Somewhere in the Skies - The Missing General: Scientists, Secrets, and the Wright Patterson Connection

Starting point is 00:00:01 There's been a horrible accident, I said hastily. I don't know what happened. Corcoran's eyeless skull gawked. His lower jaw having sagged more since I first found him, making it look like his corpse was trying to scream. His body is just a casing to be discarded, the man said softly. What's important is that you will not deny him burial in the method we prepared for him.

Starting point is 00:00:38 We're his protectors. Stop us from doing his will and you'll be harmed. His transition has come and we are ready. Go back in the house. No one needs to know. Knife Point Horror. Tales of supernatural suspense written, produced and narrated by Soren Narnia.

Starting point is 00:01:14 Now transmitting from Spector Vision Radio, anywhere you hear podcasts. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Banking. Hey guys, Ryan Sprague here from Somewhere in the Skies. The podcast has always been and always will be completely free for you to listen to. But creating it every week takes a lot of time, research and resources.

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Starting point is 00:02:44 Thank you so much for listening, for supporting, and as always, keep looking up. The following episode of Somewhere in the Skies is based on the original research and investigative reporting of the Sentinel Network. For full coverage and up-to-date reporting on this developing story, visit the sentinel.network.

Starting point is 00:03:13 Links to their substack and socials are in the show notes. Because of the sensitive nature of the following content, listener discretion is advised. It began, as so many of these stories often do, with something deceptively simple. A man left his house and has yet to return. Search continues for a missing retired Air Force General who disappeared from an Albuquerque

Starting point is 00:03:47 neighborhood last week. Now we've learned federal investigators are helping in that search. William McHastlin was last seen near his foothills area home on Friday near Tramway and Academy. Today volunteers along with investigators from BCSO and the FBI were canvassing the neighborhood. We walked right by there Friday morning. know, would have been around 11 o'clock and nothing out of the ordinary in the area. So it's strange.

Starting point is 00:04:19 The deeper one looks into the disappearance of Major General William Neal McCasland. The more that simplicity collapses into something layered, interconnected, and deeply unsettling. What first appeared to be a missing person's case begins to unravel into a network of people, programs and places operating at the very edge of what we're told exists, where advanced aerospace research, national security, and decades of UFO speculation all quietly overlap. At the center of it all sits Wright-Patterson Air Force space, a place long associated with both groundbreaking science and some of the most persistent and controversial secrets in American history. And as we'll soon see, William Neal McAssland wasn't the only one who vanished and had connections to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Starting point is 00:05:20 He was just the latest. This is the missing general, the scientists, and the Wright-Patterson web. While our government's official position is not to speculate on this subject, we can't choose to let our minds explore other possibilities. to use of our imaginations. For if we consider that astro-scientists agree on one point that the possibility of life elsewhere is not only quite probable, some field is there without a doubt. Let us suppose them that these objects are real space vehicles,

Starting point is 00:05:58 extraterrestrial origin, and not an illusion of the mind. This is somewhere in the skies with Ryan Sprague. Bonjour, compadre. It's the... Priceline negotiator. How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget. The Price Line app.

Starting point is 00:06:32 It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, all of those deals in a bundle, deals, game day deals, concert trip deals. No one deals more deals than Price Line. Hold your horses. There's more. The app lets you filter hotels by neighborhood, vibe, star level, and amenities like pools and spas and beach fronts. Wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting me up.

Starting point is 00:06:52 Price Line! On February 27th, In 2020, McCaslin walked out of his home in Albuquerque and into the Sandia foothills without his phone, without his watch, and without any identifiable means of being trapped. His wife couldn't even confirm what shoes he was wearing. That detail alone lingers. This was not a rushed exit or a moment of forgetfulness. It was either a deliberate departure or something far more disorienting.

