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monitors may not detect all objects around or behind the vehicle [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever
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everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music]
00:03:49
[Music] parkerburg West Virginia a young woman goes out for some late night bar hopping as the night goes
00:04:09
on she becomes more and more inebriated she finds herself without her purse her phone or her
00:04:20
wallet but a friendly Good Samaritan comes to the rescue and offers her a safe ride home
00:04:30
however she has never been seen since this is true crime garage and this is the case of Gretchen
00:04:43
[Music] Fleming want to take you home [Music] want to take you [Music] home Gretchen Eve Fleming was born in
00:05:09
Warrington Virginia on Christmas Eve that's December 24th 1994 I'm making a guess here but that
00:05:17
could be why her parents chose the middle name Eve for their Christmas Eve baby Gretchen had a younger sister her
00:05:25
name is Emma but when the girls were young their parents split up it's unclear why their mother did not seem to
00:05:34
be involved but their father David raised the two girls in parkerburg West Virginia David remarried a woman named
00:05:44
Jennifer who brought three-year-old twins into the family and David and Jennifer had a child of their own the
00:05:51
family now numbered seven with Gretchen being the oldest of those children Gretchen graduated from from parkerburg
00:06:00
high school in 2013 and went on to Marshall College in Huntington West Virginia as well as some
00:06:08
schools in North Carolina she apparently studied political science at William Peace University and also attended Shaw
00:06:17
University there after college she lived in Raleigh North Carolina but things weren't as rosy as they should have been
00:06:25
for a young woman in her mid 20s living and working independently when our Story begins in
00:06:33
December of 2022 Gretchen is 27 years old and had returned home to West Virginia she had
00:06:42
experienced a recent breakup of a year-long relationship in North Carolina then there was this and this is some
00:06:50
very rough stuff here Captain Gretchen was in a way reunited with her biom mom but this was when her mother became very
00:07:00
ill Gretchen tried to take care of her mother she at this point due to the divorce is the next of kin and because
00:07:08
she's an adult she is going to have to make the very tough decision that very few of us are even somewhat equipped or
00:07:17
prepared to make she was in charge with the decision to take her mother off of life support needless to say it was a
00:07:25
traumatic time for Gretchen and those who knew her described her as a bit lost back in parkerburg she moved in with her
00:07:34
father David's mother and dad this is Lise and Phil Fleming this is in Vienna because David and Jennifer still had
00:07:43
four kids at home and it was I'm sure a little chaotic in the household with a child Centric lifestyle and household
00:07:52
I'm sure a young woman in in her mid-20s is not going to love that setup so she's
00:07:58
living some what out on her own if you will but technically with David's mom and dad her grandparents now Vienna is
00:08:07
right next door to parkerburg so to speak it's just a short Drive North from parkerburg Gretchen was basically
00:08:15
hitting the reset button on life and trying to figure out what to do with her young adult life she was considering
00:08:22
being a flight attendant but in the meantime she was working at an H&M store this was located at the Grand Central
00:08:30
Mall she didn't drive as she had no driver's license so her grandparents her friends and Ubers and lifts drove her
00:08:39
practically everywhere Gretchen was definitely the Moody artist type her Facebook page shows A Soulful looking
00:08:47
slender young brunette with huge dark eyes and quite a few selfies but her profile photo is a cat Gretchen was
00:08:57
described by those who knew her as a musician a writer someone who made a statement with her clothing and hair who
00:09:05
didn't look like everyone else she was creative smart well-traveled and educated her father told
00:09:13
WTAP that Gretchen was very unique she loved her fashion and she was a Thrifty fashioned girl yeah very artistic and it
00:09:22
seems like she put that not just into songwriting and music but she also put that into her own personal style
00:09:31
Gretchen was about 5' 1 in tall and 110 lb she was quiet but not a Wallflower or
00:09:38
doormat types this from West Virginia Metro News quoting her father David quote she went to Washington DC for the
00:09:47
women's March when she attended Marshall University she sent me one picture she was on some kind of stage in with
00:09:56
Marshall with a megaphone talking to the crowd she wasn't afraid to stand up for
00:10:01
what she believed in end quote and Gretchen's grandmother Lis Fleming said her granddaughter had been living with
00:10:07
her and her husband in Vienna for the past six months leading up to her disappearance Gretchen Louie said was a
00:10:15
joy to have in the house she brought new life into the older couple's lives Gretchen came and went spending a lot of
00:10:24
time at work or with friends but most of her childhood friends were gone from the
00:10:29
area by this time having moved away she was meeting new people not a lot of them
00:10:35
