Radioactive Toothpaste and Conspiranoia: The Strange Saga of Ufologist John Ford, Pt. 1
A bizarre assassination plot, radium from Northrop-Grumman, UFOs, militias, the Oklahoma City Bombing, and a culture of conspiracy
If you spend enough time researching the vast recesses of UFOlogical history—a field brimming with strange sightings and even stranger people, often with egos the size of a mothership from Zeta Reticuli—you’re bound to stumble across a bizarre story. But it’s not everyday that you find a plot to murder a group of Long Island political leaders with radium.
It was described like “something out of a novel” and the man at the center of it all was John Ford, a then 47 year old former court bailiff turned UFO researcher.1 According to the news reports at the time, Ford had conspired to murder then Suffolk County Republican Party chairman John Powell, legislator Fred Towle, district attorney James Catterson and public safety director Anthony Gazzola—but it was the method Ford had allegedly chosen that made his arrest headline news. Catterson claimed that Ford was planning to spread radium in the cars and food of his targets, “in the hope that over time he would contract an incurable disease and cause his death.”2 The motive? Well, that depends on who you ask.
As well as planning to poison the Suffolk County officials, Ford was also accused of plotting to set fire to the Suffolk Republican headquarters in a bid to take it over and install his own candidates—the police claimed that they had found “blank political nominating petitions” in Ford’s home on 55 Sundial Lane. Reports claimed that the then 47 year old Ford was prone to political rants about the “moral decline” of America, as well as his “opposition to abortion, and to mothers who work outside the home. He expressed his fierce dislike for Bill Clinton.”3 While today's GOP may have welcomed the conspiratorial Ford with open arms, back in the early 90’s his theories pushed him to the fringes of local conservative political activism.
Ford had studied philosophy at St John’s University and graduated in 1971—for a while he worked at a court in Brooklyn and gained a masters degree in public administration, but by 1982 he was back home in Suffolk County. In 1983 his mother Catherine had run to be the highway superintendent and two years later she ran for county legislator—both times for the conservative party. Catherine’s politics clearly had a strong influence on her son and soon Ford would follow in her footsteps. He started a local conservative club and helped with his mothers campaigns but, according to reporter Michael Colton: “Frustration over Suffolk County’s Republican rule caused him to quit politics, but his hatred of county Republicans never left him.”4 Local conservative party chairperson Peggy Eckart recalled:
“It was terrible. He always had conspiracy theories which used to drive us all crazy. He was a very good organizer who could draw people in and get them involved, but his oddball ways would push them away.”5
Ford was arrested on the evening of Wednesday, June 12th, 1996 alongside Joseph Mazuchelli, a then 42 year old ex-felon who was described as a “long time burglar”6 a “wiry, tattooed hot-rodder” and a “tough-talking former junkyard employee” by the local press.7 Ford had supposedly taken him in a year earlier and provided him with money, a cell phone and a roof over his head. In exchange, Mazzuchelli told Ford that he was working for the Israeli Mossad on the pertinent topic of UFO disclosure. As for the radium, it was believed to have been supplied by then 49 year old Edward Zabo. According to Ann Jensis-Dale, a spokeswoman from the Department of Defense, Zabo was a longtime employee of Northrop-Grumman, having worked there since 1973 as a quality assurance specialist in electronics. At the time of his arrest Zabo was on probation for a DUI conviction he had received in March 1996.8 When the police raided his house they found radioactive material, “black powder and thousands of explosive devices” and he was charged with 21 counts of illegal possession of explosives, 11 counts of criminal possession of a weapon, illegally possessing radioactive materials and reckless endangerment. According to Zabo, he had gotten the radium “four years ago from the widow of a Farmingdale radiographer” but others believed he’d gotten it from his employer.9
Alongside the sheer absurdity of the plot itself was the manner in which the three were caught. A short time prior to their arrest, career criminal turned state informant Kevin Koch had begun to associate with Mazzuchelli. Koch ended up buying a gun from Mazzuchelli which had previously belonged to Ford—it’s unclear whether Ford had given the guns away willingly or if he stole them. According to former Assistant District Attorney Marty Thompson: “We had become aware of Ford’s name because a gun that we had purchased earlier in the week was registered to John Ford. We did not know what, if any, role John Ford had in selling that gun, other than the fact that the gun was registered to him.”10 Koch embedded himself further, showing up to Ford’s home and socializing with both him and Mazzuchelli. It wasn’t long until Koch claimed to have overheard John Ford admitting that he had stalked then Republican Party chairman John Powell, even going so far as to hide outside of his house with a gun. Unsurprisingly, the police began to narrow in on Ford, the gun-toting, UFO-believing conspiracy kook.
