The Mysterious Vanishing of Brian Shaffer
When I was a teenager, my brother was in a band. They were terrible, absolutely terrible, but they took themselves very seriously and hoped to make it big one day. They definitely did not. My brother is now a plumber for a Veteran’s Affairs Hospital in New York State. One of the bandmates is an elementary school teacher, another has fallen off the face of the planet, but I believe is in factory work, and the final is professor of computer engineering at a well-known college in New York State. All of this to say that Brian Shaffer wanted to be in a band. He was a second-year medical student at Ohio State University as his “fall back” option. Being a doctor was inspired by his late mother, Renee, who was a nurse for most of her adult life. I can’t imagine going to medical school as a “fall back,” but Brian was smart to say the least, and saw being a doctor as a wonderful career if “being a rockstar” didn’t work out. Anyway, Brian Shaffer grew up outside of Columbus, Ohio with his mom, Renee, his dad, Randy, and his brother, Derek. I believe he was studying microbiology and even took a year off at one point. After returning to his undergrad, he applied to medical school at OSU - where he studied with his girlfriend, Alexis, also a medical student.
Brian was a huge fan of Pearl Jam and even had a tattoo of the Stickman on his upper right arm. When Brian was out with friends, it sounds as if he were always finding new people (possibly mostly women) to talk to and striking up conversations with the band. He himself was a guitarist in a band with a few friends. I’m not sure if the band was an ongoing thing, but it was my impression that it was something from his recent past.
Brian was so close with his mom. I’m totally inferring here, but I would venture to say that he was closer with her than his brother, Derek was, and definitely closer to her than he was to his dad, Randy. Afterall, she was the reason he was going into the medical field to begin with. In 2005, Renee was diagnosed with cancer and would pass away in March of 2006. That last Christmas spent with Renee, she gifted Brian and his then girlfriend, Alexis, with a trip to Florida for spring break. According to every podcast known to man about this case as well as most articles, Brian began fervently researching and planning his trip to Florida. It is rumored that he was supposed to be proposing to Alexis on this trip, but no one has ever spoken of a ring found, and there’s also a lot of discrepancy over how long they had been dating. Some sources indicate that it had even been less than five months - which is way too short for a proposal. According to, “Dead or Alive,” podcast, Brian’s mom had actually encouraged a proposal, because of how sweet Alexis was, and how he needed a woman like that to marry. Regardless, I guess we’ll never know if he was going to propose or not.
On March 31, 2006, Brian met his dad for a steak dinner at Outback Steakhouse to celebrate the end of classes at OSU. Later, Randy reports to authorities that he felt his son looked exhausted and shouldn’t have gone out drinking, but that he didn’t say anything to Brian at the time. As I would find in my research, Randy and his father didn’t have the best of relationships. There is speculation that there was an affair that occurred that angered Brian, but there’s no proof of this, nor does it really matter. It’s no surprise that Randy wouldn’t be doling out advice to his son though if Brian and Randy had a strained relationship to start.
Following dinner with his dad, Brian met up with his friend (used to be roommate), Clint Florence, at a popular OSU bar, The Ugly Tuna Saloona. This was around 9p.m. From there they went to two more bars, North Shore Tavern, and Brother’s Bar and Grill. All of these bars were within walking distance, as was Shaffer’s apartment - roughly ½ mile away. While out at these other establishments, they run into another friend of Clint’s, Meredith Reed. She accompanies them back to the Ugly Tuna. The three of them are seen on surveillance footage at 1:15a.m. going up the escalator to the Ugly Tuna. Clint runs into two more girls that he knows, Amber Ruic and Brighton Zatko, who are sitting at bar stools just inside of the entrance to Ugly Tuna. Shaffer ends up getting really comfortable with one of them and is seen kissing on her neck, she puts her phone number into her phone, and Brian is again seen on camera talking to them just outside the bar at about 1:55 a.m. In this footage, Brian is seen having a brief interaction with them before heading back into the bar as the women head down the escalator and leave. For those of you thinking, wait what about the girlfriend who he is supposedly proposing to - same. I’m not going to get started on that.
