In early August of 1993, a little girl visiting her grandmother in Massachusetts would vanish off a neighborhood street, only to turn up dead more than two months later.
Ten-year-old Holly Piirainen lived with her family in Grafton, Massachusetts, but on August 5th, she, her father, and her two younger brothers were staying at their grandmother’s summer cottage in Sturbridge. On this particular day, a Thursday, Holly and her five-year-old brother Zachary had walked to a neighbor’s house at a little before noon to see some new puppies.
A short time later, though, Zachary returned to the cottage without his older sister. Holly’s father sent eight-year-old Andrew to the neighbor’s place to fetch her, but ominously, the only sign of Holly that Andrew saw was one of her red sneakers, lying forlornly in the road.
A massive search of the area was undertaken immediately, but despite the quick response by police and the hundreds of volunteers who aided in the quest to find the child, weeks and then months passed with no trace of Holly.
Then, on October 23rd, 1993, hunters in the thick woods near Brimfield, Massachusetts—about five miles away from where Holly had last been seen—stumbled across her skeletal remains. Cause of death was uncertain, but presumably homicide.
Over the ensuing years, as the case began to grow cold, at least three persons of interest were named in the abduction and murder of Holly Piirainen. One of these was serial killer Lewis L. Lent, Jr., thought to have murdered between two and eight victims between 1983 and 1994, all of whom were children and teenagers. Lent was convicted of numerous counts of kidnapping, rape, and murder in Massachusetts in 1995, and in New York in 1997.
Another suspect interrogated in the slaying was Randy Stanger, who would be arrested in 2009 for the murder of his girlfriend and would subsequently be questioned in regards to the June 2000 abduction and murder of sixteen-year-old Molly Bish of Warren, Massachusetts. Molly Bish had been the same age as Holly Piirainen in 1993, and eerily, had even sent Holly’s parents a sympathetic letter shortly after the child’s disappearance, in which she had written, “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 hope they found her.”
Randy Stanger was never charged with either the murder of Holly Piirainen or that of Molly Bish, though he was convicted in Florida of the murder of his girlfriend.
In 2012, the Holly Piirainen case made news once again when authorities announced that they had some unspecified forensic evidence linking a man named David Pouliot to the site where her body had been dumped. Pouliot, a carpenter and avid outdoorsman who often hunted and fished in the woods near Brimfield, had died in 2003 and could not be questioned in the murder. Police have stressed that David Pouliot is not necessarily a suspect, and have not formally named him as such.
The kidnapping and murder of the ten-year-old remains an open investigation.
In the summer of 2000, a young woman would vanish from a small town in Massachusetts. Her body would not be found for three years, and investigators suspect that her murder could have been carried out by the same individual who abducted and killed ten-year-old Holly Piirainen in 1993.
Molly Bish was sixteen years old in the summer of 2000, a popular and athletic student at her high school in Warren. She had been born in Detroit, Michigan, but her parents had moved to the tiny Massachusetts town when Molly was still a toddler, because of a horrific crime that had taken place on their block in Detroit that made the family feel unsafe. Ironically, although Warren, Massachusetts proved to be a haven from crime for the next fifteen years, the Bishes would sadly discover that tragedy can find one anywhere.
It was around nine o’clock on the morning of June 27th, and Molly’s mother Magi was driving her daughter to work. A week before, Molly had started a job as a lifeguard at Comins Pond, a manmade body of water in a remote area surrounded by woods; it was a popular swimming spot for locals. Molly’s older brother had also worked as a lifeguard there, back in the summer of 1997.
This particular day was a stressful one for at least two reasons. Firstly, just prior to leaving for work, Molly had discovered that one of her teammates on the school soccer team had been in a serious car accident the night before and had been hospitalized. Molly, in fact, had considered calling in to work that day so she could visit her friend, but decided not to, since it was only her eighth day on the job. Secondly, June 27th was the first day of the children’s swimming lessons at the pond, and Molly knew that being at her post was important, though she expressed a bit of anxiety to her mother about the big responsibility.
At approximately ten minutes before ten, Molly and her mother were seen on surveillance footage at a convenience store buying bottled water, and a short time later, they stopped by the police station to pick up a two-way radio for Molly, a necessity for Comins Pond lifeguards. By ten a.m., Magi had dropped her daughter Molly off at work, and not long after that, the first swimmers began arriving.
