Molly Bish was born on August 2, 1983 in Detroit, Michigan to parents John & Magi Bish & she was the youngest of three children. Molly was a talented athlete, an honors student & an outgoing, well-liked girl. Molly’s family decided to relocated when she was just a year old after an 18-year-old girl who lived in their neighborhood had been abducted, raped & murdered.
The Bish family chose to go back to John’s hometown of Warren, Massachusetts which is a small town with a population of about 5,000 in 2020. Their goal of moving their family of five was to raise their children in a safe area where they could “find their peace.”
Fifteen years after the move, it was the year 2000 & both Heather & John Jr, the two oldest Bish children, left the home to go off to college. Meanwhile, Molly was 16-years-old & had just finished her junior year of high school & she had dreams of becoming a teacher so she could work with children. At the time, she was looking forward to starting her first job as a lifeguard at Comins Pond in Warren where she planned to earn extra money over the summer. Molly’s brother John had gotten his lifeguard certification years before & she wanted to be like her big brother & follow in his footsteps. John had worked as the Comins Pond lifeguard for three years & actually trained Molly.
Comins Pond is centrally located in Warren & is a popular spot for residents to cool off & relax or enroll their children in swimming lessons. Molly felt very accomplished after obtaining her certification to become a lifeguard, but her parents were concerned that she would be working in an isolated area that was surrounded by woods.
Molly officially started her job on June 19, 2000, beginning her shift at 10 am. During the first twenty or so minutes of the shift, Molly would set-up for the day & during this time, she would be all alone as she prepared for swimmers to arrive.
On the morning of Tuesday, June 27, 2000, it was the first day of swimming lessons & Magi & Molly headed out & first stopped at a convenience store, arriving at 9:50 am & six minutes later, Molly checked in at the Warren police department six minutes later in order to pick up her radio.
Magi dropped Molly off at Comins Pond at 9:58 am to start her eighth shift as a lifeguard. Magi said goodbye as Molly made her way to a nearby shed to gather the supplies she needed to set up for the day. The first visitors arrived at about 10:20 am & the woman & her two children noticed that Molly’s chair was open with a towel draped over the back, her sandals in front, a first aid case was open & her backpack sat on a nearby bench. Next to her chair was a two-way radio, a water bottle, a whistle & Molly’s lunch, but Molly was nowhere to be seen.
About an hour later, Molly’s boss arrived & learned that his employee wasn’t there. Knowing she was a very responsible person, he highly doubted that she would have voluntarily abandoned her post & at 11:44 am, he contacted police. When police responded, it was discovered that Molly had never checked in with officers using her radio which she was instructed to do at the start of her shift. At 1 pm, police contacted Magi & explained the situation & she rushed to the area.
Police did not initially secure the scene after assuming that Molly simply left to hang out with her friends or her boyfriend. Those that knew Molly were adamant that she would not have done this & reinforced their point by the fact that she’d left her sandals behind. After police contacted Molly’s friends & boyfriend, it was confirmed that she was not with them.
Police speculated that Molly may have drowned but her loved ones felt that this was doubtful since she was a strong swimmer. By the late afternoon, the Massachusetts Police took over the investigation & launched a search of the pond & surrounding area. Divers searched the pond for Molly’s body while search dogs combed the surrounding woods. The divers found no sign of Molly & residents in the surrounding area were interviewed by police.
Molly’s belongings had been found in an orderly fashion & there were no signs that a struggle occurred so police again explored the idea that Molly had run away. Not only had she never done anything like this in the past, but all of her items, including her purse, license & uncashed checks had been left behind.
The search for Molly became the largest search in Massachusetts history to date & involved more than 200 officers, cadets & trained civilian searchers that covered seven square miles of forests, fields, swamps & small mountains in the area around the pond. Helicopters, dogs, sonar equipment & horses were brought in to assist with the search.
Magi later described the feeling of not knowing where her daughter was as being part of a “bad movie.” John felt from the start that something terrible must have happened to their daughter. Around this time, a thought dawned on Magi when she remembered something strange that had happened just the day before Molly disappeared.
On the previous morning, June 26, Magi came to the pond with Molly for what was her seventh day of work. When they pulled into the parking lot, they noticed a white car that was parked next to them & a man sat inside, alone in his car, smoking a cigarette. Typically, when Molly arrived to start her shift, they were the only people there & seeing this middle-aged man lurking around made Magi very uncomfortable, knowing her daughter would be working by herself.
