MYSTERY: The Unexplained Death of Rey Rivera: A Hole in the Roof and a Thousand Questions

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Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at mintmobile.com/momsandmysteries. That's it. There's no catch. Up front payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra, initial plan term only, greater than 50 gigabytes, may slow when network is busy, includes up to 20 gigabytes hotspot, capable device required, availability speed and coverage varies, seed mintmobile.com. In May of 2006, a 32-year-old writer walked out of his Baltimore home after answering a phone call and never came back. Days later, his body was found inside a historic hotel beneath the hole in the roof that raised more questions than answers. Police leaned one way and the medical examiner leaned another. But nearly two decades later, no one can fully explain how Ray Rivera ended up there. Today we're breaking down the disappearance, the building, the note, and the unanswered call that still hangs over this case. Hey guys, and welcome to the moms and mysteries podcast. A true crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend, Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi, Mandy. How are you? I'm hanging in there. As I know, you are as well, Melissa. We're just hanging in there. I was thinking, um, saying something to my daughter yesterday about school next year and realizing like, we have big kids. My daughter's graduating next year, your son will be a junior. Like, these are very, feels like they're important years and I'm like, hope we're doing it right. I make no promises. Yeah, no kidding. And this school year feels like it's just buzzing on by. I know I said before that my kids have a break from school like every six weeks literally. So yeah, guess what? It's been six weeks since Christmas break. So my kids are actually home all week this week. Oh my gosh. Yeah, we are, we're home on winter break is what we call it. And then in six weeks, we will have spring break. And then six weeks after that, we're out for the summer. So my gosh, I feel like I feel like time is absolutely not real. Things have sped up tremendously in the last couple of years really since, um, since our oldest have been in high school. And I just feel like every year is just flown faster and faster and faster. Um, but yeah, it's, it's all exciting. Of course, you know, it's, it's very exciting for them. I don't even know, I don't even, I have nothing to say literally. No, I know. I'm just not prepared. And I'm like, that's probably not good because that means she's not going to be prepared for what comes next. So I'm like, this is the time you should be able to have like a parenting thing where at some time of their lives, you're like, let me have another co-parent besides my spouse, another person come in and tell me what I'm doing right and wrong. So we could, you know, in the strong. And we don't have that. And so I'm real worried about her. You shouldn't be. She's going to be great. She's awesome. But she's awesome. In spite of me, she's awesome. Yeah. All right. So we have a really perplexing story to get into this week. And it's one that there has been a few like different conspiracy theories around. And people have just like different ideas about what they think happened in this case. So Ray Omar Rivera was born on June 10th, 1973. He grew up in a military family, which meant that his childhood wasn't really anchored to just one hometown for very long. Moving frequently was normal. And there were new schools, new friends and completely new environments. But that was just a way of life. And the people who knew Ray said that he actually handled this very well. He wasn't the brooding with drawn kid, you know, just sitting in a corner somewhere. He was always outgoing, social, and funny. And he had the ability to walk into a new place and make it feel less intimidating within about five minutes. This kind of reminds me a little bit of my childhood. I was not in a military family, which when I mentioned how often I moved as a child, many people think they assumed that I was military. But my dad had actually gotten a job as an air traffic controller right before I was born. And so as I was growing up, he was climbing the ranks like in that career. And so we moved about every two years. And I think I attended, I had mapped all this out one at one point in my life. But I think I attended five elementary schools, three middle schools, and three high schools before it was all said and done. So yeah, I definitely understand this like life of moving all the time and just how hectic that is. And hard to like make friends and settle down and have roots anywhere where I live right now is like I've never lived anywhere as long as I've lived right now in my life. So that's a fun fact about Mandy. But Ray, as I said, he handled it well and he had a lot of friends. He was very athletic and very tall. He was actually six foot five and very broad in the shoulders, which meant he always stood out in a crowd whether he really intended to or not. He played water polo and basketball. Friends later described him as charismatic and warm. They described a guy with a big personality. He would hug you. Hello, and he just had this booming laugh and natural ease about him that made people gravitate towards him. But alongside that outgoing energy, Ray had a creative streak that ran really deep. He loved movies and I'm not talking like I just want to sit on the couch and watch a couple of Netflix movies, but he was actually obsessively into films. He really admired filmmakers. He studied scripts and he talked about story structure. He wanted to do more than just watch these films. He actually wanted to get into the world of making them. And that dream would quietly follow him into adulthood. After high school, Ray attended James Madison University in Virginia where he studied communication and played water polo. teammates described him as driven, but also lighthearted. He was competitive in the pool, but he was also quick to make a joke outside of it. He was social, active, and engaged and he graduated in 1996. For a while, Ray followed a more conventional path. He worked in finance and communications roles where he built practical skills and made money. And then he did what a lot of ambitious 20-somethings do. He tried to find that intersection between stability and passion. As we mentioned before, he had this pull towards this creative storytelling, this dream that never really left him. And friends said that he always talked about kind of the next chapter in his life, like he even felt there was something more. Right. At some point in the early 2000s, Ray moved to Los Angeles. This is important because LA wasn't just some random location. This was really an intentional move because he did want to write and he did want to break into filmmaking. He reportedly worked on scripts and talked about screenplays and pursued projects that could open those doors for him. People close to him said he had really big ideas. It wasn't just like I would