WANTED: Massachusetts Murderer

Feb 3, 2020

Is there a predator in Massachusetts who targeted two girls with an eerie connection? Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/wanted-massachusetts-murderer/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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hi crime junkies I'm your host Ashley flowers and I'm Britt and today I have a story for you picked by some of our fan club members now we recently changed up our fanclub tears and part of the benefit at the highest level now is that those members get to help pick monthly content the cases that are most important to them and this month they voted that they wanted to hear about the unsolved murder of Mollie Bish so I started researching the case and I quickly learned

that Molly's case isn't a standalone one there is a possible connection to another murder around the same area that has locals wondering if there is a murderer in Massachusetts

August 5th of 1993 was a warm day in Sturbridge Massachusetts a man named Richard Cranium and his three young kids didn't live in Sturbridge full time they actually lived in a town nearby but the family owned a little late Cottage there and they would visit in the Summers and August 5th was their second day of a week-long vacation according to Richard it was going to be a wonderful week filled with swimming boating fishing and all of The Quiet Moments in between that make up a lazy summer

in one of those quieter moments to of Richard's kids were getting antsy like sitting around all day doing nothing is an adult's dreamlike I am currently like air quotes on vacation right now and I literally spent most of the time researching writing and now recording this episode I would kill for a lazy day of nothingness but we all know two kids that is the worst thing ever it's got to be go go go right so to of Richard's kids Holly who is 10 and Zachary who was five ask their dad if they can go down the street to a neighbor's

Bruce house now this neighbor's dog just had a litter of puppies and they want to go look at them can I go to right thing so Richard says sure go look at the puppies then come right back at 11:45 in the afternoon Richard watched Holly and Zachary Scamper down South Shore Drive but just a short while later around noon Zachary returned home but he returned alone and this wasn't right to Richard they left together they should be back together now

there's some contradictory reports that I found on y Zachary returned alone according to an article from the Hartford Courant that ran just days after Holly went missing it said that Zachary had gotten scared by another neighbor's dog and so he ran home but Boston 25 News in a more recent article like literally within the last couple of years said that when Richard asked Zachary were her sister was he just tells his dad that Holly told him to go home okay but both those things could be right like maybe he was scared and

she was just like well then leave like I'm a big sister you're a big sister I know how it was when I was a kid if my younger siblings were annoying me I just be like fine whatever I'm just going to go on without you oh totally and either way Richards like this doesn't make sense go back and get your sister so he sends Zachary off this time with their older brother Andrew to go get her and bring her home but they return home once more soon after to tell Dad that they don't know where Holly is now right away Richard leaves the house

Aus and walks the same path his two kids would have walked to the neighbors there's no Holly where he finds the puppies there's no Holly on the street or anywhere with a nice shot but what he does find is concerning somewhere on South Shore Drive Holly's dad finds a single bright red sneaker one of Holly's tennis shoes now he knows something bad has happened and though he tries to keep looking for on his own at first like calling out her name

going up and down the road he quickly realizes that this is so beyond his wheelhouse he needs professional help he needs police so by 1250 just an hour after he watched his daughter walk down the street Richard is on the phone with police in what had to have been a surreal moment he is reporting his daughter missing do we know for sure that Zach didn't see anything else like I guess we don't know how long they were together when he left her how long they've been separated but

I would think that maybe he'd seen something right so the short answer is I don't know in all the reporting that I found on Holly's case Zachary is hardly mentioned and I have to believe that was because I mean he was just five at the time like even if he did see something he might not have known what he saw or been able to really articulate it or like not found importance in something right or even you know what he saw could have been very traumatizing but he definitely told his family that she had told him to go home right

I would think that if he could relay that that there could be something else possibly but in the same reporting from Boston 25 they speculate that maybe she told him to go home you know just because he was being a bother like a kind of we talked about earlier maybe he's hungry maybe he's annoyed by that or the dog whatever reason like stopping a baby go home or perhaps he was there when Holly was actually being taken and she was telling him to get away and go home so he could like Get Away detect him

