Law&Crime Sidebar - Missing Scientist Found Dead in Chilling Forest Discovery

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

The human remains of Melissa Casias, a missing Los Alamos National Laboratory worker, have been discovered nearly a year after her disappearance in New Mexico's Carson National Forest. The strange discovery breathes new life into a staggering federal investigation concerning more than a dozen mysterious deaths and disappearances of U.S. scientists with access to sensitive military secrets, including missing retired Air Force Major General William "Neil" McCasland. Law&Crime's Jesse Weber breaks down the latest chilling updates alongside private investigator Ashton Packe to analyze what these developments mean for national security.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Stop guessing - start making perfect food every time. Use code SIDEBAR for 40% off - https://chefiq.com/discount/SIDEBAR HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea, Alex Ciccarone, & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrimeTwitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We know the government is looking into these scientists and lab workers that have died or disappeared. We know the FBI got involved. We know the White House is now looking into this. But now one of those people has just reportedly been found. Her name is Melissa Cassius. She worked at Los Alamos and where she was reportedly discovered and what was apparently found with her is going to raise a whole lot more questions. But we're going to try to separate fact from fiction right now. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime.

I'm Jesse Weber. You know, as we were writing this episode, I was looking at the date and I was like, wow, Father's Day is right around the corner. I couldn't believe it. Now, if you're looking for what is that perfect gift for all the dads out there, meet the Chef IQ, sense smart meat thermometer. This is the secret to stress-free restaurant-level cooking. So whether you're a seasoned grill master, you're just trying to throw on some steaks this summer.

The smart thermometer is a game changer. Why? There's no more overcooking. There's no more. I think this might be done. Guesswork? No, Chef IQ tells you exactly when your meat is ready every step of the way. You just insert this wireless probe.

You select your preferences, and then you hang out and relax while you wait for the app alerts without even having to hover over the grill. It also works with ovens and smokers and stovetops, air friars. And for every protein, from prime rib to wings to salmon. Seriously, this Father's Day, it is time to raise the stakes, no pun intended, and cook with confidence. Use code sidebar for 40% off site wide at Chef IQ. So big development we got to talk about. And by the way, I have to say, I just came back from CrimeCon in Las Vegas. You guys are the best. You guys are the best. Thank you so much for the kind

words that you're following us here on Sidebar. You're invested in these stories. You appreciate what we're doing. And this is one of them. This is one of the stories that when I was speaking to you all out there, you want to know more about. Let's talk about it. Okay? This case, you have a hiker walking through Carson National Forest. Nothing out of the ordinary. and then they find something no one expected. Human remains. And next to those human remains, a handgun. Within days.

The remains are identified as someone we've talked about before here on sidebar, Melissa Cassius, an administrative assistant at Los Alamos National Laboratory, missing for nearly a year. And her disappearance back in June of 2025 was strange from the start, right? Her phone, she had more than one left at home. One of them was factory reset, her purse, her keys, still there. She was seen walking along a highway, then nothing until this. And this discovery is definitely going to raise a lot of questions. How did she end up six miles from her home in a national

forest? Why was a handgun found with her remains? And why, according to her family, was she located in an area that had already been searched? Melissa Cassius wasn't a general. She wasn't a rocket scientist, but she worked at a lab that handled some of the most sensitive nuclear secrets. And her case became part of a much larger story, one that caught the attention. attention of the FBI, the White House, the House Oversight Committee. You know, we've been covering this story from the beginning, right? The missing scientists, the retired general who vanished, the theories that are out there. But you go back to Melissa.

And what this development is telling us, because according to the New Mexico State Police on June 26, 2025, she fails to show up for work at Los Alamos National Laboratory. She doesn't return home that night. Her husband, Mark, who also worked at the lab, according to NBC News, tells investigators, She dropped them off at the lab earlier that day and said she was going to another location within the lab to complete a work task. But he says she never came back. Her family goes to the house. They find her belongings.

Purse, keys, identification, the phones all left behind. Again, one of those phones, factory reset, wiped clean. Same afternoon, a family acquaintance spots Melissa walking eastbound on State Road 518, 518. A highway runs through the mountains northeast of Tows. This is the last confirmed sighting of her. There's apparently surveillance footage of this. The state police launched an investigation. They don't rule out foul play, but a spokesperson says it could be that she disappeared voluntarily.

