The disappearance of Lauren Spierer

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As the summer of 2011 was approaching, Rob & Charlene Spierer were only two short weeks from welcoming their 20-year-old daughter back home from college to Edgemont, New York for summer break. Tragically, Lauren, who had just finished her sophomore year at Indiana University (IU), never had the chance to make it home as she vanished without a trace after a night out with friends in the early morning hours of Friday, June 3, 2011.

2026 marks fifteen years since Lauren disappeared. To her grief-stricken parents, it’s an inconceivable number, but regardless of how long it takes, Rob & Charlene will never stop searching for their little girl. They hold out hope that they’ll one day be given answers, that they’ll be able to lay their daughter to rest & deliver justice to whoever was responsible for her death.

Lauren Elizabeth Spierer was born on January 17, 1991 to parents Rob & Charlene Spierer. She had an older sister named Rebecca & the family of four lived in the affluent area of Edgemont about 24 miles outside of Manhattan. After graduating from Edgemont High School in 2009, Lauren enrolled as a freshman at IU to study fashion merchandising.

By 2011, Lauren was easing into summer before starting her junior year at IU. She had been dating her boyfriend Jesse Wolff for nearly three years after they met in 2008 during one of Lauren’s annual trips to Camp Towanda, a Jewish sleepaway camp in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. Lauren had been a 17-year old counselor-in-training at the time while 19-year-old Jesse was a counselor who had just finished his freshman year at IU.

Since counselors were forbidden from dating trainees, they would sneak away together at night, keeping their budding romance a secret. While Jesse was on the shy side, Lauren was a petite blue-eyed, blond who was exceptionally outgoing, social & full of life.

According to Rob & Charlene, in the early years of their relationship, they welcomed Jesse into their home, but as time went on, they were concerned to see that the relationship was becoming toxic. Each time he called, Lauren inevitably tried to calm him down after yet another blowup.

Moving forward to June 2011 when Lauren vanished, the normally bustling IU campus was very quiet since many students had already gone home for summer break, leaving only those taking summer classes behind.

Although Lauren wasn’t taking summer classes that year, she stayed back so that she & Jesse could drive back to New York together when he finished in two weeks since he lived in Port Washington on Long Island, about 30 miles from where Lauren lived with her family.

Lauren had been absolutely thrilled when she got her acceptance letter to IU two years earlier in 2009. She was so excited by the idea of joining Jesse on campus. However, by 2011, they were moving in different directions as Jesse was finishing college & looking toward his future, which included marriage, while Lauren had only just finished her sophomore year & wanted more freedom. She began to feel overwhelmed by their relationship as Jesse had become increasingly jealous, worrying that she might be hooking up with other guys.

Regardless, their third anniversary was approaching in early August & she & Jesse had been discussing the idea of a promise ring.

Charlene last heard from her daughter on Thursday afternoon, June 2, 2011, when Lauren told her that she was planning on meeting some friends who were in town for dinner later that evening.

Although she had made plans to meet up with Jesse later that night after the NBA finals game was over, he had been unaware that Lauren was texting with another student named Corey Rossman. They’d only recently met at the Indy 500 race the week before. Corey was trying to convince her to come to a pregame party at their friend Jason “Jay” Rosenbaum’s place a couple of doors down from where he lived.

Thursday had been especially stressful for Lauren since not only was her maternal grandma’s health deteriorating in Alabama, but she’d gotten word that morning that she was going to have to attend a disciplinary hearing for an allegation of plagiarism on a term paper she wrote.

After she spoke with her professor, she was allowed to rewrite the paper & cite the source so she had been under the impression that the issue was resolved, not realizing that her professor had notified the dean’s office about the incident.

As she got ready for the evening, Lauren changed into black tights & a light-blue striped sweatshirt before grabbing a bottle of white wine & heading over to a friend’s apartment down the hall. She & her friend David Rohn walked over to Scott Schwartz’s apartment since he was hosting a dinner that night. Both she & Scott lived at Smallwood Plaza, a student apartment building less than a mile from campus.

