Deaths and Disappearances of U.S. Scientists: 2022 to 2026




What Is Happening

The FBI is currently investigating at least 11 officially named cases of scientists and government researchers who have died or gone missing since 2022, with the number growing to 13 or more when additional cases drawing public scrutiny are included.

The House Oversight Committee has launched its own inquiry, demanding briefings from the DOD, DOE, NASA, and FBI by April 27, 2026. President Trump has publicly commented on the cases, saying he hopes they are random but confirmed he held a meeting on the subject.

No confirmed link between any of the cases has been established as of today.

One detail that stands out even to skeptics is the concentration of cases around the same institutions and research fields. At least four of the individuals Michael David Hicks, Frank Maiwald, Monica Reza, and Joshua LeBlanc were all connected to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory or NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Several others worked in overlapping fields including nuclear propulsion, plasma physics, advanced materials science, and classified aerospace research. Monica Reza and William McCasland are also known to have worked together directly, more than a decade ago.

The fact that so many of these individuals were not just scientists in general, but specialists in the same narrow and highly classified areas of research, is something even mainstream outlets and some lawmakers have noted as worth examining.


The 9 Confirmed Deaths

Amy Catherine Eskridge

Plasma physicist and anti-gravity researcher, co-founder of the Institute for Exotic Science in Huntsville, Alabama. She also had ties to NASA. Date of death: June 11, 2022. Authorities officially ruled her death a self-inflicted gunshot wound. One of her friends said she had told him that if she died by suicide, it would not be true, and that she was being targeted by a directed energy weapon. Her father, however, believes her death was a suicide. Her family stated she suffered from chronic pain.

Michael David Hicks

Research scientist at NASA's JPL for 24 years, contributing to more than 80 scientific papers, including work on NASA's Deep Space 1 mission and the DART asteroid-deflection project. Date of death: July 30, 2023. His cause of death was not publicly disclosed and no record of an autopsy was found. His daughter said there was no logical reason to connect him to the investigation and that he had known medical issues.

Frank Maiwald

Principal researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Date of death: July 4, 2024. He died with no cause of death released and no statement from NASA.

Joshua LeBlanc

A key contributor to nuclear propulsion projects for future Mars missions at NASA. He served as team lead for the Space Nuclear Propulsion Instrumentation and Control Maturation programme and had worked at NASA for approximately five and a half years. Date of death: July 22, 2025. LeBlanc was 29 years old when he died in a fatal car crash in Huntsville, Alabama. He went missing after failing to report to work. His burned Tesla was discovered after colliding with a guardrail and several trees before bursting into flames. Tesla Sentry Mode data showed the vehicle had sat motionless at Huntsville International Airport for four hours that morning before the crash. His family said he had no prior travel plans and no reason to be near the airport.

Nuno F.G. Loureiro

Director of MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, working to advance clean energy technology. Date of death: December 15, 2025. Fatally shot in his Brookline, Massachusetts home. The primary suspect, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, was also responsible for a mass shooting at Brown University and was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in New Hampshire three days later.

Carl Johann Grillmair

A renowned 67-year-old astrophysicist at Caltech's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, famous for discovering water on a distant exoplanet and for work on dark matter using the Spitzer Space Telescope. Date of death: February 16, 2026. Gunned down on the front porch of his home in Llano, California. Authorities arrested 29-year-old Freddy Snyder in connection with the shooting. Snyder had been arrested months earlier for trespassing on Grillmair's property while armed with a rifle, though no specific motive has been released.

Jason Thomas

A 46-year-old pharmaceutical researcher at Novartis working on cancer treatments, with active DOD contracts. He disappeared on December 12, 2025. His body was recovered from Lake Quannapowitt in Wakefield, Massachusetts on March 17, 2026. Police found no evidence of foul play. His parents had both died in quick succession before his disappearance.

James "Tony" Moffatt and Family

NASA Johnson Space Center veteran, age 60. Moffatt was killed along with his son Andrew, age 30, a UAH research engineer, his wife Leasa, age 61, and his son William, age 28, in a plane crash. The entire family perished together. The crash occurred in April 2026 in South Carolina.

David Wilcock

UAP disclosure researcher, age 53. Date of death: April 20, 2026. Apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. He had warned two days earlier that the missing scientists cases were "scary" and had publicly stated he was not suicidal.


The 5 Still Unaccounted For

Anthony Chavez

A 78-year-old retiree who worked as a foreman supervising construction at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Missing since May 2025. A detective told CNN there are no signs of foul play, but exhaustive searches have yielded no signs of activity or indications he was planning to leave.

Monica Reza

Director of NASA JPL's Materials Processing Group. She patented a nickel super-alloy for rocket manufacturing used in programs like SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's New Glenn. Missing since June 22, 2025. She disappeared while hiking in the Angeles National Forest. The case is being investigated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and remains unsolved.

