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On the evening of Tuesday, May 16, 2006, 32-year-old Rey Rivera, who was a loving husband & an aspiring writer, abruptly left his home after ending a phone call. Wearing flip flops & casual clothes, he drove off & never came back. Rey, an ever-steady man, seemed to vanish while his family struggled to understand where he could’ve gone. They waited eight agonizing days & when the news came, it was as devastating as it was confusing.
Rey’s body had been found in a random locked conference room on the second floor of the historic downtown Baltimore Belvedere Hotel beneath a hole in the roof that he appeared to have fallen through.
The scene raised more questions than answers; how had he ended up inside of a locked room in a building he had no reason to be in? Why was a cryptic note later found taped to the back of his computer? There were also conflicting accounts as to how cooperative Rey’s employer had been with detectives, a company that was owned & operated by his best friend since high school. Not to mention, the last phone call Rey received before rushing from his home had come from the company switchboard.
Although the medical examiner ruled Rey’s manner of death as undetermined, police felt confident that he died from suicide while his family firmly believe he was murdered. Basically every aspect of his case couldn’t be explained & there had also been strange occurrences happening at his house in the days before his death, not to mention, a normally calm Rey seemed uncharacteristically worried in the weeks before he died.
After the passage of 20 years, although Rey’s death remains undetermined, his wife Allison is convinced that her husband turned over a proverbial rock that he hadn’t been meant to turn over & because of it, he was murdered.
Rey Omar Rivera was born in Madrid, Spain on June 10, 1973 to parents Angel & Maria Rivera. Since their father was in the Air Force, he, his brother & his sister moved from city to city though they were mostly raised in Southern California as well as Florida. After graduating from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California in 1995, Rey played water polo for the Royal Federation of Water Polo in Spain.
Between 1998 to 2001, Rey coached water polo at John Burroughs High School in Burbank, California. In 2004, Rey was a handsome 30-year-old who stood at 6’5” & weighed 260#. Family was everything to him & he was in love with his girlfriend, Allison Jones, who he’d been dating since 2000 after they met in a Los Angeles bar. Although he had a passion for screenplay writing, it didn’t bring in much income so he needed to supplement his income in other ways.
Rey’s close friend & fellow water polo teammate from high school, Frank “Porter” Stansberry, created Stansberry & Associates Investment Research in 1999. The company, which later simplified its name to Stansberry Research, publishes newsletters under the umbrella of Agora Publishing, specializing in investment research to protect & grow a customer’s money.
Despite the passage of nearly a decade since high school, Porter & Rey remained very close. In September 2004, Porter called & offered him a job despite the fact that Rey wasn’t familiar with finance or stocks.
Although being a financial writer wasn’t at all his dream, he figured it was a way to make money so he & Allison could get married. When the couple relocated to Baltimore in late 2004, Rey began writing for The Rebound Reporter newsletter, writing about stocks that aren’t doing well that are likely to rebound in the future. At the time of his death, he’d shifted to contract video production work for Agora affiliates, including The Oxford Club.
On their cross-country move, Rey & Allison didn’t know a soul other than Porter, but they made a pact that they would give Baltimore & Rey’s new career a chance, dedicating themselves to live there for the next two years. While here, Rey also worked as an assistant coach for the men’s water polo team at Johns Hopkins University.
After buying a beautiful home in the Fells Point neighborhood in the suburbs, Rey & Allison quickly settled into their new community. They found a new church, began making friends, all the while, planning their wedding.
About a year after their move, the couple was married on the beach in November 2005 in Isabela, Puerto Rico.
By the spring of 2006, after they’d been married for about six months, they traveled back to LA & began discussing their plan to move back. Rey was also in the process of pitching a screenplay, Midnight Polo, a story about a young female polo player who makes it to the Olympics.
On the morning of May 16, 2006, the day that Rey vanished, Allison packed her things in anticipation of a multi-day business trip she had scheduled in Richmond, Virginia. Since she was feeling especially tired that morning & not looking forward to her nearly three hour drive, Rey, being a thoughtful husband, got up with her & made her breakfast.
