Thinking Sideways: Ray Gricar

we may be replaced by muffins in the future. It's possible, always possible. Yeah. Uh. This week we're gonna talk about a mysterious disappearance. And this story was suggested by like literally everyone literally all the time, suggested a lot a couple of times. So I just decided that we would just do it, just rip the band aid off. I'm just gonna do it. No, this is not a bad little mystery. Actually, I understand. I understand why people get so excited about this one and why they why it

catches everybody's attention. Yeah, we'll talk about problems with it in a little bit. Pulled the bottom out of this one later. Yeah, So if you don't read the episode titles. We're going to talk about the disappearance of Ray greek Car today, and here's a quick overview of the case before we dive in. On April five, Center County, Pennsylvania District Attorney, Ray greek Car called his girlfriend to let her know that he was out driving, or had just gone for a drive, or was on his way home.

Accounts Ferry Um, however, his way to Louisbourg. You know, like I said, I've read so many different accounts already, we're into it. Read so many different accounts of what he said that it's hard to tell. But definitely he was in his car while he called her. And then when she arrived home from work, she went to the gym, came back, he still wasn't home. It had been twelve hours, so she called and reported him missing and that night. Yeah, and he's never been found. There's a lot of business.

Get out of the way. So you guys just want to jump in. Yeah, Okay, who were gonna start with, because we got a couple of players. Yeah, so let's just start with like a basic overview of raised life up until this point. Ray was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in in the eighties, Raised then wife took a job teaching at penn State, and Ray decided to be a stay at home dad for their young adopted daughter, whose name was Laura. Totally instated. Still is Laura, She's still alive.

He had been a prosecutor before before they moved to Pennsylvania. He specialized mostly in rape and murder cases prior to moving to Pennsylvania, and then when the sitting center County d A at that time, when he heard that Ray was living in the area and was unemployed, he basically recruited him to work, first just in his office and then as the assistant d A, which Ray accepted. He

accepted the job. I think it was part time at first, and even when he became d A spoiler alert when he was elected d A in um Thank You eighty five, it was still a part time job until a few years later when he petitioned When Ray petitioned for it to become a full time job, which it sounds like it actually really was a full time job, So I don't really know what was happening before. I think they were paying him half what they would have to pay them.

I guess that's true. Probably forty hours or more a week probably, So. Yeah, in in nineteen five that UM, the d A that hired Ray decided not to rerun for office. So Ray ran instead and won the spot because it's an elected position. It is an elected position, and he was UM. He was DA until his disappearance in two thousand five. And I know that I've been saying d A a lot. I'm sorry, district attorney, the

district attorney. I'm going to continue to call it d A. But for those of you who are not from America or maybe be don't know what a district attorney is in America, Basically, it's what we call our public prosecutors at like at a very base level obviously, UM, in England they're called chief crown prosecutors. It's the local districts attorney. Yeah, basically, and they are they are elected officials. I mean, there's a little more cloud that comes along with it, but

that at the basic level, that's what it is. The sense that I got from UM all of the reading and all of the interviews and all of that stuff that UM I've done all the research around this is that Ray was really a good person. Some people say maybe he was a bit of a ladies man, but really in his core he seemed to have the best

of four people. A. Yeah, I mean he he would often if cases went again his own personal moral code, he would hand them off to people that worked for him to prosecute them, uh, to just make sure that everything was being done fairly instead of against the death penalty he did. Yeah, so he often handed that off to his assistant d A. Um, but he really wasn't

scared to take on big cases. Um. There's some talk about you know, so Okay Center County is where Penn State is obviously because that's where they moved Conversinia State University, which has had some troubles, which we'll talk about some of the big old stuff. Yeah, it's a big college. So you know, sometimes the athletes they're get in trouble,

for instance. And he prosecuted almost all those cases. He prosecuted a lot of murder, rape, mafia cases, and there was nothing he was he wasn't scared to go after that. He doesn't an it was kind of his job. Yeah, I mean, it was his job. But he also wasn't scared to really go after people. And fun fact, you guys may or my not be familiar with the murder of Beth Doe, which was a Jane Doe in in Pennsylvania Center County. UM. It was actually pretty horrific case.

But he ended up putting the serial killer that killed Beth Doe behind bars. They still don't know who Beth though was, but they found who killed her, so well that's cool. Yeah. Good. John Ray's wife, his first wife that worked for penn State, was named Barbara Gray. She and Ray did divorce in and then in Ray's brother committed suicide. Ray remarried in nine six, but also divorced. He married a woman named Emma. But you will almost never see that anywhere, except for the fact that she

is still maybe writing a book about Ray. Yeah, it's very long time. Yeah. I think the reason that she feels like she can write a book about Ray and his life is something we're going to talk about in a minute. But she was married to Ray until two thousand one, so from two thousand one she was his wife, and then you know, they divorced in two thousand one, and then in two thousand two or maybe two thousand three,

it's hard to tell. Ray moved in with his uh Air quotes longtime girlfriend Patty, who also worked in the district Attorney's office. I keep using air quotes with the longtime girlfriend thing because they were together for three years as actual adults over forty. Apparently three years is a is a long term relationship. I don't know. Okay, well, yeah, he was in his mid fifties at the time of his disappearances. Correct, he would have been, yeah, he would

have been. Yeah. It's it's funny, though, I really I really found it interesting the descriptions by different people of that relationship with Patty versus his other wives. I think it was much more of a friendship than it was than a passionate romance. I would say it was a partnership. Yeah, that's good, But it did seem less. You know, everybody says, well, his marriage with Emma was so passionate. There was a lot of passion, which means which, which means they fought

a lot. But they also I think we're passionate in terms of the way they expressed themselves positively to each other as But it does seem like, you know, everybody says, well, Patty's really just his soul mate. She describes herself as as soulmates and you know, all of that stuff. But it was only three years. Again, who's to say, and I don't know, but you know, who's to say it probably would have lasted forever. But you know, they always they always call her a long time girlfriend. So that's

where that is. Ray was planning to retire that year, um in two thousand five, sorry, the year he disappeared and his turn was up. He just wasn't seeking re election and his family does say that he reported feeling overworked and feeling really tired a lot. Now, the name Ray greek Car might be familiar to you, even if you didn't know that he doesn't heard and that's because of Jerry Sandusky. We're going to talk about some not

so great stuff for a minute. I believe what I referred to it earlier was I things things involving kids and that. Yeah. Yeah, So if that bothers you, go ahead and skip ahead about five minutes, because you may you may not want to hear it, but but you may want to hear the rest of the story. So, ok, so let's talk about the gym that was Jerry. Jerry Sandusky still is i'mers have heard of this guy? You know, I would guess, but I you know, I don't know.

I didn't know the details until we looked into this. I never looked into it, right, because why would you really you don't really want to. So. Jerry Sandusky is a former assistant football coach at Penn State, which, yes, there's already a little bit of his wife. Ray Creeker's wife worked for Penn State. Again, huge employer, not to say anything, but and they have a lot of clout in that town. Yeah. Yeah, But Jerry Sandusky was kind of an all around bad kind of human being. He

founded this charity, which I recognize. I'm going to follow up with something that sounds like an awesome thing, but just wait. He founded a charity called The Second Mile, which served underprivileged youth. UM. George W had really high yeah, Bush sorry, had really high praise for the organization. He said that it was a shining example. UM in a letter that he wrote words I'm sure he regretted. Not too far after that, it was a little while be horror. At the end of the whole thing came to light.

