The Vanishing Man /// Part 2 /// 178 | Forensic Files

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a beer let's talk some true crime [Music] this was a case that you wrote about yeah I I actually wrote about this case
when I was still a crime reporter I was working at the free times up in Cleveland in 2006 about a year after he
disappeared how much time did you spend looking into raise case um I I'd say it was a good month to six
weeks kind of learning the ins and outs of of the Greek our disappearance and you know we only had we only had a
little bit of information at the time uh because it was only about a year after he disappeared but it was already it
struck me as a mystery that was going to last it was very weird in the same way that more Murray's case kind of stuck
out for me because just like Maura Murray here we have somebody who disappeared there's no evidence of a crime
and it the clues can take you any way you want to go you've got possible suicide you've got motive for murder was
it a murder did he walk away to start a new life somewhere there's evidence for that too and beyond that
there's like uh there's like a a sparkle of the Paranormal in this one too that suggests some sort of connection to of
all things and I know how crazy this is oh here we go time travel okay um and and I want to get into it James
has lost his mind I've just lost all credibility but but stick around you'll like there's there's some neat things
that that uh about Greek are and and this idea of time I'm not saying he he was uh time traveler I'm saying he he might
have disappeared in a way that would lead people to believe that anyways we'll get right okay
um so yeah you have the you've set up the case well the the particulars of the case
um but you know I I guess we could go you know in order of you know possibilities here you know
look at suicide I and I kind of don't think it's you know I I don't think it's suicide but to support that you've got
the fact that his brother Roy disappeared in 1996. and his body was found in the river
and then you look at regrikar and his Mini Cooper was found by the river and that's where he disappeared
they eventually found his computer and hard drive in the river the some fishermen fished up the hard drive or
some fishermen fished up the laptop and then about a month later a woman finds the hard drive so but then they never
found Ray's body and if you're going to jump into a river if you're going to walk into a river you know do the was it
Virginia wool for uh you know weigh your pockets down with the rocks and walk in
the body's gonna turn up it's really hard to get rid of a body by committing suicide by jumping into a river it'll
it'll float it'll show up it'll you know we found the laptop we found the hard drive but no Ray so right so it almost
leads the the evidence that he did jump in because you found those other items but again yeah if he did where's the
where's the body there to support that theory you know you've got you know some people look at at how he was looking to
retire and you know didn't really know what to do with himself and uh you know was looking at that and kind of
depressed and you know he had his his job was his life more so than any of the women because he'd been married twice
and divorced twice and he was saying this this co-worker there so um when you see that a lot with men is
their their work is their identity once they lose their work they lose their identity and they don't know what to do
with themselves so you're so the theory is that oh I'm going to retire and I'm I'm
nobody anymore so I'll just end it but another thing about the the suicide theory is that he had this daughter
Laura and and by all accounts you know he loved her very much and and they were close when she was growing up in fact he
was kind of when they moved there his wife had the job and he was stay-at-home dad
now it's it's interesting to note that Laura is is adopted um it's not his biological daughter and
I've never really figured out the the backstory to that like how that adoption process worked was it
did they adopt from somebody that they knew or did they go through the typical adoption process and it was you know
um so that that's something I'd really like to know about but if it was suicide Rey didn't really set things up to take
care of Laura and his absence this is one of the more interesting things about Rey in my opinion he was the D.A of
Center County Penn State you know is his jurisdiction but when he died he there's almost no
money in his his accounts um his bank account has hardly any money in it there's he he never bought
anything in his name the car was in his girlfriend's name he had no assets so where's all that money that he was
making did he really spend it all did he not budget well or or did he have some sort of separate
account you know the police looked at the suicide Theory and thought maybe he had been contemplating suicide for a
while because the day before his disappearance he was seen in another body of water
near this Reservoir and he seemed to be like walking around and kind of contemplating life the witnesses said
and you know he was he thinking about his brother and reminiscing about that and wondering about that so you know
there's that possibility of suicide um just like the more case though there are a lot of rabbit holes that you could
go down because there are clues that don't seem to make much sense uh you go back to the Mini Cooper there was some
cigarette Ash found inside the car he was vehemently against smoking he didn't smoke himself it smelled of smoke when
the detectives opened the car as if somebody had just been smoking before shutting it up and his cell phone was in
there so who was smoking in that car right um there was a witness uh at this antique like Mall antique store where
the Mini Cooper was found it was found in this parking lot Ray was seen there with an unidentified woman
um beautiful you know attractive woman so who was that you know what does she have to do with with this whole thing he
was very much a charmer you know he very private person on one on one hand very private but
was also very flirtatious with with women and it was known you know at the local Diner to you know pick favorite
waitresses and always you know flirt with them and um you know always be you know with with
his other wives there was always you know these rumors of infidelity and you know hanging out with women and so did
that have something to do with his disappearance was that on his mind uh or did he have a
a side piece right that was thou breaking it off or who was married yeah or who was breaking it off yeah or or
maybe he was not telling some of these ladies that he was married and had a kid and you know I mean like yeah well he