Meanwhile, Jesse was watching the basketball game nearby with a group of his friends.

The gathering was very low-key; they planned to eat while watching the game together & while Scott finished cooking, he & his roommate worked on their homework.

When dinner was ready at 8 pm & everyone grabbed a plate of food, Lauren chose not to eat. Instead, she drank a glass of wine from the bottle she’d brought. By halftime, when the bottle was empty, she & David went a couple of floors up to another get together where Lauren planned to buy Xanax from a friend.

While this friend went to another apartment to see if he could find the pills, she & David snorted a couple of lines of cocaine. Rather than getting Xanax, Lauren ended up buying four tablets of Klonopin, which like Xanax, is also a benzodiazepine.

During the fall of 2010, Lauren had been ticketed by police for public intoxication which required her to attend AA meetings. Before she’d gone back to campus to start her sophomore year, her parents sent her to a six-week rehab program after they were alerted to her drug & alcohol use.

Those close to Lauren could see that her anxiety & drug use was ramping back up. She seemed to be getting thinner despite her already tiny stature, she looked pale & her hair was thinning.

When Lauren & David got back to Scott’s apartment, they put a dollar bill over the four Klonopin tablets, crushing them into a powder. According to David, while he snorted two lines, Lauren snorted six.

As the basketball game was wrapping up, she was tasked with deciding if she was going to meet up with Jesse as planned or go to the party at Jay Rosenbaum’s place that Corey Rossman had invited her to. She’d known Jay since high school since they had also met at camp. According to some friends, not only had Corey voiced his interest in hooking up with Lauren, but Jay had as well.

After Lauren decided to go to Jay’s, she texted Jesse, telling him that she was going to sleep. She changed into a loose white top, black leggings, ballet flats & carried her small wristlet that held her iPhone, fake ID, as well as the keycard to her building.

She & David left her building at about midnight to walk the three blocks to 5 Northwood Townhomes where both Corey & Jay lived in a modern four-story red brick building that housed mostly upperclassmen.

After Corey met them outside, they went into Jay’s townhome where there were about a dozen students taking shots & drinking beer from a keg. Jay was throwing the party in honor of his two friends, David Bleznak & Alex Ferber, who were visiting from his hometown in Michigan.

After Lauren downed shots of vodka, she spilled a drink on herself so Corey offered to take her back to his place so he could put her shirt in the dryer. His roommate, Mike Beth, was there, working on a class paper.

While her shirt dried, she sat on the couch watching YouTube videos with Corey, wearing only her bra & leggings. When David came by to check on her, he immediately pulled her shirt from the dryer & demanded that she put it back on.

As Jay’s party was starting to wind down, he came by to invite them out to Kilroy’s Sports Bar, a popular bar on campus known to the locals as Sports. While David encouraged Lauren to come back to Scott’s with him instead, she told him she wanted to go out. He saw that her iPhone was poking out of her wristlet so he warned her that she was going to lose it.

After they parted ways, David texted Lauren, Be careful, let me know if you need me. He worried about his friend since it wasn’t uncommon for Lauren to drink too much & need help getting back home, most times by Jesse, who wasn’t there that night.

Since the bar was just down the street, they walked over together. An acquaintance of Lauren’s, who was standing outside the bar, watched as she stumbled inside with Corey at about 2 am after showing the bouncer her fake ID.

While they were there for about 30 minutes, Lauren & Corey sat having drinks on the side patio that had been transformed into a beach setting complete with a sandy ground. Although Lauren was already very intoxicated at this point, Corey bought her several drinks.

When they got up to leave at 2:30 am, Lauren struggled to walk. She left barefoot after leaving her shoes in the sand where they sat & she also left her phone behind, but carried her wristlet with the keycard to her apartment.

