 You've probably heard someone mention the phrase, the perfect crime, usually referring to a crime in which the criminal leaves behind no evidence or any clues that bring investigators closer to solving the case. Detectives often spend years investigating these cases, all to no avail. Well, that's true in the case of Ray Rivera. Ray was a man who had a lot going for him, a beautiful wife, a brand new home, a great job lined up, and friends and family that loved him deeply. But if all of this is true, what prompted him to jump off of a 14-story hotel on a warm summer evening in 2006? Stranger still, what should be made of the strange series of notes that he left behind? And an elusive thief who repeatedly tried to steal Ray's computer? Well, that's the thing. Ray's family believe he didn't jump off that hotel roof that day, and if key pieces of evidence are to be believed, they may be right. Ray didn't jump, he was pushed. 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Better yet, Pia is even throwing in an additional four months of protection absolutely free if you sign up using my custom link. Just go to piavpn.com slash true crime stories to get 83% off your subscription, then get four additional months completely free. Thanks to Pia for sponsoring today's video. Ray Rivera was born on June 10, 1973. By 2006, Ray was doing quite well for himself. He'd become a writer and a videographer while living in Baltimore, Maryland. According to a few reports I found online, Ray was a big fan of movies and film, being particularly fond of Stanley Kubrick's work. Some accounts claim that Ray was an aspiring script writer and storyteller, but his work never really took off. He spent a lot of his time writing and journaling potential plots and stories, but nothing ever really went anywhere. I wasn't able to find any samples of Ray's scripts or any of his storytelling work, but Ray did have a job as a writer for the Rebound Report, a financial newsletter of which Ray was one of the lead editors. While Ray loved his job at first, things just weren't working out the way he had planned. Ray and his wife, Allison, had moved from Los Angeles to Baltimore so that Ray could accept the job and they could begin their new lives together, having just recently become married. The job seemed like an excellent opportunity, but it wasn't panning out. While Ray certainly was a great writer, it doesn't seem like finance was really his true passion. He did his job to the best of his ability, but many of the stocks that he would write about didn't follow the trends that he expected him to, calling his credibility into question and naturally leading Ray to become quite self-conscious about his predictions and his overall value to the company. This job had been given to Ray by one of his close friends, Porter Stansbury. Porter and Ray went way back, and Porter felt that Ray would be the perfect fit for the role of editor. While Ray appreciated the job tremendously, he couldn't shake the feeling that his efforts would be better spent elsewhere. So after around two years of working for the rebound report, Ray left his position in late 2005, instead becoming a freelance writer for the Agora Corporation, a company that was still in some way operated by Porter Stansbury. Allison, Ray's wife, says that the two had spoken several times about moving back to Los Angeles so that Ray could pursue his true passion of screenwriting. While the two had talked about this multiple times, they'd never made any concrete plans of returning to their hometown. Though it was becoming increasingly clear that Ray simply wasn't happy with their new life in Baltimore. When he wasn't writing or editing financial articles, Ray could be found coaching the local water polo team at Johns Hopkins University. Ray had a love for aquatics, and he'd even worked at a high school in Burbank, California as an aquatics coach for teenagers. His students loved him, with his former high school students recalling him quite fondly, with one of the assistant coaches saying that the kids truly valued his input because Ray was a man that, by all means, knew what he was talking about when it came to aquatics. But all of this seemingly went out the window. When, without warning, Ray disappeared one night in 2006, never to be seen alive again. Ray Rivera was last seen on May 16, 2006. He'd been at home while his wife was away on a business trip to Virginia. While she was gone, a work colleague of hers was staying over at the house with Rivera. This colleague, Claudia, was good friends with Allison, and the two spent a lot of time together. Claudia says that she'd spent the day at the house with Ray, but Ray had been preoccupied with one of his assignments, so she didn't see him much at all that day, as he'd been locked away in his office, busy with work. At some point around 4 p.m., Claudia says that she heard Ray's phone ring. He answered the phone, but only replied, oh shoot, before taking off out the back door of the home as if he was late for something. No sooner than he left, he came running back inside, then took off again just a few seconds later, leaving the lights on in his office as well as leaving his computer running. When Claudia told Allison about Ray's strange behavior, she tried to call Ray multiple times, but he never answered his phone. Allison later admitted that she assumed that Ray had just gone out to drink with friends, but there was no indication that this had actually happened. It wasn't until the following day that Allison began to fear that something had gone terribly wrong. The next day, Allison returned home from her business trip, and Ray was still nowhere to be found. Reports indicate that Allison spent the entirety of that day searching for Ray, but there was no trace of him. Once Ray had been gone for about 24 hours, Allison decided it was time to report him missing. When Ray left the family home, he'd been driving Allison's car, and about six days later, her car was found parked in the Mount Vernon area, abandoned. There was nothing of interest in the car, nothing seemed off, and there doesn't appear to have been any indication that anything suspicious had taken place. The only problem was that Ray was nowhere to be found, and there was no indication of where he may have gone. But the following day, police would reach a breakthrough in the case when they uncovered a crime scene that was, well, bizarre. On May 24th, 2006, police were called to the Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore after a passerby had uncovered a crime scene. The Belvedere Hotel is a major historic attraction for residents in the United States. Originally