A Quiet Town’s Darkest Day: The Disappearance of Molly Bish

Who Was Molly Bish? A Snapshot of Her Life

It was in the summer of 2000 that would change young Molly Anne Bish’s life forever. While other sixteen-year-olds across Massachusetts were home from school for the summer season, Molly was on her way to her job. But it wasn’t quite a job like any other. Molly actually worked as a lifeguard at Comins Pond in Warren, meaning that she was ready to spring into action and risk her own life at the drop of a hat.

Her mother, Magi, would drive Molly out to the parking lot a short distance away from the lifeguard post before her shifts. Molly would then either get a ride back with someone she knew, or her mother would pick her up again. This was how most of Molly’s summer days went, but that, unfortunately, wouldn’t be the case for the day of June 27th, 2000.

The Last Day Molly Was Seen: June 27, 2000

That day started off much the same as any other. Molly had a shift at Comins Pond, and Magi drove her out there, but Magi was a little on edge. While she’d been dropping off Molly the day before, she’d noticed something in the car park that had left her a little uneasy. A Caucasian man with a thick mustache had been sitting in a white sedan the day before, seemingly waiting for something, and the sight of him alone had sent chills down Magi’s spine.

Molly’s shift the day before had gone on as normal, but Magi feared that the strange man would be waiting in the parking lot again on June 27th. She drove Molly up to the lifeguard post and then let out a sigh of relief.

There was no white sedan in sight.

Magi dropped Molly off, said goodbye, and then headed home, but only a few short hours later she would receive a chilling phone call. It was the police, and they had some horrifying news.

Not only did it look like no lifeguards had been on duty at the pond the entire day, but no one could actually find Molly. Her belongings, including her flip-flops, were still at the post, as was a first aid kit that looked like it had just been opened and then left.

A Search Gone Wrong: Mistakes That Complicated the Investigation

Molly’s parents and the police descended upon the scene and frantically began searching for Molly. The initial theory behind her disappearance was that she had possibly drowned in the lake while on the job, based on the fact that her belongings were still at the post when she wasn’t. Investigators also determined from physical evidence and witness testimonies that Molly had only been at the guard post for around fifteen minutes before she went missing.

Molly’s case was not treated with immediate suspicion, which must have come as some sort of initial relief to her family, but it would prove to be the investigation’s undoing. The scene that Molly had disappeared from wasn’t secured, and hundreds of people went through the post and the beach, desperately searching for Molly. In fact, the search for Molly quickly grew into the biggest and most expensive search for a missing person in the entire state of Massachusetts, but from the get-go, it had started out on the wrong foot.

As the investigators and search parties continued to come back empty-handed, one question was asked: was it possible that someone had taken the teenage girl?

Chilling Discoveries: Suspects, Leads, and Dead Ends

Hours turned into days and then into weeks, months, and years. In 2002, a hunter on Whiskey Hill in Palmer, only a few short miles away from Molly’s family home, made an unusual discovery. He spotted some blue fabric, similar to the type used in a bathing suit. At first, he thought nothing of it, but when talking to a friend a few months later in 2003, his friend decided to call it in.

The police then sprang into action and conducted a shoulder-to-shoulder search of the area with over two hundred people. They found the blue fabric again and discovered that it was indeed a bathing suit, but not only that—it was the very same bathing suit that Molly had been wearing the day she disappeared.

Now with heavier hearts, the search continued, and they made one more chilling discovery only a few days later.

They uncovered Molly’s remains.

Judging by what the investigators found, they believed that she’d died the same day that she’d gone missing, and though they couldn’t determine her exact cause of death, they were certain that she had been murdered.

It was clear, then, that someone had taken Molly and had either dragged her out into the woods to kill her or had used the landscape to simply try to hide her remains.

But who would do that to a sixteen-year-old girl, and why?

With the discovery of her remains, the investigators remained hopeful that they would finally uncover another set of clues that would lead them to Molly’s killer. But the going was tough, and information on who had done this to the young girl remained elusive.

It wasn’t until 2009, nine whole years after Molly had first disappeared, that the investigators were able to name some real suspects. All of them were men, and all of them had some sort of criminal history that involved the abuse of women or minors to some degree.

And then someone posed the question of whether two similar murders could possibly be connected. In 1993, when Molly was only ten years old, Holly Piirainen, who was also ten at the time, went missing from her grandmother’s house in Sturbridge. She was later found dead in a forest in Brimfield.

Sturbridge is only about twenty minutes away from Warren; the girls were the same age, and both were found in wooded, secluded areas. This could suggest a connection between the two and suggest that they could have possibly been carried out by the same suspect.

But there was still more to come to further tie the two of them together, and it would turn out that Molly herself was the binding rope between them.

During the desperate and frantic search for Holly, Molly had actually reached out to Holly’s parents. “I am very sorry,” ten-year-old Molly wrote in her letter. “I wish I could make it up to you. Holly is a very pretty girl. She is almost as tall as me. I wish I knew Holly. I hope they found her.”

It was possible that two investigative forces were looking for the same murderer, and physical evidence at the scene where Holly had been found pointed to one man: David Pouliot.

Although what they found isn’t open to the public, the district attorney made a statement saying that what and where they’d found this physical evidence in relation to Holly’s remains made the evidence extremely significant. This, coupled with the fact that the investigators now believed that the same person who’d kidnapped and killed Holly could be the same person who’d kidnapped and killed Molly, meant that the next logical course of action for both investigations would be to bring that person in for questioning.

But there was a major setback in that plan.

By then, it was 2012, and David Pouliot had died back in 2003.

It was possible that David was the man behind both killings, but with no way of questioning him, that branch of the investigation hit a definitive dead end.

But another man named as a suspect was Frank Sumner, a convicted rapist. He not only lived and worked in the area at the time of Molly’s disappearance, but he also fit the description of that man Molly’s mother, Magi, had seen sitting in the white sedan the day before. In fact, Magi had been so relieved that there had been no man in a white sedan on the last day that she would drop her daughter off to work proved to be a bit of misdirection in and of itself.

Witnesses would later say that a man with a mustache had been sitting in the car park at the lake only a few moments before Magi drove in with Molly. Someone else would later say that they had spotted a man and car matching that description in another parking lot that was connected to the lake via a path that very same day.

Was it possible that Frank Sumner had had something to do with Molly’s death? As it would turn out, he not only matched the physical description of the man in the parking lot but also had access to a white car.

It would certainly seem that Frank was the culprit, or at least it seemed possible, but by then, it was 2021, and Frank had died in 2016.

The investigation hit another dead end, one that even DNA evidence and familial DNA sampling couldn’t solve.

Molly Bish’s Legacy: A Case That’s Still Unsolved

To this day, Molly’s case remains open and unsolved. Frank Sumner has been named an official person of interest, but without further evidence or information, the investigation appears to be at a standstill. 267 pieces of physical evidence are being kept safe, and over 6,700 leads and tips have been looked into to no avail.

It has been twenty-four years since Molly first disappeared, soon to be twenty-five, and Molly’s family still carries the weight of what happened to her on their shoulders. “Molly’s presence is missed every single day,” her sister, Heather, spoke on the anniversary of Molly’s murder. “I miss my sister, it never ends. I don’t look at the world the same way. My sister was taken by somebody, and I’ve learned there are many dangerous people out there.”