When they got back to Lauren’s apartment building, she unlocked the outside door with her keycard before she & Corey took the elevator up to the fifth floor where she lived. As they stepped out into the hallway, surveillance video depicted her struggling to walk as she leaned against the wall & closed her eyes while Corey urged her to keep moving.

Four students came out of the elevator, one who was Jesse’s frat brother. Although he said hi to Lauren, she didn’t seem to recognize him so he waved a hand in front of her face, asking her what she was doing with Corey. When Lauren still didn’t respond, Corey stepped in to say that all was well & he had her.

Things began to escalate as one of the guys told him to bring Lauren into her apartment & leave. Another stepped forward & punched Corey in the face, causing him to fall to the floor. Worried about the security cameras, the four boys fled down the hallway leaving Corey & Lauren alone, each of them lying on the ground.

It was nearing 3 am when Corey pulled Lauren up from the ground & rather than walking less than a hundred yards to her apartment, he decided to take her back to his townhouse instead. As they reached the ground level & went back out into the darkness of night, they clung to one another for support.

When they reached another student apartment building where Corey knew a few girls who lived there, he found an entrance to the building propped open. After carrying Lauren up to the second floor, he knocked on their door, but the girls were likely asleep. It’s unclear why he brought her up there, possibly so the girls could help him with Lauren.

By this time, more than eight hours had passed since Lauren had last eaten. Corey was unaware that six years earlier, she had been diagnosed with long QT syndrome, a genetic heart condition in which the heart takes too long to relax after each heartbeat, causing fluttering arrhythmias & sudden, severe drops in blood pressure.

Since doctors had advised her to avoid anything that might cause the heart to beat irregularly, she was forced to quit sports as a teen. It was a condition that she mostly kept to herself & when she was out of eyesight from her parents at summer camp, she ignored the warnings, running track & playing lacrosse & soccer.

Although she hadn’t experienced any major symptoms, they could come on at any point with heart palpitations, fainting, dizziness & even sudden death. Something as startling as a firecracker could potentially stop her heart. Excess alcohol should also be avoided with long QT syndrome.

As they got onto 10th & College, although Lauren tried to stand on her own, surveillance video proved that she struggled to walk through the parking lot before stopping to sit on a nearby stair. As Corey urged her to get up, he pulled her hand, but when it slipped, she fell back, slamming her head on the concrete.

A female bartender who had just gotten off her shift saw Lauren fall & heard the thud so she asked her if she was okay, but she didn’t answer. Since Lauren seemed sweaty & dazed, the woman was concerned while Corey tried to downplay the situation, saying that she was just drunk.

After the woman walked off, Corey picked Lauren up & carried her down the street like an infant toward an alley that led to his townhouse. After a few steps, she dropped her wristlet before falling a second time, this time forward. Unable to raise her hands for protection, she went straight down to the pavement before getting up & falling again.

As they stood near a dumpster, Corey helped Lauren to the curb while he took his cell phone out & called a friend back home in Sharon, Massachusetts, a girl named Brooke who was 17-years-old & still in high school.

According to cell phone records, when he first called her at 2:09 am while they were still at Sports, he had been unable to reach her. Corey paced nervously back & forth as he called again, now at 2:55 am, but the call went straight to voicemail. Phone records prove that he called Brooke again the following afternoon & they spoke for three minutes.

The majority of the information from this case came from my reading the 2024 book by author & investigative journalist Shawn Cohen, College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight. According to Cohen, what they talked about has never been determined.

When Shawn Cohen spoke with Corey twelve years later in 2023, he claimed that since he & Brooke were close friends, he often called her & he had no recollection of what they talked about on Friday afternoon or why he called her that night when he’d been out with Lauren.

In the final moment captured of Lauren on video, Corey threw her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry & walked the remaining block to his townhouse on the corner of Eleventh & Morton Street.

Although surveillance cameras were fixed on nearly every building along their route, at this point in time, there were no security cameras in place at 5 North Townhomes where Jay & Corey each lived in separate townhomes.

