28 Facts About Ray Gricar

Ray Frank Gricar was an American lawyer who served as the district attorney of Centre County, Pennsylvania, from 1985 until 2005.

Ray Gricar moved to State College, Pennsylvania, around 1980 and, after a brief stint as an assistant district attorney, was elected district attorney of Centre County in 1985.

Ray Gricar was re-elected four times before announcing that he would not run for re-election in the 2005 campaign.

Ray Gricar was reported missing to authorities after failing to return home from a road trip.

Ray Gricar's car was found in Lewisburg with his cell phone inside, and at a later date his laptop computer and the laptop's hard drive were found in the adjacent Susquehanna River.

Ray Gricar was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and grew up in the city's Collinwood neighborhood.

Ray Gricar attended high school at the Gilmour Academy, a prestigious Catholic school in Gates Mills, and enrolled at the University of Dayton, where he became interested in studying law after working as an intern for the prosecutor's office.

In 1980, Ray Gricar moved to State College, Pennsylvania, where his wife had taken a job at Pennsylvania State University.

Ray Gricar opted to become a stay-at-home dad to his young daughter following the move.

In 1985, the incumbent district attorney, Robert Mix, chose not to run for re-election, and Ray Gricar ran for the open position.

Ray Gricar won the election by a margin of 600 votes.

Ray Gricar's office was part-time when he was elected, and he successfully campaigned to make it full-time in 1996.

Ray Gricar was re-elected in 1989,1993,1997, and 2001.

In 2004, Ray Gricar announced he would not run for re-election and would retire from practicing law altogether in December 2005, shortly after his 60th birthday.

Ray Gricar moved to Cleveland with him after graduation and they married in 1969.

Ray and Barbara Gricar divorced in 1991; Ray married again in 1996, but divorced in 2001.

In 2002 or 2003, Ray Gricar moved in with his girlfriend Patty Fornicola, an employee of the Centre County District Attorney's office.

Ray Gricar was living with Fornicola in her childhood home in Bellefonte at the time of his disappearance.

Ray Gricar's body was found a week later in the Great Miami River; authorities ruled his death a suicide.

Ray Gricar failed to return home, and late that evening, Fornicola reported him missing.

Police noted that a sniffer dog's behavior around where Ray Gricar's car was found suggested that he might have gotten into another vehicle with someone else.

Ray Gricar was reportedly looking forward to his upcoming retirement.

Ray Gricar had recently been involved in a police operation busting a heroin dealing ring, and the criminals concerned were investigated for any links to his disappearance, but none were found.

The third theory is that Ray Gricar wished to start a new life and therefore engineered his disappearance.

Ray Gricar allegedly expressed interest in the case of a Cleveland police chief who had disappeared, in order to start a new life.

Multiple sightings of Ray Gricar were reported after his disappearance, most notably in a bar in Wilkes-Barre, where both the bartender and an off-duty police officer claimed to have seen him watching a baseball game.

Ray Gricar had relatives in Slovenia and had made trips to this region of the world in the past.

Ray Gricar's disappearance was the subject of television documentary programs, including episodes of Haunting Evidence on Court TV in June 2006, Disappeared on Investigation Discovery in February 2011, news magazine Dateline NBC in December 2011, and an episode of Crime Junkie podcast in January 2020.