Ronald Tammen - A Special Presentation from Already Gone

0:00 To listen ad free, visit simspod dot com slash subscribe starting at two ninety nine a month. You'll also get access to our exclusive bonus content episodes when you joined through Patreon or Apple subscriptions. Thanks for supporting the show. Hello and Happy New Year to all. I'm Sean and with me as always is the one and only John. I am the only John in the room. This week, John and I are taking a break and we have a presentation from the Already Gone podcast hosted by the awesome Nina Instead. She recently had an episode on the disappearance of Ronald Tamman. Ronald was only nineteen when he disappeared from his dorm room at Miami University of Ohio.

0:43 This is one of Nina's greatest episodes to date, and she was able to interview Ronald's roommate's son. It really highlights how these cases affect the entire community. We are so grateful to Nina for allowing us to share this story with all of you. And now a special presentation Have Already Gone. Ronald Henry Tammand Junior was born July twenty third, nineteen thirty three. He grew up in Maple Heights, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb. He was the second of five children. His two younger siblings came along much later, so Ron, as he was known, grew up the middle child. His childhood was largely uneventful, and he was known as a nice kid.

1:26 He was also known for his good looks, looks that were slightly yet endearingly flawed by a crooked front tooth and a cauliflower ear developed after years of wrestling. When Ron got to college, he was tall, handsome, athletic, and musically inclined playing the stand up bass. It's in college where the mystery develops because tall, handsome, athletic, and musical Ron was last seen in Old Fisher Hall, a former Victorian era mental asylum converted to a dormiti at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio on April nineteenth, nineteen fifty three.

2:07 Not only did Ron live at Fisher Hall, he was also a resident hall advisor for that school year. Ron and his dorm mate Chuck Finley, resided in Room two twenty five. Room two twenty five is at the end of the hall. You have to walk by several other dorm rooms to get to twenty five. The window of Room two twenty five, overlooked the awning on a covered porch. On the night of April nineteenth, a fellow student played a prank on Ron, and at eight o'clock Ron requested new bed sheets because someone had put a dead fish in his bed. Now, people put a lot of stock in this dead fish, but it appears to be only a prank and not indicative of something more serious. We're going to come back to the fish. Ron was alone in his dorm room now weekend. His roommate was back in Dayton visiting family. The roommate, Chuck, would not return until late Sunday night. As to what Ron did that weekend, well, according to the website Ronald Tamman dot com, on Saturday, Ron played music with the Campus Owls, a music ensemble at the Omicron Delta Kappa Carnival, which was a fundraiser for the Honor Society. Ron's brother, Richard, who was also attending Miami University, was with Ron until roughly eleven o'clock that night. Ron may have also paid a visit to the Delta Tau Delta fraternity house that evening. On Sunday

3:40 the nineteenth, the last day that anyone would see Ron. He was busy and spotted all around campus. In the afternoon, about three o'clock he was seen in his dorm room studying psychology, and this is unusual. We'll come back to him studying psychology, but make a note of it. Ron would have dinner in the dining hall that night, sitting at a table with other students. I want to note that there was a dress code for the dining hall. Shirt and tie were required garments. One of the people Ron sat with that late afternoon as he had dinner was a man named Ken mac diffettmc diffittt would later say that the conversation at the table was friendly and upbeat.

4:22 Ron's main topic of conversation was music, specifically the Campus Owls, which is the band he'd played with the previous night. It's after five o'clock when another resident of Fisher Hall sees Ron, and they don't notice anything strange or unusual about his activities or his behavior. Other students will report seeing Ron in a towel, likely headed for the showers, but the timing of this is in question. One person said they saw him in the afternoon, another said it was the evening. Either way, Ron is clean and fresh by eight o'clock Sunday night. At seven o'clock that evening, Ron is in his dorm and he spent a bit of time helping a fellow student, Richard Titus, with his school work. At some point, Ron says he has his own studies to focus on, and he returns to Room two twenty five. At eight o'clock, Ron is seen again.

