2026-04-17T17:19:00-0400 / https://www.cbsnews.com/news/deaths-disappearances-scientists-staff-government-labs/
特朗普总统本周暗示，与敏感核技术或航天技术相关的10名政府工作人员失踪或死亡背后可能暗藏险恶，但参与这些分散案件调查的相关人士表示，他们未发现任何关联。
“我刚参加了一个相关主题的会议，事情相当严重，”特朗普周四对记者表示，“希望只是巧合……但其中一些人是非常重要的人物，我们会对此展开调查。”
近期社交媒体上涌现出大量关于这些失踪和死亡事件的阴谋论，这些事件发生在三年时间里，涉及多名与美国国家航空航天局喷气推进实验室以及洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室有关联的研究人员和其他工作人员。外界一直在猜测，是否存在针对美国核计划或航天项目的蓄意伤害阴谋。
但参与相关案件调查的人士表示，这些死亡和失踪事件背后并非间谍惊悚片式的阴谋，而是更为私人且悲剧性的缘由。
68岁的退役少将威廉·尼尔·麦卡兰德于2月底最后一次在新墨西哥州阿尔伯克基的家中被人看到。他的妻子苏珊·麦卡兰德·威尔克森在脸书的一篇帖子中称，“他不太可能被人掳走以从他口中获取早已过时的机密”。她的丈夫已退役超过12年。
68岁的退役空军少将威廉·尼尔·麦卡兰德自2月以来失踪。他最后一次被人看到是在阿尔伯克基地区的家中。伯纳利洛县警长办公室
麦卡兰德的失踪引发了网络上大量关于其与机密军事项目和不明飞行物（UFO）潜在关联的猜测，原因是他曾担任赖特-帕特森空军基地空军研究实验室的指挥官。在过去约一年时间里，新墨西哥州共有四名现任或前任敏感岗位雇员失踪，他便是其中之一。
截至周四晚间，一位消息灵通的政府消息人士告诉CBS新闻，联邦调查局（FBI）并未将这些失踪和死亡事件作为可疑模式展开调查。相反，负责监管NASA喷气推进实验室和洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室的美国能源部正在对此进行调查。
FBI发言人本·威廉姆森将此事描述为“动态发展中的情况”。
“FBI已获悉此事，并正在提供所有被要求的协助，”他说，“通常情况下，除非当地执法部门提出请求，否则我们不会牵头处理这类案件。”
在给CBS新闻的一份声明中，美国能源部国家核安全管理局（NNSA）的一位女发言人表示，该局正在关注公众对这些案件可能存在关联的担忧。
“NNSA已获悉有关我们实验室、工厂和基地雇员的相关报道，并正在对此事展开调查，”NNSA的一位发言人告诉CBS新闻。
现任和前任能源部官员承认，这种情况“令人侧目”，国家实验室的能源部工作人员及其承包商确实有成为外国间谍目标的风险。但一位前工作人员表示，他们未看到任何证据表明这些案件之间存在关联。
“人总会死亡。中风、心脏病、自杀、抢劫遇害，这类事情时有发生，”这位前能源部官员说道。
涉事机构合计雇佣了超过2万名员工，其中许多人从事行政和支持类工作，无法接触机密信息。
“如果加上‘核武器设施’和听起来可疑的职位头衔，可能会掩盖某人的工作有多普通，”这位前能源部官员补充道。
资料图显示的是新墨西哥州洛斯阿拉莫斯的洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室。蔡俊·洪 / 美联社
CBS新闻采访了多位能源安全和执法专家。没有人认为这些案件之间存在明显关联。
战略与国际研究中心核问题项目副主任约瑟夫·罗杰斯表示，将这些案件联系起来的谣言听起来带有阴谋论色彩。
“这些死亡和失踪案件分散在数年时间里，涉及不同且关联松散的机构，”罗杰斯说，“如果所有科学家都在为同一个项目或武器系统工作，那我会更加怀疑。”
曾为美国政府处理核安全问题超过15年的核威胁倡议组织核材料安全副总裁斯科特·罗克表示，当前的伊朗战争可能影响了人们的思考方向。
“如果你在考虑外国对手，伊朗可能会浮现在脑海中，因为伊朗的核科学家曾遇刺身亡，”罗克说。
“但我们不像伊朗。我们有成千上万的科学家，拥有完善的基础设施。因此，即使个别死亡事件令人悲痛，伊朗也无法通过除掉十几名核科学家来达成任何战略目的，”罗克说道。
