The loss of life of Los Alamos Nationwide Laboratory employee whose stays had been found practically a 12 months after she went lacking stays shrouded in thriller — after medical experts revealed they will’t decide who left her with a deadly gunshot wound to the pinnacle.
Melissa Casias, 54, disappeared in June 2025 whereas working on the New Mexico laboratory, the place nuclear weapons analysis continues and the primary atomic bomb was developed.
Her daughter reported her lacking after discovering Casias’ two telephones, pockets, identification and laptop computer at her Taos, N.M., house, however no signal of her mom.
In late Could, nearly a 12 months after her disappearance, a hiker stumbled upon Casias’ skeletonized stays in a secluded stretch of northern New Mexico, with a handgun mendacity shut by.
An post-mortem launched this month decided {that a} gunshot wound triggered Casias’ loss of life, however investigators couldn’t conclude whether or not it was self-inflicted, the Los Angeles Instances reported.
Casias’ stays had been in an “superior state of decomposition” when she was discovered, in accordance with the New Mexico Workplace of the Medical Investigator, and dental picture comparisons had been required to determine her.
The situation of her physique additionally restricted investigators’ “capacity to estimate the vary of fireplace, different attainable accidents involving pores and skin, gentle tissues and organs, and underlying pure illness,” the report stated.
Casias’ household has pushed for a extra thorough investigation and maintained that they don’t imagine she killed herself, in accordance with the Instances.
“The situation and circumstances during which Melissa’s stays had been finally found have solely raised extra questions for her household,” the household wrote on a Fb web page devoted to discovering Casias.
“Melissa was a mom. A daughter. A sister. A lady who was deeply cherished. Her household looked for her, fought for her, and refused to surrender on her whereas she was lacking. They won’t quit on her now.”
The unresolved findings come as Casias’ case has grow to be a part of an FBI investigation analyzing attainable connections among the many deaths or disappearances of not less than 10 federal scientists or employees members tied to extremely delicate nationwide security-related analysis.
Former Los Alamos worker Anthony Chavez, 79, vanished with out a hint after leaving his house on foot on Could 4, 2025, simply seven weeks earlier than Casias.
Monica Reza, 60, an aerospace engineer who served because the director of the NASA Lab’s Supplies Processing Group, disappeared whereas mountaineering in a Los Angeles forest simply steps behind two mates, additionally in June 2025
Steven Garcia, a authorities contractor working for a serious facility in Albuquerque, additionally disappeared after strolling out of his house on Aug. 28, 2025, carrying solely a handgun and no identification.
Retired Air Drive Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland, 68, hasn’t been seen since leaving his house in Albuquerque on Feb. 27. The FBI is now concerned in the seek for McCasland, who had deep data on UFOs and was concerned in a few of the Pentagon’s most superior aerospace analysis, The Submit beforehand reported.
