Details Are Sketchy
A bimonthly true crime podcast, in which two friends share an unsolved disappearance or unsolved case, a crime they're most intrigued by, and talk all things true crime.
Details Are Sketchy
Down the Rabbit Hole: The Baffling Case of Rey Rivera Part 2
In this episode, Rachel brings us the first part of the very baffling case of Rey Rivera, while Kiki brings us the disappearance of Dawnita Wilkerson. We also talk about books, meeting a couple of DS9 actors, and a bunch of other stuff.
Our next book is "Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers" by Frank Figliuzzi, which we will discuss in episode 28.
Sources:
Rey Rivera -
Unsolved Mysteries - "Mystery on the Roodtop" Season 1 Episode 1
Crime Junkie - "Mysterious Death of Rey Rivera"
Mysterious Brews Podcast - "Rey Rivera"
Strange and Unexplained with Daisy Eagan - "Impossible Death of Rey Rivera"
Jennifer Bails - "Preacher Dies in Crash"
Caleb Kaltenbach - "The Suspicious Case of Rey Rivera...and Why He Matters"
Dawnita Wilkerson
FBI Missing Persons
If you have information call:
FBI Indianapolis Office at 317-595-4000 or
Evansville Police Department at 812-436-7979 or tip line at 812-435-6194.
You may also contact your local FBI office or the nearest American Embassy or Consulate.
Socials:
Instagram: Details Are Sketchy - @details.are.sketchy
Facebook: Details Are Sketchy - @details.are.sketchy.2023
Instagram: Kiki - @kikileona84
Instagram: Rachel - @eeniemanimeenienailz
Email: details.are.sketchy.pod@gmail.com
A quick note before our episode starts. I kept getting the episode numbers confused, so to be clear, this is episode 25 and our book will be episode 28. And that's it. Enjoy. I'm Kiki and I'm Rachel, and this is. Details Are Sketchy, a true crime podcast, and I don't know what we're doing right now. My mind just went blank. I'm in a food coma. I'm too much ice cream, too much teriyaki chicken.
Speaker 2:We had a little partay. You sure did Partay before the podcast.
Speaker 1:Well, so that brings us to happy birthday, rachel. By the time this comes out, it'll be a full week since your birthday, but happy birthday I am officially old. Oh my God, I'm older than you.
Speaker 2:No matter. It doesn't mean that you're old, but like to me, you are.
Speaker 1:I know, I know, I know I felt old my entire 30s.
Speaker 2:But I hear you Like when people are like I'm so fat, I'm like I'm so fat, I'm like shut the fuck up yeah.
Speaker 1:It's okay. I'm just saying enjoy your last few years of being 30.
Speaker 2:My last few years of life. That sounded really obvious.
Speaker 1:No, just being 30. I mean, 40 hasn't been bad, but I have noticed, you know, some new aches and pains and you can't do those like four-hour nights anymore, yeah, those four-hour sleep nights anymore. At least I can't.
Speaker 2:I mean I never really could, but it's even worse now. I do like four-hour nights and then like I crash, like in the middle of the day I'm like I'm functioning. I'm functioning and then I'm like so not functioning. That like if I sit down or something and I like, look at my phone, I like would literally drop my phone because I'm passing out. Yeah, that's how bad it is so. I'm like I can do this, but I like I actually can't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't do that, but I definitely don't function at my best, although I don't really know what functioning at my best is I don't think I ever have but I have a hard time waking up. Getting me up is very difficult. If it's only been a few hours, yeah. And then I get that thing where it's not just a second wind, but when it comes to like go to bed at a reasonable hour that day. I can't go to bed then, so I'm just on this terrible like four hours a night cycle until I pass out one day, yeah, yeah, if I forget to take my meds at night, then I'm like I'm awake.
Speaker 2:I'm like, why am I awake? I'm like, oh, I forgot to take my meds. Like I'm awake. I'm like, why am I awake? I'm like, oh, I forgot to take my meds. So yeah, because my, my brain will just go on something and like, you know, like my brain just likes being awake and active at night, and then also like I get the you know like restless legs and stuff yeah so my body cannot get comfortable yeah and so that is a very deadly combination yes, it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Does your brain think about like random life things or is it more like like fantasy? Because my brain that, for my brain that's like storytelling time and I tell myself stories.
Speaker 2:I used to do that like a lot, like I really had a really rich, yeah, like fantasy life yeah, I can like imagine up any kind of a story like lately I don't do that as much anymore and I'm not sure. I'm not sure why that is. I guess I do like in a way, but it's, I guess it's less fantastical. Yeah, I guess it's like you know, like our future life could be like this yeah, that that's what I mean I don't have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't go into fantasy land anymore, but it'll be like a really more realistic fantasy land.
Speaker 2:A very sensible fantasy, right like like oh, what I wouldn't do for that mixer stand or whatever, yeah, we could have a three-bedroom apartment and I could have a second dog and yeah, like real, real luxury stuff, right, I mean it is kind of a luxury it is it is, dogs are now a luxury. Yeah, that makes me quite sad because I'm like I love dogs. Yeah, like I don't want to live without dogs. Like, like, stop, like, stop trying to take my dogs away.
Speaker 1:Capitalism right boy. We're not even five minutes in and we're already railing on capitalism you know like animals bring so much joy. They do, they're incredibly therapeutic.
Speaker 2:It's like now you're trying to suck all the joy out of my life. Yeah, like, don't take my animals away from me, right? You know? Like landlords and just like the cost of like, even like feeding Like you know like I feed homemade. That's expensive, but like pet food is also fucking expensive.
Speaker 1:It's gone up exponentially.
Speaker 2:So, much it's gone up exponentially and so like even when I've been like maybe I should switch, you know, to just pet food, because I'm like, oh, this is also insanely expensive and like it's not really a savings either no, no, it isn't yeah it's tough, it is tough, it's tough. So, and I'm fortunate that nixie is my esa. Uh, I don't hear anybody bullshit about.
Speaker 2:Esa is okay, I'm fucked up we all are here in new mexico, yeah you cannot get an esa letter unless you have been seeing a provider for like a while. Yeah, so I've been had been seeing my provider for like three years. Yeah. When I asked him hey, like you know, I want to find out about, you know, getting my dog as an esa. Yeah, and like he wrote a letter for me right on the spot. Yeah, so I don't want to hear about fake esas or anything like that. Some of us need real esas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and like pets have so many health benefits they do, even if it's not. That whatever, uh, you know what I mean no, you don't know what I mean. But yes, I yeah, I mean just just regular people having regular animals.
Speaker 2:It is very therapeutic, I feel like it should be, I feel like it should be all right for people to have animals because it's so good for us and it's good for them too, and so it's like what good does it do Like if all these animals are like dying and all these people are miserable? I guess that is good for the capitalist machine, but it's actually really not, because when people are miserable and downtrodden they're not so productive workers so, yeah, I mean, dogs are instant medicine.
Speaker 1:I was at um, I was in college at st john's, and we would always leave the um front doors open and a lot of us would leave our dorm rooms open during the day because people would come and go and talk and whatever, and I was stressed out. I was feeling very depressed. I hadn't been diagnosed yet. I was riddled with anxiety, it was. You know, I was incredibly shy at that point in time and I was at a school that required you not to be shy because it was all speaking right. It was all, uh, discussion based and I think it was. I want to say it was summer maybe, but anyway, we had this thing up and this random dog just came in and like put his little head on my leg and it was like instant calm. Yeah, you know it was, it was like set, it was.
Speaker 2:I was blissed out and it got me through whatever homework I was doing that's why they have these therapy dogs that go to hospitals and nursing homes and things of that nature, because it just makes people feel so calm and ease and it just-hmm. It just lifts your mood.
Speaker 1:It does, even when they're being asshats and barking at the UPS guy.
Speaker 2:There's a reason that we domesticated dogs, yes, and cats and cats. Yeah, yes, I love my little kitties, me too. Agnes is like my little shadow. Yeah, she like, like, follows me around, like, as soon as there's an opportunity, like I said, she'll climb on my chest and climb on my lap and and she like purrs and she like hucks her little claws into me and it's like you're stuck now right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my cats aren't really lap cats, but they they demand to have their chin rubbed a few times a day.
Speaker 2:Dexter's not so much a lap cat, but definitely he's got his times of the day when he's like I need attention.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I went over to eat with you, he didn't want me to stop petting him. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, he'll come over'll. Did he flop over so you could rub his belly? Yeah, he loves that, yeah he's a sweetheart.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he is. Yeah, did you name him after dexter, the serial killer kind?
Speaker 2:of, yeah, yeah, kind of kind of a combination. We have been watching dexter, yeah, the serial killer show. We also both like Dexter's Lab and I was like Dexter just fits a cat because Dexter, dexterity I was like it's a cat name. Sometimes Jay will piss me off and call him Baxter, but he won't respond to Baxter. I'm like Baxter is a dog's name. I love my animals. I do too. I guess I like X's and N's.
Speaker 1:Do you think like animals take after their owners, or like you kind of get you kind kind of I don't want to say soul connect, because that sounds kind of woo woo, but you kind of connect with, like certain ones that kind of fit your personality?
Speaker 2:I definitely have connected with like different things in my animals, but I don't think that they necessarily like take after me or but I think that I definitely like relate to certain aspects of their personalities and I'm like we have this in common. Like Nyx is a completely different dog than like Keora and Ananda. I mean Keora and Ananda were completely different dogs too. They they were kind of alike in that they were both very independent and I wouldn't say aloof, but definitely compared to nixie they were aloof and definitely free thinkers, kind of like like you know they will work with you. Like Ananda was a real good partner with me, like we would work well together and sometimes like I would feel like she knows what I'm thinking, like she really knows what I want her to do, and Kiora, she wasn't so much of like I want to do this thing or whatever. You know, like she's a Basenji. She was very like I'm going to do my own thing.
Speaker 1:Like, but she, they're kind of like the cats of the dog world, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so much so. And she also she loved, she loved cats, like she was not so much a dog's dog yeah, you remember. Yeah, um, she wasn't so much like a people's dog or a dog's dog, like like certain people she would be really into, but very much like a cat. Yeah, she tended to really like people who were not so into her. Yeah, like she really liked josh. Yeah, and josh was like what is this?
Speaker 1:thing. No, she liked. She apparently liked me too, when I went over to your house that one time and I was like what is happening? Yeah?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and like my aunt, my aunt definitely thinks that like all dogs are like German shepherds and they're going to like sit, heal and like all this stuff. And like she would take such issue with with Keora because she would like come over and like Keora would be not into her right and she wouldn't want key or to be like this, like, yeah, like german shepherd or golden retriever type dog and like yeah, yeah, she wouldn't want to like get dominant over keyword, like like, first of all, dominance theory doesn't even fucking work, it's totally debunked. So right, if you're following dominance theory, fucking work, it's totally debunked. So right, if you're following dominance theory, don't. But most dogs will be like they will tolerate, like your dominance bullshit, right. But like key or is not a dog that you could do that with? No, and like it would never, never work, no, with her yeah, no and so she would be like don't fucking come near me.
Speaker 2:And I would be like, hey, don't like touch my dog, right, you know? Yeah, so yeah in in some ways, like I think that that kiora and ananda tapped into some of those different you know aspects of of my personality, like you know like kind of withdrawn, like I don't want people near me all the time. Yeah, you know those kinds of things.
