What really happened to Lauren Spierer?

For Lauren Spierer, June 3rd 2015, will mark four years and thousands of dead-end tips since she disappeared without a trace from Bloomington Indiana, after a calamitous night of booze and drugs and carousing:

Some people theorize that this now-famous missing person was murdered, and her body dumped someplace.

Others believe the petite young blonde was abducted while staggering home to her nearby apartment.

They're the ones holding out hope that she may still be alive today, albeit living a desperate existence as somebody's hostage and sex slave.

After all, things like that have been known to happen from time to time, as Ariel Castro and his Cleveland kidnappings of Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus prove.

But I don't think such a fate befell young Lauren Spierer.  She wasn't as lucky...
 

[click to read/share "The Auto-Assassination of Lauren Spierer"]

The parents of missing person Lauren Spierer filed a lawsuit this week against the trio of young men who were last seen with their daughter on the day that she vanished: 

Robert and Charlene Spierer claim that the negligence of Corey Rossman, Mike Beth and Jay Rosenbaum -- who all lawyered up within hours of Spierer being reported as missing -- is what ultimately "resulted in her disappearance, death, or injury."

Attorneys representing the Spierers say a statute of limitations barring such a civil action was bound to kick in soon and, since the young woman still remains unaccounted for, they felt legally compelled to file suit for the wrongful acts of these former students.

All three defendants named in the suit had either admitted to being with a grossly inebriated Spierer the day she vanished without a trace, or were witnessed by others as being in her company in the hours before she went missing.

Many fellow revelers that evening had observed Spierer -- bruised from repeatedly falling down and practically incoherent -- being escorted and even carried at times by her three male comrades. 

However, all the men insist that Spierer somehow made a full recovery later on, then left their apartment for her own, barefoot, at around four in the morning. After which, they say they don't know what may have happened to her.

One of the youths in fact has alleged amnesia: He was punched in the face earlier that fateful night by an interceder who apparently hoped to convince him, through physical force, to take the visibly incapacitated woman safely back to her home so she could sleep it off.

He declined to do so, unfortunately, and Lauren Spierer continued to party with Rossman, Beth, and Rosenbaum for several more hours.

The Spierers insist none of those key players have ever been 100 percent forthright about the predawn events which led up to their daughter's disappearance, and they now firmly believe she never left the youths' apartment at all.

(0riginal story above published on the 2-year anniversary of Spierer's disappearance)
6/28/13 9:17 AM

Welcome Home, Abigail Hernandez

This July, Abigail Hernandez surprised everybody. Missing nine months and presumed dead, she defied the statistical odds by surviving a brutal abduction and finding her way home again -- welcome back, Abby Hernandez. Well done.

Nine days of total seclusion later, she would stun us all once more, showing up in court to face the accused kidnapper she'd been quietly helping investigators to finger. He in chains this time; she stoical but stone-faced, and seeming so much older than the little girl pictured in her missing person poster. So much wiser than her mere 15 years.

July 29, 2014, Conway District Court, NH:  She still sees it all in her mind's eye. She still feels imprisoned in her soul. She thinks this monster standing in front of the judge's bench, who would snatch a young girl like some coveted object on a store shelf, has robbed her of more than just time. 

He's taken things she can't retrieve anymore, no matter how hard she might try. He's stolen her childhood, her naiveté, her innocence ... she might never laugh or love again.

Beside the gaunt, pale and hard-jawed Abigail Hernandez sits her stricken mother Zenya. She's overjoyed to have a long lost child at her side once more of course, but, like her traumatized daughter, she too wears a grave and tortured expression. 

Together the two solemnly watch the court proceedings unfold from the first row; both bearing an uncannily sad family resemblance and defiantly eying the lanky, shackled defendant who boldly turns to glance at them.

His name is Nathaniel Kibby, age 34, and he has a criminal rap sheet as long as he is tall, dating all the way back to when he was a teenager.

If convicted of abducting Abby Hernandez on October 9th 2013 and cruelly confining her for nearly a year in a soundproof shipping container next to his mobile home, Kibby will receive only a seven-year sentence. 

Which means the career criminal would likely serve about five years max, assuming that throughout this brief period of incarceration he at all times exhibits "good behavior."

On the other hand, if "Crazy Nate" Kibby can be linked to other eerily similar disappearances in the area, then the good people of New Hampshire could probably put him away for life...

Missing in New Hampshire

In hunt for Abigail Hernandez "No tip too small" FBI says

The FBI's lead investigators in the search for Abigail Hernandez say it's looking "less and less likely" that the New Hampshire teen simply ran away.

The athletic 15-year-old from North Conway, NH has been missing since October 9th when she sent her last text at around 3 PM to a friend while walking home from school.

Since that afternoon there's been no activity on her cellphone or social media accounts either, a troubling indicator in the case of a girl who is said to be very active online, especially with her Facebook page.

"She has gone totally dark from a very robust social media presence," FBI agent Kieran Ramsey reports. "We have no idea where she is right now."

Regardless of the trail growing cold, however, state and federal officials insist that the search for Abigail Hernandez is still very much underway, even though, so far, they have no solid leads to act upon.

Agent-in-charge Ramsey also expressed a degree of frustration with what he perceives may be reticence on the part of some people to provide investigators with more tips. 

"Nothing is too small" he assured the public yesterday, emphasizing he'd rather get duplicate tips phoned in than nothing at all.

And those need not be about the specific moment the child vanished either, he added. 