When the bar begins to close down at 2:30 a.m, Clint and Meredith stand around looking for Brian, waiting for Brian, calling Brian’s cell phone - while all calls go straight to voicemail. At 2:09 a.m., Meredith and Clint are seen riding down the escalator to the street without Brian. They headed back to a professor’s home that Clint was house sitting for, and no one was any wiser as to where Brian was, but it was assumed that maybe he walked home by himself, as it was close, and maybe his phone was dead and he passed out. They had been drinking heavily and footage that captures him clearly shows that he is intoxicated.
The next day, Apri 1l, 2006, Brian’s girlfriend, Alexis Waggoner, tried to call him. She didn’t go out the evening before, because she had gone home to Toledo for the weekend. I have heard it speculated that she was going home to “clear her head,” about things with Brian, but after further research, found that she was actually going home to see her family dog, Elly, as Elly wasn’t doing so well. Poor Alexis. She’s home, possibly saying goodbye to her family doggo, while Brian is schmoozing with other women at the Ugly Tuna. So she called him around noon, and her call went straight to voicemail. Thinking nothing of it because he had been out drinking the night before, she calls a few more times throughout the day, but her calls continue to go straight to voicemail. Around midnight on the first, she starts to worry. Then as far as I can find, we have silence. On Monday morning, April 3rd, she and Brian are supposed to be at the airport to catch their flight to Miami, FL. She still hasn’t heard from him since Friday evening when he left her a voicemail telling her how amazing she was and how much he loved her. When she gets back into town she went straight to his apartment, noticed everything looked totally normal and his car was even there - which is strange being that he wasn’t. Where would he go and be MIA for days without having his own vehicle. Definitely strange. Evidently, she stayed there for quite awhile waiting for Brian and eventually his brother, Derek showed up because like Alexis, Derek and his dad hadn’t heard from Brian either. Derek had been invited out by Brian on Friday evening, but already had other plans with his girlfriend, so they hadn’t heard from him since then either.
At this point, they reported Brian missing to the police, and decided to get ahead on the search, knowing too much time had already passed. So they went out searching dumpsters, checking hospitals, calling the county jail, and approaching passersby hoping that someone had seen or heard from Brian. They had no luck. They couldn’t find a trace of Brian and all calls continued to go straight to voicemail. The time for Alexis and Brian to go to Florida came and went, and with Brian not showing up for that, things took a very grim and serious turn. Everyone knew how excited Brian was for this trip, and how hard he worked in school and at his part time job at JC Penny’s, and he couldn’t wait to be on the beach unwinding with Alexis. Now missing persons posters went up all over campus, the police got more involved, surveillance cameras were checked. According to my research, Columbus, Ohio has more surveillance cameras than any other city. No camera caught him leaving the Ugly Tuna - only entering it - which made an already peculiar case, even more peculiar.
All of the typical things were done. The police detectives went door-to-door, the cadaver dogs and scent hounds sniffed out the area, and found nothing. Some of the detectives believed Brian had left of his own volition, and didn’t want to be found. I’m not sure how one would do that being as intoxicated as Brian was though.
Two weeks went by and the reward for information leading to finding Brian Shaffer climbed to $25,000. Still, no one had any information. There was one report of a sighting of a guy in Columbus eating a sandwich, but it turned out to not be him. They were all at a dead end with their search for Brian.
Now three weeks after his disappearance, dozens of people searched the Olentangy River in an effort to recover Brian. As much as no one wanted to find him on the banks of the river or in it, people were also desperately hoping for conclusion or answers to this ongoing nightmare.
I want to touch again on Brian’s relationship with his dad - because while I do not believe it was the greatest, I also do not believe for a second that either wouldn’t have stopped everything they were doing to help the other one out. I don’t feel that their strained relationship was so strained that there was anything that could really come between them being there for each other. Anyway, Randy started to think a little out side of the box and consulted with multiple psychics in his efforts. One (and this breaks my heart) believed that she saw Brian stuck to one of the concrete bridge posts, trapped under the water. Randy waded through the water and checked every single post himself, nearly drowning in the process. This poor tortured man just lost his wife, and is now wading through the cold river to try to find his son’s body. I cannot even imagine the pain that he must have been in.
