Disappearance of Lauren Spierer

Lauren Spierer
Born	(1991-01-17)January 17, 1991[1]
Disappeared	June 3, 2011 (aged 20) Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.
Status	Missing for 3 years, 10 months and 28 days
Home town	Greenburgh, New York[2]

Lauren Spierer (born January 17, 1991) is an American woman who disappeared on June 3, 2011, after a night of partying at a bar in Bloomington, Indiana. At the time, she was a 20-year-old college student at Indiana University. Her disappearance generated national press coverage and remains unsolved.^[3][4][5]

History

Lauren Spierer was born in 1991 to Charlene and Robert Spierer, an accountant. She grew up in Greenburgh, New York, a town in western Westchester County.^[6][7][8] Spierer graduated from Edgemont High School in Greenville, Westchester County, New York in 2009 and enrolled at Indiana University studying textiles merchandising.^[9][10]

Spierer was active in the Jewish community at IU and had spent the previous spring break planting trees in Israel on behalf of the Jewish National Fund.^[11]

Spierer met her boyfriend Jesse Wolff, and her friend Jay Rosenbaum years earlier at Camp Towanda, a summer camp in Pennsylvania. It was there that she also met various other future IU students who later became her circle of friends when she went to college in 2009.^[12][13]

Disappearance

On the night she disappeared, Lauren was partying with several male friends. Her boyfriend, Jesse Wolff, said he did not go out with Spierer or her friends that evening. He said he was texting back and forth with Spierer before going to bed.^[14] According to witnesses, Spierer was very intoxicated.^[12] Using video surveillance footage and witness statements, Bloomington police were able create a timeline of Spierer's whereabouts before her disappearance.^[15]

Timeline

The timestamps in bold indicate surveillance footage. The other times mentioned are on the basis of witness statements.

Friday, June 3, 2011

• 12:30 a.m. - Witnesses report that Lauren left her apartment with a friend named David Rohn. The pair went to Jay Rosenbaum's apartment and she met up with Cory Rossman, Rosenbaum's neighbor.^[15]

• 1:46 a.m. – Spierer is seen entering Kilroy's Sports bar.^[15]

• 2:27 a.m. – She is seen exiting the bar with Cory Rossman. Lauren 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.^[12][15]

• 2:30 a.m. – She is then seen entering Smallwood Plaza apartments, where her residence is located. A passerby named Zach Oakes noticed her level of inebriation and asked if she was okay. Rossman reportedly replied: “She’s OK, I got it." Oakes stated that he told Rossman to take her back to her room. Rossman cursed at Oakes, which led to an altercation in which Oakes punched him, knocking him to the floor. Rossman claimed that this blow caused him to lose his memory of the evening.^[12][15][16]

• 2:42 a.m. – Exits apartment complex. Police reported that Spierer did not go to her fifth-floor apartment during this short visit. Surveillance video shows Spierer stumbling and Rossman helping her to her feet and walking out of the building. A few minutes later, she is witnessed by a bystander sitting down on a staircase and falling backwards, hitting her head on the concrete step. The noise of the impact was loud enough for the bystander to hear it and ask whether she was all right. According to the woman, Rossman replied, “She’s OK, I’ll take care of it.” After they continued up the street, she is witnessed falling again. Because of her intoxication level, she didn't raise her hands to cushion the blow and her face hit the ground unguarded. A few steps later, she fell a third time. At this point, Rossman began carrying Spierer.^[12][15][17]

• 2:48 a.m. – After she left the apartments, she entered an alley that runs between College Avenue and Morton Street. Security cameras mounted on nearby apartments show her exit the alley at 2:51 a.m. and walk toward an empty lot. Spierer’s keys and purse were found along this route through the alley. Spierer and Rossman arrived at Rossman’s apartment shortly after. Michael Beth, his roommate, was at the apartment. Rossman himself was very intoxicated and stumbling. He vomited on the carpet on the way upstairs. Beth stated that he escorted Rossman to bed. He then tried to persuade Spierer to sleep over for her own safety. He claimed Spierer said she wanted to return to her own apartment.^[12][15]

• 3:30 a.m. – Beth said he then phoned his neighbor, Rosenbaum, wanting him to take care of her. Beth said that Spierer was attempting to get Beth to drink with her at her own apartment. She eventually went to Rosenbaum’s apartment, where he observed a bruise under her eye, presumably sustained in the falls earlier in the evening. She told him she didn't know how she got the bruise. Two calls were placed from Rosenbaum’s phone shortly before she is reported to have left. Rosenbaum said Spierer placed both calls, one to Rohn and one to another male friend. Neither picked up and no messages were left.^[12][15]

• 4:30 a.m. – Rosenbaum reports that she left the apartment. This is the last reported sighting of Lauren Spierer. He reported last seeing Spierer at the intersection of 11th Street and College Avenue, headed south on College. She was last seen wearing black leggings, a white shirt, and no shoes.^[12][15][18]

• Several hours later that morning, Jesse Wolff sends Lauren a text. He gets a reply back from an employee at the bar. He reports her missing.^[19]

Investigation

In August 2011, Police conducted a nine-day search of the Sycamore Ridge Landfill in Pimento, Indiana south of Terre Haute for clues in the disappearance. The landfill is where trash from Bloomington gets hauled after a stop at a transfer station. The Bloomington Police Department, Indiana University Police Department, and the FBI took part in the search.^[20][21] As of May 24, 2013, investigators had received 3,060 tips on Spierer's disappearance, 100 of which were received during the first half of 2013. Spierer remains missing.^[22]

