An Unexplained Death: The True Story of a Body at the Belvedere

by Mikita Brottman Narrated by Mikita Brottman

Overview

This program is read by the author.

An Unexplained Death is an obsessive investigation into a mysterious death at the Belvedere-a once-grand hotel-and a poignant, gripping meditation on suicide and voyeurism.

“The poster is new. I notice it right away, taped to a utility pole. Beneath the word `Missing,' printed in a bold, high-impact font, are two sepia-toned photographs of a man dressed in a bow tie and tux.”

Most people would keep walking. Maybe they'd pay a bit closer attention to the local news that evening. Mikita Brottman spent ten years sifting through the details of the missing man's life and disappearance, and his purported suicide by jumping from the roof of her own apartment building, the Belvedere.

As Brottman delves into the murky circumstances surrounding Rey Rivera's death-which begins to look more and more like a murder-she contemplates the nature of and motives behind suicide, and uncovers a haunting pattern of guests at the Belvedere, when it was still a historic hotel, taking their own lives on the premises. Finally, she fearlessly takes us to the edge of her own morbid curiosity and asks us to consider our own darker impulses and obsessions.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 07/02/2018
The 2006 death of handsome newlywed Rey O. Rivera serves as the focal point of this mesmerizing true crime account. Brottman (The Great Grisby) never met Rivera, but she lives in the Belvedere, an apartment complex in Baltimore where his body was found, and her morbid curiosity results in a decade-long obsessive, informal investigation of his death. Rivera was missing for over a week before his body was discovered in a locked office, having fallen through a hole in the roof of the building’s extension. According to the autopsy report, which ruled the death a suicide, Rivera had jumped off the roof of the main building, creating the hole on impact. As Brottman looks into the case, she learns that the people in Rivera’s life don’t believe he killed himself—he was about to start a family with his wife, made plans for the weekend just before disappearing, and showed no indication of depression. Her suspicions deepen when she learns the police report of his death has gone missing, as has the building’s surveillance footage from the night of Rivera’s death. In the end, Brottman hires a private investigator to aid in her quest for answers, and his conclusions end up being rather anticlimactic compared to the suspense of the author’s investigation. In addition to the crime element, Brottman adds an alluring layer to the narrative by interrogating her own preoccupation with death and suicide. The result is a page-turning look at the darker impulses of the human psyche. (Nov.)

From the Publisher

A compelling, often creepy book…Mixing fascinating investigation and macabre memoir, this is a dark ride with substance." —Kirkus Reviews

“This is a learned, lucid, and finally heartbreaking account of urban obsession. It's David Fincher's film Zodiac crossed with accounts of Judge Crater's disappearance crossed with Ms. Brottman's wild take on the unknowability of life and the necessity of staying obsessed. Ms. Brottman is a groove—and so is her book." —James Ellroy

"Brottman meticulously follows any and all threads she can ...but Brottman's book is, sneakily, more than just a true crime narrative." —NPR.org

"A page-turning look at the darker impulses of the human psyche." —Publishers Weekly *Starred Review*
“What better place for a mystery than in an iconic old hotel such as the Baltimore Belvedere? …The topic is enthralling.” —San Francisco Book Review

“This book works as both a glimpse into the well of obsession (Brottman’s) and as a philosophical treatise into the nature of suicide…Anyone who enjoys true crime is liable to enjoy the story behind Brottman’s search and Rivera’s death.“ —New York Journal of Books

“Mesmerizing. A haunting meditation on the opacity of facts—how the who, what, when, and where always fail to plumb the abyss: the why. Brottman’s inquiry into the death of Rey Rivera turns into an 11-year hunt for revelation along the knife-edge of pathology.” —Claudia Rowe, author of The Spider and the Fly: A Writer, a Murderer and a Story of Obsession

"[A] page-turner...those who choose books with dark subject matter, suspense, and microhistory elements will all find something to enjoy here." —Booklist

“At once a meditation on suicide and the ways people die as well as a solid piece of investigative reporting, An Unexplained Death crosses man lines and takes big risks. Admirable. Compelling. Unusual." —Beverly Lowry, author of Crossed Over and Who Killed These Girls