whom were known to her family now I want to hone in on something real quickly here before we move
00:10:42
into the days and events in question from that statement from Grandmother Louise she's saying when she says
00:10:51
Gretchen came and went what she meant was was not that she came to live with us and then she left
00:10:59
right what she's stating is that because of Gretchen's age and because of the rules of their household Gretchen was
00:11:06
free to come and go as she pleased with the exception of this like there was a cut off time not necessarily a curfew
00:11:14
she didn't have to be home it was just if you're going to arrive after this hour just stay with your friends you
00:11:21
know these are these are folks that that didn't want to be you know don't wake us
00:11:25
up in the middle of the night when you're coming and going and this was something that was pretty regular as we
00:11:30
will see when we go through our timeline here now in early December of 20202 this is
00:11:38
when Gretch and Fleming went missing so let's start with December 3rd this is a Saturday Captain Gretchen's grandmother
00:11:47
drops her off at the mall she's going to work that day that's where she works Gretchen's grandmother says this was at
00:11:55
1:15 p.m. and Gretchen told her that she was going going out with friends after work which happened often and so it was
00:12:05
expected by all that Gretchen would be staying with friends that night after going out after work Lis didn't give it
00:12:13
a second thought when Gretchen didn't come home that night Gretchen's stepmother Jennifer later told the TV
00:12:20
show disappeared that Gretchen's grandparents had strict rules in the house including not really a curfew but as
00:12:28
said she would stay with friends and according to the Stepmom couch surfing sometimes for three or four days at a
00:12:37
time so she basically popped in and out of her grandparents house using it as a bit of a home base right but it was
00:12:46
common for her to be gone for several days at a time unfortunately this is what everybody
00:12:53
thought was going on and Gretchen does not ever come home when Gretchen didn't come home for over a week her
00:13:01
grandmother began to get very worried so now we're going to go to December 11th Lise drove over to Jennifer and David's
00:13:10
house and told Jennifer she's worried I've not seen Gretchen and I've not seen Gretchen since December 3rd so we're
00:13:18
like seven eight days later right by this point when she dropped Gretchen off at work on Saturday afternoon the
00:13:27
previous Saturday that's what she's telling Jennifer and David this is the last time
00:13:31
that I've seen her by the way I've sent her some text she's not responding and her phone is going immediately to
00:13:39
voicemail by this time so now everybody's kind of alerted and they all agree something was wrong David Gets in
00:13:47
his car Dad gets in his car and went to the bars in the area that he knew that young people liked they knew that
00:13:57
Gretchen liked a bar called the front row so David went in with a photo of Gretchen that he had on his phone and
00:14:04
now he's asking the people that work there have you seen this girl right the bartender working that day says yes I've
00:14:13
seen her not only have I seen her she was here last weekend and oh by the way we have her purse it was dropped off by
00:14:20
a male friend last Sunday morning okay this is weird and not in a good way yeah so
00:14:28
Gretchen's been missing for almost a week she's not returning anybody's texts or
00:14:34
calls like you said the when you call her it's going straight to voicemail so we can almost assume that her phone is
00:14:41
dead at this point they go to this local bar have you seen my daughter yes we have and by the way we have her purse I
00:14:49
mean this is um many red flags that's exactly right we don't know Gretchen's whereabouts for a oim 8 days now there's
00:15:00
no communication since now dad in an attempt to track down his daughter or at least possibly find a lead as to where
00:15:09
he may find his daughter he finds her purse Instead at the front row bar Sports Bar and Grill do we have a list
00:15:16
of what items are in the purse yes we do so th this is to be clear here if I'm Dad this is not a lead this feels more
00:15:25
like a dead end a bad bad sign yes all right so what we do have inside of this purse Captain David finds Gretchen's
00:15:36
phone her ID wallet credit cards her tablet and so on like the list is actually longer than
00:15:44
that but it's to sum it up nice and short it's everything he expected to find in her purse in fact we could
00:15:52
probably phrase it this way it's everything he didn't want to find in her purse right you yeah you would hope to
00:15:57
maybe that she has her phone on her her that she has her credit cards she had none of this stuff on her all this stuff
00:16:03
is in her purse and her purse has not been with her since last Sunday so this is beyond bad news for a father with a
00:16:10
missing daughter yeah if all the important items her phone her IDs or credit cards if those weren't in the
00:16:18
purse then that' give you some kind of hope but when you're finding all these items that you know that she uses daily
00:16:27
you know you your heart breaks for this guy yeah he said that he panicked which is a natural reaction yeah and in the
00:16:36
moment he kind of lost touch with reality he he was hoping that maybe finding the purse meant that his
