Going West: True Crime - Lauren Spierer // 34

Episode Date: August 5, 2019

After a night of drinking at a sports bar in Summer 2011, a 20-year-old Indiana University student is seen stumbling home with a male acquaintance. When her boyfriend fails to get in touch with her th...e following day, a nation-wide searched is conducted to find her. Tons of anonymous tips come in and the next is more confusing than the last. This is the case of Lauren Spierer. Do you have anxiety, stress, insomnia, or lack of energy? You need to try Lumi! Get 10% off your order at lumicbd.com using promo code goingwest. OR click this link! https://lumicbd.com/?afmc=3m&utm_campaign=3m&utm_source=leaddyno&utm_medium=affiliate Get 20% off your first Hunt a Killer subscription box using promo code going west at huntakiller.com **GOING WEST DOES NOT OWN THE MEDIA IN THIS EPISODE**  Fox News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIQaVKAw3Qg Fox News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpIZ8i0kQtk Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UxhGW2GESg&feature=youtu.be   Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 What is going on, Troop Crime fans? I'm your host, Teeve, and I'm your other host, Daphne, and you're listening to Going West. We want to give thanks to everybody who gave us an awesome five-star review this week on Apple Podcasts and I think we realized that we're not really seeing reviews from other countries so we're gonna look into that. But for now, thank you so much to Angie from Tennessee and Jess from Florida and also thank you so much Jess for being a patron. And a big thanks to Beverly from Wilmington, Delaware, and Corey Jay from Columbus, Ohio. Thank you so much to John from Buffalo, New York, and Chris from Atlanta, Georgia.
Starting point is 00:00:51 And then we have Emily C from Indiana, and Sherry also from Indiana. Thank you so much to Amanda from Nashville, Tennessee, and Heather from Seattle. And up next we have Kinsey from Oklahoma Oklahoma and Jackie from Gulf Shorts, Alabama. And then big thanks to Dagnie from Copenhagen. She was the one who pointed out that we are not seeing reviews from other countries, so thank you Dagnie. And of course we have to highlight our newest patrons this week. Thank you so much to Ashley, Little Lady Justice and Tara. Subscribing to our Patreon is a great way to support the show since our episodes are usually free.
Starting point is 00:01:27 It's just a $5 donation every month and you even get bonus episodes with it. So please subscribe at patreon.com slash going west podcast. And not only do we give you guys bonus episodes, we also donate 10% of our proceeds to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. So that's a really big deal and you're doing a great thing. We have a new bonus episode coming very soon for you guys, and this case that we're covering has been driving Heath and I crazy.
Starting point is 00:01:52 Absolutely, so stay tuned for that. All right, guys, this is episode 34 of Going West, so let's get into it. Indiana University student, Lauren Spire, and she has not been seen since last Friday. She left a friend's apartment in the early morning hours after a night of being out and then she literally vanished. The friend of a missing Indiana college student tells police he has memory loss from the night she disappeared. Lauren Spirer was last seen June 3rd after a night out with friends. Now a new report reveals two hours before she vanished.
Starting point is 00:02:45 Spearer helped a male friend get home after he'd been in a scuffle. And that friend now claims he was punched in the face and has no memory of how the night ended. And I understand that Lauren may no longer be with us. We, you know, we ache for her. We want to bring her home. Lauren Speer was born on January 17, 1991 in Scar'sdale, New York, which is a gorgeous village and it's actually the wealthiest town on the east coast. It's about 35 miles north of New York City, so you kind of get the best of both worlds, and it looks like it'd be somewhere in England with its tutor-style architecture. It's super beautiful.
