Massachusetts : Molly Bish
Warren, Massachusetts, has just under 5000 people in it, according to the 2020 census. The violent crime rate here is higher than the national average, but property crime is way lower than average. I find in most towns when the violent rate is high property is low or vice versa. An interesting fact was On March 13, 1834. The town was renamed Warren in honor of General Joseph Warren, who died at the Battle of Bunker Hill during the American Revolutionary War. The case I am going to talk about today is the disappearance and murder of Molly Bish. This teenager’s name is actually on this town’s Wikipedia page as a notable person because of her unsolved murder.
Molly Ann Bish was born and raised in West Warren, Massachusetts, to parents Magdalen and John Bish Senior. Molly was the youngest of three children, she had an older sister Heather that was six years older than her, and she had a brother John who was three years older. She was described as a helpful girl who was always there for others. She loved to make people laugh and excelled in softball, basketball, and her favorite sport, soccer. She was 16 years old when she got a job as a lifeguard, and she loved it. She got the job because her older brother John was originally a lifeguard at Comins Pond, but when he quit, he was able to get Molly the job as his replacement. She also loved music, singing, and shopping.
Molly had a very close-knit family. Heather, her older sister, lived just down the road from her family's home. Magdalen Bish, the family's matriarch, was a teacher, and John Senior, her father, was a probation officer. They were your everyday middle-class working family. John and Magie had moved from Michigan to Warren because they wanted to raise their children in a safer area or what they thought was safer. Twenty years before Molly had gone missing, her parents and Heather were living in Detroit when a young woman was kidnapped, raped, and killed. This is what propelled the young couple to move. They didn't want to raise their children in that violent area only to have their worst fears happen when they thought they were safe.
Molly was an honor roll student that would spend her time babysitting, school, and sports. Then only a few weeks before she went missing, she started working at Comins Pond. Now I said she got this job because her older brother John Jr. was quitting to move on to another position. Molly’s family didn't have any reservations about this beautiful 16-year-old girl working in a rural pond frequented by fishermen and the occasional group of people wanting to party. John Junior had worked there for three years and never had any issues that concerned his safety. Molly being the youngest child, I could only assume they all had no clue anything terrible would ever happen or they would not have allowed her to work there. Comins Pond was in the process of being revitalized. The city was offering swim lessons, and with a lifeguard on duty, it became a place kids and families loved to visit. On the other hand, this pond was a bit off the beaten path, and many people didn't know about this town’s waterhole, even if they were from the area. The summer hot spot was at the end of a dead-end road with a forest all around so if you weren’t looking for it, most likely you wouldn’t stumble upon it by accident.
Now for the day she went missing, on June 27th, 2000, it was Molly Bish’s eighth day working at Comins Pond as a lifeguard. Molly was already having a rough start to the day. One of her friends was hit by a car the night before, and on this particular Tuesday morning, Molly’s mom woke her up, told her the news, and then snuggled with her in bed while she processed and prayed for her friend. Molly was so responsible that even though she was devastated about her friend's accident, it was the first day of swim lessons, and Molly wouldn't let those kids down. So she gets ready, and then her mom drives her to the pond, but first, they stop by the local convenience store to grab some water, then off to work Molly had gone.
When Molly was getting dropped off at work the day before, On Monday her mother noticed a white vehicle with a man sitting in the driver's seat smoking a cigarette. This man glared at this mother and honestly gave her a bad feeling, so she pretended to be fiddling with stuff in the vehicle to kill time, hoping the man would leave and she wouldn't have to leave her daughter alone in this rural area with him. It didn't take long, and this man drove away. This worried mother, relieved, drove off, thinking crisis diverted. Call it mothers intuition or what but Magie had a very bad feeling about this man. By the end of that day, when she picked her daughter up, and nothing was a miss, this mother thought she was overreacting.
Back to that Tuesday, after Molly arrives at Comins Pond, no one knows what happens next, but it doesn't take long for her to be reported missing. When the parents and children arrive at the pond for those swim lessons, they do not see a lifeguard on duty. What do police typically think when a teen isn't where they should be? They assume they left on their own and are most likely with friends. The pond had quite a few people there that morning, and none of them saw Molly there when they arrived. Police did not secure the scene because they did not realize a crime had happened there. It took about three hours after getting the call of no lifeguard on duty before authorities started searching the pond, thinking Molly may have drowned.
Around the same time the pond started to be searched, Molly’s mother got a call about her daughter's disappearance. Her family knew right away she did not run away, first because she was such a responsible girl, but something more concrete was that Molly did not like walking barefoot anywhere, including around the pond. She didn't like how the grass or dirt made her feet feel, so the fact that her shoes were left next to the chair proved to her parents right away that she did not go anywhere on her own because, more than anything, she would have worn her shoes. Molly wore a swimsuit and shorts and did not take her purse or money. She even had uncashed checks from working in her bedroom. If I ever ran away, I would ensure I took whatever money I could, so I find it extremely weird that she just leaves everything behind that would help her make it on her own.
