Odell Rasmussen-Bright Invented It In 1994. He Spent 20 Years Taking It Back.
He is the most quoted witness for the levels under Concourse D. The 4,100 paper discs from his key clock put him on the surface perimeter through every shift he described. He said so himself, in 2011, to eleven authors.
AURORA, Colorado — Odell Rasmussen-Bright walked 2.9 kilometres of construction fence seven times a night, four nights a week, for nearly three years, and punched a paper disc at fourteen boxes on every round.
His family kept 4,100 of the discs in a shoebox on a shelf in a garage in Aurora, Colorado.
He died there on 11 August, at 78. The cause, according to the Arapahoe County coroner's office, was emphysema.
The interview
In 2003 he gave one telephone interview, fifty-one minutes long, to a researcher writing a book. It was published in 2004 and has been quoted in eleven books since, in two documentaries, and across roughly forty thousand pages online.
He is the only named eyewitness for the levels below Concourse D at Denver International Airport. Everything else in that argument, including this newspaper's own reporting, is drawings.
What he described was a room the length of three football fields, with a channel down the middle and a rail set into the channel, strings of bulbs along one wall, and a ramp at the far end wide enough to drive a truck down.
The retraction
In the spring of 2011 he told two researchers, and a reporter from The Verity Beacon, that he had invented it in a bar on Havana Street in 1994 in exchange for a round of drinks, and had gone on repeating it because he could not think how to stop.
He wrote to eleven authors. Three answered.
An earlier draft of this obituary said that none of them printed it. One did: a four-sentence note on page 388 of a 2013 edition, which we found because its author read our draft and told us where to look, at some cost to herself. Her reply is printed below and she is right about us.
The discs
A Detex watch clock takes one paper disc to a round and cuts the station number and the minute into the rim as each key is turned. Ridgeline Protective Services kept them for insurance; when the firm folded in 2001, a supervisor put them in a box and gave the box to the family.
Two people who were not told why transcribed all 4,100.
On every shift he named in 2003, the clock is on the surface perimeter for the whole of the shift. The longest gap between any two punches on any of those nights is twenty-six minutes, at the fuel-farm leg, which the post orders allow nine minutes for and which he plainly walked slowly.
Ridgeline's key register lists forty-one keys ever issued to him. All of them are perimeter, gate or trailer-row keys. He was never issued a key on the sub-grade series at all.
Where the room is
Sheet 4 of the 1992 mechanical set PX-1402 shows the baggage tunnel: a little over 340 metres of it under the apron, a conveyor trench down the centre line, a maintenance rail set into the trench, and a vehicle ramp at the north end.
Station 9 on his patrol stands at the head of that ramp.
From there, at two in the morning, with the festoon lighting the electrical subcontractor left burning, a man can see perhaps eighty metres down it.
He described a real place accurately. It is at the wrong depth, it is on the published drawings, and you can book a tour.
What this does not do
It removes a witness. It does not remove an anomaly.
The 1992 drawings still show six floors under that concourse. The published record still says three. Note 13 on sheet 4 still says do not field-verify below level minus three, and this newspaper has still never been below level three.
An obituary cannot answer a question about ductwork, and we are not going to let the loss of somebody else's best-known witness stand in for an answer we do not have.
The letter he did have
At 02:14 on a February night in 1993, on the south fence line between stations 10 and 12, he found a cable trench on fire. He emptied two extinguishers into it and reported it, and the round shows him back at station 12 at 02:41.
The electrical subcontractor's superintendent wrote him a letter about it. One paragraph, signed, naming the trench.
It was in the shoebox with the discs, in a plastic sleeve, folded once.
His daughter, who found it in April, says he never mentioned it to her in her life.
He is survived by her, by a brother in Pueblo, and by three grandchildren.
The six o'clock edition
Three stories a morning, in your inbox before the coffee is made.
Sources & Method
We did not start with the man. His daughter offered a shoebox, and two people who were not told why transcribed 4,100 paper discs before anybody here read a word of what he said in 2003. Then we got the post orders and the key register from a retired supervisor, and only then did we read the eleven letters.
Who we spoke to
- Charlene Rasmussen-Bright, His daughter. Interviewed at her home in Aurora twice, and given the full draft two weeks before publication June and July 2026 Gave us the shoebox, the letters and the 1993 commendation. Took no payment and was offered none.
- 4,100 punched paper discs, 3 June 1991 to 22 April 1994, Detex Newman watch-clock discs, one to a round, fourteen stations to a disc. Photographed and transcribed twice by two people working separately, neither told what the assignment concerned; both transcripts published with this obituary April to June 2026 The two transcripts disagree on 26 discs, all of them about a minute value, none about a station.
- Hector Villalpando-Reese, Retired site supervisor, Ridgeline Protective Services. Interviewed by telephone three times; produced the post orders and the site key register from his own garage May 2026 Volunteered, unprompted, that keys were passed hand to hand at shift change and that the register records issue rather than custody.
- Marguerite Deveaux-Ostrander, Author of the 2004 book in which the 2003 interview first appeared. Sent the full draft on 30 July 2026 with three weeks to answer August 2026 Her reply corrects this newspaper on a matter of fact and is printed unedited at the foot of the page.
- Arapahoe County coroner's office, Public record. Written record request 13 August 2026 Cause of death recorded as emphysema.