Starting point is 00:03:37 Her parents are Charlene and Robert Speer, and her dad worked as an accountant. Lauren also had an older sister named Rebecca. Once Lauren graduated high school in Scar's Dale, she started applying to different colleges, including Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. She got accepted and in the fall of 2009, began studying textile merchandising for the fashion industry. Lauren was very active in the Jewish community at her school and during her freshman year of college, she spent her spring break planting trees in Israel as a part of the Jewish National Fund. So on Thursday June 2, 2011, Lauren was just 20 years old and had just completed her sophomore year of college. She was taking a summer course at Ivy Tech Community College in Bloomington and then
Starting point is 00:04:28 planned to go back to her parents' house in Scarredsdale so she could do a summer internship in New York City for the well-known clothing store Anthropology. So it being summer in a college town, most of the students had already left. But some of Lauren's friends were still around, so that Thursday night, Lauren decided to go out with some friends. But first, she went to pregame at a guy named Jay Rosenbaum's townhouse. And he was also a student at Indiana University. Jay had a friend visiting town for the weekend, so they wanted to have a party. At 12.30am, Witnesses saw Lauren leaving her apartment, which was very close to Indiana
Starting point is 00:05:07 University's campus, with her friend David Ron. And by the way, since we're in the early hours of the morning, it's now Friday, June 3. She and David went over to Jay's place, where Lauren was seen hanging out with a guy named Corey Rossman, who was one of Jay's neighbors. About an hour later, at 1.45 a.m., most of the party moved to a nearby sports bar called Kill Royes. Lauren and her friends were all having a great time, and most of them were getting pretty drunk. Lauren included. About 45 minutes after arriving to the bar, at 2.27 a.m. Lauren and Corey Rossman who again is her friend J's neighbor are seeing leaving the bar together. Also by the way bars
Starting point is 00:05:51 in Indiana close at 3 a.m. and I know in California and Oregon they close at 2 a.m. and I think that's kind of the general time here in the U.S. but some bars close at 3 a.m. 4 a.m. and I saw that even some close at 5am, I think that's in Alaska, but in Indiana it's 3am. So right now in this story, it's 30 minutes before closing and Lauren leaves the bar. Also, she did have a boyfriend at this time who lived in the area. His name is Jesse Wolf and he stayed home on this night to watch the game. It was reported that Corey had told friends he was interested in Lauren, but this has not been confirmed. So around 2.30am, Lauren and Corey leave Kilroy's and are seen walking towards Lauren's apartment complex called Small Wood Plaza Apartments, which is only about a 3 minute walk away.
Starting point is 00:06:41 So she lived incredibly close to this bar. She left her shoes and cell phone at the bar, and this bar actually has a sanded patio, so it's pretty common for people to take off their shoes there. But for whatever reason, maybe because she was too intoxicated and forgot, she left her cell phone and her shoes. Lauren and Corey also ran into a group of people who Lauren somewhat knew, and one of them had kind of gotten into it with Corey. His name is Zach Oaks, and he had noticed how drunk Lauren was, and asked her if she was okay or if she needed help. So Corey had been carrying Lauren like over his shoulder because she could barely walk herself, which is actually the reason why Zach Oaks asked her if she was alright. And he had a weird feeling about seeing Corey carrying Lauren, so he punched him after
Starting point is 00:07:30 Corey had said something rude to him. And I'm getting the idea that possibly Zach thought maybe Corey was trying to take advantage of a very drunk Lauren spear. Well, Anne Zach knew that she had a boyfriend, so he probably just was like what is going on. Well, Anzac knew that she had a boyfriend, so he probably just was like, what is going on? Lauren and Corey went up to her apartment for just about 18 minutes, and then at about 248 AM, they entered an alley going towards Corey's apartment where they were captured on security footage. And by the way, there are also reports that say that she didn't go up to her apartment at all,
Starting point is 00:08:03 where others say that she did, and some reports say that they were going up to her apartment to get drugs, but again, this isn't confirmed. She still didn't have shoes after that, so you would probably think that she would have gotten the shoes if she did go up into her apartment. So the issue is, is there's security footage of this, but police haven't released it, so that's why it's kind of hard for the public to piece together the information on this part. While Lauren and Corey are walking to Corey's place, Lauren falls down twice from her intoxication, both times in which she fell on her head because she didn't put out her hands to support her fall. Passerbyes saw this happen and asked her if she was okay because they actually heard her
Starting point is 00:08:43 head hit the street. And we mentioned before that Lauren had left her shoes and phone at the bar, but she did bring her purse with her. Later on her person keys would be found in this alleyway. It wasn't just Lauren though that was intoxicated. Cory was also wasted. When they arrived at his townhouse just minutes later, Cory's roommate Mike Beth was also home. On the way into his apartment, Corey threw up everywhere. That's when Mike helped him into bed and then asked Lauren to stay the night because
Starting point is 00:09:13 he was worried about her walking home by herself. But Lauren said that she wanted to go home and sleep in her own bed, and at this point, it's 3.30am, so Mike called his neighbor and Lauren's friend Jay Rosenbaum to see if he could take her back to her place because she kept asking him to come back to her apartment and drink with her, but Mike knew that she wasn't in a good position to continue drinking. And remember that Jay Rosenbaum is the person who she was pre-gaming with before she went to kill Royce. Lauren was definitely known to get this intoxicated and just 9 months before she disappeared, she was actually arrested for public intoxication and illegal consumption.
