09/02/2026
On April 15, 2005, Ray Gricar, the longtime District Attorney of Centre County, Pennsylvania, left work early and went for a drive. Around 11:30 that morning, Gricar called his girlfriend, Patty Fornicola, and told her he was driving through the Brush Valley area toward Lewisburg. He never came home. That evening, Fornicola reported him missing. The following day, investigators found Gricar’s red-and-white 2004 Mini Cooper parked near an antique store in Lewisburg, close to the Susquehanna River. His cell phone was still inside the locked vehicle, but Gricar himself was nowhere to be found. There was no obvious sign of a struggle, and investigators could not determine where he had gone from there. Then, months later, an even stranger clue surfaced. In July, fishermen discovered Gricar’s county-issued laptop in the Susquehanna River. The computer was damaged, and its hard drive was missing. A hard drive later found along the river could not be successfully analyzed, leaving investigators without the information it might have contained. Another puzzling detail emerged years later: investigators learned that searches had been made on a computer at Gricar’s home concerning ways to damage or destroy a hard drive. It was never established who conducted those searches or what, if anything, they had to do with Gricar’s disappearance. Over the years, investigators considered numerous possibilities, including that Gricar left voluntarily, died by choice, or was the victim of a crime. None has ever been proven. There were reported sightings of Gricar in several places after he vanished, but none were confirmed. His disappearance remains unsolved.