Ray Gricar Pt. One

April 15, 2005. Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. After taking the day off work and leaving on a road trip, 59-year old Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar fails to return home and is reported missing. The following day, Ray’s abandoned car is discovered 60 miles away in the town of Lewisburg, parked across the street from an antiques mall. Over the course of the next several months, Ray’s county-issued work laptop and its hard drive are discovered in the nearby Susquehanna River, but the hard drive is too damaged to recover any data. A number of different theories are pushed forward, which include Ray disappeared voluntarily, completing suicide by jumping into the river, or becoming the victim of foul play, possibly in connection to the infamous Penn State child sex abuse scandal. However, there is no conclusive evidence pointing to any of these theories and Ray Gricar is never found.  If you have any information about this case, please contact the Pennsylvania State Police at [phone]. 

Support the show: 

Patreon.com/thetrailwentcold

Patreon.com/julesandashley

 Additional Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Gricar https://charleyproject.org/case/ray-frank-gricar
 

http://old.post-gazette.com/pg/05109/490420-85.stm

 https://www.pennlive.com/news/2020/04/the-hunt-for-ray-gricar-15-years-of-clues-theories-and-the-search-for-answers.html

“The Serial Killer’s Apprentice: And 12 Other Stories of Cleveland’s Most Intriguing Unsolved Crimes” by Ray Gricar

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/07/utah_detainee_isnt_gricar_but.html

https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/15/us/ray-gricar-missing-prosecutor/index.html

https://www.pennlive.com/midstate/2015/04/ten_years_later_ray_gricars_di.html

https://www.centredaily.com/news/local/education/penn-state/jerry-sandusky/article42806712.html

https://www.centredaily.com/news/article42828846.html

https://www.wearecentralpa.com/news/podcast-gives-new-insight-on-district-attorney-ray-gricars-disappearance-16-years-later/

https://www.northcentralpa.com/news/crime/no-answers-16-years-later-in-disappearance-of-centre-county-da-psp-says-case-still/article_8e33cc04-72d1-11eb-ab98-f30bcdaa197b.html

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Welcome back to the Pathway Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
And I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
April fifteenth, two thousand and five, Belfont, Pennsylvania. After taking
the day off work and leaving on a road trip,
fifty nine year old Center County District Attorney Ray Greekar
fails to return home and is reported missing. The following day,
rais abandoned car is discovered sixty miles away in the
town of Louisbourg, parked across the street from the antique

(01:00):
small Over the course of the next several months, Ray's
county issued work laptop and its hard drive are discovered
on separate occasions in the nearby Susquehanna River, but the
hard drive is too damaged to recover any data. A
number of theories are pushed forward, including the possibilities that
Ray completed suicide, disappeared voluntarily, or was the victim of

(01:22):
foul play, but there is no conclusive evidence to point
to any of these theories, and no trace of Ray
is ever found after that.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
The path went Chile. So today we're going to start
tackling one of the most heavily discussed missing persons cases
of the modern era, the two thousand and five disappearance
of Ray Greecar. We've recently passed the cases twenty year anniversary,
and it's not hard to figure out why it captured
the public's attention, as this is a rare example of
a prominent law enforcement official becoming the center of their

(01:52):
own unsolved mystery. For two decades, Ray Greecar had been
the District Attorney of Center County and devoted his life
to put in murderers, rapists, and other vicious criminals behind bars.
But less than eight months before he was scheduled to retire,
Ray vanished without a trace. On the day he disappeared,
Ray decided to play hooky from work and take a
road trip, but he never returned home, and the following day,

(02:16):
his abandoned Mini Cooper was discovered sixty miles away in
a parking lot across the street from an antique s
mall in the town of Louisbourg. Now, since Ray had
been to this particular antique small before taking a trip
to Louisbourg wasn't all that unusual, but there were a
number of odd clues surrounding his disappearance. Even though Ray
detested smoking cigarette, ash was found inside his car, and

(02:37):
there would be reported sightings of him in Louisbourg alongside
a woman who has never been identified. Ray's work laptop
and its hard drive were discovered in the nearby Susquehanna River,
leading to speculation that had contained information which Ray or
someone else did not want to be uncovered. In fact,
this would lead to conspiracy theories that Ray's disappearance might

(02:58):
be connected to the notorious Pens State child sex abuse scandal,
which became a major story six years later. But it's
also possible that even though his body was never found,
Ray may have been feeling suicidal and decided to end
his own life by jumping into the Susquehanna River, as
he lost his older brother under similar circumstances years earlier.

(03:18):
Even though this is a very high profile missing person's
case with a number of different possible scenarios, there's no
conclusive evidence which points to any of them, and since
we're going to have no shortage of theories to discuss,
this will be a special three part series of episodes
we'll bring in.

