Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret

Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret (2021), by Jacques Vallée and the journalist Paola Leopizzi Harris, tells the story of José Padilla and Reme Baca, who say that in August 1945, as boys of nine and seven, they found a crashed, avocado-shaped craft near San Antonio, New Mexico, not far from the Trinity atomic test site, saw small figures moving inside, and watched soldiers recover it. Vallée, long sceptical of crash-retrieval stories, presents it as a case that predates Roswell and deserves study.

The story first appeared in a local newspaper in 2003 and rests on the two men's memories, told decades later, with no documentary support. Critics have called it a hoax: Doug Johnson in a long, detailed online review, and Brian Dunning in a series of reports from 2023, who noted that Baca had earlier pitched a different crash story. In 2023 Vallée conceded that a man the witnesses said they saw entering the craft had in fact been serving with the Army in Europe at the time, though he still trusts Padilla's account. The book is testimony relayed by its authors.

Sources: Wikipedia — Trinity UFO case · Wikipedia — Jacques Vallée