EP 47 | Holly Piirainen Cold Case Mystery 30 Years Later, Sturbridge, Massachusetts with journalist Rich Price

Thirty years ago today, 10-year-old Holly Piirainen was enjoying a lazy summer day with her family at their vacation cottage in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. What should have been an innocent visit with a litter of puppies nearby turned into a decades-long nightmare for her family.

Holly disappeared. The only trace of her was one red sneaker.  She would be found two and a half months later in the nearby town of Brimfield, in the next county over.

As we revisit the details of Holly's case, there are a great many mysteries still. I speak to journalist and former editor of Grafton News, Holly's hometown paper, Rich Price about his journey into the intricate details of her disappearance, the potential suspects in her abduction and murder, and his relationship with the Piirainen family members. 

In our exploration of Holly's case, we take a moment to appreciate the distinctive beauty of Massachusetts and New England. I share details about local landmarks in the areas relative to Holly's case.

Please share any information you have, overheard, or may have remembered,
Your help is needed to solve her case
Call 413-505-5993
or the State Police Unresolved Cases Unit at 855-627-6583
OR  text the word SOLVE to 274637

Reach the Hampden District Attorney in Springfield, Mass at HampdenDA.com

Listen: Holly's Been Taken
a podcast about Holly Piirainen's disappearance and murder, by Rich Price

Site developed by investigators to help solve Holly's case:
HelpHolly.com

Visit CrimeoftheTruestKind.com
Crime of the Truest Kind
Created, written, and hosted by Anngelle Wood 

Transcript

Anngelle Wood: 0:00

Well, hello, my name is Anngelle Wood and this is Crime of the Truest Kind. Hi everyone, I'm back from a lovely Maine getaway, I highly recommend, although the place that we stayed in the bed was so wretched that I got a backache. It took me until I came back home from vacation to finally shake it. Mostly, I do believe I will be visiting my acupuncturist in the not-too-distant future. My name is Anngelle Wood. This is Crime of the Truest Kind. Massachusetts and New England Crime Stories. What's to come? Season 3. True Crime Podcast Festival in Austin, Texas, August in Austin. What were we thinking? And Advocacy in Action. I will be joining the New Hampshire Coalition of the Missing and Murdered on Tuesday, August 15th in Concord, New Hampshire, beginning at 11 am. You are all invited to join. That's Step 1 of Crime of the Truest Kind's Advocacy in Action. Where, what's the term?, you put your money where your mouth is. Thank you for listening and supporting the show, sharing and leaving reviews. Apple Podcast allows you to do that. Follow @crime of the truestk ind, and, finally become a patron at patreon. com/ Crime of thetruestkind. I will thank all of our patrons later on in this show.

Anngelle Wood: 1:51

Today is a heavy day. Exactly 30 years ago, Holly Piirainen went missing. I will talk about that day and the days that followed, and in the second part of the show I speak to journalist Rich Price, whose work in local news led him to Holly's case and to write and produce the podcast Holly's Been Taken. In today's episode, episode number 47, we go to Worcester County, west of Boston, in Grafton and Sturbridge, and later in Brimfield in Hampden County, because Holly Piirainen's murder is still unsolved 30 years later. Holly Kristen Piirainen came into the world on January 19, 1983, in Worcester, Massachusetts. She lived with her family in Grafton, a small town in Worcester County and part of what's known as the Blackstone Valley. As of 2020, its population was just over 19,600 people. Grafton is five miles outside of Worcester and Worcester is the second largest city in the Commonwealth after Boston.

Anngelle Wood: 3:10

You know, in preparing this episode, I recall living in Grafton once, briefly, a friend had a place on Lake Ripple. Zillow calls it North Grafton. People familiar with this area. It was on Logan Path. I had to look it up. It was a long time ago and the story goes that we were in between homes. We moved out of one and couldn't move into the other one right away. So, a friend of ours, let us stay there temporarily. It was a very kind thing to do. The 1935 film, Ah, Wilderness!, was filmed in Grafton. It starred Lionel Barrymore of the Barrymore family and, yes, great uncle of Drew Barrymore. The producers of the film had a bandstand built in the town common where it still stands today.

Anngelle Wood: 4:03

Rich Price, the journalist whom I will speak to later in the episode, is former editor of Grafton News, the town paper. This podcast is about Massachusetts and New England crime stories. It is also about our people and places, the things that happen here. From Grafton we go to Sturbridge, also in Worcester County and 24 miles from Holly's hometown. It's a very small New England town, 9,800 people as of 2020. It's closer to the Connecticut state line than it is to the city of Worcester and, since 1946, Sturbridge has been well known as the home of Old Sturbridge Village, a tourist destination and a staple field trip location for area kids. Old Sturbridge Village is a recreation of an early 19th century rural New England town. It has 40 historical buildings on site and covers 200 plus acres. Oh, and there's friendly costumed historians.

Anngelle Wood: 5:15

On Thursday, August 5th 1993, Holly was a happy 10-year-old girl, a big sister to two brothers. She was headed to fifth grade at Grafton Middle School, where she sang in the school choir and she was a girl scout. Holly, her brothers Zachary and Andrew were enjoying a week-long mid-summer vacation at their family's cottage. Holly's dad, Rick, brought the kids to his mother's place there in Sturbridge. It was something that they did all the time. Holly's parents had split up and they had joint custody between Rick Piirainen and mom Christina Harrington. That arrangement allowed the kids to spend several nights each week with their dad and many weekends. Rick took the kids out on the boat to swim in the lake after breakfast. Holly loved to swim, m ost of us did at 10, but she really loved the water. She had just gotten her intermediate swimming certificate at 4-H Camp shortly before that vacation week. Holly was a smart child, an excellent student. At 10, she was already planning to go to school in Florida to become a marine biologist - at 10.

