On the night of Dec. 12, 2025, Jason Thomas, 45, a scientist at the drugmaker Novartis who worked on cancer treatments, left his home in Wakefield, Massachusetts, and didn’t come back. His wife, Kristen Bartoli, reported him missing early the next morning. She later found that he had left his phone and wallet on their bathroom counter and his Apple Watch in the mailbox.

Police searched with dogs and drones, but Lake Quannapowitt, near their home, where he sometimes walked the family’s dogs, was frozen. Police had planned to search it in the spring.

On March 17, 2026, a Wakefield detective searching an area of the lake that had previously been iced over spotted what appeared to be a body in the water. A drone confirmed it, and police and firefighters recovered it. Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said preliminary information, including clothing, suggested it was Thomas. The state medical examiner was to determine the cause and manner of death. Authorities said no foul play was suspected.

His family said he had been grieving: both of his parents had died shortly before he disappeared, his mother of dementia and his father of a heart attack about 90 minutes later.

Online, Thomas had already been added to a viral list of scientists who had died or vanished, and his case was included in the federal review of that list. Nothing has connected it to the others.