The Pilot Episode

Episode 0 is the pilot episode of the 8-part investigative podcast series, Open Investigation. This episode introduces the tragic story of 10-year-old Andy (Angelo) Puglisi, who disappeared from a public swimming pool in Lawrence, MA, on August 22, 1976. The podcast is hosted by Melanie Perkins McLaughlin, Andy's childhood friend, who was only nine years old when she was with him the day he vanished. When the search for Andy was called off after just six days, Melanie made a promise to herself and Andy that she would one day try to find him.

In 2007, Melanie's HBO documentary Have You Seen Andy? premiered, and in 2008, it won an Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Journalism. The documentary, currently streaming on MAX, was initially intended to help re-open Andy's investigation allowing Andy's family and the community to move forward by sharing Andy's story. However, it unexpectedly opened a Pandora's Box, revealing dozens of other unsolved cases of missing and murdered children from the 1970s.

With unique access, decades of investigative research, including hundreds of hours of documentary footage, rare audio recordings, police and court records, and research notes, Melanie reopens the investigation. She shares the culmination of her work, aiming not only to reopen other cases but also to emphasize trauma-informed, victim-centered justice for victims, survivors, and their families.

Following the pilot, each episode delves into new information that updates not only Andy's story but explores the cases of dozens of other missing children, several of which have been reopened by law enforcement as a result of this investigation. The series also documents the history of child trafficking in America.

Show Links

Have You Seen Andy streaming on MAX

Have You Seen Andy website

Mass State Police UnResolved Case Unit

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

The Vanished Podcast: Episode 454 Andy Puglisi: Open Investigation

The Boston Globe Series featuring Andy Puglisi's Case

Based on the HBO Emmy award-winning documentary "Have You Seen Andy?" - haveyouseenandy.com | @haveyouseenandy

Follow: @openinvestigation

Support: Patreon.com/OpenInvestigation

Transcript

OpenInvestigation_E0_FINAL (2)

Faith Puglisi: [00:00:00] That morning, when I got up, it was one of the hottest days, you know, of that, uh, that summer. It was wicked hot. And because in the projects, it didn't matter what season it was. Winter or summer, those radiators were clanking, and the heat was coming, and it was unbearable. The other children had all gone off to the pool with stipulation they stay together, and Andy was going to join them.

And I was making some soup for the baby, and I said, do you want some soup, hon? He says, yeah, mom. We sat down at the table, and he was right directly across from me. And while I'm feeding the baby, I heard this ungodly slurp from across the table, and my head turned to look at him, and normally I would have scolded him.

And instead, I just, uh, I looked at him and I just said, Uh, no honey, go ahead, eat your soup. And I went upstairs to put her down for her nap, and when I came downstairs, Andy had already left for the pool. And that was the last time I was to ever see him again.[00:01:00] 

Sometime around, 3 3 30. The other Children all come piling through the door and I'm counting heads and there's one missing. Where's your brother Andy? I remember going home around two or three o'clock in the afternoon, getting something to eat and then going back over to the pool. Try to see if I can find Andy when they all showed up once again without Andy.

I was furious. I remember walking the whole, the whole projects, calling his name, calling his name, and asking everybody I saw, Have you seen Andy? Have you seen Andy? You know, and a couple of times I think kids responded with, oh, they had seen him over at the stadium, and I remember walking down that street by the stadium, and there was a playground over there, and calling his name, and still no Andy.

Nothing was ever found. We couldn't find a towel, we couldn't find clothing, uh, nothing. He literally vanished without a [00:02:00] trace, like a puff of smoke.

Melanie McLaughlin: This is Open Investigation, a true crime podcast about the search for answers to the disappearance of my childhood friend, Andy Puglisi, and the incredible story of dozens of other missing children who disappeared or were found murdered around the same time Andy vanished. All for free. While a hidden network of human trafficking was thriving in our community.

I'm your host, Melanie Perkins McLaughlin. Please keep in mind this podcast deals with crimes against children, which may be triggering for some. Please take care. This is episode zero, our pilot episode. This episode gives the backstory of the disappearance of 10 year old Andy Puglisi. Based on an Emmy Award winning HBO documentary I produced and directed called Have You Seen Andy, which is currently streaming on [00:03:00] Max.

