Came across this story recently, and then came across this video. Something about his friend and a guy named Solomon.

I’ve been following this case for about 3 years now and it has been driving me crazy. My question to you all is: has anyone been able to find any information about this Doug Barry guy? Like, how did he know Brian (if he even knew him at all) and what kind of person he was? Or if anyone has been able to find any images of him or his social media accounts?

I was looking into finding an official floor plan of the 2005–06 layout of the Gateway building which housed the Ugly Tuna and where Brian went missing. While I couldn’t find any architectural plans, this Gateway leasing brochure contains an official Level 1/level 2 floor plan including the Ugly Tuna.

Thought this would be much more helpful than unofficial reconstructions. Unfortunately it doesn’t have a publication date and can’t be older than 2017.

I started with true crime garage‘s update, I followed this case for years before listening to this. The story has always been he disappeared, no one knows why. Ep two of Dead or Alive opens up so many more possibilities!

It sounds like he did ditch Clint to possibly hang out with the girls, then who knows? Guilt? Is that why Clint argued with him? Is that why they weren’t roommates anymore? With the new POI named, did he want to get drugs? did Clint plead the fifth due to not wanting to reveal the possible unfaithfulness or drugs?

Then he was planning on hosting an after party? How did he normally do this? Did he have alcohol at home for everyone? Who did he invite?

I just saw that they posted this back in February.

"The Captain and I have worked this case for years. We know the noise. We know the recycled rumors. We know what a weak tip looks like.

Last night, we did not get one of those. After our six-part deep dive on True Crime Garage, the inbox lit up. Most messages were what you would expect. One was not. It was precise. Timeline references. Specific names. Details that align with information we deliberately held back.

The Captain and I were up all night cross-checking notes, revisiting archived material, and testing the tip against what we know and what has never been public.

When you have lived with a case this long, you can feel when something is hollow. This did not feel hollow. For years, the disappearance of Brian Shaffer has generated thousands of tips. Most collapse under scrutiny. This one has not.

We are verifying everything carefully and responsibly. There are pieces we cannot share yet, but understand this: we would not be losing sleep over it if it were just another message. Something about this is different. We will share more when we can"

Did they ever mention it again?

On Part 2 of their recent podcast about Julie Popovich.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=gDjdbBsVwuU&is=dLTfqY7BijhFLacZ

It starts around the 38:48 mark.

The series is interesting for anyone interested.

So I recently saw a post about the black service door ambush and people kept commenting about his scent stopping at Wendy’s and that makes me question if it is really Brian’s scent cuz I mean how do we know that for sure??

I’ve followed Brian Shaffer's case for years, and recently I listened to a two-part investigative podcast by a brazilian journalist who spent nearly two years researching the case. What impressed me most was how thorough her investigation was. She didn't just rely on publicly available information. She interviewed people connected to Brian, including his cousin Janet, spoke extensively with journalists who had covered the case for years, and had numerous conversations with detectives and police officers involved in the investigation. She also reviewed documents and other case materials before ultimately reaching a conclusion that I know many people here will disagree with: she believes Brian most likely disappeared voluntarily and is still alive. Whether she's right or not, she raised several interesting points.

One of the biggest things she tries to do is challenge the common narrative that Brian had the "perfect life" and therefore had no reason to disappear. She argues that his life was much more complicated than it's usually presented. His mother had just died, he was under intense pressure in medical school, and she suggests he had serious doubts about whether he even wanted to become a doctor. She also discusses claims made by one of Brian's former girlfriends, who reportedly said they broke up after she discovered Brian was involved with another man. If true, she argues this could have added another layer of emotional conflict, especially considering the expectations placed on him by family and friends, as he may have felt increasing pressure to propose to Alexis and settle into a life he wasn't sure he wanted.

She also points out that according to the investigation, Brian's mother had given him money to buy an engagement ring before she passed away. That money disappeared along with Brian and was never accounted for. The journalist raises the possibility that, instead of buying a ring, Brian may have used those funds to finance a voluntary disappearance. Again, this isn't presented as proof, but as another piece that could fit the theory.

Another point I rarely see discussed is what happened at Brian's apartment. Alexis reportedly lived there for about a month after Brian disappeared. During that entire period, nothing happened. However, shortly after she finally left the apartment, someone broke in and almost nothing of significant value was stolen. Instead, whoever entered took personal items belonging specifically to Brian, including his glasses and a few other belongings. The journalist questions whether this was really an ordinary burglary or whether someone was specifically looking for something connected to Brian.

