College Girl, Missing Quotes

“The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most tragic problem is silence.”
― Shawn Cohen, College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight

“It's like a really weird existence," she continues, her eyes glistening with tears. "Because on the one hand, it's almost like I'm hallucinating, because I have one side of me that's living currently, and I have one side of me that's living June 3. I would not say that we have grieved, because I think the not-knowing keeps you from moving forward.”
― Shawn Cohen, College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight

“For the Spierers, the case presented a deeply frustrating catch-22. Without proof of an injury or a death, there was no legal basis for a lawsuit. But without a trial, the Spielers couldn't prove Lauren's injury or death.”
― Shawn Cohen, College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight

“It was the first time in seventeen months that the Spierers would let themselves experience any joy.

"It was extraordinary," Robert Spierer told me a short time later for an article in the Journal News. "People have shared with me that it was probably one of the nicest weddings they'd been to, not because I t was elaborate and fancy but because of the human connection, the love, the compassion, the happiness for us that we would have a moment of happiness in our lives. It was just palpable in the room."

But the day came and passed, and they returned home to feel Lauren's comforting yet haunting presence, which they'd live with for years to come.”
― Shawn Cohen, College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight

“I spend every day trying to find answers to the questions, which will end this mystery. Whatever the events of the night, you hold the key to what happened to Lauren at night's end. I wonder if you give Lauren a second thought. I wonder what type of person it takes to watch our grief as we face another day. I think about you all the time. I wish for one instant you were in our place, waiting, praying, hoping. I wish you knew what it felt like to have lost a loved one. Missing... The despair that comes from the realization that someone knows the whereabouts of your missing child is indescribable. I wish you could feel that heartache. I would be lying if I said I didn't wish you were experiencing the same excruciating pain we are. I with for today; I held your fate in my hands.”
― Shawn Cohen, College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight

“When Lauren's friend Blair Wallach saw Rosenbaum at a party, she purposely avoided him.

"When we were back to school, we went to the same party," she said. "And I obviously was not going up to him. I have nothing to say to him. He confronted me and was like, 'I just want to talk to you'."

"We're not friends," Blair told him. "We have nothing to say to each other. Yes, I always thought you were a nice guy, and I wasn't there for any of this." Blair wasn't in Bloomington for summer session when Lauren went missing.

"But at the end of the day," she told him, "you are the guy that didn't walk her home, and you could have prevented all of this. So I don't like you. I have nothing to say to you.”
― Shawn Cohen, College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight

“I'd hear similar instructions throughout my career, where editors would shoot down nearly all stories from poor neighborhoods, derisively calling them "low-rent." To get the go-ahead on a crime story in, say, East New York in Brooklyn, I had to emphasize there was something truly unusual about it: which they knew as well as I did was a catch-22, because you know so little about a subject before you investigate it.

It was frustrating. Certain stories that deserved attention never made the news.”
― Shawn Cohen, College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight

“In Westchester, most crimes happened in our southernmost cities, Yonkers and Mount Vernon, urban environments with large, lower-income Black communities with fewer readers and advertisers. Our nearly all-white newsroom was directed to instead focus our attention on more affluent areas, stories that typically got more clicks, and thus more ad dollars.”
― Shawn Cohen, College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight