Ray Gricar Pt. Two

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]. 

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 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 (00:30):
Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two
of our three part series on the unsolved disappearance of
Ray Greecar. Robin, do you want to catch everyone up
on what we talked about in our previous episode.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Well, this is one of the more famous missing person's
cases the modern era. It took place in two thousand
and five and the victim was fifty nine year old
Ray Griecar, who had a very long and storied career
as the District Attorney of Center County, Pennsylvania, and was
planning to retire at the end of the year, but
he would vanish under very strange circumstances. He lived in Bellefonte,

(01:01):
and he decided to take the day off from work
and told his girlfriend that he was going on a
road trip to go antique shopping, but he never turned home,
and then the following day, his abandoned car was discovered
sixty miles away in the town of Leuisbourg, parked across
the street from an antique small but there was no
sign of Ray, and there was cigarette ash outside his car,

(01:22):
even though Ray detested smoking and would never let anyone
smoke near him, suggesting that someone else may have been
driving the vehicle, and there were also unconfirmed sightings of
Ray in the presence of another woman, but she was
never identified and they never confirmed that she actually existed.
They discovered that Ray's work issued laptop was missing, and
it would not be until several months later when they

(01:44):
found the laptop in a nearby river which was near
a bridge, and sometime after that they found the hard drive,
which had been screwed from the laptop, but they were
unable to figure out what was on it and if
perhaps Ray or someone else tossed it into the river
because there was something on there they didn't want to find.
Because it turned out that Ray had made some Google

(02:05):
searches on his home computer about how to erase a
laptop and stuff like water damage to a laptop, there
was speculation that Ray could have disappeared voluntarily, so speculation
that he could have been the victim of foul play.
He had several years earlier looked into a sexual assault
charge against Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, but

(02:28):
decided not to press charges. But it was a couple
of years after Ray's disappearance when the whole Penn State
scandal broke out where it turned out that Sandusky had
been sexually abusing a number of boys and that the
college had helped cover it up. So people wondered maybe
Ray found out something about that and may have been
murdered to keep him silent. And they also looked at
the possibility that raised disappearance might have been a suicide,

(02:50):
because years earlier, his brother had actually taken his own
life by jumping off a bridge into a river, So
they looked at the possibility perhaps the Raising he wasn't
found is because he did jump off the bridge into
the same river where they found the laptop and just
have not found his body. But we recently passed the
twenty year anniversary of raised disappearance, and unfortunately, we don't

(03:12):
seem to be any closer to solving now than we
were back in two thousand and five.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Over the past several years, there have been at least
two accounts of an informant coming forward and sharing his
story about Ray being murdered. In September twenty thirteen, the
Altuna Mirror newspaper reported that the authorities were investigating claims
from an informant that a former member of the Health
Angels motorcycle club had killed Ray as revenge for prosecuting

(03:39):
and convicting this guy on an aggravated assault conviction, which
led to him receiving a multiple year prison sentence. The
story goes that the biker damaged to raise kneecaps and
slid his throat before dumping his body into a mine
shaft in rural Pennsylvania, which had since been capped and
covered with several feet of dirt. The informant reportedly decided

(04:01):
to come forward because he was under the impression that
the biker was dead, but soon learned that he was
actually still alive and living in another state. As a result,
the informant was reluctant to lead authorities to the location
of the mind shaft since it supposedly contained four other
bodies and some guns, and since this evidence could have

(04:21):
implicated the informant in other crimes, he wanted to arrange
full immunity from prosecution. It's unclear how exactly this part
of the investigation turned out, but it sounds like this
man's story was never substantiated.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Here's what's interesting about that one is that we've talked
about Sandusky and the fact that you know that he
was looking into that case and decided not to prosecute.
But then you bring in the Hells Angels motorcycle club
and saying, hey, is it possible that he was linked
to a prosecution of one of those members and therefore
became a target as well. But this person who came

(04:58):
forward one what would they have to gain by coming
forward against such a dangerous organization If he was scared
that this person was alive and then said, wait, I
think he's dead, I'm going to come forward with information,
then finds out he's alive again and withdraws that story,
or maybe doesn't follow through with any of the leads

(05:19):
that he had. It could be out of fear. It
could also be that he has potential involvement right and
brought it forward just to get attention back on it
and push the blame on someone he thought was dead,
or like you said, could he have also just been
involved in nefarious things that maybe then Ray was prosecuting

(05:40):
or should have been prosecuting, and was worried about getting
in trouble and so just completely drops all of it.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
That's what's so frustrating is because this made the news
back in twenty thirteen, and then they talked about how
he was trying to arrange full immunity to share everything
he knew, and then this part of the story just disappeared.
We never heard any follow up, which makes me think
they find out this guy's story wasn't credible. I mean,
the idea that right because he was a prosecutor may
have angered someone, that's someone he sent to prison, may

