Looking For Lauren: Untangling The Twisted Tale Of What Happened To Lauren Spierer, A Young College Girl Who Vanished Into Thin Air After A Night Out With Her Friends
Bloomington, Indiana. Blue-eyed, blonde-haired, 20-year-old Lauren Spierer was a native New Yorker studying fashion at Indiana University.
She was petite. She was popular. She was creative. She was kind. She was from a good family.
For Lauren, the evening of June 3rd, 2011, seemed to be just a typical night out with her friends, except for one thing: summer was just about to start and they were all celebrating the ending of their semester together.
There was no reason to think this would be anything but a normal night, but it turned into the last time Lauren would ever be seen again.
How can a young college girl just vanish off the face of the earth, in only the span of a few blocks, without any kind of trace….especially in a town covered in security cameras, with college kids all over the place?
Here are the events leading up to Lauren’s disappearance that fateful night 10 years ago.
Twitter; Lauren smiles in the photo above
Lauren was dating a guy named Jesse Wolff, whom she had first met years ago at a summer camp. At this camp, Lauren also met Jay Rosenbaum, who ended up later becoming one of her close college friends.
On the evening of her disappearance, Lauren’s boyfriend Jesse exchanged texts with her, before falling asleep. He did not go out that night. But Lauren did.
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According to a timeline pieced together by the Bloomington Police, around 12:30 in the morning, Lauren is seen leaving her apartment in Smallwood Plaza, which is just a short walk away from the college campus.
Google Maps; pictured above is the Smallwood Plaza apartment building
Lauren leaves her apartment with a friend of hers named David Rohn. She is wearing a white top and black leggings. Lauren and David then walk a few streets over to Jay’s place and leave there with him and his friend Cory Rossman.
At 1:46 a.m., Lauren is spotted on surveillance footage going into a local bar called Kilroy’s Sports Bar, which is a 3-minute walk from her apartment. She uses a fake ID since she’s not 21.
At 2:27 a.m. Lauren is picked up again on surveillance footage, this time she is leaving the bar along with Cory.
Now, Lauren was not wearing any shoes at this point, which she had left behind along with her cellphone.
Monroe County Jail; pictured above is David Rohn in a mugshot
Kilroy’s has a patio covered in sand, so it wasn’t weird that she had taken her shoes off. But why didn’t she didn’t put her shoes back on, or why did one of her friends not help make that happen?
In a lawsuit filed by Lauren’s parents against the men last seen with her that night, a witness stated Lauren needed Corey’s help to even stand up straight and walk out of there.
At 2:30 a.m., exactly 3 minutes later, Lauren is captured on surveillance footage entering her apartment building.
According to the lawsuit, several people say Lauren was not coherent or responsive, and she was at the elevator to the 5th floor of the building, which isn’t far from her apartment. She also appears to be in distress according to witnesses.
Someone named Zach Oakes ends up seeing Lauren like this, and he becomes concerned about her. He starts confronting Corey, who argues back with him, ending with Zach punching Corey right in the face.
Monroe County Jail; pictured above is Corey Rossman in a mugshot
After Corey gets punched, he says he doesn’t really remember anything else that happened.
Lauren spent just 12 minutes inside her building. She never went to her apartment though. She instead exits her apartment building with Corey and is seen on surveillance footage intoxicated and falling down as she struggles to walk. Witnesses say they actually did see Lauren take a few bad falls.
Lauren then ends up in an alley with Corey, and she drops her ID and keys, which are later discovered there.
2:51 a.m. is the final time Lauren is captured on surveillance footage. She leaves the alley with Corey and heads towards his apartment.
Corey’s roommate Michael Beth (who was at their apartment all night working on a term paper) says that they both got back to the apartment, and Corey throws up.
Michael notes he is clearly quite intoxicated, and helps him upstairs to his room and tucks him in.
Before he does, he tells Lauren she should sleep on the couch, and she tells him no. Michael comes back downstairs and alleges that Lauren was no longer there, so he calls their friend Jay to try to get some help.
Lauren walks to Jay’s apartment, where Jay tries to get Lauren to just sleep there, but she leaves his place too.
It’s now about 4:30 in the morning, and Lauren says to Jay she is going to go back to her apartment, so he watches Lauren walk down the street from his balcony. He literally is the last person on record to see her, on North College and 11th street.
Bloomington Police Department; pictured above is Lauren and what she was wearing when she vanished
And this is where Lauren completely vanishes off the face of the earth. Nobody has come forward saying they saw her after 4:30 am. No surveillance footage has picked her up after she leaves Jay’s apartment.