It turns out the seven or so years I spent making the documentary was just one chapter in my search for answers to Andy's disappearance. The rest of season one picks up where the documentary left off. With new leads in Andy's disappearance, uncovering other cases of missing and murdered children, and me coming to terms with the terrible reality of what I was uncovering.

What I'm about to share with you is a compelling and complex story with twists and turns that took decades of investigative research for me to fully understand. At times, this story will seem too incredible to be true. But we'll bring receipts and you'll have copies of them in all of our show notes and on our website.

When I finished Andy's documentary back in 2007, I naively expected I'd be able to move on. I didn't realize that the more I searched, the more I would find. You know that ditty about curiosity and the cat? I felt like that was the story of my life. And curiosity [00:04:00] killed the cat. Yeah, I thought, but didn't satisfaction bring it back?

As I was trying to finish the documentary, I was slowly realizing the story wasn't ending. I had opened Pandora's box. In Greek mythology, curiosity causes Pandora to open a jar given to her by her husband. By doing so, she unleashed sickness and evil upon the world. Pandora quickly tried to close the lid, noting that the only item remaining in the box was hope.

How could I know when I was just 30 years old that by choosing to find out what happened to Andy, I would find out more than I wanted to know? And that someday, I'd have to tell the rest of the story. I discovered Andy was one of dozens of children who went missing or were found murdered in Massachusetts around the same time.

And that there were groups, organized groups, that worked together to prey on children, insisting it was just another form of love. I learned that in the 1970s, child pornography in America [00:05:00] was already a billion dollar industry. And that there were few laws protecting children when Andy vanished. I learned that the very people we trusted, priests, teachers, neighbors, coaches, policemen, even parents, were abusers.

My intent in telling these truths is not to release more evil on the world, but to recognize that where there is evil, there also has to be good. One doesn't exist without the other. Andy was good, and he deserves better. Children who went missing at that time have been pretty much forgotten by society.

It was before there was a Center for Missing Children or computer databases. And I don't want Andy to be forgotten. And I don't want his family to lose hope. I want people to understand there should be no statute of limitation on truth. Andy may be one of dozens of lost children, of cold cases, but no matter what, [00:06:00] we'll never give up searching for Andy.

And we won't give up expecting justice for children like him. This series is the culmination of decades of investigative research. It's the best I have to give. It's for my friend, Andy.

Act 1. Have you seen Andy? 

On a hot summer day in 1976, a 10 year old boy vanished from a public swimming pool without a trace. His name was Andy Puglisi, and he was my friend. Andy and I met in the spring of that year. He had moved into the projects where my family and I lived in Lawrence, Massachusetts, one of the poorest cities in the country.

I still remember the first time I saw Andy. He was outside my grandmother's [00:07:00] unit playing football with my brother on the small patch of grass next to the fenced area. That was used to hang laundry. When I asked my brother if I could play, he quickly snorted no, but Andy said he wouldn't play unless I could too.

And then he smiled at me. It was pretty much an instant crush for two kids in the fourth grade. Andy had big brown eyes and shaggy brown hair and tan skin. His hair covered one of his eyes and it kind of Turn his head to the right with a flip to get the hair out of his eyes when he was talking to you.

What I remember most about Andy was just how sweet he was to everyone. He was the kid who always offered to help. Andy was the oldest with two brothers and two sisters, and he seemed to always be carrying his baby sister Mandy on his hip. They adored each other. I only have a few other memories of Andy.

I remember Andy had just gotten a professional walkie talkie CD radio set. It was [00:08:00] really heavy, like the ones an adult would have. Andy was showing me how to use it. We stood at the corner of my grandmother's block, just a few feet away from each other, but with the building blocking our view of each other.

We would say back and forth to each other as we laughed. Andy was handsome, and he was kind, and I liked him. A lot. Another time, I remember I was sitting on the steps outside of his unit, waiting for him, while he was handing out chocolate chip cookies to his siblings. He passed one to me. After all of his siblings had one, Andy came back.

