Unsolved Mysteries: Weird note behind Rey Rivera’s ‘impossible’ death

When Rey Rivera was last seen alive, he was in a panic. His body was found eight days later in “virtually impossible” circumstances.

When Allison Rivera arrived in her hotel room on the night on May 16, 2006, she found it “strange” her husband Rey didn’t answer his phone.

The newlyweds had enjoyed breakfast that morning in their Baltimore home before Mrs Rivera had left for an out of town work trip.

The last known whereabouts of Mr Rivera was at 6.30pm earlier that day when he took a phone call and hurried out of their house, according to a friend of the couple that had been staying with them at the time.

What would follow that phone call eight days later would be the discovery of Mr Rivera’s body in “virtually impossible” circumstances, a bizarre note and ultimately more questions than answers about what happened to the charismatic writer.

The bizarre events surrounding the 32-year-old’s death is the subject of new Netflix series Unsolved Mysteries, which close friends and family hope will reignite renewed interest in his case.

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Rey Rivera and his wife Allison, who is never stopped looking for answers over her husband’s mysterious death. Picture: Netflix.

LEFT HOUSE IN A ‘HURRY’ AFTER PHONE CALL

When Mrs Rivera didn’t hear from her husband that night she decided to phone her work colleague Claudia, who was staying at their house.

But Claudia said Mr Rivera had rushed out of the house after receiving a call, leaving all the lights on in the process.

“She said around 6.30 she had heard a phone call come in, heard Rey answer and then run out of the house in a hurry,” Mrs Rivera told Unsolved Mysteries.

Police would later discover the phone call had come from Mr Rivera’s workplace, Stansberry and Associates.
Mr Rivera had began working at the investments company just months prior after being persuaded by his longtime friend, Porter Stansberry, to move to Baltimore and work for him, writing newsletters.

Mr Rivera had dreamt of writing a screenplay but had struggled to find work, with Mr Stansberry eventually persuading his friend to move across the country to work for him.

When Mr Rivera didn’t turn up the next morning a worried Mrs Rivera cut her business trip short, returning home so she could begin the search for him.

Soon family and friends joined in, combing the streets of Baltimore for any clues that would lead to where Mr Rivera was.

Six days into the search his car was discovered in a carpark near the Belvedere Hotel which is located in the heart of a bustling part of the city.

Two days later on May 24 a hole was spotted on the roof of the lower section of the hotel with what looked like thongs next to it — the shoes Mr Rivera had been wearing when he left the house for the last time.

Police decided to investigate and looked inside the unused conference room where they made a ghastly discovery eight days after Mr Rivera’s disappearance.

The couple had married just months before Mr Rivera’s disappearance. Picture: Netflix.

REY’S DEATH ‘VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE’

According to former Baltimore Police homicide detective Michael Baier the investigation was immediately hurt by the fact that Mr Rivera’s body was badly decomposing.

His car had a parking ticket from the morning after he disappeared, meaning Mr Rivera had been dead for more than a week.

“The decomposition was pretty extreme at that point, he had been missing for eight days, Mr Baier told Unsolved Mysteries.

“That’s what really hurt, the decomp is going to destroy most of the evidence you could see instantaneously if you got to the body right away.”

Mr Rivera had “brutal” injuries, with multiple ribs fractured, punctured lungs, skull damage and his right leg was broken in two places.

If Mr Rivera had fallen he would have had to have fallen from a huge height, possibly the hotel’s roof, but there was just one problem.

“I’m afraid of heights, Rey was afraid of heights and being up on the roof scared me to absolute death, because there’s no railing up there and it’s very far down,” Mrs Rivera said.

“I couldn’t imagine why he was up there.”

Another problem was the fact the hole Mr Rivera fell through was narrow, meaning he fell “vertical, like a projectile” and was located 13 metres out from the hotel roof.

The hole Mr Rivera fell through was extremely narrow. Picture: Netflix.