I'm right so the fact that these news outlets are throwing out two wildly different scenarios like that makes me think that all Zachary could get out was like what she said like go home and everything kind of surrounding that in like what was happening like he really isn't able to convey so after Richard calls to report his daughter missing swarms of people come out to help search for the little girl including Holly's mother who drives up to the cottage as soon as she finds out that her daughter is missing again that shoe was assigned to

that Holly hadn't just wondered off on her own even a young ten-year-old kid isn't going to take off like one shoe and then just walk off something bad happened here they searched up and down the street door to door in wooded areas but day turns to night with no sign of Holly and despite the additional resources that descend upon the area and we were talking dogs helicopters divers that nightmare would continue day after day until at one point the fan

he realizes what was supposed to be their Family Getaway had come to an end and what started out as a week with such excitement and promise had quickly turned into one of the worst weeks of their lives and they would be heading home without their Holly search has continued for a while but eventually were called off it was as if Holly had vanished Into Thin Air and in that time the surrounding Community came together to try and support the family in another small Massachusetts town there was a

Pastor who was actually telling his congregation about Holly's disappearance and he asked everyone there to you know send your prayers send letters of support to the family and because of this call to action Holly's parents actually received a very sweet note from a young girl Holly's own age and Brett I'm going to have you read this

my name is Molly Bish I am 10 years old someday I would like to come see you I'm very sorry I wish I could make up to you Holly is a very pretty girl she's almost as tall as me I wish I knew Holly I hope they found her she is still in my heart if you give me your address and I'll write more to you love Molly that no included a picture and she said you know PS This is my family I'm the one of my mom's lap I'm older now

and letters like this encouraging supportive letters continue to come in but all the support in the world couldn't bring them resolution or peace and four months Holly's family just had to wonder where she was was she safe was she hungry why hadn't they walked with her that day what if they just said no you can't go look at the puppies all of this playing in their heads over and over and over until

October 23rd when they finally got the answers as to where Holly was now

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in late October of 1993 Hunters found Holly's remains in the neighboring town of Brimfield now the details surrounding this were hard for me to piece together because very little information about Holly's case has been released to the public some news articles had reported that her body had been found at least one the standard speaker newspaper actually specified that Hunters discovered skeletal remains now this might not seem like a big deal to some but to me it really is like skeletal remains would suggest

is that she had been out there almost the entire two and a half months since she went missing yeah we're as a body kind of indicates that perhaps she wasn't put there until some time after she went missing and the searches were may be called off well where exactly did they find her was at a place that they had already searched well according to that same article that said they found skeletal remains it says that they found her in an area that had not been previously searched which is a little bit baffling to me because even though it was like a neighboring town

on the actual location of where she was found was only like 5 miles ish from where she went missing so like with and I've never been a search coordinator I have never even been able to participate in a search like this so I'm speaking from a place of total ignorance here but I don't get how this happens I mean we had the dogs we had the helicopters people on foot and just five miles away in a wooded hunting area I mean she was there the whole time could it maybe have been like jurisdictional like they couldn't go there yeah I mean that's totally an option again

I know each agency is different and rules vary from state to state so I don't know for sure all we know is that she was found very close to where she was last seen alive going to look at those puppies did they release are announced the cause of death so again maybe so much like the way she was found I'm a little unsure of her cause of death as well because in all of the newspaper archives I reviewed for this episode I only found one single article in the Hartford Courant that said the her cause of death was strangulation

but it was never reported ever again by anyone so I don't know if they knew something everyone else didn't or if that little piece got missed as the case got re reported I mean I even kind of wonder if maybe somehow the paper heard a detail like her hyoid bone was broken and maybe someone official like offhandedly made a comment like oh it was likely strangulation right because with skeletal remains that would be the only way you could determine strangulation right and listen everything

and after this article is very hush-hush about what was found the condition of her remained so it's hard to say for sure without some kind of corroboration now in the early days of the investigation police weren't releasing a lot of information but many people were working under the assumption that this was some kind of crime of opportunity like again Holly didn't live in the area no one knew she planned to go see those puppies it only made sense that some awful man drove by saw Holly and her brother and decided to

