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Hi, listeners, it's Vanessa Richardson. Real quick, before today's episode, I want to tell you about another show from Crime House that I know you'll love. America's Most Infamous Crimes, hosted by Katie Ring. Each week, Katie takes on one of the most notorious criminal cases in American history. Serial killers who terrorized cities, unsolved mysteries that keep detectives up at night, and investigations that change the way we think about justice. Listen to and follow America's Most Infamous crimes Tuesday through Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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This is Crime House.
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Foreign 2026. In the White House briefing room, a reporter stands up and asked the press secretary a question that just a few weeks earlier would have sounded like it belonged on a Reddit thread, not in the West Wing. Fox News senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy looked at Press Secretary Caroline Levitt and said, There are now 10American scientists who have either gone missing or died since mid 2024. They all reportedly had access to classified nuclear or aero material. Is anybody investigating this to see if these things are connected? Levitt paused before answering. Then she said, quote, I've seen the report, Peter. I haven't spoken to our relevant agencies about it. I will certainly do that and we'll get you an answer. If true, of course, that's definitely something I think this government and administration would deem worth looking into. End quote. The next day, President Trump told reporters he just left a meeting on the subject. His exact words were, pretty serious stuff. I hope it's random, but we're going to know in the next week and a half. By that point, the FBI had already launched a formal investigation. The House Oversight Committee was drafting letters to four federal agencies. Cable news was running the story wall to wall. And on the Internet, people had already made up their minds. The theory goes like this. Someone, a foreign government, a shadowy agency, maybe something stranger is systematically eliminating America's top scientists. The people who know too much about nuclear UFOs. Advanced propulsion and exotic materials are disappearing. They're dying. And it's not a coincidence. The skeptics say it's a textbook case of the human brain doing what it does best, finding a pattern where none exists. A collection of unrelated tragedies stitched together by hindsight and confirmation bias, then amplified by politicians who see an opportunity and an Internet that loves a mystery. So which is it? That's what we're here to find out. From UFO cults and mass suicides to secret CIA experiments, presidential assassinations, and murderous doctors, these aren't just theories. They're real stories that blur the line between fact and fiction. I'm Vanessa Richardson and this is Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I'll explore the real people at the center of the world's most shocking events and nefarious organizations. These cases are wild and I want to hear what you think at the end of each episode. Leave a comment wherever you listen. Be sure to rate, review and follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes to continue building this community together. And for ad free access to all three episodes, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. And remember, these Monday episodes will also be on YouTube with full video. You can find them every Saturday. Just search for Conspiracy theories, Cults and crimes and be sure to like and subscribe. Please note this episode includes discussions of suicide. Please listen with care. Today we're tackling a conspiracy theory that, as of this recording, is still unfolding in real time. It involves at least 13 people connected to American scientific and defense research who've died or disappeared since 2022. The FBI and Congress are both investigating, and even the President has weighed in. Before we get started, I want to say that every name on this list belongs to a real person. Someone who was loved, someone whose family is still grieving. And some of those families are watching strangers on the Internet turn their loss into content, into data points on a conspiracy chart. So we're going to do what this show always does. We're going to lay out the facts, we are going to respect the people at the center of it, and we're going to trust you to think for yourselves. All that and more coming up.
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Girl Winter is so last season, and now spring's got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders that perfect hang on the patio sundress, those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done. Hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear open that envelope. It's time for a little in person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic.
