Another person with links to America’s nuclear secrets has gone missing as the disturbing list of deaths and disappearances in recent years continues to grow. 

Steven Garcia, 48, vanished without a trace on August 28, 2025. He was last seen leaving his Albuquerque, New Mexico home on foot, carrying only a handgun.

An anonymous source told the Daily Mail that Garcia was a government contractor working for the Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC), a major facility in Albuquerque that plays a key behind-the-scenes role in America’s national defense.

Specifically, KCNSC manufactures more than 80 percent of all the non-nuclear components that go into building the military’s nuclear weapons.

Garcia allegedly served as a property custodian at KCNSC’s New Mexico facility, giving him a top security clearance and broad access to the entire site’s nuclear secrets.  

The source described Garcia’s work as ‘a very high-level, overseeing position for all the assets. Tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars in equipment and assets, some of which are not classified, others would be classified.’

The government contractor’s sudden disappearance marks the tenth person with ties to America’s space or nuclear secrets who has died or mysteriously vanished in recent years, putting US national security experts on edge.

Moreover, four of these officials have vanished without a trace in almost the same manner as Garcia, and all had a connection to US nuclear secrets or rocket technology.

The Daily Mail has reached out to KCNSC and the US Department of Energy, which owns and oversees the facility, to confirm Garcia’s work at the site and for comment on his disappearance.

According to police in Albuquerque, Garcia was last spotted on surveillance cameras walking out of his home on Cattail Court SW in a green camouflage shirt and shorts just after 9am local time.

He was also seen carrying a handgun, and authorities warned that Garcia ‘may be a danger to himself.’

However, the anonymous source disputed any suggestions that the nuclear official may have been suicidal or was battling mental health issues.

‘He was a very stable person,’ they declared, adding that the possibility of Garcia being the target of foreign spies ‘makes the most sense.’

Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker previously told the Daily Mail: ’Our scientists have been targeted for a long time, especially in the rocket propulsion area, by hostile foreign intelligence services.’

Days after Garcia’s disappearance, KCNSC reportedly launched a desperate search for the missing contractor, including going through his work computers, emails and files for any clues to his whereabouts, but nothing has been found.

‘It’s a little strange that these people just keep disappearing. I mean, he literally just walked off into the desert with a firearm and a bottle of water and that was it,’ the source said, comparing it to the disappearance of retired Air Force General William Neil McCasland.

McCasland, 68, who also lived in Albuquerque, vanished after leaving his home on February 27, 2026, with no phone, wearable devices or his prescription glasses. The Air Force veteran was only carrying a .38-caliber revolver.

Two other individuals in New Mexico with a connection to US nuclear facilities disappeared under identical circumstances in 2025. 

Anthony Chavez and Melissa Casias both worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), one the nation’s most important nuclear research sites.

Chavez, 79, worked at the lab until his retirement in 2017, although his role there has not been made clear. Casias, 54, was an active administrative assistant at the facility and is believed to have had top security clearance.

Both were last seen leaving their homes in New Mexico on foot, leaving behind their cars, keys, wallets and phones before disappearing without a trace less than four months before Garcia vanished.

All three, Garcia, Chavez and Casias, have been tied to General McCasland, who was the former commander of the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) and oversaw research at Kirtland Air Force Base from 2001 to 2004.

Kirtland, KCNSC and LANL work closely together on national security projects, especially research involving America’s nuclear capabilities.

‘That entire mission runs out of Kirtland Air Force Base. A big part of it, including the technology and the production of the technology that they use, is all built in Albuquerque. So McCasland would have absolutely known and been to these facilities,’ a source revealed.

Fearing that a foreign power may be taking aim at America’s nuclear program again, Swecker noted: ’I think we’ve even seen instances where nuclear scientists have been taken out. They’ve been assassinated.’ 

Meanwhile, NASA scientist Monica Jacinto Reza, 60, disappeared while hiking with friends in California on June 22, 2025. 

The director of the Materials Processing Group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has also been directly tied to General McCasland through her work to invent a space-age metal called Mondaloy. The project was funded directly by AFRL while McCasland was overseeing her lab from 2011 to 2013.

In addition to the string of disappearances in the Southwest, five scientists in key areas of research have died over the last three years, including two who were murdered in their own homes.

Nuno Loureiro, 47, was assassinated at his home in the Boston suburb of Brookline on December 15, 2025. Authorities said the gunman was Claudio Neves Valente, a former classmate from Portugal.

However, a former FBI official and independent investigators have noted that Loureiro’s revolutionary work in nuclear fusion may have made him a target of a greater conspiracy against US scientists.

Astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, 67, was shot to death on the front porch of his home on February 16, 2026. The California Institute of Technology researcher’s work had been heavily supported by NASA’s JPL, including major space telescope missions led by NASA.

Grillmair’s work with the NEOWISE and NEO Surveyor has also been linked to the Air Force, as the NASA telescopes used the same systems the military relies on to track satellites and hypersonic missiles.

Two other men with deep ties to NASA JPL died recently, with the circumstances surrounding their passings remaining a mystery. 

NASA scientist Frank Maiwald reportedly died on July 4, 2024 in Los Angeles at the age of 61, but the cause of death has never been made public, and officials confirmed that an autopsy was never performed.

In June 2023, just 13 months before his death, he was the lead researcher on a breakthrough that could help future space missions detect clear signs of life on other worlds, including Jupiter’s moon Europa, Saturn’s moon Enceladus, or the dwarf planet Ceres.

Michael David Hicks, a research scientist at NASA JPL, passed away on July 30, 2023 at the age of 59, but the cause of death was never made public, and no record of an autopsy being performed could be found.

Hicks had been involved with the DART Project, NASA’s test to see if humans could deflect dangerous asteroids away from Earth. He also worked on the Deep Space 1 Mission, which tested new spacecraft technology that flew by a comet in 2001.

NASA JPL has not commented on the deaths of Maiwald or Hicks, and did not reply to Daily Mail’s inquiries into the nature of the scientists’ work before their deaths.

In another mysterious incident, Jason Thomas, a pharmaceutical researcher testing cancer treatments at Novartis, was found dead in a Massachusetts lake on March 17, 2026, after disappearing without a trace three months earlier.