to act but this was a horrifying thought because how do you catch someone like that like they're almost a ghost of course investigators did all of the normal things they went door-to-door they talked to the neighbors they looked into people's backgrounds looking for any kind of perpetrators of any crime but again and again they came up empty-handed and again and again they wondered if their guy was someone just passing through the worst possible coincidence and they wondered this for weeks than me

yes and even years by the year 2000 that's really the reality so many people had come to believe it was someone just passing through it was a one-in-a-million chance and he's probably gone now and I think that idea left some people with a sense of Peace at least he's not here anymore but in June of 2000 Massachusetts residents would come to realize that this man could very well still be among them

June 27 2000 was a hot Tuesday in Warren Massachusetts where Molly Bush flipped it was early in her summer break and Molly following in the footsteps of her older brother John had gotten his summer job as a lifeguard at the local pond now on that day that letter she wrote to the parents of a young missing girl almost seven years before was probably the furthest thing from her mind Molly knew that Holly had never been found but really nothing else like that had happened since either her town of

Warren still seemed like a safe place Molly had no way of knowing that on that morning she would begin down a road that could once again intersect with Holly's and that day started off well off instead of waking up by her alarm Molly was awoken by her mom who told her that one of her friends had actually gotten in a car accident and was in the hospital now Molly was shook by this news and her mom offered to take her to the hospital and she's like listen we can call you in to work like I know this is this is crazy but Molly had

just started this new lifeguarding gig and she knew that people were counting on her to be there so she insisted like no Mom I need to go to work so like she'd been doing all the mornings before this summer Molly's mom got in the passenger seat of the car and let Molly drive them both first to the police station to pick up the two-way radio Molly would have with her own shift and then to the pond now her mom didn't like work there with her but Molly only had her permit so her mom had to like drive with her to drop her off and pick her up each day that she worked sources differ

on the exact time but Molly and her mom make it to the pond sometime between 1945 and 10 a.m. and Molly screws off to set up her station and get ready for swimmers that she knows will be arriving any minute sure enough the swimmers arrived there's like a little like swim class or lessons that are held regularly they're not like just open swim so it is very like schedule and when they show up one of the moms notices that there's just no lifeguard which is weird like this isn't a job teenagers would

Emily flake out on and not one that Molly would flake out on but many of the people who showed up didn't know Molly intimately like yeah it's a small town maybe they knew her name but to them but she had just started working the exactly and to them a teen kid flaked on their job maybe like it does happen plus the first aid kit by her chair is open and her sandals are right there so they're thinking you know she's probably going to be back any minute now but after minutes pass and then hours concerned or

maybe even frustrated parents inform Molly's boss that the Lifeguard who was supposed to be on duty never showed now Molly's boss is a guy named ed and Ed's used the same scene that they did Molly's chair set up first aid kits open sandals are right there but no Molly and it's super clear to him that she had definitely been there at some point not just because of her sandals because of that two-way radio that was there to the one that Molly had to pick up and drop off like every day at the police station before and after her shift so the

fact that she wasn't back was really bizarre so Ed uses the two-way radio to call in to the police station and let them know that Molly is Mia now the problem was that even though Ed thought this was off I don't think anyone fully got the gravity of the situation because police don't like call her family right that second they don't start a search right away in fact when Ed leaves the pond to go run some errands he actually runs into Molly's older brother John at this like local

store and he doesn't even think to mention to John that Molly's missing or Molly's like not at her job and listen I think all the crime donkey ears just perked up a little bit I can feel it but that just kind of shows you how unimportant they all thought this was and not that her being missing was unimportant to a door to the police but just no one was even considering the worst possible scenario like this doesn't happen here or at least like all of us are immediately at a nine one one level of emergency at this point

but if it doesn't happen in your town if you aren't aware of it being a common place like why would you rush it exactly and I mean again seven years have passed since Holly's case and everyone had seemingly forgotten that stuff like this happens in small-town Massachusetts so the original call from Ed on the two-way radio to police was around 11:45 by one o'clock when there's still no sign of Molly police finally call her house to see if her parents have heard from her when this call comes into my

