Unsolved Mysteries (2020-…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Mystery on the Rooftop - full transcript

After rushing from his home, Rey Rivera disappears. Days later, his car is found and a strange sight at a historic hotel triggers a baffling mystery.

[soft melancholy guitar playing]

[woman] So, what
are your thoughts, Rey?

Uh, I'm really excited.

And I...

can't wait to see Allison
come down the aisle.

[woman] We were both so happy.

My wedding in Puerto Rico
was just magical.

We got married in a
town called Isabela.

And it was right on the beach.

It's one of the things that my brother got
from our parents, Puerto Rico,

and the respect and the love
that we have for Puerto Rico.



He made it a point

to honor that.

[officiant] I
want to welcome you here today.

[speaking in Spanish]

[in English] This beautiful,
fairy-tale wedding was just the beginning.

- [waves crashing nearby]
- No matter what, Allison,

I'll love you forever.

Rey, take this ring,

as a sign of my
love and fidelity.

- [both laughing]
- [crowd chuckling]

That was probably
one of the happiest times, as...

as the Riveras, you know, that we...
we had as a family.

I present to you
Rey and Allison Rivera.

[cheers and applause]



[sounds fading]

[woman] I don't know
why he disappeared.

When they said it
was suicide, I was like,

he ran out of the house
like he was late for something.

Who sits there and says,

"Oh, you know what?
It's 6:30, time to jump off a big roof."

[crows cawing]

I kept saying there
is something bigger,

there is something
more going on.

I think he turned over some rock,
and he shouldn't have turned it over.

But I know that he
didn't kill himself.

My hope is that there is somebody
that's out there that knows the truth.

[theme music plays]

[overlapping chatter, shouts]

[whistle trills]

Rey was 6'5, 260.

A water polo player, so,
broad shoulders, thin waist.

But also,

this beautiful smile, um,
that lit up a room.

[man] Family was definitely
one of the key things with Rey.

Growing up, um, being Air Force brats,
uh, my dad was in the military.

When you're moving
from city to city,

you become really tight,

because you're constantly making
new, temporary friends.

So the one
constant is the family.

[woman] He was happy.

Always had us laughing.

Could always find the funny
in pretty much everything.

He had a hysterical,
awesome, keen sense of humor.

You know, just naturally,
you would gravitate towards him.

You know, that kind of energy.

[Allison] His
dream was to be a writer and director.

Film was everything for him.

And so, we
were living in Southern California.

But screenplays and all of that
was not bringing in money.

So Rey turned to a friend in Baltimore,
Porter Stansberry.

Porter was his
high school buddy.

- [overlapping shouts]
- They were both water polo players,

- and they stayed very, very good friends.
- [whistle trills]

And Porter,
who was like a big finance guy,

and had a company, Stansberry Associates,
that wrote financial newsletters.

Porter had always wanted Rey...

it was for a long time,

um, Rey to come write for him.

Even though Rey
didn't know finance or stocks,

Porter's persistent and
really wanted to work with his friend.

So, Rey took a writing job,

writing financial newsletters
in Baltimore.

We moved to Baltimore for this company
and all we knew was Porter.

We made a pact that we were going
to live in Baltimore for 24 months.

We moved in in December of 2004.

We found this amazing home

and we found a church.

We found a community.

We were so happy.

May 16th, 2006,

I had a business trip.

And that morning,
I was a little tired.

I had a three-hour drive.

And Rey got up with me
and made me breakfast.

It was such a beautiful morning

and I said to him, I was like,
"I love you so much."

And... And he was like,
"Thank you for loving me so much."

He carried my suitcase down the stairs,
put it in the car for me,

and I was off.

[elevator dings]

I finished my day,
like 6:00 or 6:30.

I check into the hotel

and I call him.

[line ringing]

Please press one to
leave me a message.

[Rey repeats message in Spanish]

[voicemail beeps]

[Allison] And he doesn't answer.

It was just, like,
"That's really strange."

We had a houseguest,

and her name was Claudia,
and she was a colleague.

- [rings, vibrates]
- That night, I call her,

and she said around 6:30
she had heard a phone call come in...

[cell phone ringing]

...heard Rey answer

and then run out of
the house in a hurry.

