Death of Rey Rivera

The body of Rey Rivera was found on May 24, 2006, inside the historic Belvedere Hotel in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland. Although the event was ruled a probable suicide by the Baltimore Police Department, the circumstances of Rivera's death are mysterious and disputed. Rey Omar Rivera was born on June 10, 1973, to Angel and Maria Rivera. At the time of his disappearance, Rivera was a 32-year-old finance writer for The Oxford Club as a video contractor. Rivera and his wife Allison had relocated from California to Baltimore to work for his longtime friend Porter Stansberry as a writer and videographer for Stansberry's investment company, Stansberry & Associates Investment Research, a subsidiary of Agora Publishing. Rivera had stopped working for the company six months prior to his death in May 2006, but according to Stansberry, did freelance work for another subsidiary of Agora Publishing. Rivera went missing from his residence on May 16, 2006, after receiving a phone call from the Agora Publishing switchboard, according to a guest staying at the Rivera home at the time. After several days of searching for clues on Rivera's whereabouts, his wife's parents found his car located in a parking lot off of Saint Paul Street in Mount Vernon near his workplace. Rivera's coworkers went to the top of a parking structure near where the car was discovered, and noticed a hole in the roof of the south wing of the Belvedere Hotel. Police soon discovered Rivera's partially decomposed body inside the conference room under the roof's hole. As police began to analyze the case, numerous aspects seemed odd about Rivera jumping off the main roof of the Belvedere Hotel. Partly due to the hotel's mansard roof, there was a considerable horizontal distance between the hotel tower and the location of the hole in the lower roof. The vertical fall of approximately 177 feet (building height 188 ft = 57 meters) would have taken approximately 3.3 seconds. This suggests if he did come from the roof, and traveled a horizontal distance of 43 feet (13 meters) before impact, he would have had to have a horizontal speed of 10 miles per hour which is between a fast jog and a sprint for an average fit male wearing sports shoes. Rey was wearing flip flops or barefoot and would have had a maximum run up of just over 15 feet or 5 meters (2.5 seconds).

An additional theory is that Rivera may have jumped from a ledge several floors below the roof, but it would have been difficult for Rivera to access the ledge from the privately owned condominiums and offices that had windows onto the ledge. Rivera's eyeglasses and phone were found relatively intact on the lower roof near the hole. Because circumstances surrounding the incident are unclear, the medical examiner marked Rivera's manner of death as "undetermined". According to Stansberry's publicist, "There was no gag order or direction given to employees to not speak to the press, law enforcement or any other party." After searching the house for evidence, Allison found a note behind Rivera's computer. The confusing note included the names of prominent figures in Hollywood, movie titles, Freemasonry quotations, and additional ramblings. The Federal Bureau of Investigation analyzed the note and ruled it not to be suicidal in nature. Police would soon step back from their investigation into the case after ruling Rivera's death as a probable suicide. In 2021, new theories about the case emerged in a new investigation carried out by the forensic expert, Miryam Moya, which invalidates the theory of suicide, focusing on the hit-and-run as a possible cause of death. Her research has been published in the book Rey Rivera, Suicide or Homicide?.

Per WBAL-TV, Rivera had been interested in the Masonic order before his disappearance, reading several books on the topic and even meeting with a member. Some of his verbiage in the note appears to be a reference to Freemasonry — most notably his opening phrase, "Whom virtue unites, death will not separate." He also listed a number of shows, movies, and books as well as a long list of family members and celebrities he wanted to make "five years younger." As such, Redditor GoldenR16180 postulated that Rivera may have written the note because Freemasons are not supposed to share their organization's secrets. His audience is "the Freemasons, and the quotes, movies and names all are nods to the secret traditions of the Masons," the user theorized. They even had an explanation for the blank check found with the letter, guessing that it was meant for Rivera's initiation fee.

Redditor sammyfearless had a similar theory, guessing that Rivera was writing a speech (though not necessarily one meant for the Freemasons). "The writing is stylized in a way that makes more sense and seems more lucid when spoken," they wrote in part. "The opening is very dramatic, much like how you would give a speech. The ending is also dramatic and seems to invite applause from an audience."

Among the movies Rivera mentions in his note is David Fincher's The Game, which follows a banker named Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) who eventually jumps off the roof of a building after getting embroiled in an elaborate scheme. Redditor zumalightblue theorized that Rivera was acting out the movie, but Unsolved Mysteries co-creator Terry Dunn Meurer shut that idea down during an interview with Entertainment Weekly. Meurer explained that she'd talked with Rivera's wife, Allison — who has spent ample time analyzing the note — about the theory, and she couldn't find a deeper connection. "Rey liked a lot of different types of movies. He was just a guy who was interested in everything," Meurer said. "If he had only ever left just that writing or if it was the only thing he had ever written randomly, then people would be a little bit more suspect."

Considering the meandering nature of Rivera's note, several viewers have theorized that he lived with mental illness. Unsolved Mysteries fan hoursvary guessed that Rivera had something called Truman Show Delusion, which Psychology Today explains is when people believe they are in a TV show-like scenario. Others have hypothesized that Rivera died by suicide after a psychotic break. However, the police told WBAL-TV that Rivera had no history of mental illness, and Rivera's wife doesn't believe it was suicide, either. "[Allison] believes if he was going to [die by suicide], he would have left a note for [her] and for the family explaining why and what was going on," Meurer told Nerdist. "It's rare that somebody that [dies by] suicide doesn't leave a note or people didn’t see it coming... She also said, 'Because Rey was a writer, he would have left a beautiful note.'"

Redditor quartzlizard theorized that the entire note was actually written to spell out the world "HELP," while others put forth the idea that it's written in a code like Gematria. Vrontasaurus wasn't convinced, however, writing in a Google Doc that there are too many meanings when you plug phrases into an online Gematria decoder like gematrix.org. "I'm not saying that Rey *didn't* encode all or parts of the note in Gematria, but I think this is an unhelpful avenue to explore without having further information," the user wrote in part.

Rivera was an aspiring screenwriter, and some viewers have guessed that his note was actually the beginning of a script — something called a tone or mood reel. Meurer told Nerdist that Allison also believes this might be the case and that her late husband was doing research for a screenplay.

Perhaps this cryptic paper wasn't related to Rivera's death at all and was simply his innocuous ramblings. Reddit user e6r6i6c posited that it was a list of passwords, while Lostscribe007 theorized that it was "just a loose collection of notes and nothing more.... Rey didn't know he was going to die the night he was killed or I'm sure if he was going to leave a note with details it wouldn't have been cryptic and confusing." Ultimately, Meurer doesn't think it's worth speculating about. "Allison, who knew Rey and knows that note better than anyone, said to me, 'I know where each of those pieces of that note comes from. What I don't understand is why they're all put together in this letter form,'" she told Nerdist. "So if Allison can't figure it out, and the FBI can't figure it out, I wouldn't even venture a guess."