At least 11 U.S. scientists linked to U.S. nuclear and space research programs have died or vanished in recent years, prompting a federal investigation into a situation President Donald Trump called \u201cpretty serious stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
On April 20, the House Oversight Committee\u00a0announced\u00a0that it would look into the deaths and disappearances after committee chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) warned on\u00a0Fox & Friends<\/em> that \u201csomething sinister could be happening\u201d. Comer said that at first he thought it was \u201csome kind of crazy conspiracy theory,\u201d but now he believes it could be a national security concern.<\/p>\n CNN\u00a0reported\u00a0that the FBI is leading efforts to find connections between the missing and deceased scientists and is working with the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, and state and local law enforcement. NASA\u00a0posted on X\u00a0that the agency is \u201ccoordinating and cooperating with the relevant agencies in relation to the missing scientists,\u201d but currently sees no national security threat.<\/p>\n Trump has slashed funding for science research in his second term, providing an opening for other countries to poach leading scientists. Could the missing researchers be part of a\u00a0brain drain? Some GOP lawmakers seem to think so. Congressman Eric Burlison (R-Mo.)\u00a0posted on X, \u201cWe are in competition with China, Russia, and Iran on nuclear technology, advanced weapons, and space. Meanwhile, our top scientists keep vanishing.\u201d<\/p>\n Questions about a possible sinister connection between the 11 deaths and disappearances began to emerge after\u00a0William Neil McCasland, a 68-year-old former U.S. Air Force major general, was reported missing from his Albuquerque home by his wife on Feb. 27, 2026. McCasland left his prescription glasses, phone, and electronics behind; he is thought to have taken his .38 caliber revolver with him. Two months later, officials still can\u2019t say where he went.<\/p>\n McCasland was the onetime commander of the Wright-Patterson base, central to the\u00a0Roswell incident; his connection to UFO lore and classified space weapons programs fanned the flames of speculation sparked by a YouTuber named Daniel Liszt when he posted a video theorizing that a Portuguese physicist was assassinated because of his work in advanced fusion research. Nuno Gomes Loureiro, a renowned nuclear science professor, was\u00a0shot and killed\u00a0at his Massachusetts home in December 2025. He had\u00a0recently been named\u00a0director of MIT\u2019s Plasma Science and Fusion Center.<\/p>\n Liszt, who goes by the handle Dark Journalist, theorized that Loureiro\u2019s work was \u201cpotentially so transformative, that if you get a real leg up in the research \u2026 then you become a sort of database that needs to be erased potentially.\u201d He tied Loureiro\u2019s murder to the deaths of other scientists who had worked in the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative program.<\/p>\n Right-wing influencer\u00a0Jessica Reed Kraus\u00a0wrote a\u00a0Substack article\u00a0in February that drew parallels between Loureiro\u2019s death and that of astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, who was shot and killed outside his rural California home. In another post, she\u00a0deemed\u00a0McCasland\u2019s disappearance a \u201cConspiracy Alert!\u201d The Daily Mail kicked the story into high gear in March,\u00a0reporting\u00a0that the \u201cmystery of five missing scientists sends [a] chill across America.\u201d<\/p>\n Comer and other lawmakers\u00a0say that the string of mysterious deaths and disappearances began in July 2023 with the death of\u00a0Michael David Hicks, a 59-year-old scientist who specialized in comet and asteroid research at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. There has also been speculation surrounding the 2022 suicide of an anti-gravity scientist named Amy Eskridge, after the\u00a0Daily Mail<\/em>\u00a0linked her death to the others. Eskridge, an Alabama-based researcher, revealed in a\u00a0rambling 2020 interview\u00a0that she had plans to disclose information about UFOs and extraterrestrials, and was receiving threats as a result.<\/p>\n The cases vary extensively in circumstance and span several years. JPL space researcher\u00a0Frank Maiwald\u00a0died in July 2024; his cause of death was not publicly disclosed. Anthony Chavez, a retired engineer who had worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in nuclear weapons research,\u00a0disappeared\u00a0from his New Mexico home in May 2025. An administrative assistant from the Los Alamos lab named Melissa Casillas went missing in June 2025; she was\u00a0last seen\u00a0walking along a highway a few miles from her home. Monica Jacinto Reza was employed as director of materials processing at JPL\u00a0when she vanished\u00a0while hiking with a friend in the Angeles National Forest last June. Steven Garcia, a property custodian with high-level clearance at a national nuclear security administration facility in Albuquerque, disappeared last August. Pharmaceutical scientist Jason Thomas went missing last December; he was found dead on March 17, 2026.<\/p>\n The common thread among the 11 dead and missing seems to be that all of them had access to sensitive nuclear and aerospace research. The\u00a0press release\u00a0announcing the investigation by the House Oversight Committee says \u201cthese deaths and disappearances may represent a grave threat to U.S. national security and to U.S. personnel with access to scientific secrets.\u201d Online sleuths say the cases are linked because they were working on projects\u00a0tied to the development of clean energy, while Rep. Eric Burlison\u00a0told Fox News, \u201cThis has all the hallmarks of a foreign operation.