Retired Major General William Neil McCasland was trying to walk away from some of the most sensitive defense research programs in the country when he disappeared from his Albuquerque home on February 27, leaving behind his phone, his glasses, and any hope of being easily tracked.
Newly released police reports, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by researcher Sara Bondink, reveal that the 68-year-old former commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory had flown alone to Washington, D.C. just days before vanishing to resign from the board of Riverside Research, a nonprofit that holds Pentagon and intelligence community contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
He was also trying to step down from at least three other government-connected advisory roles, and at one, a University Affiliated Research Center tied to an unnamed school, leadership was actively trying to convince him to stay.
The police reports paint a picture of a man methodically severing ties. A March 3 interview between McCasland's wife, Susan Wilkerson, and a member of the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Ghost Unit, a division that typically handles anti-gang and human trafficking cases, documented the scope of McCasland's involvement in classified defense work at the time of his disappearance.
He was still an active member of at least four different groups with deep ties to national defense secrets. He served as a paid consultant for Sandia National Laboratories, the government-owned facility that develops advanced technology for national security, including nuclear weapons. He sat on the board of Riverside Research. He was a member of the Kirtland Partnership, a nonprofit that works to protect and expand Kirtland Air Force Base's military research mission. And he held a position with the unnamed university research center.
The reason McCasland gave his wife for quitting Riverside Research was blunt. The police report states: "Upon returning to New Mexico, Neil told Susan that he resigned from the board of Riverside Research because he could not keep up, mentally, with the conversation."
That explanation, fears of severe mental decline, sits uneasily alongside other details in the record.
On the evening of February 26, McCasland attended a dinner with Kirtland Partnership members and U.S. Space Force personnel. An unidentified woman who was present later called police after seeing a missing-persons alert.
"I was shocked this morning when I saw the alert because what I noticed Thursday evening is that he wasn't his usual self. He was kind of spacey and quiet and you know that that happens with people."
That same witness, whose phone call was obtained by the Law&Crime Network, offered a telling observation about McCasland's significance. "He was the head of Air Force Research Lab to the point the man's names are in the UFO documents that are fixed to be released," she told police. "He's in that depth, so he has a very high security clearance."
Earlier that day, McCasland had been spotted at a local sporting goods store carrying an unidentified parcel and what appeared to be a portable first aid kit.
By the next morning, he was gone.
McCasland walked out of his home near Quail Run Court NE in Albuquerque at approximately 11 a.m. on February 27. He left his cellphone. He left his wearable devices. He left his glasses. He changed into clothes his wife did not recognize.
He took a pair of boots and a.38-caliber revolver.
His wife told 911 dispatchers that McCasland appeared to be trying "not to be found." A wallet, the revolver with a leather holster, and a red backpack were confirmed missing from the home. On March 7, a gray U.S. Air Force sweatshirt was found 1.25 miles east of his residence, though his family could not confirm it belonged to him.
The search has been extensive, drones, helicopters, dogs, and FBI resources, but fruitless. Unseasonably warm spring temperatures in the Albuquerque area made thermal drone imaging nearly useless. Lt. Kyle Woods explained that heat radiating from rocks made it impossible to differentiate heat signatures: "The mountain was just lit up like a candle even at night."
Dozens of tips poured in. Bernalillo County Sheriff Josh Allen acknowledged the range of speculation: "There are some tips with some outlandish theories, conspiracy theories, we will look into everything."
McCasland's disappearance would be alarming enough on its own, a retired two-star general with decades of classified work simply walking away from his life. But the case has drawn intense public attention because of McCasland's alleged links to some of the government's most closely guarded secrets about unidentified aerial phenomena.
McCasland commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory from 2011 to 2013. Before that, he headed AFRL's Phillips Research Site at Kirtland Air Force Base. At Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, he managed a $2.2 billion science and technology program, at a facility that UFO researchers have long connected to alleged extraterrestrial debris from the 1947 Roswell incident.
In early May, Air Force veteran and UFO whistleblower David Grusch specifically named McCasland as one of the officers who had been in charge of classified programs related to what Grusch described as non-human craft recovery and reverse-engineering. Grusch also alleged that McCasland had not been cooperative with recent efforts by lawmakers seeking to interview him about his knowledge of those programs.
Unspecified government officials have indicated McCasland was still being considered a key witness in ongoing efforts to declassify decades-old secrets related to UFOs. His disappearance came just over a week after President Trump ordered the release of government UFO-related files, a timeline the Washington Examiner noted in its coverage of the case.
One detail in the police reports deserves particular scrutiny. Wilkerson had previously claimed on social media that her husband no longer possessed any top-secret clearances with the U.S. government. But the March 3 police interview documented that McCasland was still actively embedded in at least four groups with deep ties to national defense secrets, and was only in the process of trying to resign from them.
The anonymous dinner witness told police flatly that McCasland held "a very high security clearance." Whether Wilkerson's earlier public statement was inaccurate, outdated, or deliberately misleading remains unclear. But the gap between what she said publicly and what the police report reflects is notable.
Wilkerson has also pushed back on characterizations of her husband as confused or suffering from dementia. "Neil is at some risk, but not from dementia," she said. "He was not confused and disoriented." A Silver Alert was issued due to an unspecified medical condition, but investigators have stressed that McCasland appeared mentally sharp at the time of his disappearance.
No evidence of foul play has been found.
McCasland is not the only person connected to U.S. nuclear and defense secrets to vanish in the region. The White House tasked the FBI with investigating his disappearance alongside the disappearances of other individuals tied to nuclear secrets in the New Mexico area over the past year.
Only one person from this broader group has been found. The remains of Melissa Casias, a Los Alamos National Lab worker, were discovered in a New Mexico park on May 28. The circumstances of her death have not been detailed publicly.
James Tegnalia, a board member of the Kirtland Partnership Committee, captured the unease surrounding McCasland's case in remarks to Newsmax: "He's not the kind of person that you would expect to disappear."
Four months after McCasland walked out his front door, the FBI investigation has produced no confirmed sightings. The sheriff's office says it is utilizing all possible resources and still considering all possible scenarios. The questions that remain, about what McCasland knew, why he was trying to leave, and where he went, grow heavier with each passing week.
The FOIA-obtained police reports raise as many questions as they answer. Which university runs the research center McCasland was trying to leave? What did the FBI find, if anything, when it took over the case? Who are the other missing individuals tied to nuclear secrets in New Mexico? And what, precisely, did McCasland know about classified programs that made lawmakers eager to interview him and whistleblowers willing to name him publicly?
The Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office authored the reports. The FBI joined the search. The White House ordered the investigation broadened. And still, a 68-year-old retired general who spent his career at the highest levels of American defense research remains missing, carrying nothing but a revolver and whatever he knew.
When a man embedded that deeply in the national security apparatus decides he needs out, and then vanishes, the country deserves answers, not silence.