like to try this kind of energy, but he really had a long-term vision and believed that he could make something meaningful. And it was during this period of his life that he met Allison. Ray and Allison met in California. They connected quickly and friends described their relationship as strong and affectionate, not dramatic or volatile. Allison was intelligent and career-driven and they had an affectionate and stable relationship. The couple married in 2005 in Puerto Rico surrounded by family. By all accounts, they were excited about their future. Allison later described Ray as being loving, supportive and optimistic. She said he was someone who made big plans and talked about the future like it was something he was actively building. Shortly after they married, a new opportunity came up. Ray had a long-time friend from earlier in his life, Porter Stansbury, who had built a financial publishing business in Baltimore. He offered Ray some work for writing for this company, Stansbury Associates, which operated under the larger umbrella of a Gora publishing. Now the job isn't exactly Hollywood. It's not screenwriting, but it is stable income and it Thank you. from a friend. So in late 2004, Ray and Allison moved from Los Angeles to Baltimore, Maryland. It was supposed to be a temporary stepping stone and a way to earn money while Ray continued pursuing creative projects on the side. Once at Baltimore, Ray began writing financial newsletters. Specifically, he contributed to publications connected to Stansbury's investment research business. These newsletters were often dramatic in tone. They were doing things like predicting market collapses, insider tips, and urgent opportunities. And that was kind of the style of this industry. But people close to Ray said he was not obsessed with finance. He just saw this work as a means to an end and pursuit of his larger creative goals. He continued talking about screenplays and even discussed returning to California. Some friends later said he felt Baltimore wasn't a permanent home, more like a chapter in the book of his life, I guess. Socially though, he seemed fine. He played basketball at local courts. He kept in touch with friends. He and Allison hosted guests. By most outward measures, there was no obvious unraveling. By 2006, Ray was 32 years old, married, employed, physically active, and had good relationships with those around him. And that's what makes what happens next so hard to get your head around. So let's kind of set the stage because the scene of the story is part of what really makes it so confusing. So the story itself unfolds in Baltimore, but not in the quiet suburban part where Ray and Allison lived. It actually unfolds in Mount Vernon, which is a dense and historic neighborhood where old buildings kind of just loom over everything. Ray and Allison's home was in Northwood, which is a residential area that just felt kind of ordinary. It was just houses and driveways, families, you know, everyone going about their routines. There was nothing really cinematic or dramatic about it. It was just the backdrop of their everyday life. But where Ray worked was downtown and it was in the vicinity of one of Baltimore's most iconic buildings, which was the Belvedere. So the Belvedere hotel opened in December of 1903. It was designed in the Bo Arts style, which doesn't mean much to me because I'm not really much of a historic building, you know, the arts, of course, of course, but it was meant to impress. So you should be thinking like marble grand staircases and all these ornate details, just a very beautiful building. It was one of Baltimore's most prestigious addresses at the turn of the 20th century. Like if you were staying at the Belvedere in 1905, you were clearly doing very well. It hosted politicians, socialites, and celebrities. It's ballrooms hosted galas and weddings and there were restaurants that were the gathering place for all the city's elite. For decades, this Belvedere hotel symbolized Baltimore's wealth and cultural polish. But like many historic hotels, time kind of changed its role. By the late 20th century, the Belvedere was converted into condos. That was around 1991. And it did still remain a landmark in Baltimore, but it became this kind of strange hybrid building where it was part private residents, part event venue, part restaurant, and then part just like historical relic of the city. And that is kind of an interesting thing to note because not a lot of buildings actually are like that. And once a building does shift from kind of a traditional hotel into this mixed-use structure, things get a little bit weird as you can imagine. The layout when it's set up to be a hotel, like it's meant to be intuitive for a hotel. But when you start chopping things up and making part of it as private residents, part of it is we're using the ballrooms for event space. Now it's like you can open a door and it doesn't lead where you think it's going to lead. And like things are just not exactly right in the building. Am I crazy to think this reminds me of that hotel we stayed in in Miami that was once a really cool place. And now it's kind of haunted and very strange. I'm not saying that this one is exactly like that, but the same idea where people like own parts of these. And I bet it was creepy because it is. So anything historic has that like creepy element. So yeah, I imagine that the Belvedere over time has become creepier and creepier, especially if they've tried to preserve that historic element because I feel like usually that's what just keeps it creepy. But then there's also the physical size of it. So the Belvedere stands about 14 stories high. And if you're just picturing like a straight, clean, vertical rectangle from the ground up, just don't picture that anymore because this building has lots of architectural layers. There's setbacks, decorative ledges, roof variations, and from certain angles, it looks really grand and symmetrical. While from other angles, it looks almost like pieces that are just stacked on top of each other. So the hotel sits in Mount Vernon, which is one of Baltimore's most historic neighborhoods. And this area has narrow streets with older buildings that are packed tightly together. There are parking garages that are wedged between these century old structures. And this whole area is just very dense and urban and really just known for the architecture of it. So all that to say, the Belvedere hotel and the building and the surrounding area is really beautiful. And we're going to get into more of the story after a quick break to hear a word from this week's sponsors. We just registered my daughter for her last year of school and I genuinely do not understand how that's possible. Like, didn't we just start buying kindergarten supplies? Time is rude. It just moves without asking. Exactly. And it really makes you think about how quickly these years go by. And how important it is to make sure the fit is right. While this works for our family right now, I know every child is different. And that's why so many families are turning to K-12 powered schools. These are tuition-free online accredited public schools for kindergarten through 12th grade. 