna, a civilian photographer took photographs of a metallic object before it flew behind a mountain on the island. It reappeared on the other side, looking like an oval with a ring. The object flew off across the ocean away from the ship and was lost to sight.

Arizona, 1975
On November 5, 1975, a logging crew in northern Arizona saw a blue, disc-shaped object hovering over a clearing not far away. Logger Travis Walton suddenly opened the passenger door and ran towards it. His co-workers in the truck saw a brilliant flash of blue light hit Walton, raising him off the ground slightly and then throwing him about 10 feet away onto the ground like a rag doll. Walton disappeared without a trace, but he was found several days later, with memories of being aboard a UFO.

Yukon, 1996
Around 7:00 pm on December 11, 1996, dozens of people up and down the Fox Lake valley in central Yukon when they saw a very large object, covering an estimated 60 to 90 degrees of sky, moving ponderously across their view. Ufologist Martin Jasek interviewed dozens of witnesses separately and at length, piecing together a complex and consistent series of observations of a remarkable object seen over the course of 200 miles over the lake.

For more information on these cases and many others, please read the book A World of UFOs, by Chris Rutkowski, in fine bookstores everywhere and available on Amazon.

Three in Quebec, one in BC.

June 12, 2009, 10:14 pm, Mascouche, Quebec
Flash of light in sky went to left. Second flash moved to right, then a third to the left again, like a zig-zag. Total length of observation, 5-7 secs. Gave witness “shivers.”

June 13, 2009, 8:30 pm, Ste-Anne-de-Sabrevois, Quebec
As many as 50 small points of light moving high in sky over Montreal, going left to right (west to east?). Seen by two witnesses with a spotting scope. Only a handful were visible without the spotting scope. Speed was described as “faster than a jet.”

June 14, 2009, 12:28 am, Shawinigan, Quebec
Starlike light moving W-E at high speed, in north. Ten minutes later, 4 lights moving in and around one another flew quickly W-E, similar trajectory.

June 14, 2009, midnight(?), Vancouver, BC
Very bright “shooting star” lit up sky like lightning. Looked like “pizza without a slice.” Went to SW at high speed, vanished.

These came through Francois Bourbeau and MUFON.

A report just translated by ufologist Scott Corales describes how the government of Uruguay has declassified all of its UFO files:

http://inexplicata.blogspot.com/2009/06/uruguay-air-force-declassifies-ufo.html

This no doubt will spur the “disclosure camp” to claim victory again as another country opens its UFO files to the public. But it may be more of an indication of a “it doesn’t matter” attitude on the part of the Uruguay government than a way to put pressure on the USA.

Nevertheless, there’s some interesting comparisons that can be made between the Uruguay stats and the Canadian UFO survey data.

First, over 30 years of the Uruguay official UFO report collection department being in operation, they have paper files (not computerized) on 2100 cases. Of these, 40 are apparently listed as unexplained. That’s just under two per cent.

Uruguay has about a tenth of the population of Canada, and extrapolating Canadian UFO data (8500 reports over 20 years) and adjusting for population, that small country has more UFO reports per capita than Canada.

As for the percentage of Unknowns, the cumulative value in Canada over 20 years was about 14 per cent, but the percentage of high quality unknowns (HQU’s) is somewhere around one per cent, very much in agreement with the Uruguay results.

Uruguay gets about 100 new reports per year, while last year in Canada, there were more than 1000 new reports. Right on track.

Monthly distribution of UFO reports in Uruguay differs from Canada. They report peaks in February, March, July and October. Since seasons are reversed there, the February-March peaks are equivalent to our summer highs. The July and October peaks in Uruguay are odd, but we have had years with Canadian peaks in March which could be the equivalent.

The Uruguay report also notes:

Military statistics show that the customary profile of people reporting sightings involve young men up to 45 years of age. They also indicate that cases occur in the early hours of the evening, and usually involve a single witness. 49% of statistics are made up of reports of luminous spheres; barely 2% include occupant sightings.

We don’t have stats on age distribution of Canadian cases, so the first comparison is lost. But our hourly distribution has a peak at 2200 or 2300 hrs. Is that “early evening?” Our stats also show a trend towards two versus one witness per case.

