April 1, 2006 a handsome 2nd year medical student disappeared without a trace. He had a name. They all have names, but to the overloaded case docket of the investigators he was just another missing. His name was Brian Shaffer.
It was spring break and the Columbus, Ohio bars were crowded, celebrating the time off. The evening of March 31st Brian decided to meet up with friends at the Ugly Tuna Saloona, an upstairs bar in the South Campus Gateway. That Monday he had plans to take a trip with his long term girlfriend to Miami. Everyone, including his girlfriend, believe, he was going to propose marriage to her. She, in fact, spoke ot him late that night and nothing was array. Nobody would know that would be the last time she’d speak to him.
The bar was packed and Brian and his friends were separated after Brian went to say hello to a band member he knew. Video surveillance shows Brian entering, but never exiting. His friends said they waited around for him, thought he called it a night and went home, but that wasn’t he case at all. Brian had vanished without a trace.
His disappearance gained national attention, and several psychics and mediums were even called on the case. Fliers covered the campus and downtown area. His father and younger brother, who had just recently had another loss, Brian’s mom had passed from cancer just a month before, and his girlfriend waited, without an answer to where Brian was. Had he run away? Maybe his grief for his mom was more than they thought. He was close to her, after all. Was he gay, and didn’t know how to tell his family and girlfriend? It was a theory that a private investigator through around for a bit. Maybe he hit his head, had amnesia and didn’t know who he was? The hospitals and homeless shelters were searched. Did his friends kill him? But why? Someone thought they saw him in Mexico. Did he have a second life? Now people were drawing at straws, watching too many soap operas. But that was maybe easier to believe than he just disappeared. Without a trace.
I was asked to shed some light on Brian’s case. Not by the police, but by a private investigator hired by his father. And so as I sat at the Ugly Tuna Saloona w
atching the eerie video footage of Brian going up the escalator and never reappearing to go down, we talked and walked through every possible scenario. I met with Brian’s dad in front of a quarry that there had been talk someone put his body, and he wiped tears away as he discussed the loss of his boy, and the grief of losing his wife. None of it added up, though.
But missing p ersons rarely does.
I pointed out areas to search, but there wasn’t any funds to do anything like that and then Brian’s dad, Randy, was killed in a freak storm September of 2008. Without payroll for the private investigator, the case went stone cold. That doesn’t mean the detectives and others connected with the case have stopped looking because I don’t believe they have. Brian hasn’t been forgotten even though many of the websites his flyer was posted at no longer exist. Not found the pages say, just like Brian.
Columbus police has a list of cold cases, like any other large town – especially towns with college campuses, but in the age of technology, it is often confusing to just vanish without a trace.
Joey LaBute, Jr., 26, of Gahanna, Ohio was last seen late Friday night or early Saturday morning (March 4th/5th) at the Union Cafe in Columbus, Ohio. A 2011 graduate of Ohio State University, Joey worked at Morgan Stanley. Surveillance video from the crowded bar did not yield clues. On Thursday, March 31st Joey’s body was found in the Scioto River.
When I first saw the story of Joey, my mind couldn’t help but think of Brian. The bars they were last seen at was only 1 mile from one another. And they look similar. An eerie coincidence?
I write about The Brotherhood in my book Forevermore: Guided in Spirit by Edgar Allan Poe. Others call them The Smiley Face Killers.
The Smiley face murder theory (variations include Smiley face murders, Smiley face killings, Smiley face gang, and others) is a theory advanced by two retired detectives, Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte, that a number of young men found dead in bodies of water across several Midwestern American states over the last decade did not accidentally drown, as concluded by law enforcement agencies, but were victims of a serial killer or killers. The term smiley face became connected to the alleged murders when it was made public that the police had discovered graffiti depicting a smiley face near locations where they think the killer dumped the bodies in at least a dozen of the cases. Law enforcement is skeptical.
Obviously, Joey’s case is still new, the list of unsolved or categorized as accidental drownings, is long. Some have been found, like Joey. Some haven’t, like Brian. Is there a killer, or killers, getting away with murder? Many think so. I do too.
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