5:18 He's going downstairs to request clean linen's because someone left fish in his bed. Richard Titus, the student that Ron had been assisting with his work, will later take credit for the prank. Ron had short sheeted Richard's bed and Richard was getting even. Missus Todhunter, the residence hall manager, told Ron that he looked tired. Ron agreed with her and said that he was headed to bed. He took the clean linens and walked back to his room. We know he made it to his room because his bed was made up. Chuck Finley, Ronald Tamman's roommate, came in between nine thirty and ten o'clock that evening. He found the room empty. Chuck figured that Ron was spending the night at his Delta Tau Delta fraternity house and did not report Ron's disappearance until the next day, while Chuck is settling down for the night, a mystery as unraveling around him. Now, looking at the dorm room, there is no evidence that Ron was forced from the room. Nothing was disturbed. His clothing, car keys, wallet, identification, his watch, high school class ring, and other personal items all left in the dorm room. He also left the lights on, the radio playing, and a psychology textbook laying open on his desk. While Ron was alone in his room that evening, no one residing in Fisher Hall heard anything resembling a disturbance. Now,

6:49 we mentioned earlier that Ron was studying psychology that weekend, but Ron was no longer enrolled in the psychology course. He had dropped his psychology a few weeks earlier. Yet it was the psychology textbook that was left open on his desk in the dorm. If Ron's not taking a psychology class, why is he studying psychology? The book was opened to pages two ninety four and two ninety five. One of the subheadings on that page is post hypnotic suggestion. Could this be a clue as to what became of our missing student? While investigators searched for him. They discovered Ron's gold nineteen thirty eight Chevrolet Sedan in its place in the school parking lot. Inside the car, they found his base fiddle. Ron's bank account was untouched. He had about two hundred dollars in savings. That's the equivalent of two thousand, two hundred dollars in today's money. And remember, Ron's room to twenty five is at the end of the hall. If someone came for him, they would have to pass several other dorm rooms to get there. If they wanted to kidnap Ron, they had to pass a lot of occupied rooms to do so. And Ronald Tamman was a healthy, athletic young man, it's likely he would have put up a fight. While nothing eventful happened in the dorms that evening, late that Sunday night, something odd happened in Oxford, about twelve miles from campus. A woman

8:25 claimed that a young man came to her door at eleven o'clock the evening. Tamman disappeared and asked what town he was in. She told him, and then he asked directions to the bus station, which she gave him, and he departed. However, the bus line had suspended its midnight run, so this young man could not have gotten on a bus. The witness says the man she spoke to was disheveled and dirty and appeared upset and confused. He was not wearing a coat or a hat, although it was a cold night and there was snow on the ground. He was apparently on foot, as the woman did not see or hear a vehicle. The man did match the physical description of Ron and was wearing similar clothes, but it was never confirmed that they were the same person, and Ron's brother later stated he did not believe the man the witness saw was Ronald Tamman. There was another odd occurrence, but this took place five months before Ronald Tamman disappeared.

9:26 Ron went to the Butler County Coroner's office at Hamilton, Ohio, and he asked for a test to have his blood typed. The coroner claims that this was the only such request he ever got in thirty five years of practice, which is why he remembered it so well. We can't say why Ron wanted the test done and why he didn't have it conducted in Oxford, where local physicians or the university hospital could have typed his blood for him. Ron was scheduled for a physical examination by the select of Service for induction into the Army, but inductees did not need to know their blood type in advance of the physical. Ron's parents, who lived in Maple Heights, Ohio, last saw Ron a week before he disappeared, and they said he did not appear to be troubled during their visit and will be right back after a word from this Week.

10:17 Sponsor Ronald Tamman appeared to have a normal life for a mill college student in the nineteen fifties. He was well liked by his peers. He was dating at the time that he vanished, but he did not have a steady girl friend. Ron was on the wrestling team, he played in the school dance band, the Campus Owls, and he was a business major who got pretty good grades, although by the end of that semester he was no longer a full time student, having dropped a class, and his grades were sliding. This is important to note because the draft was in effect and Ron was at risk of losing his selective service to ferment. When Ron disappeared, a full investigation took place for the university. A man named Carl Knox headed the investigation. The Oxford, Ohio Police and the Ohio State Patrol also investigated. In the days following his disappearance, Miami University students joined the local ROTC for searches of the campus and nearby wooded areas. The FBI also became involved in the search for Ron Tamman, and they did have Ron's fingerprints on file. They'd been taken years earlier when Ron was in elementary school. In the summer of nineteen fifty three, weeks after he disappeared, Ron's draft status changed and the FBI really started to look for him. Selective service violation and all that, but

