BLOOMINGTON – Twenty-year-old Lauren Spierer had just completed her sophomore year when she disappeared after a night of drugs and drinking with friends near the IU campus in Bloomington during the early morning hours of June 3, 2011.
This year marks the 13th years since her disappearance.
Lauren’s story grabbed national headlines at the time and on subsequent anniversaries.
Her body has never been found and police have not made any arrests in the case. Spierer is presumed dead and her case remains unsolved.
If fate had not snatched her away, she would now be 33 years old. Her parent’s hope from the early days of the investigation has long since given way to realism. Now all they want is answers to what happened to their daughter Her parents still haven’t filed paperwork to officially declare her dead.
In a new book College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight, DailyMail.com reporter Shawn Cohen revisits the case and uncovers new details about Lauren’s disappearance.
The book – set to be released today – was written with the cooperation of Lauren’s parents, Charlene and Robert Spierer.
“Our relationship with Shawn in the early days was a contentious one. We were parents living a nightmare. Shawn was a tenacious reporter trying to cover a story.” said Charlene Spierer. “Over the years our relationship has changed. I have come to trust that our missions to find Lauren, get answers and have justice served are aligned. Much more than just a story for Shawn all these years later, I truly believe he genuinely wants to bring our family’s nightmare to a close.
“To that end, Shawn approached us with his idea of writing a book about Lauren’s disappearance,” she added. “With searches a thing of the past and leads essentially non-existent we felt Shawn’s idea was something we should consider.”
“Not having answers, not knowing which scenario is the correct one, still waiting but no longer expecting to bring Lauren’s remains home is excruciating,” Charlene added. “What I can say about Shawn’s efforts is that I hope it uncovers some new first-hand information, facts not hearsay. In a few weeks it will have been 13 years. A girl who is still missing, someone who knows the truth, a family who is still waiting.
Bloomington Police Department investigators had worked thousands of tips and tracked down countless leads, and continue to “diligently pursue information with the same level of commitment as when she disappeared.”
Spierer, from Scarsdale, New York, graduated from Edgemont High School in 2009, enrolled at Indiana University, and moved to Bloomington to study fashion merchandising. She lived in downtown Bloomington’s former Smallwood Plaza apartment building, now called The Avenue on College.
Spierer met her boyfriend, Jesse Wolff, and her friend, Jay Rosenbaum, years earlier at Camp Towanda, a summer camp in the mountain town of Honesdale, Pennsylvania. It was there she also met various other future IU students who later became Spierer’s circle of friends when she enrolled at IU in 2009.
Her parents Rob and Charlene Spierer are still hoping for that one piece of information that will bring their nightmare to a close.
“”Someone knows what happened,” Charlene said. “And the truth will come out. We have never stopped believing that.”‘
Timeline of events:
On June 2, 2011, Spierer was drinking with several friends. Wolff stated that he did not go out with Spierer or her friends that evening, but the two were texting back and forth before he went to bed. According to witnesses, Spierer was very intoxicated in addition to using drugs.
Spierer had been arrested for public intoxication nine months before her disappearance, and after she disappeared, police found a small amount of cocaine in her room.
Spierer’s parents refuted reports that she was a drug addict and said there was no evidence she used drugs on the night she vanished.
Bloomington police used video surveillance footage and witness statements to create a timeline of Spierer’s whereabouts before her disappearance.
She left her apartment after watching the 2011 NBA playoffs, drinking wine with friends and headed to a party around 12:30 a.m. on June 3, 2011, with a friend named David Rohn. The pair went to Jay Rosenbaum’s apartment and she met up with Cory Rossman, Rosenbaum’s neighbor and Rossman’s roommate Michael Beth.
She spent the next four hours moving among different parties with four friends — Jay Rosenbaum, David Rohn, Mike Beth, and Corey Rossman.
At 1:46 a.m., she was seen entering Kilroy’s Sports Bar.
At 2:27 a.m. Spierer is caught on camera exiting the bar with Rossman. She had left her cell phone and shoes at the bar. She had taken off her shoes when she walked out onto the sand-covered patio. Rossman walked with Spierer to her apartment complex.
At 2:30 a.m., Spierer is captured entering Smallwood Plaza apartments. A passerby, Zach Oakes noticed Spierer was inebriated and asked her if she was okay. When they got to the fifth floor of the building, where Lauren’s apartment is, they ran into four male students in the hallway. Rossman supposedly says something smart to one of the men and the man decked him. He says he can’t remember anything after he was hit in the head.