Speaker 4 (03:33):
On, Robin, Bring it on.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Here's what is the first thing that hit me with
this is at any time you have a judge or
a prosecutor, or anyone who's involved in the justice system
and they go missing or there's evidence of foul play
or here you know, potential suicide as well. But it
makes me question what cases they've been involved in. You
mentioned the Penn State child sex abuse scandal, but there's

(03:58):
also a lot of other criminals that this man prosecuted
right and made sure were put behind bars, And they
all have associates, they all have families, they all have
access to communicate with the people on the outside. And
so you've seen case after case around the country where
you'll have a judge killed in their home or a
prosecutor killed on their way to work. And so my

(04:22):
first thought would be someone related to one of his cases.
The Penn State child sex abuse scandal was one of
the most horrific cases, and so and a lot of
energy and emotions around that. So very potential. But it's
also when you named that there was cigarettes and ash
everywhere in his car, and that he was known to

(04:43):
despise smoking. That rules out a friend an associate, because
if I invite you to go on a ride with
me and you're a smoker. You are not smoking in
my car. If I'm having an intimate relationship with you,
you are not smoking in my car. So if I
detest smoking, which I do, right, I don't like to
smell it or be around it. The last place I'm

(05:05):
going to allow someone I know to smoke is in
my car, which means it wasn't him, and it likely
was not a buddy or at least a buddy who
was smoking while he was alive in the car with him.
So I am leaning more towards someone who hunted him
down and then when they moved his vehicle and things
like that, they had a cigarette and they were using

(05:27):
his car the way they wanted to. But fascinating. I
cannot wait to learn more. My gut is saying someone
tied to one of his cases, whether it's the Penn
State one or not, who knows, Just out.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
Of curiosity, Ash, have you heard of this case before,
because it is a pretty high profile one which has
been heavily discussed the past twenty years. Are you just
going and completely blind?

Speaker 4 (05:47):
Well, I don't know yet, to be honest.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
When you described it, I'm like, well, there's there are
a lot of high profile ones where prosecutors are killed.
So I'll have to wait to know if this is
a case I know exactly. But when you mentioned Pinn.

Speaker 4 (05:59):
State with it, I'm like, do I know this case?
So I don't know, Robin.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
You got to tell me more and then I'll chime
in if I do remember, and I'll be like, oh,
wait a minute, I've heard of this one right now,
I'm blind.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
Did you watch the TV show Disappeared?

Speaker 4 (06:12):
I don't know. I don't know that either, guys, my
brain doesn't work.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
It was a really prominent missing person show where they
featured a lot of the most famous cases, including Maura
Murray's case, and this is one of the cases that
was featured on that show, and it was the first
time that I was introduced to the case.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
Okay, I don't think so, because I feel like I
would have remembered Moro's case on that and so I
don't believe I've watched that one either.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Well, not to worry, we got lots of details to
discuss about this particular so that we can all figure
this out.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
Our story begins in Center County, Pennsylvania in two thousand
and five, and our central figure is fifty nine year
Old Ray Gricar. Originally born in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio,
Rays spent the past four decades working in the legal field,
as after earning a jurist doctor at Case Western Reserve
University School of Law, he launched his career by working

(07:05):
as a prosecutor in Cuyahoga County. Ray married his first wife,
Barbara Gray, in nineteen sixty nine, and they would adopt
their only child, a baby girl named Laura, nine years later.
Shortly thereafter, Barbara was offered a new job at Pennsylvania
State University aka Penn State, so the family relocated to

(07:26):
State College in nineteen eighty and Ray decided to put
his legal career on hold so he could become a
stay at home dad and raise Laura. But he eventually
caught the attention of the Center County District Attorney, who
offered Ray a job as an assistant prosecutor and compelled
him to return to work. By nineteen eighty five, the
position of Center County District Attorney became open, so Ray

(07:48):
decided to make his own run for it and wound
up winning the election. Over the course of the next
two decades, Ray would prosecute a number of cases and
was re elected as district attorney four times times. He
was known for being a very private and enigmatic person
who always kept a low profile, and unlike many others
in his field, Ray did not have any higher political

(08:10):
aspirations to become a judge or attorney general. However, he
did have a reputation for being a very hard working
and dedicated prosecutor who truly cared for the victims in
the cases he took on. During his run as District Attorney,
Ray's personal life would undergo a number of changes as
he got divorced from his first wife, Barbara, in nineteen

(08:31):
ninety one. Five years later, Ray got remarried to another
woman named Emma Lang, but their relationship was described as
a fairly tumultuous one and their marriage would end in
divorce in two thousand and one. But the following year,
Ray began a relationship with Patty Fornicola, who worked as
a clerk and victim's rights advocate in the Center County

(08:52):
District Attorney's office. Since Patty had also gone through a
prior divorce, she and Ray were not in a hurry
to get married again, but they still thought they were
a perfect match for each other. As a result, Ray
decided to move in with Patty at her house in
the town of Bellafont, located just over ten miles northeast
of State College.

Speaker 4 (09:12):
You know, I love everything about Ray.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Ray was willing to sacrifice his career and say, listen,
I get the best job ever, which is to be
a stay at home dad with our baby. He moves
to support his wife's career, which is amazing. And you know, look,
they did a lot together, they raised a baby. Didn't
work out, and he tries again, doesn't work out, But
when he finds Patty, it really does work. I think

(09:36):
it's hard when you work in victim services or you
work in the criminal justice system for people to understand
your energy and emotions and empathy and those kinds of things.
Ray worked to advocate for victims, which is incredible, and
then he meets Patty, who is also a clerk and
victim's right advocate in the criminal justice system. So their

(09:57):
ability to support and understand each other had to be incredible,
probably the first time in his life. He said, they
really get it right, Like I know everyone else understood,
but this person really gets it. And so it sounds
like his life's kind of lining up. I got the
ability to then the most precious years be a stay
at home dad. I'm now happily, you know, in a
relationship or in no rush, and my career seems.