Anngelle Wood: 6:31

The Piirainens headed back to the cottage at about 11:45 am. Holly, along with her little brother Zach, who was five at the time, wanted to walk up South Shore Drive, the dirt road along the lake where their cottage was. They walked a couple of hundred yards to Allen Street, one of the main roads that leads to the lake. There they went to a fence at the back of a neighbor's yard to see some collie puppies and because Holly loved animals she knew they came outside at noontime. Now Holly, who was 10, was a bit more seasoned with these things, but little Zach got scared by one of the barking puppies and wanted to go back to the cottage. Holly stayed by the fence. Zachary came back alone, no Holly. It was just after 12 o'clock. Their dad gave it about 10 minutes before sending his two sons, Zach and eight-year-old Andrew, out to find her. But when they returned without Holly that was definitely cause for alarm. Rick and the boys would drive around the lake roads looking for Holly but she was gone. A local woman would tell investigators that she drove by the intersection of South Shore Drive and Allen Street and had seen Holly and possibly her younger brother standing by the fence close to noon. She said the kids were up on the shoulder of the dirt road by the fence of the house with the puppies about 20 feet from the paved road. This helps to set up the timeline.

Anngelle Wood: 8:11

Their grandmother's cottage was on Quacumquasit Pond, also known as South Pond i n Sturbridge. Not easy to say at first try for most, but it is New England and many things here are named after our native ancestors. The lake and its surroundings was something Holly was familiar with. She was comfortable at the location and she knew her way around. It is also the reason why her family did not believe she had gotten lost or taken off when she didn't make it back to the family cottage. Holly's grandmother's husband told the Boston Globe at the time that Holly was a very street wise kid, and with that I think all he really meant is that Holly was a smart girl, mature for her 10 years, and not a kid that would just take off for any reason. She knew her way around.

Anngelle Wood: 9:09

With no sign of Holly, her dad called police and reported her missing. Reports list that as 12:51 pm, just over one hour since he had last seen his daughter. Holly had disappeared. The only sign of her was one red sneaker found by the side of the road near where they had been looking at the puppies. There were no eyewitnesses and there was no evidence on the roadway of anyone coming in, peeling out or leaving any tire tracks. The search for Holly began immediately, with more than 80 state and local police officers and firefighters searching the entire day. State police helicopters with infrared equipment kept on through the night while more officers patrolled a three square mile area of where she had last been seen, but nothing, whereabouts, unknown.

Anngelle Wood: 10:04

Rick, her dad, talked about what it was like in those hours and days that followed and how he somehow accepted the media's intrusions with grace and humor. They needed the attention they needed to find Holly, but seeing the pink ribbons that went up after her disappearance, well, it drove him to tears. Every time, and when something like this happens to a family, the sense of guilt and grief is absolutely overwhelming. Finding sleep was difficult, so her parents would go out at all hours to search nearby shacks and treehouses, anywhere and everywhere. Someone said to check, and yes, dozens of psychics offered their services to desperate parents who do anything to find their daughter. They didn't find her. Summer turned to fall and the family tried to find some normalcy. Is that possible to do? Not really no. But they had two little boys and they needed to try.

Anngelle Wood: 11:10

Two and a half months passed and on Saturday, October 23rd 1993, some men who were out hunting in an Army Corps of Engineers flood control forest discovered what they believed to be human remains. The State Police were called and reported to the scene. What they had found was the skull and partial skeletal remains of a child. A search of the area also turned up a child-sized t-shirt dungarees - which is a very New England thing to say for a pair of jeans - and one sneaker near the remains of a child. But this discovery wasn't in Sturbridge, so authorities needed to determine was this a brand new crime? Who was this child and who did this? The remains were found in a town called Brimfield. Brimfield is in Hampden County, Massachusetts. Its population is even smaller just over 3,600 in the 2020 census, and it hasn't grown very much since 1990. I read something somewhere where they said the town was so small that it had a part-time police force. I did try to find that information, but I do know this they have a small department with 14 sworn police officers a chief, a lieutenant and 12 patrol officers and they are hiring. So any aspiring cops listening? Brimfield, Massachusetts.

Anngelle Wood: 12:53

Brimfield is famous in certain circles. In those circles, the term "Brimfield means one thing Brimfield's flea market. It is the largest outdoor antiques and collectibles show around. A piece of mass live said this, " For some reason. The Brimfield flea market is a gold mine of thousands of unique finds for antique and thrift shoppers. For others, it's a totally undiscovered piece of land that sits just west of the intersection of Interstate 84 and I-90. That's the mass pike. More than 50,000 people attend the Brimfield Flea Market each year. It runs three times a year in May, July and September. From Tuesday through Sunday. You can visit BrimfieldsAntiqueFleaMarket. com and yet another beautiful reason to visit New England. I'm going to go after some of that New England tourism money one day. I was recently out in that part of the state when I got Poppy, my new little baby dog. She's doing great, by the way, and many thanks to Better Together Dog Rescue of Belchert own, Massachusetts.

