11 American Scientists and Nuclear Insiders Are Dead or Missing. The FBI Just Got Involved. Here's Every Name and What They Knew.

They worked on asteroid deflection missions. Nuclear weapons components. Plasma fusion that could change the world's energy supply. Anti-gravity propulsion. And one by one, since 2022, they have vanished or turned up dead — leaving behind phones, wallets, glasses, and more questions than anyone in Washington wants to answer.

As of April 2026, at least 11 individuals connected to America's most sensitive nuclear and aerospace programs are dead or missing. The FBI has now confirmed it is leading a coordinated investigation. The House Oversight Committee has demanded briefings from NASA, the Department of Energy, the Pentagon, and the FBI by April 27. President Trump called it "pretty serious stuff."

Here is every confirmed case, what each person was working on, and why the pattern — particularly in New Mexico — is so difficult to explain away.

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The New Mexico Cluster: Four People, One State, One Year

The detail that alarms investigators most isn't the deaths. It's four people — all connected to America's nuclear infrastructure — who vanished from New Mexico within roughly twelve months of each other, all leaving their phones and personal belongings behind, all last seen on foot.

1. Anthony Chavez, 79 — Former Los Alamos National Laboratory Employee

Missing since: May 8, 2025

Chavez spent decades as a research and development engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory — the facility that built the first atomic bomb and remains the United States' premier nuclear weapons research centre. He retired in 2017 but his clearances and institutional knowledge did not retire with him.

On May 8, 2025, he was last seen leaving his home in Los Alamos, New Mexico on foot. His wallet, keys, and car were all left behind inside the house. There were no signs of forced entry or a struggle. The Los Alamos Police Department reviewed hours of surveillance footage from nearby homes and businesses. They have not publicly identified any confirmed footage of Chavez after he left. Nearly a year later, he has not been found.

2. Melissa Casias, 53 — Administrative Worker, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Missing since: June 26, 2025

Casias worked as an administrative assistant at Los Alamos with a security clearance. On June 26, 2025, she left work, drove to Taos, and — in what would be her last normal act — stopped at a coffee shop to drop off a Subway sandwich for her daughter who was working there. When family members returned home later that day, they found her car, purse, keys, and both her personal and work-issued phones inside. Both phones had been factory reset, wiping all recent data and communications.

Her family has strongly disputed the suggestion that she left voluntarily. She remains listed as "missing, endangered" in missing persons databases. New Mexico State Police have reported no breakthroughs.

3. Steven Garcia, 48 — Government Contractor, Kansas City National Security Campus

Missing since: August 28, 2025

Garcia vanished two days before his 48th birthday. He was last seen on surveillance cameras leaving his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on foot, wearing a green camouflage shirt. He was carrying a handgun. He left behind his phone, keys, and wallet.

Garcia worked as a property custodian at the Kansas City National Security Campus — a facility managed by Honeywell FM&T that manufactures more than 80 percent of all non-nuclear components used in America's nuclear weapons. A source described his role as "a very high-level, overseeing position for all the assets — tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars in equipment, some classified." He had top security clearance with broad access to the entire site.

The same source told the Daily Mail that Garcia, McCasland, and the Los Alamos employees were all connected through Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, where McCasland previously commanded operations.

4. Major General William "Neil" McCasland, 68 — Retired U.S. Air Force

Missing since: February 27, 2026

McCasland is the most senior figure on the list and perhaps the most unsettling disappearance. A retired two-star general, he commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio — one of the most secretive research installations in the United States, long associated in intelligence circles with advanced aerospace programs.

On the morning of February 27, 2026, McCasland left his home in the Quail Run Court area of Albuquerque, New Mexico. He left behind his phone, prescription glasses, and all his wearable devices. He took his wallet, hiking boots, and a .38-caliber revolver. A gray Air Force sweatshirt was later found 1.25 miles east of his residence. He has not been seen since.

His wife pushed back on speculation linking his disappearance to classified programs, writing on social media that he "does not have any special knowledge about the ET bodies and debris from the Roswell crash stored at Wright-Patt." The specificity of that denial — addressing UFO speculation by name — struck many observers as unusual.

Sources have confirmed to multiple outlets that McCasland, Garcia, Chavez, and Casias all had professional connections that ran through Kirtland Air Force Base. All four vanished on foot, leaving personal belongings behind, from the same state, within twelve months.

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The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Cases

JPL — NASA's primary centre for robotic space exploration, located in Pasadena, California — has lost three people connected to it in the past three years.

5. Michael David Hicks, 59 — Research Scientist, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Died: July 30, 2023

Hicks spent over two decades at JPL, from 1998 to 2022. He worked on some of NASA's most consequential missions, including the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) — the first planetary defence mission in history, which successfully redirected an asteroid in 2022. He also worked on NASA's Deep Space 1 mission and the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking Project, and authored more than 80 peer-reviewed scientific papers.

He died in July 2023 at age 59. His daughter Julia told CNN he had been struggling with known medical issues, and that she had not been contacted by any government agency or elected official regarding his death. She said she found the speculation "shaking" but did not believe his death was connected to the others.

6. Frank Maiwald, 61 — Principal Researcher, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Died: July 4, 2024

Maiwald was a systems engineer and principal investigator at JPL, managing major Earth-observing and space instrumentation projects. He earned multiple NASA awards over his career and specialised in spaceflight instrumentation and remote sensing technologies. He died in Los Angeles on July 4, 2024 at age 61.

No cause of death was ever made public. Reports indicate no autopsy was conducted. JPL has not commented on the circumstances of his death.