And nearly a year passes, and we don't hear anything. And then you go to May 28th of this year. A hiker reportedly discovers human remains in the McAfee Ridge area of Carson National Forest. It's about six miles from Melissa's home and a handgun. is found alongside the remains. The office of the medical investigator positively identifies the remains as Melissa Cassius, and which, by the way,

I'm going to bring on Ashton Packing a little bit to understand how they were able to confirm this was, in fact, Melissa, caused a matter of death, I have a lot of questions. But her family released a statement online, and it has some information in it that could be significant to talk about. I mentioned this before because it says,

quote, we confirm that the remains found in Rio Chiquito are Melissa, There will be more information to come, but what we can tell you now is she was located in an area previously searched. This is a lot to process. Our hearts are heavy, and we fully intend to continue to pursue answers for justice. Located in an area previously searched, I mean, they're saying that the initial search teams look there. They found nothing, and then nearly a year later, a hiker stumbles across remains in that same area. There's a gun.

So either the search missed her, or maybe she wasn't there. yet, which I want to explore. The New Mexico State Police, they haven't explained what's going on here. The medical investigator's office hasn't released a cause or manner of death. The investigation's still active. I want to talk about it. Okay, so I want to bring in somebody who's going to walk us through what we should make of this, what is happening behind the scenes, what we can expect next. Somebody I just saw in person at CrimeCon in Las Vegas. Now I'm back to, you know, the box version of him. Private Investigator, Ashton Pack. Ashden, good to see you. And It was great to see you in person.

Yes, Jesse. It was really great meeting you guys and everyone over at law and crime. I really appreciate all that support. You got it. All right. So let's go through this. First of all, how do you think that they ID'd her? Remember, this was the office of the medical investigator that confirmed that this is to see us.

How did they know this is Melissa? Well, I'm going to go out on a limb and say they probably were able to obtain some kind of DNA. And then you also have dental records, which is often used. I know a firearm was located in proximity to the body. That's another record that could be used to coelate or at least try to identify her body. If it wasn't, and we'll get into this a little bit more, I don't know the state of her body. I don't know the state of decomposition if it existed. Is there a way, are there tools or is there a technique that they do if they can just visually identify her in a way?

You know, the technology is constantly expanding when it comes to, you know, technology for evidential use and for crime scenes. I can tell you if your body's down in the New Mexico high desert for a modicum of time, there's probably nothing left other than skeletal remains. But things that don't degrade as fast as the biologic side of our vessels, you know, things like the purse, the clothing, the IDs. maybe in the pocket. I think I read somewhere that she'd actually left a bunch of things at home. Yep. Yep. But the clothing, you're not, you're not going to, you know, she's seen running down a highway. You're not doing that with no clothes on. She carried a five. The dental records. The dental records.

And there's, right? You can get those back quick. I'm not sure how fast they can get them back. But it's, it's definitely something that they can use. They're probably, you know, I always say, we love to get to 100% when we're in law enforcement. when I was working investigations as a cop. Sometimes we can get to about 95 pretty quick, and it takes us a couple more days or weeks to get to that 100% mark in an investigation or the identification of a body. As we're talking about this,

now it goes into the ME going to be determining cause and manner of death. I imagine it's going to be complicated. Maybe, maybe not. If you talk about the handgun, you're speculating about what might have happened to her, but at the same time, if you're talking about level of decomposition

or the state of her remains, what should we be thinking about in terms of cause and manner of death and how they're going to be able to determine that. Well, just from reading everything based on my training and experience, I have a bad feeling that this young lady chose to take her own life. So I think ultimately, you know, if that was the case, they're going to be able to show that fairly quickly because that evidence will be there, gunshot, gunshot, you know, wounds.

They don't disappear with time if there's a skeletal remains that are intact. So let's focus on that the handgun, the handgun reportedly found next to her remains. State police confirm it is there. They don't say who it belongs to. They haven't said officially that it's connected to her death, but they did make that statement. What does that say to you as an investigator? That tells me that she probably utilized that firearm as the tool to unalive herself. I don't, and I'll go to the big question. I'll just go to it right now. This is the biggest thing. How was she not found earlier? I mean, her family says she was found in an area. that was already searched. This is, you know, maybe you know this terrain. You can tell us more about it. But just to let everybody know, to give everybody an idea, I was just reading this from People magazine,

this is a massive search. You had hundreds of volunteers. You had authorities. You had family members. They were all looking for her. There was a push on social media to try to find her. There was a GoFundMe page that was formed to raise money here. How is it possible she wasn't found earlier?