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That's 15% off 1skin.co with code moms. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them you sent you. And now back to the episode. Before the break, we met Ray at Charismatic movie loving writer with big ambitions in a brand new marriage. He and his wife, Allison, had recently moved to Baltimore for work, settling into what looked like a stable, forward looking life. So that brings us to the date of the incident. Tuesday, May 16th, 2006. Allison had left earlier that day for a scheduled business trip. A coworker of hers named Claudia was staying at the house because she had an early flight out of Baltimore the next morning. And Ray was home for the evening, settling into what appeared to be an ordinary night. There were no reported arguments before Allison left, there was no tension, no dramatic goodbye, and Allison would later say that Ray seemed completely normal that day. He was affectionate, relaxed, there was really nothing out of character. Sometime around 6.30 pm, the phone rang and Ray answered it. Claudia later told investigators she overheard part of his side of the conversation. She said she heard him respond with a single word. Oh, she described his tone as being surprised, but not frightened. It was the kind of reaction someone may have given when they realized they forgotten something or when they receive information they just weren't expecting. But what happened next is what made the moment really stand out. So almost immediately after hanging up, Ray moved with urgency. He grabbed his keys and he headed toward the back door. Claudia, again, is the friend who's staying there overnight. She recalled that he appeared to be focused, intent on leaving quickly, but he didn't explain where he was going or how long he'd be gone. He didn't pack a bag, he didn't gather personal items beyond what he would normally carry. And he left his laptop open on the desk, and there was food and drink sitting out. And really everything about the scene suggested that he expected to return. So when Ray watched out the door that evening, he took his cell phone, his car keys, approximately $20 in cash and a credit card. Investigators later determined that the phone call that he had received had come through the main switchboard of Stansberry and Associates. the financial company he worked for. However, the specific extension from where this call originated was never identified. The company later stated that they could not determine who had placed it. And that unanswered question, who called him and what was actually said, becomes really central later. But at the time, it simply appeared that Ray had received a work-related call and he stepped out. He got into his vehicle and drove away from his northward home. As the evening went on, there was no sign of Ray returning. Claudia went to bed, assuming that Ray was just outhandling whatever had required his attention. And Allison, who was out of town, attempted to reach him later that night, but she wasn't able to get through. But a miss call didn't immediately raise an alarm. Allison thought, you know, people run errands. They can lose track of time, or maybe his phone could have died. But when the night passed, with no contact, that's when concern began to set in. By the following day, which was May 17, Ray still had not returned home and hadn't responded to any calls. At this point, Allison felt something was wrong and she cut her own trip short and flew back home to Baltimore. A missing person report was filed with the Baltimore Police Department. Family members and close friends moved quickly. Ray's brother flew into assist with the search. They retraced routes between Northwood and Mountain Vernon. They checked hospitals and spoke with co-workers, and they tried to identify where Ray might have gone after leaving the house that night. There were no immediate signs of an accident involving his vehicle, and there was no unusual activity on his credit card. But as we said before, he also was not answering his phone. Several days later, on May 22, a significant development occurred. Ray's SUV was located in a parking lot in the Mountain Vernon area, not far from his office, and within walking distance of the Belvedere Hotel that we talked about before. When Ray's SUV was found, it narrowed the geography, but it really didn't explain anything. The vehicle was located on a small surface light near the Belvedere, just off North Charles Street. It wasn't hidden. It wasn't abandoned in any kind of way that would suggest panic. It was simply just parked. A parking citation on the windshield indicated the vehicle had been sitting there since the evening of May 16, which would be the night that Ray disappeared. Police examined the SUV, and there were no signs of forced entry, no shattered glass, no visible blood, no obvious struggles inside, and Ray's personal items were still there. If Ray had driven downtown that night, he appeared to have done so calmly enough to park legally and to walk away from his car. That detail was really unsettling to Ray's family, because in the days leading up to Ray's disappearance, there had been a strange incident at his Northwood house. Late one night, the home alarm system went off. Ray reportedly jumped out of bed and ran outside with the baseball bat. Police did respond to the alarm call. According to accounts, they didn't find evidence of a break-in, and there were no confirmed intruders on the property. To some, this sounded like an overreaction. To others, it suggested that Ray may have genuinely believed someone was attempting to enter the home. There was also mention of a broken window, or glass disturbance around the house that same week. Some reports indicate that a window had been tampered with, though the details vary depending on the source. What is consistent is that Ray appeared unsettled by something in the days prior to his disappearance. Family members later said he seemed concerned, not that he was spiraling, but he just seemed uneasy. Usually though in hindsight, any unusual behavior gets amplified, but at the time, these incidents did not result in psychiatric intervention, hospitalization, or urgent concern from those closest to him. Ray was still going to work. He was still socializing. He was still making future plans. He had reportedly talked about upcoming projects. He was discussing possible moves. There were no known suicide notes found before his disappearance. Once Ray was officially reported missing, the search intensified quickly. His brother Angel arrived in Baltimore to help coordinate efforts. As canvas to neighborhoods between Northwood and Mount Vernon, they visited hospitals and they retraced possible routes he may have driven that evening. Police initially approached the case as a missing adult with no confirmed evidence of foul play. There were no immediate signs pointing towards violence, no ransom demands, and no suspicious financial activity. Nobody who knew Ray