Chapter 1: What happened to Molly Bish on June 27, 2000?
It's been 7,680 days since my sister disappeared and I've been waiting for answers on what happened to her.
This is one of those cases that has haunted me my entire career. I was there from day one. This could be a very significant break in this case. June 27, 2000, I was a reporter at WBZ-TV in Boston. We received word that there was a teenager missing in Warren, Massachusetts. It was a lifeguard who was supposed to be working at this pawn.
Do you remember coming here?
Yes. It started like every other missing person case that I've ever worked.
And about what time did Molly arrive here?
We believe sometime after 9.50. Molly went to work that day. It was her eighth day as a lifeguard at Cummins Pond.
She drove with her mom to work. She stopped at an extra mart and purchased a bottle of water. She went to the police station, secured a police radio, her mom, and she then drove the short distance down to Cummins Pond.
I was with Molly and I dropped her off and everything seemed fine.
And the rest is a mystery at this point.
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Chapter 2: How did the family react to Molly's disappearance?
I'm coming.
Erin Moriarty reports. Help find Molly Bish's killer.
Have you heard of Molly Bish? She looks like this. She was abducted in 2000. She was only 16 years old.
In 2021, two decades after her sister went missing, Heather Bish did something she never thought she would do. 40-year-old me got into the TikTok game.
It's allowed me to share my story and share Molly's story and really just be honest. It's been 7,680 days since my sister disappeared, and I've been waiting for answers on what happened to her.
She hopes that by going public with her TikTok videos online, she will generate tips that will finally solve her sister's case and put an end to a painful 25-year-old mystery. If you know something, please say something. The wait needs to be over.
The last time Heather Bish saw her little sister Molly was the morning of June 27, 2000, just before Molly left for her job as a lifeguard at Cummins Pond in Warren, Massachusetts. Molly was playing with Heather's 11-month-old daughter, Michaela.
She was having fun with Michaela, and I remember my mom saying, come on, we gotta go, we gotta go, you're gonna be late.
But shortly after Molly was dropped off, beachgoers arrived, and she wasn't there. Police were eventually called to the scene. By the time they told Maggie Bish, Molly had been missing for three hours. And my mom was frantic on the phone. She said, she's not there, she's not there, her shoes are there. My heart dropped.
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Chapter 3: What significant leads emerged in the investigation?
I had a three-year-old daughter. Her name was Molly. She had blonde hair. She has blue eyes. This case has every day been with me from that day to today.
Also present at the scene was then Worcester District Attorney John Conte. The state police are working around the clock on this, okay? Detectives zeroed in on everyone who was close to Molly, including family members, friends, and Molly's boyfriend, Steven Lucas. They'd only been dating for three months and had just gone to the prom together.
What raised some suspicion was that Stephen Lucas had a fat lip and he had some scratches on him.
Former WBZ investigative reporter Kathy Curran.
Could a young kid pull off this crime in such a short amount of time?
The Bishes never believed that Stephen was involved. Within 24 hours, authorities were looking at known sex offenders in the area. We've looked at 35 to 45 sex offenders in the area. That's been the scariest part about all this, is realizing how many bad people were within the fabric of our community. Molly's dad worked tirelessly with police.
He was always going every weekend, trying to work with the police and trying to find different ways to find Molly. And despite the fact that DNA testing was still in its early stages back in 2000, Detective Richard says they did collect and document many items found in and around the pond area, including discarded cigarettes and trash.
When we did the initial search, anything that wasn't there by nature or by God was at least identified as potential evidence.
As the days went by, the Bish's despair grew. It wasn't like Molly was hit by a car or got sick. She was just suddenly gone. And we didn't know where she was. But it would be Maggie Bish who would give detectives their biggest lead. We pulled into the parking lot here. The morning before Molly disappeared, as Maggie went to drop Molly off at work at Cummins Pond,
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Chapter 4: What role did social media play in seeking justice for Molly?
