Thinking Sideways: The Disappearance of Lauren Spierer

gonna talk about a mysterious disappearance. We haven't done those in a while. Actually we haven't. No, we haven't. Actually I was kidding, but right, I know, I've been on kind of a I don't want to talk about it streak, but I'm ready to talk about it again. It's fine. So this week we're going to talk about the disappearance of Laurens Spear, who is It was a two thousand and eleven disappearance from Bloomington, Indiana. We've heard of it. It's kind of in the news a lot. It has

been in the news a lot. Yeah, well not not just in the super recent news, but it just mass it's five year anniversary, so it always gets the refresh. Yeah. Sorry, when you hit those kind of anniversaries. Let's just dive right in. Great Do you guys have more like banter or anything? Flop out the beginning of this episode with So, I was on the Internet the other day and I found this thing. No, I never go on the internet,

you know that, Just Wikipedia? Okay. So Lauren was an only child who grew up in an upper middle class family in New York. She was four eleven which four foot eleven inches, which I didn't bother to translate into it's about streak kilometers. It's like five stones. Yeah, right there, um and she waghed. She weighed just ninety pounds um. And she was twenty years old when she disappeared. So

she's a very petite girl, very very petite. Yeah. She was a sophomore at Indiana State University in Bloomington, Indiana, the bad Bloomington. It went to school in Bloomington, Illinois because there's a blooming to normal Indiana and a blooming to Normal Illinois. Because nobody in the Midwest knows how to creatively name places. Um, they're both like twin cities.

And I went to school in Bloomington, Illinois. Anyway, she was studying textile merchandizing, which I know I've seen she was planning on going into fashion with But my understanding from that, from research of that degree is that's not maybe the best degree. I was very confused when I saw this in the not I mean, it's more it's my understanding this is totally like doesn't matter to the

case all. But my understanding of that is that it's more geared towards like interior design or textile development, not fashion. But hey, whatever, maybe she wanted to design close are made out of textiles. You never knowist maybe she just had the wrong idea and school didn't want to steer clear of that because they were making money. Yeah, by

all accounts, Lauren was a really great person. And though some do suspect foul play, nobody suspects foul play in the like because she had a bunch of enemies that were out to get her type of thing unlikely or a grudge or pre really premeditated in any way, so kind of a crime of opportunity or of a crime of opportunity. If there is indeed foul play involved in this, I guess let's just jump right in and talk about timeline.

Kind a pretty decent timeline in this one, which isable timeline. Yeah, and there's a lot of cameras that helps she was and but there's not you know, it's not like a leading up in students, what's the what's the phrase? It's um eventually up leading to the event, dating to the event that we don't really have that. It's you know, she was a normal college student student. She was very involved in extracurricular activities until that night. Nobody, nobody would

have guessed what was going to happen. Yeah, this is a Thursday night, right, It was a Thursday night, June third, two eleven. I remember it well. I guess it was June fourth, two thousand eleven, thousand eleven, because their timeline starts I thought, I think good night thirty. Yeah, I think it started Thursday night. Was Thursday was the second, Not that this is that big of a deal, but that Friday was the third, right, Okay, yeah, I know

you're right. Sorry, am on Thursday on Friday? Yeah, okay, so twelve thirty am Friday morning, so we hours, so wee hours, and you know, researching the story reminded me of how I'm actually an adult now because I read that and it was that has to be a typo, and like read three other places and I was like, dang, that's no, that's real. So Lauren left her apartment to go pregame at twelve thirty am midnight thirty am on Friday, June eleven. She left her apartment at Smallwood Plaza and

she Meft left with her friend David Rone. They met up with a friend um with like a bunch of friends at Jay Rosenbaum's town house at the five North town Homes. Yeah, it was pretty bunch of apartments. It's all, I mean, everything kind of in Bloomington, Indiana is pretty close to each other. It's all pretty walking distance. One of the people that was there was a guy by the name of Corey Rossman and his roommate whose name is Mike beth Um. They both lived two doors down.

Her boyfriend Jesse did not go out that night. He says they were texting all night until he went to bed. I don't have any information as to what time he went to bed. Yeah, I'm gonna say he said he stayed up and watched the basketball game. I think it was the Heat were in the championships if for some reason,

and he stayed up with his friends. Game was over, they continued to drink at the apartment, and then he went to bed, right, but allegedly it's I mean, it's probably worth saying that nobody has any reason to doubt this. And I think that cell towers corroborated, not that Bloomington is so large that cell tower pining in one place or another, you know, but um worth worth mentioning. And so what everybody was doing the group that Lauren was with was they were doing this pregaming thing, which I

have heard pre funk is what we used to call it. Yeah, we always call it pregaming. But I've always heard this described as like a weekly ritual or more more than frequently than weekly, but that it was the same group people would get together for the same thing on the same night pretty much all the time. Thursty Thursdays is you know a thing I remember, you know, when I was in college, we I think we only had two nights a week that didn't have designated drinking themes. That's

this sounds very familiar right for me. I swear it was like Tuesday, Wednesday or Wednesday, Thursday something like that. We had every night of the week. We had Beer Club Tuesday, wine Wine Women Wednesday, and then Thirsty Thursdays, and then Friday has always had a different theme in Saturday has had different themes. So with Sunday Monday nights were our only nights off, we came up with reasons to drink those nights. Anyways, Joe and I used to

go out for anything can happened Mondays. That was actually a good time. It sounds like fun. So there was definitely drinking and allegedly drugs. Ostensibly drugs, I hope, so um happening there as well. And again worth reminding people, Lauren at this time is only twenty years old. Um, and if you don't already know, the legal drinking age in America is one. She was not everywhere some places and there are a few places left. Drugs are not not legal. Yeah yeah, so um that's just worth mentioning.

