F. Ray Turner Oak Park Illinois 'Saucer-Hit-A-Fig-Ash-Tree' Case and the November 1950 Anonymous Threat Note (July 20, 1950)

Summary

On the morning of July 20, 1950 at 6:29 AM, F. Ray Turner of 217 S. Maple Avenue, Oak Park, Illinois, was about to start his work-truck (parked overnight under a fig ash tree) when he heard “a whistly sound” and observed a flying saucer strike the top of the fig ash tree above his vehicle. Turner immediately abandoned the truck, called the Oak Park Illinois Police Department, and four months later (approximately November 1950) found a two-page handwritten anonymous note in his truck seat when he was called out on a 9:30 PM job. The note, in Turner’s recollection, read approximately:

“Leave the cote that is a peal of paper that was in the saucer leave it out where the Right Party can git.” (page 1 of the anonymous note)

“the saucer was not ment for you that is a coade of make of big city an atomic plant that [illegible] Bisness dont mis.” (page 2 of the anonymous note)

Turner reported the case in his own handwritten letter to FBI dated July 20/50 (which he labeled at the top as “NR 8-11-50,” apparently a contemporaneous file annotation), with copy “sent to the Republic Partie at Washington D.C.” Filed at FBI Section 5 page 203 on August 1, 1950, FBI serial 62-83894-2 (or partial OCR variant).

Turner’s case is structurally one of the most unusual single-witness reports in the entire 62-HQ-83894 archive:

1. A self-described physical-event-with-witnessable-mechanism — a saucer “hit the top” of a specific tree (a fig ash above his parked truck), making “a whistly sound” before impact. The witness fled the area immediately rather than investigate. The case is missing the post-event physical-evidence-recovery loop that makes most physical-impact UAP cases substantive (see Houston/Noack 1948, Philadelphia soap-suds disc 1950).
2. An anonymous threat-letter-with-coded-content received four months later in the witness’s own truck — referencing “a peal of paper that was in the saucer,” directing the witness to leave the paper “where the Right Party can git,” and framing the saucer as “a coade of make of big city an atomic plant” (a code, of make, of big city and atomic plant). The threat-letter mechanism mirrors the popular post-Roswell-popular-cultural Men-in-Black mythology before that mythology was canonized — Turner’s anonymous-letter-found-in-truck-seat is documented six months before Albert K. Bender’s 1953 founding of the International Flying Saucer Bureau and 12 years before Bender’s Flying Saucers and the Three Men (1962).
3. Witness’s distribution to two political channels: FBI plus “the Republic Partie at Washington D.C.” Turner sent the case to both the federal investigative agency and the Republican Party national headquarters, framing the case as politically actionable.
4. The witness’s framing: “If that would been Looked in to then it might been a grate iger now” (page 205) — an explicit retrospective regret-not-investigated framing on the file.

Turner’s letter is preserved in primary form on three pages (203 = letter body, 204 = blank lined notebook paper continuation with FBI receipt stamps, 205 = closing signature with his street address). The handwriting and grammar suggest a low-formal-education witness; the Bureau’s filing protocol nonetheless preserved the letter unaltered with full FBI serial, RECORDED stamp, and August 1 1950 receipt timestamp.

The case is the earliest in-archive primary-source documentation of a “saucer-strikes-physical-object-and-anonymous-threat-letter-follows” case structure in the 62-HQ-83894 archive. It precedes the Pascagoula case (1973) by 23 years and the Philadelphia soap-suds disc case (September 26, 1950, philadelphia-1950-soap-suds-disc) by nine weeks. Turner’s case has no in-archive follow-up — the Bureau’s standing post-Bureau-Bulletin-#57 (October 1947) protocol of defer-to-Air-Force on UAP cases applied; no SAC-Chicago investigation of the Oak Park location, no Air Force handoff documented, no resolution disposition logged.

What the Three Pages Document

Page 203 — The Sighting Narrative and the Anonymous Note (July 20, 1950)

Verbatim transcription (preserving Turner’s spelling and grammar):

“To the F.B.I. July 20/50 NR 8-11-50

Dear Sirs The answer to your letter as near as I know This letter is to the best of my Remary about the [FLYING SAUCERS] Saucer that hit the top of a fig ash tree my truck park under it at night. When I came to the to go to work I heard a whistly sound just as I was start to git in the truck and then the saucer hit the top of the tree and I taken of and left the truck and call Oak Park Ill Police at July 20/50 at 6.29 am oclock. Then a four a month later I found a note in the truck seat when I was call out on a trip at 930 oclock at night I taken to the police here. as near as I can Rember it said Leave the cote that is a peal of paper that was in the saucer leave it out where the Right Party can git. on the secon paper it said the saucer was not ment for you that is a coade of make of big city an atomic plant that [illegible] Bisness dont mis.”

The “NR 8-11-50” annotation at the top is a Bureau internal-file-reference notation suggesting the letter cross-references an FBI letter dated August 11, 1950 to Turner — implying the Bureau had previously corresponded with Turner about the case (presumably an earlier intake form-reply).

