The "11 Missing Scientists" Story Is Hiding 2 Real Cases

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]On February 27th, 2026, William Neil McCazzla disappeared from Albuquerque, New Mexico. He didn't disappear from a battlefield. He didn't disappear from some foreign CIA posting, not from some remote government facility. He disappeared from near his own home.

[00:00:16]According to the public record, his phone was left behind. His prescription glasses were left behind, his wearable devices were left behind, but his hiking boots were gone. His wallet was gone, and so was a 38 revolver. This is where the story should have started. Not with 11 names of scientists mysteriously disappearing. Not with a viral list that was perpetuated by the media, but with a simple story about a man who went missing. Instead, what we received is a headline that made everything a bit more confusing. Other stories lumped into this story. And instead of exploring the disappearance of this man and the other strange disappearances of other people, we received a viral frenzy. On this episode of Off Air, I'm going to take on the story of the 11 missing scientists.

[00:00:59]And today, we're going to talk about how that story says a lot more about us and it says a lot more about viral media.

[00:01:05]And I'm going to show you what we're missing from this story because we've decided to head for the clickbait instead of the real story behind the 11 missing scientists. By the end of this episode and off air, not only are you going to understand what happened to these missing scientists, you're also going to understand some of the tenuous connections between this story and how the media has used it for clicks and likes in order to garner your attention and perhaps distract you from some more important things that we should be talking about. As you know, this place is a place that we come for truth so that we can fully investigate each story. and I'm going to tell you exactly why the FBI is looking into these disappearances. Something that you hadn't heard before from the mainstream media.

[00:01:48]I'm Ronald Chapman, host of Offair. And on this episode, we're going to talk about the 11 scientists. We'll start with the story of William McCazzlin, who was an Air Force major general. He was retired. He was a former commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory and a former director of special programs. He was a man whose official biography places him inside the world of advanced aerospace research, space acquisition, and sensitive defense programs, and he's been involved with them for decades. And then 8 months before mccasin disappeared, another person vanished.

[00:02:20]Her name was Monica Raza. Monica Raza was an aerospace engineer. She'd worked in the world of advanced rocket propulsion systems and materials. Public patent records tie her to Mandaloy, a family of burnresistant high tensile nickel alloys. An official Air Force release tied Mandaloy 200 to Air Force Research Laboratory propulsion efforts for next generation launch systems. And in June 22nd, 2025, Raza disappeared while hiking near Mount Waterman in Angela's National Forest. She was reportedly last seen only a short distance from her friends. Then she was gone. No body, no clear trail, no resolution. These are two disappearances that matter the most out of the purported 11 missing and dead scientists. Not because they're connected or prove any sort of conspiracy. There really aren't connections here. Not because they establish any sort of criminal link or any link to outside intelligence agencies. They don't. They're important because when you strip away the noise of these stories, these two cases contain the strongest combination of unresolved disappearances of people related to documented sensitive technology. They have institutional overlap between each other in the entire public record. But nobody's making that connection because that connection has been overshadowed by a sensational media firestorm related to nine other deaths and disappearances.

[00:03:48]Why did the media start talking about 11 instead of two? That story was much bigger. It's more clean. It's more clickable. 11 missing scientists. All the headlines read. And that phrase did what phrases like that usually do. They collapsed complexity into a pattern.

[00:04:05]Immediately, people started linking things to add one more name to the list.

[00:04:08]And it took cases with different fact patterns, different timelines, different investigation postures, different causes, different levels of public documentation, and placed them under one ominous banner. 11 scientists, dead or missing, sensitive research, federal investigation, Trump's talking about it, Matt Walsh is talking about it.

[00:04:27]Everybody's going on the air to try to link these 11 people together, which was a fool's errand to begin with. And then after the media firestorm, the FBI piled on. While there's no public record that establishes a single confirmed connection among all 11 cases, what we saw was the FBI jump in and said it was spearheading an effort to look for these sorts of connections. The White House said it was conducting a holistic review, whatever that means. The House Oversight Committee demanded briefings from the FBI, NSA, Department of the Energy, and Department of Defense just to pacify all of the media and all the people out there that something was actually being done about the purported 11 dead or missing scientists. But even the congressional letters describe the underlying reports as unconfirmed public reporting about the worst source imaginable. Unconfirmed public reporting. Basically, that's like the House saying people are saying so, which is not enough for us to engage in a full official investigation. This wasn't based on an intelligence assessment, not a classified case summary, not investigative finding of any body, not any public reporting. And yet, by the time that caveat entered the record, the media frame had already done its work.

[00:05:35]Now the FBI is investigating these cases. There must be something to it. A self-licking ice cream cone. And once that happened, the weakest cases began to contaminate the strongest ones. The clearest examples are cases that sound suspicious only when they're forced onto the list. Let's look at a few of them.

