tonight on "nightline," picture of grief? shocking new testimony in the trial of casey anthony, accused of murdering her 2-year-old daughter. her ex-boyfriend and father take the stand -- >> treat me with respect and you'll get it back. >> and tell a damaging story. inside area 51. for decades the government denied its very existence. the ufo sightings, alien stories kept coming. and now, one writer is making stunning new claims. >> it was not martians, it was the russians. >> but after finding her secret source, we challenge her -- >> how can you believe this? and, tornado cam. incredible home footage from joplin, missouri, as an ef-5 twister hits. good-bye play set, good-bye

trampoline. we'll show you a tornado as you've never seen it. >> announcer: from the global resources of abc news, with terry moran and cynthia mcfadden in new york city, and bill weir in las vegas, this is "nightline," may 26th, 2011. >> good evening, i'm bill weir. the lawyer for casey anthony claims the young florida mom reacted to her toddler's death by doing, quote, what she's been doing all her life. hiding her pain. well, today, multiple witnesses testified that if she felt any pain, she hid it really well. here's ashleigh banfield. >> reporter: the facts and the evidence just keep piling up against casey anthony, the 25-year-old florida mother who is facing the death penalty in the murder of her 2-year-old daughter, caylee. >> she would have a book, she would have her teddy bear. they liked "dora the explorer." and could found to 40 in spanish which was pretty incredible for

her age. >> reporter: these tears in the courtroom were missing in the days after her daughter died in june of 2008. if you believe the prosecutors, she kills her daughter and covered it up. if you believe the defense, the child drowned accidentally and casey covered it up. any way you slice it, casey's behavior after the tragedy is taking center stage in court. >> what can you tell the jury about her demeanor when you saw her in july? >> she seemed upbeat. >> one of the toughest things for the defense to overcome is how she was behaving after her child was dead. it's just not normal. for someone to be so normal. when their child has just died. >> reporter: but what could explain casey's behavior after the death of her toddler? the defense points to this man. >> george a. anthony. >> reporter: casey's father. she says he was there when the child drowned. that he disposed of her body and then forced casey to keep it

quiet. and the accusations don't stop there. she claims her father molested her as a child and that lying and covering up just run in the family. surprisingly, the claims have caused a bitter tension between george anthony and casey's lawyer. >> treat me with a little bit of respect and you'll get respect back. that's all i'm asking. >> reporter: and finally today, the first witness to shed some light on the dark family secrets. the accusations of physical and sexual ail abuse at the hands of both casey's father and her brother, lee. the judge cleared the jury from the courtroom before kay sipcas ex-boyfriend took the stand. >> was the secret that casey had shared with you that she had been abused by her father? >> no. >> what was the secret that she had shared with you? >> lee anthony tried to sexually abuse her. he tried to feel her up.

>> all right, let's move on to mr. george anthony, her father. >> hitting. that's all i can remember. i took it as discipline. >> reporter: george anthony denies those accusations. and while casey's behavior is one thing, her own words are another. from her friend, melissa england, a claim she once overheard casey saying this. >> and as she hung up she said, she kind of flew the phone down in the dash board and just said, "oh my god, i'm such a good liar." >> reporter: and then ricardo morales, another ex-boyfriend, who posted this picture on his myspace page. the caption reads "win her over with chloroform." prosecutors say chloroform was detected in the trunk of casey anthony's car, where they believe the body of her daughter lay decomposing for days. >> why did you post this on your myspace? >> just a joke, i found it

humorous at the time. >> reporter: perhaps a crude joke back then that's become deadly serious now. for "nightline," ashleigh banfield, orlando. >> our thanks to ashleigh. up next, the story that brought us here. incredible claims in the new book about area 51. we challenge the author to back her story up. [ male announcer ] sitting, waiting, hoping. that's not how successful investing is done. at e-trade it's harnessing some of the most powerful yet easy to use trading tools on the planet to help diversify, identify opportunities, take action. it's using professional grade research and your brain to seek maximum returns to reach your goals. it's investing with intelligence and cold hard conviction. you made the money. you should have everything you need to invest it. e-trade. investing unleashed.