Well, when you're dealing with places like New Mexico, massive rural, high desert, you know, hundreds of thousands of acres of undeveloped land, it is not, it is very difficult to, you know, to say up with 100% certainty that the search was, you know, you can conduct an exhaustive search and still miss that, you know, potential needle in a haystack. Another thing to think about is if this young lady unfortunately chose to take her own life in one location, animals, coyotes, mountain lions, the kind of the cleaning system of our, you know, the forests and the deserts, you know, that could have changed the location of her body. I'm trying to find the right words to articulate to say it, you know, without being so, you know,

brutal about it. But the fact is Mother Nature doesn't care about, you know, us as a species. If we go out into the desert and we don't have the right shelter and the right weapon system to protect ourselves and if we go down out there either injured or hurt, it has a system in place to, you know, clean it up, so to speak. So it could have been that in all reality. That's 100% true. I mean, that could be the situation. I have to address the other theory, right? So the other theory would be you and I both know that she is connected to a larger story. There are those out there who will say, you know, all of a sudden her body shows up, handgun place there. Can investigators determine whether or not her body was moved to that specific area, not by wildlife, but by human

beings, what would be the telltale signs that that could be a possibility and that the scene was staged in some way. I'm not saying that's the case. I want to be clear. I'm not saying that's the case. But I know where people are where their mind is going to go on this. And because there's a lot of speculation, there's a lot of confusion about her and her connection to everything else.

So you just tell me. Sure. Again, Jesse, it's a great question. and we have to address it. It's the elephant in the room. We live in the day and age of everything is a conspiracy. My pushback to that is there are true conspiracies, but when everything is a conspiracy,

then really nothing can be a conspiracy. Yes, investigators, law enforcement, they're going to be able to determine fairly quickly if a year old body has been moved or it was placed there. You're looking for things like tire tracks, foot tracks, abnormal. You know, if a body is outside in the rural parts of our country, It's going to show, you're going to see it. It's going to, you know, indentations.

It's going to be settling into the ground. You'll probably see some scattering of the body from wildlife. You know, you'll be able to tell pretty quickly. The gun isn't going to be sitting there pristine. It's going to have wear and tear on it. And as will the body that's there. So if it was brought there and placed, you know, if there's some major grand conspiracy, I don't know.

You know, in my world, you know, if you wanted something bad to go away, Just you would eliminate the body altogether. There would be questions, and then that would be it. If I was a bad guy, I wouldn't go a year later and place the body. If I was a terrorist nation, foreign actor, some bad guy who's, you know, part of a global mass conspiracy against our nuclear scientists. I just, it violates Occam's razor. It's just not the simplest explanation, which is usually the right one. When would authorities release more information when they have it?

I mean, a lot of eyeballs are on this case as well as the other ones. When would they release information to the family? when would they release information to the public and the media? They're probably in good communication with the family, and they'll probably give the family information faster than we'll get it. Of course, you know, you get the information, generally speaking, when they get the information, and they have a time, you know, law enforcement has to make sure it's right,

they have to vet, they have to sometimes double check, double test, because we don't want to make a mistake, because, again, you know, if you make one mistake, it gets blown into some massive conspiracy on Twitter or on social media, And it's, it just, it can be a black eye on the investigators. And so they just don't want that. But family will get the information probably fairly quickly, and they probably have an agreement that, you know, the family isn't,

and, you know, the family is likely not incentivized to go out and share this information before it's ready. But law enforcement and the investigators, they'll share with media when they're prepared to share it and that they've really vetted it and made sure that they got everything right. Do you find it strange that her remains were found six miles from the family home? No.

I mean, honestly, she was seen walking down the road by, I want to say, either a family member or a coworker. I think this woman was having a very bad day. And caught on surveillance, too. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess that's the question, right? Like, you know, on one hand, her husband said that she was under a men's stress that she was reportedly walking on State Road 518. You talked to me also about the idea that, you know, what was found at her home, right?

I thought what was found at her home was very, very interesting as well. I think that's a big part of the conversation. The factory reset on the phone. Police say that it was a phone that was wiped clean. And then this is what's leading you to believe that this was self-inflicted? Well, I mean, you know, she's, you know, if you're in a, if you're in that suicidal mindset, let's just assume for a moment, maybe she's thinking, like, I want to make it as, you know, as easy for my husband to pick up the pieces as it can be.