Since it was just after 3 am, no known witnesses were walking around, so from here the story is strictly based on the accounts of those who were there: Corey Rossman, his roommate, Mike Beth, Jay Rosenbaum & his friend who was visiting from Michigan, David Bleznak.

After Lauren vanished, these four young men became persons of interest in Lauren’s case, but they were never named suspects. Lauren’s boyfriend Jesse Wolff, who said he was asleep by this point, was also a person of interest.

Although many people had seen Lauren throughout Thursday night into the early hours of Friday morning & her movements were captured on security cameras, once she reached the townhomes, she was never seen again, which caused many to wonder if she ever made it out of Jay’s alive.

When each of these young men spoke with detectives & later separately with private investigators in the presence of their lawyers, minus Corey, who refused to do so, they indicated that they’d simply done their best to help a girl who was in terrible shape. However, their stories didn’t match & over time, Jay’s evolved. They were unable to clearly answer how Lauren got from Corey’s apartment two doors down to Jay’s or what exactly she had been doing in the 90 minutes she was allegedly there from 3-4:30 am.

According to Corey’s roommate, Mike Beth, Jay called him when he & David got back from Sports so he went over & they were just chatting about their night out. After David went to bed, Jay made himself a sandwich & when he announced that he was heading to bed, Mike went back to his apartment at 3:30 am & was startled to see Corey & Lauren there. Both were very intoxicated.

Lauren wasn’t able to find her phone or shoes so Mike searched their townhome looking for them while Lauren was sitting on the arm of the couch while Corey was slouched over on that same couch. She showed him her apartment keycard as well as her fake ID, letting him know that this was all she had on her.

After Corey vomited on the stairs, Mike helped him to bed & then tried to convince Lauren to spend the night on their couch. She didn’t want to & since he needed to study for a final exam he was taking in only a few hours, he called Jay to help him with her.

However, when Jay first spoke with investigators on September 19, 2011, sixteen days after Lauren vanished, he said that when he & David got back from Sports, they immediately got ready for bed. It was Mike who had called him, letting him know that he needed help with Lauren. Jay made no mention of Mike coming over earlier & chatting about their night while he made a sandwich after David went to bed.

In these versions of events, David would have had no involvement with Lauren as he would have already gone to bed. In 2023, according to David’s lawyer, he only recalled going straight upstairs to bed & he never saw Lauren there.

After Mike brought Lauren over to Jay’s & went back to his place to study, Jay said that she wanted to stay up & continue to party, an idea her mom Charlene finds completely ridiculous. Everyone who saw Lauren after left Sports at 2:30 am, up until she reached Corey’s apartment at about 3 am, indicated that she hadn’t uttered a single word because she’d been so drunk.

Surveillance video also proved that she was unable to stand on her own, falling continuously as she & Corey made their way to his place. She was also likely suffering from a head injury as not only had she fallen backwards & struck her head, but Jay noticed bruising & blackening forming around her eye as a result of her falling forward. All of this reinforces that she had not been coherent enough to say that she wanted to continue to party.

According to Jay, when Lauren said that she wanted to leave, he made her walk in a straight line to prove that she was sober enough to walk back home on her own. She would have been shoeless at this point, without a cell phone or keys to her apartment since they were found lying in an alleyway later that day .

When she left at 4:30 am to walk home, Jay said that he stood at his front door, watching her walk to the corner, asking her if she really was okay, while she assured him she was.

In a follow-up interview two days later on September 21, 2011, Jay’s story changed when he said that he watched Lauren walk to the corner from his second floor Juliet balcony rather than from his front door. He called out to her, asking her to text him when she found her phone.

When he last saw her at the intersection of 11th & College, she appeared to be doing fine as she walked past a construction site on her way back to her apartment. During this second interview, he also mentioned seeing a shadowy figure near Lauren at the corner, theorizing that she may have been abducted.

