Ray Santilli (born 30 September 1958) is a British

musician A musician is someone who Composer, composes, Conducting, conducts, or Performing arts#Performers, performs music. According to the United States Employment Service, "musician" is a general Terminology, term used to designate a person who fol ...

, record and film producer. He is best known for his exploitation in 1995 of the controversial " alien autopsy" footage and subject of the Warner Bros. film '' Alien Autopsy''.

Early life

Born in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, Santilli was the son of Italian immigrants. He spent his childhood in

Islington Islington ( ) is an inner-city area of north London, England, within the wider London Borough of Islington. It is a mainly residential district of Inner London, extending from Islington's #Islington High Street, High Street to Highbury Fields ...

London.

Career

Ray Santilli started his professional career in 1974 as a session musician, record producer and music distributor. In 1982, Santilli founded AMP Entertainment, where he produced and promoted acts of the day. In 1981, Santilli produced The Tweets album which featured "The Birdy Song". In 1985 he founded Music Broadcasting Services Ltd, an independent record label which handled the exclusive rights to the Walt Disney Audio Soundtrack Catalogue in the United Kingdom. In 1987 Santilli produced the charity record " The Wishing Well" featuring

Boy George George Alan O'Dowd (born 14 June 1961), known professionally as Boy George, is an English singer-songwriter and DJ who rose to fame as the lead singer of the pop band Culture Club. He began his solo career in 1987. Boy George grew up in Eltham a ...

Dollar Dollar is the name of more than 25 currencies. The United States dollar, named after the international currency known as the Spanish dollar, was established in 1792 and is the first so named that still survives. Others include the Australian d ...

and Grace Kennedy for

Great Ormond Street Hospital Great Ormond Street Hospital (informally GOSH, formerly the Hospital for Sick Children) is a children's hospital located in the Bloomsbury area of the London Borough of Camden, and a part of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS F ...

. In 1991, Santilli founded the Merlin Group. The company specialised in the re-recording of hits with original artists. Merlin also produced and marketed a number of television specials. In 1994 Santilli formed Orbital Media Ltd where he produced a succession of TV documentaries and films for television. Santilli is best known for his claim to have discovered footage which depicted the autopsy of an alien creature. The '' Alien autopsy'' footage, supposedly of extraterrestrial corpses from the so-called

Roswell UFO incident The Roswell Incident started in 1947 with the recovery of debris near Roswell, New Mexico. It later became the basis for conspiracy theories alleging that the United States military recovered a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft. The debri ...

, was broadcast to a worldwide audience on 28 August 1995. The film and those who took part in the making of it have all admitted it is a hoax, although Santilli still maintains it is real despite him changing his story numerous times. He also claims Kodak have analysed the film and confirmed its date, but when asked to resubmit the film with the images, Santilli has always refused. In 2006 the story of Ray Santilli and the autopsy was the subject of a

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (WBEI), commonly known as Warner Bros. (WB), is an American filmed entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California and the main namesake subsidiary of Warner Bro ...

film '' Alien Autopsy'' featuring the British double act

Ant & Dec Ant & Dec are a British television presenting duo consisting of Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly from Newcastle upon Tyne. After meeting as child actors on CBBC's drama ''Byker Grove'', they performed together as pop musicians PJ & Duncan, ...

. Dec plays Ray Santilli with Ant as Santilli's real life business partner and friend Gary Shoefield. That same year, Ray Santilli claimed that sections of the autopsy footage had been 'restored'.

Filmography

References

External links

*
Interview with Ray Santilli
{{DEFAULTSORT:Santilli, Ray 1957 births British male guitarists British record producers British film producers Musicians from London English people of Italian descent Living people