Cameras Saw Him Walk Into the Bar. No Camera Ever Saw Him Leave. Brian Shaffer.

At one-fifteen in the morning on Saturday, April 1, 2006, a security camera in Columbus, Ohio, recorded three people riding an escalator up to the entrance of a bar called the Ugly Tuna Saloona.

One of them was a twenty-seven-year-old medical student named Brian Shaffer.

About forty minutes later, at around one-fifty-five, a camera saw him outside the bar, talking briefly with two young women. Then he moved out of view.

The bar closed at two. His friends waited outside. He never came out.

None of the security cameras covering the area ever recorded Brian Shaffer leaving.

He was supposed to fly to Miami with his girlfriend two days later. He never showed up for the flight. He has never been seen again.

Who was Brian Shaffer?

Brian Randall Shaffer was born on February 11, 1979, in Pickerington, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. He was the older of two sons of Randy and Renee Shaffer.

He graduated from Ohio State University with a degree in microbiology. In 2004, he started medical school at Ohio State's College of Medicine.

He was a laid-back guy. He loved tropical places, and he talked about starting a band in the style of Jimmy Buffett. He was a big Pearl Jam fan.

He had a girlfriend, a fellow medical student. They were planning a spring break trip to Miami. Friends and family thought he might propose while they were there.

A hard month

March 2006 was a hard month for Brian.

His mother, Renee, died that month, of a blood disorder called myelodysplasia. It was during his second year of medical school, in the middle of his exams.

Friends said it hit him hard. But they also said he seemed to be coping.

On the evening of Friday, March 31, Brian had a steak dinner with his father. His father said he looked exhausted from cramming for exams.

Then Brian went out to celebrate the start of spring break.

Friday night

At about nine p.m., Brian met a friend at the Ugly Tuna Saloona. The bar was on the second floor of a new building near campus, called the South Campus Gateway.

At about ten, Brian called his girlfriend, who was at her family's home in Toledo.

Then he and his friend went bar-hopping, heading toward the Arena District downtown. His friend said they had one shot of hard liquor at each stop.

After midnight, they met up with another friend in a neighborhood called the Short North. She drove them back to the Ugly Tuna Saloona for one last round.

At one-fifteen in the morning, a camera recorded all three of them riding the escalator up to the bar's entrance.

Out of frame

At about one-fifty-five, a camera showed Brian outside the bar entrance, talking with two young women for a moment.

Then he moved out of the camera's view.

That is the last confirmed sighting of Brian Shaffer.

At two o'clock, the bar closed. His two friends waited outside, watching people leave. They did not see Brian. They figured he had gone home.

Over the weekend, his girlfriend and his father called his phone. He did not answer.

On Monday, he missed the flight to Miami. He was reported missing to the Columbus police.

The cameras

The South Campus Gateway building had security cameras because of crime concerns in the area. Investigators went through the footage.

The cameras showed Brian going in. They did not show him coming out.

So how could he have left?

Investigators considered a few ideas. Maybe he put on a hat or changed his look. Or maybe he left through a rarely used service door. That door led to a hallway on the first floor, and then through a construction area with an exit to the outside.

Some officers thought that route would be hard to get through, especially for someone who had been drinking all night.

And the cameras had gaps. One of them panned back and forth constantly. Another was moved by hand. It is possible he walked through a spot at a moment when no camera was pointed there.

Footage from three other bars nearby showed no sign of him.

The search

Police searched with dogs. They searched dumpsters. They searched the sewers. They knocked on doors.

Nothing.

Brian's apartment, about six blocks away, was undisturbed. His car was parked outside.

Police asked the people who saw him that night to take lie detector tests. His father passed. The friend who drove them back to the bar passed. Others passed.

The friend he had spent the whole night with declined. Through a lawyer, he said he had already told police everything he knew. We are not naming him. He has never been charged with anything, and nothing on the record connects him to Brian's disappearance.

Brian's brother and his girlfriend both said they believed this friend was holding something back. His girlfriend also said she believed Brian was probably dead, and had not left on his own.

And the two young women Brian was seen talking to outside the bar? In 2009, they said they had never even been asked to take a polygraph.

The phone

In September 2006, five months later, Brian's girlfriend called his cell phone, as she had many times.

This time, it rang three times.

His phone company said it was probably a computer glitch.

At some point, investigators also found a signal from his phone that had hit a cell tower in Hilliard, about fourteen miles northwest of Columbus. It is not clear when that happened, or what it meant.

His father

Brian's father, Randy, never stopped looking.

He worked with other families of missing adults to push for a statewide plan in Ohio for how police handle missing adult cases. That bill became law.

In September 2008, Randy Shaffer was clearing debris at his home during a windstorm when a tree branch fell and struck him. He died.

In about two and a half years, Brian's family had lost his mother, then Brian, then his father.

Sightings and hoaxes

Over the years, people reported seeing Brian in Michigan, in Texas, and even in Sweden. None of the reports led anywhere.

In 2008, a message appeared online saying "To Dad, love Brian." Investigators traced it to a public computer in the Columbus area. It was a hoax.

Around 2019 and 2020, a photo of a homeless man in Tijuana, Mexico, went viral because he looked like Brian. The FBI used facial recognition and ruled him out.

In 2021, Ohio investigators released an age-progressed photo of what Brian might look like at forty-two.

A psychic told Brian's father that his son's body was in water, near a bridge pier. Family members searched parts of the Olentangy River, which runs near the campus. They found nothing.

For a while, some people pointed to the so-called smiley face theory, the idea that a serial killer was drowning young men across the Midwest. Columbus police rejected that idea, as the FBI and other agencies have.

By 2014, police said they were still getting at least two tips a month. None was useful. The case file filled four boxes.

What we still don't know

Police have said they have three theories about what happened to Brian Shaffer. They have never said what those theories are.

Did he leave on his own, weeks after losing his mother? Did something happen to him inside that building? Did he walk out a door that no camera covered, and meet someone in the street?

What we know is this. A young man walked into a bar on camera. He walked out of frame. And twenty years later, no one has found a single trace of where he went.

If you know anything, contact the Columbus Division of Police.

What do you think happened to Brian Shaffer?