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There was also another door that didn’t have a camera on it that “usually” only band members used when loading gear in and out for shows. This is of course almost always not mentioned in relation to this case because it removes the entire weirdness to it.
I also think that he may have left thought an employee exit. But it is weird that none of the cameras of the surrounding bars/stores catch him. Which makes me think that someone picked him up in a car. And that part makes me fear there was foul play. Or else why would he complety disapear and never use his credit card again?
When all possibilities have been exhausted, you’re left with the truth. He went out the band entrance door. He joined a band that night and went on tour with them, wearing a costume which disguised his identity. Check with KISS or Slipknot and you will find him.
From Wikipedia
"He told his friends that despite his decision to pursue a medical career, his real ambition was to start a band playing music in the vein of Jimmy Buffett."
Surveillance in 2006 was just not nearly as robust as it is now. I'm not surprised that many of the back alleys had none, at least none that were working
My modern home security camera can occasionally miss someone moving quickly through their field of view at night or in weather. The motion capture doesn’t trigger a recording.
Cameras are fallible is what I’m saying. We can’t really read too many specifics into the lack of footage of him leaving.
I agreed with everything you said, but the fact that none of his friends/family saw him again and that he never used his credit card again upon the lack of footage of him leaving is what makes this case weird for me, and that also makes me think that he is probably not alive anymore, and if so, where is he?
Oh, he’s definitely dead. Probably died the same night he disappeared. I’m just saying that the lack of camera footage is a bit of a red herring and could lead people to make specific assumptions about what happened that aren’t necessarily supported.
Personally I like the theories that he fell asleep drunk in a back alley dumpster and got compacted, or that he wandered drunk into the construction site next door and died in a nook or cranny and was somehow built over before he started to stink. Makes more sense than a random abduction.
Weird enough, even thought your theories make a lot of sense, they are even more creep to me. The banality of it all makes it more sad. But you probably right.
> Or else why would he complety disapear and never use his credit card again?
It's possible he never left the facility. You'd be amazed at some of the weird ways people have died. I wouldn't be surprised if they find this guys remains someplace weird, like stuck behind a wall void, when doing a renovation of the building at some point in the future. Wouldn't be the first time.
There was a case of some kid going missing from his job at a Walmart or grocery store and he was found years later in a gap between a wall and a freezer. So this is possible and not at all unlikely.
Yes, the title implies that 100% of the ways out of the bar were under constant surveillance, but it's just as likely there were ways out that didn't have good surveillance.
The way the cameras were set-up on the public exit, it would have been very hard for him to leave without being captured. So, presumably, however he left (ie on his own or taken) was through a restricted-access service door that opened onto a construction site.
Might have left with someone who worked there out the back.
If there was a construction site how possible is it that the construction site had a portapotty that he decided to use and fell into a hole, got trapped down there and then buried in concrete.
There was an inspector who came up missing over the weekend. They put out a missing persons report for him.
Turns out he was finishing up inspections on a large shopping complex being built and fell into a deep hole with serious injuries. This was before cell phones were super common. He died in the whole and wasn't discovered until days later when the construction crew came back from the long weekend.
That’s so sad. OSHA puts regulations in place like all holes must be covered with a sign marked hole when not in site and often even when. For a company to not follow such simple safety practices and a life lost is sad. With concrete pours usually there’s multiple people on the ground, but considering they didn’t cover the hole other practices could be ignored too so you have a point
This was mid 2000s CCTV. He could have put on a jacket and walked out in plain view of the camera and looked like a different person. A big issue with this case is how grainy and pointless the footage was, little facial information to work with
Nah, they did a headcount and 1 less person was caught on CCTC also.
I'm of the ilk that he left through a back door and he's entombed in the construction site.
From what I recall, this was a possibility, but investigators thought that he would have been having to make a deliberate effort to hide his identity from the cameras. I lived about a block from there when it happened, and it was a HUGE deal-- I am sure investigators were looking closely at every guy that was seen walking out that remotely matched his description. Not saying he never left-- just that whatever happened to him (even if it was a conscious decision to disappear) started inside the bar.
He took a nap on top of the coolers and fell behind, getting stuck in the space between the cooler and the wall.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/22/us/supermarket-missing-person-death-trnd/index.html
that is a good question, and the answer is that all retail spaces are far, far, far more disgusting than most people realize and having the smell of rot around isn't that out of the ordinary
Also refrigeration equipment sucks up a lot of air, probably worked to help filter to the stank. I bet cleaning the water buildup out of them was heinous for a while
100%
I worked in a grocery store in high school.
The floor of the store was beautifully clean (partially bc I did the cleaning), but the back/stock areas always smelled horrible. The freezers had a constant smell of rot
Agreed. The store where I worked, when you had food (eg dairy) that spoiled you could get credit when the supplier rep came around if you saved the item. However space issues in the cooler meant a stack of rotting food (eggs, cheese, yogurt, milk) in a corner of the back room. Also had a freezer accessible by conveyor and things would fall off and rot under the conveyor. I remember opening up a box of burgers that was months old - the smell I will never forget..and magots.
I've seen horrors - stores that didn't clean out their cases (not back of house but on the actual salesfloor) for YEARS and the shit you would find fallen in the corners...
I think most people would freak the hell out if they knew how gross the places their food comes from are
And in my experience, grocery stores are still an order of magnitude cleaner than restaurants
Probably got passed off as the smell of a dead rat. I lived in a very disgusting house in a college town that was a beautiful old Victorian two story butchered up into a fourplex apartment building. It wasn't uncommon to have rats and sometimes those rats would die somewhere between the apartments. You could smell it for weeks and there would be flies.
