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Police have revealed a new clue in the death of a missing nuclear lab employee, as a shocking and chilling theory emerges which some believe points to foul play.
New Mexico State Police told the Daily Mail that forensic investigators have reconstructed the skull of Melissa Casias, the missing administrative assistant from the Los Alamos National Laboratory who vanished without a trace on June 26, 2025.
Casias's skeletal remains were discovered in New Mexico's Carson National Forest on May 28, next to a handgun which her family said did not belong to the wife and mother.
While some experts examining the case have speculated that Casias's life may have ended in suicide, police made a chilling revelation that casts some doubt on the lab worker's cause of death. In a statement to the Daily Mail, authorities confirmed that 'the initial CT scan did not reveal any projectiles in the skull,' meaning a bullet was not recovered along with the skull fragments found in the woods.
While the new revelation from New Mexico State Police does not rule out a gunshot wound, a former FBI agent examining the Casias case made a string of chilling comments, including that he was convinced the woman was murdered. Former FBI agent Ben Hansen told the Brian Entin Investigates podcast: 'Just what they have shared is highly highly suspicious. I don't know if I give a percentage but it's kind of more like an 80 percent foul play versus someone who's depressed is the way I see it.'
Hansen would add an even more shocking theory, suggesting that Casias was killed by someone with access to advanced technology, such as a directed energy weapon which fires beams of microwave radiation and charged particles at its target.
Melissa Casias worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a long-running nuclear research facility, before disappearing on June 26, 2025
Although Casias's remains have been with officials since June 1, an official cause of death still has not been announced by the New Mexico medical examiner's office.
Hansen theorized that futuristic weapons the US government has only recently acknowledged may have played a role in not only Casias's death, but also in her decision to walk away from her family 11 months ago.
The agent mentioned devices such as 'voice-to-skull' technology, which allows the user to beam voices directly into a victim's head, making them believe they are hearing God-like commands - something Hansen called a form of brainwashing.
Weapons like this, using low-frequency sound waves below what humans can normally hear, can also induce feelings of fear, paranoia or a belief in the victim that they are being watched.
He also mentioned weapons that can cause Havana Syndrome, which was linked to a cluster of mysterious illnesses among US diplomats, intelligence officers and their families in Cuba.
Common symptoms after these individuals were allegedly blasted with directed electromagnetic energy included head pressure or pain, dizziness, vertigo, nausea, hearing strange sounds, vision problems, memory issues and balance problems.
'Homeland Security actually purchased one from the black market, something similar, a small device it seems like that maybe Russia had,' Hansen revealed on the June 14 podcast.
'And if that is possible, is it possible that foreign adversaries are targeting US military or contractors and employees for some other new sort of a weapon of some sort.'
Melissa Casias (Left) pictured with her daughter, Sierra. Her daughter is believed to be the last family member is see Casias alive on June 26, 2025
The final image of Melissa Casias alive came from a surveillance camera near State Road 518 in New Mexico, approximately three miles from her home
The former FBI agent also called Casias's behavior 'out of character' on the morning of her disappearance, something that leads him to believe the 53-year-old was influenced by a foreign actor in some manner to leave her home without warning.
Casias vanished after dropping off her husband, another LANL employee, at the facility that morning, approximately 70 miles from their home.
That was when Casias's behavior allegedly became unusual, as she claimed she would need to return home after forgetting the badge needed to access the nuclear lab.
According to her husband, Mark, a superintendent at the lab, Casias had the security badge with her when she dropped him off that morning, as she would have needed the badge to get past the security checkpoints.
When Casias arrived in Ranchos de Taos, the couple's daughter, Sierra, reportedly told investigators that her mother visited the teen's place of work to drop off a sandwich and then said she planned to work from home after forgetting the badge.
Despite what Casias reportedly told both her daughter and husband, she returned home to drop off her work and personal phones, which the family would later find inside the house, wiped clean of all data.
Surveillance cameras last spotted Casias walking alone eastward on State Road 518, roughly three miles from her home, around 2.20pm local time without her keys, identification or purse.
'I think either there was an influence from the outside and I'm not saying that it's energy-directed anything, but foreign adversary influence of some sort,' Hansen declared.
'The other option is they were enticed. This is the behavior in all these cases, it looks like they thought they were coming back.'
The other cases Hansen mentioned involve the ongoing string of mysterious deaths and disappearances throughout the US among scientists, nuclear lab workers and military personnel who all had some tie to classified research or sensitive data.
Melissa Casias (Left) pictured with her husband Mark Casias
While intelligence officials and local police continue to search for clues, one private investigator is now facing severe backlash from the Casias family, after claiming that the lab worker's disappearance and alleged mental spiral was triggered by problems in her marriage. Court records show Mark Casias has filed a restraining order against Thomas McNally after the private investigator allegedly launched an 'escalating campaign of public harassment, defamation and criminal threats' against him and his daughters.
McNally previously claimed to the Daily Mail that Casias's disappearance and death had nothing to do with her ties to potentially classified nuclear secrets at LANL.
In April, McNally claimed: 'What the attention should be on is that there's a 53-year-old woman who's missing and has a family who love her, while the husband is out trying to date other women and doesn't care about her.'
Casias's daughter, Sierra, has publicly stated that the allegations that her parents fought over the family's financial struggles and the mother's belongings were thrown out after she was declared missing were also untrue.
The Daily Mail has reached out to McNally for comment regarding the Casias family's legal claims.