And she was like,
"Let me see if he came back."

So she walked around the house,
all the lights were on.

She said,
"He's not here."

And then she called me

that next
morning at 5:30,

and she was like,
"Allison, he's not home."

I'm not one to panic,

but there was just something
that wasn't right.

I'm like, "I'm
headed home."

I'm driving up,
calling everybody.

At the time,
we were living in Puerto Rico.

Uh, the phone rang,

and it was Allison.

She always call me "Mama,"

and she said, "Mama,
I can't find Rey."

I was like, "Have
you talked to him?"

She's like, "No."

After that, I called
Angel, Rey's brother.

[Angel] I
instantly knew something was amiss.

You know, he's not
the dude to disappear.

So, for him to go, you know, MIA

for any extended period of time,
and his wife not know about it,

it was so out of the ordinary.

By, like, 1:00 or 2:00,

I'm on a flight from
Orlando to Baltimore.

[Allison] I get to the house,

his car's not there.

And I walk in

and in the kitchen,
there was a soda can opened,

a bag of potato chips,
and his Invisaligns.

I ran upstairs.

Our bedroom light was on,
the office light was on.

He wasn't anywhere.

By seven o'clock, Angel landed.

Claudia had went
back to New York,

and all our friends flew down.

We're just really, um,

you know, combing the streets.

[overlapping chatter]

[Allison] And
then, Maria, his mother, came in.

And my parents
came in the next day.

Hi, um, I'm calling regarding a person
that we're looking for.

So I had cleared out
the entire dining room area.

Then it became work.

"Where do we have to go?
What do we have to do?

Here's the license
plate number."

Approximately 6
foot 5, Hispanic.

[indistinct chatter]

[Allison] I
would be calling the hospitals,

you know, if there
was a John Doe.

Porter put up a
reward of $1,000,

because Rey and Porter
were good friends,

and was able to
get the media in there

and kind of get
that all stirred up.

[Angel] So we're just kinda
trying to think of places

that people would've seen him.

Coffee shops, uh,
different restaurants, that kind of stuff.

You know, you're hoping

that someone spotted him.

But... you didn't
hear anything.

[Allison] There's
no movement on credit cards.

The cell phone was dead.

There was no cash pullout
from our bank accounts.

You know, nothing.

And every step
of the way in this,

I... I couldn't believe
that it was real.

Nothing. They...
They put the posters up, so...

[Angel] It
starts getting get real scary. But...

you feel that you gotta be strong
in front of everybody,

and not, you
know, not lose hope.

Or sort of let those worst thoughts
come into your mind.

You're fighting
that. I'm fighting that.

But, um... it
gets daunting.

[Maria] Where is Rey?

Where could he possibly be?

[sniffling, sighs heavily]

[reporter] Family and friends
say Rivera left the house in a hurry,

as if he was late
for an appointment.

For the 11 News I-Team,
I'm Jayne Miller.

My interest in Rey Rivera's story
was because it seemed just so unusual

to have a 32... I
think he was 32 years old at the time...

popular,

no evidence that
he was trying to run from something

or distraught about something,

that he kind of
just, poof! Vanished.

[reporter 2] Baltimore City police
are searching for a missing 32-year old man.

Anyone with information should call
Baltimore City police at...

[Allison] So, we're now
six days into him being gone.

I'd come home from searching,

and my mom and dad wanted to go
to look for the car

in different parking lots.

They were on their own,

and Mom said, "Let's
pull into this one."

And my dad was driving

and she looks over to talk to my dad,
and through my dad,

she's like, "Tom, that's the car."
And Dad said, "No, it's not."

She's like, "Tom,
that is the car."

[reporter 2]
The search took a turn last night

when Rivera's car was found
behind a building on St. Paul Street.

[Allison] My mother and father
found the car right here.

This parking spot, number seven.

By the time I got here,
which was about ten minutes, um,

there were cops everywhere,

uh, the media was everywhere.

[siren wailing, muted]

[Allison] When we found the car,
there was a ticket on it.

The parking attendant said
that the car must have been parked

the evening that
Rey disappeared.

Because the parking attendant
had found the car

when he arrived at
work the next morning.

So it's six days of him missing.

The sixth day, we found the car.

