Marianne Robb retired from the Gilbert Police Department in 2021, after 34 years in law enforcement. But she’s still working with police officers.
A few years ago, she and another former officer, Dave Rich, started an organization they call UAP PD — the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Police Department. They take reports from cops and other law enforcement officers who have experiences they can’t explain.
This work isn’t new for Robb. She’s been actively involved in the Arizona chapter of MUFON — the Mutual UFO Network — since 2015.
And as she told The Show recently, even back when she was on the police force, fellow officers would call her when their investigations intersected with the paranormal.
Full conversation
MARIANNE ROBB: I had a case where the family thought the sister was mentally ill because she said that she was going to marry a entity or an alien from another planet, and his name was Lucifer. And that she was going to meet him one night, and he was going to take her and her two kids up to his planet and live happily ever after.
SAM DINGMAN: Oh, boy.
ROBB: My partner goes, “Hey, can you come with me on this, because I don’t know how to react to this?” So I got there, come to find out she actually was headed to a very dark area the night before at like midnight. And it’s up near Sunflower, Arizona. And if anybody knows that area, it is probably the darkest spot that I have seen in a very long time.
And it was her and her two small young kids. She was there for half the night waiting for Lucifer to come down and take her up to his planet. Well, he never showed.
My thought that really kind of concerned me was what happens if Lucifer did not want kids? What would have happened to those two kids out in the middle of nowhere?
So I spoke to the lady, and we sat down, and she was telling me this whole story. Well then she started talking about [ufologist] Steven Greer, and she started to talk about all these other organizations that’s part of this UFO thing.
Well, I knew what she was talking about. Whether I believed in the people that she was talking about, that didn’t matter. I knew what she was talking about. And she got so comfortable, she held my hand and she literally got up voluntarily, walked up, got into my patrol car, and we took her to go get a psych evaluation.
Now, if it would have been my partner or if it had been any other officer that doesn’t know the key words or didn’t know the people she was talking about, oh, there’d be a fight on their hands.
DINGMAN: Boy, that’s a complex story, Marianne. Thank you for sharing that. Let me just make sure I understand: You took the step in your mind to consider the idea that she sincerely believed in Lucifer.
ROBB: Yes.
DINGMAN: And that if her version of the story was true, there might be a case that these kids would get abandoned. So by taking that step because you were immersed in this world, you were able to kind of meet her where she was and ask her a question that made her comfortable enough to go get a psych evaluation.
ROBB: Correct. I’m looking at her body language, I’m looking in her eyes ... I’m hearing what she has to say. In her mind, she is 100% telling me the truth.
Do I believe all that happened? No. But I’m going to make her feel that, yes, I believe her. And I’m going to give her any kind of help that she needs.
DINGMAN: This seems like a really critical difference you just identified: Is someone telling the truth versus do they believe they’re telling the truth?
ROBB: My first priority at that point was, you know what? I’m here with you. Let’s get you some help.
DINGMAN: Let me ask you this, Marianne. As I understand it, sometimes officers themselves have these unexplainable experiences, right?
ROBB: Oh, yes.
DINGMAN: Not just they get calls about other people having them.
ROBB: Oh, no. There is a lot of officers and first responders that have had these type of experiences, and they have no clue what to do, where to go.
We have officers and first responders. Now when we say law enforcement, we’re talking state, local, county, federal, any kind — park rangers. All of these different categories are out there working either 24-hour shifts, working 10-hour shifts out in, you know, under the big open sky.
DINGMAN: And so what do you and Dave do once people bring these stories to you? Do you then liaise with the departments, or how does the collaboration work?
ROBB: No, because most of these officers, whether or not they are still on duty or they’re retired, there is a lot of officers that don’t want to be identified. They just want to share their story, get it out there and have someone reassure them they are not crazy. This stuff happens, and it just relaxes them.
Do we have answers for them? No. But that’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to help them to navigate whatever the situation was and to reassure them they are not crazy. They saw something.
DINGMAN: So it’s almost — and I mean this in a good way — it’s almost like therapy.
ROBB: Yeah, that’s exactly what it is. Because we want them to understand that there is what we call a “safe zone,” where they can come and share.
Now, when we get numerous officers that have experienced something in one specific location — which we have had — we’ll go out and maybe do somewhat of investigation. Hey, can we see something?
We had about eight stories with this one location. So we decided, OK, we’re going to go check it out. And I had a video camera and I’m just kind of just videotaping. Dave and I have a couple other folks that are on our team. One is kind of a ghost hunter, has all the equipment, and one is a kind of a medium. She is very sensitive in that fashion. She’s also a hypnotherapist, and she’s kind of our therapist if anybody would like to talk to her.
So the four of us are out there and. And all of a sudden, just as we’re getting ready to leave, Dave and this gal that we’re with, Gwen, they see something. And I’ve just got my video camera and I’m freehanding this, and I’m looking and kind of zooming into where they say they’re seeing something. And Dave goes, “I just have the sense we need to leave.”
So we all get in the truck, we leave. We go to a restaurant just to get something to eat and kind of debrief a little bit. And I’m looking at my video camera. And I’m looking at this, and I’m kind of seeing something. Didn’t say a word to him. I said, “Dave, just look at this. See what you think.”
And he goes, “Holy cow.” And he showed it to the other two people. And there was one tall being or something standing there. And then there was another one, all fours that was kind of doing, you know, going back and forth, trying to figure out who we were kind of thing. Gwen saw it, Jesse saw it, Dave saw it. He could not explain it.
DINGMAN: So these folks that come to you and they say, “I had this experience. I need you guys to hear me out.” Do they pay you for that?
ROBB: Oh, no, no, no, no.
DINGMAN: You’re not doing it for money.
ROBB: No. We’re doing it on our own dime. I just traveled to Utah because we had a bigfoot experience that this officer, even though he’s retired, he still wanted to remain anonymous. So he goes, “If you want my story, you need to come up to Utah.”
Well, guess who found a hotel and off to Utah? And I drive because I have my equipment and everything, so I’ll drive. So again, on my own dime, I drove up to Utah to get the story. I will travel wherever I need to go to meet with that person.