Pre game um at Jay's town house until about one six am, which is when Corey and Lauren walk over to Kilroy's Sports Bar, which was a local sports bar that apparently wasn't really great at I d ing at night, huge looked huge, freaking gigantic. Yeah, it looked really big, and it looks like, again, you know, the kind of like college place. I think they I don't know what

Indiana's law. Actually, we were just in Indiana, I don't I don't know that I even looked up when they're like beer a clock is, so we used to call it beer clock whenever they stopped serving alcohol too. Um yeah, that's when the hotel kicked us out of the bar. It's too yeah great. Um so yeah, you know, they showed up pretty much like fifteen minutes before last call. They had been pregaming already. But it sounds like that was a pretty big place where people kind of hung out.

And just because the bar stops serving alcohol doesn't mean they necessarily close, and I think that was the case with Kilroy's. I never understood the wanting to go to the bar just before it closed. Well I've done it, don't get me wrong, but I never never could fathom fund that. But there are places that have after hours functions too, but for me, it was always like, you know, there's no more booze, What the hell I'm leaving? Right? Yeah? So I think in this instance it's likely that they

just got pretty sloppy about I deing. Later in the night, it was like, all right, who's going to sneak in for the last fifteen minutes. Well, she also had a fake idea, I believe. Yeah, but I mean a fake I D. You can still just because somebody has a fake, I D do me. If you're good at I ding, it means you should be able to catch a fake, I D. I mean it's a college town. You know

you're not gonna be too, but you might be. And that I would just say, that would be a reason that I could give for why she would go that late, because she wanted one more Madori sour or you know, I don't know, maybe there's like dancing happening there. I don't know. Um, yeah, that thing has a bunch of dance floors. Yeah. It is a one stop shop of drinking and partying. And then at two am, Lauren has seen exiting the bar with Corey. Lauren had left her

cell phone and her shoes at the bar. At the shoes she had taken off, there was a part of the patio again, one stop shop part of the patio that was sandy. I think she was wearing she wasn't wearing heels, but she would be some kind of something, yeah, because it gets pretty hot in India, and she'd taken them off to go walk out in the sand and

then just have a little volleyball there. Maybe they do. Actually, yeah, I was confused by this, so I went to their their Facebook page, and there's boatloads of photos of it, and it's you know how there's that big green awning in the front that you always seeing all the photos of it, like forty ft long or whatever. Just to the right as a courtyard that's fenced in, and that apparently they truck in sand to have stuff go on.

What was it that the event that I Malibouti party was the photo album that I was looking at, So that was very cleverly named. But yeah, no, it's right there. They had volleyball. Sounds like a lot of fun. To go back to college and go to Bloomington, and I'll say, Illinois can the college that's there's vastly superior. So then three minutes later, at to thirty am, Lauren is seen entering Smallwood Plaza, which is where her apartment is, which is by the way, just around the corner from the

bar practically, which she's got Corey with her. A group of boys basically saw her and Corey and the it kind of differs a little bit. Basically, they they noticed that she was in bad shape and asked her because they knew, you know, everybody kind of knew each other, and asked her like Harry okay, and she said, yeah,

I'm fine. But apparently at the same time, Corey gotten an altercation with the same group of guys, and the reporting that I've heard is that they didn't like the way that Corey was treating Lauren, whether that be like handling, like touching, acting around, well, you know whatever if if you're a guy, well, I think the guy that that he had the altercation was with Zach Oaks, who was

a friend of j J. A boyfriend. Yeah, And of course, you know, when you're a guy and you see this girl and she's hammered, which apparently by our reports, she was, as some strangers like taking her off to her apartment, you make the assumption that, well, he's you know, take her, taken her back there to take advantage of her, So he might not have been mishandling it at all. You just make the automatic assumption, Hey, this guy is gonna do what I would do. I don't like that. Apparently

smarted off to him. That could have been it too. Yeah. So what happened during this altercation, though, is they did it did it was a physical altercation. What happened is Zach hit Corey in the head, punched him. Yeah, apparently knocked him to the flora. Yeah. I don't know that that would have been too hard of a thing to do to Corey at that point, because he was also pretty intoxicated. I don't think he was in a great shape anyway. But from that I am going to use

the word ostensibly I think it really fits here. Ostensibly Corey lost the fifteen minutes prior to this altercation and the rest of his memory for the rest of the night until he woke up the next morning. I will also say that it may not have been the blow to the head, that he may have been so saucy that nothing was being recorded by more, he just doesn't want to tell people what was being recorded by its pretty convenient, pretty convenient excuse. Some people are a little

suspicious for whatever reason. I don't really know why. But at this point Lauren and Corey decided to go back to Corey's house, because Lauren did eventually when we'll talk about this in a minute, but she did eventually misplace her keys, but it wasn't until after they left her apartment, so it wasn't I don't think they ever actually got

into her apartment. They were just in the building and looked after that SmackDown, they got up to the fifth floor actually where her apartment was, and that's why they had the altercation. Instead of just going to her apartment, they turned around. That's what I'm saying. It's a really weird because I mean, obviously that's a good reason to like, you know, forget just everything you knew, which is what Corey did, because that is a little inexplicable. Yeah, I

