*This information is obtained from the ‘Where are they?’ Podcast and other online resources**
When a District Attorney goes missing, the community takes action. There is also no shortage of possibilities- or theories.
When Ray Gricar went missing in April 2005, no one knew what to think. There were limited clues that seemed to point in multiple directions. Was this a suicide? An accident? Did Ray just walk away from his stressful life, even though he was months away from retirement? Or, is it possible that someone connected with one of his cases came after him? Ray had multiple high profile convictions during his career as a district attorney in Centre County, Pennsylvania, perhaps that played a role?
Where is Ray Gricar?
This case is unsettling as there are a few different possibilities- and it’s nearly impossible to completely rule out any one theory. It’s also a sad case, as Ray was just months away from retirement, and left behind an adult daughter whom he was really close with and had upcoming plans with.
Who was Ray Gricar?
Ray Gricar was born October 9th, 1945 in Cleveland, Ohio. He grew up in the Collinwood neighborhood and had an older brother Roy.
Ray attended Gilmour Academy for his high school years, a private Roman Catholic school in Gates Mills, Ohio. Ray was well-liked and very smart. He attended college at the University of Dayton, and during an internship at the prosecutor’s office while there, he made the decision to go on to law school.
During his time at college, he met his future wife, Barbara. They would both move to the Cleveland area where Ray would attend Case Western University Law School to obtain his law degree.
In 1969, Ray and Barbara married. Ray enjoyed a quick stint working in the Prosecutor’s office in Cleveland, before he and Barbara would adopt a baby girl, Lara.
Shortly after, Barbara would be offered a job at Penn State University and the family decided to relocate. Ray would become a stay at home dad for a while, until a job offer came his way that he couldn’t refuse- he would become the Assistant District Attorney for Centre County, Pennsylvania. In 1985 when the D.A. decided not to run for re-election, Ray decided to run for the position. He won the vote & would become the D.A. of Centre County for the next 20 years.
Ray was extremely dedicated to his job and dove fully into his cases. He would go on to prosecute some high profile cases, such as the shooting at Penn State, and would even investigate and locate witnesses for his cases on his own.
Meanwhile, Ray’s older brother Roy was living in West Chester, Ohio. In May 1996, Roy was reported missing. His car was found near a river and the family spent several days searching for him, but after 7 days his body was discovered in the Great Miami River. Roy’s death was ruled a suicide. There have been several reports and articles that stated Ray didn’t believe his brother committed suicide. But, Roy’s own son, Ray’s nephew, has said he doesn’t believe that is true as Ray never questioned police, never requested the autopsy report or said anything to ever indicate that Ray didn’t believe Roy committed suicide.
Roy’s case will come up again in this story, however.
In 1998, a very controversial legal decision would put Ray Gricar in the limelight. Assistant Football Coach Jerry Sandusky was accused of sexual abuse of several young boys. Gricar refused to press charges at that time, which of course sparked a public outcry. Some felt there were personal reasons Gricar chose not to press charges, but everyone who worked with him said there was no way. If Gricar chose not to prosecute, it was because there was insufficient evidence to get a conviction. Sandusky was a well known coach, having won assistant coach of the year at Penn State, authored several books & was active in his own non-profit — The Second Mile- for at-risk youth.
The Sandusky accusation was big news in the area, and Sandusky would actually go on to be charged and convicted of 52 counts of sexual abuse in 2011.
Even with Ray’s decision in 1998 to not charge Sandusky, he would continue to be re-elected. He was an excellent prosecutor, and everyone knew it.
In 1999, Ray and Barbara would divorce, sharing custody of Lara, who was 13 at the time.
Ray would go on to marry his second wife, Emma, but that marriage would also soon end in divorce.
Not long after his second marriage fell apart, Ray would find love where he least expected to- at the office. Ray was always very serious at the office, and not very social with his co-workers or colleagues. He was friendly, he was always said to be very focused on his work.
Patty Fornicola was an employee at the courthouse, and Ray would move in with her shortly after they began dating. This relationship was said to be perfect by all accounts- they got along well, they were both independent and both having been divorced before, they were in no rush to get married.
In 2005, Ray made the decision not to run for reelection, but to retire instead. He was ready to do the things he wanted to do- travel, take road trips, and he was even planning a trip to visit his daughter, Lara in Seattle, Washington.