在网上引发猜测的10名受害者中，有一名科学家在加利福尼亚州徒步时失踪，五人死亡，还有四人——从一名将军到一名行政人员——在过去一年里在新墨西哥州失踪。其中一人是麻省理工学院教授，在自家门口被一名前葡萄牙同学杀害，这名凶手后来被证实是布朗大学枪击案的枪手。
新墨西哥州失踪案
退役将军麦卡兰德于2月离开家中，未携带手机、任何可穿戴设备或处方眼镜。他随身只带了一双徒步靴、钱包和一把.38口径左轮手枪。
由伯纳利洛县警长办公室牵头、州和联邦机构协助的搜救队出动了无人机和搜救犬展开搜寻。3月7日，调查人员在他家以东约2公里处发现了一件灰色的美国空军运动衫，但除此之外，显然没有发现他的任何踪迹。
他的失踪在网上引发了诸多猜测，认为麦卡兰德是被强行掳走，部分原因是他曾为一个非政府组织担任顾问，该组织正在调查政府的UFO档案。他的妻子在脸书帖子中承认，他曾短暂与一个呼吁政府公开UFO档案的群体有过联系，但她驳斥了任何认为他的失踪与此相关的说法。
“尼尔对赖特-帕特森基地存储的罗斯威尔坠毁事件中的外星尸体和碎片没有任何特殊了解，”她在脸书帖子中开玩笑地写道，这指的是关于外星生命在沙漠中被发现的阴谋论。
“不过在目前完全没有他的任何踪迹的情况下，也许最好的猜测是外星人用光束将他带上了母舰。不过目前尚无报道称在桑迪亚山脉上空发现了母舰，”她写道。
据伯纳利洛县警长办公室消息，FBI一直在协助当地执法部门搜寻麦卡兰德。
“截至目前，调查人员未发现任何他杀证据，”包括阿尔伯克基都会区的伯纳利洛县的一位官员表示。该官员补充说，调查仍在进行中。
一张来自寻人启事的史蒂文·阿贝尔·加西亚照片。新墨西哥州公共安全部
阿尔伯克基地区的官员也在搜寻48岁的史蒂文·加西亚，他于去年8月失踪。据报道，加西亚曾在位于阿尔伯克基的美国国家核安全管理局堪萨斯城国家安全园区担任物业管理员。
在阿尔伯克基以北约两小时车程的地方，当地警方正在调查洛斯阿拉莫斯的两名雇员失踪案。
53岁的梅利莎·卡西亚斯曾在洛斯阿拉莫斯工作多年，最后一次被人看到是独自在高速公路上行走，背着背包，一位看过监控录像的家人透露。
“梅利莎是一名行政助理，没有高级别安全许可，”她的侄女杰兹明·麦克米伦说道。
“很高兴看到梅利莎的案件受到关注，但我没有看到任何证据将她与其他案件联系起来，”组织过家庭搜寻队、查看过多页与该案相关的警方文件的麦克米伦说。
去年5月，同样曾在洛斯阿拉莫斯工作的78岁的安东尼·查韦斯失踪。洛斯阿拉莫斯警方正在请求公众协助寻找他。
加利福尼亚州徒步者失踪案
加利福尼亚州一名资深科学家的失踪在媒体报道中引发了几乎与新墨西哥州麦卡兰德案同样多的猜测。
60岁的莫妮卡·贾辛顿·雷扎是一名从事火箭发动机研究的航空工程师，她于2025年6月22日在洛杉矶郡徒步时失踪。
一个专门用于搜寻她的脸书页面发布了她的照片，并呼吁经验丰富的徒步者协助搜查这片崎岖的地形。
谋杀与其他死亡事件
调查人员表示，麻省理工学院教授努诺·卢雷罗是核聚变与等离子体物理学专家，去年12月在波士顿地区的家中被克劳迪奥·内维斯·瓦伦特枪杀。瓦伦特是一名心怀嫉妒的前工程系同学，二十年前曾与卢雷罗在同一个项目中学习。曾在布朗大学工程系学习过的瓦伦特，在枪杀卢雷罗的前一天，还在校园内制造了一起大规模枪击事件，造成两名学生死亡、九人受伤。
卡尔·格里迈尔是加州理工学院的天体物理学家，今年2月在洛杉矶郡的自家门廊被枪杀。格里迈尔的讣告称，他曾获得2011年NASA杰出科学成就奖章以及多项NASA团体成就奖。一名被控杀害他的29岁男子去年12月被一名法官依据“不必要起诉”法案从监狱释放。
上个月，诺华制药研究员杰森·托马斯的尸体在马萨诸塞州的一个湖中被发现，距离他被报失踪已有三个月。他的妻子告诉NBC新闻，他在去年父母双双去世后精神崩溃。
NASA的弗兰克·迈瓦尔德于2024年7月4日在洛杉矶去世，享年61岁。
迈克尔·大卫·希克斯是NASA喷气推进实验室的物理学家，于2023年7月去世，享年59岁。
CBS新闻查阅了讣告、家人的声明以及执法部门的调查结果，未发现任何死亡案件之间存在关联的证据。
Speculation swirls around deaths and disappearances of staff at secretive government laboratories. Here’s what we know.
