Transcription
My husband is missing. It's been about 3 hours and I have some indication that he must have planned not to be found. He turned it off and left it behind, which seems kind of deliberate.
That is the wife of retired Air Force Major General William Neil McCasslin. Heard in a 911 call that had never been released until now.
I think he's on foot. All of our cars and bicycles are in the garage. This is a big new development in the story that we have been covering of a missing man with work tied to Wright Patterson Air Force Base, a place long rumored to be connected to Roswell and UFOs. And now he apparently walks out of his house in the middle of the day, allegedly changes his clothes and vanishes. So what happened in that narrow window between when his wife left and when she came home? And one of the most highly trained men in the US military is just gone. Let's talk about it.
Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. A retired twostar Air Force general allegedly walks out of his house in the middle of the day. Apparently leaves his phone, his glasses, his smartwatch, seemingly changes his clothes into something that his wife apparently can't identify. And then nothing for weeks. No sightings, no video, no answers, just speculation. UFOs, government secrets, a name tied to hacked emails about Roswell. But right now, we have something new. We have something in our hands that as of right now, at the time we're publishing this, we haven't seen anyone else publish it. This is a brand new 911 call from his wife made just hours after he vanished. And I want you to listen. This is part of it. I want you to listen to what she tells the dispatcher.
My husband is missing. Okay.
And he's it's been about 3 hours and I have some indication that he must have planned not to be found.
That again is the wife of retired Major General William McCasslin and what she says next about his mental state about him not wanting to be found. We're not only going to break it down, but we're also going to bring in somebody to help make sense of this. A key law enforcement expert with the Cold Case Foundation. Because when weeks go by with no answers, when a man who spent his career inside America's most secretive programs just vanishes into thin air, where do investigators even start? Where did they go? What do we make of this 911 phone call? Now, before we even get into this new audio that we haven't heard before, I need to put all of this into context so the call will make sense. Okay, who exactly are we talking about? Who exactly are we looking for? William Neil McCasslin, 68 years old, retired major general, United States Air Force. This isn't some random guy who wandered off. This is somebody who spent 34 years apparently working on some of the most sensitive technology the military has. Astronautical engineering, space acquisition, the National Reconnaissance Office, that's the spy satellite people. And eventually he took command of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Now Wright Patterson, it's important. For decades, conspiracy theorists have claimed that is where the government secretly stored debris from Roswell. The Air Force, to be clear, has never confirmed that, but the association sticks. And as we continue to cover this case, a person like this goes missing, people start talking, people start speculating. Now, the conspiracy theories aside, here's what we actually do know. We know that it was February 27th a Thursday morning. Now, according to the Bernal Leo County Sheriff's Office, around 10:00 a.m., a repairman shows up at McCasslin's home on Quail Run Court in Albuquerque in New Mexico. Scheduled appointment, goes inside, interacts with McCasslin, that's confirmed, and about an hour later, 11:10, his wife Susan leaves for a doctor's appointment. When she gets back just afternoon 12:04, he's apparently gone. Now, at first glance, maybe he stepped out for a walk. He's an avid outdoorsman, hiking, biking, skiing, knew those foothills cold in the area. But then she starts looking around. His phone still on the counter, his prescription glasses sitting there, his smartwatch abandoned there, and his clothes. She says she knew what he was wearing when she left. But, and this is interesting, she ends up finding those clothes later in the closet. So, he seemingly changed into something else, something she can't identify right now. So, she calls 911 and right away she says something that will just stop you cold. Again, this is new audio. We haven't heard it before. Take a listen.
This is April. How may I help you?
Hi, April. My name is Susan Wilkerson. Um, my husband is missing.
Okay.
And he's It's been about 3 hours and I have some indication that he must have planned not to be found. He's left his phone. He changed his clothes into I don't know what. I think he's on foot. All of our cars and bicycles are in the garage. I left for a doctor's appointment at about 11:10 and uh he was here at that time at the house and I got back from that at noon and he was gone. He turned it off and left it behind which seems kind of deliberate because he's always got his phone. He has a smartwatch. I don't know if that's with him or not.