So we knew the
car had been sitting there six days.

I just like, looked around,

and I was looking, you know...
I was looking at these buildings.

I just... I was like, "Why are you here?
Why are you here?

Why would you be here?
Why, why, why, why, why?"

[Jayne] When they found the car,

that really, you know,
accelerated the interest in the case,

because now you had a clue.

The area where the car was found
is a parking lot near the Belvedere Hotel.

It used to be an old hotel.
Now it's a condominium.

But it was also located
in the area of town

where the company that he worked for,
Stansberry, is located.

So it wasn't unusual, on its face,
that he would know that part of town.

But it became this
mystery, right away.

It was like, "Where is he?
His car is here. What happened to him?"

Now, it really started
to have the appearance of...

Hmm. Foul play?

[reporter 3] His
phone was missing.

Was his phone recovered in the
truck, or no?

No, there is
nothing in the truck,

nothing of evidentiary
value in the truck.

There is nothing to indicate
a theft of the vehicle.

There is nothing
that we've uncovered in his background,

up to this point,

that gives a logical reason
for him just to disappear.

We went down this
block, about ten blocks.

Targeting a bunch
of local businesses.

Couple of people
said they knew him.

[Jayne] After the
car was located,

all of these folks started to organize
these kind of searches

in that area around the car.

The next big thing that happened
is that...

someone discovered
this hole in a roof

of the Belvedere Hotel.

[Allison] Three
of Rey's co-workers decided to go

on the top of the parking garage
next to the Belvedere.

They looked over the edge,

and they spotted flip-flops
on the lower roof area, near a hole.

The only way to find the hole

was to be on top
of the Belvedere,

or to be on top of the...
the parking structure.

[Angel] It just
looked like a black spot

on this white roof.

[Jayne] It's not a big hole.

You'd be just like, "Oh, well,

must've... you know,
rain must've caused a leak or something."

And then, the three men
who found the hole called the police.

[siren wailing, muted]

[man] Detectives came in. They said,
"Where's the manager of the building?"

They said, "Gary, can you open up
this door for us?" You know.

And the space
was the old Racquetball Club.

We called it the
old church space.

A lot of people probably wouldn't know
that it was used at all.

I open the door up,

and the first thing I did,
I smelled the... this stench.

The smell was a dead body,

and you could see the wall

where the blood had came down,
and his legs were towards the door.

I looked up, and I saw outside.

That roof there was metal.

So he came right
through the metal,

and right through the ceiling.

Still today, when
I open up a door,

sometimes I still see that body.

It's just something
that I would never want to see again.

We get the call

to go down to
Baltimore Police Headquarters.

And that was the longest, quietest drive
I can ever recall.

[Allison] This
guy is sitting behind his desk,

and he's like,
"Would you like some water?"

So he gave me

a coffee mug full of water.

And that's when they confirmed

that the body that they had found
was Rey's.

My hands, they went like this.
Like, the water went everywhere.

You couldn't even, um...

You couldn't even hold it.

[voice trembling] And
I was just like shaking, and I just...

uh, I sat down
and just screamed.

It was just...

anguish...

heartbreak.

Um...

I mean... It's
your little brother, you know?

[voice trembling]
And so, I remember...

everyone just starting to cry.

Um...

Ah, man. And, uh...

Trying to put, you know, putting arms
around each other and everything.

So...

the reality... reality of it
starts setting in at that moment.

Didn't...

think about the who, what,
and the where, or how,

probably until later on when we got back
to Allison and Rey's place.

[Maria] I was at
their house, waiting,

and I, you know,
and I knew when they walked in

that...

Yeah.

[muted cheering, applause]

[Maria, voice shaking]
And I looked up at Allison...

and she was crying rivers.

She was just crying rivers.

And, uh...

I... I... I just
held her. I just...

[Gary] We used to
have a saying there:

"Meet me at
the Belvedere."

And that was the biggest thing
that was going on in South Baltimore City,

was the Belvedere.

Real ritzy, high-class place,
you know, real nice.

Anybody that was somebody
stayed at the Belvedere.

I spent 30 years
of my life there.

Started off as a, uh, busboy,
making $2 and something an hour.

And then when I left,

I left as a property manager.

