Law&Crime Sidebar - Panic Growing as 10 Scientists Mysteriously Die or Vanish

Episode Date: May 5, 2026

Nearly a dozen U.S. nuclear and aerospace scientists have died or vanished since 2023, prompting the FBI, White House, and Congress to launch a major investigation into a potential national security crisis. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber breaks down the investigative efforts, the evidence, and the most intriguing unanswered questions with private investigator Ashton Packe.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: You’re 30 seconds away from being debt free with PDS Debt. Get your free assessment and find the best option for you at https://PDSDebt.com/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.

Ten missing scientists with access to classified stuff. Do you think that this is connected or totally random? Well, I hope it's random. So pretty serious stuff. Are aliens real? They're real, but I haven't seen them, and they're not being kept in, what is it? Area 51. My husband is missing.

Okay. And it's been about three hours, and I have some indication that he, You must have planned not to be found. We have at least 10 scientists, some dead, some missing, all with apparent ties to nuclear or space technology. And now the FBI and the White House are investigating. So is this just a string of unfortunate, disconnected coincidences or is something else going on?

Is something far more sinister, far more serious going on? We are going to try to break it all down for you with the latest updates right now. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. A retired two-star Air Force General walks out of his house in the middle of the day. William Neal McCaslin, 68 years old. For 34 years, he worked on some of the most sensitive technology the U.S. military has, reportedly astronomical engineering, space acquisition,

the National Reconnaissance Office. We're talking about the spy satellites. And eventually, he took command of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. The same Wright Patterson that people believe have claimed for decades stores debris from the Roswell incident. That has been a conspiracy theory. And this is the same base where, according to his wife, McCaslin had access to, in her words, some highly classified programs and information. So when a man like that walks out and doesn't come back, obviously people notice.

Apparently left his phone on the counter, his prescription glasses, his smart watch, apparently changed his clothes into something his wife couldn't even identify. And then nothing. No sightings. no video, no answers. His wife calls 911, just hours after he disappeared. We have that call, by the way, the audio that we were the first to release. We heard this before anyone else had. Here's what you told the dispatcher.

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. He's left his phone. He changed his clothes and I don't know what. He turned it off and left it behind, which seems kind of deliberate because he's always got his phone. So apparently turns it off, leaves it behind, seems kind of deliberate because he's always got his phone. But here's the thing.

McCaslin isn't the only one. Since 2023, at least 10 people who are tied to U.S. nuclear and aerospace research have either died or disappeared. This is according to the House Oversight Committee, which announced an investigation last month. A NASA JPL scientists who studied comets and asteroids died in 2023. The cause never publicly disclosed. A rocket scientist who reportedly invented a space age metal used in advanced missiles vanished while hiking in California. Family says she was just a regular person.

An MIT physicist on the brink of revolutionizing fusion energy shot to death in his own home his 12-year-old daughter found him. Astrophysicist who helped discover water on distant planets shot dead, front port. in the desert. And those are just some of the names. When a reporter asked President Donald Trump about this, here's what he had to say. Ten missing scientists with access to classified stuff,

nuclear material, aerospace, they've all gone missing or turned up dead in the last couple months. Based on what you've been briefed, what do you think is happening here? And do you think that this is connected or totally random? Well, I hope it's random. But we're going to know in the next week and a half. I just left the meeting on that subject.

So pretty serious stuff, but we're going to be now. Hopefully, I don't know, coincidence, if you want it, whatever you want to call it, but some of them were very important people, and we're going to look at it over the next. So some lawmakers right now say it could be a foreign operation. The FBI is now spearheading the effort to look for connections. The White House is investigating. And there are other people, including some of the families that say this is just a coincidence. It's people die. The scientists are human beings. That's it. They point that out. People go missing. This is life. But again, you have the government looking into this. So we're going to lay out what we know, what we don't know, what the government isn't saying. And I want to bring on a private investigator who worked as a police sergeant and FBI counterterrorism veteran. He was a Las Vegas shooting responder. And he's going to walk us through what we should be thinking about in terms of this investigation. Now, according to the House Oversight Committee, which apparently sent letters to the Department of

of Energy, the Department of War, the FBI, NASA, at least 10 individuals with ties to U.S. nuclear secrets or rocket technology have died or mysteriously vanished in recent years. And by the end of April, Congressman Eric Berluson put the number at 13. Here's what the committee said in their press release. 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. But here's the challenge for anyone trying to connect the dots. These cases span more than three years.

