Will There Ever Be Justice for Murdered Molly Bish: 25 Years Unsolved
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I think about Molly Bish. Why?

What happened to a beautiful, beautiful young girl, Molly Bish? It's been 25 years since teen lifeguard Molly Bish disappeared, just minutes after her mother dropped her off at Commons Pond for work. Molly's remains were found three years later. Twenty-six of her 206 bones were found five miles away from the swimming area, but her murder remains unsolved.

Rodney Stanger, a Southbridge man who was convicted of murdering his girlfriend, was once a potential suspect. But more recently, D.A. Joe Early said another man, Frank Sumner, a sex offender who died in 2016, is a person of interest. Let's just revisit. What happened? Joining me right now is a special guest, Maggie Bish.

and her daughter, Heather. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. It was Molly's eighth day at a brand new job as a lifeguard. She was just 16. It was a hot summer day. Do you remember that day, Maggie? Oh, how I do.

Again, we had just gotten out of school. I'm a school teacher, and we had cleaned your room. And I actually was a special ed teacher, and I had some IEP, some work to complete. And so we were all kind of buzzing a little bit. You know, Molly had a new job. My son had just trained her. And I had taken her to work the day before,

And it was kind of a little unsettling. We had seen a car that day parked in the parking lot, and there was only one white vehicle. And Molly got out, and she was very excited and said, Bye, Mom, I love you. See you later. You know, and just she had to get some supplies ready and go down to the beach. It was the first week of swimming lessons for the town kids.

So we live in a very small community, only 4,000 folks, one traffic light, a beautiful town in central Massachusetts. Well, Molly went off, and I see this vehicle and this man, and he ends up kind of staring at me. And I get kind of unnerved, and I said, I can't leave Molly here. What is this guy doing here?

So I head to the beach and meet her, and we sit, and it is a very lovely little place. And it's kind of, again, it's down a main street, but it's also kind of isolated. And we sit, we talk, and I really...

We haven't talked a whole lot about danger, but we talked about, you know, I said, I noticed there's more men around maybe. And she said, well, it's just fishermen, Mom, not concerned at all. I talk about how nice the beach is. And then I said, I got to get back and do my reports. So I go to the car and this individual is still there. I am so kind of awestruck. Like, what is he doing? He's just sitting there smoking a cigarette. There's nothing to view. It's wood spilling.

And I get into my car, and I'm looking. I had not even taken my purse before. So when I go in, I'm pretending I'm getting something. And prior to that, I'm walking, and he stares at me. And I have to tell you, it's like a mother bear. You just want to protect your child. You just say, what are you doing here? Go to work. It's 10 o'clock in the morning. And that just got me so unnerved. So when I went to the car to get my purse,

He pulled out so fast that I didn't even think. I just got relieved. It was one of those immediate gut feelings. I just was uncomfortable. And that white car, still to this day, we've never found the individual who was driving it. Our case remains unsolved.

And anyway, the next day happened, took Molly to work the same, talked to her that night about being safe, even offered her a little coubaton stick, which my husband had as a probation officer. She said, Mom, I don't need it. It's just fishermen. Don't worry. And that next morning after I drove her to work, there wasn't a single car in the parking lot.

She said, goodbye, Mom, I love you. Our routine kind of farewell. And that was the last time I ever heard my Molly. And I would have never, ever in my wildest dreams or sadnesses imagined that three hours later I would get a phone call from the assistant chief of police that Molly had not been at the pond all morning. Her things were left on the beach, an open first aid kit,

The police radio, her shoes, and her backpack all remained on the beach, and nobody knew where she was.

At that point, this was an unusual event for us. Molly was very conscientious, very kind of nervous. It's a new job. They told me she probably went with friends. It didn't make sense. She left her shoes, she left her backpack, but she left the job at 10 o'clock when she just was starting. It just didn't make sense at all. So I called my daughter, Heather, and Heather said she would meet me at the beach.

And I immediately got in my car, went to the beach, and I went. I'm still in disbelief, and I'm calling her and screaming her name on the beach, Molly, Molly, and people were coming, but there was no Molly. And people had said that she hadn't been there. There had been the lifeguard all day, and I knew I dropped her off.

