Ray Gricar Pt. One

fails to return home and is reported missing. The following day, rais abandoned car is discovered sixty miles away in the town of Louisbourg, parked across the street from the antique small Over the course of the next several months, Ray's county issued work laptop and its hard drive are discovered on separate occasions in the nearby Susquehanna River, but the

hard drive is too damaged to recover any data. A number of theories are pushed forward, including the possibilities that Ray completed suicide, disappeared voluntarily, or was the victim of foul play, but there is no conclusive evidence to point to any of these theories, and no trace of Ray is ever found after that.

own unsolved mystery. For two decades, Ray Greecar had been the District Attorney of Center County and devoted his life to put in murderers, rapists, and other vicious criminals behind bars. But less than eight months before he was scheduled to retire,

Ray vanished without a trace. On the day he disappeared, Ray decided to play hooky from work and take a road trip, but he never returned home, and the following day, his abandoned Mini Cooper was discovered sixty miles away in a parking lot across the street from an antique s mall in the town of Louisbourg. Now, since Ray had been to this particular antique small before taking a trip to Louisbourg wasn't all that unusual, but there were a

number of odd clues surrounding his disappearance. Even though Ray detested smoking cigarette, ash was found inside his car, and there would be reported sightings of him in Louisbourg alongside a woman who has never been identified. Ray's work laptop and its hard drive were discovered in the nearby Susquehanna River, leading to speculation that had contained information which Ray or

someone else did not want to be uncovered. In fact, this would lead to conspiracy theories that Ray's disappearance might be connected to the notorious Pens State child sex abuse scandal, which became a major story six years later. But it's also possible that even though his body was never found, Ray may have been feeling suicidal and decided to end his own life by jumping into the Susquehanna River, as he lost his older brother under similar circumstances years earlier.

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

makes me question what cases they've been involved in. You mentioned the Penn State child sex abuse scandal, but there's also a lot of other criminals that this man prosecuted right and made sure were put behind bars, And they all have associates, they all have families, they all have access to communicate with the people on the outside. And so you've seen case after case around the country where you'll have a judge killed in their home or a

prosecutor killed on their way to work. And so my first thought would be someone related to one of his cases. The Penn State child sex abuse scandal was one of the most horrific cases, and so and a lot of energy and emotions around that. So very potential. But it's also when you named that there was cigarettes and ash everywhere in his car, and that he was known to despise smoking. That rules out a friend an associate, because if I invite you to go on a ride with

me and you're a smoker. You are not smoking in my car. If I'm having an intimate relationship with you, you are not smoking in my car. So if I detest smoking, which I do, right, I don't like to smell it or be around it. The last place I'm going to allow someone I know to smoke is in my car, which means it wasn't him, and it likely was not a buddy or at least a buddy who was smoking while he was alive in the car with him.

So I am leaning more towards someone who hunted him down and then when they moved his vehicle and things like that, they had a cigarette and they were using his car the way they wanted to. But fascinating. I cannot wait to learn more. My gut is saying someone tied to one of his cases, whether it's the Penn State one or not, who knows, Just out.

as a prosecutor in Cuyahoga County. Ray married his first wife, Barbara Gray, in nineteen sixty nine, and they would adopt their only child, a baby girl named Laura, nine years later. Shortly thereafter, Barbara was offered a new job at Pennsylvania State University aka Penn State, so the family relocated to State College in nineteen eighty and Ray decided to put his legal career on hold so he could become a

stay at home dad and raise Laura. But he eventually caught the attention of the Center County District Attorney, who offered Ray a job as an assistant prosecutor and compelled him to return to work. By nineteen eighty five, the position of Center County District Attorney became open, so Ray decided to make his own run for it and wound up winning the election. Over the course of the next two decades, Ray would prosecute a number of cases and

