The Lesson Of Candide: The Disappearance Of Ray F. Gricar, District Attorney Of Centre County, Pennsylvania, For Example Poem by Dennis Ryan

Sunday, July 3,2022

Note: Ray F. Gricar, the District Attorney of Centre County, Pennsylvania, disappeared in Union County, Pennsylvania, on April 15,2005, in the vicinity of Lewisburg, PA. The State, including the Pennsylvania Bureau of Enforcement and Investigation, with ample staff and resources, declined to investigate Gricar's disappearance. It fell to a local police department, in Bellefonte, PA, which was not the police jurisdiction where Gricar disappeared. During the investigation, the Bellefonte PD followed implausible leads, including several red herrings—e.g. reported sightings of Gricar in different locations, these sightings made by retired and off-duty police officers. They refused to investigate the most promising lead: a Ray Gricar body double was seen in the parking lot of the Bellefonte County Courthouse by an assistant district attorney at 3 p.m. on the day Gricar disappeared, many hours after he had left Bellefonte, and Centre County. This information was not released to the public until much later, which angered the Gricar family because it was clear the police were not following up on credible leads. The case has yet to be solved, and been called the perfect crime: i.e. without a body, there is nothing to investigate. Several criminal experts link Gricar's disappearance to the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse case—the former Penn State assistant football coach who was charged with sexual abuse of minors in 2011, and convicted in 2012. Gricar had begun an initial investigation of Sandusky in 1998-1999, and some experts believe Gricar was disappeared by powerful persons—who may have been involved in covering up Sandusky's crimes over a lengthy period of time—because of Gricar's knowledge of the case, the evidence collected at that time, and Gricar's reputation as a no-nonsense, honest District Attorney.

By the end of his adventures,
Candide had learned one thing:
never get in the way of power;

say nothing, and tend one's garden.
Otherwise, terrible consequences
will follow. That is his lesson.

I understand Candide's lesson,
what happened in Europe, Constantinople—
how he kept quiet, tended his garden.

But what I don't understand,
don't really follow, here, in America,
is how evil, evil deeds are masked

by public appearance: here, when
public officials disappear, or are killed
as often as not it's not an accident,
there's a reason, a message being sent.

Ask Ray F. Gricar, the Centre County D.A.,
his disappeared corpse if you can find it.
"Keep your head down", my brother has said.

The Bellefonte Police followed every lead,
except the one that could lead to the killer(s) —
and Pennsylvania washed its hands of the case.