After purchasing hamburger buns at the Convenient Food Mart in Maple Heights, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb, eight-year-old Tiffany Papesh began walking the half-block to her home at approximately 2:45 p.m. on the afternoon of June 13, 1980. She never arrived.

A pedophile has been convicted of Tina’s murder, but she is still listed as a missing person, because, in addition to her remains not having been found, many investigators and even family members do not believe the confession.

Tiffany Papesh’s case is not one of a potentially innocent man being wrongfully imprisoned; it is instead one of trying to determine if she was really one of the proven predator’s victims.

The ultimate hope of course, is to find Tiffany, who is still missing after forty-four years.

Tiffany Papesh

Tiffany’s father, Frank, and stepmother, Debby, felt the neighborhood was safe and had previously allowed Tiffany to go to the store on her own. She had always come straight home as they told her. The walk home typically took between five-to-seven minutes.

Convenient Food Mart

Maple Heights, Ohio

When Tiffany had not arrived home by 3:00, Debby began searching for her. After finding no trace of her, she called the police, but they too found no indication of what happened to her.

Tiffany had a good relationship with her father, stepmother, and brothers, fourteen-year-old Richard and two-year-old Frank, Jr. Police quickly concluded she had not run away from home.

No Trace Of Tiffany

Frank Papesh, a service manager at a garage where truck engines were rebuilt, was at work at the time of his daughter’s disappearance and was cleared of any involvement. Debby passed a polygraph test and was also cleared.

I could not find any information about Tiffany’s biological mother.

Frank And Debby Papesh

Tiffany’s Father and Stepmother

Hundreds of volunteers searched for Tiffany in the days after she vanished; one of them was twenty-eight-year-old Brandon Flagner of Elyria, thirty miles west of Maple Heights. Born Chico Tenorio, he had been arrested for burglary in 1978 and sentenced to two five-year prison terms. After serving sixteen months he was paroled in March 1980, three months before Tiffany disappeared.

Flagner had an obsession with Tiffany’s disappearance. In addition to participating in the searches, he at first offered, then pestered, her parents to let him sell t-shirts with her picture to raise awareness and money for the search. The Papashes rejected his offer, believing Flagner intended to pocket the money for himself.

In November, five months after Tiffany’s disappearance, Flagner told his brother, Cedric Tenorio, that Frank Papesh had hired him to find his daughter’s killer, but, in the course of his investigation, Flagner said he came to believe that Frank himself had killed her. The claims were bogus and Flagner was arrested for harassment. Police warned him not to further bother the family and make outlandish contentions.

Brandon Flagner

In 1983, Flagner was convicted of multiple counts of child molestation and burglary in Texas. While imprisoned in Palestine, Texas, he confessed to the rape, murder, and dismemberment of Tiffany Papesh three years earlier in Ohio. In his confessions, he mentioned a scar on Tiffany’s knee, which had not been made public.

In interviews with the FBI, as well as in letters written to Ohio television station WEWS and to two ministers, Flagner said he abducted Tiffany and drove her to a wooded area near a school where he accidentally shot and killed her after she fought his sexual advances. He stated he ate parts of her body, stored other parts in a freezer, and scattered the rest of her remains throughout Ohio.

Flagner Claims He Accidentally Killed Tiffany

Even though Tiffany Papash’s body had not been found, Brandon Flagner was charged with her murder. The girls who he had molested in Texas, all of whom were under age ten at the time, testified at his trial. All said he had threatened them with violence.

Flagner’s former wife, Carol Woodward, and brother testified he had asked them to destroy a metal box which he kept in his car’s trunk. Among the items inside were children’s clothes.

In June 1985, five years after Tiffany Papesh vanished, Brandon Flagner was convicted of her kidnapping and murder, even though her body had still not been found. He was sentenced to life in prison for the murder plus twenty-five years for the kidnapping.

Flagner Is Convicted . . .

