Missing: Bryce Laspisa and Brian Shaffer (Part 2)

MISSING PERSONS: Bryce Laspisa was a 19-year-old college student when he disappeared on August 30, 2013. Brian Shaffer was a 27-year-old medical student at Ohio State University when he disappeared on April 1, 2006.

Neither has been seen since the nights they vanished and despite tips and reports, there have been no solid leads to where they could be. While it’s hoped they are still alive, their families and friends are searching for any information on what happened to their loved ones.

For part one, click here!

Missing: Bryce Laspisa and Brian Shaffer

Theories for Both

When adults go missing, there is always the question of, “Did they leave on purpose and of their own accord?” OR “Did they commit suicide?” Families don’t like to consider either of these and want to focus on foul play, but it’s important that we acknowledge all possibilities.

Did Brian or Bryce leave on purpose?

Brian was a 2nd year medical student whose mother had just died after a battle with cancer. Medical school is, no doubt, stressful (and it was mentioned that his real desire was to be a musician) and losing a loved one at all is difficult to manage let alone having it be because of cancer where you watch the person you love deteriorate and then on top of that it was his mother who was described as the center of his world. This was a very hard time for Brian. Maybe he just walked away from it all?

However, this theory kind of falls apart thinking about what and who he would have been leaving. Brian had a girlfriend he was in love with and who loved him. They were going on a trip to Miami the next week. Brian’s dad and brother had dinner with him the night before he disappeared and saw nothing unusual. Plus, Brian postponed going out that night until he could have dinner with them. He wanted to be there for them. While he’d lost his mom very recently and was definitely grieving, everyone in his life said that he was handling the loss in a “healthy way.” Brian was doing well in med school and Alexis was also in med school and supportive. They were very close.

Brian left without his car or any other clothing, hygiene needs, or anything you’d need. Sure he could replace those with things he’d buy on the road, but his cards have never been used. Not to charge anything, withdraw money, rent a hotel room/lodging of some kind. Nothing.

The possibility of Bryce leaving on his own seems slightly more believable, but only a little. Bryce broke up with his girlfriend and gave away prized possessions. He had been behaving strangely leading up to his disappearance and said that he had something important he wanted to talk to his mom about, but never shared what.

When his SUV was found, he had left behind his cellphone, wallet with all his cards, his laptop, and a duffle bag with clothes. If you’re going to disappear, you probably don’t want those things with you to avoid being tracked. Could he have gotten out of his car and walked up to the truckstop and hitched rides? His erratic behavior could have been partly due to his reported increase in drug use and alcohol intake which could have been what he wanted to talk about or could be part of why he left.

The drug and alcohol use might not have been the only issue. Bryce was at the age where people tend to experience their first psychotic episode or a psychotic break. Could his drug use have enhanced or provoked a psychotic break or visa versa? On top of his substance issues and possible psychotic break, Bryce had been using Vyvanse that is typically prescribed for ADHD, so that he could stay up for extended periods. Lack of sleep can cause many of the same issues as a psychosis.

Below, we’ve included a comment from Reddit that has been shared on TONS of posts regarding this case….

theanonymoushooligan
Something of an insider here…

I can say with certainty that there were issues between Bryce and his family. While Bryce’s mother, Karen, is an unrepentant psycho, I am told that Bryce had a tight, borderline codependent relationship with her in the years leading up to his disappearance, but not much is known about their relationship in the final year or so. His relationship with his father, Mike, was at times very tumultuous as Mike would lose his temper, yell, and scream at Bryce over things as trivial as not understanding how to complete his math homework. I don’t know if the relationship was ever physically violent, but there was most definitely a lot of verbal/emotional abuse going on in that household, and not just with Bryce.

The latter part of Bryce’s teen years were marred by a few incidents, such as getting busted with MDMA, as well as a lot of underage drinking issues that have gone largely unreported, all of which served to soil his familial ties. As I understand, Bryce was well on his way to becoming a teen-aged alcoholic. He was apparently known for taking booze to high school and spending some school days maintaining a desired level of intoxication. It’s very safe to assume that this behavior continued to spiral out (evidenced by his taste for Adderall and other scripts), and he suffered a psychotic break from it (evidenced by his friends calling his mother with their concerns). It must have been some pretty disturbing behavior in order for kids, who all used drugs recreationally, to contact their friend’s parents with concerns about his mental state.