said he was in distress. So the big questions were, was this voluntary? Was this work related? Is it accidental and most importantly, where was Ray? Family members and friends began concentrating their efforts in the downtown area, particularly near where the vehicle had been parked. They walked the surrounding streets, checking alleyways and nearby buildings, and they tried to imagine what Ray might have done after stepping out of his car. But still, days passed with no answers. Then on May 24, which is eight days after Ray went missing, everything changed. According to accounts, three of Ray's co-workers had been serving the area from a nearby parking garage. And from that vantage point, they were able to look down onto a lower roof section attached to the Belvedere. This wasn't a rooftop that most pedestrians would ever see from the street because you actually had to be elevated to even notice it. So from above, they saw something that didn't belong there. And that was a hole in the roof. I'm not talking a small crack. I'm talking like a visible opening, roughly several feet wide, in the roofing material of the lower structure that was connected to the hotel. And near that hole, they noticed some personal items. So they contacted authorities. When police and building staff accessed the interior space beneath that roof section, they entered a conference room area inside the Belvedere complex. And inside that room, they discovered Ray Rivera's body. The ceiling above him had been punctured directly below the hole that was seen from the parking garage. So Ray had fallen through that opening and landed inside the room below and had been there for days. This is crazy to me. I don't feel like I heard anything like this where it's like, and then your friends happen to be, not happen to be, they're searching, but they're up at an elevated thing and to see a hole and be like, well, maybe it could be. That's the crazy part to me. I mean, there's a lot of crazy things about this story, but this is among the craziest part to me is just the fact that they were up there and happened to see this is really is something else. It's really wild. So the condition of Ray's body indicated significant decomposition that was consistent with the timeline of his disappearance. On the roof outside, investigators found Ray's flip flops, his cell phone, and his glasses. And these items were located near that hole. Those details immediately complicated the situation. The phone and glasses did not appear to have sustained any catastrophic damage. They weren't shattered in a way that you might expect if they had fallen from a really big height in a phone from 2006, right? Exactly. Lasting through anything, even a small fall. It's not going to. Right. One of Ray's sandals reportedly showed a drag mark as well. From a structural standpoint, the lower roof where the hole was located was not the main rooftop of the Belvedere. It was part of an adjoining section, remember how we said before this building is like very confusing and has all these different levels and parts and just different things going on. So we're not talking about the main roof of the building, just like a little side, a little side roof to another little building. So the first question they had was where exactly had Ray fallen from and investigators consider the possibility that he had access the main roof of the Belvedere and then jumped and then fell into the lower roof before breaking through. And that scenario would require a very precise trajectory because the distance between the edge of the main roof and where this hole was really was up for debate almost right away, whether or not it would even be physically possible for him to do this. Additionally, there were no confirmed witnesses who reported seeing Ray on the roof that evening and there was no publicly released surveillance footage, even placing him entering the building or accessing rooftop areas at all. The Baltimore Police Department initially leaned toward the theory that Ray's death resulted from a fault from the roof. They were thinking this was potentially a death by suicide. But the Baltimore City Medical Examiner did not definitively classify the manner of death as such. Instead, the ruling was listed as undetermined. An undetermined manner of death does not confirm homicide nor suicide, but instead it indicates that the available evidence does not conclusively support one explanation over the other. Ray had been found inside a locked conference room area beneath a roof puncture. His vehicle was parked nearby, his belongings were found on the roof, which is still so weird to me, and the geometry of this fall was not so simple. And there were still those unanswered questions about that phone call that brought him downtown in the first place. At this point in the timeline, what had begun as a missing persons case shifted into something else entirely, an eerie mystery that would soon have every aspect scrutinized. The top of the building here sits significantly higher than that lower roof where the hole was. So the question wasn't whether someone could fall from the upper roof and land there, it was whether that trajectory even made sense. From the edge of the main roof, the lower roof section is set back horizontally, so that means a person falling straight down from the top wouldn't automatically land on that lower section, they would actually have to clear a horizontal distance before impact, and that's where the debate begins. So some analysis suggests that the distance between the edge of the main roof and the whole location. was considerable enough that it would require forward momentum, not just simply stepping off the ledge. So basically you would have to either like run and jump to get across, or somebody would have to push you that far across, but either way, if you just simply jumped from the ledge, you wouldn't go that distance. But there's never been a universally accepted reconstruction that resolves the trajectory question definitively in this case. And other than the math, there's also the issue of access. The Belvedere at that time in 2006, as we said, was part residential and part commercial. So access to the main roof wasn't not designed for the public to really be able to access. It would typically require a key or entry through some internal stairwells, really not meant for casual guests to even find. So the question of how he even would have gotten up to the roof is still a mystery. Right. And then of course, there are his belongings. On the lower roof, near the whole, investigators recovered, raised flip-flops, his cell phone, and his eye glasses, as we mentioned before. And the condition and the placement of those items have fueled speculation for years. Reports indicate that the phone and glasses were not destroyed. They were described as being intact enough to function or appear usable. Again, one sandal had a drag mark, which I don't really understand how you even call something a drag mark. And like, I accidentally drag my feet all the time. I tripped in flip-flops, I tripped. Exactly. Concentragging. Don't