11:50 they closed the case on Ronald Tamman in nineteen fifty five. Investigators turned up nothing, not a single confirmed sight or sign of Ronald Tamman since April nineteen fifty three. When Fisher Hall was demolished in the nineteen seventies, extra care was given to search the building and the debris for his remains. They were able to check the wells and cistern beneath the building, but nothing of interest was recovered. A couple of odd little bits to mention Ronald Tamman had dropped his psychology class. Yet the night he disappeared, he was studying psychology. During the nineteen fifty two fifty three school year, Ron's psychology instructor, Saint Clair Switzer, was a lieutenant colonel with the US Air Force Reserve while he taught at university. Doctor Switzer was also a hypnosis expert and a pharmacist. CIA documents show that Switzer was likely involved in Project Artichoke, which was a forerunner of MK Ultra. One of Ron's classmates remembers men on the lawn of Fisher Hall recruiting volunteers for a study. Could Ron, who was just another cash strapped college student, have participated in something top secret at his disappearance was part of a larger plan? Well? Possibly, It's hard to know where to look when there are so many possibilities and so few clues to sort through. In the nineteen fifty two

13:21 fifty three school year, Ronald Tamman roomed with Chuck Finley, who we mentioned earlier in the episode, and during my research, I was thinking about how this must have impacted Chuck for the remainder of his college career. Chuck Finley was that guy, that guy who roomed with Tamman, that guy who reported him missing. What do you think that guy knows? After ron disappeared, Chuck was moved to a different room with a new roommate. His own room was a crime scene. While the Tammon family suffered and struggled, Chuck Finley faced his own challenges in the days, weeks, and years after Tammon vanished. Today we're talking with David Finley, Chuck's son, who has a special interest in seeing Ronald Tamman's case resolved.

14:07 I came back to campus, to Fisher Hall and went to my room as normal, and the light was in the room, and in the room, the door was unlocked, and Ron's book was opened his side of the desk. And the desk chair was pulled back as though. I get up and went somewhere. So I thought you too much about that, and I study, I think to eleven o'clock that night. I got back to school about nine o'clock, went to bed as usual, and got the next morning and didn't see Ron in his bed. I still wasn't too excited. About it, because I thought you might spend the night at the fraternity house. So today we're talking about Ronald Tamman who disappeared from his dorm room back in nineteen fifty three. And you, David, have a unique connection to this disappearance.

14:56 Yes, my father, Charles Finley, was Ronald Tamman's roommate at the time of his disappearance. And for those of you who may not be familiar with the story, I can give you tell you some things from my father's point of view. He returned to the dorm at Miam University at approximate nine thirty between nine thirty and ten o'clock on April nineteenth, nineteen fifty three, and he found his roommate, Ron Hammond's deescalight on radio was playing his class ring, His checkbook, his wallet and personal effects like that were. On the desk. We hit a psychology book open on the desk. Now, when this happened, initially, you know, my dad's just come back from being in Dayton over the weekend home with his family, and he just walked into the room and it's like, well, it's just kind of not that unusual really, you know, Ron could have emptied his pockets and stuff and gone down and taken a shower or something. Dad said, nothing crossed his mind. That really at the moment, that was that unusual.

15:57 So it wasn't concerning what he came back to. At that moment. No, it wasn't concerning. And Dad said it wasn't unusual for Ron to go to the fraternity. His older brother, Richard Tamman, was also student on campus and he sometimes hung out with him, so they didn't think anything about it. He settled in for you know, settled in for the evening, of course, not realizing what was going on around him, and Dad said, you know, the next day, the next morning, he was on his way to class and ran into Richard Tamman and said, hey, have you seen Ron. He wasn't back at the room last night. Richard said no. And neither one of them at the moment really gave it much of a second thought because this is college kids, you know, and teenagers.

16:44 So it wasn't until that next day they had a like a house meeting for the dorm. Dad and Ron were both advisors. They were like student advisors. They were m Yeah, they were both student advisors. Dad brought it up at that point and said, Ron didn't back last night. I haven't seen him. Richard hasn't seen him, and I don't. I can't tell you all the stats and when the police were called. But very shortly after that the police recalled and still Dad said this. At that moment, it was like, well, he could be off on a lark or something, you know. Yeah, nobody was panicked, and nobody was afraid. Nobody was panicked, right, Nobody was that upset at that moment. But my dad said a day or two later, the National Guard showed up and started dragging the pond on campus, and my dad said, the moment that happened, for some reason, that hit him and at that moment he was like, oh, something really terrible could really have happened. And it really at that moment, something about you know, dragging the pond.