They stretch across multiple states. And the circumstances, they're all over the map. So I want to go case by case. The earliest case on the committee's list is July 2023, Michael David Hicks, 59 years old. According to the American Astronomical Society, he worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL for nearly 25 years, specializing in comets and asteroids. He served on the DART project and the Deep Space One Mission.

His cause of death? Never publicly disclosed. His daughter, Julia Hicks, told CNN she doesn't understand the connections or the connection between her father's death and the other cases saying, I can't help but laugh about it. But at the same time, it's getting serious. One year later, July 2024, Frank Maywald, 61 years old, German-born researcher at JPL. According to his obituary, he had an illustrious career in space and science research. His cause of death? Also, never, also, never publicly disclosed. Daily Mail reported there's no record of an autopsy even ever taking place. We'll talk about if that's unusual. All right, real quick, I'm sure you guys have seen all the headlines about how so many Americans are struggling with debt right now, but then it shows up. You know, it shows up in your own numbers, rising balances, fees, minimum payments that stretch out for years. It doesn't need to stay that way, though. No, today's sponsor, PBS debt, has helped hundreds of thousands escape. debt, reduce what they owe, and take back control. So whether it's credit cards or personal loans

or medical bills, PDS debt has customized options to help you pay off debt faster. No minimum credit score required. They look beyond the numbers and they design personalized plans to help put money back where it belongs in your pocket. Plus, they're A plus rated by the Better Business Bureau. Every month you wait is just going to cost you more. But your way out starts right now. When the numbers are clear, act. Take back control in 30 seconds. Get your free, personalized assessment and the best option for you at pdsdebt.com slash sidebar. That's pdsdette.com slash sidebar. PDSdebt.com slash sidebar. May 2025. Anthony Chavez, 78 years old, retiree worked at a foreman at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Same lab that developed, you know,

the atomic bomb. According to Los Alamos police, he disappeared from his New Mexico home, left behind his car, his phone, his wallet, his keys. exhaustive searches turned up nothing, no signs of foul play, no indication he was planning to leave. His friend Carl Buckland told CNN, it's about time authorities are looking into it. Month later, June 2025, two people, both tied to sensitive research, both missing. First, Melissa Cassius, 53 years old, an administrative assistant at Los Alamos National Laboratory. According to New Mexico State Police, she was last seen walking along a highway. Her keys, phone purse were found inside her home.

Her phone had been factory reset. Her daughter told NBC's dateline her mother had been going through a huge, huge, huge amount of stress. Monica Jacinto Reza, 60 years old, director of materials processing at NASA's jet propulsion laboratory. According to L.A. Mag, she disappeared while hiking in the Angeles National Forest with two people from her yoga group. Searchers found no trace of her. Here's what her family told L.A. Mag, quote, she was just a regular person who had a family. They also said no one from the White House or the FBI has ever contacted them about her disappearance. Now, here's a detail that reporters uncovered. According to Newsweek in the Daily Mail,

Reza invented something called Mondoloy. It's apparently a space age metal that's used in advanced missile and rocket engines. And her work was funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory, the same lab that a retired general named William McCaslin had apparently once commanded. We're going to come back to that. August 2025, Stephen Garcia, 48 years old, a government contractor at the Kansas City National Security Campus in Albuquerque, according to the Daily Mail. That facility manufactures more than 80% of the non-nuclear components that go into America's nuclear weapons. Garcia was a property custodian there, so that gave him top security clearance, broad access to classified equipment. He was last seen, leaving his Albuquerque home on foot, carrying only a handgun. Again, sound a little familiar.