Tragically, Randy would pass away before ever finding out what happened to his son. During a windstorm, his neighbor’s tree fell down and hit Randy directly in the head, killing him instantly, leaving Derek without his mom, brother, and father, all within two and half years. Derek has been difficult to reach by most and has stepped away from the investigation. I hope he is finding joy and peace wherever he is in life now. However, when Randy’s obituary was posted online, someone had posted, “Dad, I love you, Brian,” in the comment section, and listed their location as the Virgin Islands. We would come to find out though, that this was a cruel hoax and was actually posted from a public computer in the Columbus area. So cruel.
That is where our story seems to end. His case is still technically active and ongoing, but nothing of value has proved to find Brian so far. I have to say, what I felt going into this case was peculiar. Do I feel Brian is dead or alive? I feel very strongly that Brian has passed away and is no longer with us here in his physical form on Earth. So what happened?
For starters, I think Brian did manage to just get past the camera in some freak glitch. I don’t believe he is still in the Ugly Tuna, nor do I believe that he was killed in there. This may shock you, but I don’t believe that Clint had anything to do with it either. I think that Clint lawyered up because he knew that he and Brian had an interesting friendship, and he knew that people would look at him. Not wanting to fail the lie detector test for whatever reason, he opted out of taking it. I don’t believe that he has anything to hide, but I do believe he was nervous that he had information that could paint Brian in a less than favorable light. Again, Brian was out getting phone numbers from other women while in a committed relationship - not exactly the best behavior.
I feel that whatever happened, happened outside of the Ugly Tuna. Like I said earlier, he slipped past the cameras.This is another case where I can only give snippets of what I’m seeing but can’t necessarily piece it together like some of the others. I do see a woman involved, but I’m not sure that she was involved so much as present in the situation. I see him traveling in a car with another woman - I got “toyota” when I was listening, and a gray, like a dark gray. I also see him stumbling out of the car when they pull up to this location. I get the idea that this woman was involved with someone else and that it has something to do with his disappearance. I do not believe she was ever on police radar, nor was her significant other. I feel that neither one will ever speak up because she was convinced that she’d ruin her future as would he - and they were quiet and have been. I do not believe that he was killed on purpose. I think a strike in an argument turned into something that hit him in the back of the head and rendered him unconscious. His phone was immediately shut off and I believe they buried him well outside of the city. I do believe he was killed in one location and taken to a third location to be “disposed of.” It feels to me as if it’s property that’s in the family of either the man or woman involved, but that it’s neglected and not traveled to very often, so it was safe to bring him there to do so. I also think that he knew her from campus, even if it was just in passing. I do think they were at least acquaintances. The location feels to me like it’s “due east,” of OSU. I’m not sure how far one would have to go to get outside of the city, but I do feel that it’s east of there. I see a row of pine trees to the left of the left side of the cabin as well as behind the cabin. To the right of the cabin is a massive field/clearing. I feel like there is something unique about the roof as well. It looks tin to me or something that isn’t a typical roof.
So, I think I neglected to mention that months after Brian was missing, Alexis was still calling his phone and one day, it randomly rang instead of going straight to voicemail. The phone company assured them that it was very likely that it was a glitch in the system and that his phone likely wasn’t on. I think that his phone was turned on though. I think the woman felt guilty for what had happened and had his phone and one day turned it on to look at any pictures that were on it. While it was turned on, the phone rang and she immediately turned it off and would never turn it on again. The phone pinged in a suburb outside of Columbus. I believe she still has the phone. I do not believe she will ever turn herself in, and neither will her accomplice. I also do not believe that Brian will ever be found.
If you or anyone you know has any information on the disappearance of Brian Shaffer, please contact the Ohio State Police.
Sources:
https://medium.com/@jennbaxter_69070/the-mystery-of-the-missing-medical-student-21a268aa673c
https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/vicap/missing-persons/brian-shaffer
