The incident that ultimately brought the UFO-sleuth nexus into the mute picture occured in mid-December 1974, when a cow was found chopped up at the farm of Frank Schifelbien, near Kimball, Minnesota. At the same time, there were a number of UFO sightings in the state. After a rather cursory examination of the mutilation site, a Minnesota flying-saucer buff (and avowed Sasquatch contactee) named Terry Mitchell came to the conclusion that hovering aliens had beamed a high-energy ray at the cow. There were also suspiciously broken branches, undoubtedly caused, so Mitchell's theory went, by heedless saucerite aeronautics; and then there were strange indentations in the ice on the farmer's pond—obviously gouged by UFO landing gear—and peculiar circles in the snow, which appeared in an aerial photo.
Mitchell went on to postulate that UFOlk like steak as much as most Americans—although, again, the parts of the animal taken were those seldom found in any but a weirdo's casserole. Nevertheless, Mitchell's theory created a media flap that culminated in a telephone interview on Tom Snyder's NBC Tomorrow show in late 1974.
It was at this point that serious saucer students decided to get into the case. Le Dr. J. Allen Hynek, director of the prestigious Center for UFO Studies and professor of astronomy at Northwestern University, had a friend in Minneapolis who had done some field investigation work for the center in his leisure time. This man was Donald E. Flickinger, a special agent for the Treasury, Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and in January 1975, Dr. Hynek asked him to investigate the Minnesota mutilations.
Flickinger traveled to Kimball, interviewed Frank Shifelbien and rapidly demolished the UFO hypothesis. The saucer-landing divers in the pond turned out to be watering holes chopped in the ice; the tree branches had been broken by the wind and by Schifelbien himself; the saucer circles were actually snow-covered silage piles.
Word spread quickly among UFO researchers across the United States that the highly respected Dr. Hynek had taken an interest in the mutilations. One of those who
heard the news was Jerome Clark
, a UFO researcher of some reknown, who had been
investigating the cattle mutilations since they first occurred in his home state of Minnesota in the spring of 1973.
Clark wrote to agent Flickinger in January 1975 and related the allegations of a convict
name A. Kenneth Bankston.