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NARRATOR: There is a hidden side of America,
secret, mysterious, forbidden, where nothing is what it seems.
A determined assassin fires a single bullet
and silences one of America's most uplifting voices.
Martin Luther King was shot
and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
[ Screaming ]
NARRATOR: The FBI fingered a small-time hood
named James Earl Ray.
Anybody who looks at the evidence is gonna say,
"Yeah, he was the shooter."
NARRATOR: But was Ray just the fall guy
for a well-planned conspiracy?
There is no possibility that James Earl Ray
was the assassin of Martin Luther King.
NARRATOR: At the scene of the ***,
test the official account and the conspiracy theory.
He set the barrel right here on the sill to take the shot.
NARRATOR: And then an unprecedented live-fire test...
Have your feet up against the top.
That gives you some stability.
NARRATOR: ...that may finally uncover the truth.
Something strange is in the skies above Marfa, Texas.
They're out there.
It scared me really bad.
NARRATOR: There's lots of theories
but no explanation.
DESCHAINE: Nobody really knows what they are.
Our investigators hunt the Marfa lights like no one before...
using a cutting-edge thermal imaging system
with a range of 10 miles.
If the lights show up, we're ready for them.
NARRATOR: It takes two days of waiting.
This may be the first bona fide Marfa light of the evening.
NARRATOR: But the lights show up and are wildly unpredictable.
Where did it go?
The mysterious lights of Marfa, Texas.
How will you explain them?
What if the Marfa lights could be some kind of living thing?
It's time to look behind the secrets,
mysteries, and conspiracies.
This is "America Declassified."
-- Captions by VITAC --
Closed Captions provided by Scripps Networks, LLC.
Memphis, Tennessee.
Home to Elvis, the blues,
and one of the most tragic events in American history.
I have some very sad news for all of you,
and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens
and people who love peace all over the world,
and that is that Martin Luther King was shot
and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
[ Screaming ]
NARRATOR: In April of 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King
and leaders of the civil rights movement
came to Memphis to march in support
of striking sanitation workers.
Dr. King and the others
were meeting at the downtown Lorraine Motel in room 306.
Just before 6:00 P.M., Dr. King walked outside onto the balcony.
He looked over the railing
to talk to someone down on the ground floor.
Suddenly...
[ Gunshot ]
...a shot ripped through the air, striking King in the head.
REPORTER: An assassin's bullet felled King
as he stood on the balcony of this motel.
NARRATOR: Reverend Samuel "Billy" Kyles
was on the balcony when King was struck down.
We heard what sounded just like a firecracker --
loud, a real loud shot.
And I heard somebody holler, "Oh, lord!"
NARRATOR: Today, the memories of that tragic night
are seared in Reverend Kyles' mind.
That bullet destroyed half of his face.
He wasn't able to say anything.
Half of his face was gone.
Within days, the FBI named James Earl Ray as the killer.
The bureau presented a bundle of physical evidence
they say Ray dropped as he fled the crime scene.
The most promising evidence inside the bundle --
a rifle spotted with Ray's fingerprints.
I think that anybody who looks at the evidence is gonna say,
"Yeah, he was the shooter."
NARRATOR: However, ballistics tests
were unable to tie that rifle
to the bullet that killed Dr. King.
According to the FBI, Ray fired the fatal shot
from the second-story bathroom window of a boarding house,
which overlooks the Lorraine Motel across the street.
Today, the boarding house and the motel
have been preserved
as part of the National Civil Rights Museum.
But many still doubt the FBI's official version of events.
Eyewitnesses say they saw a puff of smoke
and someone fleeing from another area
behind a cluster of brush below the bathroom window.
Those reports fueled beliefs in a conspiracy,
perhaps even involving the U.S. government.
This scenario has Ray as an unknowing participant
but not the shooter.
PEPPER: In my view, there is no possibility
that James Earl Ray was the assassin of Martin Luther King.