[00:05:52]Michael David Hicks died on July 30th, 2023 at the age of 59. He'd worked at JPL, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, from 1998 to 2022. It'd served on science teams connected to Dart, NE, Dawn, and Deep Space One. Some very high level programs. These are important NASA related programs. But the public record in the report does not show that Hicks was working on a classified or topsecret project at the time of his death. CNN reported that his daughter said he had known medical issues and the conspiracy framed around his death had shaken the family. Imagine how those family members feel given that their loved one who likely died not related to any nefarious causes is swept up into this media firestorm. Frank Warner Maywald died in Los Angeles on July 4th, 2024. His obituary described him as a longtime jet propulsion leader involved in sophisticated instrument development including SBG, AMR, SWAT, COVW, JSON 3, and Hi-Fi. I don't expect you to know what any of those mean, but they are highlevel technologies. This is very technologically advanced work.

[00:06:58]Sensitive, yes. Adjacent to some of the things that other scientists work on, yes, but the public record does not show any classified component of his work or any suspicious death investigation or any aspect of his work that he was going to imminently disclose to the public.

[00:07:16]Jason Thomas, a scientist at Novartis in Massachusetts, was reported missing on December 13th, 2025. His body was later believed to have been recovered from a lake whose name I cannot pronounce, and I won't even attempt to do so on March 17th, 2026. Public reporting described grief after the deaths of both parents, and authorities didn't publicly suspect any sort of foul play in his death. His work was private sector pharmaceutical research and there was no public evidence in the report tying him to classified government science or defense work. Nula Lorero was a major scientist.

[00:07:51]He was an MIT professor and director of plasma science and fusion center. He died after suffering gunshot wounds in December 2025. But the public authorities tied that to a named suspect already connected to another violent incident. A homicide case with an identified suspect is not the same kind of case of unresolved disappearance with no body, no suspect, and no explanation.

[00:08:12]But yet, he appears on the list. Carl Grimro was an astronomer at Caltech's IPAC Science and Data Center. His death was violent and deeply serious, but again, investigators arrested a suspect, Freddy Schneider, and ABC7 reported that detectives did not believe Schneider and Gilar knew each other. That does not make the deaths unimportant. It makes it different. And this is the central failure of the 11 dead and missing scientists narrative. It treated different things as though they were the same simply because people might have had some science background or connection. And the nuance that the media should have gone through connecting these scientists and their work to some grander narrative before reporting was completely lost because everybody felt that they would be missing out if they didn't talk about this 11 scientist theory. Most people went on the air and sort of discussed the scientists and never really drew any connection. And I recently viewed Matt Walsh's episode and he doesn't really seem to say much of anything. But what we should really be doing is condemning this sort of public narrative from the beginning to prevent wild conspiracy theories from occurring. If these 11 people are connected in more than name show the connections, but otherwise what we're doing is we're overshadowing the real story here. The story of the two disappearances that are the most problematic in this case. The two cases that deserve the most scrutiny were hidden in plain sight. Monica Raza and William Neil McCasslin. Let's start with Raza. June 22nd, 2025. Angel's National Forest, Mount Waterman. Not a difficult hike. A 60-year-old aerospace engineer goes hiking on that trail. She's reportedly near others. She vanishes from view. Search efforts begin. They continue. The case remains unresolved.

[00:09:49]That alone would make it troubling. But Raza's professional background is what moves this case into a completely different category and warrants a tremendous amount of scrutiny. She was not merely someone with a vague connection to science. Public patent records list Monica Yasinto as an inventor tied to burnresistant and high tensile strength metal alloys. The report identifies her work with Mandeloy, an official Air Force release described Mandoy 200 as co-developed by Aerogjet Rocket Dine and the AFRL materials directorate. the same Air Force material described as relevant to oxygenrich staged combustion rocket engines and next generation launch systems. Ladies and gentlemen, everybody wants to know what's in the mind of the scientists and wants to know her capabilities and wants to know the secrets that she has available to her.

[00:10:38]Let me ask you this. Would it be crazy if you wanted to make one scientist disappear? Would it be crazy to make it seem as if a whole bunch of other scientists disappeared just by collecting various stories and pushing them in the press in order to get people all frenzied up about those which would prevent them from investigating the real disappearance. I suggest that what you're dealing with here is a tremendous amount of media manipulation. Raza's work was real. It was defense adjacent.