And gave me a second cookie. I think that was his way of telling me he liked me too.

I still vividly remember that Sunday. My brother Jeff and I were with Andy at the pool. I remember it was so [00:09:00] hot, you almost didn't want to get out of the water. And the second you did get out, you wanted to jump right back in. It was after lunchtime and I was getting pretty hungry. For some reason that I still can't explain, I didn't want to walk home alone that day.

So I asked Andy if he would walk home with me. And he said no. He didn't want to. He was going to stay at the pool longer. My brother Jeff ended up walking home with me. Later, after we went to sleep, I heard banging on the front door in the middle of the night. It was the police. They had my mother bring Jeff and me downstairs into the kitchen.

And they asked us if we had been with Andy. And when was the last time we had seen him? The actual search for Andy didn't start until after more than 24 hours had passed. I located an old police log that documents the following. Sunday, August 22, 1976. Card number 6. Hittish and Stadium Police Officer assigned.

11. 03 p. m. [00:10:00] Missing person, Angelo Andy Puglisi. At 31 A. M. East Dalton Street. Reported by mother. No formal report filed at this time. Cars notified that Andy was last seen at the stadium, wearing cut off jeans, white tennis shoes. Here's Andy's mom, Faith. 

Faith Puglisi: And they asked for a picture. And he says, oh, I'll bring you this picture back in the morning.

And I went, the heck with that. Bring me my son. It's a picture. I don't care about the picture. You know, I want my child. 

Melanie McLaughlin: I also noticed the same police log included a note to the chief that at 12 31 a. m. a little more than an hour after Andy Puglisi was reported missing all radio contact for Lawrence police cruisers except those very close to the station across the city were quote without capabilities of transmitting or receiving and this poses a serious condition.

So 10 year old Andy Puglisi was missing, no formal report was [00:11:00] taken, and the police communication system wasn't working. Not good signs. Here's a news clip from WCVB in Boston that I only recently unearthed. It was filmed the day after Andy vanished. 

Reporter: As far as anyone can determine, 10 year old Angelo Puglisi spent Sunday afternoon here at the MDC pool just a short distance from his house.

Since the young boy disappeared on Sunday night, the search has been mounted in earnest, with hundreds of volunteers participating. The lifeguards last saw Angelo dressed only in swim trunks. About 5. 30, I remember he came up to me and asked me if he could borrow some money from me. And I asked him what it was for, but I don't remember.

You know, listening for his answer. I went to look for the money and, uh, found out I didn't have any. And, uh, told him that, and that was the last I saw of him. This morning, Lawrence police found what they believe are the child's trousers and towel still locked in a pool locker. Angelo's house is just a few steps from [00:12:00] the pool.

He lives with his mother and four brothers and sisters in this stadium project. Lawrence Memorial Stadium is a block from the Fuglisi home. Police scoured the stadium Sunday night and Monday, but found nothing. His mother was showing the strain of her ordeal as she recalled what happened Sunday. As far as I knew, he had gone swimming.

When my other children got back, they says, Mom, Andy says he's going over the stadium. I say, he knows he doesn't belong over there. That's when you see him, you tell him to get home immediately. And, uh, in between that, while the kids had their lunch, a phone call was made. My eight year old answered the phone, and he says, Ma, it's, uh, Andy.

I says, please tell him to come home, right away. He said he said he's on his way home now. The search was called off after about 5 or 6 days. I was devastated. 

Melanie McLaughlin: I was one of the last children with Andy the day he vanished. I never understood why the adults couldn't find him. [00:13:00] At nine years old, I made a promise to myself and Andy when I grew up.

I would try to find him when I first started investigating Andy's disappearance in 1998. I had no idea that my journey would reopen a case that had been considered cold for more than 20 years. The first call I made was to Andy's mother, Faith Puglisi. 

Faith Puglisi: I remember you calling me, but when I got off the phone, it was sort of like, pinch me, I'm dreaming, and is this real?

You know, here is a grown woman telling me that, uh, she adored my son and they were kind of considered, um, sweethearts that summer. I thought, wow. Andy had a girlfriend. He impacted your life. I'm not alone with my search. I'm not alone with my longing for answers and missing of Andy.

