On June 3rd, 2011, 20-year-old Indiana University student Lauren Spierer disappeared without a trace after a night out with friends in Bloomington, Indiana. She was last seen walking from a friend’s townhouse in the early morning hours.
Her mysterious disappearance garnered media attention right away, and the FBI eventually became involved in the case. Despite all the efforts, law enforcement never located the missing student.
Lauren’s sudden vanishing reignited discussions about campus safety and accountability among friends. The mystery surrounding her case continues to this day.
Background
Lauren Elizabeth Spierer was born on January 17th, 1991, in Scarsdale, New York, to parents Charlene and Robert. She had a rare heart condition known as long QT syndrome, which could cause irregular heart rhythm, but that didn’t stop Spieler from pursuing her dreams.
As a teenager, Spierer spent her summers at Camp Towanda in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, where she met many of her close friends, including her future boyfriend, Jesse Wolff. Many of the teenagers from the summer camp decided to enroll at Indiana University after high school, and Spierer did the same.
After graduating from Edgemont High School in 2009, she applied to Indiana University and was soon packing bags to move to Bloomington, Indiana. Since her dream was to work in the fashion industry, Spierer chose to study textiles merchandising.
By the end of the spring semester in 2011, Spierer decided to take a summer class and stay a bit longer at Bloomington to earn extra credits. She lived off-campus at Smallwood Plaza apartments at the very heart of Bloomington, where all the bars were within walking distance.
Indiana University is known for hard partying and a very active Greek life community. Although some students had already left the campus by the beginning of June 2011, Bloomington was still a lively place, and bars were always crowded.
Spierer had a wide circle of friends, and her boyfriend of two years, Wolff, was also studying at Indiana University, so she always had someone to hang out with.
Wolff was two years older than Spierer and was already planning what to do after college. By the end of Spierer’s sophomore year, the couple had slight disagreements, but they always found a way to reconcile.
The disappearance
On Thursday, June 2nd, 2011, Spierer was at her apartment while her boyfriend, Jason Wolff, was watching an NBA game with his friends.
The two were in contact via text messages, but they had argued earlier that day, so Spierer decided to hang out with her friend, David Rohn.
That same day, Spierer was also texting with Corey Rossman, a fellow Indiana University student she met at the Indy 500 race a week ago. Rossman was very flirty with her and didn’t care that she was in a long-term relationship.
Rossman lived next to Spierer’s good friend Jay Rosebaum. Rather than hanging out at her place, Spierer and Rohn decided to drop by Rosenbaum’s townhouse. The two headed out just after midnight on June 3rd, 2011.
Even though she hadn’t eaten much that day, Spierer drank wine with Rosebaum and Rossman. Rohn, feeling sleepy, asked Spierer if she wanted to go home, but she refused.
He tried to convince her to call it a night, but Spierer was determined to continue partying. Eventually, Rohn gave up and returned to Smallwood Plaza.
Rosebaum, Rossman, and Spierer decided to go to the nearby Kilroy’s Sports Bar, arriving there at 1:46 AM. Spierer used her fake ID to get in, and Rossman continued buying her drinks. At one point, the two went outside and sat on the sand-covered patio to get some fresh air, where Spierer kicked off her shoes and left them at the bar.
Spierer and Rossman left the bar at 2:27 AM and arrived at Smallwood Plaza three minutes later. She is visibly intoxicated and struggling to stand on her feet, but the two managed to get inside the elevator and go to the fifth floor, where Spierer’s apartment was located.
There, they encountered a group of four guys, one of whom was Zach Oakes, who knew both Spierer and her boyfriend Wolff.
Confused because Spierer was with an unknown guy and was very drunk, Oakes told Rossman to leave, but he refused. They got into an argument, and Oakes punched Rossman in the face, knocking him out. The four then leave quickly because they didn’t want to get into trouble.
Once Rossman regained consciousness, he and Spierer headed straight to his apartment. They left Smallwood Plaza at 2:48 AM and walked through an alley between College Avenue and Morton Street, where Spierer dropped her keys and purse.
At one point, Rossman picked Spierer up and carried her over his shoulder. When they reached a parking lot, he put her down, but Spierer couldn’t stand on her feet and fell backward, slamming her head on the ground.
Minutes later, the two arrived at Rossman’s place and were greeted by his roommate, Michael Beth, who had stayed in that night to write a paper.
Rossman was also in very bad shape and vomited on his way up to his bedroom. Seeing that Spierer was also intoxicated, Beth tried to convince her to sleep over, but she insisted on returning to her apartment.
At 3:30 AM, Beth called Rosenbaum, asking him to pick up Spierer, believing she might be more willing to stay with someone familiar.
When Rosenbaum arrived, he immediately noticed a bruise under Spierer’s eye. She couldn’t remember what had happened, but Rosenbaum assumed she had fallen somewhere during her night out.