NARRATOR: Former CIA officer Mike Baker
has come to the scene of the crime
to investigate the assassination.
He's been given unprecedented access
to conduct a test that may shed light on that fatal shot.
One fact is not in dispute.
On the day of the assassination,
James Earl Ray was staying at the boarding house
across the street from the Lorraine Motel.
And this is the room that James Earl Ray checked into
on the 4th of April.
Over the previous couple of days,
there had been news reports stating that Dr. King
was staying at the Lorraine Motel.
And, in fact, the night before he checked in here,
there was a news cast that showed Dr. King
clearly going in, out of room 306.
Now, Ray would have looked out that window and realized that,
while he did have a view of the Lorraine Motel,
it wasn't a perfect view.
It wouldn't have taken him very long to realize
that there was a much better opportunity.
And it is right here in this communal bathroom
of the rooming house,
where James Earl Ray would have looked out that window
and realized he had a very good opportunity.
NARRATOR: At the time of the assassination,
James Earl Ray was a prison escapee.
He had a long rap sheet that included burglary, theft,
and armed robbery.
But did he have a motive to kill King?
Jerry Ray is James Earl's brother.
He robbed several places.
That wasn't the only place he robbed.
But he never shot nobody or nothing like that.
He's not a violent person.
He's not a racial person.
PEPPER: The government was never able to even assert or prove
ascribing a motive to James Earl Ray.
NARRATOR: In 1999, more than 30 years after the assassination,
attorney William Pepper convinced a civil-case jury
that sinister forces within the government
were responsible for King's assassination
and that James Earl Ray was simply a fall guy.
Pepper believes the government's motive was twofold --
to prevent King's planned Poor Man's March on Washington
and to silence him
for his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War.
So, the big picture is that the government
effectively by undertaking the removal of Martin King
as a last resort --
and political assassinations are usually a last resort --
as a last resort,
save the country probably from what would have been
enormous disruption, if not revolution.
NARRATOR: We now know that in 1963,
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover initiated surveillance
of King's every move
and eavesdropping on his phone conversations.
You know, they say every conspiracy theory
has a kernel of truth that you can point to,
and in this case, the FBI had for years
been trying to get King --
not kill him, but to discredit him, to embarrass him.
They had him under surveillance.
They did a lot of stuff, wiretapping that was illegal.
NARRATOR: But what about the rifle with Ray's fingerprints?
Ray claimed there was a man named Raoul
who responsible for planting the evidence against him.
James became convinced that he was being set up by Raoul.
NARRATOR: No one knows the true identity
of the mysterious Raoul.
But the question at the heart of the conspiracy is,
where did the bullet come from?
In this iconic photo, taken just seconds after King was shot,
the people are presumably pointing towards the shooter,
but exactly where that is has never been determined.
William Pepper says eyewitnesses reported seeing a puff of smoke
and someone running from an area behind Jim's Grill,
a local restaurant on the ground floor
of the boarding house where Ray was staying.
Mr. Pepper, we're out here behind what was at the time
the rooming house where James Earl Ray checked in
on the 4th of April.
Now, if you could,
walk me through what you think happened that day.
What took place out here and where?
The people who were involved in the actual assassination
took up positions here.
The bushes themselves actually were straggling on this area,
but as you move in this direction,
they got very, very heavy and very thick.
And so, they took up their positions
virtually right around this area here.
Photos from that day clearly show the bushes,
located behind the boarding house,
with a clear view of the motel balcony.
How many people were out here, do you believe?
So far as we've been able to determine,
there were three people out here.
One of them being the owner of Jim's Grill.
One of them being the owner of Jim's Grill.
The other being a spotter, and the third being a shooter.
And who do you believe the shooter was?
I can't tell you that.
Because you don't know?
No. I believe I know.
But I can't tell you that
because if I reveal that at this point in time,
it's going to put other lives in danger
who have given me information,
and the information I have could only have come
from particular other witnesses, so, Mike, I'm sorry.
