A new Unsolved Mysteries update suggests that personal computers could help solve the Rey Rivera case. Directed by Marcus A. Clarke, the Netflix reboot opens with "Mystery on the Rooftop," perhaps the most baffling of the six featured episodes. In May 2016, Rivera's decomposed corpse was discovered at the Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland. Authorities initially believed that he had leaped to his death, but Unsolved Mysteries heavily implies that Rivera was murdered after acquiring damning information about a specific person or organization.
Unsolved Mysteries viewers are presented with the image of Rivera as a talented writer with an imaginative mind. Friends and family recall his life-long friendship with Porter Stansberry, who hired Rivera to write investment articles for Stansberry and Associates. On the day the Unsolved Mysteries subject was last seen alive, he received a phone call and then suddenly left home, according to a house guest. When Rivera's body was found eight days later, both investigators and family members couldn't determine how a suicide jump would be possible given the location of the body in relation to surrounding rooftops. Unsolved Mysteries mostly explores whether or not Rivera was the victim of another cover-up on Unsolved Mysteries.
After Unsolved Mysteries premiered, various online theories linked Rivera's death to Stansberry and Associates. The company had been accused of fraud in 2003 by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which implies that Rivera may have been involved in a scheme that he didn't fully understand. As for hard evidence, though, Unsolved Mysteries viewers have speculated about the wording of a cryptic note that was found by Rivera's computers. The FBI determined that Rivera's language wasn't suicidal in nature, which has led to theories that he was perhaps researching or investigating something or someone.
According to Stansberry and Associates, the Unsolved Mysteries showrunner, someone reached out to the police about the whereabouts of Rivera's computers after his death, seemingly in an attempt to gain access to it. He revealed this fact during a recent appearance on the podcast "You Can't Make This Up," suggesting that the caller had called the police about the computers "a couple of times" asking to pick them up. Though Meurer didn't go into the implications a great deal, the matter of why someone would inquire about the computers is surely an intriguing line of inquiry. Due to Rivera's line of work, it's certainly plausible that a Stansberry and Associates employee wanted information that could help with on-going legal problems, however, Porter Stansberry himself recently debunked various theories about his involvement. So who else could have wanted that access?
An un-aired Unsolved Mysteries clip reveals that Rivera had reached out to a local freemasonry group on the day of his disappearance. The mysterious note left by his computer appears to reference secret organizations, so it's indeed possible that Rivera was researching or investigating freemasonry and subsequently uncovered information that someone didn't want to be revealed. Would that be enough to have him killed? Rivera was a writer who was seemingly well-versed in storytelling techniques, whether it was for his day job or for personal writing projects, so it seems likely that he would have documented his findings, particularly given his reported fascination with the Freemasons.
Surely, if police had thoroughly searched his computer, Unsolved Mysteries would've included any significant findings from that search? That they didn't could suggest that it either did not exist to be found or the information was withheld for some reason. Then again, as his friends note in on the show, Rivera had a "unique mind" and may have coded certain information on his computer if he was in any way fearful about his safety. Without any sort of key revealing the existence of that code or any potentially explosive information, that part of the mystery presumably must remain unanswered.