Help Find Molly Bish's Killer

20:48We want to tell you that Molly's come home.

20:54We are extremely saddened. the depth of our sadness no family should have to endure. With the discovery of her sister's remains, Heather had a hard time accepting the tragic news. I wanted to run away, honestly. I just wanted to run outside of this nightmare and this life and maybe even my own body. But I remember feeling like I wanted to run away immensely. The search for Molly Bish was now over. But the search for her killer was never more urgent.

22:01Two months after Molly Bish's bones were discovered, in August of 2003, on what would have been her 20th birthday, Molly was laid to rest.

22:15Erin Moriarty:We commend you now to the loving care of the Lord of us all. We were so blessed. We got to have it in a church.

22:34But after three years, the Bishes still had no answers as to who could have murdered Molly. And the man in the white car, who Maggie had seen the day before Molly disappeared, had never been identified.

22:50Erin Moriarty:Frustrating is a reoccurring word in this case. Maggie wasn't the only one who reported seeing a suspicious white car in the vicinity, say investigators. On the day that Molly went missing, a white car was spotted at a car wash right down the street from the pond, and again in the cemetery behind the pond. So where is Cummings Pond, right from here? It's that direction, straight down. And you can see there's a path opening there. Yes. So somebody saw a white car where right down on that road down there? So is the thought that if somebody brought their car down there, they could maybe grab her, pull her back up, get in the car before?

23:37Erin Moriarty:That's a theory. In fact, in the early days of the investigation, search dogs did follow Molly's scent from the pond leading up to the cemetery. You don't just stumble upon Cummins Pond. That's why the person who killed Molly Bish had to have watched her, and they had to have had a plan. But there were still so many unanswered questions, like why was the first aid kit left open? Kathy Curran believes that Molly's abductor may have pretended to be injured. And then someone either forced her or threatened her to get her up that hill. Because she's athletic. She's not going to go easily. Then in May of 2004, four years after Molly disappeared, DA John Conte called for a grand jury to be convened.

24:39Whenever you hear a grand jury in a criminal case, you think, oh, they have evidence against someone. So the hope was that the case was moving forward. Heather, along with her family, were called to testify. They say that many of the DA's questions seemed to be focused on Molly's friends. I remember we were all kind of like mad because we didn't feel like they were really significant. But detectives had learned that some of Molly's friends had gathered at her boyfriend Stephen Lucas' house the morning of Molly's disappearance. We have a timeline. And they were telling police conflicting stories about what happened in the hours before and after Molly went missing.

25:30The grand jury transcripts are sealed, so it is not known whom the investigators actually questioned. but they would later clear Stephen Lucas as a person of interest. After two long years in December of 2006, the grand jury was dismissed without an indictment. It was disappointing. It was incredibly disappointing. Just weeks after the grand jury was dismissed, John Conte retired, and Joe Early Jr. took over as Worcester District Attorney. He says the grand jury was used as an investigative tool to preserve witnesses' testimony. You get them right in, you get them under oath, and there's a criminal penalty if they lie in the grand jury.

26:24And they can't say later, I didn't say that, because it's right there. And that is something that helps us get cases beyond a reasonable doubt and prove guilt. But Heather says not having answers as to who murdered her sister was taking its toll. I was giving up hope in a lot of areas. And things only got worse. In 2007, her father, John Bish, who worked so closely with police, had a stroke. Heather would now face the daunting task to take over where her father had left off. and it would not be easy. The police have always stayed very careful about what they'd let us know. The police kept saying, we're just one piece of information away.

27:12Well, where is that piece? In 2008, a man who resembled the sketch named Rodney Stanger was arrested for murdering his girlfriend in Florida. The victim's sister reached out to Heather and claimed that Stanger may have been involved in Molly's murder as well. He has this violent history. He lived very close to where Molly trained to be a lifeguard. Was he a smoker? He was also a smoker. He was known to fish at Cummins Pond and hunt in the area where Molly was found. Police were notified about this tip, But Heather says she was told that Stanger had been on one of the investigators' lists of persons of interest from the very beginning.