So I'm not going to do this at home. I'm going to reset the phone so that they can be kind of, you know, maybe resold or just refurbish and get, you know, that she's kind of erasing herself in a way. You know, there's a million psychological avenues we could go down at. Of course, investigators will probably have a little bit more information. There's probably some things that we just don't know about what is also in the home, what happened.

But she's under an immense amount of pressure. She's under stress. You know, she says, you know, I'll see, I got to go to another part of the lab to get some other work done. And then later that day, she's seen walking down the road. So I, me personally, from everything that I'm seeing, you know, I'm far into the 85, 90 percentile range that she chose to unalive herself and just a very unfortunate, you know, circumstance for her family. And it's not unusual for you that someone like her would would do this without giving any, any kind of. advance warning to her family, a goodbye of some sort, a note, hold on a little bit longer for a hug,

make some sort of clue as to what she was about to do. That wouldn't surprise you? Well, she might have left a note, and they just haven't released the information yet. Or she might have something out there that was her way of saying goodbye that isn't being construed in the traditional sense. But no, it doesn't surprise me, Jesse. You know, people make these decisions every day.

she just happens to be a high-level, you know, scientist with a security clearance working in, you know, critical space of our nation's national security space. And so, you know, it's unfortunate. I think there's a lot of, you know, I worked in government. I worked on federal task forces and I worked, you know, with the intelligence community as well, not just a front-line street investigator and cop. And there was a lot of pressure because there's so many threats out there. There's so much happening that everyday Joe Citizen, Jane Citizen, and they're just not aware of it. And so I know a lot of people who work in the intelligence community and federal spaces

and the weight of the world is on their shoulders, you know, because there are some legit bad guys out there that want to do our country and our families and our kids harm. And that responsibility lies on their shoulders to get it right. You know, bad guys can get it right once. We can never get it right. We can never be wrong. You know, I always tell my cops and my trainers when I was training, you cannot get it wrong. They get it wrong.

They can be wrong. They get it right one time and it's mass devastation. So, Ashton, can you stay with me for a little bit? I want to just put this into context of the other cases and the other stories that people are making connections to and try to see if this is determined to be, you know, her remains. And let's say you are correct or your theory or your belief at this point is correct that she did this to herself. I want to know how that's going to affect the investigation into the other cases. So just let me lay this out. Stay with me for a second.

So as I mentioned, according to the House Oversight Committee, Melissa's disappearance was one of several people. several involving people with ties to Los Alamos, again, to the Air Force research to classify technology. There are some dead, some missing, enough of them that the House Oversight Committee started asking questions. And according to the committee's April 26 press release, at least 10 individuals with ties to U.S. nuclear secrets, a rocket technology, had either died or vanished in recent years. And by the end of that month, you had Congressman Eric Berluson put the number at 13. Now, the committee's statement read, quote, these deaths and disappearances may represent a grave threat to U.S. national security and to U.S. personnel with

access to scientific secrets. And the FBI announced that it was spearheading the effort to look for these connections. The White House said it was investigating. So Ashton, you've got these multiple investigations, right? You got the House Oversight Committee investigation. You have the FBI involved. You have the White House paying attention. You're looking at that. Where does this death of Melissa, where does potentially, you know, finding her remains, how does that affect the other cases? It's a great question. I mean, ultimately the FBI is going to be the lead at investigative agency on this and they will provide the information and intelligence to the oversight committees as well as the White House. I think the FBI will, it'll be a no-brainer for them to come in and

take this case and look at it with a fine-tooth comb and with a microscope, as they should. Again, when we spoke earlier and I've spoken about these missing scientists and people tied to our national security apparatus, I don't think there should not be an investigation. I think there should absolutely be an investigation because we have to know beyond any shadow of doubt that there isn't a foreign nation state or anything like that going on here. Terrorist organizations, foreign actors, nation states that are trying to gain access to our secrets. Again, the United States of America is so technologically advanced that unless it's a revenge thing, I don't see where you're going to get out of 13 scientists the ability to forward your,

or to diminish our ability to conduct, you know, nuclear technology and build nuclear weapons or advanced weaponry. Maybe it's not even nuclear. We're so technologically advanced. There are things out there that are so unbelievably advanced that if you saw them, you would, it would be like taking an iPhone to a Neanderthal. You know, we would look at it and go, sometimes I think what we see in the skies that we can't explain that are so these anonymous anomalous things that's really it could be something absolutely that we can't explain but I think sometimes it's our technology so we've already got it we know the United States of America has how many thousands of nuclear weapons that you know killing our unless it's a revenge thing that you're

