Crime Weekly - S3 Ep271: Rey Rivera: The Belvedere Hotel (Part 2)

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

Baltimore, 2006. A city buzzing with life suddenly became the backdrop to one of the most perplexing mysteries in recent history. Rey Rivera was a young, charismatic writer with big dreams and a loving wife by his side. He seemed to have it all. But on May 16th, he vanished without a trace, leaving behind nothing but a hurried phone call and a series of unanswered questions. Eight days later, his body was discovered in the most chilling and bizarre circumstances you could imagine- inside an unused conference room in the historic Belvedere Hotel. He appeared to have fallen from a significant height, crashing through the roof of the conference room. As the investigation into Rey’s death began, theories swirled; was it suicide, an accident or something far more sinister? Nothing was adding up, and the deeper investigators dug, the more tangled the mystery became. Rey had left his home abruptly that night, for seemingly no reason- why? What had led him to the Belvedere Hotel? And what secrets were hidden in a cryptic note found taped to his computer screen- a note filled with references to movies, codes and seemingly nonsensical musings? This is not just a story about a man’s life tragically ending, it is a journey into the unknown- a labyrinth of secrets, shadows and haunting questions that still linger almost two decades later. We're coming to CrimeCon Denver! Use our code CRIMEWEEKLY for 10% off your tickets! https://www.crimecon.com/CC25 Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. TryFum.com/CrimeWeekly - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY to kick your bad habit today! 2. HelloFresh.com/CrimeWeekly10FM - Get up to 10 FREE meals and more! 3. UpSide - Download the FREE UpSide app and use code CRIMEWEEKLY to get an extra $0.25 back for every gallon on your first tank of gas! 

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definitely has mysterious aspects to it. But before we kind of dive into that, we want to mention the fact that CrimeCon is coming up in September. It's going to be in Denver, Colorado, and we would love to invite everybody to come and check it out. And not only that, but come and hang out with us there. Yeah, I know we just mentioned on Crime Weekly News, but we have a much bigger audience on these main Crime Weekly episodes. So we obviously wanted to mention it here, as Stephanie said, September 5th through September 7th, Denver, Colorado. We mentioned it for a couple of reasons. One, it's a great event. You get to meet a lot of families who have gone through incidents that we talk about right here on Crime Weekly.

You also get to meet a lot of people in the true crime space, whether that's podcasters, TV personalities, industries that are actually working out in the field, like an auth room. So there's a lot of opportunity to actually explore and immerse yourself in all the things that you hear about on your podcast or your YouTube channels that you watch. So it's a really great experience. If you can get out there, strongly recommend you do it, especially when it's in a location like Denver, Colorado. Not everyone's saying, hey, I'm going to go visit Denver for any reason. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if you have an opportunity. Lots of people go to Denver. It's

like outdoorsy people love Denver. Yeah, if you're outdoorsy people. For me personally, I went to Denver. We mentioned it on Crime Weekly News. By the way, anybody who already listened to this spiel, you can just fast forward. We forgive you. You and I have only been to Denver once each and it was both for the same reasons at different times. So clearly we're not running out there. Denver is absolutely stunning, but for me, it's got to be a purpose for me going there and I'm not a big skier or a snowboarder. So, but it's a great opportunity to go out, see a new place, meet some new people. And the reason that we push it so hard is a couple of things. We think you guys would get a lot out of it, but more importantly, it's for selfish reasons. We don't go and do like tours or anything like that. So we talk to you guys all year and we really have a one-sided

conversation with you because we never get any feedback other than the comments. So to get to meet you in person and we get to interact and talk, it's not just during the convention. Stephanie said this last episode, there's a lot of restaurants and bars usually at these events. CrimeCon always puts on an amazing place. It's always at a ridiculous venue. And so we're usually hanging out at night and anybody who's been to CrimeCon, you can, you know, say what you want in the comments below. You can kind of verify it. So it's an opportunity to kind of mingle, hang out, share stories, interact with the people that support us. So we get as much out of it as you guys do. And if you really are interested in it, we strongly recommend that you go over to CrimeCon.com now and use our code CrimeWeekly.

You can save 10%. The Platinum VIP is already sold out. There are some Gold VIP memberships available. The standards are still available. So if you want to get 10% off a standard pass, you just go over there right now. Use our code Crime weekly. If you do mention it in the comments down below. So we know we'll definitely stay up with crime con to see how many people use our code. So we have an idea of how many crime weekly people are coming.

Yeah. We we love hanging out with you guys during the day at the convention. It's more focused on, you know, meeting it's more quick because there's a line. We get to talk about current cases. It's more business focused. But at night, we let our hair down. We hang out. We release all the pent up kind of stress. What did you say last time? We laugh, we cry. When I corrected you and said Stephanie cries. I'd be crying during the day at the convention. People come up and hug you and then they're like, I love you. And you got me through a hard time. And then they start crying and then I'm crying.

And then Derek's like uncomfortable and he like backs up into the bushes like that meme. So there's always a sing-along in the bathroom for some reason. I'm just always in there and then I'll start singing in the stall and then everybody will join in. I have videos of this. Shannon can attest. She's not lying. Shannon can attest. Yeah, this, she's not lying. This actually, this happens.

Yeah, this happens every year, every single year. Shannon didn't believe it until she started coming. Now she knows. Now she knows. And now she's a part of it actively and happily. So we would love you guys to come and hang out with us. Use our code CRIMEWEEKLY when you purchase your pass. It's in Denver. We're going to have a great time. Let's do this. I have exclusive merch there. We will have exclusive merch. We had exclusive merch in Nashville. We'll have exclusive merch that you can only get in Colorado if you come to the event. So just another reason. Like she said, Crime Weekly at CrimeCon.com. Thank you. Hope to see you there. All right. So let's dive in

to part two of the Ray Rivera case. When we last left off, Ray was in Baltimore. His fiancee, Allison, was still in California. Ray was working for Porter Stansberry, doing some writing and things for his financial newsletters. Allison was kind of waiting for Ray to come home because it was supposed to be short term, only a few weeks, then it turned into a few months. And then they finally decided that Ray would continue working for Porter. Allison would come to Baltimore and they would stay there for about a year. And then once they'd saved enough money, they would move back to California, move back to the West Coast and start their lives together. So in December of 2004, Ray Rivera and his fiancee Allison purchased a home in the Northwood neighborhood of Baltimore for $280,000.

Whoa. I know. Get you a garage these days. I know. I was just looking at it and I'm like, oh my God. So not only would this make their mortgage less than they'd been paying for rent in Los Angeles. And this was a nice house, like a big house, but it is literally, like Derek said, in 2025, you'd be lucky if you could rent a room for that.

Yeah. So, yeah. But still, less than they were paying for rent in Los Angeles. And at that time, Allison was traveling a lot for work. Ray was still writing the rebound report. But when Allison was away from home, she worried about Ray because he didn't really have any friends in Baltimore. Sometimes he would hang out with Porter Stansbury and his buddies, but Ray didn't really have anything in common with these types of people, something a friend

of his made note of after visiting Ray in Baltimore. This friend said, quote, And when Allison was home, she could tell how deeply unhappy Ray was working for Porter and writing the Rebound report, because not only did Ray not know anything about finances or managing finances, but he was unfulfilled with this type of work. Allison remembered that Ray, a laid-back guy by nature, would come home after being at the office, and he would be so uptight and wound up that he wouldn't be able to sleep. He would stay up all night playing video games. Fortunately, Ray found his people when he began joining an informal water polo game each week at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Through this game, he was introduced to Ted Bresnahan, who was the coach of the Johns Hopkins water polo team. They were called the Blue Rays.

Ray was asked by Bresnahan to be the assistant coach of the team, and Ray just flourished in this environment. So did the team. That season, the Blue Jays played 30 tournament games. They only lost six, and the team ranked first place nationally, which contributed to Bresnahan being voted coach of the year. And this also clearly helped Ray because it gave him people to be around who motivated him and who he could motivate. You know, Ray was somebody like that. He wanted to sort of have these connections and these attachments and sort of have a community around him where, you know, a rising tide lifts all ships kind of thing. That was very much who he was.