[00:11:04]It wasn't invented by social media. When people ask whether or not any of these cases had any actual sensitive technology nexus, Raza's case is the one that rises to the top with a resounding yes. On February 27th, 2026, Albuquerque, New Mexico, a retired major general disappears. His public air force biography shows a career that moved through the center of advanced air force research and special programs. He commanded the air force research laboratory. He served as the director of special programs. He held a doctorate from MIT and had exposure to sensitive aerospace and defense programs over decades. And when he disappeared, the facts were incredibly strange. Just like Raza, his phone was left behind, his glasses were left behind. All of his wearables were left behind, but his hiking boots wallet and revolver were missing. The Bernardo County Sheriff's Office remained the lead agency investigating, not the FBI. Quite suspicious. It's almost like the Park Police investigating the Vince Foster case, which I did a video on previously.

[00:12:04]Seems like we always have local police stepping in when the FBI is necessary in these sorts of suspicious situations.

[00:12:10]The FBI Albuquerque field office assisted when useful, but didn't provide too much assistance. Authorities publicly stated there was no evidence of foul play at that stage, but all possibilities remained under review. Are you kidding me? That was the careful official posture. Nobody said anything about espionage. Nobody said anything about abduction, but we have a lot of unanswered questions. This is a case involving a former senior Air Force research officer and leader, a general.

[00:12:38]The absence of an answer here is not a small thing. This is one of the most important disappearances in our country.

[00:12:44]Now, place Raza and Mccasin next to each other. Raza is tied through public records to AFRL linked rocket propulsion materials. McCastenlin commanded AFRL and had leadership roles connected to space vehicles, special programs at Air Force research. These two cases are connected. Raza disappears in June 2025.

[00:13:06]McCaslin disappears February 2026.

[00:13:09]Both cases remained unresolved. Both sit inside aerospace and national security ecosystems. The problem here is that the media narrative became so broad it obscured the one overlap that actually had documented support because there's a difference between a pattern and a collage of 11 names. A pattern is built from meaningful repetition, the disappearance of scientists that are connected. A collage is just a bunch of random things that you throw at the paper. It's built by placing things next to each other until the eye begins to invent coherence. And that's exactly what the media did. That's exactly the trick that they played on you. The 11 sciences story functioned like a collage. Put JPL next to NASA. Put NASA next to Caltech. Put Caltech next to MIT. Put MIT next to Fusion. Put Fusion next to nuclear. Put nuclear next to Los Alamos. Put Los Alamos next to Albuquerque. Put Albuquerque next to McCaslin. Put Mccasin next to Rhea.

[00:14:07]Eventually, the mine supplies the rest.

[00:14:10]scientists, technology disappearing. But investigative work doesn't operate that way. Investigative work that I do has to ask what is actually connected. And the answer on the public record is much smaller. There are three real clusters that I'm going to get into that we really should be talking about. The first cluster here is Southern California Aerospace and NASA linked research. Michael Hicks, Frank Maywald, Monica Raza, and Carl Gilmar. All people I've discussed all have some connection to NASA JPL Caltech ecosystem but that cluster breaks apart quickly. Hicks Maywald are deaths without public criminal indicators in any sense.

[00:14:47]Grillar's case has a suspect. Raza is the unresolved outlier that we should be really concerned about. The second cluster is northern and central New Mexico's nuclear and defense corridor.

[00:14:57]Anthony Chavez and Melissa Cas are tied by reporting to Los Alamos National Laboratory. Steven Garcia is tied by reporting to Kansas City National Security Campuses Albuquerque work.

[00:15:09]McCaslin disappeared in Albuquerque after decades in the Air Force and AFRL leadership. The cluster is real enough to justify attention, but the public record still describes the strongest provable connection as only geography plus adjacency to sensitive institutions.

[00:15:26]This is not a demonstrated operational network. But the third cluster is the most narrow and most important. Raza and Macaslin, the AFRL rocket propulsion materials, space vehicles, special programmed, documented institutional orbit, and the space race and moon race that we currently have going on right now. While we lack proof of any criminal plot or any outside organizations, these are the two cases that I'm looking into the most. I'm discarding the other nine names. And this really should be the case of two missing scientists. To prove the distraction that's going on to you, I want to talk about the case that everybody else is talking about, the case of Amy Escri. She's got the strongest imminent disclosure rhetoric, the suggestion that her imminent disclosure led to her disappearance. She co-founded the Institute for Exotic Science. She was a bit of an outlier.

[00:16:20]her case re-entered public attention because of prior statements describing harassment related to anti-gravity or exotic physics research, but the public record does not show a government contract classified access or a reopen law enforcement investigation. Her death had been publicly described as self-inflicted and her family told CNN she suffers from chronic pain. While there may be questions around the case, there really isn't any indication of any foul play. We can then look at the Anthony Chavez case. He remains missing.

