I've never made a huge deal of it, but being aged 59 now, I have some serious vision problems. It's almost impossible for me to reply to each point in a post and not miss something- just the ways my eyes don't work now.
Please forgive me for a clunky response.
Since all this is hypothetical, and since I do think he probably left voluntarily and successfully ( that is, alive and well), my responses are both genuine to what I believe about him, and like most of this case, are also hypothetical.
1) How often does something bother one of us? I would have laughed this damned question off until the past 2 years. My life has been turned upside down by lies and fraud perpetrated by someone I am legally bound to in ways I could never have imagined.
So, as hard and painful and CRUEL as it is, I have to say " Maybe part of what I've been through has been and is to help me understand mental anguish, true suffering of a non- physical type, the principle of Grace, and the ability to forgive in that it is sufficient measure. " I fall very short, but I do believe things happen to teach us humility and humanity in ways we didn't have exposure to before. There's a mis-applied but fundamentally sound reason for the old saying in the Lincoln assassination " Their name is Mudd". Note- I have an ancestral ( biological, not adoptive) tie to Dr. Mudd and his family. Ha.
Ray Gricar could have been betrayed and deeply hurt in a way he couldn't work out on his own. He seemed to be a low key person who didn't really " put himself out there" as far as many close friendships/ relationships go.
However, perhaps the more insular of us are the least prepared for betrayal so huge that it changes our sense of self, our ego, our trust, our ability to still believe we are a good person despite what someone we are tied to has done.
What could have shaken Ray to the core, hypothetically?
Information or proof of actions committed by people he loved and respected that HE, personally, found incompatible with his belief system or with his moral system. We can't judge the seriousness or merit of his reaction to this " it ". It is his.
A few hypotheticals in short:
1) The whole story of what happened to Roy. It seemed to weigh heavily on his mind for a long time.
2) Something truly seriously bad and hidden about a friend, Patty, one of his staff DAs, a woman he loved who wasn't Patty, a family member. Something he couldn't fix, with the added burden of " guilty knowledge".
I think it would be like something that happened to me when I was young, and have never made peace with. When I was a very young nurse in my 20's, my parents would take my little son down the street to the lovely home of old friends of ours to swim in their pool. I went with them a few times. I was extremely startled to see a very large pigmented growth on my dad's friend's forehead... I kept thinking " This has every appearance of malignant melanoma". I sat there, really upset while they all played with my little tyke in the pool, wondering what was appropriate and what was overstepping my boundaries. You see, this was not a highly educated man and he and his wife were " older". Probably near 60 at that time and I didn't judge age too well back then, LOL.
I rationalized that as prominent as the lesion was, the dear sweet man's personal physician had to have seen the lesion and had it biopsied.
But no, apparently his wet hair changed his hairline to make it visible to me but it was hidden under his dry hair when he saw his MD. It grew, unabated.
He had advanced melanoma, and died when it metastasized to a kidney a year or so later. I'll never forget deciding to stay silent and thereby keep people calm that beautiful summer day at their pool with my beautiful little boy, and maybe letting a very good, kind father and grandfather die. It's been many years ago, but I'll never forget 1000 things about that dear man and his wife. Or the fact that when my own father died, his granddaughter, who was my age and loved my family so, placed a tiny bouquet of red roses underneath my dad's " pillow" in his casket at the viewing. Guilt can kill.
The BIG " UNKNOWN"
We have, off and on, wondered whether Ray accidentally stumbled onto something so bad outside his jurisdiction as DA of Centre County that it can't be named here because it would be speculative, and the criminal activity either stopped because of " the Sandusky effect" or continues, unabated.
Very smart criminals will implicate the good guys. There's no doubt in my mind that Ray was a good guy but did he leave over total disdain and also personal fear if he had been somehow framed or caught in a trap? IF he knew he couldn't PROVE it and if he knew he couldn't SOLVE it, he might have been so utterly disillusioned with PA State Police, the PA AG, and maybe higher levels of investigative bodies that he got out of the country for his own sense of mental and maybe also physical safety. This could tie into the old theories about the protection of the FBI or CIA and him going to work for them covertly.