And being in that environment and back in the water seemed to reawaken something creatively in Ray's brain. For the first time since being in Baltimore, Ray began to write again, and he started working on a new screenplay about a young Latino water polo player's journey to the Olympics. He titled it Midnight Polo. Over the weekend of June 11, 2005, Ray attended Agora's annual conference in Toronto, and it is believed that he'd already made the decision to resign from the company by that point because he seemed lighter and less burdened. And this is important because what ends up happening to Ray, some people believe was self-inflicted, that this is how he would choose to take his own life, even though I can't imagine why if you were

going to choose to take your own life, you would jump off a roof. I don't see why you would do that, especially jumping into another roof. It's not like there was nothing underneath that. Obviously, Allison, Ray's fiancee, doesn't believe that Ray took his own life. His friends and family doesn't believe that Ray took his own life his friends and family don't believe that even Porter Stansberry we'll see later would say things like you know this he was the happiest dude he was getting ready to to start the life that he actually wanted so when you look at where he was the decision to leave Agora and its subsidiaries that he was working for with Porter Stansberry,

that made Ray happier. He was working on a screenplay. He and Allison were getting ready to move back to California. He was coaching water polo again and being around people who stimulated him creatively. He was leaving the stuff that had made him unhappy and going back towards the stuff that fulfilled him. So why now, after he'd been in Baltimore being miserable, doing all this stuff for so long, and finally he was going to be not doing the stuff and not be miserable anymore, why now would he decide that this was the time to end it all? That's what people are sort of leading up to. And that's why we're talking about this. Yeah, it's a great question. And that's why we're talking about this. Yeah, it's a great question. And that's why we're talking about it. And as you mentioned, many people, including who his wife was

at the time, right, believes that he didn't kill himself. And, you know, listen, suicide is something that I don't think many people understand. Even the loved ones of the people who commit suicide, they feel like they were maybe doing better or things were starting to look up before they do it. So I'm not going to pretend that I'm some, what of an expert in this field. I'm not, it's not what I did as a police officer, but I have been around situations where you find people at their lowest point and they don't even understand why they can't get out of that rut. And if I were to play devil's advocate in this, I think some people might say, well, he was maybe going through a struggle mentally. And part of this pattern of behavior that you're talking about was his attempt to get out of it,

to remove himself from the things that were making him unhappy and to surround himself with things that he enjoyed in the hopes of that, you know, that things would get better. And maybe even after doing those things, they didn't, which only compounded the depression or whatever he was going through. Now, I have nothing to prove. Which would mean that his depression or his negative mental state wasn't environmental or externally based. It was kind of internally based. And he thought that moving things around outside would make it better. And then when it didn't, maybe he felt despondent. Yeah. It almost makes it 10 times worse, right? It's like, Hey, if I do this, this is, this should probably help. And when you do it and they're still internally,

listen, it's funny because we all go through it and we don't have, you know, I'm not going to go on a tangent here, but we all have our low points. And I recently had one where I was just going through a funk, right? And it's weird how it happens, right? Because you don't necessarily know what the thing is that's making you feel that way, but you just wake up and you're just not in a good headspace. I think it's burnout with a lot of things like just constantly working. Whatever it is, but you wake up and for some reason, you're just not in a good headspace. You're not in a good mood and you don't really have a reason why. And so I can only imagine.

And you kind of get mad at yourself for not being able to figure out why and get out of it. Yeah. Yeah, Matt, you're like, dude, just get out of it. And, and it's not that easy. It's not a choice. Right. And so I can't imagine for anybody out there who, who has committed suicide, what they were going through at that time, where they felt like the only way to make it stop was to go this route. Like how bad was it really? It's, it's, it really? It's a scary thing, but to just, you know, like I said, we talked about it. Maybe if it's possible that Ray did kill himself, then maybe that was what was transpiring before it. Now, as far as jumping off a roof, you know, it's a great question. Like, why do people choose the certain ways that they do in order to kill themselves when there are less, I guess, violent or less extreme? Who knows? It just goes back to the understanding of why do it in the first place. We don't understand why someone would kill themselves, why that's the only way out. But that doesn't mean that in their heads they didn't. Right. And so we can't ask them now, but you hear about people who jump off a bridge or why, why choose that route? Who knows? Yeah, no, I actually, as I was

saying, I was like, why would you jump off a roof? And I'm like, well, he's not the first person. No. If that's what happened, he's not the first person to have done that. But yeah, you're, you're right in our brains. It's like, even if I felt like I didn't want to live anymore, that's not the route I would take. Right. Right. So but but of course, perspective is different. And if he was struggling with some mental health issues that maybe that logic and and that sort of that reason thought process, that reason.

Yeah. Maybe it was symbolic for him for whatever reason. I get. Yeah, I get what you're saying. You know, it's unfortunate that we we couldn't get to these people before. And there was a guy who jumped off a bridge and he talked about it. Oh, a lot of people survived. Yeah, he survived.

And there's reasons behind it. But no, it's a terrible situation. Obviously, that's not why we're here. If this was a clear-cut suicide, we would not be covering it. So there's a world where everything I'm saying right now doesn't apply to Ray. And that's why I'm kind of bringing it up. So as I'm talking about his mindset leading up to when he falls or is pushed or jumps off this roof, I want all of these things to be considered. And so when I'm saying something like, it's the Toronto conference for Agora. It's their annual conference. Ray's there.

And everyone said, this dude's the life of the party. Like, who's this guy now? Right? Because they've been working with Ray. And he's been like, eeyore, you know, this whole time because he hates what he's doing. He doesn't like these people. He's nothing in common with them as far as politics or morals and values and things like that. And all of a sudden, he's at this conference, and he's just the funnest guy ever, like old Ray. And so the people who knew him from that back then, which

he worked with a couple of high school buddies, they're like, oh, Ray's himself again. Now they didn't know that he was going to quit at that point, but he knew. So maybe this is why he's feeling better. He's lighthearted. I think we've all been there. When I've decided I'm going to put my two weeks in somewhere, I'm all of a sudden the best employee ever because I'm like, I'm out of here, bitches, in two weeks. Y'all don't even know it, but it's over and I'll never have to see you again. And that makes me happy. So that's what they think he was feeling because the very next month in July of 2005, Ray quit his job working for Pirate Investor, which was Porter

Stansberry's company, and he explained to everyone that while it was not personal and he did love to write, the rebound report was not the type of writing that he wanted to do, and he had been making incredible progress on his screenplay, Midnight Polo. Now, reportedly, Porter Stansberry was not surprised or upset, and he would even go on to hire Ray to work freelance after Ray started his own company, Cieba Video Productions. Now, the Cieba is Puerto Rico's national tree, and the ancient Mayan people believed it was the link between worlds. Its roots were representative of the underworld, the base of its trunks were where the humans lived, and the trunk and the branches going up are supposedly the dwellings of the gods

and the entrance to the heavens. So Ray had started his company using a $15,000 cash advance taken from Allison's credit card, and he hoped to pick up freelance work, you know, more sort of in his area of interest. But he was given the opportunity to work on promotional videos for Porter Stansberry, who that same year had changed the name of his company from Pirate Investor to Stansberry and Associates Investment Research. And obviously, this may have had something to do with that SEC fraud case that was going on against him and his company at the time. On November 5th, 2005, Ray and Allison tied the knot on a beach in Puerto Rico. And, you know, it was a great wedding. It was beautiful.

You can see the pictures. Everyone had an amazing time. They were there to witness Ray and Allison's love. And the one kind of, I guess, weird thing or dark spot on the whole weekend was that Porter Stansberry showed up in a private helicopter and he like steps out of this helicopter, you know, all Wolf of Wall Street style. He's got a cigar hanging from his mouth and everybody was kind of like, oh, this freaking guy, man. He's always got to show off. He's always got to be bombastic. It's always about like, look at me. How much money do I have?

Stuff like that. So that kind of like, I guess, rubbed some people the wrong way. Haters, let the man live. If I had a helicopter, I'd be showing up like that too. Oh, yeah. I mean, come on. I believe you. I believe you.