Anngelle Wood: 14:14

The spot where these remains were found in Brimfield is six miles from the Sturbridge cottage. Holly had gone missing in early August. The remains did appear to belong to a human child. An investigators were called to the scene to comb for evidence. What is sad and disgusting is something I read in a piece on Boston 25 News around the 11th anniversary of Holly's disappearance. Her mom, who was identified as Tina Harrington in the story, said I got a phone call from a television reporter saying, " can you give me any information about the body in the woods? That's how I found out. That is how Holly Piirainen' s mom, Tina Harrington, found out that her little girl's remains were found in the woods in Brimfield three months after she disappeared. Are you fucking kidding me? But things like this happen to families all the time and we really, really need to do better. It was Holly. She had been found after 79 days. An autopsy found that she had been murdered, and very likely in the location where the remains were found. A forensic examination of the clothing found with her would tell the story that her clothing was removed. She was assaulted and murdered and left out in the open in the woods of Brimfield, exposed to the elements of the heat and whatever lived in those woods.

Anngelle Wood: 15:58

There have been at least five or six strong suspects in Holly's abduction and murder. Some named, others just suspected. Holly's case has been featured on local news for as long as I can remember. Then, seven years after Holly, another young girl from the same area went missing, a girl who would be connected to Holly's case in a few ways. First was when Holly went missing. That girl from Warren, ten miles from Sturbridge, was Molly Bish. She had just celebrated her tenth birthday a few days before Holly went missing. When Molly heard that a little girl her same age had disappeared while visiting her grandmother in Sturbridge. She wanted to offer Holly's family comfort, so she wrote Holly Piirainen's parents a letter. It read, " my name is Molly Bish, I am ten years old. Some day I would like to come see you. I am very sorry. 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 find her With love. Molly Followed by several X's and O's for hugs and kisses and she included a picture of her family. That is an incredibly kind thing for a ten-year-old to do. Molly's mother, Magi, would say much later that Molly was very sensitive to the feelings of others. She wrote that letter on her own and she didn't need any help.

Anngelle Wood: 17:36

Molly Bish went missing from her lifeguard job on Comin s Pond in Warren on June 27, 2000. She was sixteen. Three years following her disappearance her remains were discovered a few miles from the pond in Palmer, Massachusetts. Molly's disappearance opened a lot of wounds for the Piirainens as well as other families of missing and murdered children. I have spoken about Molly's case before, that once it was discovered she was missing, an extensive search for her began. It is the largest and most expensive search for a missing person in Massachusetts history. I get all that, but what is the price for a child? Holly's case and Molly's case, two young Massachusetts girls who were abducted and murdered, remain unsolved to this day. There are many people of interest, named and unnamed, some of whom were potential links to both cases.

Anngelle Wood: 18:37

Holly Piirainen went missing on August 5, 1993. Exactly thirty years to the day that I tell you this story. What will it take to solve this case? And the many cases like hers? I ask that of my guest. Rich Price is a journalist. He is from Holly's hometown. He investigated her case in depth. He has developed a relationship with Holly Piirainen's family and he covers her case in a podcast he calls Holly's Been Taken. I'm grateful that he agreed to speak with me about her case. And before we get started, there was some glitching in our Wi-Fi connections, so on some occasions audio is a bit tenuous. It was something I hoped to be able to repair in post, some of which I was able to, but what I will do is include the transcripts of this episode. Interview begins here: Anngelle: I listened to most of your podcast. We did a lot of work on that. That's a lot of work.

Rich Price: 19:53

It was a lot of work I didn't want to do one-off. I saw this on Wikipedia.

Anngelle Wood: 20:00

Unfortunately for this true crime community, that's a lot of what we get.

Rich Price: 20:07

It is At least the popular ones, which shall not be named. You're absolutely right. There's a lot of that going on, and if you've got to crank these things out, you're not going to be able to do a tremendous amount of research. You're just going to pretty much just hope you're going to get the ears that you want.

Anngelle Wood: 20:23

I know that you have a very strong background. Are you a Massachusetts native? Did you grow up here?

Rich Price: 20:30

I am. I grew up in Norwood and then lived in Boston. I lived in Metro West, I moved to Minnesota for like seven or eight years and we came back and live in Grafton. Now Became the editor of the Grafton News just the town paper.

Anngelle Wood: 20:51

Yeah.

Rich Price: 20:54

And it was great. I met a lot of people and got to know a lot of people and one of them ended up being a Piirainen family. You know, carla Jackman was kind of the go-to person for the family. She was the spokesperson Her mother used to be, but now she's just kind of getting up there in years and it's just too much and she would send me every once in a while a request to run like an anniversary type story. You know, if you know anything, call the detective's unit, that kind of stuff. So we kind of knew each other and she works for the public school system and I had kids in the school system, so we all knew other people and kind of town stuff.

Rich Price: 21:36

You know, at some point I ended up leaving the paper because the paper had been bought by a Gannett long story short. So I ended up kind of just stepping down and one thing led to another and Carla had reached out to me, wasn't sure that I had stepped down. I was also looking for a project and I ended up asking her can I work on a podcast? Because the reality was this case had been written about a lot at the beginning and then there was a lot of anniversary type stories, just kind of by the book kind of stuff, and there were some television programs, some local and some from other network type shows, but none of them really did a thorough job.

Rich Price: 22:25

So I really wanted to kind of build this, which the first couple of episodes really was kind of. That was it about. It was like kind of like, here we were on August 5th, here we are in October, and now we're here because what happened is that, as you want to do, is that I wanted it to be a researched story. I didn't want it to be anything less than that and I wanted it to work as hard as I could on it and to see how well I could do it.

Rich Price: 22:54

And I wanted to do it as a podcast because I figured if I wrote a book, no one's going to read it, so why not try this and try something different? And I think it was the right call. I mean, I was, you know, I kind of listened to these episodes and I kind of cringe at some of the audio quality, but I was learning as I went along and I can tell, if I you know, you have like a radio background and you have a nice mic and everything else you know how to do, like good audio, so I'm sure you were probably trying not to cringe too, but this was something that I really wanted to do. I really wanted it to really tell the story and, as it turned out, it ended up becoming also where I started turning rocks over.

