Ten years ago today, Brian Shaffer vanished and left a wake of unanswered questions that have tormented the people who want to find him most. Alexis Waggoner waited in Brian's apartment alone for two days after he went missing, hoping that she and her boyfriend would get on a plane that day headed to Miami, where Brian hinted he might propose. But he never came home.

Ten years ago today, Brian Shaffer vanished and left a wake of unanswered questions that have tormented the people who want to find him most.

Derek Shaffer still wears a green missing-person bracelet with his brother's name. Derek lost his entire immediate family in short order. Cancer took his mom. Three weeks later, his brother disappeared. And about two years after that, his father, who searched hardest for Brian, was killed by a falling tree branch in a windstorm. Now, Derek and his wife, Maurin, are left to shoulder the emotional toll of Brian's unknown fate.

Alexis Waggoner waited in Brian's apartment alone for two days after he went missing, hoping that she and her boyfriend would get on a plane that day headed to Miami, where Brian hinted he might propose. But he never came home. Waggoner soon became the beautiful face of a frantic search that gained national attention. As time passed, she moved beyond the bewildering unknown that imprisoned her, but she still occasionally finds herself online, searching for answers that may never come.

Sgt. John Hurst would awake to 3 a.m. phone calls from Randy Shaffer, sometimes for updates on his son's investigation, other times just needing a friend. No case has consumed Hurst like Brian's. There were hundreds of interviews, thousands of hours watching video and countless dead ends. Even after switching police units and jobs, Hurst kept the case, remaining the lead investigator on a case still swirling in questions.

Did someone murder the handsome 27-year-old Ohio State University medical student?

Did the death of his mother and stress of medical school cause him to run away from his life?

Did he kill himself? Is he still alive?

Shaffer went missing after a night of drinking with friends on April 1, 2006. But those closest to him and the search for him often have been the ones lost in the mystery.

"Everybody has a theory," Hurst said. "We have been able to answer a lot of questions and rule things out, but the ultimate mystery remains - what happened that night, and where is Brian?"

Fading hope

It was the beginning of spring break for Ohio State students on March 31, 2006, and Brian Shaffer wanted his family to celebrate the beginning of vacation with him and friends that Friday night.

He invited his brother, Derek, and Derek's wife, Maurin, to meet him at the Ugly Tuna Saloona after their date at the Funny Bone Comedy Club.

But the show ran late, and the high-school sweethearts decided they were too tired to visit a crowded campus bar on High Street, so they drove straight home.

"I've thought about that night over and over and over for 10 years," said Derek, now 34. "What if I had been there that night? Would things have been different? Would my brother still be here? I've carried that guilt around for a while."

Grainy video footage shows Brian entering the Ugly Tuna that night, but it never shows him exiting the bar. It shows Brian at the top of the escalator outside the bar at about 1:50 a.m. talking to women who his friend, Clint Florence, knew from Ohio State. Brian walks back inside the bar after the women leave. Florence later told police that he had seen Brian after he returned inside the bar and said they were planning to leave. But he lost track of him.

Two nights later, Derek received a call from his dad saying Brian was missing. Derek used to believe there was a chance his brother might still be alive, but he never thought that Brian just ran off to escape his life.

Florence initially cooperated with the investigation but then hired an attorney and refused to take a polygraph test or talk further with police. He couldn't be reached for comment.

"If I saw him I'd say, 'Where the hell is my brother?' " Derek said. "If anyone knows whether he is still alive, or if something happened to him, it's Clint."

The brothers had never been closer than after their mom, Renee, lost her fight with cancer about three weeks before Brian went missing. Brian was the one blessed with a charm that attracted attention from just about everyone. Derek was more introverted and content with a smaller group of friends and Maurin, whom he married in 2009.

At first, Derek thought his brother was just sleeping off a long weekend at a friend's house. Or that he was playing some kind of practical joke.

But that all changed when he saw police at his brother's apartment and learned that all of Brian's possessions, even his glasses, remained untouched.

Derek joined in many of the massive searches for Brian around the campus area and the Olentangy River. He called Brian's cell number hundreds of times for about a year, praying that he would hear his voice one more time.

"We never could have believed then that 10 years later we still don't know what happened to Brian," Maurin said. "It's been so hard watching Derek go through this, but we had to get back into our normal lives."

Derek and Maurin now live in Canal Winchester with their 2-year-old son. Derek continues his work installing electrical and communication systems for businesses around central Ohio.

It's hardest for Derek when he hears news reports that someone else has gone missing. That was the case last month when Joseph LaBute Jr., a handsome 26-year-old, went missing after leaving a bar in the same area where Brian went missing.

"It just brings all the pain from Brian back again," Derek said. "How long will it be before we know something? Ten years? Twenty? Thirty? Never?"