Melanie McLaughlin: Act II Open Investigation 

[00:14:00] 

Reporter: A 10 year old Lawrence boy disappears mysteriously in 1976. It's been almost three decades since Andy Puplisi vanished. Now police and the DA's office claim They're refocusing on the case. I remember being with him at the pool. It's a mystery that's haunted not only his family, but a childhood friend who has spent the last two years searching for answers.

Melanie McLaughlin: More than 20 years after I made that promise to Andy and myself to try to find him, I reached out to the district attorney's office, Mass State Police, and the local police, asking them to reopen the investigation. Here's Jack Garvin, former lieutenant of the Massachusetts State Police.

Jack Garvin: I received information, I believe it was from you, Melanie, that you were interested in reopening the case.

I went back downstairs and looked at any files that we might have had. From the information that was received, we kind of brought this back up to the front burner for a while. 

Melanie McLaughlin: Once Andy's case was reopened, I asked the police about a letter in Andy's file. It said there was a prison inmate who confessed to the murder of a Lawrence boy.

There wasn't much [00:15:00] information about the guy. All I knew was his name was Charles E. Pierce. At the time, a Boston Globe reporter named Judith Gaines was following me for a series about my search for answers to Andy's disappearance. So she ran Charles Pierce's name through the Globes database. We were shocked to learn Charles Pierce was a convicted necrophiliac who had killed a little girl named Michelle Wilson in Boxford, Mass., less than 10 miles from where Andy disappeared. Pierce was an itinerant carnival worker connected to a string of child murders across the country, and no one had gone out to talk to him about Andy. The Boston Globe reporter and I scrambled to try to get into the prison to talk with Charles Pierce. But as we were trying to locate him, Charles Pierce died in prison.

But not before the Mass State Police were able to get in to see him. 

Reporter: This is the 10 o'clock news on WB6. He spent the past two decades behind bars for the kidnapping and [00:16:00] murder of a little girl. Then just before Charles Pierce died, he confessed to other murders. and told police where he buried the bodies.

Jack Garvin: Mr. Pierce stated that he had been over to the Higgins Pool to observe some of the young children from time to time. He stated that he knew Wayne Chapman. He said that Wayne Chapman had been in the area. He had seen him frequently while Pierce was working with carnivals and was working also with Woolworths 5 and 10, which is on Essex Street in Lawrence.

Melanie McLaughlin: Wayne W. Chapman was the only person ever publicly named by the police. As a suspect in Andy's disappearance. When Andy vanished, Wayne W. Chapman was a 28 year old janitor from Rhode Island. On September 5th, just weeks after Andy disappeared and only days after Andy's 11th birthday, Wayne W. Chapman was pulled over in upstate New York.

Chapman was driving a box style dark blue van with a white stripe and horse head decal on the back. On the dashboard in plain view were dozens of Polaroid pictures of naked children in various poses. [00:17:00] Police searched Chapman's van and found a cache. of child pornography, tape, handcuffs, 8 millimeter home movies, maps, addresses for child pornography shops in Boston, a sock that looked like a child's and appeared to have blood on it, a fake police badge and a starter pistol.

And as we would learn serial pedophile Wayne W. Chapman and convicted necrophiliac and murderer, Charles Pierce, we're associates. This was the first time I had the horrible realization that there may have been more than one person involved in Andy's abduction. Like Charles Pierce, Wayne W. Chapman was a suspect in the disappearance of several children.

This is former Rhode Island police detective Al Mintz, who interrogated Wayne Chapman for hours back in 1976. 

Al Mintz: I'd received a teletype that this individual had been arrested in Upper State, New York. After I interviewed several children in Providence, the neighborhood where Wayne had lived, they found out that [00:18:00] he had been involved with sexual assaults under the pretense of running a 4 H group for children.

I went on an investigative trip to New York to interview him. He talked about a lot of towns and a lot of places. And each place he was, there were children involved. And multiple children involved. He found a group of kids in a park, for example. He would go up like he was in a panic and say that, you know, he'd lost his dog.