December 2025, Nuno Lerreiro, 47 years old, Portuguese, professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT. He was the director of MIT's plasma science and fusion center working on fusion energy. According to a detailed account from journalist Jessica Reed Krauss, based on police reports and surveillance footage, here's what happened. This was a big case. December 15th, the man named Claudio Valenti, Parked a Grey, Nissan Centra, near Lurero's Brookline, Massachusetts home,

lingered for hours, wore a yellow reflective safety vest, carried a box with a barcode. At around 8.30 p.m., Lerero's 12-year-old daughter heard the doorbell. She ran to answer it. Her father followed behind, told her to come back inside, and according to the report, she then heard three or four gunshots. And when she ran back to the entry foyer, she found her father lying on the ground in a pool of blood. And Valente fled with his headlights off, and we know that he also carried out that mass shooting at Brown University, two students killed, 11 wounded. After five days on the run, he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire. Now, authorities later

confirmed that Valenti had attended the same university program as Louerro in Portugal between 1995 and 2000. February 26, Carl Gromere, 67 years old, Canadian-born astrophysicist at Caltech. According to his colleagues, he helped discover water on a distant planet. He identified galactic streams that reshaped how scientists mapped the cosmos. Just after 6 a.m. on February 16th, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Grill Mayor was found on his front porch. This is in Lano, California, 75 miles north of Los Angeles, suffering from a gunshot wound, pronounced dead at the scene. A 29-year-old named Freddie Snyder was arrested in charge with murder, carjacking, burglary.

He's being held on a $2 million bail. Now, police haven't released the motive. It's unclear if the two men knew each other or if the shooting was targeted. But then, February 27th, the same month, William Neal McCaslin, the retired two-star general, we told you about the top. And according to the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office, a repairman showed up at his home at around 10 a.m. His wife left for a doctor's appointment at 1110. She returned home at 12.04 and he was gone. Again, left his phone, glasses, smartwatch, changes closed. His 38 caliber revolver was missing.

his wife told the dispatcher. He had said if his brain and body kept deteriorating, he didn't want to live like that. She also told CNN it seems quite unlikely that he was taken to extract very dated secrets from him. But still weeks turned into months, no sightings, no video, no answers. March 2026, Jason Thomas, 48 years old, pharmaceutical researcher at Novartis working on cancer treatments. According to reports, his body was found face down in a lake in Wakefield, Massachusetts. both of his parents had died in quick succession shortly before he went missing. Official cause of death, not confirmed.

And then there's other cases that the committee is still apparently looking at. Matthew James Sullivan, former Air Force intelligence officer, according to the New York Post, he died of an accidental drug overdose in May 2024, just weeks after he reportedly agreed to testify before Congress about government UFO programs. Congressman Eric Burleson told Fox News he died by suicide, called it suspicious, saying he was scheduled to come in for an interview within two weeks. He had suspiciously, applying he went out on his own terms. Amy Estridge, 34 years old, founder of the Institute for Exotic Science in Huntsville, Alabama, specializing in quantum computing and gravity modification. According to Rolling Stone,

she revealed in a rambling 2020 interview that she had plans to disclose information about UFOs and extraterrestrials and was allegedly receiving threats as a result. She died in 2022. Her family told CNN, people should realize that scientists die also and not make too much of this. Joshua Leblanc, 29 years old, NASA nuclear scientists died in a car crash in Alabama last year. Ning Lee, an anti-gravity physicist who died in 2021 at age 79 after being struck by a car. Both names submitted by Congressman Berluson for scrutiny. So 13 people in total, right, 10 of them being investigated by the committee, tied to nuclear research, aerospace, classified programs, stretching from 2021 to 2026 spread across the country.

Some lawmakers say it's a foreign operation. The FBI now leading the effort to look for connections. Susan McCasland Wilkerson, so the general's wife even joked about the UFO theory. She wrote on Facebook with absolutely no sign of him. Maybe the best hypothesis is that aliens beamed him up to the mothership. However, no sightings of a mothership hovering above the Sandia Mountains have been reported. And by the way, it's not just online conspiracy theorists asking questions about UFOs. Former President Barack Obama was asked on a podcast, are aliens real?

Responded, they're real, but I haven't seen them. They're not being kept in Area 51. There's no underground facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy, and they hit it from the President of the United States. That got a lot of attention. So Obama later clarified on Instagram, he said, statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good. There's life out there, but the distances between solar systems are so great

that the chances we've been visited by aliens is low. And he added, I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us, really. So where does an investigator even start with something like this? How do you tell the difference between a pattern and a coincidence between espionage and just tragedy? So this is where we need somebody who has done this work, who knows this. I want to bring on Ashton Pack, private investigator. Ashton, thank you so much for taking the time to talk about this. First of all, how significant is it now the FBI, the president,

the House Oversight Committee, they're all looking into this. I think it's significant. I think it's a, it's very warranted. I think at the end of the day, a complex, full-blown FBI investigation by the nation's, you know, best investigators is very needed for this situation. I don't know that correlation equals causation. I don't know that they're, I don't believe they're all related. But I think there's some definite weirdness going on here, some X-Files kind of stuff,

if you would have it at that. Well, it's definitely weird. I think we can make a conclusion. It's definitely weird. If it's connected or not, that's what I want to explore. But when the FBI, it's announced that it's spearheading the effort to look for connections. What does that mean? What are they doing operationally behind the scene to potentially connect the dots?

