Going West: True Crime - Brian Shaffer // 44

Episode Date: November 12, 2019

In 2006, a 27-year-old Medical School student went out to a bar with some friends. But when they couldn't find him by last-call, they left without him. Days passed and his dad decided to file a missing persons report. But when police finally checked the bar's surveillance footage, they noticed that he was never caught leaving the bar that night. This is the disappearance of Brian Shaffer. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on to crime fans, I'm your host he? And I'm your other host, Daphne, and you're listening to Going West. Today we have a really crazy missing persons case. This case has baffled me for years, and I'm really excited that we finally get to cover it. But before we get into that, we'd like to give shout outs to everybody who gave us a five star review on Apple Podcast this week.

So first of all, thank you so much to Gary from Budva, Montenegro, and Desiree from Michigan. And then we have Ricky from Tennessee and Gabriella from Arizona. Thank you. Thank you so much to Anne from Houston and Chrissy from Florida. And a big thanks to Abby and Jeff from Midloathe in Texas and Jamie from Oklahoma. Thank you so much to Mindy from California and Cindy from East Greenville, Pennsylvania.

And then we have Tina from New Jersey and Margarit from Cherry Valley, California. And last but not least, thank you so much to Rachel from Sonora, California, Jane from Panama City and Wendy were not sure where you're from, but thank you so much. And then we also have to give thanks to the people who subscribe to our Patreon account this week. So big thanks to Varro, Tina, and and Carolina. Thank you guys so much. We really appreciate all the support. Yeah, for everyone who is not a patron, go over to

patreon.com slash going west podcast. We just a couple weeks ago released a new episode on the Texarkana Moonlight murders. So they're just like our normal episodes, but they're ad-free. And that bonus series is called Real Crime. Again, that's patreon.com slash going west podcast, go over there and check it out, go scroll through all the bonus episodes, have a listen, let us know what you guys think. Alright guys, this is episode 44 of Going West, so let's get into it. Music Lesson one month after an Ohio man lost his wife to a deadly disease, his son mysteriously disappeared. Brian Schaefer, a medical student, was last seen after a night out with friends. Brian was last seen in this Columbus neighborhood, not far from the Ohio State camps. It was early in the morning on Saturday, April 1st.

Brian had been out bar hopping with a friend from school. One minute this young man was a grainy image on a surveillance video, the next minute he was gone, and police are Beth. I have one at home, you know, I want to see them every day. Brian Schaefer was born on February 25, 1979 in Pickerington, Ohio, which is a suburb in Southeast Columbus, to his parents, Renee and Randy Schaefer, who then went on to have another son, Derek. Brian was always a very smart kid and he was really interested in academics since childhood, but he definitely didn't shy away from making a ton of friends. He ended up graduating from Pickerington High School

in the spring of 1997 and then decided to pursue a career in medicine. When he graduated high school, he started working at JC Penney as a part-time employee, which he only did for a few years until he decided to quit so that he could focus more on college, which he began attending in 1999. He would spend the next four years studying microbiology at Ohio State University in his home city of Columbus until he graduated in 2003 with a bachelor's degree. Then he became a radiology tech assistant at the Ohio State University Hospital. The following year in 2004, Brian started attending Ohio State University College of Medicine to continue studying to become a doctor.

Brian was also very passionate about rock music, and he had a super laid back personality, despite choosing a very serious career. So alongside being a doctor, he dreamed of starting his own band. And one of his things was that he always wanted to move away to an island and just own a bar and kind of like live there and play music. He wanted to be a doctor, but that was kind of just a for now thing and he hoped that later in life he could kind of live a more chill life. Yeah, like maybe he wanted to become like Jimmy Buffett and like be on an island, play music, and just drink cocktails all day long. That was his exact inspiration, yeah.

