College Girl, Missing
Sometimes a story hits closer to home, not because you were personally involved or knew the relevant parties, but because it happened in your town and was ingrained in your community’s consciousness and daily life for so long that it’s left an indelible mark. Such is the case with the 2011 disappearance and presumed death of Indiana University sophomore Lauren Spierer, the subject of investigative journalist Shawn Cohen’s new book College Girl Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight.
It’s impossible to forget the years of seeing her smiling face on missing person flyers and billboards all over town or seeing the pained pleas in the press from her parents for someone to come forward with information. We all waited for news as a nearby landfill was searched or worried when skeletal remains were found over the years, wondering if they were hers. Our town had already been through it a decade prior with the disappearance and later discovery of the remains of another young co-ed Jill Behrman, and everyone felt that sense of deja vu.
On June 3, 2011, Lauren went missing after a night of hard partying with friends. The petite, blue-eyed blonde was enjoying her last few days in Bloomington before she was due to drive home with her boyfriend to New York. Ditching her plans for that evening with him, she instead went out with new friends, including a young man with interest in her, drinking at a popular local bar before continuing the party at his and his friends’ off-campus housing. Heavily intoxicated on both drugs and alcohol, Lauren had already fallen hard a couple times and had to be carried off-and-on, but the young men with her that night swear that she left their place in the early hours of the morning to walk the dark streets alone to her nearby apartment. She never arrived.
It takes no effort to victim-blame, but the truth is Lauren really could be any of us. My daughter and I both graduated from IU, and knowing that in the right set of circumstances or with the wrong group of people, anyone's story could have been hers. Who of us didn’t go through our teens and twenties feeling like we were invulnerable to bad consequences or testing out the new freedoms being away from our parents brought, even if it wasn’t in such extreme ways?
Lauren’s parents believe she’s dead, but as any parents would, they want answers. The most popular theory is that she overdosed, possibly complicated by a serious heart condition, and that her “friends” panicked and disposed of her body. Unfortunately, these young men from wealthy families lawyered up and refuse to talk. Add that to some early missteps in the local police response and the territorial police chief’s refusal to bring in the FBI or state police, and sadly the Spierers may never get the answers they deserve. I hold out hope that they will.
I listened to this on audio, and thought the narration by Kyle Snyder was well done. My biggest complaint about this book is that Cohen, the author, came off as self-important in touting how close HE is to the Spierers, and how HE broke the news first, and how HE doggedly pursued answers all these years, when in the end, he really didn’t bring much new information to the table. For all his self-congratulatory persistence, even when he got the young men to talk after all these years, they offered a bunch of “I dunno”s and “I don’t remember”s which got the Spierers no closer to any answers. It felt a little like a vanity piece at times. Nonetheless, I respect his efforts to help the family, and I hope his continued persistence eventually helps bring them closure.
★★★ ½
Thanks to HighBridge Audio, NetGalley and author Shawn Cohen for this ALC to honestly review. It’s out July 30, 2024.
It’s impossible to forget the years of seeing her smiling face on missing person flyers and billboards all over town or seeing the pained pleas in the press from her parents for someone to come forward with information. We all waited for news as a nearby landfill was searched or worried when skeletal remains were found over the years, wondering if they were hers. Our town had already been through it a decade prior with the disappearance and later discovery of the remains of another young co-ed Jill Behrman, and everyone felt that sense of deja vu.
On June 3, 2011, Lauren went missing after a night of hard partying with friends. The petite, blue-eyed blonde was enjoying her last few days in Bloomington before she was due to drive home with her boyfriend to New York. Ditching her plans for that evening with him, she instead went out with new friends, including a young man with interest in her, drinking at a popular local bar before continuing the party at his and his friends’ off-campus housing. Heavily intoxicated on both drugs and alcohol, Lauren had already fallen hard a couple times and had to be carried off-and-on, but the young men with her that night swear that she left their place in the early hours of the morning to walk the dark streets alone to her nearby apartment. She never arrived.
It takes no effort to victim-blame, but the truth is Lauren really could be any of us. My daughter and I both graduated from IU, and knowing that in the right set of circumstances or with the wrong group of people, anyone's story could have been hers. Who of us didn’t go through our teens and twenties feeling like we were invulnerable to bad consequences or testing out the new freedoms being away from our parents brought, even if it wasn’t in such extreme ways?
Lauren’s parents believe she’s dead, but as any parents would, they want answers. The most popular theory is that she overdosed, possibly complicated by a serious heart condition, and that her “friends” panicked and disposed of her body. Unfortunately, these young men from wealthy families lawyered up and refuse to talk. Add that to some early missteps in the local police response and the territorial police chief’s refusal to bring in the FBI or state police, and sadly the Spierers may never get the answers they deserve. I hold out hope that they will.
I listened to this on audio, and thought the narration by Kyle Snyder was well done. My biggest complaint about this book is that Cohen, the author, came off as self-important in touting how close HE is to the Spierers, and how HE broke the news first, and how HE doggedly pursued answers all these years, when in the end, he really didn’t bring much new information to the table. For all his self-congratulatory persistence, even when he got the young men to talk after all these years, they offered a bunch of “I dunno”s and “I don’t remember”s which got the Spierers no closer to any answers. It felt a little like a vanity piece at times. Nonetheless, I respect his efforts to help the family, and I hope his continued persistence eventually helps bring them closure.
★★★ ½
Thanks to HighBridge Audio, NetGalley and author Shawn Cohen for this ALC to honestly review. It’s out July 30, 2024.
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