17:46 Just that moment really hit home with Dad and really had you know, a big effect on him. At that point, things are starting to get more serious, you know, And the police showed up. Dad was of course interviewed by the police, and the FBI didn't that wasn't until later their involvement. But the gravity of the situation really didn't hit home until the National Guard showed up. Yeah, and they had I mean, they had they had students searching the grounds I mean there were there were search parties everywhere and no ron and then strangely Dad got moved to a room at the other end of the hall, still in Fisher Hall, and spent the rest of the semester pretty much without a roommate, which I don't think mentally could have been good. For him at all. No, that must have been difficult.

18:27 I think I think it was they should he should. Not have been alone. I want to talk just briefly about their room, because people say, well, he must have been dragged from his dorm room, but that's not really possible. Yeah, their dorm room was on the second floor, so you had to go in really probably the front doors of the dorm and it was a big old building, built in eighteen forties, and you had to go to the central stairs and go up to the second floor. Then you had to turn left and go all the way to the end of the hall. And it was quite a lot. It was a huge building. It was quite a long and of course dorms on either side. So this is not a situation where somebody walk in the front door, up a flight of stairs, down a long hall and you know, abduct someone who is an athlete who's in good shape. Right, Yeah, he wasn't.

19:17 He was a good site. It was a healthy, young, healthy young wrestler. Yeah. And so the scenario of somebody, you know, taking Ron out of their you know, bodily is just not I don't know how it, ever, ever, ever could have happened. I see no scenario where that would have happened. And we know from what we discussed in the episode that the whole wave of the dorm was occupied. There were students in and out and helping someone with homework. Yes, it was not he was at the end of the hall, so he would have to go buy several dorm rooms to exit the building. Yes, absolutely, Ron's disappearance. You know, if you think about the fifties, nineteen fifty three, you know, college campus, this is a safe place. Yes, it becomes home and you know, and it's a safe place in general.

20:03 Well, it's Ohio. It's not like he was in Manhattan. Right, not a huge university. And I think that's another thing that had a huge effect on my dad because this was Miami University. This was a safe place. And to have this happen in a place that essentially it's your home. I think that was one of the things that really affected my father, that this was a safe place and this happened. I should say this is all not necessarily in order, but my dad always maintained that he just had a feel, a feeling that Ron was always alive. Until it got much much later, you know, decades and decades down the road, and you know, certainly at lege that age, you know, natural causes could have taken him. But Dad always felt that Ron was alive.

20:58 Couldn't explain it. He just always feel that Ron was alive. And your dad had lived with Ron for several months. They weren't tight, they were friendly. They were friendly, and they got along great. They were a lot alike. They were both very hard working students. You know, college wasn't a breech for my dad. He worked very very hard at it. And you know, Ron was remember the campus owls. He was a wrestling team, you know, a student. He was busy. Yeah, fraternity. They were both busy. They were both a lot alike, focused on what they were there to do. But got along great. And we're both advisors, you know. But they'd lived together for months, Yes, they had lived together for months. This had such a profound effect on my father. He actually graduated from Miami in fifty six early winter graduation took a little bit longer to graduate, and once he graduated from Miami, well, this is interesting.

21:49 After this incident. The following year, when Dad moved out of Fisher Hall, my father never returned to Fisher Hall in his life. He never returned to Fisher Hall. He was on campus till fifty six. He could at any point he could have gone back to Fisher Hall, yes, of course, and then after graduation he never went back to Miami. My dad lived to be eighty five years old and never returned to Miami. My dad did not speak about what happened to his roommate. It was something that he did not speak about to friends, family. It wasn't something that anyone that knew him unless they were Miami and knew from the university, from the university college. They did not know, and he didn't speak of it. It really affected him very deeply.

22:32 We talk about in the episode how your dad became that guy. Yeah, yeah, that's sort of a strange, really strange thing. That guy Ron's roommate, that guy that also had an effect on Dad. Sure for the next three years. I mean, anybody that he was in a class with there was a hand over the mouth. They did know who that is. Of course, that guy. Roomed with Ron Right, so that was another factor for sure. So Dad didn't speak of And after graduation, my dad, with this business degree from a very well known, prestigious business college, didn't pursue business. He went to a little town south of Cleveland, West Ohio, where his younger brother was.

23:15 His younger brother was a nationally known roller skating professional teacher, and my dad had skated and had done a little teaching with his brother in the past. And my dad went to West Ohio and spent a year and a half, two years maybe with his brother teaching skating. He needed to he needed some sort of a reset. He had to decompress after what he'd been through. Yes, And I think, you know, that's that's a good comment because I think because of his studies and the energy that it took for his studies, there was no time to decompress into process. It was all I have to get this done right. You know. Dad worked really hard to be able to go to school. There was no money pay for it, so he worked at graft Hardware and Dayton during the summers, and he worked in the mail room I think at Fisher Hall and delivered the mail to the students. He also worked in the dining hall and that allowed him to get free meals.