Three years after Molly Bish disappeared, Dr. Anne Marie Myers, a forensic anthropologist for the Boston Medical Examiner's Office, was summoned by police to the area known as Whiskey Hill, located about five miles from Cummins Pond. This is how we came in at first. So right above us here are these rock ledges, and this is where the bathing suit was found.
A local hunter had stumbled upon pieces of a weather-beaten blue bathing suit, much like the one that Molly Bish was wearing when she disappeared. When I saw the bathing suit, I said, this has probably been up here for roughly three years. And how could you tell? It was covered by deadfall, so leaves and debris from three years of foliage dropping.
But then it had also grown into the surface, and roots had come up through it. I arrived with my photographer and I was let in.
Acting on a tip, Kathy Curran and her crew got there in time to take pictures of the bathing suit. What's going through your head? I was sick to my stomach.
Just thinking about Maggie and John. And knowing what it could mean.
As Kathy left Whiskey Hill, she called Maggie. And she said, you know, could you show us the video?
And I said, Maggie, you know, I really don't want to do that, but, you know, if that's what you want to do, I want to do whatever I can to help.
She just had a little van that had the six little TVs or whatever inside, and she showed it to us. So distinctive. It looks like hers. And I knew, I knew that was Ma's pants, right down there.
It was one of the toughest days of my career.
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Chapter 5: What evidence was found years after Molly's disappearance?
Being that familiar with the area? It's possible. She also believes that after Molly was killed, a mountain lion may have scattered her remains among the 35 acres of forest.
I often felt that the person knew the area and knew that there was a large animal up there.
We want to tell you that Molly's come home. We are extremely saddened. The depth of our sadness no family should have to endure. With the discovery of her sister's remains, Heather had a hard time accepting the tragic news. I wanted to run away, honestly. I just wanted to run outside of this nightmare and this life and maybe even my own body.
But I remember feeling like I wanted to run away immensely. The search for Molly Bish was now over. But the search for her killer was never more urgent. Two months after Molly Bish's bones were discovered in August of 2003, on what would have been her 20th birthday, Molly was laid to rest.
We commend you now to the loving care of the Lord of us all.
We were so blessed we got to have it in a church. But after three years, the Bishes still had no answers as to who could have murdered Molly. And the man in the white car who Maggie had seen the day before Molly disappeared had never been identified.
Frustrating is a reoccurring word in this case.
Maggie wasn't the only one who reported seeing a suspicious white car in the vicinity, say investigators. On the day that Molly went missing, a white car was spotted at a car wash right down the street from the pond and again in the cemetery behind the pond. So where is Cummings Pond right from here?
It's that direction, straight down. And you can see There's a path opening there.
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Chapter 6: Who were the key suspects in Molly's case?
In 2007, her father, John Bish, who worked so closely with police, had a stroke. Heather would now face the daunting task to take over where her father had left off. And it would not be easy. The police have always stayed very careful about what they let us know.
The police kept saying, we're just one piece of information away. Well, where is that piece?
In 2008, a man who resembled the sketch, named Rodney Stanger, was arrested for murdering his girlfriend in Florida. The victim's sister reached out to Heather and claimed that Stanger may have been involved in Molly's murder as well. He has this violent history. He lived very close to where Molly trained to be a lifeguard. Was he a smoker? He was also a smoker.
He was known to fish at Cummins Pond and hunt in the area where Molly was found. Police were notified about this tip, but Heather says she was told that Stanger had been on one of the investigators' lists of persons of interest from the very beginning.
I've actually visited him in prison.
Sean Murphy is a lieutenant with the Massachusetts State Police.
He didn't have much to say to me, but I attempted, and so have other investigators as well.
Stanger was convicted of murdering his girlfriend and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. In 2012, state police went down to Florida again to search Stanger's trailer.
We did execute a search warrant at his residence with our law enforcement partners, and we did take items.
