The Misery Machine - A Hoosier Mystery: The Disappearance of Lauren Spierer - Missing a Decade This Year

Episode Date: September 6, 2021

This week, Yergy and Drewby travel to the college town of Bloomington, IN to discuss the mysterious disappearance of Lauren Spierer, a sophomore at Indiana University, after an evening of partying with friends at a local sports bar. Many believe this to be a conspiracy involving a group of affluent college boys. If you know anything about the disappearance of Lauren Spierer, please say something. Tips can be shared anonymously by emailing [e-mail], or by calling the Bloomington Police Department at 812-339-4477 or Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana at 317-262-TIPS. A very special thank you to Levi for supporting our show as our highest tier patron! Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine Buy Us A Coffee! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/miserymachine Join Our Street Team! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1HfRUPQhB6LOqVupZm92OdV5rLDQcIMpHudmUZwt0C24/edit?usp=sharing Levi's Adoption Fundraising Page: https://gofund.me/d658a3a7 Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #themiserymachine #podcast #truecrime Source Material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Lauren_Spierer https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/long-qt-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20352518 https://nypost.com/2021/06/03/lauren-spierers-mother-private-investigator-hopeful-for-break-in-case/ https://www.wthr.com/article/news/local/indiana/lauren-spierer-missing-college-student-indiana-university-10-years/531-f4cad986-5e5c-4e6f-bada-86f81f0df38d

Hi, the Miser Machine. I'm Yergy. And I'm Drewby. And this week we're doing another missing person's case from Indiana, one that's been plaguing the state for 10 years now. And that's the Lauren Spear case. And if you're watching this video on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. It's the best way you can support our channel. Yes, yes.

And also thank you to John from Indiana for recommending this case to us. And for those that requests more animals, there's Prada and a very special guest this week. Turkish is visiting because his mama has gone. camping. But without further ado, Lauren Spear. Lauren Spear was born January 17, 1991, to Charlene and Robert Spear. She grew up in Scarsdale, New York, an affluent town near Lower Westchester County. She graduated from Edgemont High School in 2009 and enrolled in Indiana University, where she was studying textile merchandising. Lauren was active in the Jewish community at the university and had spent the previous spring break planting trees in Israel on behalf of the Jewish National Fund.

Lauren met her boyfriend, Jesse Wolfe, and her friend Jay Rosenbaum years earlier at Camp Tawanda, a summer camp in the mountain town of Honesdale, Pennsylvania. It was there she also met various other future IU students who later became her circle of friends when she enrolled at Indiana University in 2009. Lauren was a petite and pretty girl with blonde hair and blue eyes standing at about 4.11 and 95 pounds. She suffered from a rare heart condition called long QT syndrome, which is a heart rhythm condition that can potentially cause fast, chaotic heartbeats. These rapid heartbeats might trigger you to suddenly faint. However, some people with the condition have seizures, and in some severe cases, long QT syndrome can cause sudden death.

On June 3, 2011, Speer was drinking with several friends at Kilroy's sports bar in Bloomington, Indiana, despite being only 20 years of age. So for international listeners, the legal drinking age in the United States is 21. According to witnesses, Lauren was very intoxicated. Her boyfriend Jesse Wolfe stated that he did not go out with Lauren or her friends that evening. Rather, he texted back and forth with Lauren before he went to bed. Little did Jesse know this would be the last time he heard from Lauren. The following morning, Jesse sent Lauren a text and received a reply from an employee at the bar in which Lauren was drinking the night before. Jesse then reported Lauren missing.