And it was a cute little dog, and it was usually described as a little white poodle. And he would say he would give them 5 or 2 or whatever to the kid that helped him find the dog. And then he would send them off different, You go this way, you go this way, you come with me. And they would all go different directions.

Well, the rest is history. That kid that went with him would be a victim. 

Melanie McLaughlin: In August of 1975, the year before Andy was abducted, two neighborhood boys, who I also knew, were lured away from the same area in Lawrence where Andy disappeared and raped in the nearby woods. The Lawrence police were unable to solve the crime at the [00:19:00] time, and unfortunately, no one thought to warn the rest of the neighborhood about the potential threat.

It wasn't until Wayne Chapman's random traffic stop More than a year after the crime against the boys, and just weeks after Andy disappeared. That the boys finally got to see Wayne Chapman's mugshot. They immediately identified Wayne Chapman as the man who had abducted them. One of the boys Chapman abducted bravely shares his experience.

Victim #1: Some guy came up and asked us to help him find his dog. And, um, you know, the timing was perfect. You know, there's two kids and we just happened to be looking for money, so we could do something. And, uh, so, of course, we said, yeah, you know. And we didn't think nothing of it. And there seemed to be a bunch of other kids around, Some of them came over and stopped and talked to the guys, so I figured, you know, they were out looking for the dog, this guy's dog, too.

Went up into the woods, and, you know, that was probably the biggest mistake I've ever made in my life. You know, I can still remember begging to be let [00:20:00] go, and promising that we wouldn't tell anybody, and then telling us that you'd better not tell anybody. In all my life, I've never had that kind of fear. I didn't want anything to happen to my friend.

And that helped me there, mostly. Just the fear of knowing that if I took off, he's going to end up dead. While all this was going on, I could hear, you know, a lot of noises in the woods, like somebody walking around or, you know, sticks breaking or a clicking noise, and it just seemed that there was somebody else up there.

Melanie McLaughlin: Once again, it seemed Wayne Chapman was working with other individuals. Chapman was ultimately convicted of abusing the two Lawrence boys and other boys in Fall River and Seekonk Mass, and he was named a suspect in Andy's disappearance.

Wayne W. Chapman was considered a suspect based on the crime that he had been convicted of committing in the Lawrence area, such a close proximity to where Andy Puglisi had been reported missing.[00:21:00] 

Act III Pedophile's Paradise 

Wayne W. Chapman was never charged with Andy's abduction. Instead, he was criminally convicted for the assault on the boys. And was civilly committed indefinitely to the Massachusetts Treatment Center for the Sexually Dangerous, a sort of psychiatric hospital for sex offenders.

Here's one of Wayne Chapman's former therapists from the treatment center, Paula Erickson. 

Paula Erickson: Chapman was what we call a fixated, regressed therapist. Pedophile. That means that their main interest in sexual partners is children, that it is compulsive. And if on the street the average fixated regressed pedophile has between four and 500 different victims.

Former Rhode Island Police, detective Al Minz recorded interrogations between him and Wayne Chapman. Here's former detective Al Mintz.[00:22:00] 

Al Mintz: I crawled into this guy's head. I was the only one that was able to get him to talk. I had searched his van and found a tape of sort of a fantasy where he was following a school bus with children and fantasizing what he would like to do and what he has done.

What you're about to hear is an actual audio recording that Wayne Chapman made of himself while he was stalking children on school buses. Please be advised, this tape is disturbing, but it's also critical to the understanding of this man's mindset. 

Wayne W. Chapman: A school bus just passed me, with a load of kids in it.

I wonder if there's any boys in there. Here comes two boys now. One of them look pretty good there. Well, I was about eight years old, wearing a light blue snowmobile suit. Another school bus just passed, loaded with small children. Boy, would I love to get into some of the stuff that's in [00:23:00] them buses. Wow, whoo, I'm suckin to them good.

Some of them scream, man, it hurts, it hurts. Well, uh, it feels all right. You know what that means when they say it feels all right? It feels all right, man.