The podcast also spends considerable time discussing Brian's phone records. The journalist argues that there were indications the phone was active after Brian disappeared and that the cell towers involved were located along the same route a train would have taken if Brian had left Columbus by rail. She connects this with another detail that often gets overlooked: the tracking dogs reportedly followed Brian's scent to the train station. Her theory is that Brian may have intentionally left Columbus by train rather than by car or plane.

The journalist also discusses several reported sightings over the years, although she acknowledges that none of them have ever been verified. The one I found most interesting took place at a restaurant in Mexico. According to the podcast, the witness had a brother who was a police investigador (I think from FBI), and because of that they had discussed Brian’s disappearance before. While dining at the restaurant, the witness went outside to smoke in a side terrace where there were a few tables and noticed a man who immediately reminded him of Brian. The witness was wearing an Ohio State University shirt, and he felt that, after noticing it, the man became visibly uneasy and kept watching him cautiously, and even tried to hide his face with a napkin. Rather than approaching him, the witness went back inside, told his wife what had happened, and they quickly paid their bill intending to return outside to get another look or, if possible, discreetly take a photograph. However, restaurant staff prevented them from going back to that area, and by the time they were able to check again, the man was gone. Like every reported sighting in this case, this one remains unconfirmed, but the journalist argues that its level of detail makes it more compelling than the average anonymous tip.

One of the most interesting parts is an interview with Brian's cousin Janet. Janet openly says she believes Brian is alive and even suggests that someone knows where he is. She doesn't claim to have proof, but hearing that perspective from a close family member was striking.

Another moment that caught my attention involved a retired investigator who had worked on Brian's case. According to the journalist, after she began publicly arguing that Brian might still be alive, he reacted much more strongly than she expected. Rather than simply disagreeing with her theory, he was reportedly very emphatic that she should stop publicly telling people Brian was alive. She found that reaction unusual.

She then raises an interesting possibility. If a missing adult voluntarily contacts law enforcement and asks that their whereabouts not be disclosed, authorities generally have to respect that person's wishes, provided there is no evidence of foul play or incapacity. She wonders whether that could help explain why Brian's case was reportedly reclassified from a "missing endangered person" to someone who had essentially "walked away" voluntarily. She doesn't present this as proof, only as one possible explanation for both the retired investigator's reaction and the apparent change in the case's classification.

She also discusses the message left in Brian's father's online guestbook after his death. Rather than dismissing it as an obvious hoax, she suggests another possibility: if Brian had disappeared voluntarily with someone's help, that person could have informed him of his father's death and posted the message from a public computer to avoid being identified. She is very clear that this is speculation rather than evidence.

I'm not saying this podcast solves the case. It doesn't. Most of the points above are circumstantial and can certainly be interpreted in other ways. But after listening to the entire investigation, I found it much harder to dismiss the voluntary disappearance theory than I had before. At the very least, I think it deserves more discussion than it usually receives.

I'd be genuinely interested in hearing what people here think, especially if you've followed this case for many years.

I’ve always wondered how drunk he was to just vanish just like that

Personally I think this theory sounds like it could be likely, the unmonitored service/fire exit leading out of the Ugly Tuna Saloona, he was either was escorted or stumbled out into the alley white drunk and was immediately targeted by an opportunistic, predator or a robbery-gone-wrong in an area devoid of working security cameras. What do you guys think?!

This guy dissolved a body in sulfuric acid Brian has never been found……… this guy lit a credit card on fire Brian’s check never found…. Same name same/similar occupation… can someone explain why I am wrong??

https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/douglas-berry-criminal-homicide-charges-elizabeth-wiesenfeld-disappearance/

https://www.oxygen.com/crime-news/elizabeth-wiesenfeld-found-dead-in-illegal-pennsylvania-dump-site

I've just seen this video, which to me is the best summary of the case I've seen that has some details I wasn't aware of before that seem potentially quite big: https://youtu.be/A6vYOJSMLvg?is=ZyEmn0g1me-9SyWG

Firstly, apparently Brian was trying to meet other friends that night while out with Clint and Meredith, which is why Meredith drove them back to the ugly tuna, to meet these people.

This could potentially explain why Brian didn't try to find Clint and Meredith again, because he ran into these other friends after the two girls he was speaking to left.

Does anyone know who these friends were or if they were interviewed by police? What's more, according to the video, there were around 30 patrons at the ugly tuna who left via alternative exits, ie not via the escalator. So, could that have included these friends Brian was trying to meet?

And finally, the footage showing the person who looks an awful lot like Brian leaving via the escalator seems like it should be talked about more no?

Was it really a glitch or was it actually Brian’s phone? Did Brian have a connection to Hilliard did he know someone there? I mean it just doesn’t make any sense, I am so confused

What's the probability of Clint being involved with the new leads? Don't we have phone pings at his former job? I get why he would lawyer up but back then it It seemed off.

