A retired U.S. Air Force general who went missing in New Mexico vanished with hiking boots and a revolver, according to authorities.
Authorities have been searching for William Neil McCasland, 68, for two weeks, a Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) press release shared on X March 12 said. McCasland formerly led Kirtland Air Force Base’s Phillips Research Site and Air Force Research Laboratory based out of New Mexico and left his final posting in 2013.
McCasland interacted with a repairman around 10:00 a.m. on Feb. 27 at his New Mexico residence. His wife, Susan McCasland Wilkerson, departed the residence at around 11:10 a.m. for a medical appointment and came back around 12:04 p.m. to discover him missing, the BCSO said.
McCasland’s glasses, phone and wearable devices were found at the home. His wife looked for him and reached out to relatives and friends before reporting him missing at around 3:07 p.m., prompting an investigation, according to the agency. (RELATED: Hero ROTC Cadet Stabbed ISIS-Inspired Shooter To Death, Saving Lives)
The BCSO believes McCasland may have been wearing a light green, long-sleeved button-up shirt for the outdoors at the time of his alleged disappearance. He is also thought to have vanished with hiking boots, his wallet and a .38 caliber revolver with a leather holster, officials said.
Detectives discovered a gray U.S. Air Force sweatshirt about 1.25 miles east of the McCaslands’ residence. The item, while not confirmed to belong to McCasland, has been collected and processed with no blood found during the first analysis, according to the BSCO.
The BSCO said it is pursuing “all credible leads” and has employed drone operations and helicopter along with ground and K9 units during the investigation.
McCasland Wilkerson responded to what she called “misinformation” about her husband’s disappearance in a March 6 Facebook post. She addressed a Silver Alert, saying he was not at risk of dementia and had shown no signs of being “confused” or “disoriented” when she interacted with him. She also alleged that a supposed worrying phone call with a close family member was a fabrication.
“It is true that Neil had a brief association with the UFO community through Tom DeLonge, former frontman for Blink-182 and founder of the organization To The Stars. Neil worked with Tom for a bit shortly after his Air Force retirement as an unpaid (Neil’s choice) consultant on military and technical/scientific matters to lend verisimilitude to Tom’s fiction book and media activities,” she wrote.
“After the Russians hacked John Podesta’s emails (see Neil’s Wikipedia page), there was less contact with Tom and the community pushing for release of UFO information. This connection is not a reason for someone to abduct Neil. Neil does not have any special knowledge about the ET bodies and debris from the Roswell crash stored at Wright-Patt,” Wilkerson claimed.
“Though at this point with absolutely no sign of him, maybe the best hypothesis is that aliens beamed him up to the mothership. However, no sightings of a mothership hovering above the Sandia Mountains have been reported,” she wrote.
Podesta reportedly shared emails about his interest in UFOs with DeLonge and at least one email mentioned McCasland, according to NBC News. Podesta’s emails were publicly posted on WikiLeaks, NBC Miami reported in October 2016.
While McCasland had access to “some highly classified programs” during his time in the Air Force, he retired 13 years ago and has only maintained “very commonly held clearances” since then, according to his wife. She suggested that meant a possible abduction to extract classified secrets was “unlikely.”
In his final role at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Air Force Research Laboratory in Ohio, he oversaw a global workforce of 10,800 people and managed the Air Force’s “$2.2 billion science and technology program as well as additional customer funded research and development of $2.2 billion,” according to his official biography on the Air Force’s website.
A spokesperson for the BCSO directed the Daily Caller to the same press release when contacted for comment.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated with additional information about the Podesta story.