George Van Tassel

American UFO enthusiast who, at one time, held a yearly UFO conference at his private airport in Yucca Valley, CA. He stated that after his first sighting, on 8/24/1953, he contacted outer-space beings in person and in trance. The beings reportedly instructed him to build a machine to heal and bring the dead back to life. For many years he collected funds for his project until he died in the '70s. He died on February 9, 1978 of an "apparent heart attack" in his Pasadena, CA hotel room according to his second wife who was with him at the time. However, others in his family did not buy this explanation and they believed he had been poisoned. According to his mother and others, he had been very healthy with no history of heart problems. Furthermore, they claimed, his wife at the time of his death was a chiropractor whose two previous husbands had died under mysterious circumstances. In addition, they cited the fact that she had the body cremated immediately after his death and before the rest of the family had been notified of his death. Link to Wikipedia biography