After my most recent blog post about when Carl Knox stopped investigating Ron Tammen’s disappearance, a reader and I were discussing the 1976 documentary produced and narrated by Ed Hart of Dayton’s Channel 2. For those people who haven’t watched it yet, I encourage you to do so. It isn’t very long—less than 1/2 hour total. I’ve embedded the two parts on my home page, but you can also link to them here:
The Phantom of Oxford
What’s special about this documentary is that key people tied to the investigation in 1953 have given on-camera interviews in 1976, and what they say is revealing. This got me to thinking that I should transcribe their quotes and post them online. That way we won’t forget the things they said in light of any new information that we’re able to uncover.
As it turns out, creating a transcript of their quotes wasn’t that time-consuming. I recalled that I’d found a transcript of the program in Miami University Archives early in my investigation and had filed it away. I’ll discuss that transcript in more detail a little later, since I believe it reveals something about the person or persons who created it. (Spoiler alert: it wasn’t Ed Hart.)
And so, here you go…the quotes from The Phantom of Oxford along with my thoughts below several of them:
Quotes from The Phantom of Oxford
PART 1
Joe Cella, Hamilton Journal News reporter [0:06]
[Opening]
“I believe Ron Tammen voluntarily walked off campus. I believe he’s somewhere out in the world today…alive, under an assumed name. Everything has been…erased with him…uh…and I believe he’s still out there.”
Oh, man, me too, Joe, with one slight difference: I think Ron was driven off campus. But other than that, I totally agree with you, 100 percent, that Ron Tammen was still very much alive in 1976.
Charles Findlay, Ron Tammen’s roommate [5:40]
[Describing his return to his and Ron’s room in Fisher Hall on Sunday night, April 19, 1953]
“I came back to campus, to Fisher Hall, and went to my room as normal and the light was on in the room. And in the room, the door was unlocked, and Ron’s book was open on his side of the desk. And uh…the desk chair was pulled back as though he got up and went somewhere. So I thought not too much about that and I studied I think till eleven o’clock that night. I got back to school about nine o’clock, went to bed as usual, and got up the next morning and didn’t see Ron in his bed. I still wasn’t too excited about it because I thought he might have spent the night at the fraternity house.”
For the life of this blog, I’ve been reporting that Chuck had arrived back at Fisher Hall at around 10:30 p.m. I’ve reported that time because A) that was the time reported by Joe Cella in his one-year anniversary article in the Hamilton Journal News on April 22, 1954, and B) Carl Knox had written the time 10:30 on one of his note pages along with the words “Light on – Door open but he never returned.” Carl didn’t say what happened at 10:30, but I presumed that’s when Chuck had arrived at the room, as corroborated by Cella. I’m now wondering about that time. This has nothing to do with Cella, by the way, who was an excellent reporter. But it might have something to do with what someone had told Cella when he was writing his one-year anniversary article.
In the video, Chuck says that he returned to Miami at 9 p.m. I figured that, with 23 years having transpired since he’d recounted the story, that detail may have become a little fuzzy. However, when I went back to read the earliest news articles, I found this in the April 28, 1953, Miami Student, which was overseen by journalism professor Gilson Wright, who also reported on the case: “Tammen, a counselor in Fisher Hall, disappeared sometime between 8 and 9 on a Sunday night.” How do they know it was before 9 p.m.? It may just be sloppy reporting, but could Chuck Findlay have arrived at 9, which is how they would have been able to provide that timestamp? And if that’s the case, what would the 10:30 signify in Carl Knox’s note? Of course, it may indeed be the time of Chuck’s arrival, but what if it was something else—such as the time Ron had walked back to the dorms with Paul (not his real name) and Chip Anderson or the time someone may have spotted Ron sitting in a car with a woman before driving off? Something to ponder…
Addendum: I’ve added Carl Knox’s note to the bottom of this post.
Charles Findlay [6:36]
[Describing the next day, Monday, April 20…]
“And it was sometime later that afternoon, the evening, we had a counselors meeting. And that’s when I think we discussed a little more, a little further, as to what, where Ron was and what the situation was.”