00:16:43
daughter had been at the front row very recently and had left her belongings there on accident but remember the
00:16:50
bartender said that Gretchen was last in the previous weekend 8 days ago the same
00:16:56
day that her grandmother had dropped off at work but it gets even more mysterious
00:17:02
than that the bar staff said Gretchen left the bar last Saturday night with some guy and she had her purse with her
00:17:11
when they left and it seems like there's not a guy in her life as far as like a there's no solid boyfriend like you said
00:17:19
she broke up with somebody she's coming back to town she's resetting her life and so
00:17:26
when you hear I mean it's not that Weir we to hear that she was in the bar with a guy that could be a guy friend or it
00:17:34
could be somebody that she's been seeing and she's not telling she doesn't live with her dad so but still not a great
00:17:43
sign no I wouldn't I mean she's in her mid 20s it would almost be weird if she wasn't hanging out with friends so right
00:17:52
I don't find it strange at all and especially when we're talking about she's out at a public place but maybe a
00:17:57
lead for the dad you know you said is he finds these items it's not a good sign but okay so
00:18:06
now do we know who she was with yes and I think you're tapping into something important here because In This Moment In
00:18:15
This Very crucial moment he finds the purse at the bar he's he's informed that she had left that Saturday night with
00:18:22
some guy but guess what her phone is in the purse so maybe the phone could provide the Le
00:18:29
and her phone was not password protected so rather quickly it he he could access
00:18:35
the phone unfortunately the first thing that Dad notices is that Gretchen had not
00:18:41
responded to any Communications since December third David spoke with Gretchen's
00:18:47
friends his friends her friends tell him that Gretchen was with a guy named John
00:18:53
that night he was driving her around Gretchen's family did not know him the DJ that was working at the front row bar
00:19:04
also confirmed that Gretchen was there with a guy that the DJ knew the guy's name to be John right so the DJ confirms
00:19:12
the bartender confirms the staff confirms that from what everybody's eyeballs saw that Saturday night
00:19:19
Gretchen left with this guy that they all believe or know him as John now the next morning after finding the purse at
00:19:27
the bar this is is when the missing person's report was filed with the police because of the circumstances here
00:19:35
Captain the police jumped on this immediately by this point it's been over a week and they have her purse so the
00:19:43
investigation went into high gear very quickly this is something we scream at the top of our lungs especially these
00:19:50
small law enforcement agencies what else are you going to do write some tickets we have an emergency
00:19:57
here let's get all hands on deck and they do so and we should applaud them for that yeah the parkerburg police
00:20:05
department posted about Gretchen's disappearance on Facebook immediately stating that if anyone had any
00:20:12
information on the current whereabouts of greten Fleming age 27 please contact detective Zimmerman this Facebook post
00:20:20
was shared over 1,000 times in the first 24 hours behind the scenes police learned that Gretchen went to a number
00:20:30
of bars on the evening of December 3rd here are her movements to the best of everyone's knowledge Gretchen arrived at
00:20:39
the front row sports bar and grill at located at 4000 Emerson Avenue in downtown parkerburg in the company of a
00:20:48
young man this could be the John person or the person that is known as John according to two female employees at the
00:20:55
front row who went to high school with Gretchen this is helpful because these are people that actually know her yeah
00:21:01
and so you're you're not getting you're not getting some strangers going yeah I think I saw that that young lady these
00:21:08
two female employees are telling police and the family Gretchen was regularly in
00:21:16
the establishment it was said that Gretchen was at the bar with a male friend until
00:21:22
about 11 p.m. when they left together Gretchen's family said on the show disappeared the guy named John and
00:21:29
Gretchen headed to a bar called my way for some karaoke some late night karaoke not my thing but I'm not a hater either
00:21:38
if you want to sing some T Swift or some black street I'm down oh if it's late enough baby it is my thing I'll hit you
00:21:50
with some I'll hit you hardcore with some Billy Idol there you right to the face so this bar the my way carry I I
00:21:58
shouldn't Define it as a karaoke bar I've never been there but they that's what they went there for is what we're
00:22:05
told and remember Gretchen is a a musician she's she's likes to perform and so this makes a lot of sense right
00:22:13
she's into karaoke this bar is located at 501 Julianne Street in parkerburg now when this John fella learned that
00:22:24
Gretchen was missing he contacted the Parkersburg police to help them fill in some of the blanks about this night in
00:22:32
question so this is helpful right we're somehow this information gets back to this John character might have been the
00:22:39
Facebook P post might have been any of these employees or staff at at these two establishments but somehow this
00:22:46
information gets to JN rather quickly that she's missing well I guess it's a positive thing that he finds you and you