During the Netflix July 2020 Unsolved Mysteries episode that covers Rey’s case in S1.E1, Allison recalls just how gorgeous that morning was. She was feeling very grateful for her life & as she was getting ready to leave for her trip, she told her husband how much she loved him while Rey responded, Thank you for loving me so much. He carried her suitcase down the stairs, loaded it into the car & she drove away, never realizing it would be the last time she would ever see her 32-year-old husband.
As she finished her day sometime between 6-6:30 pm, Allison checked into her hotel & called Rey to see how he was doing, but he didn’t answer, which was unusual. Since Allison’s co-worker, Claudia, was in town from New York & staying at their house that night, she called her at about 9:30 pm to see if she knew where Rey was.
Claudia told her that at about 6:30 pm, when she had been in the guest room that bordered Rey’s office, she heard his cell phone ring. She could hear Rey talking to someone on the other end when he suddenly left the house in a hurry as if he was late for an appointment. Some sources say that he quickly returned to the house as if he’d forgotten something before leaving again.
While Claudia continued her conversation with Allison, she walked around the house to see if Rey had come back. Although all of the lights were on downstairs, she could tell that he hadn’t.
When Claudia called Allison at 5:30 am the next morning, Wednesday, May 17, 2006, she let her friend know that Rey still wasn’t home. A typically calm person, Allison immediately sensed that something wasn’t right so she got her things together, jumped into her car & left Richmond to head home. While she did, she continued to call Rey as well as their family & friends to see if anyone had heard from him.
At the time, Rey’s parents were living in Puerto Rico while his brother was in Orlando & his sister was in North Carolina. None of the family had heard from him & they knew in their hearts that something was wrong since Rey was a dependable person who wouldn’t have gone without any communication.
As Allison pulled into their driveway, she could see that Rey’s car wasn’t there. When she walked into the kitchen, she noticed an opened can of soda as well as a bag of potato chips that were sitting out on the counter along with Rey’s Invisaligns that made it look as if he’d been in the middle of having a snack. As she made her way upstairs, the lights were on in their bedroom as well as his office which gave her the impression that Rey hadn’t intended to be gone long. At about 3 pm that day, Allison filed a missing persons report.
By 7 pm, Claudia had flown back to New York while Rey’s brother, Angel, landed in Baltimore. All of their friends & family flew in to support Allison & help with Rey’s search. Allison converted their dining room into a makeshift command center as everyone gathered around making various phone calls to hospitals as well as police stations.
Porter Stansberry put up a $1,000 reward & helped gain media attention in his friend’s case. Fliers were posted with Rey’s information, as they all hoped & prayed that someone had seen him, but sadly, no one had. Meanwhile, his cellphone was dead & his bank cards hadn’t been utilized. All the while, Allison felt as if she was trapped in an unimaginable nightmare that she couldn’t make sense of.
With each passing hour, the family became increasingly desperate, unable to fathom where Rey may have gone. On May 22, six days after he vanished, Allison came back home from searching while her parents, who had traveled to Baltimore from their home in Colorado, had gone out to drive around to various parking lots in search of Rey’s car.
While Allison’s dad was driving, her mom looked around & suddenly spotted Rey’s black 2001 Mitsubishi Montero SUV. It was parked behind a building in downtown Baltimore on St. Paul Street in parking spot #7 with a parking ticket on the windshield that was dated May 17. By the time Allison arrived only ten minutes later, the area was surrounded by both police as well as the media.
According to a parking attendant who worked until 6 pm on May 16, the car hadn’t been there when he left that evening, but it was there when he arrived the next morning. This led investigators to believe that Rey’s car had been in the lot since the evening he vanished.
The lot was near the historic Belvedere Hotel that had since transitioned into condos. It was also near the offices of Stansberry Research. However, Allison couldn’t understand what had suddenly prompted Rey to drive over to the office as in the months since he’d resigned from Stansberry Research & began working as an independent contractor, he’d been working out of his home office.
There was no concerning evidence found in the SUV nor was Rey’s cell phone found. As investigators continued to look into his background, they could find no logical reason for his disappearance.
After finding the car in the lot on May 22, searches began focusing on that specific area. Two days later, on May 24, three of Rey’s co-workers decided to go to the top of their building’s parking garage that was next to the Belvedere Hotel.