And if I didn't have the helicopter, I'd be the guy at the wedding being like, what? This asshole. I know. It's the truth. Who does he think he is? Who does he think he is? What a douche. That's so true.

That's hilarious. Okay. Well, Porter Stansbury shows up in a helicopter. and if Derek was Porter Stansberry, he supports it. But if he's not, he's like, screw that guy. Should we take our first break? Yeah, let's do it. All right. We'll take our first break. We'll be right back. Okay, we're back. Yeah, we honestly just spent five minutes laughing about this but

yeah we're back though we're off porter's helicopter but i also said that porter porter gets off his helicopter and then his wife comes off after him and she's wearing like white from head to toe oh my god because you know they got to make an entrance okay porter man oh sorry porter sorry porter he doesn't care, man. He's a millionaire. He does not give a shit. All right. By early 2006, Allison and Ray had put their house on the market, right? They just bought it for like $260,000. They're putting it on the market because they want to sell it. They're excited for their future plans of getting back to Los Angeles, starting a family, and then hopefully, obviously, turning Ray's screenplay into a film because he finished it, man. He finished Midnight Polo. It was ready.

So with their exit from Baltimore nearing, Ray happily went to Delray Beach on March 14, 2006 to film the Oxford Club's eighth annual investment conference. And once again, those who saw him there described Ray as being in a good mood, lighthearted, fun, and positive about his future endeavors. Ray and Allison also took a trip back to Los Angeles that spring in preparation for their move. And it was after they returned that Allison claimed Ray began acting very strangely. He had seemed to be doing better mentally after he'd quit working on the rebound report, when he'd been writing his screenplay, and when the decision was made to relocate back

to the West Coast, but now he seemed on edge and nervous again. And even stranger, Ray began insisting on going everywhere with Allison. This included joining her for her daily jog around an athletic track a few blocks from their house. Ray would bring a book and sit on the bleachers while Allison sprinted and ran laps, and usually this occasion every day was pretty uneventful. But one morning, about a week before Ray's death, it was a rainy day, and so Ray wasn't on the bleachers. He was sitting in the car with his book. Allison was on the track running when she saw a man walking in her direction, a strange man.

She doesn't know this dude, but she didn't think anything of it, right? You know, she's out there. Why can't other people be out there? But Ray, he reacted oddly. He exited his vehicle and he ran like a dead run towards the track. And then he sort of stopped when he got closer and then he stood watching, at which point the man who had been walking towards Allison switched directions and walked away. And then Ray returned to the car.

Now later, Allison questioned Ray about this, asking if he was okay, and Ray assured his wife that he was fine, but that the strange man had terrified him for some reason. Now two days before Ray died, on May 14th, he and Allison went to church. Everything was normal until they got home and they were walking into the house. Allison said at that time, Ray made a phone call to someone. She didn't know who. And this person didn't answer the phone, but Ray left a message telling this unknown person in an excited voice, hey man, call me back. I finally got it all figured out. So that same weekend, Ray had spent a lot of time voraciously reading The Builders by Joseph Fort Newton. Now, The Builders is a 1914 book that delves into the history, philosophy, and symbolism of Freemasonry.

Newton traces the origins of Freemasonry back to the ancient stonemason guilds. He dives deep into speculated interpretations of ancient mysteries and wisdom and traditions, and he discussed how the operative craft evolved into the speculative fraternity. And Newton explains the rich symbolism in Freemasonry, such as the square, the compass, and other Masonic tools. Now, apparently, Ray had become very interested in the Freemasons in the months leading up to his mysterious death. And I don't know how much you know about the Freemasons, Derek, but for those who don't know- How much?

Yeah. So, okay. You and everyone else who doesn't know, I'm going to give you a quick breakdown. They're one of the world's oldest and most widespread fraternal organizations. Reportedly, they promote moral and personal development through allegory, symbolism, and ritual. And Freemasonry is divided into local units called lodges, which operate under the jurisdiction of a grand lodge for a particular region or country. There is no central or global authority, and members will progress through degrees of Freemasonry, each involving ceremonies, teachings, and symbolic lessons. Freemasonry also traditionally requires members to believe in what they call a supreme being, often called the great architect of the universe, but they don't seem to prescribe to a

specific religion like Christianity, etc. So while all of that sounds pretty straightforward, Freemasonry has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories over the years. These theories often stem from the organization's perceived secrecy, their use of symbols, and their influence on history. Freemasons are alleged to be a part of a secretive elite working to establish a new world order, a single world government controlled by a small group of powerful individuals. The use of rituals and symbols and the historical involvement of some very influential figures have fueled this idea. And if you look back through history and even up until today, there have been several notable people who ranked among

the Freemasons. You've got Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, both Roosevelt's, Theodore and Franklin, but not just politicians. We have musicians like Mozart, great thinkers like Voltaire, writers like Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde, athletes like Sugar Ray Robinson, Scottie Pippen, actors like John Wayne, and businessmen like Walter Chrysler, Charles Hilton, even Buzz often depicted as a single eye enclosed within a triangle and sometimes surrounded by rays of light. This can be found on the United States dollar bill, as well as in Masonic lodges and artwork, where it is known as the eye of providence. And it symbolizes the omnipresence of that supreme being, the great architect of the universe.

In some circles, it's believed that the Freemasons participate in occult or satanic practices. They are believed to have orchestrated major political revolutions like the American and French revolutions while secretly controlling the world's government and leaders. Freemasonry has also been linked to the Illuminati,

an alleged secret society rumored to be seeking world domination. Basically, the Freemasons are said to guard ancient knowledge, including secrets about the origins of humanity, the existence of extraterrestrial life, and religious truths. And Ray was not only reading books about the Freemasons, he was doing more, which we're going to talk about in a minute. But I want to know what you kind of take from all of this. You talked about the track incident. And when you describe it, when you explain everything in that pattern, as far as the track incident, now we're talking about him heavily researching the Freemasons and then making this weird call saying, I've got it all figured out. When you read it in that way,

it sounds like he was potentially being monitored or threatened by the Freemasons, right? That's how it looks on the surface, just by the way you read it. Or somebody. By somebody. Now, just to pop that balloon, it also could be that he was thinking all those things and none of it was true. He was paranoid. But to bring it back to the Freemasons, obviously really interesting stuff. Oh, yeah. And I would imagine if we had a book that told us everything that was actually going on in the world and it was nothing but truth, we would find that there are organizations or societies like this.

That wouldn't surprise me even a little bit but is there a world like i was just saying where ray was thinking he was being targeted by this group and it's not true i have had a situation where i gotta leave out names but someone in my neighborhood um who was clearly going through something um started dming me started messaging me and they were telling their parents, this was an older person, but they still lived with their parents. They believed that I was attacking them, that I was coming to get them.

And they truly believed it. It became a little bit of a thing for a while. It's paranoia, yeah. We figured it out, but obviously there's no truth to it. But yet in their mind, that's what was going on. I was going to kill them.

And so this was something that we had to figure out and work out. So I don't know. I just will bring it back to all of what you had said earlier, which I think is really important. Allison, Ray's wife, knows him better than anyone. Closest person to him. She experienced this. She knew her husband. She knew what he was going through, what he wasn't going through. And she believes that he was, that he was murdered. And you have to ask yourself why, because there've been many cases out there where someone will take their own life. And the spouse is very quick to come out and say, listen, you guys didn't know this at the time, but so-and-so was going through a lot. And that's not what she's doing here. So we have to take everything that's being said at face value.

