A retired two-star Air Force general with deep ties to classified military research and an unusual consulting role on UFO-related projects has been missing for almost two weeks in New Mexico, and no one can find a trace of him.
Authorities issued a Silver Alert for retired Maj. Gen. William "Neil" McCasland, 68, was last seen at his residence on Quail Run Court in Albuquerque on Feb. 27. He is believed to have left his home on foot. He has not been seen or heard from since.
According to Fox News, the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office, the FBI, and other assisting agencies reported no immediate signs of foul play, according to a statement released on March 6. The search has been extensive. His wife, Susan McCasland Wilkerson, described the scale of the effort in a Facebook post:
"There have been dozens of searchers on foot, both official and friends and neighbors of Neil's, who coordinate with the official sources. There have also been horseback searchers, drones with different capabilities, helicopters, three different types of search dogs, neighborhood canvassing and looking for Ring or wildlife videos."
All of that, and still nothing.
"There has been no indication whatsoever of where he might be."
McCasland is described as an avid outdoorsman who often hikes, runs, and cycles in the Northeast Heights and the Sandia foothills near Albuquerque. On the surface, this could be a tragic but straightforward case of an experienced outdoorsman who encountered trouble in the mountains. The sheriff's office even issued standard hiking safety tips alongside their plea for information.
But McCasland's biography makes the "wrong turn on a trail" theory harder to accept at face value.
Before his retirement in 2013, McCasland commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, one of the most significant military research installations in the country. He also previously commanded Kirtland Air Force Base's Phillips Research Site and Air Force Research Laboratory. Kirtland, notably, served as the headquarters for a military program monitoring unidentified flying objects from 1947 to 1969, according to the government.
And then there is the Blink-182 connection.
According to his wife, McCasland had previously maintained a relationship with Tom DeLonge, the Blink-182 frontman, serving as an unpaid consultant on military and scientific matters related to UFOs for the rocker's fiction and media projects. It is the kind of detail that, in any other missing persons case, would be a bizarre footnote. Here, it adds another layer to an already unusual disappearance.
Susan McCasland Wilkerson has been remarkably candid in her public statements, seemingly anticipating the conspiracy theories that a case like this invites and attempting to defuse them before they metastasize.
She was direct about his mental state, noting that her husband "is at some risk, but not from dementia." She also acknowledged the obvious question about his military background head-on:
"It is true that when Neil was in the Air Force, he had access to some highly classified programs and information."
But she pushed back firmly on the idea that his past access to secrets makes him an abduction target. McCasland retired from the Air Force almost 13 years ago and has held only commonly held clearances since. As his wife put it, "It seems quite unlikely that he was taken to extract very dated secrets from him."
She applied the same logic to the DeLonge consulting relationship, stating plainly that "this connection is not a reason for someone to abduct Neil." She also noted that her husband has no "special knowledge" about extraterrestrials or Roswell, New Mexico.
Then she offered a line that cuts through the tension with the kind of dark humor that only someone living through a nightmare can get away with:
"Though at this point with absolutely no sign of him, maybe the best hypothesis is that aliens beamed him up to the mothership."
She followed that with a dry clarification: "However, no sightings of a mothership hovering above the Sandia Mountains have been reported."
The sheriff's office is casting a broad net, asking the public directly for help and suggesting that people who were in the Sandia Mountains around Feb. 27 or Feb. 28 may have captured something useful on a GoPro or other recording device without even realizing it.
"We believe there are people who have information valuable to locating Neil who have not yet spoken to law enforcement. This could include people who have been in the Sandia mountains and may have seen Neil or captured him on a GoPro or other recording device, specifically on Friday, February 27 or Saturday, February 28."
They urged anyone with information, no matter how minor it may seem, to contact them. Tips can be submitted by texting "BCSO" to 847411 or calling 505-468-7070. McCasland is described as 5 feet, 11 inches tall.
Here is what gnaws at you in this case. An experienced outdoorsman with decades of familiarity with local terrain walks out of his house and vanishes. Dozens of searchers on foot, horseback riders, drones with multiple capabilities, helicopters, and three types of search dogs have turned up nothing. Nobody. No gear. No sighting. No ping from a device. No Ring camera footage that leads anywhere.
No signs of foul play, but also no signs of anything else.
The conspiracy crowd will do what it always does with a story that involves UFOs, classified programs, and a man who ceases to exist one February afternoon. That is predictable and mostly unhelpful. But the straightforward explanations are struggling too. Almost two weeks is a long time for a missing person search to produce zero leads in a defined geographic area with this level of resources deployed.
McCasland spent his career in the world of advanced military research, in places where the government's most closely guarded work happens behind layers of classification that most Americans will never penetrate. He consulted on UFO-related projects with a rock star. He lived in the shadow of mountains that sit near a base once tasked with monitoring unidentified flying objects. None of that necessarily explains his disappearance. But it makes the silence around it louder.
A man walked out of his house in Albuquerque, and the earth swallowed him whole. Somewhere in the Sandia foothills, or somewhere else entirely, there is an answer. No one has found it yet.