(06:08):
have wanted to get revenge, is not that far fetched,
but it just doesn't sound like there was any evidence
to corroborate it, and also doesn't explain why Ray would
travel sixty miles to another town and then just happened
across paths with this biker who would kill him.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
And I also question how many mine shafts are in
the area. It seems like quite a risk if you're
going to dump a body somewhere to keep that mind
shaft open, and just to dump three other bodies and
then some guns there because it's there found in that
one place, it's like jackpot for authorities, and if they
can trace it back to you, then your goose is cooked.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Exactly. If you're going to do that, you're better off
just sealing the mind so that no one will ever
find it to begin with so. In twenty twenty, journalist
Wallace McKelvey published a fifteenth anniversary article about Rai's disappearance
for The Patriot News at Penn Live, which detailed his
interactions with a man he only referred to as the informant,

(07:05):
though from my understanding, this is a completely different informant
than the man who shared the previous story about the
Hall's Angels. According to this informant, while he was incarcerated
at this state correctional institution at Camp Hill, a former
cellmate told him that he and another man have been
contracted to kidnap and murder Ray Greecar because of a
drug investigation. Both these men have paid a female acquaintance

(07:27):
to Lurerey to the street of shops in Louisbourg with
the promise of giving him information of about a drug ring.
But after the woman took Ray to a local motel,
the sal MAT's surprise Ray by snapping his neck and
putting his body into the trunk of a car. Afterward,
the salve Mat and his accomplice dumped Ray's body down
an abandoned, flooded mind shaft. By the time the informant

(07:48):
shared this story, both the sal mate and the woman
were deceased, though the male accomplice was still alive. Just
over two weeks before his disappearance, Ray did hold a
press conference in which he announced that the largest drug
bust and the history of Central County had taken place,
as charges were filed against nine suspected dealers who were
involved in a heroin and cocaine trafficking ring. However, the

(08:10):
case was mostly handled by another attorney from Ray's office,
and his personal involvement was mostly limited to giving statements
to the media. No evidence has ever been found to
link the drug bust to raise disappearance, and once again,
the informant story has never been substantiated. In spite of
all the different theories surrounding this case, we have recently
passed the twenty year anniversary when Ray Driecar went missing,

(08:32):
but there's still no conclusive answers about what actually happened
to him. So I guess you could say the path
went Chile.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
What are the chances though, that there's two informants saying
something about a mind shaft. Are mind shafts peppered all
over this place, So it's kind of a logical lego
of a body's you know disappears and it's going to
go here. And remember Ray was supposedly seen with a
woman at some point, So is it possible that this
second story is actually more believable than the first one.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
It could be. I mean, I know that we have
all these informants coming forward, but this was a pretty
high profile missing person's case, so I guess it would
not be surprising if an informant wanted attention to suddenly
insert himself into the case and give what sounds like
a believable story on the surface, that this former district
attorney was targeted by a criminal out of revenge for
some sort of investigation. But once again, like I know,

(09:24):
it seems like a coincidence that a drug bust just
happened to take place so shortly before Ray went missing.
But Ray's roll, like I said, was just limited strictly
to giving press conferences and he did not actively work
on the case, so it seems weird that anyone involved
with this drug organization would decide to target him. So,
like I mentioned in the intro to our first episode,

(09:45):
I think a big reason that Ray Greekar's disappearance has
become one of the most high profile missing person's cases
of the modern era is because he was an individual
who devoted his career to closing cases and putting criminals
behind bars, but found himself at the center of his
own unsolved mystery right before he was scheduled to retire. Yes,
people who work in law enforcement for such a long

(10:06):
period of time are going to receive threats because of
what they do, and sometimes they will even be murdered.
But very rarely will you find a situation where the
victim completely vanishes without a trace. And what further complicates
this story is that there is no definitive evidence that
Ray was murdered or that his disappearance had any connection
to his career, as it's entirely possible he was feeling

(10:28):
suicidal and made the decision to take his own life.
But to give you an idea of just how out
of the ordinary this situation is, Ray Greecar might be
the only person who has ever been interviewed on an
episode of a true crime show for helping solve the case,
but then became the subject of an episode of another
true crime show over a decade later because he went missing.

(10:50):
In October of nineteen ninety nine, the Discovery Channel true
crime series The FBI Files released an episode titled A
Stranger in Town, which chronicled the murder of a seventeen
year old runaway named Dawn Marie Bernbaum, whose body was
found alongside Interstate eighty near Belfont, Pennsylvania. A truck driver
named James Robert Cruz Junior would be charged and convicted

(11:12):
of the murder, and since Ray Gricar was the Center
County District Attorney at that time and prosecuted Cruise at
his trial, he was extensively interviewed during the FBI Files episode.
You can find this episode on YouTube, and needless to say,
it's quite easy to watch this interview with Ray knowing
that he would go missing five and a half years later.