Later that morning, the massive holes at the construction site that Lauren allegedly walked past were filled with concrete while garbage trucks emptied the city’s trash bins & dumpsters, hauling it all to the landfill outside of town.

A security camera located along Lauren’s route home didn’t capture any images of her walking back.

Two calls had been made from Jay’s phone at 4 am, one to Lauren’s friend David & the other to her friend Scott, that ended in two different stories as to who placed them. While Mike Beth told investigators that Jay had called them so they could help Lauren get home, Jay later claimed that Lauren had made the calls before she left.

Through his lawyer, Corey claimed that he suffered memory loss from being punched that night, saying he had no recollection of the events from fifteen minutes before he was punched in Lauren’s hallway until he woke up in his bed on Friday morning, June 3, 2011. Those that saw him later on Friday morning indicated that he had no noticeable injury to his face. He’s never once spoken with Lauren’s parents to help them with her case.

As Friday morning progressed, Jesse continued to call & text Lauren’s phone without reaching her. When a man suddenly answered, he explained that her phone had been left at Sports, but he would only release it to Lauren or the police.

Jesse’s frat brothers confirmed what he had told investigators, that he had been with a group of them, watching the basketball game at a house on 8th & Park, about three blocks from where he lived. Although many of them were drinking & smoking weed, they said that Jesse was not. He headed home after the game at about midnight & according to Shawn Cohen’s book, he stayed up talking with his roommate, Zack Rifkin, until they both went to bed sometime between 1:30-3 am.

On the other hand, Jesse’s other roommate, Aaron Greenberg, told investigators that he & Jesse had been watching the game alone together at their house & Zack hadn’t even been there. They watched the game in its entirety, drinking beer & smoking weed until 3 am when Aaron went to bed. Since he had a loud fan in his room, he couldn’t say for sure if Jesse had left after this point.

When Aaron was confronted with the discrepancies, although he was shocked that Jesse’s frat brothers told a different story, he admitted that the night had been a blur since he’d been drunk.

When Lauren’s roommate told Jesse that she hadn’t come home on Thursday night, he called around to all of her friends. This is how he came to learn that she’d gone out with Corey that night & had been extremely intoxicated.

At the time, her friends weren’t immediately concerned since it was college & kids were often crashing at other places after a night of drinking. They knew Lauren as a heavy sleeper who could stay in bed until 2 pm.

When her friends saw Corey & Jay that day, they seemed very calm & casual as they described Lauren as being pretty messed up when she left their complex the night before. They also seemed surprised to hear that Jesse still hadn’t heard from her. As a group came together to begin looking for her, they joined in.

When they retraced her obvious path home, one of the students found Lauren’s set of keys down an alley with a hamsa hand keychain attached, a Jewish symbol for protection.

By that afternoon, her friends had called area hospitals as well as the jail, but there was still no sign of Lauren. Hearing just how impaired she had been the night before, they went to the police station to report her missing when they still hadn’t found her by early evening.

Jesse also called Lauren’s older sister Rebecca to let her know what was going on so she could notify her parents.

A Bloomington police officer told them that they couldn’t file a report until Lauren had been missing for twenty-four hours. They explained the situation, begging him to take the case seriously right now. Jesse voiced that he always feared something like this would happen since there were many times Lauren passed out in an alleyway, so drunk that if he hadn’t found her, something terrible could have happened.

Rob & Charlene landed at Indianapolis Airport as the sun rose on Saturday morning, June 4, 2011, twenty-four hours since Lauren was last seen. While Rob flew in from New York, Charlene came in from Alabama where she’d been tending to her ailing mother.

Their first stop was the Bloomington police station so they could get caught up on that status of the investigation. Officers had taken dogs to Lauren’s apartment & followed the general path she would have taken on Thursday night, searching in dumpsters & ditches as they looked toward the sky for vultures that might alert them to a dead body. Dive teams searched Lake Monroe, but crews didn’t search through the acres of garbage at the landfill until two months after Lauren had been missing due to bureaucratic hold-ups.

