| Date: | [1] |
| Place: | Belvedere Hotel, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
| Coordinates: | 39.3021°N -76.6155°W |
| Cause: | Undetermined, probable suicide[2] [3] |
| Inquiries: | Baltimore Police Department |
| Coroner: | Baltimore City Medical Examiner |
The body of Rey Rivera was found on May 24, 2006, inside the historic Belvedere Hotel in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, United States.[4] 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 and his wife Allison had relocated to Baltimore from California to work for his longtime friend, publisher Porter Stansberry, as a writer and videographer for Stansberry's investment company, Stansberry & Associates Investment Research, a subsidiary of Agora Publishing.[5]
Rivera went missing from his home on May 16, 2006, shortly after receiving a phone call from the Agora Publishing switchboard, according to a guest staying at the Rivera residence at the time.[6] After several days of searching for clues on his whereabouts, Rivera's in-laws found his car located in a parking lot off of Saint Paul Street in Baltimore's Mount Vernon neighborhood, 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 next door. Police soon discovered Rivera's partially decomposed body inside the conference room under the hole.[7]
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 and the location of the hole in the lower roof. The vertical fall of approximately 177 feet (building height 188 ft[8] = 57 meters) would have taken approximately 3.3 seconds. This suggests that Rivera, if he did come from the roof, and traveled a horizontal distance of 43 feet[9] (13 meters) before impact, would have had to have a horizontal speed of 10 miles per hour which is a speed between a fast run 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).
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".[10]
After searching the house for evidence, Rivera's wife found a note behind his computer.[11] The confusing note included the names of prominent figures in Hollywood, movie titles, Freemasonry quotations and additional ramblings.[12] The FBI analyzed the note and ruled it not to be suicidal in nature.[13] The Baltimore Police Department would soon step back from their investigation into the case after ruling Rivera's death as a probable suicide.[14]
Rivera's death was featured in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries in July 2020.[15] An additional theory offered by the show 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.[16]
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