![\"Ronald](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/7f6e2a6b-bc00-479c-9b94-a5e5d211d916-30svoLRONALDFISCHERBACKINRIxcodemix203_frame_0.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nNEW YORK (WJAR) \u2014 Captured after 21 years on the run.<\/p>\n
But for the last decade or so, a fugitive rapist from Rhode Island, a former doctor, wasn’t necessarily living underground.<\/p>\n
He was in one of the most crowded, most well-known areas of the country.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ronald Fisher is shown in a booking photo after his capture off New Jersey. (Rhode Island State Police)<\/p>\n
Ronald Fischer wasn\u2019t hiding.<\/p>\n
But he was using a fake identity.<\/p>\n
Richard Graydon.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe definitely was not hiding by any means,\u201d says a sailing acquaintance, Matt, who asked NBC 10 News to not fully identify him.<\/p>\n
Another sailing acquaintance, Joel Hoag, told NBC 10, \u201cI met him probably in 2017, 2018. And I met him just as he joined our sailing club. He was just a regular person joining the club, wanting to sail, wanting to go in the harbor just like everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n
That harbor was New York Harbor, on the Hudson River, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.<\/p>\n
Ronald Fischer, or Richard Graydon, was taking advantage of his freedom, including joining weekly sailboat races as recently as last year from the now-closed North Cove marina in lower Manhattan.<\/p>\n
The NBC 10 I-Team travels to New York to find new details about Ronald Fischer’s time on the run.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The NBC 10 I-Team traveled to New York City to speak to some of the people who were unknowingly sailing with a convict on the run.<\/p>\n
Hoag says he helped Graydon train to skipper a boat.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was pretty normal at first, friendly, nice, he asked a lot of questions. He was very thankful for the help, right. He just seemed like a regular guy,\u201d Hoag told NBC 10 News.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a strange person, I guess you could say. He was very private,\u201d Matt said. \u201cI don’t think you suspect the person you’re sailing with to be a serial rapist who has been running from the law for the last 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Twenty years back, in April 2005, Ronald Fischer was on trial in Newport, accused of raping a woman on his boat in Portsmouth.<\/p>\n
He was free on bail, and as the trial was coming to a close, sent an email to his lawyers, writing he “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.”<\/p>\n
Days later, a jury convicted Fischer.<\/p>\n
But he was gone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt sick in the pit of my stomach,\u201d the victim in that case, Cheryl Gingerich, told NBC 10 News in April 2025, 20 years after Fischer took off<\/a>.<\/p>\n She met Fischer through an online ad in which he claimed to be seven years younger than he was, and a doctor.<\/p>\n Fischer had been the head of anesthesiology at Memorial Hospital in Pawtucket in the 1990s, but his medical license was stripped following a previous sexual assault allegation.<\/p>\n After Fischer fled, investigators say they found books hidden in a drop ceiling in his East Greenwich home, explaining how to conceal identity and set up offshore accounts.<\/p>\n Investigators wrote at the time that Fischer bought but voided a plane ticket to London from Logan International Airport, that he was seen on video with two travel bags at a Boston rental car office, and that he had transferred cars to each of his daughters the week before he disappeared.<\/p>\n A profile of Fischer on Rhode Island’s Most Wanted website stated he had used 17 aliases before he vanished and that he was a master yachtsman.<\/p>\n Investigators questioned that claim, and so did some who sailed with him.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was not a great sailor,\u201d Matt told NBC 10 News. \u201cWhen he was skippering, I know a lot of people didn’t particularly like sailing with him.\u201d<\/p>\n Hoag told NBC 10, \u201cThere’s little bits of behavior that, at the time seemed kind of OK, but afterwards, of course now, makes a lot more sense. He was very cagey about what he did for a living. He wouldn’t tell anyone exactly the same story.\u201d<\/p>\n But they say the man they knew as Richard Graydon was not keeping the lowest of profiles.