Speaker 1:And Nixie very much taps into my like really goofy, spacey, like ADHD, yeah, yeah, because I was thinking about it the other day, jack, especially like he's basically the dog version of me. I mean we both like to be in bed, right, we both want to be super comfortable, pillows everywhere. We tend to be quiet, unless we like somebody or we're feeling sassy and we both like sweets yeah, we're both a little chonky.
Speaker 1:And we're a little shy of people yeah, and or I shouldn't say shy, I think wary of people is a better term and we only want to be outside for like two seconds to do whatever we need to do and then be back inside. And we like cats and um, yeah, and like lenny not so much lenny's, more of, she taps into that like clingy aspect of me that I don't really allow myself to be, but like, if I allowed myself to be, I'd be kind of clingy to the people I love, like I guess not clingy, that's not the right word Fiercely loyal and territorial, like to a point where I will like yell at you like she does yeah, you know. Like don't come near my friends, yeah, yeah, unless I say that you can't.
Speaker 2:That's definitely how Kiora was too. Yeah, Unless I say that you can't. That's definitely how.
Speaker 1:Kiora was too. Yeah, but yeah, I was just thinking about that. Oh, stubborn, stubborn is the other thing. Jack and I are equally stubborn, which makes certain things sound very difficult for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh my God, I'm starting to feel emotional, oh my dogs are dead.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I know, I know I get that way over cleo too. She's been gone for like seven years or something.
Speaker 2:Ananda's been dead 14 years now. Yeah and it I mean they are family, they're family. Yeah, I mean I get one of your clean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I, I cry over my first dog, chiyo, who I think we got when I was maybe one year old, that's so cute.
Speaker 1:Maybe when I was one year old his name was actually Chiyonofuji. He was named after my grandmother's favorite sumo wrestler that she had a massive crush on and he was a big golden retriever and he kind of became the family dog because we all moved around. So he got moved between families. Yeah, but he had to be put down probably over 25 years ago. I'd say, yeah, but I still miss him. Yeah, you know, he was the sweetest dog, the best dog.
Speaker 2:Yeah, studies show that, like we grieve, forieve for dogs like the same as we do for people.
Speaker 1:I don't doubt it, I would say for any animal. I still feel sad about my fish that died like 15 years ago. You know, samson, my beta. Oh, actually, I guess it was more than that.
Speaker 2:It has had to been 20 years ago yeah, yeah, yeah, I miss my fishies too, too, all of my critters, yeah, but yeah, like Ananda especially like asked Jay, if I started thinking about Ananda, then I started crying. And I was also just thinking about Kiora. And I was thinking about when you said that thing about Lenny being fiercely loyal I was thinking about how great Kiora was to my kids. Yeah, even though she, though she like, hated kids.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, she knew they were a part of you, or at least probably sensed it a little bit in some way.
Speaker 2:Yeah dogs definitely know, like when you're pregnant and stuff like that yeah and like I remember being so nervous about how she was gonna be with the kids. Yeah, yeah, she was like completely great the whole time. Oh, that's good. Not always the case. I mean, it's important to like whatever like desensitize, and like you know, of course, I never was like let's just leave the dog alone with the baby or right, you know yeah, something like that.
Speaker 2:But no, she was super awesome with my kids, that's good, and always like really, really patient with them, even though she was never patient with anybody else or anything else except for cats yeah, except for cats. She was incredibly patient with cats. Yeah, one time like agnes like attacked her when she was sleeping.
Speaker 2:I don't know what she was. She was like like fuck this dog. And she attacked her when she was sleeping and Keora just stood up and was like argh and Agnes backed off, but she never went after her or did anything like that, Even though she had kicked the ass of dogs much larger than her yeah yeah, that's.
Speaker 1:That's that fits me too. I will definitely. If I have to to protect somebody I love, I'll go after somebody much bigger than me nixie, on the other hand, has been beat up by my cats she's a softy, yeah, she is.
Speaker 2:She's a complete baby and she will like run cower in a corner and wait for me to rescue her.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Those cats are jerks to her sometimes, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think Alia and Lenny are in like a competition to see who can get me to pet them more yeah, you know, because alia lately has become very affectionate.
Speaker 1:She's usually. It's not that she's not affectionate, but she's, like I said, not really a cat, a lap cat. Right, you know she might be in the same room as you, but that's kind of about it. But she's been snuggling with me and like she checks to make sure lenny knows that she's on the bed. You know like she does it, she will. If lenny is there, she will raise her head to make sure lenny's looking at her.
Speaker 2:You know she's like check this yeah exactly, it's hilarious. It's hilarious I love all you because she's the only one of your pets who likes me my other pets don't like anybody.
Speaker 1:They're again. They're like me, they're like me, they um, they're cautious, I think very very secretly likes me yeah, don't you lenny? I think she does too. Yeah, yeah, they. It takes most of my pets a very long time to warm up. Yeah, to people just like me, I don't. I generally don't warm up to people very quickly, okay, so I mean, this has already been quite a bit, I think like 20 minutes.
Speaker 2:We should like get to the case we should. I will probably cut almost all of this in. Don't get me started on animals, I know.
Speaker 1:I don't even know how we got started, so, as usual, oh wait, I guess I should introduce this episode. It is episode 22.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:As always, one of us will be doing a missing person, the other will be doing the case. This is a second parter to a three parter. Rachel, yes, that is correct, okay.
Speaker 2:On Ray Rivera. That is correct, because, oh my God, I wrote so many things and I didn't even get to the end of my notes.
Speaker 1:So I'm gonna Be winging it at the end.
Speaker 2:Yeah, again, I know you guys love it when I do it.
Speaker 1:Well, we haven't gotten any hate stuff, so they must not hate it too much, or?
Speaker 2:they're just indifferent.
Speaker 1:That too, I don't know which is worse. Okay, yes, so I'm doing the missing person, in other words, and I'm going to do Donita Wilkerson, who went missing in Evansville, indiana, june 21st 2020. She was born March 14th 1976. Her hair is black. Her height is 5'3". She is a female 5'3". She is a female. She was born in Evansville, indiana. Her eyes are brown. She weighs 145 pounds, at least at the time of her disappearance, and she's black. She also has multiple tattoos, including a heart on her lower back, praying hands with the name Timmy on her upper right shoulder and a cross on her upper left shoulder.
Speaker 1:I can't say shoulder. I always say soldier. It's very irritating. Okay, so it's a cross on her upper left shoulder and then in class, like we were talking I don't remember what I was teaching at the time, something early American history and I was trying to say soldier, but I kept saying shoulder, like what is what? Why, why? I was a jerk. You know, I went to journalism school before this and I almost went into like literature for a thing and I, you know, like I should be more articulate.
Speaker 1:I can't. It's just a brain thing. Maybe I I'm going to blame it on being 40 because, like, I've lost my ability to speak. Okay, anyway, so it was Donita Wilkerson. I will give a few more details, plus the number you can call after Rachel does her thing.
Speaker 2:Okay, awesome. Hopefully you will not forget, like I did Well.
Speaker 1:I've forgotten myself a few times, so no worries.
Speaker 2:Well, hopefully, just yeah.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:So we left in the last part. We had just like learned a bunch of basically background information about Ray and Allison, about Porter Stansberry and his business.
Speaker 1:And so wait, just really briefly, in case people didn't listen to the first one. Ray Rivera is the person we're talking about. Allison is his wife, yes, and Porter was his friend slash, former employer. Former employer.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, he was his friend since like high school Former employer. Yeah, he was his friend since high school. They went to high school together, they played water polo together, they were real good friends. He went to his wedding. They even lived together for a short time and he basically knew that Ray needed a job. Ray needed a job, he needed financial advisors who were not real financial advisors, allegedly and so he basically offered Ray this pretty sweet job doing this newsletter called the Rebound Report, where Ray would basically try to predict the stocks that had dropped and that he thought were going to rebound, which ended up and like spike again, which ended up being pretty fucking stressful for him because he didn't know anything about finances and and he didn't feel like he was qualified to do it and he didn't want to scam people. Basically, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so, basically, he had gotten out of that job and thanks to the money though he had gotten from it, the money though he had gotten from it, then he was able, and along with like a fifteen thousand dollar like tab on alice and his wife's credit card company they were credit card company, jesus, you know I'm talking about on her credit card yeah, they were able to fund the stuff that ray needed to start his own little production videographer company and so he was still working for like Porter kind of and Porter's like.
Speaker 2:So the company Porter worked for was like a subsidiary of this bigger company called Agora, and basically they're all into rich people, shenanigans, yeah and um, and so he had been freelance hired by them a number of times to like video their conferences and stuff like that, including at the time of his uh death that he he had done like a a video of the conference for the Oxford Club, which was another subsidiary of Agora. That was basically for tax evasion, yeah, and so he had even well, I guess we'll get to that but he was working on editing that video to put it together and send out the final product, and he had fronted actually quite a lot of money to put that together something like $70,000.
Speaker 2:But he was going to get it all back and then some, but then he passed away and actually it's really shitty, because poor allison ended up with a bill for all of that, yeah, and it took her like 10 years or something to pay it off.
Speaker 1:Yeah don't get into debt and get married which to me that's your spouse's responsibility, when that was another thing that I was like.
Speaker 2:I was like, because, like porter's supposed to be his good buddy, I'm like you couldn't take care of that, porter, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, but okay yeah so let's get into it. Yeah, so on the morning morning, if I can talk, then we can get into it. On the morning of May 16th 2006, allison Rivera left early in the morning for a business trip in Richmond, virginia. So Ray carried her suitcase out to the car and kissed her goodbye. So no one would as one would kind of expect any loving husband to do when seeing his wife off on a trip. So there's nothing inherent in that that would ring any alarm bells.
Speaker 2:They gave each other their goodbyes, said I love you, and then Allison took off.
Speaker 2:So she was on the road and then straight from the road into some work, meetings and stuff, before she finally checked into her hotel at 6 30 in the evening, at which point she gave Ray a call to check in on him and at that time Ray didn't pick up.
Speaker 2:So unfortunately, as you may have guessed, when her and Ray kiss each other goodbye, that would be the last time that she would ever see him again. Now the fact that Ray didn't answer the phone does strike Allison as a bit odd, but she's a pretty down-to-earth person, she doesn't panic easily and she figures Ray's probably gone out with some friends or something. And I also think about the fact that this is 2006. In 2006, I may have a cell phone, and I think, for those of us who did, we were all kind of still adjusting to the paradigm shift of having anybody available at the touch of your little flip phone, and so I could definitely see Allison not being alarmed from a missed call or two, because we were all just not as accustomed as we are now to immediate communication back and forth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely I think we panicked less. Yeah, definitely absolutely.
Speaker 2:I remember when I was a kid my dad had like a pager. When we have a home phone, right and he would get paged by work, and then he would have to walk half a mile to the payphone at the grocery store to call his work, to even find out what they wanted.
Speaker 1:So yeah, well, we had a home phone, but even then, yeah, you, when you left home, you didn't have a phone. Yep, yeah, and so if somebody was late or whatever, you just kind of let it go for a while until it was unbelievable we did get a phone shortly after that.
Speaker 2:But but yeah, there was a period in which I recall that happening. Yeah, I remember one of the days my dad was sick and my mom walked down to the grocery store to call his work and tell them that he was sick and he wouldn't be in. And they were like no, he has to call directly. So then he had to walk his sick ass down to the grocery store to call them and tell them that he wasn't going to be in. How awful is that? That is awful, okay.
