Note: Odd Ball is produced and designed to be heard, not read. We highly recommend listening to the audio. The audio contains tone and emotion that are not included in the transcript. Transcripts are created using speech recognition software and human transcribers, but it may contain errors. Please verify with the audio before using any quotes in print.

[Promo:]
Odd Ball is made possible by supporters of WJCT Public Media with additional support from Bold Bean Coffee Roasters. While this podcast might be a mystery, Bold Bean's coffee isn't. Ethically sourced beans are roasted to highlight their origin characteristics and natural sweetness. So when you order that latte, you're supporting transparency and quality at every step of the coffee chain. Bold Bean. Sourcing, roasting, brewing, and, serving outstanding coffee.

From WJCT Public Media in Jacksonville, this is Episode 3 of Odd Ball. I'm Lindsey Kilbride.

[Montage of clips from previous episodes:]

[Caren Burmeister:]
"The trucks would break down on the highway and the driver would call her and say, you know, 'Something's wrong with it,' and so she would probe him with questions. She would just have these real strong instinct or gut feelings."

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
"I quickly realized that if I was going to ask the family anything about the Betz Sphere, I was not going to get anywhere with the family."

[Gerri Betz:]
"Definitely, it's not a ball valve."

[Speaker 3:]
"She took me around and she showed me some of the places where some of the strange events had occurred."

[Historian Tim Gilmore:]
"The house was built in the late 1920s. Nettleton Neff. He shot himself. And he never lived in the house."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
"We found we found the house!" Nyah: "This is definitely the type of area that inspires paranormal thinking."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
"So you talked to Gerri on Monday?"

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
"I did."

[Theme music fades out]

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Years before I started reporting this story and also just within the last few months, other podcasters, YouTubers and bloggers have published their own research and thoughts about Betz Sphere. But one in particular, the podcast Astonishing Legends, came out during the peak of my research, which led to sort of a mid-series crisis.

[Talking to intern Al Pete:]
"OK. I think it was Friday. It was put on my radar, that a different podcast, basically did the same story I'm working on. It's a major gut punch. And I know I mentioned it to you earlier in the week. But I was definitely considering just dropping it. But I don't know. Do you think that still should be something to consider? Or do you think that we're kind of making enough headway where this is going to be good on its own?"

[Al Pete:]
"I think we I think we should go ahead and go with it. Yeah, I totally feel like we should go with it. I just feel like the way that is going to be presented is going to be great. Yeah, not even think. I know."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
It's weird to listen back to this because I was so close to quitting this project. All I needed was a nudge in that direction. Now, I definitely don't feel that way. But I couldn't ignore this other podcast. So I instead called up the hosts, who are super cool and nice. And I talked to them about their findings, which I'll have a little later. But one interesting tidbit I gathered from their research is relevant to what I'm about to get into. An anonymous source, who said she's a Betz family member although not Gerri, told those podcast hosts a more exact location of where the ball was found. We really only knew it was found somewhere in the woods on the Betz's acres and acres of property. Assuming she's telling the truth, that's helpful information because it pertains to the most prolific theory said to totally debunk the mystery of the ball: that it rolled off the roof of a man's VW bus.

[Old commercial sound:]
"A Volkswagen is a nice station wagon to have around the house. It'll seat your whole family comfortably. Average 23 miles to a gallon a regular and hold on one supply of groceries." Commercial fades under narration

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
A guy named James Sterling Jones, who was an artist and hotel manager in Taos, New Mexico, had acquired a bunch of metal balls he was planning to use in a sculpture of a giant clock. One of those balls was sitting outside the hotel a couple weeks after the news broke of the Betz discovery. The Coca-Cola man saw it and freaked out because it looked so similar. James Durling-Jones told The Florida Times-Union he was actually driving through Jacksonville around Easter of 1971. That's almost exactly three years before the Betz ball was found. The bus was crammed full. So he stuck the spheres up on a luggage carrier on his roof. They lost three or four of them while driving through the South. One article is even paired with the cartoon of a man driving a Volkswagen bus, balls flying out of it. And his speech bubble reads "If I can spread a few more of these things around the state, I can make Wells' War of the Worlds look like a tea party."

