In the early morning hours of June 3, 2011, 20-year-old college sophomore, Lauren Spierer, disappeared off the face of the earth. After a night of heavy drinking and reported drug use, Lauren, extremely intoxicated, was said to have left a friend’s apartment, alone, barefoot, and without any of her belongings, and began walking towards her apartment. She was never seen again and her remains have never been located. Was Lauren a victim of opportunity, falling prey to a serial killer? Or were the “friends” she’d been with all night covering up Lauren’s death, whether it had been intentional or accidental?
Who was Lauren?
Lauren Spierer was born on January 17, 1991 to Charlene and Robert Spierer. She had a big sister named Rebecca. The family grew up in Scarsdale, New York, which in 2019 and 2020, was listed as the east coast’s richest town. Most of the published information about Lauren is regarding her disappearance, so there is very little information about her childhood, however her family continues to remind the public how important she was, and still is, to them. On the Facebook page dedicated to finding Lauren, her family wrote, “…we have an undying love for Lauren. Lauren is like a breath of fresh air, she is the bright spot in the day of those who knew her. Lauren would never give up, she would fight for answers, she would be the loudest voice.”
Lauren graduated from Edgemont High School in 2009 and was accepted to Indiana University in 2009, where she was studying textiles merchandising. Lauren loved helping others and even spent one of her spring breaks in Israel, planting trees with the Jewish National Fund. She was small, but mighty. At only 5 feet tall and 90 pounds, Lauren was athletic and outgoing. She didn’t let her size keep her from having a huge impact on the people around her
The Disappearance
Lauren was finishing up her sophomore year at Indiana University and working on her degree in textile merchandising when she went out for a night with friends. Rob and Charlene, Lauren’s parents, felt comfortable with their daughter being at IU. Despite the fact that the university consistently ranks in the top 20 party schools of the US, the Spierers felt like their daughter was in a safe atmosphere.
Lauren was only 20 years old, but in a college town, it wasn’t difficult for someone underage to get alcohol. On Thursday June 2nd, 2011, Lauren had several friends over to her apartment to watch a basketball game and drink. Her boyfriend, Jesse Wolff, wasn’t at her apartment that night. He was at his own place, just north of campus, watching the Knicks’ game. Lauren and Jesse had been dating for about three years, after they met at a summer sleepaway camp in Pennsylvania. Jesse said that Lauren told him that she was planning on going to bed soon, after the basketball game was over. After texting a bit more, Jesse went to bed around 2:30AM.
At 12:30AM, Lauren left her apartment with her friend, David Rohn. Witnesses said that Lauren was fairly intoxicated by this time. They went to Lauren’s friend, Jay Rosenbaum’s, townhouse about two blocks away. Here, Lauren met up with Jay, several of his friends, and his neighbor, Corey Rossman. There were approximately 10 people at Jay’s. Lauren had met Corey a few days prior at the Indianapolis 500. Apparently, Corey had made it clear to his friends that despite Lauren having a boyfriend, he was interested in her. According to witnesses, Lauren continued drinking alcohol at this party and possibly engaged in the use of Klonopin and cocaine. Klonopin is a benzodiazepine that is prescribed for anxiety and panic disorders, as well as to control seizures.
Corey and Lauren left Jay’s apartment and headed to a nearby bar, Kilroy’s Sports Bar. Bars in Bloomington were open until 3AM, so college students typically pre-gamed at home until they went to the bars after midnight. She used her fake ID to enter the bar. There is reportedly quite a bit of surveillance video footage of Lauren from that night, however it’s unclear exactly what’s available to the public and what footage has only been viewed by police, and they’ve reported their findings to the public without releasing the footage. Lauren and Corey were seen entering Kilroy’s at 1:46AM, now the early morning of Friday, June 3rd.
While at Kilroy’s, Lauren takes off her shoes to walk on the sand-covered patio. When she left the bar at 2:27AM and began walking with Corey to the Smallwood Plaza apartments, where Lauren lived, she was still barefoot, leaving her shoes and her cell phone at Kilroy’s.