Spierer still insisted on going home, so Rosenbaum asked her to walk in a straight line inside his apartment, which she did.
Believing she wasn’t too drunk, he watched her walk out of his place at 4:30 AM, telling her to text him when she found her phone. And so, Spierer headed out barefoot and without her purse towards Smallwood Plaza. She was never seen again.
The search
When Wolff woke up in the morning, he tried to reach Spierer on the phone, completely unaware that she had gone out the night before. His texts and calls went unanswered until an employee of Kilroy’s Sports Bar picked up and informed Wolff that the phone had been left at the bar.
Meanwhile, Spierer’s roommate noticed that she hadn’t returned home the previous night, but she wasn’t too worried. She assumed Spierer was sleeping at a friend’s apartment. At the same time, Wolff was trying to contact Spierer’s friends in search of her, but she was nowhere to be found.
As hours passed, Wolff and the others got increasingly worried, so they decided to meet up and go out to look for Spierer.
While walking through the neighborhood, the group bumped into Rosebaum and Rossman, who informed them that Spierer had been out with them the night before and left alone around 4:40 AM, heading towards her apartment.
The only trace found was Spierer’s keys, which she dropped in an alley between College Avenue and Morton Street. Knowing that Spierer had a heart condition, Wolff and the others began calling hospitals, but she wasn’t admitted anywhere. Finally, they drove down to the local police station around 4:30 PM to report Spierer missing.
Wolff immediately informed the Spierer family, and her parents flew in the next day. After visiting the police station, Charlene and Robert printed photos of their daughter and started handing them out all over Indiana University.
Charlene made a public appeal, urging people to come forward with any tips, no matter how insignificant they might seem, but this didn’t generate any leads.
The investigation was at a standstill until August 2011, when police went out to Sycamore Ridge Landfill, where the trash from Bloomington is delivered.
The FBI joined in on the search that lasted nine days. Law enforcement officials combed through more than 4,000 tons of waste but found no trace of Spierer.
Without any solid leads regarding the mysterious disappearance of Lauren Spierer, the case went cold. The Bloomington Police Department continued urging the public to call in with any information.
Hannah Wilson
On April 24th, 2015, Hannah Wilson, another Indiana University student, went missing after a night out at Kilroy’s Sports Bar. The eerie similarity to the disappearance of Lauren Spierer almost four years earlier didn’t go unnoticed by law enforcement.
However, Wilson’s body was found the following day in Brown County. A man named Daniel Messel was arrested for her taking her life because he had left his cell phone at the crime scene. Months later, law enforcement announced there were no connections between Wilson’s case and Spierer’s disappearance.
What happened to Lauren Spierer?
Over the years since Spierer’s disappearance, several theories have emerged. Her parents believe that Rosebaum and Rossman know more than they had told the investigators. The fact that they lawyered up just days after Spierer was reported missing raised suspicions among many.
Furthermore, the two refused to take a polygraph test at the local police station, opting instead to do it privately. According to their lawyers, both students passed the test. Rossman also claimed he couldn’t remember much about the night of Spierer’s disappearance, attributing his memory loss to a punch received from Zach Oakes.
While interviewing Spierer’s friends, law enforcement learned that she sometimes mixed substances with alcohol when going out. Considering Indiana University is known as a party school, obtaining illegal substances is not difficult in the area.
This led to speculation that Spierer accidentally overdosed in the early morning hours of June 3rd, 2011. According to Rosenbaum, Spierer consumed alcohol along with cocaine and Klonopin on the day of her disappearance.
Having in mind that she had a serious heart condition, she should’ve avoided using substances, as they could be life-threatening.
Then it was revealed Spierer was arrested and charged with public intoxication and illegal consumption in September 2010. As a result of these findings, rumors started circulating that Rosenbaum and Rossman were covering up Spierer’s overdose and hiding her body somewhere.
Investigators working on the case also brought forward a possibility that she was abducted while walking back to her apartment by someone she didn’t know. But the Spierer family doesn’t believe that is true.
The aftermath
The Spierer family filed a civil lawsuit against Rosenbaum, Rossman, and Beth, accusing them of negligence and providing alcohol to visibly intoxicated Spierer. The parents hoped this lawsuit would compel the three young men to share more information about Spierer’s disappearance.
The lawsuit against Beth was dismissed in 2013, followed by the dismissal of the suits against Rosenbaum and Rossman in 2014.
Their attorneys stated that all three individuals have cooperated with the police and the private investigator hired by the Spierer family. However, they claimed they don’t have any new information to provide to law enforcement.
To this day, no suspects have been named in connection with Spierer’s case, and it remains open more than 14 years after her mysterious disappearance.
Sources
https://findlauren.com/index.html
https://people.com/college-girl-missing-shawn-cohen-excerpt-exclusive-8652994
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