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>> announcer: "nightline" continues from las vegas with bill weir. >> sin city markets itself on the act to keep secrets. but this town has nothing on the slice of nevada known as area 51. for decades the government kept

such a tight lid on the place, many people assumed they must be hiding ufos. so when a new book claimed to have the real story based on the newly disclassified lives of the men who worked there, we jumped on the chance to meet the author and her sources. but what we found disturbed news ways we never imagined. if you leave the rattle and hum of the las vegas strip and head hour and a half north, you will find a military test range the size of connecticut. and out in the middle of that hot dust and jet fumes are airstrips and hangars few people have ever seen. a place that for decades officially did not exist. the nearest town is tiny rachel, nevada, and if you stop by the little alien-inn, there are locals that will tell you why they think the neighborhood has been secretive for so long. >> i've seen orbs, balls of light moving erratically. i did the math one time. 23,000 miles an hour. >> i think they also may be reverse engineering ufos out

there. >> reporter: while few know exactly what happens out there these days, the cia finally admits there is an area 51. and for the first time, the unsung heroes of the cold war are able to talk about it. >> people would ask me, what are you guarding? i don't think it's any of your business. >> reporter: to guard area 51, richard took an oath of silence, along with all the others who spent their careers in a sun-baked wasteland, locked in a race to build and test better flying weapons than their arch enemies. >> first impression was seeing the soviet migs sitting on the car mack as we were landing and that was very exciting. >> reporter: did you know we had a mig at that point? >> no. >> reporter: t.d. barnes helped america build the first stealth aircraft. he couldn't tell his wife how he spent his days. jim's family thought he was a tv repairman. >> the wife says, where are you going?

for a whole week? i can't tell you. it took special people not to break up. >> reporter: but it was impossible to keep every test flight away from prying eyes and with every civilian sighting came a new type of conspiracy theory. >> it's not conventional aircraft, then, what did they see? >> planes at 90,000 feet, twice or better than any conventional plane and at that speed, it was a ufo sighting. >> reporter: many believe this place still holds the key to the biggest ufo mystery of them all. >> the flying disc has been found and is now in the possession of the army. >> reporter: legend has it after a flying saucer crashed in roswell, new mexico, in 19747, the wreckage and aliens inside were taken to area 51 for studies. annie jacob ken details a number of top secret weapons tests. but she concludes they were not

the reason for the secrecy. instead, it was something else. >> one of them tells me something that completely stuns me and causes my jaw to drop. everything that the myth of roswell is has an element of truth. and then he tells me he can't tell me more. >> reporter: he says her source told her the flying saucer came from russia, not outer space. and inside were not little green men, but horribly disfigured children. >> they were about 13 years old. and they had been manipulated surgically or genetically to appear as if they were aliens. >> reporter: after world war ii, she writes, josef stalin employed a doctor to create alien look alikes out of humans. he then placed them in a round

hover and fly aircraft and sent them to america, hoping to set off a kind of mass panic that came after the war of the words radio scare. >> ladies and gentlemen, this is the most terrifying thing i've ever witnessed. >> reporter: and what was the basis for his story? had he seen the craft? had he seen the deformed children? >> he and four other engineers were the recipients of what he calls the equipment, the equipment and the people. and as he told me, two of them were still alive. and he held them and so the way he described them to me, many times he's described them to me, is always with this horrible sense of looking down at them. >> reporter: not only was her source ordered to reverse engineer the flying disc, she writes, but also the people inside. and, she alleges, area 51 engineers began their own human experiments.

