Redfern Rumors

On Aug. 25, 1927 a slim, wide-mouthed young man named Paul Redfern took off from Brunswick, Ga. to fly to Brazil. Some 27 hours later Pilot Redfern's single-motored monoplane swooped down over the Norwegian freighter Christian Krohg 200 miles out of La Guaira, Venezuela. Getting his bearings, Redfern dashed on toward South America, where he was later reported over the Orinoco Delta. Then he vanished.

Because the region into which the young flyer had headed was so vast, unknown and impenetrable, search was from the beginning regarded as largely useless. Nonetheless, a few attempts were made, and all future scientific expeditions through the Guianas or Venezuela were asked to keep an eye open. After five years of silence even Pilot Redfern's wife and father believed him dead, had given up hope that any trace of him or his plane would ever be found.

Late in 1932 a rumor burgeoned from the jungle. A U. S. engineer named Charles Hasler reported at Para, Brazil that he had heard of a captive white man believed to be Redfern. By mid-1933 the air was thick with rumors from a dozen sources. A German-U. S. engineer named Tom Roch appeared out of the wilderness to announce he had talked to Redfern. Regardless of source, the stories were all remarkably alike in detail.

By last October, when Explorer William LaVarre said he believed the Georgia flyer alive, the Redfern rumors had grown to such proportions that the U. S. State Department ordered an investigation. The Consular Agent at Paramaribo, Netherlands Guiana, unearthed a Creole Catholic missionary named Melcherts, stationed at Drie Tabbetjes on the Tapanahoni River in the interior, who told the following story:

"During December 1934 . . . I dispatched a Bush Negro named Paje with two boys to the upper river. He returned in February of 1935 and stated that while at an Indian Village (name unknown), he was told of a white man who had come out of the sky, had both legs broken and was living in an Indian Village only three hours from where he was. . . .

"On April 15 there entered the hospital at Drie Tabbetjes an Indian named Kapan from the village of Sapakunu on the Paloemeu River (not on the map) suffering with yaws. . . . He told me that there was a white man on the Paloemeu River in the village of Piaiman, that he, Kapan, had seen him and that he was crippled, so that he could not walk, that he had come out of the sky, and he had seen his machine which was wrecked on a savanna and not on a mountain."

Estimated the State Department: "To reach the place where Redfern is supposed to be . . . would probably take 75 days in all."

Such a semi-official story caused a rash of proposed rescue expeditions, the latest being announced last week by Explorer LaVarre. Four have actually got under way. One, financed by the American Legion, set out from the Canal Zone with lavish equipment, is now deep in the jungle in canoes. Tom Roch popped up again, went off in search by foot with another U. S. adventurer. A Dutch expedition started along another route to the unknown interior. Most publicized expedition of all was that started by Pilot Art Williams, who taught Redfern to fly.

All four groups by last week had found nothing convincing to outsiders, were still plugging ahead, when there came an event which first blew the lid off the yarn, then clamped it back more confusingly than ever. In a Paramaribo newspaper appeared the tale of one Alfred Harred, newshawk and alleged member of an expedition to determine the boundary of British Guiana: "Art Williams, two Indians and I took off, landed on a tributary of the main Amazon . . . started to trek across the Tumuc-Humac Mountains. . . . After several days we came to a village where all Indians were completely nude. We saw an airplane caught in the branches of a big tree. A few hours later we met Redfern. He was dressed in a ragged singlet and underpants. He looked like a man over 40, hobbling on rude crutches made of tree branches and liana. He found difficulty at first speaking English, but evidently he had been expecting to be found. Williams gave him a biscuit and some tinned meat. . . .

"He told us he had been forced down by a leak in the gas tank. . . . His legs and arms were broken in the crash, but medicine men cured him. . . . He had married an Indian woman and has a son who looks very much like him. When the Indians suspected we intended to take Paul away they threatened us with poisonous spears and arrows and on Paul's advice we withdrew . . . with the intention of returning. It must be realized that any rescue must mean the use of force with probable death of Redfern. . . ."

Said Art Williams in Georgetown, British Guiana: "I never saw Redfern or his plane. I do not recall meeting Harred."

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