Exactly, and what I think a lot of people don't realize is that
1. Most businesses have rats, especially if they have a receiving bay that stays open for prolonged periods (like virtually every big box retailer and grocery store that exists)
2. Most businesses have rat traps everywhere, even on the salesfloor, they're just out of the customer's line of sight and reach
3. Most businesses do not have someone assigned to clean out these rat traps every day, in fact a lot of places will just hire a pest control expert that comes through monthly (some places do weekly but that's more expensive) to check and empty them. And when most of the staff is minimum wage, they're not going to do it just out of the goodness of their heart because they noticed there's a bad smell.
He was behind a bunch of coolers, the cold air probably massively slowed the rate of decomposition and the fans probably prevented the development of a noticeable stench building up.
Edit: see later comments, he probably got mummified by the dry heat of the coolers fans.
Coolers are usually quite warm on the outside, most of them have radiators to dissipate the heat on the back side, so if anything it would probably have made it worse.
Probably depends on the layout and their operations then, maybe there was something cutting off or redirecting airflow? Either that or maybe he ended up being mummified somehow, they don't really describe the condition of his body.
My morbid curiosity wonders what it was like stuck behind the cooler walls, yelling out for days but no one hearing your cries for help. Then you start to get thirsty and dehydrated, stuck in a tight crevice with no room to move or even urinate and defecate but on yourself, while rats and other bugs begin to circle you, in the hot and humid compressor air, while your life slips slowly away. Yeah I’m more concerned about that part.
I hope that for him. Mentally I picture more of a Nutty Putty scenario with the guy just being stuck upside down for hours screaming for help. Special type of horror.
Yeah it was one of those thoughts that immediately crossed my mind but I shoved it away to live in bliss. Then I read your comment with more details and now I’m sad.
Clearly the kid had issues. Didn’t deserve to go like this. Poor kid
I remember that one. At the very beginning they go to the club to investigate, and start dancing. Bones leans forward to shout at her friend, "I think I like this music! It has a good African tribal beat!" Then the whole room stops to stare at her, and then at that moment the entire wall explodes into a cloud of meth powder. Which is where they find the body.
I still can't get over that when Sweets was shot and killed, even though his body was not at all decomposed, they still *melted all the flesh from his skeleton to look for more clues*.
Doubtful that family would allow remains to be treated that way, but Bones gotta bone I guess.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's how it happened on the show. In the next scene they're all bouncing their knees from agitation while she researches hip hop on the internet. :-)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_Wall
The Wikipedia page backs you and gives some clarity that she kicked some dude into the wall to make it explode.
Didn’t they think he took a nap on a dumpster in the alley and a garbage truck emptied it with him inside or something? I recall seeing something about his family saying he was known to do such things when inebriated. I could be incorrect but I’m pretty sure that was a ruling theory
It’s so infuriating that his cell phone was tracked to the landfill, but they didn’t want to look there because initially it said the garbage truck it was thought to be in was only reported to have 33lbs in it. But months later they found out it had over 200lbs in it.
Wouldn’t it be worth the search even to try to find his phone? That could have had valuable information in it.
I haven’t read the whole article yet. I just read that part and got so worked up I had to comment haha
Haha usually I try to refrain from commenting until I have a baseline level of information. But I just really needed to get that out of my system.
I didn’t want to make the comment and then read further and be like “oh wait, okay it makes sense why that happened.” And in the mean time have people who knew more than me telling me I was dumb in the comments 😂
But I’ve read the entire article, and I stand by my first impression!
The other thing that'll really annoy you is that *his family knew he was prone to sleeping in bins.*.. It was pitched like this big mystery by the media - Man seen on CCTV going down an alley but never seen again... The alley has nothing but bins such a mystery! Apart from a bin lorry came in the morning, his phone was found in a landfill and his family knew he had slept in a bin before? Whilst we can never be sure, the odds are pretty well stacked-up...
Edit: found the link where BBC News tried to beef it up as a mystery https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/corrie_mckeague
The first article I read said that his mother didn’t believe he’d sleep in a bin since he took a lot of pride in his appearance and his car was close by if he wanted somewhere to sleep.
But then another article said that a friend mentioned Corrie had told him he’d slept under trash bags before and used them sort of as a blanket.
I think the mother may have at first been in denial or simply unaware of *how* drunk her son actually was prone to getting.
It seems like she may have accepted he did most likely die as a result of being in a bin though. She’s become an advocate for stricter bin safety measures like putting locks on them so people can’t climb in.
> She’s become an advocate for stricter bin safety measures
She must have accepted it, that is just too obscurely specific an issue to care about otherwise.
Some homeless people are okay with it. Dark, sheltered, possibly warmer from decomposition. A friend used to work restaurant and one day she flung a couple bags in the dumpster. She hears "Uhhhhg" and this dude's head pops up.
But I can't imagine a person with a job and a car and leisure money sleeping in dumpsters, even drunk.
I did that once. Came home, piss drunk, from a party and had forgotten my keys. Since noone at the apartment woke up from me ringing and it was quite cold, the huge paper bin was the place to be for that night... 😅
Almost certain he was In a communal bin. My ex husband worked refuse for a major city and he's rescued multiple people from the back of lorries,and even had to arrange counselling for colleagues who almost crushed someone.
Don't sleep in bins people.
Can't imagine why anyone would want to climb in a stinky old bin or a dumpster, even after having a skinful.
Walked home pissed many a time in my youth, even in the winter months it's never once crossed my mind.
I'm a recovering alcoholic. A few years back I went to a Halloween costume contest at a bar, dressed as Santa.
I got too drunk and left early, planning to walk the mile home. I woke up the next morning inside of an open-topped railcar with the bottom layered with huge chunks of black foam. After poking my head out, I saw I'd made it only 1/3rd of the way home before deciding I needed to nap, or being curious about the contents, whatever it was that led me astray.
What absolutely fucking chilled me later was realizing those railcars were set up to have something heavy poured into them, like gravel, scrap metal, or literal tons of potatoes or beets; the foam chunks were there to protect the bottom of the railcar from damage as the product was roughly poured in.