7. Monica Reza, 60 — Director of Materials Processing, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Missing since: June 22, 2025

Reza was a senior aerospace engineer who led JPL's Materials Processing Group, working on rocket engine materials and advanced manufacturing. On June 22, 2025, she set out for a hike in the Angeles National Forest in California with a companion. Near the Mount Waterman area on Angeles Crest Highway, she fell behind her companion by about 30 feet. When the companion turned around, Reza was waving and smiling. When they turned back again, she was gone.

Rescue teams searched for days. Her body was never found. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department classified her as an "at-risk missing person." She has not been located.

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The Academic Scientists

8. Nuno Loureiro, 47 — Director, MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Centre

Died: December 16, 2025

Loureiro was one of the world's leading nuclear fusion scientists. He joined MIT's faculty in 2016, received tenure a year later, and rose to become director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Centre — overseeing research that could eventually produce clean, limitless energy from nuclear fusion. He held joint appointments in nuclear science, engineering, and physics.

On December 15, 2025, he was shot and killed at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts by Claudio Neves Valente, a Portuguese national who had studied in the same academic programme as Loureiro in Lisbon two decades earlier. Valente had also carried out a mass shooting at Brown University one day earlier, killing two students and wounding nine, before killing himself after shooting Loureiro. Authorities say his motive remains unclear.

9. Carl Grillmair, 67 — Astrophysicist, Caltech / NASA NEOWISE

Died: February 16, 2026

Grillmair was a Caltech astrophysicist who spent decades working on NASA-backed missions including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, NEOWISE, and the NEO Surveyor — a mission to catalogue near-Earth objects that could pose a planetary threat. He was known for research on galaxy collisions, dark matter, and the search for water on exoplanets.

He was found fatally shot on the porch of his home in Llano, California on February 16, 2026. A 29-year-old suspect, Freddy Snyder, was arrested on murder charges. Investigators said the two men likely did not know each other — but Snyder had been arrested months earlier for trespassing on Grillmair's property while carrying a rifle. No clear motive has been disclosed.

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The Peripheral Cases

10. Jason Thomas, 45 — Pharmaceutical Researcher, Novartis

Found dead: March 2026

Thomas reportedly worked as a researcher at Novartis, working on cancer treatments, though his precise connection to classified programmes is less established than others on this list. He disappeared from his home in Wakefield, Massachusetts on December 12, 2025, walking out while his wife was filling the dogs' water bowl.

His body was recovered from Lake Quannapowitt in March 2026 after the lake thawed. The Middlesex District Attorney's Office stated no foul play was suspected. His wife Kristen told TMZ that his death was "probably not connected" to the others, saying he had been struggling after the deaths of both his parents in quick succession — his mother from dementia, and his father from a heart attack one hour later.

11. Amy Eskridge — Aerospace Researcher, Institute for Exotic Science

Died: 2022

Eskridge has become one of the more contested names on the list. She was president of the Institute for Exotic Science and co-founded HoloChron LLC with her father, Richard Eskridge — a former NASA propulsion engineer. Her work focused on experimental propulsion, including what she described as anti-gravity research using quantum phenomena. Authorities ruled her death a suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Her ex-boyfriend Mark Sokol claimed in a recent interview that as Eskridge made progress in her research, her behaviour shifted and she became increasingly paranoid, adding that "attacks happened" prior to her death. Her father told NewsNation he did not believe her death was suspicious: "Scientists die also, just like other people."

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What the Government Is Saying

The FBI confirmed on April 21, 2026 that it is "spearheading the effort to look for connections into the missing and deceased scientists," working alongside the Department of Energy, the Pentagon, and state and local law enforcement.

President Trump said he had just left a meeting on the subject and called it "pretty serious stuff... I hope it's random." He added that "some of them were very important people."

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer told Fox News: "It does appear that there's a high possibility that something sinister is taking place here. It's very unlikely that this is a coincidence. Congress is very concerned."

A White House official confirmed to Newsweek that "multiple equities across the Trump administration are involved in this investigation, including the FBI, DOE, DOW and others."

NASA issued a statement saying: "At this time, nothing related to NASA indicates a national security threat." The agency said it is cooperating with the investigation.

The House Oversight Committee gave the FBI, NASA, the Department of Energy, and the Pentagon until April 27, 2026 to provide briefings on the cases.

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What Nobody Can Explain

Authorities have been careful to say they have found no verified link between the cases. Several families have pushed back on conspiracy theories, offering personal explanations — medical issues, personal struggles, wanting to disappear voluntarily.

But the New Mexico cluster resists easy explanation. Four individuals — all connected to America's nuclear infrastructure, all with security clearances, all from the same state — vanished within twelve months of each other, all on foot, all leaving their phones behind. Garcia and McCasland both left carrying only a handgun. Chavez left his keys and wallet. Casias factory-reset both her phones before disappearing.

Missouri lawmaker Eric Burlison has suggested the pattern could be a "foreign operation." Congressional investigators have pointed to China, Russia, and Iran as potential adversaries with both the motive and the capability to target individuals with access to America's nuclear secrets.

Whether this is a coordinated intelligence operation, a tragic series of coincidences, or something the FBI will quietly conclude is unconnected — the briefings due April 27 may be the most important thing happening in Washington this week that nobody is talking about.

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Sources: Newsweek, Washington Times, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, Scientific American, Daily Mail, TMZ, NewsNation, Fox4KC. This article reflects confirmed reporting as of April 23, 2026. The investigation is ongoing.