Speaker 4 (10:20):
To be really getting its feet underneath of me again.
And he seems happy.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah. That's what's interesting about Ray is because he had
such a high profile job where he often interacted with
the media. You can actually find interview clips of him
online from the years before he went missing. So this
is a rare missing person's case where you get to
see the person speaking on video rather than just photographs
and kind of get an idea of their personality. And
he really does seem like a nice, low key, down

(10:47):
to earth guy. But I do think it's appropriate that
they describe him as enigmatic, that sometimes he was hard
to read, and even though he does look like he's happy,
as we're going to talk about later, there was speculation
that maybe he was feeling secretly depressed or suicidal, and
he seemed like he had the type of personality that
if he was having a mental health crisis or something
was bothering him, he would keep it bottled up inside

(11:08):
and not tell anyone.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
That's fair, But I do wonder too, when you have
a job like he had, where he's a prosecutor, you
need to be.

Speaker 4 (11:17):
Animated and you need to be passionate.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
But I also think you've got to wear your hurt
pretty close to your sleeve, because you know, as much
as he's advocating for these victims and he's putting himself
out there, at some point, you do kind of have
to create this boundary where you say, I'm going to
do my professional duty and I'm going to try to
survive the emotional side of it. And I think sometimes
that comes off where you have more of that reserved,

(11:40):
cautious attitude where people admire you and think you're you know,
gregarious and things like that, but there's also that kind
of affect where there's a little bit of a wall
and distance from people.

Speaker 4 (11:50):
Sometimes.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, that would definitely make sense, because if he's working
with victims all the time who have suffered from horrific
crimes and working with a lot of families, I think
he would have to keep a professional demeanor and kind
of bottle up some of his emotions just to be
able to get through it. So in January two thousand
and four, Ray announced that he had decided not to
seek a sixth term as Center County District Attorney and

(12:12):
would not be running for reelection the following year. He
would be stepping down at the end of two thousand
and five, shortly after he passed his sixtieth birthday and
retire from practicing law. He wanted to spend more time
traveling and visiting his daughter, Laura, who was living in Seattle,
Washington at that point. On April fifteenth, Ray was in
the midst of winding down his career and had just

(12:33):
seven and a half months left in office. When he
and Patty woke up that morning, Ray told her he
was planning to take the day off work and went
back to sleep. Patty's ordinary routine was to return home
at lunchtime in order to take care of their dog,
but since she had to run some errands that day,
she wrote a note asking Ray if he could handle
the dog before she left. Well. At around eleven thirty am,

(12:55):
Ray called Patty from his cell phone to inform her
that he was now taking a scenic drive in his
red and white Mini Cooper and heading northeast on Route
one ninety two through the unincorporated community of Brush Valley.
He told Patty that he was planning to do some
antique shopping, which was one of his favorite hobbies, and
he would not be back in time to take care
of the dog. But after the call ended, Patty never

(13:16):
heard from Ray again. Ray failed to return home that evening,
and when repeated calls to a cell phone kept going
to voicemail, Patty became concerned enough to contact the Bellefont
Police Department and officially reported him missing some time after
eleven PM. Patty also reached out to Ray's daughter, Laura,
who confirmed that she hadn't heard from him either. Years earlier,

(13:37):
when Ray was married to his second wife, Emma, he
decided to leave the residence after they got into a
huge fight and made an impromptu trip to his hometown
of Cleveland, and since Ray was a fan of the
Cleveland Indians baseball team, he decided to blow off some
steam by attending a double header and watching back to
back games at Jacob's Field. While this was going on,

(13:57):
Ray did not bother to contact Emma or anyone else
to let them know where he was until he suddenly
reappeared to work again on Monday morning, as if nothing
had happened. Since the Indians had an afternoon game scheduled
on April the sixteenth, the Bellfow PD contacted the local
authorities and asked them to check the Jacobs Field parking
lot for raise Minnie Cooper, but they did not find

(14:18):
it there.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
So you have to digest the two of those situations.
I mean, I understand what she was doing. She was
desperate and saying, hey, there's a chance, you know, maybe
he did the same thing. He failed to communicate and
went to the Cleveland's game, but the Cleveland Indians game.
But when you look, he was in a fight with Emma,
and he was not in a fight with Patty. He
was communicating with Patty. And so as a spouse, if

(14:43):
you got into an incredibly large fuss, I could actually
see being a little bit of a turd and going
to a baseball game, ignoring your wife's calls and making
her quote worry about you, which is not healthy, and
then just showing back up and pretending like nothing else happened.
But here with pat they have plans. He's calling and
keeping in contact with her. He has, you know, this

(15:06):
day where he's going to do some of his favorite things,
which is antique shopping. He was filling her in on
what was coming that day, and so her first gut,
which is something's wrong, wonder where he is. I need
to reach out. That is way more probable than him
running off and failing to communicate, because they weren't fighting,
and he was giving her the details of what his

(15:26):
day was supposed to look like and it just didn't
end up the way she thought it was going to.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah, as we're going to find out, he technically looked
like he was going antique shopping because, as we mentioned
in the intro, his abandoned car would eventually be found
outside of antique Small So it makes you wonder was
he actually telling the truth. Did he plan to go
there for that reason, or did he have a trip
plan for other reasons which he did not tell his
wife about. But all anyone knows is that he never

(15:53):
came back.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
I guess you could look at it like he has
his history of disappearing, like he was fighting with his
wife the time. Like if it is a pattern, maybe
he's setting up an like kind of an alibi for
like this is where I am, this is where I've been,
and then in doing so, he's going to assuage any
concerns that she has or any fears, and that may

