Tag: national parks

Missing Scientist Melissa Casias Body Found ‘Skeletonized’

Missing government worker Melissa Casias has been found dead … with her body “skeletonized” and a gunshot wound to her skull, a report says.

According to New Mexico State Police, a hiker found “human remains” at McGaffey Ridge area of the Carson National Forest … who authorities have ID’ed as Melissa. They also said a gun was found “alongside the remains.”

NMSP hasn’t announced cause or manner of death, but investigator Thomas McNally — who’d been looking into the case for Melissa’s parents — told DailyMail that her body was “skeletonized,” sitting against a tree with a gunshot wound in her skull.

McNally claims Melissa was wearing “sun-bleached clothing” and her body didn’t show any signs of animal activity.

Melissa — who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory — disappeared about a year ago, after she dropped her husband off at the lab, where he also worked.

Her case has made headlines because she’s one of at least 10 government workers and scientists who have died or gone missing since 2023.

But McNally insists Melissa’s death has “nothing to do” with those other cases, telling DailyMail … “I want to be emphatic on this point — this is in no way, shape, or form related to her job.”

He does, however, believe there’s foul play involved and says her family is filing a civil suit against NMSP … because they believe they botched the case.

Keep reading

Missing Scientist and Nuclear Lab Employee Found DEAD in New Mexico Forest as the Shocking Circumstances Surrounding Her Disappearance are Revealed

A missing scientist has been discovered dead in a New Mexico forest, but that is just the beginning of a more harrowing and stunning story.

As The Daily Mail reported on Monday, New Mexico State Police announced that they identified the remains of 54-year-old Melissa Casias, a scientist and nuclear lab employee, who worked as an administrative assistant at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The Office of the Medical Investigator in New Mexico has not yet determined the cause of her death.

Casias was last seen alive on June 26, 2025. Her body was found in the McGaffey Ridge area of the Carson National Forest.

This is about six miles from the last place Casias was seen walking before being declared missing.

It’s unknown how long Casias’s body was in the forest before it was found. But it’s surprising it took this long because this is a part of a US Forest Service restoration project where crews have been working consistently since December 2025.

Casia’s disappearance and death are also quite alarming. The Mail notes that she previously left ALL RECORDS from her phones (she had more than one), left her identification behind, and vanished last June.

Sounds like something straight out of a spy thriller. What was going on?

From the Daily Mail:

Casias vanished after dropping off her husband, another LANL employee, at the facility that June morning, approximately 70 miles from their home. That was when Casias’s behavior allegedly became unusual, as she claimed she would need to return home after forgetting the badge needed to access the nuclear lab.

According to her husband, Mark, a superintendent at the lab, Casias had the security badge with her when she dropped him off that morning, as she would have needed the badge to get past the security checkpoints.

When Casias arrived in Ranchos de Taos, the couple’s daughter, Sierra, reportedly told investigators that her mother visited the teen’s place of work to drop off a sandwich and then said she planned to work from home after forgetting the badge needed to access the nuclear lab.

The wife and mother then wiped all records from her phones before leaving them and her identification behind and walking out of her home in Ranchos de Taos.

Keep reading

Police confirm body is missing Taos woman, LANL worker

New Mexico State Police confirmed Saturday night that human remains discovered off Rio Chiquito Road southeast of Taos belong to Melissa Casias, the missing Ranchos de Taos woman and Los Alamos National Laboratory worker who disappeared last June.

The single lane dirt road — Forest Road 437 — is accessible from N.M. 518 in Talpa, where security camera footage captured the last known sighting of Casias on June 26 of last year. Rio Chiquito Road extends deep into the Carson National Forest and provides access to the Garcia Park recreation area and several trails.

The body was discovered by a hiker in the McGaffey Ridge area of the national forest.

The Office of the Medical Investigator positively identified the deceased individual as Casias, however the cause and manner of death have not yet been determined, according to a state police press release. Police said a handgun was found “alongside the remains.”

The remains will undergo “further anthropological examination” by the medical investigator, according to state police, who “extend their deepest condolences to the Casias and Mondragon families during this difficult time.”

Jazmin McMillen, Casias’ niece, posted an official statement from the family on a Facebook page dedicated to finding the missing wife and mother. 

“We confirm that the remains found in Rio Chiquito are Melissa,” the post states. “There will be more information to come but what we can tell you now is she was located in an area previously searched. This is a lot to process, our hearts are heavy and we fully intend to continue to pursue answers for justice.”  

An investigation into the circumstances of Casias’ disappearance and her death is ongoing.