Speaker 2:So, however, by around 9.30, when Allison still isn't able to get in touch with Ray, she calls her co-worker who is staying with them uh, there, as like a temporary housemate. So that seems like a little bit of a weird situation. I'm not sure exactly what the situation is, but I'm guessing like kind of a boarding situation, because from what it seems like, even though she was living with him, or for a short time, it didn't seem like she had a whole lot of direct interaction with Ray, because never in this time did he like like, talk to her and be like hey, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, or anything like that.
Speaker 2:The housemate and coworker of Allison, claudia tells Allison that Ray isn't home and that a few hours prior he had taken a phone call from his office and then left the house abruptly. Claudia goes on to explain the slightly unusual circumstances of the call of the call. Ray had been working in his office, which shared a wall with the room Claudia was staying in about an hour before he had gotten up for a snack Around 5.30 to 6.30, the Unsolved Mysteries episode said like 6.30. The Makita Broadman book said 5.30. So just somewhere in that window Ray received a call and, according to Claudia's report, ray listened to the person on the line for a few seconds before he declared oh shit, and then he ran out of the house. A minute or two later, or maybe 30 seconds, he returned as if he had forgotten something, and then he immediately left again. So he was reported to have been wearing a zip-up shirt, shorts and flip-flops.
Speaker 2:I've seen that that was what they said in the Netflix episode. That was what they said in the netflix episode. That was what they said in multiple sources. However, makita broughtman's book reported that he was wearing like gray pants or green. Sorry, not gray pants, green pants I'm not wait.
Speaker 2:Grain or gray green green, that's okay I said gray initially, but I meant green green I'm not sure, like where she's getting her information versus where other people are getting their information. Yeah, so, regardless of whether it was green pants, I assume like sweats, because, like, what kind of pants are green? Right, and now I'm at a loss for words.
Speaker 1:Or shorts.
Speaker 2:The point is he was wearing like comfy clothes, house clothes, yeah, and he didn't bother getting dressed. And when he left he took Allison's car, a Mitsubishi Montero, which is a type of SUV, and the circumstance of that decision is something that I wondered about, but I couldn't really find any information or whether that was something that was investigated. Like, did he just take it out of like necessity, because, like she had his car? Did he take it because maybe he thought it wouldn't be recognizable, versus he he thought maybe his car would be? Was it just a random whim? Like it would help to know if allison was driving his car or if she was driving like a rental car?
Speaker 1:yeah, um, or was it in the shop?
Speaker 2:maybe yeah, or yeah, yeah, any of that information would be helpful to know, like was this a decision that was on, or was it just like this car is here, I'm taking this car?
Speaker 2:So Allison is still feeling at this point that everything is probably fine, that maybe Ray had gone out drinking with some of his old work buddies, as he was known to do from time to time, and maybe he had turned off his phone or forgotten to charge it and some. Maybe he wasn't able to call her or he forgot he was drunk and forgot to call her, and as the evening wore on, she thought maybe he had even stayed over at a friend's house so he wouldn't have to drive home drunk, which people used to do all the time. For you, babies, before the proliferation of Uber slash Lyft, I recently saw an article and, to be fair, I didn't click on it, but anyways, in the future, uber slash Lyft might be able to deny passengers rides on the basis of their inebriation, which, to me, I was like. Doesn't that defeat a lot of the purpose and benefit of the service?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I imagine that it would also be a major loss of business for drivers. So while she was a bit unsettled by her inability to contact Ray, she is still not really panicking yet and she doesn't startle easily. A lot of podcasts and articles and in the Unsolved Mystery episodes were like oh my god, ray and Allison were newlyweds. They're only six months into their marriage, so they called each other all the time. However, I wanted to point out that they have been together since like 2000 and they've been living together for like the past like two, three years. So it's not like they're like oh my god, first blush of our relationship like. But also like calling and contacting your spouse, like when you're away on a trip, is like a completely fucking normal thing to do. Yeah, like I could not imagine going a day or even half a day, like you know, without contacting my spouse. When we went to our mystery friend unnamed friend's wedding, like how often was I talking to my spouse? Like all the time right.
Speaker 2:Right Like it was, it was constant.
Speaker 1:It was constant.
Speaker 2:Like you cannot, and like we've been married for 10 years together for 12 years, so it's, it's not something that is just a newlywed thing, in my opinion. Right when Allison really starts to worry, however, is when she wakes up and Ray has still not returned any of her calls, or and he's still not picking up the phone. So she calls back her house guest, claudia, to see if Ray is home or has been home, and when Claudia reports again that Ray has not been home all night, that's when Allison finally sets in that something is really wrong. So she immediately takes steps to cut her business trip short and she starts driving home from Richmond. On the way home, allison calls up as many of Ray's friends, families and co-workers as she can get a hold of. So she's asking if anyone's seen him, spoken to him, knows someone who has, but nobody has seen or heard from him in like the last two days.
Speaker 2:When Allison gets back to the house, it seems really clear that Ray just rushed out with no preparation, planning or forethought at all. The lights are still on in his office, in the kitchen and in their bedroom. His computer is still turned on. His toothbrush is still in its place, which tells Allison that he definitely didn't plan on staying over at a friend's house. In the kitchen he left an open soda and a half bag of chips. Well, one source said a soda, one source said a can of seltzer, like potato potato, and he even left his retainer on the table. So obviously something is off. Allison gathers together a contingency of raised friends and family around her and even like a lot of his, his friends and family like fly in from different places. Like his mom comes from like Puerto Rico, his brother is coming in from, like Florida. Like her parents come in from Colorado. So like right away, like assemble the troops. They're really on it, yeah, because this is really out of character for him. And so they get to work right away trying to locate ray.
Speaker 2:All that day on tuesday, may 17, 2006, ray and alice's family spend spend it canvassing the neighborhood. Ray's favorite places they call hospitals, morgues and funeral homes, looking for any man matching Ray's description. They also made missing person posters and taped them up everywhere they could. In Makita Brotman's book, she recalled seeing one near the Belvedere where she lived by Wednesday, may 18th 2006,. I was like 2016,. Nope.
Speaker 2:Allison filed a missing persons report with the Baltimore Police Department around 3 pm in the afternoon when taking the report, the police asked Allison and Ray's family the usual types of questions about his mental health and like his mental state. What's the difference? They're very repetitive, sorry. All of them report that Ray was like a happy guy. He was stable, he had a lot of plans for building a family with Allison for their future and his personal future with his production company, with his screenplay. He was very ambitious and there was a lot of things that he wanted to do and he just had no indication of being depressed or anything like that Like he really seemed like he was looking forward to the future. Ray's big brother, angel, also reported that it was very out of character for Ray to just take off somewhere and not to tell anyone where he was going or what he was doing.
Speaker 2:Ray's good friend, porter Stansbury, who just happened to be out of town on an employee retreat with all of his employees, returned to town at that point and offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to finding Ray. At the time, porter said to the Baltimore Sun quote he's a happy guy. He and his wife just booked a trip to New Mexico in a few weeks. That's true they had. It is not. This is not a man who wanted to leave. I have got to find my friend. I can't imagine my life without him. End quote.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's totally true. They had a trip to New Mexico booked for like two weeks and two weeks in the future from when he disappeared, so New Mexico cameo. However, allison does report to the police that there have been some strange incidents happening to and around Ray and Allison recently and that Ray has been acting a bit nervous and on edge in recent days. He has been more concerned about her safety than usual and he had wanted to accompany her whenever possible. It was her habit to go jogging in the mornings at a nearby track and Ray started insisting on going with her and sitting back in the car where he could keep an eye on her while she ran or sitting in the bleachers and reading. And it seemed as though his suspicions were not entirely unfounded, because Allison reported that one morning, while jogging, a man that she didn't recognize started rapidly approaching her on the track and when she saw this guy she froze and was looking at him approaching her. When Ray burst out of the car that where he had been watching and ran toward them, and when the man saw that, he switched directions and rapidly walked away. I don't know about you, but that would freak me out. Yeah, and I don't think it is completely strange for Ray to worry about Allison running alone, whether or not there were suspicious circumstances or not, like Baltimore is not super known as like the safest place or not. Like Baltimore is not super known as like the safest place, and so I don't think that's really an odd thing, but anyway, but it does seem to have been out of character for him and like a recent concern.
Speaker 2:Basically, another strange occurrence was that the Rivera's home alarm system was triggered for the two nights in a row right before his disappearance, and Allison reported the alarm had never been triggered in the two years prior to his disappearance, that they had lived in the house and it never happened since. And then I put some notes because some, some sources that said one consecutive night, but I remember two nights, and then I found the other sources that said two nights, uh, so basically, yes, it was on the 15th and the 16th, both around 1 am in the morning. Basically so the alarm both around 1 am in the morning, basically. So the alarm was triggered at 1 am on the nights of May 15th and 16th, directly before Ray disappeared.
Speaker 2:On May 15th, at 1 am, allison was awakened by the sound of their alarm going off and she came out of the bedroom to find Ray coming out of his office where he had been up late working holding a baseball bat. And, according to Allison, ray was not a man who startled easily. He was a tall man, broad shoulders, in athletic shape, and he had what Allison called Latino machismo. So, even though having your home alarm system go off is an incredibly alarming event, she said that the amount of fear that he displayed in that moment was very much out of character for him. She said that he had a look of absolute terror on his face and when the police showed up, however, they attributed the alarm going off to rambunctious squirrels.
Speaker 1:Those rambunctious squirrels.
Speaker 2:However, allison reported in a 2009 article that this alarm system was only triggered by something trying to force a door or a window, which a squirrel is definitely not large enough to do.
Speaker 2:And not only that, but the exact same thing happened again 24 hours later. Their alarm went off again around 1 am on May 16th, and while I couldn't find information about whether or not the police came out a second time or what they had to say, allison reported that it had looked as though someone had tried to force their master bedroom window. Now, recall that this second incident was just hours before Allison left on her work trip, from which she would never see her husband again, and left on her work trip, from which she would never see her husband again. And then I have a little rant about the fucking squirrel thing, because I wanted to mention that, while many animals are nocturnal or crepuscular, squirrels are pretty much firmly diurnal, with the exception of flying squirrels, which I'm pretty sure there aren't any fucking flying squirrels in Baltimore. So there is about a 0% chance that a squirrel tried to break into the Rivera's master bedroom at 1 am in the morning, and I said it could have possibly been a raccoon.
Speaker 2:That's what I was thinking, yeah and a raccoon would be strong and clever enough to force a window that wasn't super firmly installed. However, unless they had like food lying around cat food or something really enticing to a raccoon, there would be much easier ways for a raccoon to seek food, like in garbage cans People put out food for feral cats or in the park. There's lots of trash and or even less secure housing options. And they don't have any kids, they don't have any pets, and so it seems very unlikely that there would be a lot of enticements for a raccoon to break in. And even if a raccoon had come by on night one and attempted to break in, I find it very unlikely that it would make a second attempt after having the very negative reinforcement association of this shrieking alarm with no positive gain of any kind of beneficial payout. So I think that we can rule out an animal, a non-human animal.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely Good point, and I also did a little rant. I said these officers do not know anything about animals. Then I was talking about just went on a little tangent about how cops kill a bunch of dogs every year and how they do like 10,000 dogs every year according to the Department of Justice, and part of that is because a lot of cops unless they're like those who work directly with animals, like Mount Police, or cops who canine units, aren't you know, they're just not, they're not trained for that and they're not familiar with yeah, they should definitely be trained for that Absolutely so.
