I'm Brett and I'm Alice and we are the prosecutors.

The day on the prosecutors, when Ray Rivera was found dead in a Baltimore hotel, most people thought it was suicide, but maybe it was murder.

Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors. I'm Brett and I'm joined with my fantastic cohost, a cohost so amazing that she makes me forget my own name, Alice.

This is Alice. You're forgetting your own name. You guys are going to get that joke in a couple weeks. This is completely all out of order. You have no idea what we're talking about, but you're going to come back to this one and you're going to be like, oh, Alice, I get what you're talking about now. That was maybe the single funniest moment of my life ever. I don't know what that says about my life, but yeah, so that gives you guys something to look forward to in the future. I do have to apologize because Cheryl McCollum is not

with us today. I know you guys really enjoyed that show. You know, it was so good not to have to listen to us. Can I profess my love for her again on this subsequent podcast? I love her. I had so many people, my friends text me saying like, I'm so invigorated. I want to change the world because of her and they, you know, they're not, they don't do anything in law enforcement or cold cases at all, but she's just one of the most inspiring people that they've ever heard from.

No, she's awesome. So since she's so awesome, I don't feel particularly insulted about all the, the compliments that we got for that episode that

were like, this is the best episode ever. And wow, I wish every episode could be like that. I wish that Cheryl McCollum just hosted this podcast.

My mom said that, but whatever.

And you know, just to remind everybody, do check out her, the cold case, investigative research institute and support that. Everything they do is through donations. So if you guys can throw them some donations, that would be awesome.

We don't have a Patreon or anything like that. Never going to ask you guys to pay us any money to listen to this show. But if you do have some money that you wanted to throw our way, just go ahead and send it over there. So those guys can continue to do the good work they are doing.

But today, we do have a new case that we're going to talk to you guys about. It's the case of Ray Rivera. And I think probably all of you have heard of this case at this point. It's a case that

I don't know how well it was known until the most recent iteration of unsolved mysteries launched on Netflix. But now everybody knows this case. And it's sort of interesting. I feel like there's some serendipity here because weeks ago.

I think even before the Ray Rivera episode came out, we received an email from a fan, Donna, I won't say her last name, so she can stay anonymous.

Suggesting that we cover the Ray Rivera case. And I started looking into it and thought it was really interesting. And then Alison, I've been having to drive all over the world for our jobs. And I was, I had all these books on tape. I had purchased or they're not on tape anymore. They're audible. It shows you my age.

I was going to say, you're really old if you're going to say books on tape.

So it wasn't on tape. It was on my phone. But there was this book called an unexplained death by Makita, brought me and I had no idea what it was about. But I decided to start listening to it. And five minutes in. I was like, oh, it sounds like it's about Ray Rivera. And then after that, the unsolved mysteries episode came out. And everybody started talking about this case. So he really sort of worked out that we had decided to cover this one. Hopefully we can, you know, shine a lot on this case because the unsolved mysteries episode was great. But I can tell

you there's a lot that was left out. It left me so wanting. And, you know, we didn't only get one email about this case. One of my favorite defense attorneys actually emailed about this case. And she really urged us to look into it. And after I watched unsolved mysteries, I wasn't angry per se, but I was like, there's so much more. I don't, I want people to know more about this. So we thought, hey, we have a podcast might as well tell people more. Exactly. So

let's just dive in. Take you back to 2006. May of that year. And Ray Rivera was a man who seemed like he had everything in front of him. He would been married for less than a year. He'd recently established his own video production company. And he was putting the final touches on a screenplay that he was riding with a friend called midnight polo. Ray was energetic. He was athletic. He was funny. He was seemingly happy.

He was a guy that everybody loved and that everybody thought had really almost the perfect life. He had been a world class water polo player in his younger years. And in fact, he'd even been on the 1996 Olympic team, though he did have a falling out with a coach that led to his dismissal literally right before the Olympic game started. And we'll talk about that. And what it might mean if it means anything a little bit later.

But you know, he hadn't let him get that down. And he'd actually stayed involved in the sport. In fact, he had helped to coach the John Hopkins water polo team all the way to a number one ranking. And when the players for that team were interviewed at the end of the year, they all said the addition of Ray Rivera as an assistant coach had really been what had propelled them from a good team to a great team.

And you know, if you when you see videos of Ray, you really do see what a charismatic, vibrant, lively, attractive person he is, right? You can't look at dude.

I don't even mean attractive in terms of good looking. I literally meant when he's good looking.

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