Concealing his identity and using the pseudonym “Dennis,” Lazar said that deep within an unconfirmed section of Area 51 called “S4,” he’d once worked on recovered extraterrestrial spacecraft for the US government.

On May 24, 1989, in a live interview with investigative reporter George Knapp on KLAS-Las Vegas, Robert “Bob” Lazar took the first steps toward becoming one of the most influential (and controversial) figures in all of UFO lore.

But now, 30 years after initially talking about Area 51, Lazar and United Nuclear Scientific have become part of a new and unusual situation that conspiracy theorists claim is tied to element 115. (It’s worth noting that Lazar’s element 115 is not muscovium, an element that was first synthesized in 2003 and added to the Periodic Table in 2015.)

In the years after his initial appearance, Lazar largely returned to private life. He eventually opened a business called United Nuclear Scientific, a scientific supplies and equipment store based in New Mexico, and then Michigan (earlier this month, the company announced it’s moving to Oregon). From radioactive ore to ammonium nitrate, a quick check of Lazar’s scientific supply company’s website reveals the business caters towards the exotic and potentially dangerous side of science. A whimsically Strangelovian GIF on the site’s home page says, “Looking for some URANIUM? CLICK HERE.”

Months later, no longer concealing his identity, Lazar claimed the US government was now waging an all out covert war against him. He said it shot out one of his tires and erased all of his educational records from CalTech and MIT. Lazar eventually claimed that, while at Area 51, his job was to reverse-engineer an alien material called “element 115” that he claimed was used to power an alien spacecraft. Lazar has repeatedly hinted that he took a piece of element 115 from Area 51, and that this element is of great interest to the federal government.

What actually happened on that raid, uncovered in documents obtained by Motherboard using public information requests, doesn’t seem to have anything to do with element 115, but the real story is almost as bizarre.

Right in the middle of the production of a documentary about Lazar’s life, United Nuclear Scientific was raided by the FBI and local police. Lazar and his followers have found this to be very suspicious, and have theorized that the FBI was attempting to recover samples of element 115 that Lazar took from Area 51. Conspiracy theorists suggest that Lazar was under government surveillance, and that this is the latest in a decades-long harassment campaign against Lazar by the feds.

A self-proclaimed protege of George Knapp, Corbell said it took considerable convincing on his part to get Lazar to return to the public eye. Corbell, who also stars in the film, has made a name for himself in the paranormal genre, previously releasing the documentaries Hunt for the Skinwalker and Patient Seventeen . Under the title “Sensei,” he has also sold instructional videos for an “MMA style that involves sport, street, and art” that Corbel calls “Quantum Jujitsu.”

While Lazar was seemingly content spending decades as a small business owner, the police raid wasn’t the only thing that brought Lazar back into the limelight. In late 2018, he was the subject of a documentary made by filmmaker Jeremy Kenyon Locklear Corbell called Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers.

Conspiracy theorists and Lazar himself have suggested that Lazar stole a piece of Element-115 from Area 51, and that he has it to this day. The only presently known form of Moscovium has a half-life of 0.65 seconds and would thus have decayed very quickly. Nevertheless, the thinking is that the government wants it back, which is why law enforcement raided Lazar’s business.

"It's a superheavy element," Lazar once told Larry King . "It's a unique element. When it's exposed to radiation, it produces its own gravitational field—its own antigravitational field, and it's what's used to lift and propel the craft."

No evidence of the existence of Lazar’s element 115 has ever surfaced. However, according to Lazar, this alien artifact is a highly radioactive element that allows alien spacecraft to traverse the cosmos, impervious to gravity’s effects. Lazar has said for years that he worked on the material at Area 51, and that it can be used to power spacecraft.

In the beginning moments of the documentary, viewers find Corbell huddled in a neon-lit bathroom, fretfully pouring over a series of text messages saying Lazar is currently being raided by the “feds.” In an ensuing scene, Knapp, a co-producer of the film says, “I had a feeling something like this might happen.” The climax of the film lays out what they think the raid is really about: An attempt to recover the supposed alien energy source, element 115.

