Brian Shaffer

It was possible, investigators realized, that he could have changed his clothes in the bar or put on a hat and kept his head down, hiding his face from the camera. The cameras might also have missed him—one panned across the area constantly, and the other was operated manually. He might have also left the building by another route. However, the building's only other exit, a service door not generally used by the public, opened at the time onto a construction site that officers believed would have been difficult to walk through while sober, much less intoxicated, as Brian likely was at the time.

In 2014, the Columbus police said they were still receiving at least two tips a month on the case via the local Crime Stoppers hotline, though none had proven useful. The evidence in the case filled four boxes of files. One of the original investigators, Andre Edwards, told Columbus Monthly that after extensive review of the camera footage at the Ugly Tuna from the night Brian disappeared, which was intended to rule out the idea that Brian could have left in disguise, he could "say with 100-percent certainty" that Brian did not leave via the escalator. Police say they have three theories about the case but declined to discuss them even generally with the magazine.

Rosenberg's assertions notwithstanding, many of those who were close to Brian have criticized Florence for not being forthcoming enough. "As soon as the detective started getting involved, that's when he pretty much had no contact with anybody," recalled Derek Shaffer, Brian's brother and last surviving immediate family member. "I've always thought he definitely knows something–just won't come forward with it." He believes it is still possible that Brian is alive, and Florence knows where he might have gone. "If Brian did take off somewhere, if that is the case, we just always had a strong feeling that Clint would possibly know that," he said. Shaffer's girlfriend at the time, Alexis Waggoner, also thinks that Florence is withholding information. However, she believes that it's likely her former boyfriend is dead and did not run off. "I can't imagine he would have just done that," she said.

Those who had seen Brian that evening, including his father, were asked to take lie detector tests. Reed and Randy Shaffer passed theirs, as did reportedly all the others, while Florence refused. The two women Brian had last been seen talking to were later identified; they said in 2009 that they had never been asked to take one themselves.

In April 2009, The Lantern, Ohio State's student newspaper, disclosed the exchange. "If Brian is alive, which is what I'm led to believe after speaking with the detective involved, then it is Brian, and not Clint [Florence] who is causing his family pain and hardship," Rosenberg wrote. "Brian should come forward and end this." Florence, he said, did not have anything to hide; he had merely told everything he knew from the beginning and did not see the value of doing so again.

In September 2008, during a heavy windstorm in Central Ohio, Randy Shaffer was out in the yard of his Baltimore home clearing debris. A branch blew off from a nearby tree and fatally struck him. Neighbors found his body the next morning and called police.

Following that, he began studies at Ohio State University College of Medicine in 2004. During his second year there, in March 2006, his mother Renee died of myelodysplasia. His friends say that although he appeared to be handling it well, her death was hard for him.

Shaffer grew up in Pickerington, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, the state capital, where Ohio State University (OSU) is located. He is the older of Randy and Renee Shaffer's two sons. He graduated from the local high school in 1997 and went to OSU for his undergraduate work. Six years later he graduated with a degree in microbiology.

Brian Shaffer (born February 25, 1979) was a medical student at Ohio State University. On the night of March 31, 2006, Shaffer went out with friends to celebrate the beginning of spring break; later he was separated from them and they assumed he had gone home. However, a security camera near the entrance to a bar recorded him briefly talking to two women just before 2 a.m., April 1, and then apparently re-entering the bar. Shaffer has not been seen or heard from since. The case has received national media attention.