TEEN LIFEGUARD’S BEACH MURDER
SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD MOLLY BISH VANISHED FROM HER SUMMER JOB IN 2000 – HER REMAINS WERE FOUND THREE YEARS LATER. NOW, AFTER DECADES WITHOUT AN ARREST, HER FAMILY MAY FINALLY GET ANSWERS
High atop her perch on the worn wooden lifeguard chair at Comins Pond in Warren, Massachusetts, Molly Bish could see kids splashing in the water, diving under the surface and building sandcastles on the tree-shaded beach. The fun-loving, athletic high school honour student was excited to be lifeguarding at the popular swimming spot – following in the footsteps of her older brother John, then 20, who had lifeguarded there for years before her. When he landed a different summer job, 16-year-old Molly jumped at the chance to step in, even though her mum, Magi, was apprehensive about her daughter manning the post at the secluded pond. “She reassured me,” Magi remembers. “She said, ‘Mum, I’m not worried.’”
What Molly couldn’t see as she watched over the pond was the evil lurking in the woods around her. On the morning of June 27, 2000 – only her eighth day on the job – Molly vanished from Comins Pond just minutes after her mum dropped her off for her shift. Despite the largest search ever undertaken in Massachusetts at that time, it would take three years for authorities to find her. Her remains were discovered on a desolate wooded hillside a few kilometres away, in Palmer. “We loved our Molly; we didn’t know how to survive without her,” says Magi. “We were a family of five. How do you become four? It’s like the chain is unlinked, and you don’t know how to go on.”
Now, after more than two decades, the Bishes may finally get some longawaited answers about Molly’s murder. On June 3 – weeks before the 21st anniversary of Molly’s disappearance – police announced they had identified Francis “Frank” Sumner Snr, 71, a convicted rapist and kidnapper, as a credible suspect in Molly’s murder, based on information received months ago in the case, which they never stopped investigating.
“We have growing confidence in the tip,” says Worcester County District Attorney Joseph Early Jnr. While he’s “optimistic” about this latest development, he knows justice may never truly be served – Sumner died in 2016. Still, he hopes to give the Bish family a measure of relief. “What the family really wants is Molly back,” he says. “The thing they want, I can’t give them.”
It was about 9.55am on June 27, 2000, when Magi dropped Molly off at the beach. At 1.30pm she received a heart-jolting call from the Warren assistant police chief, telling her that her daughter hadn’t been seen at work since around 10.08am, when mothers bringing their kids for morning swim lessons called to report there was no lifeguard on duty. Knowing Molly would never have left her post unless there was an emergency, Magi rushed to the pond.
“I was desperately yelling, ‘Molly! Molly!’” she says. When Magi saw Molly’s backpack in the sand near the lifeguard chair along with her shoes, a chill raced down her spine: “Why would she leave without her shoes?” Molly’s older sister Heather, then 24, watched her normally unflappable mum demanding to speak to the local police chief with increasing panic. “My stomach dropped,” says Heather. “I was like, ‘Something’s really wrong.’”
Initially, local police guessed that Molly might have simply left the site to go off with friends, but it soon became clear there was something more sinister going on. “As soon as the state police came in, they started looking at it as an abduction or a homicide, like, ‘What happened to this girl?’” Heather remembers.
Divers – including Molly’s frantic brother John – delved into the pond’s murky waters, trying to find any trace of the teen. Volunteers and police with search dogs combed the surrounding forest, theorising that whoever had abducted Molly had been watching her from behind her lifeguard chair, hidden in the woods. “It’s a perfect place that someone could see her,” says Magi.
“And could get her.”
It would take three years and hundreds of fruitless tips before a local hunter mentioned to a friend that he’d seen a blue bathing suit in the woods on Whiskey Hill, approximately [5km] from Comins
“I’ve spent half my life hunting Molly’s murderer. I’m hopeful I don’t have to anymore” – HEATHER
Pond. The friend contacted police, and on June 9, 2003, Molly’s remains were located. “There’s no understanding of it,” says Magi. “It just really doesn’t make any sense.”
Haunted by the several hours wasted when authorities thought Molly had simply run away, Magi, 69, now a retired special education teacher, and her husband, John, 72, a retired probation officer, spent the years after Molly’s death channelling their pain into helping other families.
In 2001 they partnered with then-US Senator Ted Kennedy to bring amber alerts to Massachusetts and worked to launch the state’s Missing Children’s Day. They also started the Molly Bish Foundation to raise awareness about child abductions and have distributed more than 750,000 free ID kits to families to help find their children should they ever go missing. “Molly, in her own way, has a legacy no-one would have ever thought,” says Magi. “That makes my heart beat.”
Since 2019 Heather has also been working with the state legislature on a bill that would let Massachusetts join other states in allowing law enforcement to use familial DNA searches in the investigation of violent cold cases.
Says State Senator Anne Gobi, the bill’s lead sponsor, “[Molly’s case] definitely raised awareness, in a scary way.”
For now, the Bishes are hopeful about the break in the case. On June 2 authorities met with Heather to discuss the new suspect – and to return some of Molly’s belongings investigators took during the initial investigation. Among the items were Molly’s purse, sunglasses and prom invitations, all bringing back memories of the sister who never made it past the age of 16.
In the bags of belongings, Heather also found a soundtrack cassette tape from the animated movie An American Tail, with one of Molly’s favourite songs. “It’s ‘Somewhere out There’, and she loved that song,” Heather says. “When that came back, I thought, ‘Oh … it’s a little sign from my sister.’”