Starting point is 00:07:29 By that evening, a silver alert had been issued. By the weekend, search and rescue teams were combing the mountains. Within days, the FBI joined the investigation, and Curtland Air Force Base activated coordination efforts through its command structure. The scale and speed of that response exceeded what one would expect for a missing hiker, especially when authorities publicly maintained that there was no evidence of foul play, while simultaneously insisting that all possibilities remained open. The terrain itself only deepened the urgency.

Starting point is 00:08:07 The Sandia Mountains rise sharply from the desert floor, with temperatures that can drop below freezing overnight at elevation. A person without supplies, without communication, and without a clear trail would not survive long. Yet even as the search intensified, certain decisions stood out. Authorities requested GoPro footage from hikers or ring camera footage from nearby homes, and they would establish a dedicated evidence upload portal, signaling a level of investigative sophistication rarely seen in such cases.

Starting point is 00:08:43 At the same time, no wireless emergency alert was issued to nearby mobile devices, a tool typically used to mobilize civilians during search efforts. The public was told that the search was ongoing. but not fully enlisted in it. It created a subtle but important distinction. This was a search that people were allowed to know about, but were not to necessarily participate in. That distinction becomes more meaningful

Starting point is 00:09:12 when placed against McCaslin's background because he wasn't simply a retired general who had just wandered off into the mountains. He was a man who had once overseen the most sensitive programs in the department of defense. At Wright- Patterson Air Force Base, McCastling commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory, the institution responsible for billions of dollars in advanced aerospace research, including propulsion systems, material science, directed energy, and space-based technologies. Before that, he served as an

Starting point is 00:09:49 executive secretary for the Special Access Program Oversight Committee, placing him at the center of the government's most tightly controlled and compartmentalized programs. Wright Patterson has long occupied a unique place in both official and unofficial narratives. It is where some of the most advanced technologies in the world are developed, and it's also the site most frequently associated with claims of recovered UFO material dating back to Roswell. Did a UFO really crash in the middle of the night, and if it wasn't a UFO? What was it? And is the government covering up the story of the century?

Starting point is 00:10:31 Well, one thing is for sure. There are an awful lot of unanswered questions, and tonight we're going to try and sort out facts from friction concerning an alleged alien encounter out in the New Mexico desert. And also, it's connection to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Well, the Air Force agreed for the first time to talk about it. In an exclusive one-on-one interview with a man who hedged this sprawling complex known as the Air Force Foreign Aerospace Science and Technology Center,

Starting point is 00:10:57 we got some surprising answers. If we're to believe that Roswell was nothing more than a weather balloon crash, why would it have been brought here in the first place? If it was easily identified as a weather balloon, probably it wouldn't have been. If it were a foreign weather balloon, it may have been. If it were unidentified, it would be brought here because, in fact, that is our job to look at technology

Starting point is 00:11:20 and technological advances in any sense. Whether those claims are grounded in reality or mythology, McCaslin's role placed him in a position where such information, if it existed, would pass through the very system he helped oversee. His knowledge was not theoretical. It was administrative, operational, and deeply embedded. Even in retirement, he remained connected to that ecosystem. His work with applied technology associates,

Starting point is 00:11:51 later absorbed into Blue Halo, tied him to programs involving directed energy, quantum systems, and space warfare. His consulting firm advised agencies across the Defense Department and the Department of Energy. His board positions linked him to organizations managing hundreds of millions of dollars in active contracts related to machine learning, electromagnetics, plasma physics, and advanced sensing technologies. The thought of retirement simply did not apply to McCasland. He transitioned from public command into the private channels, or much of the nation's most sensitive research now continues.

Starting point is 00:12:35 Around him were individuals like Dr. James Tecnelia publicly described as a concerned acquaintance, but in reality, a former DARPA deputy, a defense threat reduction agency director, and McCasland's own business partner. The network was not peripheral. It was tightly woven. At the center of his personal life was Susan McCasland Wilkerson, his wife, whose own background complicates the narrative further.