I totally agree with that. I think it's it's weird um drunk logic. I don't know if it's drunk logic or what. Necessarily, and again we don't really have Corey is the only person who can tell us what really happened, because it seems to me that that group of boys had that altercation and then left and you know, probably assuming that Lauren was just gonna go like they were right outside of her apartment. She was probably going to go right in and but she didn't. Actually, I have

a theory, but it crosses in slander. Okay, Well we'll talk about that in theories. How's that Okay? At to forty eight am. So the altercation took a little while, this whole situation that happened in the apartments. Yeah, I heard that they were there in the apartment building for about twelve minutes. Uh. Yeah, I think she was caught. I think they were caught on tape leaving the apartment is when they were seen leaving the apartment, So they

were eighteen minutes ish. So they left the apartment and Lauren and Corey entered an alleyway that runs between College Avenue and Morton Street. There's some security cameras nearby. There's lots of security cameras in Bloomington's that caught a lot

of footage of her. And I will just say that one of the frustrations with this case is that the police have and we'll talk about this probably a little bit more and a little bit, but the police have for whatever reason, chosen not to release the majority of the tapes, which you know, is kind of weird, but finally, so the security camera mounted on the apartments show her and Corey exit the alley at to fifty one am

and walked towards an empty lot. A woman came forward as a witness, and I don't have a good beat on when exactly this one instance happened, but then the following instance happened, um after they had left the alley way and talking about the sitting portion. Yeah, okay, So this witness came forward and she was leaving um quote unquote visiting a male friend. We all know what that actually means. And she said that she saw Lauren and Corey sitting on some stairs and the young girl her words,

young girl, which is easy. Laura was so small that or Lauren was so small that it would have been easy to mistake her for a young girl. The young girl tipped over and hit her head, and the woman said that it was a really really loud noise over backwards. Correct, Yeah, that's what there. It is like fell backwards and constantly just lost her balance and just and there were concrete steps to also, by the way, from what I heard, Yeah, yeah,

that's that's seriously intoxicated. Yeah, I mean, because if you don't try to catch yourself or turn or anything. And I've had friends who were so intoxicated they face planted on the sidewalk and everybody said they didn't do anything, they just went straight down. Well Lauren did that later. Yeah, that's that's what I'm sitting and that and this it's like that's a real indicator of her blood alcohol level. Yeah,

but I think that incident happened in the alleyway. Is My sense is that like there were you know, stairs into the alleyway, and that they had set because it took them a really long time to get through the alleyway basically that specific alleyway. So I'm guessing that they sat down and then the women saw them in blah blah.

But again I don't really know when that happens. But after they left the alleyway, they were walking down a different alleyway, lots of alleyways, and there were the investigators talk about Lauren uh falling forward and hitting her head like she didn't even put her hands up in the alleyway. Um, and then Corey helped her up and then um, they got a couple of steps and then she just like crumpled. Is the term that people use mostly where she just

you know, fell again. Corey picks her up again and for whatever reason, takes her to the apartment of four girls they've been parting with earlier. Um, that was like right there, but nobody was home. I don't really know. I don't understand the logic of a lot of these things that were happening. I mean drunk logic, sure, but it don't like they didn't Lauren didn't live that far away from Corey. It was just like a couple of blocks. So I don't really know why they went to this

girl's apartments. If Corey figures if she's this fall down drunk, he's not going to want to go back to the apartment complex that she lives in because he's already got his clock cleaned ones. So he's gonna try and find somebody else to offload her on because right now she's being a total drag. Um. Yeah, so he there were cameras that caught he and Lauren going up into this apartment building. Um, the four girls were reportedly not home, So there are also cameras obviously of them leaving, and

when they're leaving, Corey's carrying Lauren. At this point but he's got her. I really can't find the right way to describe this, like a fireman's car. He's kind of wearing her like a cape, honestly, kind of yeah, where her arms are just around his neck and forward, and she is draped across his back. Yeah, she's just laying and her legs are towards the ground but short enough that they don't I don't think the fireman's carry was over the shoulder facing backwards. Yeah, yeah, and so well

I thought it was kind of draped over both shoulders. Yeah, well that's so, but that's the best way to get that's not the firearms were. Yeah, her arms were over his shoulder and he was just holding them, and then she was just raped down the rest of his body. But like I said, she was tiny, so she wasn't dragging on the floor or anything like that. His lawyers, I think it's his lawyers. I don't actually know. I

watched this interview. Well, I watched this interview with these two lawyers who look like total skis balls, and I couldn't figure out. They just said who their names were, and I googled them, and I couldn't figure out. I think they're his lawyers. They're lawyers of the defense of some kind, and they have a very good timeline of some more eyewitness counts and things like that, and that's where I got some of this information. But they said, uh,

that she was conscious at this point. Actually, to my point about them being kind of skis balls, the quote actually exactly is, oh, no, she was alive and well at this point. Well maybe not well, but alive. Come on, So he sits her down. Corey sits Lauren down an alcove of a building, which is the point where she drops or otherwise loses her keys and her I d because I was found in like a little alcove in

an alley during the search for her. Then they head off to Corey's house at this time for real, and I don't know if he was carrying her, if she was walking at this point, I think he was carrying her. Again. His roommate Mike, who we talked about earlier, um was at home and still awake. Lucky for Corey, Mike sees Lauren there. Um, But there hasn't been a whole lot of elaboration on her state at this point. I haven't really ever seen again. The guys aren't talking. Really, they don't.

