Lauren Spierer

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1:13Voices for Justice is a podcast that uses adult language and discusses sensitive and potentially triggering topics, including violence, abuse, and murder. This podcast may not be appropriate for younger audiences. All parties are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Some names have been changed or omitted per their request or for safety purposes. Listener discretion is advised. My name is Sarah Turney, and this is Voices for Justice.

1:45Today, I'm discussing the disappearance of Lauren Spearer. On the 13th anniversary of Lauren going missing, her family took to their Facebook page for her case to write, quote, The incessant state of not knowing is exhausting.

2:11This is the disappearance of Lauren Spearer. On the night of Thursday, June 2, 2011, 20-year-old Lauren Spearer was doing what a lot of college kids do in their spare time. She was getting ready to go out with some friends to her local bar with her fake ID in hand. She gets dressed in a white tank top, white blouse, and black pants. While it's officially summer and many of her friends have a few months off from grueling classwork, Lauren is enrolled in a summer class at Indiana University Bloomington, or IU. She's determined to work in the fashion industry, and is squeezing in her credits as a junior before heading back to her home state, New York, for an internship.

2:56Despite being from Scarsdale, Lauren has some pretty solid roots in Indiana. As life would have it, many of her friends she met at a summer camp in Pennsylvania when they were younger chose to attend IU as well, including her boyfriend of two years, Jesse Wolf. Lauren really is that girl. She's beautiful, smart, and outgoing. Her roommate Hadar Tamir told ABC News that she's the girl everyone falls in love with after meeting her. But Lauren isn't all work. She likes to sprinkle in some partying, which is what IU was known for at this time. And Lauren really lives at the center of it all. Her apartment complex, Smallwood Plaza is in the center of the city, and just a few minutes from campus and really all the major popular hangouts.

3:43So Lauren's getting ready for really what sounds like just a typical night out, when she gets a text from one of her friends from camp, Jay Rosenbaum. He has a plan for the night. He tells Lauren to come over to his place to pregame before heading out to Kilroy's Sports Bar, aka Sports. From what I can gather, it's your typical cheap college bar that's known for letting fake IDs, like Lauren's, slide. So Lauren, along with another friend of hers who lives in the same apartment complex, David Roan, make the about five-minute walk to Jay's place at five north townhomes. They get there a little after midnight.

4:21And the pre-gaming is really more like a full-blown party. There's a ton of people there, and Jay is already drunk. He has reportedly taken six to ten shots of vodka. So it's definitely not a let's have a drink or two to save money at the bar type of situation. But while at Jay's, Lauren eventually meets up with a man and fellow student that she met the weekend prior at the Indianapolis 500 event. His name is Corey Rossman, and at some point they leave Jay's and head to his place for about an hour. After that, they walk the few blocks to sports, and get there at 1.46 a.m. At this point, Lauren is clearly very intoxicated.

5:02According to journalist and author of College Girl Missing about Lauren's case, Sean Cohen, she wasn't only drinking. At some point, she also bought Klonopin and Xanax, and she was also doing cocaine. But Corey continues buying drinks for himself and Lauren, and at 2.27 a.m., they leave sports to go back to Lauren's apartment complex. She leaves without her phone and without her shoes, but still walks the two blocks home. And what happens next is captured on video surveillance. Lauren and Corey are seen entering the lobby and using the elevator to get to the fifth floor, where Lauren's apartment is.

5:43But when they step off the elevator, they're met by a group of men. Again, Lauren is still visibly intoxicated and losing her balance. So the men ask if she's okay. Corey answers for her and basically says he's got it, he's gonna take care of her. But I think we all know how this situation looks. Lauren is barefoot and barely standing on her own. The men tell Corey that he basically needs to do the right thing and make sure that she gets home safe. But Corey doesn't appreciate this. He begins cursing and basically says mind your business. And then one of the men punches Corey in the jaw which knocks him to the floor.

6:23But for some reason, despite being really close to Lauren's apartment, she doesn't make it home. She's seen on surveillance video 12 minutes later leaving through the front door of the lobby with Corey, and she still doesn't have any shoes on. She never made it to her apartment. She's stumbling and makes it about a block before she tries to take a break. She attempts to sit down on a set of steps, but falls and hits her head on the sidewalk. Rock. Surveillance captures her falling two times after this, dropping her purse, student ID, and keys along the way. He is also reportedly seen making a phone call during this time, but the woman that he called says that she doesn't remember what the call was about.