So while Brian was attending OSU College of Medicine, his mom Renee got really sick and she was actually diagnosed with cancer. More specifically, Milo Displastic Syndrome, which is a type of cancer that's created by immature blood cells in bone marrow. Brian and his brother Derek supported Renee through her chemotherapy treatments and visited her at the hospital as often as they could. During Brian's second year at school at OSU College of Medicine, and his six-year-of-college total, his mom Renee passed away from cancer. This news was, of course, really hard on the entire family.

Bryan had a hard time focusing on his schoolwork after this and became incredibly depressed. He even almost broke up with his girlfriend because of it and told her that maybe he needed to be alone. But he had the support of his friends and his family to get him through this time. At this time, it was early 2006, Bryan Schaeffer was 27 years old and he was dating a girl named Alexis Wagner, who was also attending the same school as him, and she, too, was in her second year of medical school as she was studying to become an OBGYN. Brian and Alexis had become very serious, and they were planning a trip to Miami for Spring Break. Brian's friends strongly believed that he planned on proposing to Alexis during this trip.

Brian was super excited for this vacation after he and Alexis had been working so hard in school and his favorite destination was always anything tropical. Since like I said, he did dream of having his own bar on a beach and just playing music all day so they were definitely counting down the days. So Spring Break 2006 for OSU students started in early April, and on Friday March 31st, just weeks after Renee passed away, Brian went out to a nice steak restaurant for dinner with his dad, Randy. They caught up and talked about Brian's trip and all the things that he'd been up to in school. To Randy, Brian seemed really exhausted because of all the studying he'd been doing for his spring exams.

Those exams took place that week, so he'd been staying up most nights cramming for these tests, and in turn, he was super tired and groggy. But regardless, he told his dad that he'd be going out to the bars with his friends that night to unwind a little bit from his rough week at school, which Randy didn't think was a very good idea. Which is normal because he's obviously Brian's dad. He probably just wanted him to be able to relax and catch up on sleep, but he didn't say anything to Brian about it. During their dinner, they really connected and become a lot closer since Renee's death

just three weeks earlier, so that night Brian even told his dad that he would seem as much as he could since he really struggled emotionally without his wife. That night, around 9 p.m., Brian headed over to a local bar called the Ugly Tunisaluna, which was a bar in the campus area that was a popular place for college students to dance, get drunk, and potentially eat seafood. So this bar wasn't a standalone establishment and it appears to have been a part of a complex of restaurants and bars so the kind of place that had a parking garage. Brian planned to meet his friend William Florence who went by Clint and was also previously Brian's roommate. Earlier that day and into the night was a big bar crawl that much of the

student body was taking part in. So Brian and Clint planned to hit multiple bars throughout the evening. They started by taking shots at the ugly tuna saluna and then went to another bar. Brian's girlfriend wasn't there that night because she had been visiting her parents for the weekend in Toledo, Ohio. At about 10 p.m. Brian called her but got her voicemail, so he left a message telling her that he loved her. After midnight, Brian and Clint met Clint's friend Meredith Reed at a bar in the area. Brian had walked to the short north that night, which is the strip where a bunch of college bars were, but he and

Clint had ended up at a bar down the street, so they all got in Meredith's car when she arrived and they headed back to the Ugly Tunis Saluna. So Brian only lived about six blocks away from the bars, so he usually just would make that walk. At this point, Brian and Clint had been drinking for about three hours. While they were all enjoying a night out drinking, Brian said that he was going to go talk to the band that had been playing at the ugly tuna saloon of that night. Meredith and Clint apparently didn't think anything of it, but as time passed, he never came back to find them.

They called his cell phone repeatedly, but at 2am on the morning of April 1, 2006, the bar closed. So they went outside like everyone else and waited for him to come out. But when they never saw him, they decided to leave, figuring that he went home without telling them. The next day came and they hadn't heard from him. But Brian lived alone in his apartment, so although no one had heard from him, he wasn't necessarily out of action that anyone knew at least. That is not until Monday morning came when Brian missed the flight to Miami. So Alexis had also been trying to contact him that weekend but didn't get an answer.

