Ray Gricar

Case background and investigation

Ray Frank Gricar had served as the district attorney of Centre County, Pennsylvania, for two decades and had announced he would not seek re-election. On April 15, 2005, the 59-year-old took a day off work and told his longtime girlfriend, Patty Fornicola, that he was going for a drive. Around 11:30 a.m. he called her and said he was traveling on Route 192 toward Lewisburg. He never returned home, and she reported him missing that night.

The following day, Gricar's red Mini Cooper was found abandoned in a parking lot near the Susquehanna River on the outskirts of Lewisburg, about 45 miles from his Bellefonte home. His cell phone was left inside the car, but his keys and county-issued laptop were missing. There was no sign of a struggle.

In late July 2005, fishermen recovered the county-issued laptop from the Susquehanna River, wedged near a bridge support several hundred yards from where the car had been found. Months later, the computer's hard drive was located on the riverbank, but it was so badly damaged that investigators could not recover any usable data from it. Authorities later learned that internet searches on topics such as how to destroy a hard drive had been made on Gricar's home computer in the period before he vanished, a detail that deepened the mystery. There has been no activity on his cell phone, email, bank accounts, or credit cards in the years since.

Investigators developed several theories about what happened. One is suicide; Gricar's brother had died in an apparent suicide in a river years earlier, a parallel that authorities noted. Another is that Gricar deliberately 'walked away' to start a new, anonymous life, an idea supported by his announced retirement and lack of enemies. A third possibility is foul play, though police have said no threats had been made against him and they did not believe his disappearance was connected to his work as a prosecutor. None of these theories has been confirmed.

Ray Gricar was declared legally dead in July 2011. Pennsylvania State Police describe the investigation as ongoing and active, and in recent years they have renewed public appeals and offered a reward of several thousand dollars for information that could resolve the case. Despite periodic reported sightings and extensive coverage, no trace of Gricar has ever been confirmed. More than two decades after he drove away from Bellefonte, the disappearance of the Centre County district attorney remains one of Pennsylvania's most enduring and puzzling unsolved cases.