Dennis began working as a part-time assistant in the Ballard Funeral Home in 1940 while still attending Roswell High School. After graduation, Dennis was excused from wartime military service because of poor hearing, and commenced an apprenticeship as an embalmer at Ballard. He graduated from the San Francisco College of Mortuary Science on 22 December 1946 and was put in charge of Ballard's military contract, which included ambulance and mortuary services for the nearby Roswell Army Air Field.
Roswell incident
Dennis came to the attention of UFO researchers in 1989 when he called the hotline after an episode of Unsolved Mysteries featured the Roswell UFO incident. He was the first witness to confirm claims of alien bodies at the Roswell base itself.
Analysis of testimony
Dennis’ accounts featured prominently in Crash at Corona published in 1992 and The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell, published in 1994, as well other pro-UFO books, but serious doubts about his story were soon raised. For some, like Karl Pflock and Kevin Randle, these inconsistencies were great enough to discount Dennis’ credibility entirely. Several researchers, including Karl Pflock, investigated Dennis’s claims and found a number of inconsistencies, including the identity of a nurse who Dennis claimed was a witness to the alleged alien autopsies and the need for Dennis's own involvement in any embalming process when qualified pathologists were said to have performed the autopsies. Pflock also questioned the validity of sketches of aliens provided by Dennis. Dennis's account is repeated in Witness to Roswell: Unmasking the 60-Year Cover-Up by Thomas Carey and Donald Schmitt, published in 2007. Regarding Dennis providing researchers with a false name, they write, "His surprising and disappointing response was,... 'I gave you a phony name, because I promised her that I would never reveal it to anyone'." The authors then comment that "Dennis was found to have knowingly provided false information to investigators, and must technically stand impeached as a witness." However, the book also notes that other witnesses "have told us that Dennis had told them about the phone calls for child-sized caskets way back when it happened" and that "Dennis had told them about his run-in at the base hospital long before Roswell became a household word."