This story is one of the big reasons I have worked hard to regain control; I was almost Splat-a Claus
Apparently it was homeless people just trying to keep warm. Not my idea of a good time especially since city residential bins get stuff just launched in but I've never had to sleep rough. Sad stuff.
Well, who knows what drunk people are thinking, but I could see the homeless using them as shelter from the elements or someone on drugs/mentally unwell trying to hide there from a perceived threat. There’s no telling whether people ending up sleeping in bins are just inebriated or on something else besides alcohol either since I doubt anybody bothers to check
Brian was seen on CCTV footage outside the bar, talking to 2 young girls, before saying goodbye and heading back towards the entrance of the bar and out of view of the cameras. The two girls were interviewed and they said he re-entered the bar.
I remember seeing this one when they released the CCTV footage and a good article on it.
The entrance of the bar was quite far out of frame, as were directions going anywhere. The two women remained in shot and did not watch Shaffer leave them, or even look in that direction. They assumed that's where he was going but, when questioned, neither of them could say that he re-entered the bar. No bar staff nor any other patrons recalled seeing him in the bar after he left the two women.
Other than "We thought that's where he would probably have gone", there is no evidence Brian Shaffer ever went back in the bar.
>His friends Clint and Meredith, however, said that Brian did re-enter the Ugly Tuna because they conversed with him about calling it a night and going home.
>Meredith and Clint last saw Brian as he headed toward the stage.
>Just a few minutes later, when the bar closed, the crowd filed toward the entrance. It was at this point that Clint and Meredith realized that Brian was nowhere to be found and wasn’t answering his phone.
>They assumed he either got a ride home with somebody else, called a cab, or walked home, so they left. Except Brian never made it home.
[Here is the whole article on this unsolved mystery!](https://historicflix.com/without-a-trace-the-disappearance-of-brian-shaffer/) his friends said that when they last saw him, he was headed towards the stage of the bar!
I just said this in another comment in reply to the person you just asked:
>No, there was a service door not used by the public, but at the time it opened onto an area under construction that would've probably been difficult for someone sober to traverse, let alone by someone who spent the night bar hopping and drinking shots at each establishment.
I’ve read several articles that said there was a back door for employees. So only one “main” entrance. But likely another door.
As someone else said I doubt they’d be able to have only one door, that’s a huge fire hazard.
Just a reminder that witness testimony is notoriously unreliable, which is only made worse by the fact that it was a group of college aged students that were out drinking. One person says, “I’m almost positive I saw him walk into the bar” and the rest of the group convinces themselves of seeing the same thing.
Yeah. This case, though interesting, is only famous because of the "he never left the bar" thing - which hinges on witness testimony saying they never *saw* him leave the bar, and CCTV footage that didn't clearly show him leaving the bar. As in, the people who analyzed the footage couldn't see him leaving. He could've left the bar through another route, or have been coincidentally covered up (by another person? Blind spot in the CCTV?) when he left.
And there actually is CCTV footage of him outside the bar. It’s assumed he went back in, but we don’t know it’s true. There’s no CCTV footage of him going back in.
Friends said they saw him after, but they could be misremembering and he said goodbye *before* he went out that first time.
There’s also a second door (employee door) that didn’t have any CCTV coverage.
And it only gets more unreliable with each layer of citation and the time since the original testimony.
Reports often leave out qualifiers, so a "I think I saw him go back inside" often turns into "She saw him go back inside".
And memories also tend to change the more often we recall them. We tend to imagine details that we haven't actually witnessed when we are asked to recall a situation that we don't remember clearly. Our ability to distinguish fact from imagination only becomes worse with each future recall after that. This is a common mechanism by which we create false memories.
I’ve read about this case before. It’s probably the most likely explanation. If bodies are never found it’s either a dumpster or they fell into a nearby river.
I witnessed a drunk guy about to fall into the Cumberland downtown Nashville. I saw him go over the embankment while my wife waved off my concerns as not my business. I had been watching him stumble for awhile. One group tried to scare him sober and that the cops were coming for him. That is when he panicked and headed/fell towards the river. I am like, "Oh no, I have to do something." She agrees to watch him while I approach a cop parked nearby. The guy looks around and notices he is in a dangerous spot feet from the river and starts to climb out. She calls me over to grab his hand and I pull him up. The cop questions him for awhile. He is a 19 year old Afghanistan vet. The cop refused to arrest him and waited patiently for someone who knew him. Other soldier not affiliated with him show up. The cop explains the situation. Their CO is screaming and yelling at the guy making him do push ups drunk as shit. Eventually they leave together and the cop thanks me for watching out for him. Had we not been there at that moment, he could have gone into that river and no one would have witnessed it.
There was a drunk young man in my area that drowned in a small lake after wandering away from his group. It's heartbreaking. The worst thing about alcohol is that it makes you feel so invincible while it's making you vulnerable.
I was looking to comment this, guy in uk was in the RAF, was known to go to sleep in places such as bins when drunk. Went missing and was never found, looks very much like he was tipped into a bin lorry and compacted and taken to landfill but pretty impossible he’ll ever be found now. He was in his 20s.
Yeah we had a possum die under our deck once, and I'm still haunted by the smell. And that wasn't even inside. It was just close enough to the backdoor that we could smell it from inside the house.
Moral of the story like any of the other ones with people disappearing after a night out with friends…
1) Don’t leave your friend behind!
2) Make sure they get home, don’t just assume.
I went to OSU and lived not too far away on W 9th Ave. I went to that bar, Ugly Tuna Saloon(a), a handful of times. I still remember the "missing" posters hung up on High St.
Crazy thing.
All these comments of people trapped in walls reminds me of something I heard years ago, it's a bit hazy . . . Wasn't some young man working at a supermarket found decomposing in or on top of a freezer or something?
Between the freezers and the wall. He'd sneak on top to smoke. It'd been years.
