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The disappearance of Ray Gricar (Part 2)


mbrn30000

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Since discussion has died down a bit, I thought I'd spark some discussion with a question. It seems as though all 3 scenarios involve some sort of accomplice. Scent evidence rules out Ray moving directly from the Mini to his final resting place or scenic beach, and even if you believe Ray was never in the Mini, someone else would have had to have staged it there and/or ditched the laptop at some future point in time. My question to everyone else is: Who's the helper?

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Good question Ipshred.....and to add to that whoever this helper or helpers may be what would be their motive? I believe Sloane is in someway involved or a helper, I cannot say how yet or what his motive might be but being Ray's best friend perhaps there was something he was jealous of. And, above all that, he knew everything about Ray. This is why I asked in my last post about this book Sloane has written. There are some words that this " J J in Phila" uses that I have discovered in my research are not very common words, in fact I had to look them up to get their meaning, and it would be interesting to do some comparison with something he has actually written. There's a bit more to my thoughts but I'm still working to get it all down. Additionally, maybe it was SuperSmith (though I could be wrong) that brought up a theory where Ray stumbled upon something extraordinary about his brother and it was something he was not supposed to know.......and for that he was targeted....a sort of government conspiracy. Yes that one is out there I admit, but something about it makes me wonder and ask myself some questions.

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Since discussion has died down a bit, I thought I'd spark some discussion with a question. It seems as though all 3 scenarios involve some sort of accomplice. Scent evidence rules out Ray moving directly from the Mini to his final resting place or scenic beach, and even if you believe Ray was never in the Mini, someone else would have had to have staged it there and/or ditched the laptop at some future point in time. My question to everyone else is: Who's the helper?

in my mind it was his girl friend he was living with, possibly with some help.

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I'm always googling Patty Fornicola just to see if there is anything new on the net. She has totally avoided social media since RG disappeared. But, found her name on a list of customers for a company in State College that does home remodeling.

http://www.vbrinc.com/Clients

And, had an interesting visitor to my googlesite who specifically was searching for keyword "Patty Fornicola" - visitor was from Conegliano Italy on an Alcatel android phone model OT-4033X.

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I'm always googling Patty Fornicola just to see if there is anything new on the net. She has totally avoided social media since RG disappeared. But, found her name on a list of customers for a company in State College that does home remodeling.

http://www.vbrinc.com/Clients

And, had an interesting visitor to my googlesite who specifically was searching for keyword "Patty Fornicola" - visitor was from Conegliano Italy on an Alcatel android phone model OT-4033X.

Well, Fornicola is an Italian name, so it's possible someone was just searching for a relative. However, it's worth noting that Conegliano is 75 miles from the Slovenian border.

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Mrs. PC... can you clarify something for me? Did this user google "Patty Fornicola" and then reach your site from the google results? Or did the user enter the query in the search box on your actual site?

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Mrs. PC... can you clarify something for me? Did this user google "Patty Fornicola" and then reach your site from the google results? Or did the user enter the query in the search box on your actual site?

they googled Patty Fornicola (not directly within my site)

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I recently did some unofficial poking around in this case and there is a lot more to this case than meets the eye. I am even more confused/intrigued than I was before since I got some answers to some questions that were bothering me.

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I recently did some unofficial poking around in this case and there is a lot more to this case than meets the eye. I am even more confused/intrigued than I was before since I got some answers to some questions that were bothering me.

can you share what answers you got?

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I was working on my computer & cleaning up some old email accounts I hadn't used in forever & totally didn't realize I had saved some of my old Gricar case stuff under those old email accounts. Anyway, attached are some of the press releases on the case. I'll post other stuff later.pressreleases.PDF

Edited by MrsPC
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can you share what answers you got?

I like the shot in the pan approach. At least there is no dribble afterwards. ;)
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A blogger/investigator named Brett Faulds who has an alias "Keepthesearchalive" recently traded tweets with Renner (yes that one) and indicated that Gricars "family attorney" (Goodall) leaked legal documents to him that made him conclude that Ray was still alive and that anyone that was privy to these documents would think the same.