We can’t really compare the Uruguay shape data with ours, as “luminous spheres” could be starlike objects in some translations. More than 42 per cent of Canadian cases were starlike objects, but ten per cent were spherical objects.

Two per cent of Uruguay cases were “occupant” reports, whereas Canadian reports had only about four per cent that were Close Encounters of any kind.

Since classification standards certainly differ between Uruguay and Canada, we’re probably talking apples and oranges here. However, some stats are comparable, and that suggests that the UFO phenomenon does exhibit some characteristics that are consistent throughout the world.

The other difference: the official government/military position on UFOs. A Uruguay government official was quoted as noting:

“The phenomenon exists. It could be a phenomenon that occurs in the lower sectors of the atmosphere, the landing of aircraft from a foreign air force, up to the extraterrestrial hypothesis. It could a monitoring probe from outer space, much in the same way that we send probes to explore distant worlds. The UFO phenomenon exists in the country… the Air Force does not dismiss an extraterrestrial hypothesis based on our scientific analysis.”

Now what’’s the position of the Canadian government on UFOs? The American government?

For some reason, Quebec has had a big increase in reported UFOs this year, at the apparent expense of the rest of Canada. Recently a flurry there has caught my attention:

* May 21, 2009: A photo submitted to MUFON shows a black speck in a daytime blue sky.
* May 21, 2009, Montreal: 30 claimed photos of UFOs described to OVNI-Alerte, but not received by them yet
* May 21, 2009, Montreal: Photos of chemtrails supposedly show a UFO making them (no photos available yet)
* May 24, 2009, Kahnawake, 9:30 pm: White light going east stopped overhead. Descended, got closer, making no noise, then sped off east again and vanished within 5 seconds
* May 27, 2009, Magog, 2:30 am: Bright light in east, not moving during long period of observation. Francois Bourbeau explained this as Jupiter.
* May 28, 2009, Escoumins, 8:45 pm: A purple boomerang-shaped object was seen by two witnesses for five minutes.
* June 1, 2009, St-Marc-en-Richelieu, 3:55 am: Another stationary bright light observed, for one hour.
* June 4, 2009, Sainte-Julie, 9:45 pm: Bright white light far ahead of driver, going south at high speed (the light not the car). Vanished in 5 seconds, but witness insisted it was not a shooting star.
* June 4, 2009, Sorel-Tracy, 9:45 pm: At the exact same time, a brilliant green light appeared to some witnesses, vanishing quickly. These two cases sound like bolides (fireballs).
* June 5, 2009, Saint-Constant, evening: An object described as “red/black in center” with “fire all around” was seen in the north.

That’s ten sightings in about two weeks, enough to qualify as a flap. Only a few seem unusual, and only one (Escoumins) could benefit from an in-depth investigation. If the rate of Quebec reports keeps up, they would get about 250 reports this year - a definite record.

Although my last post was about a dearth of Canadian UFO reports, that doesn’t mean there weren’t any reports at all.

In my survey of recently posted reports and received info, I have come across some interesting things. The following report was from someone who simply noted he was in Saskatchewan. The date was May 16, 2009:

I seen [it] flying South to north. Made no sounds wasnt super high in the sky. Was about 15-20 times brighter then say jupiter. Went in straight line. From one horizon to the other in about 1minute. I check a program Satscape and nothing in my area should of passed with that brightness ever in the first place. And nothing that fast. ISS usually takes 4-6 minutes. Also I know planes make noise of some kind. Plus No blinking lights just constaint brightness. Oh this was about 10:02pm

Then, about the same date, another person noted:

over the past three or four nights, I have had several sightings of a golden ball that moves silently across the sky in a northeast direction, and which occasionally stops and then lifts slowly straight upwards, then lowers straight down again to resume its previous position, sometimes doing this several times in a row before continuing on northward. It looks to be quite low in the sky (i.e., not a satellite), is relatively large (not a star… plus moving across large portions of the sky in a smooth but relatively fast motion), does not descend or have a tail (not a meteor or meteorite nor any kind of space junk), and does not have flashing lights of any kind, nor the variation of colored lights seen on small aircraft, and it makes absolutely no sound what-so-ever, so not a helicopter nor conventional aircraft of any kind. I am not sure what it is, but it seems to be intelligently piloted, and I get the distinct impression at times that it is playing hide and seek with me, especially when it bobs in and out of the tree-line, which makes it virtually impossible to take a photograph. It has been suggested to me that I carry my Nikon digital camera with me at all times from now on, and I plan to do so in an attempt to capture it the next time I see it, but … and you’ll think me strange, I’m sure!… I feel like it’s here for me… to show itself to me!… and possibly even to convey a message of some sort, though to date I’ve received none.