I seen her things, so I was very, very frightened. For me, the first gut reaction was something is really wrong here.

I started to go toward the police station. There comes Heather, our new little granddaughter, and we go into the police station, and I say, something's very wrong. I need this chief, the assistant chief, because he called me and my husband. And because he was at probation in the local area at the local court, I said, call him. That's how upset I was already. I knew in my heart that this was not how Molly operated.

And they told us to go in a little room. It was two young officers, and they figured out that, oh, she just went with friends. They weren't concerned. And that's when Heather and I, you know. Well, they told you to go in the room, and I took off looking for Molly's friends. Okay. So I went from there. Yeah.

And then I went also to look for her other friend in the next town that was a good friend. And she was accounted for. And then I got my son. We returned to the beach. And when we got to the beach, we were aghast. I mean, people in a small town heard...

Molly was not at the beach. It was on the scanners, and there were people starting to come. And Molly's friend's father was the head of the fire department. And nobody, I think this was the hard part, Nancy, nobody knew. Everybody felt something, but they didn't know what to do. And I really didn't see the police as I got there. It was the firemen had actually entered the pond thinking Molly drowned swimming.

And that was very frightful. They had those special dogs to determine if there was a body. I mean, it was like you were now really in a surreal state.

unbelievable place that you've never been and it's heartbreaking because you don't know where your daughter is nobody knows where she is and you're just watching this this show progress and it was scary and and sad and you worry what she's thinking you don't know what now that you have children

I know you can imagine how hard, what would your child do? And, you know, each child has their own personality. Molly was funny and silly, but she was also very shy. And if someone would hurt her, but she would also trust somebody because she was a good kid and she had no reason not to. You know, if they dressed like a police officer or they dressed in some, you know, authoritative, she would go.

And that's how I know that we looked. There was no, nobody had Molly. And we had everybody that she was, you know, friends with accounted for. And that was really the beginning of our horrible nightmare. Everyone with me, Maggie Bish. This is Molly Bish's mother. Molly goes missing one warm June morning, 2000. The search still on.

From Molly's Killer. And when I hear you talking, I can't help it. It takes me straight back to when my fiance was murdered. And there's that feeling. I felt like a wild animal. This is the only way I can describe it. I felt like a wild animal that couldn't form words. I wanted to...

break the window with my bare hands and just howl. I didn't even know words to say. And I'm thinking, I remember one night right before I was supposed to go on the air, my longtime makeup artist, Shazon, was with me. She got a call. She had her hands in my hair at the moment and put it on speaker and her son was missing. Arlington was missing.

And everything just went berserk. And I mean, I've covered all these cases. I know what to do. I know who to call. But when it happens to you, it's a whole, whole nother can of worms. In her story, he was found. Thank goodness. And I'm just thinking about you at that, at that pond.

And they're looking in the water, and you see the first aid kit, and you see her shoes, and everything's there. Everything's right. Everything is present. But, Molly, when did you find out what happened to Molly? They took her.

three long years before we knew anything. And they were hard and it was really tough for our whole family and families suffer. You know, we used to have fragile Fridays if we made it another week. You know, how are we doing checking in with each other?

It was tough. We didn't have small children. My children, my son was just in his first year of college and Heather just had her first child. So we were a little older, which in some ways is easier, but still very difficult because every age has its own challenges.

acceptance of losing a sibling. You're so right about that and there are so many phases you go through. One, when you suffer a loss. My father passed away and I'm still a mess. He and I were, I guess, soulmates. We were just... I mean, I love my mother. I'm extremely close to her. I've always talked to her more, I guess, than I did my dad, but...

He and I were just two peas in a pod. And you go through, it hurts me too much to remember what I went through when Keith was murdered. But the thing that phases you go through when you lose somebody. But I guess, I don't know what, I'll have to ask you because I knew almost immediately who murdered Keith and what had happened to him.

But it was 2003, almost to the day. It was June 9, 2003. Yes. Before you knew what had happened. Well, you know, it is, oh, I can't tell you. It's awful.