Charles Findlay [7:40]
[Describing when it first hit him that Ron probably wasn’t coming back]
“I think probably the first three or four days I wasn’t concerned. But I really realized he wasn’t coming back, he wasn’t coming back as he normally would, when the ROTC was out and they were dragging the pond, I get concerned. Cause I remember sitting at my desk and looking out the window and watching them drag the pond…and that was kind of an eerie feeling.”
Ed Hart: Someone must have thought that there was foul play involved. Did you?
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t think so because at that time, even now, you go back and you think about a college student, what 19, 20 years of age. How do you make an enemy? And who would think that a college student would have much money?”
As we’ve discussed in the past, if Ron was gay, then there was a chance that he could have been the victim of a hate crime. However, because we now have evidence that the FBI expunged Ron’s fingerprints in 2002 due to the Privacy Act, that tells us that Ron was still alive in 2002. (Per the FBI: only the subject of the record can request an expungement of that record.) Therefore, I don’t believe Ron was a victim of foul play.
Jim Larkins, fellow sophomore counselor in Fisher Hall [8:40]
[Describing why he felt it didn’t make sense for Ron to run away]
“He is just the last person that you would ever expect just to merely take off uh… for as far as I was concerned there would be no reason for his having done it. From all that we could…all that we knew about him and could learn about him he just seemed to have everything going for him.”
Carl Knox, dean of men at Miami University, who oversaw the university’s investigation into Ron’s disappearance [9:33]
[Describing students in the 1950s and a little about Ron as a person]
“Much more it was known as the apathetic period of time. It was certainly uh…far different from the Sixties but uh…it was generally a fairly happy time, sort of normal activities taking place. This young man was uh…well appreciated around campus because of his musical talent. He played bass with the Campus Owls uh…he did and was one of few people on campus who had a car permit in order to transport that bass viol around. And one of the oddities of the thing because he prized it so highly was the fact his car was found locked up with the bass inside and uh…no Ron.”
In his role as the dean of men, Carl Knox was responsible for all male students on campus. He made a point of knowing the students, especially the ones who were most active. I’ve been told that he likely knew Ron Tammen, though probably not very well. H.H. Stephenson, who was an employee of Carl’s, would have known Ron a lot better. We’ll get to H.H. in a minute.
Ronald Tammen, Sr., Ron’s father [10:52]
[Describing his perceptions of the last time he saw Ron, who’d been in Cleveland playing with the Campus Owls the weekend before he disappeared]
“He just seemed to have fun the whole time he was there. There was never anything at all that would indicate there was a (laugh) he had a problem or a thing was bothering him. Nothing at all.”
That’s how Ron’s father may have perceived his son, but there was obviously a lot more going on inside that “fun” veneer. If something was bothering Ron, especially if he was dealing with the sorts of stresses that I think he was dealing with—his grades, his finances, his sexuality—I doubt that he would have gone to his father, who was known to be decidedly not fun in certain situations.
Joe Cella [11:25]
[Describing his impression of how the investigation into Ron’s disappearance was conducted]
“I wasn’t too keen on the initial investigation that went on. It was very abruptly done. To me there was no thorough investigation. And that’s the reason I stayed with it. Over a period uh…of years that followed, we were able to accumulate a lot more, much more, than we ever had initially.”
THANK YOU, Joe, for sticking with it! It’s because of the leads you chased down that we’ve been able to get to the place we are now.
PART 2
Dr. Garret Boone, physician and Butler County coroner [0:16]
[Describing his experience when he tried to notify Miami officials at that time about Ron’s visit to his office in November 1952 to have his blood type tested]
“On one occasion…uh…led to some uh…sharp words between a…uh…between me and two Miami University personnel who did not appreciate uh…my uh…being concerned about the problem of his disappearance.”
Ed Hart: Why?
“Well, I really don’t know. Uh…they might have been bored with me and maybe they got fed…been fed up by reporters and TV men, I’m not sure…which.”