Starting point is 00:09:55 At this time, Lauren was only 20 years old, and the legal drinking age in Indiana is 21, so she and her friends definitely had fake IDs. So when she was arrested for illegal consumption, she was only 19 years old. And we're unsure if she had gotten a new fake ID after her arrest, but regardless, this night she used her fake ID to get into kill Royes. So Corey's roommate Mike hadn't gone out that night because he had some work to do, so he decided to stay in. Lauren went over to Jay's apartment after all, which was just next door,
Starting point is 00:10:28 and that's when he noticed a bruise under her eye, which he assumed that she got from a fall. But she didn't know how she got it. Two calls were placed on Jay's phone while Lauren was there, but he said that she placed both of them to call her friend, David Ron, who she started her night with, and then a call to another friend. But neither of them answered and she did not leave any voicemails. According to Jay, Lauren left his apartment at 4.30am, and this was the last time anyone saw her. He states that he saw her walking back the way she originally came from,
Starting point is 00:11:02 wearing a white button down shirt and black leggings without her shoes, phone, or her purse. Later that day, Lauren's boyfriend Jesse Woolf reported her missing when a text he sent to her was answered by an employee at Kilroy's. So he knew that she was going out that night and the fact that she left her phone at the bar and hadn't come to pick it up by the time he texted her, that kind of freaked him out. Yeah, and that was at 4.30 in the afternoon. So I also just think it's really weird that Jay never called Jesse to say, Hey, your girlfriend's here. She doesn't have any of her things like the fact that he would just kind of send her off into the night when he knows she doesn't have a phone. She doesn't have her keys to get into her apartment.
Starting point is 00:11:45 She doesn't have anything and you just kind of let her go and don't tell anyone, it's pretty weird to me. And just to be clear, this account of Lauren leaving Jay's apartment, that is only his account. There is no video evidence of her leaving his apartment. Right, and we'll get into that a little bit later as well. When all of Lauren's friends became aware that she was missing,
Starting point is 00:12:08 none of them had any information to give because none of them had seen her either. Since the boyfriend is usually the first person looked at in cases like this, people started to speculate that Jesse Wolf had something to do with it. Because he hadn't been out that night and his alibi to police was just that he'd been sleeping
Starting point is 00:12:27 at the time of her disappearance. So, I mean, that makes sense considering it was 4.30 AM, but it also makes it hard to prove that he wasn't near her apartment that morning. It was especially suspicious to people that just five days after her disappearance, Jesse went back home to New York. And to be fair,
Starting point is 00:12:45 it was summer, so it's possible that he had plans to go home, but a lot of people kind of felt like if he cared for Lauren, he would have stayed to help find her. But all of Lauren's friends and her parents have stated that they don't believe Jessie had any involvement in her going missing. Robert, who is Lauren's dad, thought it was odd that Jesse only searched for the first two days after her disappearance and then went back to New York with his parents. But he's not sure that that means he's guilty. And here's a little bit about Jesse. He was also an Indiana University student and is from Port Washington, New York, which is a suburb of Long Island. He lived in a house that was just north of campus and Lauren lived southwest of campus.
