(Ref: The Berwyn Mountain UFO Crash - A British Roswell?)
(Note: Mr. Roberts' text appears in italic font)
'The Berwyn Incident lay largely dormant throughout most of the 1970s and 80s, being little more than a footnote in the literature. But intriguing pieces of information did surface, later becoming part of the lore surrounding the case. Jenny Randles was a frequent visitor to the region in the late 1970s. staying in the Llandrillo area for weeks at a time. She recalls the locals speaking to her about military activity on the mountains in the wake of some form of crash-like event. Jenny was very interested in the case and initially put it down to a possible 'earthlight'.'
Margaret Fry fell out with Jenny Randles over this case. Mrs. Fry had a life-long interest in UFOs since herself, along with many others, witnessed the landing of a craft in broad daylight in her then town of residence Bexley Heath. Margaret insisted that the Berwyn case was one of her incentives to relocate to North Wales and that it was she who drew Jenny Randles' attention to the event. It was after that - and as a leading light in BUFORA - the event was muscled in on as her own.
The claim by Andy Roberts that Jenny Randles was a frequent visitor to the 'region' (very vague) and staying in the Llandrillo 'area' (very vague) for weeks at a time has never been upheld. I've enquired about this myself and have discovered nothing but a wall of silence. Andy Roberts has a track record in silence when confronted with perhaps unpalatable questions.
When I got involved in this subject and started enquiring I was warned by several people not to trust Andy Roberts. That was of course their opinion and only experience could demonstrate any accuracy in that. Mr. Roberts did not disappoint. In the early days circa 2003 I joined an online forum called 'Ufology In UK' and this article by Mr. Roberts was published on the website uk-ufo.org. The forum was, if I recall correctly, operated by Joe McGonagle. I joined lots of groups and such like in the quest to glean more about this case.
In one chat with Margaret Fry she told me that Jenny Randles had claimed the case as her own after Margaret told of the event and Randles had tried to write her out of the story, rarely crediting her with anything. Margaret was no fan of BUFORA anyway and suggested several or more of its heirachy were shills. In addition, Margaret was at that point living in Abergele on the north Wales coast when she told me of this - and nearby resided also, Jenny Randles.
When Margaret first moved to Wales from Kent, she resided at Llangernyw about 10 miles or so inland from Abergele. They occasionally saw each other in passing but rarely spoke, such was the animosity which had sadly engulfed them. I was advised that Jenny Randles had been taking more of a back seat in Ufology but comments made on the 'Ufology In Uk' forum made me think that wasn't the case. I thus employed a trick tactic. I made a deliberate 'error' in a post and mixed up Tony Dodd with Nick Redfern. This had the desired effect and Mr. Redfern came out upset that I'd used his name instead of Tony Dodd. In turn, others appeared including Jenny Randles. It was a sort of mini pile-on.
I've done this on other occasions. One interesting example at a later date and elsewhere was when I deliberately suggested that Terry Hooper lived in south Wales rather than Bristol. He seized upon this in one of his regular rages and was too ignorant to grasp it was a set up. Mrs. Fry had told me he was a volatile character and this was reiterated by Dennis Plunkett who, in a lengthy telephone conversation, explained why he was under suspicion as a member of the local Bristol UFO group for harvesting information which didn't belong to him. In due course he was asked to leave the group. He certainly lived up to the volatility claims against him.
When pushed by me, Andy Roberts simply ignored the question. What was peculiar about Mr. Roberts was his bold claims about the importance of accurate detail. There's nothing wrong with that of course except as I bothered to visit the Berwyn range - and actually started to tramp the hills, not just stand on a roadside or driveable track, pontificating - it became increasingly obvious that some of the claims made by Andy simply could not be true let alone inaccurate.
His lack of knowledge about the countryside, wildlife and indeed game conservation exposed his ignorance. So when, for example, I challenged his claims, he'd simply ignore the questions. I even at one point offered to go up onto the Berwyns with him to physically show how his claims were impossible. Silence.