When she called him on Saturday morning, it had gone straight to voicemail and so did every call that she made. She didn't think much of it at first since she knew he had been out late the night before, but the day went on and he never called her back, so she went to his apartment and waited to see if he would come home. Later, Alexis called Brian's dad Randy to see if he had heard from him, but he hadn't. So, Randy went over to Brian's apartment to see if he was there, but everything seemed normal. His car had been parked outside like it had been when he left for the ugly tuna saloona and everything seemed untouched and his bed was even made. Brian was nowhere in the apartment.

So that afternoon, Randy went and filed a missing persons report. At that point, Brian had been missing for less than 48 hours, but Randy knew that something was wrong. So he begged police to look for him. Even though typical protocol for adults is to wait 72 hours. Police went to the Ugly Tunis Saluna and questioned all the employees, but no one knew anything. They then got a hold of all the security footage from the previous evening so they could trace

Brian's steps. When they watched the videos, they saw Brian, Meredith, and Clint entering the ugly tuna at 1.15am. At 1.55am, so 40 minutes later, Brian is seen just outside the bar talking to two girls. After chatting to them for a few minutes, he's seen going back inside the bar. But the weirdest part, Brian is never seen exiting the bar after that. So we have photos of this on our Instagram which is at Going West Podcast, but to explain this a little bit better, there was an escalator that went up to the ugly tuna saluna and you had to either take that or the stairs directly next to it to leave or enter the ugly tuna. Brian is seen talking to the girls on the same

camera that showed him entering the bar nearly an hour before. So although Brian was technically outside the bar talking to the girls, he was still in the upper area outside it since the entrance wasn't out on the street like a regular bar would be. So he didn't leave the place entirely while talking to them if that makes sense. Okay, so to kind of clear things up, he's still in the bar, correct? I guess you can technically consider this outside area more of like the patio, even though it's not like a balcony and you can see onto the street. But basically, his only options are to go down the stairs or down the escalator or inside the bar. So it's not like, oh, I'm just going to walk away.

If he walked away and left, we would have seen him go down the stairs or down the escalator. Right. So the only way to leave the bar or the bar area or the complex specifically is to go down the escalator. Right. And so when he's talking to the girls, he's technically at the top of the staircase when they're talking I don't know why they're outside maybe it was loud inside or maybe you're allowed to smoke out there I have no idea but then he's seen going inside towards the bar which means he had to have gone inside

the bar because there's nowhere else to go right and if you guys are extremely confused about this just go over to our Instagram at going west podcast and we'll have photos of the bar so you can kind of see what we're talking about. Police checked all the footage countless times, and in the video, the one and only door in the place, Brian is never seen leaving like we mentioned before. Brian's brother and dad, along with Alexis and Columbus Police posted missing persons flyers all over town so that everyone knew to look for Brian. As days passed, they searched through every trash can on campus and in the bar area, as well as the Allentangie River, which was the river that ran through the center of Columbus.

Even with cadaver dogs, they couldn't find any trace of Brian. So, going back to the security footage, police believed that it was possible that Brian had for whatever reason changed his clothes before leaving the bar. But then that begs this question, why and where did these clothes come from? The other idea is that he left out the only other door in the place, which wasn't used by the public.

At that time, the place was under construction, so that door was used by construction workers as a service door. Police figured that Brian was fairly drunk around 2 a.m. since by that time he'd been drinking for five hours. And as far as we know, he had been taking shots for five hours. I don't know if he was taking shots that entire time, but there's a big difference between drinking beers for five hours and taking shots. So I'm sure at this point it's 2am,

he's probably fairly intoxicated. Right, we didn't get word on that from Clint or Meredith exactly what he was drinking. I know that he did start the night drinking shots, but I don't know if maybe he did slow down or how much alcohol was actually in the system and I don't know if they even knew that. I'm sure they were watching what he was drinking. When we go out, I know what you're drinking because I see you, but they didn't say unfortunately.

