On the morning of February 27, 2026, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland, 68, left his home on Quail Run Court in Albuquerque, New Mexico, sometime around 11 a.m. He left behind his phone. He left behind his prescription glasses. He left behind every wearable tracking device he owned. What he took with him was a wallet, a .38-caliber revolver and leather holster, and a red backpack. The Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office issued a Silver Alert. The FBI's Albuquerque field office and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations eventually joined the search. Weeks later, no confirmed sighting of McCasland has been reported.

Now, newly surfaced police bodycam footage — obtained by the Law&Crime Network — adds a layer the missing-person bulletins didn't capture. The footage shows officers conducting a phone interview with an unidentified woman connected to the Kirtland Partnership, a nonprofit organization whose stated mission is protecting and expanding Kirtland Air Force Base and its surrounding military-research ecosystem. The woman told investigators that the evening before McCasland vanished — Thursday, February 26 — she and members of the U.S. Space Force had dinner with him at an Albuquerque restaurant, beginning around 6 p.m. Her observation about that night was unambiguous: "I was shocked this morning when I saw the alert because what I noticed Thursday evening is he wasn't his usual self. He was kind of spacey and quiet."

That single witness statement is, at the moment, the most specific known account of McCasland's behavior in the hours before his disappearance. It does not confirm foul play — the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office has stated explicitly that investigators have found no evidence of foul play. What it does confirm is that on the eve of his disappearance, a man known for his commanding presence and professional precision appeared, to someone who knew him, to be somewhere else mentally. The nature of that dinner — who convened it, what was discussed, whether it was routine or out of the ordinary — has not been publicly established.

The Space Force connection matters as more than atmosphere. McCasland spent the final years of his active military career commanding the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, overseeing a $2.2 billion science and technology portfolio along with an additional $2.2 billion in externally funded research and development, and managing a global workforce of roughly 10,800. Wright-Patterson is not just any installation. It has been at the center of the U.S. government's most sensitive aerospace research for decades, and it carries a specific gravity in the UFO conversation that dates back to 1947. The official Air Force biography for McCasland, still accessible on the Air Force's own website, lists his command of that laboratory from 2011 until his retirement in 2013.

The connection to UFO-adjacent circles is not secondhand inference — it is documented in primary source material. In emails published as part of the 2016 WikiLeaks release of correspondence from John Podesta, then serving as chairman of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, musician and UFO researcher Tom DeLonge described McCasland as a key contact in his effort to build institutional support for UAP disclosure. In one email, DeLonge wrote that when the Roswell crash occurred in 1947, the wreckage was shipped to the laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — and that McCasland had been in charge of that exact laboratory. DeLonge described the general as someone who not only understood what DeLonge was pursuing but had actively helped him "assemble" a team of government advisers. Whether DeLonge's characterizations of McCasland's beliefs or involvements are accurate is not independently confirmed; McCasland himself had previously described his own stance as skeptical. But the documented email trail makes clear his name was circulating in sensitive conversations about UAP, at high levels, a decade before he vanished.

After the disappearance, additional evidence was recovered — none of it definitive. A gray U.S. Air Force sweatshirt was found approximately 1.25 miles east of McCasland's Albuquerque home on March 7; investigators reported no blood detected in initial processing, and the item had not been confirmed as belonging to him. His second residence, a home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, approximately 200 miles away, yielded a light green long-sleeve shirt and hiking boots during a subsequent search. His wallet, the .38-caliber revolver, the holster, and the red backpack remain missing and unaccounted for as of the latest public statements from the sheriff's office.

The 911 call placed by McCasland's wife, Susan McCasland Wilkerson, on the day he disappeared — audio obtained and released by the Law&Crime Network — offers one of the most striking data points in the entire case. Wilkerson told the dispatcher her husband was missing, then added: "I have some indication that he must have planned not to be found." That phrase has driven significant speculation, though what specific indication she had has not been publicly detailed. A former senior FBI official, commenting publicly on the investigation, stated flatly that there was no credible evidence that anyone had taken McCasland against his will — which narrows the field of explanations without closing it.

What makes the case genuinely difficult to categorize is the combination of what McCasland left behind and what he took. Abandoning a phone and glasses — items essential to daily function for anyone, let alone a 68-year-old — while taking a loaded firearm and cash suggests either significant premeditation or a state of mind in which normal risk calculation was suspended. The witness at that Space Force dinner noticed something off. His wife, before she called 911, had formed some impression of intentionality. Months into the search, the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office continues to treat the case as an active missing-person investigation, the Silver Alert remains in effect, and neither the FBI nor the Air Force Office of Special Investigations has offered any public accounting of what, if anything, the Space Force dinner was about — who convened it, under what authority, and whether its content has any bearing on what happened the next morning. Those questions have not been answered. They have barely been asked.