The death of Max Spiers, who studied UFO sightings, in Poland has set off a flurry of conspiracy theories.
Spiers sent his mother a text message just days before his death several months ago in which he told her, “If anything happens to me, investigate,” as reported by the Telegraph.
The 39-year-old from Canterbury was found dead in Warsaw, Poland, in June. Local authorities said he died from natural causes—a claim his mother denies.
“He was making a name for himself in the world of conspiracy theorists and had been invited to speak at a conference in Poland in July,” his mother Vanessa Bates told the Telegraph. “He was staying with a woman who he had not known for long and she told me how she found him dead on the sofa. But I think Max had been digging in some dark places and I fear that somebody wanted him dead.”
She said her son was a “very fit man who was in good health” and said that “all I have is a death certificate from the Polish authorities that it was from natural causes, but no post-mortem was done so how can they tell that?” Bates added, “They are also refusing to release any paperwork about it to me because, absurdly, I don’t have his written permission.”
Bates’ comments drew intense speculation on UFO and conspiracy websites. On the website Project Camelot, Kerry Cassidy wrote: “This death is very suspicious. I now have reason to believe a cover-up is in motion,” as reported by The Guardian.
Nick Pope, who investigated UFOs for the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense, wrote on Twitter: “The death of Max Spiers was a tragedy, but having run the UK Government’s UFO project I promise we don’t go around killing UFO researchers.”
Miles Johnson, who runs the supernatural conspiracy group the Bases project, told the Independent: “A person has died here and I don’t think it’s good enough [that] somebody who just took normal medication should end up vomiting, spewing black liquid, whatever it was. And then shortly after that, whatever length of time it was, he died.”
The Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO) said it’s not investigating the death as it happened abroad, in Poland. A representative of the UK Foreign Office told The Guardian that: “We provided assistance to the family of a British national following his death in Warsaw, Poland, in July.”
The North East Kent coroner’s court told The Guardian it could not comment on the case unless an inquest was made. An inquest would take place “if the cause of death is unknown or if it was sudden, violent or unnatural,” it said.
