When a widowed Louisiana woman vanishes from her home in the middle of a rainstorm,

the scant evidence left behind points to the unthinkable, an abduction.

Investigators search for answers in a truly unlikely disappearance in this episode of Last Seen Alive.

Music Thanks for listening to Last Seen Alive.

I'm your host, Leah, crime analyst by day, and true crime storyteller by night.

And as always, I'm your co-host, Scott.

Barbara Blunt was last seen alive on May 2, 2008. She was 58 years old at the time and lived in Holden, Louisiana.

Holden is an unincorporated rural community, not technically a town, in Livingston

Parish, which is just east of Baton Rouge and a little over an hour's drive from New Orleans.

It's a beautiful parish, rich with the kind of natural beauty you probably imagine when you think

of southern Louisiana. You know, waterways, over 400 nautical miles worth, to be exact, and trees draped

with Spanish moss. It's home to a state park, a sprawling strawberry farm, and plenty of restaurants,

with an emphasis on seafood. Barbara was a longtime citizen of Livingston Parish, having raised her family

there. She lived off of State Highway 1036 in a home that sat at the

end of a long, unpaved driveway on nearly 18 acres, or over 7 hectares, of land. Some of it was

field, and those fields were surrounded by forest. She raised cattle and gardened on the property

where she lived alone. She loved roses and hummingbirds,

and I imagined that during May, she probably spent some time planting flowers that would

attract the latter. She had previously had a career at a local optometrist's office, but to the

best of my knowledge, by the time of her disappearance, she had retired. As for family, Barbara

had been married for many years, but tragically,

four years before her disappearance in 2004, she was widowed when her husband died in an accident.

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