The mysterious death in 2006 of a man with ties to Windsor is the subject in a Netflix documentary series that was released July 1.
Netflix, the online media services provider and production company, revived the long-running “Unsolved Mysteries” earlier this month after an 18-year absence from television.
One of the stories in volume 1 of the series is titled “Mystery on the Rooftop,” featuring the death of 32-year-old Rey Rivera in Baltimore in mid-May 2006.
Rivera was the son-in-law of former Windsor Town Board member Tom Jones and his wife, Kathleen. Rivera married the Jones’ daughter, Allison, in November 2005. Allison now lives in Los Angeles.
Rivera was an assistant water polo coach, and he was working for a subsidiary of Agora Publishing, a company that produced newsletters on investments at the time of his death, according to Kathleen Jones.
He was found dead in the Belvedere Hotel about two weeks after his disappearance on May 16, 2006.
Rivera’s death was labeled as a “probable suicide,” by Baltimore police in the weeks following the discovery of Rivera’s body. By August 2006, suicide continued to be a focus of the investigation but questions lingered.
According to The Baltimore Sun in a July 3 story on the “Unsolved Mysteries” episode, Rivera’s family and a retired homicide detective who was involved with the case are “skeptical” of suicide as an explanation.
Kathleen Jones said the death remains an open case. Jones said Allison received a call from producers of the new show in January 2019, expressing an interest in featuring Rivera’s case in the series.
In November 2018, Rivera’s story was detailed in a book titled “Unexplained Death: A True Story of a Body at the Belvedere.” The book was written by Mikita Brottman, a British-born teacher and writer in Baltimore who lived in a condo in the Belvedere.
The hotel was converted into condominiums in the early 1990s.
Rivera’s death and the case since was also the subject of a podcast called Crime Junkie. The 1-hour episode on Rivera was released June 29.