00:22:54
don't have to find him but we've seen another cases that doesn't mean much but now we have made contact with Jon so we
00:23:03
can figure out who Jon is and is he involved in her disappearance and if he even if he's not right he could likely
00:23:13
provide some information because you're looking for a breadcrumb trail right and
00:23:17
right now the breadcrumb trail led to John and then we learn from other people that oh well that John person and
00:23:25
Gretchen went to this other bar so now your bre from Trail takes you to the my way bar now this dude's calling you he's
00:23:32
reaching out to police and so so you're hoping to get some more information so to fill in some of the blanks here John
00:23:39
tells police that he and Gretchen they were he was the one that was with her at the front row and he said that Gretchen
00:23:47
was the one that wanted to go to the MyWay Bar for karaoke and John was the driver so they went together he said
00:23:55
that Gretchen left her purse in his car now now we don't know if this was accidentally maybe she was intoxicated I
00:24:02
don't know or could be simply on purpose right perhaps thinking it was better to
00:24:07
leave it in the car rather than to maybe accidentally leave it in the bar or maybe she didn't want to take it in the
00:24:13
bar for any other reason if you're law enforcement at this point with JN telling you the story you don't know if
00:24:20
Jon's telling you the truth oh of course not no if if you're a good detective you
00:24:24
think everybody's lying to you yeah so but but the thing that we need to focus in on here is it sounds to me I can't
00:24:33
speak for John or Gretchen of course but it sounds to me that the general thought
00:24:39
was that they arrived at this second bar together and they were probably going to
00:24:42
leave together now John said that he got caught up talking with some friends of his so these are people he knew that
00:24:51
Gretchen didn't know we have eyewitnesses saying that they came into the bar but they basically sat on
00:24:56
opposite sides of the bar yeah he says that once he's hanging out with these other folks he kind of loses track
00:25:02
aggression and he said that she must have left the bar because he couldn't find her and he says I didn't see her
00:25:10
leave the bar at closing time John says he looked for Gretchen to attempt to give her a ride home and again he
00:25:19
couldn't find her he was actually kind of freaking out a little bit and all he can think is well at some point I went
00:25:25
to the restroom and when I came back out I I never saw her after I came back from
00:25:30
the restroom and in fact one thing that we know that is backed up by some of the
00:25:36
security camera footage in the area is that when he's looking for her he not only appears to be looking for her in
00:25:44
the bar but he goes outside he looks around for her out there she's nowhere in sight and he actually went to other
00:25:52
bars or other other places very close within walking distance to see if maybe she was there as well he never finds her
00:25:59
that night now let's fast forward to the next morning where on Sunday December 4th Jon Turned Gretchen's purse into the
00:26:07
bartender or the owner of the front row bar now this was verified by several employees so he left her purse at the
00:26:17
front row he tells police look I I know that she goes there on occasion I don't know her I have no way of getting in
00:26:26
touch with her I mean she doesn't even have her phone he simply said my thought was that she would be at this bar before
00:26:34
I would have an opportunity to get in touch with her so he leaves the purse at the bar assuming that they might even be
00:26:44
able to contact her and she would just come and pick up her her bag and as said John didn't know Gretchen very well and
00:26:51
he didn't know to drop her things off at her grandparents house so he may not even known that they that she lived with
00:26:58
her grandparents or where that was located I do want to point something out though I don't know what time this cut
00:27:04
off was for arriving home but one thing I find strange about John's story and it
00:27:10
may just be that he doesn't have the information yeah it's implied that he was going to drive her home that night
00:27:18
the Witnesses are saying they left the front row at 11:00 p.m. and then went to another bar if there's a cutof point
00:27:25
what was he really going to drive her home were there other plans yeah or is home just a relative
00:27:32
term hey we're going to go to this other bar and I can drop you back at home when
00:27:37
we're done oh yeah great yeah I I what I'm saying here is there's something missing from this part of the story
00:27:46
right but again it could be simply that JN doesn't he doesn't know Gretchen very
00:27:50
well this is backed up by other people he may just not have all the information Gretchen may have had what we don't is
00:27:58
anybody coming forward saying that oh yeah Gretchen was going to go out and have a good time and then get dropped
00:28:03
off at my house that that's kind of what's missing here because it would seem to me that she's probably already
00:28:09
passed the cut off point of going back to Grandma and Grandpa's house I totally agree but it is very possible that she
00:28:16
just thought I'll figure this out when we're leaving oh yes but I mean we've we've all been in our 20s sometimes
