Tiffany Jennifer Papesh

Status:

Open

Jurisdiction:

Maple Heights Police Department (OH)

Missing From:

Maple Heights, Ohio

Summary:

Tiffany Papesh mysteriously disappeared after leaving a convenience store near her home in Maple Heights, Ohio during the summer of 1980. Three years later, a man would be charged with her kidnapping and murder. In 1985, he would be convicted of the charges and sentenced to life in prison. Despite the conviction, Tiffany’s body was never found. There is also some doubt as to whether the man was truly her killer. The case remains unsolved.

Vital Statistics

Circumstances of Disappearance:

Tiffany was last seen in Maple Heights, Ohio on June 13th 1980. Her family was planning on going on a camping trip at 6:00 pm that day so Tiffany’s stepmother sent her to a neighborhood grocery store to get hamburger buns since they didn’t have any. She left her house located at 5840 East Glenn Drive at 2:45 pm to walk to the Convenient Food Mart store located just a half block away from her house at 5280 Lee Road. A clerk at the store said Tiffany got the hamburger buns and allowed an elderly woman to check out her items before she paid for the buns. She then left the store and began walking back towards her house. When Tiffany failed to return home by 3:00 pm, her stepmother began searching the neighborhood for her but was unable to locate her anywhere. Tiffany was then reported missing to the police and a large scale search began for her. Police believe that Tiffany was abducted shortly after she left the store on the day she disappeared. According to witnesses at the store, she was seen leaving with a middle aged woman. Police described the woman as being white with short brown hair. She was approximately 50 years old in 1980, stood at 5’4” and weighed 160 pounds. The woman might’ve been driving a blue car. No one came forward to identify the woman and it’s unclear if she was involved in Tiffany’s abduction.

Additional Details:

Shortly after Tiffany’s disappearance, a man named Brandon Lee Flagner from Elyria, Ohio began inserting himself into the Papesh investigation. Flagner had been previously incarcerated for burglary in 1978 and was released from prison just three months before Tiffany went missing. He attempted to sell shirts with the child’s photo printed on them to spread awareness and help raise funds for the investigation. Tiffany’s stepmother and father rebuffed him, believing he intended to pocket the money for himself. In November of 1980, Flagner told his brother that Tiffany’s father had hired him to find the girl’s killer. Flagner also said he felt that the girl’s own father was the killer. After this, the Papesh family had him arrested and the police warned Flagner to stop bothering them. He would later be arrested in Texas for child molestation and burglary which landed him back in prison. While incarcerated in Texas, Flagner sent letters to two Ohio ministers and a television station in which he confessed to being involved in Tiffany’s disappearance. Flagner confessed that he abducted Tiffany on the day she went missing and took her to a wooded area by a nearby school where he to sexually assaulted her. When she resisted his advances, Flagner said he shot Tiffany in the head. Afterward, he dismembered her remains and allegedly cannibalized parts of them before scattering the rest in various areas of Ohio. Police and the FBI believed his confession because he mentioned a scar on Tiffany’s right knee which was not known to the general public at the time. He was charged with two count of aggravated murder and one count of kidnapping in connection with Tiffany’s presumed death. At his trial, his victims who were all girls under the age of 10 testified against him. They told the court that Brandon threatened them with violence after molesting them. He was convicted of all the charges in June 1985 and sentenced to life imprisonment as well as 25 additional years for the kidnapping charge. Despite the conviction, many believe Flagner to be innocent of Tiffany’s death. According to investigators, he made over thirty different confessions to the crime and all of them contradicted each other. His time card from work showed Brandon was working at his job at Sta-Co in Creston, Ohio which is 40 miles away from Maple Heights. The time card showed he stopped working about a half an hour before the kidnapping. Some have suggested that a coworker might’ve stamped the card for Flagner but his boss said that even if this happened, the production line needed five men, Flagner included to function properly. There were no reported issues that day although no one can say exactly if he was at work that day. Even if he left work a half hour before Tiffany’s abduction, he wouldn’t have had time to get to Maple Heights in order to grab the girl. Flagner has since recanted his confessions and claims he only did so because he was about to be released from prison which also meant he would stop the sex offender treatment program he was enrolled in. He claimed he wanted to continue getting treatment and thought confessing to Tiffany’s murder would allow him to do so. He remains in prison currently and his bids for parole have all been denied. Despite Flagner’s conviction, many don’t believe he was responsible for the girl’s disappearance. As a result, Tiffany’s case remains an open investigation. She has never been found despite exhaustive searches and investigations.

Case Last Updated:

Oct 24, 2025