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William J. "Bill" Birnes is an American writer, editor, book publisher and literary rights agent. He is best known as an active publisher of UFO literature (UFO Magazine) and is a New York Times bestselling author. He holds a law degree and received a Ph.D. from New York University in 1974. Along with detective Dr. Robert Keppel, Birnes co-authored The Riverman, about how serial killer Ted Bundy helped police track Green River Killer Gary Ridgway. The book was broadcast into a made-for-TV film on A&E in September 2004.

He co-authored The Day After Roswell with Philip J. Corso. Birnes also headed up an investigation team of fellow ufologists on the 2008-2009 History Channel documentary series UFO Hunters. He made a cameo in the 2009 movie Race to Witch Mountain.

In 2009, Birnes' credibility came into question after investigating a sighting of bright lights in the skies over Morristown, New Jersey on his show UFO Hunters. A Skeptic.com blog said that he, "declared definitively that the Morristown UFO could not have been flares or Chinese lanterns." Afterward, two men, Chris Russo and Joe Rudy, came forward and claimed the lights were a hoax they perpetrated using balloons and flares as part of a "social experiment." Birnes specifically "ruled out" flares as a possibility for the lights on that program.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "William J. Birnes", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0