In all the years Andy Roberts has spent rubbishing any notion of a vehicle of perhaps extraterrestrial origin landing on the Berwyns (crashing if you prefer), not once has he put himself in a position to be actively challenged in the field. Clearly something was there if all those involved as witnesses were telling the truth, yet Andy Roberts has 'investigated' enough to tell everyone what it wasn't, but equally has failed to tell everyone what it was.
Of course when someone suggests it was perhaps a failed missile test and he then claims it may have come from a nearby test facility which was in fact 70+ miles away any reader could be forgiven if a thread of cynicism appeared. As it happens, Mr. Roberts' claims are littered with inaccuracies which on location can easily be proven wrong.
'In Paul Devereux' book Places of Power, he briefly relates the Berwyn Incident, attributing the cause of the odd lights seen on and above the mountain to geophysical stresses. Known as 'Earthlights' to ufologists these are literally lights formed by Earth. Devereux notes that a colleague, Keith Critchlow, was in the area several days after the incident and 'fell in with scientists who were investigating the mountain'. They had a geiger counter with them which allegedly gave extraordinary readings in the vicinity of a Bronze Age archaeological site known as Moel ty Uchaf, on the slopes of Cader Berwyn.'
On the subject of inaccurate information. Mr. Roberts has gone to extraordinary lengths to jumble up Berwyn range locations. By doing this he has thus far gotten away with vague claims to uphold what is a tome of inaccuracies. In this paragraph above he clearly states that the Moel Ty Uchaf stone circle is on the slopes of Cader Berwyn. This is brazenly false. It is on the lower slopes of Cader Bronwen.
Cader Berwyn, where the UFO was, is the next peak along the range and which puts the UFO at least three miles from Llandrillo village and over a mile from the B4391 where Pat Evans and daughters witnessed the Object. Despite this, Mr. Roberts has continually portrayed the area of interest as being so small, anyone and everyone could see what was going on that night and in the following days. He has deliberately interchanged Cader Bronwen, Cader Berwyn, Berwyn and Berwyn range to ambiguously place people and locations.
Jenny Randles' interest in UFO connections to stone circles is well known. It is however astonishing that the Moel Ty Uchaf stone circle was concentrated on when less than a mile away across the River Dee, the Tyfos stone circle was completely ignored. It seems because the search area by the Police and RAF search & rescue team was above Llandrillo and the suspicious lights were in the same location the night before, the Moel Ty Uchaf stone circle must have had a connection to the purported UFO.
Incredibly to uphold this belief, Jenny Randles appeared to ignore the fact that the Object witnessed by Mrs. Evans and daughters was well over four miles from that stone circle. She went as far as to say Mrs. Evans was looking at an Object which, despite her being some five miles from the stone circle, what she was looking at was above Llandrillo. Anyone with binoculars stood on the B4391 at Pat Evans' position can see the stone circle is below undulating landscape and thus invisible being below any line of sight.
It seems unlikely that trained scientists would carry out what appeared to be a very amatuerish investigation with a geiger counter. The original suggestion was Jenny Randles herself did this geiger counter work and got extraordinary readings (all unpublished it seems?) from within the circle. It's schoolboy stuff to know one needs to test and re-test and if soil samples were taken, a control is needed. What of the soil outside the circle?
'The 1990s brought growing interest in the UFO subject and the Berwyn Incident was recalled. Jenny Randles lectured on the case at the 1994 Fortean Times UnConvention and mentioned the anomalous radiation count at the Moel ty Uchaf circle. Following her lecture she was approached by a science correspondent from the Sunday Express. He mentioned rumours of a leukaemia cluster among children in the Bala area which had arisen in the years following the Berwyn Incident. At the time he connected it with possible leaks from the Trawsfynedd nuclear power station but could not prove this. In the light of later claims of UFO crashes or secret military hardware it could be implied that whatever had crashed had possibly been radioactive in nature and of sufficient strength to affect the human organism.'
This is interesting as I personally know several people born and bred in Bala and the surrounding area and not one old enough to know recalls any rumour or otherwise of a cancer cluster in and around Bala. In fact once again, locations seem to have been shrunk. Bala as the crow flies is some 14 miles from Trawsfynydd nuclear power station (now decommissioned) - some 18 road miles - and yet populations much nearer to the power station have no mention of cancer!