his mother I can't even begin to imagine the sinking feeling she must have gotten in her stomach like what do you mean she isn't there I dropped her off this morning myself like just three hours ago and why am I just finding out about this right now she's been missing all morning yeah that that timing is just driving me crazy especially as a mom like I want to know immediately if something is wrong with my kid let alone if they're missing right but this is where they are now and all Molly's mom can think about is finding her daughter Molly would never say

skip out on work willingly like something had to be going on now all the while police are still trying to ease her worries this is probably nothing teenagers do this all the time but no she said not her Molly she was sure of it so she calls up Molly's sister and asked her to help look for Molly they start calling friends they're stopping by houses of people Molly new including her boyfriend Steve but call after call drop in after drop in know when they were talking to had seen or heard from Molly that day

as the day slips on with no sign of Molly police become less convinced that Molly just walked off the local police call in state investigators and that very night a search is underway in the area that she went missing from now the first place they searched is the pond thinking that maybe Molly drown okay but she was a lifeguard she had to have been a really really strong swimmer no I know and that's what her parents said to like she was a great swimmer she wouldn't be in the

the pond but investigators have to start with the most logical explanations first and looking at the scene I mean again her sandals were there most people don't walk off without their shoes but maybe if she went into the water and just didn't make it out like maybe that was an explanation for it and it was so heartbreaking I was watching an episode of disappeared on Molly's case called murky Waters and her brother was telling the producers about how when he heard this like that maybe she had drowned he actually went into the water himself and was

like trying to find her searching on his own up and down going under the water knowing that he'd be looking for her body and eventually the professional dive teams had to physically like pull him out and tell him to stop so that they could search but when they do search like so many people suspected they didn't find any sign of Molly that first day now that didn't mean she wasn't in there there was like talk of actually like lowering the water levels to the pond trying to maybe drain it in some kind of like Aid to a search but

anything that they were going to do would have to wait until the next morning because at this point it's completely dark and they couldn't resume any kind of search until it was light outside when the sun rose on the 28th the Bish family found themselves still in the same waking nightmares the day before Molly's mom couldn't shake the feeling that something bad had happened not in accident something worse and she knew this in her gut because of an interaction that she had with a man the very day

for Molly went missing at the exact same spot that Molly was last seen

Molly's mom tells investigators there was someone at the pond the other day and you have to find him he probably did something to Molly and investigators are like okay like who who was at the pond and she says well I don't know exactly but she goes on to tell them this story she says that the day before Molly went missing so this is the 26th she and Molly were doing their usual Molly was driving moms in the passenger seat they pull up to the pond and Molly grabs her thing says bye to Mom and gets out of the car

and starts walking to her post but Mom notices that there is another car next to her a white sedan and in the white sedan there is just this man sitting there and he's watching Molly instantly Molly's mom got that feeling in her stomach the one that we've all gotten at one time or another the one that tells you that something is wrong something feels bad she catches the man's eye and he just starts

it's staring at her almost like mean mugging her and she knows that this isn't right she knows she can't just drive off and leave her daughter there everything in her body is telling her that she can't leave her alone with this man so she stalls she like gets out of the car at first she goes to talk to Molly and she doesn't want to make a big deal of it or Scare Molly so she kind of just like putz is around and eventually brings it up like oh I didn't know that there are just like solo guys up here while you're working like I didn't realize there were so many men around

and I kind of just pictured like kids or families and Molly's like oh my gosh you know she's the Invincible teenager like oh my gosh mom like their fisherman please don't be so dramatic like they're here all the time this is super normal they were here when John is lifeguard to hear when I'm lifeguard they'll be here long after I leave and I'm sure for a moment it crossed Molly's mom's mind like you're right I'm being crazy so she heads back to her car but when she reaches it she sees the man again still just sitting there smoking