Wouldn’t you love to know who the two Miami personnel were? Doc Boone may have given us a couple clues. What I’m getting from his comment is A) he went to the university in person, since he was ostensibly talking with two people at the same time; and B) the personnel seemed to be the types of people who frequently dealt with “reporters and TV men.” Therefore, it sounds as if one of the two persons handled media relations. Was the other person Carl Knox? It’s my understanding that he was a soft-spoken man who employed a velvet-hammer type of leadership style. For this reason, it’s difficult to imagine him engaging in “sharp words” with a public official who was offering to lend his assistance in the investigation.
Ronald Tammen, Sr. [1:20]
[Describing his impressions of the investigation]
“I was happy that we got the FBI to be involved because of the broad coverage. But uh…I can’t say that I’ve ever been happy about anything that’s happened in the case, because nothing’s ever happened.”
Ronald Tammen, Sr. [1:51]
[Describing the effect Ron’s disappearance had on Mrs. Tammen]
“So much with the wife that uh…big problems occurred with her health. It was just beyond her…she just couldn’t take care uh she couldn’t take it and her health started failing and that was…that was the cause, I believe, of her death was his disappearance and no evidence or solutions at any time.”
This is probably Mr. Tammen’s most revealing statement. First, he refers to Mrs. Tammen as “the wife,” which is about as impersonal as he could be. Maybe it was how they talked in the 1950s, but in the ’70s? I’d think he could have spoken more affectionately…how about “my wife,” or “Ron’s mother,” or, best of all, “Marjorie”?
Mr. Tammen’s biggest slip was when he said “she just couldn’t take care uh she couldn’t take it.” As we’ve discussed, Marjorie was an alcoholic for years before Ron disappeared. As you can imagine, his disappearance didn’t help in that regard. When Mr. Tammen said she “couldn’t take care,” I believe he was about to give away too much information about her condition. Was he going to say that she couldn’t take care of herself? Their two younger children, Robert and Marcia? I don’t know. But he caught himself just in time.
Carl Knox [2:40]
[Describing why Ron’s disappearance had stood out for him throughout his career]
“On other campuses where I’ve been located there have been disappearances and there have been tragedies, but nothing which has sort of popped out of…
No background of explanation, no way of reasonable…uh anticipation, but just suddenly happening and there you were with uh…uh…egg on your face, deepfelt concerns and yet uh…no answers for any part of it.”
Ed Hart: And yet something tells you Ron Tammen is alive?
“Yes, I feel this. I feel it…keenly.”
I believe Carl Knox had discovered information about Tammen’s life and disappearance that he was not making public, likely after having been told by someone in a position of authority. Remember how he’d had a buzzer installed on his secretary’s desk for Tammen-related calls? Or how his secretary was given a list of words that she was instructed not to say to reporters? And we’ve since learned that he’d discovered that Dorothy Craig of Champion Paper and Fibre had written a check to Ron shortly before he disappeared. When asked 23 years later if Ron Tammen was alive, he said, “Yes, I feel this. I feel it…keenly.” This tells me that Carl had some indication that Ron was in ostensibly trustworthy hands when he left Miami’s campus. Like the U.S. government’s perhaps?
Barbara Spivey Jewell, daughter of Clara Spivey, who was at her mother’s house in Seven Mile, Ohio, when a young man who looked like Tammen showed up late at night on Sunday, April 19, 1953 [3:33]
[Describing when her mother and she notified the Oxford police about the young man’s visit]
“Well, we saw his picture in the paper about a week afterwards and my mother said, well that’s the boy that was here at our door. And so we went to Oxford to the police station and talked to them. But uh…I was at the door with my mother also and I’m um…positive it was him.”
It was actually two months later, not a week. Also, a third person in the room, Barbara’s eventual second husband, Paul Jewell, told Detective Frank Smith in 2008-ish that he was “absolutely confident” it wasn’t Ron. He thought it was a local ruffian.
Barbara Spivey Jewell [4:07]
[Describing whether she’s still convinced that it was Ron]
“I would still say that it was him. I’m positive. I can still see his dark eyes and his dark hair.”
