RIP, Rick Murray

Sad last few minutes here at the Trentonian after learning through a phone call that 39-year newspaperman (and book author) Rick Murray died of a heart attack today. He turned 58 on June 9.

Rick was a fixture of Jersey newspapers, one of the craziest dudes in the very best of ways, and so goddamn mentally sharp.

I'll update this later.

RIP, crazy UFO man.


P.S. For the last 4-6 weeks he wrote UFO/alien/paranormal Sunday columns for us. He was big into it. This was his last column:


The second X-files movie is due next month, and while it will feature the beautiful and brilliant Gillian Anderson reprising her role as FBI agent Dana Scully, it reportedly won’t continue the plotline in which the space aliens conspire with human leadership to take over the world.
Producer Chris Carter won’t disclose even a teaser plot point, so we’re left to imagine what Scully and partner Fox Mulder will do in lieu of tracking down ET.
It’s a pity that at this juncture the alien conspiracy thing seems to have exhausted its dramatic appeal — just as more and more evidence leaks out that its premise, or something like it, may well be true.
Since the demise of the X-Files TV show, the Internet has muscled up exponentially as a way for ufologists to collect, exchange and compare credible data.
While hoaxes and BS still abound in cyberspace, some Web sites have emerged as reputable information powerhouses, allowing some of us to mine nuggets of truth from the mythological mire.
The general public, distracted by environmental and economic cataclysms, may not be aware that UFO experiencers have by now come to include the most reputable members of human society.
The late Mercury Astronaut Gordon Cooper, for example, made the situation plain both in his autobiography and in an address before the United Nations.
While a jet fighter pilot in Germany during the early days of the Cold War, Cooper said he saw numerous disks flying in formation.
He claimed they hit near supersonic speed, then hung turns so sharp no human being could possibly have endured the G-forces.
Apollo astronauts, meanwhile, have been publicly coy, but confidentially frank, in addressing reports that lunar-based ETs warned them away from further moon exploration.
The warning supposedly came after the astronauts observed huge alien spacecraft on the lunar surface, as well as the remnants of a domed city there.
The UFO Casebook Web site is only one of many sources that quote Apollo Astronaut Neil Armstrong owning up to the grim reality of an ET moon base.
“I can’t go into details, except to say that their ships were far superior to ours, both in size and technology. Boy, were they big, and menacing,” Armstrong is reported to have confided after a NASA symposium.
Another Apollo Astronaut Edgar Mitchell has been more forthright, regularly lecturing these days at UFO conventions.
The St. Petersburg Times recently quoted him saying this about the recovery of dead ETs: “A few insiders know the truth ... and are studying the bodies that have been discovered.”
Surveys show most people figure, oh well, maybe we have hosted ET visitations. But what’s the big deal?
Outside of anal probing a few rubes here and there, the ETs don’t seem to be conducting major mischief, such as an invasion. Then, too, there’re those who see the ET presence as a good thing.
Dr. Steven Greer, a new-age ufologist, sees visiting space aliens as our spiritual brothers. Through his “Disclosure Project,” Greer is lobbying hard to have the government reveal what he assumes will be a beneficent ET reality.
But then there are guys like ex-CIA pilot John Lear — a buddy of controversial Area 51 whistleblower Bob Lazar — who espouses the more dire aspect of the X-Files premise.
That scenario, he says, intensified in the ’60s, when our top people in the secret Majestic 12 group realized to their horror that the greys/lizard alien coalition had welched on a deal it had previously struck with us.
Turns out, the aliens were — and are — abducting way more people than agreed upon, while providing only some of the ultra-high tech toys they promised.
As to why they’re here, Lear offers a plausible answer. The “ugly little creatures shaped like preying mantises (greys),” writes Lear, adding that they have suffered a genetic disorder because of nuclear war somewhere in their billion years of history. Either that, or they’ve begun an evolutionary backslide.
In the long term, Lear writes, they want to plant their seed in us by creating hybrid human/alien specimens. In the short term, they need to absorb us as food.
“In order to sustain themselves they use an enzyme or hormonal secretion obtained from the tissue that they extract from humans and animals,” Lear writes.
The secretions, he says, are mixed with hydrogen peroxide and applied to skin surface as an ointment. They also bathe in this unholy brew.
Fortunately, the hemoglobin in cattle is similar to that in humans and often a cow will suffice (hence the highly publicized cattle mutilations).
But sometimes, aliens apparently find themselves asking, “Where’s the beef?” And so, writes Lear, “it became obvious that some of the nation’s missing children had been used for secretions and other parts required by the aliens.”
One suspected human mutilation involved Sgt. Jonathan P. Louotte, who was found dead after a UFO sighting at the White Sands Missile Test Range in 1956.
Louotte suffered removal of his genitals, as well as the coring out of his rectum all the way up to the colon. His eyes, tongue and throat had been excised with a laser’s precision.
Rarely in these cases is any blood left behind.
The Web site “Our Government Sold Us to the Greys” reports that in another such case an autopsy concluded the victim ultimately died of a heart attack induced by extreme pain. And that means “this victim was almost certainly alive while the systemic mutilation took place.”
Space aliens. If they’re here, and that seems likely, what’re the chances of them eventually causing us grief?
The answer to that question, ironically, comes as another question: When in our human history has any race, armed with absolute power over another, ever behaved itself?
Meanwhile, at the movies, we may not get to see Mulder and Scully kick alien ass. But maybe, and finally, we’ll see Mulder get a piece of Scully’s.
(Got a story of high strangeness? Give Rick Murray a holler at rmurray@trentonian.com or 609-989-7800, ext. 292.)