As far as the track incident, I don't know if that's related to it. It could be something that was going on. And because of Ray's paranoia, he thought this guy was involved. Dude, such a good point. I was just thinking that. Maybe nothing was going on with that guy, but something was going on. Remember, I can say this now because I've backed off. Dude, you're going to talk about CrimeCon? Yeah. And they don't bother

me. I was thinking about it. You never told the story. You got to tell it. I got to tell it now, but they don't, they don't bother me anymore because I backed off and I was like, all right, all right. Well, you're not suggesting it was any particular group. So I'm not saying the group's name. We're just going to, we're just going to say what happened at CrimeCon. Okay. So when we were in Vegas at CrimeCon, we were doing a meet and greet and it was like a VIP meet and greet in a separate room. So you have to understand that whoever was in that line to meet us had paid for VIP, which isn't cheap. Okay. So we're waiting, we're waiting. And then all of a sudden this like clean cut guy, which it's like, he's not your typical crime con person. He's like clean cut. He's got like, like a suit on kind of, and he has a camera and he's taking pictures of us. Very good looking guy.

Very good looking. Okay. Like hair slicked back, white teeth, like looking good. Like Christian Bale in American Psycho. So he finally gets up. He's been taking pictures of us, but that's not anything new. It's fine. Nope. But he's got like a professional digital camera with a damn zoom lens on it. Right. And he comes up and he's like, oh yeah.

You know, and he's not looking at Derek at all. Didn't even acknowledge my existence. Doesn't acknowledge him. And he's like, yeah, we know you've been talking about, you know, you've been talking about these people, this organization, and that's really dangerous. They can figure out where you live. They can figure out where your kids go to school. It's just – it's really crazy that you're doing this.

It's kind of like he was concerned for me, but dude didn't blink goddamn once. By the way, I'm in between – like I'm on the side of this conversation. I'm just like watching this interaction. And so we go through this, and it a super uncomfortable because he's not leaving. Like it was just a moment of awkwardness. And we were just like, it was like, dude, it was like eight minutes of awkwardness. And then finally he walks away and Derek looks at me and he goes, you're not talking about this on YouTube anymore. You're done now. It's it. That's it. You're not doing it anymore. But before that, when he said all those things,

I was trying to expedite the situation. It was getting long. And I go, well, do you want a picture? And he just looks at me and goes, no, I'm fine. I already got my pictures. And he walks away. No picture. Every other person in line took a picture, by the way.

Oh, he took pictures of us. But not with him in it. And then he walked away. And I was like, dude, you do what you got to do. But no, he didn't say you do what you got to do. He said, you're done that you're not doing. You're not talking about this anymore. So needless to say, after that, I was a paranoid mess.

Okay. Everybody that walked up to me after that, I was like, what, who are you? What do you want? Like, and I was, I was interpreting everything they said to me through a lens where it could have been threatening because that shook me so hard, especially when it was like, they can figure out where your kids go to school and stuff. I was like, holy shit. And Derek said, you're done. I said, you're absolutely right. I'm done, dude. Four minutes into that conversation, I knew I was done. And then when we were in London, there was another incident, right? Because this organization happens

to have a location based in London too. So there was another incident. And even now to this day, I'm still paranoid when I talk to people. So something could have been going on with Ray, but that person might've had not, I mean, when we were at our meet and greet, our private meet and greet in Vegas, I was so paranoid because it was the same day that happened. And I was literally – everybody who was talking to me, I was like, are you one of them? I hid in the bathroom for 45 minutes. I'm so sorry to anybody who was at that Vegas meet and greet that we did at a restaurant after because I was a mess, a mess. So I apologize. But I was a mess, a mess. So I apologize, but I felt threatened. So Ray could have been dealing with something else and then just thought that this benign man who's just out

for a walk was connected, but he was so paranoid and scared from something else at that point that everywhere he looked, he saw a threat, which I can understand. A lot of different options here. Yeah. The spectrum, right? It could be exactly the way you're describing it, like how it sounds, or it could be someone who's going through some mental struggles and is making this stuff up in their head. Basically, their brain is their biggest enemy at that point. The worst part is you don't know. No, that's a scary thing.

If your brain, which controls everything, is playing tricks on you, how do you beat that? How do you beat that? It controls your perception. And that's why things like cults and stuff like that are so scary because that is exactly what they do. They reprogram the way you think. Well, I was saying if he's having mental health issues, if he's having struggles, if none of this is actually true, but it's conjuring up in his brain, then he could be reading these books and doing all these things because of a paranoia that's not warranted. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, but I'm saying we wouldn't know one way or the other, only he knows.

Like if something had happened to me after our meet and greet in Vegas, people might've been like, that girl was acting crazy that night. Yeah, exactly. But there was a legitimate reason for it. I just didn't tell anybody. So you would never have known. Yeah, fair point. If my disappearance was connected to something legitimate or if I was having like a mental break, nobody would have known.

Could be both. With me, yeah. So at this point, Ray and Allison had been living in their Baltimore house for about two years. Their security alarm had never gone off in that time. But suddenly, it did go off two nights in a row at exactly the same time. On May 15th, the alarm triggered at 1 a.m.

and this startled both Allison and Ray. And Allison said that Ray's reaction to this was very significant. He ran out of his office holding a baseball bat, visibly fearful, indicating that he at least believed there was a real threat. The police arrived, they cleared the house, and they told Allison and Ray that maybe squirrels had triggered the alarm, even though squirrels had never in two years triggered the alarm. The next night, on May 16th, the alarm triggered again at the exact same time, 1 a.m., and Allison noted that a window in the

home appeared to have been tampered with, but once again, the police arrived and dismissed it as if it was nothing. Allison had very little time to process this, though, because she had to leave early the next morning to drive to Richmond, Virginia for a business trip. This also happened to be the same day that Ray Rivera left his home as well, but never returned. And on that note, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. And we'll talk about the morning of May 16th. Okay, we're back. The morning of May 16th.

This is the day that Ray vanishes. And it would mark Allison's final interactions with the husband that she loved so dearly. The couple had a seemingly normal morning. They shared breakfast. They said goodbye as Ray helped Allison load her car up for her work trip. Looking back, Allison could not remember anything about Ray's behavior that would have suggested he was upset, anxious, or planning anything unusual. But that day after arriving in Richmond, Allison made multiple calls to Ray. Obviously, she's arriving in Richmond, Allison made multiple calls to Ray. Obviously, she's going to say, hey, I'm here. Let him know she's checked in, whatever. He doesn't answer any of her calls. This is very unusual for him, especially since he's been so

concerned about her safety and following her everywhere and making sure she's okay. He's now not answering her calls. Now, Claudia, this was a friend and work colleague of Allison's from New York City. She had been staying with Ray and Allison at that time. She was just staying there for a few days. So Allison called Claudia, and she was like, hey, is Ray home? Like, what's going on? Claudia said he wasn't, but she said she'd seen him earlier that day. Ray had been working from home that day on a project for the Oxford Club, but he had a very strict and nearing deadline.

The finished product was due the following Wednesday, and since May 16th was a Tuesday, that means Ray had just over a week to finish it. Now remember that Ray had filmed the Oxford Club's annual conference in Delray Beach, Florida, and the company wanted the completed video to be edited so that they could send it out to subscribers who hadn't been able to be there in person. On May 16th, Ray had called a company, a video editing equipment rental company that he'd worked with in the past, and he booked an editing suite for Saturday, May 20th.

Like I said, this was a company he'd worked with before. He knew the people there. He spoke to a guy named Mark Gold. And Mark Gold said that Ray seemed to be under some pressure to get the project done, but a normal, like, work pressure. And the project that he was working on sounded like it was a fairly average editing task. Stephen King, the man who had organized the conference in Delray, said, quote, Ray had been working on the video along with our advertising team. Our advertising manager spoke to him about it the day he went missing. She asked him if he

had any idea when the video would be ready, and he said he'd have it to her by Monday. End quote. Allison's friend Claudia told Allison that Ray had been working in his home office, and then around 4 p.m. he'd gone into the kitchen to get a snack. At that time, 4 p.m., Ray seemed normal. He was not visibly stressed or anxious. But then, sometime before, right before 6 p.m., Claudia heard Ray's phone ring. She described his immediate reaction to the call as alarmed, and he said, oh shit, before running out of the house. Ray left the house in a rush. After receiving the phone call, he returned briefly a few minutes later as if he'd forgotten something, and then he left again.