Has he ever done this before?
Never. Nothing even remotely like it. He's a retired Air Force major general. He's very responsible, but he's also facing some medical issues.
Do you have any video at your home?
No.
Has he been diagnosed with any mental um disorders or anything like that?
Well, we've been seeing a doc for both physical and mental in terms of anxiety, short-term memory loss, lack of sleep. The same doc I went to see today.
Does he carry any weapons on him?
Well, not generally. I He does have a gun safe and I went to look in the gun safe to see if anything was missing, but I couldn't tell if anything was. There's
Okay. He has quite a number of pistols and rifles. Other than saying if his brain body keeps deteriorating, he didn't want to live like that. But it seemed to me that was just a man, I hate how this is going kind of thing. Cuz I told him, "Yes, you do. Yes, you do."
Okay, we're going to send some deputies up to talk to you. See if we can search a little bit and see what's going on. Okay.
Sure. Thank you very much.
You're welcome, ma'am.
So, here's a question. Okay. You're a 911 dispatcher. A woman calls, says her husband, this former major general, walked out of the house hours ago, no phone, no glasses, apparently changed his clothes, and she says he planned not to have been found. I mean, honestly, what goes through your head about that? How do you even start the investigation? And by the way, how does the wife know this, right? That's key, right? What about his routine? What about did she know about him? Says that this is a situation that he may have taken active steps to not be found. So to help answer all of this, to get reaction to this, to figure out where this investigation goes from here, we're bringing in somebody who has been doing this work for decades. Chris Madonna is director of law enforcement relations and an investigative consultant with the Cold Case Foundation. Chris, so good to see you. Thanks for taking the time.
Thank you, Jesse. Appreciate the invitation. Bud,
Will you tell me what stands out to you the most about that call?
Well, right away, I mean, the the first red flag with inside that phone call is just that comment, you know, uh he must have a plan or something to that effect. And you know, that's kind of one of these anomalies, right? What we would call DLR, doesn't look right or doesn't sound right. And not that it couldn't be right. It's that would be like the first step off point uh when the first officer gets on the scene to start uh looking into this thing.
The idea that he not, you know, she didn't say someone must have taken him, someone must have done something to him. There was this acknowledgment that based on the man she knows and in particular about the clothing and the items left behind that he did this that he didn't want to be found. You know, you compare it to the Nancy Guthrie case, which is uh obviously different, but there wasn't an indication. Well, maybe initially we weren't entirely sure what happened, but it was pretty clear this wasn't a wandering off situation, you know, and yes, she's uh much older than McCasslin, but the idea that he must have planned not to be found is very, very interesting.
Yeah. I mean, because who's introducing that plan, right? We hear it very first on the 911 call. He planned not to be found. Well, all right. When the first deputy gets on the scene and they start, you know, they have a couple of priorities. The first priority is to see if there's any suspicious activity in relationship to how the environment looks. Okay. Then the second activity there that's going on simultaneously is you're interviewing witnesses and in this case the family, the wife, and you want to lock them into a statement so that you know later on when the investigators get on scene and if it didn't sound right or it doesn't look right like we were talking a moment ago then you know you tell that to your first responding investigators. And third piece of that puzzle is you got to start looking through the house and you have to start looking through the anomalies that she may have been talking about on the phone. I.e. she has a lot of guns, he's been going through a lot of mental stuff, we went to the same doctor, etc. And you want to start looking for evidence that will correlate to the truthfulness of potentially that statement. So in this case, it is critical and would have been critical right from the very moment that first deputy got on scene uh to potentially start telling the story.
I think the clothes were a big indication, right? You know, the idea that the clothes was so does it become almost impossible to know what he was wearing then? I mean, do you how do you know the whole wardrobe collection of a human being even if you're married to them and also unless they purchased clothes beforehand that they hadn't worn before? That seems like a challenge in it in and of itself.
