Mableton, Georgia: Shaved monkey presented as dead flying saucer occupant, hoax admitted
On the evening of July 7, 1953, Atlanta barber Edward Watters and two friends presented a shaved, tailless monkey to a Cobb County policeman on US Highway 78 near Leland (now Mableton), Georgia, claiming it was an occupant of a flying saucer; the FBI and Dobbins AFB were alerted before Emory University identified the animal and Watters admitted the hoax.
Background
In the evening, Edward Watters, a barber from Atlanta, Georgia, bought a monkey from a pet shop, shaved and killed it, and cut off its tail. With two friends, Tom Wilson and Arnold Payne, he took it to US Highway 78 near Leland (now part of Mableton), Georgia, and waited for the first car to stop; the driver turned out to be Cobb County policeman Sherley Brown. They told him they had seen a flying saucer and accidentally killed one of its occupants. The men brought the dead animal to the Atlanta Constitution, where reporter Thomas McRae notified the FBI, which alerted the Air Force at Dobbins AFB in Marietta. At Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, anatomy professor Marion Hines identified the animal as a shaved Capuchin monkey. Watters admitted the hoax and was fined $40 by a judge; records on the case are part of the PURSUE release. The account follows the entry in George M. Eberhart's chronology UFOs and Intelligence (CUFOS) and the sources cited there; it is not an independent determination by From Beyond Space.