H.H. Stephenson, Miami housing official who saw a young man who looked like Ron dining in Wellsville, NY, on August 5, 1953 [4:44]
[Describing his experience in the Wellsville, NY, restaurant]
“When my eyes would look toward him I would find he was looking at me. And I had that feeling that uh… that he was sort of looking right through me. Uh… for some reason uh… that I’ll never know I said nothing about uh… the fact that I thought maybe this young man was Ron Tammen. I didn’t speak of it to my wife during the meal. I don’t know why I didn’t.”
H.H. Stephenson (he went by Hi, short for Hiram) knew Ron Tammen, whereas Mrs. Spivey didn’t. In 1953, Hi was the director of men’s housing and student employment. He would have interviewed Ron for his counselor’s position. He also gave Ron his permit to have a car on campus. Most of us wonder why Hi didn’t walk up to the young man when he had the chance, and he obviously would agree. But Hi told his boss, Carl Knox, the next day. Why didn’t the university follow up on that potentially big lead?
Sgt. Jack Reay, Dayton Police Department, Missing Persons [6:30]
[Describing his check on Ron’s Social Security number in 1976]
“When I checked with the state, this uh…Social Security came back negative. There was no record of it, which would indicate that, in the past few years, since we’ve had the computer, uh…and things have been entered into the computer, there’s been no activity with that Social Security number.”
The fact that Ron never used his Social Security number again is incredibly important. This means that he didn’t just run away to be with some forbidden love interest, be they female or male. If he lived—and we have evidence that he did until at least 2002—then he had to have gotten a new Social Security number, which is extremely difficult to do. There is a list of circumstances for which a person can request a new Social Security number and running away to become a new person isn’t on the list.
As I mentioned earlier, there’s a transcript of The Phantom of Oxford in Miami’s University Archives. I’m missing the first page, but I have the rest of the pages, which end at 23. The transcript appears to be written by someone in the business. It’s typewritten in two columns. On the lefthand side is a description of each video clip (photos, videotaped interviews, B-roll, and reenactments) and on the righthand side is a description of the audio (narration and interviews) that accompanies that clip. I’d always thought that the transcript was provided by someone with the TV station to the university, but now I don’t think so. I think someone affiliated with the university typed it up because they only cared about the narrative and the interviews with people tied to the university. There is one person whom they didn’t care about—Sgt. Jack Reay. Even though he wasn’t involved in the Tammen investigation, he was a great resource and had a lot to say about missing person cases. The only words typed on page 21 are “MISSING PERSON THEORY,” which covers all of Sgt. Reay’s air time. I feel that his comments are elucidating too, which is why I’ve included them here.
Sgt. Jack Reay [7:16]
[Describing how rare it is for a person to disappear completely without a trace]
“It’s very difficult for a person to just drop completely out of uh…civilization and not somebody else know who he is or where he is or something about him…or him to relate back to some of his early childhood. I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m just saying that, percentage-wise, for someone to just completely drop out would be very small in comparison with the missings and runaways.”
Agree. I think it would have been impossible for Ron to have carried it off without A LOT of help.
Sgt. Jack Reay [8:00]
[Describing what kind of person would voluntarily leave family and friends forever]
“If somebody is really set on…getting lost, I think that they can, but they’re going to have to be a very strong individual. And as far as a 19-year-old…I don’t know. It takes an awful lot of willpower to sit back and say, there’s nothing back there that you ever want to be related to again.”
Also agree. But, as we’ve discussed numerous times, the 1950s were different. If Ron was gay, it would have been extremely difficult for him, especially if he was at risk of being outed. I honestly think that, in his 19-year-old brain, he decided that his family would be better off thinking that he was dead as opposed to being gay.
Sgt. Jack Reay [8:29]
[Describing the potential of identifying Ron’s remains decades later if he’d been a victim of foul play]
“If he was a normal individual and never really had any contacts with any type of…law enforcement or any type of identifying thing [mumbled], it would be a little bit difficult to identify that individual today. In fact it would be very difficult.”
Marcia Tammen’s DNA is on file in CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System. If there is ever a discovery of unidentifed human remains, law enforcement should be able to ascertain if it’s Ron. But, as discussed above, I also don’t think he was a victim of foul play.