Yeah. Right. And and this is why you don't go into these in investigations asking the word how, but always asking the word why. Why would he have left, you know, the items behind like his cell phone, his prescription glasses, all the wearables, right? The things that you're going to need out there in the world. And so you have to start breaking that down. And then you have to start plugging those, you know, gaps of really gum shoe investigative techniques. I mean, the strongest tool for any surgeon is a is a scalpel, but for an investigator, it's the question. So, the very first type of questions that are put out to the witnesses slash even the wife and the family, those are going to tell you the wounds potentially with inside this investigation. and you're going to be able to figure out, okay, how do I need to stitch these wounds up where investigators get screwed up is they write the prescription without doing the diagnosis. And so sometimes, you know, if somebody was, you know, if there's foul play here, well, the suspect has the advantage in that situation. And, you know, some of the red flags that even like you're talking about there jump right out the he missing hiking boots, you know, the a gun, etc. But where is all of this coming from? It's coming from the inside of his home, i.e. through the witnesses that last saw him. And so, you want to make sure that you're cutting through that pretty quickly with the right type of questioning and and interviewing techniques.
And I wonder if there's a complication that this is not just John Smith who disappears, but this is somebody who has training. This is somebody who's an outdoorsman. And you wonder if this is the case where they don't want to be found. Is it likely they won't be found?
Well, you know, that's always a possibility, right? I mean, with his military training, um the question is if he's wandering away from his house, you have to now do what they call a geographical profile and say, okay, you know, how far would this guy get? He's 68 years old, may have some upcoming health issues, but he's also healthy. uh based on what you know his wife is saying, he doesn't have any dementia issues uh per se. So immediately you'd want to talk to his doctors. Uh you'd want to talk to the last people that saw him and try to tighten up that that timeline. Uh and then simultaneously if he doesn't want to be found uh then you want to start looking for a digital footprint in today's environment.
I I just want to go back to the mental health aspect of it, right? I I think that's really a concerning chilling part of it. The lack of sleep, short-term memory loss, anxiety, if my brain and body keeps deteriorating, a question of whether or not he wants to live like that. One of the challenges is if we are dealing with a situation somebody did something to themselves, how on earth is it possible that with all of these agencies looking for him that he still can't be found? That's why there are others who believe, was he apprehended? Was he taken? Um or again you go back to the idea you said how can someone just disappear but that that's the part that's challenging right even if somebody did something to themselves where where are they where's their body?
Well, you know, this is a really interesting case and where where uh I used to work in San Diego County we had we had a case in Rancho Santa Fe it was called his name was Ian Spiro uh I don't know if you've ever heard of that name but he lived in a very wealthy neighborhood uh his family, four members of his family, his three children and his wife were found uh deceased in his house. Uh and then he was later found, you know, in I I believe it was the Burggo Desert in his vehicle and he had drank uh uh some cyanide and everybody didn't know who he was at the time. Uh, but you know, just fast forward here and the correlations is he ended up being some highlevel government uh operative where he was a gun dealer uh etc etc and to this day that case still has not been solved. Uh, and th this has the smell of something like that where, you know, you have this highlevel government guy uh who just, you know, decides, hey, I'm just going to walk away from my house. Uh, they find a potential piece of clothing, you know, a couple of miles away. But to your point, he's just evaporated. Now, people can do that, but there's also, to your point, all these other conspiracies come coming up here. And you have to ask yourself, okay, well, what's going on in that house first? And you don't leave that environment because in this case, he's a very lowrisk uh victim. Uh meaning his environment, he's at his house, his situation, he's at his house, his circumstance. it's early in the morning. That puts him way down on the lowrisk uh thing. So, there's a higher probability that he was either targeted by somebody he knew or somebody that had access to his environment.
And that window, that window, the sheriff's office releases the timeline, repairman at 10:00 a.m., wife leaves 11:10, she's back 12:04. It's such a narrow window. And you wonder how investigators, you know, work a timeline like that. And the sheriff's office, by the way, has been pretty open about how unusual all this is. Here's how they put it.
His wearable devices and taking his phone were common practice with him. That is out of the norm. We said from the get-go that this was an abnormal behavior by his part. And thus, we are looking at every possible aspect of it and willing to unturn any stone that we can in order to help identify where Mr. McCasslin is.