It always amazes me that many witnesses believe they have been singled out by the aliens for some purpose. That’s apart from the fact that most people see objects that are only lights in the night sky and are actually planes or satellites, despite rationalizations otherwise.

Another person simply noted:

I’m in Saskatchewan and last night (May 17, 2009) I witnessed several objects at around 1 am. They were travelling from north-west to south-east. I was using my Bushnell Astralis 15×70 binoculars.

Without knowing exactly where he or she was located, I looked up possible satellite tracks for 1 am on May 17 (or 18) and found some that may have been overhead within 20 minutes of 1 am. Is that close enough? Satellites fly NW-SE, so that’s feasible. The other possibility is that these were high-altitude aircraft, I suppose.

Lights moving high in the sky are difficult UFOs to deal with. Not because they can’t easily be explained, but because they could be literally anything.

Here’s a case from May 19, 2009, from London, Ontario, sent to MUFON:

I was at home, looking up into the sky in the evening, and saw 4 white lights, quickly moving from south to north. I first noticed them when they were almost directly overhead, and lost sight of them when they reached the horizon, about 3 seconds later. The 4 lights appeared to be connected as one object; they were very close together, and in a row perpendicular to the direction of travel. There was no sound. They were moving much faster than satellites appear to be moving. They were unlike any airplanes I have seen (moving too quickly; no sound; traveling in an unusual direction for the area). I would like to know how to find out what it might have been.

This sounds a lot like the International Space Station. However, while it was visible from London that night at almost the exact time given (22:45), it would have been low in the north, going west to east, not south to north. And while it might look like 4 lights close together (with panels and the shuttle), this doesn’t sound like a good fit. Was it therefore a fleet of aliens scout ships, or simply high flying planes or a flock of Iridiums?

On May 20, 2009, I received a report of a UFO over Oyster River, BC. A witness had seen “lights traveling in multiple directions very high,” and that one had shone a light at the witness for “a split second.” This was at 3:00 am that morning. CFB Comox added a note that a Cormorant helicopter had been up a few hours earlier, but a check found that it landed at 2350 hrs May 19, nowhere near Oyster River. I spoke with the witness and found him quite articulate, but didn’t really have anything else to add to the report. “Just some lights,” he told me.

A mixed bag, to be sure.

As most readers of this blog will know, there were more reports of UFOs in 2008 than any other year on record. And I should know; Geoff Dittman and I just completed our 20-year longitudinal study of UFO reports in Canada. We catalogued more than 8,500 sighting reports between 1989 and 2008, and there were more than 1,000 cases in Canada in 2008.

But so far this year, in 2009, UFO reports are way down in Canada. In fact, as far as I can tell, we are on track to get only about half as many cases as in 2008. I’ve looked at all the sources of UFO reports we’ve been using, and all are down. I even remarked to a colleague at Canadian Defence that the number of cases they’ve been passing on to me is down from 2008.

I’ve checked Peter Davenport’s site (National UFO Reporting Center) and his numbers during the first quarter of 2009 are about even with that of 2008, taking into account reports from around the world. So, it’s just a Canadian effect, as far as I can tell. Why this is so is anyone’s guess.

It may be too early to really say if the number of reports will remain low this year. Some years, we get a surge late in the year, and sometimes many cases are reported long after the fact, so we still might end up with a respectable number of reports for 2009. There’s a reason we wait until well into the following year to issue our annual study; it often takes months for the past year’s reports to get collected or passed along to us.

And yet-it’s too quiet…

When I left off, I was writing about my visit to the CORUS TV set where I was a guest on iChannel with Steve Bassett and Paul Hellyer to talk about UFOs. Actually, about aliens being here on Earth and the cover-up of their presence. That clarification hadn’t been conveyed to me before I had already bought by ticket.

