Editorials & Other Articles

Questions about a possible sinister connection between the 11 deaths and disappearances began to emerge after William Neil McCasland, a 68-year-old former U.S. Air Force major general, was reported missing from his Albuquerque home by his wife on Feb. 27, 2026. McCasland left his prescription glasses, phone, and electronics behind; he is thought to have taken his .38 caliber revolver with him. Two months later, officials still can’t say where he went.

McCasland was the onetime commander of the Wright-Patterson base, central to the Roswell incident; his connection to UFO lore and classified space weapons programs fanned the flames of speculation sparked by a YouTuber named Daniel Liszt when he posted a video theorizing that a Portuguese physicist was assassinated because of his work in advanced fusion research. Nuno Gomes Loureiro, a renowned nuclear science professor, was shot and killed at his Massachusetts home in December 2025. He had recently been named director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center.

Liszt, who goes by the handle Dark Journalist, theorized that Loureiro’s work was “potentially so transformative, that if you get a real leg up in the research … then you become a sort of database that needs to be erased potentially.” He tied Loureiro’s murder to the deaths of other scientists who had worked in the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative program.

Right-wing influencer Jessica Reed Kraus wrote a Substack article in February that drew parallels between Loureiro’s death and that of astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, who was shot and killed outside his rural California home. In another post, she deemed McCasland’s disappearance a “Conspiracy Alert!” The Daily Mail kicked the story into high gear in March, reporting that the “mystery of five missing scientists sends [a] chill across America.”