11 Years Ago, This College Girl Headed Out For A Night With Her Friends, And Then She Disappeared
20-year-old Lauren Spierer was originally from New York, but then she headed off to college at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, to study fashion.
Lauren was kind, she was creative, and she had no trouble making friends with her bubbly personality.
11 years ago on June 3rd, 2011, Lauren headed out for a fun evening with a few of her friends. They all were excited to get together to celebrate the end of their college semester and the beginning of their summer.
Although all of Lauren’s friends made it home from their night out on the town, Lauren did not. In her college town, full of people, Lauren disappeared.
“…In the early hours of June 3, 2011, Lauren became a missing person,” Lauren’s mom Charlene wrote in a Facebook on the 10th anniversary of Lauren’s disappearance.
“What started as an evening with friends ended tragically for Lauren and for our family.”
“There is no video evidence proving Lauren ever turned the corner at 11th and College Avenue around 4:30 AM. There has never been any suspect named.”
“This is what I know. What happened to Lauren was shocking,” she continued. “It is inconceivable to have spoken to Lauren hours before discovering it would be for the last time.”
Facebook; pictured above is Lauren
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“Shocking that someone so loved could vanish without a trace but entirely possible. It did happen and ten years later I still struggle.”
So what happened to Lauren? While we don’t know the answer to the question, we do know what happened leading up to her disappearance 11 years ago.
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 her college campus.
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.
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.
Facebook; Lauren smiles in the photo above
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.
After Corey gets punched, he says he doesn’t really remember anything else that happened.
Facebook; pictured above is another photo of Lauren
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 toward 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. Lauren walked away down North College and 11th street, 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 in to 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.
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.”
Everything 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.
To this day, Lauren’s family has not given up hope that they will find her. They still maintain a P.O. box located in Bloomington, in case someone decides to mail in an anonymous tip there.
At the time of her disappearance, Lauren weighed 95 pounds and stood at 4’11”. She was wearing a white tank top with a white shirt over it and black leggings. She has blonde hair and blue eyes.
Bloomington Police Department; pictured above is Lauren and what she was wearing when she vanished
“What happened to Lauren was shocking,” Charlene said on Facebook. “It is inconceivable to have spoken to Lauren hours before discovering it would be for the last time.”
“Shocking that someone so loved could vanish without a trace but entirely possible. It did happen and ten years later I still struggle.”
“The space that once held hopes and dreams for Lauren will never heal. It is replaced by an ache fueled by the not knowing.”
If you have any information related to Lauren’s disappearance, you can call the Bloomington Police Department at 812-339-4477, or you can send an anonymous tip to the P.O. box Lauren’s family has set up at:
Find Lauren
P.O. Box 1226
Bloomington, IN 47402
You can also look at the website Lauren’s family created to raise awareness for her disappearance here.
Facebook; a missing poster for Lauren is pictured above
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