\u201d<\/p>\n Critics say it\u2019s simply a conspiracy theory. Retired FBI agent Jennifer Coffindaffer told\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0that the claims \u201cfall apart when examined under basic investigative principles.\u201d Erin Ryan, co-host of the political commentary podcast\u00a0Hysteria<\/em>, called it a symptom of MAGA\u2019s anti-science rhetoric: \u201cI think that it\u2019s a way for people on the far right to try to wash their hands of their culpability in creating an environment that\u2019s actually dangerous to scientists.\u201d\u00a0The Atlantic<\/em>\u2018s Daniel Engber\u00a0wrote, \u201cTo call it a conspiracy theory would be far too kind because no comprehensive theory has been floated to explain the pattern of events.\u201d All in all, Engber said, the story is \u201cunbelievably dumb.\u201d<\/p>\n The tale of the missing and dead scientists snowballed when GOP officials claimed it was serious news. On April 15, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt\u00a0about the scientists; two days later, Leavitt announced that the White House would launch an investigation. Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fl.)\u00a0posted, \u201cIf you are feeling uneasy about the amount of scientists that have gone missing, died, and recent suicides ref those scientists and others you are correct in your intuition.\u201d Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va), who serves on the Oversight Committee with Comer and Burlison, struck a measured tone about the investigation,\u00a0telling CNN, \u201cThe United States has thousands of nuclear scientists and nuclear experts. It\u2019s not the kind of nuclear program that potentially a foreign adversary could significantly impact by targeting 10 individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump said this week that the investigation has yet to turn up evidence of a connection in the deaths and disappearances. \u201cSome of them that we looked at are very sad cases, in some cases, some were sick. Some left this earth self-inflicted. Some had other things,\u201d Trump\u00a0told reporters. \u201cWe\u2019re going to be doing a full report. And it\u2019s very serious.\u201d<\/p>\n Family members of the dead and missing are frustrated by the swirl of conspiracy theories. Michael David Hicks\u2019 daughter said that speculation about her father\u2019s death has shaken her. \u201cFrom what I know of my dad, there\u2019s no train of logic to follow that would implicate him in this potential federal investigation,\u201d Julia Hicks\u00a0told CNN. \u201cI don\u2019t understand the connection between my dad\u2019s death and the other missing scientists. I can\u2019t help but laugh about it, but at the same time, it\u2019s getting serious.\u201d<\/p>\n Amy Eskridge\u2019s father, Richard Eskridge, a former NASA scientist, denied that his daughter\u2019s suicide was suspicious,\u00a0saying, \u201cScientists die also, just like other people.\u201d William McCasland\u2019s wife\u00a0wrote on Facebook that, when McCasland was in the Air Force, he had access to \u201csome highly classified programs and information,\u201d but that he had been retired for more than a decade. \u201cIt seems quite unlikely that he was taken to extract very dated secrets from him.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the federal investigation, Monica Jacinto Reza\u2019s family says that no one from the White House or the FBI has contacted anyone in the family regarding her disappearance. They reject any suggestion that Reza was working on something that could have endangered her life. Speaking to\u00a0LA Mag<\/em>, one of Reza\u2019s relatives said, \u201cShe was just a regular person who had a family.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether or not they\u2019re credible, the conspiracy theories keep coming.\u00a0The Mercury News<\/em>\u00a0reported\u00a0that Rep. Burlison presented two more names that he says warrant scrutiny \u2014 Matthew James Sullivan, a former Air Force intelligence officer\u00a0who died from a drug overdose in 2024; and Ning Li, an anti-gravity physicist who\u00a0died in 2021 at the age of 79\u00a0after being struck by a car. There\u2019s also the\u00a0case of Joshua LeBlanc, a NASA nuclear scientist who died in a car crash in Alabama last year.<\/p>\n On April 30, Burlison\u00a0posted on X: \u201cThe count is up to 13. Thirteen American scientists tied to nuclear and space research, missing or dead. Every adversary on the planet celebrates each one we lose. We are weaker as a nation today because of these losses, and I\u2019m working to get answers.\u201d<\/p>\n Best of Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Every Super Bowl Halftime Show, Ranked From Worst to Best<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n The United States of Weed<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n Gaming Levels Up<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Sign up for\u00a0RollingStone’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on\u00a0Facebook,\u00a0Twitter, and\u00a0Instagram.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At least 11 U.S. scientists linked to U.S. nuclear and space research programs have died or vanished in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3147,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-science","category-us"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3148,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3146\/revisions\/3148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Who are the scientists who have died or disappeared?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
What ties the scientists together?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
What are the conspiracy theories?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Why is there a federal probe?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
What do the families of the scientists say?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n