Only twenty minutes after Molly was dropped off, however, things took a turn for the ominous. A woman named Sandra Woodworth brought her children to the pond, and noticed that there was no lifeguard on duty. Molly’s shoes, backpack, towel, and radio were still at the post, and the lid of the first aid kit was open, but Molly herself was nowhere to be seen. It was odd, but at first, no one was particularly alarmed, and one of the other mothers at the pond stepped in as lifeguard in Molly’s absence.
An hour later, Parks Commissioner Ed Fett, who was Molly’s boss, dropped by the pond and realized that Molly was not there. After speaking to the other swimmers and determining how long she had been gone, Ed became concerned and phoned the police.
When officers arrived, they initially believed that Molly had simply blown off work to go visit her friends, or to see her boyfriend, Steve Lukas. And after they learned that one of Molly’s friends had been in an accident, they surmised that Molly had either gone to the hospital to visit her, or had felt too overwhelmed with worry to work. A phone call to the hospital soon confirmed that this was not the case, however, and Molly’s boyfriend also told authorities that he had not seen her all day. Further, both Molly’s boss and her family—once they were informed of her disappearance at around one p.m.—were adamant that Molly would not simply walk off the job, as she was very conscientious, and took her responsibilities very seriously.
Police then wondered whether she might have drowned in the pond, and thoroughly searched the water with boats and divers, but found nothing. At this point, since the local authorities had little experience working with missing persons cases, the state police were brought in to assist, and search parties were organized to try to find the young woman.
Because Molly’s first aid kit was found open, investigators began formulating a theory that perhaps someone had approached Molly and feigned a minor injury, and had abducted her shortly after she arrived at the pond. Moreover, they speculated that had a kidnapper taken Molly along a secluded path that led from the pond to a small cemetery nearby, then it’s likely he wouldn’t have been seen.
Once this hypothesis was put forward, Molly’s mother Magi remembered a chilling detail that had previously slipped her mind. It turned out that the day before, when she had been dropping Molly off at work, Magi had spotted a suspicious-looking man, sitting in a late-model white vehicle that was parked in the lot near the pond. The man seemed to be staring at her and Molly for an uncomfortably long time, and he appeared so sinister that Magi had sat in her car and watched him until he had finally driven away. Magi described him as a man between forty-five and fifty-five years old, with dark, salt-and-pepper hair, a dark mustache, and dark eyes. He had been smoking a cigarette.
Magi said that she had not seen the man in the white car on the day of her daughter’s disappearance; the parking lot had been empty. However, a truck driver who had been at the pond on June 27th, delivering a load of sand, told police that he had seen a similar white car in the parking lot before Magi and Molly got there, and claimed he saw the same car parked near the cemetery later on the day of the incident.
A detailed sketch of the man in the car was produced and distributed to the public, and the search for Molly Bish continued, but it would be three long years before her ultimate fate would be revealed.
In the late autumn of 2002, a hunter spotted a blue swimsuit in the woods near Palmer, Massachusetts, only a few miles from the site where Molly Bish had vanished. Police weren’t informed of this find until the following spring, at which point a thorough search of the surrounding area in June of 2003 revealed the remains of the missing young girl. Though cause of death could not be determined, it was assumed that she had been murdered and buried in a shallow grave.
The previously mentioned Rodney Stanger was extensively questioned in the murder of Molly Bish in 2009. He was known to occasionally fish in the area near Comins Pond, had access to a white car similar to the one described by witnesses on the days leading up to the abduction, and additionally closely resembled the description of the suspicious individual spotted by Molly’s mother. Though Stanger was also questioned in the murder of Holly Piirainen, he has never been charged with either crime.
Another potential suspect was named in 2011: convicted rapist Gerald Battistoni, who attempted suicide in prison after being publicly identified as a person of interest in the case. Though DNA testing was apparently done, the results have not been made public. Battistoni died in prison in 2014.
In 2021, authorities named yet another suspect in the murder, registered sex offender Francis P. Sumner Sr., who had been convicted of aggravated rape and kidnapping in 1982. Sumner was found dead in his home in 2016, but police have not specified what spurred them to investigate him.
Both cases remain open and active.
Crime Immemorial 