Episode 361: Brian Schaffer

The First Degree

Alexis Linkletter and Jac Vanek

True Crime, Society & Culture, News

4.5 • 10K Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the spring of 2006, 27-year-old Ohio State medical student Brian Shaffer walked into a popular Columbus bar called the Ugly Tuna Saloona, and was never seen again. Surveillance footage captured him entering the bar around 1:55 a.m., but he never appeared on camera leaving. No signs of a struggle. No phone activity. No trace. Nearly two decades later, Brian’s disappearance remains one of the most haunting and confounding cold cases in modern true crime history. In episode 361, Jac and Lex unravel the night Brian disappeared, the theories that won’t die, and the question that haunts everyone who’s ever heard his story: how does someone vanish into thin air?

Transcript

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0:00.0	The first degree.
0:02.8	First degree.
0:03.9	First degree.
0:04.5	First degree.
0:06.3	First degree.
0:07.3	The first degree.
0:08.9	These things are supposed to happen in movies.
0:10.1	You see it on the newspaper.
0:11.1	You see it on Facebook.
0:13.2	These things are supposed to happen in movies, not in real life.
0:25.5	Welcome to the first degree, the true crime podcast that you might end up on.
0:26.5	My name is Jack Fannick.
0:28.6	I'm sitting here with Alexis Link Letter.
0:29.8	Happy Wednesday.
0:30.9	Happy Hump Day.
0:32.9	Happy Wednesday, everyone.
0:34.4	Happy Wednesday, everyone.
0:38.2	I think that we have the best announcement that we could ever have, and that is that our premium episodes, our first degree underground, is now available on Apple podcast subscriptions.
0:47.9	Now, this is the same content that we have over on our Patreon that we have been giving you for the past like four years now,
0:54.4	like something crazy. Many, many years. There's over 150 episodes, but they're now all available
1:00.4	on Apple podcast subscription. It's so easy. All you do, go on your Apple Podcasts, go to the first
1:05.9	degree, click a little button, and you're subscribed. And honestly, people have been rejoicing.
	...

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