wasn't married at the time of his disappearance okay he was he had a he had this girlfriend that was they were
living together they were very you know of course right but still the he could have been telling you know the girls
that he meets all while I'm single right and I don't have anybody in my life and
blah blah and then once the you know the side piece then finds out he does have a
life they're like well I'm gonna tell on you right because that happens often whoever this was hasn't come out you
know since The Disappearance then you look at the case for murder and you know there are a lot of times I kind of lean
this way because there's definitely motive for murder and but at the time in 2006 when I reported on this it seemed
very unlikely like who would have had the who would have had the balls kill a D.A in Center County well you know five
years later after my article came out Jerry Sandusky is arrested and charged with all these counts of you know
molesting boys at Penn State and then it comes out that the prosecutor in charge of Center
County who was Ray greekar knew about this in 1998 yeah he had investigated it for he had investigated for some time
having spoken to one of the victims right however they had no evidence to pursue the charges
other than this boy's statement the boy's statement and they actually got Sandusky to come in and and they like
taped this interview where it was this weird thing that Rey had set up where he got the boy in the same room as Sandusky
just to see like what Sandusky would say or his body language and there was an expert there that told that told Greek
or he's like look this guy you know without a doubt this guy's a pedophile and you know he could have
charged Sandusky at that time and saved you know maybe further victimization or whatever
but if if anybody really runs Center County Penn State at that time it's Joe Paterno right right
um this revered you know coach and you know his reputation as we saw was destroyed along with sandusky's uh the
question is you know how much he knew and for how long was it Rey's ultimate decision to not prosecute Sandusky was
it was it somebody else was it Paterno was it was it pressure from somewhere you know was this something that that
Greek are always felt guilty about and I wonder if you know he was looking at retiring in December
of 2005 he disappeared in April was he thinking about opening that case opening that can of worms before he
retired so that he would have a clear conscience and be able to go on um was he reopening that and did he you
know did he meet with Paterno did he meet with Sandusky or or somebody else that was you know wrapped up in all this
and was it that person was he trying to keep it kind of off the Record until he had more those people certainly had a
motive to get rid of Ray greekar I think it was similar to like Spotlight too I mean with the idea of well we don't want
to go after you know the Catholic church because of how big they are right and I would and
we could argue that college football at Penn State is possibly bigger yeah than Church oh for sure for some people it is
church you know um absolutely and I think they're they're they might be wrapped up in
there somewhere yeah there's another possibility here one of the reasons um green card didn't prosecute Sandusky was
some sort of culpability um you know there there were some weird internet searches
um on Greek Carr's computer before he disappeared and the one of the police officers who was investigating the case
suggested to me that um some of the searches had to do with um you know being on the down low you
know was there some sort of you know sexual promiscuity you know something weird going on there I tend to not not
really buy into that because it by all appearances it seems that you know Rey was really really into women you know so
meaning that the searches he was looking up were you know possibly that he'd let
um a gay lifestyle outside of the public eye some of the police wondered if he wasn't cruising these parks for men
okay um because he was seen at these Parks you know right before he disappeared and
they were some of the places he was seen were known you know cruising spots at the time right and but maybe possibly
the you know if I if I act like a ladies man sure then that you know and I'm I'm
kind of flamboyant about that well that I think flamboyant might not have been the right choice awards but if
I'm you know outwardly man I love women then that's a pretty easy cover-up for my alternative lifestyle I I don't
know how much I I buy into that um or how much you know evidence there really is to that and and that still
doesn't explain where the body is you know if if it does turn out to be murder uh I believe that would also possibly
be a reason for suicide somebody that has lived such a long life and they feel for whatever reason then they can't you
know live their live a life where they can be true to themselves right and he like without a doubt in my mind Greek
Carr is the one that wrecked his computer and hard drive so what was on the computer and hard drive that
needed to be destroyed right somebody in greekar's home that he was sharing of Patty fornicola some and this is
probably Rey himself uh was searching was Googling you know how to destroy a hard drive uh how water
destroys hard drives so he had this plan when he went there to destroy this hard
drive what was on there was it something to be murdered for was it something he was
going to be shamed for and he committed suicide was it plans to run away was it his you know bank accounts and uh the
the things he had set in motion to walk away and as more time goes by I find myself just like in Maura
Murray's case I'm leaning to this idea that he that he planned to start a new life and
well but possibly again because if you're leading this other lifestyle that maybe you can't come out
as yourself sure but the idea that well I can start a new life start a new name and I don't have to worry about being
shamed at all right because I'm just this new person any person but again it's one of those piece of evidence that
like can lean either way right but have we had anybody that has come out in the last
about 10 years or so that has said that they've had a romantic relationship with
them as as like a man saying that not that I not that I know not that I know and that's and that's why I think that
that that might be not actually what was going on right I mean he certainly had characteristics
that would seem a little you know effeminate or or prissy you know he's a very clean meticulous type of person but
I think that was just his you know kind of slightly on the autism spectrum you know ocd-ness that was Ray I want to
talk a little bit more about the like the theories that back up the walk away like why he like he's about to turn 60.