They don't have a lot to say about. Let's let's clear up this right now. All all of the guys that we're going to talk about at Corey and then the other gentleman that we're all going to talk about, they all lawyered up right away. And some people pointed that as a sign of hiding something, and other people say, no, that's all being smart and protecting yourself. So that's why

why the the information is. This is where the information gets a little more sketchy totally because of that, because shut up, and you know again, it'd be great to

be able to hear from Mike. You know. So Corey and Lauren got back to the apartment and Lauren was you know, drunk and high but like conscious and talking to me and you know, walked in on her own power, or Corey walked in with Lawrence slugged over his shoulder, dropped her and was like here she because I would love to know, you know, what kind of the circumstance was there. But anyway, Corey is also kind of a

mess at this point. He's drunk and probably on a lot of drugs at least some Corey, you know, once he gets lawn into the house, kind of tries to go upstairs. I think it was a townhouse that they

lived in, so their rooms were upstairs. Tries to go up the stairs and just throws up all over the stairs, and Mike is on, man, dude, really um and helps him up the stairs and cleans up after him, at which point he comes back down and really notices, you know, Lauren's in really bad shape, and so he tries to convince her to stay over at their place, you know, basically like sleep it off. Lauren reportedly said no, she wanted to go home. Actually, she wanted to find her

cell phone. The reports aren't she her saying that she wanted to go home, And it may be that, you know, once they the reason that she didn't just walk into her apartment was because she realized her cell phone was missing and she wanted to find it. That's certainly possible they went way in the wrong direction, but she she said no, she want to go find her cell phone.

And Mike says that he decided that he didn't really know Lauren very well, which is kind of true, I guess, but that Jay, his neighbor, knew her way better, so he would um again. In the words of the lawyers maker, J's problem vote nice guys that you know, it's kind of understandable. Yeah, I've been there. So Mike walks next door two outdoors down and wakes Jay up and says, you know, Lauren's over here, can you take care of her?

And Jay goes over and you know, gets Lauren and brings her back to his house and basically, again just like Mike says, he tried to get her to stay over just you know, sleep it off, totally innocent, and she said again no, she wanted to go find her cell phone, so that I mean, so he kind of just says, all right, fine, Well he did make it.

He did try and figure out, you know, if she was just going to fall over, because he said, listen, if you can walk to the end of the block while I'm watching you and not stumble, then you can go. But if I see you stumble, I'm going to bring you back. I mean, that seems to be what his intention was, and he probably fully expected her to stumble on the first stage. Yeah, so actually at four fifteen am,

this is the last official recorded fighting of her. Um, Jay, let's Lauren use his cell phone to place two calls. Again that's what Jay says, but two of her friends records, probably to confirm with the right well, they confirmed that two calls were made to two of his other male friends at that time. Whether it was Lauren or not, um, you know, who knows, because that plays in a little bit to some of the theories later on. But one of them was, you know, David Moon, which was a

different male friend that David Rowan, the guy she first. Okay, there's a lot of David's in Bloomington Hens a popular name for my generation. There's a lot of David's, I know. I said that, like, you should know who that is. It's you don't. It's fine, he this is the only time he comes into the story, really, but I heard that the other call was to David Rohan. It may have been either way, two male friends that were in

that circle. Um. Neither of them answered, and so Jay said, all right, you know, like Steve said, if you can walk to the end of the block, fine, and he watched from his little balcony area, which wasn't It's not really a balcony. It's more of a stoopid, isn't it. Yeah, But it's it's like on the second story. Oh, it's one of those little halves okay where you can kind of just step outside. You can put a flower pot on it and nothing else. No, I think it's literally

just like the width of a foot. Yeah, sure, maybe a tiny one. Um. So he says that he watched her get quote almost unquote to the corner and then turn around one inside and this last time anybody's ever seen Lauren ever. So really feel good story. Um, this

case did garner national attention. News networks like CNN and Fox were picking the story up like immediately, and since the two thousand eleven those stories, you can find all that footage online or at least a lot of it reporting like an hour long special just just a few years to this day, Literally no additional clues have been found. And again, like I said, one of the big issues that people take with this case is the um lack of CCTV footage. There was another case that was kind

of similar to this. It was a you know, girl disappeared in College City after you know, walking, and the police department they're released literally all of the footage and that ended up actually, yes, leading to somebody remembering seeing this guy interacting with her, and they found the guy and then found this girl's remains. Well, they were able to track the guy on tape. That's how they figured

it out. Yeah, right, but you know, somebody said, oh yeah, I saw that guy, which they didn't have on tape. Was the interaction between them too, but they were able to track him and then you know, figure out who he is. And so everybody's hoping that would happen again if the tapes were or something would happen, you know, and um, unfortunately they haven't done that. They've just released two kind of little snippets and that's pretty much it.

So there you go, frustrating. Yeah, so that's the story. Do you guys have anything to add to the story? Let me thank let me thank you. No. I mean, we're probably gonna talk about this in theories, but it's just there's a whole lot of questionable judgment through this entire story, and it is I was about to say, it's all based in in twenty somethings, early twenties, some things, consuming a lot of intoxicance and making some weird, not

so smart decisions. Because I remember some of the things that I did and years later, I look back and I'm like, how did you not die? You idiot? I'm so glad I didn't get caught. Totally. Yeah, so we will talk about that in the theories. Absolutely. Um, okay, well actually then I guess we're our theories. But before we go, let's take a break. I have a cat named Ginger, also known as the Rickety Princess. She is an adorable little Himalayan who falls over a lot. She's

