The 11 Scientists Who Died or Disappeared Under Mysterious Circumstances: Part One
The 11 Scientists Who Died or Disappeared: Is There a Connection?
The 11 scientists who died or disappeared under mysterious circumstances have become the center of a growing conspiracy theory, but what were they actually working on?
In Part One, I investigate Michael David Hicks, Frank Maiwald, Nuno Loureiro, Jason Thomas, and Carl Grillmair, tracing their work through NASA, JPL, MIT, Caltech, plasma physics, exoplanets, dark matter, biomedical research, and the search for water beyond Earth. This investigation eventually became large enough that I had to divide it into three parts. Some deaths have fairly straightforward explanations. Others remain less clear. What caught my attention wasn’t simply that these scientists died.
It was what they were working on. And the strange places where some of those lines of research begin to intersect.
Michael David Hicks
Michael David Hicks was born February 7, 1964, and died July 30, 2023, at the age of 59.
Hicks was a planetary scientist who earned his PhD in Lunar and Planetary Sciences from the University of Arizona before working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
His research focused heavily on the physical properties of comets, asteroids, planets, and moons. During his career, he served on the science teams for projects including DART, Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking, the Dawn mission, and NASA’s Deep Space 1 mission.
He was also a prolific researcher, publishing dozens of scientific papers involving subjects ranging from Saturn’s icy moons and Neptune’s moon Triton to Pluto and potentially hazardous asteroids.
There is no publicly confirmed cause of death for Hicks. That alone doesn’t mean something sinister happened. Families frequently keep causes of death private. But Hicks led me somewhere much more interesting.
The JPL Connection
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory sits near Pasadena, California, and is managed by Caltech for NASA. JPL has been involved in some of the most important robotic space missions in history, including Voyager, Galileo, Perseverance, Curiosity, Juno, and numerous Mars missions. It also operates NASA’s Deep Space Network.
But JPL’s history didn’t begin with peaceful little robots rolling around Mars. Its early history is tangled up with rockets, weapons development, military research, and one of the strangest figures in American aerospace history: Jack Parsons.
Parsons was one of the pioneering rocket engineers associated with the group that eventually became JPL. He was also deeply involved in ceremonial magic and Aleister Crowley’s occult system of Thelema.
Parsons participated in what became known as the Babalon Working, an elaborate series of magical rituals conducted with L. Ron Hubbard before Hubbard went on to found Scientology.
And then there is the geography. JPL sits near Devil’s Gate Dam. Devil’s Gate has accumulated its own strange mythology over the decades. The area became associated with occult stories, rituals, disappearances, local legends, and Parsons himself. The dam received its name from a natural rock formation that resembles a face or horned figure. Depending on the photograph, I think it looks more alien than demonic, but that’s another conversation.
The surrounding area was also the site of several disturbing disappearances and attempted kidnappings involving children during the twentieth century. None of that demonstrates a connection to Hicks’ death. But it certainly makes JPL one hell of a rabbit hole. And Hicks wasn’t the last scientist on this list connected to it.
Frank Maiwald
Frank Maiwald died July 4, 2024, at the age of 61. Born in Germany, Maiwald eventually became a spectroscopy engineer at JPL. Spectroscopy involves analyzing electromagnetic radiation emitted or absorbed by matter. In astronomy, spectral signatures can tell scientists an enormous amount about distant objects, including their chemical composition.
Maiwald worked on multiple sophisticated NASA instruments and missions, including microwave radiometers and satellite systems used to study Earth’s oceans and atmosphere. His projects included AMR, SWOT, COWVR, Jason-3, HiFi, and the microwave radiometer aboard the Juno spacecraft currently orbiting Jupiter.
And this is where another theme started appearing.
Water.
A surprising amount of Maiwald’s work involved detecting or studying water. Some of the instruments he helped develop measured ocean circulation, sea levels, atmospheric water vapor, storms, and ocean winds. But his research wasn’t confined to Earth.
One of the papers associated with his work involved using passive microwave technology to probe for subsurface oceans and liquid water in Jupiter’s icy moons. That’s considerably more interesting.
Maiwald spent decades working on highly specialized technology capable of studying planets, atmospheres, oceans, electromagnetic radiation, and potentially water hidden beneath the surfaces of distant moons. He authored or co-authored dozens of publications and accumulated thousands of citations.
According to memorials left by family members and colleagues, he was warm, hardworking, creative, and deeply respected. Several messages suggest that his death was unexpected. One colleague wrote about simply staring toward Mount Wilson after hearing the news and asking himself why. Another remarked that it seemed as though Maiwald had left “in the middle of everything.”
