Aftermath: The Kelly-Hopkinsville case proves difficult to "wrap up"
Hynek’s
comments in “The Hynek UFO Report”
five years later add more detail to his analysis of the case. By this time,
Hynek had a chance to consider the 1957 Blue Book report, and found it lacking.
“Then appear in Blue Book the
following series of statements which later investigators showed to be untrue:
that Mrs. Langford (sic) belonged to the Holy Roller Church (she belonged to
the Trinity Pentecostal, which holds conventional-type services); that on the
night of the occurrence she had gone to a religious meeting; that her sons,
their wives, and some friends had become worked up into a frenzy, becoming very
‘emotionally unbalanced.’ All of these statements are completely
unsubstantiated. They were apparently obtained from Deputy Sheriff Patts (sic),
an avowed skeptic, and not from any of the witnesses.”[1]
In the Blue Book narrative, the
Suttons saw a “silver-painted monkey” that might have escaped from a nearby
circus. After all, the windows of the Sutton home were low enough for a small
monkey to reach from the ground.
“The story quite
naturally met with complete disbelief on the part of most persons, except those
who knew the family well,” Hynek’s account continued. “There is no question
that Mr. Ledwith, who made the only serious investigation following the event,
firmly believed the witnesses. He could find no motive whatever for a hoax—the
simple folk were not seeking publicity, and indeed suffered horribly from
curiosity-seekers, reporters, and sensation-mongers. It is also highly unlikely
that a hoax would involve that many persons and a midnight dash to a police
station miles away.
“Although I had no
official connection with the case, I did make an attempt to find out whether
there had been any traveling circuses in the area from which some monkeys could
have escaped. The monkey hypothesis fails, however, if the basic testimony of
the witnesses can be accepted. Under a barrage of gunfire from Kentuckians,
over a somewhat extended period, it is unthinkable that at least one cadaver
would not have been found. Furthermore, monkeys do not float down from trees;
they either jump or fall. And anyway, I was unable to find any trace of a
traveling circus!
“If, then, one assumes
that the event did take place as reported, and if the creatures had a physical
reality, why was not one of them killed under fire? Why did they flip over when
hit?”[2]
Lucky Sutton’s daughter
Geraldine Sutton Stith pointed out two other mysteries that have gone unsolved
since that first night: “For one, of course, the glowing substance on the
ground; for two, the big burned out place in the back field where nothing grew
for years and years and years. But they just wanted to sweep it under the rug
and get rid of it. They didn’t want to have anything to do with it.”
Stith, born eight years
after the incident, said she knew nothing of the scorched spot until Lucky
showed it to her in the late 1960s. Two writers had visited the family two
weeks prior and had coaxed Lucky to talk… As he reluctantly recounted his tale
for the first time in many years, young Geraldine heard entire the story of the
little men from her father’s lips for the first time. To help her understand
the story, Lucky took her out to the old farm and showed her the burned-out spot
where the family believed the UFO had set down; information that, if the story
is to be believed, none of the original investigators had come across, and that
the family had, apparently, decided not to share with any outsiders; not even Bud
Ledwith or Isabel Davis.
“The burned out spot was
still visible after 13 years,” she said.
Finally, one last
unanswered question: What happened to Alene Sutton when she stepped outside the
house that night? Did something approach her from the gully? Did something grab
at her hair from the roof? Could those unaccounted-for moments have produced
some proof of the events, long since vanished?
When Bud Ledwith
visited the Sutton farm the day after the incident, he focused on the womens’
descriptions of the creatures and doesn’t seem to have gone into the sequence
of events until he spoke with the men hours later. Bill Burleigh, reporter for
the Evansville, Indiana Press,
interviewed Alene the day after the incident and added a few tantalizing
details to the story: “Mrs. Sutton said
the figure ‘looked like it was made of aluminum foil. It had two big eyes,
pretty far apart,’ she said. She said the figure seemed to fly or jump right
over the house, land in the back yard and then vanish.”[3]
A year later, Davis had an
opportunity to ask the reticent Alene “one or two” questions, but again the
moment she encountered the creature in the back yard apparently went
unaddressed.
When asked in 2013 whether
her Aunt Alene had ever spoken of her experience outside the house that night,
Geraldine Sutton Stith said that, to her knowledge, she had not.
“No, I never got to talk to
her about it,” she said. “By the time I was ready to do something with the
story she had passed. Wish I had talked to everyone before they had passed, but
I was too afraid of the story to do that!”