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In early 2026, a list started circulating around the Internet. It included the names of scientists, engineers, government contractors, people connected to America's most sensitive research who had either died or vanished under what some were calling mysterious circumstances. The spark was a retired Air Force major general named William Neil McCasland who disappeared from his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on February 27, 2026. We'll get more into his disappearance later. But it was McCaslin's background that lit the fuse that blew this whole thing up. He'd commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, a facility that's been at the center of UFO lore for decades. His name appeared in a 2016 WikiLeaks email from Blink 182 frontman and devoted UFOlogist Tom DeLong to Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman. In that email, DeLong allegedly described McCasland as someone who knew about the Roswell crash. Once news of McCasland's disappearance hit the conspiracy communities, people started digging. Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic magazine, would later describe it. Bluntly, he said, people were scouring obituaries and missing person reports, then cross referencing every name against any conceivable connection to military research, UFOs, or aerospace and and the list grew fast. Online sleuths dug through LinkedIn profiles, public obituaries, and local news archives, piecing together connections that at first glance looked too specific to be random. A JPL researcher here, a Los Alamos employee there, a physicist at mit, a missing hiker who happened to co invent a superalloy used in rocket engines. Each addition made the pattern feel more deliberate. The By March, it had jumped from fringe forums to News Nation, the New York Post, and the Daily Mail. Congressman Eric Burleson of Missouri, who the Kansas City Star said built his political brand around UFOs, started amplifying it, and by mid April a Fox News reporter was asking about it in the White House briefing room. And then it was Everywhere. So let's do something the Internet rarely does. Let's slow down. Let's actually look at these cases one at a time. And let's start with the ones where we have answers. Because if we're going to take the bigger mystery seriously, we owe it to these families to be honest about what the evidence actually shows. The first person I want to talk about is nuno Loreiro, a 47 year old Portuguese born plasma physicist. By all accounts, he was one of the most brilliant minds in fusion energy research. Nuno was the director of MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center. In January or February of 2025, President Biden presented him with the Presidential Early Career Award, the highest government honor for young scientists. His colleagues described him as warm, funny and compassionate. A leader who made people feel valued. On December 15, 2025, Lureiro was shot at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts. He died from his injuries the next day. The killer was identified as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a Portuguese national who'd attended the same university as Loreiro in lisbon in the 1990s. Two days before killing Loreiro, Valente carried out a mass shooting at Brown University that killed two people and injured nine. Forensic investigators matched a firearm found with Valente to the weapon used to kill Larero. By the time they made that connection, Valente had been found dead by a self inflicted gunshot in a storage unit in New Hampshire. Based on reports, investigators believe he'd been planning both attacks for years, driven by envy and resentment of Loreiro's success. So why is Nuno Loreiro on the list? Because he ran MIT's Plasma Science Infusion center, the kind of institution that in conspiracy circles gets connected to advanced energy research, UFO propulsion theories, and classified government programs. The word plasma alone is enough to set off alarm bells in certain corners of the Internet. But CBS News confirmed that Loureyro was not working on anything classified. In fact, MIT doesn't conduct any classified research on its campus. It was clear this was a revenge killing by a disturbed former classmate. It is a tragedy, not a mystery. The next person I want to talk about is Carl Grilmar, a 67 year old Canadian astronomer who spent 30 years at Caltech. He worked on the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and NASA's WISE mission. He discovered water on multiple exoplanets. One colleague called him the most generous individual one could imagine. On February 16, 2026, Grilmar was shot on the front porch of his home in Lano, California, a remote community in the Antelope Valley. He died from a single gunshot wound to the Torso. The suspect, 29 year old Freddy Snider, was arrested the same day in connection with a carjacking. Investigators said the two men did not appear to know each other. But here's the thing. Snider had been arrested in December 2024 for trespassing on Grilmar's property while carrying a loaded unregistered rifle. When deputies