Bish investigation remains active, district attorney says
Lifeguard killed 23 years ago
A deceased Massachusetts man convicted of rape in 1981 who was named as a person of interest in the slaying of Molly Bish remains a focus of investigators who continue to work the high-profile case, Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. said Wednesday. Bish was a 16-year-old who vanished from her Warren lifeguard post in 2000.
“Two years ago, in 2021, we announced that Francis ‘Frank’ P. Sumner Sr. had been named a person of interest in the case,” Early said in a statement, adding that officials “received a lot of helpful information related to Sumner and he remains a person of interest.”
Sumner was convicted in 1982 of aggravated rape and kidnapping and emerged as a subject of the investigation after authorities received new information, Early said in 2021. Sumner lived in Central Massachusetts from 1960 until his death in 2016, officials have said.
On Wednesday, Early said any “additional discussion of Sumner would be premature given the open and ongoing nature of the case.”
“This year, a significant number of items of evidence were identified for testing or retesting based upon current science,” Early said. “Our State Police Detectives are working with the crime lab to assess evidence that can be reanalyzed thanks to changes in science.”
Early said investigators “still regularly receive tips on Molly’s case.”
“We are doing everything we can to solve Molly’s case,” Early said. “We have solved 40-, 30-, and 20-year-old cases. I would also encourage anyone with information about any unresolved case to call or email our State Police detectives.”
Bish disappeared on the morning of June 27, 2000, after her mother dropped her off at Comins Pond in Warren, where she worked as a lifeguard.
Despite an extended search, her remains were not found until nearly three years later, when a blue bathing suit similar to the one she was wearing was found in the woods in nearby Palmer, prosecutors said.
Searchers found several bones that DNA analysis identified as Bish’s. She was buried that August on what would have been her 20th birthday.
Bish’s sister, Heather Bish, told the Globe in 2021 that someone had reached out to the family and investigators several years earlier with a tip about Sumner, who fit the description of a suspicious man her mother saw in a white sedan near Molly’s lifeguard post the day before the teenager disappeared.
In the criminal case in which Sumner was convicted, he hired a 21-year-old woman on Oct. 20, 1981, to clean an apartment he was trying to lease and attacked her, court records show.
Sumner was convicted of aggravated rape and kidnapping and given concurrent sentences of 15 to 18 years on the rape charge and 9 to 10 years on the kidnapping charge, according to court records.
He was released from prison on March 31, 1998, a Department of Correction spokesperson said.