The mystery of Ray Gricar, the Centre County District Attorney who vanished without a trace, reached a somber 21-year milestone yesterday. What began as a routine half-day off on a spring afternoon in 2005 has transformed into one of the most enduring and chilling cold cases in Pennsylvania history. State police and the legal community are once again turning the public’s eye toward the disappearance that left a mountain of unanswered questions. On April 15, 2005, Gricar, then 59, told his girlfriend he was heading out for a scenic drive through the Susquehanna Valley in his red Mini Cooper. The following morning, the car was found abandoned in a parking lot in Lewisburg. While his county-issued cell phone remained inside, his wallet, keys, and laptop were gone. The investigation took a dark turn when fishermen later recovered Gricar’s laptop, and a separate hard drive from the Susquehanna River. Despite the FBI’s best efforts, the hardware was too badly damaged to yield any data. In 2009, forensic experts uncovered a digital “smoking gun” on Gricar’s home computer: recent searches for “how to wreck a hard drive” and “water damage to a notebook computer.” The discovery suggested to many that the destruction of his data—and perhaps his disappearance—was meticulously planned. Pennsylvania State Police maintain an active file on Gricar and are offering a $5,000 reward for any information that brings closure to the case. Anyone with details is asked to contact state police in Hollidaysburg. Gricar was declared legally dead in 2011.