he's going to retire why then why is he retiring then well it seems to me like they're not
retiring but why would he walk away at that point right because that seems like the least right likely time to walk away
he's going to get a retirement he's going to get a pension for this job that he's done forever
um it's he had plans to travel um these don't point to anything any reasons to walk away unless he was a spy
for Slovenia [Laughter] which out of context sounds ridiculously silly but let me break it
down okay and this now pulls into question whether or not his brother's suicide was in fact a suicide right um
after keep in mind that Greek art disappears he's making good money but nobody can find any accounting of that
money right he's got no assets in his name um a couple years ago uh Deadspin uh one of their reporters puts in a
public records request for the FBI file and CIA file of great Greek car and it comes back redacted for national
security reasons and the CIA is involved in says you can't we can't release certain bits of information related to
regret's disappearance now what is in the world is the CIA doing involved in rate greeker's disappearance and this
disappearance of this uh this um D.A well right there is a really good sighting of Rey
after his disappearance in Southfield Michigan this is so cool because the person who
who spotted greekar was a retired police detective who did when he was working for the police did composite sketches
okay so this is the guy you go to this is the eyewitness you want this is the best eyewitness ever and he says he
definitely saw Ray Greek or after he disappeared in Southfield Michigan now what's important about Southfield
Michigan it's nothing I don't give a [ __ ] about Michigan Right nothing's up there except for the
Macedonian consulate and if you're on if you're laying low and you want to leave the country and get a visa
to Slovenia you would go through the Macedonian that would be the closest place that Ray Greek art could get to go
through there and he has citizenship his um I think grandfather or something his
ancestors came from Slovenia um so he could apply for a Visa and get taken over there and everything would be
kosher that's how he could escape the United States under under radar the FBI file also shows that Greek art took two
trips to Yugoslavia which is now part of Slovenia he took two trips to Yugoslavia
during the Cold War in 1973 and 1984. for the FBI these are red flags why is this young man in 1973
traveling to Yugoslavia into the Soviet Union well but it is it is his motherland it's his yes right but does
he I I don't know that he would have any living relatives there maybe they would
be distant but that doesn't really matter right but let's consider he was turned
at that point he and his brother turned to uh to protect the motherland to gather information
um to be a sleeper agent essentially what better job would there be Than You Know A District
Attorney uh in Pennsylvania which is near shoot Center county is is very close to another uh there's this
very famous case of this directly north there's another County in Pennsylvania north of Center County very
famous case where this government official was turned out to be very corrupt and was
laundering money through the government system and disappeared he ends up in Slovenia with all these foreign
connections so I'm not saying this is exactly what happened but if Greek Carr and his brother were
involved in Espionage it would explain the FBI's presence the cia's presence it would explain possibly the brother's
suicide that wasn't actually a suicide maybe it was murder and it would explain why Greek art decides to disappear then
because he's finished his mission he's finished his uh his his duty which is to work in government in America and to do
what he can for the the Homeland now he gets to go home right you know but in order to go home he has to burn his old
id you know he's got the Burn Notice um yeah but also too I mean it could be you have this
um talented smart prosecutor and it could be not working for his motherland it could be working for the United States
as well right you could take it the other way right yeah and that's why I would visit in 73 and then 84 and then
well we're going to have to have you go missing here so then exactly when you go
back home you're a new person was he one of our spies yeah and you think you know
and that sounds crazy too but people have to understand like the the FBI and the CIA they recruit people
well they they gotta re depending on what the mission is they're going to recruit somebody in their 20s or 30s 40s
50s and so on and you know he's already working in the system you know and somebody like that
might go well this is a prestigious move up you know right um right they could set up the secret
accounts for him the Swiss bank accounts that he must have had you know to funnel
his money we'll take care of all the stuff and then when it when it comes out that you're
um you're you're missing I mean we're going to be investigating this but you know you've worked the mara murder case
for so long to get the FBI or the CIA involved in the missing person cases really hard to do oh yeah and you got
both of them in this case which is fascinating foreign [Music] [Music] we're back cheers mates Nick is in
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conversation that we had with James Renner about the vanishing Man Ray green car
foreign travel as I was in investigating his disappearance back in 2006. somebody
directed me I was directed to this book this obscure sci-fi book called 2020 Vision written by Pamela West
in the 80s and I it was hard to track down a copy I think it's out of print but I was able
to get one through Amazon and I picked it up and at first glance you're like what does this have to do
with Ray greeker and you read the book and it's about this detective who had this one case he could never solve near
Penn State and he ends up growing old and in some ways this this has shades of Primrose