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Chapter 7: What challenges did investigators face in solving the case?
Frank Sumner has a violent past. He was convicted of rape and kidnapping.
Was he familiar with the area?
He was familiar with the area. He was from the area. He had access to a white car. And when you compare the photo of him smoking the cigarette to the sketch, you can see a resemblance there.
And just like the sketch, Sumner was photographed smoking with his left hand. DA Joe Early says Sumner, who died in 2016, had been well known to investigators working the Bish case for years. What made Frank Sumner rise to that top to actually be called a suspect?
Information that came in, some dots that were connected.
Although tight-lipped about the details, the Worcester DA's office was confident that Sumner was a viable suspect and planned to compare his DNA to DNA found at the crime scenes. But as it turned out, they couldn't obtain Sumner's DNA. Sumner had been cremated, and his DNA had never been submitted to the National CODIS database. I don't know who dropped the ball, but somebody dropped the ball.
So authorities traveled to Ohio to get DNA from his son, Frank Sumner Jr. He was serving time in prison for robbery. And so we waited, and we waited, because they said, we're going to, you know, do some DNA analysis. Heather, who had started that TikTok months earlier, reached out to her followers to see if she could drum up more evidence.
If you know something, if you heard something, please call the state police tip line. We are still waiting for answers. Heather says it took investigators about a year before they finally told her the results of the DNA testing. It was inconclusive. What do you mean, inconclusive? Was he eliminated from the DNA? I don't know what that means. Oh, you don't? And they won't tell me.
Heather wonders if authorities who collected discarded cigarettes and other evidence at Cummins Pond even have a viable sample of the killer's DNA. Do you have enough DNA that you could do genetic genealogy, and have you done any?
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Chapter 8: What are the current developments in the investigation of Molly's murder?
It's part of her strategy. These are all tips. To organize and look at past tips with fresh eyes. Who else might have heard or seen something that they didn't realize was significant?
That one person that we haven't spoken to, they might be the missing piece that we've been searching for this entire time.
I believe that that one more piece is out there. I just have to keep digging. And Detective Safford faces an overwhelming task. She says there has been almost 8,000 tips that have come in since Molly went missing, and they keep coming.
I can honestly say that since I've been in this office, I don't think a week has gone by where we haven't received a Molly Bish tip, if not multiple, throughout the weeks. Detective Safford says she's also studying the many pieces of evidence involved in Molly's case.
She allowed 48 hours to accompany her to the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab's DNA cold storage facility in Sudbury, Massachusetts. Boy, it's shivery in here. Sherry Mittelhauser is a forensic support section manager at the crime lab. And what am I looking at right in front of me? So this is a bay full of evidence. And all of these items here go with the Molly Bish case.
Inside some of these brown paper bags are items taken from the crime scenes. Is the swimsuit here? It is. Oh, it's this one, I believe. I don't think it says it on it, but I know it was sent out for additional testing. Are there any cigarettes here or any? There definitely are cigarettes, containers, ABC. There are a lot of them in ABC. ABC is this one here. They've been repackaged over time.
And they've been tested? Oh, yeah. Chelsea, are you going to be looking at this to see if there's something else? You're thinking, why don't we try to test that? Absolutely. Yeah. Today, Detective Safford has her eye on one piece of evidence in particular, Molly's backpack. I'll tell you, this is the number one item that I've been looking for. Why? I think...
What we carry in our backpack or a pocketbook, I think it says a lot. And I personally think learning about the person, the victim, I think is a very important part of each case. Despite the challenges, Detective Safford says she is determined to find answers for the Bish family. None of us can bring Molly back, but the best thing I can do is find out what happened.
I see you have some of these solved, guilty, captured. Is that what you want to do in this case? It's not what I want to do. It's what I'm going to do. Yes. We, we will do it. Heather Bish, who has been critical of the Massachusetts State Police investigation in the past, says she is encouraged by Detective Safford's passion.
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