looking at her daughter and she knows all over again that this isn't right but she doesn't know what to do she doesn't want to just like walk up to him that would seem so weird and what if he was a fisherman what would she say like she couldn't kick him off public property so she just kind of sits in her car and fiddles with some things trying to like come up with a plan but just then the man started his car and pulled away Molly's mom breathes a sigh of relief and when she did she let go of all of those feelings that she couldn't explain she was

being paranoid so she to started up her car and left and like we didn't think about any of this for the rest of the day she picked up Molly everything was fine Molly was right it was just a fisherman nothing to worry about

but now with her daughter missing she felt that same sinking feeling in her gut what she called paranoia two days ago she now knew was her Natural Instincts I cannot imagine just being a mom and like replaying that moment over and over and over again in your mind thinking like what else what could I have done you know which I'm sure she did like you know she just did what she thought was right in the moment and no one can fault her for that like what happened to Molly is not her fault

I think there is an important message in this story and one that I think we've hammered into people for the last couple of years trust your instincts you feel fear for a reason learn how to listen to that so In This Moment her mom knows that police need to find this man but the problem is she didn't know who he was she didn't think to take down a license plate I mean all she knows about the car was that was a white sedan she didn't know the make or the model but she did get a good look at this guy's face when he was staring her down

down and she's able to work with a sketch artist to generate like a picture of this moustached man that she saw in the white sedan now the sketch is done and later is redone by a different artist but Britt I'm in is send you both of the sketches that were done and the first sketch on the left and then there's the updated one on the right okay and then we'll also post this on our website for everyone to see as well I mean it does look like two different guys but there's so many similarities they both look around the same age like me

in their 50s they have similar hair lines mustaches kind of facial structure and they're just black and white sketches so I can't really tell skin tone but the one guy on the right kind of looks like he might be Hispanic and the guy on the left looks pretty decidedly white but you know it yet it's hard to tell a lot because they're both black and white sketches but I think like what I can tell is this guy definitely has dark hair you can tell that there is like some light in his hair like some Gray's maybe so he definitely is like

that age range that you're talking about he has a very distinct mustache and even though it's hard to tell like in the newer sketch he almost looks Hispanic but in everything that I've read it was definitely a white male and you can't see in the picture but Molly's mom said that he had dark eyes now as this sketch is being created and then distributed hundreds of people are still searching for Molly and trying to figure out who may have taken her to do this they're talking to everyone in her life talking

you know people her parents work with looking up vocal like sex offender Registries and according to the Boston Globe apparently early on in the investigation there were six or seven people identified as suspects very early on who well they never actually say all the police and the da would announce publicly was that they had these six or seven people and they wouldn't say who they were or how they found their way onto police's radar but

out of those six to seven people plus all of the normal people investigators have to look at in the early days in the investigation they like give out a bunch of lie detector test right and left and they announced that of all of those 11 people failed so in the very early days with a handful of good suspects and people failing lie detectors it seemed like they were close to answers close to finding Molly I mean clearly they looked into everybody that would be likely like family members

stuff like that I assume they looked into her boyfriend Steve obviously doesn't fit like the sketch profile but we know a lot of times you know an intimate partner can be the person right commits crimes like this yeah and and they did look into Steve I so he was 17 though I mean doesn't fit the sketch at all but he did look kind of fishy to police right away because according to the murky Waters episode the day that Molly went missing he actually had a cut on his lip and a missing eyebrow ring now

this alone obviously isn't damning but what was was that he was telling different people different stories about why his lip was cut but even though he looked a little bit fishy he passed a polygraph like and the entire Bish family stands behind him though they were extremely close with him since his relationship with Molly was fairly new they were still convinced that there was no way that he could do this something so horrible to Molly and then like turn around mere hours later after she went missing and the be with them in Act

normal I mean we've seen crazier things though true but it appears that even investigators ruled him out as a suspect because there's very little mention of him when you research Molly's case so I can't tell you why they ruled him out but it seems that eventually they did and I mean if we fast forward a few years her boyfriend actually ends up passing away in a car accident now as much as they distribute the composite sketch in the news as high as the reward for information got as much as they