When it was finally searched in August, only one to two of the twenty acres of trash from Bloomington were searched. Since temperatures were scorching & the air was filled with the stench of rotting meat, cadaver dogs were of little to no use.

Charlene & Rob also went to a copy center to print up fliers with their daughter’s photo & information, attaching them all around town. They contacted a friend in New York, asking that the media be alerted while they set up a command center out of their hotel room at the Hilton Garden Inn.

Search teams gathered each morning with parties going out three times a week, combing over the woods outside of Bloomington.

Soon, Lauren’s disappearance garnered national headlines as celebrities took to social media to share her story using the hashtag Find Lauren. Her case was covered on the Today show, Good Morning America & America’s Most Wanted.

Attention was quickly focused on Corey Rossman & Jay Rosenbaum since they had been with Lauren on the night she vanished.

Initially, Jay was cooperative, going on two ride-alongs with police, handing over his cell phone & credit card records as well as giving statements. After his family retained high-powered defense attorney Jim Voyles, who represented Mike Tyson in his 1992 rape trial, his interaction with investigators stopped almost immediately.

In the aftermath of Lauren’s disappearance, Corey, who was on campus for summer classes, failed several of his tests before he was granted a medical leave & left campus. In the investigative files, an IU professor described him as an entitled kid with an explosive temper.

When Jesse’s parents flew in from New York on the Sunday after Lauren went missing, they met Charlene & Rob for the first time. Although they suggested that their son take a polygraph test to clear him as a suspect, Rob & Charlene got a text from Jesse’s mom the next day, saying they were heading to the airport to fly home.

Since there is no footage of Lauren leaving Jay or Corey’s townhomes, rumors began to spread that Lauren had likely overdosed that night or died as a result of her heart condition. It was suggested that one or more people panicked & disposed of her body.

Theories suggested that Jay’s two friends who were in town from Michigan, Alex Ferber & David Bleznak, could have disposed of her body on their way back home. They’d driven Alex’s family car, which was never searched.

At only 4’11” and 90 pounds, Lauren’s body could have also been easily placed in a bag & carried to the dumpsters that were only steps away before it was hauled away later that morning.

When Mike Beth spoke with the media days after Lauren vanished, they couldn’t help but notice that he referred to her in the past tense saying, I just hope they find her. She was our friend.

Since the young men had lawyered up & the story remained that Lauren had left Jay’s townhouse at about 4:30 am, the case began to run cold. Police began losing hope that Lauren would ever be found or that anyone would be held accountable for her disappearance.

Twelve days after she vanished, when police held their daily press briefing, they showed a photo of a white four-door Chevy Silverado that had ran a stop sign right around the time Lauren went missing. They were asking for the public’s help in identifying the driver. The truck was also seen circling a block near her presumed route home at 4:14 am. Ten minutes later it was further down the street only a block from her last known whereabouts at 5 North Townhomes.

Early on in the investigation, an unhomed woman reported hearing a female’s screams at about 4 am that morning which alluded to the idea that Lauren could have been abducted after leaving Jay’s.

Nearly 500 tips came in about the truck & police were able to track down the owner. When they did, they realized that the truck hadn’t even been in the area during that timeframe since the timestamp on the video had been incorrect, putting the investigation back at square one.

On their return home to New York from Indiana, Rob & Charlene connected with Bo Dietl, a man who runs one of the most prominent private investigative agencies in New York City. As he & his team made their way into Bloomington, it was clear they were not welcome by the BPD.

Meanwhile, when school was back in session in the fall at IU, Jay Rosenbaum became a pariah around campus. Signs were hung on his door saying, FIND LAUREN.

After bumping into Lauren’s friend Taylor at the bars one night, Jay convinced her to meet him at his apartment so he could tell her exactly what happened that night. He mentioned that there had been an iPod lying on the counter that Lauren, in her intoxicated state, believed was a phone & continued to try to make phone calls with it.