And apparently, they searched hard. Drones, helicopters, canine unit, cadaver dogs, grid searched the canyon where his wearable devices showed he hiked. And here's the thing, they later found the green shirt and the hiking boots that they thought he left in. This was at the family second home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. So, they don't actually know what he was wearing. And by the way, the sheriff's office addressed that, too.
We've received a lot of tips about items that have been located. We check every one of them. We check with family and friends to see if those are items that were known to be utilized by him or owned by him and we'll continue to do that. So that's the update on these items that you are seeing being brought forward. We're not saying he left in them. They are just unaccounted for.
So Chris, you're hearing the response from law enforcement. It's been a while now. Where do you think they are at at the investigation?
Well, hopefully they're at a situation where they're starting to look at that digital footprint if it exists. If in fact those items are connected to this particular disappearance and they're found at a different location, that means you you potentially have two crime scenes here. And so now you have to connect those dots, right? How do we get from point A to point B? Uh and then, you know, from there you have to work it backwards. Did he have did he have a plan? I mean, let's say this was an intentional walk away. What was what was part of that plan? Well, if it's a rental car or if it's a you know, some type of vehicle that would be utilized to get to that second location, then that information is going to be available to law enforcement. They're eventually going to find that. Uh but if there's let's say another situation where he runs into somebody you know who has um you know in will uh bad intent for lack of a better term. Uh I've I've had a kidnapping case where uh a mother left the pot of potatoes on the store and she went to the local grocery store and she vanished and we found her 4 months later she was buried. Uh, and we also discovered that she the suspects that she ran into were at the grocery store and it was a kidnapping for robbery. Uh, and so if this is a situation where let's say he goes out and then he runs into somebody.
Yeah.
We don't know if that if that's a possibility that could have taken him to a secondary location and said, "Okay, we're going to go from here."
Yeah. Or he wanted to meet with somebody. We just don't know because again it's such a narrow window when he left. Very when he was went missing. I mean, goes missing right after the wife leaves. Those the items are left. It's difficult to know one way or another. And then there's the gun, by the way. So, this 38 caliber revolver, the leather holster, still missing. Sheriff's office was asked if he normally carried it. Take a look.
He wouldn't commonly hike with a weapon on him. That would be relegated for maybe overnight camping trips and things of that sort. And then it was for personal protection. So, what are we looking for with that? Um well, if uh say General McCasslin had recently gone to a pawn shop and and sold that off and we just weren't aware of that or his wife wasn't aware of that, we'd want to know that. And so that would be something that would be of interest. If someone is hiking in the mountains and finds um a spent 38 special casing, that would be unique that we would want to be able to to take and and process. Um, so that's why we're putting that information out.
Yeah, Chris, real quick. I mean, that's a really smart police work to try to figure out how the gun could be connected, but I haven't heard any updates about it. So, I wonder if that's a dead end now.
Um, it could be, Jesse. It actually could. And the anomaly there is he took it with a holster. Okay. If you're gonna, you know, typically with somebody's going to do self harm, for lack of a better term, why do you need the holster? Okay. I mean, I've seen so many death scenes that if somebody's going to take care of business, I either going to hurt themselves. They're just going to tuck that weapon right in, you know, potentially in into their pants or carry it or whatever. I I would I would challenge and say maybe it was maybe again if we're talking about him taking it
custom I mean it was his it's process he always kept it in the holster let's say and maybe I don't know what distance he might have traveled it would have been whatever alleged plan he had or whatever he wanted to do you know it would have been more secure to have it in the holster before he decided to use it or if he needed to use
right and and I wouldn't disagree with that at all but at the same time he's going to go to a location where they're going to find his body and they haven't discovered that at this point. So, it's almost like these items are mentioned to create this confusion.
