Mass. police in Fla. seeking clues to teen’s death
Aug 2, 2012, 4:37 PM
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) – Investigators from Massachusetts are in Florida this week looking for clues in the unsolved disappearance and death of a teenage lifeguard 12 years ago.
Massachusetts State Police are scheduled to meet Thursday with a man serving prison time in Florida for killing his girlfriend, said Tim Connolly, a spokesman for Worcester County District Attorney Joseph Early Jr.
Rodney Stanger has been described as a person of interest in the June 2000 disappearance of 16-year-old Molly Bish from her lifeguard post at a pond in the small central Massachusetts town of Warren. Her remains were found nearby, in Palmer, three years later.
Massachusetts police this week searched a trailer in Summerfield, Fla., where Stanger once lived with his girlfriend, Chrystal Morrison. Stanger is serving a 25-year sentence in Morrison’s killing in 2008.
Last month, state police detectives seized items found in the trailer by Morrison’s sister, including barrettes, hair bands and a 2000 Massachusetts firearm identification card with a photograph of Stanger that resembles a man in a police sketch who was seen near Comins Pond the day before Bish disappeared.
Stanger was born in Palmer and lived in Southbridge for a while.
Early said Stanger spoke to state police in 2008 about the Bish case.
“We are following leads as we follow every lead that comes through to its logical conclusion,” Connolly said.
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