In Portage County, Ohio, east of Akron, between Atwater and Randolph, Deputy Sheriff Dale F Spaur and Wilbur Neff, a mechanic who assisted the police as a mounted deputy, ignored a call at 04:45 from a woman who claimed a brightly lit object "as big as a house" was flying over her neighborhood. While checking an abandoned car at 05:05, they saw a 30 - 45 feet metallic object approach over the treetops from the woods, bathing the witnesses and the whole area in light while making a transformer-like hum. It then headed east and they gave chase in the patrol car, reaching speeds of up to 105 mph during an 85-mile chase.

Officer Wayne Huston, in his police cruiser near East Palestine, Ohio, about 35 miles to the ESE, was monitoring the radio reports of the chase between Spaur and the sheriff's office in Ravenna. He saw an object he described as ice cream cone-shaped, pointed downwards, approaching from the west. It passed overhead at about 800-900 feet height with Spaur and Neff in pursuit. He joined them in the chase near Unity, Ohio, with the object about 1/2 to 3/4 mile ahead of them. They reached the Pennsylvania state line at 05:35. They lost sight of the object at Brady Run Park, but regained it in Bridgeport, Pennsylvania.

At about this time officers Lonnie Johnson and Ray Esterly in Salem, Ohio, saw three jet fighters attempting to intercept a bright object at about 10,000-20,000 feet, about 25° elevation to the east for about two minutes. In Conway, Pennsylvania, at 06:00, they met with officer Frank Panzarella who had been watching an object for ten minutes to the east which he described as a 25-35 foot, half-football-shaped object, at about 1,000 feet height. It stopped in the northeast towards Harmony, Pennsylvania, then rose. They watched as the object climbed to about 3,500 feet to the left of and level with the quarter moon in the ESE (which was at about azimuth 116° elevation 14° and 11 % illuminated at 06:00) and Venus (at 122° azimuth 22° elevation). It then passed near a 707 airliner taking off from Pittsburgh Airport and disappeared, shooting up vertically at about 06:10.

The Air Force's Project Blue Book decided the entire case was based on a mis-sighting of the planet Venus. The Condon Committee refused to consider the case. The leading witnesses were subjected to ridicule and negative publicity. Spaur's home life became violet. He became estranged, and then divorced from his wife. His career and health were ruined. He left the sheriff's office and earned a living doing odd jobs. He passed away at the age of around 51 on 8 May 1984 in Cuyahoga, Ohio.

Hynek provides excerpts from the witnesses' testimony as follows:

Spaur:

…(Neff) gets out the right side, I got out the left side, he goes to the right front corner of the cruiser, which is where he stops --- sort of an insurance policy --- and I went to the left rear of the other vehicle. I turned just to make a sort of visual observation of the area, to make sure nobody had walked into the woods, you know, to take a leak or something. And I always look behind me so no one can come up behind me. And when I looked in this wooded area behind us, I saw this thing. At this time it was coming up. And there's a slight rise there; went up to about treetop level, I'd say about a hundred feet. It started moving toward us --- well, now, the trees that it was clearing were right on top of this rise right beside the road .... And at the time I was watching it. It was so low that you couldn't see it until it was right on top of you. I looked at Barney, and he was still watching the car, the car in front of us --- and the thing kept getting brighter and brighter and the area started to get light, and I looked at Barney this time and then told him to look over his shoulder. So he did. He didn't say nothing, he just stood there with his mouth open for a minute, and as bright as it was he looked down. And I started looking down. I looked at my hands, and my clothes weren't burning or anything when it stopped, right over on top of us. The only thing, the only sound in the whole area was a hum. It wasn't anything screaming or real wild. And it'd change a little bit --- it'd sound like a transformer being loaded or an overloaded transformer when it changed.

I was pretty scared for a couple of minutes; as a matter of fact, I was petrified; so I moved my right foot, and everything seemed to work all right. And evidently he made the same decision I did, to get something between me and it. So we both went for the car, we got in the car, and we set there. I wouldn't even venture if it was 10 seconds, 30 seconds, or 3 minutes --- and it stood there, and it hovered, and we didn't make any --- anything --- and it moved right out east of us and sat there for a second, and nothing still didn't happen to me, and Barney looked all right. I punched the mike button, and the light came on, so I picked it up. I first started to tell them, you know, this thing was there. And I thought, well, if I do, he'll think --- so I just told Bob on the radio, I said, "This bright object is right here, the one that everybody says is going over." And he comes back with, "Shoot it!" This thing was, uh, no toy; this --- hell, it was big as a house! And it was very bright; it'd make your eyes water.

I talked with Spaur by radio. I met him at the north edge of the city on Route 14. 1 saw the thing when Dale was about five miles away from me. It was running down Route 14 about 800-900 feet up when it came by. This was the lowest I ever saw it. As it flew by, I was standing by my cruiser. I watched it go right overhead. It was shaped something like an ice cream cone with a sort of partly melted down top. The point part of the cone was underneath; the top was sort of like a dome. Spaur and Neff came down the road right after it. I fell in behind them. We were going 80 to 85 miles an hour, a couple of times around 105 miles an hour. At one point at least I was almost on Spaur's bumper, and we checked with each other what we saw. It was right straight ahead of us, a half to three quarters of a mile ahead.

I am familiar enough with Rochester, and I guided him by radio. All the way we were trying to get contact with a Pennsylvania car. Had the base call Chippewa State Police station to see if they had a car on 51; they didn't. The first Pennsylvania car we saw was in Conway, Dale was low on gas, and we stopped where Frank Panzanella was parked.