look at my shoes for any clues. Please don't look at my shoes in general. But the fact that these items were located near the hole, but not completely obliterated, of course, raised questions. However, it's also important to note that objects can behave unpredictably in falls. The physics of a body striking a surface first could alter the trajectory and impact force experienced by smaller items. There was no publicly released evidence suggesting that the phone had been planted or that the other items had deliberately been arranged. They were simply found near the opening. Inside the conference room, raised injuries were consistent with a fall from a height. The Baltimore Police Department publicly stated that the injuries aligned with the high impact fall. And there is another structural detail worth noting. The lower roof, where the hole appeared, was not built to withstand the concentrated force of a fallen human body from 14 stories. I mean, duh. What kind of roof is like can somebody fall from 14 floors and not go through this? I don't usually test for that or worry about that when they're building things. No, it doesn't seem like the highest on your list. But roofing materials, of course, can vary in strength. And the fact that raised body was able to go through the surface into the room suggests that there was significant impact velocity. Investigators had to consider whether the whole sum engines matched the pattern of injury and whether the roofing material showed evidence of a single impact event. I don't even know how they're doing all this stuff. I'm still a third. So what are you doing? Dropping somebody multiple times? Is that what this could be? Is what they're saying? It makes no sense. Actually, when I was reading through this episode, I kept thinking of Ellen Greenberg for just the undetermined and all that kind of stuff, right? My cause of death. And I was like, isn't that the same town not realizing that's in Philadelphia and this is Maryland? So it is different. But I thought, what's going on here? But back to the story, there were no confirmed reports of blood trails leading across the roof. Again, no eyewitness accounts, placing ray wandering around the roof and no confirmed documentation of forced entry into restricted rooftop areas. The working police area at the time lean towards suicide by jumping from the roof. But the lack of conclusive manner of death classification and the unresolved geometry questions prevented the case from closing cleanly. So at this stage in the investigation, we're left with a physical puzzle and that phone call that brought him there that night that still remains unidentified. And we still have more to get into after a quick break to hear word from this week's sponsors. Okay, I did not expect to become emotionally attached to sweatpants, but here we are. 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That's q-u-i-n-c-e.com/moms see it free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com/moms. I have a home chef box coming this week and I don't know who's more excited. Me or my son. Home chef actually just collaborated with Nick Di Giovanni, who is my son's favorite cooking YouTuber by far, and I ordered his rotisserie style chicken with herb butter and you potatoes. I've watched enough of Nick's videos to know this is going to be beyond delicious. So expectations are at an all time high in this house. And that's exactly why I wanted to try home chef. I love a good dinner. I just don't always love everything that comes before the dinner, the planning, the grocery shopping, all the freaking prep. Home chef delivers fresh food with easy to follow recipes with more than 30 meal options each week, including 30 minute meals and oven ready options. And people really love it. Home chef is rated number one by users of other meal kits for quality, convenience, value, taste, and recipe ease. I'll report back, but I have a feeling Nick and Home Chef are not going to let us down. For a limited time, Home chef is offering our listeners 50% off and free shipping for your first box plus free dessert for life. Go to homechef.com/mystories. That's homechef.com/mystories for 50% off your first box and free dessert for life. Homechef.com/mystories must be an active subscriber to receive free dessert and now back to the episode. Before the break, Ray left his home after a phone call from his workplace and never returned. His car was found parked calmly in downtown Baltimore just blocks from the Belvedere Hotel, which narrowed the search but raised new questions. Days later, coworkers of his spotted a hole in a lower roof section of the historic hotel and beneath it, Ray's body was discovered. The investigator started examining the building's layout, the trajectory of Ray's fall and the condition of his belongings, but key pieces still didn't add up. Now the case is shifting from a disappearance to this physical puzzle that still has not been fully resolved. Once Ray's body was found inside the Belvedere, investigators didn't just treat the building as a scene, they treated Ray's whole life like a scene too. That meant going back to the Rivera's home in Northwood and looking at anything that might help explain what brought him downtown in the first place and what state of mind he could have been in or whether there were signs that he might have been planning on taking his own life. You know what sucks, if Ray's wife would have been there that night, she knows him better than anyone. So she could have noticed anything. Claudia is someone that probably knew him somewhat, but she's not gonna pick up on any nuances with him or ask questions really like, where are you going? Why are you leaving? Who were you talking to? - Exactly. - So it's really sad that the house wasn't there. - Yeah. - During the process though of trying to piece all of this together, something really strange surfaced in Ray's home office. Family members later described finding a typed note that was folded, tucked into plastic, and taped in a hard-to-reach spot behind Ray's computer. This wasn't something they found just sitting out in a place that you would naturally, you know, discover this during a casual cleanup. It was truly concealed in a way that would certainly suggest that it was intentionally placed there and maybe meant to never even be found or to be found, but only if someone was looking closely enough. Allison also described a detail that makes the timing of all of it feel especially eerie. She said that she believed Ray had created the note the day he disappeared because there were actually scraps of it in the trash. And that, of course, is a huge thing that matters in this case. This isn't like a journal entry that they found, you know, from months ago or that was being worked on for months and months. This is potentially something that he just, you know, just did this in the 24 hours maybe before his death. And as for the note itself, it really wasn't normal. Multiple accounts describe it as being multiple pages, but it was printed in really small font and then shrunk down so that the entire