School of Humans. Helen Got Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in an effort to raise public awareness invite witnesses to come forward and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated by law enforcement. While we value insights from family and community members, their statements should not be considered evidence and point to the challenges of verifying facts
inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone has presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing. Thanks for listening.
On June twenty seventh, two thousand, Maggie Bish drove her sixteen year old daughter, Molly and Bish to her job lifeguarding at Commons Pond in the town of Warren, Massachusetts. Ellie was excited about her new job, which she had just started eight days earlier. Mollie came from a close knit family. She grew up with her mom Maggie, her dad John, her sister Heather, and her brother John Junior.
Mollie was the baby of the family. According to New England dot Com, Molly's father, John, had been living in Detroit and was on track to become a priest when he met and fell in love with Maggie. Then he left seminary and they got married. The newlyweds relocated to Warren because it was John's hometown and because they believed that it would be a safe place to raise a family, and for a long time it was. Maggie was a
first grade teacher, John was a probation officer. Mollie's brother, John Junior, also worked as a lifeguard at Commons Pond. He actually trained Mollie during her first six days on the job before she started lifeguarding and teaching swimming lessons to children on her own. At school, Molly was on the Hona roll. She had just been to her first prom, and she was looking forward to starting her senior year. She was athletic and played soccer, basketball, and softball. Her
obituary red quote, funny and social, Molly loved everyone. She was a blend of lucy and forst gump end quote. Maggie and Molly had a routine. Maggie dropped Molly off at work every day. She would later tell police that the day before on June twenty six, when she dropped Molly off at work, she saw something weird in the parking lot. She noticed a man with a mustache smoking
a cigarette. He was driving a white sedan, and this man was staring at Molly and at one point, Maggie said, she looked over at this man and locked eyes with him. Maggie said there was nothing overtly threatening about the guy, but as a mother, he made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She was so unnerve that on June twenty six she waited for about twenty
minutes until the mustache stranger drove away. The next morning, on June twenty seventh, she didn't see any sign of the creepy stranger, so she felt safe dropping Mollie off at work.
When Mollie got out of the car.
Ahead of the beach that day, her mother later told CBS that Mollie's last words to her were.
I love you, Mom.
That was the last time that Maggie bish ever saw her daughter alive. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past seven years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as a small town where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families and their communities.
If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven, eight seven even four four, six, one four or five. That's six seven eight seven four, four, six, one, four or five, or you can send us a message on Instagram at
Helen Gonepod. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Police say Molly would have been alone at the beach at Commins Pond for no more than ten to fifteen minutes before the parents started arriving for their children's swimming lessons at around ten twenty am. A woman named Sandra Woodworth, who was one of the parents and her children showed up for the swimming lessons, but they noticed there was no one at the lifeguard station. Mollie was gone, but her
stuff was still there. Mollie's backpack was there with her beeper inside it. Remember this was the pre cell phone era, so teenagers didn't go anywhere without their beeper and the first aid kit that she used was there and open. There was also a towel draped over the beach chair she was using. Her whistle was there, and so were her shoes and her poland Spring's water bottle. Mollie also had a radio, so every morning Mollie had to pick up her two way radio that she used at work
from the police station. It was also sitting there. Mollie never showed up. At eleven am, Mollie's Bok Park's commissioner ed Fett showed up and Sandra told him Mollie was nowhere to be found. At first, people thought maybe Molly had just stepped away for a minute, since all of
her stuff had been left behind pretty much undisturbed. The park's commissioner later told police that at first he thought Mollie may be in the water swimming, but when she didn't reappear at eleven forty four am, ed Fett called the Warren Police department. He called from Mollie's two way radio to report that she was missing. Since there were no signs of a struggle, the police didn't initially assume that Molly had been abducted. They also thought she might
have ditched work. Maybe she was hanging out with her friends, or they even considered the possibility that she'd jumped in to go swimming and drowned. Mollie's sister, Heather told a journalist much later that, in addition to a delay in figuring out that this could be a potential abduction, the police were already that day. It was a small town with a small police force, and the night before one of Molly's friends had been hit by a car, so when they got the call about Molly, they were already
occupied investigating that. But Molly's family points out they believe from the beginning they thought it was very unlikely that she would have left, because even if she did have to step away for some reason, why would she leave all of her stuff behind, and why was the first aid kit open. Finally, about three hours after Molly's shift started, State police showed up and called Molly's family. This was at around one thirty PM. That's when Molly's mother, Maggie,
found out that her daughter was missing. Police talked to Maggie about her drive with Mollie and their morning routine. Maggie told them she and Molly had stopped by a local convenience store at nine to fifty am. The store's camera had Molly on camera in that storey water bottles. At nine fifty six am, Maggie and Molly stopped by the local police station to pick up Molly's two way radio that she used for her lifeguarding job. At nine
fifty eight am, they arrived at Cummens Pond. Maggie said that she noticed the parking lot was pretty much deserted and the beach was empty except for a dump truck that was dropping off a load of sand. Maggie drove off at exactly ten am. The police asked Maggie if she had seen anyone suspicious lately, and of course, she told them about the man in the white car who
she saw the day before. She said that the man was sitting alone in the parking lot, that the man was staring at Molly, and that at one point she had stared this man straight in the eye.