I interview people give them polygraphs that are failed and as much as people keep searching investigators get no closer to Mali or even two answers about what happened to her but they do come up with a theory about how she was taken away from that pond so the pond was surrounded by woods and I guess there was this little path that led to a cemetery and because of whatever police found there maybe tire tracks like they never officially say but whatever the reason something leads them to believe that

whoever took Molly parked there at the cemetery and then walked to the pond and took her away with them okay Ashley I have to know do you think it's the sedan guy like for me it makes sense like if Molly's mom had those instincts and they were right and he was there the day before to do something but realize that you know he'd may become too late there was going to be too much traffic people are going to see him so he comes back the next day with a completely different plan

that's actually exactly what I was thinking and like I even can speculate a little bit further and I kind of wonder if the ruse he used to get her was pretending that he was hurt I mean her first aid box was open right and I have no clue how normal that is like you know for Molly or for anyone but I feel like you would keep that close to keep sand and stuff out of it but like maybe he pretended that he needed help to like get her to let her guard down and then as she goes to like open it maybe he like incapacitated her

or maybe even drew a weapon and got her to walk away with him willingly or you know under kind of dress so again it seems like this picture is coming together of what happened that morning but you know it's like we're so close yet still so far because even though we have a when and a pretty small window of time actually because I mean was literally just minutes between Molly being dropped off and swimmers arriving we have a where we know she was taken from the pond and likely transported to the cemetery where a car was waiting but we

still don't have the who or the Y and those seem completely elusive

as months fade into years the prevailing Theory became that this was a crime of opportunity and this is when connections start being drawn to Holly's case Molly Holly they're both blond hair blue eyes both the same age though they were taken at different times in their life and this fear begins to swell in the community as people wondered if they'll old themselves into a false sense of security was

man really living among them this whole time or did he come back just to pray on their young girls and the main question looming in everyone's mind was would Molly eventually be found the same way Holly was it had been almost three years now since Molly had gone missing but this idea of a connection to Holly's case Breathe new life into the investigation because they knew Holly had been found in a wooded area known mostly to Hunters

so then they question hunters in Molly's case and one of them had some shocking information that would finally warm up this cold case

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according to an article from The Berkshire Eagle One Hunter tells investigators that while he was out in the town of Palmer which is a neighboring town of Warren where Molly lived he spotted some weird cloth on the ground it was blue cloth that looked like it could have been from a bathing suit now when police go and check this out it seems almost like it can't be real it was old it was degraded and dirty but it looked like the same color and same material

Molly was wearing on the day she went missing right away the suit is sent off for DNA testing and a more intensive search is conducted in that area Weeks Later a public announcement is made Molly has finally been found law enforcement confirms that DNA testing on the suit confirmed that it was Molly and in addition to that they also were able to uncover bones and teeth that were linked to Mali as well okay but she was found in a neighboring town like she still

wasn't that far away from where everyone was looking right yeah here's the thing I couldn't find any Source material that would say exactly where the searches were conducted so I don't know if anyone looked in Palmer specifically in the woods I was called whiskey Hills where she was found but I did find an article from the Boston Globe that said police believe she was buried in a shallow grave near where the items were found years later so it's possible that even if that area was searched on foot

in someone could have walked right over her without knowing that she was there and it took all these like years of rain and weather to uncover her grave does law enforcement ever release anything else like cause of death or anything more than what we got in Holly's case not really like her remains were found so much later than Holly's that they couldn't determine a cause of death based on just the skeletal remains alone but all that means is like to me that okay we

we can rule out blunt force trauma there's no damage to the skull but everything else we really need some kind of soft tissue to determine and they never say anything about the hyoid boy knows what they talked about in Holly's case but strangulation has never been mentioned in Molly's so as wonderful as it is to have one answer to know where Molly was now the realization came quickly to everyone that having her remains didn't actually get them any close to her killer what about the area where she was found

that that tell them anything not much more than they already knew everyone says that the area would have likely only been known to locals and more specifically to local like hunters and fishermen but let me clarify just a little bit they didn't say publicly if the sight of her remains or anything found at the scene told them anything but it's possible that they learn something because the da in the county did say shortly after her remains were found that there are lists of six or seven people

