A number of skeptical investigators, including Philip J. Klass, Peter Brookesmith, Steuart Campbell, Curt Collins, and Brian Dunning, questioned the details and overall authenticity of the incident.
They later said that, about 9 p.m., while driving on an isolated two-lane road in dense woods, they saw a light above some trees and that they first thought it was an airplane approaching Houston Intercontinental Airport (about 35 miles [56 km] away) and gave it little notice.
[3] He went on: "The object, intensely bright and a dull metallic silver, was shaped like a huge upright diamond, about the size of the Dayton water tower,[4] with its top and bottom cut off so that they were flat rather than pointed.
Small blue lights ringed the center, and periodically over the next few minutes flames shot out of the bottom, flaring outward to create the effect of a large cone.
But as published in Skeptical Inquirer, Robert Sheaffer has concluded that despite media reports to the contrary, "neither Cash, nor Landrum, nor Schuessler had any idea [of precisely] where this incident actually took place!
[9] However, Brad Sparks contends that, although the symptoms were somewhat similar to those caused by ionizing radiation, the rapidity of onset was only consistent with a massive dose that would have meant certain death in a few days.
[10] In Gary P. Posner's contributed Cash-Landrum chapter for the 60-authored compendium titled The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony,[2] he agrees with Sparks about ionizing radiation, but concludes that there are "myriad reasons for skepticism of virtually every aspect" of this case.
However, this confrontation was born of confusion,[15] as the pilot's incident, though also involving a reported unidentified craft, had apparently taken place in July 1977, more than three years prior to Landrum's.
In May 1982, UFO investigators interviewed a Dayton police officer, Patrolman Lamar Walker, and his wife Marie, who claimed to have seen approximately 12 Chinook-type helicopters the same night and near the same area in which the Cash-Landrum event allegedly occurred.
Senators, Lloyd Bentsen and John Tower, who suggested that the witnesses file a complaint with the Judge Advocate Claims office at Bergstrom Air Force Base.
In August 1981, Cash, Landrum, and Colby were interviewed at length by personnel at Bergstrom Air Force Base, and were told that they should hire a lawyer, and seek financial compensation for their injuries.
[19] Persuaded by their testimony (and other evidence) that no agency of the U.S. government possessed any such UFO, and that no military personnel had operated any of the reported helicopters, a U.S. District Court judge dismissed their case on August 21, 1986.
[20] The incident received coverage in both the tabloid press and mainstream media: Betty Joyce Cash (née Collins) died aged 69 on December 29, 1998,[22] 18 years to the day after her claimed close encounter.
In 1982, Lt. Col. George Sarran of the Office of the Inspector General of the United States Army began the only thorough formal governmental investigation into the supposed UFO encounter.
(quoted in Clark, 177) In 1994, UFO skeptic Steuart Campbell suggested that the witnesses may have observed a mirage of the star Canopus, which lay exactly in line with the road.
[citation needed] And skeptical British ufologist Peter Brookesmith writes, "Sceptics have always asked a blunt and fundamental question: What was the trio's state of health before their alleged encounter?
"[29] Brookesmith also wrote: "To ufologists, the case is perhaps the most baffling and frustrating of modern times, for what started with solid evidence for a notoriously elusive phenomenon petered out in a maze of dead ends, denials, and perhaps even official deviousness.
[30] Dunning concludes: In my experience, it's completely plausible that Cash and Landrum wrongly, but honestly, placed the blame for their health problems onto whatever they saw; and even pushed the truth a bit trying to get the Air Force to pay for it.