What happened to Rey Rivera of Netflix’s Unsolved Mysteries?
NETFLIX’S new true crime show Unsolved Mysteries is set to be your next binge-worthy obsession.
The first episode kicks off with the mysterious murder of 32-year-old Rey Riviera.
What are the details of the death of Rey Rivera?
Rivera was a 32-year-old writer, whose family came from Puerto Rico.
He was newlywed to Allison Rivera, and planning on starting a family.
On May 16, 2006, Rivera received an urgent phone call and rushed out of the house. His body was found in an empty conference room of Baltimore’s Hotel Belvedere a week later.
The police have not identified any suspects in his death, and have ruled it as a suicide.
What are the leading theories?
There were some suspicious circumstances surrounding the writer’s death which led his family to believe there was foul play.
Rey’s glasses and cell phone were completely intact after the 14-foot drop. There was a drag mark on one of his flip flops and a broken strap on another. His money clip, a wedding gift from his wife, was missing.
Theory one: Rey jumped to his death
The Baltimore police officially labelled Rey’s death as a suicide.
Having plunged through the roof of the room where he was found, it was assumed Rivera had jumped to his death.
Theory two: The jump was staged
In the first episode, many reporters and detectives reveal that they doubted Rivera fell through the roof.
The camera on the rooftop where Rey supposedly fell through was disconnected.
Some other pieces of evidence also didn’t make sense, two of those being that Riveras phone and glasses were intact when he was found.
The forces that killed Rivera did severe damage to his body, so it was bizarre that not a scratch could be found on those items, leading many to speculate that they were staged and that someone had positioned Rivera’s body beneath the hole as well.
The medical examiner also told Rivera’s wife that the way his shins were broken weren’t consistent with a fall.
Theory three: Rey was murdered
Rey had recently started working for his old friend Porter Stansberry.
According to The Baltimore Sun, Stansberry’s business was ordered to pay $1.5 million in civil penalties for “disseminating false stock information and defrauding public investors through a financial newsletter.”
Stansberry denied any wrongdoing.
On the week of his disappearance, Rivera’s home alarm went off two times. And on the night he went missing, Rivera picked up a call from work, but it was impossible to determine who had called him because the call came from a switchboard.
The theory is that Rey, being a fully trained finance journalist, used his investigative skills to look into his new employer. Rey, it is alleged, may have found out something he wasn’t meant to and wanted to expose it.
MORE FROM NETFLIX
Rey was low on cash at the time, so perhaps he was hoping that someone would pay good money for the story.
The theory is that someone ordered a hit on Rey to keep him quiet.
Where can I watch Unsolved Mysteries?
The first series of Unsolved Mysteries is available to binge on Netflix UK now.
The show, which dropped on Netflix on July 1, is a reboot of the 1987 show of the same name.
It is a 12-part series where each episode looks at a different unsolved mystery.
The first episode is title Mystery on the Rooftop, and looks at the 2006 death of Rey Riviera.