Tag: mysterious disappearances

Rep. Eric Burlison calls for FBI probe into ‘deeply concerning’ scientist and military personnel disappearances and deaths

The list of U.S. scientists and military personnel who have gone missing has grown in recent months, beginning with the July 4, 2024 disappearance of Frank Maiwald, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory researcher.

Following several more high-profile disappearances—including a senior aerospace engineer and a retired Air Force General, Representative Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) is demanding a federal investigation. Citing the
“deeply concerning” ties these individuals share with advanced research, Burlison revealed that he has asked for the involvement of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to determine if these incidents are connected or represent a targeted threat to national security.

“The disappearance of multiple scientists and military personnel with ties to advanced research is deeply concerning. I’ve already requested FBI involvement, and we will keep pressing for answers,” Burlison said Monday on X.

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Why Are All These Scientists And Military Officials Missing/Dead?

A disturbing number of scientists and military officials connected to America’s most sensitive aerospace, nuclear, and space programs have gone missing or turned up dead recently.

The timing is prompting serious questions as to whether it is connected to President Trump ordering the full release of UFO and UAP files.

Fox News host Will Cain highlighted several of the cases:

“Carl Grillmair: Astrophysicist at Caltech. He worked on a NASA-supported space telescope project and infrared systems. Now, he was shot and killed at his home just two months ago.”

“Frank Maiwald: Senior Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. He died nearly two years ago but his cause of death has never been made public.”

“Monica Reza: Connected to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab Project. She went missing last summer while hiking in California.”

“William Neil McCasland: Retired Air Force General that oversaw advanced space and surveillance programs. He’s been missing since February. (Connected to Monica Reza)”

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Girl Who Went Missing in 1994 Found Alive

A cold case from another era finally reached its conclusion this week in Gila County, Arizona.

On Wednesday, the Gila County Sheriff’s Office announced via news release that Christina Marie Plante, who was 13 when she disappeared from Star Valley, Arizona, in 1994, has been found alive.

The Sheriff’s Office posted a copy of the news release to Facebook.

“Christina was reported missing after she vanished without a trace from her community,” the press release read. “At the time of her disappearance, extensive search efforts were conducted involving local law enforcement, volunteers, and regional resources. Despite exhaustive ground searches, interviews, and investigative follow-up, no viable leads were developed.”

The Sheriff’s office credited the subsequent formation of its own cold case unit, which led to “new leads” and eventually a “breakthrough.”

“Investigators have confirmed her identity,” the press release noted.

As for what happened to Plante nearly 32 years ago, authorities remained mum.

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Mystery of scientists dead or missing rises to EIGHT as two more men tied to America’s most coveted secrets join the list

The ominous web of US scientists and lab employees who have died or gone missing continues to grow as two more cases have been linked to the disturbing trend. 

NASA scientist Frank Maiwald reportedly died on July 4, 2024 in Los Angeles at the age of 61, but the cause of death has never been made public and officials confirmed that an autopsy was never performed.

Maiwald had been a prominent researcher at the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) since 1999 and worked on multiple projects tied to advanced satellite technology that could scan Earth and other planets.

In June 2023, just 13 months before his death, he was the lead researcher on a breakthrough that could help future space missions detect clear signs of life on other worlds, including Jupiter’s moon Europa, Saturn’s moon Enceladus, or the dwarf planet Ceres.

Despite Maiwald being a JPL Principal – an award given to scientists ‘making outstanding individual contributions’ in their fields – NASA has never commented publicly on the scientist’s death, and the only public record marking his passing was an obituary posted online.

Meanwhile, another mysterious disappearance has come to light at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), one of America’s key nuclear research facilities, bringing the total number of unexplained incidents to eight since July 2024.

Anthony Chavez, a former employee at LANL until his retirement in 2017, vanished without a trace on May 4, 2025 – just seven weeks before a key assistant at the same lab disappeared.

The Los Alamos Police Department told the Daily Mail that the search for Chavez, 79, is still ongoing and no new information in the case has emerged, nearly one year later. 

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‘Something Dark Is Going On’: Nine Top-Level Scientists Die Or Go Missing In Past Year

In the span of nine months, nine top-level scientists in the United States have died or vanished without a trace.

Seven of them were connected to the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) or the institutions it directly funds.

AFRL develops and transitions the most sensitive aerospace technologies in the United States’ defense arsenal.

1) Monica Jacinto Reza vanished June 22, 2025 while hiking with friends in the Angeles National Forest in California.

