The case spans multiple years and includes a patchwork of people with different backgrounds, circumstances, and connections to classified materials.
President Trump says government will begin releasing UFO files
President Donald Trump said at a Turning Point USA event that his administration would begin releasing government files on UFOs.
The highest levels of the federal government are keeping an eye on the list of missing and dead people, some of which may be classified, due to concerns about links to scientific research.
This list includes multiple scientists, spans several years, and includes a patchwork of people from different backgrounds and situations. The White House, multiple federal agencies and lawmakers said they were taking a closer look at a list of about 10 cases to see if they were linked.
The incidents range from the disappearance of a retired Air Force general (authorities previously said there was no evidence of foul play) to the shooting death of an astrophysicist outside his home. The missing construction site supervisor at Los Alamos National Laboratory is also included.
Republican Reps. James Comer and Eric Burlison, who chair the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Economic Growth, Energy Policy and Regulatory Affairs Subcommittee, said they are investigating cases of missing persons and fatalities who had “access to sensitive U.S. scientific information,” respectively. It is unclear how many people on the list released by lawmakers had such access.
President Donald Trump said the cases could be random.
Trump told reporters last week that he had attended a conference on the topic, saying, “I hope, by coincidence, by coincidence, whatever you want to call it.” “But some of them were very important, so we will look at them in the short term.”
Meanwhile, critics have dismissed the concerns as baseless conspiracy theories. Daniel Ember, editor of The Atlantic, called the panic “incredibly ridiculous.”
Sociologist Robert Bartholomew was also skeptical in a Psychology Today report. The reaction to missing or dead scientists is an example of how the human brain is wired to search for patterns, even when no patterns exist, Bartholomew wrote. There are thousands of nuclear and aerospace scientists in the United States, and people are dying or going missing all the time, he said.
Here’s what we know about the missing and dead scientists.
White House and federal agencies investigate missing scientist case
Reports from various news outlets suggest there is a “possible ominous link” between the deaths and disappearances, Comer and Burlison said in a letter to the heads of the Departments of Energy, the Department of the Army, the FBI and NASA.
“We request information regarding these deaths and disappearances and an explanation of the processes and procedures in place to protect U.S. scientific secrets and ensure the safety of our personnel,” they said in the letter.
NASA is coordinating with agencies investigating the incident, but “nothing associated with NASA suggests a national security threat at this time,” spokeswoman Bethany Stevens said on April 20.
According to Burleson and Comer, the deaths and disappearances began in 2023 with Michael David Hicks. Hicks’ cause of death has not been disclosed. The two most recent ones are from 2026.
White House press secretary Caroline Levitt said on April 17 that the administration was working with “relevant” agencies and the FBI and said “no stone will be left unturned.” The case came to the attention of government officials after weeks of internet speculation and tabloid coverage.
USA TODAY reached out to the FBI and the Department of Energy, two agencies involved in the investigation.
Who are the people on the list?
Republican lawmakers conducting the investigation listed the names of scientists including McCasland, Hicks and Monica Jacinto Reza, an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Some were mentioned by their affiliation with other scientific institutions. About 10 names were widely reported in tabloids and other news outlets.
Examination of the incident reveals inconsistent connections with scientific research and various research topics.
The following people associated with the U.S. scientific community are currently missing:
- McCasland, who was 68 at the time of his disappearance, is a retired U.S. Air Force general and former director of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, where he managed science and technology programs. He joined Wright Patterson in 2011 and left in 2013, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer, part of the USA TODAY Network. The base was home to a project to investigate UFO sightings in the 1950s and ’60s. This connection appears to have sparked speculation about his ties to classified information.
- Reza was 60 years old and director of the Materials Processing Group at the NASA Research Institute at the time of his disappearance. She worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory since 2022 as a materials and process engineer in JPL’s Thermal, Propulsion, and Materials Engineering Group.
- Anthony Chavez, who was 78 at the time of his disappearance, previously worked as a construction foreman at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos Police Chief Dino Sgambellone told USA TODAY. The institute “works with the Department of Energy to support energy advancement and environmental stewardship,” its website says. It also manufactures parts for nuclear weapons.