I strongly suspect the press was just looking for sensationalism and that interest has been exploited to further play down the concept of an alien vehicle. As the alleged radiation readings (of what elements?) have not been published, the whole claim of anomalous readings could be a fiction.
For scale, this is the area of North Wales which should be equally affected perhaps, yet because of the debunking of Berwyn, Mr. Roberts has been quite prepared to throw the suggestion of a cancer cluster in Bala to add fuel to the 'it's not a UFO' while ignoring the fact that a considerable number of towns and villages should be equally at risk but not mentioned.
Also, although I have some evidence the search above Llandrillo on the lower slopes of Cader Bronwen was in part a ruse to deflect eyes from Cader Berwyn where the UFO/Object was the night before, if there had been a crash of some sort of military hardware which was radioactive, then that would be evident perhaps even today. However, as Jenny Randles and Andy Roberts both knew where the Object actually was in relation to Pat Evans and both knew which mountain slope it was on, one can only describe their attempts to portray the Object as being anywhere near Llandrillo as malicious.
It was not until June 2012 that restrictions were lifted on several hill farms in Eryri (formerly Snowdonia) affected by Chernobyl radioactive fallout - radio caesium.
'By 1996 the Berwyn Incident had featured in UFO books, several UFO magazines and national newspapers. Television programmes on Channel 4 and the Discovery Channel covered the case, and by 1997 it was the focus of an entire chapter in Nick Redfern's best-selling book about the government cover-up of UFO information, A Covert Agenda.'
'The Berwyn incident was big news once again. From its humble beginnings it was now a 'British Roswell' just waiting to burst, firmly enshrined in ufo-lore as one of the United Kingdom's few UFO crash retrieval cases. This surge of publicity brought forward new witnesses whose testimony added new and dramatic dimensions to the case.'
'In an article for UFO Magazine, veteran ufologist Tony Dodd recounted how his anonymous informant was part of a military unit put on stand-by several days before the date of the Berwyn Incident. His unit was moved northwards through North Wales until he and four others were sent to the village of Llanderfel to collect 'two large, oblong boxes'. They were ordered to take these to Porton Down in Wiltshire. Once at Porton Down, a UK government research establishment, the boxes were opened and Dodd's informant told him: 'We were shocked to see two creatures which had been placed inside contamination suits. When the suits were fully opened it was obvious the creatures were clearly not of this world and when examined were found to be dead. What I saw in the boxes that day changed my whole concept of life.' Dodd's informant goes on to relate details of the creatures; 'The bodies were about five to six feet tall, humanoid in shape but so thin they looked almost skeletal with covered skin.'
'The military man did not actually see a crashed UFO himself but claimed that: 'Sometime later we joined up with the other elements of our unit, who informed us that they had also transported bodies of 'alien beings' to Porton Down, but said their cargo was still alive.'
The 1990s certainly did see a rise in interest in this case but it hadn't been dormant. Each January - and odd other times - the locals recalled the 1974 event and the kids still even as they got older joked about little green men. It may have been dormant in UFO interest circles but it escalated in the '90s. It was to be the decade of disinformation seeding.
When interest grew it was curious to me that it evolved around the concept of a UFO crash. Despite the fact that Mrs. Evans herself and others had spoken locally of learning the Object took off and left about 10 minutes after she and her daughters headed home, the whole story went forward as a crash and even a crash retrieval. I picked up on this when me and Mrs. Fry started to go through her diaries and other documents, weeding out anything which was anonymous or suspicious.
I don't believe for one second that UFO enthusiasts started the line of a UFO crash. Over-zealous enthusiasts certainly added fuel to the fire by taking on board the crash scenario which was a lie from Day 1. Their adoption of the crash claim was the intention. Every single claim about a crash and subsequent crash retrieval was disinformation seeded into the public domain and into the UFO community. The logical assumption was to way-lay researchers. As by Andy Roberts' own admission in his article here, interest grew in the case from the start of the 1990s.
