Jason Rosenbaum of West Bloomfield, a 23-year-old partner in a Birmingham mobile app business, is involved in criminal and civil inquiries stemming from his time as a University of Indiana undergraduate.
Lauren Spierer vanished in June 2011, when she was a 20-year-old Indiana University junior. (Facebook photo)
Scott M. Burnstein reports in The Oakland Press on legal clouds hanging over Rosenbaum:
A young local businessman has found himself at the epicenter of a high-profile unsolved crime, stemming from a night of partying with friends when he was in college in Indiana two years ago. . . .
Rosenbaum . . . is considered a key "person of interest" by law enforcement in the disappearance of Indiana University student Lauren Spierer, who vanished from the school's Bloomington campus in the early morning hours of June 3, 2011.
Rosenbaum was named in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Spierer’s parents who live in New York. It accuses Rosenbaum and two fellow students of being responsible for her "disappearance, death or injury."
According to investigators, Rosenbaum’s business partner, David Bleznak, a University of Michigan graduate, was present in Bloomington with Rosenbaum at the time Spierer disappeared, but he was not named in the suit.
The two men, pals since childhood, were summer campmates and schoolmates at Cranbrook Kingswood Academy in Bloomfield Hills, according to the article.
Their business is Imovation Solutions, which they describe in West Bloomfield Patch. Rosenbaum earned a business management degree from Indiana in May 2012, the same month Bleznak graduated from the Ross School of Business in Ann Arbor.
"Rosenbaum admits to be the last known person to have seen Spierer alive," The Press says
The wrongful death lawsuit, filed in federal court in Indiana, names Rosenbaum and fellow students Mike Beth and Corey Rossman as being the last three people to have seen Spierer alive.
The suit contends that Rosenbaum breached a duty by letting their clearly intoxicated daughter leave his apartment, barefoot and alone, at approximately 4:15 a.m., to retrieve her lost cell phone.
The Oakland reporter's detailed article recounts events of that night, based on law enforcement information, interviews and the civil suit. It also quotes Rosenbaum's lawyer as saying he has been "totally cooperative" with investigators.
The missing 20-year-old's parents, Charlene and Rob Spierer, created a findlauren.com site where they say:
It is impossible to explain, as we continue to search for Lauren, what the experience of having a missing child is like. There is no explanation for why this has happened. Imagine learning one of the most important people in your world has disappeared and there is not enough information available from friends and acquaintances to find them.
There is no reason to think the people Lauren was last with, wouldn’t do everything in their power to help us find her. But, alas, there is deafening silence. That silence compounds our frustration, our desperation and our grief in not having found Lauren. It threatens to be our undoing but make no mistake, we will never give up.