Lane in it and uh grows old and then uses uh time travel in order to go back and save this woman
from being killed like Quantum Leap kind of like Quantum Leap yeah right and the
interesting thing about it is the date that this guy disappears in the book is April 15th
and there are Clues like a little bit of cigarette Ash found inside his vehicle and he didn't smoke and his car was
found by a river and every you realize that everything from this sci-fi book about time travel this guy that
disappears inside the book matches up with everything about Rey's disappearance even the date and you
would think this is total coincidence Until you realize and find out that Ray greekar was the consultant on the book
2020 Vision right and Pamela West was a journalist professor at Penn State and she's writing under a pen name and
for a while I wondered if Ray greekar wasn't in fact but he's not she really does exist
and what she wanted to do was she wanted to write a true crime book called about the Betsy ardsma case right
which is a famous unsolved case out of Penn State have you guys done that one yet no but was that the girl that was
killed in the library yes her body stabbed yeah her body was found in the stacks and this was like back in 69 that
her body was found in the stacks in the library at Penn State and when they found her body they couldn't figure out
how she died she was just dead on the floor and what they found later was she was stabbed once directly through the
chest into her heart um and it was a clean cut in out and she bled inside so there's no blood outside
of her body and she dropped dead like that to this day that case remains unsolved now Pamela West
thought she knew who did it and she wanted to write a book explaining who did it and all of her evidence for it
and she went to Greek our asking help you know how do I do this without getting sued he said well
let me put all the details in there and just make it fictitious you know add some sci-fi to it and that way you get
you get you know what you've done all this research can go to something but you know you're you're not going to be
able to name the person you think did it so was this if if Greek are is going to
walk away you know was he doing it in some sort of funny you know was he having a little
fun with it oh he's leaving a clue right like I helped with this book one of the big things was that this guy
has to go missing her back in time right and and what happened in the book okay well I need to go missing I'm just going
to do that yeah and somebody's gonna get the reference it might take him a while
right right so I hope that that's what happened and he was having a little fun with his
disappearance it seems too much of a coincidence to me yeah the exact date the fact that Greek her was the
consultant on the cigarette the cigarette Ash everything matches those are that that's tiny details if it was
just guy went back in time and here's the date and then he went missing I'd go well there's that's one right and but
once you get those little small right details isn't that weird yeah the the other thought that people have had along
those lines is you know was he close to did he want to go after Betsy Arts Max killer before he retired and did he try
to meet with Betsy ardsmith's killer there and there was a scuffle and he was murdered and but then again
and you still don't have a body so um boy and it doesn't explain the the hard drive and the computer and the
lake because exactly well maybe you could clear up a few um things since you did speak with the
investigator yeah sure um there was there was rumor from his co-workers and his girlfriend that he was may have been
suffering from depression that he was acting strange that an out of character that week leading up to his
disappearance uh one thing that keeps coming up as a question mark amongst a lot of people is
his his day his morning before he disappeared was he did he leave work early did he
not go into work at all that day I've seen it reported both ways from what I've heard he you know so he disappears
on it's a Friday Friday April 15th and from what I understand he was at work the day before
um but then he called off he was playing hooky you know he was supposed to be in
a work but and nobody thought that that was too weird because he was you know getting ready for retirement and he
would often take these days where he'd just drive into the country and go antiquing you know
um where he was possibly meeting up with this other woman who knows but anyways it wasn't that out of character
what was odd is so he calls off on that that Friday one of his co-workers also prosecutor swears 100 swears he saw
Greek Carr there that day in somebody in the passengers seat of somebody else's car and he had
come in it looked like he'd come in and maybe forgot something and was you know but he was pulling out of the
prosecutor's office in the passenger seat of somebody else's car and he made note of it because he's like
what you know he's not supposed to be in today he's here he's in who's driving the car so what's he doing back at at
the office that day but there's no record of him actually going into the office not that we've not
that we've found no huh he was oh I forgot to mention this Greek Carr was also obsessed with an
Ohio case uh unsolved case um that he mentioned to a number of co-workers in the weeks leading up to
and the months leading up to his disappearance and that's the unsolved disappearance of Mel Wiley Mel was the
chief of police in I want to say bath but I'm not entirely sure it was near bath Ohio and this was in the 70s or 80s
I believe but he disappeared one day and they found his shoes and clothes and uh
his wallet tucked into his shoes on Edgewater Beach up in Cleveland and they're like wow he must have drowned
out there but they never found a body and then they went back and went to his typewriter and were able to extract like
all the letters that he had written and very obviously this guy had planned for his disappearance and was you know