As they gazed around, looking over the edge, they saw a pair of flip flops on the roof of the second-floor extension of the Belvedere. They were lying near a black spot on the white surface that appeared to be a hole. Since the hole wasn’t big, measuring at about 40 inches in diameter, it could have come from something as innocuous as rain.
With Rey missing, the men decided to contact the police. When officers responded to the Belvedere, Gary Shivers, a former concierge at the hotel, was asked to open a locked door on the second floor that was situated under the hole. It was a room longterm employees referred to as the old Racquetball Club or the church space.
As Gary pushed the door open, he was immediately struck with a terrible stench & noticed blood streaks coming down from the wall. Rey’s body was sprawled on the floor with his legs positioned toward the door. He was lying under an open area of the ceiling.
As Gary looked up at the hole, he was able to see the sky through the metal roof that had busted through to the ceiling. Looking back even so many years later, he indicates that it’s an image he has been unable to erase from his mind.
Rey’s family were asked to come down to the Baltimore police headquarters & as they sat down, they were given the devastating news that Rey was dead. At the time, Allison had been holding a coffee mug full of water & her hands began shaking so violently that she spilled the water everywhere. As she sat down, she began screaming in anguish, unable to understand that her husband of six months was gone.
It wasn’t until they all got back to Allison & Rey’s home when they were even able to begin to think beyond their immense grief. They sat, trying to figure out how or why Rey had ended up on the floor of an unused, random conference room in a hotel that he had no association with.
The Belvedere opened its doors in Baltimore in December 1903 as a luxurious hotel in an 11-story tan brick building that stands 188 feet high. However, in 1991, it was converted into a multi-use condo building with private residential units from floors 3-10 as well as commercial offices & retail space. It maintained its iconic features, including the lobby, restaurants & bar areas that remained open to the public.
As police responded to the room where Rey’s body had been found, according to Baltimore homicide detective Michael Baier, he was lying face down. Since eight days had passed since he vanished, decomposition was extreme, potentially destroying evidence.
Near the hole in the roof, investigators found Rey’s fully functioning, unbroken phone as well as his unscathed eyeglasses. These mostly undamaged items were in stark contrast to the injuries Rey had sustained to the point that they almost appeared to have been staged. The flip flops on the roof, which Rey’s co-workers had seen from the parking garage, were also there. One was broken while the other had drag marks.
The family heirloom money clip that Allison had engraved with Rey’s initials & given to him as a wedding present was not with him. Although he was never without the clip that held his money as well as his IDs, it has never been found. Allison scoured her husband’s car after getting it back from police, but it was nowhere to be found.
According to the medical examiner’s report, when the autopsy was done the following day, May 25, 2006, Rey’s body was in a moderate state of decomposition. He was 6’4” in height, he weighed 251# & he wore a black & white zip up jacket with a yellow t-shirt underneath as well as green pants that were torn along the left thigh.
Rey had multiple skull & facial fractures & despite the advanced state of decomposition within his brain, the ME was able to see that it had been injured while his scalp was intact. There was an open fracture of the right tibia & fibula (lower leg bones), while no fractures were seen in his upper extremities or his left leg.
The report concluded that Rey had died from multiple injuries sustained as a result of a fall from a 13-story building. Because the circumstances surrounding his death were unclear & it was unclear as to how he fell from such a height, his manner of death was classified as undetermined.
Toxicology testing for drugs was negative while the small amount of alcohol detected in the decomposition fluid may have been entirely or in part from the decomposition itself.
The hole Rey’s body created on the roof of the building was not very large, to the point that a detective with a smaller stature than that of Rey had difficulty fitting through. This indicated that his body had come through vertically like a projectile, either entering head first or feet first. However, had he entered feet first, it couldn’t be explained why only his right tibia & fibula had been fractured rather than seeing bilateral lower extremity fractures as one would expect.
Investigators were also tasked with trying to figure out where he had fallen from.
The first theory was that Rey had either jumped or had been pushed from the very top roof of the building, entering the lower roof that was positioned about 13 floors below. The very top of the building is a U-shape with an open area that houses air ducts & air conditioning units that spans 40 feet. The hole was approximately 45 feet out from the edge of the top roof down to where he entered the 2nd story roof which would have made it virtually impossible, even if Rey had run before he jumped.