When Bryce left home to attend community college, he did not do so by his own motivation. Karen and Mike shopped around for what school he would attend, gave him no decision in the matter, and shipped him out when the school year began. The decision was in part based on the availability of dormitories as they wanted Bryce out of the home as soon as possible, which seems in keeping of what I know to be true of their “parenting”. They sent him to Sierra College, in Rocklin, CA, which is a 460 mile drive from his parents’ home in Laguna Niguel.

Mike and Karen were both very controlling parents, the type that foster harsh, rebellious behavior from their kids. They sought to control every aspect of his life and used their money to do so. Bryce owned literally nothing of his own and was frequently reminded of it when he stepped out of line. To me, his actions were a great big “fuck you” to his manipulative, controlling, abusive parents. What better way to let them know you’re done than by intentionally wrecking their car and leaving behind all the accoutrements they paid for with their money, and leveraged as a means of control? The time he spent in that small rural town was most likely waiting on someone to give him a ride. I believe the big story he wanted to tell his family was that he would be dropping out of school and moving elsewhere. I believe he wanted to say it to their faces but chickened out and decided that he was just going to move on. I believe his family knows this and have used the media, his friends, and so on, to wage a pressure campaign against him. I believe the police have encountered him at some point and have respected a request for silence, thus leading them to their conclusion that he is “voluntarily missing”.

According to many health resources, sleep deprivation can cause mood swings, anxiety, depression, impulsivity, paranoia, and suicidal thoughts. Which is the next theory.

Suicide

While the theory of suicide is breifly considered in Brain’s disappearance, it wasn’t nearly as prominent as other theories. Bryce on the other hand, as we mentioned, had been behaving very differently than anyone who knew him was used to.

If the drug use or alcohol or a psychotic break were happening, perhaps Bryce was suicidal. Either he had been considering it and the started the “self medicating” OR he started using and drinking and/or having some sort of mental issues that made him feel like suicide was his only option. However he may have gotten to the point where he might have been suicidal, the classic signs of someone contemplating suicide were there.

Brice broke up with his girlfriend, Kim who he thought would be “better off without” him and sent a heartfelt text message to his roommate and good friend, Sean. He was giving away things that were important or special. His Xbox and some diamond earrings he was given by his mom.

Bryce spent hours on the side of the road, could he have been debating with himself?

When his Highlander was found, it appeared to investigators that the SUV went over the embankment at a high rate of speed and without using the breaks. Was he trying to drive into the lake or just crash his car hard enough to kill himself? But Bryce was nowhere to be found when his car was discovered so if he did attempt suicide and fail, he walked away and was never seen again.

Foul Play

Since neither Bryce nor Brian has turned back up, the obvious and sad intuitive leap is that they encountered foul play.

Brian was out late at a bar in an area that was known for being high crime. Could Brian have left the bar without his friends and then run into something nefarious? One theory online suggests that Brian started chatting with the band while they were packing up their gear. Perhaps the staff closed down the bar and weren’t concerned with Brian thinking he was with the band. Doors got locked and Brian was still inside with the band. So he walks out with the band and staff and then encounters something.

It’s also thought that maybe Brian slipped out the emergency exit and into the construction area that was very hazardous. It was described as “dark and chaotic.” In this area theories consider; could Brian have fallen in a hole and then was covered in cement? The theory suggests that perhaps the construction workers showed up the next morning and found him injured or dead and fearing the repercussions, they covered him in cement to hide the evidence. This theory crumbles when you consider that to have died and been covered with cement you’d have to think that multiple people at a construction site agreed and felt it better to bury him in cement than to call the police. The sewers were checked and there was no sign of Brian, so falling down a manhole is not super likely either.

OR perhaps he never really left the Ugly Tuna Saloona? It’s thought that maybe Brian died inside the bar somehow and that the staff members were worried about lawsuits. In order to protect the bar and themselves, they snuck him out of the bar through the emergency exit and disposed of his body somehow.

This theory doesn’t suggest that Brian’s body is still in the Ugly Tuna because the police scoured that place and found no sign of Brian. But could multiple staff members at a bar come together to hide a body and then keep quiet about it for years? The Ugly Tuna closed down eventually, would this theory suggest that their loyalty to the bar and the people they worked with was so great that they are still not talking? NO ONE HAS RATTED OUT THE OTHERS?!