The cops decided to fit Koch with a wire and he was sent back to Ford’s home where he just so happened to capture Ford and Mazzuchelli discussing the supposed plot on tape. Sadly, I’ve been unsuccessful in my attempts to obtain a copy of the wire recording or an official transcript, but parts of the tape were printed in Michael Colton’s article “Out There” for The Washington Post:
“I got that very dangerous stuff in the back of the truck,” said Ford, according to a transcript of the police recording.
“How bad is it?” asked Koch.
“It's in (…) a three-inch lead container, and it's leaking five roentgens per hour.”
The dogs bark. Ford puffs his pipe. Somebody goes into the kitchen for drinks. Talk turns to burning down the offices of the Suffolk County Conservative Party, throwing elections into disarray.
Ford mentions Tony Gazzola, an old political adversary. “This isotope, he'll start glowing in 24 hours.” They all laugh.
“Put it in a bag, take the little bag and put it underneath his car seat,” says Ford.
He also boasts: “I'll kill that {expletive} President Clinton—up the {expletive}. I'll do it.”
“Does Gazzola eat Italian food?” asks Ford. “Take the yellow {expletive} powder, and mix it in with chopped garlic. The radium in with the chopped garlic.”11
You won’t be surprised to hear that the press didn’t write about Ford favorably. He was described as short and stout with a voice like Elmer Fudd’s, a loner, an odd-ball, a pipe-smoking conspiracy nut who bore somewhat of a resemblance to John Belushi. He had lived with his mother Catherine until she passed away in November 1995—it was a death that seemed to send him spiraling. Ford’s nephew Sean Doyle told the press: “They lived together, they were very close. He would drive her around, take her places. He was very shaken up by her death.”12 A former colleague at the Suffolk County Court said that Catherine’s death “hurt (Ford) tremendously, probably more than anything else.”13 Some have speculated that it was his mothers death that led to Ford taking Joseph Mazzuchelli in, eventually allowing Mazzuchelli to stay in the former family home.
After his arrest district attorney Catterson held a press conference where he assembled an array of items seized from Ford’s home. Catterson claimed that Ford’s home was “heavily barricaded and covered by electronic devices.”14 To say Ford enjoyed shooting guns would be the understatement of the century, and while some of the press coverage could be accused of being hyperbolic, one news report accurately described Ford’s weapon collection as an arsenal:
Alongside the weapons, police found several issues of The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, a libertarian magazine published by the Foundation for Economic Education—themselves a libertarian think-tank that claims to “promote free market principles.” Looking through the press reports at the time, there seemed to be some confusion between the magazines that were found in Ford’s home and the anti-government militia group the Montana Freemen. This extremist group believed the United States to be a “Christian republic” and that much of the federal government was illegitimate.15 Sounds scarily familiar, doesn’t it?
The Freemen had been in a tense standoff with the FBI since March 25th 1996—one that, after 81 days, coincidentally came to an end on the day after Ford’s arrest. Journalists were quick to ask Catterson whether there was any militia connection—he claimed that he didn’t know of any official militias that were in operation on Long Island, but remarked:
When I see that type of behavior closely coupled (...) with rifles, knives, handguns, (...) those are empty canisters for 81mm white phosphorus mortars. I don’t know where the mortars are but I can tell you that as an old soldier, that gives me the willies, because they didn’t call it Willie Peter for nothing. It’s a very, very explosive burning agent that once you’ve seen it, you never want to be anywhere near it when it goes off (...) you don’t know what’s in the minds of these people and that’s what makes it more dangerous.16
But that didn’t stop some members of the press from making the link between Ford’s Freeman magazine and the Montana Freemen, as you can see in the following clipping:
While Ford appeared to have no tangible connection to the Montana Freemen, he did seem to share some of their beliefs when it came to the government—namely that they weren’t to be trusted. Writer Michael Colton once described John Ford’s life as “an X-Files episode written by Thomas Pynchon”—his world was rife with paranoia and, much like Maxine Tarnow in Pynchon’s novel Bleeding Edge, no amount was too much.17 Aside from his own political beliefs, Ford was convinced that Long Island was the epicenter of a vast government conspiracy to cover up the existence of UFOs. From sightings in Moriches Bay, a crashed flying saucer and recovered alien bodies squirreled away at the nearby Brookhaven National Labs, to the bold allegation that a UFO was responsible for the Sunrise Wildfire of 1995—Ford’s world was chaotic, paranoid and filled to the brim with conspiracy theories, but he wasn’t alone.