On the morning of May 17th, Claudia called Allison at 5.30 a.m., and she's obviously worried because she informed Allison that Ray had not returned home the previous night. Now, this was the first time that Ray had been missing for hours with no communication, but despite her growing unease, Allison initially tried to rationalize the situation, and she considered the possibility that Ray may have stayed out late the night before. Maybe he crashed at a friend's house, even though that wasn't consistent with Ray's usual behavior. But after hours passed that morning, Allison decided to leave her business trip and return home, making a series of phone calls to Ray's family and friends

on the way, but no one had seen or heard from him. When Allison repeatedly called her husband's cell phone that morning and that day, May 17th, it went straight to voicemail, which obviously suggested the phone had been deliberately turned off or the phone's battery had died or the phone had been deliberately turned off, or the phone's battery had died, or the phone was damaged or lost. As soon as Allison pulled into the driveway of their Baltimore home, she immediately noticed that the car Ray drove, a 2001 Mitsubishi Montero, was missing. When she walked into the house, the first thing that caught her eye was a bag of chips on the counter and a can of sparkling water next to it, which would have been Ray's 4

p.m. snack. Ray's Invisalign retainer was also sitting nearby, so anybody who's had Invisalign knows that you have like a mouth guard basically like fitted to your teeth and you're supposed to wear that after Invisalign, but when you eat, you have to take it out. So the lights were on in the kitchen, the lights were on in Ray's office, the lights were on in Ray and Allison's bedroom. Ray's toothbrush was still in the bathroom. It looked as though he had left in a rush, maybe to make an appointment that he'd forgotten about. But it was clear to Allison that Ray had not planned to be out all night. So concerned, Allison contacted the police and reported Ray missing at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, May 17th.

Family members from different cities quickly boarded flights to Baltimore to support Allison and help her. Her parents traveled in from Colorado. Ray's family members got on planes in their respective cities to fly to Baltimore, and the house soon became a central hub for one mission, finding Ray Rivera. Everyone pitched in to help locate him. They called hospitals, police stations, anyone Ray might have known in or around Baltimore. Posters were printed and distributed, and Porter Stansberry offered a $1,000 reward

for any information that might help locate his old friend. This bothered me. And like, listen, any reward you wanna offer is generous, but Porter Stansberry's flying around on helicopters, buying like $17,000 bottles of wine. And the most you can muster out your pocket to offer a reward to help find your old high school friend who you're going to refer to multiple times as your best friend in the media and when you're being interviewed, that's all you got? $1,000 for that? I don't know.

I kind of go with what you said at first. He's offering something. I think there's also a point where it's almost too much, where it comes off as just like it's a flex for you as opposed to just wanting to find it. I think at this point, they don't know what happened to him. So he's like, hey, listen, we're not going to waste much time here. They're not going to put out a reward for this guy yet because he could just be somewhere, you know, taking a breather. So we'll just put a $1,000 cash reward out there. Somebody calls and says, hey, I just saw him or he's over here.

He just wants to be left alone. Throw him $1,000 and call it a day. But I get what you're saying. I see both sides of the argument. I mean, he might as well just have offered $999 and 99 cents at that point. Like, you know what I mean? Like it just seems so like I'll put to 5,000 at least. I don't know. Does that make people want to call in more? I mean, if he's, if, if your friend is just out there blowing off steam somewhere, and then at least if the reward's high enough and people

want to get it, they'll be like, Hey, we know where he is. He's fine. And you figure that out sooner. Okay. Well, let me, let me come at it the other way here. If he, if he was somehow involved, which we have talked about more in episode one, you'd kind of laid the groundwork where there could have been something going on here. Maybe he would have gone over the top to make it really seem like, Oh, you know, this is something I want to figure out, even though he already knows. Maybe that would have been a reason to say, hey, I'll offer $20,000 to find my friend knowing no one's going to find their friend alive. So I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't look too deep into the $1,000 thing. One way or the other, I'm not like, oop, red flag. I mean, man, for a guy that was known to throw around his money on the most meaningless, pointless things, you'd think that this would be someplace maybe you could dig a little deeper. That's all. All right.

All right. But at the time of Ray's disappearance, Porter had been out of town. He, too, cut his business short in order to be in Baltimore and help find Ray. So days passed. Obviously, everyone was kind of freaking out. This whole thing was so unlike Ray. It was almost unbelievable that it was happening. And Allison, along with everyone who knew Ray well, were plagued by anxiety because

they just couldn't imagine that he would do this, that he could be out there alive and well, purposely not making contact with anyone, including his wife, who he loved more than anything in the world. Ray's brother Angel would tell the Baltimore Sun, quote, It's completely out of character. He's not only going to tell you where he's going, he's going to tell you how he got there. For him to go this long and not contact any of his family or friends, it's got everyone scared. End quote.

After Ray had been missing for six days, Allison's parents decided to drive around Baltimore to see if there was any sign of Ray or his vehicle. And I think at this point, it was really just an effort to do something, you know, to do something for their daughter, who at this point was feeling completely hopeless and powerless. But in a surprising turn of events, Allison's parents actually did locate Ray's SUV. It was just innocently parked in a lot behind a building on St. Paul Street in parking spot number seven. The Montero was just chilling, sitting there all relaxed, like it had no idea how many people were desperately trying to locate it, including the Baltimore police, who it's worth noting did not locate the vehicle. We're going to talk about them plenty going forward. They did not locate the vehicle. It's been almost a week. This vehicle's been sitting there this whole time. They didn't find it. Now, there was a ticket on

the windshield, and the parking lot attendant told Allison's parents that the SUV had been there since at least the morning of the 17th. The attendant said he'd come into work and noticed it parked there, and he was the one who placed the ticket on it. Since the same attendant had left work at 6 p.m. the night of the 16th, which is when Ray rushed out of his house, the Mitsubishi Montero would have had to have ended up in that lot sometime after 6 p.m. and before the attendant arrived to work the following morning. So this parking lot that Ray's car was found in is actually in a very interesting area, not an area he often frequented, at least not outside of work hours,

and at least not since he wasn't working for Porter Stansbury anymore. Now, the two places of note that are within the vicinity of this parking lot are the Belvedere Hotel, and the second place of note is the headquarters of Agora Financial, which is on St. Paul Street, just a few blocks away from where Ray's vehicle was found and where a short time later, his body would be found in the Belvedere Hotel. I also want to address two mysterious phone calls before we move on. The call Ray made on the afternoon of May 14th, remember, he and Allison were returning home from church.

He'd been excitedly leaving a voicemail for someone. He was like, dude, I got this all figured out and, you know, call me back. We didn't know who that call was to. And it was only later that it was discovered that the call had been to Porter Stansberry. But when Ray's brother Angel asked Porter what the call had been in regards to, like what was Ray talking about? What did he figure out? Porter claimed he was as much in the dark as anyone else. He had no clue what Ray was referring to in that voicemail. We also had that mysterious phone call made to Ray at home before 6 p.m. on May 16th, the call that seemingly triggered him to rush out of the house in flip-flop sandals,

leaving all the lights on. As it turns out, that call was made from the Agora Publishing switchboard. Agora is the parent company of several dozen companies, including Porter Stansberry's company and the Oxford Club, which remember Ray was working on a video for the Oxford Club at that time. And at that time, all calls from all of the companies, all the subsidiaries would be routed through that main switchboard. So the specific caller was never able to be determined. Damn it. That's unfortunate. A police spokesperson did say that the call came from an owned subsidiary company of Agora Publishing, but would not give further details, citing an open investigation. Now, Porter Stansbury spoke publicly about this call years later after Ray's case was

featured on Unsolved Mysteries and Porter started getting a lot of heat from the public. You know, they had questions. And Porter said, quote, every person in our company who had worked with Ray was on the eastern shore at that time that the call was made, having a corporate retreat in St. Michael's. No one in my company was in town when Ray disappeared. The idea we were calling him from our switchboard is ridiculous. End quote. Now, Porter has more to say.