So the timeline of events for June 3rd have roughly been pieced together based on eyewitness testimony and surveillance footage are as follows. So at 1230 a.m., witnesses report that Lauren had left her apartment with a friend named David Rhone. The pair went to Jay Rosenbaum's apartment and she met up with Corey Rossman, who is Rosenbaum's neighbor. At 146 a.m. Lauren is seen entering Kilroy's sports bar. At 2.27 a.m., Lauren is seen exiting the bar with Rossman. Lauren had left her cell phone and her shoes at the bar. That is why, when Jesse called, he ended up getting somebody at the bar. She had taken off her shoes when she walked out onto the sand-covered patio. Rossman walked with Lauren to her apartment complex. At 2.30 a.m., Lauren is seen entering Smallwood Plaza apartment. where her residence is located.

A passerby named Zach Oakes noticed her level of inebriation and asked her if she was okay. At 2.48 a.m. she left the apartments, and Lauren entered an alley that runs between College Avenue and Morton Street. Security cameras mounted on nearby apartments show her exit the alley at 2.51 a.m. and walk towards an empty lot. Lauren's keys and purse were found along this route through the alley. Lauren and Rossman arrived at Rossman's apartment shortly thereafter. Michael Beth, whose Rossman's roommate, was at the apartment. Rossman himself was very intoxicated and stumbling. He vomited on the carpet on the way up the stairs.

Beth stated that he escorted Rossman to bed. He then tried to persuade Lauren to sleep over for her own safety. He claimed Lauren said she wanted to return to her own apartment. So at 3.30 a.m., Beth said he then phoned his neighbor Rosenbaum, wanting him to take care of Lauren. Beth said that Lauren was attempting to get Beth to drink with her at her own apartment. She eventually went to Rosenbaum's apartment where he observed a bruise under her eye, presumably sustained in a fall earlier that evening. She told them that she didn't know how she got the bruise. Two calls were placed from Rosenbaum's phone shortly before she is reported to have left.

Rosenbaum said Lauren placed both calls, one to Roan and another two of friends. Neither picked up and no messages were left. At 4.30 a.m., Rosenbaum reports that Lauren left the apartment and this is the last reported sighting of her. He reported seeing her at the intersection of 11th Street and College Avenue headed south on college. She was last seen barefoot wearing black leggings and a white shirt. In August of 2011, police conducted a nine-day search of the Sycamore Ridge landfill in Pimento for clues in the disappearance, and from those in the area, you might know this is south of Terre Haute. The landfill is where trash from Bloomington is

hauled after a stop at a transfer station. The Bloomington Police Department, the Indiana University Police Department, and the FBI took part in this search. As of May 24, 2013, investigators had received 3,060 tips on Spears' disappearance. 100 of them received during the first half of 2013. So they received exponentially more after six months after her disappearance. So in April of 2015, the Bloomington police announced that they were investigating a possible link between Lauren's disappearance and the murder of another Indiana university student, Hannah Wilson. Hannah went missing on April 24, 2015, after visiting Kilroy's the same bar that Lauren had visited when she disappeared.

She was last seen getting into a taxi in the front of the bar and driving away. Her body was found the next morning in Brown County. A local man named Daniel Messel was arrested for her murder after his cell phone was discovered near her body. In July 2015, it was concluded that the two cases were unrelated and any similarities between the two cases were merely coincidental. I think that's more than a coincidence. I think that's much more than a coincidence. On January 28, 2016, the FBI and other police agencies investigated a property in the 2,900 block of Old Morgantown Road in Martinsville. This is approximately 20 miles north of Bloomington.

The property was connected to a man, Justin Wagers, who resided there with his mother and stepfather. Wagers was suspected of exposing himself to numerous local women. Investigators searched the property with cadaver dogs, which indicated potential evidence. Anthropologists conducted a dig and sifted dirt from the barn where the cadaver dogs hit but found nothing. Investigators also towed a white truck from the property belonging to wagers. I wonder if that means someone was there and was moved. It's possible.