And it feels like if you're looking into so many different cases, you know, that could take some time. Yeah, there's a saying, you know, where I came from when I was in law enforcement and when I was on the FBI task force as a local investigator, you know, you can have the information. fast or you can have the information right. You cannot have both. And I think that's part of the world of several generations who have, you know, every 48, 45 minute, you know, CSI show or whatever, SVU, you know, it's all the cases cleanly wrapped up in that time frame. It's just not the real, real world. And so FBI is, you know, the world's premier federal law enforcement entity. They have just an amazing amount of knowledgeable investigators. Plus, they have the tools. And what they're going to look at is, you know, the main concern here is this some kind of foreign counterintelligence,

foreign nation state conducting some kind of targeted assassination or kidnappings of our people. I think that's the first and foremost concern. Let's explore that because you had former FBI assistant director Chris Swecker told the Daily Mail, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, they all have motive. Congressman Berluson said, we're in competition with China, Russia, and Iran, a nuclear technology, advanced weapons in space. Meanwhile, our top scientists keep vanishing. So, you know, throughout this, you'll say, you know, correlation, causation. I am curious, though, if this was a foreign entity or foreign entities, they had to imagine this would get pickup. No, then again, it was really only the McCaslin episode that really started getting the ball rolling and everybody

looking to these things from, you know, years prior. So it does make me wonder, is this common work from foreign intelligence agencies or foreign governments? Because on one hand, it's bringing a lot of attention. And if they did want to kidnap scientists or take scientists or make them disappear, whatever it might be, is this the way that they would do that? Is this operation or operations seem common? Well, I know when we're talking about foreign nation states that are the enemy of the United States, you know, we probably have done and worked with other countries to do targeted. generally America, the United States will not do targeted assassination for the most part. But not to say that, you know, kind of using proxies or that our allies in other places of the

world will. And so, you know, we have to, there's that moral line there of what do we, you know, what do we say we can and cannot do under the rules of engagement in the United States? Those are questions to be answered in the highest, you know, highest halls of Washington, D.C. where the elected officials and those career bureaucrats are making decisions that affect the American people to safeguard this country. But I think that, yeah, I mean, if you're a foreign nation state, first of all, why do you want to target our people? Is their motive? And if so, how would you go about doing that? I don't know that this is the way that you would do it.

Again, I don't think everything here is connected. I've looked at, you know, many of these cases. Personally, I think there's three cases that are very, very unique and interesting. I think that that should be the focus. And I don't want to give up sources and methods, but I think if it's not already happening, they're probably having some kind of a foreign, like a counterintelligence,

you know, case set up, a system set up to kind of keep an eye on the people who are with us still. I'll just leave it at that. Oh, interesting. So you mean other high clearance scientists and engineers, you think they're keeping an eye on them now, to see if there's anything that should be happening? Well, I think common sense would dictate that in lieu of recent events.

Again, I don't want to give up sources and methods. And look, you know, people within the highest ranks of our federal government and the federal law enforcement and the intelligence community, they're not stupid people. They have a lot of tripwires and rings of security around certain things in our country that we have to safeguard, especially when it comes to advanced technology and nuclear technology. So there's many safeguards already in place, but I would be, I would want to think common sense would rule the moment here. So in other words, when you look at this, even though

you have multiple people, nuclear aerospace research, but disappearances, killings, maybe natural causes, suicides, accidents, whatever it may be, you believe there are some that are automatically being ruled out. And just because they have a common connection or there is a common industry, you can separate that out, whereas there are other ones that may, may be connected in some way. Correct. I think you can rule out several of these cases fairly quickly. There were some homicides, some murders that occurred. Arrests were made. They were able to go back. Again, I would still investigate just because people are asking questions. And when you have congressional leadership on the Hill sending letters to the director of the FBI, let's just do what the FBI does best.