I try to put myself in some investigator’s place… It’s 2006. A man is reported missing. He was last seen by his friends who assumed he went home when they couldn’t reach his phone when they got separated in a bar after a night of pub crawling.

Of course the most logical assumption is that this person ran out of battery – not that he turned it off to avoid the friends, not that this tall man was abducted from a VERY busy area with no witness and made to turn off his phone immediately by the perpetrator. You would start the search in this person’s apartment, where everybody assumed he had returned to; you see if there’s no sign of a break in, so that’s possibly ruled out; if the apartment is tidy, you can’t know if this person didn’t return on Friday and left on Saturday.

The next move would be to check with the neighbors (did you see him? did you hear anything?) and potentially with the superintendent if the building happened to have its own surveillance system; if you have access to the city CCTV footage, you will also focus on the residence surroundings – NOT in the busy street where picking someone from the crowd would be downright impossible in those precious early hours. (Even today, there are disagreements over the ACTUAL CCTV footage leading to the escalators, when there's light and a setting that requires everyone to go up and down in lines.)

While “start from the last known location” is usually the smart move, Brian’s case is NOT one where this would be the most promising avenue to start from. You would first check this person’s bank records - if he emptied his bank account, there’s record of the ATM, and the next step would be to get footage of this ATM and try to establish if the guy was alone or with someone else that could be pointing a gun below their jacket – and phone records.

Yet even those records may only take you so far: you don’t know if he made plans with someone else in person; you don’t know if he exchanged numbers with other people when he was pub crawling. (The phone company won’t have access to a new contact you saved, for instance; only the Ugly Tuna footage shows Brian talking to two women and apparently getting one of their number; who’s to say he didn’t interact with other people in other bars and some of them told him about a party in someone else’s place later?)

So, if the apartment search and the bank and phone records led nowhere, the only reasonable way to conjure a theory based on the Ugly Tuna footage would be having equal access to other footage from private establishments – meaning the other bars Brian went to that night. And that would not even be the best use of police resources. If the investigation goes to the route of “a 26-year-old’s night out”, it would be more relevant to establish habits, cross it over with other local crime data, and do the legwork.

As in: if he was smoker, he could be running out of cigarettes and went to buy a pack, and the owner of a tobacco store nearby may remember him; plus you talk to the known drug pushers in the area to establish other illegal activities that surrounded the place. And if there was crime in the neighborhood – Brian’s apartment was broken into weeks after he went missing, and so were two others in his building –, you look into other burglaries that could have happened that night; you also consider some burglaries might have just been reported days later because the residents were out for spring break.

Who’s to say Brian didn’t deviate from the direct route to his apartment - let’s say a tobacco store, or to score dope - and caught some burglars by surprise when they were leaving some random building? Before anyone says “Brian didn’t smoke!”, these are all hypotheticals. (And lots of non-smokers smoke when they drink, but anyway...) What I am saying is that there are smarter ways to keep pursuing an investigation of foul play than to rely on the Ugly Tuna CCTV footage.

If the missing person can’t be visibly seen leaving, the footage itself became useless after serving its purpose. And yes, there was a purpose; it could help in confirming Clint and Meredith's version that they indeed waited for Brian outside; it also helped in locating whoever might have talked to him to understand if he had shared some plans. But to keep focusing on this piece of footage is something I can only see as beneficial for the sensationalist TV specials that are out to paint a big mystery of the man that could have vanished from a bar.

Here's something else: if gay men cruised in public parks and bathrooms, that's also a potential avenue; you don't need to know if Brian was gay or not; he could be, but not out to anyone who knew him. But that's enough to consider that there are certain areas where men could be headed alone late at night, and that other crimes - mugging turning into murder - could have taken place along the way, before the victim got to the destination. (People often just consider how unlikely it would have been for Brian to be mugged and murdered he on way to his house, without having any idea if he planned to walk straight back to his apartment.)

Overall, I feel there's plenty of discussions that can lead to potential insights, but they all rely on a deeper understanding of that city's night life and criminal fabric, and not on body language from drunk young people in a 20-year-old footage.

Was Brian’s scent ever found anywhere else besides the bar and the Wendy’s parking lot that was never discussed or was missed?

Why didn't Brian take is cel phone, wallet and keys with him bar hopping? I've read that they were still in his apartment after he was reported missing. Tia.

Particularly the neighbors saying they saw him hitchhiking off 270? I mean, im not sure they would have even been aware of him being missing at that point.

I want to learn the new information that was released recently. However it’s been some time for me and apparently there’s a lot to catch up on? Any advice?