Anngelle Wood: 23:34

You sure did.

Rich Price: 23:35

There was an episode called the man in the Pickup Truck. I'm not sure Did you have a chance to listen to that one.

Anngelle Wood: 23:41

I sure did I have questions.

Rich Price: 23:44

I started turning rocks over and I started pursuing leads and I started interviewing a lot of people and I'm talking about people who were close to the investigation. I'm not talking about neighbors who said I think I saw this, I think I saw that. I mean, I really want to try and get to the core as best I could, and it was that, along with some other people. One was David Pooleyott, who was probably the only person that was publicly named by the district attorney. There was Rodney Stanger, who was written about quite a bit in the newspaper and he's serving time in a prison. So I mean, these are the kinds of things that I had to kind of like vet and figure out. You know, are these people legitimate targets of interest or is this just a lot of distraction? And to me it turned out to be that the man in the pickup truck episode was the one that came close to the core.

Anngelle Wood: 24:40

Because that was the suspect who you do not name and maybe this is one of the questions for you Do you not name that suspect because there's not enough to name them. An official suspect in Holly Piirainen and disappearance and murder.

Rich Price: 24:59

Well, since that person was never named by the district attorney or anyone in law enforcement in a public way, certainly for liability reasons, I certainly do not want to do it, but also because for the integrity of the case. These episodes that I put out I'm proud of. I think they tell a good story. I know that they're accurate. However, I also know that these are not the only names. You know there are other people that law enforcement on their list. So I have to be very careful with that.

Rich Price: 25:35

And I think one of the things that I did say, perhaps in the first episode, was that this is not just a project that I'm hoping that will shed light, but it's also a project when you're dealing with unsolved cases like this that have been going on for three decades, that it can also be very humbling too. You know that I could reveal stuff that I feel really good about and then the next day perhaps an indictment could come and it could be somebody completely different. So it's a very humbling situation to be in and I think about that all the time as I'm doing this, and I think about that as I'm talking to, you know, the family members, especially to be as sensitive as I possibly can, and to defer to them, because they're the ones who have to live it.

Anngelle Wood: 26:20

And that's really one of the most important things that I've learned doing this I mean, my background is largely in rock and roll radio to where you're always trying to get the laugh. I learned very quickly into my journey, so to speak. I went from true crime consumer, which I still am, to a true crime creator, and I learned very quickly, speaking to loved ones of family members of murdered and missing people, that they're not characters that belong to us to create these exploitative narratives that these people are dealing every single day with the loss of this little girl. She was 10 years old when she disappeared off the streets of her grandparents' neighborhood.

Anngelle Wood: 27:11

And here we are 30 years later and we still have no better answers to solve what happened. But one of the good things is that Holly was on and was actually found.

Anngelle Wood: 27:23

But her case remains unsolved 30 years to the day later. How are her family members doing when you speak to them? How are they dealing? I know you said her parents have sort of stepped back from a lot of the day-to-day involvement of her disappearance and her murder and she has a very strong it looks like a very strong team of other family members who are a part of this. How are they doing and when you speak to them, what do they share with you?

Rich Price: 27:50

Well they're doing as well, I think, as probably can be expected under the circumstances that they live in. There are I mean, certainly there are some people who under these circumstances would probably couldn't be able to deal with it at all. And there are other people who probably become advocates I think to some extent after 30 years, because they do have a strong family and a large family that if somebody needs to kind of pull back, there are other people there who will step in. And I think that and that's certainly what's going on right now.

Rich Price: 28:23

Carla Jackman, who is Holly's aunt, has been very supportive of my work. She has always taken my calls. We were texting each other a lot, so there's a lot of back and forth going on with us. And then when I had her two cousins on a three-hour Zoom call where I laid out essentially my cases with three different people, they hung in there the whole time. I mean they were very strong people and I find that to be a humbling kind of experience, because you really want to do, I really want to do right by them. You put them first at all times and one of the things I've always said to them was I'll keep turning rocks over, but if there comes a point where you don't want me to do this anymore, whether you feel that there is too much compromise with the investigation or anything to that effect, I said then I'm going to stop. Then I'm going to stop because really I really needed to have their buy-in, or else I wasn't going to do this at all.

Anngelle Wood: 29:27

And that's admirable because we know a lot of people don't do that. I have developed a bit of a rapport with Julie Murray, Maura Murray's sister and she is on the front lines every single day, even almost 20 years later, of Maura's disappearance on her worst day. When she doesn't want to do it, she soldiers on. And I love that about the Murray family because 20 years later and that's heartbreaking to even say that their sister's been gone for 20 years and they have no resolution to it she hasn't been found. They have their own theories and beliefs about what happened to her, but it's an amazing amount of emotional labor and it's incredible even for these families that have some answers but, not the answers they really need in terms of all the brain and disappearance.

Rich Price: 30:12

Is that still considered a missing person case, or is that a homicide case now?

Anngelle Wood: 30:17

Maura? Maura, I believe, is still considered a missing person's case because there has been no definitive evidence to the contrary for Maura.

Rich Price: 30:25

She's completely disappeared off the face of the earth.

Anngelle Wood: 30:27

Yeah, and there was no indication of anything at all aside from finding her car on the side of the road in Haverhill, New Hampshire, and the family does active searches. They're constantly trying to make sure to keep Maura's name in the press. Can you talk a little bit about each of these people of interest? The ones that you feel comfortable talking about? So number one is David Pouliot.