In the early nineties some UFO researchers found themselves preoccupied with picking over the bones of the fake MJ-12 documents, while others were still reeling from the revelation that the Air Force Office of Special Investigations had targeted one of their own—a UFO researcher named Paul Bennewitz. For the first time there seemed to be definitive proof of what ufologists had suspected all along—that they were being spied on and, worse than that, they were being used to spread disinformation. As Bill Moore put it, “a large proportion of what we are hearing today about malevolent aliens, underground bases and secret treaties with the US government has its roots firmly planted in the Bennewitz affair.”18
Outside of ufology things weren’t looking much better. Anti-government sentiment was rife after two high-profile and ultimately deadly standoffs between law enforcement and citizens—Ruby Ridge in 1992 and the siege on Waco in 1993. After all, in both cases the government had murdered their own citizens, and all those conspiracy theories about government sieges and black helicopters began to feel frightfully real for some. At the same time, writers like Bill Cooper and Jim Keith blurred the lines between ufology and right-wing conspiracy theories—Cooper published the entirety of the antisemitic tract The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in his book Behold a Pale Horse, while Keith frequently cited fascists like Nesta Webster and Michael Hoffman.19 In his book The United States of Paranoia, Jesse Walker writes:
In the 1990s, as the world’s cultures and subcultures traded and blended more easily than ever before, so did its schools of fear. Militiamen, black nationalists, ufologists: one group’s legends flowed freely into another’s. Figures on the right found ways to work flying saucers into their litany of official crimes and cover-ups.20
Researcher and writer Martin Cannon labelled Cooper and Keith’s brand of conspiranoia “sick think”, writing that, “This is paranoia in its most advanced and crippling form: Angst raised to DefCon 3.”21
On April 19th 1995 167 people were killed at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in what remains the deadliest act of “domestic terrorism” in US history. I would highly recommend Wendy Painting’s Aberration in the Heartland of the Real for anyone interested in a definitive account of the OKC bombing—especially relevant to the John Ford case is her detailed profile of Steven Garrett Colbern, a former candidate for John Doe #2 turned MUFON spokesperson, who was described in the press at the time of the bombing as a “fugitive chemist” and a “gun collector.”22 His neighbors described him as a radical that didn’t like the government23 and Painting details his alleged belief that “Jews ran the world as part of a UN conspiracy.”24 This belief had led him to contact a series of far-right militia organizations who eventually put him in contact with Roger Moore, who in turn introduced him to McVeigh. Colbern claimed that he had never met McVeigh in the flesh and only ever sent him a letter. However, according to witness testimony detailed in Painting’s book, McVeigh had actually visited the trailer that Colbern shared “with at least two other men who, along with Colbern, operated a crystal meth lab in a small shed on the lot.”25 Today you can find Steven Colbern talking about supposed “alien implants” on shows like Spaced Out Radio. You know what they say, a career in ufology is the ultimate reputation launderer.