(16:15):
buy him some time if he decided to disappear voluntarily,
which I'm not saying that I think that's necessarily what happened,
but just that there is a potential that that could
have happened. However, at around six thirty pm on the
evening of the sixteenth, a state trooper found the Mini
Cooper in the small town of Louisbourg, located sixty miles

(16:36):
east of Bellefonte in Union County. The Mini Cooper was
in a gravel parking lot located across the street from
an antiques s mall called the Street of Shops. Like
we mentioned earlier, one of Ray's favorite hobbies was collecting antiques,
so he traveled to Louisbourg to visit this mall on
previous occasions. The vehicle was locked, but when the police

(16:57):
managed to open it and get inside, they found Ray's
cell phone, which had been issued to him by the
county for work purposes and was turned off. A half
filled water bottle was also found in the vehicle's beverage holder,
and testing would later find traces of raised DNA on it. However,
raised wallet and the keys to the Mini Cooper were
nowhere to be found. The strangest clue were small traces

(17:20):
of cigarette ash on the passenger side floor mat, and
there was also a scent of cigarette smoke. This seemed
very unusual since Ray is like smoking and everyone who
knew him found it unlikely that he would have ever
let anyone smoke inside his car. A pair of cigarette
butts were also found on the ground near the passenger
side of the vehicle, and while DNA was recovered from

(17:42):
them and entered into law enforcement databases containing the DNA
of offenders, it failed to produce a match. When the
sniffer dog was brought in to track raise scent, it
did not go any further than the parking lot, which
seemed to indicate that Ray may have climbed into another
vehicle and left a scene.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
That's possible too, but when you think about if he
was going to go to another vehicle, who then drove
his vehicle and had those cigarettes there again, that is
one of those factors that says that was so out
of character for him. He's never going to be in
an enclosed space. You come in my home, you come
in my car, you are not bringing your cigarettes like
poor Rebel's parents go outside and smoke, you know, are

(18:23):
they ride in their own car?

Speaker 4 (18:25):
Because it's a hard no.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
And so when you know, when we think about Ray's
car is found with those items in there, in those
kinds of details, yes, clearly there's stuff that traces back
to Ray because he drove that car. But there's also
elements that say, wait a minute, there was someone else
there and like I said earlier, likely someone he was
not very closely associated with.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, and online discussions about this case, I've actually seen
people try to put for the cigarette butts as evidence
of a suicide, thinking that if Ray wanted to end
his life, maybe he just wanted to enjoy one last
cigarette beforehand. But no, like this wasn't a former smoker
who had quit for a long time and wanted one
final cigarette. He was a guy who had detested smoking
period and will not let anyone smoke in his car.

(19:11):
So that really does suggest that he was in the
presence of another person who was in that car. But
to this day, they've never been able to figure out
who it might be. So there were multiple witnesses who
were called seeing Ray and Louisbourg on April fifteenth, and
it appeared that earlier that day, before he parked the
car in this particular lot, he had parked across the
street from another location, the Packwood House Museum. Employees from

(19:35):
the museum said they saw Ray pacing around outside in
a nearby park as if he appeared to be waiting
for someone, but at some point he moved his car
to the lot near the Street of Shops. The most
intriguing sighting was provided by witnesses who said they saw
a man matching Ray's description inside the Street of Shops
walking alongside a dark haired woman, and they appeared to

(19:55):
be together since they were speaking to one another. During
the early stages of the investigation, it was believed that
the brown haired woman might have been a close friend
of Ray's named Barbara Patito, who had worked as a
TV reporter in State College. Not only did Petito match
the description, but she was known for being a smoker
and a regular customer at the Street of Shops who
had an interest in antiques. However, it turned out that

(20:19):
Potito was away on vacation in New York on the
date Ray went missing, so she was ruled out as
being the woman Unfortunately, the sighting of the woman was
not made public until thirteen months after Ray disappeared, and
investigators would face criticism for not pursuing this lead more aggressively.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
Well, when you say witnesses saw this, how many witnesses
saw this?

Speaker 1 (20:40):
It sounds like it was quite a few, like not
just one, but various witnesses throughout the course of the
day who were certain that they had seen Ray walking
alongside this woman. And the ones I've been intrigued about
is when they say they saw Ray and a woman
in close proximity to the Mini Cooper, Because that is
a very distinct vehicle. So you have to think that
if you saw Ray and a woman or a man

(21:01):
and a woman standing beside it, then it's probably Ray.

Speaker 3 (21:04):
So if this is the woman who was potentially smoking
near the vehicle, I could only think of a scenario where,
like I was a smoker ten years ago, I haven't
touched them since I can't stand the smell now. I'm
very put off by it, but I can understand for
people it's a very difficult habit to quit. And if
it was a woman that he was attracted to or

(21:25):
potentially having an affair with, sometimes people. And I'm not
saying this is what happened, but sometimes people will forgive
vices in others if it is a scenario like that.

Speaker 4 (21:36):
That's very true. That's very true. He could be like,
listen with you, I don't care. Yeah, that's.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
Yeah, it makes sense to me. I've given people rides
with people who have smoked in my car, even though
I don't particularly like smoking. But I'm more flexible if
I know that they want to smoke and I'm doing
them a favor.