It hit the fan, Yeah, it hit the fan. Uh. It's estimated that that organization served as many as a hundred thousand kids annually. Uh in nearly um it was, and it existed almost thirty six years. It's a lot of kids. So the percentages that were about to start talking about are low, but extremely but like any even like point o percent is too many percents. But anyway, that's just long story short. He Sandusky basically set this up and turn it into his own personal dating service

a little. Yeah, it turns out, yeah, Sandusky was raping young boys that he met through the Second Mile. Officially he was charged with lusting nine boys, but he was also charged with forty five counts against him. He was sexually abusing his adopted son Matt for six or seven years, and he met literally all his victims through the Second Mile. He was vetting them. He's looking for a very specific personality type and sexuality type that was open to the

kind of suggestion that he was open to. And all of them had no father figures. So he sadly very stereotypical. Yeah for a predator like that. Yeah, I'm of the opinion that he likely had many, many more victims than just the nine, But that's you know, my own personal feeling.

That's for another mystery. That's for a different mystery. Yeah, in the spring of two thousand eight, Aaron Fisher Um was a high school student where Sandusky was volunteering as an assistant football coach, and Aaron told his mom that Sandusky had been touching him inappropriately. And Aaron was a freshman. Aaron was a freshman. Yeah, so that would make him what four depending on when his birthday last. Sandusky's relationship quote unquote with Aaron had started in two thousand five

with the second Mile. And it turns out that a graduate assistant coach in Penn State had witnessed Sandusky abusing boys in two thousand one and had told Joe Paterno, who was the Penn State head coach at the time. Pa turn out, to his credit, it seems did report this. He sure took his time. He did. He was on vacation, so you know, he had to wait. He was about to go on vacation when um, when he was told

about the case. And then he was like, well, I'm going to go on vacation, then I'll come back and tell everybody that Sandusky has been touching people inappropriately, among other things. Yeah. Yeah, so, um, but the people who were above Joe Paterno. Seems it seems like they said, oh, I'm sure Sandusky was just horsing around, even though I mean some of the descriptions are are like, oh, Janitor saw him behind a boy. They were both naked, the boy was pushed up against the wall, and they were

slapping noises quote unquote. It's just like, but that didn't you know, nobody at Penn State seemed to really. I think it's one of those situations where the disturbing nature of what was going on in each retelling it got sanitized more and more to the point that I was like, oh, they were just playing around the shower. Yeah. So the two people um that Joe Paterno did tell it testified in court that all they heard was there was some

horsing around happening in their shower. So they were totally clean. But it sounds like Joe turn of stories. He told them and they said, don't worry about it, ignore it. Either way, it doesn't really matter. I'm telling this story because the earliest documentation of Sandusky's abuse was by the aforementioned adopted son, Matt. Okay, well, Matt didn't report it, but Matt and one of his adopted sisters tried to commit suicide, which caused uh CPS Child Protected Services to

raise some concerns and say they needed to investigate. That's kind of unusual to kids committing suicide at the same time we're attempting suicide. Yeah, And actually, the thing that was really interesting about this is I've read a lot of the stuff from Matt and he would Child Protective Services removed him from the house and took him obviously like he was in the hospital, and they said, Okay,

we're going to place you somewhere else. This is when he was still a foster kid, and he actually wrote a letter to Child Protective Services saying that he wanted to be placed back with Sandusky, despite the fact that he had been being lusted. So, I don't know what. I didn't care to go into too much detail onto the kind of mind games that Sandusky must have been playing with these young boys, but that I think is very indicative of the kind of power he had over them.

In an eleven year old boy later known as Victim six in the indictments of Sandusky, came forward to test by that Sandusky had showered naked with him and another boy enter Ray greek Car. Not not in the shower, I hope. No. Not into no, no, not no, no, he was the district attorney into the story. I'm sorry you leave with something out there. Sandusky showered with these two young boys, and he also touched them, right, Yes,

I was, you know, trying to sanitize it a little bit. Yet. Anyway, the victim's mom apparently wanted to talk to Sandusky, which is fair, and I guess i've you know, I've heard it both ways. Either Sandusky said, hey, I want to talk to you about this, or she said we need to talk about this, But either way, they range to

talk about the situation. She had she had reported the situation, she had reported it to, she'd reported to the police, who reported it to greek Car, and I understood that her confronting Sandusky was actually at the prompting of yeah, so let's see what you can get. It was a bit of a sting. Yeah, you know what absolutely was.

And this was one of the things that a lot of people say about him when you start talking about Ray as a professional, is that he was always the kind of guy to say, okay, did you try this though thinking outside the box? Yeah, you know, he would take it. That next step is the thing that people say about him. And so I think, you know, the mom said, well, my son is being abused, and he said, okay, but we need something more concrete than your eleven year

old child saying that so sadly. Yeah, unfortunately, so let's see if we can get Sandusky to admit it. So they set up the sting where Sandusky comes to the mom's house, and they set up recording devices all around the house, and there's cops sitting outside monitoring, and you know, like you like, almost like on TV. I guess, and apparently apparently Sandusky says, uh, and I quote, I understand I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness from you.

I know I won't get it from you. I wish I were dead unquote, which sounds like an admission to me, but okay, it's not. He doesn't actually say I'm going to really confess. He doesn't. There's there's nothing there, there's nothing. Unfortunately, there's not. And I mean, I think I was probably smart on Sandusky's part. Unfortunately, so Ray decides there's not enough evidence to prosecute Sandusky. I agree, I think there

probably wasn't enough. Unfortunately, again, you can't just say it's gonna it's gonna be this grown man who was really well respected in the community. It's going to be his word forces versus an eleven year old boy. Well, I'm sure she. He probably sat down with the mother too and probably said, look, you know, this is gonna be a high profile case, a lot of publicity. A kid's name might not stay secret. And so that's part with these any kind of situation, this is almost there. They're

a watershed moment. It's kind of like the Cosby case. One comes out and everybody goes that didn't happen, and then suddenly a whole bunch more show up, and that's when it gains momentum. But there may not have been enough there for him to say I really think that this could go. I mean, I'm sure that's why he didn't pursue it isn't he didn't have even enough to begin with. Yeah, and you know, but unfortunately a lot of the stuff that Sandusky did eventually get charged with

happened after that. So a lot of people talk about if if Ray had just prosecuted Sandusky, none of this would have ever happened, and I don't know that that's true. I Sandusky may have started getting sloppy. Yeah you're getting well, No, no, no, I just mean that people blame Ray for Sandusky's action. There were a lot of people who enabled him, a

Ray Greek Car was at least among them. I would agree, I totally agree with all of his victims should have said something number one and a lot of other people suspected. And and by the way, we're not pointing finger at victims for not coming from I don't know, I understand, but I understand why they wouldn't. I just I don't want anybody to be upset by that. Yeah, anyway, this is not an episode about Sandoski thrankfully, Yeah, we're not. I can think I can pretty solidly say we are

never doing an episode on Santa. Yeah. I can guarantee that I don't have a lot of interest in that case. Actually, but okay, I will say that you can't talk about Greek Car without talking about Sandesky, because the Internet thinks they're intimately connected. Yes, so that was just a little bit of really icky background. I promise it will factor in again in a couple of minutes. Let's get let's get back to Ray greekr. Shall we? Yeah? And Patty

and Patty Yeah. In April fifteen, two five, all around eleven thirty, Ray calls his longtime girlfriend Patty to let her know that he's been driving. It's very unclear in all of the stories that I've read. I've read that Patty said he was playing hooky the entire day. I've read that his colleague said he was playing hooky for half a day, like he was going to take half a day off. I've heard that he was actually working.

I've heard that he was driving home. I've heard that he was driving to that he told her that he was driving too somewhere. All I know is that he said, I'm on, I'm I'm driving in this valley, which, for all I know, I mean, it could be that that's that meant he was on his way somewhere, and couldn't mean he meant his he was on his way. I

don't know exactly, but yeah, I had to. But we do you know that the cell phone paying to tower that was next to Highway one, so he was driving down that road he was Yeah, No, absolutely, and that doesn't that's not an issue For me, it's us what he was saying and what the circumstances surrounding this are. And that I think is very important because there are some things that people bring up as being weird that

aren't weird. If he was coming from work, say right, but if he was playing hookie the entire day, it is kind of weird. Well, but the thing is is, I know Patty said that he decided to go driving, which he was. Yeah, he was known to go take a I'm not one of those guys, but some people like to take a three four hour drive and just dry. And he had he loved his little car he had.

