Where’s Brian?

In September 2008, Randy Shaffer cleared debris in his yard after a heavy windstorm hit his town in Baltimore, Ohio. Unfortunately, while Randy was outside, a tree branch flew off and fatally struck him in the neck. When his obituary was posted online, his son, Brian Shaffer, posted in the condolence book, “To dad, love Brian (Virgin Islands). 

This was a brief condolence post from a son, but that’s nowhere near the shocking part. Brian had a close and loving relationship with his father. The shocker is that Brian has been reported missing since March 2006 after a night out bar hopping with friends. 

In March 2006, Brian was at a bar called the Ugly Tuna Saloona with his friend William “Clint” Florence and a woman named Meredith, who was a friend of Clint. While in the bar, Brian walked away from his friends and was never heard from again. 

To this day, surveillance videos don’t show Brian ever leaving the bar. However, because of the condolence post supposedly from Brian, it is speculated that somehow Brian snuck out of the bar and started a new life in the Virgin Islands. If it was a post from Brian, the biggest question would be how he escaped to the Virgin Islands and why.

***

During Spring Break in March 2006, Brian Shaffer, a medical student at Ohio State University College of Medicine, went out with his friend Clint to the Ugly Tuna Saloona bar for drinks. Brian had been pulling all-nighters for upcoming exams and wanted to celebrate his hard work with a night out before he was scheduled to fly out to Miami with his girlfriend, Alexis Waggoner, for Spring Break. 

Brian and Clint met at 9:00 pm at the Ugly Tuna Saloona. They bar-hopped and took shots for most of the night. After 12:00 am, they met up with Meredith Reed, a friend of Clint, at a bar. Meredith eventually gave Brian and Clint a ride back to the Ugly Tuna Saloona, where they started the night. The trio was inside the bar together, and at some point, Brian said that he had to go to the bathroom and broke away from the group. 

After 30 minutes, Clint started to wonder if Brian was ok. Brian was 6’2 and well built, and he always handled his liquor well, but they had been taking shots of hard liquor all night, so Clint figured maybe Brian was still in the bathroom throwing up, or perhaps he fell asleep on the toilet.  

Clint searched the bathroom but couldn’t find Brian. Clint told Meredith that he didn’t know where Brian was, and they searched all over the bar but still did not find him. At this point, it was 2:00 am, and the bar was closing. Clint and Meredith waited outside the bar anticipating Brian would eventually walk out with the crowd, but he never did. 

They called his cell phone multiple times but since Brian never answered, they assumed that he left back to his apartment without telling them. The following day, Brian’s father called his phone multiple times and got no answer. On the following Sunday Brian was scheduled to fly to Miami with Alexis, but no one had contacted him, Randy called the police and filed a missing persons report.

***

Brian grew up in Pickerington, Ohio, a suburb outside of Columbus. After high school, he studied microbiology at Ohio State University and then started his medical studies at Ohio State. Despite his medical studies, his real passion was starting a band in a warm climate, which is why he wanted to visit Miami for Spring Break. 

In the same month that Brian went missing, his mother, Renee Shaffer, passed away after battling myelodysplasia. Myelodysplasia is a group of disorders characterized by abnormal development of blood cells in the bone marrow.

Brian went through a period of depression after losing his mother. He even told his girlfriend that she probably would be happier if she were with someone else, but Alexis was super supportive of Brian during this challenging time and made their relationship stronger.

***

Detective Sean Vincent was on vacation with his family in Orlando, FL, when he got the call to investigate a missing person. Initially, Detective Sean was annoyed. The area around South Campus, where the Ugly Tuna Saloona was located, had a risen crime rate, and Detective Sean was working around the clock with a couple of homicide cases just within the past month. His family had been looking forward to a much needed vacation. But Detective Sean’s wife knew how demanding his job was and how unpredictable it could be. So instead of Detective Sean ruining his family’s vacation, he chose to go back to Ohio by himself, and his wife and kids would finish the vacation without him.

Columbus had more security cameras in Ohio than Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Toledo combined. It was hard for Detective Sean to wrap his mind around the idea that someone could go missing without a trace in an area with many security cameras installed. 

Detective Sean’s first stop was investigating the bar where Brian went missing. When he checked the security footage around the time Brian went missing, he saw Brian, Clint, and Meredith going up an escalator at 1:15 am. This was the time when Meredith said that she brought Brian and Clint back to the Ugly Tuna Saloona.

At 1:55 am, Brian was seen outside the bar talking to two females and saying goodbye, then moving off-camera. This was the last time any trace was known to Brian. The camera doesn’t show Brian exiting the bar any time after it closed. Detective Sean also checked the cameras from other bars to see if they caught Brian entering or leaving one of them, but they had no evidence.

There was only one other way that Brian could have left the Ugly Tuna Saloona: through a service door in the back of the bar that is not generally used by the public. The door opened to a construction site that Detective Sean believed would be hard to walk through while sober, let alone while intoxicated, which he believed Brian had to be at the time.

At this point, Detective Sean used police dogs to search the area and even ordered Brian’s dad and the two friends he was with to take lie detector tests. Clint hired a lawyer who instructed him not to take the lie detector test. In 2009, the two women whom Brian talked to in the surveillance footage and supposedly the last people that Brian communicated with were identified but were not asked to take a polygram. 

Brian’s girlfriend, Alexis, called his cell phone every day for a long time. It went to voicemail for the longest time, assuming that after a few days, his phone’s battery died. One day in September 2006, Brian’s phone rang three times, but no one picked up. A cell phone tower pinged his phone to be in Hillard, Ohio, 14 miles northwest of Columbus.  

Two years after Brian’s death, the case went cold, but Randy Shaffer didn’t give up searching for his son. Although Randy’s hope for finding his son alive mainly was depleted at this point, he at least wanted to find his son’s body to bring some closer. 

A psychic that Randy consulted told him that Brian’s body was in the water near a bridge pier. Doubting that someone could have kidnapped Brian’s 6’2 fit figure, killed him, and thrown him over a bridge without any evidence or surveillance trace, Randy concluded that maybe his son committed suicide over his depression from the loss of his mother. But Randy and his search party never found Brian’s body or any evidence that he was near water.

Detective Sean moved on from the Brian Shaffer case until the condonecence post was reported to him. When Detective Sean investigated the post, the location was from a public computer in Franklin County. Brian’s case was very famous, so someone who knew about the case played a hoax. 

To this day Detective Sean believes that Brian might still be alive and has criticized Clint for not taking a lie detector test. Him and Brian’s ex-girlfriend, Alexis, both believe that Clint knows something and is not coming forward.