SUBJECT: SIX SOLDIERS AWOL FROM INTELLIGENCE UNIT FILE: UFO2200
This was from the Tampa Tribune for Thursday, 26 July 1990:
-----------------------------------------------------------
FORT KNOX, Ky. (AP) - Six soldiers charged with going AWOL
from their intelligence unit for what a friend described as a
rendezvous with UFOs could lose pay and rank under disciplinary
terms offered Wed-nesday by the Army.
The six were reported missing from their units in Augsberg,
West Germany, on July 9 and arrested in Gulf Breeze, Fla., four
days later.
They were offered the "non-judicial punishment" after an in-
vestigation failed to find evidence of espionage, said Major Ron
Mazzia, a spokesman at Fort Knox, where they were being held.
The soldiers were given three days to consider the proposed
disciplinary action and could later be discharged, Mazzia said.
It was still unclear why the six, all from the 701st Military
Intelligence Brigade, traveled to Florida.
Stan Johnson of Bybee, Tenn., said the oldest member of the
group, Specialist Kenneth G, Beason, 26, told him they had been
"chosen by ... divine intervention to help prepare for the end of
the world, which was supposed to occur in about eight years from
now. ...
"They were going to Florida to kick off preparations," said
Johnson, a friend of Beason's for several years who picked him up
at the Knoxville, Tenn., airport upon arrival from Germany.
"The real interesting part of this," Johnson said, "was that
when the second coming of Christ occurred, Jesus Christ was going
to arrive in a spaceship."
Gulf Breeze, a beach town near Pensacola where Beason and
others in the group received training, has been the site of many
reported UFO sightings.
Besides Beason, those charged were identified as Pfc. Michael
Hueckstaedt, 19, of Farson, Wyo.; Pfc. Kris Perlock, 20, of
Osceola, Wis.; Pfc. William Setterberg, 20, of Pittsburgh;
specialist Vance Davis, 25, of Valley Center, Kan.; and Sgt.
Annette Eccleston, 22, of Hartford, Conn.
Capt. Kenneth Hicks of the Gulf Breeze Police Department said
that when he questioned Hueckstaedt and Eccleston, neither spoke of
religion or UFOs.
"Really, the only thing they said is they were heading out
West and they were just going to kind of live out in the woods -
kind of like a survivalist group," Hicks said. They mentioned Santa
Fe, N.M., and Texas.
Mazzia said the soldiers were AWOL for varying amounts of
time, but the longest was seven days.
**********************************************
* THE U.F.O. BBS -
http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
**********************************************