Casias, who lived with her husband in Ranchos de Taos, was reported missing after her daughter, Sierra Casias, came home from work and discovered her mother’s keys, wallet, and work and personal cell phones — both wiped of data — inside the house. Her mother’s car was parked outside the home and the front door was locked. Melissa Casias was an administrative assistant at LANL, where her husband, Mark Casias, also worked.

Her disappearance drew national media attention and has been featured on the Crime Junkie podcast, which reported the discovery of the human remains in a social media post Friday evening (May 29).

Keep reading

Mysterious ‘dumbbell-shaped’ UFO spotted for 45 minutes over Joshua Tree before vanishing

A family hiking in Southern California has revealed stunning images of a mysterious craft flying overhead during a solar eclipse. 

The four hikers spotted a large dumbbell or H-shaped UFO flying slowly and erratically near Ryan Mountain in Joshua Tree National Park on October 14, 2023.

According to the witnesses, they followed the object for about 45 minutes, watching it disappear and reappear several times before it vanished completely.

Images of the craft, shared with safeaerospace.org, a nonprofit group focused on aerospace safety and national security, captured a clear view of the UFO, which was made of a highly reflective material described as silver.

It was described as looking like a ‘capital I’ or ‘sideways H’, and its two large panels on each end gave it a shape reminiscent of a TIE fighter from the Star Wars films.

Skeptics sharing the sighting online have suggested that the craft may have been a box kite or an escaped letter H party balloon.

However, the hikers estimated that the craft was the size of a car or small plane, which would make the object significantly larger than the typical kite and balloon.

While the Pentagon has maintained that physical evidence of UFOs or extraterrestrials has never been found, the sighting took place near several US military bases, including one that has tested experimental aircraft for decades.

Keep reading

Lawsuit Challenges National Park Service Ban on Cash Payments

Across the United States, cash is quietly disappearing from places that once took it without question. Government agencies and private businesses now route even the smallest transactions through digital networks that record who paid, when, and where.

This has created a growing dependence on card processors and mobile payment companies that profit from every exchange and hold the power to deny or suspend access.

That dependence has now reached federal land. The National Park Service has begun refusing cash at dozens of parks and historic sites, forcing visitors to use electronic payment systems to enter public property.

A lawsuit challenging that policy argues that by excluding physical currency, the agency is violating federal law and pushing citizens into a digital system that tracks their movements and spending.

Attorney Ray Flores has filed an appeal with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, seeking to overturn the dismissal of a lawsuit against the National Park Service (NPS) for refusing to accept cash at dozens of federal sites.

We obtained a copy of the filing for you here.

The case, backed by Children’s Health Defense, centers on whether a federal agency can legally decline the very currency the government itself issues.

At issue is the NPS policy that bars visitors from paying park entrance fees with cash. The appeal argues that the agency has violated both the Administrative Procedure Act and the Legal Tender Statute, which defines US coins and bills as “legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues.”

Flores wrote that the district court’s earlier decision effectively “demonetized the U.S. Dollar on federal property without justification.”

His brief asks the appeals court to declare the policy unlawful or send the case back for trial.

Keep reading

Yellowstone National Park has 50 mile ‘zone of death’ where all crime is ‘legal’… as expert reveals why loophole has never been closed

An iconic American park is hiding a 50-mile area where all crime is legal, an expert claims.

It’s been two decades since Professor Brian Kalt uncovered the ‘Zone of Death’ at Yellowstone National Park.

The Michigan State University College of Law professor published research in 2005 in a paper called The Perfect Crime.

He theorized that all crime in the 50-square-mile section of Yellowstone that sits in Idaho can’t be prosecuted.

Yellowstone stretches across nearly 4,000 square miles in Wyoming, with small portions of the park located in Montana and eastern Idaho. 

When Congress designated the park’s borders in 1872, Yellowstone became one of the few federal parks that fall exclusively under the federal government’s jurisdiction, meaning that states are powerless to prosecute crimes. 

According to the Sixth Amendment, alleged criminals are entitled to a trial by jury, comprised of residents who live in the district where the crime was committed. 

However, the 50-square-mile section of Yellowstone in Idaho is desolate land where no humans live. 

Therefore, any trial for a crime committed in the ‘Zone of Death’ would violate the defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights. 

When Kalt initially published his research, he noted that the findings weren’t meant to inspire crime, but to raise awareness among lawmakers about a potential legal loophole – one that has yet to be closed.

Keep reading

Wall Street’s Planned Theft of America’s Lands and Waters

Up next on Wall Street’s exploitation list.

