The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has confirmed that it is leading an investigation into potential links between approximately a dozen cases involving the deaths or disappearances of scientists and laboratory personnel working in the fields of nuclear and space technology.
This multi-agency effort, which includes assistance from the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and various state and local law enforcement agencies, aims to determine if there is a common thread connecting these incidents.
While officials noted that there are no obvious, immediate links between the cases, the matter has gained significant public attention and sparked numerous conspiracy theories on social media, eventually reaching the desk of the White House.
President Donald Trump addressed the issue during a press briefing last week, describing it as a very serious matter and expressing hope that the situation is coincidental, while promising that further information would be disclosed in the coming days.
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A significant portion of the investigation is focused on the Los Angeles County area, where authorities are examining the circumstances surrounding the deaths of astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, who passed away this past February, and three specialists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Michael David Hicks, Frank Maiwald, and Monica Jacinto Reza.
While Hicks and Maiwald died in 2023 and 2024 respectively, Reza remains missing after vanishing during a hike in the Angeles National Forest last June.
These cases are being scrutinized alongside the disappearance of retired Major General William Neil McCasland, 68, who was last seen at his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, late in February. McCasland was a prominent figure in the aerospace community, having directed the Air Force Research Laboratory and led several advanced Pentagon aerospace investigations.
Other cases being examined by investigators include the death of Jason Thomas, an assistant director of chemical biology at Novartis, who went missing in Massachusetts last December before his body was discovered in a lake three months later, with police finding no signs of foul play.
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The investigation also encompasses the 2022 death of Amy Eskridge in Alabama, which was ruled a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Her case drew public interest due to her prior claims on a podcast regarding a psychological warfare campaign intended to hinder her work in anti-gravity research.
The FBI is also investigating the death of Portuguese scientist Nuno Loureiro, who was shot and killed at his home in Massachusetts last December. Authorities have attributed this crime to Cláudio Neves Valente, a Portuguese national who was also identified as the individual responsible for a massacre at Brown University.
Loureiro, 47, was a globally recognized expert in nuclear fusion and served as the director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The list of cases under investigation concludes with the unexplained disappearances of three other specialists, Melissa Casias, Anthony Chávez, and Steven García.
