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Alleged alien abductee Linda Napolitano has filed a lawsuit against Netflix over the new documentary The Manhattan Alien Abduction.
The Manhattan Alien Abduction is the story of Linda Napolitano, who went by the pseudonym Linda Cortile after claiming that she had been abducted by aliens from her 12th floor Manhattan apartment on November 30th, 1989.
Among her many other claims were that aliens levitated her out her 12th floor window, then lifted her up into the sky and entering their spacecraft, performed experiments on her, placed some sort of implant in her nose, then placed her back in her bedroom.
Napolitano was assisted in spreading her alien abduction tale by well-known UFOlogist Budd Hopkins, who eventually claimed to have around 20 people who witnessed what he was calling the Brooklyn Bridge Abduction. The alleged witnesses were either never identified or never had their claims verified.
The Netflix documentary reveals a intricate and very convoluted story that is strongly disputed by filmmaker Carol Rainey. Plot twist: Carol Rainey was married to Budd Hopkins, who died in 2011. She too is also now deceased, passing away in 2023.
“I felt that Budd had lost his objectivity,” Rainey said. “I don’t know if it was through the Linda case, or earlier than that. I couldn’t respect what I heard him do to people who were vulnerable, very vulnerable. I had to try to protect other people from being tormented this way. I was sick. I was literally sick of the whole business, and the only thing I could think to do was to speak out about it.”
Carol Rainey is also one of the main reasons Linda Napolitano, the estate of Budd Hopkins, and Peter Robbins (a colleague of Budd Hopkins) are now suing Netflix, the documentary’s production companies, and Rainey’s estate.
The lawsuit claims the defendants’ participated in fraud, defamation, and breach of covenant of good faith and fair dealing.
Napolitano’s attorney, Robert Young, claimed in a phone call to Today that she and Robbins feel they were “egregiously deceived” by the documentary’s producers.
“They would have never entered into any production or description of what happened to Linda that was going to be questioned and subject to such denigration and aspersions against their good names and character,” he said. “They’re not happy.”
The lawsuit also claims that Napolitano was set up as “a villain for purposes of controversy and conflict” in the documentary and that it will “destroy her reputation as an honest and decent person.”