Actually, we had did the Missing Children's Day at the end of May, and we had come home, and John had gotten a call, my husband, and he said we have to get home. And usually I'm saying thank you to all the people. We have two busloads of people that we take with us to Boston, and so I'm very grateful. We put flowers. We put Forget-Me-Nots. You don't go out there. We do a big, beautiful program, so we are coming home with all this stuff.

And John's saying, hurry up, get home. We're going, we're going. And he was pushing me. I was getting a little agitated. Well, what happened is one of the news reporters came to our house and they had the pictures because somebody did not believe. Well, how it went is there was a hunter that had spotted something that he wasn't familiar with, but he mentioned it to this person who used to be a police officer. And so they went and they were kind of on their own doing this. And then I guess this person

Police officer didn't believe that the, you know, he was afraid the police would take credit for his find, I guess. And so he wanted someone to take pictures. He called in the press and the press did it. And so guess what? What they do, they show it to us before the police even called us.

and told us anything. So I'm in my driveway, and you know how in the press car, like the vans, they have all the TVs? Oh, no. There's Molly's. Yeah. This is how Molly's. I've seen her bathing suit in the leaves, the old leaves.

and John didn't remember, you know, my husband, he, you know, it's so funny. I actually went out with her to buy this special bathing suit because they didn't have the colored ones. He, the, the recreational person was going to order them. So I knew exactly what it was. It was a blue one, but it was a special one. And I knew right then and there, I, my knees almost crumbled and I ran up the stairs and to our home and,

I mean, there was three days that I could say, and when you were talking earlier, you do, it's like a primal cry. It's from the depths of your soul. I knew, and I didn't want it. You know, you want to find Molly, but it wasn't the way we had hoped, you know. And my, I mean, I cried, and it just, that was one of the worst, I have to say, days. And I howled, and I, every piece of me

When you say it was a special swimsuit, and the moment you saw it, you knew what it was, what was it that you knew beyond a doubt that was Molly's swimsuit? No, I really...

I don't know to analyze it. I think it's just that I was the mother. I picked it out. It was the color. And I think there was a little bit, she was going to the training for the lifeguards and she needed a certain kind of a tank suit type. So I knew that material and it was blue, but it had to be a little bit cool. So it had some mixed colorings in the middle of different things.

And I seen it. I knew. I just knew. And, you know, again, they had to send the police in. They had to send a search party in. And, I mean, that began really another whole experience because the first day they came home with one bone. Yeah, it was a shin bone, but it could possibly be someone in Molly's age range. The next day they had rib bones. And then by the third day they had her skull.

I mean, what mother sees, you know, we actually did say goodbye to Molly and kissed her goodbye, but we only had 24 bones that were found. But because of that, we were able to get her dental records.

You know, so that's, they had to certainly make sure it was Molly. And I think that was the only way we were able to, they were able to fake the police, but I knew, you know, and it was just confirmed.

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Heather Bish is Molly's sister. Heather, what do you recall of this time?

Well, I think, you know, I, again, it was still that it couldn't be possible that Molly was abducted. You know, I thought that in the beginning that it had to be a mistake and, you know, sort of the same thing that this, this couldn't be right. There's, there's gotta be an explanation for this. And then as the moments and time kept passing and Molly didn't pop out of anywhere, you know, that's when we realized her, her peril, she was, she was in a great deal of peril. So,

you know, we became increasingly anxious. I think when, even when we found the bathing suit for me, I, you know, I think it just kind of just hold on to hope. Like, I don't know, maybe, maybe he stripped her and threw the bathing suit in the woods or, or something. You just want, want to believe something as terrible as, as her loss isn't, isn't going to be what, what the final end of the story is.

And for me, I can remember the day that the state police actually came up to the house on June 9th when they did find the skull.

because people were coming over to my mom's house every day. And I had been living in Western Mass at the time and driving out every morning with my three-year-old. And it was about a 45-minute drive. And for a three-year-old that has to go potty all the time, that's like two potty stops, you know, so never an easy trip. But we were doing that daily to ensure that we were all together.

and I remember we had just gotten there on June 9th, and there were people in the driveway, and Mom was talking, and in the distance I could see the district attorney and the head of our investigation walking up the driveway, and they were wearing suits, and it was

You know, it's interesting that you're saying that.