going off to California but he did it in a way he was never found again and he was working in government and he had
this top position and this guy just up and disappeared started a new life and Greek Carr knew about it and was kind of
weirdly obsessed about it and had mentioned that case to a couple people so it was on his mind yeah or again
maybe leaving little bread crumbs right right like I can't tell you where I'm going
but when I disappear I'm gonna be okay yeah I think might have been what he was telling people it was very strange with
the lack of money in the bank that to me says volumes it says that there's an account out there we don't
know about he didn't seem to be living a frivolous lifestyle yeah he wasn't like
no extravagant living he didn't have his own house he was living with his his girlfriend
um if he was broke he could have attempted to get reelected and keep his position exactly yeah for another four
years right right he wasn't broke we just don't know where his money is yeah he's probably at least making six
figures you would think so Penn State yeah yeah so he calls off there is an eyewitness that says that they believe
they saw him at work in the parking lot that clears up the discrepancy of did he
actually go into work and just do a half day and leave as far as his vehicle goes
we should probably set this up a little bit because he had a Mini Cooper red Mini Cooper yeah and this wasn't just
like oh go out and buy a um fuel efficient car to get you to and from work he was a driver yeah he liked
to take long drives he seemed to be particular about his vehicle yeah um the vehicle that was in his
girlfriend's name yeah it was his which is weird and so that makes the that makes the cigarette ashes even more
strange because it he doesn't we don't see any signs that he would have allowed somebody to smoke in his
car right just kind of willy-nilly it seemed like something that he that he wouldn't
let happen absolutely unless it's his last last time in that car you know I I picture what I picture is his sexy CIA
Handler you know coming in and you know they they sit in the car for a minute and
then he and she's like you know got the cigarette in her mouth and she's like well Ray it's been a trip
take one last look at Happy Valley before we get to before I take you back to Slovenia right
um and then they get into a waiting black sedan and you know drive off into the sunset
so his his uh laptop that's later found it's a county issued right laptop and that's why I brought up the whole thing
of whether he was at work that day or not because a lot of people have questioned well if he called off and
didn't go into work How likely would it be that he would have had that computer with him at the
time of his disappearance right I think I from what I understand it was a it was
issued through work but it was a laptop that he could take home and do his work there
so I you know I don't I don't put too much into that um I wouldn't look too hard into that
for Clues his cell phones found in his vehicle uh his keys wallet never found oh that's right yeah right and is the
vehicle locked I can't remember but I think it's locked the vehicle's locked no keys and the cell phones in the car
but turned off that sounds right yeah and this is a county issued cell phone as well I think
you know again like I don't want to get tracked so I'm leaving this cell phone here I've got my
burner on Me Maybe um or if he was murdered you know nobody else wants that bit of evidence being
able to tie them to it later so again you've got these clues that can lead you both ways I tend to lead more
towards you know these these all seem like clues that he himself was responsible for I'd
love to see what was on that laptop they've never been able even though they recovered the hard drive they've never
been able to extract any data out of it because it was in the river so long yeah
and if anybody's going to be able to it would have been the CIA or right FBI they had a a group that works with NASA
examine the the hard drive and they weren't able to pull anything out of it yeah it was it's interesting to me
because like like you said the connection with the book The Connection to this Ohio case it seems like
he had some interest in starting over it does you know and if none of that were to happen you know it would look more it
really would look more like a a murder you know abduction well the tough thing about you know when they're like well we
think the body went in the river I mean yeah suicide or murder you would expect that at some point you'd find the body
right there is always that possibility that you sure that we're getting stuff random case that they just don't treat
right you know and getting to the abduction you know Murder thing that's very unlikely with a 60 year old man too
unless it's like I mean if he was if we're talking abduction from the scene and murder
it would suggest organized crime to some extent possibly and well then if it's then you gotta look into his brother's
death as well exactly right yeah you know because maybe that was not a suicide and then it's how now how are
these murders connected right well maybe not though his brother's not a district
attorney a district attorney can create a lot of enemies that's true yeah yeah especially over a 20-year
time frame yeah definitely but what was his brother involved in because yeah I mean because sometimes you it's like
maybe his brother was I I don't know much about his brother at all but I'm just saying if you wanted to start
speculating and going down that rabbit hole it's like was this you know yeah I'm this uh prosecutor and I'm doing
well for myself but this guy's struggling so maybe I know some people that can help him out or maybe he's just
a bad seed right the the brother too could just be a legitimate suicide right although you know suicides very rarely
just walk into a river yeah that's very determined you know there are better ways to kill yourself
especially for men men are usually gun you know to the mouth uh more violent you know they don't
