The Disappearance of Brian Shaffer.

We're going to look into the unsolved and, to be perfectly honest, extremely bizarre disappearance of Brian Shaffer. He attended OSU for his undergraduate studies and graduated with a degree in microbiology in 2003. He returned to OSU and enrolled in the college of medicine in March 2006. Three weeks prior to Brian's disappearance, his mother passed away from cancer, and although he appeared to be handling it well, his friends claim that it was difficult for him given how close they were.

Brian Shaffer entirely vanished on April 1, 2006. According to his family and friends, this was exceedingly uncommon and out of character for Brian.

He was a successful medical student who had a girlfriend he adored. His family filed a missing person's report when he missed his trip to Miami, Florida, where Brian and his girlfriend planned to spend their spring break.

It's worth noting that many of the couple's relatives and friends, as well as his girlfriend, anticipated he was going to propose to her on this trip. Therefore, it is unlikely that Brain would simply vanish. Brian and his friend William Florence went out on March 31st to celebrate the start of spring break. Meredith Reed, a friend of William Florence's, ended up joining them later in the evening.

Brian vanished on April 1st, 2006, while out drinking at the Ugly Tuna Saloona in Columbus, Ohio with friends. The biggest puzzle in this case is why Brian's corpse was never recovered despite security camera footage appearing to show him returning to the bar and never leaving. At 1:50 in the morning, a camera near the bar's entrance captured him speaking to two ladies. William Florence told police that he had seen Brian when he re-entered the establishment but had lost sight of him in the fifteen minutes before it closed.

William Florence and Meredith Reed said that after searching the bar, they were unable to find Brian. William searched the men's restroom, but didn't find Brian, and he called Brian's phone, no one answered, so they presumed he had left without them and walked home. Brian has not been seen or heard from since, his personal belongings have not vanished along with him, and his bank accounts haven't had any activity.

After missing his trip to Miami, Brian was reported missing on April 3rd, 2006. He had not been seen for two days, an investigation and search were launched right away. They found Brian's car at his apartment, and all of his possessions were accounted for . Next authorities focused their attention on William Florence and Meredith Reed. Reed consented to take and passed a polygraph test. William initially assisted the police. He then hired a lawyer and declined to submit to a polygraph test or continue speaking with the police. In William's eyes, this matter was over because he had nothing more to say and was completely open and honest with the police from the start.

At the Ugly Tuna Saloona, cops started their search for Brian.

They spoke with bar staff and the two ladies Brian was last seen talking with, but none of them were able to provide any relevant information. No blood or other evidence was ever found inside the bar by the police. Police searched through CCTV from adjacent bars to see if any of their footage may shed any light on how Brian disappeared the Ugly Tuna Saloona.

However, neither the security footage from the establishments along Brian's way home nor any other bars' cameras turned up anything.

At one point it was thought that Brian changed his clothes or put on a hat at the bar to avoid been captured on video. Investigators came to the conclusion that this was extremely unlikely. 

The only other exit from the building was a service entrance that was only accessible to the workers. At the time this exit opened into a construction site.

However, police dogs didn't pick up enough of a scent for the police to assume that Brian had exited the bar that way.

Police began scouring neighborhood streets, dumpsters, nearby bodies of water, and started asking residents whether they had seen Brian. The police even examined the sewers after asking the city for access. After scouring miles of sewer from the bar in all directions, the police began to think about other plausible scenarios besides an accident or foul play.

Police assumed that since his mother had passed away recently, he had fled to grieve and would return. However, this was shown to be incorrect and not what happened when his disappearance was shown to be permanent and there were no obvious reasons for him to willingly leave. To this day, no valuable information has been discovered.

He entered a bar and never exited.

One of the several possibilities that have been proposed is that he may be the sole victim of the Smiley face killers to have never been found. However, this has been met with a great deal of skepticism.

Another theory is that William Florence assisted Brian in disappearing, but why would a medical student want to throw away over six years of hard work in college, his family, and a girlfriend he loved. 

Six months after Brian went missing, his girlfriend called his cell phone, it rang three times before disconnecting. According to his cell provider, a crossed wire error may have caused this call to go through and the subsequent pinging off a tower 40 miles away. However, it's plausible that either Brian's killer or Brian turned the phone for a split second.

Randi Schaeffer, Brain's father, passed away in September 2008. After his obituary appeared online, a condolence book was uploaded. One of the signatures read, "To Dad, love Brian," and was signed from the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Because of this it was thought that Brian relocated to the U.S. Virgin Islands. However, it was revealed that the note had been written from a public computer in Franklin County, Ohio. It turned out to be a hoax.

 Since there was construction going on and a temporary freight elevator without security cameras, there's a chance that there was a blind spot where he was able to avoid the cameras. He might have seen something he shouldn't have and been the victim of foul play.

Even if Brian had been able to leave the bar undetected by security cameras, and he might have walked home, but it was likely that he was at least a little drunk after a night out. Foul play is possible because of the high crime rate in the neighborhood where he lived.

The FBI became involved because many people were anxious to find Brian. It's unlikely that he made it out of the bar; something must have happened, perhaps he was killed or injured. But since this occurred more than 17 years ago, whoever knows what happened to Brian that night is keeping their information very well hidden. 

There are currently no confirmed sightings of Brian, and I find it absurd that a man could simply vanish without a trace in a bar of all places. The Ugly Tuna Saloona bar shut down on May 28, 2018.