BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — In the days after IU coed Lauren Spierer disappeared following a night of partying on June 3, 2011, a reporter from her hometown newspaper in Westchester County, New York, arrived in Bloomington and started breaking stories and scooping the local reporters who flocked to cover the case.
Shawn Cohen of the Journal News made inroads with the closed-mouth circle of friends who knew Lauren’s secrets and what she had been up to in the last days before she vanished.
Now, 13 years after her disappearance, Cohen has returned to Indiana to unveil his new book, “College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight.”
It’s a painstaking probe into Lauren’s last known night, the people she encountered and the police and community investigation that has yet to reveal the clues to solve the mystery.
”When you asked questions about what happened that night, a real unvarnished take on what their college experience was, crickets,” said Cohen, recalling the impenetrable wall of silence that surrounded the case from the start. ”I know about kids and partying. When I got there, I was surprised at how, even more than I imagined, that people were clamming up and not talking and the sensitivities in play.”
As the first reporter to arrive in Bloomington and begin knocking on doors in the neighborhood where Spierer was last seen, I can attest to the struggle it took to get Bloomington Police, the IU community and Lauren’s friends to talk on the record about what happened to the petite college sophom*ore from New York.
Neighbors told me that weekend they saw Lauren appearing heavily intoxicated when they turned down her request after 2 a.m. to party in the company of another IU student, who turned out to be Corey Rossman, as the pair staggered through an alley that paralleled College Avenue toward a block of townhouses along West 11th Street.
”There are things that happened along that including that she had fell a couple times on the ground and she knocked her head on a staircase,” said Cohen who also searched for evidence of security camera video in that alley. ”The last images of her are of Lauren on a stump and Corey grabbing his phone and then making a phone call and he walks back and forth.”
Cohen tracked down the woman Rossman called that morning but was unable to jog her memory of the conversation several years ago.
”There’s a lot of indication that she was in an extreme condition. She had fallen, she had done a lot of drugs, mixing of drugs, so there are questions along with her heart condition that she could’ve just plain passed out and died,” said Cohen, who uncovered Lauren’s medical condition as well as her history of substance abuse. ”What we do know is that Lauren ended up in the townhouses with a small group of young men. There’s not a shred of evidence that she ever made it out of those townhouses alive.”
Rossman accompanied Spierer to the townhouses where IU students Mike Beth and Jay Rosenbaum resided and a Rosenbaum friend from Michigan David Bleznak was visiting.
”Corey carries her part of the way up to his townhouse,” said Cohen, basing his account on interviews he scored with some of the witnesses and persons of interest years later. “That we’re pretty confident happened. In the townhouse, Corey brings her back, he had his roommate Mike Beth who was there and then two doors down you have Jay Rosenbaum and a friend of his who was visiting, David Bleznak. So there were four people who were witness potentially to her final moments when she allegedly vanished.”
Minutes before, in the hallway of Spierer’s downtown apartment building, Rossman had been punched in the face by a friend of Lauren’s boyfriend, Jesse Wolff, with whom she was contemplating breaking up.
”Corey, through his lawyer, said he has no memory of that night through amnesia because of a punch to the face. So he was out of the mix,” said Cohen. “David Bleznak was purportedly asleep. So you have Mike Beth and Jay Rosenbaum is everything that we know about the case.
”Mike and Jay both talked about how Lauren wants to continue partying even in those final moments and ultimately she just wasn’t gonna stay there and go to sleep. But when you look into the backstory of what happened in the prior hour, any witness accounts were that Lauren wasn’t talking, that she was in a complete daze, that she had fallen, according to Jay’s own words, she had a bruise forming under her eye. So that leads to fresh questions about whether that makes perfect sense that she was still wanting to party or is that just their description of things.”
Rosenbaum claimed that even though Spierer had lost her sandals, keys and cell phone, she was still insistent on walking back to her apartment from his townhouse at 4:15 a.m.
”Jay gave three statements to the private investigators and there is a sort of evolution to those statements,” said Cohen, who had exclusive access to the files of private investigators hired by Spierer’s parents. “Initially describing that final moment where he says she walked out he said that he opened the door and she starts walking down the block toward the corner of College Avenue. In his initial statement to the investigators, the sit-down, he said that she walked up to near the corner and that was the last he saw her. In a follow-up interview with the private investigators, he said that after she walked out the door, he went up to the second-floor balcony so he could have a better look at her walking out and he said that he saw a potentially shadowy figure at the corner where Lauren was walking. He may have seen that, he said. In the third interview, he repeated that he saw a shadowy figure and he said he was confident he saw a shadowy figure at the corner and he said that that person was very close to Lauren.”
I’ve been to that street corner, observed the large leafy tree and the small building light that sheds very little illumination on the sidewalk, the townhouse and its alley.
“Does it make sense that a guy on a balcony at four in the morning can see through a green tree and see a shadowy figure up on College?” I asked.