(11:32):
I know that I first became familiar with Ray's story
when it was featured on an episode of Disappeared, which
aired in February of twenty eleven. It's very rare that
you get to see interview footage with a missing person
before they vanished. But during his appearance on the FBI Files,
Ray does come across like everyone described him as. He
seems like a decent, straight shooting guy who genuinely cared

(11:53):
about getting justice for his victims, but he's also got
a pretty reserved and low key personality for.

Speaker 3 (11:59):
Someone who's so driven and someone who is so close
for retirement and kind of has these big plans with
his wife and daughter. And I wonder we had the
idea floated that he simply ran away on his own
or maybe completed suicide right as another explanation, But it
doesn't seem like that fits his personality unless we know
other things that are going on. Of course, I think

(12:21):
we might have even compared him to the Ray rivera
case where there were some odd things that occurred. But
for this Ray, it almost seems like he had to
have run into some kind of foul play. It's that
smoked cigarette in his car that I just can't buy
the idea that he would smoke it as one last
act before he took his own life or ran away.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
Yeah, you can go either way. And a lot of
people think that because he was such a reserved and
low key guy, that if Ray was experiencing mental health
issues or he was depressed or had something wrong with him,
that he would mask it like he would not tell
anyone about it. So you are correct that on the surface,
he doesn't seem like a guy who was suffering and
would choose suicide as an option, But his brother had

(13:07):
done the same thing years earlier, so for all we know,
maybe something was going on with Ray which nobody knew about.

Speaker 1 (13:14):
Not surprisingly, this case has also been featured on a
number of true crime podcasts such as Generation Why, True Crime, Garage,
and Trace Evidence. But in April of twenty twenty one,
a new long form, multi episode podcast was released titled
Final Argument The Disappearance of Ray Greecar. It was created
and hosted by a reporter named Rebecca Knight, who managed

(13:38):
to get access to the original case file and revealed
some new pieces of information which were never made public before. However,
the podcast has become a bit of a mystery in
its own right, as it had a very erratic release
schedule and dropped only six episodes over the course of
one year. At one point, Knight mentioned that she'd received
a death threat, and it appeared that she experienced lot

(14:00):
of obstacles which caused lengthy delays between episodes. The podcast
last episode was released in May twenty twenty two, and
if you visit the Final Argument Facebook page, you'll see
this final post from Night in April twenty twenty three. Quote,
I'm going to release the final episodes in a few weeks.
My hiatus was due to having a serious surgery and

(14:21):
a long recovery. I'm on the mend and excited about
getting these last episodes out to you. My mission has
always been to see a statewide jury convene to investigate
the disappearance of Ray Greekar. As we're all seeing now,
the mighty and powerful are being held accountable. No one
is above the law, and I will be laser focused
on exposing shocking information never released to the public that

(14:44):
I hope will turn the tide so there'll be justice
for Ray Greecar. They murdered him because he was getting
ready to charge who is they Stay tuned, and I
promise you will be able to connect the dots just
as I have done. End quote. While these final episodes
never did get released, and even though numerous comments on
the Facebook post have stated that they've tried to contact

(15:05):
Night about this, she's never provided a response. Now, Night
has continued to publish articles for such websites as Business Insider,
so it's good to know that she's still active and
nothing bad happened to her. But it sounds like her
reasons were deciding to abandon The Final Argument podcast are
a pretty odd mystery within a mystery.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
I wonder what it could have been. There could have
been legal ramifications, right, someone saying, hey, listen, I heard
that you know you interviewed somebody. I know we're gonna
come after you civilly if you won't if you mentioned
us on this podcast. I always wonder when you have
suspects that end up not actually being the person who
commits the crime, right, and they've been on on hours

(15:46):
and hours of a show about Hey, this was the
first suspect, and then all of a sudden it pivots
and it's like, oh, it wasn't him, though that person's
still living a life somewhere. So could it have been
something as simple as someone saying, and if you're going
to mention me in this podcast, I've already been clear
to this and I'm going to sue you. Or could

(16:06):
it have been something way more sinister of someone saying
you're getting too close, you need to back off, or
maybe a combination of both.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
But don't you think that if it was the case
of somebody saying I could sue you, then that would
be potentially predicated on the fact that she would have
mentioned that person in previous episodes, and if that was
the case, then those episodes would be scrubbed because you
could just use a pseudonym going forward and say allegedly
and be covering your bases legally.

Speaker 3 (16:33):
That's true, That's very true.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
I did listen to the entire podcast, and no one
was ever pushed forward as a potential suspect, like she
was hinting that there was some cover up and that
perhaps his disappearance was related to the Penn State scandal.
But even though, like most other podcasters, seem to be
fifty to fifty and in big you us about whether
this was a suicide or foul play, it really does
seem clear that Rebecca and I believes that Ray was

