A chilling pattern has emerged after a string of US scientists died or went missing in recent months.
Retired General William Neil McCasland, 68, and NASA aerospace engineer Monica Jacinto Reza, 60, were both major figures in the Air Force Research Laboratory. The general oversaw Reza’s work on creating a futuristic metal for rocket engines.
Within the span of eight months, both have mysteriously vanished without a trace while allegedly hiking in the Southwest United States.
McCasland’s reported ties to secret UFO programs at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, and Reza’s work with space-age technology used for advanced propulsion, have led many to claim without evidence that the pair are fleeing from parties that wish to silence them because of what they know.
Independent researchers and even a member of Congress fear the pattern has grown even darker after three scientists in the fields of chemical biology, nuclear fusion and astrophysics were murdered or found dead in just the last three months.
One of those renowned scientists was working on a breakthrough that could one day revolutionize science, creating an unlimited energy source that may end fossil fuel use as we know it.
Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett told the Daily Mail he saw a clear pattern in these seemingly unrelated deaths and disappearances, noting that the work several of them were doing has been linked to theories about extraterrestrial spacecraft.
‘There have been several others throughout the country that have disappeared under suspicious circumstances,’ Burchett said. ‘I think we ought to be paying attention to it.’
Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett has spoken about the potential threat to national security tied to McCasland’s disappearance
Burchett also blasted the nation’s intelligence community, specifically calling out the so-called ‘alphabet agencies’ such as the FBI, for being unhelpful and frustrating his attempts to find out the truth about what has happened to these scientists.
‘The numbers seem very high in these certain areas of research. I think we’d better be paying attention, and I don’t think we should trust our government,’ he warned.
McCasland has not been seen since February 27, when he suddenly left his home without a phone and was last spotted near Quail Run Court NE in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The congressman specifically noted that McCasland’s disappearance was a major national security issue, claiming that the general not only possessed some of America’s nuclear secrets but also worked with recovered UFO technology housed in Ohio.
McCasland’s name became associated with UFO topics after the 2016 WikiLeaks release of emails from John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.
In the emails, musician Tom DeLonge, founder of Blink-182 and the UFO-focused To The Stars Academy (TTSA), referenced McCasland multiple times, claiming he had advised him on disclosure matters and helped assemble an advisory team.
The general had previously led the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson, which was rumored to hold extraterrestrial debris from the 1947 Roswell UFO crash.
‘Everybody’s talking about the UFO stuff,’ Burchett said. ‘Those folks are very secretive about what they know. So I suspect very much that [McCasland] was involved in some of that.’
William Neil McCasland, 68, was last seen near Quail Run Court NE in Albuquerque, the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office said
Monica Reza has been missing since June 22, 2025. A memorial mysteriously claiming the scientist was dead was set up online four days after her disappearance and later taken down
McCasland’s wife, Susan, claimed that ‘foul play’ was not suspected in her husband’s disappearance, but noted that the avid hiker and cyclist left home with only a pair of boots and his .38-caliber revolver.
The retired Air Force officer did not take his phone, wearable devices and prescription glasses, leaving behind any way of tracing or contacting him.
Burchett also confirmed that Reza was working on special metals used in missiles and rocket technology, which raised questions for him about where those materials originally came from.
‘I’ve talked to people in departments that say, in fact, they do exist. There is [UFO] material. We don’t really know what it is or what to do with it,’ Burchett claimed.
However, the congressman said he had also spoken with members of the intelligence community who claimed they had no knowledge about UFOs or the US military’s alleged work to reverse engineer that technology.
‘I honestly think that they both are telling the truth as far as they know it. It’s a very compartmentalized issue,’ said Burchett.
Reza was the co-inventor of the special metal called Mondaloy and was serving as the Director of the Materials Processing Group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory when she vanished without a trace last summer.
Conspiracy theorists have noted that an online memorial claiming Reza was dead appeared on the website Find a Grave just four days into the search for the missing scientist.
That page has mysteriously been taken down after alleging that Reza was given a ‘green burial,’ meaning a body would have needed to be found, placed in a biodegradable container and put straight into the earth.
Investigators with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have not announced the discovery of a body, and the case remains unsolved.
Meanwhile, the deaths of the other three scientists have been equally disturbing.
Nuno Loureiro was leading efforts to create fusion energy, a form of clean energy that could upend the multi-trillion-dollar fossil fuel energy
Nuno Loureiro, 47, was assassinated at his home in the Boston suburb of Brookline on December 15, 2025. Authorities said the gunman was Claudio Neves Valente, a former classmate in Portugal.
Loureiro, a respected physicist, had recently become the director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was reportedly on the brink of revolutionizing the energy sector as we know it.
Loureiro’s research centered on plasma physics, the study of super-hot, ionized gases, and how to apply them to fusion energy, a promising clean power source.
However, independent investigator Daniel Liszt has claimed that this obscure science has also been tied to speculation about the advanced propulsion of secret UFO tech, noting that Loureiro’s background also involved neutron star mergers – a theorized source of unlimited energy.
Carl Grillmair was killed by a gunshot wound while on his front porch. The scientist have been studying exoplanets and dark matter at the California Institute of Technology
Astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, 67, was killed in his home on February 16, 2026, after being mysteriously gunned down on his front porch around 6am local time.
Grillmair had contributed to the discovery of water on a distant planet, with colleagues calling his work ‘ingenious’ and adding that the research could point to signs of life less than 160 light-years from Earth.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department named Freddy Snyder, 29, as a person of interest in Grillmair’s homicide case and later charged the man with murder, carjacking and burglary.
However, police did not release a motive in the alleged homicide and it was unclear if the two men knew one another or whether the shooting was targeted.
Grillmair lived in a rural home in Llano (Pictured). Police responded to reports of an assault with a deadly weapon and later arrested a suspect for carjacking and murder
Meanwhile, the remains of 45-year-old Jason Thomas were discovered on March 17 in Wakefield, Massachusetts, at Lake Quannapowitt.
Thomas had been the assistant director of chemical biology at Novartis, a global pharmaceutical company, before disappearing on December 12, 2025.
His work reportedly focused on using chemistry and biology to discover and create new medicines, including potential treatments for cancer.
Novartis has active contracts with the US Department of War and has previously worked with the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Daily Mail has reached out to Novartis for comment on the nature of Thomas’s work.
The Wakefield Police Department said that the cause of death still needed to be determined, but ‘no foul play is suspected.’
Jason Thomas was found dead after being pulled from a Massachusetts lake on March 17. He had been missing since December 12, 2025
When asked if the public was taking this mysterious string of events seriously enough, Burchett said, ‘I’m thinking it is now.’
However, the congressman said he feared it had taken too long for the disappearances and deaths to gain mainstream attention, allowing ‘the trail to cool off.’
‘He might find [McCasland]… I don’t want to speculate on what’s happened to him, or where he is now,’ Burchett said. ‘But anytime there’s a delay between the disappearance and us taking it seriously, that begs the question of why? Why were we not immediately paying attention to this?’
