Rey Rivera

On a spring evening in 2006, a man in Baltimore took a phone call at home, hurried out of the house, and drove away.

Eight days later, his body was found in an empty room of one of the city’s most famous old hotels, beneath a hole in the ceiling. His phone and his glasses were found up on the roof, undamaged. And behind his computer at home, his wife found a strange, rambling note that seemed to make no sense at all.

Nearly twenty years later, his death has never been explained to his family’s satisfaction.

Rey

Rey Omar Rivera was born in 1973 and grew up in California. He was an athlete — a former water polo player and coach — tall, fit, charming and full of energy. He married a woman named Allison, and in the early 2000s the couple moved across the country to Baltimore, where Rey went to work for a longtime friend, Porter Stansberry, who ran a financial newsletter company called Stansberry & Associates, part of a larger publishing business called Agora. Rey worked as a writer and videographer.

By 2006, the couple were living in a house in Baltimore. They seemed happy.

The Week Before

In the week before Rey disappeared, according to his wife, something changed.

The alarm system at their house went off twice, without explanation. Rey seemed frightened, which Allison said was very unlike him. He didn’t tell her what was bothering him.

The Phone Call

On the evening of May 16, 2006, a friend and colleague of Allison’s who was staying with the couple saw Rey take a phone call at the house. Right afterward, he left in a hurry. He didn’t say where he was going.

He never came home.

Phone records later showed that the last call he received came from the switchboard of Agora Publishing, the company he worked for. Who made the call has never been determined. According to his employer, the people who worked most closely with Rey were away at a corporate retreat at the time.

The Belvedere

Allison reported Rey missing. Police and family searched for him. A few days later, family members found his car in a parking lot in the Mount Vernon neighborhood, near the Belvedere and near the offices of his employer.

The Belvedere is a grand old Beaux-Arts hotel, built in 1903, which had once hosted presidents and movie stars and had since been converted largely into condominiums, with event spaces. When Rey’s family looked out from a parking garage next to the building, they noticed something on one of its lower roofs: a hole.

On May 24, eight days after he disappeared, Rey Rivera’s body was found in an unused room inside the Belvedere, directly beneath that hole. He appeared to have fallen through the roof from a great height.

The autopsy found severe injuries consistent with a fall — broken bones, punctured lungs. His glasses and his cell phone were found on top of the building, undamaged.

The Note

While searching their house for clues, Allison found a piece of paper taped behind Rey’s computer.

It was a strange note. It mentioned the names of Hollywood figures and movie titles, quoted phrases associated with Freemasonry, and referred to friends and family. It was rambling and cryptic, and didn’t seem to say anything clear. Some people who read it thought it read like a goodbye. The FBI examined it and concluded that it was not a suicide note.

The Rulings

The Baltimore Police Department concluded that Rey’s death was most likely a suicide — that he had jumped from a higher level of the building.

But the Maryland medical examiner classified the manner of death as “undetermined,” meaning it could not be determined whether it was a suicide, an accident or a homicide.

Rey’s family never accepted that he took his own life. They pointed out that he had no history of depression. They noted that he was afraid of heights. They asked how his glasses and phone could have ended up on the roof undamaged if he had fallen. A detective who worked on the case early on later said publicly that he had doubts about the suicide theory and felt the scene looked staged; he said he was reassigned shortly after he started the investigation.

Unsolved Mysteries

In 2020, Rey Rivera’s case was featured in the first episode of a revival of the television series Unsolved Mysteries, titled “Mystery on the Rooftop.” Millions of people watched it. The episode explored the possibility that Rey had jumped from a ledge high on the building, the possibility that he had been killed and his body placed there, and the strange questions surrounding his last week.

The episode brought renewed attention to the case and thousands of new theories. But it didn’t bring an answer. It’s important to say clearly that no one has ever been charged with any crime in connection with Rey Rivera’s death, and that there’s no evidence that anyone was responsible for it.

The Question

There are only a few possibilities. Rey took his own life, for reasons no one knew. Rey died in some kind of accident, perhaps after going up to the roof of the Belvedere for reasons no one knows. Or someone else was involved.

His wife, his brother and the rest of his family have spent years trying to find out which. They believe he was frightened of something in the last week of his life. They want to know what it was.