<\/p>\n \u201cHe had an arrogance about him where if you taught him something or he learned something, then he would think he would know better than you. And that would happen frequently with a lot of people,\u201d Hoag said.<\/p>\n Matt said Graydon had multiple run-ins with other sailors over racing rules.<\/p>\n \u201cTwo of the incidents that I’m aware of led to him threatening lawsuits,\u201d Matt told NBC 10 News.<\/p>\n Hoag said, \u201cAt one point he tried to sue three people in the club, or threatened to do that, for mostly defamation. If you do something in the club, maybe you get teased a little bit or if you break a rule in racing someone will call you out on it, he would not like that and would either completely ignore or it or argue with you in a very sort of arrogant way. So that turned people off.\u201d<\/p>\n Matt also noted Graydon’s treatment of women.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s that he kind of held them in a slight disregard, that he was better than them,\u201d he told NBC 10 News. \u201cHe definitely had a girlfriend. He would bring her out. It was a very odd relationship, to the point where a lot of people commented on it. There was one day where I came down, and waiting for people to go out, where he got into a raging fight with her on the docks, calling her names, just apoplectic he was with how red he was in the face.\u201d<\/p>\n So where was Fischer living?<\/p>\n An address search for Richard Graydon in the New York area comes back to an apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.<\/p>\n That record goes back 10 years, with no history before it.<\/p>\n And it appears if he did live there, it wasn’t recently.<\/p>\n NBC 10 News talked to the man living in the apartment listed for Graydon.<\/p>\n Shown a picture of Fischer, the man told NBC 10 that he had never seen that person, but he did remember seeing the Graydon name on mail in the building a while ago.<\/p>\n Instead, sailing acquaintances told NBC 10 News that Graydon was living in an apartment building in lower Manhattan, along the Hudson River, just down the street from the North Cove sailing club.<\/p>\n A rental search shows a single bedroom there rents for $4,000 to $5,000 a month.<\/p>\n Other sailors told NBC 10 that Graydon would call them from his apartment to tell them he could see them on the water below.<\/p>\n But he didn’t want his face widely known.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you take a photo and he was in it, he would very quickly and pretty dramatically ask you to make sure you didn’t post it. That was not so surprising because there are some people who don’t want to have their faces online, but it was more direct and aggressive than the usual person would do,\u201d Hoag told NBC 10 News.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was oddly private,\u201d Matt added.<\/p>\n As for what he did for work, Hoag said, \u201cHe’d kind of tell you briefly, I’m an oncologist or I’m in the medical field or a cancer doctor. But nobody knew exactly what it was or where he worked.\u201d<\/p>\n A real job, and a picture posted online, appear to have unraveled the long lie.<\/p>\n U.S. Marshals in Rhode Island told NBC 10 News that the tip that led them to Fischer in July<\/a> was a photo of Richard Graydon from a California bio-pharmaceutical company\u2019s website which listed him as a newly hired chief medical officer and a hematologist-oncologist.<\/p>\n Marshals determined there was no real Richard Graydon with such a medical background.<\/p>\n He used fake credentials.<\/p>\n There is a Richard Graydon resume NBC 10 News found online.<\/p>\n One company told NBC 10 that Graydon was briefly a consultant in 2022, another that he was a consultant from 2016 to 2019.<\/p>\n Johnson & Johnson, listed on the resume, says he was never an employee.<\/p>\n There’s even a Richard Graydon-written book for sale on Amazon.<\/p>\n Investigators told NBC 10 News that they were able to quickly make a link between the Richard Graydon name and sailing, and tracked him to his boat docked in Jersey City, across the Hudson River from Manhattan.<\/p>\n Authorities said Ronald Fischer was captured on his boat Silver Lining. (U.S. Marshals Service)<\/p>\n Following his movements, they captured Fischer on his yacht, Silver Lining, just offshore.<\/p>\n![\"Authorities](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/0b5b83c2-43a8-4053-8b16-77d7b99e7bfe-silverlining.jpg\")
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