So, when host Arlene Bynon turned to me on air and asked me, “So what do the aliens want?”, I wasn’t sure what to say. I could have just walked off the set, I suppose, but then I would have just been edited out of the show. I think I simply blinked, then said, “Well, there are many science fiction stories that describe such scenarios.” Bynon quickly went to Hellyer for a comment. He waxed at leangth about how the aliens are trying to convey a message to mankind that we should not use nuclear weapons, stop polluting the Earth, and so forth. Since he isn’t familiar with UFO literature, he wasn’t aware that contactees have been stating the same thing since about 1950.

I don’t think Steve liked my saying later that I didn’t think there would be any disclosure any time soon, million faxes or no million faxes. Curiously, Hellyer echoed my belief, doubting that there will be disclosure but arguing that it is vital that it occur.

Steve also praised Grant Cameron on air, calling him the finest ufologist since sliced bread (or something like that) for his persistence in document retrieval. Steve praised my investigations and research, and I gave him kudos for his dedication to the cause.

Bynon did plug my book quite extensively throughout the show, making my publisher very happy.

The show will air something in the fall/winter of 2009/10.

Then it was off to visit The Dundurn Group, my publishing house. I found the right streetcar to get me downtown from CORUS and found them just off Front Street in downtown Toronto, on the fifth floor of a business block. The offices are well-appointed, and after I was met by Beth Bruder, I was taken into the board room where I met everyone else and talked about my upcoming book. The staff seemed very sharp with a variety of skill sets, and were eager to meet me, and I felt comfortable to be there. (This was the first time I had actually been in the Dundurn offices, having previously just discussed and negotiated through email and phone calls.)

Following my Dundurn visit I went for lunch. Their offices are not far from the St. Lawrence Market, so I zipped in there and discovered far too many choices. What to pick? I settled on a swordfish sandwich from Buster’s Seafood Cave, and was not disappointed.

From there, I was able to hail a cab that got me to Scarborough, where I dropped in on Errol Bruce-Knapp and his partner Bobbi. Errol is the Grand Master of Ufology, having run the UFO Updates listserv since (gasp!) 1996. he himself was previously very active in ufology, investigating cases and doing in-depth research, but he has also been the host of an excellent radio show on CFRB about UFOs, and now also the host of podcasts on the subject on virtuallystrange.net

It was great to see him and Bobbi again. However, Bobbi has been very ill and was confined to a hospital bed when I saw her during my visit.

I am sad to say that she lasted only a few more days, passing away yesterday. Errol feels very lost without her, and I thoughts are with him at this time. I encouraged him to take a break and not to worry about the UFO discussion list. The UFOs will wait.

Part 3 coming soon

I just flew back home from Toronto.

(Boy, are my arms tired!) Pah-dum-pum!

It was a whirlwind visit.

I had received an email two weeks ago from a producer with Corus, the independent Canadian TV network. She wanted to know if I would be interested in being on a serious news program to be on a panel to talk about UFOs. I said sure, and then she gave me a call. She wanted to know, “Are you planning to be in Toronto next week?” In a word, no. She sounded disappointed, but that’s showbiz.

But it didn’t end there. Talking with my wife about it, she suggested that we might be able to afford a trip to Toronto for me, and that while there I could meet with my publisher, visit friends, buy her a birthday present, etc. Naturally, I agreed. I went online, found a seat sale and booked the flight. I called the producer back and told her I could do it. Done.

Then a few days later, I learned what the show really was about. The host, Arlene Bynon, an award-winning radio host, has her own TV series on iChannel, a cable all-news channel. The series, called “@issue” has been running for a while and tackles some heavy subjects as a rule. But apparently Bynon spoke with Steve Bassett of the Paradigm Research Group several weeks ago on radio, and was intrigued with the whole government UFO cover-up thing. So, she picked the topic:

Aliens - Have they visited us? A group of notable scientists and researchers is presently petitioning Barack Obama’s government to reveal information that confirms that Earth has been visited on numerous occasions by extra terrestrials. Join us on @issue as we look at whether E.T. is a hoax, or, if not, just what the ramifications of such an announcement might be.