Speaker 3 (21:53):
I thought you were going to say, I'm more flexible
if I think they're hot.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah. No, I didn't want to say. That would never
be his podcast.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
When Patty performed a search of her residents, the only
items of Rays which appeared to be missing were a
pair of sunglasses and his county issued laptop computer that
he used for work purposes. Patty said it was uncharacteristic
of Ray to bring his laptop on non work related trips.
He also left behind the computer's case, power cord, and

(22:26):
sloppy drive, and the laptop's battery was believed to have
about two or three hours worth of power. The Mini
Cooper had been parked in close proximity to the Susquehanna River,
which had two bridges crossing over it. One of them
was part of Pennsylvania Route forty five and used by
local traffic, while the other was a rusted, abandoned railway trestle.

(22:48):
There was some concern that Ray might have decided to
intentionally jump off one of the bridges into the river,
as the whole scene had some striking similarities to another
tragedy experienced by the greek Car family years earlier. In
May of nineteen ninety six, Ray's older brother, Roy Greekar,
who was fifty three years old at the time, left

(23:08):
his home in Westchester Township, Ohio, after telling his wife
he was going to buy some mulch, but he never returned.
Two days later, Roy's abandoned car was discovered forty miles
away at a park in Dayton, located near a bridge
overlooking the Great Miami River, one week after he originally
went missing. Roy's body was found in the river, down

(23:30):
streamed from a spot where his car had been parked.
Since Roy had a history of struggles with depression and
bipolar disorder, it seemed likely that he jumped off the
bridge and drowned, and his death was ruled to be
a suicide. The fact that Ray's abandoned car was also
found a great distance from his home, near a bridge
overlooking a river, caused speculation that he may have followed

(23:51):
in his brother's footsteps and ended his own life. While
Ray had no documented history of depression or suicidal behavior,
and his life ones believed that he was looking forward
to his upcoming retirement. However, people had recently started noticing
that Ray appeared to be withdrawn and giving off signs
that he was fatigued, as he would often take naps

(24:12):
after work and at lunch time. In fact, Ray seemed
to spend so much time sleeping that in the weeks
prior to his disappearance, Patty suggested that Ray go see
a doctor, but he never did. On April fourteenth, the
day before Ray went missing, he took a half day
off from work, and witnesses would recall seeing a Mini
Cooper parked at a local lakeside marina during the morning

(24:35):
hours with Ray sitting inside. Later that evening, surveillance camera
showed Ray arriving at his office at the Center County
court House, but he left just under two hours later,
and no one could be certain what he was doing there.
In search of Ray's office computer would show that he
had done an Internet search to look up the route
to Bellefonde to Louisbourg, which struck some people as odds

(24:57):
since Ray had previously driven to that area. Yeah, on
numerous occasions.

Speaker 4 (25:02):
That is really odd.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
If he was familiar with the area, you know, why
would he need to look it up on the computer.
But it is It's sad when you think about they've
already suffered a tragedy where his brother completed suicide in
a way that they're now assuming could he have followed suit?
Could he have been you know, telling Patty, this is
my plan, this is where I'm going, right, And instead

(25:26):
of the verbal plans, he has these other mental plans
that he's actually saying, I'm going to take my own life,
and I just don't want her to worry. So he
kind of has this quote monotonous routine day and never
comes home.

Speaker 4 (25:39):
But again, I don't know when he's not sleeping much.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
He's stressed at the end of his career. There's grief
that goes into that change, you know. But he has
plans to retire so he could spend time with his daughter. Remember,
even though the marriage didn't work, that was like the
greatest thing he had in his life, more than his
career and things like that, He's going to go hang
out with Lauren, get to see her more if he retires,

(26:03):
and he's not sleeping very much and being encouraged.

Speaker 4 (26:06):
To the doctor.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
But I could chalk that up to just stress and
grief and venality of saying, you know, a chapter of
my life is closing, and I want to make sure
I end my cases, wrap up things that I want
to get done. But then you look and you say, Okay,
we know Ray went to his office. We're not really
sure what he was doing there. But if you look
at the office computer, he's googling this place that he

(26:28):
should be or searching his place. He should be very
familiar with what could he need to know that he
doesn't already know.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
I mean, I guess it's a possibility if he was
planning to meet someone there, that maybe he had to
look up the instructions because maybe he knows the route
by heart, but he has to get the directions from
the computer so that he can provide them to someone.
And I know that people have speculated that maybe Ray
was depressed and suicidal, because retirement is sometimes difficult for
people they don't know what they're going to do with
themselves once they no longer work. But this wasn't a

(26:58):
force mandatory retirement. He was almost sixty, and he could
still continue working for a couple more years if he
really wanted to. And even if he didn't win re election,
he could have gotten some other job in the Center
County Attorney's office. So yeah, everyone just swears that he
just didn't show any signs of being suicidal or depressed.
But as I'm sure you know, sometimes people can mask

(27:19):
those symptoms very effectively. Since there were no obvious signs
of foul play at his abandoned vehicle, investigators seriously explored
the possibility that Ray elected to take his own life
and performed a search of the Susquehanna River. Since the
currents were strong and Ray was not known for being
a great swimmer, he likely would not have survived, even
though the fall from both of the bridges crossing over

(27:40):
the river was only twenty five feet. However, a search
of the river failed to turn up Ray's body or
any other evidence. But since the spring melt had recently
taken place, the water level was higher than usual. By
the time summer arrived, the water level had considerably lowered,
and on July the thirtieth, some fishermen finally discovered ray
laptop in the river, lodged against a bridge support on

(28:03):
the abandoned railway trestle. A forensic examination of the computer
indicated that it had been in the river for months,
but the laptop's hard drive was removed and a new
search of the area failed to turn it up. But
two months later, on October the First, a mother and
daughter skipping stones in the water wound up coming across
a hard drive on the riverbed near the railway trestle.

