New podcast dives into disappearance of former Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar
A new podcast about the vanishing of former Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar was released earlier this month, just weeks before the 16-year anniversary of his disappearance.
Rebecca Knight is part of a chorus of de facto investigators consumed by one of the most fabled missing person cases in Pennsylvania history.
“It’s inexcusable how they allowed this public servant to essentially fall through the cracks,” Knight said. “It didn’t make sense to me. And it still doesn’t make sense, nor a lot of other people.”
Knight lived in Centre County from 1994 until 2004, one year before Gricar went missing. She retired from her magazine publishing job in 2009 and has been researching his disappearance ever since.
Central to the past decade-plus of Knight’s life has been interviews with hundreds of friends and peers of Gricar’s, along with some of the key investigators. Knight presented information in the first two episodes, but said interviews are forthcoming.
She purportedly has a copy of the entire state police case file into Gricar’s disappearance, which plays a key role in “Final Argument: The Disappearance of District Attorney Ray Gricar.”
The podcast is available on common apps — including Apple Podcasts and Spotify — as well as raygricar.com.
“Once I got inside of it, it didn’t take me long to see that it was something that I needed to really look into. It’s just one of those things,” Knight said. “The first and foremost thing was, how does someone of his stature vanish without a trace? How does this happen?”
Gricar departed Centre County in his red and white Mini Cooper 16 years ago Thursday. He ended up in Lewisburg, just eight months before he was set to retire.
Gricar, then 59, called his girlfriend, Patty Fornicola, about 11:30 a.m. the day of his disappearance to tell her he was driving down state Route 192 and wouldn’t be home in time to feed their dog.
She called police about 12 hours later to report him missing. There are myriad theories as to what happened after their initial call.
Did he die by suicide? Was he killed by someone he’d prosecuted during the course of his decadeslong career? Did he flee his old life with the hope of vanishing and starting anew?
It depends who you ask. That’s part of the mystery.
“I believe a grand jury investigation has to be called into his disappearance,” Knight said. “... I’m going to keep beating this drum.”