Magi didn’t feel comfortable leaving her daughter alone with the strange man there, so she walked Molly down to her post & when she walked back to her car, the man was still there. Magi made a point of staring at the man so he would be sure to know that she had seen him & was aware of his presence. The two locked eyes as he continued to smoke his cigarette. Magi said he gave her a bold & cocky look & she stayed there & waited about twenty minutes for the man to leave, unwilling to leave her daughter alone while he was there.
When they arrived the next day, June 27 which was the day that Molly disappeared, the man was not there when Magi dropped her daughter off. Magi did see a truck from a local company which was unloading sand for the beach & this made her feel better, knowing that Molly wouldn’t be alone.
Because police had no other suspects or leads, they turned their attention to the man that Magi described seeing & a composite sketch was created as well as a description of his car & both were released to the public. A witness soon came forward & told police that they’d seen the car on the morning of Molly’s disappearance near a car wash at the base of Comins Pond Road. The driver of the sand truck said they had also seen the car only moments before Magi & Molly arrived. An employee from a cemetery across the pond saw the car later in the morning & there is a path that leads from the cemetery to the pond’s beach.
It was John’s theory that the man had likely parked at the cemetery & walked the path to the beach where Molly was setting up for the day. He likely took control of her & forced her to walk the path back to the cemetery where his car was parked, taking Molly from the area down nearby Route 19. Police also learned that a person who lived near the pond heard a scream around the time that Molly disappeared.
Molly’s parents created an email chain with Molly’s picture which was sent to more than 35,000 people & created a website devoted to finding her that received thousands of hits, hoping to generate any information that could lead to finding their daughter.
Because Molly had been at the remote area of the pond alone, residents began discussing the safety at the pond & the commissioner said that Comins Pond would not be reopened to the public unless two lifeguards were on duty together.
Molly’s case sadly grew cold for over a year, but her family refused to give up. Magi tracked down a famed sketch artist named Jeanne Boylan who worked on other high profile cases such as the Unabomber & Polly Klass, who was kidnapped at age twelve from a slumber party in her own home in 1993. Jeanne agreed to meet with Magi at a local bed & breakfast in hopes of creating a more accurate picture of Molly’s suspected abductor. The two worked together for nine hours until the drawing was complete.
Magi was floored by the accuracy of the drawing but felt it was missing one detail & asked if Jeanne would create a second sketch, this time with the man holding a cigarette. When Jeanne showed Magi the updated sketch the following day, Magi said she felt instant fear because of how much it looked like the man she’d seen the day before her daughter went missing. She felt renewed hope that this picture would help bring her daughter’s abductor to justice.
More than two years after Molly disappeared, a break in the case came when a hunter noticed a blue bathing suit in the woods on Whiskey Hill about five miles from Comins Pond in November 2002. The bathing suit matched the one that Molly was wearing, but because the hunter believed that Molly had been wearing an orange bathing suit, he left it there & made no reports of his findings.
In mid-May 2003, the hunter was having a conversation with another man & mentioned the bathing suit. The man realized that it could have belonged to Molly so they contacted the police & the hunter led them to the bathing suit. A massive search of the area began on June 3, 2003 & searchers soon found more than 20 human bones on a remote wooded hillside about 500 feet from where the bathing suit had been found. Sadly, six days later, on June 9, 2003, a little more than three years after Molly had gone missing, DNA analysis & dental records determined that these were the remains of Molly Bish.
Molly was finally laid to rest on August 2, 2003 which would have been her 20th birthday. Because of the time that had passed, Molly’s cause of death was not able to be determined, but investigators ruled her death a homicide. It’s believed that Molly was buried in a shallow grave after she was murdered & animals later scattered her remains.
Over the years, several persons of interest have been identified in this case.
In 2009, a Florida resident named Rodney Stanger who was convicted of murdering his girlfriend, was investigated. At the time of Molly’s murder, he lived in Southbridge which is a few minutes from the town of Warren where he had lived for more than twenty years. His home was only three-tenths of a mile, on the same street as the YMCA where Molly had gotten her lifeguard certification & he often hunted & fished not far from where Molly’s remains were found. On Saturdays in early 2000, John would drop Molly off at the Y & head to work a mile away; if she finished early, Molly would walk from the Y to meet her father & it’s possible that this was when Stanger first noticed Molly. Molly was a very talkative, outgoing person & it’s possible that if she encountered him & began chatting, she may have told him where she was working that summer.