A lot of great memories.

Lot of great memories.

But not that
memory of Rey Rivera,

that was not a
great memory at all.

We got that call
on the 24th of May,

I believe, that a body was found in a
room in the Belvedere.

Um...

So we, of course, responded out
to the room where the body was located.

The body, pretty much,
was in a prone position.

Decomposition was pretty extreme
at that point.

He had been
missing for eight days.

That's what really hurt.

The decomp is gonna destroy
most of the evidence

that you could see instantaneously
if you got to that body right away.

Rey's autopsy,

it was some brutal reading.

Multiple, multiple
ribs fractured,

punctured lungs,

lacerations, seven, nine inches,

damage to his skull.

The right leg
had two different breaks in it,

to the point where the bone
was actually protruding through the flesh.

With the extent of the injuries,

it seemed like
the man came from such great heights

when he went through that hole.

The hole was pretty clean
and it wasn't that large.

I could fit through the hole
with only a little clearance around me.

So that's how
small the hole was.

It wasn't this massive
cave-in of a roof.

He came vertical through that thing
like a projectile.

The biggest question is:
Where did he come from?

How did he get
through that hole?

[Jayne] The
first theory was that he jumped off,

or fell off, or was pushed off,

but came off the very top roof

and then went
through that lower roof,

ten or eleven stories down.

The very top of the hotel roof,

at best, maybe from point-to-point,
was maybe a 40-foot open area.

Of course, there's air ducts,
there's air conditioning units,

there was a lot of different
structures up there.

The hole was
quite a distance out.

The rough angles I
could get were 45 feet

from the Belvedere
to where the hole was.

Even to attempt a jump, a running jump,
to get to the point where the hole was,

was, in my mind,
virtually impossible.

He's a tall, fit man,
but he also was in flip-flops.

The hole never made sense,
like where it was.

So my dad and I
went up on the roof.

I'm afraid of heights,

Rey was afraid of heights,

and being up on the roof
scared me to absolute death

because there's
no railing up there.

And it's very far down.

I couldn't imagine
why he would be up there.

Immediately, nothing about the evidence,
at that point, felt good to me.

The rooftop, the
location of the hole,

I didn't believe
that Rey went off that top of the roof.

So after that,
we went over to the parking garage,

right adjacent to the building.

[Jayne] From the perspective
of the garage, the hole is too far away.

I mean, he'd have to, like,
go way out there

to reach that area
where the hole was.

[Michael] The top of the garage roof
is only 20 feet.

So, to me, it seems feasible
a man could survive that,

even with going
through the rooftop.

Now, the extent of the injuries
to the body

were pretty...
pretty intense.

So, that theory went
to rest pretty quick.

There was theories
that he came off the 11th floor.

There's a ledge
that wraps around the building.

From there, it's possible.

But to get to those ledges,

you had to go through
somebody's personal property.

You had to go through an office.
You had to go through a room.

You had to go through a condo.

None of the hallways
just left out to the ledge.

And the windows
are half windows,

which barely even open
if they opened at all.

[Jayne] And then, the ledge,

it's not a catwalk.

It's a ledge.

And this is a really old building,
so, it's ornate.

You'd really have
to be pretty nimble

to maneuver that
without falling off the building.

So, that hole
still is a mystery.

Which part of that building
he came off of.

During the investigation,

around the hole on the rooftop,

we find his cell phone.

The phone was in
totally working order.

[Allison] This is his cell phone
that was found on the roof,

and there is not
a crack in the screen, um...

which I find really strange.

The phone is one of those things
that I will never forget.

I mean, you can go anywhere right now
and drop your phone from three stories,

and something's
gonna happen to it.

Even from the garage roof.

[Allison] His
eyeglasses, when they were found,

there wasn't a scratch on them.

[Jayne] His
injuries were severe...

and fatal.

And it's just odd that,

for the force it took for him
to go through that roof,

that the cell phone and glasses
would survive that force.

It's odd.

None of these
objects are damaged,

yet he is brutal.

One flip-flop was broken.

The other flip-flop...
They both were laying on the rooftop.

These are his flip-flops
that were also, um, on the roof.

There's drag marks here
that are pretty fresh.

And then this one is, you know,
this one is... is broken.