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off your first week of deliveries. So go to Hello fresh dot com and enter sideways thirty when you subscribe. Because it's great for those days when you're fuzzy, wonder or just the world make it a little hard to sit down and plan a meal from scratch. And we're back first theory. I'm okay, I'm actually doing it in sections. I'm sorry, Okay, you mean to foul play and not foul play so let's start with theory number one. Foul

play three number one A. The Sons of Silence. You mean the Sounds of Silence, the Simony Garth Uncle song. Now the Sons of Silence, the those guys. OK. Yeah, there was segment on Lauren a few years ago and they tracked down this guy who had been a member

of the Sons of Silence. The Sons of Silence, for those of you who do not know, are what is known as a one percent group of motorcyclists, which means they're an outlaw motorcycle gang, and that comes from the American Motorcycle Association, who they're The president made a statement once where he said of motorcyclists or law abiding like great citizens, and so the one percent that are not like that took to heart that they are the one percent,

and so they actually wear patch is they're very proud of it. Not to be confused with the one percent that people were protesting a couple of years ago. That's a different one percent of non law abiding citizens. I've met a lot of people, a lot of bikers who we are not even in the one percent, probably still wear that patch just because it's kind of badass. I have heard that that is a very bad idea. Oh, in that culture, you you don't pose. There is no

posing because you will get it handed to you. So the Sons of Silence are like a real legit outlaw like gang. And you know they have kind of factions everywhere, and one of them chapters chapters. Excuse me, they have chapters everywhere. And we do not want to become after to be in Bloomington, Indiana or thereabouts. And there was a tip given to the investigators in the case that guy who used to be what they call a cleaner for the Sons of Islands, which is um Harvey Keitel. Yeah, yeah,

I don't feel like I need to explain it. I didn't know that those guys cleaned up after themselves. He cleans up after them. Basically, there was some speculation that he had, for whatever reason, killed Lauren and buried the body on his farm. Well, it turns out that that tip actually came from his very annoyed ex wife and was totally unsubstantiated. Um. So, in short, this theory is

bad and you should feel bad. I saw I saw a little footage Ryan wah Russell into his house and the guys like from said, I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't even know the broad Yeah. I mean, if you watch the whole thing, it's actually very interesting.

I kind of feel bad for the guy because he seemed like he was very willing to talk, but he had stipulated without cameras and they showed up with cameras and he was like, I don't want to talk on camera, turned the camera off, and I'm happy to talk to you guys about everything that I may or may not

know about this case. And they said, you know, not in like a shady like well I might know something like I literally don't know anything, but like I'm happy to talk to you guys about you know, because he's an ex member of this gang, and so he was, you know, it seemed like he was willing to say, like, well, I'm happy to talk to you guys about the activity I knew about around that time to see if any of it. They booked the appointment under semi false pretenses

with yeah, they tried to ambush him. They didn't. He was having none of it, and he was like, I told you no cameras and they were like uh, and they've just gotten his face with the cameras and he was like okay, bye and close the door and told them to get off the property. The same episode they tried to ambush Corey also, and a lot of people he has the same results. Yeah, they apparently are not very good at setting up stings, is what this this tells me about the crew of the Dead Bikers. Yeah,

well there's the people do think maybe the boyfriend did it. Um, he was actually considered a serious point or a person of interest for a while, just the first parts of the beginning. Well it's always the boyfriend. Yeah, the husband, my boyfriend, or the wife or the girlfriend. You know. Actually, but he had he had roommates and his Yeah, there was there was no evidence to back this up. It was just people saying like, well, you know, it was

a jealous boyfriend who did it. And I think there are some people on the internet who falsely perpetuate that continue to falsely perpetuate that. But I think that's a really bad theory and it really is just making somebody who's already suffering. Although you know, there is that question again, this is one of those things that doesn't really make a lot of sense because he stayed home while she's out drinking with a bunch of with other guys and stuff.

That's a little weird. Have you ever heard of the friend zone? She may have had. The couple of guys that she was hanging out with, they were in the friend zone, and they were trying to, you know, make their impression, to make their mark, and so they always went out with her. But she was like, yeah, no,

I'm not No, that's never happening there. Just yet. You can just be friends with people, that's not even a friend zone, Like everybody can just be friends with everybody else, and there doesn't have to be sexual tension or like underlying romance or any Yeah, but you're not a man. You don't understand how the dudes constantly like dudes are constantly, especially when there's a lot of booze involved. Yeah, there's

I'm afraid guys will take advantage. Yes, all right, fun discussion. So, but leaving the boyfriend out of the whole thing, I mean that he could have done it. I mean there's people with all sorts of theories out there, like, for example, he was supposedly texting her at the bar stuff over the course of the evening, could have had somebody else do the texting while he went out and stocked her and observed her with these guys and then eventually, you know,

bushwhacked and killed her out of jealousy. Oh yeah, but I just want to say, you know, it's it's yeah, and I think it's possible. I think I think the Sons of Silence did it before. I think Jesse did it. And I do not think the Sons of Silence did it. So on, Um, so the next two theories are you know, still foul play, um the not boyfriend theories. There is one thing that I didn't mention, and that is the surveillance footage that was released. There are only two little bits.

One of them is just a picture of Lauren leaving for the night from her apartment. You see her from behind, No, you see her from the front when she was Oh wait, I thought you meant when she was leaving the apartment at four in the morning. I'm getting. I'm getting at the beginning of the night. She's kind of smiling. She's got a white polo shirt on and some black pants and I don't know why, I guess, like so that people could know what she had looked like on that night.