“Mikita Brottman’s An Unexplained Death is not just a thrilling whodunit, with new clues unfolding every chapter, it’s a beautifully written elegy about the mystery of death. By the end of the book, you’ll be just as fascinated by Brottman as you will be by her main character: the handsome and devoted Rey Rivera, who suddenly goes missing early on a Baltimore spring evening. This is one riveting, heartbreaking read." —Skip Hollandsworth, author of The Midnight Assassin: The Hunt for America’s First Serial Killer

“An Unexplained Death begins as a factual mystery, then opens up into something far greater: the fundamental mysteries that concern us all. Mikita Brottman is a gripping writer and an intrepid explorer, a brave chronicler of her obsessions, and ours.” —Zachary Lazar, author of Vengeance

"Gripping, immersive, and beautifully written, with an unsettling juxtaposition of criminality and mundanity. Brottman blends tragic and gruesome details with an intelligent and refined touch." —Henry Bond, photographer and author of Lacan at the Scene

"An intriguing story of a woman's decade-long morbid obsession with suicide and the mysterious death of the 32-year-old stranger who died after crashing through the roof of her home, Baltimore's historic Belvedere Hotel." —Caitlin Rother, New York Times bestselling author of Then No One Can Have Her

Kirkus Reviews

2018-08-27

The apparent suicide of a stranger becomes both the subject of an author's true-crime investigation and the catalyst for her intimate memoir.

Brottman (Humanities/Maryland Institute Coll. of Art; The Maximum Security Book Club: Reading Literature in a Men's Prison, 2016, etc.) opens this compelling, often creepy book with a "Missing" poster she spotted on her morning walk, asking for information about a strikingly handsome young man named Rey Rivera. His image stuck with her, and when his decomposing body was found in an unoccupied office in the building where Brottman lives, an obsession was born. That building is the Belvedere Hotel, a Baltimore landmark built in 1903. Rivera went off the top of the 13-story building and plunged through the roof of a smaller building. By all accounts, Rivera was a happy newlywed with a thriving business, a former Olympic-caliber water polo player who charmed everyone; in short, he was an unlikely candidate for suicide. Brottman, a scholar and psychoanalyst who often writes about true crime, spent a decade trying to understand his death, meeting mysteries at nearly every turn. Why did the Baltimore police seemingly conduct only a cursory investigation? Did Rivera's death have anything to do with his former employment with Agora, a multimillion-dollar financial advising firm entangled with legal problems and conspiracy theories? Woven into Rivera's story is the author's own: her striking sense of being invisible to other people and her fascination with death (she catalogs historical suicides at the Belvedere). She writes of a police description of another suicide, "I felt I had found exactly what I am looking for—a crack in the surface of things that shows me the world is not the place I have assumed it to be….I am not a gawker: I am a connoisseur."

Mixing fascinating investigation and macabre memoir, this is a dark ride with substance.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172040108
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	11/06/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

MY BULLDOG IS only ten months old. He still needs to go out early in the morning, while it is dark. I get out of bed, put on my sandals, pick him up, and, in my nightdress, quietly leave my apartment and press the button for the elevator. In the lobby, we slip silently past the concierge, asleep in his chair behind the desk, and out into the morning. Although the sun has not yet risen, the air is already warm.

* * *

I see strange things at this hour. Once I saw five rats walking toward me, one in front of the other, right in the middle of the street.

* * *

The poster is new. I notice it right away, taped to a utility pole. Beneath the word "Missing," printed in a bold, high-impact font, are two sepia-toned photographs of a man dressed in a bow tie and tux. One shows a close-up of his face; the other is shot from medium distance, showing his head and shoulders. He looks like an old-fashioned movie idol. Under the images are the details. Name: Rey O. Rivera. Age: 32. Description: 6'5?, brown hair, brown eyes, 260 lbs. Last Seen: Tuesday, May 16, six p.m. Leaving home (Northwood neighborhood) to run errands in his wife's car. Wearing pullover jacket, shorts, and flip-flops. Carrying $20 in cash, no bank cards. There's the name of a detective in the missing persons division, a phone number to call, and a $1,000 reward for information leading to Rey Rivera's safe return.

