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In the end, a cellphone gave Roy McGrath away.
The former top aide to Gov. Larry Hogan had eluded federal authorities for three weeks and traveled hundreds of miles. Federal agents were searching for his white Cadillac Escalade across the Southeast.
Their break came on the afternoon of Monday, April 3. FBI agents in Baltimore detected a signal from a cellphone that belonged to McGrath in a Costco parking lot outside Knoxville, Tennessee. Within minutes, a local agent drove into the parking lot, spotted the Cadillac and parked nearby. The agent, however, couldn’t tell if McGrath was in the car or not.
Then the Cadillac started to pull away.
These details were included in investigatory files obtained Wednesday that present a fuller account than previously known of the FBI’s fatal confrontation with McGrath. The records were requested from Knox County prosecutors by the Daily Memphian news site; Tennessee law limits public records requests to citizens of that state.
Later Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee said it has cleared the agents of any criminal wrongdoing. Both federal and local prosecutors conduct routine reviews of all fatal shootings by FBI agents. The Office of the District Attorney General for Knox County cleared the agents last month.
Roy McGrath manhunt
A final review falls to the FBI’s administrative review board. The board will determine whether the agents followed bureau policies. That last review is expected to continue into the fall.
Knox County medical examiners conducted an autopsy and found McGrath suffered two gunshot wounds to his head. Prosecutors determined one of the shots was fired by an FBI agent, the other by McGrath himself. But prosecutors concluded the shots happened simultaneously. They based that conclusion in part on a bystander’s cellphone video of the confrontation.
“Even when slowing the playback speed to 0.125 times the original speed, only one shot can be heard indicating the shots were fired simultaneously,” Knox County prosecutors wrote.
The agents had followed McGrath from the Costco parking lot and turned on their lights and sirens to pull him over.
The first agent “could see the driver, Roy McGrath, lean over apparently reaching into the passenger side of the vehicle,” prosecutors wrote. “He radioed this information to other agents as he knew this could mean McGrath was trying to access a weapon.”
McGrath turned in beside a Sonic Drive-In. Another agent had gone ahead and parked nearby. The agent stepped out with his gun drawn, made eye contact with McGrath and ordered him to stop, prosecutors wrote. Two other agents pulled up and blocked in the Cadillac.
“While being given commands to put his hands out the window, McGrath kept saying, ‘No,” prosecutors wrote.
The agents saw McGrath raise a handgun to his head. Prosecutors wrote that the way he held the gun it put an agent in the trajectory of the bullet. An agent later told prosecutors “that he believed McGrath posed an imminent danger of death to himself and others” before the agent fired.
McGrath was pronounced dead at the hospital in Tennessee. Doctors were unable to determine which of the two gunshot wounds killed him, prosecutors wrote.
McGrath resigned as chief of staff to former Gov. Larry Hogan amid controversy over a payout of more than $230,000 that he negotiated when he transferred to the governor’s office from the state’s environmental service. A subsequent investigation found McGrath carried out a scheme to enrich himself personally by defrauding the government, prosecutors alleged.
A federal grand jury indicted McGrath in October 2021 on charges of fraud, theft and falsifying records. He was also charged in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court with misconduct in office, embezzlement and wiretapping. Prosecutors accused him of recording other government officials, including Hogan, without their consent.
There has been much speculation about what Hogan and state officials said on those calls, but Maryland’s wiretapping law forbids authorities from releasing the recordings.
McGrath was scheduled to stand trial March 13 in Baltimore. When the 9 a.m. start time arrived, he didn’t show.
He spent the next three weeks keeping ahead of the FBI and U.S. Marshals Service. Federal authorities offered $20,000 for information leading to his arrest and came to focus their search on the southern U.S. states.
Still, his whereabouts during those three weeks remain unknown.
With McGrath missing, a self-published e-book titled “Betrayed: The True Story of Roy McGrath” went on sale online. The unknown author, who gave the name “Ryan C. Cooper,” claimed the book was based on McGrath’s own manuscript and their interviews from months prior to his disappearance. The book jumped to No. 4 among Amazon’s 100 bestsellers in “Political Commentary & Opinion.”
A sequel published one week later recounted McGrath’s time at the Maryland Environmental Service. The author promised a third book once more was known about McGrath’s location. Speculation swirled that the author could be McGrath himself.
The third book has not appeared.
tim.prudente@thebaltimorebanner.com
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Tim Prudente is an enterprise reporter for The Baltimore Banner.
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