thing could be folded into a compact little form. And the content was written kind of like a collage. There were names, phrases, references, and lists. It didn't read like narrative at all and it didn't really resemble a suicide note either. So they didn't really know even what this was. And the note needless to say answered absolutely no questions. All it did was create new ones. It opens with language addressing brothers and sisters and references natural events. And it includes a phrase that multiple sources say has a Masonic connection. And the note also contains this odd mixture of things On the surface, it doesn't look like any of them belong together, but there's references of films and films. makers, there's lists of people, and there's these scattered mentions of technology in different concepts. At least one account describes a note as including a page with names. Some of those names included celebrities who had died. There were also names of people that Ray actually knew, and there was like just bizarre things in there like language about becoming five years younger and just things like didn't really make a lot of sense. So the fact that it was hidden is also what kept them from just dismissing this as being a random, you know, random thing that he made because clearly if you have this weird thing that's typed out and folded up and, you know, taped behind your computer, you put that there on purpose, but like what is the purpose? So naturally, of course, this note becomes a focal point for interpretation. Some people read it like code, some read it like creative exercise, and some read it as evidence of a mental health crisis. Even within official material, the note is treated as potentially meaningful enough to warrant specialized review. In fact, the FBI's behavioral analysis unit, or BAU, was consulted about this note later that year. The FBI BAU consultation becomes important because it shows how seriously this note was taken by investigators when they were trying to understand whether or not even connected to Ray's death. In an FBI document tied to the case, the BAU analysis describes a language in themes as consistent with delusional thinking, including the possibility of a delusional disorder. And it notes that such an illness could go undetected by people that were even close to the person. The BAU materials also include investigative suggestions that emphasize forensics, specifically recommending forensic analysis of the computer and printer associated with where the letter was found. And that's a big deal because it reinforces that the note wasn't being treated as some kind of irrelevant curiosity. It's being treated as something that might reveal the timing, the authorship, his intent, or even context. At the same time, even official summaries reflect how messy and inconsistent the record can be in a case like this. For example, one FBI case summary version of events states that the house gas being Claudia heard Ray say, oh, blank, before leaving, while other reports quoted as just saying, oh, and the difference doesn't really change the core fact that the column immediately preceded his departure, but it does show why this case is so murky. Even the smallest details don't always line up cleanly. But what does line up is that the note existed, it was deliberately hidden, and it was unusual enough that it became a central artifact in the effort to understand Ray's final days. So next, we need to talk about what happened after Ray died, specifically the response from his workplace and the decisions investigators made that still frustrate Ray's family. It was learned that Ray had received a phone call from the main switchboard of Stan's Barry Research on the evening he disappeared. Investigators confirmed that through phone records, but what they couldn't determine was which extension inside the company placed the call. According to reporting at the time and later interviews, the company stated that they were unable to identify the specific caller and that answer didn't sit well with Ray's family. The call was the last known interaction with Ray before he left his house and that's potentially what even brought him downtown and brought him within walking distance of where his body would later be found. But yet the identity of the caller remained unknown, which really is super eerie when you think about it because I feel like anybody who worked with Ray that was hearing about all this that's happened and knew that the police were trying to figure out who made this call. Why wouldn't you just come forward and say call to him? This is what the call was about. If it was nothing, you know? That's what makes it even creepier and more eerie is that they never were able to identify who made that call. I can't imagine it. It's just one company. How hard could it be to identify who made this call? So that part of the story is definitely interesting that they never could figure that out. What complicated matters even further was that shortly after Ray's body was discovered, the company reportedly instructed employees not to speak with investigators without legal representation. Multiple accounts say that employees declined to speak with the police directly. And of course, that decision is legal. It's normal. The company is well within their rights to advise their employees to do that. Companies often do advise their employees not to talk to the police. I imagine without having counsel, but from the grieving family's perspective, all of this kind of feels like a wall that is being put up and that, you know, everybody who works with Ray somehow in on this. So Ray's wife later described feeling that cooperation was limited and that potential witnesses who might have provided clarity about the phone call or Ray's recent behavior were pretty much silent. So a little more about Dan Sberian associates, which as we said was operating under a Gora publishing, they produced financial newsletters that often relied on dramatic marketing language. Some publications predicted market crashes or positioned information as urgent and exclusive. In 2003, which was three years before Ray's death, Porter Stan Sberian, his company were charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission or the SEC and a civil case involving claims that made it into one of those newsletters. The case alleged that a newsletter promoted insider information about a stock tip that was not actually based on confidential knowledge. The company denied wrongdoing and the matter eventually resulted in financial penalties. Now to be clear, there's never been public evidence linking that SEC case to Ray's death, but it does establish that the company operated in a high stakes, illegally scrutinized financial publishing environment. Ray was working within that world, so when he received a call from the company's switch board and then left home urgently, the context really matters. But without confirmation of who actually made that call, the questions still remained unanswered. The police response in the aftermath also became a source of frustration for Ray's