I can't do that
'cause I think I owe it to them not to do that.
Do you think there ever will be a time
when you reveal the name of who you believe the shooter to be?
I believe that day will come.
It's clear now that there are two obvious schools of thought.
One's the official report.
It was James Earl Ray, shooting from
the second-story bathroom window of the rooming house.
The second being the conspiracy.
This shooter was behind Jim's Grill,
taking a shot from the ground.
What I need to do now is actually test both theories.
NARRATOR: Former CIA officer Mike Baker
is in Memphis, Tennessee,
where the Reverend Martin Luther King
was assassinated in 1968.
A petty criminal named James Earl Ray
was convicted of the killing,
but Mike's investigating persistent allegations
that King was actually the victim
of a well-planned conspiracy.
King's autopsy report shows that the fatal bullet
traveled on a downward trajectory.
Mike obtained rare access to the *** scene to investigate.
He called veteran surveyor Jack McAdoo
to determine the trajectory of two shots --
the one Ray supposedly fired from the bathroom window
and the alleged conspiracy shot from the brush area.
The fatal bullet hit King here on the motel balcony.
That's where Mike and Jack start.
All right, Jack, what are we doing here?
Well, we're gonna take this surveyor's rod.
I'm gonna attach it to the railing on the balcony here.
We'll adjust the height
to the approximate height of the point of impact.
Mm-hmm.
Mike and Jack run the string to the bathroom window,
where the FBI says Ray fired the shot.
It measures 207 feet from the impact point
and 18 1/2 feet above it.
According to official reports,
he set the barrel right here on the sill to take the shot.
NARRATOR: Next, Mike and Jack connect the string
from the balcony to the brush area.
All right, Jack, well, according to the conspiracy theory,
the actual gunman, who was taking a shot
from behind a row of bushes and scrub --
Where was that positioned?
Probably be in this general vicinity.
Okay, clearly overlooking the Lorraine Motel.
Mike's sniper experience helps him determine
where the conspiracy shooter may have positioned himself.
He's got to be worried about visibility.
He's also got to worry about some type of steady platform.
So he's not gonna be in a crouching position of some sort.
He doesn't know exactly when he's gonna be taking that shot,
so he's gonna steady himself,
and you have to assume he's somewhere along here
and in this position.
Let's go ahead and yeah.
Let's look at right about here.
Strings in place,
Mike can now compare the two trajectories
to where King was standing on the balcony.
He stopped here to exchange some conversation,
and as he was bending down,
at approximately 6:01, the shot was fired...
[ Gunshot ]
...hit the right jaw, went down through the neck,
severed the spinal cord,
and came to rest in the shoulder blade.
What we can clearly see from these setups
is that the shot fired from James Earl Ray,
allegedly, on that day from the bathroom window.
There's a significant drop down here to the point of impact.
The shot from the conspiracy position almost level.
NARRATOR: The experiment may suggest
that the shot came from the bathroom window above,
but King was looking down when he was hit,
which means a level shot
could look like it was coming from above.
You could have a straight-on gunshot at somebody,
but if they're bending forward,
it could look like it's going down
because of the way it goes through the body.
NARRATOR: In addition, William Pepper believes
he has a trump card to put the issue to rest --
the degree of difficulty behind the bathroom shot,
especially considering it was just one bullet
that killed King.
The idea of the bathroom shooting is just pure nonsense.
Tell me why.
If you ever got into that bathroom
and you tried to stand on that bathtub
and twist yourself in such a way
that you could actually get a shot out that window.
There was absolutely no possibility
that a sniper could have been in there plotting to shoot --
in a very convoluted way, by the way --
from the bathtub, which made a very difficult shot.
Those who knew James Earl Ray best
were unaware he had any marksmanship skills.
I don't know if, in the army,
if he took any courses on shooting or not.
I'm not sure.
