Artist: Fragment is bogus -- He says purported UFO piece came from studio

by John Fleck

The purported Roswell UFO fragment that created an international sensation earlier this year is really a scrap from a St. George, Utah, jewelry studio, the artist said Thirsday. Randy Fullbright said his scrap might have passed for alien metal because of its strange swirling pattern. "It's a wierd metal that people have never seen before," he said. Fullbright's jewelry is characterized by patterns of copper and silver similar to those easily visible on the purported UFO fragment. The metal's mysterious characteristics are the result of an ancient Japanese metal-working technique that is rare in this country, Fullbright said in a telephone interview.

The fragment, kept in a Roswell Police Department safe, has been brought out occassionally for display at the Roswell International UFO Museum and Research Center.

Museum officials say it was brought to them by someone who claimed a member of a military crew picked it up in 1947 when cleaning up after the alleged crash of a flying saucer in southeastern New Mexico. Fullbright said he gave the unusual-looking scrap to a friend, never claiming it was from a UFO. He said he had nothing to do with it eventually showing up in the Roswell museum. Museum officials repeatedly have said they don't know whether the fragment is from an alien spaceship. Fullbright said that when he called the Roswell museum several months ago trying to explain the fragment's true source, he was rebuffed. "They just kind of got hostile to me," Fullbright said. He doesn't remember with whom he talked.

Museum co-founder Max Littell questioned Fullbright's claim, saying it seemed unlikely to him that the intricately layered metalwork would be used in jewelry.

"It does not make sense that he would do that for a piece of jewelry," Littell said. [NOTE: The article includes photographs of not only the fragment, but also of several pieces of Fullbright's work.] Littell said he doesn't know who Fullbright might have talked to when he called to explain the alleged hoax. "He didn't talk to me," he said. The museum, a leading tourist attraction in Roswell, has made more than $1,500 selling photographs of the fragment, Littell said. News of the fragment's discovery was reported by international wire services. According to Fullbright, the scrap passed through several hands before arriving at the Roswell museum.

Fullbright said he gave the scrap to the owner of an art gallery. He never represented it as anything more than leftovers from his own work. The gallery owner gave it to Blake Larsen, a former St. George resident who has since moved to Roswell, according to Fullbright. Larsen then gave it to the museum.

Larsen, inetrviewed by phone from his Roswell home, acknowledged getting the fragment from the gallery owner and taking it with him to Roswell when he moved there in March. Larsen said the gallery owner told him the fragment was found near Roswell in 1947, the same story Larsen related to museum officials when he gave them the fragment for study.

Museum officials, who have never identified the person who brought them the metal, confirmed this week it was Larsen. The gallery owner who played the alleged middleman between Fullbright and Larsen coudln't be reached. A person who answered the telephone at the gallery Thursday said the owner was in California and there was no way to contact him.

Larsen acknowledged knowing Fullbright, but said he didn't know Fullbright made the metal scrap.

Evidence against the famous fragment being from a UFO was mounting before Fullbright's claim, said Miller Johnson, who spearheaded the scientific testing. Last month, Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists concluded the metal in the fragment, silver and copper, matched the chemical fingerprints of silver and copper on Earth.

Scientists had predicted that metals from distant planets would exhibit clearly different chemical fingerprints. "The more I've looked into it, the less likely I've been to believe that it's from a UFO," Johnson said. He said he would contact Fullbright to obtain a sample of his work to check against the fragment.

Fullbright said the technique involves using a blacksmith's forge to make a layered piece of copper and silver, then rolling it through a mill to make the layers very thin. "It's quite a labor-intensive proces," he said. The result is metal that looks similar to wood grain, said Santa Fe jeweler James Kallas, who sells Fullbright's work and is familiar with the technique.

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