In the hours that follow, Lauren’s boyfriend Jesse tries to text her but gets no reply. And then an employee at Kilroy’s texts him back to say Lauren’s phone was found at the bar. Jesse then reports Lauren as missing to the police, after searching her apartment.
In the days that follow, there’s a huge search for Lauren and thousands of tips are called into the Bloomington Police, but nothing ends up coming of it.
In the weeks that follow, the FBI ends up digging through landfills, trying to find any sign of Lauren’s potential remains.
Twitter; Lauren is pictured above with her dad
Eventually, Lauren’s parents Charlene and Robert Spierer file a negligence lawsuit against the men who saw her last, and who maintained that they had nothing to do with Lauren’s disappearance: Jay Rosenbaum, Corey Rossman, and Michael Beth.
Michael Beth is later dropped from their lawsuit entirely, so the lawsuit then basically states that Corey and Jay gave Lauren multiple drinks and then didn’t make sure she got home safely.
Jay allows the police to search his apartment, take a DNA sample from him, and give him a polygraph test, which he passes.
The lawsuit filed by the Spierers is ultimately dismissed after a lower court and federal court of appeals decides there just isn’t any evidence to connect Jay and Corey with Lauren going missing.
In the decision from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, it reads, “We have found no decisions under Indiana law where persons were held liable for the actions of their social peers, absent additional factors not present here.”
“Because he was with Lauren the majority of the evening and bought drinks for her, Rossman was nearest to assuming a duty to care for her. But he also appears to have been intoxicated–so much so that it is questionable whether he could effectively take care of himself, still less another person.”
Lauren’s case goes on to garner a lot of speculation and gossip.
Everything I’ve laid out for you above is based on what little the police have shared about her case or what the lawsuit from her parents alleges.
But what about the theories and rumors that still persist about what happened to her, given the lack of evidence?
Facebook; Lauren smiles in the above black and white photo
So Lauren had a pretty rare heart condition called Long QT Syndrome that she took medication daily for, and the condition can cause dangerous and uncontrollable arrhythmias.
One theory is that the amount of alcohol she consumed, coupled with her heart condition and the possibility that she was doing drugs or fell and hit her head and sustained some kind of injury that night, caused her to pass away. But that still doesn’t explain why she would be missing.
Adding on to this, some people wonder if Lauren overdosed or passed away in front of someone she knew or maybe someone she didn’t know, who then covered it up and did something with her body.
A second theory is that Lauren was kidnapped on her walk home and that person harmed her and disposed of her remains.
A third theory is that Lauren’s disappearance was somehow connected to a young woman named Hannah Wilson who was also a student at IU. She had been murdered by a man named Daniel Messel after she was out partying with her friends one night.
Ted Adams, the prosecutor who put Hannah’s killer behind bars, has stated to the Bloomington-Herald Times, “I have been consistent with my belief regarding Daniel Messel’s possible involvement with Lauren Spierer’s disappearance.”
“I believe that, in my personal opinion, her disappearance is consistent with Daniel Messel’s modus operandi.”
Facebook; Lauren smiles in the photo above
Lauren’s family shared last year in a Facebook post, “Despite everything, something propels us forward. Of course, it is hope. Hope that today someone will have the courage to tell the truth or send an email or make a call or post a lead on social media.”
“We still have a PO box in Bloomington, just waiting to receive a letter with words which will lead us to the truth. It remains unfilled.”
“Another dead end. No tips or leads have ever been sent which took us one step closer. Logically you think…it’s anonymous…what you don’t realize is that the monster responsible for Lauren’s disappearance simply does not care.”
“Hope, is a strange bedfellow. Some days you want to abandon all hope but our desire to bring Lauren home whether literally or figuratively is a strong motivator.”
“To those responsible, you’ve moved on, but we have not. We will never give up. There is always someone actively working to find you. SOMEONE IS ALWAYS LOOKING FOR YOU. How ironic, just as we are looking for Lauren, we are just as diligently looking for you.”
“I have to believe that someday you will let your guard down. You will need to share your truth and it will just be too big for the person you’ve told to keep it to themselves. That is what we hope for.”
“Missing you Lauren. Loving you with all our hearts. Eight years later…. Just as determined as day one. Hoping today is the day.”
Lauren was born the same year I was. About a month before I was. Just like Lauren, I studied fashion.
I went out and partied and had a great time with my friends in college. I got to graduate. Lauren didn’t. This case has stuck with me since I first heard about it, and she has now been missing for nearly a decade.
If you have any information about Lauren’s case, you can submit a tip via the website her parents have set up here or you can call the Bloomington Police Department at 812-339-4477.
Facebook; a missing poster for Lauren is pictured above
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