HOLLY PIIARAINEN - 10 yo (1993) - Boston/ Sturbridge MA

BOSTON -- Holly Piirainen was 10 years
old, visiting her grandparents at their Sturbridge home when she and
her brother wandered to a neighbor's house to play with a litter of
puppies on a summer afternoon in 1993.Her brother ran home. Holly never returned.Volunteers
searched for the missing child for months -- scouring the woods of
western Massachusetts for endless hours. Police hunted for clues by air,
underwater and on horseback.Flyers featuring Holly's face were plastered all over the town of Grafton, where she grew up, and in the surrounding areas.There was a glimmer of hope when one of Holly's sneakers was found.Then
nothing until a day in October when hunters walking through a secluded
woods in Brimfield found the skeletal remains of a child, and the
Piirainen family got the grim news that Holly's body had been found.The
search was over, but the hunt for her killer has never stopped. Now,
state police say there has been a new development in the case.NewsCenter
5 has learned that forensic evidence has surfaced for the first time.
Her loved ones hope it could be a step toward closure."We found Holly but not the person responsible," Holly's father, Richard Piirainen, said.Investigators will announce the new lead in the case Tuesday morning. Holly's family plans on attending the news conference.
Read more: http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/30119146/detail.html#ixzz1iN9FY068

A man dead nearly a decade could be the key to the mysterious abduction and murder of a little Massachusetts girl that has stumped investigators for more than 18 years.
Investigators named David Pouliot, a Vietnam veteran who worked for a juvenile detention center as a 'person of interest' in the disappearance of 10-year-old Holly Piirainen, but stopped short of naming him as a suspect.

Holly was abducted during a family vacation in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, on August 5, 1993, and her remains were discovered three months later eight miles away in Brimfield.
Investigators found evidence near Holly's remains that 'indisputably' puts Pouliot at the wooded site where her body was dumped, Hampden County District Attorney Mark Mastroianni
Mr Mastroianni would not say what, specifically, was found or how it links Pouliot to the killing.
However, it was only when the evidence was subjected to 21st century forensic science that the connection to Pouliot became apparent, he said at a press conference this morning.

No one has ever been charged with her murder, but analysis of forensic evidence found at the scene has revealed new leads.
'This is the lead we’ve all been waiting for,’ Holly's father Rick Piirainen told the Boston Globe.
'We feel it’s the beginning of the end of this case.'
Authorities say he frequently hunted and fished in the woods where Holly was found.
He has a criminal record, Mr Mastroianni said, but no arrests that would have indicated he might be capable of killing a little girl.

This is the first break in the case in 10 years, but Mr Mastroianni said several times during his news conference that Pouloit is not a suspect, merely a person of interest.
David Procopio, a spokesman for the Massachusetts State Police, told the Globe: 'We hope the new evidence may spark someone's memory, or someone's conscience.
'Holly's family has waited for justice for almost two decades.'
Holly disappeared after she and her 5-year-old brother Zachary walked down the road to a neighbor's house to look at a litter of newborn puppies.
Holly, Zachary and her other little brother Andrew, 8, were visiting their grandmother's cottage with their father Rick.
Zachary returned from the neighbor's house without Holly.
For weeks, authorities hunted for Holly and what clues to what might have happened to her.
It was two and a half months later when hunters stumbled across her remains in a thickly wooded area.
Over the years, police have questioned at least two men on suspicions they had something to do with her disappearance, but have never had a break in the case.
Pouliot's name only came up recently after he was linked to the evidence found under a bride near Holly's body.
Maureen Lemieux, Holly's grandmother, told the Worchester Telegram and Gazette that the family never knew Poilio and had never heard of him until prosecutors brought his name forward.
She said the said the development has her family 'cautiously optimistic.'
With the new evidence comes a new motivation for witnesses or anyone who might know about what happened to Holly.
State Sen Stephen M. Brewer and state Rep Todd M. Smola, a Democrat and a Republican, are offering a $15,000 reward for any information that leads to solving the case.
The two politicians pooled the money together using personal and campaign funds.
'I took that abduction personally' Sen Brewer said.
'That and Molly Bish.'
Investigators have speculated Holly's abduction and murder could be linked with that of Molly Bish, who disappeared on June 27, 2000, after she was dropped off at Comins Pond in Warren where she was a lifeguard.
The 16-year-old's remains were found in 2003 in a wooded area near Comins Pond.
However, the Telegram and Gazette reported that authorities have had their eye on a different suspect in that murder.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2081602/Holly-Piirainen-case-New-forensic-evidence-links-David-Pouliot-1993-abduction.html#ixzz1iS1Db28S