(28:24):
The spot was about one hundred yards upstream from where
the laptop had been found, and it seemed impossible that
the hard drive could have been dislodged accidentally. After the
computer was tossed into the river, the hard drive had
to be manually unscrewed, so someone had clearly gone to
the trouble of intentionally removing it. By this point, the
hard drive was so badly damaged by the sand and

(28:45):
grit from the riverbed that it was impossible to recover
or extract any data from it. Even after the FBI's
best forensic crew performed an analysis. Prior to his disappearance,
Ray had purchased software to erase the computer's hard drive,
which did not seem unusual since he was likely planning
to wipe his work laptop for his upcoming retirement at

(29:06):
the end of the year, but it was eventually revealed
that a search of Ray's home computer showed that he
had performed Internet searches using such terms as quote how
to wreck a hard drive, how to fry a hard drive,
and water damage to a notebook computer. So this only
increased speculation that Ray may have removed the hard drive
from the laptop and tossed both items into the river

(29:27):
because there was something on there he did not want
people to see.

Speaker 4 (29:31):
That is incredibly bizarre.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
I would have just thought, hey, look he's trying to
destroy information. Remember he's a prosecutor. There's a lot of
sense of information on his computer. But this is also
not some backwoods prosecutor's office. I'm sure there is an
actual policy of you have to do the following things
to destroy information, store information, write vile.

Speaker 4 (29:53):
Information before you leave.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
It's real interesting when you look at it's how to
wreck a hard drive, how to fry the hard drive,
and then water damage, so we're going beyond like, hey,
I've got this old computer. I'm going to just try
to get rid of it. We don't need to go
now submerged in water. And then it's found in water.
That's a little bit questionable. And it almost gives me
the Ray Rivera vibes a little.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
Bit that is true, Yeah, because I remember Ray Rivera
had made a number of strange Google searches on his
computer before he was disappeared and found dead. And my
day job, like one of my duties is when employees
lead having to do stuff like erase their hard drive
or archive all the files that they want to save
after they leave. And it's a very like a standard

(30:35):
process where if Ray was buying software to erase the
hard drive, that wouldn't have been anything unusual. But yeah,
the Google searches just seem like too much of a coincidence,
and it makes you wonder like was he making plans
to destroy what was ever on this computer and what
could have been on there if he felt that he
needed to do something like toss it into a body
of water.

Speaker 3 (30:57):
And since ash brings up the Ray Rivera case interesting
because it's like, is it something that's on there that
could be dangerous or is it something that he's just
believing that it's dangerous because he's got himself into a
mental health situation where he won't go to a doctor
for help. But clearly he is experiencing something and maybe

(31:17):
masking some symptoms of something because he's sleeping so much
that he's taking naps at lunch and this isn't characteristic
of him, and his partner noticed that there's something to
be worried about here when you're urging your partner to
go okay, like you really need to go see a physician,
but then they're holding back. But the fact that this
laptop is found in the river creates so many different possibilities.

(31:41):
Did somebody else take it from Ray because of the
information on there that they wanted destroyed because it would
be deleterious to them, Or did Ray destroy it because
of one of his connections to the cases that he
thought something that he did or his conduct could have
been damaging, or that the information and may have been
threatening if it got out there for him personally. Or

(32:05):
did he just want to destroy this laptop because he
didn't want anyone to be able to trace where he
was going, and somehow there might have been a clue
to that on his laptop.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
Or, to take another analogy to the Ray rivera case,
if he was having a mental health crisis. Maybe there
was nothing of value on there, but in his own
mind he thought there was, which is why he felt
the need to destroy it. Or maybe it was just
an act of misdirection where he wanted to add some
intrigue to his disappearance or suicide, so he just decided
to toss this laptop into the water for no reason.

Speaker 3 (32:37):
When Ray's coworkers returned to his office following his disappearance,
they noticed a county codebook lying on the desk of
an assistant district attorney, and curiously, it was open to
the page describing what to do in the event that
a sitting district attorney went missing or died. Even though
the authorities explored the possibility that Ray could have voluntarily

(32:58):
staged his own disappearance, there would be no further activity
on his bank accounts, credit cards, and cell phone records.
No discrepancies were found in the district attorney's office financial
accounts to suggest that Ray had done anything illegal to
compel him to run away, such as embezzling money. There
would be a number of reported sightings of Ray, including

(33:19):
two witnesses who were certain that they'd seen him watching
a Cleveland Indians baseball game at a bar in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania,
on April eighteenth, three days after he went missing. One
month later, a retired police officer thought he saw Ray
and an older woman together at a restaurant in Southfield, Michigan,
and another witness became convinced that she'd seen Ray sitting

(33:42):
in the studio audience for a taping of an episode
of The Oprah Winfrey Show in Chicago, though in search
of the episode's footage turned up empty. One woman was
so certain she had seen Ray eating at a restaurant
in Texas that she snapped a photo of the man
with her cell phone and turned it over to the authorities,
but the FBI analysis of the photo concluded that the