He had a red Mini Cooper and he loved to drive that thing, which is always hilarious to me because he was he do you know how I think it was like seven. Yeah, he's a big guy and it always cracks me up. And I see big guys Mini Cooper's except Mini Cooper's fit tall people, which is the amazing part about the Mini Cooper. This episode brought to you by Mini Cooper Product Place. Yeah, I do think that he was driving one north or east northeast to

Louis because that afternoon. Yeah, No, there's and there's no doubt in my mind that he was in Louisbourg in that afternoon. Whether he told Patty that's where he was going or not, I'm not sure. Whether he was, you know, knocking off work for a half day or a whole day, I don't know. All I know is he ended up in Louisbourg that afternoon. I'm not I'm not concerned about that timetable at all. But again it does depend a

little bit. We'll talk about them a little bit. Actually. So, as we said, um, Patty gets home from work, she doesn't see Ray. So she goes to the gym, She comes back, calls his cell phone a bunch of times, Netflix, No, not yet, maybe drink spear or some wine. Calls rays cellphone a number of times, she says, it goes straight to voicemail. And then finally, after she had not heard from him in twelve hours, which was incredibly unlike him,

she called the cops. She called nine one one and said, my boyfriend Ray Greeker is missing, and they of course said, oh crap, d is missing. Better get on that. What's the last thing you know of him, right, which is you know the way you're supposed to do it. Yeah, exactly. The following day, which would have been April. Uh, investigators find his car either fort or fifty five miles away from the home that he shared with Patty, which is in Louisbourg, and it was in the parking lot of

an antique mall that Ray liked, I believe. I've also seen some reports that it was in the parking lot of a park really, yes, and that plays in in a little bit in the theory. I've seen pictures of both parking lots as well. It kind of looks like one is across the street from the other. And I'll be honest with you, I have not gone out to Google street View to really check that out. It's it's a gravel lot across the street from this, or it's in the antiques in it was, it's across the street

from it. That's uh. The antique ball is just an old industrial building that's been converted into sort of a mall kind of thing, which right, yeah, like a flea market. Yeah, I like that. In his car, there's not m is not him. There's no sign of him, there's no sign of his keys, there's no sign of his wallet, there's no sign of his county issued laptop, though his county issued cell phone was in his car, and I'm under

the impression that was his only cell phone. Originally, when I started doing the research, I thought, surely he had a personal cell phone as where as well, But I have not actually seen any mention of that. So I'm going to assume that his county issued cellphone was his only cell phone in two thousand five. I don't know that that would have been so, I mean, my mom didn't get a cell phone until two thousand five, and sixty year old man has no interest in a cell phone.

He has one because he has to have one, and he probably hated it. Yeah, there were no signs of foul play around the car, but according to police reports, the car smelled like cigarette or cigar smoke. Even though Ray was apparently like an avid anti smoker, she hated the smell. Yeah, but his car smelled like cigarette smoke. And they found a fleck of ash on the back seat, which, okay, fine, whatever, win does more than a fleak, But I mean that was was not a huge amount of some ash. There

was some cigarette ash. Yeah. Family members, upon hearing that Ray was missing his nephew particularly drove up to come kind of help out with the investigation. They showed up. They show up in Louisbourg and immediately think, um, you know, there's this interview that I watched with a nephew and he says, I immediately just thought, oh my god, here we go again. Because Ray's car was parked in a parking lot next to park near bridge over a river.

And that's exactly how they found his father's stuff, Roy Ray's brother, nephew's father. They that's how they found his car before they found out that he had killed himself by jumping off a bridge. So the family immediately thought, oh my god, Ray killed himself just the exact same way, at least according to the nephew. According to the nephew, who really likes to be in front of the camp, well he's here. He calls himself the official media liaison

of the family. Nobody else the family really wants to talk about. They really don't. Um, but I mean it was his father who killed himself, so I can understand why he would immediately just be like, oh my god, how why So okay, yeah, anyway, they searched the river, they find nothing. Nobody, nobody they search all around the antique mall, all around the town, and we'll talk about some of that stuff in a little bit, but there's

no no Ray. Ray didn't show up. Eventually, you know, they kind of start to scale back the search a little bit because you can't do full on manhunt forever. Not really. The FBI analyzes raised credit records, nothing, he's not tired, nothing's going on. They continue to scale back a little bit. Then on July five, fisherman in the Susquehanna River found a laptop which was kind of caked with mud. It was sitting on the bottom, it was sitting, it was getting on the bottom, but it was really

caked with mud and stuff like that. And uh, they immediately turned it over to the police. I'm not sure if it's because they thought it would be connected to this case or not, but they turned it over to the police. If you look at the photos of it, it's got county property tags on the back of it. Of course they always do that. Yeah, so I'm sure that these guys probably wiped it off. Oh we should

probably maybe the county give us a reward. Yeah, So they turned it over to the cops and the cops give it to their computer forensic expert, who immediately realizes there's something very wrong with this computer because it just doesn't have a hard drive in it. Oh, I thought it because it's full of water. Well that too, that wouldn't help. Yeah, so there's no hard drive in this thing, so obviously there's nothing. There's there's nothing they can do

about it. Well, it's got a fish screen saver fish swimming on it. Yeah, I mean, obviously, if there's no hard drive in a computer, it's not going to do anything. There's all the all the fun information is on the hard drive. Yea. Although interestingly, I will briefly mention not that I necessarily think it pertains to this case, but one can pull a hard drive out of a computer, out of a laptop and plug in via a USB either a flash drive or an external hard drive, and

run an operating system on that. Steve is looking at me like I'm a crazy person. I understand that you can do that. I don't understand the implications in this case. I don't know that there are any, but I just

want to throw that out there as something that is possible. Well, I think I think that I thought about this very thing too, And that is if somebody had raised laptop but they didn't know his password, but they wanted information off of that, then removing removing the hard drive and ugging it in as an external drive to another computer would be a way around that, assuming the files on

the on the hard drive or habit themselves been encrypted. Right. Well, I'm sorry, maybe I'm dumb, but if the files on the hard drive are under my profile and therefore are locked behind my password, firewall, whatever you want to call it, and you plug in another hard drive to operate the computer, that's not what we're saying. We're saying that you remove the hard drive from one computer and plug it into

a different computer, the hard drive into it. Hard drive goes from original computer to second computer, and then how are you accessing the contents of it when you well, I've done the same thing. It's a couple of Mac minus that I retired. So you're just you're just going through a back door to get to the file tree and find things that way. It's just it's it's just opens It's like a file that appears to your desktop and you plug in. It's like plugging in a USB

stare or something like that. It's okay, Okay, I got it. It's much like a plug and play flash drive. Okay, that's the part that I wasn't getting. Well, is locked behind his password. Well, and the OS would continue to be but the files are not. They're technically still still just files. Now I understand it. I've done the very

same thing, right, I know what you're getting. Okay, So I mean I think that's interesting as well as if he did have something to hide for some reason, you wouldn't necessarily have the hard drive in it in the computer in the laptop out that you could have something that you would be able to disconnect from the computer. I know, I have a lot of friends who do stuff like this where they, you know, don't necessarily want people to just be able to log onto their computer

or take their actual computer. They have to have two parts of the puzzle, right. Anyway, that's a long tangent to say. It's possible that somebody removed the hard drive and had access to the files otherwise was accessing the files. Okay, it was. People would have had different motives. Yeah, it was also missing the slide in C D C tray.

