The parents of missing 20-year-old Lauren Spierer are suing
the three former college students who were the last known people to see their
daughter alive.
The Indiana University sophomore vanished two years ago
after a night out with a group of friends and was last seen by fellow students,
Corey Rossman, Mike Beth and Jay Rosenbaum
Her parents Robert and Charlene Spierer have now filed a
lawsuit claiming their daughter's final interactions with the students led to
her 'disappearance, death or injury,' attorney Jason Barclay said.
The complaint seeks a jury trial against the three men, who
are no longer students, and monetary damages. The case has never been solved.
Barclay admitted that the move seemed extreme, but added to
Fox News: 'Any parent in search of information about a missing child would use
every resource available to them.
'Therefore, we intend to use the rights afforded by the
civil justice system to obtain answers to questions that have gone unanswered
for too long. We fully expect that those with relevant information will
cooperate with this process.'
In an interview last month, the couple said they did not
believe the men were telling the truth about their daughter's last hours and
they are uncertain if she even left their apartment, as they have said she did.
The couple say they still believe someone will eventually
reveal what happened to her and that it would be devastating to never find
their daughter even though they assume she is dead.
The Spierers have maintained since soon after Lauren
vanished in the early hours of June 3, 2011, in downtown Bloomington that
several of the people who were with her that night haven't fully cooperated
with police.
'There's a sense that someday, some week things will change
for us. That someone will have the strength, the crisis of conscience to come
forward,' Robert Spierer has told The Herald-Times.
Lauren went to Rosenbaum's apartment with a friend on the
night she vanished. She then left with Rossman and went to a bar - even though
she was not old enough to drink.
At 2.27am, she was caught on camera leaving the bar with
Rossman to her apartment. But once there, he got into an altercation with
another student who punched him.
Minutes later, Lauren and Rossman left the complex and
walked through an alleyway to his apartment. At one point, he was seen carrying
Spierer, who appeared drunk.
When they arrived at the apartment, Mike Beth helped Rossman
to his bed and then walked her to Rosenbaum's apartment down the hallway.
He said he tried to convince her to sleep on his couch, but
she refused and he watched from his balcony as she walked home alone.
It should have taken her just six minutes to return home,
but she has not been seen since.
The three young men have previously said that the Spierers
are harassing them for information about their daughter's whereabouts.
'We’ve done nothing wrong. If we'd done something wrong, we
would have been arrested already.
All they’re doing is hurting my career,' said
Corey Rossman.
'It’s inappropriate the way they’re harassing people that
are also victims in this case,' he told The Indianapolis Star.
Rossman told the paper that he has had to field phone calls
from reporters, the Spierer's lawyers, and the Spierers themselves, though the
parents deny that they ever called the young men.
'Rob and I have never spoken to Corey Rossman,' Lauren's
mother Charlene said to the paper.
'The private investigators have never spoken to Corey. So I
don't know how it is we're harassing him other than asking him to talk to the
Bloomington police department. All of them.'
Rossman's lawyer has previously said that Rossman does not
remember anything after the punch.
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