But before we talk about that, I want to address this really quick. First of all, yo, they be going on lots of retreats, okay? Well, you kind of described it, like it's, you know, it's the Wolf of Wall Street type thing, you know? Yeah. It feels like every month they're jetting off to some other place to, I don't know. When you got a lot of money and you got nothing to do, you spend it and then it's a tax write-off, right? Yeah, you throw parties and call it a business write-off. Exactly. It's a spend it and then it's a tax write off. Yeah, you throw parties and call it a business write off. Exactly. It's a retreat.

It's a quote unquote retreat. I do want to say if you're in the camp that this is somehow a conspiracy with Agora and Porter Stansberry and whoever, that would be the time to do it right while everyone's away and has an alibi, plenty of photos and videos being taken at this retreat. And so if you're going to take someone out and you don't want to be connected to it, what better alibi than to say, hey, everyone, including myself, was nowhere close to Ray. So it couldn't have been us. And if you're at that level where we're talking about the Freemasons and all that stuff, it's not going to be Porter Stansbury who does it. It's going to be someone else who's not

connected to Porter Stansbury. Right. Porter's not doing it himself porter stansberry who does it it's going to be someone else who's not connected to porter stansberry so right porter is not doing it himself of course yeah yeah exactly this would align they would make sure that they were they had a complete alibi to support any type of notion that they were involved with that they would be able to dispute that that doesn't make me feel one way or the other the fact that he says says, oh, nobody from my company would have been able to call him. Yeah, exactly. But someone could have called him through that switchboard that knew exactly what they were doing. Yeah. And the thing is, I'm not saying the Porter Stansberry did anything. I'm not either. I'm not either. But I know people are saying that. I know you're not. yeah but i have to qualify for me because you know i i do tend to be more conspiracy theory fueled than you if you are

looking at this through the lens of it could be a conspiracy it could all be connected porter coming out and saying like giving his alibi no one in my company was here that almost seems suspicious right does it though i don't know i kind of like it's like why why do you feel like you can tell the police that but why do you i don't know well you said it the unsolved mysteries comes out yeah he was getting heat he's getting a ton of heat now if he's not involved with it i can't imagine what that's like to be, you know, have your friend take his own life or be, maybe he was killed by someone else, not connected to Porter Stansberry. And you're now getting millions of DMS and, you know, I hate to say it. We talked

about traders, right. You know, or a last episode and it's like, Oh, crime weekly news. We talked about traders, weekly news. You know, I'm getting DMs from random people. They're looking at the show and they're like, why did you, why did you target so-and-so? Like they're really connected to it. So, but are you responding and defending yourself? I don't necessarily respond individually, but I'll put up like a, so I put up a post about it, basically explaining my rationale behind it and what I'm doing. Because when I watch the show, I can see how it's being portrayed.

So the way it's being edited. Correct. So I could see a world where Porter watches Unsolved Mysteries and he's going, that don't make me look good. Yeah, he's like, God, like how they made me look in that that Eliza Lam Cecil Hotel documentary where, they cut it and edited me to make it look like I was accusing this guy. And that is not the way it went down at all, man. That is not the way I was like, what? You know? And all of a sudden I'm getting like death threats and stuff. And, and that did, that is not how, how it happened at all. So this might've been a response to, to maybe some heat he was taking where he felt, all right,

man, I got to address this. You know, I got to address this and put it out there, but him addressing it doesn't make me feel like he's more guilty or less guilty. That alibi doesn't necessarily mean that he didn't have anything to do with it. It just means he didn't do it directly. That's all. That's all you can take away from that. Well, Porter also talked about Ray's interest in the Freemasons telling the Baltimore Sun that Ray had previously asked him if he was in leadership of the Masons, but Porter says he just laughed it off. He thought it was a joke. So now we have an idea that Ray Rivera may have suspected that Porter Stansbury, his old boss and his old friend. Were connected to the Freemasons, yeah.

Yeah. And this goes back to what we were saying earlier. It's either Ray had actual information to suggest that Porter and his colleagues were involved in the Freemasons or because of something that was going on internally, Ray was making this up in his own head. Which is, no disrespect to anybody who's personally involved with this. Very possible. We see it all the time. You know, we see parents take their own babies and throw them in ovens because they think they're a demon. Oh, you went there. Right. But it's true. Now, is that, is that true? Of course not. But in their brain.

Is it true that the parents thought that their kid was a demon or did they just take their own kid's life, which we've also seen happen a million times, and then say they thought it was a demon? I definitely believe that there's been cases where the horrific incidents where a parent is struggling mentally and they do something heinous to their children and they're doing it when they're clearly not in the right mind state. So could that be the situation here where Ray is seeing something that's not actually happening. Goes back to the incident I was just describing about my neighbor. You know, it's possible. Additionally, we would find out later

that earlier in the day on May 16th, the day Ray had vanished, he purchased a book called Free Masons for Dummies. And he had met with a member of the Maryland Masonic Lodge to discuss potentially joining himself. Now, according to the man that Ray met with that day, there was nothing unusual about their conversation. It was typical of someone who wanted to learn more about the organization and its membership. Ray had also been acting normally,

and when they said goodbye, Ray thanked the man for his time and said he would be in touch. Now, is this Ray wanting to become a member of the Masons or is this Ray doing some, because we know he was a writer, doing some investigative undercover work? But it's interesting that you say that was on May 16th. So May 16th, because he also, again, there's a lot of dates and times. May 16th was also the day that he left the house, correct? The day he got the call from the Agora switchboard. He got the call from the house.

So this interaction with this gentleman would have been before that phone call? Before that, yes. He was doing that. So he probably, what it seems like is Ray put Allison in her car, said, hey, love you, have a good business trip. Then he kind of went out, ran some errands. He bought this book. He kept his appointment at the Masonic Lodge in Maryland. And then he goes home to work from home. He calls and books the editing suite. He gets a snack at four o'clock. And then around six o'clock, he gets that call, says, oh shit, rushes out. Yep. More than likely goes to that parking lot or somebody goes because that car would have had

to have been there after 6 p.m. correct yes yes exactly so that kind of aligns that kind of aligns where as a security guard said the car would have been there after six because that's when he that's when he left yeah I mean as of right now I don't think it's up for dispute at this point whether it's true or not Ray believes that somehow either he wants to be a member of the Freemasons or the Freemasons are targeting him and he's heavily researching. Or there's something that's going on. The whole theory is that he found out something was going on with Agora and its subsidiaries or maybe just some of its subsidiaries, maybe Porter's company. He was about to blow something open.

He was connected. They were connected to the Masons. Ray is doing some investigative work. They find out that he's looking into it and they take him out. There. I can see it. I can see the timeline. Maybe he gets that call later that day because something got back to someone that he was

starting to dig a little too deep. Yes. Or maybe somebody called pretending to be somebody else, right? Like, oh, this is the guy you met with earlier at the Masonic Lodge. And actually I do have something important to tell you. And then Ray's like, oh shit. And he leaves and he gets lured to the parking lot.

Yeah. Yeah. The call is troublesome. The call is troublesome for me as well because if he had just left on his own and he was out there, maybe, maybe. But it is interesting, the timing of the phone call and also this meeting earlier that day. That's compelling.

It's compelling information. And you know what else is interesting about the phone call is anybody who knew Ray possibly could have known that Allison was out of town on a business trip, but maybe wouldn't have known that Allison had a friend, Claudia, staying with them. So they wouldn't have thought that there was somebody who would be privy to what that call was. So the police would have pulled phone records and seen that that call came in, but they would not have known the way Ray reacted to it or how he rushed out directly after that

call. They would not have known that. But because Claudia heard it and was in the house when it happened, we know that Ray reacted to this call in a way that we 100% believe this call is what caused him to leave the house, where before, if Claudia hadn't been there, we may have been able to speculate about that, but we wouldn't have known. And maybe whoever called him did not know that Claudia was there to hear that call. One more thing that I think is important to mention, we know for a fact that that call came through the switchboard. There's no disputing

that. They were able to trace it back. It came through the switchboard. So somebody within that organization or one of the subsidiaries made that call. It's indisputable. Somebody who's in one of those buildings at least. Right. One of those buildings. Let me ask you this. Has anything came out publicly that someone came forward and said, yeah, that was me. I called them. No. No. Interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. Because if it was innocent, maybe like a sec, yeah, maybe like a secretary or somebody working on that, on that Oxford club project, maybe they were like, oh, by the way, it wasn't. Hey, you missed a deadline or this was wrong. Or I gave you the wrong date for the deadline. And so he, you know, then that would have been okay. Would that make sense? Jane from Oxford call says, hey, by the way, that was me. I called him. No problem. I was just,

it was innocent. I told him he had missed something. Yeah. As far as we know from what law enforcement has shared, no one has come out and said, yeah, that, that wasn't me. Hand up. I made that call. No, that's concerning. Yeah. So let's take our last break. We'll be right back. All right. So we're back. And when Ray's vehicle, the Mitsubishi was found, it didn't really do much to further the investigation outside of giving the police a more specific area to focus on in their searches for Ray. And I just want to point this out. It was not the Baltimore police who found Ray's car, and it was not the Baltimore police who found Ray. Okay? So the police said there was nothing located inside the car to suggest foul play or theft.