Other items left behind at the pond were Molly’s lunch, water bottle, a two-way radio, and her sandals were left right by the lifeguard chair Molly was supposed to be sitting in that day. This lifeguard chair wasn't like one of those towers we see at the beach; it was just a chair sitting on the pond's bank. There was a first aid kit, which was a decent size box. Sometimes the lifeguard would kick their feet up on it to get a tan. The two-way radio is what Molly would use multiple times a day to communicate with local police about the happenings at the pond. The first aid box was also left open, making me wonder if someone came up to her pretending to be hurt and grabbed her while she was distracted, but honestly, that is just my best guess at this point.
This part is devastating; once John Junior discovered that Molly was missing, he ran to the pond, jumped in, and started diving repeatedly. Over and over, he dove down, hoping but also dreading the possibility of finding his baby sister. John Junior swore he knew that pond better than anyone because he had been swimming it every day for the past three years. By the time he walked out of the pond, he was not only exhausted but there was still no sign of Molly.
The search ramped up with hundreds of people volunteering to search the woods around the pond. Authorities brought out scent dogs and picked up Molly’s trail. They tracked her scent leaving the lifeguard chair and going behind it up a hill to a cemetery, and then nothing.
Authorities found a section of woods that looked as if there were some sort of an altercation or struggle. This area had broken branches and just looked disturbed. Tips started coming in, including people reporting that a man in a white vehicle parked at the cemetery around the same time Molly went missing. Another tip was that a man in a white car was watching Molly in the days leading up to the abduction. Within a month and still, no clue what happened to Molly, the case added even more police, and at this point, they had fifty state police detectives investigating full-time. We know the drill by now, the leads start to dry up, officers get reassigned, and then soon, it has been over a year without much of an update and no idea where Molly could be. The reward is up to 100,000 dollars, and the Bish family is a force to be reckoned with. They stop at nothing to find their daughter. Mr. and Mrs. Bish keep in contact with the media to push Molly's story out there and others that went missing in the area. They contacted politicians and held community vigils to get her picture out there even more. Then they started using the internet to assist in getting the word out. Mrs. Bish would send out emails in hopes someone would see Molly’s picture and recognize her.
By year two, no closer to finding Molly, the Bish family started the Molly Bish Foundation. This foundation began with getting ID kits for children. They would photograph and fingerprint all of these kids and then give the parents a pamphlet with this information and more about their child just in case anything ever happened and they needed this information to find the child quickly. I remember doing this as a child a few times; I know my boys have done it too. It's terrifying to think about, but it could be vital in locating a missing child. I can't applaud this family enough for all their hard work on their loved one's case and so many others they had an impact in the future.
I will chat about another local case quickly because it overlaps with Molly’s disappearance. Holly Kristen Piirainen was ten years old when she went out with her brother to look at some puppies and never returned in August 1993. The first crazy link between Molly and Holly was when Holly went missing. It was a massive search and made pretty big news in the area. Molly was ten years old and wrote Holly’s parents a letter saying, “I am very sorry. I wish I could make it up to you. Holly is a very pretty girl. She is almost as tall as me. I wish I knew Holly. I hope they found her.” Holly’s remains would be found two months after she went missing by hunters.
Another reason these two cases are intertwined is that a police officer in the area of Holly’s case was conducting his own side investigation, and he received a tip about a blue swimsuit up in the woods. A man was hunting around Whiskey Hill in Palmer, Massachusetts and he came across this swimsuit towards the end of 2002. He thought it was weird that a bathing suit was way out in this dense forest area but he didn't overthink it.
Tim was a police officer in North Brookfield when Molly vanished, and he was immediately intrigued by the case, just as he was in Holly's disappearance and murder. He was never officially on either of these cases, but his friends would say he became obsessed with these unsolved crimes, and authorities would say these were unauthorized investigations.
So this Tim guy goes up to Whiskey Hill and finds the swimsuit still there after all this time, and then he alerts the authorities of this find. Then the area is searched extensively, and human remains are found. On June 9th, 2003, Molly Bish was found five miles from her family’s home. The manner of death was a homicide, but the medical examiner could not tell the cause of death because of how long it had been, and they were not able to find all of the bones. Tim was not praised for his work in finding Molly, but he actually became a person of interest.