7:07Finally, Corey just picks Lauren up and carries her over his shoulder to his apartment. Here, they're greeted by Corey's roommate. And it really seems like a big mess. Corey throws up, his roommate helps him, and then the roommate tries to get Lauren to sleep on the couch, but she's adamant that she wants to go back home. At 3.30am, this roommate calls Lauren's friend Jay from earlier in the night, and he asks if he can bring Lauren to his place. Jay agrees, and when they get to his place, he can't help but notice that Lauren has a fresh bruise under her eye. He does ask about it, but Lauren says that she can't remember where she got it.

7:48And when Lauren gets to Jay's, she still wants to go home She continues to insist And while Jay does try to get someone else to take Lauren home He ultimately decides to let her walk the about two and a half blocks home alone at around 4.30 a.m He says he watched from his balcony as Lauren walked barefoot towards her apartment complex And eventually out of sight And despite there being a security camera that should have captured Lauren walking home, she's never seen in that footage or any other. Jay watching Lauren walk away is the last reported sighting of her. This message is sponsored by Greenlight.

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9:37A few hours after Lauren Spear was last seen, her boyfriend of two years, Jesse Wolf, calls her phone, but there's no answer. According to reporting by Indianapolis Monthly, Jesse lived in a house just north of campus. And he spent the previous night at home and went to bed at about 2.30 a.m. So he really has no idea what's going on at this point. He just knows that Lauren isn't answering her phone. So he texts and he calls again and again and again. until finally someone picks up. But it's not Lauren. It's an employee from sports, the bar Lauren was at the night before where she left her phone.

10:17So Jesse tries Lauren's roommate Hadar Tamir, but she hasn't seen Lauren either. This seems to be when they realize that something is seriously wrong. It's college, and partying and staying out all night really isn't anything abnormal. In fact, according to reporting by ABC News, Lauren had been arrested for public intoxication nine months prior to going missing. But it wasn't like Lauren to just blow everyone off. So Jesse and Hadar meet up. It seems that Hadar was away from the apartment she shared with Lauren at the time. So she gives Jesse a key so he can take a look around. But he doesn't find anything.

10:57Finally, at 4.30 p.m., Lauren is reported missing to the Bloomington Police Department. Lauren's parents, Charlene and Robert, are also notified. They're still in Scarsdale when they get a call from Lauren's sister, Rebecca. She tells them friends have reported Lauren missing. And they immediately call Lauren's boyfriend, Jesse, who's at the police station at that moment. Once they get a little more information, their first thought was maybe Lauren had a health complication that landed her in the hospital. See, Lauren has a heart condition called Long QT Syndrome. Basically, her heartbeat can become irregular, which can cause things like fainting or for her heart to stop entirely.

11:37So they start calling local hospitals to see if maybe Lauren is there, but none report treating Lauren that day or the night before. So her parents book a flight out to Bloomington for the very next day. Overall, the response to Lauren going missing is huge, both by law enforcement and the media. Lauren was young, successful, beautiful, and from a very affluent family She gets the response every missing person should be so lucky to receive Immediately, there are massive searches for her With hundreds of volunteers scouring the area for any trace of her They even call in the National Guard to help with the search And of course, once the immediate area is searched They expand to more remote areas like farms, the woods and have dive team search Lake Monroe.

12:28The Herald Times runs the first story about Lauren, and that starts a huge snowball effect. Essentially, the media just swarms the area surrounding her apartment. Her story is soon featured on the Today Show, USA Today, CNN, and the London Daily Mail. Her case basically blows up. Before long, people like Ryan Seacrest, author Nicholas Sparks, Kim Kardashian, and Stephen Colbert share her case as well. There are also a ton of blogs popping up dedicated to discussing Lauren's case, including one called Jay Rosenbaum Needs to Talk. Her family also advertises a$100 ,000 reward for information leading to Lauren.

13:13Law enforcement, the media, and her family are literally doing everything they can at this point. And I think that this is part of why Lauren's case has become somewhat infamous in the true crime space. There are countless witnesses who saw Lauren right up to when she went missing. The response for her was above and beyond what most missing person cases receive. And they just had nothing. There was no trace of where Lauren could have gone or what happened to her, but they do immediately suspect foul play. During a press conference at Bloomington Police Headquarters on June 7th, Lieutenant Bill Parker says, quote, when somebody at 4.30 in the morning, no shoes, and has earlier been drinking, goes out and then just disappears off a street corner, we feel like there certainly could be foul play involved, End quote.