I don't know, I think that was a bad idea, but whatever. And then the other thing that they have released is um it's actual video footage of white truck pup truck. It's white pickup truck. And the reason that this interest them interested them was two reasons. One, they thought it would actually be identifiable, because it does look like there's some lettering on the side, though you can't see it in any of the footage. It's not clear.

But the real reason that they're interested is that you see Lauren walking down the street and you see the truck go by, and then it circles the block and comes background and passes again. And they think it would be pretty easy, particularly given Lauren's size and current state, to just quickly grab her and thrower in your truck and go off. Sure, and now this this took place at what time? When it was this act she left?

It was like, yeah, and I know they tracked down the owner, yet kind of a weak excuse, I thought, can you remind me of what you thought? I don't remember hearing that they tracked I don't remember that either, So I'm just wanting what I read is they they actually found the owner I don't know exactly how they

did it. Maybe he recognized his own truck and came forward, or what it turns out, he he has like a construction company something, and he was he was trying to find one of his employees picking him up for some reason. So I thought was a little strange at that time of the night. I mean, maybe he had a problem employee who'd got in trouble with things like drinking or something like that. Or if he instruction firm, that's when they start. Maybe it was his morning. I mean, it's June,

it's light early, and it's got to be hot. That's true. Good point, So maybe that was it. Maybe he wasn't up late, Maybe he was up early. There are guys that I live in a blue collar neighborhood, and there are guys that come and pick up other workers or you know, co workers in the area, and they're they're super crazy early in the morning, especially this time of the year. So it's I mean, it's it's possible that

that was the resolution to that white truck. It's possible that that wasn't actually the white truck, but that that person was like, I don't know, I was kind of in that area at that time, and I have a white truck and I was circling the block, So yeah, maybe he thought, Yeah, I mean, you know I would if I thought I might have been in that neighborhood, might have been on that camera, I would have probably gone to the police and said, listen, I can't tell

you exactly what moment I was driving around what block. I can't tell you. You know, I don't know where that surveillance camera was. Here's what my truck looks like, here's what I was doing. Here the people who can

corroborate it, you know. But the reason that that white truck, it kind of brings up this theory of foul play, that opportunity, a crime of opportunity, right, that somebody could have just been prowling for a victim for whatever kind of crime they wanted to commit, whatever kind of probably horrific crime they wanted to commit, and that Lauren, again, given her size and state, would have been a really really good She would have put up very little struggle

and you know, just overall would have been super easy to abduct and you know, do whatever you wanted to do with it, and then uh with her, Yeah, with with her and then uh, you know, get rid of the body however you wanted and wherever you wanted to, and it would be pretty hard to track. The next foul play theory is Corey That Corey killed her. Mr I hirt on the stairs. Yeah, there are a couple theories. Here's possibly, uh, Corey drugged Lauren hoping to get lucky

in like the illegal way. Yeah, so you r in the bar, I guess. And I should point out that we didn't originate that theory. It's out there in the end. Yeah, No, none of this is original. Time. Maybe Corey got mad at Lauren for spurning his advances and hit her. Really, the thing about Corey is that really, no matter how you cut it, there's he probably does at least have

a part ownership of her disappearance. Not that's not to say that she should have been responsible for her own damn actions, but it does seem like he was continuing to encourage her to continue to be intoxicated and then and then when he was supposed to be taking care of her, whether he was fit to or not, didn't really escalate. I mean, you know, if somebody falls over and hit their head as hard as it sounds like

she did. You don't just drag I mean, you know, you shouldn't just take her somewhere and like let her sleep, Like don't even if you're like super super drunk. I mean, you know, again, it comes down to that bad judgment that we were talking about earlier. Um, But I would say I feel a little weird about saying that he definitely has a hand in being responsible for her disappearance.

But I still feel like that. But it's just like it's a weird thing for me, right because I don't necessarily know if they were both super drunk, but he seemed like he was definitely more sober than she was, so the hope would be, I mean he wasn't. If I disagree that he was maybe more sober, the fact that he walked in his house and tried to walk up the steps and and lost the contents of his guts means that he was pretty toasted and was probably

carrying on a big belly full of hard booze. Yes, But the reason that I say he was more intoxicated than she was more intoxicated than him is that she wasn't even able to walk at that point. He was at least amilatory, right, I mean in decision making and you know whatever aside, he wasn't like, like so drunk that he was just falling over sitting down there. There is such a thing as being able to function well

blackout drunk. Sure, yeah, And so that's that's the only thing that I'm getting at, is that he may he may have been you know, it's like sleep walking at that point. He's just doing things and you know, as a drunken mission. I well, but I will, I guess I will add to that that I do feel And I'm sorry Corey if you're listening to but I really genuinely do feel like he knows more about what happened

that night than he's saying that he knows. I know that face that you're making, Steve, I just think he does. We've all lost time, you know, from a from a heavy night of boozing. Yeah, it seems unlikely the actually killed her, abducted or killed her or anything like intentionally. Well even well, I mean she unless his roommate Mike is lying. Also, oh yeah, and what's the other guy?

J J would have to be in on it as well as So why don't we move to the next theory that kind of helps explain all of this life.