Thank you. I love the hand motion that you're doing, and somehow I figured that out or did by reading of the I'm trying to remember this in two thousand five, did they have Were we still using floppy disks back in those days? So we go to what do we go to? DVDs and CDs and all that stuff. It depends on how new the model was. Yeah, that was this was a relatively new computer. I did a bunch

of looking into this stinking computer. This thing you could get it was a Micron, which was actually a fairly expensive computer at the time, and you could get There were several different options that you could get, one of which was the CD. You could get the three and a half inch floppy drive. That was an option because I actually had hard I had the three and a half inch floppy drives from not too long prior to that. I still had some sitting around. This computer also had

the capability. I believe it's in in the photos. You'll see when it's open and you're looking at it from the front, there's a hole in the left side which is actually a separate second hard drive. It had a second external hard drive that was a push button it could have like it it was. It was meant for

the business professional had all these different configurations. Well, I would suspect that he had a floppy drive, just given that it was the government and if you had to look at historic stuff like that, you would be on he didn't have a floppy because it was floppy or CD or your CD is what I I understood. Now. The information on Micron is hard because Micron went under. They became I love It, They became MCP from Tron,

and then they went away. So the information of what their models were is kind of tough to dig up. It was battery in front, external hard drive here, CD drive here, and the removable hard The actual physical hard drive was somewhere center ish. That was the internal So it was the internal hard drive that was removed right on the beach. Okay, whatever, fine, So Joe has spoiled the fact that a few months later, I think it

was a few months. It was either two months or in the end of October two thousand five, hard to tell. It was October, a mom and her kid found the hard drive and the CV tray, just like in the mud on the banks of the river. The hard drive was found with the CD tray. Pretty sure, maybe not me, I think the computer, but all the pictures you see of it are your rusty. Yeah, it's pulled out of it. So yeah, I guess that's probably an unfair assumption on

my part that it was missing. But the hard drive was definitely missing, and it was found a couple of months later. Also, it was like a day where they found the computer. Yeah, but also you know, also kicked on mud and all that stuff. So the police decided to turn the hard drive over it. I mean, after they find the hard drive. Obviously they turned over to the c I A. I believe it was service, thank you, and the Secret Service says, no, there's no we can't know.

There's nothing on here that's usable. This is totally ruined. So they but they say, but this, there's this private firm that we used to recover all the data from the Challenger when it exploded. They're pretty good at this stuff. Let's pass it on to them and see what they can find. And that firm came back and said, na, there's no, there's no way, which is interesting, Well, I said,

I said, they took it apart, they discovered it. Probably you know that there's you know, in a hard drive, there's a disk in there, or discs there were, I mean not anymore, they don't make them that way anymore, but yeah, yeah, they probably found out and those things are kind of delicate. Well they are, you know, like some months in the water. I mean, there's gonna be some corrosion and stuff. Chance you recover data for those yes, No,

that's the thing is the challenger. You know, it was flung from way far up high and took some heat and radiation, but that was a brief impact and brief amounts, so yeah, go figure it was still usable wars when it's sitting in the mud. Yeah, it's not to think about the mud, does your shoes? Yeah? Your computer? Yeah? Absolutely. And by the way that this was found, this was found in open air on the bank, right. It was it was like the mud, but yeah, that wasn't underwater. Yeah,

that's one thing. You can immerse something in water for an extended period of time, but it doesn't necessarily start to rust or oxidize and as soon as you getsosed to air. Yeah, this thing had been sitting in the air, so you know, as rusty as hell. Yeah, absolutely, And you can you can look at pictures of this and it's definitely. They're they're messed up the computer and the hard drive both, so nothing nothing, and you know that

really let the investigators just they just we're heartbroken. I think everybody with the case were heartbroken because they found the hard drive and they were thinking, oh my gosh, we're going to solve this thing. I don't see how anybody could have looked at that thing and gotten their hopes set. Yeah. I don't know either, but hey, it's a clue that God knows how much time. Yeah, absolutely, divers pretty sure that Okay, we found raised computer, that

must mean that his body somewhere down there. Do another dive. They search extensively, nothing, they don't find anything. So finally they decided I should mention this. I was looking on the thing. It was on redd at some guy, some local guy that lives in the area said that the in the Susquehanna River people drown all the time. He says, they all with the body always turns up. Yes, you know, it might not be found by the police, but sooner or later somebody finds it washed up and we will

talk about that more in theories stuff. Again. No, No, it's fine, I mean yes, but it's fine. Finally, in April two thousand nine, police reveal that prior to raise disappearance, just a couple of days prior to raise disappearance, somebody had used the personal computer at Ray and Patty's house to search how to wreck a hard drive, how to fry a hard drive, water damaged noble computer? Question about

that I was. I made some phone calls trying to get an answers to these questions, which was why when exactly did these searches take place? Because everybody says they took place before he disappeared, But I've never heard anybody say actually pinned down the actual dates when I haven't either, No, I haven't either. Also haven't heard why the police waited so long to say that that had happened. And well, you know, sometimes they they want to keep some certain

certain details. Absolutely, yeah, so that's why. But but I still it's very frustrating to be I called this the cold case to unit at this the Pennsylvania State Police, and of course they didn't call me back, but I wanted to answer to that to that question was exactly when were those searches made if anybody even knows they could have been made after he disappeared. They could have been. Everybody assumes that they were made before, but I'm not so sure that that's well. I think they likely, sir.

I mean, they would have had to have found that information on the computer within a day or two of Ray disappearing. Well. And my other thing, Joe, is that if those searches had come up after Ray had disappeared, that brings to light a whole another set of implications that says somebody close to him is involved, and you know that they would have then looked at Patty and anybody else that had access. But I'm assuming that it comes out the way it does because it was something

that he had done a week, a month. There's something in advance, and they just they pulled his his search history. I just want to put this in context to say that you know, Ray was retiring, and he had actually been physically at like personally asking people in the office, hey, how do you how do you totally wipe a hard drive? And I have heard from other people who have been district attorneys or served it's not uncommon that it's not uncommon to want to do something like that after you've

left office. You know you've got a computer, you want to wipe your stuff. He apparently kept a daily journal on his hard drive of his own personal feeling about things and all that stuff. And I think it's likely that before turning that computer back over to the county, he would have wanted to wipe it queen. And so I don't I mean, I think, yeah, by water, that's weird. Sure, I'm totally willing to say, like how to fry a

hard drive with water? That's Those are all weird things, But just his interest in how to wipe a hard drive is not so weird to me. It's not weird at all. But the strings, some of these strings really set up my BS meter a lot, Like, for example, of water damage to note put computer. Can you imagine

yourself entering that search string of Google? Yeah, I mean I can't following how to wrack a hard you know, exactly, no no roll back though You're you're assuming that Ray has a semi decent grasp on how computers work, and not everybody does. And he may have been googling how do I a hard drive and then something said or if your computer was immersed in water? He's like, oh, well, what does that do? Water in you? Know notebook, computer and water like he may have been followed. I felt

like I do that. We do that all the time, where we take a phrase out of an article and and start searching that phrase to understand what it means. He may have had no idea. Um, I can only tell you I know what happens when I dropped my TV into the bathtub. That happens when I try it when I drop my laptop into the bathroom. Every everybody knows. This is why we keep telling you just stop watching

TV in the bath But here's the thing. Everybody knows that electronics one exposed to water are going to be destroyed. We all know this well, can we? And right into this I'm sure? So can we put a pin in this discussion and start talking about again in theories because I think this conversation is going there. We have more stuff to cover. Okay, thanks Steve. So I know, back

to the Appalachian Trail. Yeah, seriously. And I guess the thing that I'll echo not about the actual actual queries, but like, why if you search on a home computer, like you know that search is going to get found? Like he would have known that necessarily Ray and not necessarily if you if you don't know, I mean, I don't know, maybe and if you just you just jumped from one side to the other devon. The reason that

