Late on the night of July 15, Justin Carvalho watched as a balding, 70-year-old man walked up to a 56-foot sailboat docked across the Hudson River from Manhattan.
The man went by the name Richard Graydon and claimed to be an oncologist who made a living testing cancer drugs. But Carvalho, a supervisory deputy U.S. marshal for the District of Rhode Island, recognized him as convicted fugitive Ronald L. Fischer, who’d fled while on trial for rape in Newport more than 20 years earlier.
As Fischer peddled away on a bicycle, law enforcement officials decided it wasn’t the right time for an arrest.
“We kind of just let it go,” Carvalho said.
The next morning, the U.S. Coast Guard noticed that Fischer’s sailboat, the Silver Lining, was moving. When Fischer was 7 miles from the open sea, the Coast Guard approached under the guise of a standard safety inspection and life jacket check. Instead, Carvalho and others boarded the boat and arrested Fischer.
“It felt great,” said Carvalho, who’d been on the case for nine years as a member of the Rhode Island Violent Fugitive Task Force. “It’s been a long time.”
‘Narcissistic sociopath’
The dramatic arrest at sea marked the end of a decades-long search. Fischer was on the run for so long that many of the initial investigators had long since retired, said Elden DaSilva, a supervisory deputy U.S. Marshal for the District of Rhode Island.
Fischer, a former anesthesiologist, is accused of raping multiple women he met through personal ads in the 1990s and early 2000s and lured onto his yachts. In two cases, the alleged assault led to criminal charges.
“He was a narcissistic sociopath,” said Babette Augustin, a former Providence Journal photo editor who went on one date with Fischer in 2002. “He picked women who he thought were not his equal.”
Augustin considers herself “the lucky one,” because she wasn’t harmed. In general, “he picked women who had too much to lose,” knowing that they would be shamed and victim-blamed if they came forward, she said.
More: One of RI’s ‘most wanted’ fugitives caught in a sailboat off New Jersey
Allegations of violence in a turbulent marriage
Fischer, who is originally from Long Island, had an elite background: He attended Cornell University and Syracuse University Medical School, then completed his residency at Harvard University in 1984.
He married Nancy Loeber, a fellow anesthesiologist, in Las Vegas in 1984. After a stint in Chicago, the couple moved to Rhode Island, where Fischer took a job as chairman of the anesthesiology department at Pawtucket’s Memorial Hospital. He also began teaching at Brown University Medical School.
The couple lived in a seven-bedroom home in East Greenwich, with a pool and live-in staff on hand to help with housework and raising their two daughters, according to divorce filings.
They liked the trappings that came with their upper-middle-class lifestyle, court records show. Both had Rolex watches. A Jaguar and Mercedes were parked in their driveway.
Their relationship began to fray, and in 1991, Fischer filed for divorce citing irreconcilable differences. In court filings, Loeber recounted incidents of abuse that began shortly after their marriage.
In 1985, Loeber said Fischer strangled her when she tried to call police to stop his screaming, all in front of their 6-month-old daughter. Two years later, she said he threatened to kill her with the kids looking on.
“Ron threatens bloodshed, nuclear war, the abyss, and to take away our daughters if I divorce him and investigate his corporation or ask for equitable distribution,” she said, referring to an Illinois business he held.
That same year, she got a no contact order against him after he pounded on her car with his fists and ripped away its antenna, she said. He also admitted to having an affair after she found a condom in the glove compartment. He was not charged in any of the alleged incidents.
Though the couple finalized their divorce in 1992, the case stretched until 2005, with Loeber, who remarried, accusing Fischer of deceit and filing misleading financial statements. She asked the court to intervene when he failed to pay child support. She sought to get him removed from their daughters’ college funds.
After his arrest in Rhode Island, she sought to modify his visits with one of their daughters, saying he was applying pressure after his indictment.
Fischer, who was represented by now Family Court Judge Karen Lynch Bernard, denied Loeber’s allegations.
