As investigators look to piece together how the mysterious deaths and disappearances of roughly a dozen experts tied to secretive US research facilities occurred, a disturbing pattern has emerged, the Daily Mail can reveal.
One of the victims was Anthony Chavez, a former Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) employee, who disappeared without a trace on May 4 last year.
The 78-year-old worked at the company, one of America’s key nuclear research facilities, until his retirement in 2017.
Shortly before he vanished, Chavez purchased a 9mm pistol for self-defense, according to police records obtained by the Daily Mail.
Chavez was ‘in good spirits’ at the time of the purchase and did not express suicidal thoughts or fear for his safety prior to buying the firearm, the documents said.
He disappeared before he could pick the weapon up from a Santa Fe sporting goods store.
Police records also revealed that Chavez, a former HVAC technician, was allegedly mentored by an ‘unknown scientist’ at the lab on secret AI and quantum physics projects, focused on the idea of being in ‘two places at once.’
It is the fourth mysterious case tied to a secretive US facility in the past year which involved a handgun, either because an individual went missing after obtaining one, left home carrying one or was found dead beside one.
Anthony Chavez, 78, allegedly worked with a quantum physicist in Los Alamos, according to a police report. He disappeared without a trace in May last year
Carl Buckland, a childhood friend, told police that Chavez had recently purchased a handgun for self-defense and did not appear suicidal
The disappearances of retired Air Force General William Neil McCasland and government contractor Steven Garcia, and the death of lab worker Melissa Casias, also all involved one of the firearms.
On May 28, Casias, an active administrative assistant at LANL, was found dead in New Mexico’s Carson National Forest with a handgun next to her body. Authorities have not disclosed who owned the weapon or released her cause of death.
McCasland and Garcia were both reported to have left their homes carrying handguns. Garcia’s wife, Valerie, told Albuquerque police that the weapon had been taken from her and was registered in her name.
After more than ten individuals were named as having ties to a potential plot against the US scientific community, the White House announced the FBI would review the cases and look for connections between the deaths and disappearances in April.
The group includes NASA scientists, nuclear lab employees and military personnel who have either died under strange circumstances or vanished from their homes in recent years.
President Trump called the matter ‘pretty serious stuff’ and promised an update on the investigation in mid-May. However, there have been no public updates from the FBI since.
McCasland, Garcia, Casias and Chavez had previously been connected through their work at top-secret government research labs, where scientists engaged in experiments involving nuclear weapons.
McCasland (left) was captured on surveillance cameras on February 26, the day before his disappearance. Garcia (right) was last seen on August 28, 2025, carrying a handgun and water
McCasland was the last to disappear, leaving his Albuquerque home on February 27 with only a .38-caliber revolver and a pair of boots.
The retired general had previously been in charge of the Air Force Research Lab, which worked with secretive research labs throughout the US.
Garcia vanished after an argument with his wife on August 28 last year. Like McCasland, he was armed with a revolver.
Garcia was a property custodian at the Kansas City National Security Campus, a major facility that plays a key role in America’s national defense.
The four disappearances had even more in common than the involvement of handguns, as police records in each case show the nuclear lab workers all mysteriously left their homes without any identification, phones or keys.
The documents noted that Chavez’s childhood friend, Carl Buckland, reported the former LANL employee’s disappearance to police.
Buckland claimed that Chavez was being harassed by an unidentified man looking to buy his family’s property for well below market value.
The concerned friend reportedly convinced Chavez to buy the firearm and even claimed that the individual pressuring Chavez to sell, whose name was redacted by police, should be a suspect in the case.
Melissa Casias worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a long-running nuclear research facility, before disappearing on June 26 last year. Her remains were found on May 28
‘Carl wanted to make it clear he feels that the missing person’s case should be a homicide case. Carl could not give any reason why he believed that the missing person, Anthony Chavez, was murdered,’ the police report revealed.
Despite Buckland’s grave fears, authorities reported that first responders searched the Los Alamos area for weeks, looking for any signs of a body, a death by suicide or foul play.
However, over 14 months, every lead and potential sighting reported to the police has turned out to be a case of mistaken identity – including the discovery of a dead body, which resembled Chavez, in New York City in March.
Chavez uncharacteristically left behind his wallet, car keys, cigarettes and the backpack he normally took with him when leaving home.
The report also revealed that the retiree strangely disappeared just three days after visiting his sister, who had been moved to a nursing facility while he prepared to sell her property to pay for her continued care.
Records showed Los Alamos County Police treated this as a serious missing persons case, searching Chavez’s home, his sister’s house, surrounding areas and canyons and checking local hospitals in case the healthy 78-year-old had an accident.
However, local authorities labeled the case ‘inactive’ in October after no clues emerged.
Buckland wrote in a social media post: ‘Please do not give up on Tony… As time goes by, finding him grows more difficult, but not impossible… In any case, his family and friends are desperate to know what happened to him.’
The police report mentioned an individual, whose name was redacted, who allegedly harassed Chavez before his disappearance
Chavez’s friend, Buckland, claimed the 78-year-old was being mentored by an unnamed scientist working on quantum physics
Chavez uncharacteristically left items such as his wallet behind when he went missing
Buckland, who was granted power of attorney over Chavez’s property while the search drags on, did note one mysterious clue his longtime friend told him about before vanishing without a trace.
‘He had a keen interest in AI and quantum physics. He was being mentored by a man he only identified as “a scientist from the Lab,”‘ Buckland posted on Facebook.
Chavez’s friend told police that he had been working with the unnamed Los Alamos scientist on the idea of being ‘in two places at once,’ a concept deeply linked to quantum physics.
Chavez was reportedly an HVAC technician at the lab until his retirement.
How Chavez was connected to, or was assisting, the Los Alamos scientists with potential experiments involving quantum physics or advanced computers remains unclear.
However, working with quantum technology requires super-cooled environments that can reach -459.65F in order for the particles that power them to stay in their active states – a problem that could require the services of an HVAC specialist.
Buckland, a Santa Fe resident, asked for privacy as the search for Chavez continues into a second year, adding: ‘We continue to search for Anthony and remain hopeful that we will find him one way or the other.’
After Casias’s body was found, former FBI agent Ben Hansen said: ‘Just what they have shared is highly, highly suspicious. I don’t know if I give a percentage, but it’s kind of more like an 80 percent foul play versus someone who’s depressed, is the way I see it.’
‘I think either there was an influence from the outside and I’m not saying that it’s energy-directed anything, but foreign adversary influence of some sort,’ Hansen said on the Brian Entin Investigates podcast.
‘The other option is they were enticed. This is the behavior in all these cases, it looks like they thought they were coming back.’