So with all the construction going on, if Brian did indeed stumble out the service store, workers believed that something could have happened there since it was hard enough to maneuver around sober. But the reason this theory wouldn't even necessarily make sense is because Brian isn't seen on any security cameras in the area after 155 AM. If he had gone through the service door, he'd still have been seen on cameras from other bars as well as the parking garage and probably even the street. So the fact that he isn't seen on any cameras, even the three surrounding bars is incredibly strange. So that service door eventually did lead you down to the street and there was no camera outside of that door. But like you said, he probably would have showed up on the camera outside another business on that street.

It's not impossible for him to have gotten away not being seen on camera if he had left through that service door. It's just unlikely. When Brian Schaefer was last seen, he was wearing an olive green polo t-shirt with a white long sleeve shirt underneath it, along with blue jeans, white edela sneakers, and a yellow cancer awareness bracelet. He was 6'2", around 165 lbs, and he had brown hair and hazel eyes, and his left eye had a black spot on the iris. He had one tattoo on his upper right arm of a stick figure from Pearl Jam's cover art. Pearl Jam was Brian's favorite band, and in late 2006, so the same year he went missing, Pearl Jam played a show in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Eddie Vetter, the singer, actually mentioned Brian's disappearance during their set. And Brian was actually supposed to attend that show with Alexis, and she ended up auctioning off the tickets and adding the money to Brian's reward fund. That was a big red flag for Alexis that he didn't show up to the show because he'd been planning to for months and months and,

like I said, they were his favorite bands so he never would have missed them. Police started their interview process by questioning those closest to Brian. Randy, Brian's father passed his and police didn't believe that he had anything to do with whatever happened to Brian. Then they interviewed Meredith and she also passed a polygraph. But when police questioned Clint, who remember is the friend of Brian who had been out with him that night that he disappeared, refused to take a polygraph. Since Clint wasn't a suspect considering they didn't have any idea what happened to Brian, he was allowed to refuse and he was let go.

But a lot of people questioned why he would refuse when this case involved one of his best friends. And if he was innocent, why refuse to take the lie detector test in the first place? Since word was spreading in town so quickly about Brian's disappearance, police were able to find and interview the two young women who Brian had been talking to on camera at the ugly Tuna Saluna, but they were never asked to take a polygraph. Their names were Brighton and Amber, but they didn't have much to tell about Bryan or about where he went.

They said that they spoke to him briefly, but it was just a regular conversation. Police also questioned the band that Bryan supposedly went to speak with before he went missing, and they said that they didn't remember him at all. The case pretty much went cold after this. Months went by and Brian didn't touch his bank account, uses cell phone, visit his apartment, or talk to any of his friends or his loved ones. Something weird did happen to his apartment though though the month after he went missing, which was May 2006.

So at 2 in the morning, someone kicked in the front door of his apartment, and I guess they were still, I don't know who was paying for his apartment, but it was still there, and it was still his. So someone kicked in the front door of his apartment and stole a TV and a couple DVDs. And the police and hour after it happened called Alexis because they thought maybe it was Brian trying to fake a break in and take some of his stuff. But they determined that it was unrelated because one of his neighbors had also had their apartment broken into. And like I said, they took a TV. So I don't think Brian would break into his own apartment to steal a TV and not things that actually matter.

And Brian loved playing music, but he had two really nice guitars in his apartment and those weren't stolen, so I'm not sure why steal a TV and some DVDs but not these nice guitars. And nothing else of value was stolen either, as far as we know. His girlfriend Alexis got in the habit of calling Brian's phone every night to see if he would answer. She originally believed that he had run away, so she always hoped that he would answer the phone, but his phone went straight to voicemail every time, except for one time in September 2006, around five months after Brian disappeared.