He went on with Renner in this exchange to say that a former Department of Defense higher up had contacted him directly to tell him "to back off" the Gricar talk.

This Mr. Faulds was supposed to have released a book on Gricars disappearance among other missing cases. This book is now months late and no word if it will be released now. Faulds did release a page or two from his book but that's it.

Now I don't give this.individual a huge amount of credibility but for discussion sake and assuming he is telling the truth why would a former Dept of Defense employee contact him and tell him to back off? Why would Goodall leak these docs? And why would Goodall lie under oath that he believes Gricar is deceased?

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A blogger/investigator named Brett Faulds who has an alias "Keepthesearchalive" recently traded tweets with Renner (yes that one) and indicated that Gricars "family attorney" (Goodall) leaked legal documents to him that made him conclude that Ray was still alive and that anyone that was privy to these documents would think the same.

He went on with Renner in this exchange to say that a former Department of Defense higher up had contacted him directly to tell him "to back off" the Gricar talk.

This Mr. Faulds was supposed to have released a book on Gricars disappearance among other missing cases. This book is now months late and no word if it will be released now. Faulds did release a page or two from his book but that's it.

Now I don't give this.individual a huge amount of credibility but for discussion sake and assuming he is telling the truth why would a former Dept of Defense employee contact him and tell him to back off? Why would Goodall leak these docs? And why would Goodall lie under oath that he believes Gricar is deceased?

Faulds has jumped to completely inaccurate conclusions in other cases based on faulty premises and pure speculation. See the Jamison family, for example. Despite his rather aprupt and accusatory tone with Tony Gricar, TG tried with reasonably good humor to disabuse Faulds of inaccurate assumptions regarding Ray, yet Faulds chose not to believe TG. (Side bar: reminded me of some of the TG/Blogger Dude exchanges of yore wherein TG would humor BD yet try to show him why his assumptions were wrong.)

Faulds has been crowing for a year or more that he had documents which would prove his Macedonian consulate-government agent disappearance theory, all part of his big publicity tour for the still non-existent book he's promised for a year or more (not that I've waited with bated breath as 1. I give it a very small chance of ever being published as anything more than an e-book and 2. I give it an even smaller chance of containing anything useful to discovering what happened to Ray).

Let's be realistic and first ask the question why would Gricar's family attorney and friend Amos Goodall leak Gricar financial papers from 2014 to an actor/wanna be crime writer with no track record of published true crime volumes? Under what circumstances would that happen, when LG has always insisted that finances were nobody's business except the investigating authorities? A respected local attorney and family friend just whips out financial papers and gives them to some internet wanna be true crime vulture wanting to make a name for himself from Ray's disappearance? I don't know about anyone else, but I find that difficult to swallow.

But for the sake of argument, let's say Goodall broke attorney/client privilege and passed this stuff to Faulds. Goodall helped LG prepare the Declaration of Death Petition, in which he writes that LG comes before the court "by and through her attorney" Goodall himself. And Goodall believes Gricar is dead, or at least believed that in 2011.

The ruling Monday was an administrative step more than an investigative one.

Gricar was twice divorced, and his only child, Lara, sought the death declaration so she can finally settle his estate. The order by Centre County Judge David Grine does not say what happened to Gricar, just that a thorough investigation suggests he won't be seen again.

Amos Goodall, the lawyer representing Lara Gricar, said investigators had two new leads on the case, but he would not elaborate. Goodall's opinion? Gricar was killed.

"I can't believe that he would have spent the last six years causing his family to be in the real purgatory that they have been in," he said. "If he were alive, he would've contacted his family."

http://articles.philly.com/2011-07-31/news/29835864_1_investigators-retirement-plans-ray-gricar

If Goodall received information in 2014 that contradicted his position, as an attorney, he would turn that information over to authorities, not to an actor/wanna be true crime guy from the Internet.

The only thing that makes sense IMNSHO is that this is more wild speculation on Faulds' part of the type he exhibited in other cases.

