INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) - June 3 marks six years since Indiana University student Lauren Spierer disappeared in Bloomington.
Lauren's family posted this on Facebook Saturday morning:
Official Lauren Spierer Updates from Her Family
5 hrs ·
On June 3, 2011 you made decisions which sealed Lauren’s fate and inextricably joined our destinies. You chose the wrong girl from the wrongfamily. A mother, a father a sister. Only a skeptic would think we would ever stop searching for our daughter, stop seeking the truth and justice. Anyone who knows us knows we haven’t stopped, will never stop. I hope the nightmare we wake from every morning is one that haunts your dreams as well. Six years of silence is long enough.
Lauren, you are always loved, forever in our hearts, never forgotten.
Charlene Spierer
If you have any information please contact us here through private message or through any of the following:
Bloomington Police Department -812.339.4477
helpfindlauren@gmail.com
Find Lauren – PO Box 1226 – Bloomington, IN 47402
Beau Dietl & Associates – 800.777.9366
This a case that gripped the campus community and made national headlines in 2011 and it's a crime that police and Lauren's parents are still working to solve.
Even if you're not a parent, you can empathize with the pain this family has gone through.
Theirs is a life without closure.
Lauren is still missing. Foul play is still suspected. The Spierers still don't know what happened to their daughter.
The face that looks back from a missing persons poster from 2011 is what Robert and Charlene Spierer see in their minds every single day. It’s their daughter frozen in time as a sophomore at IU.
"We never expected to be here - certainly not six years past Lauren's disappearance,” said Robert Spierer by phone Friday from his home state of New York.
It was six years ago on a Friday night, when 20-year-old Lauren Spierer left her Smallwood apartment, went out to party with friends in Bloomington and never came home.
Lauren spent time at friends’ townhomes and apartments that night. Investigators say at one point, at Kilroy's Sports Bar, she became so intoxicated that she left her phone and shoes behind.
In the early morning hours of June 3, Lauren was last seen walking in an alley alone.
- RELATED: Updates from Lauren's family
Six years later, she's still missing. That’s despite massive community searches, thousands of tips and national media coverage.
But Lauren's parents remain vigilant. They say this case has not gone cold.
"We are contacted by people either through Facebook or the web page - findlauren.com - and they're, you know, they're providing leads for us, which we do follow up on,” Spierer said. “We appreciate anyone who’s able to give us information, however small they think it is, however remote the possibility. We’re interested in getting that and following up on it because you just never know where the answer's going to come from."
The Spierers talk with Bloomington detectives once a month. They're still working with a private investigator, as well, hoping that one key lead will pay off.
"There are a few things that we're working on, but I can't say that they're any more valid or will give us the result that we want than some of the other things that we've gotten. So I'm not in a position to say that we are getting closer. I wish I could. Believe me,” Spierer said. “It would just make things just…so much better for our family and friends.”
Closure for this family remains elusive. Robert Spierer says closure is something he’s both dreamed of and feared now for six long years.
"I'm sure it will be a moment of complex and mixed emotions. I just - a sense of relief combined with a sense of agony. I'm not really sure, because we're just not there yet,” Spierer said.
Robert Spierer specifically thanked the people of Indiana for all their help.
But the Spierers still need more.
You can share information on the family's Facebook page, on their web page or with Bloomington Police.