Starting point is 00:13:31 He told police that he went to sleep at around 2.30 a.m., and reported Lauren missing at 4.30 p.m. the next day, so approximately 12 hours after she was last seen. Lauren's parents found out because Lauren's older sister Rebecca had heard from Lauren's friends that she was missing. So that afternoon, Rebecca called her dad and told him what was going on. Robert and Charlene immediately called Jesse Wolf, but he was at the police station at that time. That's when they started calling hospitals and clinics in Bloomington to see if they could find Lauren. calling hospitals and clinics in Bloomington to see if they could find Lauren. Robert and Charlene Spear offered $100,000 as reward money for their
Starting point is 00:14:10 dollars' safe return. Lauren's apartment complex offered $10,000 and the Indian apolis Colts owner Jim Urce also offered $10,000. So the community was incredibly generous and very involved in trying to find Lauren. On Tuesday, June 7, so four days after her disappearance, Bloomington Police obtained a search warrant for Lauren's apartment at the Smallwood Plaza Complex, and they requested all surveillance footage from the night Lauren went missing. Apparently, the employee working in the office that day wasn't responding to police because unbeknownst to police. They were not on duty at that moment. So police knocked
Starting point is 00:14:52 down two doors in the lobby before seizing the computer hard drives and CDs from the security room. The apartment complex wrote a letter to police explaining why no one answered the request fast enough, but that they didn't need to cause thousands of dollars worth of damage because they could have just waited for a key. And I think it's great that police were so adamant about saving time and getting those tapes, but it just seems a little over the top. I mean, especially because the apartment complex has been so helpful and has offered so
Starting point is 00:15:24 much throughout this case. But given the details of the case, police were very confident that foul play was involved, which is why they wanted to act so fast. Hundreds of volunteers showed up to search streets, the woods, and dumpsters throughout the city. Lake Monroe is the closest body of water to Lawrence apartment, and the Marina is just about 12 miles or 19 kilometers away from where she lived, so just about a 26-minute drive away,
Starting point is 00:15:51 which would be close enough for someone to dump her body there. Police received a very specific anonymous tip to check that area, so dive teams were sent to Lake Monroe to search for her potential remains. But after an entire day of searching, they didn't find any evidence of her being there. It definitely makes things more difficult that she didn't have her phone on her, so police couldn't like ping her location or track her in that way, and also since her purse and her keys were found in the alleyways well, she didn't have any of her belongings on her at that time.
Starting point is 00:16:25 So other than her body and her clothes, there's virtually no other evidence or nothing else to come across. You know, it's not like, oh, we found her keys in this pond. You know what I mean? Right, exactly. And that it always makes it a lot easier in an investigation when there is a cell phone involved because there are ways to ping that and there are ways to go through her text messages and stuff like that, which I'm sure they did after they found the phone, but her not having it on her kind of leaves us almost with nothing. Right, there's no bread crumbs to follow. And I mean it would have been great because if she did use Jay's phone to call her friend David and another friend, she would have just used her phone to do that. So that could have proved that she was indeed at Jay's townhouse at a certain time. So it would help us kind of piece together her night even better than just taking some guys' word for it.
Starting point is 00:17:15 Absolutely. And in this modern day of technology, that kind of muddies up this investigation a little bit because it would have definitely made things a lot more clear for us. Yeah, I think that's just obviously one of the biggest benefits of having a case like this in this day and age when we do have cell phone records and we do have pings and locations and everything like that because of cell phones and because of technology. And unfortunately, we don't have that here.
Starting point is 00:17:40 So we had brought up that Corey had gotten into a fight with one of the guys in the group of friends he and Lauren ran into that night. On June 9th, more details of that scuffle surfaced. So Cory's lawyer made a statement that Cory didn't remember anything about the fight, nor did he remember anything about his night with Lauren. He said that he experienced Amnesia, which is really strange, and I know a lot of people have said that as well that he's just happened to experience Amnesia the night that Lauren goes missing. It's too weird. Yeah, and at this point a lot of people are starting to question his relationship with Lauren.
Starting point is 00:18:15 Apparently, Cory and Lauren had only met two weeks prior to her disappearance while at the Indy 500 in Indianapolis. So the big question here is, why did Lauren go back to Cory's townhouse? She had a boyfriend, so it's unlikely that it's because she was interested in him, and she hardly knew this guy. What's up gang, Heath here. Are you an armchair detective just like me? Have you ever wanted to know what it's like to solve a murder case? Then you need to try the revolutionary game hunt a killer. It's a monthly subscription box that allows you to sift through documents,
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Starting point is 00:20:55 On June 9, two of Lauren's long-time friends went on national TV to talk about Lauren's disappearance. They said that although Lauren loves a party and have fun, her actions that night were completely out of character for her. They understood why she took off her shoes and they also understood why she left her phone at the bar because she had been wearing leggings which usually don't have pockets, so they just kind of assumed that she left her phone at a table or something like that and just forgot to pick it up. But they also stated that she was always on her phone, so it was weird to them that she had left
Starting point is 00:21:28 it somewhere without noticing. And, you know, at the time she was very intoxicated, so it's possible that she just wasn't thinking about it, and I can attest to this because that has definitely happened to me a couple of times. The friends also stated that they knew her boyfriend Jesse, and they agreed that he was a very nice guy that Lauren had been dating for a couple of years since the two were in high school together. So Jesse had met her family and her friends and vice versa on numerous occasions. Neither of them had ever heard Lauren talk about Cory though, which we know makes sense because they only knew each other for about two weeks at that point.
