2008 Woodie Awards
Deadly Disappearance
A Miami University graduate's murder mystery novel resurrects an ancient urban legend on campus
Laura Houser
Issue date: 10/31/06 Section: Features
Yet that fated night in April, assumptions were proven wrong.
According to the Miami Mysteries and Ghost Stories Web site, it was a snowy Sunday evening April 13, 1953. Ron Tammen left his second floor room at approximately 8 p.m. to retrieve new bed sheets from the hall manager. Someone, Tammen claimed, had put a fish in his bed. He then returned to his room to study psychology.
That was the last anyone saw of Tammen.
His roommate, Charles Findlay, returned later that night to find Tammen gone, the radio on, the bed carefully made and his book open. Findlay, assuming that Tammen had merely gone to spend the night at his fraternity house, didn't think much of his absence.
The next morning, when no sign of Tammen appeared, Findlay quickly alerted authorities. A thorough police investigation found Tammen's room relatively unhampered with his Miami ID and license in his wallet, his car keys and fraternity pin in his desk and his car still in the parking lot. No clue whatsoever laid the path to his whereabouts.
The following summer, Carl Spivey, a resident of nearby Seven Mile, Ohio, claimed that a young man had come to her front porch at midnight on the night of April 13.
According to Mckeever, who spoke with Spivey years after the incident, she recalled that Tammen was a confused but polite man. He asked her where he could catch a bus. After directing him to a bus stop, Spivey later remembered that the bus route had been just recently cancelled. But by then, it was too late.
"No one knows what happened to him after that," McKeever said. "He went off to catch a bus that never came."
From then on, information would only sporadically surface in the continuing investigation. One particularly chilling piece of evidence was brought forth in 1973 by Garret Boone, the Hamilton County coroner. He claimed that in 1952, Ron Tammen had come to him requesting a blood test - the only student in 40 years to ask such a question.
According to the Miami Mysteries and Ghost Stories Web site, it was a snowy Sunday evening April 13, 1953. Ron Tammen left his second floor room at approximately 8 p.m. to retrieve new bed sheets from the hall manager. Someone, Tammen claimed, had put a fish in his bed. He then returned to his room to study psychology.
That was the last anyone saw of Tammen.
His roommate, Charles Findlay, returned later that night to find Tammen gone, the radio on, the bed carefully made and his book open. Findlay, assuming that Tammen had merely gone to spend the night at his fraternity house, didn't think much of his absence.
The next morning, when no sign of Tammen appeared, Findlay quickly alerted authorities. A thorough police investigation found Tammen's room relatively unhampered with his Miami ID and license in his wallet, his car keys and fraternity pin in his desk and his car still in the parking lot. No clue whatsoever laid the path to his whereabouts.
The following summer, Carl Spivey, a resident of nearby Seven Mile, Ohio, claimed that a young man had come to her front porch at midnight on the night of April 13.
According to Mckeever, who spoke with Spivey years after the incident, she recalled that Tammen was a confused but polite man. He asked her where he could catch a bus. After directing him to a bus stop, Spivey later remembered that the bus route had been just recently cancelled. But by then, it was too late.
"No one knows what happened to him after that," McKeever said. "He went off to catch a bus that never came."
From then on, information would only sporadically surface in the continuing investigation. One particularly chilling piece of evidence was brought forth in 1973 by Garret Boone, the Hamilton County coroner. He claimed that in 1952, Ron Tammen had come to him requesting a blood test - the only student in 40 years to ask such a question.