Information about Hernandez and her relationships and activities prior to disappearing is equally being sought, since this could provide more insight to the events that led up to her vanishing. 

With October coming to a close and cold weather fast bearing down on the northland, there is an undeniable sense of urgency in the hunt for Hernandez who the authorities do consider to be endangered.

The teen track star joins a growing list of similar disappearances in the region, some of which, like Celina Cass, age 11, ended in homicide and a body-dump, or, as with the missing-person cases of Heide Wilbur, Brianna Maitland and Maura Murray, remain unsolved to this day.

The prospect of a serial predator freely roaming such a vast and mountainous territory  targeting young females to victimize has both citizens and law enforcement alike on edge.

Abby Hernandez went missing in broad daylight at the side of the busy North-South highway, just two miles from her residence and an even shorter distance from her high school. 

Police ask that anyone with knowledge of this missing child's current whereabouts -- or any info whatsoever -- immediately contact 1-800-CALL-FBI. A $20,000 reward is also being offered as an incentive.

You can view Abby's missing-person poster and find other important details here, and learn more about her and the scenic area she lives in right here.

License plate scanners and the Jessica Heeringa abduction

JESSICA HEERINGA IS STILL MISSING

Fixed or on police cruisers, license plate scanners are being used to track millions of  unsuspecting Americans, it's been revealed this week. Broad illegal searches which have civil libertarians rightly up in arms.

 

That recent disclosure, coupled with revelations of the government's nonstop internet peeping, made by ex-CIA contractor Edward Snowden in early June this year, shows that indoors or outdoors Big Brother is now watching all of us 24/7.

 

And yet on the night of April 26, 2013, when underpaid Exxon Mobil-mart employee Jessica Heeringa was abducted as she closed up shop for the night, there where no cameras in her place of business and, allegedly, no license plate scanners along the route that the suspect and his silver minivan took...

 

Or was there?

 

A baffling abduction with no searches

 

Alerted by would be customers who found the Exxon station in Norton Shores Michigan curiously deserted, police were on the scene within minutes of Ms. Heeringa's April kidnapping.

 

Still, they say they found no clues, except a tiny droplet of blood which later through DNA analysis proved to belong to the 25-year-old blonde mother-of-one.

 

Fuzzy surveillance video of the suspected vehicle leaving the area that night was obtained from nearby businesses and that silver minivan singularly hunted for in the days, weeks and months since Heeringa has been gone without a trace.

 

Indeed, so sure was law enforcement about this aspect of the case, that they became fixated on the elusive van, refusing to launch any official ground searches for the victim, and further urging no one else to do so either.

 

But today stumped investigators worry that what and who they sought for so long may be a red herring in Heeringa's abduction. After all, no one has seen this vehicle ever since that date, nor a 30-something man who supposedly resembles the police sketch of its driver.

 

Never too late

 

Of course, as the Cleveland kidnappings have clearly shown us, it's not too late to organize search teams to scour the Norton Shores suburb for a missing woman. In fact, it's a darn good idea because most people who are abducted are taken by men they somehow are acquainted with.

 

Yes, men.

 

Generally, though, if a woman or child isn't found within 72 hours, the odds are they've met up with foul play, but, still, that shouldn't prevent folks from hunting for Heeringa, nonetheless.

 

One way or another, a family in Michigan needs closure now, even if all that is returned to them is their missing loved one's remains.

 

In the meantime, maybe local police agencies should just man up about their own warrantless surveillance of innocent motorists and cough up their license plate scans for that evening.

 

Sadistic stranger, fiendish friend, or even a corrupt cop, it couldn't hurt to see who actually was in the vicinity of the crime at that particular hour.

 

You know? 

 

EPONYMOUS ROX

 

The Mysterious Disappearance of August Reiger

WHERE ON EARTH CAN AUGUST REIGER BE?

 

Father's Day, June 16, 2013, an American family of four vacationing in Ecuador takes a jungle hike together on the scenic but hilly trails overlooking the tourist town of Banos. Two brothers suddenly race up ahead ... but only one of them returns. What happened to the other? Was he kidnapped? Did he fall? Is he a runaway? Or was he murdered?

 

Fulbright scholar, class valedictorian and Oklahoma resident, August Reiger, 18, vanished in thin air on June 16th while exploring Ecuador's picturesque countryside with his mother, father and younger brother, Laithe. 

 

At one point in the trek the two boys had dashed ahead of their parents, yet, minutes later, only the youngest son rendezvoused with them again.

 

"He was sitting there waiting," explains Mr. Reiger, "but he hadn't seen his brother."

 

The steep and winding path the Reiger family took, while secluded, is a popular tourist attraction in this region, and the small town where they were staying, dependably crime free.

 

In fact, although U.S. and Ecuadoran officials are jointly investigating August Reiger's strange disappearance as an abduction, and even offering a reward to his potential kidnappers, the reality is there's never been an abduction in this area.

 

Moreover, no ransom note has been delivered...

 

Adding to the mystery, some locals have since been claiming they might've spotted the youth riding in the back of a pickup truck, apparently headed for the Amazon rainforest.

 

But others think that's a bit farfetched. They're speculating that Reiger is probably at the bottom of a ravine somewhere, his body hidden from search parties by dense foliage.

 

What do you think? Is this brilliant young man still among the living? And, if so, where?

 

Eponymous Rox

 

[Updated on 7/2/13 from July 1st to include photo of Laithe Reiger]