“I couldn’t see it with my own eyes when I went there and I looked,” said Cohen. “I don’t have x-ray vision or Superman vision.”
Reporters and detectives, both Bloomington Police and private investigators, were frustrated by the lack of cooperation from those in Lauren’s circle whose parents were quick to line them up with attorneys who advised the students to keep quiet.
“The frustration early on was that these kids were lawyered up and certainly by the time the private investigators got to them they were prepared to say certain things but not prepared to answer some very specific questions,” said Cohen who was told that Rosenbaum had passed a polygraph test overseen by his legal counsel, noted Indianapolis defense attorney Jim Voyles. ”And as I approached these witnesses and found others, there were a whole lot of them who had interesting things to say, informative things to say about what happened that night, and they weren’t approached by police, and those who were had very basic interviews but not any level of detail. So that really presented me an opportunity to present some information here that people really don’t know.”
Bloomington Police have remained very close-lipped about the Spierer investigation from the day the disappearance was first reported.
”All I can tell you is that the Bloomington Police has information. They’ve never shared a thread of information or evidence that she was seen outside of that townhouse after she entered,” said Cohen, who counted city detectives and retired investigators among his sources. “Based on that, people can draw certain conclusions. I hope there is a new push for the Bloomington Police to share some of the information that they’re continuing to hold back.”
Cohen said Bloomington Police clashed immediately with private investigators hired by the Spierer family.
”The way they approached this versus say the way NYPD retired detectives approach this was stark,” he said. ”They wanted cooperation. They wanted access to the files of the Bloomington Police and the Bloomington Police saw these brash cops from New York and like, ‘No way, we’re not inviting you into the investigation.’ And that was part of the problem even among the Bloomington Police. The investigators I spoke with, one who was retired, said the department and particularly the chief were not known for playing nice with outside agencies.”
Bloomington Police sent this statement Wednesday:
“This coming Monday, June 3rd, will mark 13 years since Lauren Spierer went missing.
The investigation into Lauren’s disappearance remains very active and is most certainly not a cold case. In the past two years, the Bloomington Police Department has investigated over 30 new tips and leads in the case. Investigators continue to share information regularly with law enforcement partners from Federal, State and local agencies in an effort to utilize every available resource as we work to locate Lauren and determine who is responsible for her disappearance. However, as a police department, it is imperative that we work within the laws of the State of Indiana to ensure a proper and legal investigation. We will not jeopardize the integrity of the investigation by taking shortcuts or utilizing inappropriate investigative techniques.
The Bloomington Police Department is hopeful that a recently released book will generate new leads and keep Lauren’s case at the forefront of the minds of those with information about her disappearance. Someone, somewhere, knows something. Anything a person might know, even if it seems small, could prove to be essential in solving Lauren’s case.
Anyone with information regarding the disappearance of Lauren Spierer is urged to speak up.”
Charlene and Robert Spierer, who cooperated with Cohen’s renewed investigation into their daughter’s case, issued a Facebook statement today:
“I am sure if you are familiar with Lauren’s disappearance you have most likely read articles written by Shawn Cohen, a New York reporter we originally met that summer of 2011. Our relationship with Shawn in the early days was a contentious one. We were parents living a nightmare. Shawn was a tenacious reporter trying to cover a story. Over the years our relationship has changed. I have come to trust that our missions to find Lauren, get answers and have justice served are aligned. Much more than just a story for Shawn all these years later, I truly believe he genuinely wants to bring our family’s nightmare to a close.
“To that end, Shawn approached us with his idea of writing a book about Lauren’s disappearance. With searches a thing of the past and leads essentially non-existent we felt Shawn’s idea was something we should consider. In the next few days, that book will be released – “College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight” by Shawn Cohen.
“I can’t say it wasn’t difficult to read because it was. Most things we knew. Some things we did not. We are still fiercely protective of Lauren. Not having answers, not knowing which scenario is the correct one, still waiting but no longer expecting to bring Lauren’s remains home is excruciating. What I can say about Shawn’s efforts is that I hope it uncovers some new first-hand information, facts not hearsay. In a few weeks it will have been 13 years. Some people will hear about Lauren for the first time, some people will have forgotten and moved on. What I am hoping is that some people will remember and finally, finally come forward.
“Thank you, Shawn, for using your skills as a writer, for being a reminder that there is a girl who seemingly did disappear in plain sight. A girl who is still missing, someone who knows the truth, a family who is still waiting.
“Hoping today is the day.”
– Charlene Spierer
Regarding the lack of evidence of a stranger abduction and the observations of Lauren’s precarious medical and health conditions and the evolving accounts of those students who were with the young woman during the last hours before she disappeared, I asked Cohen, “Did Lauren Spierer die or was she killed?”
Cohen paused to carefully consider his response.
“That’s a question nobody has the answer to,” he said.
Cohen will sign copies of his book at Barnes & Noble at 7 p.m. Wednesday at 14790 Greyhound Plaza in Carmel.
