Missing district attorney seen?
Share with others:
BELLEFONTE, Pa. -- He remembers a man in a suit and tie talking about baseball, as a game played in the background. The man, who was alone and appeared healthy and normal, told him how he'd grown up in Cleveland and loved to watch the Indians play.
Ray Gricar Â
They spoke for only about five minutes, but the man made enough of an impression that the person he'd spoken to realized four days later that he'd talked to missing Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar.
The witness, who police would not identify, contacted authorities April 22, telling them that he spoke with Gricar at a business on Highland Park Boulevard in Wilkes-Barre on the evening of April 18, three days after Gricar was reported missing.
Police received the tip a week ago, but only talked about it publicly for the first time yesterday at a news conference.
After police began investigating the man's claims, they found another witness from the same place who corroborated the sighting. Before this information came to light, the last verified sighting of Gricar was on the afternoon of April 16 in Lewisburg.
"At this point, we have to take it as credible," said Bellefonte Police Chief Duane Dixon. He said both witnesses, after viewing photographs and video of Gricar, were 100 percent sure that's who they saw. No one in Gricar's family knew of any reason he'd have been in Wilkes-Barre.
Despite the new sightings, Dixon said they have not changed the thrust of the investigation. Police are still checking into the possibilities that Gricar is the victim of foul play, or left of his own accord.
"It gives us more hope than we had in the past that he's out there and alive," Dixon said.
Gricar last spoke to his family the morning of April 15, when he called his live-in girlfriend, Patty Fornicola, and told her he was taking the day off. When he called he was driving his red Mini Cooper through the countryside. Police found it later the next day parked in a dirt lot near antiques shops in Lewisburg, along the Susquehanna River.
First Published April 30, 2005 12:00 am
