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The Cash-Landrum incident (Texas, 1980)

SpeculationDecember 29, 1980 (lawsuit dismissed 1986)Less than credible: not fully documentedAlso called Cash-Landrum UFO, Betty Cash Vickie Landrum, Huffman Texas UFO, UFO lawsuit 1980, Cash…

The short answer

Two women and a boy said a fiery object escorted by helicopters hovered over their car. They fell ill, an Army inspector investigated, and they sued the US government for $20 million.

Source: John F. Schuessler, The Cash-Landrum UFO Incident (1998)

What's strange about this

Three people fell sick and sued the US over a UFO

  • Two women and a boy in Texas fell sick the same night in 1980 after they said a fiery object passed over their car, and the US Army looked into their claim of more than twenty helicopters. Why that is odd: It is one of the few UFO stories that reached a federal court. A judge dismissed it in 1986 after the military said it had no such craft.
  • They said the car's body grew too hot to touch.

The record

On the night of December 29, 1980, Betty Cash, 51, Vickie Landrum, 57, and Vickie's 7-year-old grandson Colby were driving home to Dayton, Texas, through pine woods near Huffman. They said a huge, diamond-shaped light hovered over the road ahead, shooting flame downward and giving off heat strong enough to make the car's body too hot to touch. They got out to look, then drove on. They said they saw many helicopters, some with twin rotors like the Army's Chinooks, following the object.

All three said they fell sick within hours: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and burning eyes. Betty Cash, who stood outside the car longest, had blisters and lost hair, and she was in the hospital from January 2 to 19, 1981. Vickie Landrum later developed eye problems. Their doctors' records were later collected by researchers.

Their story drew the attention of Texas senators, and in 1982 Lieutenant Colonel George Sarran of the Army Inspector General's office looked into it. He found no evidence that any US military helicopters or craft were involved, though he described the witnesses as believable. With a lawyer working without pay, the women sued the US government for $20 million. A federal judge dismissed the case on August 21, 1986, after military and NASA officials testified that no government agency owned an object like the one described.

Betty Cash died on December 29, 1998, eighteen years to the day after the sighting. Vickie Landrum died in 2007. Neither changed her story.

The open question

Still strange: Betty Cash died exactly eighteen years after the sighting.

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Where this comes from

EvidenceSpeculation

Comes from John F. Schuessler, The Cash-Landrum UFO Incident (1998). A book by a UFO researcher: A book by a researcher who studied the case and interviewed witnesses. It is useful for details collected first-hand, but it was not checked by outside experts, and authors can lean toward one explanation.

What this means

The illnesses, an Army inquiry and a dismissed lawsuit are on record. No record of the object or the helicopters has been found.

For The Cash-Landrum incident, the idea goes beyond what the evidence shows. We cover it because people ask about it. The main problem: There are no medical records from before the sighting to compare with, so some illnesses may have started earlier. Researcher Brad Sparks argued the quick onset fits a chemical exposure better than…

An idea or reading that goes beyond what the evidence shows. We include it because people ask about it, and we mark it so it never gets mixed in with the record.

See all five labels

Sources

  1. A book by a UFO researcherA book by a researcher who studied the case and interviewed witnesses. It is useful for details collected first-hand, but it was not checked by outside experts, and authors can lean toward one explanation.John F. Schuessler, The Cash-Landrum UFO Incident (1998)Reference
  2. WikipediaA free online encyclopedia written and edited by volunteers. It is a good starting point and usually lists its own sources, but anyone can change it, so we treat it as a guide to better sources, not the final word.Cash–Landrum incident, WikipediaReference

Quotations come from public-domain translations. A book in our Library links to its Library page; other links open the free online copy or the reference page.

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