was re elected as district attorney four times times. He was known for being a very private and enigmatic person who always kept a low profile, and unlike many others in his field, Ray did not have any higher political aspirations to become a judge or attorney general. However, he did have a reputation for being a very hard working and dedicated prosecutor who truly cared for the victims in

the cases he took on. During his run as District Attorney, Ray's personal life would undergo a number of changes as he got divorced from his first wife, Barbara, in nineteen ninety one. Five years later, Ray got remarried to another woman named Emma Lang, but their relationship was described as a fairly tumultuous one and their marriage would end in

divorce in two thousand and one. But the following year, Ray began a relationship with Patty Fornicola, who worked as a clerk and victim's rights advocate in the Center County District Attorney's office. Since Patty had also gone through a prior divorce, she and Ray were not in a hurry to get married again, but they still thought they were

a perfect match for each other. As a result, Ray decided to move in with Patty at her house in the town of Bellafont, located just over ten miles northeast of State College.

when he finds Patty, it really does work. I think it's hard when you work in victim services or you work in the criminal justice system for people to understand your energy and emotions and empathy and those kinds of things. Ray worked to advocate for victims, which is incredible, and then he meets Patty, who is also a clerk and victim's right advocate in the criminal justice system. So their ability to support and understand each other had to be incredible,

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

to earth guy. But I do think it's appropriate that they describe him as enigmatic, that sometimes he was hard to read, and even though he does look like he's happy, as we're going to talk about later, there was speculation that maybe he was feeling secretly depressed or suicidal, and he seemed like he had the type of personality that if he was having a mental health crisis or something was bothering him, he would keep it bottled up inside and not tell anyone.

survive the emotional side of it. And I think sometimes that comes off where you have more of that reserved, cautious attitude where people admire you and think you're you know, gregarious and things like that, but there's also that kind of affect where there's a little bit of a wall and distance from people.

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

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

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

heard from Ray again. Ray failed to return home that evening, and when repeated calls to a cell phone kept going to voicemail, Patty became concerned enough to contact the Bellefont Police Department and officially reported him missing some time after eleven PM. Patty also reached out to Ray's daughter, Laura,

who confirmed that she hadn't heard from him either. Years earlier, when Ray was married to his second wife, Emma, he decided to leave the residence after they got into a huge fight and made an impromptu trip to his hometown of Cleveland, and since Ray was a fan of the Cleveland Indians baseball team, he decided to blow off some steam by attending a double header and watching back to

back games at Jacob's Field. While this was going on, Ray did not bother to contact Emma or anyone else to let them know where he was until he suddenly reappeared to work again on Monday morning, as if nothing had happened. Since the Indians had an afternoon game scheduled on April the sixteenth, the Bellfow PD contacted the local authorities and asked them to check the Jacobs Field parking lot for raise Minnie Cooper, but they did not find it there.

was communicating with Patty. And so as a spouse, if you got into an incredibly large fuss, I could actually see being a little bit of a turd and going to a baseball game, ignoring your wife's calls and making her quote worry about you, which is not healthy, and then just showing back up and pretending like nothing else happened. But here with pat they have plans. He's calling and keeping in contact with her. He has, you know, this day where he's going to do some of his favorite things,

which is antique shopping. He was filling her in on what was coming that day, and so her first gut, which is something's wrong, wonder where he is. I need to reach out. That is way more probable than him running off and failing to communicate, because they weren't fighting, and he was giving her the details of what his day was supposed to look like and it just didn't end up the way she thought it was going to.