Once again, I could not find a publicly confirmed cause of death.
Now we have two JPL scientists, both highly accomplished, both dying relatively young, within roughly a year of each other, without publicly disclosed causes of death.
Nuno Loureiro
The third scientist is where this story takes a much darker turn. Nuno Loureiro was a theoretical physicist and fusion scientist who served as director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center. He died at 47 after being shot at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, in December 2025.
Loureiro studied physics in Portugal before earning his PhD from Imperial College London. His career took him through Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, and eventually MIT. His research dealt with plasma physics, magnetic reconnection, fusion energy, solar flares, and astrophysical phenomena.Shortly before his death, he was also working with quantum-computing algorithms for plasma-physics simulations.
Police eventually connected his murder to Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, who was also identified as the gunman responsible for a mass shooting at Brown University days earlier. Valente was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside a storage unit in New Hampshire.
Investigators determined that Valente and Loureiro shared an academic connection. Both had attended Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon during overlapping periods. Valente had reportedly been a high-performing student and teaching assistant before his position at the institution ended in 2000. Loureiro continued his academic career, eventually becoming an internationally recognized physicist. Authorities ultimately characterized Loureiro and Brown University as symbolic targets representing failures and perceived injustices in Valente’s life.
That’s the official explanation. And it is certainly possible. But Loureiro wasn’t randomly encountered somewhere. He was shot at his residence. Twenty-five years had passed since the period when the two men attended the same institution. Valente also used a different gun in Loureiro’s murder than the weapon connected to the Brown University shooting.
None of that proves a larger conspiracy. It does, however, make Loureiro’s murder substantially more interesting than simply describing him as another victim of a spree killer.
Plasma, Plasmoids, and UAP
Loureiro published extensively on plasmoids and magnetic reconnection.
Plasmoids are coherent structures of plasma and magnetic fields. They occur naturally in environments including solar winds, comet tails, and Earth’s magnetosphere and are studied extensively in fusion research and astrophysics.
They are also increasingly appearing in discussions about unidentified anomalous phenomena. A 2024 paper published in the Journal of Modern Physics examined what its authors described as self-illuminating, pulsating plasma-like UAP observed in NASA space-shuttle footage and other recordings.
The paper proposed that some plasmoid phenomena may display complex behaviors and even entertained the possibility that they could represent an unusual form of life. That doesn’t mean Loureiro was researching aliens. He wasn’t.
His work was legitimate plasma physics. But plasma physics itself has become increasingly relevant to discussions surrounding certain categories of UAP. Suddenly, Loureiro’s research looked considerably more interesting within the larger pattern I was investigating.
Jason Thomas
Jason Thomas’ story is completely different.
Thomas was an accomplished scientist and associate director of chemical biology at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In December 2025, Thomas disappeared after leaving his home for a late-night walk.
He had recently experienced an unimaginable personal tragedy. His mother had died while receiving hospice care. Shortly afterward, while dealing with her funeral arrangements, Thomas’ father suffered a fatal heart attack and reportedly collapsed in his son’s arms.
Thomas was an only child and extremely close to his parents. His wife described him as deeply affected by their deaths. He had been crying frequently, going for long walks, spending time outdoors, and struggling with pressure at work. His journals reportedly showed that he was considering changing careers.
On December 12, Thomas and his wife went out socially with friends for the first time since his parents’ deaths. After they returned home, Thomas quietly left for a walk. His wife initially wasn’t alarmed because walking was something he regularly did when stressed.
Then he didn’t come home. She discovered that he had left his phone and wallet behind. More strangely, he had placed his Apple Watch inside their mailbox.
Surveillance footage later showed him near the Wakefield train station and railroad tracks. Police searched extensively. K-9 teams and drones were brought in. Investigators checked surveillance footage, financial accounts, transportation records, and reported sightings. Nothing led to Thomas.
One place investigators wanted to search more thoroughly was Lake Quannapowitt, but winter conditions complicated the search because portions of the lake were frozen. Three months later, after the ice thawed, Thomas’ body was recovered from the lake.
Authorities reported that foul play was not suspected. Given the devastating deaths of his parents, his depression, and what his wife discovered in his journals, suicide is an obvious possibility. Unlike several other people in this investigation, Thomas also had no obvious professional connection to astronomy, plasma physics, planetary science, or UAP research.
Thomas earned degrees in physics and biology from Temple University, a doctorate in biophysics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and completed postdoctoral work at Scripps Research Institute.