On April 15, 2005, Patty went to wake up Ray for work as usual. When she told him it was time to get up, he responded by telling her he was going to play hooky that day and go for a drive. This was actually not that out of the ordinary for Ray to do this once in a while, so Patty thought nothing of it and headed into work by herself.
At 11:30am, Ray called Patty to check in and they had a normal conversation. He told Patty he was headed to Lewisburg and going for a drive, possibly to do some shopping in the shops at Lewisburg. He told her he would not be home to let the dog out, so Patty said she would head straight home after work. Again, nothing out of the ordinary according to Patty, and they ended the conversation with their standard, “I love you”’.
Patty went home as planned, let the dog out and then decided to head to the gym for a workout. When she got home from the gym, and Ray still wasn’t there, she began calling him over and over, but he didn’t answer.
She kept trying his cell, and became more anxious by the minute. By 11:30pm, she called the police to report him missing. Her worst fear at that time was that Ray had possibly been in a car accident. Nothing else really made sense.
Immediately the police jump all over this case. Ray was a public figure, and everyone in the town knew who he was. He was one of them. It was all hands on deck from the get go.
The very next day, Ray’s red Mini Cooper was found in the parking lot of an antique store in Lewisburg. The car was locked, and Ray’s cell phone was inside, turned off. But there was no Ray.
What’s interesting about the discovery of the car, however, was that they found cigarette ash on the floor of the passenger side, his car smelled of cigarettes and there were cigarette butts outside the passenger door. Ray was not a smoker, in fact he despised even the smell.
No usable DNA was presumably found on the cigarette butts.
Ray’s car found in the parking lot of an antique store was understandable. Antiques were a hobby of Ray’s and he frequented antique malls. So police went inside the mall to talk to the individual shop owners. A few people thought they remembered seeing Ray, but a couple witnesses had more specific sightings. They said they saw Ray talking to a woman, about 5’8–5’10, with short dark hair. They would talk and then they would head into different shops separately, meeting back up occasionally. Both witnesses said there were no signs whatsoever this was a romantic relationship. They stood a few feet from each other, even when talking, did not touch or hold hands, and the woman was younger, possibly 30–40. They had assumed it might have been a daughter or just a friend.
When this information was given to police, they decided not to release it right away. It’s not uncommon for police to keep things out of the public eye to help their investigation. This was one of those bits of information, and it seemed that police had an idea of who this woman might have been. However, after they were able to confirm that it was not this person, they finally released the information to the media. To date, no one has come forward to identify this woman.
Isn’t it odd, that the police originally thought they knew this woman’s identity? Who did they think she was? They never said, but something must have linked Ray to this person.
It’s also important to note that these witnesses thought they saw Ray. There was no surveillance camera, what if they saw someone that looked like Ray?
The family was very distraught over Ray’s disappearance. Patty was polygraphed, as was his daughter Lara , and both easily passed. Both were visibly upset and no one ever suspected either of them.
The FBI was called in to examine Ray’s bank records, credit card statements and cell records, but nothing unusual was found.
They also asked for Ray’s county issued laptop, but when Patty took them his laptop bag, where his laptop was normally kept, the bag was empty.
People immediately began to recall Ray’s brother’s suicide. The details are eerily similar. Roy had gone missing and then his car was found near a river. Roy’s body however was discovered just a week later. The main difference was that Roy had been diagnosed with depression, and Ray had no history of it. So was history repeating itself with the Gricar family?
One of the things about unsolved cases is that speculation and theories and misinformation can run rampant as people try to make sense of things.
Some have said that Ray had been complaining of being tired, and exhausted a lot lately, and was encouraged to go see a doctor shortly before he disappeared. Others have stated that he was acting perfectly normal and nothing seemed wrong with him at all in the days and weeks leading up to April 15th.
Weeks turned into months, and there was still no sign of Ray. There was no sign of foul play. His disappearance was a complete mystery.
The Susquehanna River continued to be searched. On July 30th, they finally found something- Ray’s missing laptop. The hard drive had been removed and there was no useful data recovered from the computer. Weeks later, they found the missing hard drive, which had been completely destroyed. They sent the hard drive off to the FBI and the Secret Service for analysis, but nothing could be recovered.
Interestingly, when police had investigated the home computer at Ray and Patty’s house, they found a search history of ‘how to destroy a hard drive’. They also found software in Ray’s office to delete a hard drive.
Patty said this was not suspicious and she knew he had purchased it. He was going to be retiring soon and didn’t want to leave any personal data on his county laptop.
Lots of theories began popping up.
