kathleenAs I was researching a follow-up to my last story concerning Kathleen Marden, the niece of famous alien abductee Betty Hill, I stumbled across an obscure comment tucked away in the far recesses of the Internet that blows a major hole in the entire Betty and Barney Hill abduction case.

In a 2007 article titled First Lady of the Grays, writer Tom Lombardo recounts his 1974 interview with the alien abduction superstar Betty Hill. For the first time in over 30 years, Tom Lombardo reveals a comment Betty Hill made to him after the interview, once the tape recorder was switched off, that rocks the very foundation of the Ufology and abductee community.


Betty Hill’s Passing Opens A Can of Worms

What started as a simple background article about Betty Hill’s niece, Kathleen Marden, and her latest revelations about her aunt’s abduction many decades ago, might very well turn into yet another RealityUncovered fraud expose if this story leads in that direction. Based on Tom Lombardo’s claim, it appears that the larger fraud-hunting guns of RU may be required. The strange thing about this revelation is that anyone hunting for information about Betty Hill might never have found it. For some reason the PDF article is stored away in the recesses of the web server of a Christian Bookstore named the Swedenborg Foundation. However, searching for the name “Kathleen Marden” eventually turned up this obscure PDF article, and what a discovery it turned into.

Betty: “I’m going to make my million off this story.”

Tom Lombardo is a well respected poet with a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a master’s degree in journalism (among other degrees). In the 1970’s, Tom was a “budding journalist” in Cincinnati. At the time, he was also good friends with Kathleen Marden, Betty Hill’s niece. In 1974, Kathleen suggested to Tom that he should interview her “Aunty Eunice” about her UFO abduction experience. In fact, most of the documentation reveals that Kathleen herself played a very significant part in not only collaborating with Betty Hill in her abduction research in subsequent years, but she also had a large hand in the promotion of the Betty and Barney Hill abduction story - setting up this interview with a journalist is only one example.

In the apartment, Tom questioned Betty on the record about her experiences in 1961 and all of the details surrounding the Lancaster UFO sighting and abduction experience she had with her husband Barney. The details of that abduction experience has been distributed throughout Ufology folklore for many years, so I won’t recount that part of the discussion here. Suffice to say, Tom was impressed by her story, although his description of it in the article has a very unbiased, almost dry tone. As I was reading this 2007 PDF article, I was struck by a few parallels with some of the elements that were used throughout the Ufology MJ-12 folklore distributed by hoaxers throughout the 1980s, such as the “book” that one of the aliens almost offered Betty as a gift, but took back before they parted company.

alien abductions

The most significant part of the interview is revealed at the very end of this article, where Tom describes what happened after he turned off the voice recorder. He writes:

After I turned off the tape recorder in that 1974 interview, Betty Hill lit another cigarette, drew deeply, and exhaled. Then in her gravelly voice, she asked: “Is that thing off now?” I assured her it was. And she said something that ruined it all for me: “I’m going to make my million off this story.” She mentioned that James Earl Jones had taken an interest in her story, and that he wanted to play the role of Barney, who was African-American.

She clearly intended her comment to be off the record, but now that she is dead, the bond of reporter confidentiality no longer exists.

This movie eventually took shape in 1975 in the released for TV film A UFO Incident, starring Estelle Parsons and James Earl Jones. Additionally, author John Fuller wrote an account of the abduction experience in An Interrupted Journey.

What is the most fascinating is that before this 1975 media blitz, the field of Ufology and the cultural concept of “aliens” looked nothing like it did after the distribution and promotion of the Betty and Barny Hill story. As Tom accurately points out in the conclusion of his article.

Before Betty Hill, we had Robby the Robot in the movie Forbidden Planet, Klaatu and Gort in the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, and other outlandish 1950s images of aliens, but once Betty Hill described The Grays, they took root. They seem to live on and on. E.T. herself was modeled on The Grays, and you can find little alien dolls that replicate Betty Hill’s Grays in children’s toy stores today. They are “cutified” for kids, and their very appearance lends them an aura of kindness that diminishes any sort of threat.

In fact, the fraudulent UFO activities throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as outlined over at RealityUncovered, really grew feet and took shape during the decades after Betty and Barney Hill created “the Greys” while under hypnosis in the 1970s.

Was it all a dream or did something real happen to Betty and Barney, but they grossly misinterpreted the experience? Betty’s reputation and level of respect throughout the UFO/abduction community was unsurpassed by any other abductee after her because people expected her motivation was nothing more than to tell the truth about the experience. However, now that you know she expected “millions” from her story, how does that impact her credibility? Her shocking statement would imply that the money was what was on the forefront of her thoughts at least during 1975. For me - that changes everything.

What’s your opinion of this new Betty Hill revelation? Is it significant or insignificant and why? Share your opinion in the comments section below.

Posted by Ryan in October 19th, 2009  
Posted in: Alien Abductions, Featured, The MJ-12 Myth     Tags: , , ,

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