I couldn't say, but he'd probably be an average shot.
NARRATOR: To assess the shot himself,
Mike takes one last look
from what would have been Ray's vantage point to his target.
All things being equal,
he's just got to worry about a couple of things in particular.
Can he get himself comfortable to take the shot?
Interestingly, police reports said
that there were scuff marks in the bathtub,
implying that James Earl Ray stood in the tub,
possibly to take the shot.
He may have actually sat or leaned against the tub
with his back against the wall, perhaps, to take the shot.
NARRATOR: Could James Earl Ray even have made the shot
that the FBI says he did?
To find out, Mike and Jack got access to a private farm
where they could fire live rounds.
Then they put their measurements to the test.
We've replicated the bathroom
with the dimensions of the walls, window, and bathtub
and lifted it up to the exact height
and angle between the bathroom window and the balcony.
We've also simulated the conspiracy shot.
Distance to balcony -- 128 feet.
Height differential -- none.
The trajectory is virtually level.
Because no weapon has ever been linked to the conspiracy theory,
Mike is using a Remington Gamemaster 30-06,
the same type of rifle the FBI claims Ray used in the shooting.
You can imagine the shooter
not really having a full understanding
as to when that target was coming out.
But at that moment, when he sees that door open,
the clock starts ticking, and he's just waiting.
He comes off safe.
He waits for that moment.
He acquires the target.
NARRATOR: It's a level trajectory with no obstructions,
an easy fatal shot.
But the bathroom shot has some challenges
that could have made things difficult for James Earl Ray.
BAKER: Your options are pretty limited.
You either have to bend down like this
and hope for the best,
or you try to sit on the edge of the tub.
But sitting on the edge of the tub, you're too far down here.
It's just not going to work.
So your next option
is to use what you've got to your advantage,
brace against the back wall,
have your feet up against the top.
That gives you some stability.
And then use this sill right here
as a stable platform to acquire your target.
And that only requires you to have to put that barrel out
a short distance out the window, again,
'cause you got to worry about your visibility.
NARRATOR: Do these constraints make it unlikely
that James Earl Ray could have made the shot,
making the conspiracy theory more likely?
BAKER: When the door of 306 opens,
Dr. King steps out,
James Earl Ray gets himself into position,
steadies himself, and prepares to take his shot.
NARRATOR: Former CIA officer Mike Baker
is in Memphis, Tennessee.
He'll re-create the shot the FBI says James Earl Ray took
to kill Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968.
He's replicated the bathroom as it was
when king was assassinated -- bathtub and all.
With all the obstacles in his way,
could Ray have actually made the shot?
BAKER: When the door of 306 opens,
Dr. King steps out,
James Earl Ray gets himself into position,
steadies himself, and prepares to take his shot.
Well, I have to admit, it was a more difficult shot
than I originally anticipated when I was there
in the rooming house looking at the actual bathroom.
NARRATOR: According to the FBI,
James Earl Ray was an average shot.
It's important to remember, again, that James Earl Ray,
as the alleged shooter on that day, only had one shot.
And then looking at how we did,
you can see that that would have done the job.
Now, it's more complicated than I would have thought,
and particularly the angle that he had to put himself at
and the position that he had to assume
in order to get that shot off,
but I think the one thing that we've discovered from this
is that on that day,
James Earl Ray could have made that shot
from that second-story bathroom window.
NARRATOR: Mike still has one last piece
of evidence to consider.
Remember this iconic photograph
taken just seconds after the shot was fired?
Whether the people were pointing towards Ray
or a still-unknown killer remains a mystery,
but Ray was convicted for the crime.
I can't say who killed King.
I can't say who did this, who did that.
But I know the fact that James Earl didn't do it.
NARRATOR: On March 25, 1998,
James Earl Ray gave his last known interview
to journalist Mike Vinson.
Ray was terminally ill.
He would die three weeks later.
This was his last chance to set the record straight.