family. The Baltimore Police Department publicly stated that the injuries were consistent with a fall from height and they believed that the most likely scenario was suicide. However, the Baltimore City Medical Examiner, as we mentioned before, had ruled the manner of death as undetermined and that distinction created this big divide. From a law enforcement perspective, the case appeared solvable under a self-inflicted fall theory. But from the family's perspective, that unanswered phone call, the silence from the people that he worked with, the debate over the trajectory of the fall, and that unusual note all created too many unresolved elements for his family to easily accept that conclusion. Alison has consistently maintained that she does not believe her husband took his own life. In interview's years later, she described Ray as being future-oriented, loving, and actively planning projects. She emphasized that there was no known suicide threats and no history of diagnosed mental illness. Meanwhile, the consultation with the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit, regarding the note, added another layer of complexity. So while this analysis referenced possible delusional themes, it did not officially classify the death. It provided interpretive guidance, but not a definitive conclusion. So by mid-2006, the case just was existing in this really strange space and because there was no arrest, no confession, and no forensic reconstruction that was publicly released, the case kind of just quietly stalled. Baltimore police publicly described his death as a probable suicide, and the basic shape of that theory is pretty straightforward on paper. Ray leaves home after a phone call, drives downtown, parks near the Belvedere, accesses the building somehow, reaches a high point, and falls onto the lower roof hard enough to punch through into the conference room area. The reason that theory remains in play is because it does explain several big facts at once. It explains why his car was parked nearby, why his body was found inside the building, and why there was a single point of impact that appears consistent with a high fall. It also aligns with the medical reality that a fall from that height can produce devastating blunt force trauma without leaving the kinds of defensive injuries you'd expect in a hands-on assault. But the suicide explanation shouldn't be the default just because it's the needest. And that's, again, where this case gets sticky. The Baltimore medical examiner did not rule the manner of death as suicide. Again, it was classified as being undetermined. It means the evidence was not sufficient to establish intent. So the real question becomes, if investigators believe he jumped, what did they have that made them so comfortable with that conclusion, and what didn't they have that made the medical examiner stop short? This is where we have to talk about the parts of the suicide theory that are simple and the parts that aren't. The simple part is access. The Belvedere is a large mixed-use building with residents and commercial spaces, and the lower roof where the hole appeared is not visible from the street level. That roof section is the one raised co-workers noticed from a nearby parking garage, and it lined up with the interior conferred through an area where his body was found. The not simple part is a path. A person doesn't accidentally end up on a roof with a clear line to a lower roof section unless they've either found a route up there or been led up there. If Ray reached the top of the Belvedere, that suggests he navigated the building with purpose. If he didn't reach the top, then we're talking about other possible launch points. Like the parking garage, ledge, a low roof top area, each of which comes with its own questions about how he got access. And then there's the trajectory debate, which we've been talking about a lot, and that's one of the reasons this case just refuses to settle down really. It's one thing to say that Ray fell from above, which. of course he did, but it's another thing entirely to explain how he landed where he did, because as we said, that hole is in an area that's on a lower roof set away from the main roof line. So if this was a jump from a higher point, it did require forward motion, not just stepping off the ledge. That doesn't necessarily rule out the suicide theory, but it adds this mechanical hurdle that an investigator really would want to be able to demonstrate very clearly if you're going to land on that for, like if you're going to actually say that that's what happened, you want to be able to say that it's even possible that that happened. Then you add in his belongings that were found, the flip flops, the phone, and the glasses, and it doesn't prove a staging, but it is really strange that those items were found there completely undamaged, and that is one piece of evidence that keeps his family, you know, seeking more answers because they want to know how exactly those items got there. And none of that still takes into account the note that was hidden behind Ray's computer that was strange enough for the FBI behavioral analysis unit to be consulted about it. And in the document that they produced, I was associated with this case, they described the note with references to delusional content and the possibility of a disorder that could have gone unnoticed by friends and family. So some people take that and they're kind of thinking that this note is proof of a suicidal intent, but the FBI is even saying that's not necessarily what it's saying. They're saying they're not determining suicide based on this weird note, but it is a behavioral interpretation that they're making of this unusual writing. Other people treat the note like it has to be a code that's pointing towards murder, but also that, you know, there's no facts to support that either. What you can say is that Ray did create something unusual. He concealed it and the investigators did take it seriously enough to have it analyzed and to try and figure out if it had anything to do with his death. So when you combine the possible altered mental state with the high fall, then that suicide theory becomes plausible and explainable. However, it still doesn't become proofable. They still have no way of proving that he was actually able to even make this fall happen in the trajectory that they are saying it would have had to have happened from. And we're going to get into the rest of the story after one last break to hear a word from this week's sponsors. 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Head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's w-a-y-f-a-i-r.