CASH–LANDRUM.

The three exited the car and watched in awe as the object rose and was joined by approximately 23 US military Chinook helicopters that appeared to be escorting it.

In the days following the encounter, all three witnesses developed severe physical symptoms consistent with acute radiation exposure: skin blistering and reddening on exposed areas, hair loss, eye inflammation, persistent vomiting, weakness, and a long course of secondary illnesses. Betty Cash was hospitalized for weeks and never fully recovered; she died in 1998 on the 18th anniversary of the encounter. Vickie Landrum suffered from related ailments until her own death.

Investigator John Schuessler of MUFON spent years documenting the case, including the medical records, the location of severe distress in the witnesses' bodies relative to the encounter geometry, and asphalt damage at the alleged hovering site. The witnesses sued the United States government for $20 million, alleging negligence by an agency operating an experimental craft. Federal Judge Ross Sterling dismissed the suit in 1986 after the Department of Defense, Army, Air Force, NASA, and Department of Energy all formally denied operating any such craft on that night.

Cash–Landrum is among the most physically documented UFO cases in US history. The denial of US government craft operation is itself unusually firm: under oath, multiple agencies stated they had no aircraft, no helicopters, and no experimental program responsible for the encounter. Whatever the witnesses saw, the official position is that it did not belong to any branch of the United States military.