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In the early hours of April 1, 2006, Brian Randall Shaffer, a 27‑year‑old medical student at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, disappeared in Columbus, Ohio, United States.

He had spent the previous night, March 31, having drinks with friends at a campus‑area bar to mark the start of spring break. Security footage from outside the second‑floor entrance recorded Shaffer briefly speaking with two women just before 2 a.m. before walking out of frame. No video shows him exiting the building, and he has not been seen or heard from since. Shaffer's disappearance has been especially puzzling to investigators because the bar had no other publicly accessible exits at the time, aside from a nearby service door. Columbus police have explored several theories about what happened. Some scrutiny has focused on a friend who was with Shaffer that night, though he was advised not to take polygraph tests. Other speculation has included a possible connection to the purported Smiley Face serial killer, but police rejected any link to the alleged killer, consistent with the FBI and other agencies. It has also been suggested that Shaffer might be alive and living elsewhere under a new identity.

Brian Randall Shaffer was born on February 11, 1979, and grew up in Pickerington, Ohio, a suburb outside of Columbus, the elder of Randy and Renee Shaffer's two sons.

He did not think Shaffer should go out with a friend, William "Clint" Florence, later that night as he planned to do, but did not express his reservations to his son. At 9 p.m., Shaffer met Florence at the Ugly Tuna Saloona, a bar in the South Campus Gateway complex on High Street in Columbus. An hour later, Shaffer called Waggoner, who had returned to her home in Toledo to visit with her family before she and Shaffer were due to depart for Miami. Shaffer separated from his companions while the three were there and was last seen on a security camera outside the bar just before 2 a.m.

Police began their search for Shaffer at the Ugly Tuna Saloona, the bar where he had last been seen. The camera did not record him leaving shortly afterward when the Ugly Tuna Saloona closed; this was the last known time that Shaffer was seen. Officers next looked to the footage from other bars to see if cameras there could explain how Shaffer had left the Ugly Tuna Saloona.

Shortly after Randy Shaffer's death, Neil Rosenberg, attorney for Florence, wrote to Don Corbett, a private investigator who has volunteered his time to help the Shaffer family find Brian, regarding his client's ongoing refusal to take a polygraph test. Rosenberg intimated that he had learned that the Columbus police investigating the case believed Shaffer was alive: "If Brian is alive, which is what I'm led to believe after speaking with the detective involved, then it is Brian, and not Clint , who is causing his family pain and hardship," Rosenberg wrote. One of the original investigators, Andre Edwards, told Columbus Monthly that after an extensive review of the camera footage at the Ugly Tuna Saloona from the night Shaffer disappeared, which was intended to rule out the idea that he could have left in disguise, he could "say with 100-percent certainty" that Shaffer did not leave via the escalator. In March 2021, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation released an age-progressed photo of what Shaffer might look like at age 42, nearly 15 years after his disappearance.

Between the time of Shaffer's disappearance and his own death, Randy joined the families of other missing adults in Ohio in lobbying the state legislature to pass a bill establishing a statewide protocol for such cases.

Find Brian Shaffer, webpage set up by family and friends.

Quick Facts

• Security footage from outside the second‑floor entrance recorded Shaffer briefly speaking with two women just before 2 a.m. before walking out of frame.
• Shaffer's disappearance has been especially puzzling to investigators because the bar had no other publicly accessible exits at the time, aside from a nearby service door.
• Some scrutiny has focused on a friend who was with Shaffer that night, though he was advised not to take polygraph tests.
• He had spent the previous night, March 31, having drinks with friends at a campus‑area bar to mark the start of spring break.
• Police began their search for Shaffer at the Ugly Tuna Saloona, the bar where he had last been seen.

Source material: Wikipedia - "Disappearance of Brian Shaffer". Adapted and summarized for DiscoverScroll. Original contributors are credited through the linked Wikipedia article. Read original on Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made from the original.