The poster intrigues me. Rey Rivera parts his hair on the left. He has a slightly bashful smile. In the medium close-up photo, you can just see the trace of a flower in his buttonhole. Not a rose or a carnation; something less traditional — a sprig of jasmine, perhaps. He's so tall and handsome I find it difficult to believe he's gone missing. But then I realize I've rarely seen a "Missing" poster for an unappealing or angry-looking person. People on "Missing" posters generally look happy and beautiful because whoever makes the posters chooses the best pictures they can find. Often, they're professional portraits taken at a prom, graduation, or wedding. Tograb your attention, missing people have to possess a certain allure. They have to mesmerize you.

* * *

A student, Rachel, went missing when I was at college. I didn't even know she had gone until I noticed the posters. The last person to see her was her boyfriend, John. He told the police that after visiting Rachel, he went to the train station, and Rachel went with him. Waiting for his train, they ran into someone Rachel knew — a friendly, long-haired young man who offered her a ride home.

It didn't escape notice that John had long hair himself.

* * *

The next time I saw my tutor, I asked whether there had been any news about Rachel. It seemed the polite thing to do, the way you might ask about someone's sick mother. I was expecting a friendly platitude. Fingers crossed! But my tutor's answer made me catch my breath.

"They won't find her alive," she said.

My tutor was the kindest person I've ever known. When I missed my tutorial because I had strep throat, she came to my dormitory, sat down on the bed beside me, and placed her hand on my hot brow.

"The police gave us all the facts about missing people," she explained. "They said it's extremely rare that responsible people disappear the way Rachel did, without even taking their purse. But when they do, if they're not found the same day, they have almost no chance of being found alive. The police said now it's just a matter of finding her body. They're about to trawl the river."

She was right. Rachel's body was found eighteen days after she first went missing. John, it appeared, had strangled her in a fit of jealous passion. He'd spent hours looking around her house for a place to hide the body. Eventually, he'd found an eight-inch gap at the back of a closet under the stairs crammed with household junk. After emptying the cupboard of its contents, he'd pushed Rachel's body through the gap into the recess and under the floor. He'd then stretched out on his belly, pushed the dead body in front of him, and pulled himself along through the cavity until he was all the way under the floorboards of Rachel's bedroom. After eighteen days in this small, hot space, Rachel's body had partially mummified.

* * *

Full urban mummification is not as common as you might think. It requires a particular set of circumstances. Not only does the environment have to be either extremely hot or extremely cold, with low humidity and good ventilation, but also these conditions have to remain stable during the several years it takes for mummification to occur. Urban mummies are formed only when a person dies in a home with the right kind of atmospheric conditions, and only if the death goes undetected for a long time. In one recent case, the mummified bodies of a sixty-three-year-old German woman, her neurologically impaired thirty-four-year-old son, and their German shepherd dog were found preserved in their home in Florida. The cause of death was determined to be an overdose of benzodiazepines. The mother had administered the drugs, dissolved in liquid, first to her son and then to their dog, laying the pair out to die on twin beds beside each other. She left a handwritten note in German, which translated as "God's perfection now finds expression through my body." The trio's mummified cadavers were found four years later. Mother was lying on the kitchen floor, clad in a dressing gown surrounded by insect larva cases, her eyeglasses adjacent to her head, a full brown wig resting gently on her bare skull.

* * *

The posters of Rey Rivera multiply. The reward has now been increased to $5,000. Walking down Charles Street in the morning, I point one out to D., who recalls how, as a young boy, he used to hear about men who went out to buy a packet of cigarettes and never came back. They usually turned out to be supporting another family in another town, he tells me. Either that, or they had just walked away from their wife and kids and gone to start life over again in another state. D. says you never hear about men doing that anymore.

I wonder: Why was it always a packet of cigarettes? What if they didn't smoke?