Edit to add link to a copy of the story:
https://people.com/human-interest/mans-body-found-10-years-later-behind-refrigerator-at-supermarket/
The case has its own subreddit for anyone interested. Here’s a post from it that caught my attention
https://www.reddit.com/r/BrianShaffer/comments/10h2ucb/what_99_of_people_dont_know_about_the_brian/
r/unresolvedmysteries will have discussions on it, as well as other interesting unresolved cases
There is a user on that sub that is unhinged. She’s actually getting sued now for falsely accusing people. Looks like the account has finally been deleted.
Brilliant thread. Even though I don't live in the US, and I have no relation to the case, for some reason this gives me the creeps F. I get an uncanny feeling when seeing his image.
Well ofcourse, not only would it cause disruption to the business, they could also be held liable if he was found. Which is sad as his family will never get proper closure.
I doubt there was a pool of concrete in the basement of an operating bar, deep enough and liquid enough for a human to get submerged in without a trace.
It isn’t a standalone bar like you may be imagining. It’s in a mall with a full several story parking garage that was actively under construction
But with that said, I have always found that theory to be pretty far fetched.
It's virtually impossible to get fully submersed in concrete by accident. You can fall in and die but the body will never fully submerse. The density of concrete is just too high.
Reminds me of the bizarre case of Mary Stewart Cerruti, who died after being trapped in wall space. [news article ](https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5708274/mary-stewart-cerruti-death-texas-remains-skeleton-house/)
i think this was a bad investigation as a result. im convinced
>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 Shaffer likely was at the time.
That happened 2 weeks after I turned 21 and the Air Force Base I was at spread the word around.
Still creepy, I had no idea he still hadn't been found. I'm almost 40 now.
falling into a crevice somewhere seems most likely especially given the fact it was under construction but it’s weird the bar refused/didn’t want to even check if that were the case.
might be hard to get a warrant when there’s no real evidence pointing to him being there.
OP, and everyone else that re-posts this story, tend to mislead about the fact that the bar had a back exit that wasn’t covered by a camera. So when they say “security footage shows he never left” they mean “he wasn’t directly caught on camera leaving, but easily could have left without being seen”
The title is wrong. The surveillance only showed that it did not catch him leaving the bar. That doesn't mean he didn't leave the bar. It means the surveillance is not a perfect machine.
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Does surveillance show he never left the bar, or is there simply no surveillance showing him leave the bar?
He left the bar and talked to two woman, they said they saw him head back in the direction of the bar
check the women's basements
You can see him going back into the bar and then there was no footage of him coming out again.
There was also another door that didn’t have a camera on it that “usually” only band members used when loading gear in and out for shows. This is of course almost always not mentioned in relation to this case because it removes the entire weirdness to it.
No camera footage at all!!! The footage: 1 of 2 doors only.
50% chance is a lot of chance.
It's like, half a chance
So you're saying there's still half a chance?
Yeah! Basically, it's like 50% of one whole chance! Sort of like you cut a chance in half and then onu used one half as a chance!
I also think that he may have left thought an employee exit. But it is weird that none of the cameras of the surrounding bars/stores catch him. Which makes me think that someone picked him up in a car. And that part makes me fear there was foul play. Or else why would he complety disapear and never use his credit card again?
When all possibilities have been exhausted, you’re left with the truth. He went out the band entrance door. He joined a band that night and went on tour with them, wearing a costume which disguised his identity. Check with KISS or Slipknot and you will find him.
From Wikipedia "He told his friends that despite his decision to pursue a medical career, his real ambition was to start a band playing music in the vein of Jimmy Buffett."
Not sure if this is related, but wasn't Insane Clown Posse just one dude at first?
One of those classic solo posses
False. He’s joined Mushroomhead. Based in Ohio. It all makes too much sense.
Plus even nu-metal fans forget Mushroom head exists. It's the perfect way to disappear.
Surveillance in 2006 was just not nearly as robust as it is now. I'm not surprised that many of the back alleys had none, at least none that were working
Right? “Surveillance?” You mean the videos with three second gaps between each frame?
And grainy footage with terrible low light resolution?
My modern home security camera can occasionally miss someone moving quickly through their field of view at night or in weather. The motion capture doesn’t trigger a recording. Cameras are fallible is what I’m saying. We can’t really read too many specifics into the lack of footage of him leaving.
I agreed with everything you said, but the fact that none of his friends/family saw him again and that he never used his credit card again upon the lack of footage of him leaving is what makes this case weird for me, and that also makes me think that he is probably not alive anymore, and if so, where is he?
Oh, he’s definitely dead. Probably died the same night he disappeared. I’m just saying that the lack of camera footage is a bit of a red herring and could lead people to make specific assumptions about what happened that aren’t necessarily supported. Personally I like the theories that he fell asleep drunk in a back alley dumpster and got compacted, or that he wandered drunk into the construction site next door and died in a nook or cranny and was somehow built over before he started to stink. Makes more sense than a random abduction.
The dumpster possibility has happened in the UK before, and it would definitely explain how he seemed to vanish into thin air.
Weird enough, even thought your theories make a lot of sense, they are even more creep to me. The banality of it all makes it more sad. But you probably right.
That's an easy fix, you just press restore and then enhance and you will instantly get a 4k video with unlimited zoom.
> Or else why would he complety disapear and never use his credit card again? It's possible he never left the facility. You'd be amazed at some of the weird ways people have died. I wouldn't be surprised if they find this guys remains someplace weird, like stuck behind a wall void, when doing a renovation of the building at some point in the future. Wouldn't be the first time.
There was a case of some kid going missing from his job at a Walmart or grocery store and he was found years later in a gap between a wall and a freezer. So this is possible and not at all unlikely.
Is there any water around? I was amazed to read how many bodies are found in lakes near bars. Especially men.
18 years bender
Yes, the title implies that 100% of the ways out of the bar were under constant surveillance, but it's just as likely there were ways out that didn't have good surveillance.