Edited by 2-B
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I was working on my computer & cleaning up some old email accounts I hadn't used in forever & totally didn't realize I had saved some of my old Gricar case stuff under those old email accounts. Anyway, attached are some of the press releases on the case. I'll post other stuff later.pressreleases.PDF

I can't cut and paste from the document, but the language in what appears as the second press release is interesting re the computer searches--the paragraph which begins with how a search of Gricar's home turned up little information. the emphasis in that paragraph is on the known information: that Gricar had expressed interest in wanting to erase the hard drive on the laptop, that this seemed to be a preparatory step toward his eventual retirement, and that the history on the desktop showed searches for Window Washer 5.0 (listed first) plus the other more inflammatory terms.

As I read that paragraph, it was not the "bombshell" it became once it appeared in the media, which skewed toward "eliminates foul play," and emphasized the inflammatory search terms. The press release made it very easy to see a guy who wanted (pre-Blogger Dude's "obliterate the data" mantra) only to erase his hard drive before retirement, a prudent step anyone would take but especially a DA with sensitive case material on his computer. How easy would it be for him to sit there searching for Window Washer 5.0 and have Google suggest other search terms which he idly clicked on, perhaps.... That would be one very simple explanation for the linguistic anomalies.

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I think our specie survived because we pulled together, I think Jesus knew there was no God, is why he tired to bring man into a state of mind of a oneness,like he said to the Jewish priests even by your own laws you called men Gods,his whole teaching was of a oneness,the whole kingdom of God is with in you.ect ect.

Edited by docyabut2
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I think our specie survived because we pulled together, I think Jesus knew there was no God, is why he tired to bring man into a state of mind of a oneness,like he said to the Jewish priests even by your own laws you called men Gods,his whole teaching was of a oneness,the whole kingdom of God is with in you.ect ect.

opps wrong thread

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Faulds has jumped to completely inaccurate conclusions in other cases based on faulty premises and pure speculation. See the Jamison family, for example. Despite his rather aprupt and accusatory tone with Tony Gricar, TG tried with reasonably good humor to disabuse Faulds of inaccurate assumptions regarding Ray, yet Faulds chose not to believe TG. (Side bar: reminded me of some of the TG/Blogger Dude exchanges of yore wherein TG would humor BD yet try to show him why his assumptions were wrong.)

Faulds has been crowing for a year or more that he had documents which would prove his Macedonian consulate-government agent disappearance theory, all part of his big publicity tour for the still non-existent book he's promised for a year or more (not that I've waited with bated breath as 1. I give it a very small chance of ever being published as anything more than an e-book and 2. I give it an even smaller chance of containing anything useful to discovering what happened to Ray).

Let's be realistic and first ask the question why would Gricar's family attorney and friend Amos Goodall leak Gricar financial papers from 2014 to an actor/wanna be crime writer with no track record of published true crime volumes? Under what circumstances would that happen, when LG has always insisted that finances were nobody's business except the investigating authorities? A respected local attorney and family friend just whips out financial papers and gives them to some internet wanna be true crime vulture wanting to make a name for himself from Ray's disappearance? I don't know about anyone else, but I find that difficult to swallow.

But for the sake of argument, let's say Goodall broke attorney/client privilege and passed this stuff to Faulds. Goodall helped LG prepare the Declaration of Death Petition, in which he writes that LG comes before the court "by and through her attorney" Goodall himself. And Goodall believes Gricar is dead, or at least believed that in 2011.

The ruling Monday was an administrative step more than an investigative one.

Gricar was twice divorced, and his only child, Lara, sought the death declaration so she can finally settle his estate. The order by Centre County Judge David Grine does not say what happened to Gricar, just that a thorough investigation suggests he won't be seen again.

Amos Goodall, the lawyer representing Lara Gricar, said investigators had two new leads on the case, but he would not elaborate. Goodall's opinion? Gricar was killed.

"I can't believe that he would have spent the last six years causing his family to be in the real purgatory that they have been in," he said. "If he were alive, he would've contacted his family."

http://articles.philly.com/2011-07-31/news/29835864_1_investigators-retirement-plans-ray-gricar

If Goodall received information in 2014 that contradicted his position, as an attorney, he would turn that information over to authorities, not to an actor/wanna be true crime guy from the Internet.