* * *

As soon as you go missing, according to the FBI's National Crime Information Center, the chances of your survival start to diminish rapidly. Still, there are miraculous exceptions. A small percentage of people who have been missing for years manage to reach out from whatever dark world they now inhabit and leave signs for friends and family to decipher: a garbled, untraceable phone call, a scrawled message on a dollar bill, a note scratched in red nail polish in the restroom of a public eatery. Kidnap victims have been recovered as long as eighteen years after their abduction. Often, they've been both here and not here all along, living among us in a locked basement, a converted bomb shelter, a box under someone's bed.

High-profile missing people are almost always young white women, and on the rare occasions when they're found, an uneasy feeling seems to be generated around the question of their return. It is almost as if, once people enter the liminal realm of the missing-and-presumed-dead, there's an unspoken assumption — you might even call it a faith — that they are no longer one of us. Some follow every development in such cases, vowing they'll never give up hope that missing girls will one day be safely back home with their loved ones. But the same people often express disquiet if, after begging for the public's help in finding their daughter, sister, or wife, family members suddenly go mute, or request privacy, when the missing woman returns.

When no explanation is offered for a person's absence, those who have been following the story in the media or online will sometimes feel they have been cheated. In the comments section of newspaper articles and in threads devoted to the case online, there will often be grumbles that the story does not add up, that we are not being given the full picture, that the missing girl might not have been "really" missing but off on a jaunt or drug binge. You will hear the complaint that, since taxpayers' money has been spent on the search, then we have a right to find out what "really happened."

In the case of missing women who escape their abductors after having been kept captive for many years, people sometimes believe that anyone who remains so long with her kidnapper must be complicit in her situation, at least to some degree. This incredulity is compounded if it is revealed that, as sometimes happens, the kidnap victim had eventually been allowed to go outside her captor's house, to do yardwork or accompany him to the grocery store. Our unease and mistrust around the stories of missing people are a defense mechanism that lets us keep the horror at bay; we can reassure ourselves that many missing people aren't "really" missing, and as for kidnap victims, they must have been weak and gullible enough to fall in love with their captors, something a stable, rational person would surely never do.

* * *

Rey Rivera, a freelance video director, is last seen on Tuesday, May 16, 2006, when he's on a tight deadline. He is working from home, on a quiet street in a middle-class neighborhood. His wife, Allison, a sales executive, is in Richmond, Virginia, on business when Rey goes missing. A work colleague of Allison's, Claudia, is staying over for a few days.

Around four p.m., according to Claudia, Rey goes into the kitchen and gets himself a snack: a bag of sour cream potato chips and a bottle of sparkling grapefruit juice. Normally, Rey enjoys cooking and is health-conscious, but today he is pressed for time and grabs whatever comes to hand.

Rey is back in his office when Claudia hears his cell phone ring. A very brief conversation follows. She hears him say, "Oh, shit," and sees him run out the back door as if he is late for an appointment. His office light is still on and his computer running. Then a couple of minutes later he comes back — but just for a moment, as if he has forgotten something. Then he leaves again. He drives off in Allison's black 2001 Mitsubishi Montero.

At five thirty p.m., Allison calls Rey from Richmond. His phone rings for a while then goes to voicemail. Allison asks him to call back when he has a chance. Before going to bed, around ten p.m., she tries again. Still Rey doesn't pick up. She calls Claudia, who's sleeping when the phone rings, to ask whether Rey is home. Claudia says she isn't sure. "He went out earlier," she says. She goes to see if he's back, calling his name, looking in his office and in his bedroom, but there's no sign of him. Allison apologizes for waking her up and says she'll try again later.

At five the following morning, Wednesday, May 17, Allison is woken by a call from Claudia. Rey still hasn't come home. Claudia sounds concerned, but Allison tells her not to worry. At this point, Allison assumes Rey has drunk too much and stayed out all night. After all, she thinks, while the cat's away ...

She calls Rey's phone again. There's no answer, so she leaves another message asking him to call, then showers, gets dressed, and packs her suitcase. When she calls her husband again and there's still no response, she starts to realize something must be wrong. Normally, she and Rey talk to each other five or six times a day. It's not like him to ignore so many calls. But then, Allison does not worry easily. She's experienced, worldly, and used to dealing with unpredictable situations. At first, she thinks Rey must have left his phone somewhere. She keeps calling. Eventually, her calls go directly to voicemail, which means Rey's phone battery is dead.