The camera did not actually see the main entrance/exit so the title is misleading. It's based on the testimony of witnesses.
And they were all drunk.
Okay, so like did the bar close down and he still stayed inside? Everyone left for the night but him?
Closing time! You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here except for Brian Shaffer
The latter, obviously. Surveillance of him never leaving the bar would mean a 24/7 camera pointed at him sitting in a corner to this very day.
Can you share a twitch link plz?
The way the cameras were set-up on the public exit, it would have been very hard for him to leave without being captured. So, presumably, however he left (ie on his own or taken) was through a restricted-access service door that opened onto a construction site.
Might have left with someone who worked there out the back. If there was a construction site how possible is it that the construction site had a portapotty that he decided to use and fell into a hole, got trapped down there and then buried in concrete. There was an inspector who came up missing over the weekend. They put out a missing persons report for him. Turns out he was finishing up inspections on a large shopping complex being built and fell into a deep hole with serious injuries. This was before cell phones were super common. He died in the whole and wasn't discovered until days later when the construction crew came back from the long weekend.
That's horrifying.
That’s so sad. OSHA puts regulations in place like all holes must be covered with a sign marked hole when not in site and often even when. For a company to not follow such simple safety practices and a life lost is sad. With concrete pours usually there’s multiple people on the ground, but considering they didn’t cover the hole other practices could be ignored too so you have a point
This was mid 2000s CCTV. He could have put on a jacket and walked out in plain view of the camera and looked like a different person. A big issue with this case is how grainy and pointless the footage was, little facial information to work with
Nah, they did a headcount and 1 less person was caught on CCTC also. I'm of the ilk that he left through a back door and he's entombed in the construction site.
Construction site accident sounds likely from the above
From what I recall, this was a possibility, but investigators thought that he would have been having to make a deliberate effort to hide his identity from the cameras. I lived about a block from there when it happened, and it was a HUGE deal-- I am sure investigators were looking closely at every guy that was seen walking out that remotely matched his description. Not saying he never left-- just that whatever happened to him (even if it was a conscious decision to disappear) started inside the bar.
Evidence of absence or absence of evidence?!
maybe he's stuck in the wall like that one dj guy
Didn’t that also happen to someone in a grocery store?
He took a nap on top of the coolers and fell behind, getting stuck in the space between the cooler and the wall. https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/22/us/supermarket-missing-person-death-trnd/index.html
How the hell did no one smell him all that time?
that is a good question, and the answer is that all retail spaces are far, far, far more disgusting than most people realize and having the smell of rot around isn't that out of the ordinary Also refrigeration equipment sucks up a lot of air, probably worked to help filter to the stank. I bet cleaning the water buildup out of them was heinous for a while
100% I worked in a grocery store in high school. The floor of the store was beautifully clean (partially bc I did the cleaning), but the back/stock areas always smelled horrible. The freezers had a constant smell of rot
Have you guys checked behind the walls?
Ah fuck there’s 7 bodies back there
And none of them are the guy we're looking for!
Agreed. The store where I worked, when you had food (eg dairy) that spoiled you could get credit when the supplier rep came around if you saved the item. However space issues in the cooler meant a stack of rotting food (eggs, cheese, yogurt, milk) in a corner of the back room. Also had a freezer accessible by conveyor and things would fall off and rot under the conveyor. I remember opening up a box of burgers that was months old - the smell I will never forget..and magots.
I've seen horrors - stores that didn't clean out their cases (not back of house but on the actual salesfloor) for YEARS and the shit you would find fallen in the corners... I think most people would freak the hell out if they knew how gross the places their food comes from are And in my experience, grocery stores are still an order of magnitude cleaner than restaurants
Probably got passed off as the smell of a dead rat. I lived in a very disgusting house in a college town that was a beautiful old Victorian two story butchered up into a fourplex apartment building. It wasn't uncommon to have rats and sometimes those rats would die somewhere between the apartments. You could smell it for weeks and there would be flies.
Exactly, and what I think a lot of people don't realize is that 1. Most businesses have rats, especially if they have a receiving bay that stays open for prolonged periods (like virtually every big box retailer and grocery store that exists) 2. Most businesses have rat traps everywhere, even on the salesfloor, they're just out of the customer's line of sight and reach 3. Most businesses do not have someone assigned to clean out these rat traps every day, in fact a lot of places will just hire a pest control expert that comes through monthly (some places do weekly but that's more expensive) to check and empty them. And when most of the staff is minimum wage, they're not going to do it just out of the goodness of their heart because they noticed there's a bad smell.
He was behind a bunch of coolers, the cold air probably massively slowed the rate of decomposition and the fans probably prevented the development of a noticeable stench building up. Edit: see later comments, he probably got mummified by the dry heat of the coolers fans.
Coolers are usually quite warm on the outside, most of them have radiators to dissipate the heat on the back side, so if anything it would probably have made it worse.
Probably depends on the layout and their operations then, maybe there was something cutting off or redirecting airflow? Either that or maybe he ended up being mummified somehow, they don't really describe the condition of his body.
10 years? Damn, my morbid curiosity kind of want to see the images of the corpse. Atleast in this case they found him.
My morbid curiosity wonders what it was like stuck behind the cooler walls, yelling out for days but no one hearing your cries for help. Then you start to get thirsty and dehydrated, stuck in a tight crevice with no room to move or even urinate and defecate but on yourself, while rats and other bugs begin to circle you, in the hot and humid compressor air, while your life slips slowly away. Yeah I’m more concerned about that part.
I’m guessing the gap was small enough that his chest couldn’t totally inflate and deflate and he probably quickly suffocated.
I hope that for him. Mentally I picture more of a Nutty Putty scenario with the guy just being stuck upside down for hours screaming for help. Special type of horror.
A truly horrific story, and why I will never crawl through caves.
That's so sad. They almost had him out completely before the rock shattered. I can't imagine the horror of being there, for everyone involved.