She explained to police she.
Had waited for the guy to leave, which he did about twenty minutes later. Maggie clarified that while the guy had given her a creepy vibe, he had not been overtly threatening. She described him as being between the ages of maybe forty five and fifty five years old, with dark black and gray hair and a mustache. Once the
search started that afternoon, it mushroomed fast. Police had a ground search with around two hundred people scouring the woods, along with police dogs at the scene, helicopters, and police from elsewhere in the state. Unfortunately, because at first police didn't think this was an abduction, the crime scene was not secured properly. Dozens of people were walking through and around the area where Molly went missing, and they went
through her stuff that was left behind. Police questioned a lot of people, including Molly's boyfriend at the time and
people who were at the lake that day. Molly's family was adamant she would not have wandered away from her new job once she had taken many classes to get certifications for They also said they believed she was a strong swimmer and would not have Also, investigators started believing that she had never gotten into the water because when she arrived for her shift, Mollie was wearing a blue one piece bathing suit and shorts, and her shorts were
nowhere to be found. Also, whatever happened to Molly had happened within a very narrow window of time. Mollie had not called into the police station at the start of her shift, which was her regular routine. It seemed as though something distracted her Right when she arrived. The next day, the police dogs alerted on Molly's scent near the pond and tracked it up a rocky steep path that led
to a cemetery. Now this was a steep path with a lot of rocks, so it seemed unlikely she would just wander up there, especially because her shoes were left behind at the pond. So did someone lure Molly up there or incapacitate her somehow and take her there?
And it so?
Was it someone she knew or a stranger, But there was no sign of Mollie. Then the dogs lost the scent en route nineteen Mollie was popular in school and had no known enemies. Police considered a lot of possibilities about who could have taken her. They even wondered if it could be someone who was linked to Molly's father, John bish because John was a probation officer at the
East Brookfield District Court. So they asked if someone would have been angry at him and maybe hurt Molly in retaliation for something John did, but that possibility was quickly ruled out. Police had no obvious suspect, and Molly's sister, Heather, said that the family started their own investigation. They were calling around to Molly's friends. They were trying to see if anyone had seen her during this time. Police stated they questioned hundreds of people and ten different people all
failed by detector tests. It seemed like everyone was a suspect and the police seemed to be clueless. They talked to Molly's boss, ed Fett. He told investigators that that morning, from around nine to fifty am until the time he arrived at the beach, he was painting a fence nearby
with some volunteers. But it was reported elsewhere that John, Molly's brother, saw Ed feed at the hardware store at nine thirty am, and that Ed had shown up with the paint at Cutter Park at around nine to fifty am, and then that he had left, so he may not have been in that park the entire time. However, there is no reason to suspect that ed Fett was in
any way involved with Molly's disappearance. He was just one of the many people who were questioned by police, and one of many people whom it was reported in the media, failed a light detector test. Ed said to The Boston Globe quote, I was treated like a suspect.
Back then.