Alexis called Brian's phone before bad as usual and it rang three times before going to voicemail. Brian had singular wireless at the time of his disappearance. So once Alexis told police that the call rang, they checked to see which cell tower Brian's phone pinged off of. And the call was detected by a cell tower in Hilliard, Ohio, which is 14 miles outside of Columbus. And we know that cell towers usually have a 5-10 mile accuracy rate.

So singular feels that this occurrence was likely due to a computer glitch and that Brian's phone hadn't actually been turned on, meaning that it likely wasn't actually ringing on the other end. But this of course isn't concrete. They said that it's definitely possible that it likely wasn't actually ringing on the other end, but this of course isn't concrete. They said that it's definitely possible that it did ring, but I think to them, they just figured why would his phone be on after all this time. But to me, I don't know how cell towers really work, but if they were able to check which tower his phone pinged on to me, that would have meant that the call had to have been received on the other line, meaning that his phone probably was on.

That makes sense because you would think that if his phone did ping from a specific cell tower, that it would have been on. Since the news about Brian's disappearance had continued to spread, people called in with sightings from all over, which as we know from tons of other cases happens pretty often. People called from Texas, Michigan, and other parts of Ohio, and even in different countries including Sweden. But Brian had a pretty basic look to him, he didn't wear flashy or noticeable clothes,

and he had short brown hair, and he also had a fair complexion. Although many people do believe that Brian Shafer ran away and that he was not met with foul play at all. If Brian did run away, what would even make him want to do that in the first place? Many people argue that he was upset about his mom dying, he was stressed out from college, and he wanted to get away from his supposedly pushy girlfriend. At the time he disappeared, he had already completed nearly six years of college and only had a couple more until he would graduate from medical school. So why just run away then?

Also, why make up an elaborate scheme to make it seem like you went missing? He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would torture his family like that, especially since they had all gone through so much lately after Renee died. And also the night he disappeared, he specifically told his dad that he would be with him as much as possible, since he was having a really hard time being alone. So it just doesn't seem like he would make up this whole thing and go missing instead of just leaving a note and saying, this isn't working for me, I need more in life kind of thing. Like, why go through this whole thing of not coming out of the bar

and not using your car and all these things that just seems who would do that? Right, and I don't know Brian obviously personally, but he just doesn't really seem like the type of person that would do that. He seems really responsible. Yes, he seems very responsible. I mean, for God's sake, he's in medical school, and his mother just passed away right before his disappearance. So, I don't think you would want to put his dad in that position, like you said, and he had a lot to live for. But some people point out that by having dinner with his dad that night, and calling Alexis,

and leaving a voicemail saying that he loved her, that that was his way of saying goodbye. But why not just leave then? And it also doesn't make sense why he didn't take his car, any of his belongings, or touch his bank account after that. There were no real consistent signs of a runaway situation, which is why it's so widely believed that Brian Schaeffer didn't run away at all, but that something happened to him. So I know not everyone believes in psychics, but I do want to touch on them a little bit. So Brian's dad had gone to see a psychic soon after Brian disappeared in hopes of getting some kind of answers. And the woman he saw explained that Brian's body was in water somewhere near up here.

And Randy fully believed that this could be true, and although I'm sure again everyone has their own opinion on psychics, you kind of can't blame him for giving it a try. So not trying to take any chances, Randy and his other Sonderek started searching the Allentangie River themselves, despite the fact that police had kind of already searched it. The only issue with this search is that the Allentangie River is 97 miles long, so if Brian had actually been dumped there, he could have been anywhere at that point. But they did get waiters and they basically waited the river, trying to look for his body, but there was just so much river to search that I mean, they didn't really stand a chance.

Right, it's like searching for a needle in a haystack, essentially. A psychic named Bill Mitchell visited Brian's apartment within the first week of his disappearance and stated that he believed Brian was far too drunk to make it home safely that night and that he had recently gone through a terrible tragedy regarding his mother. Another psychic who had also been in the apartment named Mark Moody stated, I feel positive that he's alive, but I feel like there had been an injury. I keep feeling impact in my abdomen.