28:01Erin Moriarty:I've actually visited him in prison. Sean Murphy is a lieutenant with the Massachusetts State Police. He didn't have much to say to me, but I attempted. And so have other investigators as well. Stanger was convicted of murdering his girlfriend and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. In 2012, state police went down to Florida again to search Stanger's trailer. We did execute a search warrant at his residence with our law enforcement partners, and we did take items. Detective Murphy says the items were tested for DNA to see if they could be connected to Molly. We've tested and continue to test and move forward.

28:48But there was not enough evidence to make him an official suspect. And then in 2011, a private investigator came to Heather with a new tip about a man named Gerald Battistoni. He had actually raped a woman in the woods where Molly was found. His ex-wife had a white car that she reported he was driving in Warren the day Molly disappeared. Heather says she took this tip to the state police, who have confirmed the Badastoni, who died in prison in 2014, was on their radar along with many others.

29:30Erin Moriarty:There are times you could say, this person's really good for this, this person's really good for that. But that's not how you solve a crime. You have to have the evidence to support it. Finally, in 2021, 21 years after Molly disappeared, it looked like investigators had enough evidence. The district attorney's office officially named a person of interest. For the first time, I thought, this is it. there will be justice.

30:14On June 3rd, 2021, more than two decades after Molly Bish disappeared, there was finally news. Tonight, a break in the murder of Molly Bish. More than 20 years after the teenager was killed, investigators have named a new person of interest. We named the person of interest. But you had never done that before. Never done that, never done that in this case. But we did get more information to come in. We pursued those leads. And at that point, I was comfortable saying, this person is a person of interest. Yes. Francis Frank Sumner Sr. was a local auto repair shop owner with an extensive criminal record.

30:58Kathy Curran was the first to report the details. Frank Sumner seemed like a great suspect. Frank Sumner has a violent past. He was convicted of rape and kidnapping. Was he familiar with the area? He was familiar with the area. He was from the area. He had access to a white car. And when you compare the photo of him smoking the cigarette to the sketch, You can see a resemblance there. And just like the sketch, Sumner was photographed smoking with his left hand. DA Joe Early says Sumner, who died in 2016, had been well known to investigators working the Bish case for years. What made Frank Sumner rise to that top to actually be called a suspect?

31:53Information that came in, some dots that were connected. Although tight-lipped about the details, the Worcester DA's office was confident that Sumner was a viable suspect and planned to compare his DNA to DNA found at the crime scenes. But as it turned out, they couldn't obtain Sumner's DNA. Sumner had been cremated, and his DNA had never been submitted to the National CODIS database. I don't know who dropped the ball, but somebody dropped the ball. So authorities traveled to Ohio to get DNA from his son, Frank Sumner Jr. He was serving time in prison for robbery. And so we waited, and we waited, because they said we're going to do some DNA analysis.

32:46Heather, who had started that TikTok months earlier, reached out to her followers to see if she could drum up more evidence. If you know something, if you heard something, please call the state police tip line. We are still waiting for answers. Heather says it took investigators about a year before they finally told her the results of the DNA testing. It was inconclusive. What do you mean inconclusive? Was he eliminated from the DNA? I don't know what that means. Oh, you don't? And they won't tell me. Heather wonders if authorities who collected discarded cigarettes and other evidence at Cummins Pond even have a viable sample of the killer's DNA.

33:37Do you have enough DNA that you could do genetic genealogy? And have you done any? I can't speak to the DNA. I can't speak in this way. We continue to test, and we've gotten well over 100 pieces of information tested, and we continue to test. You know that the Bishes have been frustrated. They don't feel they're getting enough information from your office. They want to know, is the DNA being preserved properly? What kind of DNA? There's a general rule of thumb. No matter what family it is, the Bishes are the families that we have. We just don't share the information because someone might say something they shouldn't say and it can compromise the entire case.

34:21However, he says DNA is just one piece of the puzzle. This isn't just a DNA case. There's a lot of investigation that's been done. We need a little bit more. I'm not going to say what it is, but we need a little bit more to get to where we need to get to name a person as a defendant in this case. But Heather says she's losing faith in the investigators. It's really a sad situation to be a victim family member in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Investigator Sean Murphy says he understands Heather's frustration.

35:00Erin Moriarty:Heather is a fierce advocate for her sister and her family, and I wouldn't have it any other way. And I have no problem being held accountable by Heather, and I'm happy that she holds me accountable. 25 years after Molly Bish's murder, the case remains active. And there is a new detective who has recently joined the investigation. She has a plan. When I dedicate myself to something, I do not stop until it's accomplished.