2026-04-17T17:19:00-0400 / https://www.cbsnews.com/news/deaths-disappearances-scientists-staff-government-labs/
President Trump hinted this week that something sinister may lurk behind the disappearance or death of 10 government workers tied to sensitive nuclear or space technology, but those close to the various investigations into the disparate cases say they see no links.
“I just left a meeting on that subject, so pretty serious stuff,” Mr. Trump told reporters Thursday. “Hopefully, coincidence… but some of them were very important people, and we are going to look at it.”
Social media has recently lit up with theories about the disappearances and deaths, which occurred over three years and involved several researchers and other staff with ties to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Speculation has swirled about whether there’s some kind of plot to harm U.S. nuclear or space programs.
But those involved in the various cases have said that what underlies these deaths and disappearances is not a spy-thriller plot, but something more personal and tragic.
Retired Major General William Neil McCasland, 68, was last seen at his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in late February. His wife, Susan McCasland Wilkerson, said in a Facebook post that it “seems quite unlikely that he was taken to extract very dated secrets from him.” Her husband retired from the Air Force more than 12 years ago.
William Neil McCasland, 68, a retired Air Force major general, has been missing since February. He was last seen at his home in the Albuquerque area. Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office
McCasland’s disappearance has sparked significant online speculation about potential connections to classified military programs and UFOs because of his past role as the commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory on the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He’s one of four current or former employees at sensitive sites who’ve gone missing in New Mexico over roughly the last year.
As of Thursday evening, a well-placed government source told CBS News the FBI was not investigating the disappearances and deaths as part of a suspicious pattern. Rather, the Department of Energy, which oversees NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory, is looking into it.
FBI spokesman Ben Williamson described the issue as a “developing situation.”
“The FBI is aware and providing all assistance requested,” he said. “Usually what happens is we are not the lead in cases like this unless local authorities request.”
In a statement to CBS News, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said the agency is paying attention to fears the cases may be linked.
“NNSA is aware of reports related to employees of our labs, plants, and sites and is looking into the matter,” a spokesperson for NNSA told CBS News.
Current and former Energy Department officials acknowledged the pattern is “eyebrow raising” and that department staff and its contractors at the National Laboratories do indeed risk becoming the targets of foreign espionage. But one former staffer said they have seen no evidence of any link in these cases.
“People do just die. Strokes, heard disease, suicide, mugging, it happens,” the former DOE official said.
The facilities in question combined employ more than 20,000 people, many of whom work in administrative and support roles and do not have access to secret information.
“If you attach ‘nuclear weapons facility’ and some sketchy sounding job title, it could conceal how mundane someone’s job may be,” the former DOE official said.
File photo shows the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Jae C. Hong / AP
CBS News interviewed several energy security and law enforcement experts. None saw an obvious link between the cases.
Joseph Rodgers, the deputy director of the Project on Nuclear Issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the rumors connecting the cases sound conspiratorial.
“The deaths and missing persons cases are scattered across several years at different and only loosely affiliated organizations,” said Rodgers. “If all of the scientists were working on one project or weapons system, then I’d be more suspicious.”
Scott Roecker, vice president for nuclear materials security at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, who worked on nuclear security issues for the U.S. government for more than 15 years, said the current war in Iran may factor into people’s thinking.
“If you were looking at a foreign adversary, Iran might come to mind because of the Iranian nuclear scientists who have been assassinated,” Roecker said.