At 2:30AM, witnesses saw Lauren and Corey entering the apartment complex. Zach Oakes, a passerby, recalled that Lauren appeared extremely intoxicated. He, along with three of his friends, were concerned about how drunk Lauren was. Zach, who was reportedly friends with Lauren’s boyfriend Jesse, asked Corey if Lauren was all right. Corey responded, “She’s okay, I got it.” Zach said that he then told Corey to take Lauren back to her apartment. Corey supposedly cursed at Zach, which started an altercation, in which Zach ended up punching Corey in the face. Corey fell to the floor and later told police that after he was hit, he lost most of his memory from the night. Lauren did not go to her apartment at this time.
Surveillance video showed Lauren stumbling inside the building and almost falling. Corey helped her up and they exited the building. Shortly after, bystanders saw Lauren sitting down on concrete steps and falling backwards, hitting her head on one of the steps. Apparently, the noise of her head striking the concrete was so loud that the bystander stopped to ask her if she was okay. Corey said that she was fine and that he was taking care of her. She was witnessed falling two more times while walking to Corey’s apartment complex. During the second fall, Lauren, extremely inebriated and unable to guard her face, struck her face on the ground. Sometime during this walk to Corey’s, Lauren dropped her keys and her ID card.
After this, there is reportedly surveillance video showing Corey carrying Lauren over his shoulder. They entered an alley that runs between College Avenue and Morton Street. There were security cameras that showed her coming out of the alley at 2:51AM, when she continued walking towards an open lot. Lauren’s keys and purse were later found in this alley.
Lauren and Corey arrived at Corey’s apartment, where he, also extremely intoxicated, promptly vomited on the floor, then went to bed. Michael Beth, Corey’s roommate, was home and helped him to bed. Michael said that after that, he tried to get Lauren to sleep over since she was so intoxicated. Michael said that Lauren insisted on returning to her own apartment. At 3:30AM, Michael called his neighbor and Lauren’s friend, Jay Rosenbaum. Remember, they were at his apartment earlier that evening. Lauren eventually left Michael’s apartment and went to Jay’s, where he said that he saw a bruise under her eye. Lauren reportedly said that she didn’t know how she got the bruise.
Phone records showed two calls placed from Jay’s phone just before she reportedly left. One was to her friend, David, who she’d been with after leaving her apartment earlier the previous night and the other was to another friend. Neither picked up and Lauren didn’t leave any voicemails. At 4:30AM, Jay said that Lauren left his apartment on her own. He said that he last saw her at the intersection of 11th Street and College Avenue, heading south on College. She was wearing black leggings, a white shirt, and was barefooted. Jay later told private investigator, Mike Ciravolo, who’d been hired by the Spierers that he went out on his terrace after Lauren left and yelled to her, “text me when you find your phone.” Ciravolo said, “that he’s not sure, but he thinks he may have seen another individual in the shadows intercept Spierer on the corner of 11th and College, and then he loses sight of her around the corner.” This was the last reported sighting of Lauren Spierer.
Several hours later, Jesse texted Lauren on her cell phone. An employee at Kilroy’s, where Lauren had left her phone, responded. Unable to find Lauren or get in contact with her, Jesse reported his girlfriend missing to the Bloomington Police Department.
The Investigation
Based on posts that Lauren’s mom, Charlene, wrote on the official Facebook page dedicated to finding Lauren, Rob, her husband, called to tell her that her daughter was missing.
“Initially, you feel physically sick. Your heart races, your breathing all but stops. You feel as if you cannot stand. The heat rises and your head pounds. You are speechless. You are incredulous. After the initial shock, the adrenalin takes over. You call the police department, you call the airlines, and you wait…each passing moment agony. You desperately want someone to call you, to tell you Lauren is OK. You miss an incoming “blocked” call. Your heart sinks. You think you’ve missed the one call that can lead you to the discovery of your daughter.”