00:28:23
you're just flying by the seat of your pants what I'm sure at least one or two of the beautiful listeners are out there
00:28:31
thinking is all right well here's this missing young woman John must have did it he must have
00:28:37
had some he must be responsible for whatever happened to Gretchen but to be clear here Gretchen's
00:28:47
parents don't agree with that thought in fact they told disappeared that Jon was
00:28:52
very upset and worried and they feel he has nothing to do with what happened to Gretchen and and police agree for
00:29:00
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garage this message is proudly sponsored by [Music] Greenlight all right we are back you
00:34:53
filthy animals tall cans in the air cheers to everybody in the back back and cheers to you Colonel cheers to you
00:35:02
and merry Christmas you filthy animals so this is the change yeah keep the change this is from news Nation now
00:35:13
again we have that delay and when she is last seen to when she's reported missing
00:35:19
and from news Nation it says quote authorities were not concerned about the delay in reporting she was close with
00:35:26
her family says Park urg police chief Matthew bour sometimes you just go a few days without speaking to family so they
00:35:34
didn't really feel it was strange but the delay in reporting was of course disastrous for what would end up being a
00:35:43
missing person's investigation yeah but we have a couple things working for us couple things working against us the
00:35:50
thing working against us and this happens with any young adult they're not in constant contact with their family
00:35:59
they don't have set schedules I mean if she's working at H&M she probably doesn't have a Monday through Friday
00:36:06
schedule so their schedules are constantly changing so it's really hard unless she was supposed to be somewhere
00:36:15
and didn't show up and that's my big question is you know people can question the family and go well why did it take
00:36:23
you so long to report this but my question would be for her EMP lawyer at some point I'm sure she was scheduled to
00:36:31
show up to work that week and she didn't show up and why didn't you contact anybody yeah that's a good point and so
00:36:39
one of the things that we don't have that we're not equipped with is what was on her phone what did Dad see on her
00:36:46
phone when he accessed it could it have been miss calls from her employer that maybe they the only number that they
00:36:53
knew of to attempt to contact her was her cell phone which which we know unfortunately was sitting in her purse
00:37:00
basically in the lost and found at the front row day after day waiting for their owner to come back who would never
00:37:08
return to retrieve it yeah but normally you have some kind of emergency contact person and maybe they just didn't fill
00:37:16
out that paperwork correctly I mean I'm I'm sure I uh gave false information on some of those forms when I was younger
00:37:25
but what we do have working for us if we're law enforcement if we're the family the search for Gretchen is the
00:37:33
last person seen with her or the last person we think was seen with her in public was John he's cooperating with
00:37:42
law enforcement and that's a good thing because we've seen in so many missing person cases the last person that
00:37:48
they're seen with or the last group of people somebody seen with where they get scared and they lawyer up and they they
00:37:56
don't give us information that could be vital to figuring out what happened to the
00:38:01
individual well and we're going to be able to move on from John rather quickly because as said our breadcrumb Trail now
00:38:09
takes us to the my way Lounge we have several witnesses there that remember seeing Gretchen remember we have several
00:38:15
witnesses that say they saw Gretchen with this John person arriving there however we get some other people at the
00:38:23
bar that say well we saw her without John a lot of the people are not going to know who Gretchen is some of these
00:38:30
people are not going to know who J is but what what these Witnesses are saying is yeah I saw that young lady at the bar
00:38:37
that night but she was with an older man with a guy with gray hair hey there's some young men with gray hair as well
00:38:44
they call us silver foxes this is very true however what we're getting is the description of this person that she's
00:38:52
seen with does not match the description of John yeah I believe believe the bartender says that he he bought her a
00:39:00
drink maybe and they were sharing or they were sharing a drink um not sharing the same drink not like one cup two
00:39:08
straws but um that this individual was sitting at the bar with her and and chatting yeah so police will actually
00:39:17
technically see her with this older man as well because the MyWay Lounge provided all of their surveillance
00:39:24
footage from that evening as we had mentioned prior so on this surveillance footage they're seeing her talking with
00:39:32
this guy who is not John so John was not to be clear not the last person to see Gretchen on this night and why is it so
00:39:41
important to report somebody missing as soon as you can is because of many reasons but one of the major
00:39:51
reasons is like you're saying here they're able to go to the bar and go do you guys have cameras yeah we do okay
00:39:59