wife the time. Like if it is a pattern, maybe he's setting up an like kind of an alibi for like this is where I am, this is where I've been, and then in doing so, he's going to assuage any concerns that she has or any fears, and that may buy him some time if he decided to disappear voluntarily, which I'm not saying that I think that's necessarily what happened, but just that there is a potential that that could

have happened. However, at around six thirty pm on the evening of the sixteenth, a state trooper found the Mini Cooper in the small town of Louisbourg, located sixty miles east of Bellefonte in Union County. The Mini Cooper was in a gravel parking lot located across the street from an antiques s mall called the Street of Shops. Like we mentioned earlier, one of Ray's favorite hobbies was collecting antiques, so he traveled to Louisbourg to visit this mall on

previous occasions. The vehicle was locked, but when the police managed to open it and get inside, they found Ray's cell phone, which had been issued to him by the county for work purposes and was turned off. A half filled water bottle was also found in the vehicle's beverage holder, and testing would later find traces of raised DNA on it. However, raised wallet and the keys to the Mini Cooper were

nowhere to be found. The strangest clue were small traces of cigarette ash on the passenger side floor mat, and there was also a scent of cigarette smoke. This seemed very unusual since Ray is like smoking and everyone who knew him found it unlikely that he would have ever

let anyone smoke inside his car. A pair of cigarette butts were also found on the ground near the passenger side of the vehicle, and while DNA was recovered from them and entered into law enforcement databases containing the DNA of offenders, it failed to produce a match. When the sniffer dog was brought in to track raise scent, it did not go any further than the parking lot, which seemed to indicate that Ray may have climbed into another vehicle and left a scene.

presence of another person who was in that car. But to this day, they've never been able to figure out who it might be. So there were multiple witnesses who were called seeing Ray and Louisbourg on April fifteenth, and it appeared that earlier that day, before he parked the car in this particular lot, he had parked across the

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

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

had an interest in antiques. However, it turned out that Potito was away on vacation in New York on the date Ray went missing, so she was ruled out as being the woman Unfortunately, the sighting of the woman was not made public until thirteen months after Ray disappeared, and investigators would face criticism for not pursuing this lead more aggressively.

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

about two or three hours worth of power. The Mini Cooper had been parked in close proximity to the Susquehanna River, which had two bridges crossing over it. One of them was part of Pennsylvania Route forty five and used by local traffic, while the other was a rusted, abandoned railway trestle. There was some concern that Ray might have decided to intentionally jump off one of the bridges into the river, as the whole scene had some striking similarities to another

tragedy experienced by the greek Car family years earlier. In May of nineteen ninety six, Ray's older brother, Roy Greekar, who was fifty three years old at the time, left his home in Westchester Township, Ohio, after telling his wife he was going to buy some mulch, but he never returned. Two days later, Roy's abandoned car was discovered forty miles away at a park in Dayton, located near a bridge overlooking the Great Miami River, one week after he originally

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

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

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

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

and I just don't want her to worry. So he kind of has this quote monotonous routine day and never comes home.

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

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

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

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

the abandoned railway trestle. A forensic examination of the computer indicated that it had been in the river for months, but the laptop's hard drive was removed and a new search of the area failed to turn it up. But two months later, on October the First, a mother and daughter skipping stones in the water wound up coming across a hard drive on the riverbed near the railway trestle. The spot was about one hundred yards upstream from where the laptop had been found, and it seemed impossible that

the hard drive could have been dislodged accidentally. After the computer was tossed into the river, the hard drive had to be manually unscrewed, so someone had clearly gone to the trouble of intentionally removing it. By this point, the hard drive was so badly damaged by the sand and grit from the riverbed that it was impossible to recover or extract any data from it. Even after the FBI's

best forensic crew performed an analysis. Prior to his disappearance, Ray had purchased software to erase the computer's hard drive, which did not seem unusual since he was likely planning to wipe his work laptop for his upcoming retirement at the end of the year, but it was eventually revealed that a search of Ray's home computer showed that he had performed Internet searches using such terms as quote how to wreck a hard drive, how to fry a hard drive,

and water damage to a notebook computer. So this only increased speculation that Ray may have removed the hard drive from the laptop and tossed both items into the river because there was something on there he did not want people to see.