And yet another psychic had a feeling about Brian. They said that they believed that something had happened between him and someone that worked at the bar. The entire bar staff that worked there that night, March 31, 2006, was interviewed by police, and they all said that they didn't recognize nor know Brian, but the psychic felt that at least one of them was lying.

So moving on to Clint, it definitely seemed suspicious that Clint Florence refused on multiple occasions to take a polygraph test regarding Brian's disappearance, but it also doesn't make much sense how he would be involved. At 2.15am, both Clint and Meredith were seen on video surveillance leaving the ugly Tunis Luna. And since Meredith also claimed that she and Clint had been looking for Brian together at the time he had come back into the bar after talking to the two girls outside, Meredith would

know if Clint had disappeared too. And since Meredith passed her polygraph, we pretty much know she didn't have anything to do with Brian's disappearance, but it's hard to say why Clint won't cooperate with police. But it has been said that Clint loyered up and that they were the ones to suggest that Clint shouldn't do the polygraph because legally it would be safer. So your automatic thought would probably be, well, if he's innocent, he has nothing to hide. But at the same time, if a polygraph becomes inconclusive or you fail because, let's say,

you're nervous or generally emotional about the case, you automatically will look incredibly suspicious, even if you are innocent. And everyone has different opinions on polygraphs. Many people think they're bogus anyway, but in the eyes of the law, if you don't pass, that's kind of a big red flag. So it's possible that Clint's lawyer was just aware of this and didn't want to risk it, and that it doesn't necessarily mean Clint is guilty of anything. Also he answered all the original questions that police asked, so it didn't really seem like he was hiding anything, but we can't be for sure about this. And we also read that some people who believe Brian ran away also think that maybe Clint

knows where he went, and that's why he doesn't want to take the polygraph. But Derek, Brian's brother, believes a little differently. He says that he always had a weird feeling about Clint, like maybe there was something wrong with him. He just got this weird vibe whenever they saw each other. Also, after Brian's disappearance, Derek stated that Clint acted like he almost didn't even care about the situation and that he didn't seem like his best friend had just vanished at all. He was even speaking negatively about Brian. Yeah, I definitely think that there's a lot of suspicious things surrounding Clint, but again, I can't pinpoint exactly what that would be.

Another popular theory is that Brian was looking for drugs from the bar staff and was taken to the back where he was met with foul play, either on purpose or by accident. With this theory, it's also believed that Bryan was killed in the bar and that he was taken out by employees later. This would make sense with the fact that Bryan was never seen leaving. So whether or not drugs were involved, and it's important to note that all his friends state he wasn't the drug type, it's possible that either something happened to him in the employee area of the bar and the staff covered it up. But when he initially went missing, police brought cadaver dogs into the ugly tuna and they didn't find his scent at all. So if Brian had been

killed in the bar, it would have been very likely that the dogs would have found his scent somewhere, but it's also not impossible that they wouldn't. Right, because you think about it, there's a ton of like foot traffic in this bar, so there's probably a ton of people sent in there, especially because there's different people coming in and out of the bar like every day. So it might be kind of hard to determine if his body was in fact in the back of the bar. I don't know what the employee area looks like at the ugly Tunis Aluna or the kitchen or whatever back area that they would have. I think that would be helpful to know. I don't know what went down at this bar. I don't even know if Brian would go behind the bar and ask for drugs.

It doesn't even seem to make sense anyway, but I would really like to know if on that back service door or even in the front door, if anyone saw employees taking out trash or anything like that, I know the police looked at this footage like so many times and really studied it, so I wish that we knew if they saw employees taking out trash or taking out like a cooler or anything that Brian potentially could have been put into if in fact this theory is true. I'm sure it's possible that he could have been killed in the bar and taken out that way. So I wish we knew more about that footage regarding the employees.