It is of interest too that all the information (or rather disinformation) given to Tony Dodd about the Berwyn event came from anonymous sources or third party claims. Margaret Fry also received directly much of the same information. This is perhaps understandable as Tony Dodd was a prolific author of UFO-related articles and both he and Margaret Fry were two of the most high-profile UFO researchers in Britain at the time, influential and ripe for targeting. Tony Dodd was always reluctant to dismiss anything no matter how bizarre and as any reader of his work will know, some of his informants made fantastic claims, but claims with little proveable substance.
The claims of military on standby and being sent to Llandderfel (spelled incorrectly again by Mr. Roberts) to collect oblong boxes tallies with other disinformation about soldiers being seen carrying boxes off the hillside in the vicinity of the alleged crash site.
Why would soldiers carry off let's say oblong boxes perhaps containing dead aliens without the unknown witness to this not being able to see crash debris? Surely one would remove the bodies first, dead and alive? Essentially the crash story involves a crashed alien craft in full view of the B4391 road and which, in just a few hours, was cleared up leaving no trace. Bio-material would most likely not be taken by road. Speed would be of the essence.
What Andy Roberts describes as related to Tony Dodd is accurate but the story is full of holes. Why take potentially dangerous bio-material to Porton Down only for decontamination attire to be opened in an unsecured area in front of anyone? The whole story is ludicrous.
'This interest by the media, together with the claims made by researchers Jenny Randles, Nick Redfern, Tony Dodd and Margaret Fry led to me re-investigating the Berwyn Incident in 1998. There was a wealth of information available and I reasoned that somewhere, amid the accounts of the witnesses and the claims of the ufologists, lay the key to what really happened on that January night in 1974.'
There is indeed a wealth of information available but it isn't readily available to the public who might start asking awkward questions. Elsewhere Mr. Roberts has boasted being the first person to see records, undisturbed for twenty years, at the British Geological Survey. I can relate my own experience of trying to access what Andy Roberts claimed to have accessed. It took me two years and a plethora of lies and excuses from several BGS staff - but particularly Dr. Roger Musson - before I got some of the information. I only got that because I filed an official complaint about my treatment and the obstruction.
The excuse was my requests were unclear despite citing quotes from Mr. Roberts himself. I know they were lying because Dr. Musson was a personal friend of Mr. Roberts and a fellow Fortean. Musson knew exactly what I was after and even had the audacity to claim they did not hold the information I sought. Of course when I got some of the information I requested, Dr. Musson kept his mouth shut. No apologies from him.
The truth of the matter there is that Andy Roberts has relied on the public not getting access to information which might challenge his narrative. As I mention above, challenges are met with silence.
'Ufologists, particularly those who believe that there is a global conspiracy to conceal evidence of extraterrestrial visitation are keen to stress the importance of the 'paper trail'. By this they mean that any event, however secret, must have generated some official documentation, and that by finding this documentation clues as to what happened can be gleaned. It seemed reasonable that an event of the magnitude of the Berwyn Incident would have left at least some trace in official records, no matter how small or obscure. But those ufologists who had pursued the case up to 1997 had not followed this line of enquiry, claiming that either the documentation no longer existed or was part of the cover-up. They clearly hadn't looked hard enough, because I found a wealth of official documentation from a variety of sources. I used it, together with witness statements, to piece together the true events of January 23rd 1974.'
This last paragraph is wholly disingenuous. I had the support of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which was outrageously abused by certain persons within the BGS. Prior to that act the BGS was under no obligation to divulge anything and, in view of what happened to me with the law on my side, the BGS would never have divulged anything prior to 2000. It is a bit rich Mr. Roberts claiming he found a wealth of information especially from the British Geological Survey when the man in charge of it was a friend.
Effectively, Andy Roberts has created an 'official' version of events based on documents which he has cherry-picked to evolve that version and, in so doing, has been party to frustrating other interested parties from accessing that same infiormation which would then possibly undermine his claims. To state his version is the 'true' version when any competition has been supressed is quite outrageous.
I challenged Mr. Roberts to field visit the Berwyn range with me over 15 years ago so I could demonstrate how his claims are untenable. As I mentioned, that was met with silence, but the offer still stands. I think I'll be waiting a long time for any cooperation.