Disclaimer: This blog post discusses missing persons. Reader discretion advised.
Hi friends! Happy Friday. Sticking with the eerie and creepy theme for this week, I thought we could take a look at an unsolved cold case - the disappearance of Brian Shaffer.
Firstly, my heart goes out to his family because not knowing must be traumatising and I will do my best to discuss this case with as much respect as possible. I like to think that I'd know what I'd do in a situation like this and just assume that they were gone, but fortunately, I'm not in their situation and I don't know for sure whether I would hold onto hope.
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The Disappearance of Brian Shaffer
According to Wikipedia (because we always start there and double-check that their information is correct), Brian Randall Shaffer (25 February 1979 - ?) was an American medical student. He attended the Ohio State University College of Medicine. Brian has been missing since the early house of the 1st of April, 2006. To this day, he is still missing. He was 27 at the time of his disappearance. Even though Brian attended medical school, he was passionate about music.
So what happened?
March 31st, 2006
The Evening: Brian's classes at OSU ended for spring break, and to celebrate, he had a steak with his dad, Randy, for dinner. Brian also had plans to go out that night but his dad thought he looked exhausted and thought it would be better if he stayed home. Randy did not tell his son though and Brian still went out that fateful night. That same month, Brian's mum had passed away from cancer and he was described as handling the situation well.
Around this time, Brian had also developed a relationship with another medical student named Alexis Waggoner, and the two had plans to go to Miami that spring break, and Alexis even believed the pair were going to get engaged very soon.
9PM: Brian met up with his mate William "Clint" Florence at a bar called Ugly Tuna Saloona - a bar on High Street in Columbus. This bar is no longer open. Prior to March 31st Alexis had gone home to visit her parents in Toledo, before going to Miami.
10PM: Brian calls Alexis and then Brian and Clint go bar hopping, always stopping for a shot at each bar.
1st April, 2006
Just after Midnight: Clint and Brian meet someone called Meredith Reed - said to be a friend of Clint's. Meredith gave them a lift back to the Ugly Tuna Saloona and joined them for a final round of drinks. Brian then separated from his drinking buddies.
2AM: Brian is last seen on a security camera at the bar. As Brian was separated from his mates, the two tried to call him with no success. They both waited outside the bar thinking maybe he had gone to the bathroom. When he didn't come out with the closing crowds, they assumed that Brian had just gone home to his apartment and ended the night.
A few days later, people started to try and call Brian to get hold of him as no one had heard from him but it wasn't until he didn't show up for his flight to Miami when people really started to worry. This is when his family reported him missing to the Columbus authorities.
The Investigation
The search started immediately. And of course, the police started at the bar, the Ugly Tuna Saloona, where he was last seen. The area was known to have a high crime rate so there was a lot of security cameras around.
After reviewing the security footage, the police saw that the three amigos were going up an escalator to the bars' main entrance at 1:15am and then Brian was seen outside the bar at 1:55am talking with two young women and saying goodbye. He then moves off camera and there was no recording of Brian leaving the bar after it was closed. Of course, there could have been many explanations for this, such as putting one's head down when passing the camera, changing outfits, or putting on a hat, to get past the camera, that the police had to consider. Brian may have also left the bar via another route. The bar did have another service door that at the time was a construction zone so it would have been quite difficult to walk through while intoxicated. Other bar's security cameras also found no footage of Brian outside.
It's not clear if authorities searched the construction zone but I'm sure they would have tried, if it was safe to do so. Anyway, as the investigation went on, the search radius got bigger and bigger, they even searched the sewer system for Brian. Nothing useful was uncovered and Brian's car was still parked outside his apartment. All this highlighted to the police that they needed to consider other explanations, not just an accident or foul play. Did Brian leave on his own accord? Had he gone off on his own to grieve the death of his mother?
Everyone who interacted with Brian that evening was asked to take a lie detector test. His dad Randy and Meredith both passed theirs and Clint refused to take one. Later on, the two women Brian was talking to at the end of the night were later identified and in 2009, they claimed they had never been asked to take a lie detector test themselves.
Brian's partner, Alexis would call his phone every evening before going to bed for a very long time following the disappearance. The majority of the time it would go straight to voicemail as if the phone was off/dead. However, in September 2006, Alexis claimed that the phone rang 3 times rather than going straight to VM. On her MySpace page, Alexis wrote "I kept calling it to hear it purely because it was one of the best sounds I ever heard, even if no one picked up". This was said to be most likely due to a computer glitch, but there was a ping from Brian's phone that was detected at a cell tower in Hilliard which was 23km NW of Columbus.
