Hoax Claims and Rebuttals
Some debunkers suggested that the affair was a hoax. Harvard astronomer Donald Menzel first suggested that Zamora had been the victim of a complex prank engineered by high school students who "planned the whole business to 'get' Zamora." (Hynek suggested this to some Socorro citizens, who discounted the idea). Years later, Menzel argued that Zamora had misidentified a dust devil.
Journalist, and prominent UFO skeptic, Philip J. Klass first suggested that the Zamora sighting was due to misidentified ball lightning. When this debunking was itself debunked (notably by atmospheric physicist Dr. James E. McDonald), Klass switched gears and suggested the Zamora sighting was part of a scheme Zamora had invented with Socorro's then mayor, Holm Bursum, Jr., to attract tourism, claiming Bursum owned the land where Zamora's encounter occurred. Klass claimed that Bursum hoped Zamora's "fabricated" UFO story would lure tourists to Socorro, and Bursum could then develop the UFO landing site into a tourist attraction. Both Bursum and Zamora consistently denied these accusations as ridiculous, and even after Zamora's sighting gained national publicity the landing site was never developed. In fact, Bursum didn't even own the property as Klass claimed.
As of 2009, the landing site reportedly remains much as it was in 1964.
Read more about this topic: Lonnie Zamora
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