They then not foul play, but kind of foul play. Um. One thing I have not mentioned yet is that Lauren actually had what is called long QT syndrome, which is a heart condition that basically means your heart beat can be really off and actually can be spontaneously fatal in and of itself, like you can literally just keel over and die from having this being perfectly healthy, just sitting there, totally sober and like normal all the time. Luckily for Lauren,

I don't think that's what killed her. I well, I don't know, so that it's actually interesting because Lauren's parents are very sure that Lauren is dead, and they really think her drink may have been drugged, but that it was drugs alcohol caused her to have a cardiac attack or you know, the rest of some kind of the rhythm gets off and then it skips a beat, and then it misses a beat, and then it doesn't pick that. I would actually kind of even maybe you give a

vote to following her backwards. It's smashing her head on a concrete step, maybe having a cerebral hemorrhage or something like that. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that she had been roofied or otherwise date drugged. I remember that being really big. I so I when I was in Bloomington, Alliant, Illinois. Um I was there until two thousand and ten, so I was there kind of around the same time, and it was

like a really big thing. I got lucky and they thought my Long Island iced tea or they thought my friend, my like gay best friends Long Island nice to you was mine, and drugged his instead of mine. But like he went from like, you know, totally fine to like crazy drunk within you know, ten minutes and just had no memory of the entire night. And it's just but I mean, you know, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that she had been drugged in one way or another.

But also I think it's not a crazy idea to think that her parents are just unwilling to see how far into the party scene Lauren was. It's not an uncommon thing with parents to to justify some of it to deny another part that's less convenient or less it is more painful. Yeah, so you know, for them to say, like, yeah, she was drinking and that's fine, but she must have been drugged. What sounds like she was doing a lot

of drugs on her own accord. But the one way to tell if she was rooting in the bar's just to check her state going in another state coming out. We know what she left the bar, she was hammered, Was she already hammered? What she went into the bar?

It's hard to tell though. I mean, she was there for like an hour, for minutes CCTV footage, might you know, if they actually have video of her, they could probably tell her she was staggering then, I mean, of course that she was really hammered, then would they have let her in the bar? Well? But I mean, you know, there are some drugs you can do and they'll take forty minutes to kick in, right. Stuff could have kicked in while she was at the bar, as well as

her being drugged at the actual bar. So during the pregame thing we mentioned there were some drugs which I didn't see, but Steve you said it was on the Wikipedia, which yeah, well, and I've seen some other places. They found coke in her room, not a lot, but a little bit of cocaine and then according to Jay they had been snorting. They've been crushing up and snorting clon a pin, which is an anti seizure medication, which like, fine, well,

and I had to read about it. I apparently people like it because it's you know, it's a it's a relax it it's not a stimulant. It's kind of relaxing. So it's out of the antich coke. Yeah, exactly. So it's weird. I mean people, it's weird to me when people like do to drugs. I want to get really high, but then I need something to bring me right back down, so I'm gonna I mean, that almost seems like they were spiking, doing that you know, up and down routine

and throwing booze in the middle just to see what happens. Yeah, yeah, it sounds like fun. Yeah. So, I mean she was It's not crazy to think that, you know, she had

just overindulged. And I mean, Lauren was obviously very aware of her own heart conditions, So any number of the combinations of any of the things that we've talked about already could have really just caused a massive heart failure for her, I mean, or just being sober obviously, and then again or it could have been one of the like four or five times she fell over and hit

her head real hard. Well, being aware of her own heart condition and the potential impacts of drugs and alcohol on that, I think you can counteract that with the I'm twenty years old and in invincible, I will never die. Yeah. I mean, it seems like she had had a couple of scares, so it is interesting that she still was so feeling like she was so invincible, but you know whatever,

she'd be okay. Yeah. Well, I've also heard some reports from students that were at Indiana State University at the time, and the consensus from them was that Corey, Mike, and j were actually well known high volume drug dealers in Bloomington at the time. Um, So the theory here would go that through whatever kind of circumstances, either Lauren o'deed just like flat out o'deed, or she got super drunk

and you know whatever. But for whatever reason, they found themselves with the dead Lauren on their hands, and since they were drug dealers and loaded and loaded. Instead of doing the responsible humane thing and you know, calling the cops or taking her to the hospital or whatever, they decided that they would dump her in the Ohio River, which there is some some corroboration to this story, though

it's been redacted or retracted. Was just a big black market at that it was a jail hus snitch thing, but it was. It was a weird jail huff snitch thing, and that they got a tip from the cellmate of one of the guys. He was like and then um, they interviewed the guy who was friends with that group and he said, no, I don't know anything about that. I've never known anything about that, and I don't want to be involved in that at all. Absolutely not. I

have no knowledge of that. But whatsoever? Uh, in kind of like a too frantic way, Well, that guy's story is hilarious and he is probably gun shy because he is if he's the one who loved this. He got so loaded on drugs that he walked out of his house wearing nothing but a baseball cap, holding a gun and started shooting it. And it is some of the it's the funniest look in CCTV images I've seen every because you're like, wait, I mean it's grainy, but is

he wearing like skin colors? Oh god, No, he's naked. It's pretty intense. So he said that he knew the guys, and he actually said that he had helped initially with the whole dumping, and he you know, said it to some jailhouse guys and then um totally retracted it. And it might not even it might not have actually been about Lauren. That maybe why he was so scared, because he may have helped somebody with a body for something. Well,

the reasonings. The reason that it came up was because they were watching a thing on Lauren and he like looked at the pictures of Lauren and said, oh, yeah, that's the body that I helped dump in the Ohio River. Yeah. But the thing about it is I heard this story and they basically loaded it into a car, took it out and just through in the river, which didn't she float well? And to me, it's like it's like that's a prescripture for having the body turned up about twenty

ft downstream, tangled in the brush. You know. It's like, we won't have a boat take her out in the middle. At least she'll show up like miles downstream hopefully. Yeah, she's not a hard drive, No, not exactly now, she's not.