[00:16:48]His case is unresolved. According to CNN report, he'd worked as a foreman supervising construction at Los Alamos National Laboratory. That gives the case proximity to sensitive infrastructure, but proximity is not the same as classified research and nothing places him in the category of suspicious disappearances. He was not on the verge of disclosing anything. Melissa Cas remains missing. Her case includes odd reported facts. her purse, her phone left at home, the phone allegedly factory reset, family suspicion about a blue truck, law enforcement statements that no foul play was suspected. She was reportedly an administrative worker at Los Alamos National Laboratory. There's no indication that she was working on a classified programs in any way. What we have here is taking somebody who's associated with these programs and assuming that their disappearance is suspicious merely because she was associated. Steven Garcia, one of the other cases, was reportedly connected to Kansas City National Security Campus, whose mission includes supporting nuclear weapons work and producing most non-nuclear components in the US nuclear stockpile. But public evidence of his employment and clearance level was thin and indicated nothing suspicious at all.

[00:17:58]So yes, scientists go missing.

[00:18:01]Scientists in some cases are deceased.

[00:18:04]That's not suspicious. What's suspicious are actual connections between them. And the only thing that stands out are Raza and Macazzlid. They sit apart from all other cases. They are not nearly near sensitive institutions. They are tied to the same institutional world as each other. And that world is the AFRL, the Air Force Research Laboratory. The Air Force Research Laboratory is the primary scientific research and development center for the Department of the Air Force. It's where materials, propulsion, space weapons, and emerging technologies intersect. A person connected to the Air Force Research Laboratory randomly disappearing on a hike is already unusual. A former research laboratory commander disappearing months later under unexplained circumstances is super unusual. Together, they become the clearest unresolved overlap in this entire record. So, we'll be following up on the story of those two scientists, but I want to talk about why it's important for you all not to lump these people together. By turning these cases into the 11 missing scientist story, it created a suspicion where there was no support for it. Families of people like Michael Hicks were forced to watch their personal loss become part of a conspiracy adjacent story. A death with no known issues becomes part of the public mystery. It creates skepticism where skepticism should have been more carefully targeted because once the exaggerated versions become easy to debunk, the genuinely strange cases are dismissed along with it. That's the danger. Bad framing is misleading those people who may believe the real true story that two of these disappearances are very shady. This gives skeptics an excuse to stop looking. And in this case, people most likely to suffer from that are Monica Raza and William McCasland, whose cases remain unresolved, but are now somewhat delayed because of these other disappearances and the attention paid to them. Raza vanished from a hiking area near Mount Waterman and has not been recovered. She documented work tied to rocket propulsion materials. Mccas vanished from Albuquerque, leaving behind electronic devices and personal items while his wallet, boots, and revolver were missing. He had a documented senior career inside Air Force Research and Special Programs, and their shared AFRL orbit is the strongest public connection in the entire set. Now, where is the investigation currently? The FBI says it's looking for connections involving classified access, classified information, and foreign actors. The White House says it's reviewing the cases together. NASA says it's coordinating with agencies from NASA's vantage point and they saw nothing indicating a national security threat.

[00:20:37]Congress has asked for briefings, but the Department of Defense had reportedly told committee staff there were no active national security investigations of any purported missing person who was a current and former clearance holder involved in special access programs.

[00:20:52]That's top secret programs. So perhaps because nobody can make a link between these 10, the White House gets rid of the story. The FBI gets rid of the story. It's very quickly debunked and these two deaths fall by the wayside and are never properly investigated to begin with. And so I'm going to do what these other agencies haven't done. I'm going to isolate Mccasand and Raza and do separate episodes about each one of them. I'm going to dive as far as I can into the disappearances of these two, ignoring all of the others so that we can get to the bottom of what potentially happened. I'll talk about where their investigations are, whether or not these investigations are being thoroughly followed through, and what we can expect in terms of information coming out of those investigations. I've got a couple of foyer requests that I'm still poking through, and a couple of people to talk to. But when that's done, I'm going to lay down a couple of episodes about Raza and Mccasand that hopefully provide you some new insight and information into the Air Force Research Laboratory and the disappearance of these two people. And I hope that by the end of those episodes and by the end of this episode, you'll be able to see why it is important that instead of collecting this type of information together, we need to isolate the cases and look at what's important.

[00:22:02]We need to separate the signal from the noise. They want you to listen to the noise. They don't want you to find the signal. And here on Off Air, finding the signal is exactly what we're going to do. Thank you to all those in the member section. Thank you for all of your support. And please let me know what you think about these two cases in the comments. I'd be especially interested in hearing if you have any insight or information about the Air Force Research Laboratory or these two individuals that would help us solve this mystery. I'm Ron Chapman. This is Off Air. Thank you for joining.