Brian Shaffer

Brian Randall Shaffer was a 27-year-old second-year medical student at the Ohio State University College of Medicine when he vanished in the early hours of April 1, 2006. Born February 11, 1979, and raised in the Columbus area, Shaffer had earned an undergraduate degree in microbiology before entering medical school, where he was known as bright, sociable and close to his family. His disappearance came at an especially painful time: his mother, Renee, had died of cancer only weeks earlier, in March 2006. At the time he went missing, Shaffer was dating fellow student Alexis Waggoner, and the two had planned a spring-break trip to Miami.

On the night of March 31, 2006, Shaffer met his friend William "Clint" Florence around 9 p.m. at the Ugly Tuna Saloona, a bar in the South Campus Gateway complex on North High Street near the OSU campus. The pair spent the night bar-hopping through the Arena District and Short North before a mutual friend, Meredith Reed, drove them back to the Ugly Tuna for a final round shortly after 1 a.m. At about 1:55 a.m., a security camera recorded Shaffer standing outside the bar's entrance, talking briefly with two young women before walking off-camera. He was never seen again. The same camera never captured him leaving as the bar closed at 2 a.m., and his companions said they could not find him.

Shaffer was reported missing after he failed to board the Miami flight he and Waggoner had booked and did not answer calls over the weekend. Investigators reviewed footage from surrounding bars, searched dumpsters, sewers and construction areas, and used cadaver dogs, but found no trace. There was no activity on his cell phone, credit cards or bank accounts. Detectives noted a service door near his last-known position that led toward an adjacent building then under construction, but no evidence placed him there. A brief, unexplained cell signal was reportedly detected months later near Hilliard, northwest of Columbus, though it was never substantiated.

Suspicion has long centered on the murky final minutes around the bar. Clint Florence declined to take a polygraph examination that others reportedly passed, and members of Shaffer's family have said they believe Florence knows more than he has disclosed, though he has never been named a suspect or charged. Police have publicly acknowledged multiple working theories — voluntary disappearance, an accident, and foul play — but have declined to detail them. Claims linking the case to the disputed "Smiley Face" drowning theory were rejected by police and the FBI. Over the years, purported sightings, including a homeless man in Mexico, were ruled out by facial-recognition analysis, and in 2021 authorities released an age-progressed image showing how Shaffer might look in his forties. Nearly two decades later, the case remains open and unsolved, one of Ohio's most enduring missing-person mysteries.