So is this the best explanation? Brian Dunning, co-host the Skeptoid podcast (different than the podcast I just spoke about), thought so when I talked to him a couple years ago. His podcast looks into different theories and legends people believe...

[Brian Dunning:]
"…and where there's more interesting science behind what's actually going on. And that can be anything like a paranormal phenomenon, a, an alternative medicine belief, a conspiracy theory — the whole spectrum of weird things that people believe is just incredibly wealthy."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
In 2012, he released an episode on the Betz sphere.

[Brian Dunning:]
"When I heard about this initially, my thought was, 'Oh, well, that sounds like a, like a bladder tank from a spacecraft.' Because occasionally those do fall out of the sky. And people in strange places find this weird metal sphere. And they don't know what it is."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
He ruled that out because the type of thing he was thinking of would be larger and have attachments for valves.

[Brian Dunning:]
"So you know, I had a couple of possible explanations in my mind like that. But then you go and you read about what was reported all of these strange properties that the ball has. And, you know, I've done enough stories like this to know that reports are not always accurate that these stories tend to grow over time substantially. And that's exactly what happened in this case, as well."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
His main method of research:

[Brian Dunning:]
"Newspaper reports. Largely for doing what I do, when you're trying to go back so far into history, in some cases hundreds of years, contemporary newspaper reports are often one of the best, most reliable sources. Because those reports usually came from the day that it happened. There hadn't been any chances yet for anyone to magnify the story."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
He thinks that magnification is what's happened with this ball story. Most of the more recent blog posts and YouTube videos focus on the more outrageous claims like that the sphere itself played organ music, when, according to Sandy's article, the weird stuff at the house predated the ball. Or that a scientist found the ball was made out of elements heavier than anything known to science, which I found the source on that to be somewhat questionable. And we're going to get really deep into the science a little later. But I'm saying this now to point out, I get where Brian is coming from. He points to the Navy's findings that the ball was made out of stainless steel 431.

[Brian Dunning:]
"That's a common industrial steel. And it's probably not likely to be something that aliens would use. So we can be pretty sure metallurgically that it's something from some industrial plant right here on Earth."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
And he wasn't too fixated on the witnesses' claims of the ball's rolling.

[Brian Dunning:]
"Things like this, they're anecdotes, which means evidence that we can't test or verify. It's an Elvis sighting. You know, when you hear of an Elvis sighting, we don't conclude that, 'Oh, someone reported seeing Elvis, therefore Elvis is definitely still alive. And this person actually saw him. There's no other possible explanation.' Well, no, it's far more likely that this person was simply mistaken. So this is when you hear an anecdote about the ball was rolling around on its own. And people who went there said, oh, their floor was really uneven. Anything you put on it, it's going to roll around."

"There's these places called mystery spots, these little tourist attractions all around the world where balls seem to roll uphill, cars seem to drive up the hill by themselves. Things stick to the wall. And those are simply optical illusions. And it's perfectly reasonable. Because the number of people who go through those little tourist attractions and come out convinced that the Betz family could have been equally mistaken about the reason the ball was rolling around, even though the floor looks flat to them."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Which brings us back to the theory he settled on: This ball is from artist James Sterling Jones's VW bus.

[Brian Dunning:]
"It was an industrial ball check valve that is made of stainless steel 431. Exactly like the Betz mystery sphere. And it is known to have been deposited in the area some years before the best family found it. So once we have all the those little strings tied together, I'm satisfied that it's the best explanation anyone's put forward. And like, I think it should be the default theory, the null hypothesis."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
The artist wouldn't confirm the origin of the balls to reporters back in the day because they were maybe, sort of, kind of stolen. He said, 'I can't tell you where I got them because I'd get in trouble. But I'll tell you this. They're not from outer space.'