Since the iPod was missing after she left, he’s sure she took it with her. Taylor asked him if he told the police about this since it was possible that the iPod could be tracked. He responded, Oh, I don’t know. I told them. Although he had mentioned Lauren trying to use his iPod as a phone, he never mentioned her leaving with it.

As the fall semester of 2011 was coming to an end at IU, Jesse Wolff was preparing to graduate in December. When the Spierer’s PI set up a meeting with him around this time, he abruptly left town to drive back to New York one day before their meeting. He left a lot of personal belongings behind in his apartment as well as six months on his lease that he stopped making payments on.

After the landlord gave the PI permission, his apartment was searched & the PI found two documents in his dresser. One was an article discussing the story of a woman named Kristin Lardner who was brutally murdered by her abusive boyfriend in Boston in 1992. He also jotted down an article on a notebook page, The stalking of Kristin: The law made it easy for my daughter’s killer.

Nine months after Lauren vanished, Jay & his mom agreed to meet with the Spierer’s PI at a Starbucks. Although he previously told investigators that he’d seen Lauren & Corey at Sports together, but only from afar, this time, he said they were all there together. He said he was convinced that Lauren had been abducted after leaving his townhouse based on the shadowy figure he saw near her.

As the one year anniversary of her disappearance rolled around, Charlene & Rob tearfully admitted that they believed their daughter was no longer alive. It was their wish to find her body, to bring her home & to deliver justice to whoever was responsible for her death.

As the two year anniversary approached, the Spierers filed a lawsuit against the three men who were last known to have seen their daughter alive: Jay Rosenbaum, Corey Rossman & Mike Beth. They hoped it would force them to share crucial information, including text messages & anything that could shed light on their involvement.

Since there was no proof that Jesse Wolff had been with Lauren that night, they were unable to sue him.

The lawsuit alleged that the three men were responsible for negligence resulting in the disappearance, death or injury of an adult child. Because Lauren was severely intoxicated, they owed her a duty of care & failed that by supporting her drinking & allowing her to walk home alone.

Since Mike Beth hadn’t been out with Lauren that night, the case against him was dismissed early on as there was no evidence that he had provided her with alcohol.

Months later, the cases against Jay & Corey were also dismissed. The judge wrote that because there was no way of knowing what injuries, if any, Lauren sustained & without evidence to prove any of the theories around her disappearance, a jury would have no way of determining if whatever happened to her was natural or a result of her intoxication.

A later appeal was also denied citing nothing under Indiana law where people are held liable for the actions of their social peers.

Four years after Lauren disappeared, IU senior Hannah Wilson vanished after a night out with friends on Friday, April 24, 2015. She was last seen just before 1 am after her friends put her in a cab home from the bars. We covered Hannah’s case in episode 203 which was released on July 20, 2025.

49-year-old Daniel Messel, who lived in Bloomington with his father, was convicted of her murder. The prosecution theorized that Daniel, who had been trolling around IU’s campus for young girls since at least 2012, had followed Hannah’s taxi back to her house from Kilroy’s, the very bar where Lauren had been the night she vanished.

After the taxi dropped her off at home, Hannah somehow ended up in his car where he drove her to an open field in Brown County & murdered her. Police quickly connected him to Hannah’s case since his cellphone was found under her right foot when her body was found the next morning. In 2016, he was sentenced to 80 years in prison.

Daniel Messel was known to troll the campus in search of intoxicated students who were out alone. One 22-year-old woman found herself in his SUV on September 1, 2012, a little more than a year after Lauren vanished, with no recollection as to how she got there. He brought her to a secluded area, tried to force her to perform oral sex, but she was able to fight him off.

Although investigators found DNA evidence under her fingernails during her medical exam, it was never run through any databases as there was insufficient quantity for comparison at the time. After Hannah’s murder, the victim contacted authorities in 2016 & when the state police lab ran the DNA, it was a match to Daniel Messel. With this evidence, he was charged in relation to this case as well.