At 5:20 A.M. stopped at Conway Hotel and had a cup of coffee. I then left the hotel coming down Second Avenue. Looked to my right and saw a shining object. I thought it was a reflection off a plane. I then got out of the police car and looked at the object again. I saw two other patrol cars pull up, and the officers got out and asked me if I saw it. They pointed to the object, and I told them I had been watching it for the last ten minutes. The object was the shape of half of a football, was very bright and about 25 to 35 feet in diameter. The object then moved out toward Harmony Township approximately at 1,000 feet high; then it stopped and went straight up real fast to about 3,500 feet. I then called the base station and told the radio operator to notify the Pittsburgh airport. He asked me if I was sick. I told him if I was sick, so were the other three patrolmen. The object continued to go upward until it got as small as a ballpoint pen. Relative to the moon, the object was quite distant and to the left of the moon. I could not see the moon from my position. The object was seen between two antennas in the backyard across the street to the east. We all four watched the object shoot straight up and disappear.

Spaur: Second of all, I'm under the impression that Venus rises out of the east, as the morning star. And this is probably another thing that's wrong, I'm not sure.

Quintanilla: Depends, depends.

Spaur: Huh?

Quintanilla: Sometimes it'll rise right over you.

Spaur: Oh. O.K. So anyway ...

Quintanilla: Venus, Venus --- Venus today rises at 2:49 in the morning. And it rises 150° azimuth and 25 deg elevation. It doesn't have to rise low on the horizon; it can rise high. But it's on the ecliptic, yes.

Spaur: O.K., so it's on the ecliptic. Granted you have this. Now this, this thing is this large, this big, and this low, and these people watched this thing from over in the Mogadore area; they report it, and I follow it, and I have Barney with me. We're going down the road; so you're gonna discount, well, there's two nuts; we're running Venus. Now Venus .. .

Quintanilla: Now, wait a minute . ..

Spaur: Well, wait a minute, let me speak .. .

Quintanilla: You used the wrong word ...

Spaur: O.K. Well...

Quintanilla: I'm an officer in the United States Air Force ...

Spaur: Right. You definitely are ...

Quintanilla: and I don't call anybody a nut.

Spaur: No, O.K. I have hallucinations then! But this is what I've been saying .. .

Quintanilla: I didn't say you were having hallucinations.

Spaur: What I'm trying to say is this. I'm going down the road; now this thing that I am following...

Q; And treat me with the same respect that I treat you.

Spaur: I will sir; I am. I'll treat you with more respect than I've been treated the last...

Quintanilla: I'm not calling you a nut. I'm not saying you had hallucinations.

Spaur: All right, the last twenty days! Anyway, this thing passes over another police car. He watches it go by; he's spotted it now. This is two cars that are fixed on Venus. So we're going down the road. And we get into Conway, Pennsylvania, and then this thing passes over the third car that's sitting there. Not even on the same frequency. I never met, seen, spoke to before nor after this another officer. He's watching the same thing as it goes over top of him, going toward Pittsburgh, as we come screaming in. Now: we watched it, four men, standing right there, four officers. Probably you say anything you want, we stood right there, watched it, watched the plane go underneath it, and we watched it make a vertical climb straight up. And this, sir . ..

Quintanilla: Disappeared.

Spaur: My knowledge is God's truth. Yes, sir. The only thing left even to look at, after we went to the station and called the guy, was the one bright spot that was there. The sun was coming up full, and the moon was fading out. It was about a quarter of a moon, and right straight off that moon, which would have been to the south of the moon if you were looking west, was one bright spot. I'd say it was probably, would look like a pencil eraser, real bright.

Wilson: That was the mother ship.

Spaur: Huh? The other ship?

Wilson: That was the mother ship!

Spaur: Oh, the mother ship. You guys are gonna have me convinced pretty soon. Aw, give me a tranquilizer and some coffee . . .This thing was to, would have been to the left, which was the north of it, and we watched it, and it went up, stopped, the airliner went under it, and then it went straight up. Just as straight up as, well, just straight up. And there --- I, uh, I wouldn't conceive of what, I know that people can get fixed on something maybe, or something like that; but I don't think that --- I don't see how myself and another cruiser and another guy and all this could go over. Chasing Venus. I, uh, I won't concede a part of it. I know that there's — this may be a way to discount it or what it is, but I know it was there. I seen it very plainly.

Quintanilla: Dale, it's not a question of discounting; we're trying to get into the …. We're trying to make the determination as to what it was.

Spaur: Sir, if I could tell you what it was, believe me, Major, I --- I myself --- and like I said before, if I told you that I seen a Ford going down the highway, you'd know what I was talking about. And if you said, "Gee, there goes a Chevrolet," you would assume the fact that you identified it, and I would know what it is. The same thing with an aircraft. You say, "There goes a B-29," and I say, "Yep, sure is, that's an old war horse," or something to this effect, and it's identified. This, I have never seen nothing like it before or after or in the wildest far-fetched imagination. I know you can have an optical illusion or even see something moving or like if you look through a piece of glass or something...

Quintanilla: Yeah, distortions.

Spaur: I can go along with this. But nothing this big. In my wildest dreams I don't think I could have ever imagined or seen anything like it- But this thing was there. I seen it very plainly; I seen it outside the car. I saw it inside the car, and I saw it from outside the car after I got to Conway, And I would hate to think that I gambled this man's life and a lot of other people's lives chasing Venus. I don't believe for an instant that I was following Venus. I don't know how to explain it. I don't have the slightest idea. But sir, this thing was as real as ...

Quintanilla: You know. Dale, I'm just going to say this for whatever it's worth: you're not the first one it's happened to.

Wilson: What does the air force think these are, Major?

Quintanilla: Misinterpretations of conventional objects and natural phenomena. Last year we had 245 astronomical cases.

Wilson: What category does this go under, what Dale saw?

Quintanilla: Place it in the category of satellite and astronomical observations.

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