arrived, Snyder had claimed he was walking to the post office and was carrying the weapon to protect himself against wild animals. But property records showed the post office was in the opposite direction from Grilmar's home. He was arrested on a felony weapons charge and tried to escape jail the following day. Despite all of that, the charges were dismissed. Days after his release, a neighbor told the LA Times Snyder broke into his home. Two months after that, Snyder allegedly came back to Grilmar's property and killed him. As of this recording, Snyder is awaiting arraignment. Grilmar landed on the conspiracy list because of his NASA partnered work at Caltech's IPAC Science and Data Center. His research on exoplanets and galactic structure was exactly the kind of space science that conspiracy theorists associated with hidden knowledge. He'd even built a personal observatory on his property because the desert darkness made for better astronomical observations. But his death isn't a conspiracy, it's a system failure. A man walked onto a scientist's property with a rifle, got arrested, got released, then came back and then allegedly killed him. Grilmar's widow Louise called the conspiracy theory absolute nonsense and said her husband would laugh at those spreading it. The next person I want to Talk about is 59 year old Michael David Hicks, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. From 1998 to 2022, he published over 80 scientific papers, worked on the Deep Space One mission and contributed to the DART project, NASA's test of whether humans could deflect a dangerous asteroid. Hicks died at his home in space Sunland, California on July 30, 2023. Online. His cause of death was reported as undisclosed. That word alone was enough to fuel suspicion. But the LA county coroner does list a cause of death, arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease with morbid obesity, as a significant condition. His daughter Julia Hicks told CNN her father had been struggling with known medical issues and she saw no logical connection to any federal investigation. His brother was more blunt. He said he's deeply upset that Michael is going to be remembered for, quote, some baloney Loch Ness monster Bigfoot conspiracy theory instead of his actual scientific achievements. Think about that for a second. This is a man who helped figure out how to protect the planet from asteroids, and his family now has to defend his legacy against a Reddit thread. That's what this conspiracy has cost real people. Now let's talk about Jason Thomas, the 45 year old associate director of chemical biology at Novartis, the pharmaceutical company he worked on cancer drug discovery. His obituary said he was deeply compassionate and generous and believed his work could make a meaningful difference in people's lives. On the night of December 12, 2025, Jason and his wife Kristen came home from a night out with friends. He was quiet, unusual for him, but not surprising given what he'd been through. His mother had recently passed away, and then, while making funeral arrangements, his father collapsed from a heart attack and died in Jason's arms. That night, Kristen locked eyes with Jason for just a second before he turned away and walked down the street. She thought he was going for a late night walk. He left behind his phone, his wallet, his Apple watch. He never came back. On March 17, 2026, after the ice thawed, his body was recovered from Lake Quannapowit in Wakefield, Massachusetts. The authorities didn't suspect any foul play. The conspiracy theory absorbed Jason Thomas's death and filed it under mysterious. His wife, who watched him walk away in grief, has to live with that. So that's four of the names on the list. A revenge killing by an ex classmate, a violent crime with an arrested suspect, a heart attack, a man in the depths of catastrophic grief. Four different people, four different stories, four different explanations, none of which require a shadowy government conspiracy. But not every case on this list has an answer. And some of the ones that don't, they're genuinely unsettling.
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Think about some of the cases that defined true crime in America. Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer. The kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart. The Karen Retrial. Some crime cases are so shocking, they don't just make headlines, they forever change a country. I'm Katie Ring, host of America's Most Infamous Crimes. Each week, I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases, whether it's unfolding now or etched into American history, revealing not just what happened, but how it forever changed our society. Serial killers who terrorized cities, unsolved mysteries that kept detectives up at night, and investigations that changed the way we think about justice. Each case unfolds across multiple episodes, released every Tuesday through Thursday, from the first sign that something was wrong to the moment the truth came out or didn't. These are the stories behind the headlines. Listen to and follow America's Most Infamous Crimes available now wherever you get your podcasts.
