Retired Air Force Major Gen. William "Neil" McCasland vanished from his Albuquerque home within a one-hour window on Feb. 27, leaving behind no trace, no explanation, and a growing list of questions that neither local authorities nor the FBI have been able to answer.
The 68-year-old aerospace engineer was last seen interacting with a home repairman around 10 a.m. His wife left for an appointment. By noon, McCasland was gone. His gun, a .38-caliber revolver, and his wallet remain unaccounted for, according to authorities.
Nearly two weeks later, the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office released a new timeline of his last known movements. A joint statement from the sheriff's office, the FBI, and other assisting agencies, released on March 6, said investigators did not immediately see any signs of foul play.
That is about the only thing investigators have been willing to say.
Fox News reported that authorities issued a Silver Alert for McCasland, who is described as 5 feet, 11 inches tall. He is believed to have left his residence on foot, a detail that makes his total disappearance all the more baffling. A U.S. Air Force sweatshirt was found just over a mile from the home, though authorities have not confirmed whether it belonged to McCasland.
The BCSO asked residents along Quail Run Court Northeast and surrounding roads to check and submit home security video from between 9 a.m. Friday, Feb. 27, and 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 28, through the BCSO Axon Portal. The search effort itself has been extensive. McCasland's wife, Susan McCasland Wilkerson, catalogued it 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."
Horseback searchers. Drones with multiple capabilities. Three types of search dogs. Helicopters. Ring camera canvassing across an entire neighborhood. And still nothing.
"There has been no indication whatsoever of where he might be."
McCasland was known to often hike, run, and cycle in the Northeast Heights and the Sandia Foothills. The terrain is rugged, and the possibility of a medical emergency on a solo outing would seem like a natural explanation. But the missing revolver and wallet complicate that theory considerably. People don't typically grab a .38 and their wallet before a casual jog into the foothills.
Before his retirement in 2013, McCasland was the commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. He holds a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Wright-Patterson served as the headquarters for a military program monitoring unidentified flying objects from 1947 to 1969.
McCasland also consulted on UFOs for Blink-182's Tom DeLonge, a detail that in any other missing persons case would read as a bizarre footnote but here lands differently, given his career trajectory and the nature of his former postings.
His wife moved to preempt the inevitable speculation. She acknowledged his access to classified material but argued it didn't explain his disappearance:
"It is true that when Neil was in the Air Force, he had access to some highly classified programs and information. He retired from the AF almost 13 years ago and has had only very commonly held clearances since. It seems quite unlikely that he was taken to extract very dated secrets from him."
She is probably right. Intelligence assets who have been out of the game for over a decade are not typically high-value abduction targets. Clearances decay. Secrets age out. But the fact that she felt compelled to address it publicly tells you where the public conversation has already gone.
Wilkerson's frustration with the search effort's lack of progress was palpable, and she leaned into gallows humor to make the point:
"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."
The FBI joined the search, which signals the case has moved beyond a routine missing persons inquiry. Federal involvement doesn't happen because a retiree wandered off on a hike. It happens when the profile of the missing person, or the circumstances of the disappearance, triggers a different set of institutional concerns.
Yet beyond that single March 6 statement and the timeline release, the agencies involved have offered the public almost nothing. No press conferences. No named officials providing updates. No indication of where the investigation is actually heading. The BCSO's most concrete public ask has been for neighbors to upload their security footage.
Wilkerson confirmed her husband does not have dementia or Alzheimer's, which eliminates the most common explanation for elderly disappearances. A physically active, mentally sharp retired general with no cognitive impairment walked out of his house in a one-hour window, possibly armed, and dissolved into the New Mexico landscape. Every tool available to modern search operations has been deployed. None of it has produced a single confirmed sighting.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office missing persons unit at 505-468-7070 or text "BCSO" to 847411.
Somewhere in the Sandia Foothills, or somewhere else entirely, a retired two-star general with a career full of secrets is simply gone. And nobody can explain why.