built in 1903, the building has a very rich history, housing historic icons such as Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Woodrow Wilson, and King Edward VIII, just to name a few. When police were called to the hotel, Ray had been missing for just over a week. When employees led investigators to the scene of the crime, they couldn't believe their eyes. Ray Rivera was found lying on the ground inside an abandoned office room in the hotel that hadn't been used in a number of years. His remains were very badly decomposed, meaning he'd been here for quite some time. Police believe he had likely ended up here on the same day that he disappeared or within a day or so after. When detectives surveyed the crime scene, they noticed one particular clue that seemingly solved the case after just minutes of arriving. A large hole in the ceiling and roof suggested that Ray had jumped from the top roof down to the lower roof, plunging 14 stories to his demise. And as it would turn out, the Belvedere Hotel is no stranger to people claiming their own lives, with the various sources claiming that people have claimed their own lives to this hotel countless times in the past, though a specific number has never been determined. The hotel has a history of strange occurrences that have taken place on its grounds, and Ray Rivera's unexpected demise only added to this list. But there was only one problem. The state of Ray's remains did not at all suggest that he had taken his own life. Worse yet, when detectives started using math and calculating the location of Ray's body, things just didn't add up. If you take a look at this photo of the hotel, you'll see that the building is designed with two distinct roof lines. There's the obvious roof at the very top of the building that noticed the alcove that's right in the center of the building. This alcove has a second much lower roof, and this is where the hole in the roof was found. The reason I bring this up is because police initially believed that Ray took his own life by jumping from the upper roof down onto the lower roof, with this lower roof giving way under his weight, sending him into the office building below. But this just doesn't add up mathematically. There was a considerable distance between where Ray would have jumped on the top roof and where he would have ended up on the bottom roof. According to experts, Ray fell about 177 feet, and it would have taken him about 3.3 seconds to impact that lower roof. When he impacted the lower roof, he was about 43 feet from the outer walls of the building, and this is where this theory begins to fall apart. For Ray to have ended up 43 feet across the roof, he would have needed to have been traveling at a speed of about 10 miles per hour and leapt off of the roof like he was Buzz Lightyear or something. But the catch is Ray only had a span of just over 15 feet on the upper roof, not nearly enough room to reach a full sprint speed of 10 miles per hour. To make matters worse, Ray wasn't even wearing shoes when he plunged through the roof. He was wearing flip-flops. This jump would have been difficult even for a professional runner who was wearing proper running shoes. But Ray wasn't a runner, nor was he wearing proper shoes. There was no logical way that Ray could have made this jump. The only other explanation would be if Ray was actually inside of the building, giving him more room to get a running start than jump out of an upper floor window. But the problem with this theory is that the upper floors have been converted into condos, which for all the obvious reasons would have been locked. And there's never been a report of any of the upper windows being left open or broken at any time. But this brings us to the autopsy report, which is shocking to say the least. Up to this point, police had been running with the theory that Ray had claimed his own life by jumping off the upper roof of the building, even though they couldn't explain how he could have done such a thing. But the coroner had a different idea. I was able to track down the official autopsy report from this case, and the medical examiner documented dozens of wounds and fractures that were all over Ray's body. When looking at the conclusion of the report, the coroner admits that Ray's injuries do appear to be consistent with him falling from a multi-story building. The only hitch in this plan is that the coroner labeled the cause of Ray's passing as undetermined. Others have taken a look at the autopsy report and claimed that Ray's injuries appear to be much more consistent with being hit by a car than anything else. But I'm certainly not an expert in this field, so I can't really comment one way or the other. The only thing I can say that I personally found odd is if someone fell 14 stories, then plunged through a roof and landed on the floor beneath it, I would tend to think that that person would have almost certainly broken their spine. But the coroner's report doesn't document even one vertebrae that was broken. Now, again, I'm certainly not an expert in this field, but I find that incredibly strange and almost impossible to believe. The most important thing here is that the coroner couldn't confirm one way or the other how Ray lost his life, but it could only conclude that his injuries could have possibly been from the fall or from something else. And it's this idea of something else that's led to many different theories, some of which point to the idea that Ray may have been pushed. One of the strangest details from this case that I just can't seem to figure out is that even though Ray's believed to have jumped from the upper roof, both of his flip-flops were found on the lower roof. The only indication of damage to them is that one of them had the toe strap popped loose, but this can happen to anyone at any time. It's not uncommon. But even stranger is that his cell phone was found on the lower roof as well, and it was also completely undamaged and fully functional. So if Ray had been 14 stories up, how were his flip-flops and phone in such perfect condition untouched on this lower roof level? Now, one thing I'd like to make clear is that there are also rumors that claim the hole in the roof of the building simply wasn't large enough for Ray's body to have fit through, but this just isn't true. The hole, though it seems small in the photos, was more than large enough for an adult male to fall through. I'm not sure where this rumor began, but I do wanna put that to rest before it spreads any further. Ray's wife, Allison, weighed in on the situation and mentioned that in the days leading up to his disappearance, Ray had been acting very