Starting point is 00:13:03 A PhD astrophysicist, astronaut candidate finalist, Air Force officer, and defense contractor, she understood the world her husband operated in, at a level far beyond that of a typical spouse. When she addressed the public, she confirmed her past access to highly classified programs and then made a striking statement, directly referencing and dismissing claims

Starting point is 00:13:30 about extraterrestrial materials stored at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. McCaslin's wife confirmed the connection. Part of that post reads, it is true that Neil had a brief association with the UFO community through Tom DeLong, former frontman of our blink 182 and founder of the organization to the stars. Neil worked with Tom for a bit shortly after his Air Force retirement as an unpaid, Neil's choice, consultant on military and technical scientific matters,

Starting point is 00:13:55 to lend for similitude to Tom's fiction book and media activities. Neil does not have any special knowledge about the ET bodies and debris from the Roswell crash stored at Wright Pat. Though at this point, with absolutely no sign of him, maybe the best hypothesis is that aliens bean him up to the mothership. However, no sightings of a mothership hovering above the Sandia Mountains have been reported. It was a moment where the long-standing UFO narrative surrounding the base was acknowledged explicitly, not to validate it, but to contain it. Yet the very act of addressing it reveals an awareness of how closely McCasland's career intersected with those persistent claims,

Starting point is 00:14:36 especially when we learned that General McCasland was actually the general. who would briefed Tom DeLong on UFOs. And what he allegedly said to Tom DeLong was very interesting. First time I met with a government official, it would have been in the back booth of a restaurant at an airport where I meet this person, he's a general, and he walks me into this vacant area of an airport restaurant, puts his briefcase down,

Starting point is 00:15:10 waiter comes over and takes a general. drink and he puts his hand up and says we were just having a conversation we were in anything and the guy's like okay fine then you know whatever he said it walked away and then he looked me in the eyes and said it was the cold war and everything we did at the time was because nuclear war could break out any given day it was a very real palpable threat and somewhere in there we stumbled upon the UFO phenomenon and i remember right when he said that my heart just started beating like crazy in my chest I got all the chills, and the next conversation that happened for an hour at that booth was extraordinary, life-changing, and scary. If this were the only case, it would already be extraordinary, but it's not.

Starting point is 00:15:55 Eight months earlier, Monica Jacinto Reza disappeared from a ridgeline in the Angeles National Forest. Under conditions that simply defy explanation, Monica was a metallurgist. whose work on a nickel-based super alloy, known as Mondoloy, solved a critical problem in rocket propulsion, allowing components to withstand extreme oxygen-rich environments without igniting or failing. Her work was funded through the same Air Force Research Laboratory. McCastland once commanded at Wright-Patterson.

Starting point is 00:16:36 On that day she vanished, she was hiking in clear conditions. only 30 feet behind her companion. She acknowledged a turn with a wave, and within minutes, she was gone. Extensive search efforts involving helicopters, thermal imaging, scent dogs, and hundreds of volunteers yielded almost nothing. A beanie was found in a ravine. Her scent trail ended abruptly. Nobody was ever recovered.

Starting point is 00:17:08 Monica Reza was not an isolated figure in a vacuum of coincidence. She seemed to be a part of a tightly linked chain. Dallas Hardwick, her mentor, co-invented the alloy and later led its government-side qualification at Wright-Patterson. McCastland, as commander, oversaw the laboratory funding and managing their work. These were not loosely connected individuals. They represented the complete life cycle of a strategic technology. Hardwick unfortunately died in 2014.

Starting point is 00:17:46 Monica Reza vanished in 2025. McCaslin disappeared in 26. The chain of expertise was gone. At the same time, Monica Reza had quietly transitioned to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL, before her disappearance. placing her within another institution deeply tied to advanced aerospace research, and notably long associated with planetary defense and space-based observation systems. The silence that followed her disappearance from both NASA and the aerospace community

Starting point is 00:18:27 is as striking as the event itself. But the pattern and web expands further. In October of 2025, three individuals, Three individuals connected to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base were killed in a single night in Ohio. We are continuing our coverage of a double murder happened over the weekend, involving three employees at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. As we previously reported, the bodies of the Pritchards and their co-worker Jamie Gistitis of Sugar Creek Township were all discovered by police on Saturday, October 25th.

