In the span of nine months, nine top-level scientists in the United States have died or vanished without a trace. Seven of them were connected to the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) or the institutions it directly funds.
AFRL develops and transitions the most sensitive aerospace technologies in the United States’ defense arsenal.
1) Monica Jacinto Reza vanished June 22, 2025 while hiking with friends in the Angeles National Forest in California.
She was last seen waving to a hiking companion approximately 30 feet behind the group. Despite an extensive search involving helicopters, drones, and canine units, only a beanie and lip balm were recovered, and her body was never found.
Reza, 60, was an aerospace engineer and Technical Fellow at Aerojet Rocketdyne who later moved to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)and co-inventor of Mondaloy.
Mondaloy is a family of nickel-based superalloys developed by Aerojet Rocketdyne to withstand oxygen-rich environments and extreme heat in rocket engines. Its unique achievement is balancing high oxygen compatibility with structural strength, solving a critical challenge where traditional oxygen-resistant alloys were too weak for use in high-pressure components like preburners and turbine rotors.
She worked closely with Retired Major General William Neil McCasland, who commanded the AFRL from 2011 to 2013 and oversaw the government funding for her alloy program. McCasland disappeared in February.
Dallas Hardwick, Reza’s mentor and co-inventor of Mondaloy, died on January 5, 2014, apparently of natural causes.
2) Melissa Casias has been missing since June 26, 2025, in Taos County, New Mexico.
She was last seen walking alone on Highway 518 near Talpa around 2:15 p.m., wearing a light-colored shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes, with a backpack containing personal items.
Casias, 53, was an administrative assistant at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), a facility known for nuclear weapons research and national security science.
Her job at LANL links her to McCasland, who worked closely with LANL on national security projects at Kirtland Air Force Base, according to the Daily Mail. She vanished just four days after Reza mysteriously disappeared.
3, 4, 5) Jacob Prichard, Jaymee Prichard, and 1st Lt. Jaime Gustitus all died on October 25, 2025.
Jacob Prichard, 34, was the Acquisition Project Manager in the AFRL Sensors Directorate at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, specializing in technologies for air and space reconnaissance and surveillance.
Jacob’s wife, Jaymee Prichard, 33, was a finance specialist at the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Wright-Patterson. The couple had three children.
Gustitus, 25, was a U.S. Air Force Operations Analysis Officer who worked in a top secret capacity at the 711th Human Performance Wing at Wright-Patterson.
Jacob allegedly killed his wife Jaymee and placed her body in the trunk of their car, then drove to Sugarcreek Township, broke into Gustitus’s apartment and fatally shot her around 2 a.m.
He then drove to the West Milton Municipal Building, opened the trunk for police to discover Jaymee’s body, and at around 4:23 a.m., committed suicide by gunshot in the parking lot. The act was reportedly captured on security cameras.
6) Carl Grillmair, astrophysicist and astronomer at the Caltech Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), was shot dead on the front porch of his home in Llano, California on February 16, 2026.
Grillmair was celebrated for his groundbreaking research in astronomy, including the discovery of dozens of stellar streams (remnants of ancient galactic collisions) and the first detection of water signatures in the atmospheres of exoplanets. For over nearly 30 years at IPAC, he worked on numerous projects including the NEOWISE Science Data Center, where he validated data pipelines for detecting asteroids and comets that could impact Earth.
Grillmair’s role involved testing new instrumentation and ensuring the NEO Surveyor’s instruments performed to specification to identify dark, cold objects against the black of space.
7) William Neil McCasland, former AFRL Commander, former research commander at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, vanished from his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on February 27, 2026. A “Silver Alert” was issued after the 68-year-old disappeared.
He reportedly left his phone and glasses but took his wallet, boots, and a .38 revolver, with the FBI now assisting in his search.
McCasland held some of the most sensitive positions in the U.S. military, including Director of Special Programs at the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, giving him critical knowledge of the nation’s most classified programs.
He reportedly oversaw $4.4 billion in classified aerospace research and development, running the lab at Wright-Patterson and serving as the executive secretary of the Special Access Program Oversight Committee, the body with full purview of every SAP in the Department of Defense. His name appears in WikiLeaks emails coordinating a UAP disclosure meeting with the Clinton campaign and the head of Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, according to the Sentinel Network.
McCasland’s association with UFO research and brief professional association with Tom DeLonge and the To The Stars Academy have drawn significant public and media attention to the case.
According to The Sentinel, these mysterious deaths and disappearances do not amount to “a loose collection of people who happened to work in defense.”
#8 Nuno F. Gomes Loureiro, a prominent Portuguese plasma physicist, was fatally shot at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, on December 15, 2025 and died from his injuries the following day.
Authorities connected his murder to Cláudio Manuel Neves Valente, who had committed a shooting at Brown University two days prior; both men were classmates at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Portugal.
Loureiro, 47, held joint appointments as a professor in MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and Department of Physics and director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center.
He joined MIT in 2016 and was known for his work on nonlinear plasma dynamics, including the development of the Viriato simulation code and his research on solar flares and fusion confinement.
9) Jason Thomas, a chemical biologist, was reported missing on December 13, 2025, after leaving his home on the night of December 12 without his phone, wallet, or identification. He was found dead in Lake Quannapowitt in Wakefield, Massachusetts, on March 17, 2026.
Thomas, 45, was the assistant director at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research with over 4,500 citations in chemical biology and chemoproteomics. His work reportedly included active contracts with the Department of Defense.
Commenting on the string of deaths and disappearances, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) told podcaster Benny Johnson last week that “Something dark is going on.”
“I know these scientists and researchers. They have testified. We’ve got to get to the bottom of it,” he said. “It’s just too much, too much is going on right now—and by the way, I’m not suicidal.”