The first being Ray walked away. Ray wouldn’t be the first person to walk away from a stressful life and job and start over — But he was just months away from retiring and had a seemingly happy life. He had also been making plans with his daughter Lara. If he did plan to start a new life, how did he make it happen?
There have been sightings of Ray that have come up since his disappearance. One in Utah made headlines when a man, who did not know his own identity, was picked up by police in Utah. He claimed he didn’t know who he was, and when his mug shot was released, instantly people thought of Ray Gricar. The man’s fingerprints ultimately identified him as Phillip Beavers from New Mexico.
Another sighting took place in Texas. A woman was dining at a Chili’s restaurant when she noticed a man eating alone. She was familiar with the Ray Gricar case and thought the resemblance was uncanny. She struck up a conversation with him, and while she said he was very friendly, she noted he acted strange when she questioned him. She had asked for directions to the zoo, and his response was that he wasn’t from the area. She asked where he was from, and he became fidgety and hesitated before stating Tennessee. She went back to her table and pretended to be taking a photo of her family and instead took the photo of this unknown man. She took the photo to local police who shared the info with the Centre County, PA police. The police showed a photo line up to the waitress also — who picked out Gricar’s photo.
They showed the cell phone photo to Patty, who believed it might be Ray. His daughter Lara however points out that the man in the photo is left handed, and she doesn’t believe it to be him- however- no one disputes the resemblance between the two.
So did Ray just walk off to start a new life?
The next theory was suicide. There are no obvious signs of foul play, and the circumstances mirroring his brother Roy’s suicide can’t be ignored. To be honest, this theory is very possible. However, police have searched the Susquehanna River over and over. The river was notably low at the time of Ray’s disappearance and the levels can vary greatly, meaning most of the time the body would have surfaced or been discovered by now. It is hard to explain actually, why it hasn’t been discovered. Most people claim to have seen no signs of Ray being unhappy- in fact, most say the complete opposite. He was very happy with Patty and very excited about his upcoming retirement.
So did Ray commit suicide and his body has just evaded searchers all these years?
The third theory: Murder. This one is harder to justify without any real clues, but Ray Gricar was a district attorney. He put many- many- people behind bars and certainly would have no shortage of enemies.
A lot of people bring up the Jerry Sandusky case. Did that play a role? Did a disgruntled victim come after Ray? Or did Ray know more than he should? Ray disappeared 7 years after refusing to charge Sandusky- and Sandusky would go on to be charged in 2011- not until 6 years after Ray would vanish.
In the last year, a new piece of evidence would come up. An informant would come forward to say that he knew what happened to Ray Gricar and would tell quite a story.
Apparently Ray was working on a drug ring case in early 2005. This is partially verified- there was indeed a case going on, but Ray’s level of involvement was unknown. This man said while he was incarcerated, his cellmate would tell him that he and another man were contracted to kidnap and kill Ray.
He said a woman lured Ray to a hotel, where they broke his neck and then put his body in the trunk of their car and would dispose of his body out of the area.
It’s always hard to confirm a jailhouse story, but it can’t be ignored either, and it certainly seems possible. This might explain why no body has been discovered, why his computer was destroyed and who the cigarette ashes might belong to. It might also explain the unknown woman seen at the antique mall possibly with Ray.
Another talked about theory, although lesser so, is that Ray is in the witness protection program. It is possible, but the whole idea of the program is to keep people protected and their whereabouts unknown, so we can never verify this one, only disprove it if one of the other theories proves true.
There are a few details that stick out with this case. Did he plan to take this day off on purpose? Why? Was he meeting someone- or did he find harm at the hands of a stranger? Or- did he drive to the river that day intending to take his own life?
The cigarette butts and ashes are also baffling. Generally someone who hates smoking — even just the smell- isn’t going to pick up a cigarette and have a smoke. Unless, he was planning on suicide and figured why not? The fact that these ashes and the cigarette butts were all found on the passenger side though does make people wonder.
There is also the issue of the laptop. What was on the laptop that it needed destroyed so bad? If Ray destroyed it, what was he hiding? It seems a dramatic way to just go about deleting some personal info off a laptop? Or, did someone else destroy it?
What do you think happened to Ray Gricar?
Ray Gricar was 59 years old, 6’0 tall and weighed 172 pounds at the time of his disappearance. He had graying hair and green eyes. If you have any information as the whereabouts of Ray Gricar- or any information at all pertaining to this case, please call the Bellefonte Police Department at 814–353–2320.
