IN - Lauren Spierer, 20, Bloomington, 03 June 2011 #34

[Ros]

Just learned that another woman, Jennifer Rogers, disappeared. She was last seen at the Shalom Center in Bloomington, Jan 15, 2015. There has been little if any publicity in this case.

 

[Ixchel13]

I'm still finding it interesting that DM hasn't been cleared yet. He had no real known connection to the case (AFAIK) so if he could be cleared I'd think they certainly would clear him publicly. Of course that assumes the media is following up and asking the question.

If he can't be cleared, then he presents an obstacle to any circumstantial evidence case against any of the known PsOI in the future. And has to become and remain a POI himself.

i would think they would wait as long as they can to publicly clear him...for obvious reasons.

 

[akh]

i would think they would wait as long as they can to publicly clear him...for obvious reasons.

I would think they'd want to publicly clear him, if possible, ASAP so as to not muddy the waters with the case and get it out there that he wasn't involved.

 

[AbbeyR]

I don't think LE needs to publicly clear anyone who has not been identified as a Person of Interest in this case... Apparently DM was cleared with respect to Marina Boelter and LE told the family (according to the facebook page, as cited in one of the posts above) but LE didn't make any kind of announcement in that case either.

 

[Ixchel13]

guy's a putzy, cold-blooded murderer, they don't owe him
anything...let the public think he may have done it, even if they know he didn't. Let the POIs think they think he may be guilty of Lauren, iykwim.

 

[akh]

I don't think LE needs to publicly clear anyone who has not been identified as a Person of Interest in this case... Apparently DM was cleared with respect to Marina Boelter and LE told the family (according to the facebook page, as cited in one of the posts above) but LE didn't make any kind of announcement in that case either.

This is a high profile case and the media has already made the connection and questioned whether he could be involved. If LE has been able to clear him then I think they would certainly do so, if asked (if not on their own), to keep this from muddying the waters of the case. If they can't or don't clear him then he presents a problem moving forward either has a potential suspect himself, or at the least a red herring in any future trial of other PsOI with a defense attorney presenting a reasonable doubt angle.

 

[Ixchel13]

not clearing someone right away also effects the POIs in this case, also others who may come forward, and all around, people start talking. LE is under no obligation to hurry up and clear someone like DM for other crimes, unless of course like in the Boelter case, it serves their purpose somehow.
Let's say DM is innocent of Lauren's disappearance.
What good is it to rush into saying that? Just the fact that someone like him was out there every Thursday night is
enough to raise reasonable doubt that it could have been
someone like him who abducted Lauren.
LE doesn't owe this guy a break. IMO, if they could tie him to Lauren's demise then they would rush to announce
it like they did with BSL. If they have a hunch or proof he
is not guilty of Lauren, it could still help her case to keep
everyone in limbo 'sall I'm sayin.

 

[Ros]

Would someone with a HT subscription kindly share a summary of this article with the rest of us? http://m.heraldtimesonline.com/news...116-580c-5a56-bb6c-b8d8ef95af75.html?mode=jqm


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Ros]

Would someone with a HT subscription kindly share a summary of this article with the rest of us? http://m.heraldtimesonline.com/news...116-580c-5a56-bb6c-b8d8ef95af75.html?mode=jqm


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

FYI, anyone who has access to the Newspaper Source database (e.g. via a library) will have access to most HT articles a few days after publication. This article is not online there yet, though.

 

[biscuits222]

Just learned that another woman, Jennifer Rogers, disappeared. She was last seen at the Shalom Center in Bloomington, Jan 15, 2015. There has been little if any publicity in this case.

Searching "shalom center" and "spierer" together finds this post from the summer of last year on a Topix thread regarding Lauren:

its all talk till one of the homeless people of bloomington speaks up. yes the truth can be found at the shalom center in bloomington. did the police bother to go and ask these people if they seen anything or heard anything the night in question???? please BPD do your job. the truth is out there.

post #57 by b-town streetsmart: http://www.topix.com/forum/city/bloomington-in/TREBRP862QRCFIOMS/p3#c57

Probably just a random coincidence that the Shalom Center was mentioned. Findthemissing profile for JR: https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/27506/104


Searching Jennifer Lynn Rogers and Bloomington reveals that someone with that name works as a doctor in the town:

https://www.zocdoc.com/doctor/jennifer-rogers-aud

The Shalom Community Center in Bloomington has the zip code 47401, same zip code FindThe Missing says Jennifer was last seen at, so the Shalom Center is probably the same place. The website says it is a place that helps homeless people out so maybe Jennifer was there as a volunteer doctor:
http://shalomcommunitycenter.org/

We should start a Jennifer Rogers thread since I don't think there is one on WS yet.