Let's just put this all to rest. Now, again, are they going to trust and like what they have to hear from this investigation once the FBI gets it done? Because, again, it will not be done in a couple weeks. This takes a long time. And they can throw teams of people at this along with technology as well as some other programs that they have in place. But for me, personally, I think the most interesting, you know, the case I would really focus on are the three folks tied to Los Alamos. You know, that place is a very, very, that's basically where all. nuclear technology in our country emanated from. That's the kind of the birthplace of our nuclear

era. And so I just feel that there's too much correlation there. But there's, yeah, there's going to be a lot of these cases here where you're going to be able to kind of go, all right, it looks weird, but we were able to, you know, dig down into the facts and figure out what was going on here. This person was an unfortunate victim of a crime. And that was put to bed pretty quickly. The McCasum one is the thing that started everything. And I think it's very strange, right? you got a retired two-star general, eventually walks out of his house, leaves his phone glasses, eventually changes his clothes, vanishes.

His wife says he talked about maybe, you know, having these darker thoughts of his health kept deteriorating. She also says he seemed very deliberate that he planned not to be found, had this revolver with him. The sheriff said he wouldn't normally hike with a weapon. He was a very active guy. Wife told the 911 dispatcher,

He had said, if my brain and body keeps deteriorating, I don't want to live like that. And we know that his name appears in these hacked WikiLeaks emails about Wright Patterson and Roswell. He consulted for Tom DeLong on UFO research. The McCasden one, I have to imagine, is where they start. What stands out to you about that? What do you think about that one? Well, you just have such a high-ranking, you know, member of former member or current member of the United States Armed Force as a two-star general. But look, if the guy who's in pain or he was having issues with his health, you know, and he walks off, goes for a long hike with a pistol and nothing else, it very well could be that, you know, he decided he didn't want to be on Earth anymore and that was his decision to make.

I think it still needs to be investigated. You know, the ties to Tom DeLong and Roswell and all that stuff, what's the point of killing this person if that was the case? I mean, this information has already been out for decades. I mean, Bob Lazar leaked all. this in the late 80s to George Knapp here in Las Vegas, you know, via the news here. And of course, you know, he wasn't unalived. And so what would be the motive here? Is there something more to it? Does the announcement of the disclosure of UFO, UAP materials, and then he disappears, obviously people are going to make connections, even though there has been no established connection, but that's what you're going to, that's, I think the counterargument to that would be,

is like the timing of this was really interesting. Yeah, yeah, the timing is interesting. I'm a theory of Occam's Razor guy. You know, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. We can't have everything be a conspiracy because then we miss out and we are blinded or can't see the force for the trees into the real conspiracies because real conspiracies do exist. They have existed over time. We live in this day and age two where I think our technology and our internet fuels the frenzy of conspiracy theories. So if the general was having a lot of health problems, it just happened to have, you know, a stellar and create amazing incredible career that had links to potential extraterrestrial or ultra-terrestrial is the other word I'm hearing and the biologics tied to that and the weird things we're seeing in the sky that we hear our government actually acknowledging finally and talking about

I don't know that it's going to be correlated to that it's just it's going to have to be investigated ultimately it takes time and that's where that investigation will hopefully you know answer these questions that we have you mentioned connections I mean mccaslin apparently oversaw funding for Monica Reza's Missile Metal Project. Reza Hicks Maywald, they all worked at JPL. Cassius Chavez, they both worked at Los Alamos.

So you talk about exploring these things. How do they explore it? And by the way, are they going to get roadblocks? If you're talking about high clearance, top secret, confidential information, how much, I know I keep repeating this question, but how much do you think investigators will

get the full story about what work they were involved in, what they were doing, what the connections were because I think that's a key component to this. That's a good question. I mean, ultimately, you know, every, you know, your frontline FBI, all the members of the FBI are top secret cleared. Agents can be read into SAP programs or special access programs, which, you know, that's how they compartmentalize these programs, especially in our, you know, anything nuclear, missile