So the balls weren't perfect. Otherwise, they'd be worth several thousand dollars to the company that made them. And if you told reporters the company, they'd want them back. Then he said they weren't stolen but that it would cost his friend his job. He did say the spheres were intended as part of an industrial valve like the kind used in high-pressure transmission lines. Some reports say the Betz sphere had this small, smoothed-over plug in its side. And this artist described his spheres as having 'welded-over plugs,' which I assume just means patched-up holes. He told a reporter those plugs were an attempt to smooth a surface left flawed by the sphere grinder.

So, I ran this by that higher-up the sphere manufacturing company I spoke with earlier. And he said normally if there's a defect in a ball like a flat spot or something, they wouldn't try to fix it and then sell that ball. And I actually talked to a few different engineers who work with metal balls for a living about why one might have a hole later welded closed, and none knew a reason for it.

But one guy said he actually sees balls come from China with single holes in them. And sometimes customers will ask his company to weld them smooth. But most of the engineers said a metal ball like the Betz's could be used in factories to stop and allow fluids, which happens with industrial valves like the kind the artist says his ball was intended for.

I was able to track down the artist through his daughter Sabrina. She's actually pictured in a Santa Fe newspaper article kneeling alongside her dad, each of them touching a sphere. She looks about 3 or 4 years old. When we first spoke in February, she said her dad is really private and wouldn't give me his contact information. And unfortunately, he did not respond to my many, many emails she said she ran by him, even when I asked if he just could just email me responses and sent her questions to relay to him. Nothing. I wanted to know, 'Where did you get these balls? From what area of Jacksonville? Were you driving through? Did your spheres ever follow people around? How could a 20-pound metal ball just fly off your bus? Why didn't you stop and retrieve them? And did you ever get around to making that giant clock?'

I decided to check out where the odd ball was supposedly found, according to this anonymous source. Is it likely the ball would have rolled off a bus and wound up there?

[sound of cars whooshing by] Intern Al Pete and I are parked at a mini strip mall at the intersection of Faye Road and Alta Drive. It's the only building out here. Woods all around us and a railroad track. 'So do you know what is what highway that is? Right there?'

[Al Pete:]
"Oh, that's I-295."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
"OK, so 295 is the main road here. And other than that, we need to figure out like if Alta Drive and Faye Road, how developed they were then because even right now it's not. There's not too much around here. There's really just this one little strip of a diner and a Mexican restaurant."

[Al Pete:]
"Between here and maybe like a mile up, is woods."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
"Yeah, so the family said that near this intersection, there was basically a little side road, like a fire road, that you couldn't get to by car that they had to walk to."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
And down that little road is where she said the ball was allegedly found. Al did a little more digging and got back to me a couple weeks later.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
"So how do you sort of characterize this area? It's kind of remote, I guess."

[Al Pete:]
"Right. If you ride down Hecksher Drive, which is maybe a mile or two south, you see a bunch of fishing. I actually used to fish there. My dad, my step dad used to take us there. So it's a lot of fishing, and people just on the bridge. And then after that it's like a row of like, very nice houses. I reached out to Public Works. And they stated that in the '70s that 295 was not built at the time. The Dames Point Bridge, which connects 295, was built in1989. So in the 1970s, the only way that you could access that road was Main Street, which is a parallel north-south. So you couldn't get off the highway to get into the area that we were at. It was just woods there. There weren't really too many houses there at the time. And if he was coming from up north or down south, the main highway would be 95. Main Street is like a couple of miles away from 95. So just to be candid about it, it would be kind of impossible for this sphere to kind of just fall off and roll. I mean, it would have had to roll for a long time to get there."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
"Yeah. And I mean, that's assuming that it rolled to this area."

[Al Pete:]
"Assuming, correct."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
"You know, like, that's the thing, because we don't have, you know, a current conversation with him. We're not able to confirm, and he may not even remember, you know, 'Did you get off the highway? Did you know people here?'"

[Al Pete:]
"'Were you going fishing?' That type of thing."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
"Right. There are so many scenarios, we just don't know. Maybe it would be unlikely if he was just driving through Jacksonville that he would have wound up in that area. But what I'm thinking is, you know, this was three years before the sphere was found. Right? So who knows? Like if, if, if someone put it there. Also: three years ago. That would make sense as to why this ball was so beat up."

