Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Who murdered Molly Bish? A cold case heats up!

Episode Date: September 4, 2017

Molly Bish was 16 when she disappeared from her life guard job at Comins Pond in Warren, Massachusetts 17 years ago. Her murdered remains were found on a mountainside three years later. No one has ever been arrested in Molly's kidnapping and murder. This is a case that Nancy Grace has closely followed for years. Molly's mom and sister join Nancy in this episode to revisit the evidence and discuss renewed efforts to find justice for Bish. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Anything to you? It's been 17 years since Molly Bish vanished. 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. Initially, Molly's disappearance wasn't thought to be an abduction. Theories ranged from Molly running away to being somewhere with her friends. I don't feel like she would run away. She was gone hiding out.

I didn't have that feeling. There's pieces out there that we just need to fit together that's going to allow us to move forward with the investigation. Does June 27 mean anything to you? It does to me. That is the 17th year that we have all been looking for. Molly Bish. June 27, 2000. Every time June 27

rolls around, I think about Molly Bish. And, almost every day in between. Why? What happened to a beautiful, beautiful young girl, Molly Bish? 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. Maggie, I can't tell you what it means to me to get to speak to you again and to meet your beautiful daughter, Heather.

Just, you know, it's funny. It's my honor to be with you. It's funny how you never think, I would never, when I was little, I would never have thought, wow, some of the greatest people I'll ever meet in my life are going to be crime victims. You know, you don't think about that when you're planning your future. There's some kind of a bond between violent crime victims, and I can't really explain it. True. And then to you, 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 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 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 the 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 notice there's more men around maybe, and she said, oh, it's just fishermen, Mom, not concerned at all.

I talk about how nice the beach is, and then I said, I've 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 woods and I get into my car and I'm looking I had not even taken my purse before so when I go, 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 sadness has 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 a 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. returned to we returned to the beach

and when we got to the beach we were aghast I mean people in a small town heard there's 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 that 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 are now really in a surreal,

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 show progress. And it was scary 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 our beginning of our horrible nightmare. Everyone with me is what I consider to be a friend with me is Maggie Bish. This is Molly Bish's mother. Molly goes missing one warm June morning, 2000. The search still on for 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 you i 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. And 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 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 another can of worms. In her

story, he was found. Oh, thank goodness. Good. And I'm just thinking about you 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? Well, you know, this was a whole new world for us, Nancy. Nobody knows how to do it. And I have to honestly say to any listeners that there's no right way or wrong way. We have learned what is best practices for law enforcement because we live in a small town. This happens often in large cities.

People need a plan. There was no plan. That day, that's what was most frightening. I think everybody wanted to help, but nobody knew what to do. And so we had the firemen in there, but they had actually contaminated this crime scene because nobody really knew it was a crime. They had come in with the dogs. People were there. I mean, it was just confusing. By the end of that night, the state police came in and they overtook the case. But even in fairness, the state police do a lot of work with drugs. And they really didn't have a plan at first either.

I think it was just, you know, find out, we found out about Molly. No, we didn't believe there's a chance at all that she had just left with friends. We didn't think she would not call us. I mean, when we had to drive home, we were beside ourselves. How do you go home if you don't know if your child has food or is safe or is being harmed or held. I mean, I think in all truth, that was one of the most horrible, exhausting, frightening days. And then what we learned, again, police helped us. You know, they were trying to do what they could do. And to me, I think we did get involved finally. We were on America's Most Wanted, and then the press came in.

Our police had asked us not to do any. We did not talk. We were isolated for two weeks. All I could imagine is parents begging people to help them with their kids, and I didn't understand that. And then once I started to open up and speak to the press and to the TV people, we had to get Molly's story out there. And that really became our burden. If we didn't do it, nobody would really know. I think people would just thought, oh, sure, she came home. But we did 500 days. We

did 1,000th day. We did her birthday. We had over 300 people that first year at her birthday. We started a foundation. We just, we didn't know what to do. But even in our small town, they had said that people, that this person could be from in the area. Well, that frightened more people. And so I was on the local school committee, so we went forward and we said, we'd like to present a safety program. So we got very involved with trying to help children. We learned right away that they needed a good picture and they needed a book, a safety book, an ID. So we created our own that we thought was small enough that Dad could carry it even and had everything in it, your picture, your fingerprints. We wanted to find that child before they were, you know,

we didn't want a DNA kit to find them past. We wanted to find them beforehand. So that became our tool to help others. We developed the Molly Bish Foundation, and we went all over Massachusetts. We actually, I believe it was far beyond 35,000 that we had done in our time. But we are always looking for Molly and trying to put on events. And I started the first Missing Children's Day in Massachusetts in our Boston Statehouse, getting the families together, trying to connect with one another, because there is, like you said, a unique bond, an unusual sadness, fear, you know, of the unknown. So that became one important day that we would come together, but it also gave people, it made the legislators aware of our plight, what laws weren't being held that were good or bad, and we could change that.