Speaker 2:Apparently, the police did dust for fingerprints at the window and they didn't find anything. However, the absence of that evidence is not confirmation of an alternate, equally unproven and physically and behaviorally unlikely explanation, and like you could just fucking put on gloves or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or sometimes like there just aren't fingerprints unlikely explanation.
Speaker 2:And like you could just fucking put on gloves or whatever, like, or sometimes, like there just aren't fingerprints, like, sometimes the conditions are just not right for fingerprints, so there's, so there's so many reasons why there wouldn't be fingerprints. Yeah, yeah, gloves are a thing.
Speaker 2:They are them yeah, or people breaking in for other reasons, which we'll get into in episode three. Okay, so when allison really starts to worry is oh, did I? I? I went back, I'm so sorry, my thing jumped up, I think. So basically, some really strange happenings went down right before Ray's disappearance and at this point on Wednesday, the police have gotten involved.
Speaker 2:Uh, porter Stansberry has gotten involved with his reward, uh, and all of that and like his employees are helping with the search. And Allison feels pretty supported. She trusts Porter. He's been a really good friend to Ray since high school. They've worked together, all of these things. Allison probably knows that Porter has some social leverage as well because of his business ties and she is hoping that he can really get something done to help find Ray. And of course, she has her family and Ray's family really supporting her. They really seem like a tight-knit family.
Speaker 2:But at that moment the leads have been thin. Ray has not used his phone. He hasn't used his credit cards. He only had taken $20 of cash with him, so if he had used it, it wouldn't have taken him far. He had not made any ATM withdrawals.
Speaker 2:As Makita Brotman pointed out in her book, after the first 24 hours, the chance of finding a missing person alive drops dramatically, and the fact that he isn't using his phone or money is not a great sign. So the police, along with Ray's family, friends, co-workers and neighbors, are all hitting the streets looking for Ray. And at this point everyone is really worried and scared of when, if and how they are going to find Ray. And it isn't until May 22nd, which is six days after Ray had gone missing, that Allison's parents are driving on the Mount Vernon neighborhood, which is an area that had been canvassed before, and on the 100th block of St Paul Street they spot Allison's black Mitsubishi Montero. I swear I sound like a car commercial right now, but I don't even think Mitsubishi is in business anymore. I haven't seen one in ages.
Speaker 1:I will look it up. You're right, I haven't even heard Mitsubishi.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:They're still in business. 2025. Mitsubishi Outlander Plug-in hybrid $40,445.
Speaker 2:Holy shit. Yeah, that's more money than I make. Maybe that's why we haven't heard about it. So the car was found parked in a lot behind the building near the Belvedere's parking garage entrance. It's parked kind of askew, as if someone parked it in a hurry, and it has a parking ticket affixed to the windshield. So here's where things get a little dicey again, because again I have two different fucking accounts of what happened. One account says that, according to the parking lot attendant, the car had not been there when he left the previous night at 6 pm. So according to that source, the parking lot attendant gave testimony the car was not there on May 21st at 6 pm, but in the morning it was there and that was when the attendant ticketed the vehicle. If that testimony is accurate, it explains why the car was not found in previous sweeps of the neighborhood and it compels a narrative, right. However, a different source reported that the ticket was dated to May 17th, which is the day after Ray went missing. So it's like which source is accurate, right? It makes a big difference and it makes it really hard to gather enough substantive evidence to figure out, like clues of what happened when somebody is saying one thing and another person is saying another thing. Like which thing is the truth? So there are definitely a lot of inconsistencies in information from source to source, which can make it more difficult to pinpoint what happened.
Speaker 2:This neighborhood is interesting because it has two locations that are of relevance to Ray Rivera. One of them, of course, is the Belfadir and the other one is the headquarters of Agora Financial, which, you may recall from our previous episode, is the parent company of Porter Stansberry's subsidiary company, pirate Investors LLC. However, although the car was located, according to police, there is nothing of evidentiary importance in the vehicle that might indicate where Ray was or what happened to him, like none of his effects were found inside the car and there was nothing pointing towards his whereabouts, yeah, however, one thing that finding the car did was narrow down the perimeter of the search to the area in which the car was found. So this basically ended up being the key to finding Ray, because two days after the car was found, on the 24th, some former co-workers of Ray's employees of Agora decided to climb to the top of the parking garage and to have a look around, and when they went up there and looked around, they spotted something odd on a lower roof.
Speaker 2:It was a flip-flop and a small roundish hole in the roof which you fed me too much food, sorry which Makita Brotman described in her book as larger than a Frisbee and smaller than a hula hoop, which I was like, damn these American measurements, because that's a big range. That is a big range. That is a big range. I'm like the whole looks small from the pictures I've seen, but I'm like I want to know exactly what size it is.
Speaker 1:However, since Because if it is like hula hoop size, then a human could fit through it Smaller than a hula hoop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but how much smaller. We don't know Bigger than a frisbee, particularly if he was slim. Well see, and the thing is that I'm not sure that Makita knows either. Yeah, because she's going from her memory, everybody's going from their memory because, rather than actually Nobody took actual measurements, no. No, and that's another thing. Like there's no, or there is a substantial lack of case information available and it seems as though they didn't take a lot of information, which is what we're gonna get into wait.
Speaker 1:Can I just ask? Maybe you'll get into it, but can I just ask did she do a follow request to get that, or is?
Speaker 2:she just, yes, yes, she did a bunch of fucking requests and and calls and paperwork and like she has a whole chapter on how, like she tried to like chase down, like the police report, all right, and didn't get it.
Speaker 1:I found another she didn't get the police report. That's at least that's like basic.
Speaker 2:All she was able to get was like a two-page summary which was edited from the FBI out of their entire report yeah, they do that quite a bit and basically that just outlined the SEC lawsuit against Porter Stansberry's company, and so it didn't really give her anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah laws are about freedom of, not freedom of press uh, about what police can and cannot give you. There's another, there's like a podcast, which is is gonna be more sourced in the next episode, but it's done by some journalists and they said that they did have the police report and, however, they said that there is very little information in it as well, and also in the autopsy report.
Speaker 1:That happens sometimes when I worked for that defense attorney. Sometimes they'd be so detailed, it'd be like 15 pages long, and then sometimes it's a paragraph, yeah, and it's like did you even go like what? I have your body cam footage.
Speaker 2:even I know it's more than a paragraph well, and based on what makita has said about her observations and what other people are saying, it really didn't seem like the police took this crime more as a crime, rather just as a suicide and it didn't even seem as if they treated it with enough reverence to what a suicide should be. To be honest, like it seemed like they were very blasé.
Speaker 1:I wonder what the crime rate was at that point in time.
Speaker 2:Very high. That was another thing. It's very high, and I guess Baltimore had a new mayor at the time who had made promises to reduce the homicide rate, and so they also had incentives to quickly label things as suicides if they could, and Ray would have been somebody who would have been considered somewhat of a society figure due to his association with Porter Right.
Speaker 2:Due to his association with Porter Right, and so that's one thing that has come up is that they may have been incentivized to really quickly close it as a suicide so that it wouldn't look like this potential society figure has been murdered. Yeah, but yeah, I guess they have like 40 homicide detectives but they have like an insane or at that time I'm not sure now but yeah but at that time they had a really really high.
Speaker 1:I remember I mean in the 90s, there was that book um homicide life on the streets and then it was turned into a show, which is an amazing show if you haven't watched it, but maybe a little dated, yeah, um, yeah, they had like the super high rate and yeah, and I don't think that they were exaggerating in the book or in the show, it was a lot, yeah, yeah, there was some kind of figure of like, I think this, many this, and I was like whoa, but like I don't remember.
Speaker 2:Like I have to go back and listen to that.
Speaker 1:I wonder if it was sorry. I was just thinking like maybe at the time it could be equivalent to like Chicago was some years ago yeah, yeah, something like that.
Speaker 2:It was pretty bad, yeah, and, and most of those cases were pretty cut and dry, but it's like these are overworked people.
Speaker 2:And so they're probably not like. Most of them are probably not like. Let's get into this potentially quagmire of a case, right, yeah? So when the cops arrived, they went and spoke to the manager of the Belvedere, who was a man named Gary Shivers. He was a veteran employee of the building and he had been working there for the past 20 years at the time, and they needed him to unlock the door of this building, which I've seen variously described as a conference room, a chapel room and a pool and tennis area.
Speaker 2:Makita Brotman reported that it had been a pool and tennis area, but it was not used for that purpose anymore. Whether there was still a pool there I'm not sure, but the few images of the inside of the building I could find, it seemed like it was more like a conference space with like a cheap red carpet than like a gym type area. I could see it being like a chapel type of you know like. Have you seen those chapels with like that cheap red carpet? It looked like that. Yeah, I remember.
Speaker 2:What I can say with more certainty is that across from this area there was a catering company and that catering company had been complaining about a foul smell from the building for the past few days. So they figured that some kind of animal had gotten trapped in the walls and died, which would be horrific enough, but I can't imagine how those people felt when they learned what actually was the truth. When manager Gary Shivers opened the door to that room, he was unfortunately hit with the overwhelming stench of decomposition and he could see that the wall in front of him appeared to have blood on it and he could see Ray's slumped body lying on the floor next to the wall. He was reportedly lying face up, which I found unusual, and according to Makita Brotman's book, poor Gary immediately had to leave and phoned a friend to meet him at a nearby bar for a stiff drink yeah, I imagine we don't blame you, gary, and I wrote they don't pay you enough for this shit.
Speaker 2:So poor's ray bought. Ray's body was not in great shape. He was lying prone with his feet facing the door. His body was battered and pretty decomposed at this point he had been lying in what I can only assume was a non-air-conditioned room, since it was not being used in late spring for a week, and we do learn that later. Yes, he based on the rate of decomposition and other factors. Then they determined he had pretty much been deceased for most of the entire time. So the remains of that snack that he had were still in his stomach. So that indicates that he died within like three hours of leaving his house on the 16th and the rate of decomposition was found to be consistent with approximately the amount of time he had been missing.
Speaker 2:He was still wearing the clothes that he had left the house in, minus the flip-flops which were found on the roof of the conference slash pool building. The flip-flops are an interesting case and the condition that they were found in is interesting and, I think, one of the more intriguing and incongruent pieces of evidence in the case which we can talk about that more in episode three, but they were found to have significant drag marks on them on both the bottom and the sides, and one of the shoes I'm not sure which, but I want to say it's the left, because the left side of his body had a lot more injuries than the right had been ripped apart. The top thong portion was ripped out of the sole and the sole had been bent under double. His sunglasses and his phone were also found on the roof, but these were pretty much undamaged. His phone was slightly cracked, but it was fully functional, and his glasses were undamaged.
Speaker 2:Found still in Ray's pocket was his ID, his credit card and a penny with a heart cut out of it, which was a gift for Ray that Allison had brought back after one of her business trips. When she gave it to him, she told him that whenever you need me, just hold this penny and you'll know that I'm close. Typically Ray kept the penny in a small bowl on his dresser, but he did have it with him on the time of his death, so some people have speculated that this was the reason that Ray ran back into the house, but of course we'll never know. One thing that Ray did not have with him was his money clip that he carried everywhere he went. So, if you recall, ray was a cash man. He strongly preferred to use cash money rather than a card because he was bad with money, and so cash is like much more concrete than imaginary plastic money that everybody uses now, which is why we all spend more than we should and Allison had given him a silver money clip engraved with his initials as a wedding gift. He carried it everywhere he went and, according to Allison, the money clip was not found on or near Ray or in his home, and its location still remains a mystery to this day.
