
"And now the question becomes, who didn't want that information to be found? Was it Ray? And would whatever was on there give him a reason to walk away from his life? Or did he or someone else have a reason to get rid of whatever was on the computer?" — Ashley Flowers
"The CIA refused to allow certain information to be released because it's classified in the interest of national defense or foreign policy and can be disclosed in order to protect intelligence sources and methods as well as the names, titles, etc. of CIA personnel." — Ashley Flowers quoting Luke O'Brien
"But here's the thing about secrets, ruin hard drives, toss the computer, there is just something about secrets they can't stay secrets for long." — Ashley Flowers
The episode recounts the mysterious disappearance of Ray Grygar, a Pennsylvania District Attorney investigator, in April 2005. Grygar vanished on a Tuesday, leaving his girlfriend and later his daughter concerned when he did not return home. His red Mini-Cooper was found abandoned in Lewisburg, approximately 50 miles from his home, locked and with the keys missing. Inside the car, investigators found cigarette ash, unusual as Grygar was not a smoker and disliked the smell, raising early suspicions. The discovery of cigarette butts with non-matching DNA in the parking lot further complicated the investigation.
As the search for Grygar intensified, parallels were drawn to the disappearance of his brother, who was found deceased in a river ten years prior under similar circumstances. This led to speculation about suicide or other darker possibilities, although no clinical history of depression was publicly known for Ray. The investigation took a significant turn when Ray's work laptop was found in a river, missing its hard drive. Evidence from his home computer indicated he had been researching how to destroy a hard drive, suggesting a deliberate effort to conceal information. This deliberate destruction of evidence pointed towards either Grygar attempting to hide something or someone else attempting to cover up their involvement.
Further investigation into Grygar's work revealed his involvement in prosecuting a major heroin operation and a case involving James Cruz, convicted of murder. However, no direct links were established. A more compelling, though ultimately unsubstantiated, connection was made to the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal. Grygar had been the prosecutor who declined to prosecute the initial allegations in 1998. The lack of notes from this period and the disappearance of his own dictation tapes fueled theories of a larger cover-up, though the timeline did not perfectly align with the progression of the Sandusky case. The episode concludes with the hard drive of Grygar's laptop also being recovered from the river, but forensic attempts to recover data were unsuccessful, leaving the contents of the drive and the ultimate fate of Ray Grygar a profound mystery.