going to target our our scientists and then the people who have access to them so I question that motive, that reason to target our people. But FBI will conduct the investigation. I think they should absolutely look into everything that the state cops and the local cops there and the medical examiner are looking into that whole case file, I hope is shared with FBI and that they're able to use their investigative and their incredible evidence lab. I hope they're assisting with this and looking at everything from their perspective as well to confirm that this young lady, you know, did what I believe she unfortunately did. Let me just lay this out. little because I want your thoughts on something else. So these cases that we're talking about,

they span more than three years. They stretch across multiple states. The circumstances are all over the map. There's Michael David Hicks, NASA JPL scientist who studied comets and asteroids. He died in 2023. The cause of death never publicly disclosed. Monica Reza, rocket scientists, vanished while hiking in California. Her work was funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory, Nuno Lerero, an MIT fusion physicist shot to death in his own home. 12-year-old daughter found him. We know that death was connected to the Brown shooter. Carl Grillmare, astrophysicist, shot dead on his front porch in the desert,

according to the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, deputies responded to the scene, also responded to a carjacking nearby, and that all led to the arrest of a suspect. 29-year-old Freddie Snyder. He's been charged with murder, a separate burglary related to an alleged trespass at Grill Maher's home. Two months earlier, there's Anthony Chavez, retiree who worked as a foreman at Los Alamos. He disappeared from his New Mexico home, left behind his car, phone, wallet, keys, searches apparently turned up nothing. Stephen Garcia,

government contractor at the Kansas City National Security Campus manufactures non-nuclear components for nuclear weapons. He was last seen, leaving his Albuquerque home on foot, carrying only a handgun. Jason Thomas, pharmaceutical researcher. His body was according to police found in a lake in Massachusetts. Police say they didn't suspect foul play. You look at all these names, Ashton. You've been talking about a little bit. You're skeptical to bundle it all together,

even though you wouldn't be surprised that people are making the connections or saying, you know, what's going on here? Yeah, I'm not surprised at all. And when you look at it from a 30,000-foot worldview, you know, it seems like it should absolutely, it could be connected and that it should absolutely be investigated. And I do believe that we, you know,

the, I do believe the FBI should and will look into all of these. But again, I think a lot of these cases, a retired foreman, why? What would be the motive for this? What, what, unless revenge? And again, what does a foreman have to do in all reality? He has a security clearance because he has access and proximity to classified materials. What's the motive to hurt this man? You know, now, you know, this guy who was killed in the hallway or the entry of his apartment, the sheriff's deputies arrested a guy, connect, you know, they charge that person with murder. Sure, let's get the details of the case, let the case work its way through court. And hopefully the FBI can come in and do a deep dive, kind of like dig down into the background, was a foreign nation state using this guy

as a patsy. We know that the government of Iran in the past is used, you know, patsies and proxies to do their dirty work. They've had plots in this country before. The FBI will be able to determine that after the investigation is done and the case is adjudicated in court. So yes, the top high level when you're looking down at it and you're, you know, checking, you're seeing these stories on social media. Yeah, it seems really weird. It seems like there could be some kind of a conspiracy going on. I just caution people, like, peel the onion back and let the investigators do their jobs on this. And I really hope that the FBI investigators are able to peel the onion back. You utilize their technology. They have some of the most advanced technology

as far as analytics are concerned. Let those armies of FBI analysts start plugging in all the data and come up with an after-action report or some kind of a report that can then go to the White House, go to the oversight committees that can answer these questions. Again, are we going to get every question answered? I don't know about that. That's going to be a hard one. There's just sometimes you can get, like I said, you can get it to 98, 99 percent, but maybe we can't get to 100. But if the investigator is fine that, hey, it looks like this is, you know, these are all random acts and not really related, or we have these three over here that they appear to be possibly related, but everything else was just happenstance, then that's what they're.

the investigational show. And let's be clear, the one that started all of this, arguably the one that got the most attention, retired Air Force General, walked out of his house, never came back so far. William Neal McCasland, 68 years old, retired Major General, 34 years. He worked on some of the most sensitive technology the U.S. military has, astronautical engineering, space acquisition, national reconnaissance office, spy satellite. He commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Again, that's the same base that you have. people theorizing of claim for decades stored the Roswell incident, the debris from there. According to his wife, McCaslin had access to, in her words, some highly classified programs and

information. So when a guy like that walks out and doesn't come back, it obviously got a lot of attention. And then on February 27th of this year, McCaslin's wife, they'll just give you a timeline, leaves for a doctor's appointment at 1110 a.m. She returns just afternoon. He's gone. His phone is on the counter, turned off, smart watches plugged in the bathroom. The shirt that he was wearing when she left, it's hanging in the closet, changed it apparently changed into something else. She doesn't know what. She calls 911.