Bryce’s main foul play theories involve Lamondre Miles (the burning body) and the truckers at the truck stop. Bryce wound up at Castaic Lake around the time that another murder took place. It has been considered that perhaps this wasn’t a coincidence. Perhaps Bryce witnessed something he shouldn’t have and was murdered? But why wouldn’t the murderers treat Bryce and Lamondre’s bodies the same and leave them both there burning in the brush?

The foul play theory with Bryce also includes the possibility of a head injury. It’s possible that Bryce had any number or variations of the previous things going on; drugs/alcohol, psychosis, suicidal ideation etc. etc. etc. Whatever was going on with him that caused him to behave the way he was and led to the crashing of his SUV could have been exacerbated by him receiving a head injury in the car accident.

This theory suggests that he got a head injury and it caused him to be disoriented or possibly to have forgotten who he was. Then he wandered to the truck stop and left with a trucker. It’s also thought that maybe he hitched a ride with a trucker (because of a head injury or on purpose) and either that trucker murdered him or he kept hitchhiking and eventually someone else killed him.

The Smiley Face Killers

The other theory that wasn’t discussed for Bryce, but could fit for him about as much as it fits for Brian.

The Smiley Face Killers is a theory developed by Detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte after the death of Patrick McNeill. McNeill was a college student who drowned in New York City in 1997. His case was originally ruled an accident due to being drunk. However, Detective Gannon examined the information available and came to a different conclusion. Gannon made a promise to McNeill’s parents that he would prove that their son was the victim of a homicide.

Gannon and Duarte would be joined in their theory by a retired NYPD detective, Mike Donovan and St. Cloud University sociology professor, Dr. Lee Gilbertson. This team developed the theory that there was a crew of serial killers across the nation who would drug college aged men at bars or parties then kidnap them to torture and kill then dump their bodies in nearby bodies of water. They discovered that in many of the cases in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Iowa there were smiley faces spray painted near the dump location.

They publicly announced the theory in 2008 and a couple cases were reclassified as homicides, but there have been skeptics to this theory.

In the spray painted smiley faces, there were no consistencies. The paint colors, sizes, and style were not the same across the cases. And multiple agencies investigated the cases to see if there were links, but none of the agencies could determine a credible link between the cases. Then the Center for Homicide Research released a 12-page report called “Drowning the Smiley Face Murder Thoery.” They explained all the inconsistencies and why they don’t buy the theory.

They reported that there were “time-order problems” and commented on the differing graffiti. They also pointed out that the team had no criteria for the distance between the graffiti and the location of the body. Finally, they pointed out that there was no evidence of victim trauma in the majority of the cases meaning no torture had taken place. It was very clear that the men had been intoxicated and that there was documentation that both men and women fell into the bodies of water where the victims were later found. Then in 2008, the FBI released a statement reiterating that they also found no connection between the cases.

Brian nor Bryce have been located dead or alive so there is no location where a body has been located and smiley face graffiti nearby. The only similarity is that Brian disappeared from a bar and is a college student (albeit an older one at 27). Bryce wasn’t included in this theory, but there’s just as much information suggesting he was a victim of the Smiley Face Killers – he was a college student who disappeared and there was water.

Descriptions, CrimeStoppers, and Tip Lines

Brian Randall Shaffer was 27 years old when he disappeared on April 1, 2006 and would now (2021) be 42 now. He was 6’2” and weighed about 165 lbs when he vanished. He had light brown hair and occasionally wore glasses. He has a Pearl Jam StickMan tattoo on his right bicep and a black spot in his left iris.

If you have any information about Brian’s disappearance you can call: (614)461-TIPS or (877)645-8477.

Bryce Laspisa was 19-years-old when he disappeared August 31, 2013 and would be 27-years old (in April 2021). He was 5’11” and about 170 lbs. He has bright red hair and green eyes. He has pierced ears and a large tattoo of a Taurus bull on his left shoulder.

If you have information about Byrce’s disappearance you can call:

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office (323)890-5500

Family tip line (949)292-4400

CrimeStoppers (800)222-TIPS

Or email the family tip email: findbrycelaspisa@gmail.com