I don't know how that...

how all of this... how
this even happened.

The flip-flops,
phone, his eyeglasses,

they were almost like...
Just to me, it looked staged.

[Jayne] It raises that question:

Well, did they really fall with him
or did someone put them there,

after the fact?

What wasn't found
with Rey was, um,

the money clip I bought him
for a wedding gift

and then engraved his initials
"R.R." on it.

He would have, you know, his IDs,
money, all that kind of stuff in it.

You know. Um...

So, yeah, he like...
It was his thing, his little...

signature piece.

[Allison] That has
never been recovered.

When I got the car back
from the police department,

I turned that car upside down

for that money clip.

'Cause there was just
something that I was like,

that... that
doesn't seem right

that that's just gone.

[man] Naturally,
you think, right,

if this guy fell
off the building,

someone's gonna
have seen something.

So, shortly after
Rey's body was found,

I literally, like, wandered
throughout the hotel,

and just tried to
talk to anybody,

and asked them
the same question:

Did you see him?

Did you hear anything?

I mean, this happened
in a public building

where people are
going to a restaurant.

You know, Mount
Vernon is a bustling neighborhood.

There are people
all over the place.

And this guy just ends up
dropping out of the sky

and ending up in a
conference room,

and no one knows anything?

[Jayne] You have all those windows
in the building,

and no one came
forward and said,

"Oh, I saw, I heard,

I looked down, I was like,
"What is that?'"

Nothing. I mean, there just...
It seemed to happen

without anyone seeing anything.

[Angel] There's no way my brother
just walks into the Belvedere Hotel,

walks through
the lobby, and you...

get to the top of that building.

I tried to do it.

I tried to walk up there.
I tried to walk through that lobby.

It's not something that just...

anyone casually can do
walking off the street.

[Stephen] You have to go through, like,
these back stairwells that lead up,

that in some cases are locked,
or are not open to the public.

And then you go, sort of,
navigate this labyrinth...

...to then get out through a door
that's usually locked,

to get to this roof area.

So, in order to get there,
you would have to know how to get there.

[Michael] At
the beginning of the investigation,

I tried to determine whether Mr. Rivera
was in the hotel at all.

So, I checked the
cameras in the hotel,

and there was no
footage of him anywhere.

The camera on the
rooftop was not working.

It was disconnected.

I was like, are you kidding me?
You know, that night,

the night Rey is supposed to have been
wandering up in the hotel,

and there's no video?

Like many elements of this case,

it's just like
another roadblock.

No one could give us any indication
that Rey was inside that building.

No one saw this man that night.

No witnesses,

no phone calls,

no jailhouse snitches.

We had nothing.

[reporter 1] Here's a
look at the morning's top stories.

Baltimore Police say...

[reporter 2] Rey Rivera
jumped from the roof of the Belvedere

and crashed
through a lower roof.

This was a solid running story
in Baltimore

for about seven to ten days,

and then it was kind of...

"determined"...

um, to be suicide,
so the interest in it faded.

Police, from the jump,
were leaning to suicide.

The circumstances,
the... the evidence,

the hard evidence that we have,

really point to this, uh,
probably being a suicide.

But... there wasn't
a lot of evidence.

He wasn't shot in the head.
He wasn't stabbed.

There was nothing suggesting
he'd been beaten,

or he'd been strangled.

He ended up in a hole,
and he fell off a building.

What else do you
want to say about it?

It was, you know,
"He committed suicide."

That was the posture of the...
of the police department.

[Angel] That
part of it was very disheartening.

They don't know Rey.
They don't know my brother.

And they're not, obviously,
listening to us.

We're telling them,
"No, he wasn't under any mental duress.

No, he wasn't under any kind of
psychoactive medications or anything.

None of those things."

You know, the drug test comes back,
indicates that, you know?

Um, so...

there's no reason for that
to be the first thing that you go to.

They wanted to, like, big guy,
off a building, through a roof.

You know, like,
he... he jumped.

And I'm the grieving widow

and I wouldn't want to believe
my husband would commit suicide.

[Angel] He just got married.

No indication of, you know,
someone that was sour at life.

Typically, people
that commit suicide,

there's plenty of
markers along the way.