24:10 So he had a really full plate as a nineteen year old whose roommate just disappeared. Yes, and he was not getting grace from his professors for exams. There was no grace for anything. And Dad had all these things to maintain, and he did. But I think afterwards, you know, he just you stop a train in all the cars come together and come right at you, right, and I think that's what happened. So he went to West Ohio to decompress and to have a reset, I think, you know, and in that process, you know, it's very strange. I'm sitting here talking with you, and Ron disappeared. Dad went to wester Ohio, which was not in the cards prior to that, of course, and there.

24:50 He meets Judy Sweitzer, who would. Become my mom. And so if Ron hadn't disappeared, and all these things hadn't happened, we wouldn't be speaking today, and so continue on that. Dad only shared the story of Ron and his disappearance with my mom after they'd known each other about two years, and he spoke about it to her one time and did not speak about it again for decades and decades again nineteen fifty three, small ish university, and this happens, So this can happen anywhere. Anywhere, anytime. Yes, And that's a hard that's a I think it's a really hard thing to walk around with like this has happened in this situation, and this could happen anywhere anytime.

25:35 I know that was really difficult for my father. You know, our house was a house the doors were locked. When I was a teenager, I smoked. I walked out the front door and have a cigarette ites ten degrees. I can't get back in the house because that's. All the door unlocked and locked behind me. When you went somewhere, you knew there was no not calling I'm here, I'm doing this. My parents always knew where we were. But you didn't know why that, You're right, such a good point. We did not know why at that point. My father was always like that, Yeah, and that was just the. Way Dad was. Dad was being a bit of a hard ass, right, right, But you didn't know there was a good, good reason. Yeah, we did. We did not know. We just knew. Dad was really extreme with security and personal safety. He talked to us about situational awareness. When you're out somewhere, it's important that you don't get so focused on what's going on in front of you.

26:24 You're not so aware of what's going on around you. Which is not a conversation. I mean, I think today it's a conversation you have with your kids. But in the seventies and eighties, nobody had that conversation in their kids. There was stranger danger, of course, yes, but not what you're talking about, you know, looking for the exits, making sure you lock the door when you come in and you're not followed, right, That sort of enhanced awareness. Right, And that's what always was around our household. Following on that, in the nineteen seventies, they made a documentary called The Phantom of Oxford and it was a channel an out of dateon Ohio, and they wanted to delve into it and explore what they could. Well, they started calling our house. My mom was taking calls, and they wanted to speak to my dad and he was not available.

27:11 He was not available and he was not available to discuss the subject. And after literally I don't know if it was weeks and weeks of them calling and calling and calling for some reason, my dad finally acquiesced and said, yes, I will do it. And so the day I heard the story of Ron Tammand's disappearance was the night Channel seven came to our house. And it was the seventies, so it wasn't, you know, a little handheld thing. It was all the big lights in the whole, the whole set up and took over half the house. And I sat cross legged on the living room floor out of camera shot, and sat and listened to my dad tell the story.

27:52 That's the first time I had heard the story, and of course at that moment I understood a lot of things that I had not understood. But I also so understood more the effect has had on my father. And then you know, it ended. I don't even know. I can't remember as a family if we watched it when it aired, and then it wasn't spoken about it. So it wasn't like the TV cameras came and then your dad sat down and had a heart to heart with the family about it. It was like the TV cameras came and then they left, and that was sort of the end of it. It was sort of the end of it. Dad didn't speak about it because it was such a touchy subject. We didn't really bring it up. Dad didn't talk about college.

28:32 And this is one aspect of his college career, right, this is just one moment in time that affected so much. He didn't talk about college when we were kids. He didn't know when I was in college, I did this or you know whatever. There was no discussion of it. The one thing you think he did say over and over about Miami. He loved how beautiful the campus was. So I know, my dad used to talk about his college roommate, a guy named Terry. So I heard all about Terry growing up. Right, Well, that's kind of a kind of a normal thing. My college roommate. You know a lot of people have a college room with my buddy, my buddy, that's a buddy, and they talked about it. Dad didn't. I didn't speak about it at all. He really didn't. And then, of all things, my youngest brother is a three time world champion roller skater.

