Michael Wessels

Michael Wessels
Died	August 2000 (aged 42)Monte Cristo Peak, Mount Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest, Washington, U.S.
Cause of death	Fall (head injuries)
Occupation	Research chemist
Years active	1988–2000
Employer	University of Washington Department of Environmental Health
Known for	Alleged member of the Jonathan Reed alien-tissue analysis team

Michael Wessels (died August 2000, aged 42) was a University of Washington research chemist who had worked in the university's Department of Environmental Health since 1988, where his research concentrated on contaminated Superfund sites and industrial-hygiene contaminants. An outdoors enthusiast, he died in August 2000 in a fall while descending from the summit of Monte Cristo Peak in the Mount Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest, a death the Snohomish County medical examiner ruled an accident caused by head injuries.

In the Jonathan Reed case, independent investigator Daniel McEvoy identified Wessels as one of four people directly involved in the DNA and tissue analysis of biological samples taken from the non-human intelligent being Freddie, as documented in the Jonathan Reed forest incident. According to McEvoy, the other members of the team were the University of Washington pathologist Rodger Haggitt, Harold Chacon, and Reed himself. Because both Wessels and Haggitt died within roughly two months of one another before any analysis was published, their deaths have been treated within the Reed literature as part of an alleged pattern of suppression — a framing that contrasts with the documented public record, in which each death was independently investigated and ruled, respectively, an accident and a homicide.

University of Washington research

The documented public record describes Wessels as a career research chemist. The University of Washington alumni magazine Columns recorded in its December 2000 "In Memory" column that he had been "a research chemist in the UW's Dept. of Environmental Health since 1988," and that his research focused on contaminated Superfund sites and industrial-hygiene contaminants. Contemporary press coverage likewise identified him simply as "a University of Washington research chemist," aged 42.

Role in the Jonathan Reed case

Wessels's connection to the Jonathan Reed case rests almost entirely on the testimony of investigator Daniel McEvoy, who presented his findings on Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM broadcast of 16 March 2001 and on the affiliated website aliendestiny.com. McEvoy stated that, on about 10 April 2000, Reed gave him the names of the four people said to be conducting the extraterrestrial tissue analysis, and that he subsequently travelled to Seattle and interviewed both Wessels and Rodger Haggitt in April 2000 about what they were preparing to test for and an anticipated timeline for results. He described the analysis team as a four-person group made up of Wessels, Haggitt, Harold Chacon — whose credentials the Seattle UFO/Paranormal Group later concluded were fraudulent — and Reed himself.

A commentary video reviewing the Reed case displayed Reed's own slides on the matter, narrating that "the man on the right was Michael Wessels," that he "worked at the University of Washington," and that he was "going to release the DNA analysis of the creature" before he and his colleague "died under mysterious circumstances in the same week." The same footage shows the case's promoters reading the genuine Columns obituary aloud on screen, repeating that Wessels was "a research chemist in the... Department of Environmental Health since 1988" who "died in August after falling from" Monte Cristo Peak and whose "research focus[ed] on contaminated Superfund sites as well as industrial hygiene contaminants" — the same biographical details that appear in the published University of Washington record.

Death

According to the documented public record, Wessels was last seen alive on 20 August 2000; his car was found near Barlow Pass in the Mount Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest, and his body was discovered on 25 August and recovered on 28 August. The Snohomish County Medical Examiner's Office determined that he had "scaled Monte Cristo Peak and then fell during his descent" and "died accidentally from head injuries." The University of Washington obituary similarly recorded that, as an outdoors enthusiast, he "apparently fell to his death on the way down after scaling the summit."

Within the Reed literature, the same death is framed as suspicious. On the 16 March 2001 broadcast, McEvoy dated it to 28 August 2000 — "two months to the day" after Haggitt's 28 June death — and said it "reportedly happened in the same mountainous vicinity and area in Washington state where Dr. Jonathan Reed's encounter had taken place." Reed, present on the same broadcast, called Wessels and Haggitt "two very prominent gentlemen in the field of sciences from the university here in Washington" and stressed that Wessels "had always climbed with somebody else for reasons of safety" before "they found him dead at the foot of the cliff."

Reed restated the account in his 2009 ODISEALINK lecture, telling the audience that Haggitt, "a world-renowned pathologist, was shot and killed in his office" on 28 June 2000 and that, "two months to the day," Wessels "was also killed in a bizarre hiking accident in the same Cascade Mountain range." In LINK: An Extraterrestrial Odyssey, co-authored with Robert Raith, Reed presented Wessels's death as a covert killing forming part of a broader pattern of government suppression of the tissue-analysis findings. No connection between Wessels's accidental fall and the Reed case has been established outside this testimony; the contemporaneous medical and press records treat it solely as a climbing accident.

Notes

References

Source ratings:

(Color-coding) (

[1 Wikipedia-grade]

[2 Questionable]

[3 Reporting/Analysis]

[4 Speculative/Hearsay]

[5 Ungrounded]

). (To change source ratings,