Apollo 20 'Mona Lisa' — Alien Woman on the Moon: Hoax or Cover-Up? (2007)

In April 2007, a YouTube account named 'retiredafb' began posting videos allegedly documenting a secret Apollo 20 mission from 1976. The account owner identified himself as William Rutledge, a supposedly retired NASA astronaut living in exile in Rwanda. According to Rutledge, Apollo 20 secretly launched in August 1976 from Vandenberg Air Force Base — a joint US-Soviet mission with crew: Rutledge, the fictional Leona Marietta Snyder, and real Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. The mission allegedly landed on the far side of the Moon near Delporte Crater, discovering an ancient alien city and a massive cigar-shaped spacecraft. Inside the ship, astronauts allegedly found a partially mummified, humanoid alien woman in suspended animation, nicknamed 'Mona Lisa.' She was connected to a navigation system and supposedly brought back to Earth. The first video appeared on April 1, 2007 (April Fool's Day). On July 9, 2007, French sculptor and video artist Thierry Speth claimed responsibility for the hoax on the internet forum Need2Know.eu. Despite this, new videos appeared two months later under the account 'moonwalker1966delta.' Fact checks by Reuters (Dec. 2022) and Lead Stories (Dec. 2022) confirmed: no evidence of an alien woman on the Moon. The Apollo 15 photos on which the alleged spacecraft is based show only a natural hill at higher resolution. All Saturn V rockets are verifiably in museums — none available for a secret mission. Italian journalist Luca Scantamburlo published a book ('Apollo 20. The Disclosure') treating the claims as credible. In conspiracy circles, Speth's confession itself is interpreted as a distraction.