(16:58):
murdered and that there was some sort of cover up.
But she was always very uh on the down low
about what she really thought was happened. And unfortunately we
may never know, and I do have to wonder did
she feel threatened or did she find that she was
going down the wrong track and potentially pointing the finger
at suspects who were innocent. We just may never know.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
Well, and if she found out information that she believed
could be somehow maybe tied to Penn State or like
the institution itself, then maybe she was fearful that if
she was going to put information out there, it would
be considered libelous, and like Ashley had said earlier, maybe
they would be taking her to court. So she just
abandoned it completely.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, I can definitely understand why, Like, obviously, do you
accuse someone like Jerry Sandusky who's already in prison, it's
probably not going to be a big deal. But if
there's an implication that people who are still out there
and walking free might have had something to do with
what happened to Ray, I can understand the fear of
making that information public.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah, And thinking about it, if she was talking about a
cover up, you know, is it someone in the prosecutor's
office that's trying to quote cover up but murdered. Did
they have loose ends that they didn't want Ray to
share or things like that. So, I mean, it's not
even necessarily a suspect in the criminal world, right, like
the Hell's Angels or something like that. Think about if
it was professional people that she was heading at, and

(18:15):
the kind of power and control and money that could
be behind someone saying hey, you need to back off
of this story.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
So, like I just said, I did listen to all
the episodes of Final Arguments, and while Rebecca Knight never
explicitly said what she believes happened, it seemed clear that
she suspected foul play in a cover up, even though
the podcast was never finished. I do want to share
a couple of new pieces of information that I learned
from listening to it. Now the three main theories which
have always been pushed forward in this case or that

(18:44):
Ray's disappearance was a homicide, suicide, or intentional walk away,
though most people would agree that the third theory is
far less likely than the first two. One detail which
has always been cited as evidence that Ray was murdered
and had another person with him at the time he
went missing is the presence of cigarette ash on the
floor of as Mini Cooper. As Ray detested smoking and

(19:05):
would not allow people to smoke inside his car. Since
there were two cigarette butts on the ground near the
passenger side of the vehicle, it's possible the ash could
have been caused by someone smoking while leaning in through
the side window to speak with Ray. But even so,
who could this person have been and why were they
chatting with Ray and Louisbourg. Well, according tonight, there was

(19:25):
no mention of the ash or a cigarette smell or
anything cigarette related in the original police reports, even though
many accounts state that the police detected the strong scent
of cigarette smoke when they first entered the vehicle. I'm
not saying that the detail about the cigarette ash is false,
as it's been reported many times by many different sources,
and was even specifically mentioned by one of the investigators

(19:47):
during an interview on Disappeared. But perhaps the story about
the cigarette smell has been greatly exaggerated for dramatic purposes,
you know, and or.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
Someone at some point said there was a cigarette ash
or cigarette app you know, cigarette ashes found in the car,
and maybe the cigarettes were outside the car, right, And
so they're going, hey, is it linked? And then it
was like a game of telephone where all of a
sudden it takes on its own life of its own
and they're saying, oh, remember there were cigarette ash found
in the car. I mean, if it's on the original

(20:18):
police report, it's possible it went from there's two cigarette
butts outside the car to then somehow there's evidence of
that inside the car, when maybe that wasn't even the case.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
I would definitely believe that, And if that is the case,
then it's possible that the cigarette butts were smoked by
someone completely unrelated who had nothing to do with Ray
and just happened to put their butts out in that
parking lot.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
It's been confirmed that latent fingerprints were found on the
exterior drive side passenger window and door handle, which matched Ray,
his girlfriend, Patty, and a receptionist to work to the
Center County Courthouse and will raised. DNA and a fingerprint
were on the label of the water bottle inside the car.
This print, it was too smudge to be of any use. However,

(21:02):
on the Final Argument podcast, it's revealed that other than
the water bottle, there were no fingerprints found inside the
Mini Cooper at all, not even Rays. Another detail which
has never been reported before. It's very unlikely that anyone
who owns and drives a vehicle could avoid leaving their
fingerprints behind, which suggests that someone intentionally wiped down the

(21:23):
interior of the Mini Cooper. Of course, there doesn't seem
to be any logical reason for Ray to do that
himself if he was planning suicide, which lends credence to
the idea of an unknown third party being inside the
vehicle who did not want their prince being found. As
you know, Ray's cell phone was left behind in the
Mini Cooper, and final argument does answer the question we've

(21:45):
always had about whether or not the phone records were checked.
The podcast confirms that the only call made that day
was when Ray called Patty at eleven thirty am to
let her know that he was going antique shopping, and
the only call is the cell phone received was when
Patty kept calling Ray's voicemail after he failed return home
that night. But interestingly enough, it turns out that there

(22:08):
was also a reported sighting from a Louisbourg store owner
who said she saw a man matching Rai's description come
into her store on the afternoon of his disappearance. He
appeared to be pacing around while holding his hand up
to his ear and looked out the window at one point.
While the witness could not confirm that the man had
a cell phone, this opens up the possibility that he

(22:29):
may have had a wireless Bluetooth device in his ear,
which was also a burner phone. When Ray was seen
wandering around outside the Packwood House Museum that same afternoon,
the witness thought he appeared to be talking to himself,
even though he did not have a cell phone in
his hand, though they don't discount the possibility that he
had a bluetooth. Ray's cell phone was a county issued