He also had access to a white car similar to the one that Magi had seen & he looks exceptionally similar to the composite sketch of the suspected murderer. After her death, he relocated to Florida in 2003.
Stanger was arrested on suspicion of the murder of his girlfriend of more than twenty years, 50-year-old Crystal Morrison, who was found stabbed to death in her home in February 2008 near Ocala, Florida. After her murder, Stanger broke into a neighbor’s house & attempted to strangle the woman. He had also been questioned for the August 1993 murder of 10-year-old Holly Piirainen who went missing in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, 10 miles away from Warren, while she was visiting her grandparents. Her remains were found two months later & her murderer has never been found.
After Stanger’s girlfriend Crystal was murdered, her sister went through the trailer that she & Stanger shared & she came across items that appeared to belong to a child: Scrunchies & childish barrettes.
Stanger has never been charged in Molly’s nor Holly Piirainen’s case, but he was later convicted of Crystal Morrison’s murder. Molly’s family hired a private investigator named Tom Shamsak who visited Stanger in prison. When he showed him Molly’s picture, Stanger refused to look at it & pushed it away & refused to speak of any connection to Molly’s murder. Molly’s sister Heather has written him letters, hoping he will admit to his involvement, but each letter has gone unanswered.
In June 2021, a new suspect named Francis “Frank” Sumner Sr was identified. Over the years, police have received several tips about him & on one particular occasion, an informant gave “clear, persuasive & credible” information that linked him to Molly’s case. Sumner died in 2016 at 71. He was a longtime resident of central Massachusetts who owned & operated area auto repair shops. In 1982 he was convicted of aggravated rape & kidnapping after he locked a woman inside an apartment after he’d hired her to clean the apartment he was trying to rent. He choked her, threatened to kill her & raped her. He was released on parole in 1998, two years before Molly was murdered.
The shops he owned were in the area of where Molly vanished, he resembled the composite sketch, smoked with his left hand just as the suspect did & had access to a white car. At the time of his death, he was facing several criminal charges, including failing to register as a sex offender, making threats, disorderly conduct & harassment; he had never been questioned in relation to Molly’s murder.
In July of 2022, DNA of Sumner’s son was compared to DNA evidence from the case & according to Molly’s sister, Heather, it was not a match. Despite this, he’s still considered a suspect & more testing needs to be done to make it conclusive. As of June 2023, the additional testing was still being done. Police have indicated that there are still a “significant number of items of evidence” that could be tested or re-tested due to scientific advancements.
Molly’s tip line remains open & is still described as being “very active.” Her killer has yet to be apprehended & a $100,000 reward is being offered to information leading to an arrest. More than 20 years have passed since Molly’s body was found, but police have indicated that they are still doing everything to solve Molly’s case & that cases that are 40, 30 & 20 years old are still being solved.
In hopes of generating something positive from this horrific ordeal, Magi & John founded the Molly Bish Foundation to raise awareness of child safety & abductions. The foundation has assisted to have fingerprint & photo records of thousands of children to support families & address the issue of Missing Persons response & training for law enforcement.
In 2004, John & Magi also collaborated with Ana Maria College to create the Molly Bish Center for the Protection of Children & Elderly with a mission to strengthen prevention, increase awareness & expand participation at all levels of the community to meet a broad range of needs for the most vulnerable population, children & the elderly. They want to help prevent other children from becoming victims & Magi has said, “You can lose your keys, you can lose your glasses, but how do you lose your children in America? Something is wrong. And if it could happen here, it could happen anywhere.”
Molly’s family realize that they can’t change what happened to their daughter, but they can try to stop it from happening to someone else.
Anyone with information about Molly’s case can call 508-453-7575.
References:
- Ocala Star Banner: Slain Summerfield woman feared for her life, co-workers say
- Wikipedia: Warren, Massachachusetts
- Wikipedia: Holly Piirainen
- Boston 25 News: Molly Bish, Rodney Stanger may have crossed paths
- CBS News: Woman believes sister’s killer is involved in Bish, Piirainen cases
- Boston.com: Here’s where the Molly Bish c
- ase stands 20 years after her body was found
- Ana Maria College’s Molly Bish Center for the Protection of Children & the Elderly
- Medium: The teen lifeguard abducted & murdered whilst working her summer job by a pond
- Wikipedia: Murder of Polly Klass
- The Hue & Cry: The death of Molly Bish
- WCVB5: Family, DA still seek justice 20 years after Molly Bish’s murder
- Medium: Have police been searching for the wrong man: Rethinking the Molly Bish murder