 

[Ixchel13]

#65 Jan 5, 2015
I heard her body is in the trunk of a car in a junk yard

this was on another message board, rhymes with hopix.

not so far out for an idea....before the current hwy 37 there was what is now called Old37. Right before you got to town, there was an giant junkyard (cars) to the right, just cars piled up to high heaven. Now, this junkyard lies between Old37 and 37.
When Lauren went missing and after, I don't recall it being said that this junkyard was searched. I wonder what's going on at that junkyard, if it's even being used. will find out.
always thought RAT put Alexis in a junkyard.

 

[AbbeyR]

Would someone with a HT subscription kindly share a summary of this article with the rest of us? http://m.heraldtimesonline.com/news...116-580c-5a56-bb6c-b8d8ef95af75.html?mode=jqm

I don't have access to the article either, but there's a snippet posted here: http://indianalawblog.com/archives/2015/05/ind_law_cyber_s.html

The gist of it seems to be that, despite online speculation, there is no connection between the sketch of the attempted abduction suspect and DM (see post: http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...ngton-03-June-2011-34&p=11734523#post11734523)

Turns out the sketch, being compared by online sleuths to Daniel Messel’s recent jail mugshot and connected on Facebook and other online sources to 19-year-old IU student Jill Behrman’s 2000 abduction and murder, has no relevance to the Behrman case. Or to Messel, charged with murder in last month’s beating death of 22-year-old IU senior Hannah Wilson.

But the path of the drawing shows how social media and its wide, fast reach can affect public perception.

The sketch actually is the suspect in the attempted abduction of a bicyclist on a rural road near Bowling Green, Kentucky, that happened on Mother’s Day 2001. The woman who was attacked, contacted last week, confirmed that the composite sketch some say resembles Messel is one she helped create after a man knocked her off her bike on Old Richardsville Road and tried to abduct her 14 years ago.

“That is definitely the police sketch that came out of my case,” she said.

The description she gave was of a young white man, 5-foot-11 and 190 pounds, with reddish hair, a fair complexion and acne-scarred face. It does not match Messel, who is taller, heavier and has brown hair. Police in Warren County, Kentucky, actually identified a suspect in the abduction attempt there, a 24-year-old man with a criminal record. Both the victim and a witness picked him out of a series of photographs.

The man was detained and questioned but never charged in the incident, which remains unsolved. <snipped>

If anyone has a subscription to the HT, please fill us in on any other interesting details.

 

[AbbeyR]

Searching Jennifer Lynn Rogers and Bloomington reveals that someone with that name works as a doctor in the town:

https://www.zocdoc.com/doctor/jennifer-rogers-aud

The Shalom Community Center in Bloomington has the zip code 47401, same zip code FindThe Missing says Jennifer was last seen at, so the Shalom Center is probably the same place. The website says it is a place that helps homeless people out so maybe Jennifer was there as a volunteer doctor:
http://shalomcommunitycenter.org/

We should start a Jennifer Rogers thread since I don't think there is one on WS yet.

The little I have found online makes me think that the doctor may be someone else with the same name, but there's not much out there. Good idea to start a thread.

 

[akh]

So where is the mistake? Is it the Jill Behrmen wiki that has that police sketch or is it the woman in Kentucky claiming that the sketch is one she gave?
Police certainly released a sketch in the Behrmen case.
You can find info about it here (from 2000):
http://www.idsnews.com/article/2000/09/sketch-of-behrman-suspect-released-by-bpd

But it doesn't actually show the sketch in the archive. Unless I missed it or a link anyway.

 

[akh]

Snippet/summary

The sketch was plucked from that &#8220;Unsolved Mysteries&#8221; webpage and uploaded to Behrman&#8217;s page on a fan site for the show at unsolvedmysteries.wikia.com. Wikia.com claims to host 120 million users and 400,000 communities &#8220;for fans, by fans&#8221; with &#8220;fresh fan-authored information that is fueling virtually all aspects of popular culture.&#8221;
On Dec. 29, 2011, a user of the Unsolved Mysteries Wikia community, &#8220;Unsolved243,&#8221; uploaded the picture onto Behrman&#8217;s page with a few short, yet inaccurate words: &#8220;A composite of the possible suspect.&#8221;
The same day, &#8220;Unsolved243&#8221; also made edits to six other missing person mysteries, criminal cold cases and a page devoted to the Yeti, or Abominable Snowman.