technology, advanced weaponry. So it, but you're right. I mean, at the end of the day, if the eight, ultimately, what's the. classified about having to investigate basically a missing person's case here. What clearances do you need, what SAP programs you need to be read into? There might be a few things that, you know, the agents have to be read into, but ultimately what are we trying to do? We're trying to figure out if a nation state or nefarious actors are targeting people within certain programs of our weapon systems of our military and our government. And so I don't know that you're going to need to have a huge amount

of people getting right into certain programs. I'm sure maybe there should be some, but at the end of the day, was there a homicide? Was this person, you know, killed at the hands of another human being nefariously? I don't know what clearances you would need to have that to answer those questions. Let me ask you about a couple people. So Nuno Larero, MIT fusion scientists, apparently killed by a former classmate from Portugal who also committed a mass shooting at Brown University. This is a big case. Shooter's dead. No, no motive. Put that one there. Carl Grimmer, astrophysicist shot on his front porch, suspect arrested, no known connection between them. Do you look at cases like that and say, move on, those aren't ones we need to explore any further?

Well, I think you can look into it. It's just time and budget. That's what, you know, is the FBI, they're going to set up a special program for this, a special case number. And how much time do we allow, you know, the investigators to dig into these cases when it's pretty, you know, if it looks on surface that it was random acts of violence. I think the Brown shooting one, that could be, that could be interesting. I would like to dig down into that suspect's world, see where his ties were. I see a giant link chart in a giant fusion center at the FBI somewhere where they're going to start putting everybody up on basically like a board where these analysts are going to start plugging in. And that will kind of help the investigators kind of see the links and see who's

tied to what. Ultimately, I think, again, you know, correlation doesn't always equal causation. The person shot by the active shooter from Brown, the person shot in the front foyer of his apartment, suspects in custody, arrested, had committed crimes that day. I think those can be put to bed pretty quickly. But again, I don't know how far down you dig. Some people will never be satisfied with the answer. They want to see conspiracy. They want to see a vast, you know, ex-files world out there that, you know, we just don't know. And the government is lying to us. That's, you know, ultimately what I think some people just want. What about the timing? So the House Oversight Committee announced its investigation on April 20th.

The White House Press Secretary said that she would look into it on April 15th. The president said he'd have answers in a week and a half, later said so far there's not much of a connection. What do you make of the public statements? I think they're just statements to the press that are just made. I don't think the president, you know, no disrespect to the president, but you can't know these answers in a week and a half. You can get a top tier brief, you know, not a top tier, but you can get a brief after a week. and a half of, hey, this is kind of where we're going and this is what we think we want to do with these cases, but you're not going to know in a week and a half. I don't think you could have

the entire FBI digging up, you know, spending all their energy on just one thing and get answers in a week and a half. Again, you can have it right or you can have it fast. You just can't have both. You know, the families, Julia Hicks, Richard Estridge, Susan McCaslin, Wilkerson, they seem to all be pushing back against the conspiracy theories. Like they're saying, you know, people die. Scientists die. They're human beings. People go missing.

It's not connected. How much do investigators take that into account what the families are saying? They should absolutely take it into account. You know, families know best. What do strangers on the Internet know? We think we know a lot. But we really don't know the deep down secrets of people's lives. Scientists do pass away.

Scientists do unalive themselves. People in the military, unfortunately, you know, you know, these things happen. Again, I'm not saying that we shouldn't investigate, but, you know, when the family, like I saw one lady, her dad was a part of this and she's just, she just doesn't understand it because she knows exactly what her dad went through, what happened to him and how he ended up passing. It has, it's hard for the victims because they have to rehash all this again. You know, there's a part of the grieving and mourning process and now all of a sudden their loved ones are in the limelight and it gets tied into these conspiracy theories.

And this is how now people are making a living, you know, like what we're here talking about right now. You know, they get frustrated as victim. So I feel very bad for those folks. But again, you know, if you have the slightest chance that foreign nation states, foreign actors, or just terrorism in general, could be targeting our people, our scientists. We need to look into that. Yeah. And I think it's important to separate fact from fiction, right? It's important to cover this.