There's none of that
in my brother's life.

He is not a guy
that would jump off a roof.

He's not a...

Especially where
we were in our lives.

He was so excited.

He wanted a baby so bad.

He wanted a family so bad.

[Jayne] No one
will accept suicide,

we know that.

But this case
just didn't have...

it... it just
didn't have that...

specter about it.

Because there just
wasn't any evidence

that he was...

somebody who was ready...
ready to take his life.

[Allison] Part of my trying
to figure all of this out

is that I wanted to talk
to the medical examiner.

I had a whole list of questions
on how Rey died...

or the possibilities.

I met with the medical examiner,

and she closed the door,

and she said,

"I know what
they're trying to do

and we are not
closing this case."

They said that,
what wasn't consistent with the fall

was the way that
his shins were broken.

And that's all she would say.

They did not say anything
of what would cause the breaks.

They just said it
was inconsistent.

[Michael] So,
with the questionable incidence

of how Rey came through the hole

and the unusual
circumstances behind it,

the medical examiner decided
to declare it undetermined.

[Jayne] When
you rule a case undetermined,

what you are saying as a medical examiner
and a forensic examiner is,

"We don't have enough information
to conclude

this person took
his or her own life

or someone
else took their life."

And so, you can't
close the case.

[Allison] When Rey was missing,

I just went through
the entire house

trying to figure out any clues
of where he might be.

We were looking
through the office,

and that's when we found a note

that was behind the computer.

[Jayne] Often
in a suicide, you have a note.

Most people who contemplate suicide
and commit suicide,

they don't want to leave their family
in the lurch.

They want them to understand
what happened.

The note was probably about,
you know, this big...

um, in all.

So it was shrunk down
really, really small.

And I know that he wrote the note
the day he disappeared,

because there were scraps
in the trash can.

The note starts out,
"Brothers and sisters."

[man] "Brothers and sisters,

right now, around the world,
volcanoes are erupting.

What an awesome sight.

Whom virtue unites,
death will not separate."

[Michael] It was a
very unusual note.

It had different names on it,

some movie star names on it,
family names on it.

It was very unusual.

There's a whole
page of people he knew.

But he's missed
some significant people,

so that seemed strange.

There were movies,

and the movies were the ones
that really stuck to him.

I know what all of
these things were,

nothing was really a surprise.

It was just why they
were all compiled,

and in the format
they were compiled.

[man] "I stand before you a
man who understands the purpose and value

of our secrets.
That's why I cherish them as secrets."

[Allison] Because
it was so weird,

I just took that first sentence

and laid it into Google search.

And the first thing that came up
was Freemasons.

He definitely was, you know,
kind of curious in, just secret societies,

the Freemasons, um...

And... And maybe he was looking
to do a screenplay.

[Jayne] I
would describe the letter as cryptic.

It's kind of like
reading tea leaves.

In fact,

someone I used as a consultant

when we were
doing this story said,

"You know, maybe
it's written in code."

[man] "That
was a well-played game.

Congratulations, to
all who participated."

Rey was a prolific writer
and he wrote all sorts of stuff,

everywhere.

[Allison] A lot of what he wrote down
was just random thoughts

that didn't necessarily connect.

It could be from a phone number

to a philosophy idea

of why the sky is blue, or work.

Um, and all in one pad of paper

can be all of those things,

with not any rhyme or reason.

[man] "Life is a test
to see if you can control your spirit.

Take care and
enjoy the festivities."

I, uh, didn't know what to do with it,
gave it to the police immediately.

[Michael] We
actually sent the note to the FBI lab.

They came back and
the FBI kind of cleared the note as...

just an unusual note,
but not suicide intent.

[Allison] This note I hate
because I don't understand it.

But this is definitely
not a suicide note.

I do know that.

[Jayne] One of the other
interesting elements in this case,

was on the day
that he disappeared,

whatever happened
seemed to happen in a hurry.

[cell phone ringing]

Yeah, he left the
house in a hurry,

he seemed to park in a hurry,

he didn't have much with him.

It just seemed that whatever sent him
to the Belvedere Hotel building

seemed to happen in a hurry.

[Allison] This room is where, um, Claudia,
my business colleague, was staying.