Speaker 2:In her book, makita Brotman recalled watching the police officers coming and going and seeing them up on the roof of the conference building. She reported that the officers handled race effects with their bare hands and that one of them tossed race shoes down to another officer. She did not see them bag up anything into an evidence bag or take pictures of the crime scene. She reports that the cops were joking, laughing and acting very casually. No one took pictures of the evidence on the roof and, as far as additional reports seemed to corroborate, no pictures or diagrams of the scene were taken. No pictures or diagrams of the scene were taken A few days after Ray's body was removed.
Speaker 2:The room was simply opened to air out and residents of the building or employees of the companies leasing the building could just come and go inside the building. Makita herself reported going inside the building and said that the door was propped open with no crime scene tape or any other barriers to prevent curious residents from coming and going, and she reported that the only remains of Ray were a lingering odor although she said it didn't bother her as much as it did some of her neighbors A stain on the carpet, some blood left on the wall and some maggots. So it seems that there wasn't even, at least at that point, a proper crime scene cleanup or those people who come and like clean up everything after like there's been like a death. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, seemed like that hadn't happened, although in her book she talks about the fact that sometimes like like cheaper hotels although the belvedere wasn't like a hotel hotel because it wasn't like open to the public anymore but she talks about how, like some like cheaper hotels or smaller hotels, will like leave it to the like the housekeeping staff to like clean up that stuff, which is like.
Speaker 2:I don't even think that's legal and it's definitely not safe. Like I'm pretty sure like you have to have like special training or licensing to do that kind of thing, because it's not safe to like just handle like bodily fluids and stuff like that. Like you get really sick, you could expose yourself to disease and all kinds of things, yeah. So if you're a hotel owner not that any hotel owners are listening to our podcast, yeah, but you better not be doing that to your staff.
Speaker 2:So Michael Baer, who was the lead detective assigned to the case, reported that he felt the scene of the things lying around the hole, like the glasses and the phone were just lying quite close to the hole, just kind of neatly, he said it looked staged. Now, according to sources those sources this could be possible for these things to fly out of his pocket while he was falling and to have a gentle landing. However, I did want to note that the only possible entry method would have been feet first and if he was upright, it seems less likely that his things would have come out of his pocket. Also, his credit cards, his ID and the penny didn't come out of his pocket, so why would the phone and the sunglasses come out of his pocket and not those little lighter things come out.
Speaker 1:Are we sure he had them in his pocket and he wasn't holding them?
Speaker 2:No, he could have also, yeah, maybe been holding them and then just like yeah, that is another possibility.
Speaker 1:I just want to say you didn't describe what you just showed me, oh sorry, like he just dropped them before he jumped, or let go of them when he was like falling, like yeah, like let go of them.
Speaker 2:Like he would have had to probably let go of them, like shortly before he landed in order for them to not be damaged. Yeah, so, yeah, so I guess that is accurate according, although to me, like the pocket thing, again, like I said, makes more sense because it's flying up out of the pocket than it's going up in an updraft, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And therefore it's slowing its rate of velocity, whereas if he's just letting go of it, isn't it remaining traveling at the same velocity that he's traveling? You're asking me science however, I know that smaller things are less prone to be damaged than larger things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that may be part of it, but still, it's like plus, I feel like those old cell phones were fairly indestructible, but the high point was like 113 feet.
Speaker 2:That's a pretty fucking far way to fall and not be damaged, even an indestructible phone.
Speaker 1:Right, that's true. That's true. My iPhone got severely damaged, just falling from my pocket the first time I had an iPhone. Yeah, oh my God, those early iPhones were so fucking fragile. They sure were severely damaged just falling from my pocket the first time I had.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, oh my god, those early iphones were so fucking fragile sure were.
Speaker 2:I remember like seeing a video about somebody like waiting in line for one of those early models and they got it and like two seconds after they got it, they fucking dropped it and it broke. Wow, how devastating. Yeah, I'm glad those days are over. I have an iphone now and and I had a pretty bad slip, like a month ago, when I got caught in that torrential rain and I slipped on some very slimy concrete and like it had one of those like ledges.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean yeah, and I slipped, and you know what I mean, and I slipped and fell on my ass very gracefully, and I dropped my phone in some gravel and it did sustain a very small crack, yeah, but it's fine, yeah. So yay for newer iPhones. Yes, newer iPhone, yeah, that's what I was saying. Like there's a lot of things that are within the realm of possibility, but just like very they're plausible, but like very unlikely, you know, and like what I was saying to you earlier, which our listeners didn't have the benefit of's true, because, like, if, often, if, if writers were to write about some of the weird shit that happens in reality, yeah, they wouldn't believe it, exactly. Yeah, because, you know, in a universe of like infinite numbers of possibilities, so many variables can occur, yeah, numbers of possibilities, so many variables can occur, yeah. And so to think of like one or two implausible things happening, like it's like, yeah, that could happen absolutely. But sometimes, when all these implausible things start to like add up and pile up, that's when sometimes you go, hmm, did that happen? And like, sure, maybe it could, and like maybe, but like that's, that's where that mystery comes in, right, yeah, I still definitely think that, like a suicide or accidental death is within the realm of possibility, but there's a lot of like uh, incongruent factors that, yeah, I'm like that just doesn't quite sit right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, and also another thing that I would have thought is for how near the things were to the whole, that even if they had landed right near him, wouldn't the force of him making that entry point wouldn't have sucked them down into the hole right after him. That's something that it would have, that those things would have been pulled down with him because they're just light little things a phone and glasses compared to the force of like a 260 pound body Right Traveling at I don't know how many fucking miles per hour, but really fucking fast, yeah. So, anyway, that's another thing that I like. That's just odd. So immediately it seemed as though the cops had like seen the hole, seen the body, and said this is a suicide and ruled it as such. Previously. What happened? What they had done would like not taking diagrams of the pictures or bagging the evidence or any of that stuff.
Speaker 2:It doesn't even seem like proper procedure for you know, if you think it's a suicide, yeah, although I believe that they're also are supposed to take steps to treat all cases initially right, as they could be a homicide. So even if that wasn't the case, though, this is a bad way to treat it. In the Unsolved Mystery episode, the police indicated that they interviewed residents and employees of the Belvedere regarding whether anyone had seen or heard anything like. Had they seen Ray or had they seen anything strange? However, makita Brotman, who was a resident of the Belvedere, reported that neither her nor any of her neighbors were interviewed. Another source reported that a former investigator on the case admitted that no one in the belvedere was interviewed.
Speaker 2:Well, that doesn't sound good yeah, an auto shop owner whose building had been adjacent to the parking garage had contacted the police to cooperate with him regarding giving his video camera footage, which may have shown footage of the parking garage on the night of Ray's disappearance, but that lead was seemingly never followed up on and the potential evidence was never obtained. Ray's cell phone records were never obtained. No statements were ever taken from the three Agora employees that discovered the hole on the roof. There is no diagram of where the hole on the roof was, where Ray was supposed to have fallen or exactly where he landed. Now, right away. Of course, allison and Ray's family didn't believe that Ray had committed suicide. Family didn't believe that Ray had committed suicide, not only for all of the reasons that we had already stated, but his behavior wasn't super indicative of impending suicide either. It didn't seem like he was trying to tie off loose ends or make amends or any of those kinds of things that potential people who are considering suicide tend to do. Earlier in the day on May 16th, ray had booked a video editing suite for the upcoming weekend on May 20th to edit the video of the Oxford Club conference that we had discussed in the previous episode. Also on the 16th at least according to Makita Brotman he met with a member of the Freemason Society to discuss the process of membership. Now Ray had expressed recent interest in the Freemasons and this is like a hot topic of discussion surrounding the case, which makes me roll my fucking eyes, because I think all of that is hope, and we will get into that some of the next episode, although it is definitely one of the sillier hypotheses in my opinion. But some reasons that Ray may have developed an interest in the Freemasons is that he may have thought that the Freemasons were a good way to build the networking connections within Hollywood, or he could have also been researching them for a future screenplay he was planning, or he could have thought that Stansbury Incorporated was infiltrated with Freemasons and the Freemasons. So we don't really know.
Speaker 2:There isn't really any information about what was on Ray's computer, so we don't have any more insight on things like that that he may have kept notes on. He was reading like Freemasons for Dummies or whatever at the time of his death. So that's another thing. But he does. He's got this note which I didn't write it down, but I'll try and find the source so that we can I can read it to you. There's this note that is attributed to him, that was found taped to the back of his computer, and it reads like a bit of mumbo jumbo, right, and so there's a bunch of hypothesis about what. What could the note mean? The fbi ruled that it probably wasn't a suicide note. Some people do take it that way. Some people take it as this is a sign of of like a case of psychosis, which to me that's a potential explanation, although there's definitely some concrete doubts to that as well. Uh, some people, some people take it as these are possibly like freestyle writing notes. Yeah, because he was a writer. Right, exactly, yes, he's a writer?
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you're a writer and you do that, it does come out as mumbo jumbo. It makes absolutely no sense unless you're the one doing it, absolutely, and it does quite sound like mumbo jumbo, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And it does quite sound like mumbo jumbo. And another hypothesis is that it's like written in code and it's meant to convey like a secret message, like blackmail or a warning or something like that possibility that ray didn't write the fucking note, because there's we can't really prove that he wrote it like it's a typed message. It's taped to the back of his computer but we don't know what was on ray's computer. So there's no like we don't know this came from there. Like this came from his files. Like he didn't sign the note, yeah, or anything like that. And like it was found, like after after his body was found, basically, and so many people had been in and out of his house, it could have been placed there like clippings, like some bits were cut off of the paper and that was folded up really tiny and taped on the back of the paper and it's like printed in a really teeny, tiny font.
Speaker 2:So it's really impossible to determine 100% that Ray wrote it. He probably wrote it, but it could have. Also another hypothesis is that it was planted there Right To make him look like he was mentally unstable. So that is another possibility. I didn't mean to get into the note already but I did because it has some mentions of the Freemasons and some references to Freemasonry stuff and so that's part of that whole thing. Yeah, it seemed like he was doing, was doing things. He had plans. He had immediate plans. Yeah, he had distant plans, it seemed like it's unlikely he would have exactly unless he did have a psychotic episode or something Right.
Speaker 2:Or like there was something that happened and he was like this is you know the breaking point?
Speaker 1:I have to do this right now Like an impulsive suicide decision, yeah, and remind me he didn't have any alcohol or anything in his system.
Speaker 2:So he had a really tiny amount of alcohol in his system, but the medical examiner could not even determine if it was from ingested alcohol or if it was merely the alcohols produced by decomposition and he didn't have any drugs or anything in his system yeah, so he was sober, he was lucid for as much as you know.
Speaker 2:If he was under psychosis, like, that's not entirely lucid, but we again don't know that. Yeah, so it can only be speculation about whether or not that is a possibility, and it's definitely a possibility that I have strongly considered and was my lead hypothesis. Um, now it's my second, because just too many factors that I'm like that doesn't quite match. Like I learned more information than I was like that doesn't match and I'm not quite as comfortable making that assessment right. Oh, we're getting to the end of my notes. So so I wanted to talk about his injuries and this is where I kind of like ran out of steam, because I was not ran out of steam, but like I ran out of time because I was like trying to research stuff about his injuries, because, again, different sources like say some different stuff, right, and uh, so I was trying to find out all the different stuff so that I can put it all down or put like the most sensible things, yeah, or the most sensible couple of things, right. So all I have so far is that, according to the autopsy report, yeah, yeah, he was pretty fucked up.