I say that is because his colleagues say that. His colleagues say he would have known that we found would have found that because I mean, he was part of investigative teams. He was, I mean, he would have seen this happen a lot. He would have seen that people were able to go on a computer and see what people were searching. He would have known that from investigations he had seen. He would know. So that's one of

the things. Again, we'll talk about this more in theories, but to me, that means that he planned to come home. That was devoting. It was right. So yeah, I know, I think you're right about that, and that's why we'll talk about it later. But I have my own theory about these search strings. Awesome and how they up there. Okay, we will talk about them a night, That's okay. But that's the last we heard in terms of details details

about the case. In July of two thousand and eleven, Laura Greeker that the adopted daughter petitioned to have the court declare Ray legally dead, which they granted, so he is legally dead now. It had been six years, had been yeah, six years. This is one of the other things. There have been a lot of sightings quote unquote sightings of Ray, and actually, as it turns out, the police, every time they get one of these reports, they follow

up on it. It sounds like everybody that I've heard who's actually seen the evidence says that really the bulk of the evidence are these Manila envelopes that the police have of each of the quote unquote sightings and how they follow it up with it. This one, however, was pretty interesting. It was literally one day after Ray was declared legally dead, man in Utah was arrested and he strongly resembled Ray. He was being charged with a misdemeanor,

but he refused to give his name. Apparently he resembled Ray. He had the same height, the same weight, he had the same lips, and the same wrinkles. Lips, yeah, and like very similar wrinkles. And I've seen pictures of both these guys. He does look like right. Uh. And so the authorities in Pennsylvania immediately sent Ray's fingerprints to Utah, thinking like, oh my god, we found him or I mean, you know, we found him and it turns out no match. They eventually identified the guy and he had no he

wasn't Ray. If I had to guess, this guy was pulling one of those stupid things that people tell each other. If you don't tell, if you say nothing and you don't tell them who you are, then they can't book you like I've oh, yeah, one of those what are those hacks to get out of arrest. Yes, it's it's yeah, that's that's that's what this guy. It sounds like that's what this guy, and he just had the bad misfortune

to happen to look like exactly. Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. Actually, you know, in the anterim between when they when they thought he might be ray and when they had confirmed that he wasn't, he probably got treated better. Probably, frankly, probably he did your Yeah, he's got to tell all of his other homeless place. Dude, if you don't say who you are, suddenly the upgrade yourself all the other guys out. You get great food, you got to try it,

and they start calling you sir. It's crazy. Theories. You can talk about theories. Okay, we're pretty close let's talk about this first theory. Never do it, let's do it. Let's do it this time, we'll do it. The first theory is that Ray was murdered, and there are a couple of different ways this could have gone. Um, you know, he was prosecuting murderers and rapists and generally bad people even before he was yeah, yeah, even before he was

just attorney, and then before he came to Pennsylvania. Yeah, and then again you know when he was well, no, before that, before when they even before he moved to Pennsylvania, prior to Pennsylvania, and then when he was he was also doing that, sorry, his whole career. Basically, we can just say he was charging bad people with the stuff they should have been charged with. So it's it's possible that one of those things could have come back and

bit him. However, the fifth we're just going to get this one out of the way, the one that everybody likes to say, is somebody close to the Jerry Sandusky scandal scandal killed Ray, and furthermore, they actually killed Roy as well. Now here's how this theory plays out. Steve is like gonna just explode. But here's how this theory plays out. Roy gets killed in this theory, gets killed just about when the first allegations of Jerry Sandusky's was he would have maybe gone onto Ray's radar to set

an example to Ray. So well, so somebody comes up to Ray and says, hey, you know, I heard your brother died. I'm really sorry about that. Um yeah, I'd be a shame if, um, you know, somebody started prosecuting this case. It's pretty big, pretty high profile. Um yeah, it'd be a shame. I don't buy it. I don't buy this at all. But this is something you will

see on the internet a lot. Here's the deal is that State alumni and other heavies like that, they wouldn't be going after the d A. They would be actually having Sandusky murdered the last guy that you try and strong arm. Well, so that the that theory actually often gets tight in with Sandusky just ended up being the fall guy. This is a huge ring. Everybody in the higher ups in the Penn State Athletic Department are participating in this. Blah blah blah. I don't buy any of that.

I should like for the record, I do not buy any of that. But that's kind of where this theory ends up is that it's the alums are weren't mad ad that that this whole like abuse thing was happening. They were mad that somebody might prosecute it, and that it was this huge ring and they were trying to keep it under wraps. Sandusky is a red Harry. Yeah, basically in this theory I don't buy. I personally feel there's red erring to the Greek arcase I would agree

I agree to. But so that's how that theory tends to run. Another point to bring up is that, right, if somebody involved with the Sandusky case, we're trying to silence people, they wouldn't be silencing the day. They'd be silencing witnesses, which I know is a harsh thing to say, but they would be going after the witnesses. They wouldn't be going out. I think that. I think that what they would have been just like they would have paid

Sandowsky to retire a lot easier than murdering people. They would have paid them and they said, dude, you take your retirement, you moved to the other side of the country. We don't ever want to hear from you again. Yeah, yeah, change your name. So if you get arrested exactly. That's what's so, that's I totally agree, totally agree. But we do have to talk about this because that's whatever. That's

like the first thing that comes up to everybody. Okay, So if we move away from the Sandusky angle, then then then where is what what else is in the murder most foul category? Foul? And one more thing about Sandusky I'm sorry before we move away that people bring up as being kind of weird is that there's literally no mention of Ray greek Car being involved with the

Sandusky case in greek Car's stuff. So like the person who took over for him as d A had access to literally all his files and didn't know that greek Car or that Ray sorry had actually even been a part of Sandusky at all. There there was nothing, There was no fire, but he wasn't he wasn't pursuing a case. It was but he did a police but he did at the police did it, and we have all that

information from the police because they were the one. I'm sure that's office would have had a file on on it probably, So it is it's a little weird, but also it's not really that weird. Well, it's not that weird, because I mean, this is where the conspiracy theory maybe does make sense, because if there is embarrassing material about Sandusky and the d A file, is it possible that somebody could have bribed somebody worked in that office to

remove the file and destroy it. That's entirely possible. But but then murder rays that now. But yeah, paperwork gets misplaced in files, accidentally get corrupted all the time. Absolutely, that's much more plausible to me than this d A seven years later. Well, although it would also give a reason to have the hard drive be destroyed, right if they thought, well, there's obviously copies of these on the hard drive, then we've got to destroy the hard drive

as well. But again I don't do you can you want to talk about the hard drive for a second? Do you mind if we if we jump to that since we're talking about it's kind of hard drive. The hard drive in that computer is held in place by a single set screw. Have you ever seen a set screw in a in a laptop. It's a set screw and a and a like a you know, pull button, no, no, no no. On the Micron, it was a set screw.