Ronald Tammen, Sr. [8:42]
[Describing his thoughts with regard to ever seeing his son again]
“I…I have uh…have never lost hope that sometime, somehow something would come up so we’d have some evidence of either his death or his disappearance or the reason, reasons for it or…I’ve never given up. In fact a lot of times I’ve thought that uh…you know, he’s gonna show up. He’s gonna show up here pretty soon.”
😔
Joe Cella [9:20]
[Describing his thoughts with regard to ever finding Ronald Tammen]
“I don’t know whether I would recognize him today if…if I saw him, but uh… Richard gave me a photograph of Ron and uh…he gave it to me 23 years ago, believe it or not. I’ve been carrying it in my wallet…hoping some day in my travels around the country that, you know, who knows…it might be him coming down the street.”
I have it on excellent authority that Joe carried Ron’s photo in his wallet for the rest of his life.
**********
ADDENDUM
Carl Knox’s note in which he’s written the time of 10:30 but doesn’t mention Chuck Findlay’s name
The 9:00/10:30 conundrum is really galling. Carl Knox couldn’t even get the very first important detail right? As poor as his investigation was, it prods me a little toward the non-conspiracy side of the case.
My first time reading this post through, I’m reminded that every time I read about Chuck, I just get an odd feeling. I understand we have to pretty much take witness statements at face value, but, I can’t just dismiss him like you do. I know, he’s a swell guy and all, but…….nothing specific, just an uneasy feeling. And maybe, just maybe, he honored a vow of secrecy Ron made to him before the disappearance.
Well…I didn’t say straight up that Carl didn’t get that detail right. I’m just saying that he didn’t write down the words “Chuck Findlay returned to room” next to the time of 10:30. He only wrote the time plus the words “Light on – Door Open but he never returned.” He also added “Toothbrush + all here.” So the 10:30 note probably signifies Chuck’s arrival, but there’s a possibility that it was something else. I don’t think it matters that much though. Whether Chuck returned at 9 p.m. or 10:30 p.m., he never saw Ron, who may have been at song practice (at ~9 p.m.) or walking back to Fisher Hall (at ~10:30 p.m.). I believe that the notes Carl was taking at the beginning were his earnest attempt at finding answers, even though they weren’t perfect. However, we have solid proof that people at the university, including Carl Knox, had access to information that, for whatever reason, they wanted to keep hidden from the public–the words that weren’t to be spoken to reporters being one major example.
As for Chuck Findlay, yes, he was a nice guy, but he was also a man who was deeply affected by Ron’s disappearance. He barely knew Ron, even though they were roommates. They never saw each other. They didn’t talk much. His response is normal for someone who had no idea what had happened. At first, he didn’t think much about it. He decided that Ron was at the fraternity house and went to bed, probably because Ron had spent the night out before. The next day, he bumped into Richard and asked him if he’d seen his brother, and then he walked over to the Delt house later that day to see if they’d seen him. If he’d been sworn to keeping a secret, he probably wouldn’t have gone through those motions. He might have even escalated things immediately to make it appear as if he had no idea what was going on–to go straight to the resident manager or something. That would have saved him some steps to the fraternity house. I can’t tell people how to feel, but having spoken with Chuck several times as well as his son, I can say that I am absolutely certain that he had no idea what happened to Ron.
Phantom of Oxford was an excellent production. Those interviews were powerful and revealing – I thought of them too when I saw your second-to-last post, Jen. I think Carl Knox knew or at least strongly suspected something he felt he couldn’t say, along with one or more of the others, and it’s priceless to see the body language and hear the vocal inflections, and so on. So grateful to them for making it while there was still time to include so many people and so much that have now disappeared.
The way Ron Sr. says “the wife” was always the oddest thing about that interview to me, too. Made me wonder if he was emotionally distant (I know you’ve written about this theme). But at the same time, I’ve heard that expression before, used by earlier generations, and my sense of it was that it was used as a subtle verbal device to shield one’s personal life/family relationships from non-intimate acquaintances. Using “my” reflects one’s own attachment to the person, which might have been felt to be too much intimacy on display by a generation that regarded privacy and used formality more seriously. The same way someone of that generation might have said “Mrs. Tammen and I….” Perhaps it’s all these things at once.