Melissa Casias

A 53-year-old administrative assistant at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Her husband worked at the same lab in a more senior position. Missing since June 26, 2025. She vanished leaving behind her car, keys, wallet, and phone. Her daughter said she was dealing with a significant amount of stress before she disappeared.

Steven Garcia

Government contractor who oversaw nuclear weapons assets at the Kansas City National Security Campus. Missing since August 2025. He was last seen on surveillance footage leaving on foot with a handgun.

William "Neil" McCasland

Retired U.S. Air Force Major General. He commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, overseeing classified space weapons programs. Missing since February 27, 2026. Police said he was last seen near Quail Run Court NE in Albuquerque. He left behind his phone, prescription glasses, and wearable devices, but took his hiking boots, wallet, and a .38-caliber revolver. His wife has pushed back against speculation connecting him to UFO research.


Quick Totals

The Institutional Overlap

Setting aside questions of conspiracy, the concentration of cases around specific institutions and research fields is objectively notable. At least four individuals had direct ties to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, one of the most sensitive and advanced research facilities in the United States. Multiple others worked in fields that directly overlap in nuclear propulsion, plasma physics, fusion energy, advanced materials science, and classified aerospace and weapons research.

Two of the missing, Monica Reza and William McCasland, are confirmed to have worked together professionally. Joshua LeBlanc, Amy Eskridge, and James Moffatt were all based in Huntsville, Alabama, the same city that houses NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the Army's Redstone Arsenal missile and space defense programs.

Huntsville alone accounts for four deaths, all connected to NASA or UAH aerospace research, and zero public statements have come from NASA or JPL about any of the deaths or disappearances.

Whether these overlaps amount to something sinister or simply reflect how small and interconnected the world of classified government science is, it is a legitimate observation that even measured analysts have found worth noting.


The "It Is Statistically Normal" Argument Does Not Hold Up

Some commentators, most notably science writer Mick West, have argued that these deaths and disappearances are not statistically unusual. West estimated that about 700,000 individuals hold top-secret clearances in the aerospace and nuclear sectors, and that ordinary mortality averages for that population over a 22-month period would produce around 4,000 deaths, 70 homicides, and 180 suicides. On the surface, this sounds reassuring. But the argument has a serious flaw that undermines it significantly.

The 700,000 figure refers to the entire pool of people holding top-secret clearances across all of aerospace and nuclear work. That is an enormous and extremely broad population that includes accountants, security personnel, IT staff, administrators, lawyers, logistics workers, and countless other roles that require a clearance but have nothing to do with hands-on classified scientific research. The people in these 14 cases are not drawn from that broad pool.

They are drawn from a far smaller and more specific group of researchers actively working on nuclear propulsion, plasma physics, fusion energy, advanced rocket materials, and classified aerospace programs. That subgroup likely numbers in the low thousands at most, not 700,000.

When you correctly narrow the relevant population to only those working in these specific fields, the statistical picture changes dramatically. If only a few thousand people in the country are actively doing this kind of work at a classified level, then 14 deaths and disappearances among them over four years is not remotely normal, it would be extraordinary.

The clustering makes it even harder to dismiss. Several of these individuals worked at the exact same lab. Two knew each other personally. Three died in the same city. A truly random distribution across a large workforce does not produce that kind of tight geographic and institutional clustering.

The statistical argument, while superficially compelling, does not survive scrutiny once you account for how narrow and interconnected this specific group actually is.

Where Things Stand

The FBI investigation is ongoing and no confirmed link between any of the cases has been found as of April 25, 2026. Political scientist Richard Hanania wrote that there is nothing to indicate that the events linked together have any connection to one another, and questioned whether some of those named could even legitimately be classified as scientists.

Families of the deceased have largely rejected conspiracy interpretations and asked that their relatives not be swept into speculation. At the same time, the House Oversight Committee has formally demanded answers, the White House has confirmed it is actively working with the FBI and multiple agencies on the cases, and former FBI officials have publicly stated the pattern is consistent with how foreign adversaries operate when targeting sensitive personnel.

Whether the explanation turns out to be coincidence, a statistical cluster, foreign espionage, or something else entirely, the cases collectively represent one of the more unusual and unresolved stories in recent American scientific and national security history.


A Note From the Author

While researching this piece I kept seeing the same framing repeated across multiple major outlets:

"Science writer Mick West estimated that about 700,000 individuals hold top-secret clearances in the aerospace and nuclear sectors. Ordinary mortality averages for that population over a 22-month period would produce around 4,000 deaths, 70 homicides, and 180 suicides. Viewed against that baseline, the number of cases over four years is within normal statistical range for a workforce of that size."

Mick West is described as an American science writer, debunker, and retired video game programmer, the creator of the websites Contrail Science and Metabunk, who investigates and debunks pseudoscientific claims and conspiracy theories such as chemtrails and UFOs. It is worth noting, and pretty strange, how broadly this specific framing was adopted, almost verbatim, across mainstream coverage of these cases.



Kai Tutor | The Societal News Team

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