thumb|Depiction of the Cash-Landrum UFO by Kathy Schuessler on the cover of her husband John's 1998 book.

The Cash–Landrum Incident was an unidentified flying object sighting in the United States in 1980, which witnesses claimed was responsible for causing health and property damage. Uncharacteristically for such UFO reports, this resulted in civil court proceedings, though the case ended in a dismissal.

A number of skeptical investigators, including Philip J. Klass, Peter Brookesmith, Steuart Campbell, Curt Collins, and Brian Dunning, questioned the details and overall authenticity of the incident.

Incident report

Description of encounter

On the evening of December 29, 1980, Betty Cash (aged 51), Vickie Landrum (57), and Vickie's grandson Colby Landrum (7)

Cash said she was anxious, and considered turning the car around, but abandoned this idea, because the road was too narrow and she presumed the car would get stuck on the dirt shoulders, which were soft from that evening's rains.

Cash and Landrum said that they got out of the car to examine the object, but that Colby was terrified, and so Landrum said she quickly returned to the car to comfort him. Cash remained outside, "mesmerized by the bizarre sight", as Jerome Clark wrote. with its top and bottom cut off so that they were flat rather than pointed. Small blue lights ringed the center, and periodically over the next few minutes flames shot out of the bottom, flaring outward to create the effect of a large cone. Every time the fire dissipated, the UFO floated a few feet downward toward the road. But when the flames blasted out again, the object rose about the same distance." it appears that they were southbound on Texas state highway FM 1485/2100 when they claimed to have seen the object. The initial location of the reported object, based on the same descriptions, was just south of Inland Road, approximately at . But as published in Skeptical Inquirer, Robert Sheaffer has concluded that despite media reports to the contrary, "neither Cash, nor Landrum, nor Schuessler had any idea [of precisely] where this incident actually took place!"

Over the next few days, Cash said her symptoms worsened, with many large, painful blisters forming on her skin. When taken to a hospital emergency room on January 3, 1981, Clark writes, Cash "could not walk, and had lost large patches of skin and clumps of hair. She was released after 12 days, though her condition was not much better, and she later returned to the hospital for another 15 days." In a 1985 HBO documentary, UFOs: What's Going On, Cash's hair loss was shown in pictures and she claimed doctors switched from treating her for burns to treating her for radiation sickness after realizing she had been exposed to radiation. Later, she was treated for cancer.

The Landrums' health was somewhat better, though reportedly both suffered from lingering weakness, skin sores and hair loss.

In April 1981, Vickie was found to be developing a cataract in one eye, and Betty was first treated for breast cancer in 1983. Neither condition was known to have been present prior to their UFO encounter.

However, Brad Sparks contends that, although the symptoms were somewhat similar to those caused by ionizing radiation, the rapidity of onset was only consistent with a massive dose that would have meant certain death in a few days. Since all of the victims lived for years after the incident, Sparks suggests the cause of the symptoms was some kind of chemical contamination, presumably by an aerosol.

In Gary P. Posner's contributed Cash-Landrum chapter for the 60-authored compendium titled The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony, he agrees with Sparks about ionizing radiation, but concludes that there are "myriad reasons for skepticism of virtually every aspect" of this case. For example, regarding the above chronology in Clark (1998), Posner notes that Betty's actual medical records, as detailed in Schuessler (1998) document that she was initially hospitalized from January 2–19, her attending physician noted "little, if any, hair loss" upon admission (though it did develop weeks later), and her dermatology consultant diagnosed only cellulitis/swelling of the scalp and face with no mention of any skin loss.

Other claims

During their Bergstrom Air Force Base interview eight months post-incident (see "Legal action" below), when asked to sketch a picture of what they saw "if it had a discernible shape," Betty drew and signed (see "External links" below) what she described as "a diamond" (Vickie concurred, added flames shooting down from the pointed bottom, and also signed the sketch). However, in their "first documented reports of the incident" (recorded, and then transcribed by John Schuessler's wife Kathy) a mere 34 days following their alleged close encounter, Betty Cash stated that she "could not get up close enough [and] the lights were too bright" for her to discern the shape, and Vickie said that she also "couldn't tell," adding that only her seven-year-old grandson Colby "swore it looked like a big diamond."

One day in April 1981, a CH-47 helicopter flew into Dayton. As Colby watched, he became very upset. Landrum decided to take him to the spot where the helicopter had landed with the hope that it would seem less frightening on the ground. When they reached the landing zone, they found a lot of people there already and had to wait some time before they were allowed to go inside the helicopter and talk to the pilot. Landrum and another visitor both claimed that the pilot said he had been in the area before for the purpose of checking on a UFO in trouble near Huffman. When Landrum told the pilot how glad she was to see him, because she had been one of the people burned by the UFO, he refused to talk to them further and hustled them out of the aircraft. However, this confrontation was born of confusion, as the pilot's incident, though also involving a reported unidentified craft, had apparently taken place in July 1977, more than three years prior to Landrum's.