29:17 Wow. And as his career in skating started to progress, well, he got to the point he was competing in the International Sports Festival Pan American Games. So he's skating and it comes home and says, well, supposed to go to Germany. I could just see the terror in my dad's face. My brother was. Maybe sixteen, and they're supposed to go to Germany to compete in the world level, and there's a big deal. My dad finally said, Okay, I found this out later. I'm not going to keep him from doing anything he ever wants to do like this. But it was very difficult for my father. It wasn't like you understood his hesitation. You just saw Dad trying to hold him back a little bit and thinking, why is dad being like this?

30:04 Right, And then things got really serious when it was International Sports Festival of Pan American Games. It was in Cuba. Oh and we didn't do Cuba back then. No, So mom and Dad were like, well, we're not not gone. Oh no. He comes and he said they're going. The team is going to Cuba, and my dad was just you know, like sending him to Cuba during the Cold War, Yeah, yeah, exactly. But anyway, so he went. But it was a lot for dad, you know, it was an awful lot. So later in life, my dad passed away in twenty seventeen, but probably about five years before he passed, he had Parkinson's and he was getting to the point where he was better off if he was with someone. Okay, he could still function, and you know, he had all he was totally intact, his faculties and everything, but he just got to the point where the Parkinson's would be daily tasks became how to use his electric raser again? Or how do I clear this electric razor again? You know, things like that. He did support, but he was mentally completely intact, and so I started spending a lot of time with him, several days a week, and he would ask me questions, you know, what's the difference? What's Netflix in YouTube? And what are all these different things? And how are they different? What does each one do? And I said, well, Dad, YouTube is anything in everything. You wouldn't believe what you can find on YouTube, right, I said, you know, from from old old movie Cluch, yeah, to current how to trim your toenails, like anything and everything.

31:37 And my dad said really, So I thought, what could I punch in and show Dad that's on here that would be interesting to him. So I punched in the documentary. That he did in the seventies, that dad. Did in the seventies, and I said, here it is. I said, what's on YouTube? You here you are, and the footage of him and the documentary The Fan of Oxford, And that actually was the impetus to start the discussion about Ron and Miami. And he let me go there. But it took fifty years. It took fifty years, yes, and he went there and we talked about it for a long time. I got on Miami's site and sort of pulled up some different buildings and asking him things whatever. Then I went on the National Archives and pulled up old pictures of Fisher Hall from the eighteen forties when it was you know, a yeah, yes, asylum. And that's what really started. And he was open. I don't know if it was late in life, and at that point he was like, maybe I should tell somebody how I feel about this.

32:41 And how it affected me. That's when we really got into it, and I learned so much about my father and all these light bulbs kept going off, like, oh, that's why he did that, that's why he did that, that's why he was so extreme. With that. The other thing, too, is a wonderful thing about this is it taught my dad you can lose anything anytime, and I think because of that, we never left his presence without him saying I love you. He became very. He was to begin with because what his parents. Were like that. He was always very expressive, even very demonstrative. Yes, but he was such a loving, caring man. But I think Ron's disappearance and the fact that anything can happen to anyone at any time situation really caused him to be so much more. Being on the other end of that was really wonderful. He loved us, and he always told us that he loved us and showed us. He told me about a prank where they I think they got the rope off the flagpole and went around Fisher Hall and tied all the doorknobs together so everybody couldn't get no one could get out of their dorm room. I'd never heard anything funny about that, about Fisher Call or anything.

33:54 So I think it was really good for me because I got an insight into my father that I hadn't had, and I think it was really good for him. We've always been very close and I think it was a really good thing for him to be able to share it with me and share his thoughts. So later in life, about a year or two before my dad passed. I can't remember what precipitated it. Jennifer Winger may have called. Okay, And Jennifer Winger has the Ronald Tamman webshow web, sort of the expert. She's devoted more time. I probably a decade of time to this unsolved mystery at this point. But I think it may have been the last call from her, and he hung up the phone and he said, I will probably not live long enough to know the answer to this, but it's really important to me.

34:47 I hope someday you know the answer. So I don't follow absolutely every word that's written about Ron Tamman's disappearance, and you know, updates on every site and everything, but I'm watching and waiting somewhat patiently. I know there will be an answer to this. But Dad always believed that Ron did something on his own, meaning Ron made a decision, maybe one of the ultimate life changes. But Ron was not forced out of that building. Ron chose to go. Absolutely Yeah, it doesn't make any sense that he was forced out of the building. It just doesn't too many people around. If you do some reading about Ron Tamman and his disappearance, there's a lot to read. But there are so many factors that point two, Ron was how do I say this? Ron was up to something? Ron was involved with. I believe one of our governmental agencies.