SPRINGFIELD – Holly Piirainen’s family has watched her friends grow up and go on to college since the 10-year-old was abducted and murdered in 1993.
“We could have had that,” Piirainen’s grandmother, Maureen Lemieux,
said outside a highly-anticipated press conference at the Hampden Hall
of Justice. “But all we have is this.”
“This,” has been the roller coaster of a half-dozen “persons of
interest” and other potential leads in the unsolved case that have so
far led to disappointment for the family.
But, an announcement by Hampden district attorney Mark G. Mastroianni
on Tuesday that advanced forensic testing may have yielded the most
promising lead in the case yet, presented a new glimmer of hope for the family.
About a dozen family members, including Piirainen’s parents and two
brothers, now 24 and 27, filled the first two rows of a second-floor
hearing room packed with reporters from around New England.

“This feels different. We're thrilled the case might finally be
solved,” said Lemieux, of Grafton, adding that the family had held on to
Holly’s camp T-shirt from that summer, covered with signatures of her
fellow campers, her Girl Scout garb and her favorite dolls.
The child’s smiling image on a projector screen appeared throughout
the press conference, juxtaposed at times with a map of the area where
she disappeared on Aug. 5, 1993, in a tranquil pocket of Sturbridge
while vacationing with family members, and the wooded area five miles
away in Brimfield where her remains were discovered by hunters two months later.
Also featured prominently on the same screen were photos of David E. Pouliot,
a Springfield resident who died in August 2003 of congestive heart
failure, according to a death certificate filed with the city.
Pouliot had no record of violent crimes or sex offenses, officials
said. But, Springfield police said he was arrested once in 1999 after
officers observed him buying cocaine in a high-crime area of Carew
Street, and snorting it while sitting in the driver’s seat of a gray
Dodge pickup truck. The disposition of the case could not immediately be determined.
Mastroianni stated repeatedly that Pouliot is not necessarily
considered a suspect in Piirainen’s slaying, but a piece of evidence
recovered by investigators near the scene where the child’s bones were
found had “undisputedly” linked Pouliot to the area through forensic testing.
The district attorney refused to say what the item is or where
exactly it was recovered; he also wouldn't even say what sort of testing
had linked the man to the crime scene.
Holly Piirainen’s father, Richard Piirainen, told reporters after the
press conference that investigators had always told the family
scientific advances may well be the key to solving his daughter’s murder.
Richard Piirainen said the family did not know Pouliot and had never heard
the name throughout the course of the investigation.
“We were always told we’d probably be waiting on the forensic
technology to get better,” he said. “Now we’re hoping some of his
friends or associates might come forward with new information.”
State Sen. Stephen M. Brewer, D-Barre, also announced a $15,000
reward for new information in the case leading to the identification of Piirainen’s killer.
Holly Pirrainen was a sweet and trusting child, according to her
grandmother, with a love of animals and a dream of being a marine
biologist ever since she took a trip to the Mystic Aquarium in
Connecticut, where she saw staff swimming with dolphins and whales.

DA wants more Information

Hampden County District Attorney Mark Mastroianni, announced a break in the 1993 homicide of 10 year old Holly Piirainen.
Watch video

“She said ‘How can I get to do that someday?’ And, we told her she’d have
to go to college to study marine life,” Lemieux said.
In fact, the girl was on foot en route to a neighbor’s house about a
block away to visit a new litter of puppies with her younger brother
when she disappeared. When family members went looking for her, all they
recovered was one of her shoes on the side of the road.
State Police Capt. Peter Higgins, an investigator on the case since
the beginning who now heads the detective unit assigned to the district
attorney's office, recovered the actual item in question from the crime
scene in 1993. He told reporters on Tuesday that he believed Piirainen’s
abduction was a crime of opportunity.
Investigators have learned Pouliot was an avid outdoorsman who spent a
considerable amount of time hunting and fishing in Sturbridge.
“It would be wonderful for the case to actually be solved. I’m 18
years older than I was when my granddaughter disappeared,” Lemieux said.
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/01/holly_piirainens_family_member.html

UPDATE: Massachusetts police seize possible evidence in Molly Bish murder case

Published July 18, 2012
FoxNews.com

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/18/authorities-seize-items-from-home-person-interest-in-molly-bish-murder-case/#ixzz21531wAps


Massachusetts State Police have seized items from the Florida home of a "person of interest" in the 2000 murder of 16-year-old Molly Bish, who disappeared from a Massachusetts pond where she worked as a lifeguard.