Starting point is 00:18:59 According to West Milton PD, Pritchard killed his wife, placed her body into the trunk of their car, and drove to the West Milton Municipal Building parking lot, where he then took his own life. West Milton also revealed in the early morning hours, Pritchard went to the home of fellow employee at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Jamie Gostitis, and took her life as well. My neighbors next door to me, there was people out on their patio, a gentleman, and he was trying to get into their door, and I opened at my back door, and he said he had a gun to get back at my house, and he hopped off their patio and left. In a recent release from Wright-Pat, the base says they are hard. heartbroken by this tragedy, and they are currently offering counseling and support services to all those impacted. Ohio BCI is still in charge of the investigation.

Starting point is 00:19:44 Jacob Pritchard, an acquisition project manager within the Air Force Research Laboratories, Censors Directorate, brutally murdered his wife, Jamie, who worked within the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center. Pritchard would also murder Jamie Gustedis, a highly trained officer. operations research analysts assigned to AFRL's 711th human performance wing. Pritchard would then take his own life. The details of that night are as disturbing as they are unresolved. Pritchard first killed his wife in their home, then transported her body in the trunk of his car before driving to a second location,

Starting point is 00:20:28 where he targeted Gustavus, a young officer with a top secret clearance, who had only recently begun what appeared to be a promising career in advance aerospace, modeling, and analysis. The events unfolded across multiple jurisdictions, ultimately drawing in local law enforcement, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Despite the scale of the investigation, no clear motive was ever publicly established. There was no confirmed personal relationship that explained the targeting, no documented pattern of prior violence that would account for the escalation, and no definitive explanation for why a cleared operations research analyst

Starting point is 00:21:14 became part of a murder that began as domestic violence and expanded into something far less easily categorized. What makes the Wright-Patterson connection more difficult to ignore is not simply that these individuals worked at the same base, but the specific domains in which they operated. The sensor's directorate, where Pritchard worked, is responsible for technologies tied to surveillance, reconnaissance, and space-based detection systems,

Starting point is 00:21:45 the same class of technologies that intersect with the tracking of UAP. Gustav, meanwhile, was part of a unit focused on human performance, in advanced modeling, a field that feeds directly into the optimization of aerospace systems, decision-making environments, and operational readiness. These are not peripheral roles. They are embedded within the research architecture that defines how the United States sees, tracks, and interacts with objects in air and space. That three individuals tied to this environment died within hours of one another,

Starting point is 00:22:25 without a clearly articulated motive leaves a gap that official explanation has yet to fill. On December 15th of 2025, Nunoz L'Oriero was shot and killed in Brookline, Massachusetts, and what authorities have described as a targeted attack. Breaking news out of Brookline and MIT professor shot and killed at his home on Gibbs Street. 47-year-old Nuno Lurero was a nuclear scientist and engineering professor. He was shot several times in the foyer of his Brookline home. Just less than an hour ago, I spoke with the Brookline Police Department, and they tell us no one is in custody.

Starting point is 00:23:06 So this shooter, it seems likely, is still out there. Neighbors, understandably, very shaken up by this. They tell us that the 47-year-old MIT professor lived in this building right here. He lived on the first floor, they tell us, in that corner apartment building. Here's what else they had to say. At about 9 o'clock, I heard three loud bangs. I thought at first it was somebody in our apartment kicking in the door or something. So I called the neighbors and they said, no, they thought it was gunshots.

Starting point is 00:23:36 So we came out and the police had already arrived and they took him away. We didn't even know who it was or what had happened. They've identified the victim now. Yeah, unfortunately. What do you know about to know? He's a neighbor and a good neighbor. Quiet. They've been living here for quite a while.

