New Mexico identifies remains of nuclear lab employee missing for a year

Authorities in New Mexico have identified human remains which they recently discovered as those of a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) employee who had been missing for more than a year. In a statement released over the weekend, state police said the remains belonged to Melissa Casias, a 53-year-old resident of Taos, New Mexico, who was last seen walking eastbound along a state highway on 26 June 2025. A hiker had discovered Casias’s remains in the McGaffey Ridge area of the Carson national forest on 28 May 2026, according to the statement from Saturday. “Investigators also learned that a handgun was located alongside the remains,” the state police statement said. Casias’s case was among that of about a dozen US scientists who were linked to space, defense and nuclear research – and had either died or disappeared in recent months. Some of those deaths have been ruled suicides or are otherwise clearly explainable. But the cases collectively have fueled a surge of online speculation and conspiracy theories, gaining congressional members’ attention and even prompting Donald Trump to direct the US government to investigate, saying it was all “pretty serious stuff”. Police said they identified Casias through coordination with the New Mexico medical investigator’s office. They said her cause and manner of death had not immediately been determined. Meanwhile, state police added, the investigation into Casias’s prior disappearance remains ongoing. …