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

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

Did somebody else take it from Ray because of the information on there that they wanted destroyed because it would be deleterious to them, Or did Ray destroy it because of one of his connections to the cases that he thought something that he did or his conduct could have been damaging, or that the information and may have been

threatening if it got out there for him personally. Or did he just want to destroy this laptop because he didn't want anyone to be able to trace where he was going, and somehow there might have been a clue to that on his laptop.

No discrepancies were found in the district attorney's office financial accounts to suggest that Ray had done anything illegal to compel him to run away, such as embezzling money. There would be a number of reported sightings of Ray, including two witnesses who were certain that they'd seen him watching a Cleveland Indians baseball game at a bar in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania,

on April eighteenth, three days after he went missing. One month later, a retired police officer thought he saw Ray and an older woman together at a restaurant in Southfield, Michigan, and another witness became convinced that she'd seen Ray sitting in the studio audience for a taping of an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show in Chicago, though in search

of the episode's footage turned up empty. One woman was so certain she had seen Ray eating at a restaurant in Texas that she snapped a photo of the man with her cell phone and turned it over to the authorities, but the FBI analysis of the photo concluded that the man was unlikely to be Ray. Even though his daughter Laura lived several states away in Seattle, she maintained a

close relationship with him. They frequently spoke on the phone and visited each other several weeks per year, but Laura said she never heard from Ray after he went missing. Laura and Patty agreed to take polygraphs in which they denied any knowledge of raised disappearance, and wound up passing.

The authorities considered administering polygraph tests to both of Ray's ex wives, as well as his two nephews, Tony and Chris Greekar, but ultimately decided against it, though they did not believe that any of these individuals knew what happened to Ray. Laura was a trustee of Ray's estate, and in twenty eleven, she petitioned Center County to officially declare him dead before the standard seven year waiting period expired.

On July twenty fifth of that year, Ray was declared dead in absentia, and ironically enough, the judge who presided over the decision was David Grine, the former Center County District attorney who gave Ray a job as an assistant three decades earlier, which paid the way for Ray becoming district attorney himself. In an odd coincidence, just one day after this decision was made, and unidentified John Doe was

arrested in Utah on a misdemeanor trespassing charge. Since the man refused to reveal his name and bore a striking resemblance to Ray Ricar, there were speculations that he might have been Ray, but a fingerprint check ruled this out, and the man was soon identified as a sixty one year old New Mexico resident named Philip Beavers.

through a suicide with my brother. We I on a daily basis, see what grief and trauma does to a family. I'm just gonna abandon my daughter and never contact her. But I would have run off and have a new life. It doesn't seem probable now if it was a suicide, I don't think you're in the middle state to understand other people's needs and grief. But if it is a choice to just leave. I don't see that here. You know, he's smart, he is involved in the criminal justice system.

least likely of any of these theories. I remember when I saw this case on Disappeared, it was only about five or six years after a had gone missing, so I thought, yeah, it's not impossible he could be hiding out somewhere. But now we've just passed a twenty year anniversary. There's been no confirmed sidings, no activity on his bank accounts, so it seems really really unusual that he's still alive

and might still be out there. So I think that the two lit most likely explanations are probably either suicide or him becoming a victim of foul play. So by the end of twenty eleven, a major story would make national headlines, which just happened to have a link to raise career as Center County District Attorney. In November of that year, a grand jury indicted Jerry Sandusky, a retired assistant coach from the Penn State Nitney Lyons football team,

with fifty two counts of sexual abuse. Sandusky ran a nonprofit charity called The Second Mile, which assisted underprivileged and at risk children, but he had used his position of power to sexually abuse several boys over a period of at least fifteen years. When Sandusky went on trial the following year. A jury found him guilty on forty five of the charges. He would receive a thirty to sixty year prison sentence and is still incarcerated to this day.

Given that the Penn State football team was such a beloved institution, the story ballooned into a major scandal, amidst allegations that high ranking officials had known about Sandusky's abusive behavior for years but swept all the allegations against him under the rug in order to protect the school's reputation. Well.