Just out of curiosity about Phantom – they seem to have gone to a lot of trouble to get all the details just right (which is one of my favorite things about it), and of course Fisher was still standing (barely) at the time. I noted that they filmed Barbara’s interview at the actual former Spivey house, and apparently (based on the door and window) even used the interior for the re-enactment (didn’t know the detail you shared about the friend who in 2008 was sure it wasn’t Ron!). So, Jen, as far as you know – did they film that re-enactment of Ron standing up from his desk in his actual room in Fisher? Looks like they filmed at least the hallway and doorway that were actually his – yes? The curtains in the room look possibly similar to those in the black-and-white photo of Ron’s desk and open psychology book, but also similar to those in one of the 1976 offices that are shown. Obviously the ugly desks and plastic chairs were newer, but after 23 years Miami would have replaced the dorm furniture by that point, I’d think. I’d love to know if we are looking in the film at the actual scene of the event. Seems like it would be consistent with their high production values.
Hi Mike–
Thank you so much for these thoughts/questions! My thoughts:
RE “the wife”: I agree that it’s probably a sign of his era, but I also believe it’s a small window into their relationship. It’s my understanding that he was cold toward Marjorie, and his emotional distance likely grew and hardened after she’d had John, Ron, and Richard so closely together (as if, you know, he had nothing to do with it…). If they’d been close, I can’t help but think that he would have instinctively referred to her with more compassion and respect. Something like, “And, you know, the effect this had on Ron’s mother was blah blah blah.”
RE: the Spviey house — You’re absolutely right! Based on the style and placement of the windows and door, it appears as though they filmed inside the Spivey house. Outstanding catch! Thanks so much for pointing that out.
RE: whether they filmed inside Ron’s room in Fisher — Thanks so much for this question. It does appear that they filmed the hallway in Fisher, although, when I saw it in 1978, I could have sworn that the paint was more chipped than that. Also, those brown panels at the end of the hallway (at the closing credits beginning at 10:52 of PART 2) look out-of-place, however as I look closer at them, I believe they’ve used 2 doors, turned horizontally, to board up the windows. So that tracks, considering the fact that the university had boarded up Fisher because of its crumbling state.
As for his room (beginning at 4:59 of PART 1), the curtains look similar to the ones in the April 22, 1954, Hamilton Journal News article, though I can see differences. The curtains in the HJN article seem to have more white space, and the pattern looks like large tropical leaves, while the curtains in Phantom look more floral. In PART 1, beginning at 5:14, as he’s walking down the hall with the sheets, you can tell that it’s a corner room as he enters it. However, I’ve been toggling between PART 1, 5:14, and PART 2, 10:52, and the hallway that he’s walking through appears to be different than the hallway in the closing credits. Although it may be due to the lighting and the camera angle, it appears that the hallway he’s walking through has mint green paint on top and cream on the bottom. But the hallway in the closing credits has a dark paint on the bottom and light/white paint on top. Also, the top section appears larger in the closing credits than in the one where he’s walking down the hall, and the light switch appears to be in the top, lighter section in the closing credits but it’s part of the bottom, cream section on his trip with the sheets. Lastly, just looking at the doorways themselves, they seem to be more deeply inset in the closing-credits hallway shot, and they may even have transoms, whereas the “walking with sheets” video shows him walking by newer-looking doors that are not as deeply inset, and no transoms. I know just who to ask about this and will do so. Thanks again!
As far as dredging the pond – that’s usually pretty typical in missing persons cases. Plus there was a whole campus of students who probably needed to be given something to make them at least feel helpful/keep them out from underfoot of the investigation. And seeing as how it was below freezing, and Ron didn’t have his coat, there could have been concerns of hypothermia, which can cause disorientation and loss of reflexes, and in severe enough cases, hallucinations and amnesia. Actually, it’s interesting no one ever seems to have specifically pointed this out if they wanted to go for the amnesia angle. It would have been much more plausible to think that maybe he went for some air, couldn’t get back inside before his body temperature fell, then???????
