Update in 9 year old Molly Bish Murder Cold Case

A Douglas woman said yesterday that a former Southbridge man, awaiting trial in her sister’s death in Florida, might be responsible for the abduction and murder of Molly Bish and Holly Piirainen in Massachusetts.

Bonnie M. Kiernan, in an interview yesterday, said that a week before her sister was slain, the woman gave hints in a telephone call that Rodney A. Stanger, 60, of Summerfield, Fla., was involved in the two unsolved Massachusetts cases.Mr. Stanger, who lived at 232 Everett St. in Southbridge for more than two decades, is in custody in the Feb. 25, 2008, slaying of Ms. Kiernan’s sister, Chrystal A. Morrison, 50.

According to an incident report dated Feb. 20 from that department, after a Massachusetts State Police officer called and asked them to check on Ms. Morrison’s well-being, officers went to the home.

When they arrived, Mr. Stanger remained inside while Ms. Morrison went out and spoke with the officers. Mr. Stanger told police via telephone that he was fearful that someone from an insurance company was trying to kill him because he’d witnessed an accident in Massachusetts and that if they “showed up with the feds he would not go quietly even if it meant shooting” at them, the report states.

Inside the house, police found four surveillance monitors hooked to cameras that were set up outside the house. Mr. Stanger told police the cameras were to “make sure people from the insurance company did not sneak up and kill him,” the report states.

But Thomas P. Shamshak, former Spencer police chief who is now a private investigator and security consultant in Boston, said he’s optimistic that the new evidence represents the beginning of closure in the Bish case.

“Based on the totality of the investigative work performed in connection with Rodney Stanger, I believe the compass is going to point south to Stanger,” Mr. Shamshak said yesterday.

Heather Bish, sister of the 16-year-old lifeguard whom police believe was abducted June 27, 2000, from the beach at Comins Pond in Warren, said Mr. Stanger bears a very strong resemblance to a sketch state police created from her mother’s, Magdalen Bish’s, description of a man she had seen smoking a cigarette while he sat in a white car in the Comins Pond parking lot the day before her daughter was last seen alive.