Molly’s funeral was held on what would have been her 20th birthday. So instead of celebrating another year of life and the end of her teens, her family laid her to rest. They were so grateful she was found but devastated they no longer could hold on to the hope that she would return alive. At Molly’s reflection of life celebration, 1000 butterflies were released. The program included musicians, stories, songs, and several PowerPoint presentations. A spiritual tribute to Molly was given by her friends, and the family recognized the State Police and the Search and Rescue Teams.
After all these years, authorities say her case is not cold. They call their group the unresolved homicide unit and not the cold case unit because as long as they actively pursue information or leads, it will never be considered cold. There have been multiple people listed as suspects throughout the years.
One was Ed Fett, Molly’s boss, and the Parks Commissioner when Molly was taken. He arrived at the pond around 11 am that morning after a parent called him to notify him that there was no lifeguard on duty. At 11:44 am, he used the two-way radio to alert the police of her absence. Ed would go through Molly’s belongings, which could explain why his fingerprints were all over her stuff. It was reported that Ed was a person of interest because the afternoon after Molly went missing, Ed ran into John Junior at the local hardware store. Ed never mentioned that Molly was missing and didn't even ask John if he knew where his sister was and he was apparently buying rope and duct tape. The day Molly went missing a friend of hers was doing community service for a minor offense and the person in charge of this program at that time was Ed Fett. This friend of Molly’s stated years later Fett was not with him and the other two painters that morning, contrary to what has been reported in the past: He said and I quote
I was doing Community Service, painting the fence at Cutter Park. The Community Service was Supervised by Ed Fett. He met us there that day at 9:00 a.m. He provided the paint and brushes, gave us instructions, then left. He was gone until about 12:30–1:00.”
When he brought all of us to Mona’s Pizza for lunch where he met with Chief Ronald J. Syriac as we ate. I’ve always thought it was strange that he left all day. He mentioned nothing to us at all. Then later that day I heard about Molly’s disappearance. I felt obligated to say something back then and I feel like I should tell you about it now.” The third painter said he and the other teenage painters didn’t know what they were doing that morning. Fett left after about “15–20 minutes,” at approximately 9:15–9:20 a.m. He also said he didn’t understand why Fett went to a hardware store in West Brookfield that day (“a pretty decent drive” from Cutter Park). Heather Bish has come out and stated that Ed saw John Junior at the hardware store around 9:30 am so Ed would not have known about Molly’s disappearance at that time. Heather stated because of the short window of time Molly went missing and the close proximity to everything she is not ruling anyone out.
The next person police looked into was Rodney Stange. This guy was arrested for the murder of his girlfriend, Crystal Morrison, in Florida. Before his time in Florida, Rodney had lived in the Warren area for years. Rodney and his brother Randy were hunters and were known to hunt in the area where Molly's remains were discovered. They also fished in Comins Pond around the time of Molly's disappearance and drove a white sedan. Both of them left the area shortly after Molly's disappearance. Rodney Stanger is serving a twenty-five-year sentence for the murder of his girlfriend. He has never been charged in Molly’s case. Another link was when Molly was taking her lifeguarding certification courses, and she was doing this in the town of Southbridge at the local YMCA.
Well, Rodney lived right by this YMCA then. So could he have seen her then and become obsessed? Could he have been the man driving the white car spotted the day before her disappearance in the pond parking lot? Could he have been in the cemetery the morning Molly was taken?
Gerald Battistoni is a convicted child rapist, and police started looking into him for not only Molly’s murder but for Holly’s too. The child victims in those cases he was convicted for lived in Warren and had ties to Sturbridge, which is very close to Comins Pond. This was pretty much all that was released about Gerald that led police to look into him. I am sure they looked into all sex offenders in the area. They even looked at everyone who owned a white vehicle as Molly’s mother described.
David Pouliot was another person of interest throughout the years. David was linked to Holly’s murder in 2012 because of the reevaluation of forensic evidence in her case. This evidence linked David to the area around the time Holly was abducted. However, police never said if anything linked David to Molly’s murder. Officials stated, “The nature of the item shows that either David Pouliot or people associated with him were in this immediate area at the time relevant to Holly’s disappearance and finding of her remains.” I think the only reason his name came up in Molly’s case was the fact authorities thought these two cases could be linked at one point in time because of their close proximity to each other.
Francis Sumner Senior went by Frank, but we will refer to him as Francis because he is a convicted sex offender, and I don't give a crap what he liked to be called. Francis lived in Spencer, Massachusetts, about 20 minutes from Warren, and was named a person of interest in 2021. When Heather Bish was made aware of this man and saw his picture, she said it was jarring because Francis looked so much like the sketch of the man her mother saw in the white car. Francis had a bunch of charges on his record, including a conviction of aggravated rape and kidnapping in the 1980s. He died in 2016, so authorities cant interview him about Molly’s murder, so they are looking to the public for help. “The tests that we have been waiting on for the last year have come back not as a match for Frank Sumner,” Heather stated. “It’s really disappointing. I am not sure what the state police have on Frank Sumner, but I am not going to ask specifically for information on him anymore. I am going to open up the investigation again to everyone that we’ve looked at.”
