Kentuckiana
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- Joined
- May 15, 2015
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Let me start with the disclaimer that I haven't read everything that everyone has posted to this thread yet and that my thoughts on this are strictly opinions and theories based on information I have read about the case over the years. I've been fascinated with the Tammen disappearance since I first heard about it in 2001. I lived in Butler County, OH for almost 20 years and am very familiar with a number of the locations associated with the case.
I have always believed that he wanted to be blood typed because he feared that something might happen to him and he wanted a record of his blood type on file somewhere for investigators to refer to. He could have gotten typed on campus, but he didn't. He went all the way to Hamilton to a doctor to get blood typed. He didn't go to just any doctor, either. He went to the doctor who was the county coroner to get his blood typed. If this blood typing was, as he told the doctor, in case he had to donate blood to someone, he could have been typed right there at the health services on campus instead of driving all the way to Hamilton.
There were some things going on in Ohio in that era, of which many people not connected to the area aren't aware. Organized crime was really making significant inroads into Ohio and Northern Kentucky during those years. I checked on Tammen's home town and they were having major problems with the mob. Newport, Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati, was a hotbed of mob activity. Robert, being a musician, could well have gotten connected to them either through playing gigs in clubs, or knowing other musicians who did have those connections, in his home town. Robert was a member of the musicians' union.
What I found curious is that Miami U is not an inexpensive university and never has been. Although one article I found referred to the family as "wealthy" and "patriotic," I can find no further information to justify that assessment. Maple Heights was a solidly middle class town. When I did genealogical work on the family looking for clues back in early 2000s, I found the family was comfortable, but hardly wealthy. I can't recall the specific details now, but Tammen's father had a blue collar job identified in those records, yet he had two sons attending Miami U at the same time. Not only that, but Miami U was one of the most distant in-state universities that these boys could have gone to from their home town. Something else that has always given me pause is that his frat brothers were the ones who reported him missing, not his own brother, who also lived on campus.
Tammen was only a sophomore, but had been selected to be a Resident Advisor/Assistant (RA). This came with a perk: he was able to have his car on campus. The article this information came from seems to now be gone from the net. It was a newspaper article from one of the local papers. I believe I found it in the Hamilton paper. Anyway, the article implied that being made an RA when you are just a sophomore was a bit unusual and that being allowed to have a car on campus was a big perk to being appointed to such a position. When I went to look for that article today, I found another article that attributed being allowed to have a car on campus to him being in the Campus Owls group.
Personally, I have big doubts about Mrs. Spivey's story about him showing up on her door step. Apparently at least one of the current investigators also has dismissed the story as not being credible. She did not come forward with that story until the summer after he disappeared. She said that she had overheard discussion about the missing student while she was in town and that she had not heard that a student had been missing prior to that. After hearing about the missing student, she recalled that it was on that exact same date that a young man with "vacuous eyes" showed up on her door step, at midnight, asking about a bus. She recalled what he was wearing, and that she was surprised to not hear a car start when he left, but doesn't mention not hearing a car pull up to begin with. Her daughter, in a later interview after her mother had passed away, supported her story saying she could "remember that night well" but doesn't explain why she didn't mention the missing student to her mother when the news first broke, and discuss the possibility that the person who showed up at the house recently might have been Ron. That was a huge local story. There were over 400 people, and that was just the ROTC students alone, out hunting for him. I find it hard to swallow that she never heard a peep about the story until summer rolled around. On a side note, I've always been enchanted by Seven Mile, OH. Blink and you might miss the whole village driving through. It makes Mayberry look like a big city. It's a little neighborhood in the middle of a lot of cornfields, basically. I often had to drive through it going to hospice cases. I loved driving through there in the autumn. It's very picturesque at dusk in the fall.
I have always believed that he wanted to be blood typed because he feared that something might happen to him and he wanted a record of his blood type on file somewhere for investigators to refer to. He could have gotten typed on campus, but he didn't. He went all the way to Hamilton to a doctor to get blood typed. He didn't go to just any doctor, either. He went to the doctor who was the county coroner to get his blood typed. If this blood typing was, as he told the doctor, in case he had to donate blood to someone, he could have been typed right there at the health services on campus instead of driving all the way to Hamilton.
There were some things going on in Ohio in that era, of which many people not connected to the area aren't aware. Organized crime was really making significant inroads into Ohio and Northern Kentucky during those years. I checked on Tammen's home town and they were having major problems with the mob. Newport, Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati, was a hotbed of mob activity. Robert, being a musician, could well have gotten connected to them either through playing gigs in clubs, or knowing other musicians who did have those connections, in his home town. Robert was a member of the musicians' union.
What I found curious is that Miami U is not an inexpensive university and never has been. Although one article I found referred to the family as "wealthy" and "patriotic," I can find no further information to justify that assessment. Maple Heights was a solidly middle class town. When I did genealogical work on the family looking for clues back in early 2000s, I found the family was comfortable, but hardly wealthy. I can't recall the specific details now, but Tammen's father had a blue collar job identified in those records, yet he had two sons attending Miami U at the same time. Not only that, but Miami U was one of the most distant in-state universities that these boys could have gone to from their home town. Something else that has always given me pause is that his frat brothers were the ones who reported him missing, not his own brother, who also lived on campus.
Tammen was only a sophomore, but had been selected to be a Resident Advisor/Assistant (RA). This came with a perk: he was able to have his car on campus. The article this information came from seems to now be gone from the net. It was a newspaper article from one of the local papers. I believe I found it in the Hamilton paper. Anyway, the article implied that being made an RA when you are just a sophomore was a bit unusual and that being allowed to have a car on campus was a big perk to being appointed to such a position. When I went to look for that article today, I found another article that attributed being allowed to have a car on campus to him being in the Campus Owls group.
Personally, I have big doubts about Mrs. Spivey's story about him showing up on her door step. Apparently at least one of the current investigators also has dismissed the story as not being credible. She did not come forward with that story until the summer after he disappeared. She said that she had overheard discussion about the missing student while she was in town and that she had not heard that a student had been missing prior to that. After hearing about the missing student, she recalled that it was on that exact same date that a young man with "vacuous eyes" showed up on her door step, at midnight, asking about a bus. She recalled what he was wearing, and that she was surprised to not hear a car start when he left, but doesn't mention not hearing a car pull up to begin with. Her daughter, in a later interview after her mother had passed away, supported her story saying she could "remember that night well" but doesn't explain why she didn't mention the missing student to her mother when the news first broke, and discuss the possibility that the person who showed up at the house recently might have been Ron. That was a huge local story. There were over 400 people, and that was just the ROTC students alone, out hunting for him. I find it hard to swallow that she never heard a peep about the story until summer rolled around. On a side note, I've always been enchanted by Seven Mile, OH. Blink and you might miss the whole village driving through. It makes Mayberry look like a big city. It's a little neighborhood in the middle of a lot of cornfields, basically. I often had to drive through it going to hospice cases. I loved driving through there in the autumn. It's very picturesque at dusk in the fall.