35:48 We touch on that a little bit in the episode with Project Art to Choke and mk Ultra. It was a precursor to mk Ultra that he may have been based on his psychology professor dabbling on the peripheree of some of this, yes, but. They're just there's so many things. You know, the fact that he left his personal effects, He didn't take his car. His car was right outside the. Window, right with his musical instruct exactly exactly, his class rang, his colll ing right. So basically what's interesting is if you look at it, anything besides his DNA that could identify Ron Tamman paid and Ron left with nothing that would identify him as Ron Tamman, nothing on his person. And I think that was for a reason. I really do. And this is an opinion, and it's my opinion. It doesn't mean it's right by any means, but there are an awful lot of things that point to involvement with the governmental agency.

36:46 You know. The other thing to remember is, this is a college student that disappeared, what seventy one years now, and the FBI still if you put in a Freedom of information records for information about Ron Tamman, a huge percentage of it is redacted or they don't supply it. Now, if this was just a simple case of a college student wandered off and got killed, or you know, something in the body has never been found, why would the FBI seventy one years later be guarding his file and all the information so closely Project Artichoke and m ka Ultra our public knowledge, it's all been made not all, but ninety percent available. Right, We're aware, We're aware that the government did this. So it's very incongruous that anything in the fairy has happened. And he was hauled out of the building by someone he was involved in this and this is a theory.

37:41 And that's what we're talking about. We're talking about theories and experiences with this disappearance. Right, did your dad have an opinion? I mean he thought that he left on his own. Accord, so my dad in later years, after reading and hearing about information that had come to light that of course he did not know at the time, and all so much has come to light since then. My father's belief was that, yeah, Ron got involved with a governmental agency. And you know, there's speculation that Ron could have been gay, and if you were a gay male in nineteen fifty three, you couldn't have a life, no, not in this country. And so the possibility exists that Ron did this to have a life that he wasn't allowed to have in this country or on his present path at the time.

38:32 So there were a lot of things going on in Ron's life that at the moment in nineteen fifty three, Ron was probably the only person that knew all these things were happening. In some unusual things about Ron and what was going on with him at that time. One was that he had a scholarship from I think his family lived in Shaker Heights outside of Cleveland, but some country club or something. He had a scholarship. But the guidelines for that scholarship were that he had to mean a certain great average and he asked had to be a full time student. Well, he had dropped a psychology class and another class, and so he had lost his full time status, so he was going to lose that.

39:13 And he also didn't come from a wealthy family, so he was relying on credit. He did not come from a wealthy family, had a lot of siblings, They did not come from a lot of money, so that that was very important. The other thing is because he had dropped enough classes that he had lost his full time status, that meant he became l's for the draft. He would lose this deferment. Those things we know for sure were going on if he was gay, if someone approached a young man in that situation and said, look, we can offer you this right, We can offer you a situation where you can spend a certain amount of time overseas and countriesider much more and more understand and accepting of folks like you, And it makes sense. I can't cite all of the evidence and everything to back all that up completely, but it's there.

40:05 It is, And we talked about it a little bit in the episode with his psychology professor. The class that he dropped, the class where the book was open on his desk. I think the night he disappeared, the psychology professor was known to have connections to the Department of Defense and the Air Force. So there's it. So we're not pulling this theory out of thin air. There's breadcrumbs, yes, that lead us in this direction. Yes, So you know, seventy one years later, it's still to me a very very very fascinating and complicated and intriguing mystery. The Fisher Hall was an asylum in its early life, and my dad said it was kind of creepy.

40:51 He said the dining room was on the second floor and the kitchen was in the basement. And Dad said, when the cooks used to spend the weekend, so we used to stay at Fisher Hall for the weekend, they would sleep in the old cells in the basement. Fisher Hall was, you know, it was it was the building was so old, you know, besides the cells in the basement. And Dad said, you know, there were weird things, like all the steps in the building were stone or granted, but he said in the middle of them they were they were half gone. They were so. Worn for so many you know, from all the traffic. And he said the third floor was closed off because it was not in good condition. And he said, what would happen is he said, the plaster would fall off the ceiling on the third floor then hit the floor on the third floor, which was of course right above the second floor, and you would hear it. So there's sort of weird, you know, weird things.