The Bish family and the district attorney’s office are asking anyone with information about Sumner - no matter how small it may seem - to call the anonymous tip line at 508-453-7575. The district attorney’s office said it is looking specifically for information related to Sumner’s employment practices and personnel, associates, vehicles, travel, and any known habits.
Heather Bish stated in an interview, “One way or another, I will find out who the person is whether it’s science or a podcast or if I have to scream from every mountaintop in this country, I will do that. I’m certain I will find out who this person is,” she continues to say. “There’s no victory here. There’s no happiness. There’s no relief. There’s never going to be,” Heather Bish added. “My sister’s still dead, and somebody really hurt her, and they did some egregious acts to her, and I think the work, commitment, and objective now are to really talk about these things.”
Heather is very active on Tiktok. She uses the platform to spread information about her sister’s case and to gain for a bill they are trying to get passed. Bill S.1595 called an Act Permitting Familial Searching and Partial DNA Matches in Investigating Certain Unsolved Cases. The bill was filed on behalf of the Bish family. It would expand the use of DNA in criminal investigations, allowing investigators to look for partial matches and narrow down the field of potential suspects in cold cases. So right now, when authorities have DNA from a crime scene, they run it through CODIS to see if there is a match to someone that is already in the system for committing a crime, but what the Bish family and other lawmakers are trying to get passed is when they have this DNA and run it through CODIS it is not a simple yes or no to being linked to someone already on file, it would now show partial matches as well. So anyone related to the person that DNA belonged to would show up, and then authorities could track down the suspect through their family. This sounds great. However, there would need to be a way to regulate this because great power comes with great responsibility. Or, however that saying goes, this could do amazing things for the thousands of cold cases. Just five states — California, Florida, New York, Wisconsin, and Colorado — have laws and formal policies allowing familial DNA searches Maryland is the only state with laws expressly forbidding them. Heather Bish is trying to get the law passed in Massachutues. Familial DNA searches have been called the last resort of forensic investigations.
The Bish family also created The Molly Bish Center for the Protection of Children and the Elderly at Anna Maria College in Paxton. Taken directly from the website states “In 2004, John and Magi Bish collaborated with Anna Maria College to create the Molly Bish Center for the Protection of Children and the Elderly in memory of their daughter, Molly Ann Bish.
In Molly’s memory, the Center was established with a mission to strengthen prevention, increase awareness, expand participation, at all levels of the community, and enhance response capacity to meet a broad range of needs for children and the elderly. It is only through education and awareness that these issues can be addressed and we begin to reduce the number and extent of these types of cases. The mission of the Center is to provide a place where practitioners and family needs converge, by providing training in best practices and resources in a victim-family-focused center.
Since its inception, the Center has directly impacted nearly 15,000 Massachusetts residents and hundreds of organizations and agencies through training events and symposia, community-based child identification programs, and school-based safety and prevention initiatives.
A quote from Molly’s father, John Bish Senior, states, “Magi and I can’t change what happened to Molly, but we can try to stop it from happening again.”
This family is remarkable, so if you can please do one of the three calls to action I have for you today.
Number one, any tips in the Molly Bish Case, call Mass State Police assigned to Worcester County DA Joseph Early's office at: (508) 453-7575.
Number two, If you live in Massachutues, please consider calling your state representatives about Bill S. 1595 or if it makes it onto a ballot near you I encourage you to do your own research about this and make an informed decision.
Number three, go to mollybishfoundation.com to learn more, submit a tip, or donate to the foundation that is doing amazing things.
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Sources:
https://www.newspapers.com/image/533419391/?terms=molly%20bish&match=1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/428759880/?terms=molly%20bish&match=1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/545875457/?terms=molly%20bish&match=1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/533498268/?terms=molly%20bish&match=1
https://www.telegram.com/story/news/local/east-valley/2011/01/16/in-bish-case-he-8217/50657452007/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Molly_Bish
https://www.boston25news.com/news/molly-bish-rodney-stanger-may-have-crossed-paths-1/141310989/
https://www.chillingcrimes.com/blogs/news/molly-bish
https://malegislature.gov/Bills/192/S1595
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/sister-of-molly-bish-man-linked-to-piirainen-case-resembles-sketch/
https://www.mollybishfoundation.com/
https://medium.com/@lorilamothe29/molly-bish-case-a-key-alibi-falls-apart-8174bbba7ed2