She was last seen waving to a hiking companion approximately 30 feet behind the group. Despite an extensive search involving helicopters, drones, and canine units, only a beanie and lip balm were recovered, and her body was never found.

Reza, 60, was an aerospace engineer and Technical Fellow at Aerojet Rocketdyne who later moved to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)and co-inventor of Mondaloy.

Mondaloy is a family of nickel-based superalloys developed by Aerojet Rocketdyne to withstand oxygen-rich environments and extreme heat in rocket engines. Its unique achievement is balancing high oxygen compatibility with structural strength, solving a critical challenge where traditional oxygen-resistant alloys were too weak for use in high-pressure components like preburners and turbine rotors.

She worked closely with Retired Major General William Neil McCasland, who commanded the AFRL from 2011 to 2013 and oversaw the government funding for her alloy program. McCasland disappeared in February.

Dallas Hardwick, Reza’s mentor and co-inventor of Mondaloy, died on January 5, 2014, apparently of natural causes.

2) Melissa Casias has been missing since June 26, 2025, in Taos County, New Mexico.

She was last seen walking alone on Highway 518 near Talpa around 2:15 p.m., wearing a light-colored shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes, with a backpack containing personal items.

Casias, 53, was an administrative assistant at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), a facility known for nuclear weapons research and national security science.

Her job at LANL links her to McCasland, who worked closely with LANL on national security projects at Kirtland Air Force Base, according to the Daily Mail. She vanished just four days after Reza mysteriously disappeared.

3, 4, 5) Jacob Prichard, Jaymee Prichard, and 1st Lt. Jaime Gustitus all died on October 25, 2025.

Jacob Prichard, 34, was the Acquisition Project Manager in the AFRL Sensors Directorate at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, specializing in technologies for air and space reconnaissance and surveillance.

Jacob’s wife, Jaymee Prichard, 33, was a finance specialist at the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Wright-Patterson. The couple had three children.

Gustitus, 25, was a U.S. Air Force Operations Analysis Officer who worked in a top secret capacity at the 711th Human Performance Wing at Wright-Patterson.

Jacob allegedly killed his wife Jaymee and placed her body in the trunk of their car, then drove to Sugarcreek Township, broke into Gustitus’s apartment and fatally shot her around 2 a.m.

He then drove to the West Milton Municipal Building, opened the trunk for police to discover Jaymee’s body, and at around 4:23 a.m., committed suicide by gunshot in the parking lot. The act was reportedly captured on security cameras.

6) Carl Grillmair, astrophysicist and astronomer at the Caltech Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), was shot dead on the front porch of his home in Llano, California on February 16, 2026.

Grillmair was celebrated for his groundbreaking research in astronomy, including the discovery of dozens of stellar streams (remnants of ancient galactic collisions) and the first detection of water signatures in the atmospheres of exoplanets. For over nearly 30 years at IPAC, he worked on numerous projects including the NEOWISE Science Data Center, where he validated data pipelines for detecting asteroids and comets that could impact Earth.

Grillmair’s role involved testing new instrumentation and ensuring the NEO Surveyor’s instruments performed to specification to identify dark, cold objects against the black of space.

7) William Neil McCasland, former AFRL Commander, former research commander at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, vanished from his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on February 27, 2026.  A “Silver Alert” was issued after the 68-year-old disappeared.

He reportedly left his phone and glasses but took his wallet, boots, and a .38 revolver, with the FBI now assisting in his search.

McCasland held some of the most sensitive positions in the U.S. military, including Director of Special Programs at the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, giving him critical knowledge of the nation’s most classified programs.

He reportedly oversaw $4.4 billion in classified aerospace research and development, running the lab at Wright-Patterson and serving as the executive secretary of the Special Access Program Oversight Committee, the body with full purview of every SAP in the Department of Defense. His name appears in WikiLeaks emails coordinating a UAP disclosure meeting with the Clinton campaign and the head of Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, according to the Sentinel Network.

McCasland’s association with UFO research and brief professional association with Tom DeLonge and the To The Stars Academy have drawn significant public and media attention to the case.

According to The Sentinel, these mysterious deaths and disappearances do not amount to  “a loose collection of people who happened to work in defense.”

This is one documented system, traceable through patent filings, congressional testimony, DTIC records, and federal contract databases.

Reza vanished in LA County. Grillmair was killed in LA County. Both in the shadow of the JPL/Caltech corridor where America’s planetary defense infrastructure is built. McCasland vanished in Albuquerque, home of Kirtland AFB and Sandia National Labs. The Wright-Patterson deaths were in Dayton. These are not random locations. They are the three geographic nodes of American defense aerospace research. Southern California. New Mexico. Ohio. The triangle where AFRL lives.

