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Brian Shaffer Goes Bar-Hopping, Misses Last Call
Brian Shaffer was a medical student at Ohio State. On March 31, 2006, he and two friends -- Clint and Meredith -- embarked on an epic bar crawl that encompassed every tavern, drinking house, and moonshine-slinging shack on their campus. Their odyssey culminated in the early hours of April 1 at the Ugly Tuna Saloona, an establishment that made up for body-shaming aquatic life with cheap booze. The three drank there until closing time ... or so it seemed.
When the bar's lights came up at 2, Clint and Meredith were unable to find Brian. After checking the bathrooms and trying his cellphone, they figured he'd quietly headed home or taken a side quest for pizza, and left. When Brian didn't resurface the next day, his now-worried family filed a missing person report. The police then noticed something odd on the surveillance tapes they gathered from the Ugly Tuna in an attempt to trace Brian's whereabouts. Here's the footage of Brian, Clint, and Meredith entering the bar at 1:15:
Columbus Division of PoliceSo far, the only mystery is how a place called "The Ugly Tuna Saloona" attracts a single customer.
And now, here's the footage of Brian leaving:
...
There isn't any. The police located footage of Clint and Meredith leaving dazed and confused at 2:15, but the only footage of Brian comes when he briefly exits to talk to two women outside ... and then turns around and walks back in.
In all the years that his family has been searching for him, no one has ever managed to explain how Brian disappeared. Did he slip out the back? No, the police checked the camera overlooking that door. Could he have blended into a crowd of people? It's possible, but that doesn't explain why he wouldn't return home, especially given that he was planning to propose to his longtime girlfriend the following week. Was he murdered by another person in the bar? It's unlikely, especially given that they would've needed to dispose of the body right then and there (without being spotted on any surveillance cameras), because the police searched the bar soon afterward.
Two years after Brian's disappearance, his father Randy died in an accident. In the comments section of his online obituary, a message stating "Dad, I love you. Love, Brian (U.S. Virgin Islands)" was posted. Police traced it, only to find it had been posted from a public computer in a nearby county.
3
Timmothy Pitzen's Mother Promises "You'll Never Find Him."
It's always tragic when a child disappears. However, describing the disappearance of six-year-old Timmothy Pitzen as "tragic" is like calling the Sun "kind of hot." Timmothy lived in Aurora, Illinois with his parents, James and Amy. Their marriage was going through a "rough patch," but it wasn't anything that couldn't be fixed (according to James). That is, until May 11, 2011, when Amy pulled Timmothy out of his kindergarten class, claiming there was a family emergency. They then hit the road on a three-day amusement park bender between Illinois and Wisconsin.
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