Spierer left her apartment at 2:48 a.m. and entered an alley between College Avenue and Morton Street. Security cameras on nearby apartments captured Spierer exiting the alley at 2:51 a.m. and walking toward an empty lot. Her keys and purse were found along this route through the alley. Surveillance cameras in an alley on the way show Spierer stumbling and that at some point, Rossman tosses her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Spierer and Rossman arrived at Rossman’s apartment shortly afterward. Michael Beth was at the apartment. Rossman was intoxicated and was stumbling around. He vomited on the carpet on the way upstairs. Beth told police he escorted Rossman to bed and tried to persuade Spierer to sleep over for her own safety. He claims Spierer said she wanted to return to her apartment.
At 3:30 a.m., Beth said he phoned his neighbor, Rosenbaum, asking him to take care of Spierer. Beth said Spierer continued to want to drink and asked Beth to drink with her at her apartment. She then left and went to Rosenbaum’s apartment at 5 North Townhomes. Rosenbaum told police Spierer had a large bruise under her eye that she allegedly sustained in a fall earlier that evening. She told Rosenbaum she couldn’t remember how she got the bruise. Two calls were made from Rosenbaum’s phone just before Spierer left his apartment. One call was to Rohn and the other to another friend. Neither party picked up and no messages were left.
Rosenbaum told police Spierer left his apartment at 4:30 a.m. This is the last reported sighting of Spierer.
She was last seen barefoot, wearing black leggings and a white shirt, at the intersection of 11th Street and College Avenue, walking south on College Avenue. She intended to walk the 2 1/2 blocks home but vanished.
Several hours later, Wolff sent Spierer a text. He received a reply from an employee at the bar. Wolff then reported Spierer missing.
In August 2011, police conducted a nine-day search of the Sycamore Ridge Landfill in Pimento, south of Terre Haute for clues in the disappearance. The landfill is where trash from Bloomington is hauled after a stop at a transfer station. The Bloomington Police Department, the Indiana University Police Department, and the FBI took part in the search.
By early 2012, the reward offered for information in the case was increased to $250,000. Although the bodies of several women were found in the months and years after Spierer vanished, they were all excluded.
In April 2015, the Bloomington Police announced that they were investigating a possible link between Spierer’s disappearance and the murder of another IU student, Hannah Wilson. She went missing on April 24, 2015, after visiting Kilroy’s, the same bar that Spierer visited the night she disappeared. Wilson was last seen getting into a taxi in front of the bar and driving away. Her body was found the next morning in rural Brown County. Daniel Messel, of Bloomington, was arrested for the murder after his cell phone was discovered near the body. However private investigators hired by the family say the crimes were similar but it was coincidental.
One of the most promising leads came in in January 2016, when investigators from the Bloomington Police Department and federal agents searched the Martinsville property owned by the family of Justin Wagers in connection with the Spierer investigation. Investigators searched the property with cadaver dogs, which indicated potential evidence. Anthropologists conducted a dig and sifted dirt from the barn where the cadaver dogs hit, but found nothing. No arrests were made and police never commented on their findings.
Armchair detectives and media reports through the years have speculated on a wide variety of theories and suspects, ranging from abduction by a motorcycle gang to a drug overdose coverup, and the people she was partying with dumped her body in the Ohio River. Many believe that is what happened because Lauren suffered from a serious heart condition and with drugs and alcohol added it could become a deadly outcome.
In 2017, Brown County prosecutor Ted Adams said he believed Daniel Messel, who he’d convicted of murder in the 2015 slaying of IU student Hannah Wilson, may also be responsible for Spierer’s disappearance. However, Bloomington police have not said whether Messel is a suspect in the case.
“I really just would like to hear, ‘This is where you can find your daughter,'” Charlene Spierer, Lauren’s mother, told ABC News. “It’s the not knowing what happened to her, where she might be… It’s unbearable.”
Spierer’s parents contend Jay Rosenbaum, Corey Rossman, and Kilroys’ Sports Bar, were all negligent on the morning she vanished. In their opinion, Rosenbaum, Rossman, and the bar’s staff knew Spierer was intoxicated and had a “duty of care” to make sure she was safe.
The Spierers eventually filed a civil negligence lawsuit against Rosenbaum and Rossman. However, the lawsuit was dismissed, as the court determined “they have failed to present sufficient evidence that [they] were at fault for Lauren’s disappearance.”
If you know anything about Lauren’s case call the Bloomington Police Department at 812-339-4477 or email helpfindlauren@gmail.com or Beau Dietl & Associates Private Investigator Michael Ciravolo mike@investigations.com or call 212-557-3334.