And at every node, the same institutional silence. JPL said nothing about Reza. NASA said nothing. The AIAA said nothing. Caltech’s statement about Grillmair said he “passed away suddenly” without using the word “shot.” Wright-Patterson offered counseling services. In every case, the institution that lost someone chose the minimum possible disclosure. The silence is its own pattern inside the pattern.

8) Nuno F. Gomes Loureiro, a prominent Portuguese plasma physicist, was fatally shot at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, on December 15, 2025 and died from his injuries the following day.

Authorities connected his murder to Cláudio Manuel Neves Valente, who had committed a shooting at Brown University two days prior; both men were classmates at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Portugal.

Loureiro, 47, held joint appointments as a professor in MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and Department of Physics and director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center.

He joined MIT in 2016 and was known for his work on nonlinear plasma dynamics, including the development of the Viriato simulation code and his research on solar flares and fusion confinement.

9) Jason Thomas, a chemical biologist, was reported missing on December 13, 2025, after leaving his home on the night of December 12 without his phone, wallet, or identification. He was found dead in Lake Quannapowitt in Wakefield, Massachusetts, on March 17, 2026.

Thomas, 45, was the assistant director at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research with over 4,500 citations in chemical biology and chemoproteomics.  His work reportedly included active contracts with the Department of Defense.

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Possible X account of missing general William McCasland claimed fellow general was murdered over nuclear material

Online sleuths think they have uncovered missing retired Air Force general William Neil McCasland’s anonymous social media account — which claimed another general was murdered for his dealings with nuclear material.

McCasland, 68, went missing from his Albuquerque, NM, home on Feb. 27 — which is the same day that the person behind a conspicuously credentialed X account centered on spacecraft and advanced science made their last post.

The account @tmbspaceships claims to be run by a “retired 38-year active duty” United States Air Force with a PhD in engineering — listing the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), the Air Education Training Command (AETC), and Air Force Material Command (AETC) as places they’ve worked.

Both the AFIT and AFMC are located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which McCasland ran from 2011 to 2013. He attended the Air War College during his 34-year career, which is a subordinate to the AETC. McCasland attained a PhD in Astronautical Engineering from MIT in 1988.

The account shockingly claimed just months before McCasland’s disappearance that Maj. Gen. John Rossi, who allegedly committed suicide in 2016, was actually murdered because of refusal to hand over nuclear material to private contractors.

The 55-year-old two star general ended his life just two days before receiving a third star and taking the reins at US Army Space and Missile Defense Command, Army Times reported.

Army investigators ruled his hanging death was due a severe lack of sleep and job anxiety, according to the outlet.

“Gen. Rossi was a good friend and it is my opinion he did not commit suicide,” the account wrote in a reply posted on Sept. 2, 2025.

“I believe Gen Rossi was killed because of a [sic] incident, reported to the pentagon IG [inspector general], that he would not transfer nuclear weapons to private hands, just months prior in an attempted Nuclear Weapons theft from Ft. Sill,” the post claimed.

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Married mom who vanished last year could be tied to missing and dead US scientists: report

A married mom who vanished last year may be tied to a string of mysterious deaths and disappearances of US scientists and military officials with access to potentially sensitive information, according to a report.

Melissa Casias, who worked with her husband as an administrative assistant at Los Alamos National Laboratory [LANL] — famous for developing nuclear weapons during the Manhattan Project — has not been seen since she dropped lunch off for her daughter in New Mexico last summer.

She is one of four high-clearance people who have died or gone missing since June 2025 with connections to UFO-linked retired Air Force Gen. William McCasland, who vanished last month, according to the Daily Mail.

Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker told the Mail he is now worried that she is part of an alarming pattern, as her work as an assistant at LANL may have made her a target for kidnapping.

“In a classified lab, or just a high clearance lab, they would basically be in the know on what’s going on,” Swecker, who spent 24 years with the agency, said. “And it wouldn’t be the first time their administrative assistant has been targeted.”

The FBI “can’t have these examined in isolation and compartmentalize them as individual missing person cases,” he added.

Casias and her husband both worked at LANL in New Mexico. She was last seen on camera on June 25, 2025 walking alone on a highway without her wallet, phone or keys, after telling family members she would be working from home, Dateline reported.

