Trump investigating mysterious disappearance of 10 missing government scientists: ‘This is serious stuff’

President Donald Trump has been briefed on a growing string of mysterious missing and dead scientists, numbering ten cases.

The president addressed the alarming situation after landing at the White House on Thursday; where he was greeted by reporters and questioned by FOX News about whether the disappearances and deaths were random or potentially linked.

“I hope it’s random, but we’ll find out in the next week and a half,” Trump said. ‘I just came out of a meeting about this issue, it’s a very serious issue. I hope it’s a coincidence… but some of them were very important people and we’ll look into that.’

These scientists, who have ties to NASA, nuclear research, aerospace programs and secret projects, have been sounding the alarm since 2023.

Many people, including researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory, had access to sensitive information related to space missions, nuclear technology, or advanced defense systems, leading to speculation about possible connections.

The president’s comments followed a briefing at the White House on Wednesday, where Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about ten people linked to space or nuclear secrets who died mysteriously or disappeared without a trace.

‘I did not meet with our relevant institutions on this issue. I will definitely do that and get you an answer,’ Leavitt said.

‘If it’s true, of course that’s something that I think this government and administration would certainly find worth investigating. “Then let me do this for you,” Leavitt continued.

This troubling situation began with the disappearance of retired Air Force General William Neil McCasland on February 27.

He was last seen leaving his New Mexico home less than two months ago without his phone, wearables or glasses. He was carrying only a handgun, and his wife said he told 911 dispatchers he was trying to “avoid being found.”

The strange circumstances surrounding the general’s disappearance were nearly identical to four other missing persons cases that occurred in the Southwest between May and August 2025.

Relatedly, all four were connected to McCasland for his work overseeing the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which was said to have been investigating extraterrestrial technology since the 1947 Roswell UFO crash.

While at Wright-Patterson, McCasland oversaw and reportedly approved funding for scientist Monica Jacinto Reza’s work on a space-age metal for rocket engines called Mondaloy.

Reza, 60, disappeared while hiking with friends in California on June 22, 2025. He had become the new manager of the Materials Processing Group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The other three disappearances all involved workers at some of America’s most important nuclear facilities, and all three were last seen leaving their homes without their phones or keys, just like McCasland.

Steven Garcia, 48, disappeared without a trace on August 28, 2025. He was last seen walking out of his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, armed with only a handgun.

The president addressed the alarming situation after landing at the White House on Thursday, where he was greeted by reporters and questioned by FOX News about whether the disappearances and deaths were coincidental or potentially related.

Steven Garcia (Pictured) was last seen on August 28, 2025. A source revealed to the Daily Mail that Garcia worked as a government contractor at a major nuclear weapons facility.

Monica Jacinto Reza, 60, was last seen on June 22 last year while hiking the trail to the summit of Waterman Mountain in the rugged San Gabriel Wilderness region within the Angeles National Forest.

An anonymous source told the Daily Mail that Garcia was a government contractor working for the Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC), a large facility in Albuquerque that produces more than 80 percent of the non-nuclear components used to build the military’s nuclear weapons.

Anthony Chavez and Melissa Casias worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), one of the nation’s most important nuclear research sites.

Chavez, 79, worked at the laboratory until his retirement in 2017, but his role there has not yet been clarified. Casias, 54, was an active administrative assistant at the facility and is believed to have a high-level security clearance.

Anthony Chavez (Left) and Melissa Casias (Right) were employees of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Both disappeared within a few weeks of each other in 2025

All three had last disappeared without a trace as they left their homes in New Mexico on foot, leaving behind their cars, keys, wallets and phones. Police have not provided any updates on the cases since last year.

In addition to a series of disappearances, five scientists working in key research areas have died in the past three years; Two of them were killed in their own homes.

Nuclear physicist Nuno Loureiro and Astrophysicist Carl Grillmair were shot and killed in their homes in recent months.

Independent researchers have noted that Loureiro’s revolutionary work on nuclear fusion may have made him the target of a larger conspiracy against U.S. scientists because his work could one day disrupt the energy industry.

Scientists Nuno Loureiro (left) and Carl Grillmair (right) were murdered in their own home after making significant advances in nuclear fusion and astrophysics

Jason Thomas was found dead after being pulled from a Massachusetts lake on March 17. He had been missing since December 12.

Grillmair’s work with NASA’s NEOWISE and NEO Surveyor also ties into the Air Force because the telescopes use the same systems the military uses to track satellites and missiles.

Meanwhile, NASA scientists Michael David Hicks and Frank Maiwald, who also worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, died at an early age for unknown reasons.

Just 13 months before his death in 2024, Maiwald, 61, was the principal investigator of a breakthrough that could help future space missions detect clear signs of life on other worlds.

Hicks, who died at the age of 59 just a year after leaving JPL, was involved in Project DART, NASA’s test to see if humans could deflect hazardous asteroids away from Earth.

NASA’s JPL did not comment on the deaths of Maiwald or Hicks and did not respond to questions from the Daily Mail about the nature of the scientists’ work before their deaths.

In another mysterious incident, Jason Thomas, a pharmaceutical researcher testing cancer treatments at Novartis, was found dead in a Massachusetts lake on March 17, 2026, after disappearing without a trace in December 2025. Local police claimed there was no suspicion of foul play.