We actually helped with Senator Kennedy to bring in the Amber Alert here to Massachusetts. We worked on the child safety law with many good people that I know you know. And anyway, we got involved with the National Center. They helped work on our case. But it took three long years before we knew anything. And they were hard. And it was really tough for our whole family. And families suffer. We used to have fragile Fridays if we made it another week.

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 difficult 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 about a year and a half ago. Sorry. 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 to Molly. Do you remember that day?

Well, you know, it is, oh, I can't tell you. It's awful my we actually we had did the missing children's day may at the end of may and uh 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 is saying, hurry up, get home. We're going, we're going. And he was pushing me. I was getting a little agitated. But 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 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 a van they have all the tvs oh no there's molly's yeah this is how molly's i seen her bathing suit in the rough in the leaves the old leaves and john didn't remember you know my husband he 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. 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. My knees almost crumbled.

And I ran up the stairs 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 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 was spent. When you say, when you say it was a special swimsuit that, and the moment you saw it, you knew what it was. You know, what's interesting, Maggie, is I remember that the morning that Keith left, he had been visiting our home.

Me and my mom and dad were home. My sister was already off in grad school at Wharton. My brother was moved out and working. This was the three of us. And he had visited for the weekend, and he left that morning to go back to Athens where he lived and worked. And I just, I guess I just suppressed this or blocked it, but it's only been in the last few years that I remembered that at the murder trial, I testified, and I remember coming down the witness stand, and it was a really tall one, and where you go up, and there's a landing, then you turn left toward the witness

stand and go up some more steps, and I remember coming down those steps and I walked past the district attorney's table and I looked down and I saw a denim shirt covered in blood. And I immediately knew that that was Keith's shirt that he had been wearing that day. And Maggie, this has only come back to me, I mean, it's been years later. And it came back with such clarity. But I remember just stopping and looking at that shirt, and I knew exactly 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 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, you know, a tank suit type. So I knew that material and it was blue, but it had some, you know, 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 the 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 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 say the police, but I knew, you know,

and it was just confirmed. The moment you saw the swimsuit, you knew. The moment everything happened, you knew it was bad. Heather Bish is Molly's sister. Heather, what do you recall of this time? Well, I think, you know, 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 got to 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 we just want want to believe something as terrible as her loss isn't going to be 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 Lisco. Because people were coming over to my mom's house every day and I had been living in 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 never an easy easy trip but we were doing that daily to to um ensure that we were 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, the beginning of June, and I was thinking, geez, it's a really hot day to be wearing a full suit like that. And then I just knew, I thought, I just knew, like, this is it. This is the final.

They're going to tell us now. You know what's interesting that you're saying, and I hate to keep projecting, but what you're saying is like striking so many chords in me is you know you know and and because I recall that day I come out of a statistics exam I was still in college and was walking to my job I worked all the way at the other end of Mercer University campus in the library, in the back of the library processing books. And I stopped midway. Of course, this was before cell phones to use the phone, the pay phone in the student union to call the library and say, my test went over like 20 minutes.

I'm almost there. Just hold on. Like there was some emergency processing books okay so anyway and when i did the head librarian miriam said you need to call keith's sister right now i knew right then that he was dead i knew just like you just when you saw those guys in the suits you knew yeah and i'm just i really i just i just really wanted to run away to be honest with you i didn't even want to hear what they were going to going to say i just thought if i could run i would be able to outrun the truth or the reality or you, 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'd go, oh, thank God he's alive. And it's just, you know, and then I'd wait, wait a minute. I would have dreams that Molly was still alive, but she would have gone off with her friends to Florida or she went on a trip and she was just back and she was going to see her old boyfriend. And I remember in the dreams feeling like,

no, you can't go. I 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. It's been 17 years since Molly Bish vanished. 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.