Although Rey was very tall & athletic, he had been wearing flip-flops at the time. He was also terrified of heights. Detective Michael Baier did not believe that he had jumped from the top of the Belvedere.
When considering if he’d jumped or had been pushed from the top of the parking garage which was 20 feet up & 20 feet out from where Rey’s body had come through, since Rey’s injuries were so extensive, Baier felt this theory wasn’t possible either.
There were also theories that he may have come down from the ledge that wraps around the 11th floor of the building. However, in order to gain access to the narrow, ornate ledge, he would have had to go through someone’s personal property, either a condo or an office since no hallway directly led to the ledge. Not to mention, the windows are also half windows, many of which no longer open, making this theory highly unlikely, if not impossible.
Allison hired an engineer to do a calculation of possible ways Rey could have gone through that location of the roof. Had he gone in from the top roof, it was determined that he would have needed to travel at 11.5 mph to reach the point of entry about 45 feet out. Since there was only about a 40 feet span of roof to run on & he’d been wearing flip flops at the time, it was basically impossible.
Some people have theorized that he could have even been pushed from a helicopter or hit by a car or brutally beaten & then brought into the extension building of the hotel where he was found. Since the roof that Rey’s body fell through was very flimsy & fragile, it could have easily been created by a person even just standing on it.
Had Rey fallen to his death from the building, one would believe that a resident, employee or office worker would have seen or heard something since the building is lined with windows & the surrounding area is bustling within the city. Stephen Janis, an investigative journalist, walked throughout the Belvedere, asking residents & office workers if they had seen Rey or heard a commotion, but no one had.
Rey’s brother Angel believes in his heart that there isn’t a scenario where Rey walked into the lobby of that hotel, found his way to the top of the building & jumped. When he tried to gain access to the roof, he was unable to do so. The only way to reach the roof is by taking back stairwells which are, in many cases, not at all accessible to the public. A person would need to know where to go & how to do it, not to mention that the door that leads to the roof was normally locked.
When cameras from the hotel were reviewed, there was no footage of Rey anywhere in the building. There have also been no witnesses who have claimed to have seen Rey, a noticeable man who stood at nearly 6’5”. On the day of his death, the rooftop camera that may have captured the incident had been disconnected despite the fact they’d been working the day before & the day after.
Despite the ME’s ruling of an undetermined manner of death, over the next week or so, police made media appearances, saying that Rey’s death had been a suicide. Media outlets also published this information & very quickly, interest in his case began to fade.
Rey’s family were extremely discouraged that authorities were quickly concluding that his death had been a suicide. Angel feels they didn’t take the time to understand who Rey was as a person & the fact that he hadn’t been under any mental duress prior to his sudden death. He wasn’t taking any medications that could have affected his mental state & his drug test was negative. He had also gotten married to the love of his life only six months earlier & he couldn’t wait to start a family. Rey & Allison had been planning on moving back to LA, they’d booked a trip to go to New Mexico in a few weeks & he’d also reserved an editing suite for the coming weekend so he could finish a video project for one of The Agora affiliate companies.
Allison met with the medical examiner with a list of questions in hand, hoping to shed some light on what caused her husband’s death. The doctor told her that the way in which his right tibia & fibula bones had fractured was not consistent with a fall. However, the doctor didn’t go on to say what she thought caused the fractures.
Although authorities wanted the case closed, urging the ME to change the manner of death to suicide, they refused to do so based on the autopsy results paired with the information they had from authorities.
In most U.S. states there are only five acceptable options for manner of death: natural, accident, suicide, homicide or undetermined. Undermined manner of deaths are present on only about 3% of all U.S. death certificates. In these cases, there isn’t enough information to classify it as a suicide or homicide, meaning, the case can’t be officially closed.
According to Miryam Moya, a forensic expert who specializes in studying the impact of accidents on the human body, based on Rey’s autopsy report, it’s her opinion that his injuries were more in line with someone who had been run over by a car. Had he thrown himself from the adjacent parking garage, dropping 20 feet to the 2nd floor roof, it’s her opinion that his body would have entered the building in a horizontal position.