35:45In March of 2025, Detective Chelsea Safford was hired to take over the Bish investigation.

36:02Erin Moriarty:It's a perfect job for someone that has an overactive mind, thrives on challenges, and and doesn't sleep much. One of her first tasks has been to weed through and organize over 80 boxes of case files that have accumulated over the years. I saw all those boxes and I just wanted to dive in. I just wanted to learn more. Detective Safford believes the answer to who killed Molly may just lie within these 80 boxes. This one, I found Molly's high school yearbook. book and I went through that, you know, that I have a few tips that I was trying to track down. It's part of her strategy. These are all tips.

36:50To organize and look at past tips with fresh eyes.

36:56Erin Moriarty:Who else might have heard or seen something that they didn't realize was significant? That one person that we haven't spoken to, they might be the missing piece that we've been searching for this entire time. I believe that that one more piece is out there. I just have to keep digging. And Detective Safford faces an overwhelming task. She says there has been almost 8 ,000 tips that have come in since Molly went missing, and they keep coming. I can honestly say that since I've been in this office, I don't think a week has gone by where we haven't received a Molly if not multiple, throughout the weeks.

37:35Detective Safford says she's also studying the many pieces of evidence involved in Molly's case. She allowed 48 hours to accompany her to the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab's DNA Cold Storage Facility in Sudbury, Massachusetts. Boy, it's slippery in here. Sherry Middlehoser is a forensic support section manager at the crime lab. And what am I looking at right in front of me?

38:05Erin Moriarty:So this is a bay full of evidence. And all of these items here go with the Molly Bish case. Inside some of these brown paper bags are items taken from the crime scenes. Is the swimsuit here? It is. It's this one, I believe. I don't think it says it on it, but I know it was sent out for additional testing. Are there any cigarettes here or any? There definitely are cigarettes. containers, ABC. There are a lot of them in ABC. ABC is this one here. They've been repackaged over the time. And they've been tested? Oh, yeah. Chelsea, are you going to be looking at this to see if there's something else?

38:46You're thinking, why don't we try to test that? Absolutely. Yeah. Today, Detective Safford has her eye on one piece of evidence in particular, Molly's backpack. I'll tell you, this is the number one item that I've been looking for. Why?

39:01Erin Moriarty:I think what we carry in our backpack or a pocketbook, I think it says a lot. And I personally think learning about the person, the victim, I think is a very important part of each case.

39:19Despite the challenges, Detective Safford says she is determined to find answers for the Bish family. None of us can bring Molly back, but the best thing I can do is find out what happened. I see you have some of these solved, guilty, captured. Is that what you want to do in this case? It's not what I want to do. It's what I'm going to do. Yes. We. We will do it. Heather Bish, who has been critical of the Massachusetts State Police investigation in the past, says she is encouraged by Detective Safford's passion. I feel like she has the same energy and commitment to solving this as I do. Heather still makes TikTok videos about Molly's case, hoping her efforts will one day generate a tip that can help investigators.

40:12Somebody knows something, and somebody knows who killed Molly Bish. I will never give up. I'll fight. Molly deserves that justice. DA Joe Early Jr. insists that investigators are moving in the right direction. As you sit here, is Frank Sumner still on the top of the list of people of interest? He's the only person of interest we've named. The only person of interest that's been named in this case, yes. On June 27, 2025, the Bish family gathered with friends and family to remember Molly 25 years after her death.

40:53Erin Moriarty:Trust eternal grant unto her, O Lord. First at the cemetery. Let light perpetual shine upon her. And then at a more formal ceremony in the center of Warren. I feel her beside me. Because of Molly, I have become braver than I ever thought possible. I have faced my deepest fears I have endured unimaginable heartbreak I have survived I believe Molly's love and light have guided us through these 25 years so today we share our family's gratitude and because of Molly we have conquered what evil could not for love is much stronger

41:47The evening ended with a gathering at Cummins Pond. I don't want people to ever forget Molly. And we will never stop honoring her.

42:07Erin Moriarty:If you have any information that can help authorities find Molly's killer, please reach out to the Molly Bish tip line. 508-453-7575