can we get that footage from this time great now we have her outside of the bar on surveillance footage with this older
00:40:08
gentleman and then they're able law enforcement is able to go to other businesses and say okay well if they're
00:40:16
leaving this bar if they left together which direction would they go in and they're able to reach out to other
00:40:22
businesses especially in a small town and so now we're going to get all this surveillance footage of this guy's
00:40:29
movements after he leaves the bar yeah so let's let's back it up just a bit I'm sorry I got excited because
00:40:37
what we we have statements from her parents you know the the police have are going to be tight lipped about certain
00:40:45
information parents if they have the same information they may or may not be so closed lipped about it and her father
00:40:55
David watched the video from the surveillance footage as well and he says that it showed Gretchen
00:41:03
was sitting at the bar alone while John was standing talking to other people this is backing up John's
00:41:09
story now attached to this bar or attach to this room that they're in is a gambling room so David says that at some
00:41:19
point on the surveillance footage an older man came out of the gambling room Stood Beside Gretchen and then bought
00:41:26
her a drink then they went into the gambling room together this is for about 30 minutes when they come back into the
00:41:33
main bar area then the man walked out the front door and Gretchen walked out behind him the video verified that John
00:41:41
was not around when Gretchen left yeah I believe he was in the the bathroom shortly after that the bar
00:41:48
closes and then John has to leave this without Gretchen detective Zimmerman actually appeared on the Disappeared TV
00:41:57
show talking about the case he said that the video footage they obtained showed the man and Gretchen leaving through the
00:42:03
front door with her following behind him at approximately 0310 hours on December 4th they believed
00:42:12
that the man the only person of interest in this case was parked in the parking lot near the News and Sentinel offices
00:42:20
at 519 Juliana street but the car and the people who got into to it were not captured on video let's go to December
00:42:31
14th the police obtained surveillance footage from numerous locations as the captain had said around the city on the
00:42:38
14th of December detective Zimmerman explaining quote from there he's talking about that parking lot we have video
00:42:47
footage that captured headlights heading down the alley towards Sixth Street we believe that to be the person of
00:42:53
interest's vehicle footage from a nearby gas station showed what they believe to
00:42:59
be the same vehicle on Ann Street heading toward Southside parkerburg the vehicle continued on various
00:43:07
surveillance footage Snippets continuing in the direction of the person of interest's home yes they quickly found
00:43:17
out who the man was whom Gretchen was believed to have left the bar with the police called him the person of interest
00:43:27
the media reported his name as Preston Pierce now everybody's saying Gretchen did not know this
00:43:36
guy David guessed that perhaps Gretchen left with him only because she was inebriated perhaps the older man
00:43:43
promised to give her a ride or perhaps she was drugged or he tricked her to going
00:43:53
outside and you know if he has a gun or something thing is there a way that he could make a
00:44:00
threat and go hey you better get in the car with me back to the Reconstruction of the route Pierce's car was believed
00:44:07
to have taken police traced the route visible on surveillance footage they conducted a search in the area under the
00:44:15
Fifth Street Bridge because the car went in that direction and police unfortunately thought that this was a
00:44:22
logical dump site they tried to figure out from the time stamps if the car stopped anywhere and they looked to see
00:44:31
if Gretchen was seen walking anywhere along the Route they found nothing well something that's also going to be
00:44:39
helpful or should be helpful for law enforcement is this Pierce's guy's car it's a all black small SUV but he has
00:44:52
these Darth Vader stickers on it so MH it's a car that you would be able to recognize if you if you saw it so
00:45:01
detective Zimmerman he drafts three search warrants and a judge found probable cause existed to search Preston
00:45:10
Pierce's home vehicle and a storage unit he had access to for any evidence relating to gret and Fleming all three
00:45:18
warrants were executed on the 15th of December the police refused to release any more information in the active
00:45:25
investigation but it got out that the search warrants were executed by the West Virginia State Police on at least
00:45:33
one private property which was a small home on the 1300 block of Division Street owned by Preston Pierce yeah the
00:45:42
police collected some undisclosed items and sent those to the State Police lab they impounded Pierce's car and started
00:45:51
a forensic examination of the vehicle and they hauled Pierce in for question detective Zimmerman much later flat out
00:46:00
said that he believes Foul Play has occurred and that pierce was the last person to see Gretchen yeah one of my
00:46:07
first questions when reading about this case is do we have any eyewitnesses that
00:46:15
saw them together going into his house and if not does he have a garage that's connected to the house that you could
00:46:23