“But we’re not like Iran. We have thousands of scientists. We have a robust infrastructure. So there would be nothing strategic Iran could achieve by taking out 10 or 20 of our nuclear scientists, as tragic as the individual deaths might be,” Roecker said.
Of the 10 that have garnered speculation online, one scientist disappeared while hiking in California, five died, and four people ranging from a general to an administrative staffer went missing in New Mexico over the past year. One of the five was an MIT professor killed at his doorstep by a former Portuguese classmate who was later determined to be the Brown University mass shooter.
New Mexico disappearances
McCasland, the retired general, left home in February without his phone, any wearable devices or his prescription glasses. All he had with him were a pair of hiking boots, his wallet, and a 38-caliber revolver.
Search and rescue teams led by the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office and aided by state and federal agencies deployed drones and K9s in their efforts to find him. A gray U.S. Air Force sweatshirt found a mile and a quarter east of his home was picked up by investigators on March 7, but otherwise there’s apparently been no trace of him.
His disappearance sparked swirling speculation online that McCasland was taken against his will in part because of his work consulting for a non-government group that was probing the government’s UFO files. His wife acknowledged in the Facebook post that he had a brief association with a community of people pushing for the government to release files about UFOs, but she dismissed any notion that his disappearance was connected to that.
“Neil does not have any special knowledge about the ET bodies and debris from the Roswell crash stored at Wright-Patt,” she wrote in jest in the Facebook post, referring to conspiracy theories about aliens being found in the desert.
“Though at this point with absolutely no sign of him, maybe the best hypothesis is that aliens beamed him up to the mothership. However, no sightings of a mothership hovering above the Sandia Mountains have been reported,” she wrote.
The FBI has been assisting local law enforcement in the search for McCasland, according to the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office.
“Investigators have so far uncovered no evidence of foul play,” according to an official in Bernalillo County, which includes the Albuquerque metro area. The official added that the investigation is ongoing.
A photo of Steven Abel Garcia from a missing-person poster. New Mexico Department of Public Safety
Albuquerque area officials are also searching for 48-year-old Steven Garcia, who disappeared last August. Garcia reportedly worked as a property custodian for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Kansas City National Security Campus in Albuquerque.
A couple of hours’ drive north of Albuquerque, local police have been investigating the disappearances of two employees at Los Alamos.
Melissa Casias, 53, worked at Los Alamos for years and was last seen walking alone on a highway wearing a backpack, according to a family member who has reviewed the surveillance footage.
“Melissa was an administrative assistant and did not have high-level clearance,” said her niece, Jazmin McMillen.
“I’m happy to see Melissa’s case getting attention but I haven’t seen any evidence linking her to any of the other cases,” said McMillen, who organized family search parties and has reviewed multiple pages of police documents related to the case.
In May of last year, Anthony Chavez, 78, who had also held a job at Los Alamos, went missing. Los Alamos police are asking for the public’s assistance in finding him.
A California hiker
The disappearance of an accomplished scientist in California has garnered almost as much speculation in media reports as McCasland’s in New Mexico.
Monica Jacinton Reza, a 60-year-old aerospace engineer who worked on rocket engines, disappeared on June 22, 2025, while hiking in Los Angeles County.
A Facebook page devoted to the search for her includes pictures of her and asks for experienced hikers to help scour the rough terrain.
Murders and other deaths
Investigators say MIT Professor Nuno Lureiro, an expert in fusion and plasma physics, was shot and killed at his home in the Boston area last December by Claudio Neves Valente, a jealous former engineering classmate who had studied in the same program with Lureiro two decades ago. Valente, who had spent time at Brown University’s engineering program also carried out a mass shooting on campus that killed two students and wounded nine others just one day before he shot and killed Lureiro.
Carl Grillmair, a Caltech astrophysicist, was shot to death on his front porch in Los Angeles County in February. An obituary for Grillmair said he was the recipient of the 2011 NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal and numerous NASA Group Achievement Awards. A 29 year old man charged with his murder was released from prison last December by a judge using an “unnecessary prosecutions” law.
The body of Novartis researcher Jason Thomas was recovered from a Massachusetts lake last month, three months after Thomas was reported missing. His wife told NBC News he was distraught following the death of both of his parents last year.
NASA’s Frank Maiwald died July 4, 2024, at 61 in Los Angeles.
Michael David Hicks, a physicist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, died in July 2023 at the age of 59.
CBS News reviewed obituaries, statements from family members and law enforcement findings and found no links between any of the deaths.