Moving forward

A young couple embraced each other and smiled in relief when Dr. Alexis Waggoner told them their unborn son was healthy 18 weeks into their pregnancy. Their first son was born prematurely and had lived only four hours.

Waggoner, one of seven OB-GYNs in her Toledo medical practice, returned to her cramped office, where boxes and pictures remained on the floor, and sighed as she sat down. She moved into the office two months earlier but had been too busy with patients and family life to unpack.

"That's the best part of my job, seeing those expressions after good news," said the weary Waggoner, who was dressed in green scrubs. "My life is crazy busy, but I love it. A lot has changed in 10 years."

Brian Shaffer was drawn to Waggoner's blue eyes and long, wavy brown hair when they met at Ohio State's medical school in the fall of 2005. They soon fell in love and were planning a future together right up to the night Brian went missing, a night that ultimately turned Waggoner's life into a chaotic hunt for her boyfriend and peace of mind.

She spent months in the campus area posting hundreds of missing-person fliers. She walked the river banks at night and the neighborhoods by day searching under bridges and in trash bins. She called Brian's phone relentlessly for almost a year, hoping to hear something to suggest that he was still alive. She did what seemed like an endless number of national and local media interviews. She did whatever the police asked of her and was beaten down by false hope, time and time again, after leads in the case went nowhere.

There were times when she wouldn't eat or sleep for days, yet somehow she managed to thrive in med school.

After about a year, Waggoner took steps to move out of the purgatory that was life while waiting for Brian to come home. She packed away T-shirts and other items that she had taken from Brian's apartment.

"I put his things in the back of my closet, and I just needed that chapter of my life to be over," Waggoner said. "There were a lot of tears and it was sad, but it was time to move forward."

Moving forward was made a lot easier when she met the handsome, burly contractor who was building her parents' new home. Alexis' mom, Melanie, was working both sides, telling her daughter she needed to go out with this guy and telling Eric Noss that he needed to take out her daughter.

Melanie already had told Eric about Alexis' ordeal with Brian, so he was understanding. The subject didn't come up on their first couple of dates. Then, over lunch one day, Eric asked Alexis to tell him the story. He listened intensely, asked questions and sympathized with both Brian and the woman he was falling in love with.

But after that conversation, Eric hasn't given much thought to Brian unless his wife wants to talk about the case. He understands and accepts that Brian was part of her life in the past, and he feels bad for Brian's family. But he doesn't dwell on thoughts about whether he might return someday. Eric focuses on Alexis, whom he married in June 2009, and on their sons, Kellen, 5, and Brecken, 2, and the happy life they have in Toledo, where they moved in 2012.

"I met the right girl, and my life changed in the best way possible," said Eric, 40. "There was just no doubt in my mind that even if Brian came back around we were going to be together. I just never was worried about it or thought about it. Everyone has a past, and I think that period of Alexis' life made her stronger."

Unlike most others familiar with the case, Alexis doesn't believe in one theory. She now is numb to emotions inherent in the case, and her continued interest is rooted more in curiosity.

Looking back, she finds it odd that a few days before that night in the bar, Brian told her to move on and find someone else, because he was struggling with his mom's death. And that a couple of weeks before that, he asked her to "just go away" with him.

"It almost feels like this all happened to someone else," she said. "It was all in a different life for me."

Chasing answers

The sergeant in charge of the Columbus Police Division's missing-persons unit was on vacation when Brian Shaffer's family called to report that he was missing.

Detective John Hurst didn't know it at the time, but he would be assigned a case that has consumed him more than any other in his career. He was offered the chance to pass it off after the sergeant returned to work, but too much work already had been invested.

"The detectives involved in this case became personally and emotionally involved," said Hurst, 54, who now leads the police's physical-abuse unit. "It's still a case we very much think about and talk about today."

Hurst is quite aware of the many theories and opinions the public has offered in what is still an open investigation. But he believes in following only the facts when trying to prove or disprove theories in the case.

He answers the questions he has received most over the years based on what the investigation has produced:

Is Brian alive? "There is a possibility he is alive, but if you look at the probabilities that he isn't alive, those are just as great."

Was he murdered? "There is nothing we have been able to recover that shows he succumbed to foul play, so again, the probability of that isn't as great as he just walked away."

Did he take his own life? "Most people who commit suicide want to be found; I would say that is probably in the lower category."

Hurst acknowledges becoming a friend of Randy Shaffer's and doing whatever he could to help find his son or comfort him as a father. He wishes that Randy could have had closure before his tragic death in 2008. And Hurst, who lost a child himself last year, now understands even more deeply the pain that Randy endured.

"The answers that everyone wants, everyone needs ... I don't know if we will ever have them."

mwagner@dispatch.com

@MikeWagner48