(22:52):
one for wark purposes, so if he was secretly communicating
with someone and did not want his calls to be tracked,
it makes sense that he would use some sort of
wireless burner device.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
Yeah, it makes sense. But then you also have this
idea of when when you look at the fingerprints in
the car, like you said, let's say Ray did walk
off or Ray did go complete suicide, why would you
wipe your car down? Because obviously your prints are going
to be in your car for the years that you
own this car. Obviously your wife's prints are going to
be in the car, right your children's prints would be

(23:24):
in the car if they had visited. So the idea
of not even his fingerprints are there is the is
another idea almost like the cigarette ashes, where it says,
doesn't that point more towards someone else taking that vehicle?

Speaker 1 (23:37):
Last, what if Okay, if we're going to entertain the
possibility that Ray potentially completed suicide and he was not
in a good place mentally. We knew that he was
enigmatic and that he likely masked a lot of his feelings.
He was sleeping a lot. There seemed to be something
going on, and if he was dealing with things and
maybe not able to properly, like think a Ray rivera

(24:02):
situation where you know what was real and what was fake,
and how could you discern between the two. If his
reality and some type of fantasy had merged in some way,
or he was experiencing psychosis, then perhaps if he was
going to complete suicide and didn't want people to know
that that's what he was indeed doing, then the wiping

(24:24):
of the fingerprints was some type of subterfuge where he
was trying to confuse whomever was going to find the vehicle,
and maybe he would think that it would lead to
evidence that he was indeed killed. In case, he didn't
want to upset people in his family given that his
brother had completed suicide, maybe he thought that that would
be too much for people to grasp.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
Yeah, there are documented cases of that of people intentionally
staging their suicides to try to make them look like
homicides because they don't want their families or their friends
to know that they had done this. And if this
is what Ray did, perhaps he was thinking, well, I'm
going to make myself disappear. If I jump into the river,
hopefully my body will never found. But if I wipe
the prints down in my car, then that's going to

(25:08):
make everyone assume that I was the victim of foul
play and they don't have to live with the stigma
knowing that I took my own life. But here's the
most surprising revelation from the Final Argument podcast. I'm sure
you know that there was a reported sighting of Ray
with an unidentified woman inside the street of shops in
Louisbourg on the day he went missing. However, I was
surprised to learn that there were other reported sightings of

(25:30):
Ray with an unidentified woman in the weeks prior to
his disappearance, and they took place at antique shops in
other towns besides Louisbourg, some of which were located in
entirely different counties, such as Blair County and Clearfield County.
In most of these sightings, the man and the woman
were described as quietly talking with each other, though they
didn't do anything intimate to give off the impression they

(25:52):
were a couple. Now, obviously virtually every missing person's case
is going to have all sightings for my witnesses who
were mistaken, and it's possible that the witnesses here mistook
another man for Ray. But the issue is that some
of these witnesses specifically were called Ray driving and climbing
out of a Mini Cooper, which is a very distinct
looking vehicle, and there were only a handful of Mini

(26:14):
Coopers registered in the state of Pennsylvania in two thousand
and five. This would add an extra ore of credibility
to these eyewitness accounts, but we can't even be certain
if he was meeting up with the same woman in
each of these sidings. Now, since Rebecca Knight got access
to the case file, she was able to review his financials,
but said she did not turn up any red flags

(26:35):
to suggest that Ray was having an affair during this
time period. If you're traveling to other towns to have
secret rendezvous with women, unexplained charges for things like motel
stays or dinners are probably going to show up in
your financial statements, but that doesn't appear to be the
case here, and the podcast also confirmed that investigators did

(26:56):
check the local hotels and motels around Louisbourg and found
nothing to indicate that Ray ever stayed at or visited
one on the day he disappeared. So Knight presents her
own potential theory that perhaps Ray was secretly working on
his own independent investigation into the allegations that Jerry Sandusky
was sexually abusing young boys, but he did so under

(27:17):
the radar without telling anyone. These women Ray was seen
with could have been the mothers of some of the
victims that Sandusky had abused, and Ray wanted to meet
up and get their stories in towns outside Center County.
In order to avoid attracting attention. Ray may have chosen
various antique shops as his meeting spots, since he had
a known interest in antiques, so traveling to other towns

(27:40):
to go shopping for them would not have seemed unusual
if Ray was collecting information for an investigation. This would
explain why he took his county issued laptop to Louisbourg,
as it was apparently very unusual for him to bring
his work computer on non work related trips. Now, this
theory is all just pure speculation, as no women have

(28:00):
ever come forward to admit having any secret meetings with
Ray in two thousand and five. I mean, I can
understand the being too frightened to say anything after Ray
turned up missing, But Jerry Sandusky was tried, convicted, and
sent to prison nearly thirteen years ago, and the people
who covered up for him have been held accountable, so
there would be no reason to remain silent. As the

