Spierer search could enter new phase

BLOOMINGTON – The search for a missing Indiana University student may soon focus on a Vigo County landfill. That type of search can be time-consuming, tedious and tough.

Wednesday marks two months since cameras captured Lauren Spierer leaving her Bloomington apartment to party with friends. She disappeared later than night and eight weeks later, her family still has no answers.

Now, frustration remains and the focus of the investigation may be turning toward a landfill south of Terre Haute.

Documents show Bloomington Police asked for a search warrant for the Sycamore Ridge landfill on June 16th. Officials at the landfill say they’re working with the FBI regarding a search.

If that happens, it will be challenging: looking for evidence in layer upon layer of dirt and trash. Each pile is dated by delivery, but it’s also been crushed and compacted.

Private investigator Tim Wilcox witnessed a recent landfill search, and offered his perspective on what it takes to complete.

“People have to be very meticulous in unearthing anything that looks suspicious,” Wilcox said. “They’ll have to divide it up in grids and so they’ll concentrate their effort on the areas where the most logical dumping would have taken place.”

Wilcox was hired by the family of Andrew Compton, a Carmel High School graduate, who was murdered after meeting a stranger online.

The suspect, Gregory O’Bryan, confessed to the crime and claimed he put Compton’s body in a dumpster near Louisville. What followed was a painstaking search through a southern Indiana landfill in November of 2010.

“We’re digging it up, sorting through it, putting it in the truck and then looking at it in another location, so it’s a very monotonous task of going through it,” said Louisville Metro Police Lt. Barry Wilkerson.

“Unfortunately the landfill search was uneventful and they couldn’t find anything of any substance there,” Wilcox said.

Last May, another search came up empty. IMPD dug through 60 tons of trash for ten hours in Clinton County, looking for a missing infant’s body. They found nothing.

Criminology experts tell Eyewitness News only a handful of cases that involve searching landfills actually turn up evidence. The ones that do, usually began with a very solid lead. For some families, there’s still no closure.

“The Compton family is extremely agonizing over this,” Wilcox said. The hope is that a potential search in Vigo County would be successful and help find some clue to bring Lauren Spierer home.

On the two-month mark since her disappearance, the “News on Lauren S” twitter account says friends and family are writing messages to Lauren. The letters are being posted on the family’s blog.

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