Painting writes that the arrest of Timothy McVeigh “brought forth the rhetorical coupling of conspiracy theorists (and others) with a newly emergent terrorist threat.”26 With the events of Oklahoma City still fresh in their minds, it’s important to ask the question: Did Suffolk County believe that Ford—a gun-collecting UFO enthusiast who made no bones about his hatred for the US government—was another McVeigh? The answer, it seems, is yes. In a sit-down interview for Hulu’s documentary series Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal, former Assistant District Attorney Marty Thompson said:
I remember distinctly when they had the Oklahoma City bombing. Had you told me the week before that someone was gonna blow up a federal building with fertilizer, I don’t know that I could’ve believed that or thought that was even possible. So you just, you just don’t know. So you can’t dismiss things out of hand because, God forbid, that could be the time that someone is seriously injured, because someone had made the effort to go out of their way to hurt someone else. So we knew that we could not wait very long before we acted, because we had no idea how many players were involved, how much radioactive material there was—everything was very much in hurry-up mode.27
Like McVeigh (and countless others) Ford was heavily armed and paranoid—he believed that there was a “special detonating device” in his car and he was convinced that communists had landed in submarines on Long Island.28 He read Soldier of Fortune magazine, claimed to have worked for the CIA since his late teens and, like McVeigh, believed the government to be responsible for AIDS. To Suffolk County officials, Ford may have appeared to have all the hallmarks of “fusion paranoia,” a somewhat dismissive term coined in 1995 by journalist Michael Kelly.29 After all, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. From COINTELPRO and MKULTRA to the disinformation campaign waged by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations against ufologists in the 1980s, there was a strong case to be made that in some ways, people were right to be paranoid.
The overarching point here is not to paint Ford as a potential McVeigh figure but to give insight into what law enforcement may have believed at the time. Obviously there are distinct differences between Ford and those involved in the Oklahoma City Bombing—namely that despite the alleged plot, John Ford never killed anyone. In fact, officials from nearby Brookhaven Labs—who were called in to calm public fears of potential contamination—explained that with the amount of radium recovered, it would have taken decades for any of the potential victims to have succumbed to illness. Ford’s attorney, John Rouse, made a point of noting that “if (Ford) wanted to kill these people he could have used any of the guns he owned.”30 Ford maintains that he was merely joking around, that he never planned to kill anybody, and that the radium the authorities had seized was being used to test his Geiger counters—he had several of them and used them in his UFO investigations.
So with all that in mind, (and considering the fact that there were zero fatalities involved in the case,) one has to wonder why, after almost 30 years, Ford is still being held at the Rockland County psychiatric center? The answer may well lie in Marty Thompson’s admission of a prosecution “in hurry-up mode.”
In the next installment of this series I will explore the aftermath of the case, the plea deals that were accepted by both Joseph Mazzuchelli and Edward Zabo, as well as the rise and fall of Ford’s Long Island UFO Network—an organization marred by allegations of stalking and harassment. In the meantime, if you have any tips on the case or want to contact me you can do so at weirdreadsemilylouise@gmail.com.
Tanner here. Thank you for reading Getting Spooked and my special thanks goes out to Emily for writing the newsletter’s second guest article. Since she won’t do so herself, go check out her exceptional documentaries at Weird Reads with Emily Louise. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read, consider becoming a regular subscriber to get posts sent to your inbox. Become a paid subscriber to read dozens of archived posts, listen to members-only podcast episodes, or ask questions to be answered in Q&As. It is the best way to directly support the continuation of this publication.
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Sutton, Larry, Debbie Tuma, and Frank Lombardi. “Bizarre slay plot is foiled: Suffolk big targeted.” Daily News (New York). 14 June 1996. https://www.newspapers.com/article/daily-news-bizarre-slay-plot-is-foiled/142864224/.
Ibid.
Vitello, Paul. “Creating a World of His Very Own.” Newsday (Nassau Edition). 23 June 1996. https://www.newspapers.com/article/newsday-nassau-edition-john-ford-4/120175059/.
Colton, Michael. “Out There: They Thought UFOs Had Landed. A Case of Hysteria, Politics, Poison, and Toothpaste.” The Washington Post. 10 January 1998. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/01/11/out-there/89f520c3-bb7b-41d3-a991-6c4a1a2ff322/.
Brand, Rick, Martin Evans, Lauren Tarrazzano, and Ellen Yan. “Lost in Space?: UFO obsession said to spawn bizarre radium death plot.” Newsday (Suffolk Edition). 23 June 1996. https://www.newspapers.com/article/newsday-suffolk-edition-john-ford-uf/120174301/.
Ibid.
Lam, Chau. “Guilty Plea in Anti-GOP Radium Plot.” Newsday (Nassau Edition). 12 June 1997. https://www.newspapers.com/article/newsday-nassau-edition-guilty-plea-in/142864191/.
Winslow, Olivia and Liam Pleven. “Radium from Grumman?” Newsday (Nassau Edition). 15 June 1996. https://www.newspapers.com/article/newsday-nassau-edition-radium-from-gru/130932551/.