[Al Pete:]
"Yes, it did have those — correct."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
"So I don't want to rule it out. But I do think it's a little weird that a really heavy ball would come off someone's van and not hit another car. You would think it would be incredibly noticeable and that you would stop and try to get it back unless, you know, it rolled where you couldn't find it."

[Al Pete:]
"I totally agree. I mean, it's a 20-plus pound ball."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
"And he even says in one of the articles, when he's talking about the Betz sphere sort of as a joke. He's like, 'Tell that guy to send the ball over to me. Those things aren't easy to come by.' So it seemed like something that was pretty valuable to him."

[Al Pete:]
"Right. Yeah, so to me, this seems unlikely, but again, we're not going to rule it out."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
After this conversation, I found an article written by a reporter in New Mexico with some more details. It says Durling-Jones had the spheres and a box on his roof. His trip took them over the highway past Jacksonville, and that's where he speculates a few balls escaped from his possession. No indication he actually drove through the area in which the ball was found.

But even with some of these other explanations being floated, an extra terrestrial one was still being investigated. After the break.

[Promo 1:]
[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Odd Ball is made possible by supporters of WJCT Public Media with additional support from Bold Bean Coffee Roasters. Bold Bean believes in transparency and paying a fair price for a quality product. That's why the company is always working to build relationships with coffee growers, like Herbert in Colombia.

[Herbert:]
"They're the ones that make it possible for us work without having to use any, any trader, or the regular, usual channels for exporting and importing coffee. How coffee usually works is that coffee growers sell it somewhere in a purchase point in the town near to where they grow coffee at or in the nearest city. That coffee gets sold or moved to dry mills. And that gets forwarded to an exporter. The exporter sells it to an importer. Bold Bean is the importer but they didn't charge a fee on that. The market is built for you not to be able to leave that level. And we needed that small key to open that door, and Bold Bean provides that key."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Taste Bold Bean's latest coffee blend called Odd Ball today and get an Odd Ball mug and the ability to binge all episodes of Odd Ball at oddballpodcast.com. Shop the listening options and merch. And remember, your contributions help WJCT make cool projects like this one. That's oddballpodcast.com.

[Promo 2:]

[Lindsey Kilbride:]

A woman talks to her plants and the plants listen and act. A struggling musician is rescued from a shipwreck by a mysterious mute woman. A husband secretly finds out his wife has just a few snacks away from a massive heart attack, and takes her out for an elaborate feast. What do all of these things have in common? They are just a few of the many stories told by Fireside Mystery Theater, an original anthology audio drama series that has been thrilling and entertaining audiences since 2014. It's a podcast, but more than that it's also recorded live in front of an audience. There are fascinatingly macabre and sometimes funny tales performed by a stock company of gifted voice actors and improvised musical score, rich sound design, songs sung by some of the best talent around, and other surprises waiting for you with each exciting episode. Find Fireside Mystery Theater on your favorite podcast player. And be sure to mind the shadows.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
At the time the sphere was discovered, the early 70s, the government was taking UFO claims very seriously, as reports of sightings were pouring in from across the country.

[Sci-fi movie clips:]
"They come from another world. Spawned in the light years of space. Unleashed to take over the bodies and souls of the people of our planet."

"Well this sweetheart she married, the man she had known and loved, was merely the hollow shell for the invaders from outer space."

"Bill?!" [woman screams]

[Jerry Clark:]
Well, I have a reputation as, you know, a calm and reasoned, sophisticated voice on this controversial contentious subject.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Jerry Clark knows a lot about this because he's written three editions of a multi-volume UFO encyclopedia —

[Jerry Clark:]
— which is kind of considered the definitive reference work on the subject and won a number of awards. You know, there's a background noise of UFO reports just goes on and on. And every once while erupt into what we call a wave, and then the wave actually makes it into the not just the local press but the national and even international press, and then interest goes up. I would say that in terms of popular interest, the 50s 60s were the height of popular interest. The height of scientific interest was probably the 1970s.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Was it your life's work to be researching this? Or did you also have another career?