It also came to light that Messel had been questioned in November 2012 after an 18-year-old IU freshman was out with friends, celebrating Halloween. When he saw her walking home alone, he offered her a ride. Once inside his car, he grabbed the back of her neck, pulling her face into his lap while his pants were unzipped. After he slammed her head against the steering wheel & dashboard, she was able to get away.

After he was questioned by the BPD, they felt they didn’t have enough evidence to charge him, alleging that the young woman wasn’t able to provide a good enough description of her attacker.

After his conviction, the BPD began to investigate the possible connection between Lauren’s disappearance & Daniel Messel. He was known to troll a four-by-five block area dubbed the zone of danger looking for victims who fit exactly Lauren’s profile: young, female, intoxicated & alone. Lauren would have been in his zone of danger at 4:30 am on June 3, 2011 had she left Jay’s apartment to walk home as he claimed.

However, without any direct evidence, investigators were unable to find a link between Messel & Lauren.

Author Shawn Cohen spoke with Corey in 2023 in anticipation of publishing his book. Corey said he wanted to sum up what happened by saying, he was out one night, came home, went to bed, woke up & learned that Lauren was missing. Had she overdosed in their presence, he insists they would have called for help. He also argued that he’d passed a polygraph test that was overseen by his legal team.

When Cohen spoke with Jay in 2023, he said that as Lauren was preparing to leave his townhome, she was drunk, but not call 911 drunk. He argued that it’s preposterous to even consider that she died at his place & they got rid of her body as they were only 20-year-old college kids. He went on to say that while Corey had been drunk & belligerent, he & Mike didn’t even have cars on campus & no cameras picked up their movement suggesting this theory.

Both Corey & Jay have been vocal about the theory that serial killer, Israel Keyes, could have been responsible for Lauren’s disappearance. Before he killed himself in his jail cell on December 2, 2012, Israel Keyes confessed to killing eight people, three of which he named & have been confirmed (Samantha Koenig in Anchorage & Bill & Lorraine Currier in Essex, Vermont), but he alluded to killing as many as eleven people.

On the day Lauren went out with her friends, Thursday, June 2, 2011, Keyes flew from Anchorage, Alaska to Chicago’s O’Hare International airport four hours northwest of Bloomington. He immediately picked up a rental car from Hertz adjacent to the airport in Des Plaines. That night, he drove through three toll booths in Indiana, with plans to visit family members in Harlan, Indiana 3 hours northeast of Bloomington.

It’s unclear what time he landed on Thursday, but he didn’t arrive in Harlan until Friday afternoon, June 3, 2011 & he hadn’t gotten a hotel room on Thursday night. Despite the fact that there’s no hard evidence linking him to Lauren’s disappearance, there was potentially a 14+ hour window of time that he was unaccounted for. When he was shown a photo of Lauren & asked if he had anything to do with her disappearance, he didn’t admit to or deny an involvement, responding, That’s how hard it’s going to be for you guys to figure it out.

Despite the passage of fifteen years, Lauren’s family have been left unable to properly grieve, still completely in the dark as to what happened to her or where she is. Charlene believes that her daughter never left Jay’s townhouse.

Although so many years have passed, the Spierers have yet to file paperwork to declare their daughter legally dead. They have come to accept that she’s physically gone from this world & the only way they’ll ever get an answer is if someone chooses to finally come forward with information.

In the meantime, they’re left with the hope that they’ll one day bring her home so she could be properly laid to rest. In a letter they wrote to their daughter on what would have been her 22nd birthday on January 17, 2013, Rob & Charlene wrote, There will be no gifts mailed to Bloomington, no cake, no candles, no excited anticipation as the celebration of one so loved approaches. We are left only with the gifts the person responsible for Lauren’s disappearance has given our family, despair, heartache & loss. There will never be another Lauren.