that they had early on in the case at some point had gotten narrowed down to two to three I don't know if that's because of her remains where they were found the condition that they were found in or if that's something they did like earlier on and he's now just making this announcement because there's been a break in the case and I really believe it's possible that they had Persons of Interest or suspects narrowed down even further because the following year in 2004 a grand jury was called to probe into the case they

plan to call all eleven people who fail their polygraphs and basically like compel them to testify so did anything come from that well that's kind of unknown like right grand jury testimonies are always secret I did find a 2005 newspaper article from the Boston Globe that gave a little bit of information on the proceedings they said there was like 250 witnesses that were called like 70 pieces of like our exhibits that were entered in evidence and all that the da would say was that

they uncovered New Leads because of this grand jury so it wasn't enough to take the trial but it did Point them in a new or different direction right but as promising as that seemed like then nothing happened until 2009 when investigators got their first break in the case in a long time the year before a man named Rodney stenger was arrested in Florida now he was arrested

the murder of his girlfriend and it might not seem like a connection at first like Rodney is half a country away his girlfriend was much older than Molly or even Holly but after his arrest the sister of the girlfriend who was murdered came forward and said that shortly before her sister's death she had been telling her that Rodney was involved in the murder of Mollie Bish that Molly Bish case in Massachusetts she said that Rodney had been living there at the time so when investigators went to

to check this lead out they found that she was right Rodney had gotten a Firearms permit renewed just two months before Molly's Disappearance in a town not too far away from where she went missing Amber I found a picture of this firearms license on telegram dot-coms website do you notice anything interesting wait what this guy looks exactly like the guy from the sketches yeah I am going to send you right now a side by side

eight of the to oh my gosh it's that is Eerie Ashley I mean even like the bags under their eyes and like their job owls like this is almost like almost creepy for sure but here's the thing beyond the resemblance and the fact that he might have been talking about the Bish case what we end up learning about this guy is baffling the same woman who alerted police to Ronnies possible involvement also went to his trailer a long time

after his arrest to like gather her sister's old belongings and according to Mass live when she was there she found a bunch of like young girls hair clips on hair ties and even a young girl's necklace like stuff that she said was definitely out of place stuff that she said definitely wouldn't have belong to her sister and she said there was also a like safety deposit box key and all of that was handed over to police

and we still don't know the outcome if those things were ever tested if like the key to the locked box like actually found anything and we have no idea if they were able to actually definitively link any of those items found in his trailer to Mali or to Holly I mean obviously this is not a good look for this guy but outside of living in Massachusetts does he have any connection to Molly other than Like This Woman's story that her sister told her about her and

and what about Holly like I guess everyone believes that they're linked but can this guy actually be linked to her in any way well here is where it gets really interesting so not only does Ronnie look a heck of a lot like the guy in the white car his brother Randy actually owned a white sedan that he would have had access to so then when they start looking at his brother Randy they find wouldn't you know it

it in 1993 at the time of Holly's disappearance Randy was actually living in Brimfield where Holly's body was found and not just like the town according to Boston 25 News he was actually living in a tent in the woods why dear her body was found yes my God in the early days of Holly's investigation they actually spoke to Randy Stinger about her and he was on polices

radar okay so was it like both brothers we still don't know maybe both of them were involved maybe one of them is covering for the other maybe they're both just like sick and twisted and acted out like in the same way at very different times two girls who were very similar or maybe just maybe they had nothing to do with it because as good as they look for it as suspicious as everything surrounding these two men look

look in 2012 things were about to get much more complicated for investigators

by the time 2012 rolls around investigators have been looking hard at Rodney Stanger for the murders of both Molly and Holly according to Mass Live he had even been officially named a person of interest and police also had his brother in their periphery trying to figure out how he fit into the equation but then they got thrown a huge curveball items from the crime scene where Holly was found or sent off for testing and a DNA match was found