Charlene said that within the first hours of finding out her daughter was missing, she called every hospital in and around Bloomington, looking for Lauren or any ‘Jane Doe’ who matched her description. Nobody had seen her. Charlene had been out of town visiting her family. Charlene’s father drove her to the airport so she could take the next flight to Bloomington. Rob, who had been at home in New York, met her at the Indianapolis airport on June 5th. The couple drove to the Bloomington Police Department, hoping that they’d already closed the investigation, that Lauren had been found. Unfortunately, she was still missing. After meeting with police, Charlene and Rob created the first missing post for Lauren. Charlene began hanging posters, while Rob searched the area that Lauren had last been.
A massive ground search commenced, with hundreds of volunteers searching for any sign of Lauren. On June 7th, police executed a search warrant on Lauren’s apartment building. On June 8th, divers searched nearby Lake Monroe, just a few miles southeast of Bloomington. In addition to the $100,000 reward that the Spierers were offering for information leading to Lauren, the owner of the Indianapolis Colts offered $10,000. On June 15th, police announced that they had 10 persons of interest, however they were not named. They also released a surveillance video still of a white truck that had been seen in the area that Lauren was reportedly last seen. They also released a photo of Lauren taken from surveillance footage that showed her leaving her apartment that night. On June 25th, the last large-scale organized search for Lauren took place in Bloomington, but unfortunately, she wasn’t located.
On August 16th, police searched through about 4,000 tons of garbage at the Sycamore Ridge Landfill. This landfill was where trash from Bloomington would have been taken.
A few months following Lauren’s disappearance, on August 17th, Charlene and Rob left Bloomington to return to New York for their other daughter’s birthday. Before they left, they had to pack up Lauren’s belongings. Charlene recalled that her daughter’s belongings fit into 19 boxes. They shipped the boxes back home to New York, no closer to finding their daughter than they had been when they’d first arrived in Bloomington three months earlier.
On September 15th, Kilroy’s Sports Bar was cited for serving alcohol to Lauren, who used a fake ID, on the night she disappeared. On December 20th, Charlene and Rob made a public statement, saying that they didn’t believe Lauren was still alive.
It seemed that Lauren’s case had quickly hit a dead end, despite the significant amount of tips coming in. By May of 2013, investigators had gotten 3,060 tips on Lauren’s disappearance. While Jesse, Corey, and Jay were all REPORTEDLY cooperating with police, they refused to take lie detector tests. On June 27th, 2013, Charlene and Rob filed a civil lawsuit against Corey, Jay, and Michael, stating that the three men were negligent on the night that Lauren disappeared. They said that both Corey and Jay provided alcohol to Lauren, who was underage and already significantly intoxicated. In December of the same year, a federal judge dismissed the suit against Michael. In October of 2014, the cases against Corey and Jay were also dismissed. The Spierers hoped that in pursuing the lawsuits, the court would compel both Corey and Jay to disclose more information about the morning that Lauren disappeared. Additionally, they hoped that the statements that the men gave to police after Lauren’s disappearance would be revealed to them. Lauren’s parents had not been told what information was in the statements that police received from them.
On April 24, 2015, another Indiana University student, 22-year-old Hannah Wilson, disappeared. She had spent the night partying with friends, when the group headed to Kilroy’s, the same bar that Lauren had been at the night she disappeared. While standing outside of the bar, two of Hannah’s male friends believed she was too intoxicated to go into the bar. They put her in a cab to head home. The cab driver was the last person to see her alive, other than the person who killed her. The cab driver watched Hannah walk towards her house. Hannah’s roommates found her belongings sitting on her bed and the front door open the next morning. Later that day, Hannah’s body was found on a rural road. She’d been bludgeoned to death. A man who had no known connection to Hannah was arrested and found guilty of her murder. There were no links found between the man charged in Hannah’s murder and Lauren. Hannah’s case brought Lauren’s case back into the limelight, reminding people that Lauren was still missing.
In January of 2016, two properties were searched by investigators in Martinsville, about 20 minutes away from Bloomington. The two properties belonged to Justin Wager and his family. A tip called into police said that Wager might have knowledge of Lauren’s disappearance. He had a history of indecent exposure and stalking. No evidence was found linking Wager to Lauren. Despite the tips that were still being called into investigators, the search for Lauren seemed to be standing still. It didn’t seem like any progress had been made since the day that Lauren disappeared.