Fox affiliate WFXT-TV reported Wednesday that investigators are reviewing possible evidence taken from the Summerfield, Fla., trailer home of 64-year-old Rodney Stanger, now imprisoned for another murder. The items include a film showing a blonde girl stripping then getting her neck snapped, according to MassLive.com, and a photo of Stanger that bears a striking resemblance to sketches of a suspicious man seen hanging around the Warren, Mass., pond where Bish worked.

"He looks just like the sketch. It's him. I have no doubt it's him."

- Bonnie Kiernan, murder victim's sister

Stanger, who lived in nearby Southbridge at the time of Bish's disappearance, is serving a 25-year prison term in Florida for the 2008 stabbing death of his live-in girlfriend, Chrystal Morrison.

Morrison's sister, Bonnie Kiernan, recently traveled to the Florida trailer home where the couple lived to retrieve items belonging to Morrison, WFXT reported. While there, Kiernan found a wallet belonging to Stanger that was hidden inside a kitchen cabinet, according to the station. In it was a Massachusetts Firearms Identification Card, with a photo of Stanger that looks eerily similar to police sketches of a mystery man seen near Comins Pond the day before Bish vanished. The F.I.D. card was renewed just two months before Bish's disappearance.

"He looks just like the sketch," Kiernan told the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. "It's him. I have no doubt it's him."

Kiernan also found girls' hair accessories, keys to a previously unknown safety deposit box and Stanger's birth certificate, which listed Warren, Mass., Bish's hometown, as his birthplace.

After the largest search for a missing person in Massachusetts history, Bish's remains were discovered in 2003 about five miles from her family's home. The case was ruled a homicide but no cause of death could be determined.

Stanger was already a person of interest in the Bish case, partly because of a tip from Kiernan. After Morrison's death in 2008, Kiernan told cops about a cryptic phone call from her sister, in which the doomed woman implied Stanger may have been involved in murders in Massachusetts, according to the Worcester newspaper. Morrison alluded to Bish and another girl, Holly Piirainen, who disappeared in 1993 in Sturbridge, a town adjacent to Southbridge. No one has ever been charged in the death of Piirainen, whose body was found two months after she disappeared by hunters in nearby Brimfield.

The Worcester district attorney is reportedly conducting DNA testing on the items from Stanger's home as well as possible evidence from Comins Pond, like discarded cigarettes.

"We hope to get a break there," Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early, Jr. told WBZ-TV last month. "As we’ve said before, time can be your enemy right away, but as years pass, time becomes your friend. There is a variety of emotions involved with this as opposed to other homicides. This one is unique, unique for so many reasons."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/18/authorities-seize-items-from-home-person-interest-in-molly-bish-murder-case/#ixzz21531wAps

Molly Bish Murder Investigation: Police Outsource DNA Testing Of Evidence
Posted: 04/15/2013 1:34 pm EDT

Investigators trying to crack the abduction and killing of a 16-year-old lifeguard in Massachusetts have sent pieces of potential evidence to an out-of-state lab for analysis, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported.

In 2000, Molly Bish disappeared moments after her mother dropped her off to work at Comins Pond in Warren. Three years later, a bathing suit and bones identified as Bish's were found scattered in a wooded area in Palmer.

A spokesman for the Worcester district attorney handling the case wouldn't specify what items got shipped to a Dallas laboratory for tests, the Associated Press reported.

Bish's sister Heather Bish, however, said she expects results on cigarette butts, duct tape and other items picked up at the pond, Fox News said.

Evidence seized from the Florida home of a convicted killer last year also awaits testing, Heather Bish said.

Rodney Stanger was a person of interest in the Bish case before he was convicted of killing his girlfriend in 2008, according to the Daily Mail. He moved suddenly from Soutbridge, Mass. to Summerfield, Fla., just three months after Bish vanished.

Last year, police searched the home Stanger shared with Chrystal Morrison after his deceased girlfriend's sister claimed to find suspicious materials in the home. Stanger's firearms identification card issued by Massachusetts looks extremely similar to the mystery man Bish's mom described lurking around the pond the day before her daughter disappeared.

A video of a blond girl stripping before getting her neck snapped was reportedly among the items taken from Stanger's home.

A backlog at the Massachusetts state police's crime lab compelled authorities to send the items from the Bish files out of state, CBS Boston reported.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/15/molly-bish-murder-dna-testing-_n_3084680.html