Despite Flagner’s confessions and criminal convictions, many investigators do not believe he is responsible for Tiffany’s disappearance, saying many of his statements are filled with contradictions and that they have not found evidence to support them. In addition, Flagner does not appear able to have committed the crime, as his time card shows he was working at the Sta-Co Factory in Creston, approximately forty-five miles southwest of Maple Heights, until 2:15 p.m., half an hour before Tiffany’s disappearance on June 13, 1980.

It has been suggested that a co-worker stamped Flagner’s time-card for him, but all denied doing so. His employer says that while no one specifically remembered seeing him at work that day, the production line needed five people, Flagner included, to function properly. No problems occurred.

. . . But Red Flags Are Raised

Brandon Flagner ultimately made over thirty confessions to the kidnapping and murder of Tiffany Papesh, but later retracted them all. The convicted child molester now claims he only confessed to the crime because he wanted to stay in prison and receive sex offender treatment.

Regardless of the reason for his confessions, many investigators doubt that Flagner is responsible for the disappearance of Tiffany Papesh. They believe he was convicted of murder largely because he was a convicted child molester. Flagner says he has molested over four-hundred young girls, but most investigators consider those claims egregiously exaggerated.

Flagner Is Scum

But Is He Really Tiffany’s Abductor?

Brandon Flagner’s request for parole was rejected in 2019. He is incarcerated at the Pickaway Correctional Institution near Orient, Ohio.

While in prison, Flagner has converted to Orthodox Judaism, and his name is now listed in some reports as “HBrandon” Flagner.

Parole Rejected

Suspected serial killer Robert Buell is also a person of interest in the disappearance of Tiffany Papesh. Executed in 2002, Buell was convicted of multiple counts of kidnapping, rape, felonious sexual penetration, and felonious assault. He was also convicted of the 1982 murder of an eleven-year-old girl in Marshallville, Ohio, two years after Tiffany Parpesh’s disappearance and fifty miles south of her home in Maple Heights.

In 2010, eight years after Buell’s execution, DNA evidence linked him to the October 1981 murder of another Ohio girl in Lodi, forty-five miles southwest of Maple Heights. Two men had been wrongfully convicted of the girl’s murder.

Robert Buell

Tiffany Jennifer Papesh was last seen in Maple Heights, Ohio, on June 13, 1980. Brandon Flagner has been convicted of her murder, but her body has not been found. Tiffany’s family and many investigators do not believe he was involved in her disappearance.

Still No Trail Of Tiffany

When last seen, the eight-years-old Tiffany stood four-feet tall, weighed approximately sixty pounds, and had blonde hair and blue eyes. Both of hers ears were pierced, she had a gap between her upper front teeth, scars on her knees, and she had previously fractured her collarbone. Tiffany was wearing blue shorts, blue tennis shoes, and a red and blue t-shirt with the wording “Let’s face it. I’m cute.”

Left Photo: Tiffany, Age Ten

Others, Left To Right, Age Progressions to Ages Twenty-Eight, Thirty-Six, And Thirty-Nine 

Tiffany Papesh would today be fifty-two-years-old.  If you have any information relating to her disappearance, please contact the Maple Heights Police Department at 216-662-5884 of the FBI’s Cleveland office at (216) 522-1400.

The Most Recent Computer-Aged Image of Tiffany Papesh

Approximately Age Forty-Six

Frank Papesh died in 1993 at age fifty-one. Debby passed away in 2022 at age sixty-six.

The Papeshes Have Both Passed

Tiffany Papesh is confirmed to have made it to the Convenient Food Mart on the afternoon of June 13, 1980. Several shoppers saw her allowing a woman to get in front of her at the checkout line, and they were seen leaving the store at the same time. The woman was believed to have been approximately fifty-years-old, five-feet-four-inches tall, and weighing one-hundred-sixty pounds. She may have driven a blue car.

Investigators sought to speak to the woman, but they were never able to identify her.

Did The Woman At the Store

Have Any Involvement In Tiffany’s Disappearance?

SOURCES:

• Charley Project
• Cleveland Plain Dealer
• Doe Network
• Eylria Chronicle Telegram
• FBI
• NamUs
• National Center for Missing and Exploited Children