He said that he did not kill Martin Luther King,
that he was a patsy.
Did he take some secrets to the ground with him?
I thoroughly believe he did,
but I do not think he was the trigger man.
NARRATOR: James Earl Ray died in this Tennessee prison
at the age of 70.
To the end, he steadfastly denied
he was the one who shot and killed Dr. Martin Luther King.
Was King's assassination a conspiracy,
one that may have involved U.S. government officials,
or was it simply the history-changing feat
of one lone gunman?
Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
I think that anybody who looks at the evidence is gonna say,
"Yeah, he was the shooter."
But where it's open to argument
is whether or not there was anybody else involved
or whether he was getting help from anybody else.
BAKER: I don't believe we actually will know for sure
that it was James Earl Ray absolutely 100%
and that if it wasn't a second shooter
or a conspiracy theory about a second shooter,
that there were other forces at play.
NARRATOR: We may never learn
the true story behind Dr. King's ***,
but the impact of his death
is still felt nearly half a century later.
BAKER: What is this, sir?
There was so much blood, we couldn't get it all up,
so we made this and made our own plaque
and let it make conversation.
What conversation does it have for you?
That, yes, you can kill the dreamer,
but, no, you cannot kill the dream.
The dream is still alive.
NARRATOR: This small Texas town has been filled with mystery
for more than a century.
Marfa, Texas, is some 60 miles from the Mexican border,
located in the Chihuahuan Desert.
The city was established in 1883,
but even before then,
there were sightings of a bizarre phenomenon
that came to be known as the Marfa lights.
Search the Internet for Marfa lights,
and this is what you see and hear
from people who've encountered them.
MAN: You're driving by.
You see an odd light that comes and goes.
It moves.
It fades in and out.
They would split.
They would go diagonally.
MAN: We got very close to it.
It was very large and very bright.
MAN: I thought I was all smart.
"Oh, yeah, they're, you know,
desert gas things, temperature inversions."
And I saw them.
I was like, "Man, I don't know what these are."
Oh, I have no idea.
NARRATOR: Marfa lights appear without warning
and with no observable pattern.
Explanations range from ghosts and UFOs
to a simple optical illusion.
But so far, nobody knows exactly what causes them.
UFO investigator Michael Parker
wants to try and solve the mystery.
I'm headed east into Marfa, Texas,
to see one of the most enduring mysteries of the southwest --
the Marfa lights.
People have been seeing the Marfa lights here
for over a hundred years.
There's a lot of different ideas as to what they are,
but they exist.
This is no urban legend. This is real.
The question is, what are the lights?
NARRATOR: Michael's first stop -- a briefing
with retired aerospace engineer James Bunnell.
He was part of the Cape Kennedy launch team
during the manned Apollo space flights.
I devoted over a decade to studying the lights.
Let's see. I started in 2001.
NARRATOR: James believes most Marfa lights
are probably unusual chemical fires fueled by plasma.
BUNNELL: When I say plasma,
I'm saying the lights that we see
are actually chemical lights, and the chemical --
It is burning the plasma as the source of this light.
NARRATOR: Lightning and sparks,
for example, are made of plasma.
So are stars, which makes plasma
the most common form of matter in the universe.
Michael will be exploring several Marfa light explanations
in addition to Bunnell's plasma theory.
PARKER: We're about nine miles east of Marfa right now,
headed out to the Marfa viewing lights platform.
I'm gonna go meet a guy, Scott Deschaine.
He's got some really interesting ideas about the Marfa lights.
Now, people have looked at the Marfa lights
from a lot of different angles,
but nobody really knows what they are.
What if the Marfa lights could be some kind
of previously undiscovered living thing?
What if there's some kind of bioluminescent organism
that moves across the desert at night
and then hunkers down during the day?
NARRATOR: A bioluminescent organism,
like a jellyfish, produces light through a chemical reaction.
