The Bellefonte Police Department squelched rumors yesterday that the hard drive from missing District Attorney Ray Gricar's laptop was found in the Susquehanna River.

Although a hard drive was recovered from the river, forensic testing determined the device was from a desktop computer and "totally unrelated to the Gricar case," a Bellefonte police press release said.

The false lead came just three days after Gricar's laptop computer was found, without its hard drive, in the same river.

Rumors began to circulate about the hard drive yesterday morning, when WKOK-AM (1070) news radio aired a report that the missing device was recovered. The broadcast described the report as "unconfirmed" by police, WKOK news staff member Sara Lauver said.

Bellefonte Police Chief Duane Dixon said he did not personally hear the report, but other members of the police department told him it falsely named the hardware found as Gricar's missing hard drive.

"Why somebody leaked that the way they did this morning, we have no idea," Dixon said. "I wasn't happy about it."

Dixon said the device was found late Monday night, three to five miles upstream from where Gricar's laptop was found.

Lauver said an anonymous source who works with cadaver dogs on the case told her the information yesterday. She added that she was on a conference call with the unnamed source and Carla Baron, a psychic hired to work on the case, when the source confided that the missing hard drive had been recovered.

Dixon said he did not alert the media to the discovery yesterday because he was unsure at the time if it was related to Gricar.

"We kept it between ourselves and the state police because we hadn't confirmed anything," Dixon said. "I couldn't see getting a media frenzy started on something that wasn't even confirmed yet."

Gricar has been missing since April 15. The last person he spoke to was his girlfriend, Patty Fornicola, whom he called on his cell phone at about 11:30 a.m. to say he was taking the rest of the day off from work and driving on Route 192. His 2004 red-and-white Mini Cooper was found outside of an antiques market in Lewisburg the next day.

Ray Gricar's nephew Tony Gricar said although it is disappointing that the hard drive wasn't a credible lead in the case, media reports of its recovery seemed unreliable since he first caught wind of the rumor.

"After three and a half months the laptop is found, and then the hard drive is found the next day?" he said. "I'm a facts guy. I hate even speculating on the cause of his disappearance."

Pennsylvania State Police forensics experts told Dixon there is a better chance the hard drive was removed than fell out on its own. Without the hard drive, the recovered laptop is useless, he said.

"That's the brain of the computer -- that's where all the information is located," Dixon said. "If we had any luck at all in this case, that's where it was going to come from."

Dixon said it is a "little bit of a setback" that the laptop was found without the hard drive, which could contain information about Gricar's whereabouts. He also said that although the police haven't ruled out any potential scenarios, the missing hard drive is forcing them to lean more toward believing Gricar was a victim of foul play.

"Once I found out the hard drive was missing, I figured there's probably a darn good chance there was something on his computer that somebody didn't want us to see," Dixon said.