A retired Air Force general known in UFO circles has gone missing during a hike in New Mexico, just months after a former colleague disappeared in a nearly identical case.
US Major General William Neil McCasland, 68, was last seen on the morning of February 27 as he left his Albuquerque home with only a backpack, wallet and .38-caliber revolver for a trail run, according to the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office.
Sources previously told The New York Post that McCasland was a ‘gatekeeper’ and ‘participant’ in the UFO community.
His disappearance has only fueled speculation around the disappearance of 60-year-old Monica Reza, who had worked on a rocket project overseen by McCasland, who also went missing in June 2025.
In a chillingly similar case, Reza was last seen hiking in a California forest with a colleague, smiling and waving moments before she ‘vanished off the face of the earth,’ according to NewsNation.
For months, authorities and volunteers have combed the area using every resource at their disposal, but the aerospace engineer remains missing without a trace.
At a recent press conference, Sheriff John Allen said a Silver Alert was issued for McCasland after reports of a ‘mental fog’ in the months before his disappearance, adding that he had no other known health problems.
Yet despite an intensive search involving drones, helicopters, ground crews and K-9 units, the avid outdoorsman – and any trace of his belongings – also remains missing.
‘Let me be straight. We’ve had a lot of tips, and we will go through every tip. But there are some tips with some outlandish theories, conspiracy theories,’ the sheriff said.
‘We will look into everything, but we are trying as a law enforcement agency and entity,’ he added.
The general’s wife, Susan McCasland, posted on Facebook to set the record straight amid what she described as ‘misinformation’ about her husband’s disappearance.
‘It is true that Neil had a brief association with the UFO community,’ she wrote. ‘This connection is not a reason for someone to abduct Neil.
‘Though at this point with absolutely no sign of him, maybe the best hypothesis is that aliens beamed him up to the mothership. However, no sightings of a mothership hovering above the Sandia Mountains have been reported.’
Just nine months ago, Reza – known professionally as Monica Jacinto at Aerojet Rocketdyne as a material scientist – was last seen hiking on the popular Mount Waterman Trail in the Angeles National Forest in Los Angeles.
Like McCasland, she loved hiking. She was just 30ft behind the man she was with when she vanished on what was described as a ‘normal day,’ according to NewsNation.
‘He turned around, next thing you know, she was just completely gone,’ the outlet reported.
‘Rescue teams spent days looking for her, but actually never recovered her body.’
Reza worked for Aerojet Rocketdyne, a high-profile company funded for years by NASA and the Air Force Research Laboratory, according to SpaceNews.
In the 1990s, she engineered a nickel-based superalloy that could survive extreme oxygen environments without added weight – technology that helped create the AR1 engine, set to replace Russian RD-180 engines on United Launch Alliance rockets.
Her patented invention brought her into McCasland’s sphere, as he oversaw the Air Force group that funded early-2000s research on advanced materials for reusable spacecraft and weapons systems.
McCasland’s Air Force biography reveals he oversaw advanced materials as director of the Space Vehicle Directorate’s materials wing and commanded the Phillips Research Site at Kirtland Air Force Base from 2001 to 2004.
His roles ultimately had a direct connection to Reza’s highly successful research.
The general had also led research at Ohio’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which Marik Von Rennenkampff, a former Obama-era national security analyst, described as ‘where all the super-secret research happens,’ CNN reported.
On the day he vanished, McCasland spoke with a repair person at his home at 10am, while his wife left around an hour later for a medical appointment, the sheriff’s office said.
Hellbound and Down 