A nuclear physicist and MIT professor fatally shot outside his Massachusetts residence. A retired Air Force general missing from his New Mexico home. An aerospace engineer who disappeared during a hike in Los Angeles. These are among at least 10 individuals connected to sensitive US nuclear and aerospace research who have died or disappeared in recent years, reported CNN.

Public reports raise questions about a possible sinister connection between a string of mysterious deaths and disappearances which began in 2023 with the death of Michael David Hicks, who worked as a scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) from 1998 to 2022.

Another JPL alum, Monica Reza, who served as the director of the NASA Lab’s Materials Processing Group, disappeared while hiking in California in June 2025 and remains missing. In February 2026 retired Air Force General William Neil McCasland disappeared from his Albuquerque, New Mexico home with a .38 caliber revolver, and remains missing, according to Republican-led House Oversight Committee.

The other missing or deceased individuals, according to the reports, are two more affiliated with NASA JPL, two affiliated with Los Alamos National Laboratory, an MIT scientist working on nuclear fusion, a pharmaceutical researcher, and a government contractor working at a nuclear weapons component production facility.

“The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating recent unconfirmed public reporting on the disappearance and death of individuals with access to sensitive U.S. scientific information. These reports allege that at least ten individuals who ‘had a connection to U.S. nuclear secrets or rocket technology,’ have ‘died or mysteriously vanished’ in recent years,” wrote the committee.

“If the reports are accurate, these deaths and disappearances may represent a grave threat to U.S. national security and to U.S. personnel with access to scientific secrets. We request a briefing on any information regarding these deaths and disappearances, as well as the processes and procedures in place to protect American scientific secrets and ensure personnel safety.”

The FBI’s role has evolved since last week, when a well-placed government source told CBS News on April 16 that the FBI was not investigating the disappearances and deaths as part of a suspicious pattern. Rather, the Department of Energy, which oversees NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory, was looking into it, reported CBS News.