William McCasland Link to Missing Rocket Engineer Monica Jacinto Reza
March 17th, 2026Via: The Sentinel Briefing:
On June 22, 2025, a 60-year-old woman waved at her hiking companion on a ridgeline in the Angeles National Forest. She was 30 feet behind him. Bright red shirt. Green hiking pants. Clear weather. A route she hiked every week.
That wave is the last confirmed contact anyone had with Monica Jacinto Reza.
…
Reza co-invented Mondaloy, a family of nickel-based superalloys now built into the engines replacing Russian-made rockets for American national security launches. She held the patent. She spent decades as a Technical Fellow at Aerojet Rocketdyne, the highest technical rank in the company. An Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. At some point after 2023, she moved to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
That matters because of what happened eight months later. On February 27, 2026, retired Major General William Neil McCasland walked out of his Albuquerque home and into the Sandia Mountain foothills. Left his phone. Left his glasses. Left his wearable devices. Took a gun and his wallet. He has not been seen since.
In THE GHOST GENERAL, we mapped McCasland’s career. He commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory from 2011 to 2013, overseeing the $4.4 billion portfolio that funded the most sensitive aerospace research in the country.
That portfolio funded Monica Jacinto Reza’s work. Her alloy is in the engines his budget was was actively building.