14:06That night, police obtained and presented a search warrant at the Smallwood apartment complex. They were there to obtain any possible security footage related to Lauren's disappearance. And when they find that the door to the security office was locked, they bring in a battering ram to break it down. Again, it's just really intense. But we know how these things go. As they are physically searching for Lauren, investigators are also trying to piece together a timeline of her whereabouts and put together a list of potential witnesses and potential persons of interest. And it's really kind of a mixed bag in Lauren's case.

14:46A lot of people seem to be scared or possibly hiding something. Only one of Lauren's friends goes to the police to tell them what they know, and some outright refuse to take a polygraph test. Now I always feel that I need to add my mandatory disclaimer here. We know polygraph tests aren't exactly reliable, and it really is in anyone's best interest, guilty or not, to refuse to take one, and to also seek legal advice when they're in a situation like this. But of course, these legalities and technicalities don't comfort Lauren's family. They want to find her, and it's really upsetting to hear that her friends aren't cooperating with all the investigators' demands.

15:29They are especially concerned about Corey Rossman. He quickly obtained a lawyer who claimed that because Corey, quote, got his clock cleaned, end quote, referring to being punched in the face, he has no memory of what happened shortly before the altercation and no memory of what happened after. On June 9th, 2011, the Today Show aired the following interview with Corey's lawyer. Carl Salzman. Police have pored over surveillance videos taken at Spears' apartment building the night she vanished and are speaking to as many as 10 people described as persons of interest. According to police, the video shows an altercation about two hours before Lauren went missing.

16:12All of our information, including video and interviews, indicates that Lauren was not involved in an altercation. But Corey Rossman, the fellow Indiana University student, Lauren was with apparently was. He was basically, he got his clock cleaned. Rossman's attorney, Carl Saltzman, says his client was hit hard in the face and now has no memory at all of what happened that night. The injury to his head significantly affected his memory, not only from the time forward, but, you know, 15, 20 minutes prior to getting hit. Following the fight, Kate Saltzman says Lauren assisted Rossman back to his apartment in this nearby building.

16:54She then reportedly spent time partying with other friends before heading home alone at 4.30 in the morning and disappearing. He's three, four, maybe even five people away from being the last person to see her. Lauren's mother and father, who are here from New York, continue to urge searchers not to give up hope. Anything small could be big. Saltzman says despite the head injury causing memory loss, his client did not seek medical attention. But he adds that Corey Rossman is cooperating fully with police. So in the first about two weeks of Lauren's case, there are major searches for her and a ton of media.

17:37But not a lot of cooperation with law enforcement. And really not a lot of movement until June 15th, 12 days after Lauren went missing. This is when police release video footage of a white pickup truck to the public. While scouring video surveillance of the area looking for any trace of Lauren, investigators notice this white truck that looks like it's circling the block. It appears in the frame twice in footage from the early morning of June 3rd, but they can't identify it. They know that it's not new, maybe a couple years old, and while there is a logo on the side, they can't see it clearly enough to identify it.

18:17And I think most concerning of all, it looks like there's something in the truck bed. But like with the logo, the footage is just too rough to be able to see what it is. But obviously, they want to find this truck and the driver immediately. And after releasing the footage to the public, they get a massive response of over 500 tips, and one actually leads them to the driver. But after speaking with him and comparing his statements to the footage along with cooperating witness statements, they discover that he wasn't circling the block and had a verified reason to be there. He was picking up an employee at Lauren's apartment complex.

18:57The driver is cleared of any involvement in Lauren's disappearance.

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19:30After searching the immediate area and expanding the search to more rural areas, investigators don't find anything that can point them to where 20-year-old Lauren Spearer may have gone. So in August, they expand their search to a local landfill, a last resort kind of search that I imagine no family is thrilled to hear about. At this point, they aren't searching for Lauren alive. They're looking for her remains. They dig through over 4 ,000 tons of garbage in nine days, but nothing related to Lauren is found. They really investigate a ton of tips in the first few weeks and months after Lauren is reported missing, but again, just nothing was found.

20:15They also execute more search warrants, including for the residences of Lauren's boyfriend Jesse, Corey Rossman, and Jay Rosenbaum. By September, Lauren's family hires a private investigator named Bo Deedle. He's kind of a flashy guy. He's a retired NYPD detective turned PI slash actor slash private security. In the 90s, he was the head of security for Jordan Belfort, aka the Wolf of Wall Street. In 1998, his autobiography, One Tough Cop, the Bo Deedle story was made into a movie, and his role was played by Stephen Baldwin. He also played the cop who arrests Henry Hill in Goodfellas, and played himself in the Wolf of Wall Street movie just two years after being hired by Lawrence's family.