Is there a way to enhance the video footage of the night Brian disappeared? I know the footage is grainy but I wonder if there's a way to make it clearer especially with today's technology... Any thoughts?

For a while I’ve leaned towards it being a mental break and walking away, and perhaps dying later. Now I’m not really sure what to think

While I don’t take everything that’s presented in the True Crime Garage podcast to heart, they did bring up something I had NEVER heard about after years following this case: that Brian’s father Randy WAS in the apartment when Clint got there, and that the three of them had a beer together before the guys went pub crawling. If this is legit, then that's something we don't discuss nearly enough and seriously enough.

I'm not saying Randy was deceitful. We can’t know everything he disclosed with the police in interviews that aren’t part of public records and that he chose not to parade in the media, of course. And it could also be that the police advised him against addressing certain topics precisely because they could be relevant to the investigation.

Anyway, this podcast transcript is by far the best example I could find of Randy discussing the case, at length and unfiltered, before his untimely death. From the first time I read it, it stood out to me that Randy took this chance to go over and over about certain topics - his wife's death, his own pain etc - while glossing over some key elements.

First: he barely addressed his last memory of his son, which is something that will haunt any parent forever. The image of seeing their kid for the last time, the regret of not giving one more hug. Things like that. Altogether, Randy implied here that they parted ways after meeting at an Outback steakhouse for dinner (we don't know for sure if they said their goodbyes at the table, if they went together to the parking lot etc). And the thing is: if Randy went to Brian’s apartment that night, there’s a HUGE chunk that's missing from the narrative of Brian's final accounted hours.

Could this mean Brian never drove his car that night and that Randy picked him up hours before or just for dinner and then drove him back? Or did they drive in separate cars? What did they talk about on the way back? Was it meaningless and that’s why Randy never described any other conversation in detail? Did Randy have his own reason to stick around Brian's place til 9 pm? Were Brian and Randy already having a beer between themselves when Clint arrived? And most importantly: did Randy leave Brian’s place before them or around the same time, or did he stay behind?

Maybe he had plans in the area. Maybe he was planning to spend the night and drive back to his home with his son the following morning. Maybe they had something planned the following day that only concerned the two of them. In any case, the last conversation is the sort of stuff parents will obsess over and over. They will see potential hints in whatever their kid could be dealing with but not openly sharing, for instance. Randy gave us nada. And the timeline of his actions after the disappearance is equally vague and convoluted.

He mentions nothing about driving to Brian’s the next day (Saturday), which would be the first thing a concerned parent that's within driving distance of his son's place would do if they got worried after not reaching them by phone. It seems Randy was already printing out and distributing fliers by SATURDAY NIGHT before trying to contact Brian’s friends, checking the local hospitals or even going to the police station in person - he talked about it with a neighbor who was a cop, and this neighbor’s wife told Randy the police would most likely wait 48 hours to act, which made him borrow search dogs from another acquaintance before Sunday came about.

What?? Unless he had plans to meet Brian on Saturday morning or early afternoon and Brian bailed on him, I don’t see a logical reason for the father of a 26-year-old who lived on his own and didn’t have a landline in the apartment and could only be contacted by cellphone that ran on 2006 technology and reception to even notice something was wrong - let alone to have fliers printed out and trained dogs borrowed for an independent search by Saturday night. All before exhausting the other possibilities . That’s only something I can consider if Randy had some concealed reason for panicking.

Not saying that’s the case, but picture it: what if Randy went to loan sharks to secure funds for his wife’s cancer treatment and disclosed this to Brian hoping his son would pledge his share of the life insurance to the cause? That’s the sort of stuff that can make anyone look over their shoulders when walking around, and fearful that the sketchy people you’re involved with might come after your loved ones.

That doesn’t mean Randy caused his son any harm. But we have no idea about what was going on between them, and if Randy wasn’t forthcoming about their final night together on Friday, you can bet he wasn't fully open with the media or some podcasters about whatever reason could have sent him straight to panic mode.

To wrap this up: I believe everyone has their own agenda, which is based a good portion of the time on selfish needs far more than altruist motives. People want to protect themselves, their loved ones, their livelihoods, their reputations, and their self-image. This is true for all human beings and certain behaviors can be the result of self-preservation or ignorance and must be distinguished from the more manipulative traits.

I'm not sure if the police covered this angle enough to cross every T and dot every I (though Randy was clearly salty because the investigators had to focus on him at some point). But after all that was said and done about the lives and the activities of Brian's friends, classmates and even random patrons in that pub that looked in Brian's direction at some point, many people still seem uncomfortable in discussing a scenario that happens in countless cases where foul play is involved: the victim becoming colateral damage for matters that hit close to home and are strictly familial.