Rich Price: 30:56

David Pouliot. There was a press conference called in 2012, January of 2012, in Springfield, Massachusetts, and in that the then-D istrict Attorney, Mark Mariano, had said that we have some forensic evidence that has come back positive from DNA. They had an item that they had picked up at the crime scene in Brimfield. Many years later they were able to get a positive DNA match with David Pouliot. What was interesting about the press conference is that they did not name him as a suspect, nor did they name him even as a quote unquote person of interest, which for those in the true crime world know that that's kind of a squishy term anyway. And from that they said basically that we want to know more about David. We know that he was familiar with the Brimfield area where Holly was found and we know he was familiar in the Sturbridge area where she disappeared, and that was pretty much all they had said.

Rich Price: 31:58

So I had decided well, I got to find out something. So I started digging. I did discover what that item was that they had tested. I did not reveal it because I know that it's still part of the investigation. I want to step on his toes there or upset the family. But I also found that David Pouliot was kind of just there wasn't a lot to him really. He had died of congestive heart failure and he also had cocaine use. It was kind of an underlying factor. He was a diabetic.

Anngelle Wood: 32:32

He was pretty young too, right About 49?.

Rich Price: 32:35

Yeah, he wasn't that old, but it appeared that he had some pretty serious health issues and so he had passed away. I believe he was living with his parents at the time. He had worked for the city of Springfield. He had worked for some other places. He also did odd jobs which a lot of people who kind of work for, you know, for the city for, like the department of public works, which I believe is what he was, they'll tend to do a lot of odd jobs.

Rich Price: 33:01

It was really hard to figure out much about him, For example his brother Gary, who was still alive. I had found out where he was living. I had his phone number. I had called multiple times and this never called back. I wondered if maybe perhaps the police had the same kind of issues. Trying to put together a story on David, I also found a lot of inconsistencies in his obituary that his family have run. It said he graduated from high school. He wasn't, he was a dropout. It said he was a veteran in the Vietnam War. He wasn't, he never signed up. So he was just. He was just a guy, he was just a working Joe. But there was one thing about David which made me believe that he probably was not somebody. That is a real suspect.

Rich Price: 33:44

The crime scene is, in my mind, very large. It's well over 500 yards, point where Holly's remains are actually found, to the point where probably people would access into that area. Off of Five Bridge Road there is separating between where she was, where she was found, and the rest of the area is a very tall hill of rock and trees that separates it that you could be on one side closer to the entrance and would never be able to know what was going on on the other side. One thing that I figured out about David was that in the scene it was a very popular place for people to party. This is a lot of trash everywhere and it was a place where people could go and because of the area access it was easy for people to not be seen, especially in the summertime. I believe that probably where this evidence was found about David, I'm guessing was probably hundreds of yards away from where Holly was actually found, and when I reviewed news articles about the press conference, the DA was not specific on where exactly this evidence was found. I just don't think David really is a serious contender, but he was somebody they were able to make a direct link to in the area.

Rich Price: 35:06

So then there's Rodney Stanger. Rodney Stanger's name had floated around in quite a bit of news articles and was somewhat of a kind of a vague connection between the Holly Piirainen case and the Molly Bish case, which I'm sure you're familiar with too. Very, yes, and people liked to draw parallels to that. There are some investigators who believe that there is a connection between the two. I'm not convinced. I don't think the district attorney in Worcester County probably believes that either. That's just my hunch. What's interesting about Stanger is that he looks a lot like the police sketch from the Molly Bish case. The same kind of look, but there have been other people that have been mentioned. We all know that police sketches are kind of BS. I mean, it really doesn't give us much information.

Anngelle Wood: 35:55

People's memory is not completely reliable, as we learned right.

Rich Price: 36:00

Nothing's going to be as good as a photograph. If that person had photographed that person and at the time boy, the Molly Bish case probably would have been solved. There were other things too. Rodney had also had a connection to the, to the Sturbridge area. His brother had lived in a house just minutes away from the crime scene. Rodney lived in next town over. However, he was over there quite a bit. I think he was kind of a lonely guy frankly. From what I could tell, I think Rodney had a lot of mental health issues. It certai nly seems that he probably had a tremendous amount of self-medicated treatment for himself and I think that probably stemmed with a lot of drinking and perhaps other substances.

Rich Price: 36:42

I did interview his former sister-in-law. She was really able to kind of debunk a lot of different things. Probably one of the most important things that I think that came out from a news article was that the police had gone through Rodney Stanger's trailer. He was in prison at that point. They had gone through his trailer after Crystal Morrison, who is the victim, (*Stanger was convicted of killing Crystal) after Crystal had died. Her sister, Bonnie Kearnan, had then gone over years later to the trailer in Florida and she had found items that she could not explain. So child hair pieces. For the most part she had wondered what that was, and so the speculation in the newspapers, local TV news was that, you know, here we got perhaps maybe he's a serial killer and he's a trophies. And I looked at that and I thought, all right, we got to figure out more here. So that's when I got in touch with his former sister-in-law and she talked about that Crystal had a daughter from a prior relationship, that she loved that daughter, but she had her daughter taken away, she believes, probably because of her substance abuse. So because of that she kept those as reminders. You know there were photos that were that are still on the Internet, from news articles and the trailers are just so much stuff in the trailer. So you know, it's easy to be able to see that. Okay, they just had a lot of stuff in a small space, and so it just seemed to me that that story somewhat debunked and some of the recent stuff that's coming on regarding the Molly Bish case from the Worcester County DA, they really seem to think that it's somebody else. Even though they haven't quite closed the case, they still feel very good about one particular person.