Speaker 2:He had 24 broken ribs. Both of his lungs were punctured. His heart and his liver were damaged. His neck and muscles were torn. He had multiple skull fractures, a broken pelvis, a ruptured testicle oh my God. Multiple lacerations on his arms, legs and torso. He had several teeth that were described as like ejected, and the thing that I was trying to really find information about are his leg breaks, the the leg injuries. Okay, because so he definitely had like a real bad um fracture on his left leg, his right leg. I was trying to find information. It was either unfractured or the fracture was far less severe, and he did have lacerations on both legs. The lacerations on the left side were again more severe. From everything I could find, they were saying his feet were not broken, which that's not consistent with landing on your feet like from a fall of like your feet would be like shattered, like it would.
Speaker 2:It's typically like bilateral is. Is that the right term? Damage onage on both sides, equal damage on both sides. Right, because you're being plummeted through this thing, you're landing at force. You know you're not usually doing like a pirouette on like one toe. You know you're bracing for impact here and so you would be damaged like pretty messed up on both sides and that's not quite the case.
Speaker 2:Like he's much more damage on one side of his body than on the other side of his body, especially in the legs where he was supposed to have landed from, and that's that's the other thing that is really like that doesn't quite match. Now, the coroner's report does say that most of his injuries are consistent with a fall, and here is where there is some again, some inconsisten right, because some sources reported that the medical examiner said in the report that his leg injuries were not consistent with a fall. Some sources said that the medical examiner told Allison verbally that his leg injuries were not consistent with the fall. The medical examiner ruled the cause of death as undetermined and again, this is a very hot button issue because there's multiple ways that people are looking at this, there's multiple ways that people are interpreting this that she knew that Ray's death was not a suicide and she told Allison like something along the lines of like we're not letting them get away with this, or something Some people have said, like you know, like Allison is a liar.
Speaker 2:And I think that's a bit extreme, right, because I'm like I don't think that she would have a reason to lie, like you know, like I think that she wants. She wants to find out what happened to her husband and now, whether or not the medical examiner told her something to try and make her feel better. You know, that could be a possibility, or whether or not she misinterpreted something with the medical examiner.
Speaker 1:That's also a possibility.
Speaker 2:Right. However, I don't think that she is lying. I think that's not. I think that's a bullshit thing to say. What else am I saying about this, However, if we just take that away?
Speaker 2:we're looking at the ruling of the cause of death is undetermined.
Speaker 2:Some people have said this ruling favors the the baltimore police department because it like basically gives them leeway to say, like this is a suicide.
Speaker 2:If we want to say it's a suicide, right, because the medical examiner is not saying this is homicide, so we can go ahead and be free to say it's a suicide if we want, right. However, it also occurred to me that, like, looking at it from probably like a scientific standpoint and an ethical standpoint, like because the way that his body was injured and stuff like that, like there isn't like a real clear indicator right Of homicide. Like he doesn't have bullet wounds, he doesn't have stab wounds, he wasn't poisoned or clearly like bludgeoned with a weapon or something like that, and so no, like how can a medical, a medical examiner could not ethically or scientifically say this is homicide, right, like that would just be like not the right choice yeah and so if they're saying like, yeah, maybe this is homicide, but I really can't tell based on what I have, which is a body Right, then the only choice that they do have is to label the death undetermined.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I don't necessarily think, oh, they're giving a boon to the police department and I don't necessarily think, oh, they're trying to give a boon to Allison. I think that you know they're just trying to.
Speaker 1:Just ethically, they can't do it. Yeah, they can't go either way. Exactly, they're trying to do their. Yeah, not enough evidence to say that Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly, and so that's really the only kind of way that they can go to say like we just really can't tell Right, and that's what they have done, mm-hmm. So.
Speaker 1:So technically it's an open case, sort of.
Speaker 2:Well, that's another thing, sort of well, that's another thing. That's another thing that makita had trouble finding out and from other sources that it's hard to to. People didn't want to answer the question of whether the case is still open. One thing that I thought which we talked about was so interesting is that is that people kept warning, like makita, throughout the book, like don't look into this, this is dangerous. Like there are certain associations you know wink, like with a certain company, wink and a certain individual wink that, like this company, these affiliates are really dangerous and like they're known to cause trouble and they're known to be a danger to people and people are known to die under mysterious circumstances.
Speaker 2:You know, when they cross paths with these people and all kinds of people gave makita this kind of warning from like cops, journalists, private investigators and, like I said, like a law professor and also like raised friends, and then at the end like nothing really she didn't really say anything about like her thoughts on that. She didn't really say anything about her thoughts on that. But then it seemed like she kind of glossed it over and she was like, well, people could just be jealous of a certain company because they're so successful, and of course they're going to come up with conspiracy theories because they're a success. And I was like I think you're oversimplifying this, you know like these are not quite conspiracy theorists who are telling you these things, right, you know like these are not quack conspiracy theorists who are telling you these things, you know. And then she was like I think it's like, you know, like a suicide or accidental suicide, because he was under, you know, like psychosis, which I think is a potentially valid conclusion.
Speaker 2:But I think she left out a lot of things or skimmed over a lot of things to reach that conclusion and I was like, wait, what about these things that I really want to go Like? She really did not at all explore the possibility that he may have been killed not by falling through a hole and placed in the conference room, right, and that the hole was from some other means, whether after or before, and it was already there and they just took advantage of it. That wasn't something that she considered at all. It that wasn't something that she considered at all, and I think it's worth considering, especially since the parking garage abuts a passage that leads to the conference room, and so you could very easily carry a body into the conference room without going through the hotel and without being noticed.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And she even talks about that.
Speaker 1:And the Belvedere didn't really have any cameras.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, that is another thing. That is weird is the camera situation. That's another thing, which has multiple stories for multiple sources as well. So definitely there is no camera footage from the roof. That's the one thing that we know. Like the cameras were off on the roof.
Speaker 1:Wait, they did have cameras on the roof, but they were off.
Speaker 2:Yes, actually, and the means from which they were off or not working or not available is also different. Like one source says they were like off. One source says that they were playing but like they record over and so by the time they had found it it had recorded over the footage and it was gone. Another source said it looked like they had been tampered with and so that's also different stories. But the cameras on the roof there were cameras on the roof but they were not working that night for whatever reason or not capturing anything Right, and there were also cameras inside the Belvedere, Mm-hmm. And that the information about those cameras is also mixed.
Speaker 2:So in the Makita Brotman book she said that Allison was brought in and reviewed footage from inside the hotel, mm-hmm. With whatever, like a cop and like the hotel manager or something. They all sat down or whatever and reviewed some footage for quite some time. Yeah, and according to the unsolved mysteries, that the cop who was on there, he said that there was footage inside the belvedere and that he reviewed it, but there was no footage of Ray found. According to another, like newspaper source from around the time, there wasn't any like footage, like there was no footage available period, and so it's like which story is true? It's like which story is true? Yeah, and if she did like see footage, like what was on the footage that she saw, why didn't she talk about it?
Speaker 2:I feel like I feel like in that instance makes me feel like, maybe, like do I even trust makita brought me? Because I'm like, if she reviewed some kind of footage, like why don't they talk about that? Yeah, like I don't know. Even if it's like we reviewed footage and we didn't find Rey, yeah, so that's a weird thing. But I mean, or it could have just been cut, like I know they cut a lot of things from the Netflix episode as well, yeah, but that was the only place I could in that book that I could find mention that and it was kind of a thing of I saw her come do this thing. I mean, makita seems like a pretty reliable person, but who knows for sure.
Speaker 2:Like, she's selling me a book, right so? And she also talked about like a passage inside the hotel where you could like go up to straight, like to the, to the, to the the roof. I'm like to the to the thing, to the roof roof. However, like she said that she saw or went in this passage like shortly after Ray's death and then the rest of the time she's like hunting for the passage, hunting for the passage, and she can't fucking find it, which seemed to me to be odd.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that doesn't sound particularly reliable.
Speaker 2:No, it doesn't. And so I'm like is there a passage or not? Like, does anybody have a fucking schematic blueprint of the fucking Belvedere?
Speaker 1:That shouldn't be that hard to get. You should be able to have access to that. Well, I'm talking out of my ass, but I'm pretty sure I remember from journalism school that you can apply to get any sort of schematic for a public building.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's one thing that I definitely haven't seen people talk about or analyze Like I've seen people talking.
Speaker 2:Google Maps shows this and from the outside of the Belvedere, we can see this. And I was inside the Belvedere, we can see this. And, yeah, I was inside the belvedere and I saw that. It seems oh remember last week, though I had reported that that I had read another source that said in makita's book that she indicated that ray went up to the roof at some point with allison and that he had maybe stayed at the bell of a deer with his friend. That was not in the book, so that source was bullshit. Yeah, so that's why I I was skeptical about that source when I read. That's why I prefaced it like I.
Speaker 1:I wonder if that person got us uh, uh, uh, got it from another source that said it was makita, like I've. I've seen that in research before from historians like they just keep they'll say something, but when you really dig into it it's like from some random person that said it and they just keep referencing each other. Right, it's like, uh, did you look at the actual source?
Speaker 2:yeah, well, there's so many and so many of these sources are podcasts and things. Yeah, are referencing heavily from her book, yeah, and and so, yeah, I could absolutely see that happening, like her book and the unsolved mysteries. Yeah, podcasts are like a main source of information because it's hard, it is hard to find real substantive information about this case and to know, yeah, like this source is this and this source is this. Yeah, like I saw, I saw in the scene. Now we're're completely off script. So in the episode Unsolved Mysteries, they report that the call that Ray got was traced back to a line line for, like Stansbury's company, like Agora, like a, like one of those switchboards where, like, you can tell it came from there, but you can't really tell exactly who it came from because in those days, like they didn't really have that kind you know, from that kind of switchboard.
Speaker 2:They couldn't the the there goes my speech impediment, you couldn't really trace it back like that, and so they couldn't tell any farther than that other than is, like from the baltimore city, says it didn't come from stanbury and associates it came from some rando house. And I'm like, so what's? Which is true, because everybody else is saying like allison, and everybody else is saying it came from Stansberry, and now you guys are saying it came from here, like, are you lying? Like, and if it came from here, why didn't you investigate here, right, what is here? Right, you know, because the switchboard explanation gives some kind of rationale for why they cannot further trace the call. Right, if it came from some random house, like, so what did you do? Did you follow up? Yeah, like, that has a whole different piece of the fucking puzzle. Yeah, which is why I said this case is like rabbit holes on rabbit holes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Because, it's like what's the truth, like what happened, like yeah, you know, yeah, you don't know, yeah, and it's. It's really kind of a mind fuck.
Speaker 1:It is frustrating. I mean just the handful of cases I've done one where there's like two or three episodes of something from different shows. Yeah, you know they'll say different, like vastly different things and and you're like what, what is the truth here?
Speaker 2:like they seem.
