Kalliope Zafiriou
| Kalliope Zafiriou | |
|---|---|
| Born | Greece |
| Known for | 1997 skeptical interview identifying alleged Plejaren photographs as images of The Golddiggers |
| Spouse | Billy Meier (div.) |
| Children | 3 |
In 1997, Greek-born Kalliope Zafiriou — the ex-wife of Swiss contactee Billy Meier — gave a series of interviews that became a cornerstone of the skeptical case against the Plejaren contact claims, alleging that Meier's photographed beamship images were of household-object models and that purported extraterrestrial-female portraits were in fact press photographs of members of the American singing-and-dancing troupe The Golddiggers.
Marriage to Billy Meier
Zafiriou met Meier after he returned to Switzerland in the 1960s following his departure from the French Foreign Legion and a 1965 bus accident in Turkey in which he lost his left arm. The couple married and had three children together, and Zafiriou was reportedly present at the Meier farm at Hinterschmidrüti — the headquarters of the FIGU association — throughout the period of Meier's most widely publicized alleged contacts with the Plejaren in the 1970s and 1980s.
Model photographs incident
According to author Gary Kinder's Light Years (1987), Zafiriou confronted Meier with photographs of incomplete craft models that he had believed he had destroyed by burning; Meier subsequently admitted to Kinder that he had used models to "recreate" scenes of Plejaren beamships. The episode is frequently cited as the first documented admission that at least some of the disputed Pleiadian imagery was prop-based rather than photographic evidence of extraterrestrial craft.
1997 interviews
Following her separation from Meier, Zafiriou told interviewers in 1997 that his photographs of alleged spacecraft had been built from trash-can lids, carpet tacks, and other household items, and that his accounts of journeys with the Plejaren were fictitious. She further identified two photographs that Meier had presented as portraits of the extraterrestrial women "Asket" and "Nera" as being, respectively, Michelle DellaFave and Susan Lund — members of The Golddiggers, the singing-and-dancing troupe that had performed on The Dean Martin Show.
The Golddiggers identification is regarded by skeptics including Joe Nickell and the Center for Inquiry–affiliated Independent Investigations Group as among the most damaging single elements of the skeptical record on the Meier case, because the original Dean Martin Show publicity images are independently datable and publicly verifiable.