(28:22):
years have gone on, I get the impression that law
enforcement has pretty much dismissed any connection between Ray's disappearance
and the Penn State scandal, which is why this new
theory took me by surprise, and I only wish that
Final Argument had released their final episodes in order to
provide more context about it.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
Well, what if it's not about the Penn State scandal.
What if there is, let's say, like the one informant
actually had told us, hey, you know, there was this
woman who actually lured him out saying she was going
to give him information. And what if that's the case.
It's also a potential that there is just simply an
actual informant that he's going to meet again. I wonder

(29:02):
how much he would have shared with his wife before
knowing if it was paying off or you know, where
he was going. Does it put her at risk if
he tells her so? Could he have been going to
meet somebody not an affair, simply to gather information about
this drug case, about a future case he was working on. Yes,
he was getting close to retirement, but I'm assuming he

(29:23):
was working right up until he was going to retire.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Yeah, And I'm pretty certain that if he was working
on something, he wouldn't have told his spouse or anyone
else about it if he felt it would put their
lives at risk. And while this is all speculation, they
never found any evidence to suggest it. I could see
Ray feeling that I'm about to retire at the end
of the year. I really want to get whatever this
case I'm working on solved before this happens. So I'm

(29:47):
going to use whatever time I can to gather up information,
and I'm going to do so under the radars so
that it doesn't put anyone else's lives in jeopardy. And
You're right, it may not even have been the Penn
State scandal. It could have been an unrelated criminal matter
where the responsible parties are still alive and out there
free and could potentially be a threat. So if he

(30:08):
was meeting up with any women who were informants, that
would explain why they never come forward.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
So we'll talk more about the penn State connection a
little later, but right now, let's explore some different theories
surrounding the disappearance. And there are some pretty wild ones,
some of which have no substance, but there's still worth mentioning.
For starters, you might recall that the Trail went Cold
and the Pass Went Chile have both released episodes about
the unexplained death of thirty eight year old Jonathan Luna,

(30:37):
another cold case which has some eerie similarities to this one.
Luna was a prosecutor who worked as an assistant United
States Attorney in Baltimore and Maryland, but on the evening
of December third, two thousand and three, he inexplicably decided
to leave his office at the Federal District Court Building
and went on an all night tri state road trip
in which he drove hundreds of miles through Maryland, Delaware,

(31:01):
and Pennsylvania. Early the following morning, Luna's car was discovered
in a rural creek in Lancaster County, and his body
was lying in the water next to it. Luna had
been stabbed thirty six times all over his body with
his own pen night, But even though the FBI believed
the wounds were self inflicted and his death was a suicide,
the local Lancaster County authorities disagreed and thought he was

(31:24):
the victim of foul play. The whole thing is one
hell of a baffling mystery, and if you want to
hear more details, we suggest you go back and listen
to our previous podcast episodes about it. Even though ray
Greek Car has never been found, it's incredibly odd that
we have two separate cold cases which took place only
sixteen months apart and involved prosecutors who traveled to a

(31:46):
rural affection of Pennsylvania before their vehicles were discovered near
a body of water. Investigators have never found anything to
indicate that the two cases are linked, and they probably aren't,
but it's still a pretty odd coincidence. Another cold case
which has been mentioned in conjunction with this one is
the unsolved disappearance of forty seven year old mel Wylie,

(32:08):
who was the police chief in Hinckley Township, Ohio, before
he vanished in July nineteen eighty five. Wiley's abandoned car
would be discovered in a park near Lake Erie, and
while it was initially assumed that he drowned, his body
was never found and evidence was uncovered to suggest that
he staged his own disappearance and took off voluntarily. It's

(32:29):
been reported that Ray Greecar had interest in this case
and made mention of it, as Hinckley Township is in
fairly close proximity to Cleveland, and it's possible, though never confirmed,
that Ray might have crossed paths with Wiley back Wiley
was still working as a prosecutor in Ohio before has
moved to Pennsylvania. I'm sure you've seen the parallels between

(32:49):
these two cases, since both involved missing law enforcement officials
whose abandoned car was found near a body of water.
So if you believe that Ray staged his disappearance, it's
possible that he used Wiley's cases inspiration. Otherwise, there's nothing
to really link these stories, though. The disappearance of mel
Wiley is a pretty intriguing mystery in its own right,

(33:10):
and if you want to learn more details. Robin released
a bonus episode about this case on his Trail Went
Cold Patreon page three years ago.