The only thing that makes sense IMNSHO is that this is more wild speculation on Faulds' part of the type he exhibited in other cases.

However, unlike his other cases he claims to have a leaked legal document to support his claims and the fact that he claims to have been contacted by a former DOD official telling him to back off goes way beyond general speculation.

If it's hype to sell books then where is the book?

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It seems as though all 3 scenarios involve some sort of accomplice.

Not in my scenario, it doesn't, but whatever.

Scent evidence rules out Ray moving directly from the Mini to his final resting place or scenic beach, and even if you believe Ray was never in the Mini, someone else would have had to have staged it there and/or ditched the laptop at some future point in time.

I just want to point out that the scent evidence is objective information and how that information is then interpreted and/or how much weight is place on such info. is subjective.

How easy would it be for him to sit there searching for Window Washer 5.0 and have Google suggest other search terms which he idly clicked on, perhaps.... That would be one very simple explanation for the linguistic anomalies.

Another very simple explanation is that Gricar actually made the searches and that there were no such "linguistic anomalies".

The press release made it very easy to see a guy who wanted (pre-Blogger Dude's "obliterate the data" mantra) only to erase his hard drive before retirement, a prudent step anyone would take but especially a DA with sensitive case material on his computer.

It's my understanding that Gricar wanted to erase that hard drive for a significant amount of time before he announced retirement.

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can you share what answers you got?

Without getting into specifics, there is a lot of information related to this case than was released to the public, which I expected. I can add nothing at this time that has any value.

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A blogger/investigator named Brett Faulds who has an alias "Keepthesearchalive" recently traded tweets with Renner (yes that one) and indicated that Gricars "family attorney" (Goodall) leaked legal documents to him that made him conclude that Ray was still alive and that anyone that was privy to these documents would think the same.

He went on with Renner in this exchange to say that a former Department of Defense higher up had contacted him directly to tell him "to back off" the Gricar talk.

This Mr. Faulds was supposed to have released a book on Gricars disappearance among other missing cases. This book is now months late and no word if it will be released now. Faulds did release a page or two from his book but that's it.

Now I don't give this.individual a huge amount of credibility but for discussion sake and assuming he is telling the truth why would a former Dept of Defense employee contact him and tell him to back off? Why would Goodall leak these docs? And why would Goodall lie under oath that he believes Gricar is deceased?

Former DOD employee? I don't buy it. And....if in fact someone did contact this guy and tell him to back off, which rarely ever happens, they would have scared the **** out of him so bad that he wouldn't dare open his mouth. I call BS on this one. Book publicity.

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However, unlike his other cases he claims to have a leaked legal document to support his claims and the fact that he claims to have been contacted by a former DOD official telling him to back off goes way beyond general speculation.

If it's hype to sell books then where is the book?

He claims to have the leaked documents, but as I said, why would an attorney breach attorney/client confidentiality for some wanna be writer, especially an attorney who was a close friend of the missing person? It makes no sense to me. Would FOIA apply to personal financial documents held by an attorney? I have no idea. But having read Goodall's article(s) on the reward fund and other comments he's made about LG and RG, I think barring FOIA he would do everything he could to protect personal information--especially if he had any knowledge of BF. One conversation with TG would be enough. Just trying to wrap my head around this claim because it seems to me a million in one shot that he could ever have had Goodall hand him, mail him, or email him Ray's personal financial documents.

The book? I think that's a lot of hype as well, unless he's talking e-book. True crime is a hot commodity in the publishing world now, but hundreds and hundreds of good writers are unpublished because publishers won't touch untested writers. I was listening to one of the founders of Wild Blue Press on a podcast a year or more ago--a publishing house started by a group of good (and in most cases already published) true crime writers who wanted to provide a platform for those who weren't big name/top tier authors *but still good writers** to have their works published. He spoke about the difficulties of breaking into the game with the big name publishers. You've read BF's stuff....I'll leave it at that.....

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I just want to point out that the scent evidence is objective information and how that information is then interpreted and/or how much weight is place on such info. is subjective.

That sounds like the thinking of the OJ jury: "DNA evidence is objective information, and how that information is interpreted and/or how much weight we place on it is up to us. Not Guilty!"

