STUCK IN A RUT...

Since beginning an investigation into the Reed UFO Hoax, quite a bit of information about the people involved in the hoax has been uncovered. Information came in, leads were followed up and some people were able to track down the real identities of some of the players involved in this scam.

However, one of the most frustrating pieces of the puzzle to track down was locating the main player in this hoax, the ever-so elusive Dr. Jonathan Reed. After several various and extensive searches for anything relating to this person (public records checks, criminal history checks, university databases, graduate records, phone records, birth records, property records, et al), the search always came up with negative results. The key to breaking this hoax wide open was to find Dr. Jonathan Reed. I had operated on the assumption that the name was an alias as had been with three of the other co-conspirators; Robert 'Raith', 'Dr.' Harold Chacon and Larry 'Arthur.' More on that later...

After receiving some good leads and talking to a person that claimed to have been involved in the perpetration of the hoax, the break I had been patiently waiting for in this case since 1998 found its way into my e-mail box...

THE GOOD DOCTOR

On 10-APRIL-2002, I received an e-mail from a person claiming to know the true identity of the man calling himself Dr. Jonathan Reed. This particular person left me a phone number and supplied some interesting details regarding "Dr. Reed." The following day, after verifying a phone number and address, I was on the phone talking to this person. Unlike the many nameless and faceless witnesses that have been presented by the 'investigators' checking out "Dr.Reed', my witness was willing to come forward and go on the record with not only his name, but proof that he indeed knows the man calling himself "Dr. Jonathan Reed."

Enter Bill Werner, a resident of Issaquah, Washington. Werner has lived in Washington State for nearly 30 years and has met some interesting people. Werner said he came to meet "an interesting person" that he would much, much later come to know as Dr. Jonathan Reed.

Werner said that on 15-MARCH-2002 he received a phone call from a close friend named Vern. Vern was at a movie theater in Redmond, Washington and had recognized someone that Werner had known for several years. Vern said he saw the person standing in the lobby of the movie theater talking on a cell phone.

Being within earshot of the cell phone conversation, Vern heard the person say the name "Jonathan Reed". Vern knew the person on the cell phone was named Jonathan, but the last name wasn't at all familiar and he found it odd that the person was "talking engineering techie stuff". Vern decided to call Werner.

"Vern called from there [the movie theater] and asked if I wanted to come up and say hello to him [Jonathan]. I declined at the time as the memories of Jonathan for 18 years were not something I really wanted to dredge up again. I had lost track of him for several years, but several of my friends would have the occasional 'Jonathan' spotting." But as curiosity often does with most, it got the best of Werner and he later found himself doing an Internet search on the name that his friend Vern had overheard.

"I did make a note of the name. I went to google.com, typed in the name, added 'Dr.' on a hunch and voila!" Werner was shocked to see pictures of a man he had known for nearly 20 years calling himself Dr. Jonathan Reed. Even more shocking to Werner were the claims that this "Dr. Reed" made about encountering an alien in the woods of Washington State. Werner said,

"There was my old friend Jonathan, the co-best man at my wedding in 1994, the world famous child psychiatrist, the collector of modern art, the master-mind behind a top-secret computer encryption code which NASA forced him to squash. Except, this guy was calling himself Jonathan Reed. You see, I knew him for all those years as...

...Dr. Jonathan Rutter."

The ever elusive "Dr. Jonathan Reed" had finally been found.

Werner had been employed at the same company that Barb worked for and that's how he met Rutter. Rutter was living with Barb in West Seattle and he claimed to be a child psychiatrist working at night viewing videos of troubled children in order to develop treatment plans for their therapy. Werner said he thought it was odd that a psychiatrist would keep such unusual hours, but he really had no reason not to believe anything Rutter had told him.

Werner and Rutter socialized quite a bit, often going to dinner, movies, social outings and meeting regularly for drinks. "Vern and his wife Patty, Jonathan and his long-time (15+ years) fiancee Barb, and my wife Carol and I often socialized together here at our house or would connect for dinner and a movie."

Left: Rutter and his former girlfriend at the home of Bill Werner some time in 1985. Photo © 2002 by Royce Meyers,III All Rights Reserved. Use is strictly prohibited.

Werner felt Rutter's relationship with Barb was highly unusual, "His relationship with Barb was, to say the least, strange for many years. He said that he was not in private practice but rather was with a group of other physicians and his job was to administer tests and evaluations on abused/traumatized children and their parents. And he did this during graveyard shift. He went 'to work' by 8PM and would return home to sleep by about 4:30AM. He would sleep until about 1PM, run errands, visit with Barb, have dinner and 'go to work' again."

Above: From left to right: Werner's wife, John Bradley Rutter, and Rutter's former girlfriend. Werner stated, "This is the summer of '91. We got rid of the boat shortly after this picture was taken." Photo © 2002 by III. All Rights Reserved. Use is strictly prohibited.

Werner also stated that Rutter had a lot of stories about his alleged work in psychiatry with children, "Some of his stories about work were heart wrenching. The two classic stories were 'The little boy in Tacoma' and 'The little boy on Mercer Island'."

"The first was taken from the true story of the little boy in Tacoma whose penis was partially cut off by a deranged pedophile. Johnny told everyone that the 'team' down there at St. Joseph's Hospital really wanted him to come on board to help them with the child but that he had to refuse because the politics of the situation were such that he would only be an attending physician with others, and he believed strongly that there should only be one counselor for the boy to bond with. The other story was about a 12 year old boy on Mercer Island whose parents had bolted his hand to the floor or a wall so that when they left, he would not get into mischief. But he, Dr. Jonathan Rutter, the world-famous but still humble psychiatrist was able to help him out of his trauma."