strangely. She mentioned that he seemed extremely paranoid, and she believes she knows when all of this began happening. She mentioned a time just a few weeks prior to the disappearance when Ray had been speaking with the man in the local park. Allison says that Ray never revealed what the two spoke about, nor did he mention who the man was. But after their conversation was over, Ray was walking away and had a very worried look on his face. Immediately after this conversation, Ray grew so paranoid that his entire demeanor changed. Ray was widely known for being a happy-go-lucky man, but all of a sudden, he'd become quite reserved, quiet and fearful. Immediately after this, Ray believed their home was burgled twice over the span of just a few days. Their home was fitted with the top-of-the-line security system, and twice the alarm went off in the middle of the night. When the couple got up to see what was going on, the security system never picked up anyone on any of the cameras or sensors, so they had no idea why the alarm had gone off. But this is where things get really weird. After Ray disappeared and police were searching through his home and office, they came across a note that had been kept in plastic and taped to the front of Ray's computer. The note had been typed on a computer and printed out in very tiny font, leading some of the words and letters to be blurry, but the best I can tell, the note reads as follows. Brothers and sisters, right now around the world, violences are erupting. What an awesome sight. The next line is a bit too blurry to read, but it continues a moment later saying, quote, that was a well-played game. Congratulations to all who participated. I hope you enjoyed it. It was a time to wake up, so here I am. I'd like to welcome those who accept that our invitations for membership during the game. We couldn't have done it without you. I took on this endeavor to find the truth. After this, most of this letter is too blurry to read, but he mentions something known as the council, then begins referencing people in his personal life as well as actors, directors and film writers, such as Stanley Kubrick. He then writes out a very long list of names, seemingly of people he knows, and ends this list by mentioning his friend, Porter Stansberry, saying he didn't do it himself, but he never mentioned what it is referring to. Now this note is obviously very bizarre and largely doesn't seem to make any sense, but a Reddit user picked up on the fact that Ray was referring to something called the game. The Reddit user mentioned a movie called the game, and in one scene, one of the lead characters jumps off of an upper level roof and crashes through the ceiling of a lower level roof, a very bizarre coincidence considering what happened to Ray. But the problem with this theory is that the FBI has taken a look at the letter and found no merit in these claims, and one other expert claimed the same thing, believing that this note has nothing to do with Ray's disappearance and ultimate demise. In fact, Ray's own family seemed to believe that this note is unrelated to his disappearance, as they claimed that he kept journals full of ramblings like this, saying that none of these notes ever made any sense. The note has since been referred to as a stream of consciousness, and that it may have never had any real purpose or underlying meaning. Why Ray wrote so many of these strange notes remains unknown, and what game he was referring to remains unknown as well. Interestingly, all of these notes were found to have likely originated on Ray's computer. When police were researching Ray's case, detectives took his computer in as evidence so that they could take a closer look at his files. After they'd concluded their research, the computer was eligible to be picked up exclusively by his wife. But in the days that it took her to pick up the computer, police noted that one person had called multiple times day after day doing their best to pick up Ray's computer, even though they weren't permitted to do so. Police never revealed who this person was. In fact, we don't know if they even know who it was. But Allison, Ray's wife, says that no one else should ever have any sort of interest in Ray's computer, and she has no idea who would have wanted to do such a thing. As far as we know, nothing important or relevant to the case was ever found on his computer, so this seems incredibly odd. The only other theory in this case is that Ray was somehow associated with the elusive group known as the Freemasons, a secret organization that has existed for hundreds of years and are rumored to have been involved in all sorts of dark and secretive plans throughout history. Ray was fascinated by the Freemasons and had picked up various books on the subject and had even recently purchased a book titled Freemasons for Dummies in the weeks leading up to his demise. He even visited a Masonic lodge and requested to join the group, but we don't know if anything ever came of this. In the end, no one knows for sure what happened to Ray Rivera. His family remains hopeful that they will find answers one day and they're adamant that he wouldn't have done this to himself. There's a prevailing theory that Ray must have been pushed from the rooftop that day, as he had an intense fear of heights and had recently just purchased a new home with his wife. But the problem is there's no indication of who would have wanted to push him. Worse yet, who could have pushed him hard enough to send him flying a staggering 45 feet across the roof? Even if he had been pushed, he should have landed only a few horizontal feet from his starting position, only a little further than he had jumped, but that just isn't what took place. Police are still actively investigating this case even after all these years, but they're no closer to solving it today than they were all those years ago. Police are still operating under the assumption that Ray took his own life, but it seems like even they are beginning to believe that this may be a bit too far-fetched to be true. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of True Crime Stories. If you wanna see more true crime documentaries like this, be sure to hit that like button and subscribe. If you'd like to help support the channel, the best way you can do that is simply by leaving a comment below, any comment at all. It helps out the channel a lot more than you may realize. If you wanna help out financially, you can do that by clicking the blue join button below or by picking up a True Crime Stories mug from tieknots.com. But with that, my name is Tye Knots and I'll catch you guys in the next video.