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WSJ: How a Fringe Conspiracy Theory About Missing Scientists Got the FBI’s Attention
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/how-a-fringe-conspiracy-theory-about-missing-scientists-got-the-fbis-attention-d61de97c
Private investigator Thomas McNally sees no link between the disappearance of Melissa Casias and some 10 other missing or deceased scientists. The internet disagrees.
Casias’s family hired McNally to hunt for clues after the New Mexico administrative assistant vanished last June. In the past couple of weeks, he’s found himself working to dispel conspiracy theories. Her disappearance has nothing to do with UFOs, he says. Nor was the Los Alamos lab worker—responsible for purchasing office supplies—caught in a government assassination plot because of a top-secret life, McNally adds.
Speculation linking her disappearance and the losses of several scientists has for months churned through fringe online communities. Now, President Trump and the House Oversight Committee are paying attention. Earlier this week, the FBI said it was spearheading an effort to look for connections, working with the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense, as well as state and local officials.
“I hope it’s random,” Trump told a reporter last week. “But some of them were very important people and we’re going to look at it.”
The questions center on deaths or disappearances from 2022 through this February. They include an independent researcher, a long-retired Air Force general, and Casias, the administrative assistant. Some were connected to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Two had ties to Los Alamos National Laboratory, which has long featured in UFO conspiracy theories.
Fringe narratives percolate constantly. But few rise to national attention—or prompt federal inquiry.
“Your average conspiracy theory, someone comes up with it and it dies on the vine,” said Joseph Uscinski, a professor at the University of Miami who studies them. “What makes this unique is you have government agents, with guns, investigating this.”
The narrative evolved over months of internet speculation. Many of the deaths and disappearances were first covered individually, sometimes with a conspiratorial bent.
Right-wing media personality Tim Pool dedicated a 2025 podcast episode to the killing of MIT physicist Nuno Loureiro outside Boston, which Pool argued could have been motivated by Loureiro’s research into clean energy. Authorities said the shooter was Loureiro’s former classmate, who also allegedly opened fire in a Brown University classroom days earlier.
A few creators, including the popular conservative writer and influencer Jessica Reed Kraus, suggested a possible connection between Loureiro’s death and the February 2026 killing of Caltech astronomer Carl Grillmair. Kraus’s post went viral, quickly becoming one of her most shared, she says.
“When I put it on IG, it went crazy,” she said in an interview. “And it just kept going.”
Their messaging amplified speculation that was already swirling online about possible connections among prior deaths, including Loureiro’s and Novartis researcher Jason Thomas’s, both in December 2025.
The February disappearance of a 68-year-old retired Air Force general, William “Neil” McCasland, kicked the theorizing into high gear, particularly once a local FBI field office joined the search early last month.
“What is happening to our space scientists?!” one popular UFO account wrote on X, attaching a photo collage of Loureiro, Grillmair and McCasland.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/how-a-fringe-conspiracy-theory-about-missing-scientists-got-the-fbis-attention-d61de97c
Private investigator Thomas McNally sees no link between the disappearance of Melissa Casias and some 10 other missing or deceased scientists. The internet disagrees.
Casias’s family hired McNally to hunt for clues after the New Mexico administrative assistant vanished last June. In the past couple of weeks, he’s found himself working to dispel conspiracy theories. Her disappearance has nothing to do with UFOs, he says. Nor was the Los Alamos lab worker—responsible for purchasing office supplies—caught in a government assassination plot because of a top-secret life, McNally adds.
Speculation linking her disappearance and the losses of several scientists has for months churned through fringe online communities. Now, President Trump and the House Oversight Committee are paying attention. Earlier this week, the FBI said it was spearheading an effort to look for connections, working with the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense, as well as state and local officials.
“I hope it’s random,” Trump told a reporter last week. “But some of them were very important people and we’re going to look at it.”
The questions center on deaths or disappearances from 2022 through this February. They include an independent researcher, a long-retired Air Force general, and Casias, the administrative assistant. Some were connected to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Two had ties to Los Alamos National Laboratory, which has long featured in UFO conspiracy theories.
Fringe narratives percolate constantly. But few rise to national attention—or prompt federal inquiry.
“Your average conspiracy theory, someone comes up with it and it dies on the vine,” said Joseph Uscinski, a professor at the University of Miami who studies them. “What makes this unique is you have government agents, with guns, investigating this.”
The narrative evolved over months of internet speculation. Many of the deaths and disappearances were first covered individually, sometimes with a conspiratorial bent.
Right-wing media personality Tim Pool dedicated a 2025 podcast episode to the killing of MIT physicist Nuno Loureiro outside Boston, which Pool argued could have been motivated by Loureiro’s research into clean energy. Authorities said the shooter was Loureiro’s former classmate, who also allegedly opened fire in a Brown University classroom days earlier.
A few creators, including the popular conservative writer and influencer Jessica Reed Kraus, suggested a possible connection between Loureiro’s death and the February 2026 killing of Caltech astronomer Carl Grillmair. Kraus’s post went viral, quickly becoming one of her most shared, she says.
“When I put it on IG, it went crazy,” she said in an interview. “And it just kept going.”
Their messaging amplified speculation that was already swirling online about possible connections among prior deaths, including Loureiro’s and Novartis researcher Jason Thomas’s, both in December 2025.
The February disappearance of a 68-year-old retired Air Force general, William “Neil” McCasland, kicked the theorizing into high gear, particularly once a local FBI field office joined the search early last month.
“What is happening to our space scientists?!” one popular UFO account wrote on X, attaching a photo collage of Loureiro, Grillmair and McCasland.
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