usually walk into a river to drown themselves well his his brother you know in the
river kills himself vehicle found near a bridge yep Rey disappears his items are found in or on the banks
of the river yep and his Vehicles found near a bridge yep if he disappeared he wanted a you
know that clearly that would have been on his mind you know is he does he want us to think
about that is is he trying to suggest that it was suicide really walk away uh you know the more I think about this
case as weird as it sounds I lean towards the Spy theory that he was either one of us or you know spying
for them and I'd love to go I'd love to go to Slovenia and just try to look around for a while
well he would be how old now oh shoot he'd be 70 but the thing here is here's what I
question about him walking away or being a spy and choosing that okay now it's time for me to go
isn't it an extreme poor taste to leave your vehicle in the same situation that your brothers vehicle was found in when
you have a daughter I don't care adopted or not you have a nephew uh that was the
son of his brother uh you do have some family that lived through an experience where a relative went missing vehicle
found near a bridge he's missing for about a week until they figure out that he's in the river and then they
ultimately rule at a suicide so now I'm planning my disappearance I'm planning to walk away
I'm gonna in the poorest of taste leave my vehicle next to a bridge in in my items in the
river that's a really good that's a really good point I hadn't thought about before that would be kind of a a mean
thing to do for your for your who who you you know assume would be his loved ones
um but let me ask you this like let's say he was a spy and it was time to go back home to the motherland how would
you do it without telling everybody you're a spy how would you disappear me I would
personally I think that walking away is is rude and bad enough on its own wow but I kind of wish you would want but
but what I'm saying is you can attempt to do it without a trace but but you you could leave the vehicle you know you
could drive the vehicle off into the woods somewhere yeah but you could leave the vehicle at your house and it
actually then becomes even more of a mystery because it's like so he disappeared from his house and put his
car's here and maybe he was doing them a favor by by not leaving it at the house
so the investigators wouldn't look at the people that lived there to make them suspects okay so he drives it out there
and he's got his brother in mind yeah I just don't know that if if that's your if that's who you are if that's your
identity and you you have to do this one way or another is there is there a decent way to do it
that's true and now you know I didn't even think about that until we started talking but
yeah of course if he's doing that he's gonna make sure that he doesn't disappear from home because he doesn't
want his loved ones to be us don't implicate Patty in anything that she was unaware of yeah so yeah it's that weird
piece of evidence where it goes back and forth because in one in one sense it's like well this is really bad taste right
but in the other sense it basically leads you to believe that yeah you know because of his brother and
because of everything going on in retirement that he was so depressed that he took his own life you know and also
he he does it during the day when he knows his girlfriend's at work and has witnesses that put her at work so he's
furthering right like but doing damage control for her well yeah damage control there but also almost damage control for
the family where it's like yeah they've been through that before and that was traumatic yeah but it's almost
understandable right right you know the second time it's like well he was depressed and his brother and maybe this
was his way of being with his brother right you know I think we've solved it here I think he's
I don't like the other woman Theory no not at all and I'll tell you why we're not talking about a guy that had
been married for 30 years right had 14 children with the same woman right he's been divorced twice
uh he's coming up on a retirement where he's going to receive a decent retirement that he's earned he's worked
a lot of years to earn it right I just don't in the relationship with Patty obviously I don't know the ins and outs
of it but they weren't married right they shared a place together I I don't I can't get into the other
woman Theory because I think there's it would be very easy for him to just end the relationship with Patty
and and start this new relationship or bring this going on relationship to light exactly and continue his life
and retire and you know set up a life with the new woman rather than this whole walking away unless unless that woman
was his Handler you know um or how about this um this this is another weird detail
about this case so this other woman that he was seen with people recognized her as like to a person like the the one of
the people that saw him with her said yeah and it wasn't just some beautiful woman it was this specific beautiful
woman who's a journalist slash TV I think she was involved in TV um like news up there too okay so the
police are like wow okay we gotta find her and they went to find her she had also called off work that day
and she she they tracked her she was like and I think if I'm getting this right Upstate New York but she had like
traveled out of the city right and so they track her down and I think she was at like a wedding of uh of a family
member or something she had a pretty good excuse but how weird is that that like the person that this per that the
witnesses sure was with Ray also called off that day it's just a bad coincidence for her
or is there more to that you know how thorough do you think that they tried to track him the authorities because I mean
there's no crime committed here but we're also talking about an active district attorney goes missing right