The “[FLYING SAUCERS]” handwritten annotation is the Bureau’s own classification marker on Turner’s letter.

Page 204 — Continuation Page (Blank Lined Notebook Paper with Receipt Stamps)

Page 204 is a blank sheet of lined notebook paper that Turner included as a separator between the body of the letter (page 203) and the closing (page 205). It contains only FBI receipt stamps:

“RECEIVED / RECORDS SEC. / JUL 24 2 52 PM ‘50”

“MR. JONES. / RECEIVED / FBI / JUL 24 4 19 PM ‘50 / U.S. DEPT OF JUSTICE”

So the Bureau received Turner’s letter on July 24, 1950 — four days after the original July 20 sighting and four months after Turner’s anonymous-threat-letter discovery (per the witness’s own narrative).

Page 205 — Closing Statement, Distribution, and Witness Address

Verbatim:

“If that would been Looked in to then it might been a grate iger now I sent it to the Republic Partie at Washington D.C.

F Ray Turner, 217 S maple ave, Oak Park Ill.”

Turner’s framing — “If that would been Looked in to then it might been a grate iger now” — reads as a retrospective regret-not-investigated framing. The “grate iger” is likely Turner’s misspelling of “great eager” or “great inquiry” or possibly “great danger” — without disambiguation in the OCR.

Turner’s distribution: FBI plus “the Republic Partie at Washington D.C.” — meaning the Republican National Committee (the Republican Party’s national headquarters in Washington, D.C., which in 1950 was at 1625 Eye Street NW). Turner framed the case as politically actionable — sending it to the opposition party’s national HQ alongside the federal investigative agency.

Why This Matters

1. The earliest in-archive primary-source documentation of a “saucer-strikes-physical-object-and-anonymous-threat-letter-follows” case structure in the 62-HQ-83894 archive. Predates Pascagoula (1973) by 23 years and the Philadelphia soap-suds disc case (philadelphia-1950-soap-suds-disc) by nine weeks.

2. The anonymous-threat-letter-found-in-truck-seat element predates the canonical Men-in-Black mythology by 12 years. Turner’s anonymous note (received approximately November 1950, four months after July sighting) directing him to “leave the cote where the Right Party can git” predates Albert K. Bender’s Flying Saucers and the Three Men (1962) by 12 years and Bender’s 1953 founding of the International Flying Saucer Bureau by ~3 years. Turner’s case is a primary-source proto-MIB artifact in the FBI archive, before the MIB mythology was institutionally canonized.

3. The “atomic plant” code-target framing is operationally striking. “the saucer was not ment for you that is a coade of make of big city an atomic plant that [illegible] Bisness dont mis.” Turner’s threat-letter framing reads the saucer-strike as an atomic-plant-related code-delivery missed-target. The 1950 atomic-plant context is loaded — the Bureau case file simultaneously contains the Stuart Adcock Oak Ridge radar case (March 1950, pass 13), the Pervier Tulsa atomic-plant-period case (February 1950, pass 16), the Oak Ridge Gasser Presley NEPA case (1947-1949, pass 8), and the Twin Falls Hedstrom case (1947, pass 24) — all atomic-installation-adjacent UAP cases. Turner’s anonymous-threat-letter framing connects to that pattern in primary form.

4. Witness’s dual distribution to FBI + Republican National Committee. Turner’s framing of the case as politically actionable (rather than just security-relevant) is unusual in the 1950 civilian-witness corpus. Most civilian correspondents (per pass-22 civilian-correspondence master page) wrote only to FBI/Hoover. Turner’s parallel submission to the RNC at Washington D.C. places his case in a politically-framed civilian-correspondence sub-pattern that the Bureau’s standing protocol did not address.

5. The “NR 8-11-50” file-reference annotation suggests prior Bureau correspondence with Turner. Turner’s letter opens “Dear Sirs / The answer to your letter as near as I know / This letter is to the best of my Remary.” The “NR 8-11-50” marker likely cross-references an FBI letter dated August 11, 1950 (which would be three weeks AFTER Turner’s July 20 letter — chronologically inconsistent unless “8-11-50” is a typo for “7-11-50” or an earlier-date reference). The Bureau-Turner correspondence chain is partially preserved.

6. The “fig ash tree” detail is botanically specific. A “fig ash” is presumably the witness’s term for a Common Ash (Fraxinus americana) or possibly a Fig Tree (Ficus carica) — the latter unusual for Oak Park, Illinois climate. The witness’s tree-species identification is otherwise unremarkable but adds to the case’s specific-physical-object-strike framing.

7. Bureau filing standard preserved Turner’s letter unaltered despite low-formal-education spelling and grammar. The case file shows the Bureau’s standing intake practice was to preserve civilian-witness letters as-received without editorial cleanup — Turner’s “Remary” (memory), “Republic Partie” (Republican Party), “coade” (code), “Bisness dont mis” (business don’t miss/mistake) all preserved in the case file. The Bureau’s documentation-discipline standard applied to all civilian intake regardless of witness education level.