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Okay, now that we've been through the cases where the evidence is clear, let's talk about the ones where it isn't, or at least where it's a little less straightforward. And I want to be upfront with you. These cases don't prove a conspiracy, but they do raise real questions that deserve honest answers. First, let me tell you about Melissa casillas. She was 53 years old and worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of the most sensitive nuclear research facilities in the country. She disappeared in late June of 2025 after driving to work that morning and dropping off lunch for her daughter. Her car was still there. Her personal belongings were left behind. On paper, it looks exactly like the kind of case that belongs on a list of mysteriously vanishing government workers. But here's the thing. Melissa Casillas was an administrative assistant, not a scientist. Despite how she's been described online, her LinkedIn makes that clear. Her family and the New Mexico State Police both confirmed she left on her own due to personal stress. We don't have any other details. What we do know is that she walked away from a difficult situation and that her family has asked for privacy. Amy Eskridge is harder to categorize. She co founded an organization called the Institute for Exotic Science and claimed to be working on anti gravity propulsion technology with her father, a retired NASA engineer. She held a chemistry degree from the University of of Alabama in Huntsville and was enrolled in a Materials Science PhD program at the same school. She also had a background in nanotechnology. Her research touched on everything from microelectromechanical systems to gene therapy. She was 34 years old when she died by suicide in Huntsville, Alabama on June 11, 2022. But the complicating factor is what she said before she died. In a text message to a business partner in May 2022, she wrote, if you see any report that I killed myself, I most definitely did not. If you see any report that I Overdosed. I most definitely did not. Amy also told a former British intelligence officer named Frank Milburn that she believed she was being targeted by a directed energy weapon. She sent him photos of what she said were burns on her hands. But her father, Richard Eskridge, himself a former NASA employee, told NewsNation he doesn't think there's anything suspicious about her death. Her family said she suffered from chronic pain. Retired FBI agent Jennifer Coffendaffer told Newsweek there's no doubt she took her own life given her behavior in the weeks before. And the Atlantic's Daniel Engber pointed out that some of Amy's claims in the months before her death suggested someone whose grip on reality was loosening. She'd made references to a katana wielding time traveling soldier. She said she knew personally. What I see here is a young woman who is clearly in tremendous pain whether someone was doing this to her or whether she was battling mental health struggles and chronic illness. Whatever the cause, she deserved better than becoming an item on a conspiracy chart. But that's what the machine does. It doesn't care about the distinction. It just needs names. And then there's Frank mywald. He was 61 years old and a principal researcher and technical group supervisor at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He managed Earth observation and space instrumentation programs. Just 13 months before his death, he was the lead researcher on a breakthrough that could help future space missions detect climate clear signs of life on other worlds. His colleagues considered him one of JPL's most respected figures. Mywald died in Los Angeles on July 4, 2024. No cause of death has been publicly released. No indication of foul play was reported at the time. NASA and JPL have not commented on the circumstances of his death. And that's all we know. A respected scientist, dead at 16, one with no public explanation. It's not proof of anything, but it's the kind of silence that gives conspiracy theories room to breathe. Now let's get into the cases that keep me up at night, the ones that have brought this conspiracy into the mainstream. I'll start with Anthony chavez. He was 78 years old and a former construction foreman at Los Alamos National Laboratory who retired in 2017. Sometime between May 4th and 8th, 2025, he disappeared from his home in Los Alamos, New Mexico. He was last seen walking away on foot. His car was locked in the driveway. He left behind his phone, his wallet and his keys. His family called it completely out of character. As of this recording, no new information has surfaced. But I want you to remember these details. He left His New Mexico home on foot without his phone, wallet or keys. Next, let me tell you about Steven Garcia. He was a government contractor who worked for the Kansas City National Security Campus. This is a facility based in Missouri that manufactures more than 80% of the non nuclear components in America's nuclear weapons. From what we can tell, Garcia worked out at a company campus in Albuquerque, New Mexico. There he worked out as a property custodian with top security clearance overseeing what an anonymous source described as tens of millions of dollars in assets, some classified. On August 28, 2025, two days before his 48th birthday, surveillance cameras captured Garcia leaving his Albuquerque home. It was just after 9am and he was wearing a green camouflage shirt and shorts. He was also carrying a handgun. He left behind his phone, his keys and his wallet. Police warned he might be a danger to himself. He has not been seen since. And then there's Monica Jacinto Reza. A 60 year old aerospace engineer, she spent over three decades