[cell phone ringing]

She had heard the phone ring

and she just heard him push off

from... from this room
over here, his desk,

and run down the stairs

and then out of
the house that night.

[inaudible chatter over phone]

Based on what we're hearing
from that friend of the wife,

it was a brief conversation,

uh, concluded with
an exclamation of "Oh."

Like a surprise
type of response.

[Michael] This guy
was working at home,

received a phone call,

left out his house quick.

[Allison] The
police traced the call,

and found out the call came from
Stansberry & Associates,

where Rey worked.

But there was no way to figure out
who made the call

because the call
came from the switchboard,

and they couldn't track down
the caller's extension.

The phone call was critical

because it seemed like
the phone call caught him by surprise,

and he was like, " I gotta go."
Like kind of in a panic.

[Michael] Unfortunately, the company
he worked for, Stansberry,

the minute the body was located

and I started
inquiring about it,

put a gag order on
all their employees.

Now, every possible
person that knew Rey,

worked with Rey,
or had any answers for me,

weren't allowed to legally talk to me
according to their company lawyers.

That's within hours
of his body being discovered.

His friend, Porter Stansberry,

and Porter's offices
of Stansberry & Associates,

have lawyered up.

This type of case,

we need a task force
with grand jury powers

to subpoena people,
and to require them to testify

and give statements.

But for a homicide detective
to try to break those walls,

if somebody doesn't want to talk to ya,
I can't force you to talk to me.

And Rey's best friend,
Porter Stansberry,

would not even return our calls,

would not talk to us,
would not give us any answers.

So, to me, as a
homicide detective,

I think to the normal person,
to me, that's really suspicious.

[Allison] Porter and Rey were
very good friends for a very long time.

Rey has known
Porter since he was 15.

They... They
were pretty thick.

[Maria] They
were in the same swimming team,

the same water polo team.

They went to prom together.

[Allison] Now I'm mad.

We move out here for him,

and Porter was not going
to speak to the police.

And that's when it started
to get really strange for me.

He's your friend and
you have no comment?

Why?

[Stephen] At the
time Rey disappeared,

he was a freelance videographer
working for Stansberry & Associates,

producing documentaries
or producing videos of conferences.

Prior to that,

Rey was working on a newsletter
called the Rebound Report,

which is a newsletter that, uh,

gives you stock
tips to buy stocks

that are like, you
know, not doing well,

that are going to
rebound in the future.

Now before Rey came out to join Porter
in his business and work with him,

Stansberry puts out a letter
under a firm called Pirate Investors

that touts the investment
in a Russian firm

that's going to, like,
discover uranium or something.

The tip didn't work out
and investors complained.

And subsequently,

the SEC filed fraud charges
against Stansberry,

and fined Stansberry
over a million dollars.

The company said that, you know,

it was absolutely
their First Amendment right

to make...
give this advice.

But, according to the SEC,

the advice was fraudulent.

[Allison] The
SEC thing with, um, Stansberry,

it's part of what Rey needed to do
when he came out initially,

was, a little bit,
clean up Porter's reputation

while he was also
writing financial newsletters.

About two weeks before he died,

there was something
that was worrying him.

At that time,

I didn't really
think much of it.

But then, that
Monday before he went missing,

the alarm went off.

[home security alarm wailing]

It was, like, 1:00 a.m.

And that thing
had never gone off.

That's the master
bedroom window,

- so it was blaring.
- [alarm wailing]

And I went down,

um, I went down the stairs
and around the corner,

and Rey came flying
out with this big bat.

And the fear in
this man's eyes...

scared me to death.

That guy was never
afraid of anything.

The police,
even though I brought them out,

said it was a squirrel.

Then again,

the following
Tuesday at 1:00 a.m.,

it went off.

[alarm blaring]

It was this window right here,

um, and all of this foliage,
none of this was here.

You could walk directly
up to the window, um, with screens on it.

And it was this window that was kinda...
it was tampered with.

Somebody was trying
to get in the house.

I believe that it was connected
to his death,

because it was...
That evening is when

he never returned home.

[Stephen] I just think something foul
happened to Rey.

Somebody or something got a hold of him
and did something horrible to him.

I believe that Rey had
some kind of information.

