The Disappearance of Brian Shaffer

Brian Shaffer was a 27-year-old Ohio State University medical student who vanished on April 1, 2006, in Columbus, Ohio, after a night out celebrating spring break with friends. Security cameras at the Ugly Tuna Saloona bar captured him entering the venue at approximately 1:55 a.m. but never showed him leaving. Surveillance footage covered every exit point of the bar except for a construction scaffolding area that provided a possible but highly unusual exit route. He was never seen on camera leaving, and was never seen again.

Investigators exhausted conventional explanations. His cell phone was never used after that night. His car, money, and all personal belongings remained in place. He had no history of mental illness, substance abuse problems serious enough to prompt disappearance, or financial crises. His girlfriend, who had not been with him that night, was investigated and cleared. No foul play was found in the bar. The construction scaffolding exit led to an area with no additional camera coverage, leaving investigators with no footage of him departing.

His family mounted a sustained public campaign and hired private investigators. His father Randy Shaffer searched obsessively for years, even launching a boat to look for his son in local waterways. Randy Shaffer died in 2008 without learning what happened to his son. Various theories — accident in a nearby waterway, voluntary disappearance, foul play by an unidentified person at the bar — have been examined without resolution.

Brian Shaffer would be in his mid-forties today. His case remains one of the most puzzling missing persons cases in Ohio history, defined entirely by the single baffling fact that camera coverage showed him entering a building and never leaving through any visible exit. Columbus police have kept the case open. The answer to how he left that bar — if he left through the scaffolding area or by some other means — has never been established.