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He would have had to have taken a “running leap” from the roof in order to have fallen through the hole, NPR reports.

“Even to attempt a running jump to get to the point where the hole was, in my mind, virtually impossible,” Mr Baier said.

“He was a tall, fit man, but he also was in flip flops.”

Other spots around the hotel weren’t high enough for a drop of that force and plus, there were no eyewitnesses who saw Mr Rivera in the hotel, let alone fall.

Bizarrely, his phone and glasses were found intact at the hole, but a money clip which was a wedding gift from Mr Rivera has never been located.

Mr Rivera’s brother Angel Rivera told the Washington Examiner in 2007 he believes there was “no way” his brother could have landed the way he did and that the missing money clip doesn’t make sense.

“It was a gift from Allison he carries with him all the time. She saw it that morning in his hand,” he said. “It was a family heirloom.”

Mr Baier told the documentary he believed the scene “looks staged”, however, Baltimore Police issued a statement at the time of Rey’s death saying it was “probably” a suicide.

But Mr Rivera had no history of mental health issues, with Mrs Rivera saying he was happy about the thought of them starting a family.

The medical examiner would rule Mr Rivera’s death “undetermined”, with the evidence unclear as to whether it was suicide or something more sinister.

The note found on the back of Rey's computer.

‘THERE WAS SOMETHING THAT WAS WORRYING HIM’

Adding to the mystery was the fact that Mrs Rivera found a note taped to the back of their computer from the day he died, local station WBAL TV reports.

It contained a bizarre list of movies Mr Rivera liked as well as the names of movie stars, friends and family members.

It also referenced a “well-played game, congratulations to all that participated”.

When Allison googled the note’s first sentence — “brothers and sisters, right now around the world volcanoes are erupting. What an awesome sight. Whom virtue unites, death will not separate” — there were similarities between the words and the Freemasons.

Mrs Rivera says her husband was “curious” about the organisation and other secret societies and may have been writing a screenplay about the topic.

He was a prolific writer and was known to write “random thoughts” on paper around the house, anything from phone numbers to musings on the world.

Baltimore Police Department Commander Fred Bealefeld told WBAL in 2007 the “really bizarre” note seems to be a “weird stream of conscious writing” or some kind of code.

But the FBI later examined the note and revealed it wasn’t an admission of suicide or a code, it was just unusual.

Mrs Rivera also told police how their house alarm had gone off both nights before Mr Rivera disappeared, spooking her husband.

“About two weeks before he died there was something that was worrying him. At that time I didn’t really think much of it but then that Monday before he went missing the alarm went off. It was like 1am and that thing had never gone off,” she said in Unsolved Mysteries.

“Rey came flying out with this big bat and the fear in this man’s eyes scared me to death. That guy was never afraid of anything.”

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Mr Rivera’s wife believes he may have met with foul play. Picture: Netflix.

The alarm went off the same time the next morning, leaving Mrs Rivera to believe it was “connected to his death, because it was that evening as well when he never returned home”.

“I believe that Rey had some kind of information,” she said.

“I believe that Rey was murdered. What I can’t get in my head was what would that information be for someone to kill him.”

It’s never been revealed what was said to Mr Rivera on that phone call that made him flee his house.

Phone records could only show that it came from Stansberry and Associates’ switchboard and when Mr Rivera’s body was found company lawyers barred employees from talking to police.

Mr Rivera’s friend and employer Mr Stansberry also refused to co-operate with police and to this day has declined to speak about his death, Mr Baier claims.

Unsolved Mysteries co-creator Terry Meurer told The Wrap she hopes the rebooted TV show will shed fresh light on Rey’s death and lead to answers.

“We’ve produced over 1300 stories in our lives, and I think Rey Rivera is one of the most intriguing and baffling mysteries that we have done,” she said.

“The key to that is, who made that phone call to Rey that caused him to run out the door like he was late for something? That person has never come forward. We would love to hear from that person.”

Unsolved Mysteries is streaming now on Netflix