And this is pretty reminiscent of the Kenya Mon hey case. And if you guys haven't listened to it, it's in our library. So go check that one out. But in that case, the killer actually puts her in a cooler and she's taken two and from this bakery kitchen So it's very possible that this could have happened to Brian So I want to touch a little bit. I want to go back to the construction situation Another theory is that Brian drunkenly wandered into the construction area Fell into a pit and passed out and then he was covered with cement

So it's possible that Brian is still in that building today, and that would explain why he was never seen leaving. It seems a bit unrealistic that construction workers wouldn't see Brian in that hole and just fill it in, but some point out that once an area is cleared, they don't check it again. They just fill it, so it's possible that Brian was passed out or asleep and they in fact didn't see him and they filled the hole actually killing him. That's definitely another plausible theory. Again, it seems kind of crazy. Why would they not check

before filling in a hole? I wish we knew more about what that construction zone looked like in general so we can determine whether or not that is a viable option. I mean, I don't think it's probably too likely. And like we said, these are just theories, but we obviously have to cover every single one. But I don't know if it would be likely if he was in a hole like that. It just kind of seems farfetched a bit. Anything seems possible in this case because none of it makes any sense. So we'd love to hear your guys' theories about what you think happened to Brian Schaefer. Alexis called Brian's phone for a year until she finally stopped trying.

Around two years after Brian went missing, in September 2008, his dad Randy died in a freak accident. There was a very heavy windstorm in Ohio and Randy was cleaning up the debris in his front yard. While he was tidying up, a branch blew off a tree and struck him, killing him. He wasn't found until the next morning when his neighbors noticed him lying in his yard and they called police. An obituary was created for him online and there was a comment section where people expressed their condolences. One comment read, two dad love Brian,

and they tagged the US Virgin Islands. Many people saw this comment and it blew up because people immediately started to believe it was Brian and that he had run away after all. But police investigated this and concluded that this comment was posted from a public computer in Ohio, so they believe that it was definitely a fake. And for people who do these kinds of things, please don't be an asshole. This is really frustrating

and very frustrating for the family as well, and the friends just don't do stupid stuff like this. Well, also, I was thinking about this, how this goes back to the runaway theory anyways, and his mom died and then two years later, his dad dies in a freak accident, and then there's just his brother Derek left. So why would Brian run away, and then after his dad dies randomly, just not come back and not touch base with Derek at least? It just doesn't seem like that would make sense either. Yeah, that doesn't make sense, and it's really sad.

It's such a tragic event for one family to go through. I mean his poor brother, his mom dies of cancer, his brother vanishes at a thin air and then his dad gets hit by a tree. Yeah, that's just so unfortunate and tragic. The ugly tuna saluna closed in May of 2018 after being open for 14 years. The same owner ended up opening a new location called Ugly Tuna 2, just a half mile from its original location. Alexis Wagner went on to marry a man in 2009, so three years after Brian's disappearance, and they have two sons together. She now has her own practice as an OBGYN outside of Toledo, Ohio. Derek is the only surviving member of Brian's immediate family, and he's still living in Ohio, hoping that he will one day find out what happened to his brother.

If you know anything, please contact Central Ohio Crime Stoppers at 614-645-8477. If requested, you can remain anonymous. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you so much everyone and we'll have an all new episode for you guys to dive into next week. Don't forget to check us out on patreon patreon.com slash going west podcast. It really helps out the show. It's only a $5 donation every month and you get bonus episodes. Not only that, but you also help the private investigations for the missing, which is a great

nonprofit organization that helps missing people around the United States. So go check us out. Also, make sure to check us out on Instagram at GoingWestPodcast and make sure to check over Heath over on Twitter at GoingWestPod. And definitely make sure you go over and check us out on Facebook, give our page a like and let us know what you think about this case

and other cases. And like Daphne said, we also have some photos of this case up on our Instagram, so make sure you go check that out at Going West Podcast. So for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. Thank you. you you