The latest victim: school-teacher Jo Ann Zachary, whose abandoned car, containing her keys and purse, was found on New Year’s Eve, disappeared without a trace. “They’re all confident women who think they can spot trouble and they don’t think they’re victim types,” says Ann Rule, the true-crime author who is following the case. Resources are pouring into a special task force. It released an FBI sketch of a suspect and spent more than $700,000 swabbing the mouths of nearly a thousand locals who drive white pickup trucks in hopes of finding a DNA match. The odds are long. “You work all the hours every day and you just get back to zero,” says Chief Deputy Mike Cazes of East Baton Rouge Parish. The white-pickup alert has done little to ease fears on the bayou, where folks recall the Washington, D.C., area’s recent fixation on a white truck that turned into a red herring.
