Preston Pierce was indicted Friday by a Wood County grand jury in the disappearance and death of Gretchen Fleming, ending more than three years of uncertainty in a case that began when the 27-year-old vanished from downtown Parkersburg. Prosecutors charged Pierce with first-degree murder, felony murder, concealment of a dead body and kidnapping.

Parkersburg police said Pierce was the last person Fleming was known to be seen with. He was apprehended Friday in Asheville, North Carolina, and is being held in the Buncombe County Detention Center while he awaits extradition to West Virginia. Pierce is scheduled to appear in court on May 18.

Investigators confirmed Friday that remains found in the Palestine area of Wirt County in 2025 were Fleming’s. That confirmation gave the case its grim ending and turned a missing-person investigation into a homicide case with named charges attached. Fleming was last seen leaving a bar on Juliana Street in downtown Parkersburg on Dec. 4, 2022, and police said she was last seen leaving the May Way Lounge in the early morning hours that same day. She was not reported missing until Dec. 12, 2022.

In the weeks after her disappearance, investigators found Fleming’s purse and phone. FBI agents and local law enforcement searched multiple properties belonging to Pierce as the case drew closer scrutiny. Pierce later told Parkersburg police in January 2023 that Fleming was in his car around the time she went missing, a statement that became part of the investigation as detectives tried to reconstruct her final hours.

For years, Pierce had been a person of interest in the disappearance, but authorities never publicly let the case drift. Parkersburg police said they did not let it go cold over more than three years, even as Fleming’s family lived with the delay between the night she disappeared and the day she was formally reported missing. Investigators said that delay was partly tied to the fact that Fleming had been splitting time living with different relatives.

Friday’s indictment is the most significant step yet, but it also closes one question and opens another: whether prosecutors can prove in court that Pierce was responsible for what happened after Fleming left the bar that night. The charges now move the case from search and speculation into a criminal proceeding that will test the evidence investigators say they have gathered since 2022.