Regarding the other points you make-
1) IF there was something SO worrisome on his stupid old obsolete county issued laptop, then he certainly made a huge production of wanting it OFF the computer. He was not smart about the statements he made, he was not prudent about asking how to wipe a HD, and he didn't cover any tracks, apparently, with the wiping software he purchased and used. I have a photo of Patty holding up the wiping software program box.
Why did he do everything but paint that laptop with bright orange florescent arrows?
Then, there's the physical evidence that the laptop was submerged in water for a period of months and the HD likely was as well. Can't argue that the laptop was a sticking point for him that seems WAY out of proportion to what we know.
2) Let's be honest. You've seen videos of Patty. You know her history pretty well in Belefonte.
IMO, Patty is not a doer. She is a follower. I wouldn't have confided in her about something extremely worrisome either.
3) Similarly, we have anecdotal statements from friends of his that Ray didn't like or trust local LE very much. I think he'd have done best to take a serious issue straight to the FBI. ( or maybe even the CIA, depending on the scope of the suspected or known crime).
He was worried and concerned, maybe about multiple issues/ crimes not in his jurisdiction, etc.
Why didn't he trust someone?
>>>>>
Or did he? <<<<<<<<
We cannot PROVE matters of this type of deep investigation and security. We know he left the life he had without any traces. Did he go into a special investigative body as a highly trained DA turned special agent?
Why do we never consider that he might have been meeting an investigator at Raystown Lake? Or in Lewisburg? Or both? I've worked with the FBI to solve a crime. They are dressed in jeans, no big " FBI" jacket, and they want the witnesses to look and BE relaxed, calm, open, establish friendly rapport..
They might have decided to meet at a picturesque lake, then the town Ray enjoyed shopping for little antiques in.
Maybe the agent copied the files off the laptop with Ray's full consent and cooperation, and was the one who separated the parts and dumped it in the river a week later. I can't stress enough how these young guys are sneakers, jeans, flannel shirt casual to blend in with everyone else. Also, they are not afraid to get their hands dirty, literally. I've seen them and likely, Tracker and others have as well. I have a great deal of respect for most FBI field agents, as they are the eyes and ears for the little people like me and you who need their help and get it by making one well- phrased phone call for assistance with a problem that is likely multi- state or may involve local LE.
Their first priority would be to see that Ray was safe and on his way to his agreed upon new career and destination, which could have been fairly fluid in nature.. Would a DA near retirement who was unmarried, had no close relatives nearby, had only a casual type girlfriend situation, take on a new exciting covert position in an area we don't have knowledge of, but do know how skilled he was in multiple areas? Would we be a modern " James Bond" if we could and it was offered us?
It's just a variation on the " He left to live on a tropical island" theory, but it uses what we know of his considerable knowledge base, his personality trait of helping others in trouble, and of seeking justice for criminals.
I'm looking beyond a reasonable doubt standard of proof, and I'm wondering if there are some points that reach that goal. Argue it, or just play Devil's Advocate.
1. Something was bothering RFG. There are a number of witnesses, starting at least at 3/8/05, Shotts, Joseph, JKA, the people at the Prison Board meeting and PEF.
Sbppoint: It could be a number of things, but we can rule out one thing, a physical threat, i.e. that someone would want to physically hurt or kill him. There are two pieces of evidence that run opposite to that idea.
A. He didn't tell anyone, including the police and his girlfriend. The girlfriend is key. If someone was targeting RFG, PEF could be caught in the "line of fire." It would make sense to tell her to be careful.
B. On 4/14/05, RFG drove to Raystown Lake. He drove through areas sparsely populated, probably no police patrols, and in areas without cell service. That is not the action of someone worried about being killed.
2. RFG was planning to go to Lewisburg. He generated a map to Lewisburg prior to 4/15/05; he checked the weather there prior to 4/15.
3. RFG wanted to clean out the data on the laptop. He asked people, including a defense attorney, how to erase that drive; he had purchased software to do it about a year before. The searches on his home computer were his.
4. RFG was in Lewisburg at least on 4/15/05. There are numerous independent witnesses that corroborate each other, including the one at Centre Hall who gave a time consistent with RFG being there and arriving in Lewisburg. The Mini and the laptop are physical evidence he was there; his scent in the parking lot is physical evidence. Point 2 adds to that as well.
What are the problems with my logic, if any?
