At the same time in Conway, Pennsylvania, local police officer Frank Panzarella saw the object. In his words to Blue Book, it was “the shape of a half of [a] football, was very bright, and about twenty-five to thirty-five feet in diameter.” The two Ohio police cars raced into Conway at 5:30 A.M. They had traveled about fifty miles in a half hour, and now received instructions to abandon the chase. For most of the past thirty minutes, the object had maintained a fairly consistent altitude of one thousand feet. But now, it rapidly ascended to about 3,500 feet, then hovered. Panzarella saw this and called the Rochester, Pennsylvania, police operator, John Beighey, asking him to contact the Greater Pittsburgh International Airport. Panzarella saw an airliner pass beneath the object, then saw what looked like jet trails. He heard a voice on his radio announcing that a jet interception was in progress. The object finally shot high into the air and disappeared.
The event seemed to be over. In thirty minutes, many police officers and civilians had seen the UFO, and the two police cars from Ohio now began their drive home. Just then, however, Panzarella received a call from Beighey that the air force office in Pittsburgh wanted to hear from the witnesses immediately. Beighey also said that during his call, he heard someone at the airport say the object was “on the screen,” implying a radar return. Within minutes, Panzarella caught up with Spaur, Neff, and Huston; just before he stepped out of his car, he heard a fading voice on the radio say, “Hey, Frank, I saw two jets....” The voice was that of Patrolman Henry Kwaitanowski. He had seen two jets, which looked like commercial airliners, flying behind a shiny, football-shaped object, which appeared to be about the same size and at about the same altitude.
The three Ohio police officers went to the Rochester police station, and Spaur phoned the air force at Pittsburgh. Speaking to “some colonel,” he said the officer tried to convince him he had seen something conventional. The officer did not speak to the other two policemen.
The case gained national attention immediately. The air force began its investigation the next day, which consisted of a few phone calls to local media and checks for weather balloons (none were found). In any case, the wind near ground level was negligible that day and could not have accounted for the movement ascribed to the object. The air force personnel in Youngstown and Pittsburgh denied that anything had been out of the ordinary, or that anything had turned up on radar. Quintanilla phoned Spaur, asking him to “tell me about this mirage you saw.” Spaur later said, “Hell, I talked longer with that colonel Sunday morning, and he didn’t ask much.” Quintanilla called Spaur briefly a few days later to confirm that he had seen the object for more than a few minutes (!).
On April 22, Blue Book announced the solution to the Portage County sighting: the officers had first seen an Echo satellite; after it had moved out of sight, Spaur had mistaken the planet Venus for the same object. When Quintanilla phoned Spaur’s superior, Portage County Sheriff Ross Dustman, to give him this explanation, Dustman actually laughed out loud.
Another investigation was being conducted, however, by William B. Weitzel, a professor of philosophy and field investigator for NICAP. Unlike the air force, Weitzel actually spoke to the principal police witnesses. He considered the Blue Book explanation to be absurd and before long wrote a four-page letter to Congressman William Stanton, whose district included Portage County. Shortly afterwards, a Portage County judge who knew each of the three Ohio officers involved also wrote to Stanton, calling the air force explanation “ridiculous.” Stanton was soon in communication with the air force commanding general. Then, after getting no reply for two weeks, he spoke with Air Force Chief of the Community Relations Division Lt. Col. John Spaulding, who promised to send an investigator to the site.
Quintanilla phoned Spaur again on May 9, obviously under pressure. He would be there the next day to interview him, he said. Spaur asked Weitzel to record the interview, and Weitzel brought his crew: two reporters and space-scientist /UFO researcher David Webb. In addition, Sheriff Dustman was present. Quintanilla, none too happy about the crowd, asked Weitzel and Webb to leave the room, and the reporters soon left as well. It didn’t matter: the meeting was ugly. Quintanilla failed to persuade Spaur of the air force explanation, and the exchange, which was recorded, became heated at times. When Weitzel returned to the room, he and Quintanilla had their own exchange over the
