Deseret News Archives, Salt Lake City
Friday, November 14, 1997
UFO enthusiast in N.Y. found unfit to stand trial

John Ford, a UFO enthusiast accused of masterminding a plot to
assassinate three political officials in Suffolk County, was found unfit
to stand trial on Thursday. A judge ordered that he be sent to an upstate
psychiatric institution for at least a year.

Ford, 48, was arrested a year ago on charges that he was scheming to kill
the three officials by putting radium in their cars and lacing their
toothpaste with radioactive metal.

Investigators said Ford wanted the three officials killed because he
believed they were interfering with his efforts to contact aliens from
outer space. Ford's friends said he believed that visitors from outer
space had crash-landed on Long Island and that government officials were
keeping the aliens at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton and had
created diversionary fires in Long Island's Pine Barrens to conceal the
crash landings.