Rich Price: 38:36

Then it came down to the man in the pickup truck to me, which became a tremendous amount of work because I really wanted to figure this thing out. I had got my hands on some police reports which were after Holly had disappeared, and it showed a pickup truck that had matched the description of what a teenage girl had I witnessed just minutes before Holly disappeared, just hundreds of yards away. So it was very close. There was a website that was created and I put that link up on the podcast description of my episode, and in it there was a narrative written by a team of retired investigators, which I found afterward was really pretty much just two investigators that pretty much put it together, and in it they talked about this pickup truck that was going back and forth on Allen Road, which is just very close to where Holly disappeared. There was a girl going to get her mail and this truck had come to a slow crawl and was staying at the girl drive off. She would go back because the mail hadn't arrived and he appeared again. This was moments later, just probably long enough for him to turn around somewhere and come back, and so this happened three times and then she had then gone back to the house, went up into a bathroom, looked out the window and saw the truck once again driving past and away from the corner of Allen Road and South Shore Drive, which was where Holly was standing waiting for a litter of puppies to come out. And so the investigators those retired investigators concluded that, because of the rural nature of this area, the low crime rate and everything else, that to them the person who was driving that pickup truck, the abduction and murder homie In the police report that I had dug up there was a pickup truck which matched the description, and then it was a person who I chose not to name and who was over and was then sent on his way.

Rich Price: 40:42

After doing a lot of research and interviews, I discovered that they had checked his driver's license and found out that it, although they came back as active, that they ran it one way when they should have run it another way, it was suspended. Keep in mind, this was 1993, so they don't have the internet, they don't have the sophisticated computer systems that they have now. That was mid-afternoon. This was roughly two to three hours after the abduction. So you know, let me dig into who this person is and let's figure out, let's see if there's more to him, you know, if he's just kind of a family guy in a church, going man and a clean record. Then we got nothing right.

Rich Price: 41:22

But that wasn't the case. That history of probably about 30-35 cases on the books in which to a seasoned law enforcement has a pretty average number for a person with a criminal history. But he had a lot of petty stuff, multiple-vehicle stuff. He was arrested at a public library in the early 2000s because he was surfing porn websites in a public library. He got defensive, he resisted arrest. He was charged with disorderly conduct. There was certainly something interesting there.

Rich Price: 41:55

And then I also interviewed his former wife, who divorced him shortly before Holly had disappeared, and she told me a lot of stories about him. He had a lot of sexual compulsions. He had a very hard time trying to not to come on to women, especially teenage girls, and she told me a story about that, about a neighbor who was a 17-year-old girl who was pregnant and her husband was 18. What was interesting also is that, as I continued to keep an eye on this person during my research and, as luck would have it, I discovered that he was due in housing court because he was being evicted from his apartment in Massachusetts and they settled it without a trial. Everyone was leaving and I decided to follow him, who he was? In a scooter at this point he was in his late 60s Followed him and his daughter who was with him.

Rich Price: 42:50

They went to the elevator, went downstairs, got out of the elevator, introduced myself and I said, sir, I would like to interview you, partly because I'm certainly I took an interest in your case today and they're looking at me like really, and I said, but also because I found a police officer to the area when Holly Perranian disappeared in 1993. And he kind of looked at me dumb, fondly. At first he was kind of shocked, like you know, how did you figure this out? Kind of thing. And then he it turned into a hardened look. It turned into a really menacing look, not to sound overly dramatic. He said basically I had nothing to do with that case.

Rich Price: 43:26

And as I was kind of talking to him and asking questions, certain hints that were coming from his line, like, for example, I'd ask a question, you know, and he would kind of look at me like I was dumb or he'd be like shaking his head like Whoa, what are you talking about? And I would say another thing and he would repeat now be lying for a lot of reasons, but it was certainly was very interesting. So he was being affected because he was accused of putting his hands on a female tenant in the elevator. So here we are again a person who has compulsions sexual compulsions and gets them into trouble.

Rich Price: 44:04

The icing on the cake is this when I was talking to and laying out my information that I had gathered to Carla and two other family members, carla had said he was interviewed by investigators and he identified the t-shirt that she was wearing that day, and at the time I thought that it was a specific thing on the t-shirt that he was able that he identified to investigators.

Rich Price: 44:33

What we found out later, after the broadcast, was that it was more of a general thing. However, if you're someone who is a criminal or if you're kind of lying, being vague is certainly part of your defense. It also could have been something where he had disassociated since that moment and his memory might have been a little bit fuzzy. It's really hard to say. However, he is, as far as I am able to pull together, he is the only person of interest that was able to identify what she was wearing that day, and what she was wearing that day was different than what was publicized in the press. It was a different item of clothing than what the press and my old newspaper article.

Anngelle Wood: 45:15

This person in the pickup truck is the same person that the boy, who was 12 years old at the time, spoke of, correct that you talk about in that episode of your podcast.

Rich Price: 45:29

Thank you for bringing that up. In Boston Globe's story a 12-year-old boy was approached by somebody in Bremfield on Apple Road and in the papers of the times, I guess, the police chief at Brimfield said there's no connection with the Piirainen case, or what have you. This was the day before Holly was found, the day before. So there's weird coincidence. Number one, after I interviewed this person, who is now in his 30s, and then I discovered a newspaper article from 1989, which talked about Theodore Stanger, who is Rodney Stanger's father, who lived in an old school bus, and then I thought, oh, that's weird. That's the same street that the 12-year-old boy years later was proposition.