Starting point is 00:23:58 Next door and nice folks. He's from Portugal. He lives right next door? Yeah, they live right here on the first floor. Nuno's an MIT professor? That's what I understand, yeah. Nuclear scientist? Is he?

Starting point is 00:24:14 Yeah, that's what it says on the website. Oh, man. What do you think about this taking place, sir? Right next to you. Brookline's not known for crimes like this. Yeah, I think that it's really a surprise. And a shooting in a state where it's so hard to even have a gun, I don't, I hope they find out what it was all about

Starting point is 00:24:35 and whoever did it is apprehended. While we were hearing from those neighbors, we saw investigators wearing gloves and carrying what looks like thin bags of evidence coming from behind the apartment building here. We've also seen officers this morning going door to door, and last night, neighbors tell us that they swarmed the area. Lauriero was not part of the Air Force Research Laboratory, nor was he affiliated with JPL or the contractors tied to the Mondoloi program. He was a plasma physicist and fusion scientist at MIT, working within the plasma science and fusion center, an institution whose research occasionally overlaps, with defense-adjacent domain. such as directed energy and advanced propulsion.

Starting point is 00:25:23 We're including him here with caution, not as a confirmed link in this web, but as a case that exists uncomfortably close to it. The connection, if it exists, is not direct, but institutional, a matter of proximity rather than proof. Yet what draws attention is not his position alone, but the nature of his death. The man charged with his killing, Claudio Valenti, appears to have spent years preparing for the act,

Starting point is 00:25:55 operating with a level of discipline and premeditation that stands apart from typical crimes, of personal grievance, burner phones, an absence of financial trace, and a pre-stage storage unit suggested a methodical approach. Even more striking is the timing, coming just days after a mass shooting at Brown University, an unbelievably tragic event that may have obscured a far more targeted act within its aftermath. There is no public evidence of foreign involvement, no financial anomalies, no clear ties to the intelligence services. This stated motive remains personal. And yet, within the same nine-month window that saw multiple deaths and disappearances across a defense-connected web, the killing of another scientist,

Starting point is 00:26:47 whose work sits adjacent to that world becomes difficult to ignore. We are not placing Lurio within the same cluster. We are acknowledging that his case sits close enough to it to raise a question that cannot be easily dismissed. In February of 26, another death added to the pattern. This time, on the opposite side of the country, Carl Grilmere, a Caltech astronomer with nearly three decades of experience at the infrared processing and analysis center was found shot dead on his property in the California desert. Shock and sadness on the campus of Caltech as colleagues mourn the loss of groundbreaking astrophysicist and astronomer Carl Grilmeyer.

Starting point is 00:27:39 We are shocked. This was so unexpected. Car was full of life. The 67-year-old killed Sunday in the Anilow Valley, spent decades devoted to understanding the galaxies, studying the Milky Way and making groundbreaking discoveries, helping scientists better understand our planet. He was my mentor, my companion, my body. Sergio Faro Acoastah knew Gromeyer for 26 years and worked alongside him at Caltech's I-PAC department. He is, and I say in the present tense, car is irreplaceable because the ingenuity, he injected into his research in astronomy is unparalleled. According to the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department,

Starting point is 00:28:21 they responded early Monday morning to a shooting in the town of Lano, southeast of Palmdale. Gromeyer is now being remembered for his brilliance and generosity. Always ready to teach, to share his knowledge. He never held anything back. Gromeyer's work spans decades, degrees, and achievements with specific breakthroughs. In the study of stellar streams, he made numerous scientific discoveries.