Predator with a pattern
After the divorce was finalized, Fischer began using personal ads to find dates, describing himself as “kind, sensitive, sincere and compassionate with a good sense of humor,” according to The Journal’s coverage.
In August 1994, a 25-year-old single mother met him for coffee at the marina in Quincy, Massachusetts, where he kept his sailboat. He invited her to tour the yacht, “Dreammaker,” then violently raped her in the cabin bedroom. She eventually escaped, running naked and screaming down the dock.
Fischer was arrested that night and charged with rape. Ultimately, that charge was dropped when he agreed to instead plead guilty to two counts of assault and battery and was sentenced to five years’ probation. Officials in Massachusetts and Rhode Island subsequently revoked his medical license.
In 2003, Fischer was accused of rape again. By then, he’d acquired a different boat, “Lion King,” a 60-foot cabin cruiser that he kept at Hinckley Marina in Portsmouth. He was also going by other names.
Cheryl Gingerich, who agreed to a coffee date, thought she was meeting a man named “Ronald Stevenson.” He suggested that they stop by his boat, and then he raped her, she later testified.
Five days before a jury convicted him of sexual assault, Fischer fled.
“Although I believe my trial has gone very well, and expect to be acquitted and dismissed, the small chance of losing could carry extremely and unacceptably harsh penalties,” he wrote to his lawyers. “I have therefore decided not to take the risk and to leave the U.S. and enjoy life in another country where I have long been carefully planning a good, safe, secure and comfortable life.”
Gingerich told WJAR that she developed PTSD from the incident and has been undergoing treatment for 21 years. The trauma left her unable to work and made her afraid of leaving her home, she said, and two of her four sons had to go live with her parents.
“I always lived in fear of seeing him again, because I never felt that he was far away,” she told WJAR.
Victims were constantly on edge with Fischer on the loose
Another woman, who said that Fischer raped her on his boat in Newport Harbor, told The Providence Journal that for more than 20 years, she felt like she was constantly looking over her shoulder. Believing that he might have fled to a tropical island, she was on high alert during trips to destinations that should have been relaxing.
“He was so cocky and so calculating,” she said. “I just wanted him caught.”
The woman, who asked to remain anonymous due to concerns about how her family and others would react, said she met Fischer on AOL’s personals site in the early 2000s. He went by the name Kevin, claimed he was a doctor and portrayed himself as a “normal, wholesome, nice guy,” she said.
After they traded messages, she agreed to meet Fischer at a bar on Goat Island in Newport, she said. During the date, he offered to show her his boat, which was moored nearby. Once she was on board, she said, she raped her.
“It was the only time in my life that I was really scared for my life,” she said.
As a divorced single mother, she assumed she’d be shamed and victim-blamed if she reported the assault, she said. She didn’t learn Fischer’s real name or find out that there were other victims until he disappeared a few years later and she saw his face on TV.
“My heart just sunk,” she recalled. At that point, she contacted the state police.
More than two decades passed. Then, on the morning of July 17, she heard Fischer’s name mentioned on television again and ran over.
“I think there were sparks coming off my feet,” she said. “I was shaking, I was crying. It was like, ‘Finally. After all these years.’”
How the U.S. Marshals found Ronald Fischer
Over the decades, investigators periodically revisited Fischer’s case. They knew he had occasional communication with his daughters. Interviews with family and friends indicated he was working in the medical profession somewhere, possibly in sales. At one point, information led them to believe he was located out of the country, the deputy marshals said.
The investigation was conducted by the Rhode Island Violent Fugitive Task Force, which brings together personnel from the U.S. Marshals Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Rhode Island National Guard Counterdrug Program, the Rhode Island State Police, and police department in Providence, Warwick, Cranston, Pawtucket, Middletown and Portsmouth.
“He knew we were searching for him,” Carvalho said.
Carvalho determined through interviews that Fischer had “significant resources” available to him, though their exact source remains part of an ongoing probe, DaSilva said.
They also knew that fugitives generally return to their behavior prior to going on the run.