And I hate to keep projecting, but what you're saying is striking so many chords in me. When you saw those guys in the suits, you knew. And I just really wanted to run away, to be honest with you. I didn't even want to hear what they were going to say. I just thought if I could run, I would be able to outrun the truth or the reality. It just felt like...

Everything's going to change now, our whole life, everything. It's really odd, Heather, that your mind tries to get around it or bend with it. Because I remember I would wake up in the mornings and I would think that...

Keith was still alive and this had been some elaborate ruse and I would dream, I would dream, and this is so, I don't know exactly what this means because I never saw a shrink about it, probably should. I would dream that Keith wanted to get out of the engagement.

And so he had faked the whole thing because, you know, this close to us getting married, he had decided that in my dream and I'd wake up and I go, Oh, thank God he's alive. And it's just, you know, and then I'd wait, wait a minute. I would have, um,

I would have dreams that Molly was still alive, but she would be, you know, she would have gone off with her friends to Florida or she went on a, you know, she went on a trip and she was just back and she was going to see her old boyfriend. And I'd be, I remember in the dreams feeling like, no, you can't go on. I'm desperately want to be with you and hang out with you. And,

Generally, that's not how 20-year-olds feel about their teenage sisters. So I've always sort of thought about those dreams later now in life and thought, geez, you know, maybe Molly was trying to tell me in some capacity that she was okay, you know, and it was just me feeling this desperate feeling. Listen to this. To the man who took Molly Bish, does June 27, 2000 mean anything to you?

I remember it as a warm summer day. We left home, we picked up the police radio, and then we arrived at the pond. The sand truck was there. We watched, mesmerized like little children, as the sand fell gently to the ground. Molly and Mom, for the last time. Molly said, "Goodbye, I love you," and ran off. It was her eighth day on her new job as a lifeguard. That was the last time I saw or heard from my Molly.

I have held those words wrapped around my heart to sustain it from breaking into a million broken pieces. Her remains were found on a central Massachusetts mountainside three years later. The case remains unsolved.

It's an open investigation. We're constantly getting tips and leads on it. We're moving forward and going through the beginning to now. We started talking to some of the original investigators, just bringing them in as a group. And we also have a district attorney assigned to the case. So they came in and we just started going over their observations, their notes, their feelings, you know, things like that. Maggie Bish could never imagine a moment that she'd never see her daughter Molly ever again.

Molly could be very shy and she could be very silly. There was two sides of her. In her comfort zone, she was silly like Lucy. I mean, goofy silly. We were just beginning our adult relationship when Molly disappeared, so I often wonder what that would have been like to have known her as an adult. ♪

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With me is Maggie Bish. This is Molly Bish's mother. Molly goes missing one warm June morning, 2000. The search still on.

From Molly's Killer. And I'm trying to imagine your view. You know, you pull up and you at a distance see all these guys in suits in your driveway. And I'm trying to imagine what Maggie, what that was when press, a van pulls up and they run up. What did they have, a picture of her swimsuit, Maggie? Yeah.

Well, you know what? I guess, like I said, this person didn't believe it. So they had six TVs going on. There were six TVs in that van, and there was every vantage point that they could take the picture. I mean, it truly was a small piece of bathing suit that was peeking out from underneath twigs and old leaves.

And it was just taking in different views. And I mean, it didn't take me the second to gather that information, you know, in a second. And I ran up the stairs because I knew I closed my door in my room and I began to howl. I was on my knees and, you know, John was down there talking and I just like...

I mean, because, again, we had just missed Children's Day for the folks in Massachusetts. It was a beautiful day. We were coming home feeling at least we're doing something positive. And, you know, we always will miss Molly. But to see this, it was too close to knowing that this was not good. Molly goes missing one warm June morning, 2008.

The search still on for Molly's killer. We are now hearing rumblings that DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid tests, are stirring little seeds of hope.

