I had previously talked about Motley Crue aiding a police investigation to find a missing fan.
The link to that video is down below. But, today I want to talk about a similar set
of circumstances involving the band Pearl Jam and one of their fans who went missing.
This event happened a year after the Motley Crue
one did. It involves an Ohio State 2nd year med student named Brian Shaffer.
March 31,2006 was a Friday, and was the beginning of a week long spring break for
Ohio State students. Shaffer started the night by going out for dinner with his father Randy.
His father recalled to the police that his son seemed exhausted from studying for his
midterm exams frequently pulling all nighters. Brian was planning on meeting up with a friend
William "Clint" Florence after dinner at a bar on campus called the Ugly Tuna Saloona
in Columbus. The pair would go bar hopping towards the arena district before meeting
up with a friend of Florence named Meredith Reed. She would give the pair a ride back
to the Ugly Tuna saloona where they were planning on ending the night.
The bar is located on the second level of a building
and is primarily accessed through an escalator.
Security cameras at the bar captured the trio around 12:30am coming up the escalator to the bar.
Schaffer and Florence were spotted on camera at 1:55am chatting outside of the bar with two
women before Shaffer headed back in. The women Shaffer was talking to gave him was apparently
flirtatious with him at least according to witnesses. That would be the last time brian was
spotted on camera. The bar would close 5 minutes later at 2am and Schaffer and Florence waited
for Brian outside the bar, but he didn’t show. They tried to contact his cell phone, but were
unsuccessful & they thought he may have wandered home since his apartment was only several blocks
away. Brian was scheduled to fly the following Monday to Florida to visit his girlfriend and when
missed his flight that’s when concern grew over his whereabouts and he was reported missing.
It should be noted that Ugly Tuna Saloona has three exits, two of which had cameras.
The rear exit didn’t have a camera but there was a lot of construction going on in the alleyway and
the tight space out back led some to believe it was unlikely he left the bar since he was likely
intoxicated. The university area where the bar was located also had a significantly high crime rate
In reviewing the footage the police had several theories. One of the security cameras from the
bar would pan the area so perhaps one of the camera’s missed him as he was leaving.
Another theory is that he simply vanished not wanting to be found possibly disguising himself
in different clothes than he entered with. There was also several things going on in Brian’s life
around the time of his disappearance. One was that his mother had passed away from a rare
form of cancer several weeks prior and while his friends stated to the police that he seemed to
be handling it well, it was also a devastating blow for him. Another was that he frequently
told friends that his real passion was to be in a rock band despite his decision to pursue a career
in medicine . At the time of his disappearance Brian was in a relationship with a fellow medical
student named Alexis Waggoner & she would reveal that a few nights before his disappearance Brian
told her to move on and find someone else, as he was struggling with his mom’s death. A
couple weeks earlier, he asked her to and i quote “just go away” with him. As I had stated earlier,
Brian was planning on taking a vacation with his girlfriend the following Monday in Florida.
In fact the night he disappeared he had called his girlfriend to check in around 10pm confirming
the vacation plans and telling her he loved her. It was also reported by several sources
that he was planning on proposing his girlfriend in Florida. In similar cases where someone has
disappeared or vanished investigators claim people often disappear as an act of desperation,
not when they are about to go on vacation, which made the case very mind boggling.
Another theory is that perhaps something more sinister happened
maybe he was murdered inside the bar and hidden somewhere. Some online sleuths believe he may
have been the victim of the smiley face serial killer who preyed on young drunk college men.
The police investigated that theory and have ruled it out.
Several days after Brian’s disappearance a homeless person claimed to have seen him,
but after the police questioned him, he didn’t reveal much. There has been
some suspicion cast on his friend William Clint Florence, who he went drinking with that night
since he refused to take a lie detector test. Let's talk about the Pearl Jam connection now.
Brian was a member of Pearl Jam’s fan club & he had bought tickets to the band’s show in Detroit
on May 22, 2006. His girlfriend would end up auctioning the seats to raise money for his reward
fund & Brian's father, Randy, was taken aback by the support he received from Pearl Jam's fan club
and the community. His father would attend a Pearl Jam show in Cincinnati in 2006,
where frontman Eddie Vedder even mentioned his son as you can see here. A young
man named Brian Shaffer kind of went missing. Four years later in 2010 during a show in
Columbus, Vedder once again mention Brian and dedicated the song Come Bcak to him.
It was a truly horrible time for his father Randy whose wife passed away from a few weeks
before his son disappeared & Randy would spend the next several years chasing every lead,
in hopes of finding his son until a freak accident took his life in 2008. After his death
a condolence book was posted online and one of the signatures read “To Dad, love Brian.” The message
appeared to be posted from the US virgin islands giving more credence to the theory tat he started
a new life somewhere else, but when investigators looked into this they determined it was a hoax.
In the years that followed there were reported sightings of Brian in Texas,
Michigan and even across the pond in Sweden,
all of which were investigated but didn’t shed any more light on his disappearance.
In 2014, the Columbus police would reveal that there local
crime stoppers hotline was still receiving several tips a month
In 2019, a picture of a homeless American man in Tijuana mexico surfaced online.
Some speculated it may have been Shaffer & It would make its way to the FBI who used facial
recognition technology and confirmed it was not him . As recently as march of this year
the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation would put out an age enhanced photo of what
they think Shaffer would look like today. Detective John Hurst who was assigned the
case would recall to Dispatch.com in 2019 his thoughts of Brian’s status Is Brian alive?
“There is a possibility he is alive, but if you look at the probabilities that he isn’t alive,
those are just as great.” That does it for today's video guys, thanks for watching. Be sure
to hit the like button and subscribe we'll see you again on rock n' roll true stories take care.