at Aerojet Rocketdyne before becoming the director of materials processing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She held degrees from Columbia, Columbia and UCLA. And in the mid-1990s she co invented something called Mondaloy. It's a nickel based superalloy that solved a problem rocket engineers had struggled with for years. How to build engines that wouldn't combust under the extreme pressures of oxygen rich staged combustion. Rez's invention went into rocket engines and the research that funded it. It was overseen by the Air Force Research Laboratory, the same lab William McCasland commanded. The house Oversight Committee specifically flagged this professional connection in their letter to the FBI. On the morning of June 22, 2025, Reza went hiking near Mount Waterman in the Angeles National Forest. She was with a friend. At one point she was about 30ft from her hiking partner when she smiled and waved. And then she was never seen again. Search dogs tracked her scent to a hat believed to be hers. And then the trail went cold. Months of volunteer searches through brutal terrain found nothing. Hiking disappearances happen. The Angeles National Forest is vast and can be unforgiving. But Monica Reza isn't just anyone who wandered off a trail. She was a woman whose work sat at the intersection of rocket propulsion, advanced materials science and national defense. And she shared professional history with a man at the time. Same center of this entire story. Which brings us to William Neil McCasland, a 68 year old retired two star general, an astronautical engineer with degrees from the Air Force Academy, MIT and Harvard's Kennedy School. During his career he held some of the most sensitive positions in the United States military. He commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, a facility that's been the subject of UFO speculation for over 70 years. On the morning of February 27, 2026, a repairman came to the McCasland home in Albuquerque and spoke with McCasland at around 10am At 11:10, McCasland's wife, Susan, left for a doctor's appointment. When she returned at 12:04, he was gone. She reported him missing at 3:07 that afternoon. Afternoon, McCasland left behind his phone, his prescription glasses, and his wearable devices. Apparently, the only things he took were his wallet, a.38 caliber revolver in a leather holster, and a red backpack. His hiking boots were also missing. Surveillance cameras covered both ends of his street, but authorities haven't identified a single confirmed sighting or piece of footage showing where he went. His wife has been clear about what she thinks happened. McCasland, who goes by Neil, had been experiencing what she called mental fog. He was seeing a doctor for anxiety, short term memory loss, and trouble sleeping. He'd stepped down from several professional groups because of it. She told 911 he had planned not to be found. And when it comes to the UFO angle, she was direct. She said, quote, neil does not have any special knowledge about extraterrestrial debris. His security clearances had been standard since his retirement over a decade ago, end quote. But a longtime friend and colleague named Sherman McCorkle went on NewsNation and said he was totally mystified that he has no understanding whatsoever how you can walk out your front door and vanish. Nothing makes any sense. He described McCasland as the kind of person everyone in a room would gravitate toward. And now, two months later, no one can find him. So here's where we stand. Three people. Steven Garcia, Anthony Chavez, and William Neil McCasland, connected in various ways to defense infrastructure, vanishing on foot in the same state. Chavez and Garcia both left behind their phones, wallets and keys. McCaslin left his phone and glasses, but took his wallet and a revolver. All three walked away from their lives and into nothing. The skeptic in me says New Mexico is a big state with a lot of defense workers. The part of me that tells crime stories for a living says that's a lot of coincidence for one corner of the country. And that's the question this whole story turns on. Is that pattern real? Or is it something our brains invented because we needed it to be? What they did to your family, you're lucky to make it out alive. Streaming on Peacock.
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These men are going to come after me.
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Taking them out. It's my only chance. Put a bullet in her head. From the co creator of Ozark. Looks like a family was running drugs. Execution style killing. It's rare for the Keys. Any leads on who they might have been running for? The cartel killed my family.
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I'm gonna kill them.
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All of them. MIA Streaming now only on Peacock.
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This episode is brought to you by Prime Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice off campus. Elle every year after the love Hypothesis, Sterling point and more slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime.
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Jacqueline Furlan Smith, a 40 year old former Canadian military trainer, moves to Costa Rica to follow her dreams. But in the summer of 2021, vanishes without a trace.
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How can a woman just go missing and us put out all that effort to find her and she's still missing?
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I'm David Ridgeon and this is Someone knows something. Season 10, the Jacqueline Furlan Smith case. Available now on CBC, listen and wherever you get your podcasts.
