Hi, all. Ive recently become fascinated with the Gricar case, and just wanted to run some thoughts by those who have spent far more time than I have analyzing it, especially J. J.
I consider murder the least likely scenario. The fact that Gricar had previously done a search for destroying a hard drive could, as J. J. has suggested, be nothing more than a coincidence. However, it is difficult for me to imagine a reason that a murderer would have taken pains to dump the laptop and hard drive. Even if the killer assumed that Gricar had damaging information on the laptop, there would be no reason to assume a)that Gricar hadnt already shared that information with others b) that the information wasnt backed up on a flash drive, his home computer, or on paper. Combined with the knowledge that Gricar himself had looked into ways to destroy a hard drive, as well as the effect of water damage on laptops, I think this makes it far more probable that the disappearance was the result of some premeditation on Gricars part.
That leaves us with suicide or walkaway. Which one is more probable depends, I think, on whether you consider it more fantastic that a man would have both the inclination and means to vanish and start a new life, or that a man could kill himself without authorities finding the body after an exhaustive search. Im not sure myself, but I do think that it is unlikely that, if Gricar did commit suicide, he did so by jumping into the Susquehana, since the body would probably have been found in that case. Rather, I think he may have killed himself elsewhere while deliberately staging a misleading crime scene for police. If this seems fanciful, consider that this was a man with a lot of experience with crime who could have anticipated what the police would do and had, apparently, been interested before in a parallel story of a missing DA.
What is more important, to me, is the question of why. People commit suicide for any number of reasons, but Gricar also, it seems, had something specific to hide that led him to get rid of the computer.
This leads me to the Penn State case. Obviously, there is no guarantee that there is any link between Gricars disappearance and the Sandusky investigation, and Im not sure if a direct connection is even likely. I do think, however, that we need to consider the possibility that whatever Gricar was so determined to hide may also be the explanation for why he didnt press harder in 1998. As J. J. has shown, there is no evidence that Gricar was bribed or even pressured to drop the investigation. On the other hand, not only was Gricars decision spectacularly bad judgment and not just in hindsight at odds with his usual record, he also deliberately excluded from the case the departments usual child abuse expert. This makes the decision suddenly appear less innocent.
So, if he wasnt paid off, why drop the case? The best answer I can think of is blackmail. J. J, I know youve said that there is no evidence of that. But frankly, theres no evidence of much of anything (no records, no body, no note, no motive), and blackmail, especially if it was exerted subtly, would be likely to have less of a paper trail than, for instance, a bribe. A pointed remark that served as a veiled warning might have been enough, especially in 1998, when we werent yet talking about something quite as serious as child rape.
Im not going to speculate openly about what in Gricars life might have left him susceptible to blackmail, and, of course, I have no evidence of anything that would call his character into question. I do think that the bizarre proposal to the woman he had just met might be some indication of either a degree of instability or an eccentricity, especially in romantic matters, that might have also had other, more compromising manifestations.
Even if Im right, this doesnt mean that Gricar was being blackmailed in 2005. Rather, it might provide insight into why someone who was about to kill himself or disappear for whatever reason might want to destroy his laptop. If the laptop contained evidence of whatever secret had forced a man of integrity to drop a good case seven years earlier, he might well have wanted it destroyed before leaving his old life behind.
Thoughts? Is there a particular reason that you've dismissed the blackmail scenario as unlikely, J. J?