Speaker 3 (33:17):
Okay, then I need to go listen to that one,
because this is really bizarre when you look at the
idea that we have very similar basic case facts. Now,
like you said, in some we have the individual was
you know, their body was recovered and different different assumptions
were made one, you know, a suicide or was it?
But I don't know. When you look at the idea

(33:39):
that they are in the same proximity, they have very
similar case facts. Really, the only thing we know are
those basic case facts, and yes, it's incredibly bizarre, but
linking them, like you said, without further information, you know,
is nearly impossible. I mean, do we have some serial
killer going around doing vigilanti justice to get prosecutors who
put people away and you know they are trying to,

(34:02):
I don't know, make a name for themselves. Maybe not.
But interestingly enough, when you look at this case, the
idea that his computer was thrown over into the water,
it makes sense if he was going out to actually
work a case and someone followed him because they were
paranoid or were thinking he's onto them, he meets with

(34:23):
this informant, they get into his car after they abduct him,
hurt him, and then they go in discard of his
work computer so that nothing he was working on could
be discovered. All of that makes sense way more than
I think him walking away from a life that was
just about to be calm and relaxing and full of
time with his family. Yes, change is stressful, but he

(34:44):
was excited and they had plans, and the biggest plan
he had was spending a lot of time with his daughter,
who was his pride and joy. So I just am
leaning towards the idea that something was going on behind
the scenes that his wife didn't know about, and it
got him into trouble where someone killed him and then said, Okay,
not only are we going to get rid of him,
but we need to make sure we get rid of

(35:04):
any device that could possibly have information about this case
on there.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
Well, before we move on, I want to briefly discuss
one of the wilder theories surrounding this case, which has
been used as evidence to suggest that Ray might have
staged his own disappearance. In nineteen eighty seven, Ray was
approached by a professor from Penn State, who wrote under
the pen name of Pamela West, and told him she
was working on a book about the nineteen sixty nine
murder of Betty Aardsma, a twenty two year old graduate

(35:32):
student who was stabbed to death by an unknown assailant
in the campus library. West was certain she knew the
killer's identity, but didn't think she could publish his name
without being sued. She wanted to raise advice on how
to handle the situation, and he told her to keep
investigating before she went public with her belief. Well. West
ultimately got around the situation by publishing a science fiction

(35:53):
novel titled twenty twenty Vision Who Done It? Where the
details of the crime were loosely based on the Betsy
Aridzma murder, and the plot involves a detective traveling back
in time in order to solve the case. The reason's
people attempt to tie this book to Ray Greecar's case
is because the lead character is a veteran who was
close to retirement, much like Ray was, and the book's

(36:15):
murder takes place on April to fifteenth, the same date
Ray went missing. In addition, the detective character drives a
car with a personalized vanity plate, and Ray's Mini Cooper
had a vanity plate which read e FO, a reference
to his girlfriend Patti Foornicola. Some other loose parallels have
been made between the plot and Raised disappearance, such as

(36:35):
ashes from an urn being a vital clue to solve
the fictional case, and the presence of cigarette ash and
the Mini Cooper. Long story short, it has been theorized
that Ray may have used twenty twenty Vision as inspiration
to stage his own disappearance, though I personally think that's
a major stretch. By Pamela Wes's own admission, even though
she had consulted with Ray for advice about her book,

(36:57):
she never sent him a copy and as no idea
if he even read it. Indeed, they never found a
copy of twenty twenty Vision and Raised Belongings following his disappearance,
and Wes said that she had not spoken to him
for many years. The book came out in nineteen ninety,
and I don't think it made a big splash, as
it looks like it is long out of print. So
I had my doubts that Ray would decide to use

(37:18):
the book as inspiration to stage a cryptic disappearance fifteen
years later. While the idea of a voluntary disappearance has
not been completely ruled out, most people do not believe
that's what happened here, as it's an extremely difficult thing
to pull off in the twenty first century, particularly if
you're a prominent figure looked like Ray Ricar whose face
has been plastered everywhere. One theory which has been pushed

(37:42):
forward is that Ray could have taken off to Slovenia,
as he was fluent in the language and had traveled
to the country in the past and had relatives living
over there. Interpol has actually gone so far as to
distribute missing Persons flyers for Ray and Slovenia, but they've
never turned up anything in two thousand and five, and
American would not be able to leave the country and
travel internationally without a passport, So unless Ray was somehow

(38:06):
able to pain a fake one, I don't see this
as a viable option.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
No, And I don't think this book has a tie
in either. I mean, April fifteenth is also tax day,
you know, so you could say, like, oh, you're stressed
about his taxes. I mean you could always you could
always tie any date or any kind of detail like
that into a conspiracy theory. But also remember we're not
even sure if the cigarette ashes existed. We know that

(38:31):
there were cigarettes fun outside the car in the police report,
but it was a cigarette ash something that was added
on in a story of telephone. And then oh, if
there's cigarette ash, maybe it's the same as the ashes
from the urn. I mean, it's starting to get a
little bit ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
I think you solved the case there, Ashley by saying
that it was April to fifty. He just wanted to
avoid paying his taxes.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
So that I'm just saying, I feel that grief deeply.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Everybody. He wants to disappear every year on that particular
date that.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
In the day property taxes are doing. That's right.

Speaker 4 (39:04):
Now.

