In 2021, Worcester County District Attorney Joseph D. Early, Jr. named Francis P. Sumner a Person of Interest in the murder of a lifeguard who disappeared from her shift at Comins Pond on June 27, 2000. Despite launching the largest investigation in Massachusetts history, the murder of Molly Bish remains unsolved more than two decades later.
Sumner, an auto mechanic from central Massachusetts, lived in the area from 1960 onward and died at age 71 in 2016. Early has said Sumner is still a person of interest in the case, calling the evidence that led his office to name him as “persuasive and credible.”
While all evidence is not publicly available, the known information about the case is not at all “persuasive and credible.” In fact, it’s the opposite. When I spoke with Molly’s sister Heather Bish in 2022, she told me the DA’s office had informed her the DNA was “not a match.”…