Could the Marfa lights be some type
of undiscovered living organism in the sky?
You're talking about, first of all,
a species that's undiscovered.
It's bioluminescent,
which I've heard of in ocean-going creatures.
We're in a desert, and it's flying.
It is a lot.
But there's only one way to find out if it's a possibility,
and that's to get a good look at them.
To get a look at the Marfa lights,
Michael and Scott want to get close to where they appear,
but they're not going in alone.
They've recruited a fully mobile,
high-end infrared camera that can see in the dark.
The team has gained access to some highly restricted areas,
where the lights are known to appear.
Will these advantages
help them find the mysterious Marfa lights?
NARRATOR: UFO investigator Michael Parker
and his team are in Texas,
trying to solve the mystery of the Marfa lights.
They've got special access
to some restricted desert backcountry for their search.
The team plans to set up a base camp
several miles from the nearest highways.
Flir Systems is assisting the investigation
by rolling out some of the world's most advanced
thermal-imaging and stabilized camera systems.
No one has ever hunted the Marfa lights
with this kind of visual firepower.
Roy, tell me what we're looking at right now.
Well, on the top two screens here,
I've got a visible camera, similar to your movie cameras.
It's functioning in the visible spectrum,
like you're normally used to.
Over here, you'll see that we've got a thermal camera.
And the thermal camera
is picking up the heat signature only.
I can cheat a little
and make this a little bit easier for us to see.
The infrared camera will pick up anything giving off heat,
like these wild desert bores.
Roy, just say we saw a Marfa light
at a range of 10, 12, 15 miles.
Would you be able to catch that quick enough for us to see it?
Oh, absolutely.
The camera is capable of picking up a 6-foot man
out to 9, 10 miles.
Now, they're gonna be very small,
but I'm still gonna be able to detect his thermal signature
against the background.
Home base is established.
The Marfa lights are only visible at night,
but where do they come from?
According to Scott Deschaine, they may be living creatures
that stay in the ground during the day
and illuminate the sky at night.
That's the first theory the team explores.
David Williams manages a ranch
in an area where Marfa lights have been seen.
Could it support the kind of life-form Scott is looking for?
Wow!
What an amazing habitat.
In the middle of this wild desert,
you got this sanctuary here.
The crew pushes on further and explores a set of caves above.
Oh, that's a bone.
That looks like out of a cow or a calf.
Could that animal still be in here?
Anything's possible.
NARRATOR: Could this small oasis be a daytime home
for some luminous creatures?
While Scott still favors the Marfa light organism theory,
Michael wants to see if the lights may be caused
by the local geology.
So he brings in geoscientist Ben McGee.
Michael Parker brought me out to take a look at Mitchell Flats,
which is over my shoulder,
which is where the Marfa lights traditionally have been seen.
NARRATOR: First, Ben sets up a base camp of his own.
McGEE: What you're looking at here
is a light meteorology station,
or a met station, as we call it.
It's collecting temperature, relative humidity,
wind direction, and wind speed,
so together, this makes for a very baseline setup
and makes sure we get some good data to calibrate,
essentially, anything that we see out of the sky.
Understood.
Mysterious lights seem to show up
in geologically unstable areas, near fault zones, volcanos,
or regions with seismic activity.
Marfa, Texas, is surrounded by several fault lines
and two now-extinct volcanos.
The faults cut deep beneath the desert.
That geologic stress creates electrical energy,
which charges the air above.
According to Ben, if the charge gets too big,
it may be released in a sudden glow
that locals call Marfa lights.
Ben demonstrates on a small scale
how Marfa lights might be generated.
If you're running with the hypothesis
that Marfa lights are ionized gas,
this is what a Marfa light would look like --
this color.
Just like that.
But what if there's an explanation
for the lights that's so simple, it's embarrassing?
Some skeptics believe the Marfa lights
are merely car headlights on a distant road.
The base camp lies east of highway 67.
To the south is a tower with visible red warning lights.
