When a West Virginia woman leaves a bar with a former police officer on a winter night in 2022, she's never seen again.

Diligent investigators close in on an ex-cop with an unlikely story and an unsettling reputation in this episode of 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 makes brief mention of the subject of sexual assault.

We won't go into any situation-specific or explicit detail, but still, please listen with caution.

Gretchen Fleming was last seen alive on December 4, 22, in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

She was 27 years old at the time, in Parkersburg, a community of about 30,000 people located

at the confluence of the Ohio and Little Canawa Rivers was her hometown.

She'd grown up there with her dad, stepmom, little siblings, and grandparents who lived nearby.

So I was trying to think if I knew anywhere around there, and I think we might have actually been there before.

Yeah, a few months ago, we actually were there in this town. We spent a night there,

and I'm sad to say that at the time I didn't know anything about Gretchen's case, but I've since

learned about it, and I was disturbed by what I learned. Growing up, Gretchen was known as an artistic

child, creative, fun-loving, a total bookworm and perhaps more than anything, a social butterfly.

One of her favorite pastimes as a teen was going to thrift stores with her friends and putting

together unique outfits. She also loved coming up with makeup looks to complement those outfits.

In many of her pictures, she can be seen wearing bold red lipstick and meticulously applied

eyeliner. If you search her name online and

take just a quick glance at the photos that come up, it's obvious that she took pride in her

stylish put-together looks. Life in Parkersburg was good, but as Gretchen had approached adulthood,

she'd realized that she wanted to try out life in a larger city. So after graduating high school,

...