In the quiet town of Morgan City, Louisiana, sixteen-year-old Mary Leah Rodermund, a white female, vanished on the evening of March 2, 1978, leaving a void in the community that has yet to be filled. A sophomore at Morgan City High School, Mary was described as an average student with dreams of attending college to become a psychiatrist. She enjoyed the simple pleasures of a teenager's life: dancing, listening to music, and spending time with her boyfriend.
On that fateful Thursday
evening, Mary drove to the K&B Drug Store on Victor II Boulevard to make a purchase. She was last seen at approximately 8 p.m. and never returned home. Her car was later discovered abandoned in the pharmacy's parking lot, the first silent clue that something was terribly wrong. The following day, a chilling phone call brought a fleeting moment of hope and an eternity of anguish to her parents. A man demanded a $5,000 ransom, and for a brief moment, Mary's voice was on the line, assuring her family, 'Hi, I'm okay,' before the call abruptly ended without any instructions for the delivery of the money. It was the last time her family would ever hear from her.
Authorities soon identified a prime suspect in Mary's disappearance: Robert Carl Hohenberger, a man with a dark past that stretched from California to Louisiana. A former sheriff's deputy, Hohenberger was a convicted kidnapper and rapist who had escaped from a California prison and was living under an alias in Louisiana. Investigators believe he may have used his old police badge to lure his victims. He was linked to a string of abductions in the Morgan City area that occurred over a three-month period, with authorities suspecting him of killing up to seven people.
The frantic search for Mary and the investigation into Hohenberger came to a dramatic and violent end in June 1978. When police in Tacoma, Washington, attempted to arrest him, Hohenberger took his own life, leaving a trail of unanswered questions and grieving families. Due to his suicide, there was no arrest or trial for the presumed murder of Mary Leah Rodermund. Her body, along with that of another presumed victim, Bertha Gould, has never been found, leaving their cases tragically unresolved.