That’s a great point! Hypothermia and its repercussions sound a lot more feasible than just being hit out of the blue by amnesia. Still, once we found out about Paul (NHRN = not his real name) and Chip and their walk home with Ron from song practice, we’d figure out that they weren’t being truthful about that too.
One last thought (for now). If I had Chuck’s quote of “who would hurt a broke 20 year old college student” without knowing who said it, I’d still definitely know it was a man, because when I was 19 I almost freaked out over my roommate deciding to meet up with a random internet stranger and not telling anyone until halfway through the weekend she was gone. I was afraid she’d wind up dead in a ditch somewhere. Pretty sure I’d have felt the same way if she said she’d be back Monday after meeting some guy at a bar or the library or whatever. It’s just one of those things women constantly have to think about. 😛
So true. Also, if I’m not mistaken, the guys who lived in the dorms could stay out all night if they wanted to but the women students who lived in the dorms had a curfew. I believe it was 10 p.m. on Sunday nights back then.
Thanks, great info! Rewatched the Phantom of Oxford, but paid more attention this time, and first, I love that they were doing dramatic reenactments on crime documentaries way back when. Imagine what Discovery ID or Netflix would do with this story, lol.
Regarding the “last person you’d expect to take off” comment, among others, that’s often the person who DOES take off. Not always, maybe not even the majority of the time, but enough that I don’t necessarily think it means anything. Often it’s just cracking from being the “responsible one” all the time, and I think we’ve hashed out several likely reasons Ron may left of his own accord. But basically, I’d say other people don’t usually know what’s really going on in someone’s life as much as they think they do (and after 20 years, their perception of how things really were are altered. Kind of like how no one remembers they voted for Nixon, yet he won the popular vote somehow.)
It’s interesting that Sgt Reay says “IF HE WAS A NORMAL INDIVIDUAL” and if he “NEVER REALLY HAD ANY CONTACTS WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT.” Is he simply referring to the fact that the FBI had his prints on file from elementary school? Because looking it over again and again, it seems more like he means, “yeah, it’s hard for the average Joe to completely vanish and start a new life, but if you have help from LEOs it’s a lot easier.” With that caveat, I’d like to say that Cleveland bank thief and antihero Ted Conrad managed to go his whole life being doggedly pursued by a federal Marshall (and eventually his son) and was never found until after he died. He did have almost a quarter million dollars to help him out initially, but seems like he blew through it quickly, so…
As far as the “sharp retorts” to Dr. Boone, if he was meeting with 2 people at once perhaps only one person did the responding? If Carl was one of the 2, he may not have said much or been more polite. Dr Boone might have been misremembering exactly how it went down, or editing his words to be succinct since it was a short piece.
Finally, youtube said some podcast I’d never heard of, Cold and Missing, covered Ron for their Halloween 2022 episode: https://www.coldandmissing.com/cold-and-missing-ronald-tammen/
Listened to it, and it was meh…some wrong stuff, a lot of stuff she could have gotten (like Clara Spivey’s name) by just searching your blog, didn’t even have to read every post, just typed “Spivey” in the search bar. I did quite enjoy some of her criticisms of Chief Decker et. al. for the amnesia theory, not to mention the fact that a bunch of frat boys had to “Scooby-Doo” – her words – their way to Cincinnati to see if Ron was there, instead of the cops doing their actual job. And she at least gave you/the blog a shout out at the end, so 👍
These are great points—Thanks! I need to drive somewhere so I can’t write a proper response right now but will as soon as I’m able.
Hi! I’m back. Here are my thoughts:
RE: reenactments — yeah, I used to not be a fan of reenactments in general, but now I can appreciate how useful they can be. I like who they chose as their actors. They did a great job.
RE: “the last person you’d expect” — totally agree, and it’s also usually the quiet one for the same reason. We never really know what’s going on inside someone’s head.
