Gretchen Fleming’s remains identified, ex-boyfriend indicted for murder

Gretchen Fleming’s disappearance has now turned into a murder prosecution: Parkersburg police say remains found in Wirt County in September 2025 were identified through genetic testing, and a Wood County grand jury indicted Preston D. Pierce on first-degree murder, felony murder, concealment of a dead body and kidnapping.

Fleming was 27 when she vanished from Parkersburg, West Virginia. Local and FBI reporting says she was last seen in the early morning hours of December 4, 2022, leaving My Way Lounge in downtown Parkersburg with Pierce. Her family reported her missing on December 12, 2022, and the FBI’s flyer described her as 5-foot-2, 125 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes, born December 24, 1994. The FBI Pittsburgh Field Office and Parkersburg Police both sought public help in locating her.

Pierce, now 58 and originally from Parkersburg, had been identified early as a person of interest and was the last person known to see Fleming alive. On May 15, 2026, U.S. Marshals in the Southern District of West Virginia arrested him in the Asheville, North Carolina area with help from the Carolina Fugitive Regional Task Force. He was being held in Buncombe County while extradition to West Virginia moved forward, with arraignment expected in Wood County Circuit Court.

The case stayed active for years before the breakthrough came. Parkersburg police said the remains recovered in Wirt County gave investigators the physical evidence they had not had when Fleming was reported missing, and the genetic testing tied those remains back to her. The long search also kept pressure on the case in the public eye, including a $100,000 reward her family had previously offered for information.

For true-crime followers, this is the kind of case that never really disappears until the evidence lands: a woman last seen walking out with the man now accused of killing her, a set of remains found years later, and a grand jury finally putting a name to the charges. What began as a missing-person file now sits in the court system as a murder case, with Pierce headed back to West Virginia to answer for the night Fleming vanished.