Since Corbell’s documentary was released late last year, Lazar’s supporters have become more militant about the accusation that the FBI improperly raided United Nuclear to recover element 115. Even the Daily Beast asked, “ Why did the FBI raid the home of the biggest alien truther? ”

According to the Michigan State Police reports and United Nuclear Scientific's website , Lazar's company sells thallium, and the police search was intended to learn more about who he'd sold the material to. Lazar is not specifically listed as a suspect in the murder in the police documents.

Thallium is most often used in the manufacture of electronics, as well as in glass manufacturing and the pharmaceutical industry. When isolated, it looks like tin. Thallium is a regular topic of conversation among elements collectors , who try to obtain samples of as many elements in the periodic table as possible.

According to reports written by Michigan State Police Sergeant Detective Thomas Rajala, the events leading up to the search of United Nuclear began in late 2015 with the mysterious death of 31-year-old Janel Struzl. Rajala says doctors concluded Struzl was poisoned and died of "thallium toxicity." Colorless, odorless, and tasteless, thallium sulfate has been described as " the poisoner's poison " due to the substance's high toxicity and difficulty to detect.

According to months worth of incident reports obtained by Motherboard, the 2016 raid on United Nuclear was part of an ongoing and extensive murder investigation that includes state, local, and federal authorities. The documents make no mention of element 115.

Because the case is still an active investigation, some names and details are redacted from reports. MSP reports suggest that police believe one of their suspects may have purchased materials used in Sturzl’s murder from Lazar. The documents note that investigators obtained search warrants for a suspect's Google, Yahoo, and Bing search results, and seized computers and other data from a suspect. Shortly after obtaining information about those internet searches, investigators decided they wanted to question Lazar.

According to the report, Lazar said sometime in March 2017 a woman provided him with her deceased brother’s “element collection,” which Lazar agreed to sell through his website. According to the report and Lazar, thallium was indeed one of the elements in this collection. “Thallium is something we never carried before and was just recently donated to us by the family of an element collector that died—so we now had a collection of some unusual materials we’ve never had before,” Lazar said in an interview.

The MSP report indicates that local and state police traveled to several areas in Michigan to conduct interviews. During this same time frame it’s noted, “efforts will be made to contact/interview Bob Lazar (United Nuclear) in person regarding any Thallium sales; specifically, to [an unnamed individual]." Rajala goes on to say in his report that a police officer “had recently discovered United Nuclear advertises Thallium (for sale) on its website.”

A check of the business's website shows, indeed, United Nuclear sells custom made "safety sealed" epoxy disk of thallium. According to the site's description, the thallium discs United Nuclear offers "do not require any sort of special handling or storage, and they can be discarded with normal trash if no longer needed."

A local police report released to me in April by the Laingsburg, Michigan Police Department first hinted there might be more to the story than an unsubstantiated theft of an unproven alien element. This first report was sparse on details, but noted “this investigation started in Houghton, MI in regard to a homicide investigation.” In May, Corbell told British outlet Express, “we believe that the ‘official’ intent of the raid was a cover story—and that they were looking for a piece of the fuel source for the extraterrestrial craft Lazar once worked on for the United States government at Area 51.”

Lazar and Corbell have publicly said Lazar's company was raided as part of a sustained surveillance campaign against a man who's been called a "reluctant UFO messiah." In the documentary, Lazar and Corbell discreetly discuss the possibility of Lazar having taken a piece of the mysterious element. The police search of United Nuclear came the very next morning after this cloak and dagger discussion, according to Lazar and Corbell. In an interview with Larry King, Corbell and Lazar claimed during the search that "FBI agents were able to repeat back verbatim" a portion of their previous day's private conversation. At the annual UFO festival in McMinnville, Oregon, Lazar told a crowd that the FBI had played an audio recording of he and Corbell's element 115 discussion." According to the MSP reports, police had already obtained search warrants a day prior to Corbell and Lazar’s conversation.

When I spoke with Lazar, he told me he didn’t believe everyone involved in the raid was aware of his work on alien spacecraft or element 115. However, Lazar was explicit in saying at least two mysterious individuals at the raid were absolutely concerned with his past, and knew of he and Corbell’s conversation.