Speaker 1:They both seem like credible sources, yeah right, yeah, and and and so like, and those are are cases that have been solved and there's not really any mystery. It's just certain like timeline things or whatever that aren't that important to the case, but they're so vastly different, it's so weird.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those kinds of things quite frustrate me too.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it is even more frustrating, yeah, in a case like this that is seemingly shrouded in mystery. Yeah, and people feel like you know, of course you know. Baltimore police official stance is Ray committed suicide, Mm-hmm, but so many people firmly believe that he didn't. Yeah, if there's anything else that I really need to talk about in this episode, yeah, another thing that there is one more thing I need to talk about in this episode, although I didn't take notes on it, so it might if I say something wrong. Don't like, come from me, right.
Speaker 1:Right, you're doing it from memory, yeah.
Speaker 2:But after, basically after Ray's body was found, porter Stansbury stopped cooperating with police and lawyered up. Yeah, and all of his employees also stopped cooperating with police. Now different sources and I guess some people have received cease and desist orders because they've made it abundantly clear that Porter Stansbury did not place a gag order on his employees. Right, and so I am making it abundantly clear that Porter Stansbury did not place a gag order on his employees. Uh-huh clear. That porter stands where. He did not place a gag order on his employees. However, I would like to say that you don't have to officially place a gag order on your employees, you just need to be intimidating gag order on your employees right yeah, exactly, you are their fucking boss.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like you can ruin their lives in your, their careers, especially if you have the kind of sway that porter allegedly had right like the way makita puts it porter is like a semi-fucking celebrity in baltimore baltimore, baltimore. And so not only could he allegedly, if he wanted, fire his employees, but he could also completely destroy their reputations and make sure that they don't find work again. And so when you have that kind of clout, you don't need a gag order Like what you say your employers do.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And another thing that like in the crime junkies, because they had to put like this kind of disclaimer, is that they were like an award for one thousand dollars and then later he put an award for five thousand dollars. It's like my dude, you're a multi-millionaire, yeah. Like, is your friend only worth five fucking thousand dollars, right, yeah?
Speaker 1:and then then just the thing about not yeah, even the FBI does like 10,000 or something, right yeah?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Even the government thinks you're worth more than that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and when you see these things on Reddit, I'm like Porter. Did you write that? Or did one of your employees write that? Allegedly? Because they're like, porter tried to find his friend. Therefore, porter could not be guilty. Right, I'm like dude. That proves nothing. Right, like they're like porter joined the search. You know killers always do.
Speaker 1:They always do. Well, I can't say always, but most of the time they do they often will. Yeah, they attend the funerals.
Speaker 2:And it certainly does not dis-fucking-prove, guilt yeah. So, and again I want to say I'm not accusing anyone. Porter Stansbury, if you're out there, one of our five listeners- Right. Like, but like. Nothing about that is exonerating.
Speaker 1:No, no, but we're not saying that is exonerating, no. No, but we're not saying that he did anything either. Let's make that clear.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. We are not saying anything. We are letting the readers draw their own conclusions. Listeners, damn it. Listeners draw their own conclusions. I don't know. I don't know what kind of senses that you're taking this podcast in with.
Speaker 1:Well, that's true, you could be listening, you could be reading a transcript, you could be reading our transcript.
Speaker 2:Yeah, In which case I feel sorry for you because our transcription service is not great. No.
Speaker 1:I apologize. We don't have any funding for this and I'm a teacher, so I make no money, and so I have the cheap option.
Speaker 2:Everybody listen. Tell your friends so you can get some money. Yeah, what am I saying? Another thing that is weird, right, is that the cops that had Ray's computer, of which we know nothing about his contents, right when Allison goes to pick Ray's computer up, the officer tells her that somebody else had been calling and trying to get them to release Ray's computer. To them who that person is.
Speaker 1:Unknown computer to them? Who?
Speaker 2:that person is unknown, yeah, but somebody was trying really fucking hard to get the cops to give them ray's computer, interesting, which is really weird. So I think that's all I have for today. Okay, uh, because I'm out of notes and and I'm just rambling at this point, right, and I think I've gone over most of the really salient points. Oh, uh, the other thing is that so the, the one guy that I had mentioned, michael bear, the, the lead detective on the case, so he is on the case and like working with allison and her family and stuff for about three weeks and he is open to the possibility of the case being a homicide.
Speaker 2:However, after that three weeks he's taken off the case and he was told that he was too invested in the case, which is kind of a weird thing to say yeah to a cop like you're too invested yeah investigating this case, yeah, and another dude is is put in charge of the case and at that point the case is effectively closed, like nobody is really allowed to like any more information about the case and that dude is very closed lip about the case and at that point, um, from what I can tell, there's no more notes, there's no more, there's nothing else about the case after that, yeah, yeah, so at that point it's pretty much no more investigating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's, yeah. I think that is all I have for today. Next episode is when I'm going to talk about these different theories and we'll talk about some of the more outrageous ones. And we'll talk about some of the more outrageous ones and we'll talk about some of the potentially more credible ones, and including, you know, suicide hypothesis, including psychosis, accidental death hypothesis.
Speaker 2:No, aliens, though I haven't seen an alien I haven't seen an alien one yet Surprisingly, but yeah, I have seen a number of odd hypotheses. I haven't seen an alien one yet surprisingly, but yeah. I have seen a number of odd hypotheses, so I'll try and fit in as many as I can, or as many interesting ones. If they're not credible, very credible and also not interesting, then I might omit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting case rabbit holes pound rabbit very interesting case okay, um, so let me finish with my missing person and then we'll do a little gossiping thing again. My missing person is donita wilkerson and she disappeared in Evansville, indiana. She was last seen on June 21st 2020 at 8.16 pm at a local Evansville Indiana motel getting into a silver pewter-colored 2004 Chevy Suburban. Donita's phone was shut off by the next morning. Her family reported her missing when she didn't call her mother or daughters as she usually did. Donita has several medical conditions that require medication that she is without. If you have any information concerning her, you may contact the FBI Indianapolis office at 317-595-4000 or the Evansville Police Department at 812-436-7979 or tip line at 812-435-6194. You can also contact your local FBI office or the nearest American embassy or consulate. So that's all the information we have.
Speaker 2:That's good information. I hope that somebody will make that call if they have any information about her. And when did she go missing again, 2020. 2020. Yeah, oof, well, hopefully she's still out there and you know, just no contact or something.
Speaker 1:So did you do any reading or writing, reading or writing, reading or watching?
Speaker 2:I have not done any writing besides this absolute word salad of an outline I have just been watching. Yeah, still deep space. Nine, we just watched that episode where rom makes a union, which is a fucking awesome episode, and he like quotes marks to quark. I'm like fuck yeah rom. And he also like steals basheer's girl. Oh, all the things for rom in that episode. Yeah, poor dr bashir did I ever tell you I'd be all right.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, like he's always getting ass that's true, he was the good looking one on that show. Did I tell you I met him? Oh my god, I even got a signature from him. That's awesome. And and the guy that played Garrick.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I remember you told me that you met Garrick. Yeah, but I don't remember that you met Dr Bashir, whose real name I never remember how to pronounce.
Speaker 1:Yeah, God, that was almost 30 years ago. Yeah, yeah, my poor grandpa. I feel so bad. I was 12 or 13, so I was kind of like I felt bad about how I looked. You know, I was getting into that age and uncomfortable with myself, and my grandfather was one of those people that took like a million photos, like constantly taking photos. But anyway, he was not into Star Trek, he's not into any kind of science fiction fantasy, but he knew that I was and so he. I didn't even know it was there.
Speaker 1:He took me to that convention yeah and he waited in line and listened to all this stuff he didn't give a shit about oh and um. I felt so bad because he he took pictures of me and I was just. I made the worst faces and I was just so because I was so uncomfortable with myself, you know, and I wasn't particularly grateful for that and I feel really, really bad now. But at the same time I was also 12 and big boobed and you know, just not feeling good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 12 is a hard age. It's a horrible age for girls. At least Katie's grandpa was a real one. He was. He was a good guy. Any guy I go out with, or whatever, is gonna have some big shoes to fill. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm doing a face and it's like a sad cry face. Yeah, I remember seeing some kind of like interview or whatever with Dr Bashir, actor, and he had been married to Nana visitor, kira actress, and they had a kid together and in fact it was written to the show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because she was pregnant. Well, she was filming, she was pregnant with the O'Briens baby.
Speaker 2:Yeah Right, and they said that she had gotten so into character and she was really paranoid about Cardassians coming to get her or something, so she like broke glass, which reminded me of like.
Speaker 1:Of our mutual friend.
Speaker 2:Yes, she broke some like glass in like front of the door because she thought that like Cardassian, like spies or whatever were going to come get her, and the Dr Bashir actor like cut up his poor foot.
Speaker 1:Oh, no Aw.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I remember that story about them.
Speaker 1:That's funny. I thought it was super fun and cute.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm sure it was not fun for the Dr Bashir actor.
Speaker 1:No, no, when he cut his foot out of the glass. Butir actor no no. Sadiq Al-Fadl, I think that's his name.
Speaker 2:But, it's probably a funny story that he remembers now, pregnancy does some weird shit to your hormones.
Speaker 1:I hear that I've been told. Did you read anything besides the book for your Whatchamacallit I?
Speaker 2:know you're currently reading. Exquisite Corpse right, I am currently reading Exquisite Corpse and I haven't finished it because it's a very not-safe-for-children book. And so I'm like, even like, I have both the audio book and the physical book, but, like you know, if, like, one of my kids is around and I'm like, I'm like. I don't want to read anything. What are you talking about, Right, you know? Like, because I don't want them to be like. What's that? What's it about? Like, how do you describe that in a?
Speaker 1:child-friendly way. Yeah yeah, that would be a tough one. Yeah yeah, no, that would be a tough one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So let me see if I read anything else. That no, I haven't, because the last one before that is Little Crazy Children. So no, it's just.
Speaker 1:You mean, I outread you this week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my reading dropped off. I've been like hella busy like doing what I'm, like I don't know stuff, kids stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it was a busy week for you. Yeah, yeah, I haven't watched anything. Well, that's not true. Matt Murphy's book came out this week, which I read. It's called the Book of Murder. It's fantastic, and I'm not just saying that because he's cute, it really is well done. So he's been on true crime shows and stuff, so like Megyn Kelly and whatever.
Speaker 1:So more podcasty things, but the visual versions of those I watched. Yeah, also, crimecon did one where he was being interviewed by Elizabeth Fargus from NewsNation, because he's on NewsNation a lot and some of his former co-workers came in and, you know, told funny stories and gave him a little bit of shit, but he seems to be a well-liked man and he was nice when I met him, very nice when I met him. So I can see that. Yeah, and the only other person who says dude as much as I do, you do say dude a lot I do.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's a beat, maybe it's coming from like beach communities, like I'm originally from hawaii and even though I left when I was a kid, I feel like maybe that's like a, just something you do when you're yeah, it's just a natural beach style word or something I used to say, say dude a lot, but then, like you know, like my siblings would always be, like a dude is a pimple on a horse's ass, and so you stopped doing it because it was irritating, I stopped doing it yeah, yeah, because I didn't want to hear that.
Speaker 1:I think it's increased over the years. Yeah, yeah, I call everybody dude. I think I've, even over the years. Yeah yeah, I call everybody dude. I think I've even called my grandmother dude, right.
Speaker 2:I call my pets.