8. No follow-up disposition logged. No SAC Chicago investigation memo. No Air Force handoff. No resolution. Turner’s case is in the Bureau record as intake-only with no analytical engagement — consistent with the standing post-Bureau-Bulletin-#57 (October 1, 1947) defer-to-Air-Force protocol but striking given the dual-channel-distribution element (FBI + RNC) that politically elevated the case.

Connections

• PURSUE full inventory
• philadelphia-1950-soap-suds-disc
• civilian-correspondence-hoover-pattern-1949-1950
• pervier-tulsa-fbi-agent-corroboration-1950
• stuart-adcock-oak-ridge-march-1950
• section-10-1966-1973-civilian-correspondent-cluster-post-blue-book
• PURSUE program
• AARO
• fbi

Open Questions

• F. Ray Turner biographical research target. 217 S. Maple Avenue, Oak Park, Illinois (1950). Address verifiable in 1950 Oak Park real-estate records. Turner’s occupation (truck driver per the “out on a trip at 930 oclock at night” detail) and 1950-period employer are not preserved.
• The Oak Park Illinois Police Department incident report on July 20, 1950 6:29 AM. Turner stated he called Oak Park PD at the time of the incident. Oak Park PD historical-records search target.
• The Republican National Committee’s response (if any) to Turner’s parallel submission. RNC archives 1950-period UAP-correspondence (likely held at the National Archives’ Republican Party records or at Eisenhower Library) cross-search target.
• The “NR 8-11-50” Bureau-internal file-reference cross-correspondence chain. Turner’s letter references prior Bureau correspondence; the prior letter is not preserved at this Section 5 location. Cross-section search target.
• The substantive content of the anonymous threat-letter Turner discovered in his truck seat ~November 1950. Turner reported the letter “as near as I can Rember” — paraphrased rather than reproduced verbatim. Whether the original anonymous note was filed by Oak Park PD (Turner mentioned “I taken to the police here”) and whether Oak Park PD forwarded it to FBI or kept it locally is not documented in this Section 5 read.
• The “coade of make of big city an atomic plant” framing. The witness’s interpretation of the anonymous-note language is preserved verbatim but the substantive meaning of the “code” reference is unclear — unclear whether the witness was reporting the note’s actual content or his own paraphrase/misreading.
• The “fig ash tree” species identification. Common Ash (Fraxinus americana), a fig tree (Ficus carica), or witness’s idiosyncratic tree-naming. Oak Park 1950-period botanical-record cross-search target.
• Whether any Bureau-internal SAC Chicago follow-up exists. The Section 5 page 203-205 cluster has no SAC Chicago investigation memo. SAC Chicago’s July-November 1950 outgoing-correspondence search target across other 62-HQ-83894 sections.

Quotes Worth Keeping

“I heard a whistly sound just as I was start to git in the truck and then the saucer hit the top of the tree and I taken of and left the truck and call Oak Park Ill Police at July 20/50 at 6.29 am oclock.” — F. Ray Turner to FBI, July 20, 1950, Section 5 page 203. Witness’s own first-person narrative of the saucer-strikes-fig-ash-tree event over his parked truck. The whistly-sound + tree-strike + abandonment-flee + immediate-Police-call sequence preserved verbatim.

“Then a four a month later I found a note in the truck seat when I was call out on a trip at 930 oclock at night I taken to the police here.” — F. Ray Turner, ibid. The anonymous-threat-letter discovery four months after the July sighting — late-night discovery in the truck seat, immediate handoff to local police. The earliest in-archive proto-MIB-mythology artifact in the FBI 62-HQ-83894 archive — predating Albert K. Bender’s Flying Saucers and the Three Men (1962) by 12 years.

“Leave the cote that is a peal of paper that was in the saucer leave it out where the Right Party can git.” — Turner’s recollection of the first page of the anonymous threat-note, July 1950, Section 5 page 203. The “Right Party can git” framing places the saucer-strike as an unintended-recipient delivery — a code-and-courier framing that recurs in later UAP-mythology.

“on the secon paper it said the saucer was not ment for you that is a coade of make of big city an atomic plant that [illegible] Bisness dont mis.” — Turner’s recollection of the second page of the anonymous threat-note, ibid., Section 5 page 203. The “coade of make of big city an atomic plant” framing places the saucer-strike in the 1950 atomic-plant-target ecosystem alongside the Stuart Adcock Oak Ridge radar case (pass 13), the Pervier Tulsa atomic-plant-period case (pass 16), and the Oak Ridge Gasser Presley NEPA case (pass 8).

“If that would been Looked in to then it might been a grate iger now I sent it to the Republic Partie at Washington D.C.” — F. Ray Turner, July 20, 1950, Section 5 page 205. Witness’s retrospective regret-not-investigated framing plus dual-channel distribution (FBI + Republican National Committee). The political-actionability framing places Turner’s case in a 1950 civilian-correspondence sub-pattern that the Bureau’s standing form-reply protocol did not address.