something at the crime scene matched a man but not Rodney and not Randy the DNA matched a man named David Puglia who exactly now I have a hard time even explaining this part of the story because there's so little information that has been released but ABC News reported that there were some items collected back in 1993 close to where her body was found and one

of those items was linked to this David guy so I don't know if it was something he owned I don't know if it was like a biological sample I have literally no idea but let me read you a direct quote that ABC News got from an official quote the nature and character of the items tested as well as its condition and location upon Discovery suggests that mr. Poole yacht and or persons associated with him were in the immediate crime scene area at the time

relevant to Holly's disappearance and the location of her remains and quote okay but I don't even know what that means yeah I don't even know what to think about this like and here's the thing after this announcement officials named David as a person of interest but not an actual suspect Okay and like in the statement there is also reference maybe someone else maybe other people and what is it that they

and right they say mr. pouliot and or persons associated with him were in the media so do they believe it's more than one person I'm gonna get without knowing what it was I almost feel like we can rule out that it was a biological sample taken from the body again we don't know the condition of the body was found in right but it specifically said something nearby and I means makes me think of like a cigarette butt or something but oh I didn't think of that but that's make totally just speculating because it seems like something that would be

the woods you know like and I wonder if they found like additional cigarette butts that didn't have like his DNA had someone else's because why else would you think someone else is there right which would mean there'd be at least another person there but I guess well I'm coming back to is like what did David have to say about this like after all this like they did talk to him and there was something right well here's the thing they can't by the time this testing was able to be done David was already dead he died back in 2003 from congestive

active heart failure and it's interesting because the international business times did a write-up on him and he didn't have like quite the background that you'd expect like no violent or sexual crimes like no convictions not many run-ins with the law outside of like this one incident involving him buying and using cocaine so he likely would have never popped up on anyone's radar when they were looking through like the sex offender registry or violent offenders in the area right so despite the DNA from

David pool yacht and the weird links between the stangler brothers and both victims and even other Persons of Interest popping up on the radar throughout the years nothing has ever panned out in October of 2018 with no movement in the case the Bish family decided to hire a private investigator named Sarah Stein to help them find out what happened to Molly and Sarah did something interesting that I had never seen done to date according to Western Mass news she held

an event where she basically set up shop and said anyone who thinks that they might know anything can come talk to me like big tip small tip even if you don't think it's important listen I'm going to be post up here for this entire day come talk to me and come talk to her they did four separate people came forward with almost the same story a story about a man who was staying at a campground not far from where Molly went missing and the day that she went missing this

I was totally Mia but then he showed back up on the 28th the day after with his face all bloodied and scratched quote yelling about something bad happening in the woods the night before end quote so then about six months later after this incident at the campground these same people heard this guy talking about how he was some kind of person of interest in the case but had never actually been interviewed by police okay but that doesn't even really make any sense like

like how could he be a person of interest if police never even talked to him well I don't know but it obviously seemed credible enough that the pi ended up turning over this information to law enforcement and they've been pretty close lip about any kind of details around this league when we don't even know who this guy is that these four people came forward to talk about but all we know is that the end of 2019 the State Police in Massachusetts announced the creation of a new unit that would be dedicated to working on

solved crimes and both Molly and Holly's case are going to be looked into and I think they're going to be looked at in a whole new way because now decades later less and less people believe that this was a crime of opportunity and more people than ever are convinced that there was a predator in the area though Holly didn't live at the lake house she visited it regularly like maybe someone saw her maybe they became familiar with her schedule and her habits and maybe that same

person did the same thing for Molly but the question Still Remains who who is the Massachusetts murderer Molly's parents went on to create the Molly Bish Foundation to help other families who are faced with the same kind of tragedy and you can find a number of resources on their website which you can either find by Googling the Molly Bush Foundation or by going to our website we will link out to it and if you have any information on either the case of

bash or Holly pyrenean you can contact the Massachusetts State Police

to see the pictures we referenced in this case or to check out our source material you can find that on our website crime junkie podcast.com and be sure to follow us on Instagram at crime junkie podcast and we will be back next week with a brand new episode

crime junkie is an audio Chuck production so what do you think Chuck do you approve