you know pull in the garage sh the garage door and then then walk into the house and nobody would have seen her but
00:46:31
he has no garage on the house but I also think what makes this difficult is if you just look at the footage of the
00:46:38
house in this guy's backyard backyard's a bunch of woods I mean that's dumping grounds in
00:46:46
itself yeah most certainly while all of this is going on of course we have her family and all the people that loved and
00:46:55
cared for Gretchen so they organized vigils and prayer meetings Gathering to pray that
00:47:02
Gretchen would be found safe Dateline spoke with Gretchen's father this was on Friday December 23rd one night before
00:47:09
Gretchen's 28th birthday he said quote we love her something happened to her I don't know what to say tomorrow would be
00:47:19
her 28th birthday which will be hard she's an amazing little girl I just want her home Gretchen did not come home for
00:47:27
her birthday and then on December 29th police announced that they had a person of interest they did not call him a
00:47:34
suspect and did not release his name on that same day Dateline spoke with parkerburg police chief Matthew bour Who
00:47:43
provided an update on Gretchen's case saying we have a person of interest that we believe has information in regard to
00:47:51
this case pertaining to Gretchen this person we know was at the MyWay Lounge the evening that Gretchen was there and
00:47:59
we have cause to believe Gretchen left with this person Gretchen's Father David told dayline that the community had been
00:48:07
extremely supportive of their family during this very tough time he said he was also extremely grateful to detective
00:48:14
Zimmerman who was working around the clock on Gretchen's case so this part here to me is rather interesting because
00:48:23
it's a little bit of a different statement coming from the Parker B police this is from Fox digital news now
00:48:31
keep in mind what what we have going on at this time this might be a little unclear for some of the listeners so
00:48:35
maybe we should clear it up here Captain yeah the police have identified Preston
00:48:41
Pierce as their Person of Interest they decided not to release his name to the media but at some point what is
00:48:49
happening in this case is the media gets this name out somehow gets figures out the name it's probably not very hard
00:48:57
right if you if you know that they're executing a search warrant you get that that
00:49:01
documentation will have I think somebody at the bar knew him or knew of him and so then that gets out to the media and
00:49:11
but this guy's strain yeah so this this bit of information from the police as said is is a little bit different
00:49:19
because it takes it a step forward where they've not announced his name yet to the media but this is is a direct
00:49:27
statement from police Lieutenant James staler so he Lieutenant staler says quote he is a person of interest in this
00:49:36
investigation we know she left with him we believe that she traveled back to his
00:49:40
residence with him he's given inconsistent statements it turned out that in his interview with police
00:49:47
Preston Pierce admitted that Gretchen had been in his vehicle on the night in question but then he stopped cooperating
00:49:56
with the invest ation yeah I think his story was I headed home but in the process of heading home I dropped her
00:50:04
off and I think he was very unclear or maybe even claims I don't remember which part of town that I
00:50:13
dropped her off and like I said we have surveillance footage so we know that his
00:50:18
car was heading in the direction of his house from the bar we don't have every second of his traveling back to his
00:50:28
house on record so it's possible and law enforcement knows it's possible that he
00:50:35
could have just stopped at a stop sign and and she said okay let me out here none of that makes any sense because why
00:50:44
would you leave your purse behind why would you leave your phone behind and that's why I
00:50:50
question was there some ruse or some threat or some way that he got her into into the
00:50:58
vehicle because I just don't think even if she was intoxicated I don't think she
00:51:03
would leave her her purse and her phone and just doesn't make a lot of sense yeah but I could line up a hundred
00:51:10
people for you rather quickly who have been have had enough drinks to leave a bar without their credit card or leave a
00:51:20
bar without their cell phone or their coach or their keys so she it may be as simple as she left the the purse in the
00:51:29
other man's vehicle and totally forgot all about it by the time she's leaving this bar at 3 a.m. yeah now here's the
00:51:39
here's the very difficult thing let's go inside the investigation and get into the heads of the detectives here and
00:51:46
really break this down and explain it to the the public how difficult just how difficult this job can be a lot of times
00:51:54
you are in a catch22 situation and I believe the detectives unfortunately were in a catch 22 situation here why
00:52:03
because if this is my case you're trying to figure out what do I do here do I go
00:52:10
and I've identified this person do I go and try to get a statement from him and then move forward with these search
00:52:18
warrants or do we try to catch him so that he doesn't know that we we've identified him before he can get rid of
00:52:27