Melanie McLaughlin: When Wayne Chapman was arrested just two weeks after Andy disappeared, there was a picture in Chapman's van that looked like Andy, along with another critical piece of evidence, a child's sock that appeared to have bloodstains on it. Once again, here's former Rhode Island detective, Al Mintz. 

Al Mintz: Andy's mother was brought to the Providence Police Station by the Lawrence detectives.

And when his mother observed those socks, she collapsed, almost fainted. She said those were her daughter's socks. And the reason she knows that those were socks that Andy was [00:24:00] wearing because they had made fun of him that day, that he'd gone to the pool by wearing those winter high knee socks, going to a pool.

Melanie McLaughlin: Andy's mother Faith remembers identifying the sock at the police station. 

Faith Puglisi: We drove down to the Providence Police Department where Wayne Chapman was, uh, being held. And when we left Providence, the only thing we left with that I remember were, um, just, uh, one sock, one navy blue ne sock that looked like little girls.

It had a stain on it that could possibly be blood. Back in the 1970s, a sock that appeared to have blood on it was just that, but today, the sock could be tested for DNA. When we asked about the sock, We heard this from former Lawrence Police Captain Mike Molchan. 

Mike Molchan: Evidence is usually discarded or destroyed or given back, uh, to victims, uh, for a lot of reasons.

There's no solvability factor to them. Uh, there's just no place to store it. I mean, you need warehouses of it. Uh, to store it is just not practical. [00:25:00] 

We were told by Al Mintz that Wayne Chapman had a job as a janitor at Miriam Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. It was said he had access to the incinerator at the hospital.

Wayne Chapman is the only person named publicly by the police as a suspect in Andy's disappearance. Maybe if the police had only listened to the children who were with Andy the day he vanished, they could have convicted Chapman a long time ago. Here's one of the child witnesses who was at the pool that day, another friend of ours, P. J. Timmons. 

P.J. Timmons: I was leaving the pool and, um, I noticed that my bike was gone. In that time, there was this guy, he kept asking me if I could go help him look for a dog. And I kept telling him no, that I couldn't because my bike was stolen. And this guy, who was still basically bugging me to help him go look for his dog, just started to ask other kids.

And Andy, unfortunately, told the guy that he would go help him look for the dog. 

And another child witness who took years for me to track down. [00:26:00] Then four year old Ray Clark claimed a man asked him and Andy to help find a lost dog. According to Ray, the two boys walked into the woods behind the pool looking for the dog.

But after Andy became suspicious, he told Ray to run. Ray got away. But when he looked back, he said he saw two people hurting Andy. Here's Ray describing Andy. 

Ray Clark: He was scared. He was really scared. He could have easily just ran away from me and left me there stranded. I turned to look and I saw, I saw Andy on a rock and two people were holding him, holding him down.

I couldn't see their faces. But he was crying and screaming and I'm calling for him, but he's not looking at me. You know, and Andy, I could see Andy screaming. I could even see him screaming off the top of his lungs. I couldn't do anything. I didn't know what to do. 

Melanie McLaughlin: Shortly after working on my documentary, I set up a P. O. box. I received a letter from two individuals who were children at the time Andy disappeared. [00:27:00] They claimed to have come across a shallow grave in the woods near the pool around the time Andy was abducted. The Mass State Police and Lawrence Police decided to bring cadaver dogs out to the woods near the pool.

Two separate cadaver dogs strongly reacted to the same area. Forensic anthropologist Dr. Anne Marie Mires, who has recovered and identified multiple missing and murdered persons, Including Sarah Ann Pryor, Molly Bish, Holly Piirainien, and the notorious Boston mob boss, James Whitey Bulger's multiple victims, worked diligently with law enforcement to excavate the area looking for Andy.

Here's Dr. Mires from that time. 

Dr. Ann Marie Mires: It's not uncommon for children and individuals to be dumped within a five mile radius of where they're abducted. 

Melanie McLaughlin: The excavation lasted for hours, and involved state police, local police, the medical examiner's office, newspaper reporters, and photographers. Despite several cadaver dogs hitting on the area, Andy's remains weren't found.

