IncidentThe Linda Napolitano / Brooklyn Bridge Abduction (30 November 1989)

Around 3 am on 30 November 1989, Napolitano said she was lifted from her 12th-floor Lower East Side window in a fetal position with three small grey beings into a craft that descended toward the East River near the Brooklyn Bridge before returning her. Abduction researcher Budd Hopkins documented her account over years (including hypnosis) and presented it in ‘Witnessed’ (1996) as uniquely corroborated by independent witnesses: ‘Richard’ and ‘Dan,’ self-described security agents who said they saw a woman float into a craft while their car stalled, and the VIP they were escorting - widely implied to be UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, who reportedly never confirmed. None of the witnesses was ever produced or identified, no VIP confirmed, and no physical or independent documentary evidence of a craft over Manhattan exists. Critics - Joseph Stefula, Richard Butler and George Hansen (1993), and later Hopkins’ own ex-wife and ‘Witnessed’ editor Carol Rainey (2011) - argued the corroboration was unauthenticated anonymous correspondence (possibly authored by Linda herself), noted close parallels to the SF novel ‘Nighteyes,’ and charged Hopkins with credulous, unrigorous investigation. The case stayed live via a 2024 Netflix series and Napolitano’s defamation suit, but no independently verifiable evidence was added. It is the flagship ‘independently corroborated abduction’ that collapses on examination into more uncorroborated testimony funneled through one investigator.