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. So before the break, we were talking about the different possibilities and what actually happened to Ray Rivera. But now let's lay out the other possibilities that are on the table. One alternative is accident or misadventure. If Ray went to the Belvedere for a reason that had nothing to do with self-harm, like he was meeting someone, chasing a lead, or responding to an urgent situation, and he ended up on a roof line or a ledge, you can imagine a scenario where a slip, a misstep, or a moment of panic ends in a fall. The problem with this theory is that we don't have a clean documented reason for him to be there. And we also don't have an eyewitness account of a stumble or a struggle. Another alternative is of course foul play. And this is the one that keeps coming back because of three converging tensions. The unidentified call, the workplace silence, and the lack of visual confirmation placing him on the roof. Multiple people involved in the reporting claim that raise employer would not cooperate in the early stage of the investigation, and then employees were instructed not to speak with detectives while the company's representatives later disputed this gag order, framing publicly. That back-and-forth matters because it shapes what could have been learned quickly in 2006 when the details were fresh and before stories have been calcified. Even if every decision was legal and routine, it really still created a perception problem. From there, the foul play theory tends to take two shapes. One is coercion, that Rae is lured or pressured to go somewhere, something escalates, and the fall becomes either a pushed fall or a stage jump. The other is staging after death. Rae dies somewhere else and is placed in a way meant to mimic a fall, which pleases not to make. That seems incredibly unlikely. The most unlikely. And the second version is harder to support as we were saying is because he's six foot five, how are you going to get the six foot five adult male into a locked conference room beneath a roof puncture without leaving clear indicators of that movement would also require a control creation of the whole and a believable placement of belongings. That's a lot of things that would have to happen ahead of time. None of it's impossible. I kind of disagree, but none of it's impossible, but it's complex and complexity is the enemy of clean staging. Yeah, I agree. It's too complex. It's not going to work. No. So as of today, Rae Rivera's case remains officially unsolved. The Baltimore City Medical Examiner's office classified the manner of death as undetermined and that ruling has not changed since 2006. It means that the cause of death, which was blunt force trauma from a fall, is not in dispute, but the intent behind that fall has never been conclusively established. The Baltimore Police Department has publicly stated in the past that investigators believed Rae likely died as a result of suicide. However, the case was not closed with a formal suicide determination from the medical examiner and there has been no criminal charge or official declaration of homicide either. So in practical terms, the case is inactive. There have been no arrests, no public announcements of new forensic breakthroughs, no updated reconstruction reports that have been released. That would definitively resolve the trajectory debate. There's been no confirmed identification of the person who placed that phone call that prompted Rae to leave his house. And when Netflix's reboot of unsolved mysteries aired an episode on Rae's case in 2020, it did renew public interest and prompt some additional tips. At that time, Baltimore police confirmed they were reviewing information that was coming in as a result of that episode, but there has been no publicly announced development that ever stemmed from those tips. Allison has continued to speak publicly about the case over the years. She's maintained that she does not believe that Rae took his own life and has expressed frustration over what she feels were investigative gaps and unanswered questions. There has been no civil ruling or secondary official inquiry that altered the original determinations, though. Nearly two decades later, the whole in the roof of the Belvedere remains one of the most talked about images in modern unsolved case history, and that is where the case still stands today as unsolved and a complete mystery. I really don't know what to think. I don't think someone planted a hole in the roof. No, I don't think someone went in like blew a hole in the roof and then like tossed his body through it. That just seems like unlikely. Totally. But I do find it so strange that the company where he's who's not talking about where he could have gotten a phone call that some of those co-workers actually are the ones that see where there's a hole in call police and police. That is those three people would have been the first three people that I would have been like wanting to know what were you doing like wanting to question because I would not be a bit surprised to learn that it was one of those three people who made that phone call. So that is just a weird one, especially for the company to say don't talk about it. Oh, but we did find where he was. It would just have been nice to know who called it and why. Yeah, and of course I don't ever, you know, we never want to like try and speculate and say that innocent people are guilty of anything, but it does kind of remind me a little bit of like when my kids were toddlers. Like I remember my youngest I think it was he scratched his name into a coffee table or something and he came and told me about it, right? But he like it was one of those things where he was like I didn't scratch the table. Like he can't just say you know I found it. Right, exactly. And so I'm like okay, well that's kind of what this reminds me of. Like okay, it's kind of strange that you knew exactly where to go that you would see this like hole that no one else could ever see. Yeah, I definitely think that raises a lot of questions and I'm surprised that with all the information in this story that and everything that they did, I do feel like it's a little strange that those three people who found him weren't really questioned to have. Yeah, literally what you wouldn't think it had anything to do with him unless you knew who went to the Belvedere. Right. So yeah, it's strange and I feel for his wife because that has to absolutely drive you crazy to not know what's actually happened. Yeah, yeah, really sad. Alright guys, thank you so much for listening to this story this week. We'll be back next week. Same time, same place, new story. Have a great week. Bye. Tammy regularly hauled stuff to her kids at college. That's why she shops at BJ's wholesale club, saving up to 25% off grocery store prices. Beef jerky, microwave meals, laundry pods even they can't screw up. Have you met my kid? And with BJ's gas, she gets there for less. They call me the road warrior. This is your home road warrior mom, home of the save. Join for just $20 at BJ's dot com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for 6 months. Open soon, limited time offer new members only. BJ's home of the save. Can you hear that? It's the calm sugar white sandy beaches of Saint Pete clear water. And if you listen closely, you'll hear the mmms coming from the epic restaurants. The cheers from sunsoked music festivals and the bee of our legendary nightlife scene. 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