Paul Bennewitz

Bennewitz was the son of Stella A. Sharp and Paul Frederic Bennewitz, Sr. (1900–1949).

Bennewitz was a native of Kansas.

Bennewitz earned a Bachelor's degree from Arizona State, but had no formal training in electronics.

During World War 2, Bennewitz was a radio electronics engineer for the Coast Guard.

He worked as an engineer for San Francisco CBS station KPIX, and KPHO in Tucson.

Paul Frederic Bennewitz, Jr. (September 29, 1927 – June 23, 2003) was an American businessman and UFO investigator.

According to multiple sources, Bennewitz was the target of a government disinformation campaign that ultimately led to his psychiatric hospitalization.

On February 25, 1949, Bennewitz married Cindy Bunch in Phoenix, Arizona.

Around 1953, Bennewitz moved to New Mexico and started working for Gulton Industries, doing sales; Bennewitz later began his own industrial sales company.

In 1966, Bennewitz acquired the rights to a humidity sensor from Sandia National Laboratories.

He founded Thunder Scientific, a small family business, with wife Cindy serving as bookkeeper.

During the 1970s, Bennewitz became a member of Arizona's Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), a civilian UFO investigation group.

By the mid-1970s, cattle mutilations had become associated with UFOs.

Harder had conducted a hypnotic regression of Travis Walton in 1975.

The two believed Hansen was under the influence of alien beams and wrote detailed instructions on how to use aluminum foil to 'shield' a room from the beams before conducting a regression.

Gabriel Valdez's son later commented on the Myrna Hanson story as follows.

The paper reported that Thunder did about $1 million in sales, but profits had waned over recent years; in 1978, Thunder employed 30 people, but by 1981, that number had dropped to only 18 employees.

On April 20, 1979, U.S. Attorney R. E. Thompson and US Senator Harrison Schmidt held a public meeting about cattle mutilations.

The meeting was attended by about 80, one attendee was Paul Bennewitz.

Mirage Men includes the suggestion that government agents likely "first identified" Bennewitz at this meeting or outright targeted him for his participation.

At the meeting, Bennewitz was introduced to highway patrol officer Gabe Valdez who was investigating the incidents.

Bennewitz later listed July 1979 as the beginning of a "personally funded study" into UFOs.

Bennewitz reportedly began filming strange lights and recording unusual radio signals over Kirtland Air Force Base.

On May 6, 1980, State Police in Cimarron, New Mexico received a report from a woman calling herself "Myrna Hansen" (not to be confused with the movie star of the same name) describing a story involving interplanetary visitors, bright lights, and herds of cattle.

Police in Cimarron referred the case to their colleague in Dulce, Gabe Valdez, who they knew to be "the cattle mutilation guy" for his interest in the cases.

Valdez, in turn, contacted Paul Bennewitz.

On May 7, 1980, Hansen and her son traveled to Albuquerque to meet with Bennewitz, staying in his home.

Hansen explained to Bennewitz that on May 5, 1980, while she was driving with her son near Eagle Nest, New Mexico they had witnessed two large, silent objects approximately the size of Goodyear Blimps hovering over a meadow.

Bennewitz arranged for Sprinkle to fly to Albuquerque to hypnotize Hansen.

When Sprinkle arrived, Hansen and Bennewitz insisted the sessions be conducted in Bennewitz's Lincoln Town Car, parked inside the family garage, with the car's windows covered with thick aluminum foil.

During her first regression, she reported a recollection of a cow being sucked into a hovering spaceship by a tractor beam.

On May 11 and 12, 1980, under hypnosis, Hansen reported recollections of an abduction and of being taken to an underground base with body parts floating in vats.

Hansen's recollections would later evolve into the legend of Dulce Base.

During the session, she exclaimed "Where's Roswell, New Mexico?", although most members of the public had not yet connected the town to UFO folklore.

Hansen reported recalling having been given an 'implant' by the aliens.

On June 3, Sprinkle returned to visit Bennewitz, he found Bennewitz armed with pistol and rifle, concerned that he was vulnerable attacks from aliens.

Bennewitz expressed a desire to protect himself, his family, and Hansen.

Bennewitz then turned to hypnotist James Harder, abduction researcher and a professor of Engineering.

"It is a possibility that the Myrna Hansen story was also part of the disinformation campaign... I will go out on a limb here and say that the story of Myrna Hansen was probably a well-orchestrated hoax because of a very important fact: the listening devices found in my dad’s house. The government heard all the conversations on the phone between my dad and [Bennewitz], so such a hoax would be relatively easy to accomplish... Myrna Hansen came into the picture in May of 1980 and the Air Force did not even acknowledge contact with Paul until November of 1980... Although this evidence can barely be viewed as even circumstantial, it would explain a lot of things and how and why they transpired during the 1980s based on what we currently know."

In April 1981, Bennewitz was profiled in the Albuquerque Tribune about his company, Thunder Scientific.