Starting point is 00:22:03 So Lauren had a rare heart disease that potentially amplified the effects of any drugs that she would have taken at any time. This condition is called long QT syndrome and it basically just affects the speed of your heart rate. Lauren was known to use cocaine on occasion and like many other college students, drink heavily and often
Starting point is 00:22:25 with her friends. Lauren's boyfriend's parents are public about their belief that she died due to her drug problem. Police were informed that either at Jay's townhouse or at the bar, Lauren used Xanax or cocaine. Also, police found cocaine in Lauren's apartment when they searched it. It's also believed slash rumored that she may have been using Kalonapen as well. But we'll get into that a little bit later on.
Starting point is 00:22:51 While police continued to investigate, they discovered that a homeless man who went by road dog and was in that immediate area the night of Lauren's disappearance heard a woman's scream at around 4.30am. Then, yet another homeless man came forward with the same story. Just a week after Lauren's disappearance, the man known as Road Dog was found murdered. I also read an article that the other homeless man disappeared after talking to the police, but I'm not totally sure if that's true. And there was one report that said that it was believed Road Dog died due to drugs,
Starting point is 00:23:25 but all the other reports that I've read stated that he was killed. And we don't know a whole lot about this side of this story, so we're not gonna get too much into it, but we felt like it was worth mentioning. I definitely think this is a really strange connection, but with the theories that we're gonna talk about in a little bit, I just don't know why this man would be killed in relation to it. It just doesn't make sense because obviously he didn't have any information. It's not like he said, I saw her being murdered or something. He just said he heard a scream. So to me, it wouldn't make sense that this would be connected to Lauren's disappearance, but I do think it's really weird. Yeah, I think it's weird too, but like you said, I don't really think there's a connection there.
Starting point is 00:24:06 This case actually got a lot of attention because Lauren's cousin is Tamara Braun, who's an actress and soap star best known for her role and days of our lives. Tamara tweeted about Lauren's disappearance, hoping to spread the word, and comedian and late night host, Steven Colbert, also shared Lauren's story on his Twitter at the time.
Starting point is 00:24:26 Ryan Seacrest and Kim Kardashian also posted about Lauren's disappearance. Just about 10 days after her disappearance, a reporter at a press conference made a statement that they had heard rumors that Lauren may have died from a drug overdose and that the guys she was with that night possibly panicked and disposed of her body. And this isn't totally out of the ordinary. I mean we've heard stories about people dying from drug overdoses or alcohol poisoning and the friends that are with them get so freaked out that they'll get in trouble for using drugs that they just hide the body themselves and try to cover it all up which is obviously horrible but it's very
Starting point is 00:25:04 possible that this is what happened in Lauren's case, especially because of the rare heart disease she had. And this condition that she had can cause sudden fainting, seizures, and even sudden death. So anything that raises her heartbeat can be incredibly dangerous and fatal, which makes it kind of shocking that she risked any of these symptoms by taking drugs because she even had to stop playing sports in high school because of her condition. So it was something that she definitely had to alter her lifestyle for. And one thing to note is that a lot of the guys that she was hanging out with around this time were pretty heavily involved in drugs and some of them were even drug dealers. And I'll briefly talk about the Colonopin for a second here.
Starting point is 00:25:50 Colonopin actually prolongs your QT intervals, so it may have somewhat helped out her condition because it lasts about 16 hours, but mixing that with alcohol could have a very negative effect, especially if you're mixing that with other drugs as well. Right, and if she did in fact take Colonopin, I don't think that she had like a prescription for it, I think she may have just been taking it more recreationally. Yeah, absolutely, and like we already know, there was a lot of drugs around, so it's very possible. On June 15th, 2011, so about 12 days after Lauren went missing, Bloomington Police released a very grainy surveillance image of a white pickup truck that passed through the area Lauren was in on two separate occasions. Okay, so this photo is actually really weird, and when I first read about it, the article said
Starting point is 00:26:38 that it looked like there was a human form huddled in the bed of the truck, and in my head I was like, there's no way, because articles are usually so dramatic about this kind of thing. But when I looked up the image, I was shocked because to me, it literally looks like a blonde girl is sitting in the bed of the truck. And it's really blurry, so it's hard to make out, but that's what I can see.