In May 1982, UFO investigators interviewed a Dayton police officer, Patrolman Lamar Walker, and his wife Marie, who claimed to have seen approximately 12 Chinook-type helicopters the same night and near the same area in which the Cash-Landrum event had allegedly occurred. They did not report seeing a UFO or unexplained lights, but said that one or more of the helicopters "had some type of a [bright] light shining down."

Aftermath

Eventually, Cash and Landrum contacted their U.S. Senators, Lloyd Bentsen and John Tower, who suggested that the witnesses file a complaint with the Judge Advocate Claims office at Bergstrom Air Force Base. In August 1981, Cash, Landrum, and Colby were interviewed at length by personnel at Bergstrom Air Force Base, and were told that they should hire a lawyer, and seek financial compensation for their injuries.

With attorney Peter Gersten taking on the case pro bono, the case wound its way through the U.S. courts for several years. Cash and Landrum sued the U.S. federal government for $20 million. Testimony of officials from NASA, the Air Force, and the Army and Navy was given.

Persuaded by their testimony (and other evidence) that no agency of the U.S. government possessed any such UFO, and that no military personnel had operated any of the reported helicopters, a U.S. District Court judge dismissed their case on August 21, 1986.

Media coverage

The incident received coverage in both the tabloid press and mainstream media:

  • In 1981, Landrum appeared on That's Incredible!, a popular ABC television program. She was hypnotized in front of a studio audience; under hypnosis she recounted the UFO incident (see "External links" below).
  • Landrum and Cash both appeared on the 1989 U.S. television special UFO Cover Up? Live!, hosted by Mike Farrell, where they related their account of the purported UFO encounter and their subsequent medical problems and legal battles.
  • The Cash–Landrum event was also depicted on the television programs Unsolved Mysteries and Sightings.
  • In 2009, Colby appeared on UFO Hunters: Alien Fallout.

Deaths of Cash and Landrum

Betty Joyce Cash (née Collins) died aged 69 on December 29, 1998, 18 years to the day after her claimed close encounter.

Vickie Marzelia Landrum (née Holifield) died aged 83 on September 12, 2007.

Investigations

Landrum telephoned a number of U.S. government agencies and officials about the encounter. When she telephoned NASA, she was steered toward NASA aerospace engineer John Schuessler, long interested in UFOs. With some associates from civilian UFO research group Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), Schuessler began research on the case, and later wrote articles and a book on the subject. Astronomer Allan Hendry of Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) also briefly investigated the Cash–Landrum case.

Due to the Chinook helicopters' presence, the witnesses presumed that at least one branch of the United States Armed Forces had witnessed the object, maybe even escorting or pursuing it. However, investigators could find no evidence linking the helicopters with any branch of the military.

In 1982, Lt. Col. George Sarran, of the Office of the Inspector General of the United States Army, began the only thorough formal governmental investigation into the supposed UFO encounter. He could not find any evidence that the helicopters the witnesses claimed to have seen belonged to the U.S. Armed Forces. Sarran stated that "Ms. Landrum and Ms. Cash were credible ... the policeman and his wife [who claimed to have seen 12 helicopters near the UFO encounter site] were also credible witnesses. There was no perception that anyone was trying to exaggerate the truth." (quoted in Clark, p. 177)

In 1994, UFO skeptic Steuart Campbell suggested that the witnesses may have observed a mirage of the star Canopus, which lay exactly in line with the road.

In 1998, journalist and UFO skeptic Philip J. Klass, found a few reasons to doubt the story by Cash and Landrum:

UFO researcher Curt Collins details the unsuccessful efforts of the Texas Department of Health's Bureau of Radiation Control to detect any residual radiation in the vicinity of the reported incident. He quotes from a 1981 Houston Chronicle article in which Russ Meyer, manager of the state's public health department in Houston, says, "If there had been radioactive contamination in large amounts, some would still be left there." The Chronicle article goes on: "However, he said certain types of radiation – such as ultraviolet light, infrared light and low-energy X-rays – might not leave any residual traces." Other UFO researchers point out that high-energy ionizing radiation of the kind that can cause damage to human beings, such as gamma radiation, does not induce radioactivity in objects and would not have left behind any residual radioactivity in the area.

Skeptical British ufologist Peter Brookesmith writes: "Sceptics <!-- British spelling by British writer; don't change to "Skeptics" -->have always asked a blunt and fundamental question: What was the trio's state of health before their alleged encounter?".

In December 2018, Brian Dunning investigated the case and reported his findings on the Skeptoid podcast. He found that Cash's doctor's notes attribute her hair loss to the autoimmune disease alopecia areata, that her other symptoms could be caused by illness that started before the incident, and that Landrum's only documented illness is developing cataract in one eye.

According to Texas Monthly, "To this day, there is no conclusive explanation of the night’s events."