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Mystery of five missing scientists sends chill across America. Three are dead. And one troubling link is now under scrutiny in DC

A chilling pattern has emerged after a string of US scientists died or went missing in recent months. 

Retired General William Neil McCasland, 68, and NASA aerospace engineer Monica Jacinto Reza, 60, were both major figures in the Air Force Research Laboratory. The general oversaw Reza’s work on creating a futuristic metal for rocket engines.

Within the span of eight months, both have mysteriously vanished without a trace while allegedly hiking in the Southwest United States.

McCasland’s reported ties to secret UFO programs at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, and Reza’s work with space-age technology used for advanced propulsion, have led many to claim without evidence that the pair are fleeing from parties that wish to silence them because of what they know.

Independent researchers and even a member of Congress fear the pattern has grown even darker after three scientists in the fields of chemical biology, nuclear fusion and astrophysics were murdered or found dead in just the last three months.

One of those renowned scientists was working on a breakthrough that could one day revolutionize science, creating an unlimited energy source that may end fossil fuel use as we know it.

Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett told the Daily Mail he saw a clear pattern in these seemingly unrelated deaths and disappearances, noting that the work several of them were doing has been linked to theories about extraterrestrial spacecraft. 

‘There have been several others throughout the country that have disappeared under suspicious circumstances,’ Burchett said. ‘I think we ought to be paying attention to it.’

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UFO ‘Gatekeeper’ General VANISHES Days After Trump’s Full Disclosure Order

President Trump’s order to release every UAP and UFO file appears to have triggered a wave of vanishings and deaths among the very insiders who guarded those secrets — and now Congress is being actively blocked from investigating.

The general is retired Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland, former commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He walked out of his Albuquerque home on February 27 with only hiking boots, a wallet, and a revolver. No phone. No glasses. No trace since.

In addition, a rocket scientist tied to the General has also reportedly disappeared under similar circumstances.

Monica Jacinto Reza, 60, vanished while hiking in California’s Angeles National Forest. She co-developed Mondaloy, a patented nickel-based super-alloy for high-performance rocket engines, on a project funded and overseen by programs under McCasland’s command.

Newsmax reported Rep. Tim Burchett directly accusing intelligence agencies of obstruction: some intelligence agencies have thwarted his attempts at finding out what happened to the several prominent scientists and researchers in the U.S. who have reportedly died or gone missing over the past year.

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High-Profile Scientists Keep Winding Up Dead or Missing — GOP Rep Suggests There May Be a Conspiracy at Play

Several prominent scientists and researchers in the U.S. have reportedly died or gone missing over the past year, fueling speculation about whether some of the disappearances may have occurred under suspicious circumstances.

William Neil McCasland, a 68-year-old retired Air Force major general who had knowledge of UFOs, went missing in New Mexico on Feb. 27, NewsNation reported. Republican Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett told the Daily Mail on Sunday that he believes there may be a pattern emerging of other researchers throughout the nation similarly disappearing “under suspicious circumstances.”

“There have been several others throughout the country that have disappeared under suspicious circumstances,” Burchett told the outlet. “I think we ought to be paying attention to it.”

The congressman also indicated that “the numbers seem very high in these certain areas of research,” adding “I think we’d better be paying attention, and I don’t think we should trust our government.” He went on to claim that researchers with knowledge about UFOs are usually “very secretive about what they know.”

“Everybody’s talking about the UFO stuff,” the Tennessee Republican told the Daily Mail. “Those folks are very secretive about what they know. So I suspect very much that [McCasland] was involved in some of that.”

Burchett’s office did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

McCasland’s wife, Susan, asserted that no “foul play” was suspected in her husband’s disappearance, but added that he had left their house with just a pair of boots and his .38-caliber revolver on the day he disappeared, according to the Daily Mail.

Still, investigative journalist Ross Coulthart suggested during a Sunday appearance on “NewsNation Prime” that “foul play” may be a possibility in relation to McCasland’s disappearance.

“We have to ask, now, [about] the possibility of foul play — is there somebody who has interceded to take the general out of the picture?” Coulthart told NewsNation. “He was a man with some of the most sensitive U.S. military intelligence secrets in his head, especially particle beam technology.”

Additionally, Monica Reza went missing on June 22, 2025 while on a hike in the Angeles National Forest, per a Facebook page which describes its mission as aiming to “raising awareness and organizing volunteer efforts” to help find her. Reza previously served as a material scientist at Aerojet Rocketdyne, which notably was funded by NASA and the Air Force Research Laboratory for several years, The New York Post (NY Post) reported.

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