He joined Novartis in 2010 and eventually became associate director of chemical biology. Novartis is one of the world’s major pharmaceutical companies, with research involving oncology, cardiovascular medicine, neuroscience, immunology, and other areas.
The pharmaceutical connection sent me briefly into the COVID-vaccine rabbit hole because of the larger history of vaccine research and collaborations among major pharmaceutical companies. But that still didn’t connect Thomas to the other scientists. Then I searched for Novartis and space research.
Pharmaceuticals Go to Space
Pharmaceutical companies have increasingly used space and microgravity environments for biomedical research.
Experiments conducted aboard the International Space Station have investigated drug formulation, disease mechanisms, muscle atrophy, bone loss, protein crystallization, and other biological processes that behave differently in microgravity.
Experiments conducted aboard the International Space Station have investigated drug formulation, disease mechanisms, muscle atrophy, bone loss, protein crystallization, and other biological processes that behave differently in microgravity.
Novartis has participated in space-based biomedical research, including studies involving skeletal muscle atrophy. The company has also partnered with Voyager Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing gene therapies for neurological diseases.
That doesn’t mean Jason Thomas personally worked on any of those projects. I found no evidence that he did. But it meant the organization he worked for wasn’t as disconnected from space science as I initially assumed. Still, Thomas remains one of the weakest connections in the larger pattern.
His death may simply be exactly what it appears to be: the tragic end of a man devastated by grief.
Carl Grillmair
Then we get to Carl Grillmair. He was a Canadian astronomer and astrophysicist who spent nearly 30 years at Caltech.
His research involved exoplanets, galactic structure, stellar streams, dark matter, and the history of collisions between the Milky Way and smaller galaxies. He worked with data from major NASA telescope missions including Hubble, Spitzer, and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer.
He worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He was a member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute. And he helped develop techniques for studying exoplanets. One of his most significant accomplishments involved detecting evidence of water in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star. There’s the water again.
Grillmair wasn’t simply studying distant planets. He was helping scientists determine what those planets were made of and whether their environments contained molecules associated with potentially habitable conditions.
He received major NASA recognition, enormous amounts of telescope time, research grants, and participated in projects involving galactic dark matter, stellar debris streams, exoplanets, and the evolution of galaxies.
Then, on February 16, 2026, Grillmair was shot outside his home in Llano, California. He died from a single gunshot wound to the torso. A suspect, 29-year-old Freddy Snyder, was arrested two days later. This case has a documented history behind it. Snyder reportedly lived nearby and had previously trespassed on Grillmair’s property. Grillmair had contacted law enforcement about him months earlier. Snyder had reportedly claimed that he was hunting a coyote on the property. He was arrested on weapons charges but released.
According to Grillmair’s widow, Snyder later returned carrying a baseball bat before eventually returning again on February 16, when Grillmair was killed. She does not believe her husband’s death was connected to a conspiracy. She believes Snyder blamed Grillmair for his previous arrest and killed him in retaliation. And she may be completely right.
But Grillmair’s murder inevitably attracted attention because it happened only about two months after the murder of Nuno Loureiro. Two internationally respected scientists. Both involved in highly advanced areas of physics or astronomy. Both shot at their homes. Within approximately two months of each other. That is going to make people ask questions.
o What Is the Pattern?
At this point in the investigation, I’m not ready to say there is one. There are still six scientists left to examine. These aren’t fringe researchers operating from somebody’s garage. These were highly educated scientists working at some of the most important scientific institutions in the world.
Their research concerns technologies and discoveries that could fundamentally change how we understand energy, space, planetary environments, biology, and potentially life beyond Earth. That doesn’t mean someone is killing scientists to prevent disclosure. It doesn’t mean every death belongs to the same story. In fact, some almost certainly don’t.
Jason Thomas’ death has an obvious personal context. Carl Grillmair’s murder has an identified suspect and documented history of conflict. Authorities have provided a motive for Nuno Loureiro’s murder.
Meanwhile, the causes of death for Michael David Hicks and Frank Maiwald simply haven’t been publicly disclosed. Those distinctions matter. But patterns don’t always begin with answers. There are six more scientists to investigate. And this rabbit hole is nowhere near finished.
f this investigation sounds familiar, it’s because the deeper I dig into UFO history, government programs, strange technology, and the people working at the edges of accepted science, the more these subjects begin crossing paths. I’ve explored many of those connections elsewhere on my blog where I dig into the researchers, programs, conspiracy theories, paranormal history, and high-strangeness rabbit holes that keep resurfacing in stories like this one.