RE: Sgt. Reay — I’m not sure. If he contacted the FBI about Tammen, and I presume he did in addition to the Social Security Administration, he should have known about Ron’s fingerprints, since they were still on file with the FBI in 1976. Remember also that, in 1973, Ron’s missing person file was “removed from Ident files” for some reason, not long after the Cincinnati field office followed up on a potential Ron sighting at Welco Industries. If Sgt. Reay had contacted the FBI in 1976, he might have learned about that too, which is interesting to think about. Anyway, I guess I thought that Sgt. Reay was saying that if a missing person who was a victim of foul play had been a law-abiding citizen who hadn’t ever been fingerprinted, it would be very difficult to identify their remains after many years, since they wouldn’t have anything to compare the prints to. At least that’s what I thought he was saying.
RE: Ted Conrad — I forgot about that story! Wow. You’re right. They’re not infallible.
RE: sharp words — I still can’t imagine what they said. I mean…even if the university reps had no intention of following up on Doc Boone’s lead, why not just make a copy of Ron’s medical card, thank the good doctor, and send him on his way? Why would they lose their temper? But I agree with you, I can see someone else from the university doing most of the (sharply worded) talking as opposed to Carl Knox.
RE: Cold and Missing podcast — thanks for the tip! I’ll try to listen to it sometime. It’s very cool that there’s still interest out there in Ron Tammen, and I’m super grateful for the shout out!
As far as the dragging of the pond goes, my mind goes more to someone thinking he’d met with misadventure. Not necessarily foul play. Young men who go missing and bodies of water are frequently connected. Was Ron much of a drinker? But obviously his remains were not found there, so it’s a moot point.
No, he didn’t drink much if at all. Also, whether foul play or misadventure, I still believe he was still alive in 2002 when his fingerprints were expunged. I believe that helps us rule out all of those possible untoward scenarios.
Thanks for sharing, Jen. Re-visiting the transcripts was both interesting and heartbreaking. As a mother, I can’t imagine the grief and the unanswered questions Ron’s own mother took to her grave. Your tenacity is amazing.
Thank you so much, Deb! 🙏Those quotes are amazing, aren’t they? Twenty-three years after he went missing, the pain and confusion is still palpable. Something else that i find interesting is how no one representing the university in 1976 was interviewed. There was no one giving a birds-eye view of how the Tammen story has lived on…blah blah blah. Either they turned Ed Hart down or he didn’t think he needed their take.
I’m SO curious why Ron got his blood typed 6 months before he disappeared. If he went into the CIA they could have done it after he disappeared. Maybe he did get a girl pregnant that no one knew about or it turned out to be a false alarm, although it doesn’t seem likely considering what we know about his personal life.
That college friend of Ron’s (Paul—not his real name); I wonder if he just wanted privacy or if there was something else to that?
What a cover up(the whole thing)!
It’s sad he felt he could never contact his family again since they so longed to know what happened.
Yeah, that blood type test is just so weird, isn’t it? We know that Ron used to donate blood for the money–$25 per pint was incredibly good payout back then. But if that was the reason, why drive all the way to Hamilton and pay a doctor’s fee? Why didn’t he just wait till he got to the donation center to have his blood typed then? Also, I can’t think of a reason that the CIA would need to have his blood type taken, before or after recruitment, but I suppose they might have had their reasons. One reader once asked if it might have to do with a drug experiment he might have been a test subject for. I can’t imagine that they’d need to know his blood type for that either, but, again, I don’t know. As for the possibility that he got a girl pregnant, they wouldn’t be typing his blood for a false alarm. It would be after the baby was born. And back then, they waited six months after a baby was born to conduct paternity tests. So the timing doesn’t work. By my calculations, Ron would have had to have gotten someone pregnant the summer before he started at Miami, which doesn’t seem at all likely based on his dating history. Perhaps the strongest evidence that Ron’s disappearance wasn’t baby-related is the fact that he never used his Social Security number again, not to mention the fact that he didn’t take his belongings with him, including his wallet, the money in his bank account, his car, his string bass…all of his worldly possessions. He wouldn’t have dropped off the face of the earth if all he did was get a girl pregnant.
As for Paul (not his real name) 😊, I’ve given him a pseudonym because I don’t want to give away the names of all of my sources for the time being. You may be interested to know that he has been interviewed on camera by a filmmaker I’m working with. Someday, people will get to hear his story directly from him.