On May 16, 2006, 32-year-old Rey Rivera disappeared after receiving a phone call from the financial newsletter company where he worked, Stansberry Research. About a week later, investigators discovered a hole on the lower rooftop of the Belvedere Hotel in New York City. Beneath the hole, they made a gruesome discovery: Rivera's decomposed body. Police pushed the conclusion that he jumped, but the details around this theory didn't track. His glasses and phone were intact. He exhibited no mental duress before his death. The jumping points were too high, too far, or needed to be accessed from a personal room.
There were two other theories. The first was that Rivera was involved in some elaborate game with the Freemasons, given an enigmatic letter that his wife found taped to his computer. The second was that Rivera upset shady dealers — Rivera was brought in to help Stansberry Research clean up its reputation following its fraud scandal. It's possible that he somehow knew too much information about something and someone may have lost a lot of money from one of Rivera's publications. Oddly, as investigators and journalists poked around in Rivera's case, Stansberry ordered a gag order on its employees.
In 2018, Mikita Brottman published An Unexplained Death, in which she looked at the details surrounding Rivera's case. A Belvedere resident, she believes she may have heard Rivera's impact the night he fell. Brottman suspects there may have been a cover up with Stansberry and the police.