Speaker 1:Dudes, yeah, yeah, little dudes, yeah, although I run into a problem with people around my age when I say like hey, dude or something, or answer the phone, hey, dude, because they all remember the show. Hey, dude, maybe you're too young to remember that, I do not remember, but it was a Nickelodeon show. I don't really remember it at all, except that they were like on a dude ranch or something and they would always say hey, dude, yeah, or at least that was the like beginning of the show or something. But anyway, I say dude a lot and I'm glad somebody else does yeah as much as I do. It's a great word, I love it, okay, anyway.
Speaker 1:So that was the only thing I read this week, but I was saying for a long time that I hadn't read like anything this summer, but it turns out I've read most of the books I've read this year, this summer. Nice, I had no idea, go you, yeah. So I don't know where I left off, but I, um, I've read most of a series that's out called the riley thorne series. I've told you about it, but yes, in case readers are interested, it's labeled as romance. I would label it mystery with a romance involved, and my theory is why it's called romance is because it says very adult words sometimes and there is a wow and and and there are some sex scenes. But I mean it's it's no more or less part of the story than the mystery, and in fact I think the mystery actually takes precedence.
Speaker 1:But they're really good. They're absolutely hilarious. The side characters are worth everything, including the. I mean, the two main ones are great too, but the side characters are fantastically done and I highly recommend getting the audio version because the narrator is probably one of my favorite narrators. She does voices for all of the characters. They are, they are all very distinct and the male characters sound male, yeah, which is nice, um, because that doesn't always happen, uh, anyway. So the riley thorne series highly recommend. Um, I read night watch for my book club. That was a horrible book, but it's the one that won the um pulitzer, I think. Not great, uh, I think that's it, but yay me, yeah yay, you indeed.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, I read a lot last month and this month I haven't been reading as much.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, you've kind of gone down this rabbit hole. So yeah, that's true. So you've been doing the podcast.
Speaker 2:Yes, I have been listening to quite a bit of podcasts and then, like usually when I make dinner and stuff, then I listen to my audio books and things like that.
Speaker 2:But, again, like, I usually just listen to. I don't have headphones Cause I'm like what if something happens? Like I need to hear, and so, yeah, I, I so I haven't been listening to that exquisite course one, for obvious reasons. And now I'm like, but I don't want to start a new book before I finish that book, and so I've been listening to, yeah, podcasts when I've been listening to that maintenance phase podcast. So it's a great, great podcast to listen to. If you are, you know, feeling like you know feeling like you know some internalized fat phobia, and if you're feeling down about yourself, you know like, even like whatever, like you know, if the doctor is like you're overweight and you're like, hold up, I'm not overweight, then you can listen to that podcast, you know. Or if you're, you know, truly quite chub like me, you know it's really great and it's great for anybody who is really into debunking like BS, like science that has led to some really questionable like medical recommendations and things of that nature.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so yeah, is that it? Yeah, I think that's it. Okay, we didn't do much gossip.
Speaker 2:Well, I guess we did the gossip we talked a lot in the beginning about our pets yes, um, okay, so I will redo.
Speaker 1:So rachel is reading exquisite Corpse. Would feel like it's kind of succinct, more succinct, like Anne Rice.
Speaker 2:I was going to say Anne Rice-ian Kind of style, but, like I mentioned to Katie before, that might be because it's partially set in New Orleans. And yeah, if you are into like serial killers, like see very dahmer inspired to me yeah, yeah, um then and wasn't it written around that time of dahmer?
Speaker 1:when was dahmer?
Speaker 2:um in the 90s, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think that book came out in the 90s, so maybe it was inspired by yeah, it's one of it's one of the classic body horror it seems very heavily inspired by dahmer like a lot of aspects.
Speaker 2:I'm like oh yeah, that's quite like dahmer, yeah, yeah, I think it's pretty good, yeah and yeah, and just kind of like unab unabashed, like bad people you know, if that's your jam unabashed bad people and, yeah, you don't mind body horror and icky kind of things and serial killers, then absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I read the Riley Thorne series Highly recommend if you're in the mood for a mystery and or a romance. Also, I highly recommend the book of murder. I really really do. If you're into true crime, and since this is technically a true crime podcast, I would highly recommend that book because it's a memoir. It's got the personal stuff in there. He talks about how being the homicide prosecutor in the place where he was, where they actually have to go to crime scenes and stuff but even if it wasn't that, I think he would still have worked really hard and how all of that took a real toll on his relationships. And also, if you like crime, because he does go into all those big crimes the dating game killer.
Speaker 1:It's called the Book of Murder A Prosecutor's Journey through love and death by matt murphy and it's well written. He's a good writer, it's it's. You wouldn't know that it's a first book, right? So those are the things I would recommend and oh, he, I mean rachel already knows this, but I may as well embarrass myself further. I put a little recommendation thingy on Instagram about how much I liked the book and the audiobook and I tagged Matt Murphy in it because I'm a dork and he actually DMed me and said thank you, which was very sweet of him, since I have like five followers on instagram or whatever. And then, of course, I have to write back and be like see you on the crime cruise. So I embarrass myself because I am an awkward, weird person no, it's good.
Speaker 2:It's good.
Speaker 1:Maybe he remembers you maybe I don't think so, though, but that's okay's okay.
Speaker 2:I think you're memorable. Aw, he's probably like that's that short cute blonde?
Speaker 1:I doubt it. That's that weirdo that came and stalked me in the airport. No, you did not. No, I didn't stalk him, I just saw him. I was like, oh my God, it was a star-studded flight. I saw a lot of people.
Speaker 1:Okay, him, I just saw him I was like oh my god, it was a star-studded flight, I saw a lot of people um, okay, who was the one who was rude to you? Oh, I don't want to say that on on here, but yeah, there was, there was someone was rude, there was a. Well, they thought I was rude. Yeah, and I really haven't figured out why, but you just said like hi or. Yeah, like I didn't want to bother them, but I also wanted to say hi.
Speaker 2:Didn't you say hi, I don't want to bother you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I said hi, I don't want to bother you, I'll see you, you know, tomorrow. I just want to come up and say hi, and then I apparently was rude.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And um.
Speaker 2:I mean, I can see how like people would be like oh you know, I've had enough, but like you know, that's not.
Speaker 1:I don't think it was that because he's somebody who will happily stop and like take pictures and things with people. Yeah, like, I don't think it's because I bothered him, I think it's because I just didn't like stay in. I mean, I really don't know. I really don't know. Maybe I said it in a tone some people say I sound rude, or maybe it's because I was like I'll talk to you tomorrow or something. Didn't ask for a picture or whatever.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I just didn't want to bother him. I'm sure he'd been bugged for like the last hours we were on the flight.
Speaker 1:Maybe he just like was not in a good mood but he seemed very happy at first to talk to me, but I didn't stay. Maybe that's why. Maybe I just like turned around. But I'm also awkward and weird. Yeah, and I apologize if I was rude, but I was just not that he would be listening. But I am just awkward and weird and I don't do social interactions very well, particularly if I don't really know people.
Speaker 2:I hear you. I hear you, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I mean I would probably be, you know, not approach because of two chicken shit.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I don't know what came over me, because normally I'm very much a chicken shit, yeah, and, and I would not have done that, but I approached two people. I can't believe I did that in the same day. Yolo, yeah, maybe that was it, and I was like well, you know I, if they don't like me, I probably won't see him again. So, exactly, exactly, yeah, exactly Exactly.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I mean you did your best to be polite.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm just awkward and weird and I apologize If you ever meet me and I come off as rude. I promise you, I'm just being awkward.
Speaker 2:I don't know how to do random social interactions, I just don't well, and I think it's interesting what some people you know find rude. And you know, like as, especially as you know someone who's neurodivergent, the parent of at least one, possibly two, neurodivergent kids, like you know, like it's, it can be hard for people to to know what to do, yeah, to do the right thing, and and to know what all the appropriate, not only know what all the appropriate social conventions are, but then different people have different ideas of what is appropriate, right, and so then you have to somehow fucking figure that out or like matriculate it into your brain, yeah, and if you don't do that, then you're rude and it's like, yeah, I'm trying my best, like if, yeah, I'm coming from a sincere place right, yeah so, and I was't.
Speaker 1:I don't know how anybody could see that I wasn't being sincere and like actually excited to like meet him and you know, I mean, who wants to talk to somebody after six hours on a crappy plane, I mean. So I was trying to be nice, but whatever anyway, um yeah, so I'm just awkward and weird. It's okay, I know, it's okay, I don't I. I have learned to accept that about myself I, there's nothing I can do about it.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying it's okay about being awkward, weird, of course that's okay, I'm saying it's okay about the situation yeah, no, I know I'm I'm also not um really all bothered about it anymore.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, I brought it up.
Speaker 1:No, it's okay. It's okay, we won't talk about it. I just won't say the name of the person. You got the book. I did get the book. So two more episodes, episode 24. We will have our new book to discuss. I should have picked that as one of my books. I didn't think it was. I don't think they have another copy. I think I got the only one at the time. Maybe no, no, just kidding, we got long haul hunting the highway serial killers by frank figliuzzi. It's looks fairly short and fairly readable. Yeah, a little over 200 pages, pages Great.
Speaker 1:And a smaller of the hardback, types of hardbacks. Also, our one year anniversary will be coming up sometime in October. I'll have to look when.
Speaker 2:We could do a Halloween special.
Speaker 1:We should do a Halloween special, although that might be independent of a Halloween special and an anniversary special.
Speaker 2:We could do both.
Speaker 1:We could do both. I will have to look at the things, but one of these days, pretty soon, is our one-year anniversary. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Episode Stravagenza.
Speaker 1:Even though we have five listeners. Yeah, they're like we don't care. It's for us. Yeah, um, it is kind of a milestone. We've been doing this a whole year, yeah, figuring it out with all of our busyness, do you think?
Speaker 2:that we are better podcasters now than we were when we started I don't know.
Speaker 1:I think we're still trying to figure out our way, and it's kind of hard because we don't know what anybody wants, because we don't really have that many listeners.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that we're not great at social networking, which I know I'm supposed to be doing, but I'm like ugh yeah. I'm not good at either, I know you must be like you're like put up the thing about the episode.
Speaker 1:A little bit. Yeah, a little bit.
Speaker 2:And I'm like ugh it's time to put up the thing about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we should probably do a little bit more of that like teasers and stuff. I know We'll get there and I got to put this stuff on YouTube, so watch out for that. It will be coming up on YouTube. I just haven't had a second to sit down and behind on everything in my life right now. Yep, it's been a very busy very busy month, but anyway, okay.
Speaker 1:So, speaking of social media, yes, like, subscribe, download, review email, send an email. We are on instagram, both our podcast and individually, although neither of us has been particularly good about posting. Well, we're also not really picture takers.
Speaker 2:We're humans who are busy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Unless. People want to see a picture of my nails.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, yours is more of a nail.
Speaker 2:Instagram.
Speaker 1:I'm just not good. I am the exact opposite of my grandpa.
Speaker 2:And if you want to see a picture of my nails I hope you're not a nail fetishist, because it's not a nail fetish channel, it's a nail polish.
Speaker 1:Appreciation yeah, Channel yeah.
Speaker 2:Nail polish appreciation channel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there you go, but anyway you should follow us. There you go, but anyway you should follow us. I think we're both going to try to be more diligent about all of that stuff. Scouts on a. Yeah, I was a scout, so was I For a very brief period of time. I hated every second of it.
Speaker 2:I liked it until I moved here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so Okay, so like subscribe, download, review, email us, follow us on Instagram and we will talk to you next time. Bye.