- Melissa Casias, who was 58 at the time of her disappearance, also worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, her family told NBC News in July 2025. She used her work email to confirm her employment, according to her LinkedIn page, which says she was an administrative assistant.
The following people connected to scientific research have died in recent years:
- Hicks, 59, worked at JPL from 2000 to 2022 and was a research scientist focused on the physical properties of asteroids and comets.
- Professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro, 47, was a member of the Department of Nuclear Science, Engineering, and Physics and the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He focused on astrophysics and laboratory plasma theory and simulation, according to MIT.
- Carl Grillmare, 67, was an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology. Grillmare’s research included dark matter, galaxy structure, stellar populations and exoplanets, according to the California Institute of Technology. He named some of the stellar streams he discovered.
- Jason Thomas, 45, was a scientist from Massachusetts who worked in the field of chemical biology at the Novartis Biomedical Research Institute, Wicked Local, part of the USA TODAY network, reported.
- Frank Maiwald (61) specializes in microwave radiation measurements. He worked at JPL from 2001 until his death in 2024. He contributed to Earth science missions such as the Jason 3 satellite, which measured sea levels to gain insights into surface water and ocean topography and climate change.
The list includes situations ranging from murder to unexplained disappearances.
A review of publicly available information and information provided by law enforcement reveals a wide range of circumstances surrounding the deaths and disappearances. Officials said no foul play was suspected in some of the cases. One death was related to a mass shooting that was widely covered in the news.
McCasland, a retired Air Force general, was last seen at his home in Albuquerque in February. Authorities issued a “Silver Alert,” an advisory used when an elderly person or person with a health or cognitive impairment goes missing, citing an unspecified “medical issue.” Authorities said he had previously experienced “mental fog,” but investigators did not believe he was cognitively impaired at the time of his disappearance. There was no evidence of foul play at the time, and a revolver and other items also appeared to be missing from the residence, they said.
McCasland’s wife, Susan McCasland Wilkerson, said in a social media post in March that she wanted to “dispel” misinformation. While it is true that her husband once had access to highly classified information, he has been retired for more than a decade and has only had “general” clearance since then.
“It’s hard to imagine that he was taken to extract secrets so old,” she wrote.
In New Mexico, authorities announced in June 2025 that they were looking for Cassias, who was an administrative assistant at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Cassius was last seen walking on the highway, and her family said they were confused as to where she went, NBC reported at the time.
Chavez, who worked as a construction foreman at a research institute in Los Alamos, New Mexico, disappeared in May 2025.
Local police chief Sgambelone told USA TODAY: “We have no information linking his disappearance to his work.”
Reza, a JPL engineer, went missing while hiking in Crescenta Valley north of Los Angeles in June 2025, authorities said.
Jason Thomas, 45, is a scientist from Massachusetts who worked in chemical biology at the Novartis Biomedical Research Institute. Thomas went missing in December 2025 and her body was found in a lake on March 17, officials said. Shortly after his parents died, he disappeared from their home, his wife told USA TODAY Network’s Wicked Local. The local district attorney’s office said no foul play was suspected.
In December 2025, Loureiro’s death made national news after authorities revealed that he was suspected of being shot by Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a Portuguese national who killed two people during the Dec. 13 attack at Brown University. Investigators said Valente, who later committed suicide, did not reveal a motive for either shooting in subsequent videos.
Grillmare, an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology, was shot to death on the balcony of his rural home in February 2026, ABC 7 and other news outlets reported. The media outlet cited authorities as saying that Freddie Snyder had previously been arrested for trespassing on Grillmare’s property, but that the two did not appear to know each other. Snyder was also charged with a separate carjacking.
The deaths of at least two JPL scientists, Hicks and Maiwald, were not disclosed in their obituaries and could not be confirmed at the time of publication. Hicks’ daughter Julia Hicks told CNN that he suffered from known medical issues before his death on July 30, 2023.
“From what I know about my father, there is no chain of logic that would implicate him in a potential federal investigation,” Julia Hicks said. “I don’t understand the connection between my father’s death and the other missing scientists.”
“I can’t help but laugh about this, but at the same time it’s serious,” Julia Hicks told CNN, adding that she was “upset” by the new attention to her father’s death.
(This story has been updated to add new information.)