There are three options as to how Rey died: either from an accidental fall, homicide or suicide. Since Rey had no reason to be up on that roof, an accidental fall isn’t an option, leaving homicide or suicide as the two remaining options.
In the meantime, Allison & the family combed through their house looking for any clues that could shed light on what had been going on before his death. This was when they found a note taped behind the computer in the office that had been tucked in plastic & typed in miniscule print. Allison could tell that he typed it on the day he vanished because scraps of paper from the paper from the note were still in the trash.
The note started out with, Brothers and Sisters, Right now, around the world volcanoes are erupting. What an awesome sight. Whom virtue unites, death will not separate. I stand before you, a man who understands the purpose and value of our secrets. That’s why I cherish them as secrets. That was a well-played game. Congratulations to all who participated. Life is a test to see if you can control your spirit. Take care & enjoy the festivities.
The note listed various names, some movie stars as well as a whole page of people he knew while some significant names in his life weren’t on the list. There was also a list of movies that had always stuck with him. All the information within the note were things that Allison knew her husband liked or had been familiar with, but the way they were compiled made no sense.
When Allison typed the first sentence of his note into Google, Freemasons immediately popped up. Freemasons are the oldest fraternal organization in the world, a group that came together during the Middle Ages in Europe as a group of skilled builders.
Although they aren’t a secret society per se, they do have secret passwords & rituals & have long communicated using symbols. Traditionally, the group is only open to men, but some women-only lodges now exist. Some famous Freemasons include George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Winston Churchill, Nat King Cole & Buzz Aldrin.
Allison knows that her husband was curious about secret societies, including Freemasons & may have been thinking about doing a screenplay about them. He’d actually talked with a member of a Freemasons lodge in Maryland about joining & that same day, he’d bought the book, Freemasons for Dummies.
Since Rey was a writer to the core, according to Allison, he was constantly taking notes, oftentimes writing random thoughts on a sheet of paper that weren’t connected. Phone numbers, work information & philosophical thoughts could all be listed on the same page.
Allison immediately handed the letter over to authorities, who sent it to the FBI lab. Although they found the writings to be unusual, they didn’t deem it a suicide note while many believe it was written in code.
Based on Claudia’s account of events on the day that Rey vanished, whatever phone call pulled him away from his home happened very quickly. He left the house with an open can of soda & chips out, the lights on & took very little with him.
When Claudia had been in the guest room of their home, she heard the phone ring from the other side of the wall where Rey had been working in the other room. Very quickly, he ran down the stairs & out of the house. She could hear that the conversation was brief & ended with Rey saying, Oh shit! as if he was surprised.
When the call was traced, authorities determined that it had come from Stansberry & Associates where Rey had worked. However, they couldn’t determine the caller’s extension since it had come from the switchboard of Agora, Inc that covers over 40 businesses. This was a critical piece of information as the call was what led to Rey rushing from his home before his tragic, mysterious death. No one from the company came forward to say they had been responsible for the call.
According to the Netflix documentary, although Porter gave reward money, within hours of finding Rey’s body, his company put a gag order on all their employees so anyone close to him wasn’t legally allowed to talk to investigators. This is despite the fact that Rey had been in Baltimore for the sole purpose of working for one of his best friends who he’d known since age fifteen.
According to detective Michael Baier, he essentially hit a wall when trying to get any information out of the company’s employees, including Porter himself.
Porter & Rey had been on the same swim & water polo teams, they’d gone to their high school prom together so Allison was understandably furious that he was refusing to cooperate with investigators. If he had nothing to do with his friend’s death, she wondered why he was being so uncooperative.
In July 2020, a spokesperson for the company disputed these claims, denying the idea of a gag order, indicating that Porter had been interviewed by the lead detective in the case on June 23, 2006.
Before Rey moved to Baltimore to join Porter’s company, Stansberry put out a letter under a firm called Pirate Investors that encouraged the investment in a Russian firm that could possibly discover something like uranium. When the tip didn’t work out, investors became angry & complained which led to the SEC filing fraud charges against Stansberry, ordering them to pay a $1.5 million restitution. However, the company fought back, arguing that it was their first amendment right to give the advice they gave while the SEC maintained that their advice had been fraudulent, accusing them of fabricating stock tips.