[Jerry Clark:]
Oh, it kind of ended up taking over my life. Not by design, but that's what happened. The only time that I was drawing an actual paycheck for an extended period of time was I worked for Fate magazine in Chicago, and that was kind of a paranormal monthly pulp magazine. And I was associate editor and then senior editor of the magazine for between the mid 70s and the end of the 1980s. And so I'm living testimony that there's no money in UFOs.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Jerry says the modern UFO phenomenon really started the summer of 1947 after a pilot reported seeing a group of disc-shaped objects flying in the sky at a high speed. Other sightings soon followed. And just a few months after, the Air Force started an official program called Project Sign looking into the claims.

[Jerry Clark:]
Project Sign was the one time that the Air Force was actually at least on the level of the investigators. Lieutenants and captains and staff sergeants who were looking into the sightings, they became convinced that these things weren't ours. They weren't Soviet in origin, so they must be from another planet. And in about September 1948, they sent from Project Sign, which was located at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. They sent up an estimate of the situation up to the Joint Chiefs that said that the best explanation was visitors from outer space were coming to Earth, and that's what was behind the flying disc reports. And the Joint Chiefs shot that down immediately and demanded that all copies of the estimate be burned so that there was no reference to any possibility that for a second, the U.S. government had considered the possibility of extraterrestrial visitation a possibility. And in fact, for years afterwards, the Air Force even denied that this estimate of the situation ever existed. But it did exist and eventually the Air Force had to admit it.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Project Sign eventually turned into Project Grudge, which turned into Project Blue Book, the most well known of the three. The goal of them quickly evolved into attaching logical explanations to UFO sightings.

[Air Force spokesman in archive audio:]
"I'm here to discuss the so-called 'flying saucers.' Air Force interest in this problem has been due to our feeling of an obligation to identify and analyze to the best of our ability anything in the air that may have the possibility of threat or menace to the United States."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
This is from a news conference in 1952. Air Force Intelligence Director Major General John Samford is talking.

[Samford continues:]
"We have received and analyzed between 1- and 2,000 reports that have come to us from all kinds of sources. Of this great mass of reports we have been able adequately to explain the great bulk of them."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
The scientific consultant they hired to do that explaining was J. Allen Hynek, a professor of astronomy and UFO skeptic.

[Jerry Clark:]
He was the guy that was brought on early on like in the late 40s to look at reports that might have an astronomical explanation. And he was the nearest astronomer to Dayton, Ohio. He was at Ohio State University at the time. And then Hynek got sucked into it, and for pretty much the next decade and a half, he pretty much he echoed the Air Force line, even though privately he was having growing doubts that this was a productive approach and would sometimes voice them privately or even publicly. But he didn't come out as an actual active UFO proponent until the mid 1960s. And then he immediately became the most famous UFO proponent in the world.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Project Blue Book closed down in 1969. But Hynek went on to start the Center for UFO Studies to keep investigating claims, including the Betz sphere. See, this all ties in.

The National Enquirer had assembled a team of five scientists, a blue ribbon panel of UFO investigators. It was offering a cash prize to anyone who produced a UFO. The panel happened to be meeting at a New Orleans conference in late April of '74. The Betz ball first made headlines in mid April, so naturally, they went ahead and took a look at it. The panelists were Hynek, an astronomer; Robert Cregan, a professor of philosophy; Leo Sprinkle, a psychologist; Frank Salisbury, a plant physiologist; and James Harder, a civil engineer. Six days after the ball's initial headlines, a South Florida newspaper reported that Gerri said her son Terry, who found the ball, was picked up by a private plane and taken to the National Enquirer's offices in Lantana, Florida, a pit stop before heading to New Orleans for the conference. The following day, a Tampa newspaper published a story about the ball's time at the headquarters. There, employees nicknamed the ball Edward and kept it in a safe. Then, on a table on the National Enquirer's lawn, the ball rolled on its own slowly around a table that was not quite level, even rolling over the uphill portion with no apparent difficulty. The article just states this with no attribution so it's not clear if the reporter witnessed it or if they were told about it.

And remember, according to that guy, Dick, Gerri's friend I spoke to in Episode1, things got even weirder here.

