More Than 10 Scientists Dead or Missing — FBI, Congress Launch Probe as Trump Flags ‘Pretty Serious Stuff’

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Congress have launched an investigation into the mysterious deaths and disappearances of scientists believed to possess sensitive information.

In recent years, more than 10 U.S. scientists connected to nuclear, defense, or space programs have vanished or died under suspicious circumstances, leading to social media speculation. On April 16, President Donald Trump called the matter ‘pretty serious stuff.’

The following day, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced on X that the government would work with the FBI to review these cases. FBI director Kash Patel confirmed that the agency has begun investigating and is looking for possible connections between the deaths and disappearances.

“We started this process last week, and then we're going to look for connections, on whether there are connections to classified access, access to classified information and or foreign actors, and then we will produce that information to the White House and the world because it's of such great public importance,” Patel said in a statement to Fox News.

Meanwhile, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform confirmed that it will also probe the issue. Kentucky Rep. James Comer, who heads the committee, said, “It does appear that there’s a high possibility that something sinister is taking place here.”

“It's very unlikely that this is a coincidence. Congress is very concerned about this. Our committee is making this one of our priorities now because we view this as a national security threat,” Comer said.

The committee is seeking information from the FBI, the Department of Defense (DoD), NASA, and the Department of Energy (DoE) to gather more details about the scientists and what happened to them.

Comer said, “We want to know everything that they know about what happened with these scientists because those four agencies were predominantly the agencies that those 11 individuals were affiliated with.”

A number of high-profile scientists and experts have died or disappeared in recent years. The most recent case occurred in February, when former chief of the Air Force Research Laboratory, William Neil McCasland, went missing after a walk in New Mexico. McCasland previously dealt with classified aerospace and UFO-related material.

In August 2025, Steven Garcia, a government contractor at the Kansas City National Security Campus, vanished without trace. Two months earlier, Monica Reza, a materials scientist for Aerojet Rocketdyne, disappeared during a hike in the Angeles National Forest.

The FBI and Congress will also be investigating the death of Nuno Loureiro, a fusion energy researcher at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center, who was found shot in his apartment in 2025. Amy Eskridge, a specialist in anti-gravity technologies, died from a gunshot wound to the head in June 2022.

Additionally, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Frank Maiwald and veteran researcher Michael David Hicks died under ‘unclear circumstances’ with no cause of death disclosed.