Lauren Spierer Parents Warn IU Students They Are 'Not Invincible'

The parents of missing Indiana University student Lauren Spierer have encouraged their daughter's classmates to use Lauren's disappearance as a reminder to take precautions towards their own safety. 

Charlene Spierer recently submitted a letter to the Herald-Times in which she revealed she had taken a walk with husband Rob Spierer through downtown Bloomington at 3 a.m. and seen an unaccompanied girl walking home without her shoes. 

"We are living with Lauren’s disappearance every minute of every day and thought, quite naively, that everyone else is doing the same," Charlene Spierer wrote. "I said to someone recently that I hope what happened to Lauren will never happen to another person. That people will learn from this horrific episode in our lives. Alas, he didn’t think that would be the case. Clearly, he was correct."

Charlene Spierer urged students to "choose [their] friends wisely" and keep an emergency contact close at all times.  

"If one person reads these words and benefits from them, we will be thankful," Charlene Spierer said. "You are not invincible. Bad things happen to good people. You owe it to yourself to be safe." 

A series of free safety seminars were held last week at Smallwood Plaza, the apartment where Lauren Spierer was last seen walking towards by surveillance cameras on Friday, June 3 at approximately 4:30 a.m. According to spokesman Ernie Reno, fewer than 100 of 500 students who recently moved into the apartment for the 2011-2012 school year attended. 

"Unfortunately, when you’re 18 to 21 years old, which all of our residents are — some are 22, but all are undergrads — you have an air of invincibility about you,” Reno said.  

Investigators seeking evidence in the Spierer case concluded a 9-day search through 4,100 tons of waste in Viggo County's Sycamore Ridge Landfill last Friday. Police say no clues were found. 

"The fact that no evidence related to this case was discovered is unfortunate, but we are confident that the proper area at the landfill was identified and thoroughly checked by the officers working there,” Bloomington Police Department Chief Michael Diekhoff said in a press release.  

Spierer's parents, who briefly came home to Edgemont two weeks ago following an an exhaustive 11-week search effort in Bloomington, have returned to Indiana to continue hanging posters with volunteers.

When asked how long she plans to stay in Bloomington, Charlene Spierer replied that she'd remain “as long as it takes." 

“Somebody out there knows what happened," she said. "And somebody knows where she is.”