If not stopped, on November 17th, the U.S. government will pass a rule that allows for America’s protected lands, including parks and wildlife refuges, to be listed on the N.Y. Stock Exchange. Natural Asset Companies (NACs) will be owned, managed, and traded by companies like BlackRock, Vanguard, and even China.

Since the early 2000’s, outfits like Goldman Sachs have been trying to trade air, or specifically carbon without much success. Their 2005 carbon exchange staggered along until it was quietly discontinued, and their Climate Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) is now facing delisting. “ESG” was the next attempt to monetize the un-monetizable, with the “E” part of that acronym standing for Environment, ill-defined as that was. Now ESG is failing. Market leaders say it is facing “a perfect storm of negative sentiment” and its U.S. investments fell by $163 billion in the first quarter of 2023 alone.

Its stepchild, Net-Zero, is so loathed, it looks like it might blow up the entire carbon scam. Says Australian senator Matt Canavan, “Net-Zero has absolutely carked it. It is a soundbite and totally insane. Almost everything we grow, we make, we do in our society relies on the use of fossil fuels.” Vanguard has pulled out of Net-Zero funds. The British government too is backing out of Net-Zero, saying “we won’t save the planet by bankrupting the British people.” New Zealand’s new government revised the country’s Net-Zero plans in its first week in office. In the hard hit Netherlands, the Farmer-Citizen movement is now the dominant party in the Dutch senate and every provincial assembly. Sweden has abandoned its 100 percent Net-Zero plans and Norway has announced another $18 billion in oil and gas investments.

Keep reading

National Parks Celebrate April Fool’s Day with Paranormal Pranks on Social Media

In honor of April Fool’s Day, a number of national parks turned to the paranormal in an attempt to pull a fast one on their social media followers. Perhaps the most impressive joke this year came by way of Zion National Park which shared a photo (seen above) that, upon first glance, appears to show a Sasquatch visiting the site’s picturesque Watchman Trail. “Though typically known to inhabit North America’s Pacific Northwest region, Bigfoot, like many visitors, has chosen Zion as her destination for recreation,” the park wrote on Facebook before, as is custom, revealing that the photo was a hoax.

Zion National Park was not the only location to enlist Bigfoot in Thursday’s tomfoolery as Whiskeytown National Recreation Area posted a typically hard-to-decipher image which they claimed was a “close-up photo of Bigfoot” purportedly “captured by one of our former employee’s wildlife cameras recently.” Showing some serious commitment to the bit, they went on to say that “scientists are struggling to come up with an answer for how this unique species has moved into the park from locations west” and detailed a number of theories for the odd turn of events until ultimately unleashing the all-too-familiar April Fool’s punchline.

Keep reading

Biden Admin Reverses Decision to Remove William Penn Statue

The Biden administration has reversed a decision by the National Park Service to remove a statue of William Penn from a park in Philadelphia. Penn was the founder of Pennsylvania (named for his father) in the late 1600s and is a revered figure in the state.

(Previous TGP report on the planned removal of the statue posted by David Greyson at this link.)

The Park Service recently announced plans to renovate the park where the statue is located, Welcome Park, to make it “inclusive” of Native Americans, even thought the park is built where Penn’s home once stood and is named after the ship, the Welcome, that brought Penn to the New World from England in 1682. The Park Service also planned to remove a replica of Penn’s home, the Slate Roof House, as well as a Penn timeline on a wall at the park. In other words, the Biden administration was erasing Penn.

The Interior Department, which oversees the National Park Service, is led by Biden appointee Secretary Deb Haaland, a radical progressive who is the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary.

Keep reading

The baffling disappearance of the anthropologist Sam Dubal on Mt. Rainier

Dr. Sam Dubal, 33, left for Mt. Rainier National Park on Friday, October 9, 2020, for a solo hike and was supposed to return the next day. He was spotted that day on the Mother Mountain Loop trail near Lake Mowich in the Park. Sam was reported missing on October 12 after he didn’t return home.

He was well equipped for the overnight hike, with a tent, a sleeping bag, snow gear, rain gear, a cellphone, and a charger. Sam was also an experienced hiker under challenging conditions. After an extensive search, Sam was unable to be located.

Mt. Rainier is considered one of North America’s most dangerous mountains due to its high chance of volcanic eruption. Still, it has also had a heavy toll of hiking deaths, with many visitors dying on its icy slopes because of accidents, misadventures, foul play or reasons unknown.

As of November 2023, the only clue has been a water bottle found in October near the Loop trail. No other sign of Sam has been located despite many searches in the park. The nature of this disappearance is very puzzling, as he was experienced, and the Mother Mountain trail is not difficult nor dangerous.

Keep reading