Suzy (Jonathan Reed's dog)

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Suzy (Jonathan Reed's dog)

Suzy was, according to Jonathan Reed (legal name John Bradley Rutter), a seven-year-old Golden Retriever owned by the Seattle man at the center of the alleged Jonathan Reed forest incident, and the non-human intelligent being later called Freddie is said to have killed her on a hike of 15 October 1996 near Snoqualmie Pass in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state. By Reed's account Suzy ran ahead on the trail, grappled with the being, and was reduced to white ash with no remains; her death was the catalyst for the whole episode — what drove him to strike and incapacitate the being — and the same encounter produced his footage of a levitating obelisk and his recovery of the metallic Link bracelet.

Suzy's very existence is, however, disputed. Investigators with the Seattle UFO/Paranormal Group — who concluded that the wider case was a fabricated hoax — reported that Reed's long-term partner and a close friend each said he had never owned a dog and was allergic to animals, contradicting his testimony that Suzy had existed at all. Reed maintained that the dog was real, and photographs said to depict Suzy were later reported among his family's records, leaving the question of whether she ever existed bound up with whether the encounter happened as he described.

Background

Photograph said to show Suzy, the golden retriever Reed claimed to own and to have lost during his alleged October 1996 forest encounter.

Suzy was a seven-year-old golden retriever that Reed described as "very well-trained and obedient." On the November 11, 1998 Coast to Coast AM broadcast with Art Bell — the first interview Reed gave about the case, after researcher Robert Raith brought it to the program — Reed described Suzy as a regular hiking companion who ranged ahead of him on the trail, her barking shifting from a normal register to "terror or anger" when she met the being, then to howling as though she were being mauled.

The encounter and death

On 15 October 1996, Reed took Suzy on a day hike approximately 15 miles northeast of Snoqualmie Pass in the Cascade Mountains, at an elevation of about 5,000 feet. During the hike Suzy ran ahead barking and met the being Reed later named "Freddie." In the ODISEALINK documentary Reed described the first moment as ambiguous: his perception was that Suzy had bitten the being's arm, its skin-tight black suit — covering its hands, arms, legs, torso, and feet — appearing to extend as contact was made. When Reed crested the ridge, the being was vibrating rapidly — "like a paint shaker" — and Suzy appeared to be biting its forearm; Reed described watching the being grasp the dog's snout and tear her head. Reed yelled for Suzy to release her grip; the being turned its gaze to Reed and then back to the dog, and Suzy began to collapse inward: "The dog actually was sucked into itself. It started to literally implode." By Reed's description the being's suit extended a pseudopod-like appendage that seized Suzy, whose body creased, folded, and dissolved, leaving only white ash with no physical remains. Bell summarized the dissolution on air as "the alien is dead, your dog is dissolved in some way — I'll use the word dissolved — I don't know if that's proper, but gone."

Recounting the episode on a December 1998 Coast to Coast AM broadcast, Raith — who had brought Reed's case to public attention and later accompanied him to the site — described Suzy's body deteriorating within seconds, "the skin and snout of her head peeling back," the being shifting its gaze before turning back to her.

Returning to the site in October 2009 for the ODISEALINK documentary series, Reed observed that trees standing on the day of the incident now lay fallen: "All these trees are newly down. I mean, they weren't down when I was here with Suzy."

Disputed ownership

The Seattle UFO/Paranormal Group (later the Northwest Museum of Legends and Lore), in its published investigation of the case, reported that Reed's former partner Barb — with whom Reed lived from 1983 to 1998, until she learned he was not a doctor and ended the relationship — stated that Reed had been allergic to animals and had never owned a dog. A close friend, Bill Werner, separately told the debunking site UFO Watchdog that Reed had not owned a pet — "especially a dog" — since childhood, again attributing this to his allergies, and that he did not hike because he was "allergic to everything that is found in a yard, let alone a forest." UFO Watchdog, whose investigator Royce Myers III is credited with first exposing the case and identifying "Dr. Jonathan Reed" as a Seattle resident named John Bradley Rutter, likewise treated the dog's existence as part of a fabricated story.

Reed, for his part, maintained that the relationship was real while placing it in a different context: in a 2001 radio interview he said his girlfriend had come to his home and seen the being's body in the days after the incident. Both versions agree the relationship ended; they diverge on whether Suzy ever existed.

Independent investigator Daniel McEvoy, who visited Reed's aunt and uncle in Seattle, reported that the family home contained photographs of the dog alongside other documentation of Reed's earlier life.

See also

References

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