41:43 The building went bump in the night. The building definitely went bump in the night very well put. Yes, you know, and there's there are stories that the people sighting the ghost of Ron wandering through the formal gardens behind Fisher Hall. You know, when Fisher Hall was still standing. They tore it down almost fifty years ago, and they looked for him. We talked about that briefly, and yeah, it did. They searched the rubble, they searched the cisterns and the well under the building. Yes, they did not find him. There are things that the university didn't do what I would consider a great job investigating. They didn't follow all leads, and looking back, there were leads that they definitely should have followed but did not. So there's a lot of inconsistencies in that.

42:25 There's two things I want to talk about. One is the New York sighting. Months after Ron's disappearance. A professor from Miami. He was in a restaurant in New York. A look across the restaurant a table, and there were approximately five men sitting there, and he swore one of them was Ron Tampon, and I believe he made eye contact with him. Professor got up shortly after that, went to use the restroom, and when he came back, the whole table was cleared, the men were all gone. It's never been substantiated, but it makes you under It certainly. Does well for me. It follows in with my idea he's out there, you know, he's working for the government or whatever.

43:09 The other thing that I wanted to talk about, because when you told me this, I was just like, what were the fingerprints? Ron's fingerprints were in the system from when he was a child, So when he went missing for the Selective Service, they pulled his fingerprints and they had them in a database. Eventually, as technology caught up, they were entered into a database, the national database, probably Athos or Cotis or one of those. But then in the early two thousands, something happened. Well, they were removed. And that's strange because normally when they're removed, that means the person is deceased.

43:49 So why in two thousand and two. Right, why were they just out of the blue removed? We don't know. The FBI won't answer, It won't tell us why they were removed. I'm so intrigued. I want to know what Ron did. I'm the type person. It's just how David Finley is wired. I feel immense connections to people. I am terribly terribly close to my father. A matter of fact, his ashes are with me today in my ring that I'm willing. So yes, my dad always wanted to know. It was really it was important to him. He never expressed that through his life to myself, I don't think anyone, not even my mom. Later in life, he told me that it was really important to him.

44:31 He really really wanted to know what happened to Ron. And as I said earlier, if he couldn't find out, he really. Hopes that in my lifetime. I know. But again I go back to if this was just a college student that wander off somewhere in nineteen fifty three, why is all the information so impossible to get your hands on it. Jennifer Winger has had to pull teeth to get information. I think by the FBI guarding all this. So closely, it adds to the mistique. They just throw up red flags everywhere. They're just like, hello, look at us, because right. Something's going on here, something to see here, right. Very strange. But I really hope we have an answer.

45:13 But until then, it's a very very intriguing mystery, a mystery that has had an effect on my life and my family's life in a way that I never would have imagined. And I don't think a lot of people would think about this collateral effect. Yes, you know. That was one of the reasons I wanted to talk with you about this today, is because we talk about how an incident like this can impact the community, and you give us such a clear example of how not only it impacted your dad, but it impacted you and your siblings and the way life ended up. If Ron hadn't disappeared, it would have been completely different. And you know, this is not so much about my family, but I've read enough I'm aware of the effects that this has had on Ron's family. Yes, and that's really, really, really tragic.

46:02 Speaking of Ron's family, I'm going to end this episode with the word from Ron's father. I have never lost hope but 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. I've never given up a lot of times I've I've thought that, oh, he's going to show up. He's gonna going to show up here pretty soon.

46:43 While there is a ton of coverage about Ron's case available online, I strongly suggest you visit www dot Ronald Tamman dot com, which I linked to in the show notes. This website offers the definitive look at Ron's case. I'm your host, Nina instead. I appreciate you listening and please be safe.

47:29 Thanks for listening. Visit sinspod dot com, slash subscribe for exclusive bonus content and to listen ad free. Remember to like and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and threads at Sins and Survivors. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. You can contact us at questions at Sinson Survivors dot com. If you are someone you know as affected by domestic violence or needs support, please reach out to local resources or the National Domestic Violence LIE. A list of resources is available on our website sinsensurvivors dot com. Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast, is research, written, and produced by your hosts Sean and John. The information shared in this podcast is accurate at the time of recording.

48:15 If you have questions, concerns, or corrections, please email us. Links to source material for this episode can be found on our website, sinsensurvivors dot com. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast creators, hosts, and their guests. All individuals are innocent until proven guilty. This content does not constitute legal advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with legal professionals for guidance.