According to Allison, part of Rey’s job after moving to Baltimore was to clean up Porter’s reputation in conjunction with writing financial newsletters.
Allison had noticed that in the two weeks before her husband’s death, something had been weighing on him & causing him stress. He’d also been especially protective of her, wanting to go everywhere Allison went & although they were extremely close & preferred to do things together, this hadn’t been his typical behavior. About a week before his death, when Allison left to go for a jog at a nearby track, Rey insisted on going with her, sitting on the bleachers reading a book while she ran.
As close as they were as a couple, if something had been bothering Rey, he never shared his worries with Allison.
On the Monday before he went missing, May 15, 2006, the couple’s house alarm went off at about 1 am, something that had never happened before.
When Allison went downstairs to see what was going on, Rey came running around the corner with a big bat, ready to strike a potential intruder. As he came upon his wife, Allison was taken aback by the intense look of fear she saw in her husband’s eyes since Rey was always an exceptionally calm, level-headed person that rarely ever got rattled. After the police came out, they determined that the alarm had been triggered by a squirrel.
The following night, on Tuesday, May 16, the alarm went off yet again at about 1 am. Although she could see the screen of a first-level window had been tampered with as if someone was trying to break into the house, police once again suggested an animal had once again triggered the alarm.
Allison remains convinced that these occurrences are somehow connected to her husband’s death as only hours later, the phone call came through that sent Rey rushing from their home & he never came back.
Allison is certain that her husband became aware of sensitive information that he may have accidentally stumbled upon & because of it, he was murdered. However, she can’t wrap her head around what the information could be that would have led someone to kill him, but she feels money is no doubt at the root of it.
Michael Baier, the lead detective working Rey’s case, like Allison, believed that Rey’s death had been a homicide rather than a suicide. Since Allison was working just as hard as he was to get to the bottom of what led to her husband’s death, he worried for her safety.
According to Baier, he was the sole person in the homicide unit that believed Rey had been murdered, but after only three weeks of investigating the case, he was reassigned to the FBI Safe Streets Task Force.
Moving forward, Allison was given another lead detective to speak with, something that was highly frustrating as each time she touched base with them, she was told to just accept that her husband had killed himself regardless of the fact that the medical examiner had left the case open with a ruling of undetermined manner of death.
Unless someone comes forward with information about who had been on the other end of the line when Rey hurried from his house, the case is sadly at a dead end.
In 2018, author Mikita Brottman, a British-born teacher & writer in Baltimore who lived in a condo in the Belvedere, published a book about Rey’s case titled, An Unexplained Death: The True Story of a Body at the Belvedere.
Through her tremendous grief at the loss of her beloved husband, Allison felt that Rey’s strength continued to surround her, allowing her to somehow move forward even when she didn’t want to. Although life & time has naturally gone on for his family, through their joyous moments, such as the birth of Rey’s nieces & nephews, pain & grief is always hovering in the background. On every new occasion or when a new memory is made, his presence is always there in their hearts.
It took Allison six long years to work up the courage to watch her wedding video. Although she had seen many photos of her husband, it had been far too painful to see him in movement, alive & full of life. However, she takes comfort in knowing just how much love they shared between each other.
If you have any information regarding Rey’s mysterious death, please contact the Baltimore Police Department’s Missing Person Unit or Homicide Unit or the FBI.
References:
- Wikipedia: Belvedere Hotel
- Rey Rivera autopsy
- History: 7 things you may not know about Freemasons
- IMDB: Unsolved Mysteries – S1.E1: Mystery on the Rooftop
- Caleb Kaltenbach: The suspicious case of Rey Rivera.. And why he matters, part 1: The story
- Unsolved Mysteries: Murder on the Rooftop
- The Real News Network: Cops say he jumped from a building, but the evidence suggests foul play
- Facebook: Baltimore True Crime
- RGA: Decoding the death certificate
- Esquire: Where is Frank Porter Stansberry of Netflix’s Unsolved Mysteries Now?
- Apple Podcasts: Crime Junkie: Mysterious Death of Rey Rivera
- Greeley Tribune: Death of Rey Rivera, a man with ties to Windsor, subject in Netflix documentary series
