Family Of Molly Bish Urges Lawmakers To Pass Familial DNA Bill

BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Molly Bish has been gone for 20 years. Andy Puglisi, for more than four decades.

On Beacon Hill Thursday, their friends and families asked the state to give law enforcement a new tool to close those cases, and others too.

They spoke before the Joint Judiciary Committee, asking lawmakers to pass a bill that would allow DNA from convicted felons which already exists in law enforcement systems to be tested in cold cases—to see if there is a family match, possibly leading to a suspect.

Heather Bish spoke about her sister Molly, who disappeared from her lifeguard post at Commons Pond in Warren in the summer of 2000 when she was just sixteen. Her body was found three years later.

"Not one day goes by that I don't miss my sister," she said. "It has been 7,169 days."

The bill wouldn't just be for Molly, Heather said, but for all the other victims of unsolved homicides in the state.

"I am here on behalf of Patty Gonyea, Theresa Corley, Holly Piirainen, and the many other victims of crime that no longer have a voice," Bish said.

Andy Puglisi vanished from a Lawrence public pool in 1976. His friend, Melanie Perkins McLaughlin, testified about him.

"I was with him the day he vanished," she said. "He was my crush that summer. He was a sweet, kind boy."

She said the practice could help solve cold cases.

"It could narrow down tips to see if we could get a link, and once you have a tip, then you have a hard link that's further processed through DNA," she said. "So it's not like it's just, oh, we think this might be the person."

WBZ NewsRadio's Karyn Regal (@Karynregal) reports

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(Photo: Mario Jarjour/WBZ NewsRadio)


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