Speculation

A number of theories have emerged regarding that evening. Lauren's parents have stated that they believe Lauren is deceased. Based on her level of intoxication, they also felt that she may have been drugged while at the bar. "We felt somebody could have slipped something into her drink at Kilroy's," said Robert Spierer. The Spierer family have voiced suspicions about the men she was with that evening as well as her boyfriend, citing the refusal of the men to take police-issued polygraphs and the retaining of lawyers soon after Spierer's disappearance. They have stopped short of voicing specific accusations regarding what they believe happened, only that they feel the men she was with that evening haven't been forthcoming.^[23]

The men involved have all reported taking polygraphs privately, including one issued by the FBI.^[8] The men have stated that their reason behind refusing police-issued polygraphs and retaining attorneys is that they do not trust the Bloomington police.^[24]

In regards to her level of intoxication, Lauren's friends and boyfriend told police that in addition to alcohol, Lauren used drugs on the night in question as well as regularly leading up to her disappearance. Wolff's mother alleged that Lauren was asked to leave the summer camp where she met her son and Rosenbaum years earlier because of drug use. "This poor little girl is not with us today because of her drug abuse," Nadine Wolff said.^[24]

Rosenbaum told investigators that Spierer snorted cocaine and crushed up Klonopin tablets that evening on top of the alcohol she consumed. Adding to the danger of drug use is a rare heart condition—long QT syndrome—that Spierer had.^[25] Police addressed rumors surrounding the possibility of a drug overdose where those with her hid the body to avoid criminal charges, acknowledging that they have not ruled it out, but stressed that there were other possibilities, such as abduction by a stranger.^[26]

Bo Dietl, a private investigator hired by the Spierer family, is dubious that a drug overdose could be enough to hide her death, citing the prevalence of drug abuse on the IU campus. “Every kid’s buying pot, cocaine, drinking, pills,” he said. “I mean, it’s all over the place. So that really can’t be the motive behind it.”^[12][25]

Missing white woman syndrome

The heavy press coverage of the disappearance has been dubbed an example of missing white woman syndrome, a phenomenon where the news media disproportionately covers missing person cases that involve young, white, upper-middle class females.^[27][28] The Indiana University paper ran a story documenting the disparity between their own coverage of Spierer's disappearance and their coverage of another local disappearance, a woman named Crystal Grubb. Grubb, 29, is also Caucasian, but came from a working-class family where many relatives had criminal histories. Following Grubb's disappearance in 2010, the student paper ran a total of seven stories on the case compared to multiple front page articles and the extensive volunteer presence and national awareness of the Spierer case.^[29] An acquaintance of Grubb's commented: "When Crystal went missing, it was in the newspaper like once. For Spierer's disappearance, everyone's here and there's posters everywhere, people walking around. Definitely nothing like that was afforded Crystal. I don't want to say it's because she was of a lower economic class, but that's what it seems to me."^[30]

Civil suit

Lauren Spierer's parents filed a civil suit against Corey Rossman, Jay Rosenbaum and Michael Beth. The suit accused the men of negligence, alleging that Rossman and Rosenbaum supplied Spierer with alcohol after she was already "visibly intoxicated," and then neglected to assure she returned safely to her apartment, which likely led to her death. The family has stated that they hope the lawsuit will lead to the men coming forward with more information about what occurred that night. "I truly don't think it was a random abduction, I think that somebody that Lauren knew was responsible for the events of that evening," Charlene Spierer said. Spierer's parents also told Katie Couric in December that only one of the men has agreed to meet with them. As part of the suit, Spierer's parents subpoenaed private cellphone and academic records spanning 134 days before and after the night their daughter disappeared, a move that the men have called a "fishing expedition".^[31] None of the men have been named as suspects in her disappearance.^[32]

Federal Judge Tanya Pratt dismissed the suit against all three men. In 2013, Pratt dismissed the suit against Beth, ruling that he had no duty to care for Spierer. Spierer's parents had alleged in the suit that Beth had assumed “duty of care” for her when he offered her a place to sleep and then escorted her to Jason Rosenbaum’s apartment. “The judge said on public policy that it would dissuade people from rendering assistance to someone that’s obviously sick on the side of the road, that’s lost in the street,” said Beth’s attorney Greg Garrison. “You dissuade folks from being involved at all by punishing them if somebody decides later on that they didn’t do enough.”^[33] In 2014, she dismissed the suit against the other two, stating "Unfortunately, there could be any number of theories as to what happened to Lauren and what, if any, injuries she may have sustained. Without evidence to prove these theories, it would be impossible for a jury to determine if whatever happened to Lauren was a natural and probable consequence of her intoxication, without any other intervening acts that would break the causal chain."^[34] Spierer's parents have appealed the ruling.^[35]

Lawyers for the men have stated that their clients have cooperated fully with police and the private investigators hired by the Spierer family, and that all of them have passed private polygraphs. “They’ve been interviewed and interviewed and interviewed, and to say they’ve been less than forthcoming is just not accurate,” said Chapman, who represents Beth and Rohn.^[12][14]

Further Investigation

In April, 2015, the Bloomington Police Department announced that they were investigating a possible link between Lauren's disappearance and the murder of another IU student, Hannah Wilson. Wilson went missing April 24, 2015 after visiting the same bar that Lauren was at the night she vanished. Wilson was last seen getting into a taxi in front of Kilroy's and driving away. Her body was found the next morning in Brown County, Indiana. A local man named Daniel Messel was arrested for the murder after his cell phone was discovered near the body.^[36] Spierer's parents have previously stated that they do not believe Lauren's disappearance was a random abduction.^[37]

See also

• List of people who disappeared mysteriously
• List of kidnappings
• Murder of Holly Bobo
• Disappearance of Hannah Graham
• Disappearance of Terrance Williams and Felipe Santos
• Disappearance of Tara Grinstead

References

External links

• FindLauren.com