Starting point is 00:28:42 While at Caltech, he worked for the Spitzer Science Center, and in 2011, was awarded the NASA exceptional scientific achievement medal. Gromeres work focused on infrared detection systems, including his involvement with NEOWISE and the development of data pipelines used to identify near-Earth objects. These systems are designed to detect faint heat signatures against the cold backdrop of space, allowing scientists to locate. asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth. But the same principles apply to tracking satellites, hypersonic vehicles, and other objects that moved through the upper atmosphere and beyond. The circumstances surrounding Gromere's death are particularly difficult to dismiss as random. Just two months earlier, a man had been discovered on his property carrying a loaded, unregistered rifle, and was subsequently arrested. The charges were dismissed in early February under judicial discretion.

Starting point is 00:29:48 And within 11 days, that same individual returned and killed Grimair. And the suspect has been identified as 29-year-old Freddie Snyder. He's behind bars right now for murder on a $2 million bond. We have reached out to the Sheriff's Department for more information on the circumstances leading up to this shooting. If this was random or targeted, of course, we will continue to. followed this story for you. We're reporting live tonight in Pasadena. Hunter Sowers, CBSLA. The sequence is documented, but the reasoning is not. No clear motive has been publicly established, and the dismissal of charges so close to the eventual killing raises questions that extend beyond

Starting point is 00:30:34 the immediate crime. Grimair's work placed him within the same broader ecosystem as Monica Teresa, whose later career included time at NASA's jet propulsion laboratory, the institution responsible for developing missions like Neo Surveyor, which relies on the very data pipelines Grimair helped refine. Admittedly, the connection is not direct, but it is structural, linking the individuals across institutions through shared technological frameworks. In New Mexico, another disappearance added yet another. other layer to the emerging pattern. Melissa Cassius, an employee at Los Alamos National Laboratory,

Starting point is 00:31:20 vanished on June 26, 2025, just four days after Monica Reza disappeared in California. For weeks, the family has been through a roller coaster of tips, searches, and unanswered questions. And while it is a possibility Cassius left on her own, some of her relatives tell us they don't believe that's the case. Because we don't have answers, we, you know, we, we can't draw any conclusions one way or the other. June 26 is the last day Melissa Cassius was seen or heard from. Jasmine and Trudy Cassius' niece and sister told us what they remember. In the morning, Cassius dropped off her husband at Los Alamos National Labs where they both work.

Starting point is 00:32:00 New Mexico State Police say she then went back home. Her daughter told investigators her mom said she may stay home and run errands. At some point, she took a break and picked up subway and dropped it off for her daughter. My cousin, Sierra, at the coffee shop where she works in the Taos Plaza area. This video is one of the last times Cassius is seen. NMSB tells us the last place someone saw her was walking along State Road 518 in Talpa. My cousin got home from work and found all of Melissa's belongings at home. Her purse, her phones, her car, her keys, everything was at home.

Starting point is 00:32:39 Her phones were factory reset. But since her disappearance, investigators say there have been three searches with the help of state, local, and federal resources. State police say they haven't ruled out foul play. All of her friends keep telling us, this is not like her. First of all, she wouldn't leave her daughter. Absolutely, she loves, adores her daughter. She would not lead her. The family adds, Cassius was planning to care for her mom for an upcoming surgery.

Starting point is 00:33:05 So the idea of leaving on her own is something the two don't believe is the case. No matter what, we need to. find answers and no matter what, we don't want to stop looking. And so I think regardless of what the situation is, if she left on her own or if there's foul play involved, we just want to find her. That morning, she drove her husband to work at Los Alamos, a facility deeply embedded in the nation's nuclear weapons and advanced materials research infrastructure. She later told her daughter she had forgotten her access badge and would work from home that day. A claim that raised immediate questions. Shortly afterward, she was seen walking alone toward wilderness terrain,

Starting point is 00:33:48 leaving behind her car, her keys, her wallet, and both her personal and government-issued phones, each of which had been factory reset. Like Reza and McCasland, she severed her digital footprint before vanishing, creating a void that investigators have been unable to fill. Cassius was not a scientist in the traditional sense, but a role placed her within the operational structure of Los Alamos, including participation in Department of Energy Advisory Processes, tied to environmental management and nuclear site operations. Los Alamos, Curtland Air Force Base, and Wright Patterson, form a triad within the United States Defense Research landscape, each contributing to different aspects of a broader system. These locations are not isolated. They are connected through shared

