When a Baton Rouge woman is abducted from a parking lot, an active serial killer is a major suspect.

The mystery surrounding her disappearance persists even after the serial predator is identified and captured 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.

A quick heads up. This episode contains brief discussion of sexually motivated homicide.

We won't go into any graphic detail, but still, please listen with care.

Dr. Marianne Fowler was last seen alive on December 24, 2002.

She was 65 years old and lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Marianne was well known in her community. She'd spent decades devoting herself to her career in education.

She'd begun as a teacher and over the decades had risen all the way to

assistant state education superintendent for research and development. At one point, she'd even

served as an education advisor to the governor of Louisiana. That is quite the accomplished career.

She was very accomplished. And in addition to her busy professional life, she also had a rich

family and personal life.

She was outgoing, very friendly, quick to laugh, just a real social butterfly.

She was also a mom to her adult son, John, through whom she had two young granddaughters,

and on top of that, she had three adult stepchildren as well.

As you can imagine, at the time of her disappearance,

which occurred on Christmas Eve, family was on her mind. However, she wouldn't be spending that

evening with her son and granddaughters, although they had invited her to. Rather, she'd be

beginning the long drive to Beaumont, Texas. Her plan was to break up the drive by stopping to spend the night

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