Newton was a veteran con artist who got the inspiration for this hoax from the publicity for a 1949 science-fiction film entitled The Flying Saucer. The producer of this film, Mikel Conrad, promoted the view that the spaceship seen in the movie was an actual alien craft held by the government. In publicizing the film, Conrad got an “FBI agent”who swore that the story was true. This prompted the U.S. Air Force to launch an investigation into the matter. Conrad admitted to the investigating officer who contacted him that he had concocted the tale to promote the movie. Newton followed this controversy in the Los Angeles newspapers.
Newton also learned of a report of two prospectors in Death Valley who allegedly saw a UFO spin out of control and crash into a sand dune. Two humanoid occupants emerged from the craft and fled, with the prospectors in pursuit. The miners eventually gave up the chase and returned to the scene of the crash only to find the saucer gone. In August 1949 Newton and his accomplice were demonstrating an oil-detecting device in the Southwest, including Aztec, New Mexico. Shortly thereafter Newton, representing himself as a Texas oilman, told the Death Valley prospector story to Frank Scully, but he changed its location and said that the two men were scientists who had forced the UFO down with sophisticated instruments.Newton told Scully that he had heard the story directly from the scientists involved. Newton presented GeBauer to Scully, saying that he was “Dr. Gee,” a government scientist specializing in magnetics who had participated in the recovery operation.
The story that appeared in Weekly Variety under Scully's byline on October 12, 1949,was that on March 25, 1948, a flying saucer crashed on a rocky plateau east of Aztec, New Mexico. The bodies of 16 small, humanlike beings dressed in the style of 1890 were found inside by Air Force investigators, who determined that they were from Venus. Soon afterward a crash occurred in Arizona, and 16 bodies were taken from that wreckage.
A third spaceship went down near Phoenix, leaving two dead occupants. In 1950 Scully elaborated on the story in his book Behind the FlyingSaucers.
The September 1952 issue of True magazine exposed the hoax in a story by J. P. Cahn. Cahn revealed that Scully's sources were both in fact con artists who used the flying-saucer story as a ruse to attract the attention of potential investors in a bogus oil-detection scheme allegedly linked to extraterrestrial technology. Scully responded to Cahn's charges by attacking Cahn's character and avoiding the substantive issues of the case.He also claimed that Dr.Gee was a composite of eight men who had given him pieces of the story. In 1953 Newton and GeBauer went on trial in Denver for conspiracy to commit a confidence crime. They were given suspended sentences and ordered to make restitution to investors.Newton's confidence career didn't end there, however. In February 1955 he was tried for selling $15,000 in worthless securities in a Utah uranium claim. In March 1958 he was again in court in Denver on a $100,000 uranium swindle. As late as 1970 he was under indictment in Los Angeles on two counts of grand theft.When he died in Los Angeles in 1972, there were at least 140 claims filed against Newton's estate by individuals who claimed that he had “borrowed” money from them to exploit oil or mining claims. His estate totaled $16,000; claims filed against it exceeded $1.35 million. Many of the claims alleged that Newton salted the claims or pumped oil into the ground at night to pump it back up the next day for the benefit of investors.
In 1987 UFO Crash at Aztec by William S. Steinman and Wendelle C. Stevens was published. It was based on speculation, rumor, and unnamed in-formants. In it,Newton and GeBauer were painted as honorable men whose good names were destroyed by the government and the press for daring to divulge information on UFOs.