I looked at that again, I was pulling up the manuals and it's a single set screw that holds the freaking thing in. And those set screws are always teeny tiny, like the size of something that's in your eye glass. You're saying that it might have just gotten knocked out accidentally, Okay, that the whole thing goes in the water and it begins to corrode, and that set screw is either a not high quality and it degrades enough that the thing

just pops out, or be it just comes loose. I mean, I've had computers where there was a screw that constantly was loosening itself and I had to tighten it back up. So when you're talking about somebody was pulling the hard drive to do all this stuff, I don't think it's nearly as nefarious as that. I just think that it was a crappy screw that easily came out. There's why I don't think that, and that is that if it fell out on impact with the water, then it wouldn't

have been found on the river bank. I don't see how. I mean, hard drives are not positively went neither a computers. But the computer was found near the bank. I mean, you can wash up. I drawt like action pushes things. I'm not disagreeing that. I don't think that it fell out immediately, but I think that it came out and got caught in the current at some point. But this, this this crap happens, and I don't think that it was you know, I don't think that it's this amazingly secured,

welded in place hard drive like it's hard. It's not, but it's negatively buyant and it's not going to float up onto the bank, which is where it was to score. But if there's current, the current is going to shove things around the round the bottom. That's why rocks that are in the middle of the river end up on the bank. Well probably, I think more likely it's just

going to flow downstream. But you know, I think probably somebody just pitched him over the side of the bridge, you know, And god knows when it could have been any time. It could have been months after the murder or the disappearance. I should say, well, we're in there in the murder at the moment. In five minutes, you can't say it. Yeah, So just one quick thing before

we let Joe lose on this case. Uh. The other thing I guess is that when the initial report was released by the police, they said one call, one inbound call was made to raise cellphone on the day of his disappearance. And then Patty started talking and saying, well, I was calling his cellphone all all night. It was going to voicemails, going to voicemail, but they were inbound calls. That's a that's a good question. I don't know the

answer to this. But if your phone is shut off and his was, and it goes straight to voicemail, does that actually get logged in as a call? It doesn't, doesn't, Okay. But so eventually, somehow, I'm not totally clear how somebody gets ahold of the phone own records and says, oh no, actually there's there's a lot of calls in and out both on the day that Radus appeared to the number. Uh. And so the police edit their report to say, okay, well, find all the calls were routine on that day. That's

a little weird term routine. Mean, that's a good question. Yeah, yeah, it's really hard to tell from records. I think probably what it means is that none of the numbers stood out as odd. They were all numbers that would have normally been contacted either way from his cell phone. That would be what how I would assume that meant how

I would assume them in what I assume that meant? Yeah. Um. And then there are a lot of people out there saying that because this was a county owned cell phone, the phone records should be a matter of public records, So why don't we see those. It's not such a big deal for me. But the fact that the police initially said, well there was only one call, that's a little suspicious. I guess, just tiny bit there withhold a

lot of information. Often they do. Yeah, I'm not going to point a finger about So Joe's got some stuff about the murder, not necessarily, but I just you know, the search strings too. And as I said earlier, they set up my book might B S detector in a large way, especially the one about water and electronics, And it occurs to me they didn't have to necessarily be

entered by ray. And because the guy, I assuming he was abducted and murdered, which I think he probably was, I would agree with this, and I'm actually on board with that. Yeah, and these people would have his driver's license with his address on it, and they would have his house keys, and maybe there was something they wanted. I'm not even sure that he would have had his laptop with them in that car. Well, that's actually a

big point of contention. It is it is, and so um, they might have actually driven to his home and you know, made sure that Patty wasn't home, gone inside, found the laptop, which maybe they wanted for one reason or another because maybe the information that was on it, and then just for good measure, they entered a few search strings as kind of a red hair and then you know what on their way. You know, it may it may well be that Ray did not even do any of that

searching from his computer. That's true, although I guess, and maybe this is misplaced faith, but I would assume that whoever found those search terms would have been a computer expert and would have said, hey, that's weird. These search terms were entered at nine pm, when Patty was at the gym or something. Don't I mean, don't you think that that would be something that they would have And I agree, I totally agree with you that like the fact that nobody ever says, this is when the search

terms were made. I agree, that's weird, and they might not have actually considered it important to mark the exact date and time that the searches were made that were really more important. I don't know that when you're doing that kind of forensic analysis, when you consider important comes into play. I think there's there's process and you you go by the numbers. This, this, this, send, this and this are what I log in about every detail. Yeah,

I don't think that's important. I canna write it down. So I don't think that. I don't think that's the way it works. I don't really know that they had an actual forensic computer expert do this. That might have just been a detective who did it. And so you just I can't I can't argue with there. There has been a certain amount of criticism of the of the investigation. Yeah, although I don't think I mean, I think they did everything they probably could probably did, And there's nothing wrong

with having a detective go looking for search strings. I mean maybe at that time it was like couldn't really be understood. They were just looking to see what he was up to on his computer. Yeah, they didn't really care about the precise time and date that they did it, all right, And and that's why the search string. You know, what does water do to a laptop kind of sets off bells for me. Well, but he may he may wonder, Okay, does that just fry the system or does that actually

erase the hard drives? When I was getting out earlier, I personally I think that I think that he's in a shallow grave somewhere, and I think that it just has something to do with a prior case, probably a crime of opportunity that a hole right there put me away for seven years. I'm getting my revenge right exactly. And so this is this is why he was on Route one, which you've looked at on Google Maps. I'm sure. Yeah,

it's a nice long drive to the woods. Lots of side roads, lots of places to pull off, go down side road, pull the shovel out of the back of your red Cooper Mini and dig a hole and bury your hard drive. No need to throw it in the river right next to where you parked your car. Yeah yeah, And that makes absolutely no sense that he did that, And it makes every every amount of sense to me that whoever did the deed would plant that evidence there, and so I'm not totally I's gonna totally be on

the rebel possibility they planted those search strings too. Yeah, that's fair. That's my two bits. Okay, so next theory is suicide. I don't give this one a lot of credence. Most people don't know. I mean that the one thing that I will admit kind of lens credence to this is the fact that he was unusually tired and kind of grumpy and depressed. I mean, I think he was probably depressed. Yeah, there was I read you read the

same thing. I know, but by one of his co workers who worked with them for twenty years, he said he was in a strange mood that way. Yeah, he had been in a strange mood. His longtime girlfriend Patty said, um that he was so tired that he that she told him that if he continued to be that tired that he needed to go to the doctor. Um. You know, he just seemed generally lethargic and kind of to be displaying the symptoms of somebody who would be depressed. But

I don't, I just don't. I don't buy it. I don't. I don't buy it because well he he you know, seen the effect of his brother's suicide and everybody around him. That's a big deterrent. Yeah, and so you see that. I just like, you know, do I want to be this big of a flaming jerk to the people around me? And probably not? Yeah, probably not. He didn't strike me as that kind of guy. And then also to do

it like almost exactly like your brother did. That's that to me is really like the big one is like, even if you were going to kill yourself and your brother had killed himself before, why would you make it look so similar to his suicide. Although if you if you were, you know, wanting to murder him, on the other hand, you were aware of the details of his brother's suicide, you might just mirror that. You might just do that exactly. There's an issue with the suicide theory. Okay,

what's that the water level? That's true, it was pretty low. Yeah, well, we'll talk about let's talk about the let's just I'm going to pose a new theory and then we can talk about Okay, I'll back off on that. A theory that I never really see, which is fair because I think there are a lot of issues with it. But also I guess it's possible that he was trying to dispose of the computer, albeit in a dumb way, right by throwing it over a bridge. Is this it is theory.

I didn't actually looked at too closely that ridge, and there's sidewalks on that bridge. There are, yeah, there's sidewalks and a low railing across the bridge, and it's I mean it's but it's not that tall of a bridge or anything like that. But you know, I guess it is possible that he was trying to dispose of his computer in a dumb way again and just fell in, which again I don't think is a very good theory, but it's possible, and I don't see people talking about

that as a thing. People say, well, he would have intentionally jumped, but nobody says, what if he just accidentally fell. It seems kind of unlikely. It seems unlikely. Well, that's that's the same thing we talked about this when we were talking about the Luchad story. Yeah, exactly, it's super unlikely.