In spite of feeling that all was not right with Rutter, Werner became friends with Rutter to the point that Rutter voiced his anger over not being chosen as Werner's best man when Werner was wed to his wife Carol in 1994.

Above: Bill Werner's wedding dinner rehearsal in February 1994. From left to right: Bill Werner's grandmother, Werner's friend/best man Vern with his former wife, and John Bradley Rutter. Photo © 2002 by III. All Rights Reserved. Use is strictly prohibited.

Werner stated, "He was co-best man at my wedding in February of 1994 after getting upset that he was not asked to be my only best man. I had asked Vern to be my best man as my wife only had one attendant and Vern and I had stayed closer friends on many levels for several years longer than I had known Johnny. But Johnny whined and I relented and asked him to be a 'co' [best man]."

Above: Werner's wedding, February 1994. From left to right: John Bradley Rutter, Bill Werner and Werner's friend Vern.

BELOW: Rutter with former girlfriend Barb at Werner's 1994 wedding. Photo © 2002 by III. All Rights Reserved. Use is strictly prohibited. Werner did say that he was good enough friends with Rutter that he asked for advice from Rutter involving some personal matters.

"I trusted him as a friend for many years and took at face value when he said he was a child psychiatrist. He talked the talk oh so well and I felt flattered in some ways that we were friends and there were times I relied upon his 'profession' to help me deal with some things in my life. Some of his advice was strange though and I learned to take it with a grain of salt. But I attributed that to his giving advice in a personal situation, which counsel might be different if it were given in a professional setting. After all, we were friends, weren't we?"

But soon, Werner came to start thinking that things were not quite what they seemed to be with his so-called friend Jonathan Rutter. Cautiously, not wanting to jeopardize his friendship, Werner began asking Rutter simple questions here and there.

"When we would meet for a drink on short notice, it was often because he was depressed because he 'had just lost a child', usually in some bizarre scenario. And the family or authorities would always suppress the death notice because an investigation was on-going. He had a ready answer for everything, including his apparent lack of verifiable academic records. His story was to me that because of academic mishaps on the transfer of records between Oxford, the University of Washington and Switzerland, he was granted a license to practice by the state but that the records still could not all be collated together."

Another unusual story that Werner spoke about involved some computer encryption deal that Rutter alleged to be working on. Werner said, "One of Johnny's claims here in Seattle was that he was 'working' on an encryption sequence for every phone/fax/pc modem such that 2 way communication was impossible to tap into. It was something he talked about in the early '90s, something that was taking his time and energy. He claimed that he was developing it but then the NSA stepped in and shut it down."

After hearing this unusual tale, Werner became weary of Rutter after Rutter allegedly made some statements that Werner said he was not comfortable with. "I became uncomfortable around him because he started talking about how 'stressed out' he was and that he really missed his previous girlfriend's insatiable sexual thirst for him." Since Werner was good friends with Rutter's girlfriend, Werner simply didn't feel right meeting with Rutter for drinks anymore.

Werner said that it was in April of 1998 that his relationship with Rutter came to a head. Werner reportedly discovered that Rutter's girlfriend Barb had found some sort of note addressed to another woman named Valerie. Barb reportedly kicked Rutter out of the home they were sharing. Werner had also heard something about Rutter claiming to have been sued and Rutter having Barb pay all of the bills for him for months.

"The story was something like he and a group of doctors he worked with all got sued and his liability insurance didn't cover the terms of the court settlement or some garbage like that. Johnny told Barb he was broke and couldn't pay for anything. So Barb wound up paying for everything."

Werner, being curious, decided to do a little digging into Rutter's background. Werner stated, "Johnny was never a Doctor, MD or PhD and had never attended college. He had no verifiable income but was still running $4,000.00 per month in bills through his checking account, had over 15 name variations of credit cards such as 'J Bradley Rutter', 'Dr. J B Rutter', 'John B Rutter', and even a few with 'Ruttre' as the last name. "

Werner also said he discovered another problem with a story Rutter had told him. Rutter told Werner that he had met his first wife while studying psychiatry in London, England. Rutter told Werner that he had dual citizenship as he had lived in Switzerland where he also studied psychiatry. Rutter also told of a fatal plane crash that had killed his first wife and that she had been four months pregnant at the time.

"I found out that Johnny's first wife was not killed in a plane crash while 4 months pregnant. Indeed, she was alive and well in California. His previous girlfriend Linda is also alive and well. And Johnny's parents, though elderly, and his brother are all still with us. And that he was not a holder of dual Swiss/US citizenship."

When asked about the story of the alien encounter in the woods, Werner stated, " [Rutter] mentioned this book to me in the early to mid 90s as a fictional account of an alien encounter. He started writing it in a diary like it was real. I happen to know that Johnny does not hike in the woods as he is allergic to everything that is found in a yard, let alone a forest. A hike for him was walking out of his old Volvo wagon."

As the alien encounter story claims that a dog was killed by the alien, I asked Werner if he knew Rutter to have owned a dog. "He has not owned or had a pet, especially a dog, since his childhood. Again, this is because of the aforementioned allergies. He clearly told Barb that they would never own a dog."

Werner also stated, "Johnny used to love talking about this Art Bell radio program and the X-Files. The X-Files was his favorite show. He was addicted to the X-Files. And about his friend Gary being killed or whatever, he told me years ago that his best friend Gary was an early victim of HIV."

But Werner isn't the only person who knows Rutter, and he most definitely isn't the only one with something to say about him...

Click here for Part III of the Reed Files

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