He may have stumbled on it,

maybe didn't know
that he stumbled on it.

I believe Rey was murdered.

What I can't get in
my head though is,

what would that
information be...

for somebody to kill him?

[Angel] The motive, in my mind,
is probably about money.

Rey's publication gets put out,

someone lost a lot more money
than they were anticipating.

And... ultimately,
I think, you know,

money makes people...

do really bad things.

[Jayne] We always considered
all these different possibilities.

Did someone push him off?

Did someone force him to go off?

Gun to his head?

Did he do something on a dare
with someone?

Was it some kind of game?

It never felt to me like,
oh, he jumped off the roof

and killed himself,
and that was the end of it.

It felt like
this was some much darker story...

that, honestly,
there are probably a lot of people

who would have a great interest
in keeping it quiet.

[Michael] When
I met with Rey's wife, Allison,

I advised her
that she needed to be careful.

'Cause she was working
as hard as I was,

if not harder, to
investigate this.

She was determined to turn every stone
that can be turned.

All the way to his company,
to his friends, every aspect of it.

And if she's this afraid
of what might have happened,

she needed to be very cautious
about who she talks to,

when she talks to them,
and how she goes about it,

and just, she had
to watch her back.

I was probably the only one
on the homicide floor

that did not believe
this thing was suicide.

And I believe there is... was enough
to investigate it as a homicide.

And then, unfortunately,
three weeks into the investigation,

I was reassigned.

I was being detailed
to the FBI Safe Streets Task Force,

so I was, uh, off this case.

[Allison] The week that I got back
from the memorial,

I called Detective Baier, and he said
he was being transferred off the case.

He says, "I'm
no longer your lead detective."

I said, "Are you on the case at all?"
And he said, "No."

It was very frustrating

and I was angry.

After a while, I called the police station
to follow up on the case.

They were like,
"You need to get through your head

your husband
committed suicide."

And then I got
pissed and I said,

"I'll get that through my head

when you show me evidence
that that happened."

[office phone ringing, muted]

[Jayne] I was just talking to someone
in the police department the other day,

"Oh that's suicide!"

So...

the posture of
the Baltimore Police Department is

that Rey killed himself.

The fact that the medical examiner
left the case open,

in terms of manner of death
as undetermined,

is what the case is all about,

is that it doesn't have
a firm conclusion to it.

There are a lot of open cases,

but they aren't open

like this one is open.

[Michael] To solve
this, somebody...

somewhere has to come out.

Somebody that knows Rey.

Somebody that knows
who that phone call was.

Somebody that worked with Rey

is gonna have to come
out of the woodwork,

and give police
somewhere to start with.

[Allison] In losing somebody,

there's a lot of people around
immediately.

[voice wavering]
And then, um...

And then, you know,
it's kind of your world,

and you have to
pick up the pieces

to figure out what's next and...

I came into this
city with everything,

and I left with nothing.

[crying] I just remember saying to my mom,
I was like, "You know, Mom,

I know God only gives you
what you can handle

and somehow, I'm supposed to handle this.
I don't know how I'm gonna do it."

But I think that Rey continues
to give to me in ways that

his strength will
always wrap around me.

When somebody
you love that much,

that they're so young

and they have a whole life
ahead of them...

dies...

a part of you dies too.

[Angel] Trying to
deal with Rey's death

has probably been the single
most difficult thing I've had to do.

Period.

We're not the same family.

The pain is still so raw

that it gets in the way of...

us really feeling for each other

as a family unit.

Life has moved on for us.

You know, I have a couple kids,

my sister has a couple kids.

And there should be a lot of joy in
that, and there is,

but right behind that,

you know, I'm thinking,

you know, Uncle Rey.

He is missed in everything.

[Allison] I didn't watch the wedding video
for six years after he died.

I had seen stills of him.

But when you see him move,

it becomes a
little more real, so...

[whispers] Sorry.

[breath trembling]

- [waves crashing]
- No matter what, Allison,

I'll love you forever.

As sad as it was,
there was also this magic

to remember how much love
there was between us.

- [both laughing]
- [crowd chuckling]

[sighs]

[voice breaks] I loved him
more than anything in the world.

[cheers and applause]

[sounds fading]

[theme music playing]