Jesse Marcel Jr., handled Roswell debris

HELENA, Mont.

- Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr., who said he handled debris from the 1947 crash of an unidentified flying object near Roswell, N.M., died at age 76.

Denice Marcel said her father was found dead at his home in Helena on Saturday, less than two months after making his last trip to Roswell. He had been reading a book about UFOs.

Over the past 35 years, Marcel Jr. appeared on TV shows, documentaries and radio shows; was interviewed for magazine articles and books; and traveled the world lecturing about his experiences in Roswell.

Marcel's father was an Air Force intelligence officer and reportedly the first military officer to investigate the wreckage in early July 1947. Marcel Jr. said he was 10 when his father brought home some of the debris, woke him up in the middle of the night and said the boy needed to look at it because it was something he would never see again.

His father maintained the debris "was not of this Earth," Linda Marcel said. "They looked through the pieces, tried to make sense of it."

The item that Marcel Jr. said fascinated him the most was a small beam with some sort of purple-hued hieroglyphics on it, she said.