they're going to try to track this guy it's not like well that's another weird part of this too because the FBI didn't
take over the case right away um it should have been a state case it should have been state troopers it
should have been the Attorney General office involved but everybody kind of stepped back and they're like okay let
let the State College Police take this over and we're talking about a department that had like three police
officers they weren't prepared to look for a missing district attorney but all the bigger agencies are like no let them
handle it is that because the the bigger agencies had access to the information that Greek art was a spy and that we
knew he was disappearing and you know let him go that's weird like they it's should have been a bigger case but it
was left to the smallest Department that could have been involved well yeah it's
left to it at first but then everybody else then comes in but maybe they all come in to go see what we tried maybe
yeah it looks like that at some point but um the FBI weren't really ever involved
with the hunt for it as far as we can tell the state becomes involved in it eventually and they seem to step in and
do their own investigation but at every turn the AG seems to like kind of scuttle it you know or just weirdly
silent about it or uh yeah it's just there's a lot of weirdness surrounding why the the people put in charge where this
this very small Police Department so what do you think you got a hunch I have no hunch I just I personally I just see
a lot of reasons to not walk away that's what I keep coming back to I was unaware
about the bank account thing right because in in this is kind of a vague broad statement but when you look into
this case you know they say well they checked his bank accounts they checked his credit cards they checked his phone
records and there was found no clues right and that's kind of all they leave you with so you assume when I read that
statement I assume well all is well you know uh they found no clues well no bank
account that's a that's a clue it's a clue yeah I think what what you got to go back to exactly how they worded at
newspaper accounts too because they're very careful with the semantics of that but they're like
um you know we yeah we looked into his accounts but we found no uh you know something like no evidence there to
suggest or whatever but um the fact yeah exactly right the fact that there is no money in there right
should tell you something that's a big thing yeah but what does that point to because as because that can point to
Suicide pretty easily here's this guy that exactly didn't save anything you know worked a bunch of years but nothing
to show for it his car's not even in his own name and so he just I'm walking away
this is a guy who's very meticulous in every other part of his life I would think he would be very meticulous about
his financial situation there yeah so is it just the the fact that there's no money
I mean there has to be some transactions on those accounts he I think there were some I don't know how
much but we're talking about I mean I think it's like 100 a couple hundreds of dollars in like uh you know an account
that was left when he disappeared and no assets by the way everything else was in
everybody else's name like like his girlfriends or his wife's name he never had assets so we have a successful D.A
who disappears and then when you look into his financial background if you didn't know his job
or the the length of his career you would assume you're looking at some 27 year old dude that's living paycheck
to paycheck right no not even that because the the transaction history wasn't that in-depth though right right
so it's almost like you're looking at a 15 year old kid that has a savings account with its father's name on it and
he only puts money in it when he has a birthday or right or Christmas huh yeah I mean like right coming out that's what
I used to do I was a banker so now a lot of people on that level would have their
own personal banker would have a portfolio sure especially you know prosecutors you know cops right
like stocks and bonds yeah and building up for retirement that can go away pretty quickly
and that could be a motive right because that would be the other motive too is like well what if he did have all this
money and he was divorced twice well I I would want to know how he was cashing his checks that would be a big
question for me how is he cashing his checks because let's just say there would be a motive you know a lot of
people would go well you need to put your money in the bank as a banker for a long time and we had a bunch of really
rich um you know retired you know the guys in their 70s and 80s that um they had
really small accounts low activity but they came into the bank every week and I I know they were just stockpiling
their money at their house you know really in a safe or whatever because they didn't trust because of the the
depression and sure stuff like that they didn't trust the banks now I'm not saying he didn't trust the
banks because of the depression but why would you trust the banks or have any assets when your last possibly with
your last two divorces and that would be public record of what they got in the divorce sure so if he got you know taken
to the cleaners twice then it's like well I'm going to take all my money and put it on a
and the mattress and I say for something but that would also become another reason for motive if one of his friends
or somebody found out hey you know this guy doesn't put any money in the bank right right and he doesn't have all
these assets and he had took all his money he just hides in the way Greek Harris got like a hundred thousand in
cash sitting in his house yeah yeah that'd be a motive it doesn't explain the computer though no well but the
computer's not as weird as the search is yeah the Google searches of how to you know destroy the hard drive
the police wondered if he had a journal on the computer that he was a personal Journal that he was keeping yeah