a program that ran for decades. >> i believe that is the truth of why area 51 is still classified. >> reporter: so, your source believes that there was american medical testing done on children -- >> according to my source they were handicapped children and prisoners. >> reporter: the dozen experts we contacted all scoffed at her roswell theory. >> well, it's just not even conceivable. it's not even conceivable. >> reporter: including amy knight. >> i think it's nightly unlikely that he would have been drawn into any kind of agreement with stalin or the soviet government. >> reporter: after writing more than 30 books on aviation history, jay miller says there is no way the russians or anyone else could have flown such a mission. >> it was physically impossible to fly the four, five, or 6,000 miles that she's claiming they flew in order to accomplish this amazing feat. >> reporter: surely you must have obsessed over how to double

source this. how do you confirm this? >> well, i'm not sure it's my job to prove it. it was my job to report it. >> reporter: can i talk to your source? >> he -- i have asked. >> reporter: she insisted her source is the last man living with a secret no one could understand. and he confided in her just bits of information over 100-plus hours of conversation. but shortly after that interview, we managed to track down annie's top secret source living here in nevada. and within minutes of entering his home, heard him describe that russian flying saucer filled with mutilated children. he says he's afraid he'll be arrested if he goes public. he's afraid al qaeda might kidnap him for his engineering knowledge. he's a genuinely likable guy with impeccable credentials. but given a few holes in his story and the fact he's almost 90, it's impossible to know whether this whole thing is something he witnessed, heard about or imagined.

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back to the tale of area 51, a place that holds, according to annie jacobsen, a soviet flying saucer, the bodies of mute yant children and evidence that americans performed experiments on disabled kids. she says her source was reputable, but when he came to us, he contradicted several of her claims to us, the man seemed confused an conflicted. we promised to protect his identity. but we were keen to see how ajob essential would act. >> this is really a great book.

>> reporter: at every stop on her promotional tour, jacobsen has stood by her book as it is written. >> who was on the spacecraft? >> well, some child-sized aviators and that's what's most disturbing about the book. it was not martians, it was actually the russians. it had been stalin's idea and it was originally of a third reich design. >> you have to read the book. if you are scratching your head at home and wondering, you've done a great piece here. >> reporter: after repeated requests and a tense negotiation, she agreed to sit down with me a second time. he told us he never touched the people that were in that craft. >> when he discusses this with me and describes the child-size aviators and he talks about them and he would go like this. my interpretation is whhe held them. he corroborated everything in my

book with two discrepancies. i see absolutely no problem with that. >> reporter: you told us that he came to you, that he made these revelations out of a sense of patriotic guilt. >> that is correct. >> reporter: when i asked him, why are you here, why are you talking about this after all this time, he said, quote, to help annie's book. >> bill, you're absolutely taking one sentence out of context. all the information that i have from this source is absolutely credible. >> reporter: how? you're not able to vet any of the things he's telling you. >> i've looked at his work history -- >> reporter: it's possible -- there are korean war veterans that have false memories. >> bill, you are taking this way out into left field. >> reporter: i am? >> hang on. i think we have to agree to disagree, because i know what i think and i stand by the verasty of my source. i absolutely do. i stand by everything that he told me. i have notes, i have audiotapes.

i have records, i have documents. >> reporter: it doesn't matter. i met him. i met him. >> you are entitled to think what you like. >> reporter: my bro deuproducer him. >> i absolutely stand by my source. >> reporter: how can you believe this? >> the other important thing is i have worked with many of his colleagues. >> there is absolutely no chance that that last chapter is true in any fashion. >> reporter: not only was t.d. barnes one of jacobsen's main sources, he's president of a group of area 51 alumni. he told us he still supports the first part of her book, but says many of his members that worked with her are now outraged. >> this was so disturbing to us, because some of the people that's in the book are 88 years old this is their last chance, probably, to get their story told. the opinion of the people that contact me think she just did it to make the book about the author and not about us. and to make it sell.

>> reporter: t.d. and his peers hope people will seek out the new documentary on the national geographic channel and visit the atomic testing museum in las vegas. >> i think the whole world should see this, because it's a piece of history that's been kept secret for so long. >> reporter: and they hope people focus on the real legacy of area 51, the men who risked their lives in thankless silence. you can see more about area 51 this saturday on the nat geo. and we want to show you video from joplin, missouri, sunday just as the tornado hit. after some warning gusts, the storm struck full force, wind speeds topping 200 miles an hour, enough to send debris hurtling at lethal velocity. this is not in fast forward. in five minutes, the yard w