I mean, you would think that what we just stated would be a breakthrough in the case. However... So several theories have emerged in reference to what happened to Lauren that evening. Lauren's parents have stated that they believe their daughter is dead. Based on her level of intoxication, they also feel that she may have been drugged while at the bar. Lauren's father, Robert, believes somebody could have slipped something into her drink at Kilroy's. The family has voiced suspicions about the men that she was with the evening,

as well as Jessie Wolf, her boyfriend, since they refuse to take police issue polygraphs and retain lawyers soon after Lauren's disappearance. So that's no indication of guilt. No. we should make it clear that that's what they did. So while the parents have not made any specific accusations, they do believe that they know more than they've told police. The men responded that they have taken privately administered polygraphs,

as well as one from the FBI. Since they do not trust the Bloomington police, they said they had retained lawyers. Lauren's friends and boyfriend told police that she used drugs in addition to alcohol in the night leading up to her disappearance. Jesse Wolfe's mother alleged that Lauren was asked to leave the summer camp where she met her son and Rosenbaum years earlier because of her drug use. On September 2nd, 2010, 9 months before her disappearance, Lauren was arrested on charges of public intoxication and illegal consumption. After her disappearance, police found a small amount of cocaine in her room by their statement.

J. Rosenbaum told investigators that Lauren consumed alcohol, snorted cocaine, and crushed up colonnipin tablets that evening. Her rare heart condition, long QT syndrome, added to the danger of drug use. Police addressed rumors that implied Lauren may have overdosed, and those with her may have hidden her body to avoid criminal charges. The police have also acknowledged that they have not ruled out other possibilities, such as an abduction by a stranger. Lauren's parents have previously stated that they do not believe her disappearance was a random abduction.

and statistics would back their theory up for sure. So Lauren's parents filed civil lawsuits against Corey Rossman, J. Rosenbaum, and Michael Beth for their involvement with their daughter leading up to the disappearance. The suits accused the defendants of negligence, alleging they supplied Lauren with alcohol after she was already visibly intoxicated, then neglected to assure that she returned safely to her apartment, which likely led to her death. The family stated they hoped the lawsuit would lead to the. the defendants admitting more information about what occurred on the night of Lauren's disappearance. As part of the suit, they subpoenaed private cell phone and academic records spanning 134 days before the night Lauren disappeared.

In 2013, federal judge Tanya Walton Pratt dismissed the suit against Michael Beth after determining he had no duty of care for Lauren. In 2014, Pratt dismissed the suit against the other two men as well, finding, and I quote, There could be any number of theories as to what happened to Lauren, and what, if any, injuries she may have sustained. Without evidence to prove these theories, it would be impossible for a jury to determine if whatever happened to Speer was a natural and probable consequence of her intoxication without any other intervening acts that would break the casual chain, end quote. So it sounds like the judge is dismissing based off of Hitchens' razor, and if you're, not familiar with Hitchens Razor, it was come up by Christopher Hitchens, which states that which

can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. So in this case, the judge found there's not enough evidence to assert foul play to the three men. And so it should be dismissed as such. That appears to be her thought process on the matter. Lauren's parents appealed the ruling. However, in 2015, a federal appeals court later upheld the dismissal of the parent. lawsuit, lawyers for the men have stated that their clients have cooperated fully with the police and the private investigators hired by the Speer family, and that all of them have passed private polygraphs. To date, none of the three men have been named as suspects in Lauren's disappearance, and no trace of Lauren has ever been found. A decade later, police say they have

received more than 36,000 tips since Lauren vanished in 2011, 1100 of which were described as actionable. They also say in just the past three to four years, they've executed at least 10 search warrants related to the case and received 800 tips, a hundred of which required some sort of follow-up. On June 3rd of this year, Lauren would have celebrated her 30th birthday. If you know anything about the disappearance of Lauren Speer, please say something. Tips can be shared anonymously by emailing police tips at bloomington.

or by calling the Bloomington Police Department at 812-339-4477 or Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana at 317-262 Tips, T-I-P-S. We will have that information in the description as well as the show notes. So many people, I'm sure, would wonder, Cadaver Dogs had a hit here. So if Cadaver Dogs had a hit and they gathered evidence, wouldn't something have happened for that, but I haven't found anything else involving Wagers since, especially in connected to this case. And as you were telling me off air, sometimes cadaver dogs hit wrong. Right. So just a wager, it wasn't an apartment, it was a property. So this can be outside as well.

