Carl Grillmair would laugh at the conspiracy theories about his killing, says his widow. I think it's absolute nonsense, says Louise Grillmair. I mean, there's the facts, and they're out there. Her 67-year-old husband was gunned down at their Llano, California, home in February. Grillmair's alleged killer, a 29-year-old local man, Freddy Snyder, has been charged with murder and burglary and is due in court next week for his arraignment.
Despite the arrest, Grillmair figures prominently in conspiracy theories about the deaths and disappearances of about 10 people with connections to top-secret labs or scientific work. They are often lumped together as missing scientists, but the list includes an administrative assistant, an Air Force general, an engineer, and a custodian, and spans several fields, from researching exoplanets to pharmaceuticals.
Online sleuths have suggested the cases may be connected, even prompting the US House of Representatives Oversight Committee and the FBI to announce investigations - despite other established explanations and family members' attempts to quell the hysteria.
Grillmair's wife believes her husband was targeted in a misguided revenge plot. Months before the killing, a man had wandered on [their property] with a rifle, claiming to be coyote hunting. She says her husband directed the suspect to a nearby ridge.
The man had also been causing mischief at other homes nearby, she says, and one resident called 911. Grillmair hadn't placed the call, but his wife believes the man blamed her husband for it as his behavior was escalating.
The man came back with a baseball bat two weeks before Grillmair was killed, but left without causing any more trouble that day. Then he returned on 16 February and allegedly fatally shot Grillmair, a renowned astronomer at the California Institute of Technology's IPAC science and data centre for astronomy and planetary science.
We believe [he] came for revenge, thinking Carl was the one that called 911, says Louise.
Skeptics have poured cold water on the wild theories surrounding the deaths. The US Top Secret-cleared aerospace and nuclear workforce is ~700,000 people, science writer, investigator and pseudoscience debunker Mick West wrote. Ordinary mortality over 22 months predicts ~4,000 deaths, ~70 homicides, and ~180 suicides. The list has 10 … The deaths are real. The families' grief is real. The pattern is not.
Louise Grillmair similarly states that - while her husband would laugh at speculation that the deaths might be connected - he would also probably talk statistically to squelch conspiracies.
The wife of retired Air Force General William Neil McCasland - the highest-ranking and highest-profile of the missing - took to Facebook the week after his 27 February disappearance from their New Mexico home to dispel some of the misinformation circulating. Even in her 911 call, three hours after she returned home from a doctor's appointment to find her husband gone, Susan McCasland Wilkerson said she had some indication that he must have planned not to be found.
She noted that he had turned off his phone and left it behind, but took his gun, though he doesn't generally carry a weapon. She also acknowledged that McCasland had acted as an unpaid consultant for Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge's To The Stars organization as it sought to investigate UFOs and other matters. But her husband does not have any special knowledge about the ET bodies and debris from the Roswell crash stored at Wright-Patt, Susan wrote.
Overall, relatives express frustration at the wild speculation surrounding the deaths. Louise Grillmair remarks, The speculation is denigrating to their memories. Many families have described the speculation as terrible and disgusting, further compounding their grief. For Louise, it is essential that the world remembers her husband not just for his career but also for his character as a compassionate and generous individual.
