MORGANTOWN, IND. — Days after police and cadaver dogs searched their homes, the parents of Justin Wagers denied any connection between their son and Lauren Spierer, an IU student who has been missing since 2011.
The FBI and Bloomington Police Department searched Wagers’ mother Lisa Walker’s Martinsville, Indiana, home, a former residence of 35-year-old Wagers. The FBI stated it did not search the property of Wagers' grandparents in Trafalgar, Indiana, but said BPD or another agency may have executed a search there.
“They tore up everything, they went through our entire home, and they didn’t find anything,” Walker said. “They tore up our lives.”
Spierer was last seen at about 4:30 a.m. on June 3, 2011, in Bloomington. On June 4, her parents filed a police report and began searching for their daughter. Since then, BPD has led an active investigation into her disappearance.
Wagers has been convicted of multiple felonies: a Class 6 felony charge of performing sexual misconduct in the presence of a minor and a Class D felony charge of vicarious sexual gratification with a child. He is a registered sex offender and is currently serving time in the Johnson County Jail, charged with indecent exposure and bond forfeiture, according to the jail.
In an interview with the Indiana Daily Student, Justin’s father Doug Wagers recounted the experience of Thursday’s police search. He was standing in his gravel driveway when about five cars showed up, he said.
He held his small dog Didi inside his jacket when she started growling so loudly she started shaking, he said. On Saturday, he sat in his parents’ living room, dumbfounded.
“There’s always an ‘if,’” he said, referring to Justin Wagers’ sex convictions and the disappearance of Spierer. “And if he did do it, he needs help, not prison. But I don’t believe it. There’s not a doubt in my mind he’s not guilty.”
By Saturday, the media trucks and cop cars had left, but the stress of the police investigation enveloped the Trafalgar home, where Doug Wagers currently lives. While he and his parents looked through childhood photographs of his son, Didi rested on his lap. She was having trouble staying asleep.
The Wagers family smiled at a faded Polaroid photograph of Justin Wagers and his brother, Kyle Wagers, sitting in high chairs. Doug Wagers said Justin Wagers had a passion for fishing, and at age 6 he caught larger bass than his father.
Justin Wagers was the tight-end for the Center Grove High School football team, they said as Doug Wagers held his son's senior prom photo. After he graduated from high school, Justin Wagers took a job with Sub-Surface of Indiana, a Morgantown, Indiana, excavation company and worked in labor jobs before and after incarceration for his sex convictions, Doug Wagers said.
At Justin Wagers' mother’s house, Walker stood timidly in her pajamas. Around her, bits and pieces of yard were torn up. A WISH-TV reporter’s business card sat neglected on her doorstep. She was scared to answer the front door because of Thursday’s “24-hour spotlight” from the media, Walker said.
Along the driveway, a black fence with blue Christmas lights was broken where FBI trucks had entered her side yard.
There were no other signs of a federal investigation.
Like Doug Wagers and Didi, Walker was weathered.
“Justin is not a psycho,” she said. “He has sex problems, but he’s not a psycho.”
Her 35-year-old was not a bank robber or a murderer or a rapist, she said. So she wondered: Why had the FBI and BPD profiled him as a suspect in the June 2011 disappearance of Spierer?
Walker said she understands the Spierers’ need for closure and the FBI’s need to search every possible lead, but she knows no one will find anything connecting her son to Spierer.
“I couldn’t imagine what that man and woman are going through,” Walker said, referring to Robert and Charlene Spierer, Lauren’s parents. “But we are going through right next to what that woman went through. Our lives will never be the same.”