Theories
While the possibility that Lauren truly did leave Jay’s apartment that night, alive and well, albeit extremely intoxicated, hasn’t been ruled out, many people believe that it’s very unlikely that Lauren was the victim of a stranger abduction. Most theories center around the three men that Lauren was last with before she disappeared, Jay Rosenbaum, Michael Beth, and Corey Rossman. It’s reported that the three men have taken private polygraphs, as well as FBI-administered polygraphs. This is mentioned in a lot of places, however I can’t find any SOLID proof they did or any results. All of the men involved have said multiple times that they don’t trust the Bloomington Police Department.
In addition to denying having anything to do with Lauren’s disappearance, the men seemed to place the blame on Lauren. Jay told police that Lauren was drinking heavily and snorting cocaine and crushed up Klonopin at his apartment that night. Lauren’s boyfriend, Jesse, and his parents have told police and reporters that Lauren had used drugs frequently in the past. Jesse’s mother, Nadine, said that Lauren was asked to leave the summer camp that she’d attended with Jesse and Jay due to drug use. Though police stated that Jesse was not with Lauren the night she disappeared, there is still much speculation about him. Nadine has continued to defend her son. She said that he is devastated because “he lost the love of his life” and “he’s in therapy now.” Nadine continued to emphasize how she thought Lauren had a significant drug problem.
“If Jesse was guilty of anything, he was guilty of taking care of Lauren, who had some serious drug issues. She would abuse to the point where she would black out. Jesse always threatened to call and tell her parents and she said, ‘if you do, I’ll break up with you’…My son took care of her for two years while she was in college. The one night she went out without him and did what she did unfortunately cost her her life. This poor little girl is not with us today because of her drug abuse.”
According to sources, Jesse only spent two days assisting in the search for Lauren before heading back home to New York.
On September 2, 2010, about 9 months before Lauren disappeared, she was arrested on charges of public intoxication and illegal consumption. When police searched her apartment after her disappearance, they found a small amount of cocaine in her room. It’s been theorized that Lauren possibly accidentally overdosed that night and the men she was with covered up her death and hid her body. Lauren suffered from a heart condition called long QT syndrome. This syndrome can lead to your heart going into a fast, dangerous rhythm, which could ultimately lead to fainting, seizures, or sudden death. Lauren had to quit sports in high school due to her diagnosis. The combination of drugs and alcohol, including a stimulant, may have possibly led to Lauren’s unintentional death while in the presence of the men. It’s possible that they could’ve panicked and hid her body. However, others, including a PI hired by the Spierers, don’t think that an accidental overdose would have been enough of a motive to conceal a body. Indiana University and Bloomington were rampant with drug abusers and overdoses weren’t an uncommon occurrence. The PI said, “every kid’s buying pot, cocaine, drinking, pills. I mean, it’s all over the place. So that can’t really be the motive behind it.”
Despite Corey, Mike, and Jay never having been named suspects or persons of interest, they’ve all still reported feeling targeted by the Spierers. Corey said that the family continuously called him, demanding that he give them information about Lauren.
“We’ve done nothing wrong. If we’d done something wrong, we would have been arrested already. All they’re doing is hurting my career…it’s inappropriate the way they’re harassing people that are also victims in this case,” said Corey. Yep. He absolutely deserves to get punched in the face. Corey continues to maintain that he doesn’t remember anything about the night after being punched. Rob and Charlene deny ever having spoken to Corey.
Another popular theory is that Lauren was the victim of serial killer Israel Keyes. There are several points that are considered in this particular theory, including that Keyes was in Indiana on the night that Lauren disappeared, AND was unaccounted for for at least 12 hours during the night. Keyes was known to bury “kill kits” around the country, so whenever he had the urge to kill, he could dig it up and have the supplies. In December of 2007, Keyes flew from his home in Alaska to Seattle, where he picked up his daughter and a gun from a friend. Keyes, along with his daughter and girlfriend, then traveled to Indiana to visit his mother until mid-December. On December 8th-10th, Keyes rented a car and disappeared for several days. Upon his return, he’d accumulated over 537 miles in the two days. Driving from Fort Wayne to Bloomington is 400 miles. It’s believed that he spent the remaining miles driving around Bloomington and to the Hoosier National Forest.