any evidence and just execute the search warrants right okay why is that important because of this next this next
00:52:35
bit remember he once he's brought in he admits that oh yeah I gave her a ride that night his statement is that I
00:52:44
dropped her off at a location downtown in downtown parkerburg now he named according to the
00:52:51
information I have he named the location but police have not released it the um part here though that I want to hone in
00:52:58
on is this is why it's a catch22 captain because Pierce admitted he gave Gretchen
00:53:05
a ride that night so on one hand he puts himself as the last person known to be with her or potentially which is not
00:53:11
good for him however on the other hand this provides an explanation for why evidence of her presence in the vehicle
00:53:18
might be found in his vehicle so if you have no statement the the problem for the detectives is this if you go and get
00:53:25
the statement from him first you've now clued him in that you're looking at him and if he needs to get rid of evidence
00:53:33
he may have that opportunity if you execute the search warrant without getting a statement well now he knows
00:53:39
that well you're probably asking him some questions that you may already know the answers to thus I will admit that
00:53:46
she was in my car but I dropped her off somewhere where before you might have been able to catch him with the
00:53:51
statement of yeah I've never seen that girl before in my life right and then you go yeah but we found her hair in
00:53:57
your vehicle so explain that well on this Preston Pierce this is this is what they say he
00:54:05
has a dubious reputation and unsettling demeanor this guy was known as a local creep yeah that that's the general
00:54:15
consensus so the the vehicle was processed by police some things that the captain was talking
00:54:22
about earlier we'll we'll give a little detail here it was a black Nissan Rogue with matching Darth Vader stickers in
00:54:30
the mini triangular rear passenger windows and an oval OBX sticker on the right rear near the top of the back
00:54:39
window the plate holder was a Pittsburgh Penguins frame this is from the Sun quote police are asking all residents in
00:54:49
the area to review home surveillance footage for a vehicle that has been connected to Fleming's disappearance
00:54:55
they believe the vcle may have traveled through the parkerburg area between the early morning hours of December 4th to
00:55:03
noon on December 5th well and this is very troubling to me because if you're telling if you're asking the public for
00:55:13
help and you're saying specifically here's the description of the vehicle does anybody have any information
00:55:20
specifically surveillance footage ring doorbell camera Simply Safe home security camera footage of a vehicle
00:55:27
matching this description traveling between the early morning hours of December 4th to noon on
00:55:33
December 5th if you're if you're giving me that time frame yeah that means they have
00:55:45
something that's telling them that whatever was done to Gretchen was done by the 5th of December correct again
00:55:54
3:00 a.m. on the 4th to noon on the 5th is a significant 33h hour window in which Preston Pierce had plenty of
00:56:05
time to get rid of anything that he may need to dispose of a 33-hour window to hide conceal bury burn the
00:56:17
evidence later police return to Pierce's home with a second search warrant looking for unspecified evidence they
00:56:25
did not specify whether anything was collected with this second search warrant so by the 31st of December Chief
00:56:33
boor told wch STV things have been collected as standard sent to the state laboratory for analysis and just
00:56:43
awaiting results there that's commonplace in a lot of Investigations and when that comes back hopefully that
00:56:50
provides fruitful but in the meantime this is not a waiting game our Detectives are still following leads
00:56:57
because as I keep reiterating the community really stepped up the leads the tips the info the phone calls the
00:57:05
Facebook messages the emails every one of them is getting vetted the agency was also reaching out to other law
00:57:13
enforcement agencies at this time throughout the state sending missing persons bulletins and so on but everyone
00:57:20
knew that Gretchen most likely had not gone far at all right you you can you can reach out you can send out this
00:57:27
information and hope that something comes back and maybe that just you get lucky and she's just in another city I
00:57:34
mean we just had a case here out of California where a missing woman was located safe and sound in in Mexico that
00:57:43
she had willingly went off on her own but by the one Monon anniversary of Gretchen's disappearance Chief board
00:57:50
gave gave an on camera interview with WTAP saying I just want to reassure the community that the Parkersburg Police
00:57:57
Department is dedicated to helping Gretchen and Gretchen's family and just because we are not releasing some
00:58:04
aspects of information that some people would like does not mean that we don't have information that does not mean that
00:58:12
we are not actively and aggressively pursuing the case but while looking for gretan we also have to protect the
00:58:21
Integrity of the invest want to take you [Music] home so much more to get to join us back
00:58:44
in the garage same bat Time same bat Channel and until then be good be kind and don't litter
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