(34:04):
man was unlikely to be Ray. Even though his daughter
Laura lived several states away in Seattle, she maintained a
close relationship with him. They frequently spoke on the phone
and visited each other several weeks per year, but Laura
said she never heard from Ray after he went missing.
Laura and Patty agreed to take polygraphs in which they

(34:24):
denied any knowledge of raised disappearance, and wound up passing.
The authorities considered administering polygraph tests to both of Ray's
ex wives, as well as his two nephews, Tony and
Chris Greekar, but ultimately decided against it, though they did
not believe that any of these individuals knew what happened
to Ray. Laura was a trustee of Ray's estate, and

(34:46):
in twenty eleven, she petitioned Center County to officially declare
him dead before the standard seven year waiting period expired.
On July twenty fifth of that year, Ray was declared
dead in absentia, and ironically enough, the judge who presided
over the decision was David Grine, the former Center County
District attorney who gave Ray a job as an assistant

(35:08):
three decades earlier, which paid the way for Ray becoming
district attorney himself. In an odd coincidence, just one day
after this decision was made, and unidentified John Doe was
arrested in Utah on a misdemeanor trespassing charge. Since the
man refused to reveal his name and bore a striking
resemblance to Ray Ricar, there were speculations that he might

(35:31):
have been Ray, but a fingerprint check ruled this out,
and the man was soon identified as a sixty one
year old New Mexico resident named Philip Beavers.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
Here's what's really interesting. He never contacted Laura. I get
wanting to disappear. I get needing to start a new life,
but to never reach out to the baby who really
was the defining pride of your life, and the fact
that he was planning retirement to be with her and
all of these things is just I mean, imagine a
father who's very well educated and who is very sensitive

(36:04):
to victim's needs, saying, look, my family has already been
through a suicide with my brother. We I on a
daily basis, see what grief and trauma does to a family.
I'm just gonna abandon my daughter and never contact her.
But I would have run off and have a new life.
It doesn't seem probable now if it was a suicide,
I don't think you're in the middle state to understand

(36:25):
other people's needs and grief. But if it is a
choice to just leave. I don't see that here. You know,
he's smart, he is involved in the criminal justice system.

Speaker 4 (36:36):
So could he leave and know what not to do
to you know, send any signals to anybody? Sure? I
just don't see it. And it's very bizarre that.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
There's multiple, multiple, multiple sightings of people who can swear
and are convinced that they saw him. Now, remember, I
think all three of us are on the same page
when we say, like a those can always be almost
chalked up, not very reliable because you might be looking
for him or going back in your mind and trying
to put him in a location. But some of those

(37:09):
sound really suspicious and interesting.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
I actually remember the live coverage when they found that
John Doe in Utah who bore a resemblance to Ray,
and before they confirmed that it wasn't him, they actually
published a photograph of him in the newspaper and if
you look at it, you're like, wow, I think there's
a real possibility this could actually be him. But then
they completely ruled it out and found out it was
a man named Philip Beavers. But yeah, I do think

(37:35):
after all these years that Ray disappearing voluntarily is the
least likely of any of these theories. I remember when
I saw this case on Disappeared, it was only about
five or six years after a had gone missing, so
I thought, yeah, it's not impossible he could be hiding
out somewhere. But now we've just passed a twenty year anniversary.
There's been no confirmed sidings, no activity on his bank accounts,

(37:55):
so it seems really really unusual that he's still alive
and might still be out there. So I think that
the two lit most likely explanations are probably either suicide
or him becoming a victim of foul play. So by
the end of twenty eleven, a major story would make
national headlines, which just happened to have a link to
raise career as Center County District Attorney. In November of

(38:17):
that year, a grand jury indicted Jerry Sandusky, a retired
assistant coach from the Penn State Nitney Lyons football team,
with fifty two counts of sexual abuse. Sandusky ran a
nonprofit charity called The Second Mile, which assisted underprivileged and
at risk children, but he had used his position of
power to sexually abuse several boys over a period of

(38:38):
at least fifteen years. When Sandusky went on trial the
following year. A jury found him guilty on forty five
of the charges. He would receive a thirty to sixty
year prison sentence and is still incarcerated to this day.
Given that the Penn State football team was such a
beloved institution, the story ballooned into a major scandal, amidst
allegations that high ranking officials had known about Sandusky's abusive

(39:01):
behavior for years but swept all the allegations against him
under the rug in order to protect the school's reputation. Well.
Sure enough, it would emerge that in May of nineteen
ninety eight, Sandusky was accused of inappropriately touching a pair
of eleven year old boys in a locker room shower,
and the case wound up reaching the Center County District
Attorney's office, where it was personally reviewed by Ray Gricar.