Documents
- PX-1402 — Denver International Airport, Concourse D substructure — mechanical drawings, sheets 1–6 of 19 accepted
What we could not confirm
- Whether the shoebox is complete. Ridgeline's payroll shows 631 shifts; at seven rounds a shift that is 4,417 discs, and 4,100 survive. The 317 missing fall in three stretches, and 41 of them lie between 4 December 1992 and 19 January 1993, which is inside the winter he described in 2003. None of the twelve dates he named that year is among the missing. Both of those sentences are true and we are not going to print only the second one.
- Whether the key register means what we have used it to mean. It records the keys signed out to him, not the keys in his hand. His own supervisor told us, without being asked, that keys moved between men at shift change and that nobody wrote it down.
- Whether the retraction is true. A man who says he lied has now said two incompatible things, and the second does not become reliable merely by being sadder. This obituary rests on the discs and the register. Without them we would have had two statements from one man and no honest way to choose between them.
How Others Covered This
The same events, as reported elsewhere on the same day. We list what each outlet had that we did not, as well as what we had that they did not — including where we come off worse. Why we print this.
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The Meridian TelegraphTHE WATCHMAN WHO WENT DOWN THERE HAS DIED AND TAKEN IT WITH HIM
Ran the 2003 telephone interview as the obituary and stopped his life at the age of 55.
Had that we did not
His full 2003 account, transcribed accurately from the original tape, which is more than most repetitions of it manage.
Left out
Everything he said after 2003. Seventeen years of a man trying to take something back do not appear.
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The Hollow PostHe Recanted In 2011. Nobody Has Explained What Changed His Mind.
Treated the retraction as the thing needing an explanation, and left a pressure in the reader's mind that the piece never names or evidences.
Had that we did not
A fair and slightly shaming account of how little attention the retraction got — better than ours on that point alone.
Left out
The discs and the key register, which his daughter has been offering to anybody who telephoned since 2011, and which cost us a car journey.
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They Buriedthis newspaperOdell Rasmussen-Bright Invented It In 1994. He Spent 20 Years Taking It Back.
Counted the discs before reading a word he said, then wrote about the man rather than the building.
Had that we did not
The 317 rounds we cannot account for, the key register's limits, and the fire.
Left out
He wrote to this newspaper's letters desk on 6 April 2011. The letter is in our archive with no reply attached to it. We found it while checking his account of writing to eleven authors, and discovered we were the twelfth. — V. Ashcombe-Doyle, standards editor
Right of Reply
They Buried contacted Marguerite Deveaux-Ostrander, author on 30 July 2026, in writing, with the full draft, both disc transcripts, the key register and the letters, and three weeks to answer. Replied on 14 August 2026 and asked that it run entire, including the correction. Printed unedited.
Your draft says that nobody printed his retraction. That is false, and it took me eleven seconds to establish, which is roughly eleven seconds longer than it would have taken your reporter.
It is on page 388 of the 2013 edition, in a note. It says that the principal witness for the lower levels had written to me withdrawing his account, that I had put four questions to him and he had answered none of them, and that readers should weigh the chapter accordingly. It is four sentences and it is not enough and I am not going to pretend it was brave. But it exists, it has existed for thirteen years, and you have written the sentence 'nobody printed it' about a woman who did.
Now let me say the harder part, because I would rather say it myself than have it said about me.
When his letter arrived in 2011 I did what you would have done. I tested it. I asked him who else was in the bar, what the man's name was who bought the round, and which spring it had been, and I asked him why, if he had invented the room in a bar in 1994, he had described it to me in 2003 in the same words twice, forty minutes apart, when I doubled back on him deliberately. He could not answer any of it. He gave me three different months for the bar in two letters. His retraction was, as evidence, exactly as poor as his testimony, and I made a judgement that a man who cannot recall inventing a thing is not obviously more reliable than a man who cannot recall seeing it.
I now think that judgement was wrong, and the reason I think so is your shoebox. I did not have 4,100 discs. Nobody offered them to me and it did not occur to me to ask a dead security contractor for a key register, and that is a failure of imagination which is mine and which I accept in public here. The discs settle it. He was on the surface. I was wrong in print for nine years and in a footnote for thirteen more.
What I will not accept is the shape of your piece, which is that he spent twenty years telling the truth and a row of authors would not listen. Three of us answered him. I answered him within a month, with questions, which is what you do with a witness and which is precisely what you have done to me. The other eight did not answer, and your obituary does not distinguish between the eight who ignored him and the three who engaged and got it wrong, because the undifferentiated version is a better paragraph.
And there is your own last line, which your standards editor has printed and which I want to name, since you will not: he wrote to your letters desk too. You did not answer him at all. You are running an obituary that scolds eleven people for not listening to a man your own newspaper never wrote back to, and the only reason you know he wrote to you is that you went looking through your own filing to check up on him.
One request, and it is not a correction. He was a good interview and a courteous man and he rang me twice afterwards to ask whether the book had done all right. Put that somewhere.
Published unedited under our right-of-reply guarantee.
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Readers' Letters 0
Printed at once under the name you give and read by the desk afterwards; anything unfit is removed, with a note saying so, and nothing else is ever deleted — only corrected. Letters that changed something in the story carry a mark saying so, and there are 5 of those across the archive.