Bloomington Police Department Capt. Joe Qualters said social media can help, but also hinder, criminal investigations.
&#8220;It can be both a blessing and a curse,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We, like other agencies, have had success with furthering case investigations due to information we have released on the department&#8217;s Facebook page and Twitter account trying to identify suspects.&#8221;
Then there are times when well-meaning people stir up misperceptions based on speculation or bad information.
&#8220;The negative side is that we have also spent an extraordinary amount of time chasing leads that did not pan out that first appeared on social media and almost took on a life of their own,&#8221; Qualters said. &#8220;And, somewhat like the game of &#8216;telephone&#8217; played in childhood classrooms, the story is nowhere close to how it began by the time it gets to the last kid in the class. It just keeps evolving, and those situations can really derail an investigation and become frustrating for investigators.&#8221;

 

[AbbeyR]

Thanks Akh!

Well, it's reassuring, I guess, to know that LE has spent time chasing down leads found on social media, even if they didn't pan out. Still, we've definitely seen here how a little bit of information can evolve and take on a life of its own. (Mystery man, anyone? :crosseyed

 

[Vidocq]

The whole tone of the Herald Times article is like they're uncovering some total hoax, whereas they're only really uncovering some pretty subtle mistakes (mistakes, I would add, that don't apply to Websleuths).

The incident with the attempted kidnapping in Bowling Green, Kentucky happened on Mother's Day (May 13th), 2001, a year after Jill Behrman disappeared. The Bowling Green victim produced a composite sketch. But, the article mentions, there were also two other attempted abductions, that took place in Ellettsville, just weeks after Behrman disappeared. Both of those victims also generated composite sketches (neither of which matched the Bowling Green sketch, according to the HT article).

Then some website (related in some way to the Unsolved Mysteries tv show) put up the Bowling Green sketch, and mislabeled it as an Ellettsville sketch. Then the Bowling Green sketch was put up on the Unsolved Mysteries Wikia fan site about Behrman's case, and just labeled as "A composite of the possible suspect".

The most important part of the Herald Times article (already posted above) is that the HT contacted the Bowling Green woman, and based on her description of perpetrator characteristics not discernible from the sketch (height, weight, hair color) the man that attacked her does not resemble Messel. The article also says that the Bowling Green police have a suspect, identified by the victim and a witness, who, for some reason, was never arrested.

So, if we had the information about the Bowling Green perpetrator's hair color, height, weight, and the existence of witness and victim identification of a known person, then that would have dissuaded web sleuths from entertaining the idea that Messel was the one who tried to grab the girl in Bowling Green. But speculators on Websleuths, at least, had the facts right: that was a sketch of the perpetrator in Bowling Green. And it did, just based on the sketch, resemble Messel.

And even law enforcement, back in 2001, was looking into a connection between the Bowling Green case and Jill Behrman. So, the inaccuracies, or vagueness, on the Unsolved Mystery sites notwithstanding, I don't see any of this as a major indictment of internet sleuthing.

 

[akh]

You know what would've really helped the HT article? Posting the proper police sketch of the Elletsville suspect for comparison and accuracy (unless it was edited from the version I saw).

As far as LE's issues, what might help their problems from social media is actually setting out to clear up details and update the case. They've released so little information, and rarely if ever sought to clarify anything, that it's only logical it's all became a giant "telephone game".

 

[Vidocq]

You know what would've really helped the HT article? Posting the proper police sketch of the Ellettsville suspect for comparison and accuracy (unless it was edited from the version I saw).

As far as LE's issues, what might help their problems from social media is actually setting out to clear up details and update the case. They've released so little information, and rarely if ever sought to clarify anything, that it's only logical it's all became a giant "telephone game".

I'm looking at my xeroxes of the version that appeared in the physical paper, and it looks like both Ellettsville sketches are included, in a timeline that runs along side of the article, that might not be in the version you saw. The two Ellettsville sketches actually look like two different guys. (It says one of the guys is "a pickup truck driver accused of grabbing an 18-year-old in Ellettsville". And the other guy is "accused of pursuing a woman outside the Bigfoot Food Store in Ellettsville".)

Regarding law enforcement not releasing things, all this talk of sketches being released reminds me of the Bar Manager's sketch of Mystery Man that was never released, as far as I can tell.

In other news, in what could be seen as a grim metaphor for lack of safety of women at IU, a 300-pound metal statue of Eve was cut off at the ankles and stolen over the weekend, as the matching statue of Adam looked on helplessly. The whereabouts of Eve are still unknown.

http://wishtv.com/2015/05/28/thieves-steal-statue-of-eve-from-indiana-university-campus/

 

[Ros]

Thanks Akh!

Well, it's reassuring, I guess, to know that LE has spent time chasing down leads found on social media, even if they didn't pan out. Still, we've definitely seen here how a little bit of information can evolve and take on a life of its own. (Mystery man, anyone? :crosseyed

And when LE does not release valid information that disproves the invalid information in social media, the invalid information lives on indefinitely.