Three and a half years later, on June 2nd, 2011, Keyes flew into Chicago in the evening and rented a car. He was intending to go to his mother’s house again in Indiana, which was just three hours away, however, he didn’t arrive until the following afternoon. He is reportedly unaccounted for during this time. Lauren was also reportedly Keyes’ type: small and intoxicated enough to be easily controlled and overpowered. Supposedly, when Keyes was questioned about Lauren’s disappearance, his reaction was very similar as to how he’d reacted when confronted about a confirmed murder of his.
Lauren Spierer is still missing and there has been very little movement in her case since she disappeared. Her parents and sister are still actively looking for her and doing everything they can to keep her case in the limelight. On the “Official Lauren Spierer Updates from her Family” Facebook page, Charlene often writes posts that seem to be directed at the person who is responsible for Lauren’s disappearance. Here is part of a post from September 3rd, 2011, just a few months after Lauren disappeared.
“To whom this may concern:
Let me begin by introducing myself, although, I am sure you know who I am. I am Charlene Spierer, Lauren’s mother. Perhaps we have met. You are responsible for Lauren’s disappearance. You know where she is. You are guilty of a heinous crime. That, you know…If you think for a minute, her father and I are going to disappear, think again. We are just as determined today as we were day one. You should know that Lauren is precious to us. Do you think this is a game? This is no game. We are in this for the long haul. Do you think we are going to walk away without finding out the answers? Do you think we are going to rest until we find Lauren? We will not. YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHO YOU HAVE TAKEN FROM US. We will NEVER give up. What are you thinking? I would really like to know. I am waiting to hear from you.”
She posted again on June 6th, 2016, hinting at what she believes may have happened to Lauren and her frustration with the investigation.
“I have always thought that an accident took Lauren on June 3, 2011. I have always known that what followed was a crime. I am still left with a multitude of questions which remain unanswered. As far as I am aware, no one has been cleared but then again, no person of interest was ever named by the Bloomington Police Department. Many leads have been submitted to law enforcement, our private investigators, various media outlets, and agencies who prefer to remain unnamed. There are various theories about what happened to Lauren and who was ultimately responsible, but the puzzle remains missing a vital piece. Until completed, Lauren’s disappearance will remain a mystery. Why? What is it about the events of June 3, 2011, which continue to allude all investigating this case? What is it about Lauren that has kept it someone’s mission to keep the facts so deeply buried? Obviously fear of reprisal, but I cannot believe the person responsible has not confided in someone. Is it truly going to come down to someone having a crisis of conscience? How many years must we wait to have that happen?…There aren’t a lot of scenarios. As Rebecca has always said, the stars would have to have been perfectly aligned for random abduction to have been a serious possiblilty. I agree.”
If you have any information about the disappearance of Lauren Spierer, please contact the Bloomington Police Department at (812) 339-4477.
https://killerqueens.link/alarm
Code: QUEENS15
sources for this episode
Lauren Spierer’s Chilling Disappearance And The Story Behind It
Official Lauren Spierer Updates from Her Family – Home | Facebook
Lauren Spierer Update: Mother Reacts to Judge’s Dismissal of Lawsuit
Parents share what life without Lauren Spierer is like in national magazine | Fox 59
Case Summary and Timeline : r/LaurenSpierer
Lauren Spierer Disappearance: ‘We Live With It Every Day,’ says Mom | PEOPLE.com
Missing student’s beau’s parents fume at cops, media
5 Years After She Vanished, New Hope in Lauren Spierer Case – ABC News
TIMELINE: The Disappearance of Lauren Spierer
Timeline: The search for Lauren Spierer
Source: DNA swab sought from suspect connected to Lauren Spierer search | Fox 59
Hannah Wilson murder verdict: ‘She fought him off, and now he’s off the street