This was not a civilian trained, uncertified dog with an inexperienced handler. This was an LE Bloodhound from the Dauphin PSP unit, experienced dog, experienced dog handler, specific training requirements and training log requirements, specific performance standards. Two other LE trained dogs worked the SOS lot, riverbanks, and surrounding areas as well.

If you want to believe that Ray Gricar walked from the SOS lot to the river and killed himself, that is in direct contradiction to the factual evidence and pure fantasy.

Another very simple explanation is that Gricar actually made the searches and that there were no such "linguistic anomalies".

I don't recall you spending dozens of hours researching and studying the phrasing of the listed alleged searches. I did put in that time to research and study those phrasings and can assure you certain linguistic anomalies do exist. But you're free to just "guess" they don't exist without any hard evidence.

It's my understanding that Gricar wanted to erase that hard drive for a significant amount of time before he announced retirement.%

I believe your timeline is off. Ray announced his retirement plans in January 2004 (and in fact said then that it had **always** been his plan to retire at age 60). In January 2005 or thereabouts, he and Patty purchased a desktop computer for the home. As I understand it, in that time frame he asked around about erasing the laptop hard drive (with the desktop eliminating any need for them to use the laptop at home). This is why the second press release of the three MrsPC provided notes that the inquiries about hard drive erasure seemed preparatory to his retirement.

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Without getting into specifics, there is a lot of information related to this case than was released to the public, which I expected. I can add nothing at this time that has any value.

I call BS on this as well

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This was not a civilian trained, uncertified dog with an inexperienced handler. This was an LE Bloodhound from the Dauphin PSP unit, experienced dog, experienced dog handler, specific training requirements and training log requirements, specific performance standards. Two other LE trained dogs worked the SOS lot, riverbanks, and surrounding areas as well.

The fact of the matter is that there was no scent detected... and what you make of that info is up to you.

I believe your timeline is off. Ray announced his retirement plans in January 2004 (and in fact said then that it had **always** been his plan to retire at age 60). In January 2005 or thereabouts, he and Patty purchased a desktop computer for the home. As I understand it, in that time frame he asked around about erasing the laptop hard drive (with the desktop eliminating any need for them to use the laptop at home). This is why the second press release of the three MrsPC provided notes that the inquiries about hard drive erasure seemed preparatory to his retirement.

I understood it to be several months prior to his announcement that he made inquiries and that the computer searches were about a month prior to his disappearance, which was still about another 9 months before he was to actually retire and so I don't think he wanted the hard drive erased because he was retiring, I think it's that he was done using the laptop. I think if he was still using it, then surely the hard drive would again contain more of the same info. about which he'd already expressed his desire to have erased.

Edited by regi
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Regarding the wiping of the Hard Drive

A. Could have wanted to remove a virus

B. Wanted to delete confidential files due to his dedication to confidentiality

C. Perhaps a minor child or family member used it for improper browsing

D. Truly had something to hide

Now, here is a man with means. Why wouldn't he pay someone to wipe it? Isn't there protocol for retiring or soon to be retired employees? Wouldn't the importance of confidentiality be so great that the DAs office would actually have a department for that?

Flip side of the coin, perhaps he planned the disappearance. Maybe he was being blackmailed. Threatening emails? Who knows? Maybe someone sent evidence to him about wrongdoing in the form of photographs/videos and he buried them.

I think the likelihood of suicide is 5%, Homicide, 75%, and 15% walk away. The other 5 % is alien abduction, spontaneous combustion, or some act of God not otherwise explained.

This is an older man with wisdom, education, and experience. I'm sure that if it was a walk away, he'll hide his tracks well. Lawyers are too egotistical for suicide, however, suicide is possible if terminal disease is present. Homicide is likely because no body has been found. Suicide victims die where they die. Homicide victims can be hidden really well. Walk always, well, they really can hide.

I hope this cold case is resolved for the family's sake.

Here I sit, reading and posting to a thread of a man I do not know personally. The unknown aspects make this rather intriguing. His family needs closure. I hope they don't think that RG killed himself and that they don't carry any guilt.

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