10 NASA Scientists Vanished Without A Trace, FBI Fears Assassination But What’s Really Going On?

Like, nothing. Really.

Look, not trying to burst your conspiracy theory bubble, but here at Wall Street Memes Dot Com we have a duty to abide by journalistic standards and call out BS when we see it. I took an oath god damn it!

So the latest hoax making the rounds is that 10 unconnected deaths/missing persons cases must in some way be connected. It’s a story that’s gone viral on social media with tens of millions of views and been picked up by such reputable publications as… The Daily Mail and The New York Post. Oy vey.

Look, I’m just going to list the ten cases cited, let’s start with that:

Michael David Hicks, a scientist working on NASA’s DART Project, who died aged 59, July 30, 2023 in California. His death wasn’t widely reported on until lumped in with the below names so there aren’t many details on the circumstances of his death.

Frank Maiwald, a “Technical Group Supervisor at Jet Propulsion Laboratory” (according to his LinkedIn) who died aged 61, July 4, 2024 in LA.

Mark Anthony ‘Tony’ Chavez an “R&D Engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory” (LinkedIn) who went missing May 4 last year in New Mexico.

Monica Jacinto Reza, “a senior aerospace engineer and director of materials processing for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory” (according to this article) went missing June 22 last year while hiking in California.

Melissa Casias, who also worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, went missing June 26 last year in New Mexico.

Steven Garcia, a government security contractor, went missing August 28 last year in Alburquerque, New Mexico.

Jason Thomas, a scientist for the Swiss medical company Novartis, was reported missing December 13 last year, after three months missing, his body was recovered March 17 this year in Massachusetts. His wife says he was struggling with the sudden, simultaneous death of his parents.

Nuno Loureiro an MIT physics professor who was murdered as part of the 2025 Brown University mass shooting on December 13 last year in Massachusetts.

General William Neil McCasland (retired), a former commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright‑Patterson Air Force Base and current director of technology at Applied Technology Associates went missing February 2 this year in Albuquerque.

Carl Grillmair, an astronomer who contributed research to the Hubble Space Telescope, was murdered February 16 2026 in California by a carjacker who had formerly burgled Grillmair’s neighbor and trespassed on his property.

Ok, so I know it’s tempting to make connections here (that’s what humans are so good at), but if I gave you a random group of anything, you’d start to wonder what connected them. The difference here is that these aren’t picked randomly, they’re cherry picked by shoddy news outlets and hopeful conspiracy theorists because the connection is already there, leading you to exact conclusion they want you to make.

And some of these connections are real loose.

Firstly all these cases are across three years (or “36 months” as some people are saying), so not exactly a narrow window. Next, they’re all across the country, some are grouped around certain areas but that’s because that’s the JPL, or the Los Alamos lab is. These people have been picked out of lists of many thousands of murdered people and missing persons because they are connected so it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s a connection.

Let’s just rule out the non-suspicious ones first. For Hicks and Maiwald’s deaths there’s no explanation given and no investigation conducted. There’s nothing to say these deaths were unusual in any way.

Jason Thomas was clearly griefstricken by the death of his parents. His story is tragic but a pretty open and shut case, plus his job doesn’t really connect him to NASA in any way which I thought is what we were doing here?

Nuno Loureiro is the same I think, where he was killed by a jealous former classmate who also shot two other people. Hardly a secret government assasination. (Of note, this shooting had a number of completely unrelated conspiracy theories pop up about it at the time. It’s almost as if narrativising traumatic experiences helps people cope…) 

And it seems to me that these five relatively mundane cases have been dug up and bolted on to the remaining missing persons cases to try and make this seem like a big sprawling conspiracy. Because sure, reaching for more disparate cases might make the whole argument more sensational, but it also makes it less credible.

So ruling out those five more explainable deaths, we’re left with all the active missing person cases of Anthony Chavez, Monica Reza, Melissa Casias, Steven Garcia (although I’m not sure his security job is actually connected here) and General McCasland.

And yes, those are genuinely unsolved cases. Throw in the location, time and their occupations and it’s very easy to start forming a narrative and come to conclusions. But when all you’re relying on is coincidence, how do you know that’s not your brain making connections and guessing the result? Two plus two doesn’t necessarily equal five.

Because that’s just it, we don’t know. And there’s nothing to say what happened one way or another. I know you want there to be something, some great big exciting secret like aliens or a government conspiracy but nine times out of ten it’s nothing

And it’s never aliens.

Unfortunately the likelihood is that these are very tragic but relatively mundane cases of people going missing that crappy news publications have picked up on because there’s a tenuous connection that they can make a story out of.

533,936 people were reported missing last year. Tens of thousands are still missing. How hard to you think it would be to find ten people with some sort of connection and make up a story about their disappearances?

It seems disrespectful if anything. These are real people who have been affected here. Isn’t it wrong to speculate and sensationalise their tragedies?

(And by the way, just because the White House is ‘looking into it’ doesn’t make this story is legitimate either. They looked into aliens too, guys.)

Sure, because we don’t know what happened yet, there is a slim chance that there is a connection between these cases. But currently there is literally no evidence of that. So until more evidence appears, please, please don’t jump to conclusions.

And take any publication feeding you sensationalist clickbait with a massive pinch of salt.

(Including this one. Sorry, I actively mislead you with the headline, the FBI haven’t said they think these are assassinations, that comes from this non-quote from the Daily Mail: “Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker recently told the Daily Mail: ‘You can say these are all suspicious, and these are scientists who have worked in critical technology.’” Yeah, goes without saying, Chris.)