Rich Price: 46:19

As I read the story, it interviewed a man named Marie Shosick who lived across the street Theodore Stanger, and Theodore Stanger had died suddenly in the school bus in 1989. He had the medical exam, as reports said that it was a heart issue. It said Marie Shosick, and I thought to myself okay, marie Shosick. And I thought of Scott Shosick, who was then 12 years old in 1993. So right at that spot where a man in a car drives up and asks a 12-year-old boy who wants to go to McDonald's, the kid panics, starts screaming, the neighbors come out, he drives off and that's the same spot that Theodore Stanger, the father of Rodney Stanger, had lived. Is that a coincidence? Sure could be. Is that eerie? Absolutely. And the state police. When I tried to get details from the state police, they said no, we're not going to give you any information on this because it is part. You know, it's tied into the Holly Perini case. So I thought, okay, well, thanks for sharing that. That at least tells me something I want.

Anngelle Wood: 47:21

Despite it was never included in anything else prior to it right Prior to you finding out about it, right.

Rich Price: 47:26

So that was a good thing. So it's just all very strange. It's all very, very strange and all continues to be unresolved.

Anngelle Wood: 47:33

Does the family have suspects who they believe did this to Holly? Suspect or suspects?

Rich Price: 47:42

They have their list of people. It's probably shorter than what the investigators have. I think that there's disagreement with who they believe within the family the man that I profiled, the man in the pickup truck that I profiled that person Holly's dad, rick Perini, believes that's the person that's responsible. I have one more episode in me and I'll tell you a little bit, but it adds to kind of the mystery of why this is not been solved In the narrative from the retired investigators.

Rich Price: 48:15

They had said that there were two teenage girls and that they were terrified about this person who drove up. After that there was a newspaper article written by the Worcester Telegrand. From that the adult woman, who was then 15 at the time, had reached out to me and said I was that person. Not to get the mail, I wanted to try and find out who those kids were.

Rich Price: 48:40

Early on in my work the family asked me not to because it is such a such a pivotal part of the investigation. So I said, okay, fine, I won't do it. But then she shouts to me and she had said something different. She debunked a few things from what was in the narrative. One was that she was the only one that went out to the mail. She was not with someone, anyone else, and she said that it was not this big time moment that the narrative had set. But then she said she told me who she and I did and she told me who she told the police at the time. And then there was a follow up investigation with current investigator and she was able to identify that person again the same person that she identified 30 years earlier In the same person.

Rich Price: 49:32

It's not the same person. I know who that person is that she's referring to. It's a different person. There's a lot more to this than that. Certainly, I told the premium family I've got to do one more episode here.

Anngelle Wood: 49:44

I said before anything else you have so much more information to add.

Rich Price: 49:49

I have more to add to it and I'm so. Much has developed since I had that conversation. We're getting to that point to put that episode out, so we'll see.

Anngelle Wood: 49:59

What is it going to take to solve Holly Piirainen's murder?

Rich Price: 50:01

What's it going to take? A confession or DNA. I think at this point, DNA is going to be very difficult, because she was, you know she was. She was in the woods for 79 days. A lot of evidence disappears, unfortunately, and whoever committed this crime, they certainly have not confessed either to authorities or to anybody else, and so they're. Either they're going to be able to get a confession or DNA technology is going to get to a point where they're going to be able to pin this thing down.

Anngelle Wood: 50:31

That's how a lot of these cases these, these cases have been languishing for decades are finally being solved because of scientific progress. A short time ago, it was revealed a t shirt that was found. The DA was very vague in describing where this was found, but there was a tank top that said Boston across the front. That was found in the area of where Holly was found. What do you make of that?

Rich Price: 51:03

I think, at the very least, it was probably an effort by the current district attorney to keep the story out there in the press. It's certainly no coincidence. I don't think that they called the press conference in January of 2023, right around Holly's birthday, so what have been her 40th birthday. I think there was certainly publicity into it. Also, whether or not the t shirt has some real connection there raises the question well, why didn't you reveal this years ago? Because certainly it seems like they couldn't find any DNA off of that was that was going to reveal anything to them, so why didn't they do it earlier? That's just kind of my take on it. It seems like it was probably meant to keep her name out there, which nothing more than that.

Anngelle Wood: 51:48

It's really important. As time goes on, 30 years, people have forgotten about this and, unfortunately, the people we need to remember, people die people die off and memories fade.

Rich Price: 52:02

So it gets harder and harder and the clock is ticking. For sure, the person that I profiled as the man in the pickup truck he's older, he's in a scooter, he has a rash of health problems and you know when you have that, I mean the clock is ticking. You know, this guy might not be around forever, for sure, not be around much longer.

Anngelle Wood: 52:24

Is this person still in the Sturbridge area that you're aware?

Rich Price: 52:29

I hope so. I think so. He's lived in the area his whole life. When he was evicted they gave him 90 days. He couldn't meet the 90 days because of the how shortage in Massachusetts, and so they had extended that a couple of times. Now his luck ran out over the summertime. I don't know what his situation is right now. He could be homeless. He's been homeless before. I know that he could be homeless now I don't know. I'm sure I've shared it with the lead investigator.

Anngelle Wood: 53:05

It's complicated these stories. They clearly don't get solved in, you know, 35 minutes plus commercials, as the general public often believes. How well, why aren't the police doing anything? Why don't they know it's not cut and dry ever?

Rich Price: 53:20

Well, it's also certainly a resource issue that's going on here too. I mean, there's a lot of data that's been collected that talks about what's referred to as clearance rates, which essentially is how many murder crimes are actually solved, and over the last 30 years that number has been dropping like a rock. In Massachusetts it's gone from roughly 70%, which I think is probably from 1965, down to roughly 50% statewide. This is Massachusetts, but around the country it's very similar numbers, depending on what part of the country you live in. It could be a little bit higher or it could be a lot lower.

