The body of 32-year-old Rey Rivera was found inside a conference room at Baltimore's historic Belvedere Hotel on May 24, 2006 — but how and why did he end up there?
On May 16, 2006, an ordinary evening in north Baltimore took a sinister turn when 32-year-old aspiring filmmaker Rey Rivera received an urgent phone call that would become the last known communication of his life.
Without any explanation to his wife, Allison, he rushed out of their home, taking only his keys, cell phone, $20, and a credit card. She would never see him again. What followed was a week of frantic searching by family and friends, culminating in a discovery that transformed a missing-person case into one of modern history’s most baffling mysteries.
Eight days after he disappeared, Rey Rivera’s body was found inside a locked conference room on the second floor of Baltimore’s historic Belvedere Hotel, located just across the street from his workplace at Stansberry & Associates Investment Research.
The scene was immediately suspicious. Rivera had seemingly fallen through a hole in the ceiling, but his eyeglasses and phone were later found undamaged on the hotel’s rooftop.
NetflixRey Rivera and his wife Allison.
The Baltimore Police Department initially concluded that his death had been a suicide, but this explanation never satisfied those closest to Rivera, nor did it account for the numerous inconsistencies in evidence and witness statements.
The case gained international attention in 2020 when Netflix featured it in their reboot of Unsolved Mysteries, reigniting public interest and bringing new scrutiny to the investigation. As millions around the world delved into the details, questions resurfaced en masse: Who made that urgent phone call? Why did Rivera end up at the Belvedere Hotel? And what secrets did he take with him to the grave?
Strange details surrounding his final days made the story even more perplexing.
For instance, Rivera had left a cryptic note taped to his computer, which an FBI investigation later determined was not a suicide note but rather appeared to be “psychotic ramblings.” Stansberry & Associates also had a somewhat controversial history — and a $5,000 reward for information about Rivera’s death, posted by his employer Porter Stansberry, struck many as odd.
And though the parking garage adjacent to the Belvedere Hotel had video surveillance, detectives apparently never obtained the footage from the night in question.
Nearly two decades later, the case remains officially unsolved, though it is still open. Today, are we any closer to knowing the full story of what happened to Rey Rivera than we were back in 2006?
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