Starting point is 00:27:00 And we'll post this image on our Instagram, which is at Going West podcast for anyone who wants to see it. But it also doesn't make sense to me why she would be sitting in the truck like that, because if what I saw is correct, it would have been so easy for someone to see her or for her to wave for help if she felt like she was being abducted. So it's just really odd.
Starting point is 00:27:22 The only thing that I could say about that is, if in fact she was in the back of a pickup truck and that grainy photo shows her there, she may have already been deceased in that photo, but honestly the photo is way too grainy for you to really make out what's in the back of that truck. But if she was dead, like that's my point, is that she was so visible. If that is a person, they're so visible, so if she was dead, then this guy is literally driving around the dead girl in the back of his truck, like that would just be crazy. That's true, that's definitely true, because honestly there's no canopy on the back of
Starting point is 00:27:55 the truck, so like I don't know how someone would not see her if she was deceased. You guys should definitely check out the photo and comment on our Instagram or our Twitter and let us know what you think it is. That probably sound bad when I laughed and I said a dead girl in the back of his truck. I didn't mean that in a bad way or a mean way at all. I just meant it's mind-boggling to think that if she was sitting in that truck that she was dead.
Starting point is 00:28:18 So it's really odd. I just doesn't make any sense to me that she would be sitting there just out in the open like that. So just let us know what you guys think. So on June 19th, 2011, police received a tip on a foul odor north of Bloomington. When they arrived, they found a patch of recently disturbed ground. So they immediately began to think that it was Lauren's buried body, but they discovered that it was just a recent utility work and
Starting point is 00:28:46 Her remains were nowhere in sight. By the end of the first month, Jesse Wolfe, Cory Rossman and Jay Rosenbaum's Apartments were all searched, but nothing suspicious came up. It was still heavily believed in the community that one or all of the boys knew what happened to Lauren. in the community that one or all of the boys knew what happened to Lauren. Since the police were convinced foul play was involved, they searched the Sycamore Ridge landfill where Bloomington's trash is delivered and sifted through 4,100 tons of garbage throughout 9 days in August trying to find her remains. So it's safe to say that police put a lot of efforts into this investigation. Jay Rosenbaum and Jesse Wolf, but they were unable to get any incredible information from them.
Starting point is 00:29:31 But one thing that really stood out to them in this case is that Corey Rosman refused to speak to them. After his lawyer made a statement on his behalf that he doesn't remember a single thing that occurred that evening. Corey made it very clear to police that he wants nothing to do with them or the investigation, even after many months of investigator attempts. And Lauren's father Robert actually said that searching through the trash and the garbage at that landfill was the hardest part of the search for him. Well yeah, because I mean, at that point, you're pretty much looking for your dead child in trash. And it's like, that's what you're doing, though.
Starting point is 00:30:10 Like, you're hoping that you're not going to find her, but at the same time, it's like, that's what you're doing. You're looking for her in trash. Like, that's just horrifying. That's extremely heartbreaking. On February 24, 2012, so nearly eight months later, Lawrence parents raised the reward money from $100,000 to $250,000. Up to this point, five people's remains turned up in Indiana and police investigated all of them to
Starting point is 00:30:39 see if they were Lauren, but none of them were. About one month later in early May, Bloomington Police announced that detectives were investigating a new Albany man who murdered two women, and by the way new Albany is about two hours north of Bloomington. While police searched his home, they found a third woman buried in his backyard. It was not Lauren Spirer. A man named Corey Hammeresley was a student at Indiana University with Lauren and in 2013 was jailed for 24 years after going on a naked, drug-infused rampage with a 9mm pistol. He was found guilty of attempted murder after shooting a random house and car 32 times, then opening fire on police.