Starting point is 00:34:44 programs, funding streams, and collaborative research efforts. When individuals linked to these nodes begin to disappear or die under unusual circumstances, the geographic separation becomes less meaningful than the institutional proximity. What many would consider conspiracy theory or reaching when comes to this story, some of it would eventually make its way to mainstream media. Police are searching for a retired Air Force general who vanished in New Mexico. William McCasland went missing last month, eight months before the general vanished, a rocket scientist who worked under him years ago also went missing. She was hiking in California with two other people. They saw her smiling and waving 30 feet behind them. When they turned back.

Starting point is 00:35:37 again, she was gone, vanished in plain sight. They searched for days and couldn't find any trace of her. This is a very, very strange situation. And 11 days before the general disappeared, another scientist was shot dead on his porch. Carl Grilmar was known for discovering signs of water on a distant planet. He was gunned down in California. Freddie Snyder was later charged with his murder. He has a rap sheet, but was led out of jail weeks before he allegedly killed the scientist. We still don't know his motive. And we don't know if these cases are even connected. But this many top scientists getting killed or going missing in just under a year looks like a major red flag. Chris Swecker is a former assistant FBI director. Chris,

Starting point is 00:36:30 The mind goes right to a foreign intelligence service. Is that where your gut tells you this is going towards? Yeah, it is, Jesse. I mean, I understand the UFO angle has a lot of interest, and people love to kind of dabble in that area with their theories. But if you look at these two, they were both involved in very, very sensitive rocket propulsion programs associated with missiles and space travel.

Starting point is 00:36:59 and there was one particular piece of technology a certain type of metal that really liberated us from having to rely on Russian-Soviet technology back in the day. So it's really sensitive stuff, and I'm not a big believer in coincidences. So if I were heading up the FBI field office or the FBI right now,

Starting point is 00:37:21 I would have a full team on this one just to make sure. I mean, I'd look at everything, dissect their lives, and just see if there's any connection to some hostile foreign intelligence service. They want that information. They've been working to get it for years and years.

Starting point is 00:37:37 India, Pakistan, even some of our friends are trying to get that type of technology from us, and they'd stop at nothing to get it. We did hear reports that the UFOs that were recovered are being exploited to, I guess, take advantage of whatever technology that's so advanced so we could apply that to our military. And there's kind of an arms race. You know, who could ramp up this UFO technology the fastest? Would that be a motive and also a financial motive too?

Starting point is 00:38:09 Well, yeah, the motivation to get your hands on that technology cuts both ways. You know, one, they would like to socially engineer their way into it, get it that way, get it through some sort of other methods that they use are getting into, our military bases with plants, and in some cases, they'll compromise a scientist. And that can lead to problems, of course, to lead to problems, but he left with a 38-caliber weapon and a backpack, and no wallet, no phone. So you wonder what he was really up to here. You know, did he anticipate not coming back, no wallet, no phone? And what was he doing with the 38-caliber weapon? So you wonder if he was, you know, if he had been compromised and he was

Starting point is 00:38:56 going to, you know, take the extreme measures to deal with it himself. Towards the end of recording this episode, the Sentinel Network discovered two more possible connections, and they extend the story. They deepen it. And more importantly, they begin to reshape the timeline and geography surrounding it. Frank Werner-Maywald becomes the earliest marker to all of this. A technical group supervisor at JPL, Maywald operated within the same sensor ecosystem as Caltech astronomer Carl Gromere, whose February killing remains one of the most jarring events connected to this broader thread. Gromere helped validate detection systems, like the NEO Surveyor Telescope, designed to identify objects before they reach Earth. Maywald managed

