Argentine Truck Driver's Missing Night on Route 3 Revisited, Fifty Years On

BAHÍA BLANCA, ARGENTINA — A UFO researcher's account of the 1973 Dionisio Llanca case has been republished on the blog Inexplicata. It is drawn from Fabio Zerpa's book on extraterrestrial beings, and it describes what Zerpa calls a fourth-kind encounter, that is, an abduction.

According to Zerpa, Llanca, then a 25-year-old truck driver hauling construction materials toward Río Gallegos, stopped on Route 3 at about 1:30 a.m. on October 28 to change a low tire. He reports that a yellowish light halted behind him, that a brilliant glare left him paralyzed, and that three figures, two men and a woman, appeared at his side. One of them, the account says, cut his right hand. Llanca then lost his memory and is said to have woken 48 hours later in a hospital.

Zerpa writes that an eight-member medical team investigated, including a forensic physician, psychologists and a hypnotist. Under hypnosis, the account states, Llanca described being taken aboard a craft, where the woman used medical-style instruments and made an incision on his scalp. He is said to have identified the hand instrument as a biopsy scalpel. Zerpa also says Llanca was given Pentothal, a so-called truth serum, and repeated the same story. Drawings made afterward, in Zerpa's telling, showed screens filled with stars.

Zerpa adds that psychological tests indicated Llanca lacked the capacity to invent so elaborate a tale. He cites a gas station employee who placed the witness nearby at about 2:45 a.m., and a doctor who noted a bruise over his left brow. Most striking to the author is a reported spike in electricity use in Bahía Blanca between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m., which he says matches Llanca's description of cables drawing power from a utility pole.

The source offers no independent verification of these claims. It does note that four police stations turned the distressed man away, taking him for a drunkard, before a hospital finally took him in.