Brand, Rick, Martin Evans, Lauren Tarrazzano, and Ellen Yan. “Lost in Space?: UFO obsession said to spawn bizarre radium death plot.” Newsday (Suffolk Edition). 23 June 1996. https://www.newspapers.com/article/newsday-suffolk-edition-john-ford-uf/120174301/.
"Lights Over Long Island.” Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal, season 1, episode 2, Hulu, 24 September 2024.
Colton, Michael. “Out There: They Thought UFOs Had Landed. A Case of Hysteria, Politics, Poison, and Toothpaste.” The Washington Post. 10 January 1998. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/01/11/out-there/89f520c3-bb7b-41d3-a991-6c4a1a2ff322/.
Brand, Rick, Martin Evans, Lauren Tarrazzano, and Ellen Yan. “Lost in Space?: UFO obsession said to spawn bizarre radium death plot.” Newsday (Suffolk Edition). 23 June 1996. https://www.newspapers.com/article/newsday-suffolk-edition-john-ford-uf/120174301/.
Ibid.
Larson, Seaborn. “Rewind: How Tactical Civics ideology traces the Montana Freemen blueprint.” Helena Independent Record. 23 November 2024. https://helenair.com/news/state-regional/government-politics/freemen-montana-history-tactical-civics-antigovernment-extremism/article_07062ed6-a6dd-11ef-94d6-9fb09c9dd4dc.html.
Colton, Michael. “Out There: They Thought UFOs Had Landed. A Case of Hysteria, Politics, Poison, and Toothpaste.” The Washington Post. 10 January 1998. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/01/11/out-there/89f520c3-bb7b-41d3-a991-6c4a1a2ff322/.
Moore, William L. “UFOs and the U.S. Government: Part I.” The MUFON UFO Journal, no. 259. November 1989. Page 8. https://drive.google.com/file/d/14t0_4KEFv66XYwFZPRkvIy5chUYfDqiv/view.
Cannon, Martin. “Alternative Three.” CANNONFIRE. 22 December 2006. https://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2006/12/alternative-three.html.
Walker, Jesse. The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory. New York: Harper, 2013. Page 249.
Cannon, Martin. “Alternative Three.” CANNONFIRE. 22 December 2006. https://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2006/12/alternative-three.html.
Queary, Paul. “John Doe #2?: Oxnard High grad arrested in Arizona.” Simi Valley Star. 13 May 1995. https://www.newspapers.com/article/simi-valley-star-john-doe-2-13-may-9/164596008/.
Newsweek Staff. “Scouring The West For The Keys To The Conspiracy.” Newsweek. 21 May 1995. https://www.newsweek.com/scouring-west-keys-conspiracy-183160.
Painting, Wendy S. Aberration in the Heartland of the Real: The Secret Lives of Tim McVeigh. Walterville: TrineDay, 2016. Page 312.
Ibid., page 314.
Ibid., page 18.
"Lights Over Long Island.” Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal, season 1, episode 2, Hulu, 24 September 2024.
Colton, Michael. “Out There: They Thought UFOs Had Landed. A Case of Hysteria, Politics, Poison, and Toothpaste.” The Washington Post. 10 January 1998. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/01/11/out-there/89f520c3-bb7b-41d3-a991-6c4a1a2ff322/.
Kelly, Michael. “The Road to Paranoia.” The New Yorker. 11 June 1995. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1995/06/19/the-road-to-paranoia.
Lam, Chau. “Alleged Radium Plotter Accused of Prior Threat.” Newsday (Suffolk Edition). 5 August 1997. https://www.newspapers.com/article/newsday-suffolk-edition-alleged-radium/130933554/.
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so happy to have your contribution to the newsletter, Emily! I'm from Suffolk county, I know all of the local landmarks mentioned herein, & it's wild to me that i was introduced to this story for the first time from your youtube video. also John ford just needed to stick around 20 years, his politics right down to his ufo beliefs would've gotten him elected as a local suffolk county legislator or worse (higher office) nowadays. thanks again for your work, looking forward to reading the next installment
Thanks Emily!
That is a wild story..!looking forward to the next installment as well as reading "Aberration in the Heartland of the Real"