But I don't know, I mean, it's not it's also not like crazy unheard of that people get really lucky dumping bodies and she got stuck, you know, under a rock at the bottom, and usually they pop up sooner or later, though, yeah, or you know, it's possible that could she could have popped up and you know, a bunch of miles down the river and she's a Jane

Doe somewhere. I mean, you know, it's possible. It seems to be that every time they find a straight body anywhere near anyone within a couple of hundred miles, they always test to make sure it's not her that they yeah. Yeah. The another possibility, too, is that she didn't o d at all. Another one who said, you know, she just like like sort of lost consciousness because of a cerebral hemorrhage, and they thought she had just passed out, so they just heared, you know, we'll let her sleep it off.

The next morning, she's cold and stiff, Yeah, and it's like, oh, something happened here. And by the way, especially as some they had actually maybe slipt her roof. Yeah, and that's in her bloodstream then, like that's kind of incriminating. Yeah.

So I mean realistically, when it comes down to it, I do feel that the that Mike, j and Corey know more that their stories are not exactly what happened that night, Um, I think, And I think that's just because that's it gives me the most closure you I've I've been around enough super blasted but uncooperative people. Joe and I used to know a girl who would show up and we would be having a beer and she'd walk in, just housed, and then you would find out

she had been doing some drugs as well. There was I mean, she would just fall flat on her face and people would try to help her, and she was combative. She's like, no, no, I'm finally be alone, and people like let me walk. You don't know, like people do this.

And so that's why, having seen that firsthand enough times, I'm not willing to completely say that these boys, while probably happy to get a problem child off of their hands, may not have actually done anything and she may have just left and there was just no way to hold her, I mean somebody down. Yeah, but then what do you think happened to her? Well? I think that there is there is that possibility that she was just a random

of duck tee. You know, it happens, it uh, and it's til you'd be very vulnerable at four thirty in the morning, a very tiny girl ninety pounds hammered, staggering that she would obviously be a target. Yeah, and so you know, actually I think it's entirely possible. I mean, obviously you kind of got to go when anybody disappears or dies or is murdered or anything, you you kind

of immediately look at their immediate circle of friends. But you know that's not true of the time that it was a friend or a family member or whatever who did asked them. It could actually have been and she was definitely a ripe target. Yeah, it's just a question of did the right dude or the on dude, I guess turn up at the right time. Totally. Yeah. Yeah, well, and you know, and I tried to look. I mean, it's not as if Bloomington's has a rash of college

age girls being abducted and killed. There's been three in the last twenty some years. One was two thousand or the late nineties, and then there's Lauren, and then there was there was the girl. Yeah, and she was a couple of years later, but they caught the dude who who took her and killed her, and he was a big suspect in this one. I think his name was Messil, was it Messil something like that, but he was he

was I don't know. He didn't do a great job of getting rid of Halley's body, no, I mean, yeah, I mean there was one girl who was not a college student, who just lived in Bloomington's who also went missing, and I believe she's still missing. She was like twenty nine when she went missing, almost within a year of when Lauren went missing. So I certainly there is a possibility that there was just serial killer or serial abductor you know whatever. Yeah, I mean there's again, it's I mean,

there's always circumstances. I mean, you know. One of the things that they did that it's really weird the way they went about it. But they searched the local dump in case they could find her body, which I don't know how how good of the search that you could take on an active dump site, because the theory is a somebody killed her and threw her into the trash, kind of like what Lonnie the grim Sleeper Lonnie got

his last name slipped my mind. Or somebody didn't chuck her put her in a garage bag and just put her in the trash, or she was so drunk she was trying to find somewhere to go to sleep and crawled into a dumpster which was then picked up, you know, not too long after, and she was crushed. I don't know. I don't think Lauren could have possibly been that drunk. I didn't know her, of course, but I've never eaten. In my drunkest moments, it would be a great idea

to crawl into a dumpster and take a nap. I would agree with that. I don't think she probably did it on her own, but no, I think, yeah, there was a pretty sizable investigation and search that happened for her. And one of the things they did two weeks they spent at the top, right did Yeah, and I think they probably did a pretty good job. But yeah, yeah, I guess it's true. We can't rule out that it was just spontaneous, but um, yeah, I think that's all

the theories. But yeah, that's about it. Well, there's always she ran away to start a new life, which is probably not a good one. We could hope, I guess I yeah, you could hope. There's always a possibility to that she wasn't heardd maybe she's being held against her will. Even to think about that one, that's a dad. I know that kind of sucks too. Yeah, it does. No, I don't I don't really have anything else. I mean, there's talk of people being abducted for sex, slavery rings.

It's so it's something akin to what Joe was saying. But there doesn't well, there is illicit activity. It doesn't seem that Bloomington would be a place to to go picking up girls to then take them to a larger city. It just it doesn't make sense college town. Yeah, it's just that it's it's an hour away from the next biggest town, which seems to be the problem. Um that I don't know enough about the slave You probably don't want to don't do so really, I got nothing. I mean,

I I don't think that the guys did anything. I don't know why I do. I just do. You just don't trust. I just don't trust those three guys. I just do not trust for some reason. Well, you know, there is that that and that didn't really help their case. I understand why they lawyered up, you know, but that always looks a little bit bad to the public. Well it's not. It's not the act of lawyering up. It's more the withholding of any relevant information is really the

thing that looks guilty. But it's you know whatever, all right. Um So, if you want to see some of the links to our research or by swag or ceeo list of all of the episode we've ever done, you can do all of those things on our website, which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. You can listen to us there as well and download, or you can listen to us and stream us or download us from pretty much anywhere.

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