They checked out my story and found out that I had an alibi. Ed Fett said police had cleared him because of his alibi, and he said he had voluntarily submitted DNA along with a lot of other people. He said at the time he believed that police got his DNA because they wanted to build a large enough database to test against. Police continued hunting for a suspect, and they seemed to be focusing on the mysterious man with the mustache who was in the white car on the
day Molly went missing. Maggie, Molly's mother, worked with a sketch artist. The sketch artist was actually the same person who did the very well known sketch of the unibomber. So Maggie and this sketch artist created a portrait of the suspect police were looking for. They offered one hundred thousand dollars reward. This brought in a ton of tips, but unfortunately it also led to a lot of dead ends for police. The sketch was very detailed, but the problem with it was that it looked like a lot
of people. Also, the suspect could have shaved his mustache, which would have completely altered his appearance. Some witnesses told police they had seen a man matching this description around the area of the pond that day and at the end of the rocky trail that led to that cemetery, but these IDs were, to my knowledge, never confirmed. Investigators continued to track down Leeds, and according to media reports, they investigated around one hundred and twenty five men with
white cars. One person police looked into who resembled the sketch was fifty two year old Oscar by Largen, who lived in the nearby town of Worcester. Oscar was convicted of raping a child and of indecent assault and battery in nineteen ninety one. He also had a tenuous connection to Molly. While attending his nephew's graduation party a few weeks before Molly vanished, he told police he had met Molly briefly, and, like many of the other men questioned
by police, he had a mustache. Oscar was interviewed twice by the police about any involvement with Molly's disappearance. There was no concrete evidence found that he was involved, and he always denied any involvement in her disappearance. Police also canvassed the area. They interviewed local sex offenders, and they started to take a look at people who had similar charges against them, but the problem was this was a long list. Police also took a look at a local
hunter and fisherman named Rodney Stanger. He lived locally and was convicted of murdering his girlfriend Cristeal Morrison in two thousand and eight. The police reportedly investigated Rodney after his girlfriend's sister told them that a week before Cristel died, she had told her sister Rodney allegedly killed both Mollie and another girl in Massachusetts. Rodney also had a connection
with the area. He fished at Commons Pond, and according to media reports, he had also driven a white cart one time when Molly took classes at the YMCA to become a lifeguard. Rodney was living in an address just a few blocks away, but there was zero evidence that linked him in any direct way to Molly's murder. He was sentenced to twenty five years for Crystal's murder, but
always denied any involvement in Molly's murder. In addition to considering the possibility that this could have been a random stranger, police also talked to people Molly knew. Police talked to her boyfriend at the time, Stephen Lucas. According to media reports, Stephen and Molly had gone to the prom together and they had dated for about three months at the time of her disappearance. On the day of Molly's disappearance, Stephen said that he was home when the police interviewed him,
they noticed he had a swollen lip. He told police he was getting out of bed and had stumbled and bumped his lip on the bedroom door, but it was reported on medium dot com that another one of Stephen's friends said they were.
Told he had a cold sore that day.
CNN also reported that Molly's family was surprised that Stephen did not show up at their house and that he was not actively participating in the search for Mollie. Whether or not he took and passed a lie detector test isn't known. Some media reports say he did pass. CNN reported he was asked to take a polygraph but declined. Channel seven reported that police had questioned Stephen Lucas and
he had given police a DNA sample. But we can't ask Stephen Lucas about Molly because he has also passed away. He died in two thousand and eight in a car accident. He was twenty five years old. Molly's family has gone on record as saying they do not believe that Stephen was the killer. They believe the killer was someone who was stalking Mollie, and they do not believe that the killer was someone Molly knew well. For a long time, Molly's case appeared to have gone completely cold until two
thousand and two. That year, a hunter in the town of Palmer, Massachusetts, which was about a twenty minute drive away from Warren, saw some blue bathing suit fabric out in the woods. At the time, it struck him as a bit weird. There was nothing attached to the fabric, but he didn't search or pick anything up at the time.
He just went on with his day.
Later, he told a friend of his named Tim McGuigan, a former police officer and later a true crime writer, about the bathing suit fabric he'd found, and Tim McGuigan called this tip in to the police, investigators started the search. Over two hundred searchers scoured that area. Then on June ninth, two thousand and three, they found remains in a wooded area about five miles from the pond where Molly disappeared. These remains were later identified as Molly's. At the scene,
searchers found twenty six of Molly's bones. Investigators said that due to the decomposition, they were unable to determine a definitive cause of death. This was also an area with a lot of wildlife, so this made recovery more difficult, but at least now Molly's family could lay her to rest, and investigators knew definitively that they were dealing with a homicide. Tim McGuigan, who reported the tip, was very familiar with
Molly's case. He had actually written a book about the abduction of a ten year old girl named Holly Parinan, and he ended up researching Molly's case because he believed there were some similarities between the two cases. Holly disappeared in nineteen ninety three from Stourbridge, Massachusetts, Hollywood, visiting her grandmother's cottage. When she and her brother went to see a neighbor's puppies. Holly's brother came home without her and
she was nowhere to be found. Hunters found her body two months later on October twenty third, nineteen ninety three, in a wooded area approximately five miles away. Holly's case made national news, and in the region that story was massive, so many online. Commoners who live in Massachusetts say that this was the first time as children they learned about stranger danger. Everyone knew about Holly's kidnapping, and strangely, there was a connection between Holly and Molly's cases.