Sure enough, it would emerge that in May of nineteen ninety eight, Sandusky was accused of inappropriately touching a pair of eleven year old boys in a locker room shower, and the case wound up reaching the Center County District Attorney's office, where it was personally reviewed by Ray Gricar. Ray decided to set up a sting operation where the mother of one of the boys would confront Sandusky at her house while police secretly recorded their conversation in another room.

When the confrontation took place, Sandusky did admit that he had showered alongside the boy and hugged him in an inappropriate fashion. Though he stopped short of admitting that he intentionally molested him. He told the mother quote, I understand I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won't get it from you. I wish I

could die end quote. A child psychologist who interviewed the boy concluded that Sandusky was likely a pet file, but a second opinion was provided by a counselor who did not believe that Sandusky was an habitual abuser. In the end, Ray decided not to press any charges against Sandusky and closed the case, though it does not sound like he

shared the reasons for his decision with anyone. When Sandusky went on trial fourteen years later, the boy from the shower incident, known only as Victim six, was one of the survivors who testified against him. Well. Needless to say, since Ray had been a missing person for six years by the time the Penn State scandal broke, there was a lot of speculation that was connected to his disappearance.

When a search was performed to raise old files and handwritten notes, it failed to uncover a single mention of Jerry Sandusky or The nineteen ninety eight investigation into the shower incident. Of course, given that Sandusky's abuse allegations were swept under the rug for many years, it has been theorized that Ray may have chosen to participate in the cover up as well, which is why he elected not

to press charges. However, Ray's nephew, Tony Greeko, who his function as the family's official spokesman, disputed this, stating quote, One thing I can say is that Ray was beholden to no one, was not a politician. He developed a bitter taste in his mouth for the program and its coach, and that was not much of a secret. So I wouldn't imagine he'd give favorable treatment to anyone associated with

the team for any reason. End quote. Indeed, no conclusive evidence has ever been found to suggest that Ray's disappearance was linked to the Penn State scandal.

that works so well. It's so clear by the time they're successfully grooming and assault multiple children that this is not their first rodeo. So that comment pretty much disgusted me. However, that's a sidetrack. I think the fact that he didn't pursue charges would be more inclined to say that this is not related to that. At the time when this broke, there were people harassing the accusers, There were people blaming

the children. There were people, you know, just rioting and doing all kinds of things because they loved the football program and like Penn State football. And I'm thinking this has nothing to do with Penn State football. This is a man hurting little boys and manipulating them, and looking for kids that need a father figure and don't have one, and he's taking advantage of them and giving them opportunities that they would never have at these university football camps

and all kinds of things at his home. It was disgusting, but people truly identified him as a hero being falsely accused and manipulated when he was protected by the university there's several emails. There was a graduate assistant who said, I just walked in on him being intimate in the shower, like not just showering with the boy, like you know, doing things to the boy at a camp and they told him to be quiet, and they escalated it and said, oh,

you know, this is what happened. And they were told shut it down and hide that, get rid of that information.

But a podcast came out a few years ago which was exploring the possibility that maybe Ray was doing a secret invest on the side without telling anyone trying to break this scandal wide open, because apparently, even though he didn't press charges against Sandusky, the whole incident apparently haunted him, and it's possible that he only decided not to bring him to trial not because he was covering anything up, but because he knew that there would be a major

backlash for going after someone associated with the Penn State football program. So he probably knew I need an airtight case if I'm going to prosecute anyone for this, and I just don't have it right now. But yeah, when you talked about all these people being harassed and threatened when the scandal broke open, even though a lot of that went on, nobody actually went missing or was murdered

over the whole thing. So it makes me think that a phrase disappearance was connected to the Penn State scandal. That so much time has passed and the case is now closed that I think evidence would have surfaced about that by now. So I think that about brings an end to part one of our series. Next week, we are going to share additional information and discuss a long

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

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