The FBI Is Investigating 11 Dead or Missing Scientists. Here Is Every Name on the List.

They worked at NASA, MIT, Los Alamos, and classified nuclear weapons facilities. They left their phones at home. They walked out the door and vanished. Or they turned up dead. Congress says it is a national security threat. The FBI says it is now leading the investigation. President Trump says he hopes it is just a coincidence. Here is what we actually know.

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Something strange is happening to American scientists.

Over the past three years, at least eleven people who worked on some of the most sensitive research programs in the country have either died or disappeared. We are talking about people who worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, MIT’s nuclear physics department, the Los Alamos National Laboratory where atomic bombs were developed, and a classified facility that builds the non-nuclear parts for America’s nuclear weapons arsenal.

Some of them left home with no phone, no wallet, and no car. Just a pair of boots and, in a few cases, a gun. Some of them turned up dead with no cause of death ever released. One walked away from two friends who were only thirty feet away and was never seen again.

Now the FBI is investigating. Congress has two committees looking into it. The White House has been briefed. President Trump told reporters on April 16, “I hope it’s random.” He added, “Pretty serious stuff, hopefully a coincidence, or whatever you want to call it.”

That does not sound like someone who thinks it is a coincidence.

Here is every name on the list, what they worked on, and what happened to them.

Michael David Hicks, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Hicks was a research scientist at NASA’s JPL for nearly 25 years. He published more than 80 scientific papers. He was directly involved with the DART project, which intentionally crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid to test whether we could deflect one headed toward Earth, and the Deep Space 1 Mission.

He died on July 30, 2023. He was 59 years old.

NASA has never publicly stated what he died from. His obituaries mentioned no illness. His daughter Julia Hicks told CNN her father had been dealing with health issues and said she found the recent speculation about his death “shaken up” her family. She added, “From what I know of my dad, there’s no train of logic to follow that would implicate him in this potential federal investigation.”

That may be true. It is also true that NASA has never explained what killed him.

Frank Maiwald, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Maiwald was a Principal Researcher at JPL, a title reserved for scientists making exceptional contributions in their field. He died on July 4, 2024, in Los Angeles. He was 61 years old.

No autopsy results were ever released. No cause of death was ever announced. NASA and JPL have made no public statement about his passing.

Monica Reza, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Reza was the Director of the Materials Processing Group at JPL, where she worked on developing specialized metals used in rockets and government programs. She had only recently stepped into that role when she disappeared on June 22, 2025.

She was hiking in the Angeles National Forest outside Los Angeles with two friends. They were about thirty feet ahead of her. They turned around. She was gone.

No trace of her has been found. No body. No sign of where she went. She simply vanished in the middle of a hike with people she knew, in broad daylight.

Melissa Casias, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Casias was 53 years old and worked as an administrative assistant at Los Alamos, the New Mexico lab that built the first atomic bomb during World War II and still plays a major role in America’s nuclear weapons program. She held a top-secret security clearance.

She disappeared on June 26, 2025. On the day she went missing, she dropped lunch off for her daughter. Then she was gone. She has not been seen since.

Anthony Chavez, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Chavez was 79 years old and had worked at Los Alamos until he retired in 2017. He was last seen on May 8, 2025, leaving his home in Los Alamos on foot. He left his car locked in the driveway. He left his phone, his wallet, and his keys inside.

He has not been seen since.

Steven Garcia, Kansas City National Security Campus

The Kansas City National Security Campus is one of the most important, and least talked about, facilities in America’s weapons program. It manufactures more than 80 percent of all the non-nuclear components used in the country’s nuclear weapons.

Garcia, 48, worked there as a government contractor. He was described as a property custodian overseeing tens to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment and assets, some of it classified, with a top-secret clearance and broad access to the entire facility.

He was last seen on August 28, 2025, walking out of his Albuquerque home on foot in a green camouflage shirt and shorts, just after 9 AM. He was carrying a handgun. He left his phone, wallet, keys, and car behind.

He has not been seen since.

Nuno Loureiro, MIT

Loureiro was the director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and a professor of nuclear science and engineering. He was a leading theoretical physicist, meaning he worked on the math and models behind how nuclear fusion energy works.

He was shot on December 15, 2025, outside his home in Brookline, Massachusetts. He died the following day. He was 47 years old.

The suspect in the shooting, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, is also the suspect in the Brown University mass shooting. Valente later died by suicide. Investigators have not publicly established a motive for the attack on Loureiro specifically.

Carl Grillmair, Caltech

Grillmair was a 67-year-old astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology. He worked on NASA’s NEOWISE and NEO Surveyor missions, both of which are designed to track near-Earth objects, meaning asteroids and other space rocks that could potentially hit our planet. He was well known in his field for studying dark matter and searching for signs of water on planets outside our solar system.

He was shot and killed outside his home near Los Angeles on February 16, 2026. His death was ruled a homicide. Authorities arrested a suspect who, they said, did not appear to have known Grillmair personally.

Jason Thomas, Novartis

Thomas was 46 years old and worked as a pharmaceutical researcher at Novartis, the Swiss drug company, where he worked on cancer treatments. He disappeared on December 12, 2025.

His body was found in a lake in March 2026. No foul play was suspected. The cause of death was not determined.