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So where do we go from here? The FBI is investigating. Con is demanding briefings. The question everyone is asking is, are these cases connected? Let's look at both sides honestly. The people who believe there's a pattern point to the geography. Four cases clustered around New Mexico, home to Los Alamos, Sandia National Labs and Kirtland Air Force Base. Four more orbiting JPL and Caltech in California. They point to how similar the disappearances look. Multiple people leaving on foot, ditching their phones and personal effects, sometimes carrying a weapon. They point to the professional overlap between Monica reza and William McCasland. And they point to the government's own response. If there were nothing here, why would the FBI be investigating? Former FBI Assistant director Chris Swecker told the Daily Mail that you can call all of these cases suspicious. He also said that for foreign intelligence services, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea have been targeting Americans with technological secrets for decades. Congressman James Comer said his committee views it as a national security threat. Congressman Eric Burleson said it has all the hallmarks of a foreign operation. Now let's look at the other side. And I have to be honest with you, the skeptics have some very good points. Robert Bartholomew is a medical sociologist who specializes in social hysteria and UFO conspiracy thinking. He wrote in Psychology Today that what we're seeing is a textbook case of apophenia, the human tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated events. He explained that our brains evolved to detect patterns. The same mechanism that helped our ancestors spot a predator in the grass now makes us see conspiracies in coincidence. Michael Shermer, the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine and a longtime scholar of pseudoscience and conspiracy thinking, also weighed in. He used a framework he calls the fallacy of excluded exceptions to explain the phenomenon. Think of a two by two grid. In one box you have scientists connected to defense work who died or disappeared. That's the mystery. But what about all the defense scientists who didn't die or disappear? Or the non defense scientists who did? Or the non defense scientists who didn't? Once you fill in the rest of the grid, the pattern vanishes. The Atlantic's Daniel Engber went further, Calling the whole thing a sham in every way at once. The people on the list aren't all scientists. They aren't all in the same field. They didn't die or disappear in any kind of cluster. The cases span nearly four years. We one was an administrative assistant, One was a pharmaceutical researcher with no apparent connection to aerospace. And the deaths that have been investigated have clear, documented explanations. Jen Goldbeck, a University of Maryland professor who studies conspiracy theories, Described how this specific theory spread. She said fringe communities created it, Conspiratorial minded politicians amplified it, and mainstream media covered it. From there, the theory made its way into the White House briefing room. But congressman James Walkinshaw on the homeland security committee offered what might be the most practical rebuttal. He said, the United States has thousands of nuclear scientists and nuclear experts. It's not the kind of nuclear program that potentially a foreign adversary could significantly impact by targeting 10 individuals. Political scientist Joseph Usinsky offered another perspective. He pointed out what makes this new genuinely unusual in the world of conspiracy theories. He said, your average conspiracy theory, someone comes up with it and it dies on the vine. What makes this unique is you have government agents with guns investigating this. FBI director Cash Patel confirmed on Fox news that the bureau is pulling all of these cases together into one place, looking for connections to classified access and foreign actors. He said a report would come in short order. And he said the words that everyone is waiting on, quote, if there are any connections that lead to nefarious conduct or conspiracy, this FBI will make the appropriate arrest, end quote. The House oversight committee, led by chairman James Comer and congressman Eric Burleson, Sent formal letters to the FBI, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and NASA. They requested staff level briefings by April 27, the Department of Defense responded that it was not investigating any missing persons associated with the scientists. The Department of Energy referred questions to the White House. NASA said it was cooperating. The FBI said it was leading the effort. As of this recording, that report has not been released. We're watching this in real time, same as you. But I want to end where I started, with the people, because they are the ones who get lost when a conspiracy theory goes mainstream like this one. Julia Hicks is trying to grieve a father who died of heart disease. Instead, she's fielding questions from strangers about a government plot. Her uncle told reporters his brother Michael will now be remembered for some baloney Bigfoot conspiracy theory instead, instead of his contributions to understanding the asteroids that could one day threaten our planet. Louise Grilmar buried her husband after a senseless act of violence, then had to go on record