Although Ray's wallet wasn't in the car, his cell phone wasn't in the car, and there was nothing to give an indication of Ray was or why he would just vanish. And Porter Stansbury told the Baltimore Sun, quote, he's a happy guy. He and his wife just booked a trip to go to New Mexico in a few weeks. This is not a man that wanted to leave. I've got to find my friend. I can't imagine my life without him. He's my best friend, end quote.

Maybe up your reward a little bit then, dude. Oh, man. Sorry. Sorry. Baltimore police announced there had been no activity on Ray's cell phone, bank cards, or bank account since he'd last been heard from. And the searches for him. And they decided that day to do something a little unorthodox. Mark Whistler, Stephen King, and George Rayburn all worked for Agora subsidiaries.

And during their lunch break that day, they decided to check out the Belvedere Hotel. Located at 1 Chase Street in Baltimore's Mount Vernon neighborhood, the Belvedere Hotel has been a significant part of the city's history since its opening on December 14, 1903. Designed by the architectural firm Parker & Thomas, the 11-story tan brick building became Baltimore's first luxury hotel, symbolizing the city's emergence as a significant urban center. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the Belvedere was the premier lodging destination in Baltimore, hosting American presidents Theodore Roosevelt, who I remember was a Mason, JFK, Woodrow Wilson, among others, along with celebrities such as

Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, General Douglas MacArthur, and a golden Hollywood-era actor, Clark Gable. One of the hotel's most famous establishments is the Owl Bar, which opened in 1903. During Prohibition, it became known for its clandestine operations with owl figurines signaling the availability of illicit beverages. In 1991, the Belvedere was converted into condominiums, though many of its historic spaces, including ballrooms and dining areas, were preserved and remained open to the public. The Owl Bar was one of those sort of areas that remained open to the public. And the seven-floor indoor parking garage next to the Belvedere was also adjacent to the outdoor parking lot on St. Paul, where Ray's SUV had been located. Now, author Makita Brotman, not only did she write a book about Ray's story called

An Unexplained Death, but she was living in the condos at the Belvedere at the time of Ray's death, and she describes the location very well, so I'm going to read a passage directly from her book. Makita Brotman says, quote, To the east, this garage is attached to an extension of the first three floors of the old hotel. This extension, the parking lot, and a cocktail lounge on the 13th floor were all added in 1964 when the Belvedere underwent renovation. The basement level contains

retail space. A Japanese hibachi restaurant occupies the storefront level on Charles Street, which is accessed through a glass and steel entrance to the hotel, built along with the extension. There's a glass roof above this entrance. Behind the glass roof is a flat roof of a retail office. Above this is a second flat roof, one side of which abuts a row of windows. These look down on the hotel's indoor swimming pool, which was made into offices when the Belvedere was turning into a condominium complex. Above these windows, there is a third roof, which would have once been the top of the pool, from which protrude two half-barrel-shaped glass skylights. End quote. So Ray's three friends, Mark, Stephen, and George, they walked through the parking garage looking for clues or any sign of Ray.

Maybe he'd been mugged. They would find his empty wallet or drops of blood somewhere. You know, they were trying to do anything. They found nothing, so they traveled up to the roof of the parking garage, and that is when they spotted something on the lower roof, about 20 feet below them. There was a brown flip-flop. There was a cell phone. There was what looked like a wallet. There seemed to be keys there. Not only that, but they saw what looked like a hole in that lower roof. The three men immediately called the Baltimore Police Department, specifically Detective James Mingle of the

Missing Persons Unit who had been assigned to Ray's case. Mingle said he was on his way. The police got there about 10 minutes later. They got Gary Shivers, the building manager who'd been working at the Belvedere for 20 years, and Shivers was asked to unlock the door to the area which would be located under that hole in the roof, an area that had been divided into two offices in 1991. Each office was marked by one of those half-barrel-shaped skylights that Makita Brotman was talking about. One of the offices was currently occupied by Truffles. That would have been the Belvedere's in-house catering company. The other was empty, even though it had been previously rented by a Pentecostal church. The empty office was where Ray's body would be found.

When Gary Shivers unlocked and opened the door to that vacant office, the overwhelming smell of a decomposing body flooded out, and Shivers would later say that the first thing he saw was a wall on the opposite side of the room that appeared to have blood dripping down it. By the way, guys, as Stephanie's describing all of this, if you're confused and you're trying to visualize what she's saying and you're having trouble doing so, you're not alone. I'm in the same boat. But Stephanie has provided all these photos from different links that she's acquired, and we're going to have those up on the screen now. So if

you're listening on audio and you're struggling like I was, definitely come over to the YouTube at this timestamp. Look at all these photos. It completely changed my perspective on what we were talking about. And now it makes a lot more sense. So I strongly recommend you do that, even if you're just an audio listener. So Ray Rivera was lying in a prone position with his feet facing the door of the office. He was in bad shape. His body

was battered and barely recognizable. Ray had left his house wearing a t-shirt, a black jacket, and flip-flops. And when he was found, he was still wearing the jacket, but both of his flip-flops were found on the roof above him, about 60 feet apart. Which, listen, this is going to be a huge thing, those flip-flops, because people are saying if he jumped from a higher roof, because he obviously didn't jump from the roof that he went through, right? Yeah, not where the hole is. How did his flip-flops come off as he was jumping in that specific area? Why would he have, first of all, they say that there's no way in flip-flops that he

could have gotten the velocity he would have needed to have jumped from any of these roof areas and landed where he did. And they've done like, you know, math stuff to do, to, to qualify this. But the fact that his flip-flops were found on that roof. But wait, there's, are people are saying that's not possible? Cause as soon as you said, I'm like, oh, that makes sense. Because they've done math equations, man. Well, I mean, listen, I'm not going to dispute them. But for me, it would be just common sense. Like if you jump from a high point and maybe during the, you know, the jump, he gets spun upside down where he's going head first.

Those flip flops are not being really held on by anything. Just from the sheer wind, they could fly off. And that would explain why they were 60 feet apart on the roof. On that small roof underneath that he fell through. Yeah. Like, I mean, if he's flying through the air, if the sandals are like these, like, you know, what do you call them? Like the thong sandals or like, you know, are they like, are we talking Crocs here? Something like that. No, they're like flip-flops. Yeah. Like flip-flops. So not really being held on by much. Right. Right. So they could have easily fell off. I mean, you're flying through the air.