“Once they get into a pattern that they’re comfortable with, they go back to their activities that they used to love. And in Ronald Fischer’s case, we knew, through Justin’s investigation, that he loved sailing, he loved boats. So that was our focus,” DaSilva said.
Then a lead came in on July 14 from a confidential source through the FBI to the Rhode Island Violent Fugitive Task Force, DaSilva said. It featured a photo of a man with the name Richard Graydon and an acronym for a business.
“Richard Graydon” bore a strong resemblance to Ronald Fischer. Within 24 hours, the task force had determined that they were the same person, and within 48 hours, they’d tracked him down.
Investigators located Fischer by finding the sail number of his 56-foot sailboat, the Silver Lining. Coast Guard intelligence confirmed that the boat was docked in Jersey City, across the Hudson River from New York City.
Carvalho headed there, teaming up with the U.S. Marshals Service for the Southern District of New York and New York/New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force. He had the late-night encounter with Fischer as he staked out the boat.
When they boarded the Silver Lining, the man at the helm “sighed and put his head down,” said Carvalho. He confirmed that he owned the sailboat and said that he had another boat, a J/111, at another marina nearby. But he insisted he was Richard Graydon.
A fingerprint match at the federal courthouse in New York, however, confirmed it was “100% Ronald Fischer,” Carvalho said.
It’s tough to say if Fischer was trying to evade capture when he headed out the East River on the morning of July 16, “but I believe he may have been,” Carvalho said.
‘Richard Graydon’ surfaces in 2016, worked for a biotech firm
Fischer appears to have developed the identity of “Richard Graydon” in 2016, DaSilva said.
How he financed his fugitive lifestyle remains under investigation. A relatively new Beneteau Oceanis 54, the model of sailboat that he owned, sells for $600,000 to $1.1 million. He also claimed to own a condo in downtown New York, although, as Carvalho pointed out, “Anybody can say anything.”
Under his false identity, Fischer appears to have passed himself off as a hematologist and oncologist with experience developing cancer drugs for major companies such as Johnson & Johnson.
As STAT News first reported, Immix Biopharma, a Los Angeles-based biotech company, named “Richard Graydon” as its chief medical officer in March. The company disclosed in a regulatory filing that he was terminated on July 17 “for reasons unrelated to his activities at the company.”
A few years prior to that, Atossa Therapeutics, a Seattle-based biotech company, announced Richard Graydon as its new interim chief medical officer. The company told Investor’s Business Daily that a person named Richard Graydon was an independent contractor, not an employee, for a short period in 2022.
“Richard Graydon” also appears to have been active in sailing circles in the greater New York City area for several years, competing in regattas such as the Riverside Yacht Club’s Stratford Shoal Race and 127th Larchmont Race Week as recently as last summer.
In April 2022, he posted on an online message board saying that he’d recently joined Liberty Yacht Club in Jersey City and was looking for a boat. By the summer of 2023, he was taking part in the club’s Wednesday night racing series aboard Silver Lining, placing first in his division the first summer.
Paul Elkouss, who crewed on Silver Lining on numerous occasions and also did electrical work on the boat, said Fischer told people he’d practiced as an oncologist and now used his medical knowledge to run cancer drug trials.
Fischer was extremely private and refused to allow anyone to take photos of him aboard the boat, Elkouss said. In particular, he had a reputation for becoming extremely aggressive on the water, and promising to pay for things but then failing to do so.
“He would get argumentative during races – unreasonably so, considering that there was just prestige on the line, and most of us were not worthy of any prestige,” Elkouss said, adding that Fischer would even go as far as threatening legal action.
Elkouss said that Fischer was otherwise mild-mannered and welcomed other experienced sailors on his boat, but often didn’t seem to respect their expertise or take their safety into account. In 2025, Elkouss decided to stop sailing with him.
Elkouss said he reached a breaking point when Fischer disagreed with one of his decisions during a race and began screaming at him, unleashing a 10-minute tirade that everyone on the water could hear.
“After that, he disappeared from that club,” Elkouss said.
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