Starting point is 00:39:53 the instrumentation that interprets what those systems detect. One finds the signal, the other helps define what it is. On July 4th, 2024, Maywalt died at the age of 61. No cause of death was publicly disclosed. There was no statement from JPL, no acknowledgement from NASA, and no media coverage. The only record of his passing exists in a legacy.com obituary, where colleagues noted he was actively working and making plans. On its own, it is a quiet absence, but placed alongside Gromere, Monica Reza, and now McAsland, Maywald shifts the starting point of this web back nearly fully a year, and it also shifts it into a corridor of advanced sensing, aerospace, and defense that now appears increasingly difficult to separate from the

Starting point is 00:40:52 larger story. And then there's Anthony Chavez, and with him, the narrative returns to New Mexico, the same landscape where McCaslin vanished. Chavez, a 78-year-old retired Los Alamos National Laboratory employee, disappeared from his home in May of 2025. That's six weeks before Reza and seven weeks before Melissa Cassius, placing his disappearance firmly within the same community. impressed window that would later include McCasland. The physical details are nearly identical. His wallet, keys, and cigarettes were left on the table. His car remained in the driveway.

Starting point is 00:41:36 There was no phone to track, no sign of struggle, no indication of preparation. Codever dogs found nothing. Investigators also found nothing. One detective would actually state, it was just like he vanished. Chavez becomes the third disappearance within what can now be described as a New Mexico defense corridor, mirroring the same signature seen in Cassius and McCasland, abandoned personal effects, exhaustive searches yielding no results, zero confirmed sightings, and no bodies recovered. Taken individually, each of these cases can be explained, contextualized,

Starting point is 00:42:23 or left unresolved within its own boundaries. But together, each case form a pattern that resists dismissal. They seem to all be connected through overlapping pathways tied to the Air Force Research Laboratory and its broader ecosystem. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base sits at the center of that network. Not only a hub of technological innovation, but as a place long associated with a deepest layers of secrecy, including the enduring question of whether the United States possesses knowledge or materials that do not originate from this world. McCaslin's career placed him at the

Starting point is 00:43:07 precise intersection of those domains, where advanced science, national security, and the mythology of UFOs all converge. What remains beyond the speculation and the unanswered questions, are the people at the center of all of this. A husband who walked out of his home and never returned. A scientist who vanished mid-step on a ridge line. A young officer whose future ended in a moment of violence. A researcher killed on his own porch. A mother who left behind everything and disappeared into the wilderness.

Starting point is 00:43:47 These are not just data points or connections in a larger web. Their lives interrupted, families left searching, and communities still waiting for answers that may never come. Whatever the truth may be behind these events, the human cost is undeniable. So, if you have any information related to the disappearance of William Neal McCasland, Monica Reza, Melissa Cassius, or any further information about the deaths connected to these cases, please contact the appropriate authorities because even the smallest detail could matter. And for those left behind, still hoping, still looking, the search in every sense of the word continues.

Starting point is 00:44:39 Again, if you or anyone you know may have any information about the missing individuals in this episode, we've included proper contact information for law enforcement and authorities in the show notes. Our special thanks to the diligent investigative reporting of the Sentinel Network. To stay up to date with this story, be sure to visit and subscribe at the sentinel.network. Links to their substack and socials are in the show notes. Remember, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching. Somewhere in the Skies. Somewhere in the Skies is part of the Somewhere Podcast Universe.

Starting point is 00:46:01 please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. To learn more about all of our shows, visit thespu.com. Spector Vision Radio. Wireless can feel like a world of traps, but not with Visible. It's one-line wireless with unlimited data and hotspot, powered by Verizon for $25 a month, taxes and fees included. Plus, for a limited time, new members pay just $20 a month for one year on the Visible plan. Using the code fresh start.

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Somewhere in the Skies - The Missing General: Scientists, Secrets, and the Wright Patterson Connection

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