It's obviously you want to cover it because the government of the United States. is talking about and investigating it, but also trying to figure out what's at stake here. I mean, I guess there's parts of it that you said weird or strange, right? So some of these people reportedly died of natural causes. But when you look at something like Hicks died of cardiovascular disease, according to the LA medical examiner, but the cause was never widely reported until the Times got the records, or Frank Maywall, no autopsy on record, that's per the Daily Mail, they're saying this, you know, are those kinds of things that bother you that we don't have more details about that,

or is that normal? No, I think it's pretty normal. Most people who pass away, there's not an autopsy. They're expensive. If there's autopsies are usually done for, you know, homicides, suspicious, unknown, you know, something weird. But if somebody has a medical episode and passes away, there's usually not an autopsy done. Death records don't necessarily just get uploaded into some public database where everyone can go and look.

You'd have to do a Freedom of Information Act request to get that information. So it's not usually placed into a public record or open source information where people can go and readily access that. And that's for privacy reasons for, again, you know, I've lost loved ones. I don't necessarily want their death record, you know, out on the Internet for all the sea. Amy Estridge worked on quantum computing, gravity modification, apparently said she was getting threats over UFO disclosure. She turns up dead at 34, no cause of death released. Her father, a former NASA scientist, says, you know, there's nothing more to see here, really. Matthew Sullivan, Air Force intelligence officer, agrees to testify before Congress about the UFO programs.

And two weeks later, he's dead of an accidental overdose. Now, Congressman Burleson has been pushing for a year. The FBI seemingly won't confirm or deny if they're investigating. So, again, these issues, I mean, it does also become a question. Why do you think that is? I mean, how much do you think we're going to know? How much do you think we're going to know about the investigation or the end results of this? Yeah.

Again, it's going to take time. And in the meantime, life continues to happen. And all the other things in life that we have to talk about and report about will occur. And a couple of years down the road when they release this, you know, after action report, will we still be curious about everything and still, will we still want to know all the stuff about this current incident that's occurring right now? People say they don't, you know, people say all the time they're not feeling like they want to unalive themselves and then they do it.

I saw that throughout my career in law enforcement, unfortunately. I saw people who said, oh, no, no, I'm fine. And the next day, they changed their minds. you know, I think, you know, you would be surprised how many people have secrets. It's like, you know, somebody accidentally overdoses on pills. This happens all the time in this country. This is hundreds of thousands of people a year losing their lives. This just happens to be an Air Force intelligence officer.

This happens to be the daughter of a, and she was a scientist, and her dad was a scientist tied to the NASA space program. So. I guess, I guess the big one. is like how people just disappear, right? Like if you're talking about McCaslin or Garcia, one thing for people to go off grid, but, you know, how can you do that?

And, you know, even if you're dealing with a situation if somebody did something to themselves, you don't find the body? I mean, how difficult is it? I mean, there's one thing to say that you're talking about disappearance of people in the same industry, that in and of itself is strange,

but if they can't be found or there's no evidence of what happened to them. That's the part I think that makes people a little curious. Well, and I think that should be the focus of trying to get the answers from the investigators. But I will preface with this. If you go walk out into, you know, if you walk into the Angeles National Forest outside of this second most populated city in America and you disappear, let's say you, let's say nothing nefarious happened with you. You fell, you had a medical episode, or you chose to end your life. it's very good chances that your body will not be found.

I don't think people who realize, you know, how Mother Nature kind of self-cleanses the area. If you've never been hunting, as a hunter, I can tell you that the thing that, you know, the thing that passes away is not there 24 hours, not even 12 hours later. It's been completely pulled apart by, you know, coyotes, cougars, whatever's out in that area. If you walk out of your house in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and you'll walk out into the, high desert is a very good chance that your body won't be found. And down the road, you never know. Some hunter, ATV writer, we'll find a wallet. We'll find the gun.

We'll find something. And then our answers, you know, our questions are then answered. So I, again, you know, now if you walk out into the city and you're in the big city and you just disappear off the face of the planet, that's a little bit weird. And that's where I want to see. But that's what I want to see the investigation trying to answer. Like, hey, we're pretty sure that this person did certain something to themselves out in the wilderness. and the wilderness did what the wilderness does, and it kind of has this self-cleaning system in place.

It's a very, very unfortunate thing to think about, but, you know, it's not a Disney movie. Mother Nature doesn't care about that, whether you're a homo sapien or you're a horse. You know, the system, the scavengers are going to get you no matter what if you go down. I appreciate making that point. It's a good point to make. All right, Ashton Pack.

We'll see where this goes. Thank you so much for taking the time, sir. Thank you so much. It's good to see you guys. 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 Podcasts, 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.