When she was taken.
Holly was ten years old, the same age Molly was at the time, and Mollie had written Holly's parents a letter telling them that she was sorry about their daughter being missing. At some point, Tim told reporters he became obsessed with Holly's case.
It affected his life.
He was an alcohol and his drinking was getting more and more out of control. His boss has criticized what they considered to be his over involvement in the case, and eventually he left the police force. He saw similarities between Holly Purinan's case and Molly Bsh's case, so he contacted Molly's family and asked for permission to look into her case.
As well, and they agreed.
But later Tim would become a controversial character in this story.
After the bathing.
Suit led to Molly's remains. Tim later tried to claim the one hundred thousand dollars reward, but it was denied and he ended up suing the Worcester District Attorney's office. Tim argued he was responsible for leading investigators to that bathing suit evidence which led directly to Molly's body being recovered. So his argument was that some of the missing posters stated the reward would be paid for information leading to Molly, but the DA's office stated those posters were for a
private organization. They said their posters had been very specific they would only pay out if the information given led to an arrest and a conviction, which has not happened yet. Eventually, Tim's lawsuit was dismissed. Tim mcgwigan testified that the lawsuit for him was not about the money, but about helping solve the case, and in a crazy twist, police actually
considered Tim a person of interest. At one point, police gave him a polygraph test which it was reported that he passed later, Molly's mother said she regretted the way that Tim mcgwigan was treated. She said while a court may have decided that Tim couldn't collect the reward because that tip hadn't technically solved the case, she appreciated the crucial role that he played in helping find Molly's body. Holly Paranan and Molly Bush's case had some other strange connections.
In twenty twelve, police did hold a press comfort It's for Holly's case. They said they were looking for the public's help in getting information about a person of interest named David Puoliocht. They were seeking information on this person in connection with Holly's abduction and murder. David had worked as a carpenter at one point. He also worked at a juvenile detention center and was in the Coastguard. He
was a fisherman and a hunter. The district attorney stated at the press conference that new forensic evidence in the area where Holly's remains were found had what they called a link to David. They said they found a match to his DNA close to, but not right by, Holly's remains.
The district attorney said, quote the nature of the items suggests either mister Puliocht or people associated with him were in the area at a time relevant to the disappearance of Holly and the discovery of her remains end quote. At the press conference, they showed photographs of David and he had a heavy mustache and looked a lot like the sketch created in Molly's case. So could David have
been involved in Molly Bush's death? Unfortunately, investigators couldn't bring David in for questioning for Holly or Molly's case because he died years earlier in August of two thousand and three a congestive heart failure and hypertension. To this day, Holly Paranin's murder has never been solved, and even after finding Molly's body, investigators seemed no closer to identifying a suspect in Molly's murder. So who took Molly that day?
Was it someone she knew or a stranger? Her father, John told New England dot Com in twenty sixteen that he believed that Molly's kidnapping and murder were planned. He said, quote, what we think happened is someone had stalked her. He had a very short window of time to get to her.
He knew what he was doing.
He probably feigned injury, maybe a hook in his finger. While she opened the first aid kit he got her end quote. That was the first thought that I had when I was reading about this case, that someone could have faked an injury, and that maybe that was why the first aid kit was open. It also reminded me of the Ted Bundy case, where he was able to abduct and murder two women in a single day at a lake by wearing a cast and appearing as though
he needed help. When those two women saw Ted Bundy, it only took a second and the same thing could have happened to Molly Bush. But if someone did convince her that he needed first aid, was it a stranger who was able to convince her of that or was it someone Molly knew and was comfortable with who lured her up the hill to that spot. Police went through Molly's room, They read her notebooks and journals. They talked to everyone in her family and all of her friends
over the years. They questioned several people who looked like the sketch, including a local man who tried to kidnap a teenage girl when she was on her way to work. The man was convicted and sentenced to six to eight years for attempted kidnapping and assault, but like a lot of other people, he completely denied having anything to do with Molly's disappearance, and eventually that investigative lead was dropped. There were also jailhouse confessions, but according to media reports,
they turned out to be fake. In twenty twenty one, Wooster County District Attorney Joseph D. Early Junior named Francis P. Sumner a person of interest in Molly's case. Francis Sumner worked in an auto body shop. He had been convicted of rape and kidnapping in nineteen eighty two. At the time, Francis told his twenty one year old victim that he had an apartment to rent. While she was looking at the apartment, he offered to pay her to clean the apartment.