I trained Molly to get her confidence up, to learn how to do the radio checks, get the first aid out, clean the beach, check the water, look for snakes. The Bish has moved to central Massachusetts to escape the noise and dangers they'd experienced in Detroit. We thought it would be a safe place to raise our kids. I stayed home with my kids until Molly went to kindergarten. We made a lot of sacrifices so I could be home with them. And now I'm very grateful that I did because I had more time with my mom.

Initially, Molly's disappearance wasn't thought to be an abduction. Theories ranged from Molly running away to being somewhere with her friends. None fit the circumstances that were evident that day at Cummins Pond. My mom called and said, Molly's not at the pond. And I said, what are you talking about? You know, they must be wrong. Well, it was more surreal. I didn't believe it. All these people tried to do what they could, but there was not a plan. The police didn't really know what to do. The fire department came in thinking, well, she must have drowned. They really didn't consider Molly's behaviors.

People were trying to do something, but it was confusion. Going home the night that Molly disappeared, and that was probably one of the hardest nights of my life. I remember just continuing to go outside and think maybe he'll drop her off. Whoever took her or whatever is happening, maybe he'll leave her in my front yard. The Bish family had no guidance on what to do or how to cope with the stress of Molly's disappearance.

I don't feel like she would run away and she was gone hiding out. I didn't have that feeling. I think everybody wanted to blame themselves. We were, like, numb. We really were not sure what to do. My sense of trust has been rocked since my sister disappeared. The Bishes set out not only to find the killer, but to help others with missing children. We couldn't give up on Molly. We had to find Ma. And so we had to do everything and anything

that we could do to find her. We started a foundation in her name. We started a safety program in our town. Never be alone. Always have a buddy. You know, tell your family, tell someone where you are at all times so that they know where you are. The third one, if it feels funny, it is funny. Trust those instincts. Molly's legacy lives on to support and protect children. Who murdered her remains a mystery. There have been persons of interest over the years. The day before Molly went missing, Maggie crossed paths with a mysterious man in a white car.

To this day, he's never been identified. We pull up to the beach, and there's a car parked, and I got this horrible feeling in my gut. I just, like, stared at him. I didn't know what to do. I have nothing. I just gave him that, like a mother bear, I want you to go away, go to work, what are you doing here? And so he, like, gave me the stare right back, which made me feel like he mother bear, I want you to go away, go to work, what are you doing here? And so he gave me the stare right back, which made me feel like he was bold, and I felt very uncomfortable, but I was not going to leave Molly. So what I did, I'm right almost by the car now, so I just pretend I'm getting my purse, I wasn't going to leave, but then he backs up.

In addition to this composite sketch of the man in the white car, other persons of interest have been reported. The case has been worked for 17 years, and I think technology is really going to help us out moving forward. There's somebody out there that knows something, and it's my hope that they'll come forward at some point. If you remember something or might have seen or overheard something, please call the Massachusetts State Police today. Even if something seemed insignificant, maybe they saw something or they heard something, there's pieces out there that we just need to fit together that's going to allow us to move forward with the investigation. 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? 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 and 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 but seconds to gather that information, you know, many seconds.

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, could this be? I mean, because again, we had just admitted children's day for the folks in Massachusetts. It was a beautiful day of great. We were coming home feeling at least we're doing something positive. And, you know, we always will miss Molly. But to see this was, it was too close to knowing that this was not good. Again, you know, we wanted, 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...a few years ago, they had a really, I don't know, quote unquote, good person of interest down in Florida, and they, you know, had taken some DNA from

there and submitted it, and then nothing was sort of a hit. So as...so I guess our hope sort of lies in the science and technology that, you know, sort of helping investigators solve these older cases. And so last year they took 24 pieces of evidence 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, you know, solve cases based on this DNA.

I mean, even right now we have a case in central mass. It's not an older case, but they've been using DNA to sort of point the direction. Let me ask you, so 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. So this is a major development that they are doing this. I want to ask you about this deep ground sonar test that's being done. What do we know about that? Yeah.