And actually there are some comparisons with the luch Store story in that half the reporting that you'll hear says that the river at that time was like really low, like below waist level low, and the bridge is pretty low. It's not it's not really high. I don't ap okay, I mean around here on April fifteen, the rivers are high. Yeah. And so according to the next you on dateline, which I guess we are going to say is a pretty credible source, the water was reasonably high, um, due to

rain and ice melts. But again, on the other hand, it's April in Pennsylvania. It's cold, it's cold, and um, apparently the Susquehanna River is full of islands and fast rapids um places where brush pile up fast get packed in that could usually easily hide a body. There's also a damn pretty far down. Oh this is this is you pulling this quote from the police chief. I remember this, yeah, because he really cringed when he made the phrase and

disintegrate a body. Yeah, But I mean also there's a dam that apparently a body could get kind of wedged up against. Although again, on the other hand, a different police officer interviewed in this same news story says that the water was crystal clear and you could literally see to the bottom and it's pretty much just a flat rock with some like silt, but not very not a very thick layer of silty mud stuff on top of it. So I get, you know, it's just kind of like

all of these stories are conflicting. There's no way for me to know definitively what the river looked like on that day. So I don't think he probably could have died falling off the bridge. To be honest, I think he. I don't think that that happened suicide or otherwise. I don't think that he died by falling in the river. We suicide too. They probably going back to suicide, I should say that if he had committed suicide, I don't think they would have found the laptop there exactly. Yeah.

And in addition to that, you know, maybe he was depressed, and certainly mental illness and depression and things like that take all sorts of different forms. But at least on paper, he had a pretty good life. He was about to retire, he had a lot of money, he had, he was planning on traveling, he had a love that pension. Yeah, I mean, there's there was a lot of stuff going from him for him. And frankly, this is kind of

going into the next theory. But if he if he wanted, if he was so inclined to escape his life in one way or another, it would have been pretty easy for him to do. So this is the Dorothy Arnold theory, the Dorothy Kay he ran off the joints circus. Yeah. So the next theory is that he ran away for a new life, which is pretty unlikely. I called the circus,

by the way, did you have they said here? They would say that, though, wait, did you talk to the bearded lady or the wolfan because the wolfman's a liar. Oh no, no, I talked to twins. Oh those two they check their information against each other. So yeah, um, okay, well, so I'm gonna I'm gonna present this in a in a series of But then, oh boy, yeah, start ran away to start a new life is really unlikely. But then there's the dark haired smoking woman. Everybody likes a

dark haired smoking woman. Yeah that's true. So yeah, according to a lot of credible sightings, Ray was seen with a woman with dark hair who was smoking. Now, a lot of reports have them eating lunch together, but it turns out no, no, actually that was a different middle aged man who drove a mini Cooper, who was hanging out with a woman, yeah, who looked kind of like Ray, who also was hanging out with a woman who matched vaguely the description of the woman who was seen with Ray.

So that adds some interesting, complicated stuff to it. However, later in the day in the antiques, in the antique shop, in the antique mall um this there was a dark haired woman who was smoking who was seen with Ray. Apparently they would kind of walk together and talk and then go into different stores and then come back together and walk and talk again. She was smoking, so was she and raised car hard to tell. Okay, So that's point. It's unlikely that he ran away to start a new life.

But what's up with the fact that his daughter literally just asked him to come back on the a press conference? Dune done. She just said, Dad, I love you, come back. And that was that. What date was that? It was like two days later? Three days later? Maybe that's Ye'll just take off. That makes total We'll talk about that in a minute. Okay, it's unlikely every time, it's unlikely that he left to start a new life, But what's

up with his fascination with mel Wiley? This is true He had apparently a really deep fascination with this guy named mel Wiley, who was the Hickney County, Ohio sheriff, who disappeared with a whole lot of like really similar coincidences, like he parked his car with all of his belongings inside near a body of water with no signs of foul play and told his girlfriend he was going to do something and then disappeared forever. Just just don't ever

tell their girlfriends we're gonna go do one thing. He was going to go buy swim trunks, Like, why is that the thing though, the first thing that pops into your mind? Yeah? Maybe what How do we know he is that fascinated with mel Wiley because he talked about all the time. He would it was it was it was kind of his go to It was his favorite

unsolved mystery. It was his go to story. Yeah, it's it's kind of like you've got a couple of them that you will just if we're sitting down and having a beer, you will bring up the we're talking about the again, like he's it may have been his go to things when it sounds like, well here's the deal, guys, it says he's out there, you know, living under an assumed name. We got on the on the jota. Obviously

this mystery. Okay, so it's super unlikely that he ran away to start new life, except for that, as you guys mentioned, he had actually run away before, well not for more than about a day. It was a day fair, but that was reported when he was married to his second wife, Emma. They had a fight because she bought some boddie furniture that he was not super stoked on. So he just got in the car and drove to

Ohio from Pennsylvania to go see an Indians game. And apparently that was like one of the first things that Comps died to called. They called. They called down and said, does anybody anybody matching that? Did Ray Greegard? And he's he there? And they said no, and they said rap. Here's the thing is that I I don't see anything weird about this because if their relationship was as it has been described, he may have been so hot under

the caller that his first instinct was I need to leave. Yeah, yeah, I need to leave. But this this is why it doesn't bother me that he has disappeared before. That was a very different relationship and he while it was reported he did it once, he may have actually done it several times in the past where he was so furious I gotta go. So that's that's why his daughter making

the plea. She's like, damn a dad, you get mad and you go hang out at the Red Lion for three days and you won't talk to us, You jerk, just call me like. That's that's the way I take her statement. I think so too, you know, at that point. But as far as the mysterious dark haired woman, the possibility that you know, maybe he had taken up with somebody new and he wanted to run off and live with her, but she could have been something else. She might have been bait. Yeah, that's one of the things

that that really sticks out to me. Yeah, yeah, I think she was bait more than more likely than anything else. She never came forward. You noticed that. I mean it could there could could have been an embarrassment factor if she maybe was screwing around with gray behind everybody's back. But it was considered a ladies man. But here's the thing is he wasn't married, Yeah right, I mean there would like it would have been fairly easy for him to just walk away from the relationship he was in.

He was about to retire, he wouldn't be working with Patty anymore. And she even says, like point blank, if he didn't want to be with me anymore, he wouldn't have been with me. I know that. So I I do agree it's possible that this woman was bait. I mean the kind of the interactions that people described between the two of them, where they would just suddenly find each other again in the crowd. Now it is a

little bit. It's a little bit like she was trying really hard to establish a rapport with him, or him with her, which is fair, right. If he was laid in and he just wanted to flirt with her, that's fine. But one of them or both of them were trying to establish that rapport, and so I would think, and I think what happened if she said, you know what I do is I'm an antiques to you that I

sell to a lot of these people. If you want to come out and look at my van, I've got some great stuff and it's going to be so much cheaper because they're going to mark it up, you know, and you'll say, so much money, so just come out to my van and have a look sick. Well, you know, if if we're gonna pull the hard the Devon did, which is what's the theory that hasn't been ever put out there? And I know that this will actually play into the next theory is what if he was bait

for her? In other words, he may have been involved in something trying to pull somebody forward in his extract information in some other kind of operation that nobody knew about who's talking, and the whole thing went sideways. So how could down sideways so sideways? Say again, yeah, thinking sideways, we're doing it. The next theory that that Steve was just referencing, which his thing fits in nicely with, I guess,

is yeah, it's crazy. It's like we have a script or something sans the next theory, you have a misspelling in the script. The next theory that Steve's most recent thing uh matches pretty well into is that it's it's possible I guess that Ray is in witness protection. I think this is a solid five out of seven stars. Five stars, just it's a five out of seven. It's perfect. Okay, I don't know what that means. Okay, Okay, So here's

here's why this works. Every time somebody requests any documents relating to this case from the FBI or the local law enforcement, it is heavily redacted. And they always say, well, he was the d A, so like we're redacting names and things like that. But apparently almost all of the documents that you request either you never hear back about, like Joe not getting calls back, or it's just like