or you know he's district attorney is that where he kept all the dirt he had on everybody else and and
somebody's getting real scared because he's up for retirement is he gonna transfer that dirt file over to the next
prosecutor right um and again we're going around in in oh what was that movie um Chad gerhover yeah where he every
time there was a new person in his like whole mission was to get the dirt file oh sure and then give it to him and he'd
be like don't worry I got my own copy yeah I mean so it's like right right maybe he had some of those dirt files
and somebody the weird thing too about the search is would they be able to know when those
searches happened like was it you know that day I don't know because if it's that day it
could really be in the murderer's hands yeah they don't go ahead I'm sorry right I think oh the
the the you know the search is from home where he's like how to destroy a hard drive right I think that was from the
night before I think I think I've read that that that happened okay so those searches were actually going from his
home computer and not the person that computer that he shared with his girlfriend right it's neat to travel
down there too then they called Happy Valley it's beautiful I mean yeah just a just a beautiful drive and uh I always
picture him you know jetting through the valley and you know looking for these antique stores and
you know maybe going it would be an excellent place to do the you know the Spy drops you know at a park you know
put it underneath the park bench and take off and your handler comes and I I I hope he's in Slovenia just you
know eating some fish and whatever they do in Slovenian and he's listening to this show right
now going they're still talking about me if you could time travel you you brought it up
so here we go if you could time travel back to a decade do you have does one pop
immediately into mine oh for sure I definitely without a doubt go back to the 60s you know if pre pre-hiv free
love free drugs uh that sounds like a very fun time how about you um oddly enough oddly enough I would pick
the 60s as well all right for different reasons oh yeah uh yep I mean that was the decade of the assassinations you
know oh sure yeah there's a lot of questions he wants to go back to shoot some people
it's uh similar to um your book The Man on Primrose Lane where he goes back and he's he's aware
of this victim and he believes if he can follow her around long enough that he can intercept the killer or her abductor
and stop the crime from happening it's like like the captain said here uh Quantum Leap yeah yeah I'd love to sit
there like as JFK's coming down the the with the motorcade see if you know anybody really was in that grassy knoll
or peeking over the the fence there's definitely somebody in the grass you know all you have to do is read the it's in
the Warren report a lot of people don't know that in the Warren report they claim that there was possible shots from
the grassy knoll so the government hasn't like fully dismissed this idea I really think what happened that day is
the is somebody contracted three different people and they didn't tell the other ones yeah you know so you had
this and whoever was going to get busted was going to get busted you know yeah uh question for you so now that we're on
the time traveling so we we said what decade right so but what case would you solve oh 100 Amy
malevic you know I'd be I'd be right at the plaza you know at at the end of the day as
she's coming in just to see who comes up to her and uh well then you could stop it
though yeah yeah yeah absolutely yeah but but if you do that I mean now we're in the realm of fiction so you've got
James Renner showing up in 1989 and this guy comes up to Amy Mahal of economy 100
sure I've got the killer right so I Pummel him to death or whatever and uh so then now I'm in prison
foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign

The Vanishing Man /// Part 2 /// 178

Part 2 of 2

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Friday, April 15, 2005 - 59 year old Ray Gricar, the district attorney for Centre County, Pennsylvania called into work. He said he would not be coming into work that day. He let his girlfriend know that he planned to take a drive and do some antique shopping. He never returned home. The next day investigators found his vehicle parked at an antique shop's dirt lot. The car was locked and Ray's cell phone was found inside the car. The scene was eerily familiar to that of Ray's brother's suicide years ago. What happened to Ray Gricar? Had many years as a prosecutor made him one too many enemies? Was Ray's case tied to the Penn State scandal? Or was Ray living a secret life and decided to walk away? Tonight we discuss one of the most fascinating disappearances from the state of Pennsylvania. Beer of the Week - Brawler by Yards Brewing Company Garage Grade - 3 and a half bottle caps out of 5

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Brief Summary

Ray Greekar, a district attorney, vanished in 2005; theories include suicide, murder, and espionage.

Key points

The Mystery of Rey Greekar. Rey Greekar's disappearance raises questions of suicide, murder, and possible time travel.
The Espionage Theory. Could Rey Greekar have been involved in espionage? His trips to Yugoslavia raise eyebrows.
The Mysterious Disappearance. Greek Carr's disappearance raises questions of espionage, suicide, and murder.
The Connection to Sci-Fi. A sci-fi book eerily parallels the details of Ray Greekar's disappearance.
The Day of Disappearance. A district attorney goes missing under mysterious circumstances, raising questions about his life.
Strange Coincidences. Witnesses and key individuals have odd alibis on the day of the disappearance.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This case struck me as a mystery that was going to last.

Reflecting on the enduring nature of the case.

3:30WatchNov 26, 2022

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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