If you look behind me,
you're going to see a radio tower beacon.
To the right of that radio tower,
you'll see a string of lights.
These white lights, many people believe, are Marfa lights.
We think they may be car headlights.
So, to test that,
we've got Ben in a car on that far horizon.
He's going to drive back towards us.
We're going to see if we can find his car
and see if that looks like a Marfa light.
McGEE: Hi, Mike, this is Ben.
Do you copy?
NARRATOR: Even though Ben is 10 miles away,
the team will use the thermal camera
to locate him on the other side of the desert.
Right here.
Ben, we see you loud and clear.
Copy that.
I can't tell you how unnerving that is,
considering how far away you are.
[ Chuckles ]
NARRATOR: With Ben and his car identified,
the headlight test can begin.
The results are startling.
Yes, Ben. This is Michael.
We are watching you on the monitor,
and you look like a Marfa light.
NARRATOR: UFO investigator Michael Parker
has led a research team
with a truck load of top technology to West Texas.
They'll attempt to solve the mystery of the Marfa lights.
They're testing a theory that the phenomenon is nothing more
than headlights on nearby highway 67.
Geoscientist Ben McGee is now driving on the highway.
How will his headlights look to the team at base camp?
McGEE: Standing by.
Yes, Ben. This is Michael.
Just come on in.
We are watching you on the monitor,
looking at the lights, and you look like a Marfa light.
DESCHAINE: This is a pretty good indication
that some of what people are calling Marfa lights
may be the car headlights on highway 67.
NARRATOR: But there have been reported sightings
of the Marfa lights since 1883,
before the automobile was invented.
So not all Marfa light sightings can be chalked up to headlights.
After the headlight test, the team at base camp
turns their cameras away from the highway
and towards the open desert, without roads.
If they film any sighting in this direction,
they'll have original footage of what is almost certainly
real Marfa lights.
PARKER: So, we just got the base camp set up.
Everybody's busy.
We're feeling good.
We're ready to do this. We've got the Flir truck up.
They've got the thermal lens.
It's gonna be very helpful tonight.
We've also got a super telephoto lens over my shoulder behind us.
If the lights show up,
we are gonna document it probably better
than it's ever been documented before.
So I'm excited. I hope they show up.
We're ready for them.
NARRATOR: The team waits...
and waits...
and waits.
But the Marfa lights never appear.
The team decides to suspend their search for the night.
Day number 2 -- time for a new approach.
Scott believes that if the Marfa lights are living creatures,
it's possible they can be lured out,
like moths to bright lights.
He and Dave Williams set up three beacons
several miles from base camp.
They will strobe at three different rhythms and colors --
amber, blue, and green.
Some bioluminescent organisms
use light to communicate or to protect themselves.
If the Marfa lights happen to be bioluminescent organisms,
we're gonna see if we can attract them
using these beacons.
Perfect.
At this point in the investigation,
we're inside the Flir truck.
I'm looking at the monitor with Roy.
We can see two of the first beacons
that Scott has put down there in the field with David.
Are we going up there? [ Laughs ]
So, that's sort of a hunting lodge of some kind.
Going to put a third beacon down,
which we are hopefully going to see in real time.
Scott has this idea that the bioluminescent creatures
might be attracted to light.
And hopefully, the lights will come to our lights.
See that?
There's the third strobe coming up.
PARKER: Michael for Scott.
Michael for Scott.
Seeing that loud and clear from up here.
That's great.
NARRATOR: Minutes after the final strobe is put into place,
Michael spots something in the distance.
You guys see that one?
That's something.
Where's Scott?
Scott needs to see this.
You can tell it's to the left.
I need you to come take a look at this.
Get a feed on this ASAP.
I don't know how long this is gonna last.
NARRATOR: It's night number two
for UFO investigator Michael Parker and his team.
They're hunkered down in the Texas desert,
searching for the mysterious and elusive Marfa lights.
