Government & military · Research & investigation
D. Arthur Byrnes Jr.
FBI field investigator
Who they are
D. Arthur Byrnes Jr. was the FBI special agent who recorded Lonnie Zamora’s account and examined the Socorro site after the reported event. The surviving memoranda distinguish the officer’s narrative from Byrnes’s own observations of ground depressions and burned vegetation. His contribution is investigative documentation, not a claimed sighting of the departing object.
He supplies the timeline’s distinction between a witness account and observations made by an investigator afterward.
Selected contributions
- Recorded the Socorro witness account and documented ground marks and burned vegetation after the reported departure.Source ↗
Primary records
Archival document · 1964
Unidentified Flying Object, Socorro, New Mexico, April 24, 1964 — FBI memoranda
The memoranda record Zamora’s account and Byrnes’s subsequent site observations, including ground marks and burned vegetation. They let readers distinguish a witness narrative from what investigators observed afterward.
Memoranda dated May 8, 1964 describe April 24–25 events; the scanned bundle contains additional correspondence.
Reading scope & citation
Reused prior inspected evidence: Read extracted text of Byrnes’s site observations, the interview provenance, and the opening witness account. Not a complete audit of every memorandum or original physical exhibit.
In the timeline
- Apr 24, 1964Lonnie Zamora reports a landing near Socorro
Biography sources
- Unidentified Flying Object, Socorro, New Mexico, April 24, 1964 — FBI memoranda ↗Federal Bureau of Investigation; scan hosted by The Black Vault