They're going to catch some wind. They could have easily flown off and gone in different directions and kind of fluttered down to the roof. They're going to fall at a different rate than his body because obviously, you know, physics. Yeah. I think that explains more why they'd be 60 feet apart. I mean, the physics of the jump in general, people are saying. Okay, I'm not going to dispute any of that, but I'm just saying if he did jump, the sandals coming off and being on the roof, the same roof where the hole was,

that would make sense to me. Okay. Now, whether he jumped or was pushed off or thrown off, that's two different things. The sandal doesn't make me feel one way or the other. Well, in the pocket of Ray's pants, the police found his American Express card, his driver's license. They also found a penny with the shape of a small heart cut into it. This coin had been a token of affection that Allison had given Ray after one of her business trips. She told him if she was out of town and he ever felt like he needed her close, that he should hold it and he would be able to feel her and sense her and she would be close

to him. Now, this usually remained in a small bowl on Ray's dresser, but now it was in his pocket. So the penny was there, but something else financially related was missing from Ray's person, a money clip engraved with his initials. This had been a wedding present from his wife, and Ray would always keep his cash, credit cards, and his identification in that clip. And although those items were with Ray, the money clip was nowhere to be found. The hole above Ray suggested that he had either fallen, jumped, or been thrown from a significant height. As I said, Ray's flip-flops, sunglasses, and cell phone were all found near that hole. But specifically, the glasses and the cell phone showed no damage. They were not broken, shattered.

There wasn't even a scratch on them. And this odd detail would raise questions and would seem inconsistent with the severe injuries that Ray had sustained. Because like you said, if he's jumping and his flip-flops are coming off and his phone's falling from his pocket and his sunglasses are coming off, when those things hit the roof, you'd think the cell phone at least would have broken. Yeah. You know, but it's absolutely fine, almost as if it was like placed there. So the position of the hole would also be puzzling because it was a considerable distance from the

hotel's main roof, which would lead to questions about whether or not it would have even been possible for Ray to jump or fall in a way that had caused him to land where he did. Now, some in the Baltimore Police Department who responded to this scene would find it suspicious, stating that it looked as if the scene had been staged. But the general vibe from the police as they began to investigate would be that they felt Ray had taken his own life. The evidence points to Ray dying not long after he'd left his home as the medical examiner determined

that his stomach still contained the residue of the potato chips he'd eaten about two hours before leaving his house. Yeah. But what was he doing there? How had he gotten up to the roof, which would have not been an easy feat since it was off limits,

even to the people who lived there. And why would he have wanted to die when he was just starting a new chapter of his life that by all accounts, he was very much excited about? Additionally, his actions and interests in the days leading up to his death were a bit bizarre with his sudden focus on Freemasons and just seeming to be paranoid and kind of on edge. up to his death were a bit bizarre with his sudden focus on Freemasons and, you know,

just being seeming to be paranoid and kind of on edge. And in the aftermath of Ray's death, Allison would find some strange things in his office that would only add to the mystery of this whole situation. Fascinating stuff. I mean, I leave this episode with more questions than answers. You know, one of them being this is a big hotel, you know, kind of a commercial area. No cameras. It's 2006, right?

No cameras anywhere. No cameras that would show us anything of value. I don't want to get into that right now, but they did question people, employees at the Belvedere. Nobody saw Ray in there. Nobody, you know, He didn't ask anybody, how would you get up to the roof? Now, there's some rumors that Ray and Allison had been up on that roof before, that they would sometimes go up there to watch the sunset. Allison has stated and stated in the Unsolved Mysteries episode that Ray was afraid of heights. She would have no idea

why he was up there, which makes it kind of seem like she does not, I guess it's kind of her saying like, no, that's not true. Like we didn't go up there to watch the sunset, but I don't know if she's ever directly addressed those speculations that Ray and Allison would go up there to watch the sunset. So we have a lot to get into.

And basically what it's going to be is determining, like, is it even possible that he could have? Because listen, there's a lot of people that think he was in a helicopter and dropped from the helicopter. And that's how it happened because somebody like kind of threw his stuff out before and then dropped him. And they think this because there was a helicopter in the area at the time.

Okay. I'm just going to say like people in the Belvedere said, oh yeah, we heard a helicopter. Yeah. Things like that. So. I definitely don't think it was a helicopter. I'll just put that one to rest right now. That's too much of a risk.

Well, you can't put it to rest. You don't know the dynamics and the mechanics of it yet. I mean, if this is a contract hit or a calculated murder, they're not going to drop the guy from a helicopter. It's like you've never seen James Bond before. And run the risk of multiple witnesses seeing, hey, we saw this guy fall from the fucking helicopter. Yeah. And then nobody would believe them. Like, you don't believe them.

If they're going to make it look like a suicide, they're going to make it look like a suicide. Yeah. You get what I'm saying? Yeah. So I'm just, you know, listen, we'll entertain it. I'm always open to a good conversation. You will entertain it. But I do want to talk about this determination by law enforcement that it was a suicide. In some cases, I feel like the determination is more of an exclusionary approach where they come into it saying, you know, we're going to look at everything else, but if we can't find anything, well, then it's got to be a suicide. Not, well, there's evidence here to support that it was a suicide.

That's a problem for me because it's easy to say suicide, right? It's easy to just say, you know what? We couldn't find anything else. So absent of that, it's got to be a suicide. That's all that's left. Yes. I also want to say that his death was ruled undetermined by like the coroner. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, because they don't have enough evidence to say that. That's good, at least. The Baltimore Police Department at that time, and probably still, was really overwhelmed with crime. And in the statistics, they don't really match up. So I'll get into the numbers of violent murders they had did not match the numbers of homicides that like deaths were being ruled at, if you know what I'm saying.

Yeah. So basically, it seemed like maybe the Baltimore Police Department was a little overwhelmed, wasn't doing too much investigation. So and kind of just trying to make it easier and maybe clear their desks off or just being like, ah, he did this to himself without actually doing the deep investigation. And I mean, they didn't find his car. They didn't find his body. I kind of feel like that that that adds up. That checks out. Yeah. I mean, we could talk about that stuff all day. I mean, as far as Ray's concerned and what we know about his death at this point, I think both options are still on the table. I think it's very possible that Ray was experiencing something, you know, Alison had mentioned he was afraid of heights, but again, if he's not in the right state of mind, those, those rules don't apply. Um, if he's not, he might not have been Ray anymore. There might've been something else going on. It could, there's a few

things that could be going on here. It could be a suicide. It could be a murder staged to look like a suicide, or it could be somewhere in between where maybe he had an altercation or he was running from someone or he was paranoid and he felt like he was trying to get away from someone who wasn't even chasing him. And this is a horrific accident. Yeah, because he didn't fall. That's very important to keep in mind. Based on the trajectory of any place around that he could have jumped from. Right. He was launched almost. Yeah, he would have had to have taken a running jump in order to get that sort of momentum to land there.

And if he's not in his right state of mind, that's possible. But it's also possible that he was running from something. Now, maybe there was actually something that he should have been in fear of, or maybe it was something that was in his head. We may never know the full answer, but I definitely understand why people are fascinated by this case because there are occasions where even though we're only one or two parts in, I kind of come to like somewhat of a conclusion and here I'm still open to everything. I think it is very possible that Ray killed himself. I think it's also possible that there's more to the story than we will ever know.

So I'm looking forward to part three. Yeah, absolutely. I'm looking forward to talking with you about part three. I've been enjoying this because this is kind of something that's been a hyper fixation of mine, but it's just me, myself and I talking about it.

I can't wait to talk about the possibility that he was thrown from a helicopter. Yeah, I can't wait. I can't wait. That's totally possibility that he was thrown from a helicopter. Yeah, I can't wait. I can't wait. That's totally plausible. Well, it's not impossible. Because how many people who would be suspects would have access to a helicopter?

That would be. I don't know. Porter Stansberry, who showed up to Ray's wedding in Puerto Rico in a helicopter. Hey, guy, I'm going to have you kill this person. But do me a favor. Take my helicopter. Kill him with a helicopter because that'll completely quell any suspicion against me, the guy who brings helicopters to a wedding.

Listen, I'm not saying. I'm not saying. Come on. They've done research into this. So we're going to go over all the theories to give them all equal opportunity. I will approach it with an open mind. I appreciate you.

I will try. All right. All right, mind. I appreciate you. I will try. All right. All right, guys, we appreciate you being here. It's always a pleasure to have you, even though we're not always talking about the best scenarios. But that's what we're doing here. We're covering these cases. We're trying to get to the bottom of these stories. And we couldn't do it without you.

So we will be back next week with Ray Rivera Part 3. Until then, everyone stay safe out there. We'll see you soon. Bye.