21:05So again, he's a big deal, and he makes some pretty big waves immediately. On the 23rd, he appears on the show Good Day New York, where he likens the Bloomington police chief to Gomer Pyle. This is after they declined to share information about Lauren's case with him. Though I do think it's worth noting that he did later apologize for this statement, saying his, quote, passion outweighed a common-sense outlook on what should have been done, end quote. By November, it's announced that Jay Rosenbaum has spoken with authorities, given a DNA sample, and complied with a polygraph test. And Lauren's parents tell Indianapolis Monthly that they believe Jay was, quote, pretty frank with them, end quote.

21:52Robert adds, quote, we've met with two of the boys, Jay and Jesse. One of the other boys flat out refuses to speak with us or to the private investigators, and that's Corey Rossman, end quote. But the holidays come and go without Lauren or any news of where she may be, and on January 17, 2012, Lauren misses her 21st birthday. The following month, the reward for information about Lauren increases from$100 ,000 to$250 ,000. This includes a$10 ,000 pledge from the owner of the Indianapolis Colts football team. And then, in April, Corey Rossman finally speaks out. In an email to Indianapolis Monthly, he wrote, quote, I do not normally talk to reporters at all, because of the exact reason of the lies that are being spread about me in articles such as those which just came out past few days.

22:51If you have some way to prove my name wouldn't be slandered, and what I say actually gets across, and I am not portrayed in the terrible light the lying slanderous people connected to this case have portrayed me in, then I'll consider talking to you. Otherwise, I have nothing to say, and you can refer all questions to my lawyer, Carl Salzman." So, despite this statement, it's pretty safe to say that Corey still isn't talking. But just over a week later, on May 3rd, the Bloomington police made an announcement that shifted the focus away from Corey Rossman. They tell the public that they're looking into a man named William Clyde Gibson III from New Albany, about two hours south of Bloomington.

23:36In March, just two months before this announcement, Gibson killed and sexually assaulted 35-year-old Stephanie Kirk before burying her in a shallow grave in his backyard. And in April, he did the same to 75-year-old Christine Wittes, who was his deceased mother's best friend. But unlike Stephanie Kirk, Gibson never buried her, and his sister later found Christine Wittes in his garage and called police. After a short police chase, Gibson was arrested. Now, because they are solved murders that don't really need our help, I don't want to go too far into detail about how these women died, but it was brutal and just really sick.

24:20Following his arrest, he confessed to a third murder from 2003, the murder of Karen Hodella. Gibson even had the date he killed her, October 10, 2002, tattooed on his arm. So for obvious reasons, authorities felt compelled to investigate him in relation to Lauren's case, but as far as I could find, nothing really came of it. In 2013, he was sentenced to 65 years in prison for the murder of Karen Hodella, and was given the death sentence for the murder of Christine Wittes. In 2014, he was again sentenced to death for the murder of Stephanie Kirk. While he did appeal his death sentences, they were both upheld, and as of late 2024, he was still awaiting execution.

25:06He has never been connected to or confessed to any crime related to Lauren Spearer. By the time the one-year mark of Lauren going missing came and went, investigators were still getting a lot of leads, just none that led to Lauren. The following June, Lauren's parents sued Corey Rossman and Jay Rosenbaum in civil court. They argued that both men were negligent, and their behavior directly resulted in Lauren's disappearance and death. At this point, they do believe that Lauren is deceased. But of course, their lawyers fight back. They argue that Lauren was an adult in charge of her own actions, and that there's no proof that she's deceased.

25:49Ultimately, everything was dismissed by the judge. Lauren's case goes pretty quiet after this, though the leads are still coming in. Then in April 2015, investigators discover a case eerily similar to Lauren's. 22-year-old Indiana University student Hannah Wilson was out celebrating her impending graduation with some friends, and during that celebration, she finds herself at sports, the same bar Lauren was at the night she went missing. Like Lauren, Hannah also gets very intoxicated. Her friends put her in a cab to send her home, but the next day she's found deceased about 10 miles from the Bloomington campus.

26:31A man named Daniel Messel is arrested four days later for her murder. And here's the thing. Investigators say that Messel had a long history of sexually assaulting women dating back to at least 2012, the year after Lauren went missing. And all of these assaults happened close to Smallwood, Lauren's apartment complex. But just like what seems like every other lead in this case, investigators were never able to link him to Lauren. He is currently serving an 80-year sentence for his crimes. And really, that's the last major lead in Lauren's case to this day. When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter.