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Space Case

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For all the media attention the story would eventually bring, the initial accounts were decidedly subdued -- at least in the big-city newspaper. KTVI (Channel 2) first broke the story on a Jan. 7 newscast, but it wasn't until Jan. 9 that a rather sketchy story appeared in the Sunday "Metro" section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. That first article mentioned by name only Millstadt police officer Craig Stevens, who told P-D reporter Valerie Schremp that "it's been driving me nuts since I've seen it. I haven't been able to sleep for the last day and a half." The Lebanon Advertiser, on the other hand, gave the story front-page, over-the-fold prominence in its Jan. 12 edition: "Huge UFO Is Reported to Have Flown Over Lebanon," blared the headline. The story's final paragraph noted that "the Federal Aviation Administration has suggested that the object may have been an advertising blimp."

The second article in the Post appeared on Jan. 12, and this time it made the front page. A week later, the sightings had drawn national media attention, chiefly because of the credibility of the witnesses. It's not often that four police officers come forth to report seeing the same UFO. Art Bell, host of a nationally syndicated late-night radio talk show, lost no time in snagging Stevens and Barton for interviews the day after the incident. As word spread, the calls became so numerous that Millstadt Police Chief Ed Wilkerson put out a gag order on media interviews, snubbing such outlets as ABC News and Extra, a tabloid TV-news show. Interferes with policing, the chief said.

Moreover, the reports had prompted intense interest among professional UFO investigators, the real-life counterparts of The X-Files' Scully and Mulder. Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle, got some quality time with the witnesses -- four cops and three civilians -- as did Forest Crawford, assistant director of Illinois Mutual UFO Network. The most exhaustive effort was undertaken by John Velier, director of the Las Vegas-based National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS). Millstadt was the first department to go public with a report on the sighting, and Officer Stevens took the initiative and contacted NIDS, the result of a flier sent to police departments nationwide requesting reports on this very sort of thing. Working from a motel in Collinsville, Velier and a team of investigators spent several days interviewing witnesses and officials at Boeing and Scott Air Force Base. (Those interviews may be perused at www.accessnv.com/nids.) A retired FBI agent, Velier assured anyone who asked that he had no hidden agenda. "I'm not here to prove or disprove the existence of extraterrestrial life," he remarks. "I'm here to gather facts through a scientific approach."

Meanwhile, some of the witnesses were trying to make sense of what they had seen through any approach available. Officer Martin met with Officer Barton at the MotoMart in O'Fallon after their shifts were done that morning -- to compare notes and check reality. "We basically saw the same thing," says Martin. Two hours after the fact, the sightings were but tidbits in the ravenous vortex of the tabloid-news industry, but in their small-town-cop way, the officers suspected that a gale of publicity was even then en route to beat down their doors. "We were half-joking around," recalls Barton, "like, 'Why couldn't somebody else have seen it? A rookie -- let them take the heat.'"

Two months later, the heat is still on. Officer Barton and other witnesses who were known to the media (seven Metro East residents were interviewed by "official" -- or at least experienced -- UFO investigators on the promise of confidentiality, and five of them have talked to the media), were still being hounded for interviews. Noll, for one, seems to enjoy the notoriety. "I'm meeting more people," he notes blithely. "A lot of radio stations have been calling. Newspapers too -- from Chicago, Peoria, Springfield and as far away as Seattle. It don't bother me to talk about it. You know, I'm glad I got to see it -- a once-in-a-lifetime thing."

Even as late as the weekend of March 11, personnel from a TV station in California had come to the Midwest to interview as many of the witnesses as they could muster. "The phone's been ringing off the hook ever since," says Ed Barton. "And I've had people tell me I was lucky to see it and so on, and I think, 'Ah, if they only knew.'"

The publicity has made some of the witnesses celebrities in their own towns. Kathy Floyd, Noll's girlfriend, says they can't even go out for a cup of coffee anymore without townsfolk approaching, rather shyly at first, then asking questions, generally the same ones: What was it like? What does he think it was? Was he scared? "Every place you go, they want to talk about it," says Floyd. "We were in Hardee's for an hour-and-a-half the other night, just answering questions. Mel's not tired of it. His story's always the same, and that's one of the reasons people believe him."

The clerk at the Gas N' Grab on Millstadt's main street says the March 7 edition of the National Examiner, the one with the story about the Metro East UFO featuring Millstadt's own Officer Craig Stevens -- big picture of him in uniform and all -- was pretty much snapped up the day it came out. Everybody in this town of 2,700 knows about the UFO; it's hard to not know when you have TV vans with unfamiliar call letters on the sides running around town, not to mention reporters and photographers pestering the citizenry. Some, such as the stocky counterman at Hardy Feed & Grain, refuse to offer comment on the UFO affair -- too controversial -- whereas others, such as librarian Sue Hucke, warm to the topic. "This is a German community," she explains. "We take things with a grain of salt -- anybody who said anything about it did so with a smile on their face. I doubt that anybody here thinks there's anything to worry about."

And there will always be someone to try to make a buck on anything. Over at Mertz Ford, also on the main street, a few little-green-men blowups are still sitting in the windows of the dealership. They first appeared about a week after the sightings. "That was my wife's idea," says Don Mertz. "We got a lot of action out of these guys -- must've given away 20 or 30 of them. Buy a car, get an alien. The great thing is," he grins, "they only cost a couple bucks apiece."

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