The guests would be myself, Steve Bassett, and the Hon. Paul Hellyer, former Canadian Minister of Defence. I had actually recommended Errol Bruce-Knapp, who lives in Toronto, as a guest, but they never called him at all. So, it had been set up to focus on Bassett’s disclosure ideas before even asking me.

I think many of you know that I’m not a fan of the whole government UFO disclosure thing. Not that I don’t think governments should come clean about their UFO files, but I doubt they ever will. Bassett has been asking people to write letters to Congress and to Obama directly, demanding the cover-up of UFOs be stopped immediately. His latest idea, the “million fax on Washington”, is designed to put more pressure on the American government.

Bassett cautioned the American government that if they didn’t “come clean” by June 1, then “another country” would beat them to it. And then how would that look? Well, since no other country has blown the whistle (Bassett mentioned France, Britain and Canada specifically), then it sure doesn’t seem to me like any one of them will.

Bassett argues that he has found many private individuals, including some ex-military, who claim that they have inside information that the US government is hiding the truth about UFOs and aliens. One of these is Paul Hellyer, who certainly was in a position to know about such things. He was even head of Defence when Stefan Michalak was burned by a flying saucer at Falcon lake in 1967, and the RCAF, USAF and other officials investigated.

However, Hellyer says that at the time, he simply was not interested in UFOs, and therefore has no insight into what the Canadian military was doing about UFOs at the time.

(Hunh?)

However, after retirement, Hellyer was at his cottage in Muskoka one year when he found a copy of Philip Corso’s UFO book The Day After Roswell as summer reading. He was riveted to the point he became impassioned.

Among other things, as a former military officer in the 1940s, Corso claimed that he had been privy to top secret material about UFOs, including the underground installations where aliens from the crashed Roswell saucer were kept alive (and dead). Corso also claimed that when the Americans pored over the crashed saucer, they were able to use the technology to develop things like lasers, fibre optics, Kevlar, transistors, etc.

The trouble is, Corso said a lot of things in his book that were not true or were outright wrong. He had the definition of a laser wrong, for example. Let alone the fact that lasers were already theoretically understood by physicists long before Roswell. Einstein’s work laid the foundation for lasers and there were physics papers about them in the 1920s. Light transmission within tubes was demonstrated in the 1920s too.

Corso made some wild claims about UFOs in his book, strange enough that most serious ufologists distance themselves from it. Like, the USA was at war with the aliens and managed to reach a peace pact.

Hellyer spoke to a former general in the USAF and asked him about Corso’s UFO claims. He was told “every word is true… and more.” Of course, Hellyer refuses to disclose the name of his informant, to protect him. So, I asked Hellyer, why should the USA disclose the “UFO secret?”

Part Two of the Trana Trip coming soon!

I just found this on George Filer’s site, in his Filer’s Files, #21-2009, released May 20, 2009.

The report was supplied by a popular UFO-related website:

OAK BLUFF, MANITOBA — The first time I saw it was about two months ago when I was driving home from Winnipeg to Domain. As I was turning off the Perimeter Highway I saw a big and red and fiery ball of fire coming to earth like a comet, but not a shooting star. Then I saw the UFO as it passed over the highway too low to be a plane. It had red and white lights on it but it was hard to make out the shape that looked like a blimp with the seating compartment on the bottom of the big oval balloon part.

Then on April 29, 2009, as I was driving home near the same place when I saw a bright light in the distance towards Oak Bluff about 10 PM. I drove towards it and could tell it wasn’t a plane, because of its low altitude and slow speed. It passed over my car and stopped and I got a better view of it. I could distinctly make out the form of a blimp shaped object with red and white blinking lights and one very bright light on the bottom. As I continued my drive and about 10 minutes later, I saw it again but further away. I should also note that my grandpa has pictures of these strange perfect cut cylinders in the earth that he found in his field like 25 years ago. I would like to have these things I saw explained to me. I am sure it was not a plane or helicopter because of its shape and no sounds. I’m only left with two options as to what it is; some sort of blimp made on planet earth or the possibility of an alien space craft.

What most people don’t realize is that Oak Bluff is a bedroom community of Winnipeg, Manitoba. In fact, it’s only a few miles away from where I live.

Now, if the webmaster had suggested the witness contact me or directed him to do so, the case might have been personally investigated and we could have additional information that could help solve the case (or rule other explanations out).

Too bad.