Starting point is 00:31:25 Another inmate and an Indiana prison told police he was playing cards with Kori when Lauren's story came on the TV. He said Kori looked up at the TV and said, man, I knew the guys that did that. Kori then told the other inmate that Lauren and some guys were drinking and doing ecstasy that night. Then Lauren O.D. and it scared the guys. They didn't know what to do with her body, so they took her down to the Ohio River and disposed of it. But Cory didn't name names. When the other inmate approached police about this,
Starting point is 00:31:56 they questioned Cory Hammer's sleigh. Cory denied knowing anything about Lauren's disappearance. He probably didn't want to be a snitch, but I'm sure he did say this because it doesn't make sense why the under-inmate would make this up. James McClish was a man who had just gotten paroled for an offense where he assaulted and strangled his ex-wife when Lauren went missing. He was living in a halfway house that was just minutes away from Lauren's apartment, and he drove a white pickup truck that looked exactly like the one that was seen in surveillance footage. A woman from James' past
Starting point is 00:32:31 contacted police and told them that they needed to check him out because he had apparently made comments about Lauren's death and said things like what happened to her the same thing might happen to you. She also alleged that he killed Lauren and buried her on his farm in southern Indiana. Police tracked James McClish down and asked him if he would take a polygraph and he said yes. So apparently James' ex-wife was the one who made these claims and James said that she was just trying to smear his name and that none of it was true. So police did the polygraph anyway and he passed everything that he said appeared to be honest and he was super respectful with them and he told them good luck in their search.
Starting point is 00:33:14 So they kind of rolled him out after that. Someone said they heard Lauren's head hit the street hard when she fell in the alleyway. So if this caused any kind of damage, not to mention the damage being done by the drugs in alcohol, mixed with her condition, death doesn't seem far fetched. She was only about 90 pounds, so she was very petite. It's known amongst the students that the guys Lauren was hanging out with that night were drug dealers, like I had mentioned earlier. So it's definitely possible that she did OD and they didn't want to get in trouble for supplying her the drugs So they dumped her body. That is the biggest known rumor amongst their classmates
Starting point is 00:33:50 Especially since there was no surveillance footage of Lauren actually walking away from Cory and Jay's building at 4.30 a.m. That statement was completely given to police by Jay So it's just kind of his word a lot of people also speculate why the guys didn't call Jesse to have him come pick Lauren up. Since it was his girlfriend and they were a bunch of guys dealing with her, you'd think they would have called him since they knew him and Lauren really wasn't doing well at this point. This kind of seems suspicious. In Indiana, there's a notorious motorcycle gang called Sons of Silence, and they've been described as an incredibly brutal group.
Starting point is 00:34:29 Some tips came into the police department connecting a man named Robert Strange, who was best known as Bo-Deen. But he doesn't even have a criminal record, so police were skeptical to check him out. Bo-Deen was known as an enforcer, so if you had a type of problem in your gang, you would go to him and he would be the one to take care of it. One of Bo's family members had a conversation on Facebook with someone regarding Lauren's disappearance. They basically said they wanted to know the truth about what happened to her and the other person said that Bo killed her because of the family code. So apparently she owed money for drugs to someone in the gang and they asked her to pay up. Her habit apparently got so bad and she wanted more drugs but couldn't pay so she threatened to tell the police about this man's drug operation.
Starting point is 00:35:19 That man went to Bo Dean and told him that he was having problems with Lauren because she owed him money and was being threatening with Lauren because she owed him money and was being threatening. So, Bo got rid of her. He also lives out in the country and apparently buried her body on his property. The person also mentioned it's very good fertilizer. And before we move on, I just want to state that these are just theories, they're not our theories, but theories from people who follow this case. Investigators went out to Bodine's house to talk to Bodine and to see if he would confess to the murder.
Starting point is 00:35:53 They showed him the Facebook message and asked him if he shot her. He said no and that he, quote, didn't even know the broad. Then he threatened to shoot the investigators if they didn't get off his property. So they left. Detectives couldn't find any link whatsoever to Lauren in the Sons of Silence. Also, we know that Lauren's friends sold drugs, so why would a 20-year-old girl get drugs from a motorcycle gang? They think Bose enemies were just trying to set him up for Lauren's murder, and that
Starting point is 00:36:21 this whole story was fabricated. Police have tons of surveillance footage of Lauren from the night she went missing. She went missing in a very populated part of town, so there were many surveillance cameras. But police only released two images of videos to the public and haven't even sent any videos to her parents. If you have any information about this case, please contact the Bloomington Police Department at 952-563-4900 or email help find Lauren at gmail.com. This case has so many different theories and there's so many different suspects to look into, but we want to know what you guys think.
Starting point is 00:37:05 So make sure that you head over to our Instagram or our Twitter and let us know. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you so much everyone and next week we'll have an all-new case for you guys to dive into. Check us out on Instagram at Going West Podcast or our Twitter at Going West Pod. And don't forget we have a Facebook page, so if you'd like, go over there and start a conversation. And don't forget, if you'd like a shout out in the beginning of the show, give us a five-star review on Apple Podcast and don't forget to leave your name and your location.
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