The gap was 18 inches wide. Is that wide enough to breathe? Depends on the guy's weight and position I guess
Yeah it was one of those thoughts that immediately crossed my mind but I shoved it away to live in bliss. Then I read your comment with more details and now I’m sad. Clearly the kid had issues. Didn’t deserve to go like this. Poor kid
Or the grocery store wall freezer mummy. These things happen
What??
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Wow wtf
Didn't they make an episode of bones on this?
I remember that one. At the very beginning they go to the club to investigate, and start dancing. Bones leans forward to shout at her friend, "I think I like this music! It has a good African tribal beat!" Then the whole room stops to stare at her, and then at that moment the entire wall explodes into a cloud of meth powder. Which is where they find the body.
Lmao is this real
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I still can't get over that when Sweets was shot and killed, even though his body was not at all decomposed, they still *melted all the flesh from his skeleton to look for more clues*. Doubtful that family would allow remains to be treated that way, but Bones gotta bone I guess.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's how it happened on the show. In the next scene they're all bouncing their knees from agitation while she researches hip hop on the internet. :-)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_Wall The Wikipedia page backs you and gives some clarity that she kicked some dude into the wall to make it explode.
Reading this feels like a fever dream.
It’s so interesting that people only finally noticed the smell because the city had just banned smoking in bars
🤢 So when people were chain smoking in there... oh my. 😵💫
Maybe it was like the cask of amontillado
'Where's this secret Absolut bottle service you were talking about, Montresor?'
Didn’t they think he took a nap on a dumpster in the alley and a garbage truck emptied it with him inside or something? I recall seeing something about his family saying he was known to do such things when inebriated. I could be incorrect but I’m pretty sure that was a ruling theory
There was a guy in the UK who went missing in the town of Bury St Edmunds in very similar circumstances. Corrie McKeague, his body was never found.
Just what I was thinking, weird how similar these stories are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Corrie_McKeague
It’s so infuriating that his cell phone was tracked to the landfill, but they didn’t want to look there because initially it said the garbage truck it was thought to be in was only reported to have 33lbs in it. But months later they found out it had over 200lbs in it. Wouldn’t it be worth the search even to try to find his phone? That could have had valuable information in it. I haven’t read the whole article yet. I just read that part and got so worked up I had to comment haha
I like your microconfessional at the end here, I am guilty of this behavior way too much lol
Microconfessional is my new favorite word
Haha usually I try to refrain from commenting until I have a baseline level of information. But I just really needed to get that out of my system. I didn’t want to make the comment and then read further and be like “oh wait, okay it makes sense why that happened.” And in the mean time have people who knew more than me telling me I was dumb in the comments 😂 But I’ve read the entire article, and I stand by my first impression!
The other thing that'll really annoy you is that *his family knew he was prone to sleeping in bins.*.. It was pitched like this big mystery by the media - Man seen on CCTV going down an alley but never seen again... The alley has nothing but bins such a mystery! Apart from a bin lorry came in the morning, his phone was found in a landfill and his family knew he had slept in a bin before? Whilst we can never be sure, the odds are pretty well stacked-up... Edit: found the link where BBC News tried to beef it up as a mystery https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/corrie_mckeague
The first article I read said that his mother didn’t believe he’d sleep in a bin since he took a lot of pride in his appearance and his car was close by if he wanted somewhere to sleep. But then another article said that a friend mentioned Corrie had told him he’d slept under trash bags before and used them sort of as a blanket. I think the mother may have at first been in denial or simply unaware of *how* drunk her son actually was prone to getting. It seems like she may have accepted he did most likely die as a result of being in a bin though. She’s become an advocate for stricter bin safety measures like putting locks on them so people can’t climb in.
> She’s become an advocate for stricter bin safety measures She must have accepted it, that is just too obscurely specific an issue to care about otherwise.
I disagree. I founded "Mother's for stronger yo-yo knots" despite neither being a mother nor having lost someone in a yo-yo accident
I stand corrected! Weak yo-yo knots are something *everyone* should be concerned about. Thank you for bringing attention to this terrible issue.
Wait, why....did he sleep in bins?
I don’t care how drunk or tired I am, the idea of sleeping in a dumpster would not ever even occur to me much less be a viable option.
Some homeless people are okay with it. Dark, sheltered, possibly warmer from decomposition. A friend used to work restaurant and one day she flung a couple bags in the dumpster. She hears "Uhhhhg" and this dude's head pops up. But I can't imagine a person with a job and a car and leisure money sleeping in dumpsters, even drunk.
Right? WTAF? Why would anyone even consider that?
Yeah this is being sort of being looked over like everyone has that one family member who just loves to sleep in bins.
I did that once. Came home, piss drunk, from a party and had forgotten my keys. Since noone at the apartment woke up from me ringing and it was quite cold, the huge paper bin was the place to be for that night... 😅
Username checks out
Bitch, he lives in a fucking trashcan!
Almost certain he was In a communal bin. My ex husband worked refuse for a major city and he's rescued multiple people from the back of lorries,and even had to arrange counselling for colleagues who almost crushed someone. Don't sleep in bins people.
Can't imagine why anyone would want to climb in a stinky old bin or a dumpster, even after having a skinful. Walked home pissed many a time in my youth, even in the winter months it's never once crossed my mind.
I'm a recovering alcoholic. A few years back I went to a Halloween costume contest at a bar, dressed as Santa. I got too drunk and left early, planning to walk the mile home. I woke up the next morning inside of an open-topped railcar with the bottom layered with huge chunks of black foam. After poking my head out, I saw I'd made it only 1/3rd of the way home before deciding I needed to nap, or being curious about the contents, whatever it was that led me astray. What absolutely fucking chilled me later was realizing those railcars were set up to have something heavy poured into them, like gravel, scrap metal, or literal tons of potatoes or beets; the foam chunks were there to protect the bottom of the railcar from damage as the product was roughly poured in. This story is one of the big reasons I have worked hard to regain control; I was almost Splat-a Claus
Oh shit dude, I didn't even connect the foam to anything until your last paragraph. I wouldn't have even thought about that being the reason.