[Dick Burnett:]
"Gerri sent Terry and Robin, her two sons, to fly down there with it, and they were going to fly back with it. Well, after a day or so, the people sent the two boys back and kept the ball. And I don't think that was the way it was supposed to work. But that's what happened. But they finally got the ball back."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
"We had that conversation in 2017. And two years later…"

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
"Hold on, let me find my notes."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Remember, this is Nan, the editor who profiled Gerri in First Coast Magazine. "So, you talked to Gerri on Monday?"

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
"I did. I tracked down her info and gave her a call. And I forgot. I forgot what a wonderful, eloquent woman she is. You know, she's just remarkable. And she was really happy to hear from me. She really enjoyed the article. I hadn't spoken to her since we did the article in 2016.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Nan mentioned to Gerri the sphere had come up in a recent news article. And Gerri just started talking…"

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
"…for 30 minutes. Just totally went back in time and just recalled all these details from that, that period of time,

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
including the ball being taken to this blue ribbon panel of UFO investigators.

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
Somewhere in that window of time someone who was organizing the panel told her son that his mother had been calling and needed him to return home. So he called her and tried to get ahold of her but could not. The Betz's phone had been ringing off the hook for weeks since this whole thing kind of blew up. So the National Enquirer flew them — there's a plane waiting for them and flew them back to Florida.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Wait, like a private plane?

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
A private plane. And when they arrived, Gerri was like, 'What are you guys doing here?' And they're like, 'They said that you were trying to get ahold of us.' And she's like, 'No!'

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Nan and Dick's versions are slightly different. Nan was under the impression Terry went directly to New Orleans. But Dick in the newspaper said he was first flown to South Florida, and that's where he separated from the ball. But either way, allegedly, Terry is separated from the ball, which winds up in New Orleans at this panel. That part of the story lines up.

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
They go back and they request copies of everything they've done and all the, whatever, information about what they've been doing to the sphere in that window of time they were gone. The scientists were not willing to share any of that. So in the middle of this panel, Terry Betz just stands up, takes the sphere and walks out and leaves, gets in his car and takes off back to Florida. And Gerri was like, 'I don't think any of them were expecting him to do that. It was very abrupt.'

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Did she share if they ever got to the bottom of who was behind this weird sick call?

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
No. I mean, she felt like it was someone involved with that panel.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Of the five panelists, the majority have passed away.

[phone rings.] "Hello, WJCT, this is Lindsey."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
But I was able to get in touch with Leo Sprinkle, the psychologist.

[Leo Sprinkle:]
I enjoyed my work on the panel. But what I really enjoyed was getting to meet so many interesting people who had described their experiences.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
He says the panel was active between 1972 and '79. And probably the reason it existed was to increase sales of National Enquirer papers. But he and his colleagues were real scientists and did real work looking into lots of claims. At the time, the prize for anyone who could prove extra terrestrial existence would win 50 grand. The Betzes didn't want any cash.

LK on phone: "It was 1974. And the panel looked at the Betz sphere in New Orleans. Do you have any recollection of that specific object?"

[Leo Sprinkle:]
"I'm sorry, I don't. I'm sure it was important at the time, but my memory is faulty. And so I don't, I don't recall. Can you tell me a little bit more about it? Was it a large sphere or handheld?"

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
"Yeah. So, the Navy said it was stainless steel. They had looked at it before the panel…"

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
I tell him about the vibrating, the rolling, and the even more out-there allegations, like Terry's allegedly being separated from the ball and its rolling up hill just before heading to the conference.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
"I mean, does any of that ring a bell?"

[Leo Sprinkle:]
"It's a beautiful case. I'm sorry that I can't contribute anything to it."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
He repeatedly tells me his memory just isn't what it used to be, that this doesn't mean the ball didn't do anything remarkable. But no, he doesn't remember it. Forty-five years was a long time ago.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
"Do you think if it had rolled up hill in this way, that that's something you would have remembered?"