The police received lots of tips but as time went on the case went cold. However, Randy still conducted his own investigation into the disappearance of his son, Brian.
Randy's Investigation
Randy consulted a psychic who told him that Brian's body was in the water near a bridge pier (very vague). Randy and Brian's younger brother, Derek, and a few other people invested in finding Brian waded through the Olentangy River in search of Brian. Because of this the police briefly considered the "smiley face murder theory" - a theory (conspiracy?) that 45 bodies of young men found in bodies of water across America did not drown and that they were all victims of serial killers - known as "smiley face" because all the locations had graffiti of a smiley face near them (weird correlation but ok). This theory was quickly disregarded in regards to Brian's case. No remains of Brian were ever found.
Randy's Death: In September 2008, Randy was clearing debris in the middle of a windstorm in his yard when he was struck down by a tree and killed. His neighbours found him the following day and called the police.
Subsequent Developments and Theories/Speculation
Following Randy's death, Clint's lawyer Neil Rosenberg , wrote to a Private Investigator (PI) named Don Corbett (who had been helping with Brian's search) suggesting that the police had more information on the case than they were letting on. He claimed "If Brian is alive, which is what I'm led to believe after speaking with the detective involved, then it is Brian, and not Clint [Florence], who is causing his family pain and hardship," going on to write "Brian should come forward and end this." Clint was said to have nothing to hide by his lawyer.
Derek (Brian's brother) believed that Clint may have known if Brian had gone off somewhere and was skeptical that he did not partake in a lie detector test.
Alexis also believes that Clint is withholding some information from their families and authorities.
Now this next one is from a Reddit thread so definitely take it with a grain of salt but it's interesting nonetheless: there were regular phone pings (not from Alexis's calls) from Brian's phone in the subsequent days of his disappearance, near the area he disappeared from, not Hilliard. Apparently, we know this because a retired detective on the case, Sergeant John Hurst said so in an interview with Kelly Bruce (I assume journalist) which may have not been intentional. The Reddit user says that the interview was quite obscure so unlikely to have reached mainstream media and that Brian's phone would not have pinged if it was turned off. As this user believes his phone made it out of the building, it's likely that Brian was not stuck in the Ugly Tuna Saloona and that he likely left and something prevented him from being contacted again. Another user in this thread claims that the detective also said Brian "Got exited out of the building," implying that he left via the construction exit and potentially forced to leave.
According to Meredith, Brian and Clint had been arguing about something the night of his disappearance but because it was so loud she was unable to hear what they were saying, just that it seemed heavy.
There is one good thing that came out of the case though and that's the fact that that Randy had joined other families of missing adults in Ohio who lobbied together to pass a bill establishing statewide protocol for missing adults (rather than invididual). After Randy's death the bill had become law.
My Thoughts/Questions
I don't think it's that weird that Clint refused to take a lie detector test, if he was upset at his friend going missing then it could have been misconstrued and set his arousal too high, even if he didn't do anything. BUT I still don't trust him.
Did authorities check if Brian was in the construction zone of the building? Like wouldn't you go down there? Correct me if I'm wrong. Is it also possible that the owners of the bar know what happened to Brian and engaged in a cover up? I kinda feel like if so, someone would have said something or you'd smell a body in the place, surely.
Did he just drop everything and start a new life? But none of his credit cards, bank accounts, or phone were used. Also, remember this was 2006 so there was no GPS on his cell that police could track.
Is this family cursed?
Brian never made it out of the bar and some altercation ultimately led to his demise.
He drowned in the giant river - although weird about his phone being in odd places following his disappearance.
It's weird that literally no one saw him, did he just vanish or was there a master criminal behind his disappearance?
Brian isn't the only person who has gone missing in this kind of way, there's a list on Wikipedia of other people who have gone missing following being last seen on security footage. I don't think it's as easy to disappear in today's society with the amount of surveillance around (which is good). My heart definitely aches for the families of those unsolved cases because they all deserve some sort of closure.
What do you think happened to Brian? Let me know in the comments below.
Thank you for reading
Ash x
Some other Freaky Friday Files you might like:
Freaky Friday Files: The Dead Internet Theory (4 min read)
Freaky Friday Files: The Burn Toast Theory (5 min read)
Freaky Friday Files: The SOS Incident (3 min read)
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