William “Neil” McCasland, Retired Air Force General

McCasland was a retired two-star Air Force general who had commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. That lab runs a $2.2 billion science and technology program that covers advanced materials, aerospace, directed-energy weapons, and more. He held top-secret clearances for decades.

He disappeared on February 27, 2026, from his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He left his phone, his glasses, and his wearable devices behind. He took his hiking boots and a revolver. His wife called 911 and told the dispatcher she believed he had planned not to come back.

He has not been found. The FBI became involved in the search shortly after his disappearance.

His name appears in a 2016 WikiLeaks release, where Tom DeLonge of Blink-182, who spent years pushing for UFO disclosure, described McCasland as someone who was “very, very aware” of classified material related to UFOs. McCasland’s wife has pushed back on this, saying her husband held no special knowledge about extraterrestrial remains or Roswell crash debris, and offering what she described as a sardonic suggestion that aliens might have beamed him up since no one had any better ideas.

Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee has publicly called McCasland “the UFO gatekeeper” and said people in his circle were “very nervous” after his disappearance.

Amy Eskridge, Institute for Exotic Science

Eskridge was the most unusual name on the list. She was 34 years old and co-founded a group called the Institute for Exotic Science, which she described as focused on experimental propulsion ideas including anti-gravity technology. In a 2020 interview she said, “We discovered anti-gravity, and our lives went to hell and people started sabotaging us.”

She died by suicide in June 2022. She is typically listed last on the list, and her inclusion has drawn criticism from skeptics who note that her death came years before the others and that she was not a government scientist in the same way as the other names.

Rep. Burchett, however, told the press he did not think her death was a coincidence.

What the Government Is Saying

The FBI said in April 2026 that it “is spearheading the effort to look for connections into the missing and deceased scientists” and is working with the Department of Energy, the Department of War, and state and local law enforcement.

The House Oversight Committee announced it will investigate. Committee Chair James Comer told Fox News, “Congress is very concerned about this. Our committee is making this one of our priorities now because we view this as a national security threat.” Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri said, “This has all the hallmarks of a foreign operation,” suggesting China, Russia, or Iran could be behind the pattern.

NASA released a statement saying it was “coordinating and cooperating with the relevant agencies” and that, at the time of that statement, nothing on their end indicated a national security threat.

Trump was briefed on the situation on April 16 and said his administration would have more information within a week and a half. As of late April, no final conclusions have been announced.

What the Skeptics Say

Several experts and major news organizations have pushed back hard on the idea that these cases are connected.

The Los Angeles Times, CBS News, and The Boston Globe all reported that experts they interviewed found no obvious link between the deaths and disappearances. Medical sociologist Robert Bartholomew, who has spent years studying how conspiracy theories spread, said the belief is an example of what psychologists call apophenia, which is the very human tendency to see patterns and connections in events that may actually be random.

When you step back and look at the full picture, the United States has roughly 700,000 people with top-secret clearances related to aerospace and nuclear programs. In any group that large, over any three-year period, a certain number of people will die of natural causes, be killed by random violence, take their own lives during personal crises, or go missing while dealing with health or mental health issues. Statistically, that number would be expected to be in the hundreds, not eleven.

Political scientist Richard Hanania, writing for UnHerd in April 2026, said he saw “nothing to indicate that the events that have been linked together have any connection to one another.”

Some of the people on the list were only loosely connected to government research. Jason Thomas worked at a pharmaceutical company. Eskridge ran a small independent research group. The list has also grown over time as new names have been added by social media accounts and online researchers applying increasingly broad definitions of who counts as a “scientist” or a “government connection.”

Why It Feels Like More Than Coincidence

Even after all of that, something about this story is hard to dismiss.

Three of the first cases on the list all trace back to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Three others were connected to Los Alamos or a classified nuclear facility in New Mexico. Several of the missing people followed the exact same pattern: walked out the door on foot, left their phone, left their wallet, left their keys. That pattern does not prove a connection. But it is a striking detail to repeat across multiple independent cases in different states.

The McCasland disappearance also sits at the center of this in a way that no skeptic has fully explained away. He was not a low-level employee. He commanded a $2.2 billion research laboratory at one of the most sensitive military bases in America. He corresponded with a major UAP disclosure advocate. He disappeared in the same way several others on this list disappeared, on foot, without his devices, with a gun. His wife, for all her public skepticism about the UFO angle, has also acknowledged that her husband has not been found and that she has no better explanation.

Trump was briefed. The FBI is leading an investigation. Congress has two committees working on it. These are not fringe responses. These are official responses.

What they find, and whether they tell the public, is the part of this story that has not been written yet.

Sources: CNN, Deaths and Disappearances of Scientists Spark Federal Probe, Newsweek, List of Dead or Missing Scientists Suspicious as 11th Case Raised, Fox News, Mystery Clouds Deaths, Disappearances of Scientists with UFO Research Ties, Timeline, Wikipedia, Missing Scientists Conspiracy Theory, PolitiFact, Fact-Checking Claims About Missing Dead Scientists, Snopes, Did 11 US Scientists Connected to Sensitive Research Die or Go Missing?, Rolling Out, Are UFO Theories Behind the Panic Over Missing Scientists?, Men’s Journal, Dead and Missing Scientists List Reaches 10, The Liberty Line, The Count Is Now 10