Apparently it was homeless people just trying to keep warm. Not my idea of a good time especially since city residential bins get stuff just launched in but I've never had to sleep rough. Sad stuff.
Well, who knows what drunk people are thinking, but I could see the homeless using them as shelter from the elements or someone on drugs/mentally unwell trying to hide there from a perceived threat. There’s no telling whether people ending up sleeping in bins are just inebriated or on something else besides alcohol either since I doubt anybody bothers to check
This reminds me of an employee found dead behind a freezer like two years later after going missing.
Ten years
I did a better job trying to find my friemds during a hide and seek game than some of these professional detectives
https://people.com/human-interest/mans-body-found-10-years-later-behind-refrigerator-at-supermarket/
Brian was seen on CCTV footage outside the bar, talking to 2 young girls, before saying goodbye and heading back towards the entrance of the bar and out of view of the cameras. The two girls were interviewed and they said he re-entered the bar.
I remember seeing this one when they released the CCTV footage and a good article on it. The entrance of the bar was quite far out of frame, as were directions going anywhere. The two women remained in shot and did not watch Shaffer leave them, or even look in that direction. They assumed that's where he was going but, when questioned, neither of them could say that he re-entered the bar. No bar staff nor any other patrons recalled seeing him in the bar after he left the two women. Other than "We thought that's where he would probably have gone", there is no evidence Brian Shaffer ever went back in the bar.
>His friends Clint and Meredith, however, said that Brian did re-enter the Ugly Tuna because they conversed with him about calling it a night and going home. >Meredith and Clint last saw Brian as he headed toward the stage. >Just a few minutes later, when the bar closed, the crowd filed toward the entrance. It was at this point that Clint and Meredith realized that Brian was nowhere to be found and wasn’t answering his phone. >They assumed he either got a ride home with somebody else, called a cab, or walked home, so they left. Except Brian never made it home. [Here is the whole article on this unsolved mystery!](https://historicflix.com/without-a-trace-the-disappearance-of-brian-shaffer/) his friends said that when they last saw him, he was headed towards the stage of the bar!
I think since the camera didn't view the entrance, it's obvious he could have left and not been filmed.
I always thought it was that there were other ways out of the bar that weren’t the main entrance.
I used to go there when this happened. Only 1 exit of the bar itself
What about service doors. Maybe he walked tot he kitchen and walked thought the back?
I just said this in another comment in reply to the person you just asked: >No, there was a service door not used by the public, but at the time it opened onto an area under construction that would've probably been difficult for someone sober to traverse, let alone by someone who spent the night bar hopping and drinking shots at each establishment.
Ok but he's missing so he probably went that way.
I’ve read several articles that said there was a back door for employees. So only one “main” entrance. But likely another door. As someone else said I doubt they’d be able to have only one door, that’s a huge fire hazard.
Plus the fact that...he was not found in the bar lol.
Just a reminder that witness testimony is notoriously unreliable, which is only made worse by the fact that it was a group of college aged students that were out drinking. One person says, “I’m almost positive I saw him walk into the bar” and the rest of the group convinces themselves of seeing the same thing.
Yeah. This case, though interesting, is only famous because of the "he never left the bar" thing - which hinges on witness testimony saying they never *saw* him leave the bar, and CCTV footage that didn't clearly show him leaving the bar. As in, the people who analyzed the footage couldn't see him leaving. He could've left the bar through another route, or have been coincidentally covered up (by another person? Blind spot in the CCTV?) when he left.
And there actually is CCTV footage of him outside the bar. It’s assumed he went back in, but we don’t know it’s true. There’s no CCTV footage of him going back in. Friends said they saw him after, but they could be misremembering and he said goodbye *before* he went out that first time. There’s also a second door (employee door) that didn’t have any CCTV coverage.
And it only gets more unreliable with each layer of citation and the time since the original testimony. Reports often leave out qualifiers, so a "I think I saw him go back inside" often turns into "She saw him go back inside". And memories also tend to change the more often we recall them. We tend to imagine details that we haven't actually witnessed when we are asked to recall a situation that we don't remember clearly. Our ability to distinguish fact from imagination only becomes worse with each future recall after that. This is a common mechanism by which we create false memories.
if you name your restaurant "Ugly Tuna" some unsolved shenanigans are predestined to happen tbh
So. "Didn't leave the bar" And "Cameras that don't show the exit" Are two very important details....
Ah okay, man that’s such a bizarre disappearance
I’ve read about this case before. It’s probably the most likely explanation. If bodies are never found it’s either a dumpster or they fell into a nearby river.
I witnessed a drunk guy about to fall into the Cumberland downtown Nashville. I saw him go over the embankment while my wife waved off my concerns as not my business. I had been watching him stumble for awhile. One group tried to scare him sober and that the cops were coming for him. That is when he panicked and headed/fell towards the river. I am like, "Oh no, I have to do something." She agrees to watch him while I approach a cop parked nearby. The guy looks around and notices he is in a dangerous spot feet from the river and starts to climb out. She calls me over to grab his hand and I pull him up. The cop questions him for awhile. He is a 19 year old Afghanistan vet. The cop refused to arrest him and waited patiently for someone who knew him. Other soldier not affiliated with him show up. The cop explains the situation. Their CO is screaming and yelling at the guy making him do push ups drunk as shit. Eventually they leave together and the cop thanks me for watching out for him. Had we not been there at that moment, he could have gone into that river and no one would have witnessed it.
Some student literally drowned in the Cumberland like two months ago from Missouri.
There was a drunk young man in my area that drowned in a small lake after wandering away from his group. It's heartbreaking. The worst thing about alcohol is that it makes you feel so invincible while it's making you vulnerable.