calling the Internet theories absolute nonsense. Kristen Bartoli lost Jason Thomas to grief so deep he walked into a frozen night and never came back. Now she's reading posts that say his death is true proof of a cover up. And then there's Susan McCasland Wilkerson, whose husband is genuinely actually missing, who has no answers, who's had to publicly deny UFO conspiracies while she waits and wonders and hopes. Here's where I land. I don't think anyone can say with certainty whether these cases are connected. The FBI investigation will either find something or it won't. But some of these cases, McCasland, Reza, Garcia are genuinely unsolved. They deserve a serious investigation, regardless of whether they're linked to one another. What they don't deserve is to be turned into data points on a conspiracy chart. That's not justice, and it's not what we owe the people who are gone or the families they left behind. But I really want to hear from you on this one. Do you think there's a real pattern here? Is there something I don't know? Or is this a case of the Internet seeing connections that aren't there? Let me know in the comments, wherever you listen. I would love to see what you have to say. Before we go, I want to do something special. A redacted report, one that's directly related to our main story. Because this isn't the first time a list of dead scientists has captivated a collection country. During the 1980s, Great Britain had its own version of what we're seeing right now. Over just a few years, roughly 25 scientists and engineers connected to a single British defense contractor, Gec Marconi turned up dead. Marconi was working on classified programs for the Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as Star Wars, Reagan's missile defense system. Some died by storm, suicide, some in bizarre accidents. One man was allegedly found dead with his feet tied to a tree and a noose around his neck. It was ruled a suicide. Another reportedly drove his car into a cafe at high speed with a can of gasoline in the back seat. The British press went wild. Parliament asked questions. Conspiracy theories linked the deaths to Soviet intelligence, to rogue elements within NATO, to the SDI program itself. It had all the ingredients classified research, Cold War paranoia, and a body count that felt too high to be random. Official inquiries ultimately attributed the deaths to suicide, accidents and natural causes. Statisticians argued that given the thousands of people working in British defense, the death rate wasn't actually unusual. But the theory never failed fully died, and 40 years later, people are still writing about it. The parallel to what's happening right now is almost eerie. Defense researchers dying under questionable circumstances, a list that grows as people look for names to add, official investigations that either find nothing or take too long, and a public that can't decide whether to trust the pattern or the statistics. History doesn't exactly repeat, but it does rhyme. And right now it's rhyming pretty loudly. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Vanessa Richardson and this is Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes. Come back next time. We'll hear another story about the real people at the time. Same center of the world's most notorious cults, conspiracies and criminal acts. Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media, Rime House on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes wherever you get your podcasts and your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes listening experience, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode ad free. We'll be back on Wednesday. Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Natalie Pertzovsky, Lori Marinelli, Alyssa Fox, Kaylee Pine, and Michael Langsner. Thank you for listening.
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Your next chapter in healthcare starts at Carrington College's School of Nursing in Portland. Join us for our open house on Tuesday, January 13th from 4 to 7pm you'll tour our campus, see live demos, meet instructors and learn about our Associate Degree in Nursing program that prepares you to become a registered nurse. Take the first step toward your nursing career. Save your spot now@carrington.edu events. For information on program outcomes, visit carrington.edu sci.
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Looking for your next listen? Check out hidden history with Dr. Harini Bhatti Every Monday Dr. Bot goes where history gets mysterious vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies and events that science still can't fully explain. Follow Hidden History now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
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Stitch Fix Stop shopping. Get styled a plus on the outfit Ms. Turner, you are about to slay parent teacher conferences.
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Oh these just the most perfect fitting jeans my stylist sent me.
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Oh hello you who didn't set one foot in a mall and still looks amazing.
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Just share your size, style and budget and your stylist sends personalized looks right to your door. Stitch Fix get started today@stitch fix.com to my stylist, this look is dedicated to you. Thank you, thank you.