So, you know, over the years we've, you know, because law enforcement so we you know over the years we've you know because law enforcement is uh you know they sort of work on their own and and and you know they don't necessarily report to victim families that can become very frustrating for victim families um and because we you know felt very strongly that we wanted this to be solved we wanted our community to feel safe we wanted our friends kids to feel safe. You know, we've all grown up here. We're, you know, in some capacity family to each other. 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. 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 campaigns. 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. This 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 got? So the location, 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 computation and it determines. So from what we understand, there were three places that they felt some interest. Now, 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, we have a girl that was 10 years old, a little bit younger, in Sturbridge, which is a 20-minute 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, but you don't understand them. And 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 that is so it's like when you throw the rock into the river and it has caused so much pain to molly's friends our family out into the community the fear that he's somewhere you know and that's what's always scared me really captivating me about this

one guy and he is simply been investigated he has not been indicted he has not been charged i'm talking about rodney stranger rodney stranger had been living in south bridge at the time molly goes missing he relocated abruptly to summerfield flor Florida A few months after Molly was kidnapped From her lifeguard position Now What really Interests me about him Not just that he relocated

But A woman that had known him Sister Bonnie Kieran Told police about a phone call from her sister, who was then murdered, where the sister suggested that this guy may have been involved in murders in Massachusetts. Now, this is based on something I read in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette. He alluded to Bish, Molly Bish, and another girl, Holly Peranin, who disappeared in 93. From Sturbridge, which was directly adjacent to Southbridge. What do you know about that call?

I know you know a lot more than I do, Maggie. Oh, wow. You want to go ahead, Heather? Go ahead. Well, you know, Nancy, we actually have about seven people with the same kind of circumstantial evidence surrounding them rodney stanger was just brought forward in the media so that's that's the greatest struggle for us because we know we know about rodney but the public only knows about i mean you know the public only knows about rodney but we know about the six other guys just like rodney stanger that are out there

and that's why we put together this movie about Molly most recently. And it was basically to solidify the events of June 27th that we knew for sure. What's the movie? Tell me the movie's name. Missing Molly. What? Our new movie, Mom, that we just did, Missing Molly. And how can I see that?

We've been sharing it on social media. It's up on my YouTube page. Hold on a minute. Missing Molly movie, and I can find it on YouTube? Yep. It's about a three-minute movie, and we have contemplated. Oh, seven, eight. I'm sorry, Heather. Yeah, that we had contemplated. Oh, 7-8. I'm sorry, Heather.

Yeah, that's okay, Ma. No, go ahead. Go ahead, Ma. I just wanted to say that it was an opportunity that we could share. Heather, again, young people are so conscientious of social media, but we could share it even by Facebook. Somebody knows something. Hey, I didn't even know about it.

This is something new to me. Would you mind if I put this on our website? No. And I'm going to direct everybody to it because this is something new for me to learn through. Hold on. I lost my track. Okay, so Missing Molly, and it's on YouTube. And you're going to give me the info and I'll put it on crimeonline.com. and it has changed our lives completely. But every single day, every day almost,

somebody comes forward and does something amazing or helpful or gives us something. And, you know, this Peter Massey who came up with his ground-penetrating radar to look at the campground a couple of weeks ago, that was something that we organized on the side. I organized with a person that's a criminologist that I know who worked with him. It was a long shot halfway down the basketball court, sort of throwing the ball at the basket. But this person was generous enough to come up here and donate his time, his skill, his knowledge to help us.

And again, maybe it was a long shot, but I mean, long shot, but really all we have left at this point. And so again, the movie, a friend of ours, Kathy Kern from Channel 5 News, and I were talking one day, I said, you know, I really think I should make a movie about Molly and solidify what happened so people aren't confused. Because often people will think, well, they got that guy in Florida, he must have done it. Or, oh, I heard about that guy in Western Mass. You're absolutely right, Heather. And no one follows up the story. And so I wanted to make sure that I imprinted it somewhere, that here

are the facts. Well, you know what I'm about to do? I'm about to log on and find Missing Molly's movie that you orchestrated. And another thing, everybody, please write this number down, 877-298-5155. Toll free, 877-298-5155.

One day, this case will be solved. Molly Bish, still on our minds, still in our hearts. Thank you. Maggie, Heather, thank you guys. Thank you. Appreciate it. I can't thank you enough. And you will always be one of my most special people in the world. And I appreciate it so much. And you're helping so many people. And you're still continuing.

And from my Molly, we thank you with all our hearts. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.