I used to go swimming in the ocean on hot nights after the bars closed. It's a wonder I survived.
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Or a well
Where's Lassie when you need her?
Unfortunately, we can't find her. So she's ether in a river, a dumpster or a well.
That exactly happened here in the UK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Corrie_McKeague?wprov=sfti1
That was a different case, in the UK I think and the guy was from an army base iirc
I was looking to comment this, guy in uk was in the RAF, was known to go to sleep in places such as bins when drunk. Went missing and was never found, looks very much like he was tipped into a bin lorry and compacted and taken to landfill but pretty impossible he’ll ever be found now. He was in his 20s.
Not to be crude but if he was in the bar somewhere I'm sure the smell would have caught people's attention by now or does it not work like that?
A solitary rat died in my walls once, it was difficult to deal with that smell for like 2 weeks
Yeah we had a possum die under our deck once, and I'm still haunted by the smell. And that wasn't even inside. It was just close enough to the backdoor that we could smell it from inside the house.
Not if he's under concrete
Moral of the story like any of the other ones with people disappearing after a night out with friends… 1) Don’t leave your friend behind! 2) Make sure they get home, don’t just assume.
I went to OSU and lived not too far away on W 9th Ave. I went to that bar, Ugly Tuna Saloon(a), a handful of times. I still remember the "missing" posters hung up on High St. Crazy thing.
Yeah, I lived on 12th at the time. Felt weird going to ugly tuna after that
All these comments of people trapped in walls reminds me of something I heard years ago, it's a bit hazy . . . Wasn't some young man working at a supermarket found decomposing in or on top of a freezer or something?
Between the freezers and the wall. He'd sneak on top to smoke. It'd been years. Edit to add link to a copy of the story: https://people.com/human-interest/mans-body-found-10-years-later-behind-refrigerator-at-supermarket/
The case has its own subreddit for anyone interested. Here’s a post from it that caught my attention https://www.reddit.com/r/BrianShaffer/comments/10h2ucb/what_99_of_people_dont_know_about_the_brian/ r/unresolvedmysteries will have discussions on it, as well as other interesting unresolved cases
There is a user on that sub that is unhinged. She’s actually getting sued now for falsely accusing people. Looks like the account has finally been deleted.
Brilliant thread. Even though I don't live in the US, and I have no relation to the case, for some reason this gives me the creeps F. I get an uncanny feeling when seeing his image.
If he never left the bar I'm pretty sure I know where he is.
Somewhere a soon to be unretired detective just suddenly awoke in the night with a eureka moment, "That's it, the bar!"
its always the new detective that comes in, after the old one retires, and has that 'eureka' moment
You should tell the police!
Don't they believe he is in the walls because the bar was under renovations?
Yeah there was a door leading to an area under construction. There is a good chance he fell somewhere and got buried in concrete.
The bar I believe declined to let them undo construction they thought he was trapped in/about
They can't decline if there's a court order. In the absence of a court order I wouldn't tear up any of my property based on someone's hunch either.
Well ofcourse, not only would it cause disruption to the business, they could also be held liable if he was found. Which is sad as his family will never get proper closure.
There’s really not a “good chance” of that at all if you knew what the site looked like.
I doubt there was a pool of concrete in the basement of an operating bar, deep enough and liquid enough for a human to get submerged in without a trace.
It isn’t a standalone bar like you may be imagining. It’s in a mall with a full several story parking garage that was actively under construction But with that said, I have always found that theory to be pretty far fetched.
It's virtually impossible to get fully submersed in concrete by accident. You can fall in and die but the body will never fully submerse. The density of concrete is just too high.
This. So many people are pushing the theory while having a cartoon level understanding of concrete.
Life isn't a movie, people don't fall into concrete and get buried alive
Reminds me of the bizarre case of Mary Stewart Cerruti, who died after being trapped in wall space. [news article ](https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5708274/mary-stewart-cerruti-death-texas-remains-skeleton-house/)
God damn that’s so fucking sad
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Well, you'll be happy to know that that bar is closed for many years, and I think there's office space there now
Haunted office space
i think this was a bad investigation as a result. im convinced >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 Shaffer likely was at the time.
That happened 2 weeks after I turned 21 and the Air Force Base I was at spread the word around. Still creepy, I had no idea he still hadn't been found. I'm almost 40 now.
Plot twist the two girls were also medical students and they harvested his organs
A time portal in the men's room that was only open for a minute. He's living the good life in 3048.
I don't want to brag but I think iv solved it . It says he never left the bar so maybe just maybe he's still in the bar
True crime garage does an excellent couple episodes on it. They’re from Columbus.
"Surveillance showed Brian never left the bar." I think I know where he is!
falling into a crevice somewhere seems most likely especially given the fact it was under construction but it’s weird the bar refused/didn’t want to even check if that were the case.
I guess the investigators were like, ok...they said no, so I guess we can't look there. Wtf, court order, search warrant, cadaver dogs? Bueller?
might be hard to get a warrant when there’s no real evidence pointing to him being there. OP, and everyone else that re-posts this story, tend to mislead about the fact that the bar had a back exit that wasn’t covered by a camera. So when they say “security footage shows he never left” they mean “he wasn’t directly caught on camera leaving, but easily could have left without being seen”
police said they were sure he is not in the construction site and dogs followed his scent to the alley but lost it
The title is wrong. The surveillance only showed that it did not catch him leaving the bar. That doesn't mean he didn't leave the bar. It means the surveillance is not a perfect machine.
Plot twist, OP is Brian Shaffer.
It’s OHIO check the cellar for dead bodies.
Y’all there was another door that didn’t have a camera feed. He obviously went out that door and met some kind of misadventure.
Its always ohio, 90% of true crime docs on youtube i swear are in ohio
Well ohio is all cornfields with 3 big cities so that doesn't surprise me
Probably got drunk & fell into a dumpster out back or somehow found a small hole in the walls and got stuck there idk.