What do you know about a potential DNA test? You want to talk, Heather? Yeah, sure. I have been sort of headlining the investigative efforts for my family, but about a year ago they took, and every so often they'll take pieces of evidence and submit them for DNA testing, and they'll try to compare it when they have a few years ago they had a really,

quote-unquote good person of interest down in Florida, and they had taken some DNA from there and submitted it, and then nothing was sort of a hit. So I guess our hope sort of lies in the science and technology that sort of helping investigators solve these older cases. And so they took 24 pieces of evidence, and

to retest. And so they don't exactly tell us what they took or where it came from, but we know it was 24 pieces of evidence. And they resubmitted them for further testing. You know, as they, like I said, the technology increases and the touch DNA becomes available.

They will continuously keep resubmitting for particularly these older cases because they've been able to solve cases based on this DNA. The seeds of hope are that...

DNA samples have been taken and they're being reexamined with new techniques that were not possible at that time. I mean, that is a huge big deal because I recall trying rape cases, murder cases, you name it, with no DNA. You know what I'd have?

I'd have a blood sample and I could say, well, the suspect is A positive and the perpetrator was A positive. That was it. Or maybe a hair. And I could say the rapist or the killer is a Caucasian male with X hair. I mean, that was it. There was no nuclear mitochondrial touch. Nothing. Nothing.

So this is a major development that they are doing this. I want to ask you about this deep ground sonar.

Sure. What do we know about that? Yeah. So, you know, over the years, we've, you know, because law enforcement is, you know, they sort of work on their own and, you know, they don't necessarily report to victim families. That can become very frustrating for victim families. And because we...

What do you think they hope to find, Heather, with the ground-penetrating radar?

And it's on a private property in an undisclosed location in Worcester County. What could that mean? Was that where the swimsuit was found, Maggie, in Worcester County? No.

No. No. It was where we received a – so I'm just trying to put the backstory here. We – some friends in the area, a person who has a Ph.D. in criminology, and I sort of formed this sort of investigative team. It kind of came off through our fundraisers and things like that. We developed this little team. This little team developed these –

So one year we did billboards. Another year we did ads. Each time we do one, we do a tip campaign. And so we had a Just One Piece campaign because the state police had always said we're one piece away from solving this crime. During our Just One Piece campaign, we received a number of tips on a particular person who stayed at this particular campground in Worcester County.

The next year, we had another campaign, and we called it Just One Car because we were trying to identify this white car. Was it tied to this person that we found? Okay, so the location. Yeah.

The location is my question. So let me understand. The location is the campground where a potential suspect stayed. Okay, got it. And what do you think, Maggie, they are looking for with the deep ground search?

Well, I understand that it has the potential to be able to recognize metal or rock or anything, and especially if there was something of some size. You know, burying a car is quite big. You know, how deep could they go? So this radar has a way to analyze the depth and how significant that, you know, if it's metal or something that...

you know, I guess that's what they do. They do some kind of a computation and it determines. So from what we understand, there were three places that they felt some interest. Now, you know, again,

they have to hand that information over to the state police. And the state police have to decide if it's worth digging or going into. Now, again, it could be, it's like this whole story again, you always get hopeful,

But you have to kind of protect yourself from disappointment. You've got to, you know, you don't, you want it, but you're scared. The emotional battle within is unbelievable because you've been doing this so long now that you want it, but we don't get to choose any of it, you know? Now, isn't it true, Maggie, that other girls similar in age to Molly also were kidnapped? Yes.

Yes, we have a girl that was 10 years old, a little bit younger, in Sturbridge, which is a 20-minute district.

distance from our home and she was taken before Molly maybe seven years there had been some cases maybe even a little older that were in northern Massachusetts near the New York border and there was a gentleman that they thought was a serial killer up there that might have been involved I mean you know it's so sad I mean you hear these horrible cases and

but you don't understand. I mean, certainly I wasn't one that

you know, really understood any of this. You know, now I know all these families who have struggled and who keep struggling, you know, to find their loved ones and how they deal with it. And it is very, very hard. So, you know, again, there possibly could be serial killer out there. And that's what worried us because this to me, honestly, Nancy, how does a normal person do something this horrific and

And that is so, it's like when you throw the rock into the river and it ripples. It has caused so much pain to Molly's friends, our family, out into the community, the fear that he's somewhere. If you have information on the abduction and murder of Molly Bish, contact the DA's office at 508-453-7575. One day, this case will end.

Nancy Grace signing off. Goodbye, friend.

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