To attract the lights,
they placed three blinking beacons
a few miles from base camp.
Within minutes, something unusual appears in the sky.
You guys see that one?
Where'd that come from?
Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.
Hold on.
Where's Scott? Scott needs to see this.
Now it's dimming.
The crew rushes into action.
Look how bright that is.
Then they discover something no one can explain.
There's something beside it now --
something very faint to its right.
These aren't headlights.
No roads run anywhere in this direction.
Could it be the real thing?
This may be the first bona fide Marfa light of the evening.
I'm glad the cameras can see it
because I'm having difficulty seeing it now.
Actually, it's separated into three little lights.
Dimmed considerably, Scott.
It was very bright earlier. It's come on.
It's gone off.
It's remained stationary the entire time.
NARRATOR: The light is suddenly gone.
Video playback may help the team
make sense of what they just saw.
That's the first shot.
Okay. It's got a little tail off to the right.
Okay, now it's blinking.
It's gonna go back here in a second.
Kind of disappeared on me.
Yeah.
It's gonna come back. There it is.
Now, it moved on me, so I had to move.
Well, this one was particularly conspicuous
because it's not pointed at what we think could be the highway.
Look at that.
Dave, what do you think that could be?
I don't know. That's really unusual.
You know, there's no cars out there.
There's no roads.
That's just wide-open country.
You know, you might actually have the Marfa lights here.
This is unusual.
It's incredible.
NARRATOR: This is it.
This is what the team came here to find.
Really strange.
In the Flir truck, Roy has just encountered something
even more strange close to the ground.
I was just watching here in the visible,
and then I came across this thermal signature here
that was just --
It caught my eye because you can see.
If you look everywhere else back here,
you don't see anything that's that bright.
The mysterious lights -- one large and several small --
are giving off heat, but why?
What's out in this direction?
Well, you know, there's some ranch houses out there,
but, you know, we're in such a drought right now,
nobody's gonna have a campfire going right now.
There's no explanation
for the cluster of heat-radiating lights.
And there's no explanation for what Roy sees next.
If a light shows up in one camera,
it should show up in the other.
However, when Roy spots a light
hovering just above the desert floor in the visible camera,
it doesn't follow that rule.
There's nothing in the thermal signature
that corresponds to this bright light
that, all of a sudden, as I was panning around,
this just caught my eye.
And now I've zoomed in on it, so it's scintillating.
Now where did it go?
Why did it...
Why did it fade like that?
And there it comes back again.
This is the same exact spot, what we're seeing here?
This is the thermal signature of that visible phenomena.
And I just can't explain why I can see it in the visible
and I can't see it in the thermal.
NARRATOR: This light -- whatever it is --
doesn't seem to be generating enough heat
to be picked up by a thermal camera.
What could that mean?
There is one phenomenon that we know of in nature,
repeatedly, of light that's generated
without generating heat, and that's bioluminescence.
While the bioluminescence itself wouldn't generate heat,
the organism taking advantage of the bioluminescence
probably would.
Ben believes geology may still play a role in what he just saw.
We know that there are lots of electrical currents
that are produced even with subtle changes
in the rock and ground water,
and there's a hot spring here, too.
So why not?
Maybe this is actually a place we can tap into
a rare conjunction of geology and meteorology
that's producing something unique.
The use of unprecedented technology
has only deepened the Marfa mystery.
But one fact is indisputable --
Our cameras captured several luminous objects
that everyone can see but no one can explain.
Going in, I was going, "No.
Come on. Marfa lights?"
But I can't describe that.
PARKER: Boys, I don't think we're gonna solve it tonight,
but this has been a good one.
Great work, gentlemen.
You did a fantastic job.
I came to Marfa hoping to witness the lights for myself.
And I'm convinced that I did.
But as far as getting me closer to knowing what they are,
I'm not sure we have that answer yet.
Maybe that's the way Marfa wants it.