He Was Found Inside a Hotel Through a Hole in the Roof. His Phone Was Undamaged. The Death of Rey Rivera.

In May 2006, a family in Baltimore was searching for a man who had walked out of his house after a phone call and had not come back.

They found his car in a parking lot near a grand old building called the Belvedere Hotel.

From the top of the parking garage next door, they looked down at the hotel's lower roofs. And they saw something.

A hole. Torn through one of the roofs.

On May 24, 2006, police found the body of Rey Rivera in the room underneath it.

The police called it a probable suicide. The medical examiner refused to say that. And nearly twenty years later, people are still asking what really happened to Rey Rivera.

Who was Rey Rivera?

Rey Omar Rivera was born on June 10, 1973. He was a water polo player. He graduated from the University of the Pacific in California in 1995 and played professionally in Spain.

Later, he coached swimming and water polo at a high school in Burbank, California. He also worked as an assistant coach for the men's water polo team at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore.

In 2006, he and his wife, Allison, moved from California to Baltimore.

He went to work as a writer and video maker for an investment newsletter company. The man who ran it was a longtime friend.

It should have been a good time. A new city. A new job working with a friend. A marriage still young. Which is why what happened next made so little sense to the people who knew him.

The week before

In the week before he disappeared, something seemed to be wrong.

The alarm at the couple's house went off twice. Allison later said Rey seemed clearly frightened. That was not like him.

A friend of Allison's from work was staying with them at the time.

May 16, 2006

On the evening of May 16, 2006, Rey got a phone call.

He left the house in a hurry. He did not come back.

His phone records later showed that the last incoming call came from the main switchboard of the publishing company his employer was part of.

Who made that call has never been identified.

Think about that. Rey's phone showed exactly where the last call came from. It came from inside the company he worked for. And still, nobody has ever been identified as the person on the other end of the line.

His employer said that everyone who had worked with Rey was away at a company retreat on Maryland's Eastern Shore at the time.

The Belvedere

Rey's family searched for him and reported him missing.

They found his car in a parking lot in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, near the Belvedere Hotel and near his employer's offices.

The Belvedere is a historic landmark building. From the top of the parking garage beside it, the family looked down and saw the hole in one of the hotel's lower roofs.

On May 24, eight days after he disappeared, police went into the room beneath the hole. Rey's body was there.

The injuries, and the phone

Rey had severe injuries. His ribs and both shins were broken. His lungs were punctured.

But one detail has bothered people from the start.

His eyeglasses and his cell phone were found on top of the hotel, and they were not damaged.

If he fell from high up and went through a roof, how did his glasses and phone end up on the roof, intact?

And there is a second question. How did he get up there at all? The public record does not show how Rey got into the Belvedere, or onto any of its upper levels.

The note

After his death, Allison found a note hidden behind his computer.

It was strange. It listed Hollywood figures and movie titles. It quoted phrases connected to Freemasonry. Much of it rambled.

One of the films mentioned in it was The Game, a 1997 thriller. In that movie, a character jumps from a rooftop through glass. Some people saw a connection. Allison said she did not.

The FBI analyzed the note. It concluded that the note was not a suicide note.

Two rulings

The Baltimore Police Department concluded that Rey's death was a probable suicide.

The medical examiner did not agree. The official manner of death was ruled "undetermined," because the circumstances were not clear.

One of the theories was that Rey jumped from an eleventh-floor ledge of the hotel. But nobody saw him there, and there was no evidence that he had gotten onto that ledge. And according to the record, Rey was afraid of heights.

A Baltimore police detective who worked the case, Michael Baier, later said he doubted it was a suicide. He said the scene "looked staged." About three weeks after he started on the case, he was moved off it.

And there was one more unexplained detail. Someone kept calling the police, asking about Rey's computers, and whether they could be picked up. That person was never identified.

Unsolved Mysteries

In July 2020, the case was the very first episode of Netflix's reboot of Unsolved Mysteries. The episode was called "Mystery on the Rooftop." Rey's brother, Angel, took part, hoping someone would come forward.

Rey's employer declined to be interviewed for the series. He later told reporters that Rey had psychological issues. The show's producer, and Allison, rejected that.

An author named Mikita Brottman, who lives in the Belvedere, wrote a book about the case in 2018, called An Unexplained Death. She said she feels "there has to be something more sinister going on."

The episode brought the case to millions of new viewers. Many of them came away with the same reaction. The official answer, suicide, did not seem to fit the facts they had just seen.

But the documentary also could not prove anything else. And the people who might know more have mostly stayed quiet.

What we still don't know

We do not know who called Rey on the night of May 16. We do not know why he left in such a hurry. We do not know how he got into the Belvedere, or onto its roof. We do not know why his phone and glasses were found on the roof unbroken. And we do not know what his note meant.

What we know is this. A man who seemed frightened in the days before his death got a phone call, ran out the door, and was found eight days later in a room under a hole in a hotel roof. The police say he probably took his own life. The medical examiner would not say so.

What do you think happened to Rey Rivera?