She says something that is just stops you. My husband is missing. And it's been about three hours. And I have some indication that he must have planned not to be found. Later, we also obtained body cam footage from the deputies who responded. And in it, a colleague, who apparently had dinner with McCaslin the night before, tells the detective, he wasn't his usual self.

He wasn't his usual self. He was kind of spacy and quiet. Is this some classified information? Is he carry like a security clearance or anything like that? He has a very classified security clearance. He was the head of Air Force Research Lab to the planes or in the UFO documents that are to be released. He's in that in depth.

So he has a very high security clearance. And by the way, you can check out the rest of what investigators discovered in our previous body cam breakdown where we go through all that footage that we got our hands on. But you go back to this timeline. Weeks turned into months. No sightings, no videos, no answers. You go to March 7th. Investigators found a gray Air Force sweatshirt about a mile from his home. Family couldn't confirm it was his, though.

By the two week mark, the sheriff's office released the photo of what they believed he was wearing this light green. button-up shirt. They also confirmed what was missing is hiking boots, his wallet, a 38-caliber revolver with a leather holster. And as of today, as I sit here, General McCaslin is still missing. Investigators, they haven't linked McCaslin's disappearance to Melissa's death. There's no evidence connecting the two. But again, both worked kind of in the same orbit, right? McCaslin at the Air Force Research Laboratory, Melissa at Los Alamos, both cases became a part of the same public conversation. Ashton, let's just wrap this up. quick about McCasum, do you think we're going to get an answer there? And if we do get some sort of

answer there, how's that going to change the story of everything we've been talking about? Well, hopefully we can find out, you know, some of the items that the colonel was or the general was wearing when he, you know, he can find either a body or parts of what he was wearing or the gun with the holster that would, you know, open up a little bit more, you know, idea of what happened to him. You know, let me, let me posit this, Jesse. You know, you're a 34-year retired, two-star, one, two, three-star, you're one of the highest-ranking Air Force officials. You were involved in some of the most sensitive, classified things in your career. You had to, you know, you're working for the United States Air Force. You're, you know, a decorated

part of the warrior class of keeping this country, you know, safe. And then you retire. And then, you know, maybe you have, you know, some issues with a mental health issue. And you meet, you know, you're meeting with friends and they're telling you about the good, and you're, you're reminiscing of those glory days and those, and then you have dinner with a friend and it's like, yeah, you can't really talk about anything. You're no longer, you know, you're suddenly you're in this inner circle and then you retire. And he probably still had a security clearance to some level if he was doing any kind of consulting work, but all of a sudden you're not in that inner circle anymore. And that is a, that could be a very devastating thing for some of our veterans and the people

who are at the tip of the spear in defending our country. I see this happen in law enforcement officers. I myself have, you know, you walk out of the police department after 23 years and, you know, you're not there anymore. You're not in the know, you don't get to go to have that coffee every morning with all your fellow detectives. You don't bump into the bosses who are, hey, I had to, you know, clarify questions or hey, great job on that case or, oh, man, you guys did such a good job on that work. So we just don't know what was going on with this general. And maybe that was part of what was happening in his life. And again, he leaves his house, you know, it's, it's, it's a suspicious circumstances for sure. And I think it should be investigated. But again, let's peel the onion back. Let's try to figure out what actually is going on here before we jump to these conclusions. He's retired. What would be the point of targeting him outside of revenge if he was a part of some advanced weapons system, for example? So. Well, a lot of strange parts of this whole saga. Ashton Pack, thank you so much for taking the time breaking down this development. And look, this is a devastating development and update for

Melissa's family, just thinking of them right now. I hope they have some closure from this. And I know it's very sad, but I hope the closure comes to them. And I hope that her memory is always a blessing to them. Yeah, it's well sad. Ashton, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thanks, Jesse.

Great seeing you. And that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcast. You can also check us out on NBC's Peacock as well. If you want to follow me, X Instagram, my News Nation show, Jesse Weber Live, Monday through Friday, 11 p.m. Eastern. I'll see you next time, everybody.