Cadabar dogs can hit on a number of things. They can hit on human remains. Sometimes they hit on animal. Even though they're trained for human, they can hit on animal. And sometimes it can be completely a false positive. Cadver dogs have to go through training and follow-ups all of the time. And if they get too many false positives, they get removed from the program. So just because there were hits, it doesn't necessarily mean that there were human remains there, specifically Lauren's remains. And I think another thing that should be talked about is Lauren's condition, which is long QT syndrome. So this is considered a rare syndrome to have. I'm no cardiologist, so just take my summary for what it's worth, but it's a disorder that causes really

fast, rapid, and chaotic heartbeats randomly. So what this can do for somebody is it can cause seizures. Severe cases, it can cause sudden death. Even in minor cases, it causes people to feel faint or to just faint completely. So what you end up having to do is take beta blockers to treat this. And if you know anything about beta blockers, you cannot take alcohol. If you take alcohol with beta blockers, your blood pressure will fall significantly. So that increases the likelihood that you will faint. And, you know, if you take too much, even the literature recommends with the more common beta blockers that if you've had alcohol and you feel very faint or your heartbeat gets very, very fast. that you should seek immediate emergency care call 911.

So keeping this in mind, now I couldn't find out if she was taking beta blockers, but I would be shocked if she was not on them. So not only that you have the kind of note that she's snorting benzos and drinking as well, which is a huge no-do. Oh, yeah, benzos and drinking on top of that, benzos can also decrease heart rate. Benzos at the end of the day are tranquilizers. So what do those do to your central nervous system?

They lower your heart rate, they lower your core body temperature, they lower your blood pressure, they lower your respiration. So you already could be taking. And again, I'm assuming she's taking beta blockers because when you have long QT syndrome, that is the most common way of addressing it. So if she's snorting colonnipin and drinking, there's a very good chance her heart rate would drop. There's a very good chance that she's going to feel faint, that it's going to mess her up real bad. even if she didn't have long QT syndrome, snorting benzos and drinking heavily, not good for you at all. And she's is very small girl. So you take all these things in consideration.

I'd find it quite miraculous if nothing happened to her. I mean, we can only make assumptions, but would it be correct to think that something medical happened in regards to this? And they didn't want to bring her to the ER because then they would have to be like, hey, we took a minor out drinking or something. happened to her and they got rid of her, it's a plausible theory. I think it's very likely that happens. It's just who found her. We have to remember what is different from this case compared to some of more recent cases we've covered. The alleged suspects, and I'll use that term loosely, because I don't think they were officially named suspects with people with interest. They're more affluent people in a college town. Some people have better access to resources like they were able to

lawyer up immediately. And again, as I said, lawyering up is no indication of guilt. I frequently recommend that when you're dealing with the police over anything that you lawyer up if you can. But people who are more affluent have the resources to lawyer up and follow a lawyer's

advice, whereas people who don't have those resources may make some sort of misstep and incriminate themselves. Could that have happened here? Maybe, maybe not. But it's worth taking into consideration. Either way, it seems as if tips on this are not stopping and there's still information coming into the local police

departments. Hopefully this is one that will be solved though. The longer this takes, the more hope that I lose. But again, if you know anything, we have the information in the show notes in the description below. So if you're listening on YouTube and you appreciate this episode, please hit like and subscribe so that way we can continue getting out missing persons cases, as well as these smaller cases that the media aren't really covering out to a wider audience. This is by far the best way to help our channel. Though we do have a very wonderful group of people that have subscribed to us on Patreon, so let's thank those people now.

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