And that's I guess where I'm going there in that thought process. It's like there's too many little details that do not make sense. You know, the the boots, you know, the wallet, all the stuff that he left behind, but he takes his gun and it's like, well, wait a minute. That that that's not lining up. There's another layer to this story that a lot of people just can't stop talking about. I want to get your take on it because McCaslin apparently isn't the only person in his orbit who's disappeared or died under strange circumstances. There is Melissa Casius worked as an administrative assistant at Los Alamos National Laboratory. This is the same lab that developed the atomic bomb. She vanished in June of 2025. Walked away from her car, left her phone, wallet, keys behind. Last seen on camera walking alone on the highway, gone. There's Monica Resza, a NASA rocket scientist, disappeared while hiking with friends in California just four days before Casius vanished. She worked on a project funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory, the same lab that McCasslin used to oversee. And then there's Carl Gilmare, renowned astrophysicist, shot dead at his home in California in February, right around the time that McCasslin went missing. His shooter was arrested. Worked on telescope uh projects that were powered by military technology that was monitored by that same lab. And to be clear, I'm not saying all this is connected. Correlation is not causation. But do you see a disturbing pattern here? Uh do you think this should all be investigated?
Absolutely. I mean with with those types of uh uh connections right who's in a circle of influence and now you know all these other individuals have also you know disappeared and it's interesting look the correlations in relationship to hiking okay and just people outdoors all of these events occurring outdoors uh if if you know that in of itself is suspicious you know what are the odds of you know u a team working together. Uh, and this explains and then disappearing together. And that this explains why the FBI is involved in this and it's not just a local issue from the sheriff's department. That was one of the things that jumped out right away to me. It's like, why are the feds involved in this? Yeah, the guy's retired military. I mean, my father was in the Marine Corps for 31 years, okay? But if he went dis if he disappeared, the federal FBI wouldn't become knocking on my door. Okay? And so there's there's a real, you know, challenge there when we see them involved. And maybe it's to your point because there potentially could be a correlation.
Former FBI assistant director uh Chris Swcker told the Daily Mail that investigators just can't look at these cases in isolation. He said, quote, "The FBI can't have these examined in isolation and compartmentalize them as individual missing person cases." You have Congressman Eric Berles also called for the FBI to get involved. He said the disappearances are deeply concerning. And then I want to go to this other aspect, the UFO angle, because McCaslin's name shows up in those hacked Wikileaks emails. Tom Dong talking about him as the guy who ran the lab at Wright Patterson, same place that Roswell Debris supposedly went. Tom Dong from Blink182. Sheriff's Office was asked about this. Their answer was basically just because it's crazy doesn't mean it's not true, but we can't investigate that. And I've asked a bunch of guests that I've talked to about this. how far can they go in terms of looking at his past and looking at his history and looking at what he was working on because I imagine there's issues of uh uh you know security clearance and classified documents. Talk to me about that.
Well, they can't go very far. Uh even the feds can't go very far, the FBI, unless you know there's, you know, what they call green card security clearances. and the the fact that all of these things are compartmentalized i.e. you know, some of these projects may have been top secret, etc., etc. Uh, you know, you can get close to the door, but that doesn't mean that door is going to open. And and that was one of the interesting things with the Ian Spiro case that I was talking about. Uh, the the news got as close as yes, there was some government connections, i.e., he was uh uh potentially looked at as one of the arms dealer during the Iran Contra gun supply. Okay. And so once it got to that level, that that's as far as it went. And that case to this day again has never been solved. Uh and that was in the '90s. And so is this going to fall into that bucket where everybody's going to get close and because of the other, you know, highlevel projects that this guy was overseeing, they can't get close enough.
Bottom line is we don't know what happened to him. We just don't know. That's the honest answer. I will say if you were in the Sandy Foothills on February 27th, 28th, check your cameras, the doorbell footage, dash cams, photos you took that day. You can submit tips to the Bernal Leo County Sheriff's Office Missing Persons Unit at 505-468770. You can text anonymously through tip 411. Text BCSO and your tip to 847411. Chris, thank you so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it.
Thank you, Jesse.
But that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Everybody, thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcast. You can also check us out on NBC's Peacock as well. If you want to follow me, X Instagram, my NewsNation show, Jesse Weber Live, Monday through Friday, 11:00 p.m. Eastern. I'll see you next time, everybody.