(39:25):
Ray decided to set up a sting operation where the
mother of one of the boys would confront Sandusky at
her house while police secretly recorded their conversation in another room.
When the confrontation took place, Sandusky did admit that he
had showered alongside the boy and hugged him in an
inappropriate fashion. Though he stopped short of admitting that he
intentionally molested him. He told the mother quote, I understand

(39:48):
I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness. I
know I won't get it from you. I wish I
could die end quote. A child psychologist who interviewed the
boy concluded that Sandusky was likely a pet file, but
a second opinion was provided by a counselor who did
not believe that Sandusky was an habitual abuser. In the end,
Ray decided not to press any charges against Sandusky and

(40:11):
closed the case, though it does not sound like he
shared the reasons for his decision with anyone. When Sandusky
went on trial fourteen years later, the boy from the
shower incident, known only as Victim six, was one of
the survivors who testified against him. Well. Needless to say,
since Ray had been a missing person for six years
by the time the Penn State scandal broke, there was

(40:32):
a lot of speculation that was connected to his disappearance.
When a search was performed to raise old files and
handwritten notes, it failed to uncover a single mention of
Jerry Sandusky or The nineteen ninety eight investigation into the
shower incident. Of course, given that Sandusky's abuse allegations were
swept under the rug for many years, it has been
theorized that Ray may have chosen to participate in the

(40:54):
cover up as well, which is why he elected not
to press charges. However, Ray's nephew, Tony Greeko, who his
function as the family's official spokesman, disputed this, stating quote,
One thing I can say is that Ray was beholden
to no one, was not a politician. He developed a
bitter taste in his mouth for the program and its coach,
and that was not much of a secret. So I

(41:14):
wouldn't imagine he'd give favorable treatment to anyone associated with
the team for any reason. End quote. Indeed, no conclusive
evidence has ever been found to suggest that Ray's disappearance
was linked to the Penn State scandal.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
To be honest, had you said that he fought hard
and when after Sandusky and brought down Penn State and
did press charges, I would be more likely to think
there was a tie in here. I remember this case
so vividly, and there's an incredible documentary done about the
boys who were abused by him. How you think he
wasn't a serial perpetrator child sex abusers. Man, we've talked

(41:50):
about this before. They groom and they have a method
that works so well. It's so clear by the time
they're successfully grooming and assault multiple children that this is
not their first rodeo. So that comment pretty much disgusted me. However,
that's a sidetrack. I think the fact that he didn't
pursue charges would be more inclined to say that this

(42:14):
is not related to that. At the time when this broke,
there were people harassing the accusers, There were people blaming
the children. There were people, you know, just rioting and
doing all kinds of things because they loved the football
program and like Penn State football. And I'm thinking this
has nothing to do with Penn State football. This is

(42:34):
a man hurting little boys and manipulating them, and looking
for kids that need a father figure and don't have one,
and he's taking advantage of them and giving them opportunities
that they would never have at these university football camps
and all kinds of things at his home. It was disgusting,
but people truly identified him as a hero being falsely
accused and manipulated when he was protected by the university

(42:58):
there's several emails. There was a graduate assistant who said,
I just walked in on him being intimate in the shower,
like not just showering with the boy, like you know,
doing things to the boy at a camp and they
told him to be quiet, and they escalated it and said, oh,
you know, this is what happened. And they were told
shut it down and hide that, get rid of that information.

Speaker 4 (43:18):
And so yeah, I think if he had pursued and chased.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
Him, there would have been a lot more people who
had these grandy oaths kind of I don't know, unnatural
obsession with the football team and felt it was a
personal vendetta to make sure this man was vindicated.

Speaker 4 (43:35):
So I'm kind of leaning away from that theory.

Speaker 3 (43:39):
I'm with you. I think that the probability seems a
lot lower given the fact that he decided not to
pursue charges. If he had, I would be more inclined
to believe that it could be something associated with the case.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
Yeah, we'll talk more about this on our later episodes.
But a podcast came out a few years ago which
was exploring the possibility that maybe Ray was doing a
secret invest on the side without telling anyone trying to
break this scandal wide open, because apparently, even though he
didn't press charges against Sandusky, the whole incident apparently haunted him,
and it's possible that he only decided not to bring

(44:13):
him to trial not because he was covering anything up,
but because he knew that there would be a major
backlash for going after someone associated with the Penn State
football program. So he probably knew I need an airtight
case if I'm going to prosecute anyone for this, and
I just don't have it right now. But yeah, when
you talked about all these people being harassed and threatened
when the scandal broke open, even though a lot of

(44:35):
that went on, nobody actually went missing or was murdered
over the whole thing. So it makes me think that
a phrase disappearance was connected to the Penn State scandal.
That so much time has passed and the case is
now closed that I think evidence would have surfaced about
that by now. So I think that about brings an
end to part one of our series. Next week, we
are going to share additional information and discuss a long

(44:57):
form podcast which was produced about this case. We also
wound up having its own inconclusive resolution so join us
next time as we present part two of our three
part series on the disappearance of Ray Greekar Robin.

Speaker 5 (45:11):
Do you want to tell us a little bit about
the Trail Went Cold Patreon?

Speaker 1 (45:14):
Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars
tier tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in
which I talk about cases which are not featured on

(45:36):
the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon,
and if you join our highest tier tier three, the
ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is
a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsawved Mysteries,
where you can download an audio file and then boot
up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
YouTube and play it with my audio commentary play in

(46:00):
the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
first episode that I did a commentary track over was
the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
download a commentary track in which I make more smart
ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
Tier three.

Speaker 5 (46:19):
So I want to let you know a little bit
about the Jewels and nashty patreons. So there's early ad
free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our
Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so
they're not very mini, but they're just too short to
turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those,
so we hope you'll check out those patreons.

Speaker 3 (46:37):
We'll link them in the show notes.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
So I want to thank you all for listening, and
any chance you have to share us on social media
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You can email us at The Pathwentchili at gmail dot com.
You can reach us on Twitter at the Pathwin. So
until next time, be sure to bundle up because cold
trails and Chili pass call for warm clothing.

Speaker 3 (46:58):
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Collors Comedy