When he came back after she was finished cleaning, he put money down on a table and then locked the door. He forced her into a bedroom and violently raped her. She told investigators that he choked her and threatened to kill her. Francis Sumner ended up serving eleven years for that rape. Francis submitted DNA to Molly's investigators in two thousand and three, and Mollie's sister Heather later made a TikTok video. She said the DNA was not a match
to evidence from Molly's crime scene. Also, the DA's office seemed to be making some mistakes. For example, when they named Francis Sumner a person of interest, the district attorney stated that Francis's victim was sixteen years old at the time of the rape, which was the same age as Molly. But Francis's victim was actually twenty one years old and it was a different mo Francis raped his victim after inviting her into his home to clean his residence. Francis
Sumner died in twenty sixteen. His half sister, Jackie, talked to reporter about the harassment that she and her family received after her brother was named a person of interest in Molly's case. She said that her brother was no angel, but she believed there was never any evidence that he had committed this crime. She wondered why his name had
been put out there publicly. She talked about how locals had thrown trash at her car and how his kids and family members had been talked about at school and elsewhere. This was one of the reasons why I wanted to cover this case because I think it illustrates how it's possible for investigators to get tunnel vision, and how easy it is to focus on suspects because of circumstantial factors, and how people's lives can be changed forever because their names are mentioned in connection.
With a violent crime.
The murder victims are obviously the focus of this podcast, but these killings reverberate through these communities, and they continue to do damage to generations of people, even people who had zero involvement. Jackie also stated that investigation had had Francis's DNA since two thousand and three, so she was wondering why his name was brought up in twenty twenty one.
She said she voluntarily gave the Massachusetts State Police a familial sample in twenty twenty, and it was reported that Francis's son had also given a DNA sample to police.
Twenty five years later.
Mollie's family still has no idea who killed their daughter, So we're left going back to that scene at Commons Pond and seeing if there was anything that anyone missed.
So what do we know for sure?
We know that whatever happened to Molly happened fast. She didn't even have enough time to grab her shoes, and the first aid kid supplies were left out. Her father told CBS that he does not believe that she would have voluntarily walked up that rocky path near the cemetery without her shoes. Her family have publicly stated that they believe that the police theory that Molly went somewhere with
friends should not have been followed from the beginning. The guy driving the white car whom Maggie saw the day before has been the focus of almost every single investigative lead. But what if it wasn't him at all? What if the cigarette smoking stranger with the mustache is just a red herring? After all, there is zero evidence that he was actually at the crime scene on June twenty seventh. What if it was someone completely different, someone who has
been overlooked by law enforcement all this time. Investigators believe that whoever did this must have been familiar with the area around Coummen's Pond and known about the trails in that area, and investigators believed they were probably hunters or fishermen who knew the area where Molly's body was dumped, and believed that it was unlikely to be disturbed for some time. Several commoners online have talked about the effect
that the case has had on them. For many people in that generation who grew up around there, it was the first time that they became aware of stranger danger and of the possibility of being taken from a public place in broad daylight. For children and their parents, it was terrifying. Could there be clues in the area where Molly was taken. It's described as a beach, which it is, but it's not a beach with a big expanse of sand.
It was somewhere where someone could hide behind trees and watch from the woods, So it is certainly possible that Molly's killer cased the area before showing up to kidnap her. Molly's parents have continued to be extremely active in victim advocacy. They have been active in trying to get justice for other families. Her parents created the Molly Bush Center and Foundation, and have been very active in local politics. They been
helping craft legislation related to family DNA identification. They have been instrumental in creating id kits with the information of missing children along with their fingerprints, and gave them to hundreds of thousands of families. They also did talks about safety at schools to children. The foundation also helped with legislation before it went national. Maggie helped bring the Amber
Alert to Massachusetts. One thing that's pretty unique about this case is how many suspects there were and how many potential suspects were living locally at the time. But they still don't know who kidnapped and murdered her. This year marks the twenty five year anniversary since Molly went missing, and her mother has said publicly that they still have hope that someone out there knows what really happened to Molly and who might have been watching and stalking her
from those woods. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance and to James Wheaton for legal review. Noah Cammer mixed and scored this episode. Our theme song is by Ben Salek Executive
producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and LC Curley. Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Flush channel on Apple Podcasts. If you were interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at Helen Gonepod. If you have a case she'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven
four four six one four or five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
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