Speaker 1 (39:04):
There have been some conflicting info out there about Ray's finances,
as journalist Wallace McKelvey published a fifteenth anniversary article about
this case in which he revealed that he found a
state inheritance tax form for Ray's estate, which had been
filed in twenty thirteen and listed his total assets as
one thousand and fifty seven dollars in eighty six cents. However,

(39:26):
the Disappeared episode stated that Ray had a bank account
containing around one hundred thousand, which was never touched after
he went missing. Given that Ray was drawing a yearly
salary of one hundred and twenty nine thousand at that
point and was not known for living a frivolous lifestyle,
having just over one thousand dollars worth of assets does
seem unusual. This has led to speculation that perhaps Raised

(39:49):
secretly moved or withdrew a lot of money in order
to plan his escape. But I know that his finances
seemed to have been investigated very thoroughly, as they never
found any large, unexplained sum of money suddenly appearing or
disappearing from his account, or any improprieties with the Center
County District Attorney's office financial account. Everyone has said that

(40:09):
Ray was looking forward to retirement and spending more time
with his family, and even if he didn't have a
great deal of money saved up, his job still entitled
him a pretty good pension which would keep him financially secure.
Given the circumstances, there really is no logical reason for
him to run away on his own accord. Ray's loved
ones also don't believe that he would have caused a

(40:30):
great pain for them by intentionally disappearing and not letting
them know what happened, particularly when it came to his daughter, Laura,
whom he was very close to. As someone who devoted
his life to practicing criminal law, I'm sure Ray had
a pretty good idea about how a missing person's investigation
would be handled and the type of questioning his friends

(40:51):
and family would face. Theoretically, if Ray wanted to disappear,
he could have secretly contacted the people that he cared about,
such as his daughter, to say, quote, Hey, just wanted
to let you know that I'm alive and well, but
I needed to get away, so please don't tell anyone
you heard from me. End quote. But we know that
Laura was extensively questioned and passed a polygraph, and I

(41:11):
doubt Ray would have wanted to put her into a
position where she was forced to lie to law enforcement
and perhaps even perjure herself in order to protect him.
An additional theory which has been pushed forward is it
Ray entered the witness Protection program, but this has pretty
much been debunked as it seems unlikely that his case
would keep receiving so much attention in the media. If

(41:33):
the authorities already knew where he was. When you look
at the big picture, I do not believe that Ray
lived much longer after he arrived in Louisbourg. But the
big question is was his death suicide or murder.

Speaker 3 (41:46):
I don't really find his bank account balance or the
idea that his total assets were just over one thousand dollars.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
That odd.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
This is someone who was making really good money. I mean,
and this is in two thousand and five. He's making
one hundred and twenty nine thousand dollars and that's just
what we know of from his salary. But he's also
probably invested in things he has real estate. Now, when
you're starting to talk about taxes and you know, being
accountable for the things that you do have, it's not

(42:15):
abnormal for wealthy people or people that are pretty stable
to access an accountant or a financial advisor or things
like that to help you move things around or put
them in you know, trust for other people or things
like that so that you're not taxed on it. And
so it's possible too that he was just intelligently moving
money around so that oh shucks, my total assets are

(42:36):
one thousand dollars. Good luck, if you want to come
after me, if you want to assume me in civil court,
all of those things, and so I wouldn't be shocked
if it's something that has a very, i don't know,
intelligent explanation behind it, where he's protecting his family's assets
by showing that he doesn't have much of anything.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
I do think that's possible, because they said they found
this inheritance tax form in twenty thirteen, which was eight
years after he went missing, So who knows where all
that money would have gone in that time. Maybe his
family moved it around or something like that. But when
you have a case a high profile is this, they're
going to investigate his finances very thoroughly, and thus far
they have never said that they found anything unusual, anything

(43:15):
to suggest that he might have been in debt or
having financial problems, or that he was embezzling money. It
just seemed like everything was completely ordinary. So I think
they're just kind of stretching things when they're saying that, oh, yeah,
he had so little assets that he must have moved
it to some Swiss bank account and he's over in
Europe somewhere living a new life.

Speaker 1 (43:34):
Robin, do you know if that hundred thousand dollars ended
up going to Laura.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
I'm not entirely sure because it's just kind of a
throwaway detail they say on the disappeared episode, saying that
Ray had a bank account containing around one hundred thousand dollars,
and I have to assume that if it existed, then
the money would have gone to Laura because that was
his only daughter. But unfortunately I just don't have that information.
So I think that about brings an end to Part two.
We have our three part series Joy and Us next

(44:02):
week for part three, as we conclude our analysis about
the disappearance of Free.

Speaker 4 (44:07):
Car Robin, do you want to tell us a little
bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?

Speaker 2 (44:12):
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

(44:34):
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 Unsolved 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 playing in

(44:58):
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 4 (45:17):
So I want to let you know a little bit
about the Jeweles 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. We'll link
them in the show notes.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
So I want to thank you all for listening and
any chance you have to share us on social media
with a friend, or to rate and review is greatly appreciated.
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 1 (45:55):
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy