On the 12th of last month, the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office in New Mexico announced the results of its investigation into the disappearance of a retired Air Force major general who vanished from his home after grabbing just a few belongings.
According to the sheriff's office, 68-year-old retired Air Force Major General William McCasland has been missing since Feb. 27, 2026. On the day he disappeared, McCasland reportedly spoke briefly with a repairman at his home at 10 a.m. At 11:10 a.m., his spouse, Susan McCasland Wilkerson, left the house for a medical appointment. When she returned at 12:04 p.m., 54 minutes later, her husband was already gone.
The sheriff's office said McCasland left behind his cellphone, prescription glasses with corrective lenses, and a wearable device at home before vanishing. Among his prized possessions, the only missing items were his wallet, hiking boots, and a .38-caliber revolver. Investigators deployed drones, helicopters, and search dogs and canvassed more than 700 nearby dwellings in the days after the disappearance and up to recently. Even so, the official position remains, "There is no evidence at this time to suspect homicide."
As of the 21st (local time), the case has been a mystery for 57 days. And by now, it has taken center stage in a strange narrative rattling the United States. Online, conspiracy theories linking McCasland's disappearance to more than a dozen other unsolved disappearances and deaths—and alleging involvement by unidentified flying objects (UFOs)—have spread like an urban legend.
As suspicion spread, even the White House and the U.S. House moved. Fox News asked Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt at a White House briefing on the 15th whether "since mid-2024, more than a dozen U.S. scientists and related personnel with access to classified nuclear and aerospace research (including McCasland) have gone missing or died," and "whether the administration is investigating if these cases are connected." Leavitt said, "I have seen the reports. I will check. If true, it is a matter worthy of government review."
A public letter from the U.S. Congress on the 21st shows that House Oversight Committee Chairperson James Comer and Subcommittee Chairperson Eric Burlison requested briefings from the Department of Energy (DOE), Department of War (DoW), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). FBI Director-General Kash Patel said on Fox News on the 19th that "the FBI will lead efforts with the Department of Energy and the Department of War to find links among the missing and deceased scientists." President Donald Trump also told reporters on the 17th, "I just finished a meeting on that topic. It's quite serious," adding, "Some of them were very important figures. We will look into it."
Experts said suspicions grew because McCasland is a retired general who previously led the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Wright-Patterson has long been rumored to store alien remains recovered in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico. McCasland lived in New Mexico after retirement, and that is also where he disappeared. Some outlets even brought up emails released by WikiLeaks in 2016 from John Podesta, then chair of the Democratic campaign. In that letter, McCasland was mentioned as the official in charge of UFO information disclosure.
The suspicions intertwined with recent unsolved disappearances involving aerospace, nuclear, and defense figures, stirring both public curiosity and anxiety. The case of Monica Reza, a 60-year-old aerospace engineer who vanished while hiking in the mountainous area of Los Angeles County, California, on June 22, 2025, is similar to McCasland's. Reza is head of the materials processing group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and a rocket engine expert. Authorities launched a large-scale search immediately after her disappearance but found no clues. Anthony Chavez, a 78-year-old retired researcher who vanished near Los Alamos National Laboratory in May 2025, has also been placed in the same context.
This phenomenon has amplified public imagination alongside recent UFO remarks by former and current presidents. Appearing on a podcast in February, former President Barack Obama said, "Aliens are real," drawing a big response. President Trump initially criticized Obama, saying he had "leaked classified information," but later shifted, saying he would "release related materials," and at a conservative event in Arizona on the 17th he said, "The first release of UFO-related documents is expected to begin soon," creating a stir.
Some argue that grouping separate deaths and disappearances under the category of a serial disappearance-and-death case simply because the individuals worked in similar fields has created an optical illusion that makes the matter look bigger than it is. While 10 people are tallied as missing or deceased within a specific occupational group, each case is somewhat different when examined individually.
For example, Melissa Casias, 53, who disappeared in New Mexico in June 2025, worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory but did not handle classified material. Her niece, Jasmine McMillan, said in a CBS interview, "My aunt did not have a high-level security clearance and was an administrative assistant," adding, "I'm glad my aunt's case is getting attention, but I've never seen any evidence that it is connected to the other cases."
The case of Jason Thomas, a Novartis pharmaceutical researcher whose body was found in a Massachusetts lake in March 2026, also differs from McCasland's. His spouse told NBC News that "Thomas suffered intense grief after losing his father and mother in succession last year." Police ruled out homicide after investigating Thomas's case.
A clear victim of a criminal case was also on the list. Nuno Loureiro, an MIT fusion and plasma physicist, was shot to death in front of his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, in December last year. At the time, the incident made headlines as the killing of a prominent university professor. The suspect was Claudio Neves Valente, a former classmate who completed the same engineering program in Portugal 20 years earlier. The day before killing Loureiro, Valente carried out a mass shooting on the Brown University campus, killing two students and injuring nine.
In February this year, a suspect, 29-year-old Freddy Snyder, was arrested in the shooting death of Caltech astrophysicist Carl Grillmair at his home entrance. These cases are violent crimes entirely unrelated to the unsolved disappearances among aerospace, nuclear, and defense figures.
Experts expressed skepticism toward attempts to interpret these cases as either the result of a hostile nation's coordinated operation or as involving UFOs. Experts from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Department of Energy said the suspicions amount to a "coincidence arising from a vast talent pool." In the United States, there are hundreds of thousands of employees at government agencies related to defense, nuclear, and space, as well as contractors. Analysts say that heart attacks, robberies, killings motivated by personal grudges, and distress accidents that occurred nationwide over about two years have been bundled under the keyword of nuclear and space workers, creating the illusion of a connected serial crime. The circumstances that Professor Loureiro was killed over a personal grudge and that researcher Thomas had a history of depression support this.
Scott Roecker, vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), said, "The United States has at least thousands of nuclear authorities and a robust infrastructure, so eliminating 10 to 20 people would not give a hostile nation any strategic advantage," adding, "The backdrop for the serial-operation narrative may also include the ongoing war between the United States and Iran." CSIS Deputy Director Seth Rogers also said, "If the scientists had all worked on the same project or weapons system, it would have been worth suspicion."
McCasland's spouse also strongly refuted the hypothesis that her husband's disappearance is related to political or diplomatic issues. She said, "My husband did not have any special knowledge about the alien remains or debris from the Roswell crash that are said to be stored at Wright-Patterson, but the hypothesis that aliens abducted him in a spacecraft is almost more plausible than an assassination theory."