A part-time scientist, Silas M. Newton, Denver oilman and former amateur gold champion of Colorado, whose disclosure about flying saucers containing "little men" were a 1950 sensation, is now accused of helping to swindle a Denver rancher and manufacturer out of $50,000 by promoting a machine to detect oil, said news reports.
The accusation is made by Herman A. Flader, rich Denver industrialist, rancher and oildman, Newton and his associate GeBauer have been named in a swindle warrant by District Attorney Bert M. Keating of Denver.
The Newton story goes back to March 1950 when a mysterious Mr. X lectured at the University of Denver. In his talk he asserted that four saucer craft had landed in the U.S. He stated that a blanket of secrecy had been thrown over the arrival because the government was conducting a study of the group of beings, 36 to 42 inches tall which had been captured from one of the craft which was comparatively undamaged after the crash of all four.
When the account got into the papers students identified Mr. X as Silas Newton, who was found to have degrees from Baylor and Yale and to have done research work at Oxford. An oil geologist, Mr. Newton had lectured widely and had been asked to head the soil conservation bureau of Nationalist China. He belonged to the best country clubs in Washington, D. C., Los Angeles and Denver and was once married to the first woman sports writer, Nan O'Reilly, who died in 1935.
In his talk, Mr. X named a "Dr. Gee" as the man who had seen the saucers, which reputedly came from Venus, making the 161,000,000 mile trip in one hour in craft operated on lines of magnetic force. There were supposedly 34 little men in the custody of the government which was being secretive about the whole thing.
Prompted by the Newton lecture, Frank Scully, Variety columnist wrote his his best-selling "Behind the Flying Saucers" naming George Koehler, of Denver as knowing Dr. Gee. The doctor was later identified as Leo GeBauer, a Phoenix radio manufacturer.
The Newton-GeBauer oil-detector swindle began with the meeting of Flader and GeBauer (who used the title of doctor) early in 1949. Dr. Gee claimed to be a research scientist who had headed an ultra-secret project aimed at locating submarines by magnetic devices during World War II. He told Flader that though he was not now employed by the government he had access to instruments in federal laboratories which could find oil and tell the number of barrels available underground.
About two weeks later, Flader said, Newton appeared on the scene, representing himself as being interested in electrical experiments which Flader was carrying out in his plant, Flader introduced. Newton and GeBauer who gave no evidence of knowing each other.
When GeBauer's oil-finding du ice was mentioned Newton claimed that he had a similar machine that had discovered oil at Rangely, Colorado. It had been developed, he said, by one of the world's leading physicists at a cost of $800,000.
Deeply interested Flater put $250,000 into oil field surveys by the Newton-GeBauer instrument. This includes the $50,000 on which the fraud charge is based.
When Flader began to get suspicious is not known. However a San Francisco free-lance writer, John F. Cahn, working with the Denver Post, got to looking into the matter.
The Colorado attorney's office reports that the machine, called a doodlebug, was really a radio-frequency changer which could be purchased for about $3 50 in any war-surplus warehouse. The operators added two dry cells to light up tubes when dials were turned.
In addition to the Flader charges against the two, Dr. Alfred Kleyhauer, an optometrist, charged that he lost about $15,000 in oil field investments after Newton showed him pictures of two "electronic detectors" used in the field where Kleyhauer invested. The optometrist says that newton claimed the machine had been developed by Dr. Robert A. Millikan, physicist at Caltech. Upon inquiry Millikan wrote Kleyhauer that he did not know Newton.
Adding to the discomfort of the 62-year-old Newton is the fact that his wife, Sharon Evelyn Newton, 36, of Santa Monica has filed suit for divorce, claiming that he has failed to support her and their 2-year-old son.
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