Rich Price: 53:56

In Worcester County, which is Grafton, which is Sturbridge, that number hovers around 50%. In Brimfield, where Holly was discovered and is Hampden County and is under the investigation, is in Hampden County. The Hampden District Attorney there is running that their clearance rate has dropped to around 30% or so. A lot of that, I'm sure, has to do with money, that they don't have the kind of resources in order to be able to keep up with all these cases. So that certainly has a lot to do with it and that's why doing things like this, like what I've been doing, I think, what you do to try and keep certain cases on top of the pile, so that the investigators will continue to dig at it and dig at it.

Anngelle Wood: 54:42

It's really difficult to find follow-up information sometimes about these cases. I've been trying to keep an eye on some of the more recent disappearances of people and to find any follow-up. It's really tough. This woman, Brittany Tee, has been missing. Is there any information about any updates about what's going on with her case? How has she been found? Doesn't appear as though she's been located. What are we doing? There was a man who went missing, Bruce Crowley, in Provincetown New Year's Eve weekend missing. What's the update with that person's case? Was he found? Is he still missing? What is anybody doing about it? How can I find out information, just so I can update the public and let people know like this was solved or not difficult.

Rich Price: 55:33

Mm-hmm. Very difficult in Massachusetts. District Attorneys, as I'm sure you know, they're not one for telling a lot of information. They really don't want to talk about it. They give you a lot of what we're working on it and we've got all our resources on it, etc. Etc. But they won't give you any specifics. So for families it's gut-wrenching. Brittany T is certainly a great example. What happened to her? What happened to Brittany T? She disappeared off the face of the earth, or so it seems, but we know that didn't happen. If something happened to her and she died suddenly out in woods or something like that, certainly she would have been discovered by now.

Rich Price: 56:17

I believe so. Something has happened to Brittany. Something has happened to her and I feel for her family and I hope that they have some closure. I don't know anything about the case. There are things that the district attorney is not telling anyone. They're probably pursuing. They just haven't gotten that point yet. I hope that these cases get solved.

Anngelle Wood: 56:36

I keep watching, I keep there. There are a number. I have lists of missing persons, murdered people, that I keep this constant list. My focus is New England, primarily Massachusetts, because there's so many cases. I have this constant list. This is young woman. She was a teenage girl from Wuburn, melanie Malanson. The family believes they know, but this case is languished for years and years and years. I could take up so much more of your time just laundry listing this, however. Holly Piirairen, 30 years. Unanswered questions for the family of Holly Piirainen as to what happened to her. She was found 79 days later in the woods in Brimfield, not far from where she went missing. But we have not been able to solve this case.

Rich Price: 57:26

And it's going to be 30 years on Saturday, August 5th.

Anngelle Wood: 57:28

That's right.

Rich Price: 57:29

Thank you, can I plug my podcast?

Anngelle Wood: 57:31

You absolutely can, and I will make sure that everybody has all the links and how to contact you if they want to reach out to you. Absolutely.

Rich Price: 57:39

Thank you, Holly's Been Taken. It is on all your favorite podcast thingies pool and apple and all the others, everywhere you get them. Wherever you go, spotify, all that stuff. So Holly's Been Taken and have a listen. If you know something, contact the Hampden District Attorney in Springfield, Massachusetts. If you go to the podcast description that I have on the episodes, there are links there, there are phone numbers there and by all means, if you know something, please reach out.

Anngelle Wood: 58:14

We need to try to help this family. Her aging parents are going to want some sort of resolution. I don't know how old her parents are, but I'm going to venture aghast that if they have taken themselves out of the day to day of her investigation, they're probably getting up there and they want to know what happened to their child.

Rich Price: 58:32

Probably gotten to a point where the mental and emotional exhaustion is too much. It's certainly has got to be extremely overwhelming for them, and it's not like they can just turn it off and walk away, like you and I can't. They wake up in the morning and it's probably the first thing in their minds.

Anngelle Wood: 58:50

They carry that with them all the time, every moment, even though it might, it might leave their minds momentarily, always comes back. There are things that trigger family members like this. We could go on about how the true crime genre re-victimizes people. That's one of the major things that I learned is that we have to treat these stories with care, because these families go through things and they're victimized and they're villainized. They're blamed, sometimes for the things that happen to their loved one. That's one of my major goals, as somebody who is in this true crime space, is to not do that and to use the powers of true crime for good.

Rich Price: 59:33

Continue to do the best we can. That's all we can do, but I really appreciate you inviting me on to your show. Thank you About the story and I'm hoping that this will help the family.

Anngelle Wood: 59:43

It needs our attention. Yeah, thank you, Rich Price. Journalist, Massachusetts native, and host and creator of Holly's B een Taken, the multi-part series available now everywhere you listen to podcasts and, as you heard Rich say, there will be another episode to come.

Anngelle Wood: 1:00:15

Holly Piirainen was murdered 30 years ago. Her case remains unsolved. Now, certainly there's a number of places that you can read about her story. In addition to Rich's podcast about his investigation into the evidence surrounding her disappearance and murder, there is a website, helpholly. com, to help solve the abduction and murder of Holly Piirainen in Sturbridge, Massachusetts on August 5th, 1993. There's an anonymous tip line 413-426-3507. Post Office Box P. O. Box 15327, Springfield, Mass, 01115. HelpHolly. com. 30 years have gone by and we never give up hope because, if the latest news is any indication, progress is being made to identify predators and solve more cases. We've seen it in the Gilgo Beach murders in Long Island. We've seen it in California with the Golden State Killer. We continue to see it. I'm going to continue working in my small way to contribute.