During the drive back to Baltimore, Allison calls as many of Rey's friends and family members as she can get hold of, but she can find no one who has spoken to him in the last two days. At home, she searches the house for anything that might give her a clue. She notices that Rey left his toothbrush behind, and the retainer he wore to straighten his teeth, which makes Allison think he wasn't originally planning to stay out all night.

After spending Tuesday looking for Rey, talking to his friends, and calling the local hospitals, Allison realizes she needs to file a missing persons report. This report, filed on Wednesday, May 17, 2006, at three p.m., states that Rey Rivera is a thirty-two-year-old Hispanic male, six feet five inches tall, weighing two hundred and sixty pounds. He has a scar on the right side of his face, his teeth are crooked, and he is believed to be wearing thick-rimmed black glasses. He's taking no medications, has no medical or psychological problems, and has never gone missing before. He's lived in the city for two years and two months, and he's registeredwith a dentist but not with a doctor. Allison doesn't know his blood type.

If the FBI gets involved with a missing persons case, it's because the individual is obviously endangered, and the disappearance clearly involuntary. The majority of these "severe and urgent" cases involve young children. But in ordinary busy police departments, where budgets are limited and resources spread thin, missing persons cases are a low priority. This is because the vast majority of such cases turn out to have nothing to do with law enforcement.

The missing people turn out to be travelers who return home later than planned, or seniors with dementia who've wandered off; they may have stormed out after an argument, or not returned home after a drink or drug binge. And, of course, a number of people "go missing" by choice, skipping town deliberately to escape bad debts, an unhappy marriage, or a web of lies that's starting to come undone. Perhaps the police assume Rivera is someone like this. No crime has been committed; somebody's husband hasn't come home. No doubt the cops assume the couple are involved in some kind of domestic dispute, especially since Rey's wife is out of town and there is another woman staying in their home.

When I first read about the case, I have to confess, I, too, blithely assumed that "female houseguest" implied "cheating husband." But after Tuesday, May 16, Claudia exits stage left, leaving an empty space where she once stood. She is merely an extra in the plot.

The days pass. There is no sign of either Rey Rivera or his wife's SUV. There's been no new activity on his cell phone. As word of his disappearance spreads, friends and family members arrive to help with the search. His brother, mother, and sister come to town from Florida; Allison's parents arrive from Colorado. Everybody says that for Rey to disappear without a word is completely out of character. They all say he's the kind of man who will tell you not only where he's going, but why, and for how long, and exactly when he'll be back.

The case is still not high priority, but it is not low priority, either. The fact that so many people turn up to help gives it significance. The subjects of low-priority missing persons cases have no friends or family to put the pressure on: they may be transients, shut-ins, or senile elders with no living relatives. They may be people with high-risk lifestyles — drug addicts, alcoholics, illegal immigrants, ex-inmates, sex workers, heavy gamblers — or who have disappeared before, especially if they suffer from mental illness.

Sometimes, when people go missing, friends and family discover they have a secret life. They may turn out to have been involved in complicated relationships or to have been hiding addictions, debts, diseases, pregnancies, or problems with the law. But nothing like this seems to be true of Rey Rivera. Everything points to the fact that he is exactly what he appears to be: an upstanding citizen. He is a married homeowner with a steady job, a stable mind, a substantial income, and a close network of supportive friends. No skeletons emerge from any closets. Still, this is not enough to spur the police into action. For that, the case has to involve concrete evidence of foul play.

I hear nothing more about Rivera until the following Tuesday, May 23, 2006, when, suddenly, his name is all over the news. His wife's car has been found. That afternoon, Rey's in-laws had decided to recheck some of the parking lots close to his former place of employment. The first lot they visit is on St. Paul Street, four or five blocks from the brownstone in the Mount Vernon neighborhood where Rivera used to work. Here, they find their daughter's black Montero, undamaged. The lot attendant, who'd gone home at six the evening before, did not recall the Montero entering the lot, but he'd seen the car — had given it a parking ticket, in fact — on the morning of Wednesday, May 17, almost a week ago.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "An Unexplained Death"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Mikita Brottman.
Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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