[Leo Sprinkle:]
"I would think — you know, I used to pride myself on my memory. Now, I'm sorry, I just don't have any recall about the experience."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Through Nan, Gerri had lots more to say. She addressed what Dick told me two years prior: that before the ball headed to South Florida and then New Orleans, in Jacksonville, the Navy took a look at it and wanted to keep it.

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
The officer came to her home to return the sphere. The Navy had it for two weeks. And the same day he was supposed to come, the naval base called her home, and I think the name of the officer —

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
I think it's Chris Berninger. He's the spokesperson in all the articles about it.

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
The Navy called her home before he got there and said, 'Is Officer Berninger there?' She said no. And he said, 'Well, as soon as he arrives, please have him call' and give him our number. And she said, 'OK, no problem.' So he got there and she let him know that the base was trying to get ahold of him. So he called the base and she said that she could tell from the phone call that whatever it was, was very serious. She said it was very much like, 'Yes, sir. Yes, sir.' And then he got off and he asked for the sphere back. He wanted to take it back to the base. And she wouldn't let him. She said, 'No, I'm sorry. This belongs to us and we're keeping it,' which is such a brave thing to do, you know?

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Most people would say the Navy is asking for this back. I have to comply.

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
Right. She doesn't know what the conversation was, but they wanted it back.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Nan and Dick's versions from Gerri, two years apart, are pretty consistent. Dick even brought up a specific scientist who came to the family's home to research the ball after the panel.

[Dick Burnett:]
And there was a pretty well-known professor. He asked permission to come and see the ball and sleep with it.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
That well-known professor was J. Allen Hynek.

[Jerry Clark:]
The most famous UFO proponent in the world.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Yeah, the guy the government hired to debunk UFO claims and later joined the UFO panel along with Sprinkle, who we just heard from. Nan clarified what Dick meant by Hynek's sleeping with the ball.

[Dick Burnett:]
"I don't think they got married."

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
Hynek reached out. He wanted them to come to Chicago. She said, 'No, if you want to see the sphere, you're gonna have to come to us.' So he came. And she said that he was just a delightful person, they enjoyed their time together. He was only there for a couple days. He asked if he could, you know, bring the sphere into his bedroom overnight. And she didn't really see any harm in that. She trusted him, you know, he was a government scientist, with, you know, with a very staunch reputation.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
"So you did bring up the fact that I want to talk to her?"

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
"I did, I did. I said that you had read the First Coast Magazine article, you are very interested in her as a person. And you were also interested in the sphere and being transparent about that. But, you know, that you're a fantastic journalist and dedicated to the city and, you know, just telling the human side of how this, really how this affected, you know, the family more so than some crazy, you know, supernatural story. And she was very, she was very gracious about it. But she was like, 'Nan, I just don't feel comfortable really sharing this with anyone,' she said, 'with anyone but you,' and I was like kind of flabbergasted. I was like, 'Thank you so much, Gerri.' You know, we just did that one little story on her in that window of time."

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
This was a huge bummer. Because I think talking to Gerri is really important. At the same time, I understand she may just not want to talk. I get that. Through this whole process, I've lost a lot of sleep over if I'm digging up too much, if I'm doing more damage than good. So I think selfishly, I kind of want Gerri's blessing that I'm telling this the right way, that I get it. And I don't know if that's going to happen. But she is the key to this story about what this kind of thing does to a person's life, to a family. Nan told me she'd give it another shot. So don't worry, I'm not giving up yet.

But as far as this Hynek situation, there are so many articles announcing the ball would be going to this panel in New Orleans, but not a whole lot laying out the panel's findings or confirming Hynek performed any kind of study at Gerri's house.

But I did find an old interview of Hynek right after returning from the panel.

[Archive sound:]
"Let me ask you first, Professor Hynek, about your latest evaluations of the sphere. Do you consider this now extraterrestrial or Earth-manufactured?"

This is a production made possible by supporters of WJCT Public Media with additional support from Bold Bean Coffee Roasters. If you like this series, you don't have to stop listening. Go to oddballpodcast.com now to see how you can get all the episodes and check out the Odd Ball shop. Odd Ball is produced by me, Lindsey Kilbride, with editing by Jessica Palombo. The music is by Matthew Wardell and intern Al Pete.