super super adaptive. I didn't request any of the documents, so like, I don't actually know that for a fact, and Steve shaking his head, like he apparently requested documents and got them from the FBI and they weren't redacted at all. It was like, not a black mark on it. But I've never seen an FBI document without a black mark on it, and nor have I. I I if dead Spin did several years back, did an fo I freume of information request for docs, and it's redacted in the

most generic form of being redacted. Social Security numbers, agents, names, like all of the normal things that would be redacted. It's the most boring seventy page pdf I've ever read through. Yeah, you know they I read it too, and I really would have liked it. If somebody to give me a heads up that none of it had anything to do with the end of the investigation into the two thousand and five disappearance. Six favorite work would And eventually I

was reading and reading. Then I started spinning through and stopping looking at the date eighty six, spin spin spin out, still eighty six, And yeah, I mean that's all it was. Yeah, but here's the thing I'm saying. You guys saw this. They checked with the CIA, they didn't ANIME check with the c HEY, and there was a redaction on that three names versions of his name that could be used. Yeah. But but the thing about it is, as as you know that the internet went bonkers, they want bonkers bonkers

exactly the word. Yeah. So okay, but it's redacted, Steve, It's super really redacted. I know what you're saying, though, is that? Oh no, I actually go ahead, Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, Well, I think these documents were so heavily redacted because they had to put on the appearance of investigating this assiduously. Okay, yeah, exactly. I

mean that's the thing. It's the it's on the one hand, on the other hand right, On the one hand, if he were in witness protection, why are this public search? Why this all this money, why this extensive thing. But on the other hand, if they didn't look for him in books suspicious and like they were high eating something, so they had to put this on and that's what you do, I wouldn't be the face I just made.

But the thing about it is is that's that's and and there's an easy way to do that, and that you have like random word generation generators and then you print them out and then you have some administrative assistant just readact about you know, about two thirds of it and it's going to be inintelligible, but it's perfect, you know. And so people think, because you have massive files on Ray, that you've actually been working hard at it. But you've

actually been not wasting any resources at all. Well, it's hard when his computer shows up, Yeah, right, when his computer shows up, and they go, uh, yeah, I thought we disposed of that really well in the Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that people say, he'll see this said is um. But but Ray wouldn't have been eligible for witness protection because he was a public prosecutor, and prosecutors by definition cannot be witnesses, so they are not eligible

for witness protection. Is that not true? No, it is true. Okay, So the way, I actually consulted one of our experts on this um and he confirmed exactly what I was thinking. His name is Stephen. Thinks Stephen um not you shut up, um. But what he was what he said is exactly what I was thinking, and that is that if within the scope of your position as a public prosecutor you see something or find something out that pertains to the case,

you are not a witness. You're a prosecutor. If, however, in your personal life you witness something like a murder and then that crazy human being starts to come after you, you are a witness to that crime. You're not a prosecutor, and therefore you are eligible for witness protection. Your job does not have an influence on your life as a

private citizen. Correct. However, typically witness protection isn't this like Hollywood, We're just gonna while you away for the rest of your life and give you a new life and everything's going to be fine. It's we're going to protect you until litigation is done and then you're on your own. It's that that Steve Martin movie. No, it's not. Do you know the movie I'm talking about, it's not. It's not Lily Hammer, right, it's not. I mean, it's not

any of those things. You go away for a little while, you stay safe until that person has been prosecuted and the threat has dissolved, and then they return you to your life. And besides which you know what exactly what Hannis crimes happened in Louisburg on the afternoon, Well, it's not necessarily that that would have been when he witnessed the crime. That's when they evaporated. But that's when you know, that was the time. Yeah, exactly when they evaporated him,

when the aliens came for him. Yeah, were are the aliens in our theories? They're not. No, I mean I just did Phobos. I don't know what you want from me. I want those two in every story. Okay, Well, my next theory is that it was the alien picabras. He did a new sitting judge to judge their cases of intergalactic The only thing that could make this more like you're eight year old girl making this up. So there were if you if you started twirling your hair, because

the look on your face. Also, there were uniforms and they were flying on ships that were sunshine at rainbows. You have one last thing here, what is this? I haven't they actually, Yeah, let's talk about that theory, because that last thing we already talked about. Okay, I mean this just seems so obvious to me. It was the I R S. It was April, for God's sake. Yeah, they're coming after him for taxes. Well every April fifteenth they make an example out of one text on tax payer.

But usually they like advertise that though usually they're like, you remember what happened array over here? What happened to you? It's on the front page of the website. Think ye, don't miss the deadline. Okay, Well that's it. Do you have anything else you want to add? I will be honest. I still believe that he was murdered, and I still say that he's in a shallow grave in some field somewhere because somebody had a crime of opportunity to get

back at him. Most likely it was that it could have been a very well planned thing where they you know, they actually have had a really good reason to do it, or it could have been a crime of opportunity. I mean, I guess the like the problem is is like, why did he have his laptop with him? That's totally solved if he was coming from work, right. That's why I'm I'm happy to believe the colleagues who say he played hockey for half a day, he was coming from work,

he up and have it with him. You don't just leave that in your car, but you do when you forget about it. My wife has done this before. She has come home and it has been Saturday at three o'clock and all of a sudden she'll look at me and go, oh, hell, my company laptop is in the car. Right. But I'm just saying that would explain and why he would have had it on him when he disappeared. But you're probably right. Actually, probably somebody came to his car

and took a bunch of stuff and tossed it. Because that's why it smelled like smoke, right, Because what do you do after you knocked somebody up? You have a you have a drag? Ye. So, But I mean, but that's why I'm inclined to believe that he was he knocked off for half a day instead of taking the whole day off because it was it was unusual for him to have his computer with him. There would have been no reason for him to have it with him, even in the car. It wouldn't have been But you know,

I don't know. I mean again I've heard I've heard it both ways too. He took the whole day off, took half the day off, and I don't know if he took half the day makes sense that he would have his laptop in his computer and that's resolved. But yeah, I think he got knocked off. I mean, there's just no reason to believe he committed suicide or just disappeared in my In my heart of hearts, I hope that he's like in witness protection or like ran off to

have a new life, but seems unlikely. He probably isn't. Just eleven years. Yeah, thanks and Steve Martin And what was the other guy in the movie Martin short, I never saw that movie, My Blue Heaven. I never saw that one. Oh, it's hilarious. They sent him to a town that was full of ex cons who were all in witness protection, and they all knew each other and

they were running rackets. It was the funniest movie ever and of course it was you know, mid nineties garbage, but Steve Martin, So yeah, I guess if you want to see some of the research that we did, watch my Blue Heaven, don't watch Heaven, that's not research. You can find that information on our website. The website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. You can also stream and download the episodes the website were question. We replaced the player,

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about the show or anything like yeah anymore. The closest relation to the show is is here's something that sort of once had Devin's face and it is now is just completely filtered. Yeah, it's really fun. Um, I don't know, but I mean, like we have people who will tweet and ask questions or say things or suggest or whatever, and that's great. I you know, I love and that's how I mostly interact with people. You guys are more

on the Facebook and more on the Twitter. Um, but we also have a subreddit as well, which I interact with people on. UM. That is just it's just Thinking Sideways, Thinking Sideways Pod. That one is not us. What's going on on the subreddit these days, by the way, I have not been out there in a while. Lots of discussion, there's a there's an episode discussion for every episode, and um lots of links. People post the things that they think we might find interesting. I need to ge out

there and look at that. Yeah, we also have an email address if you want to talk to us, if you want to suggest something, if you want to be an expert, if you come across something, you can send it to us as a story of suggestion. Yeah, or if you just want to chat with us, that's cool too. That email address is, of course, Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. And I guess all of that having been said, I don't have a joke for the end of this one. I'm just gonna say bye and talk

to you guys next week. Oh bye.