mysterious disappearance still haunts college town

70 years ago today, Ron Tammen disappeared without a trace, this event remains an enduring local mystery here in southwest Ohio to this day. Ronald Henry Tammen, Jr. was a thriving college student residing in Fisher Hall at Miami University in the quaint college town of Oxford, Ohio. By all appearances he seemed like a studious sophomore of the time, involved in clubs and organizations around campus, belonged to Delta Tau Delta fraternity and was a member of the school’s wrestling team. What is known about his activities on the evening of his disappearance is relatively minimal. Based on a timeline, we know it was around 8:00pm on Sunday night, April 19, 1953, when Tammen left his dorm room at Fisher Hall to retrieve clean bedsheets from the Hall manager as someone had put a dead fish in his bed. Tammen returned to his room with the sheets to study for his psychology class. That would be the last time he was seen alive. It was 10:30 p.m. that same night when Tammen’s roommate returned to find Tammen’s psychology book laying open on his desk and all the room lights on. The roommate didn’t think much of it, assuming that Tammen had decided to spend the night in the Delta Tau Delta house. It wasn’t until the following day when Tammen never showed up that his roommate became worried and a search for the missing student commenced. To this day, Ronald Tammen’s fate is unknown. There were alleged sightings after his disappearance. One witness claimed Tammen came to her home, dazed and confused on the morning of April 20th looking for directions to the closest bus stop. In 1973, Dr. Garrett Boone who was also the Butler County Coroner recalled that Tammen had visited his office, seeking a blood test, five months to the day before his disappearance. The Coroner even had records of the visit and said in his 35 years of practice, Ronald Tammen was the only person to visit his office to make such a request. When Fisher Hall was demolished in 1978, searches of the rubble were conducted, but no signs of Tammen or his remains were ever found. If you want to go down the rabbit hole on this one, I highly recommend Miami alumna Jennifer Wenger’s amazingly comprehensive blog on this case called ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’ you can find it linked first in the source citations at the bottom of the page.