Disappearance of Brian Shaffer: Comparisons to Eduardo Sanchez and Larry Murillo-Moncada

By: Shane Lambert

Originally Published: December 4th, 2020

Updated: January 19th, 2025

Brian Shaffer is a missing person who has not been heard from since 2006. His case is perplexing for many, however, there could be a simple answer. It's this answer that I will look at with Shaffer while comparing his case to two other cases, which have been solved, as food for thought.

Shaffer disappeared in the wee hours of April 1st, 2006. According to NamUs, he remains missing as the website has his profile active as of January 19th, 2025.

Shaffer was last seen at the Ugly Tuna Saloona in Columbus, Ohio. There is surveillance of him speaking to two women at some time between 1am and 2am. This conversation took place outside of the bar.

Shaffer, probably, re-entered the bar and, despite video surveillance monitoring the entrances, he has never been seen again. Importantly, the police paid a lot of attention to the surveillance videos on the exits and some attention to cameras in surrounding businesses. Shaffer, to date, has not been seen again. If he did re-enter the bar, then that suggests to me, quite simply, that he remained in the building and maybe even remains there.

Here's an excerpt from early journalism on this missing person's case.

April 11, 2006.
Lancaster Eagle-Gazette.

If you are reading about this case in 2025 or later, there is one detail that I think you should be aware of. According to the early journalism, the police did not have the utmost confidence that Shaffer re-entered the building after speaking to the women on the sidewalk. I think that can be gleaned from the press clippings. For instance in the April 11th, 2006 edition of the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, it's stated that police "believe" (my emphasis) that Shaffer went back inside the building. Believing something is more passive than knowing it for fact. I would say that there's a chance that he did not re-enter the building, a chance that might be deemed more probable the longer he stays missing.

But I want to compare the missing person case of Brian Shaffer to the solved case of Eduardo Sanchez as food for thought. It is possible that Shaffer simply might have entered a crawl space somewhere in the Ugly Tuna Saloona, the business that he visited the night of his disappearance.

Shaffer wasn't the type that could have ducked under a camera recording that easily. According to NamUs, he was 6'2" and about 165 pounds. That's not a heavy-set build for body fat but he was still a tall guy (imo: the weight estimate seems low for the height, age, and sex). He would have been very thin and could fit into tight spaces, I think.

But can someone disappear within a building and remain there deceased for a long time even when efforts are made to find the person? It's here where I think many would say "no, if he was in the building then the police would have found him by now." However, the answer is yes and the case of Eduardo Sanchez is definitely worth examining.

Sanchez was a disc jockey in Winnipeg, Canada in the early years of this century. One night in 2002, he disappeared in the wee hours of the morning. He was found in late 2003 wedged behind a nightclub wall in the vicinity of where he was last seen. Importantly, police believe that he put himself there somehow and foul play was not really expected.

That he was wedged and decomposing in a tight space for over a year in a building is a little perplexing. You would think that the scent of his decomposing body would have attracted some attention. Even people who do not have sensitive noses can't stand the scents associated with putrefaction. However, in this case, it's believed that the foul scents in the neighborhood might have covered up the scent of Sanchez's decomposition.

"Sometimes it reeked of sewage when you came in in the morning," said Kerrie Drine, a business owner with familiarity with the area (Drine qtd. by The Globe and Mail).

The same article suggested that a new ban on smoking cleared the air and allowed for the scent of the decomposition to become more noticeable in the time frame leading up to his discovery. Importantly, the same source says "No drugs were found in his clothing or behind the wall, however it's believed he was using drugs before he went missing."

Could drugs make you crawl into a tight space? If they did, then you might get stuck and perish. Sanchez's cause of death was positional asphyxiation -- death caused when your positioning in a tight space prevents you from expanding your diaphragm and/or middle-body area enough to breathe.

How could drug use lead to such a predicament? Surely, we all agree that drugs can make you do strange things. They can make you paranoid and this might make you feel like you need to find a good hiding spot -- such as one in a crawl space. Additionally, drugs might make you feel like you need to be hugged (search Google keywords "ecstasy hug drug"). Perhaps, the confined space of two walls might satisfy this craving for someone that is under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

But two important points to take away from the Sanchez case is that he was under the influence of drugs/alcohol when he seemingly voluntarily entered a tight crawl space. Getting into that space and getting out of it are not the same matters.

Those considerations bring up questions with Brian Shaffer. Both Shaffer and Sanchez disappeared in the wee hours of a morning after partaking in substance abuse. With Shaffer, he was bar-hopping and he was definitely drinking. Whether he was doing drugs or not is not clear by my research on the case but it should be questioned. Alcohol isn't good for clarity of mind but drugs are more likely to produce the kind of bizarre and unpredictable behavior that might make you do something incredibly strange.

If Shaffer was in a similar state of mind as Sanchez, then maybe the former also put himself somewhere confined in the building. If death ensued, then there's a question: would the microregion have scents that could cover up the smell of decomposition? Conversely, could you die somewhere in a building that just happened to be well ventilated?

That Shaffer was probably seen entering the Ugly Tuna Saloona and never seen leaving in person or on videotape might simply make you wonder if he is still in the building. I wonder that and others have wondered this aloud before.

According to an article at Fox8, "An entrance camera showed Shaffer entering the Ugly Tuna Saloona around 1:15am, but not leaving. Another camera showed he hadn’t slipped out an emergency exit, either" (November 8th, 2016). Their headline for the year-2016 article reveals a hypothesis that I agree with: "Man who disappeared 10 years ago might have never left bar."

You might think that Shaffer would have been found already if he did trap himself in the bar in a crawl space. However, that's why I brought up the case of Sanchez. He was found in the building that he was last seen in more than a year after his disappearance.

It has been a lot longer than that in the case of Shaffer but if something masked the scent of his decomposition until it completed, then who knows how long someone could stay undetected and deceased in a building for.

Comparison to the Solved case of Larry Murillo-Moncada

Those who find it hard to believe that someone might die in a building and not be detected for quite a long time should consider the case of Larry Murillo-Moncada. This individual went missing in 2009 and he was not found until 2019. He died in a grocery store, one that closed in 2016. Importantly, the exact location where he died in 2009 was just meters away from where customers walked in the aisles of the grocery store.

For seven years, Larry Murillo-Moncada laid dead and decomposing behind a row of grocery-story coolers. He was never found while the store remained in business. It was only in 2019, three years after the store went out of business, that contractors were hired to remove the coolers. They found his body and DNA confirmed that it was Larry Murillo-Moncada.

Certainly, building walls have held their secrets -- even for gargantuanly long times. Offhand, the best example I can think of for dead bodies staying secret in a wall or enclosed space is nearly 200 years (read about The Princes in the Tower). 

Nineteen years and counting is nothing. I would break this missing person's case down to two likely scenarios. Shaffer's lean body is dead in a tight space in the building or the police errored when determining that he re-entered the building after speaking to the women on the sidewalk. In regard to this latter matter, there was some passivity in statements that were made about police confidence, I think.