Dr. Ann Marie Mires: We don't have unlimited [00:28:00] resources, we don't have unlimited time, so you have to utilize what you can. We started with informants, we started with a likely spot. There definitely was a pit here. Was there a body in it? No. Could there have been at one time? 

Melanie McLaughlin: There was nowhere else to go. I had to reach out to Wayne Chapman in prison.

I sent him a letter asking for an interview. Eventually, I went into jail to see him. I asked him about Andy. He said he didn't have anything to do with Andy's disappearance, and that he'd never been to Lawrence. But I had to remind him. The reason he was in jail was because he was convicted of abusing two other boys I knew in Lawrence.

Here's former state police lieutenant Jack Garvin. 

Jack Garvin: Wayne Chapman petitioned to go before the court and be deemed no longer a sexually dangerous person. He succeeded in this some time ago. Uh, this time he is eligible for parole. There's a probability that Chapman will be out on the streets, uh, very soon.

Melanie McLaughlin: If child molesters [00:29:00] gravitate to areas where children are easily preyed upon, then the state pool in Lawrence was a pedophile's paradise. On a hot summer day in 1976, There were typically hundreds of kids swimming in the pool. Across the street in the projects, there was another couple of hundred kids.

Next to that was a junior high school. And as it turns out, at the time Andy was abducted, there was a movement within the city to zone downtown Lawrence. As a red light district, several bookstores had been raided for selling pornography, and a number of local people had been arrested. In fact, the guy that worked at the store where Andy and I bought candy, down the street from the pool, was arrested for selling child pornography there.

In a 1980s interview with WCVB Boston, Andy's mother Faith shared shocking information. Here's Faith Puglisi from that interview. 

Faith Puglisi: There were five known child molesters at the pool that day. The police told you that? Yeah. [00:30:00] Yeah, they were there. They said they weren't breaking any laws, so there was nothing they could do about it, you know.

But, there was all those children laying prey. 

Melanie McLaughlin: You heard that right. Faith told the reporter that the police told her there were five known pedophiles at the pool the day Andy vanished. Five. But who were they? I had no idea and I couldn't believe that there was a possibility that pedophiles work together.

I reached out to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, called NCMEC, to see if there was any research that showed that pedophiles actually do work together. Here's the former director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Ernie Allen. 

Ernie Allen: There's abundant evidence that pedophiles do communicate with people of like interest.

There's abundant evidence that there's a trading of child pornography. In many ways, there is a kind of collector mentality. [00:31:00] They trade images of children like kids would trade baseball cards. Not only is there a community of these individuals, but they're actually groups. They're advocacy groups where these people join together, both to advocate fundamental changes in the law.

They're groups that would argue that sex with children should not be criminalized, but that sexual contact is essentially an act of love for children. 

Melanie McLaughlin: Just a few months after Andy disappeared, a child trafficking ring was broken up in Revere, Massachusetts, a city just about 20 miles south of Lawrence.

At the time, it was called a child prostitution ring, although today, we all know children don't have the capacity to prostitute themselves. Nambla, the North American Man Boy Love Association, was born out of this child trafficking ring in Massachusetts. NAMBLA believes in legalizing the right to have sex with children, what they refer to as man boy love.

Today, [00:32:00] NAMBLA is one of the most widely known organizations of pedophiles in the world. And to think, it all started miles from where Andy and I lived. Once again, here's Ernie Allen, former director of the National Center 

Ernie Allen: In the late 70s and early 80s, it was a time in which a number of names of child victims sort of became permanently etched into the national consciousness.

And each case sort of dramatized the inadequacy of the systems we had in place in this country to respond to the cases. This was a nation of 50 states that acted like 50 separate little countries and 17, 000 different police departments.

Melanie McLaughlin: After years of researching the disappearance of my childhood friend, I was just beginning to understand what I was dealing with. Andy was one of several kids who disappeared from the area in the 1970s, [00:33:00] and most of these cases haven't been looked at in years. And the system hasn't really changed. Even today, there's still no protocol in place for cold cases involving missing kids.

In fact, There are bones from hundreds of unidentified children waiting to be tested in police departments across the country. 58, 000 children are abducted every year in America. Of those, 115 vanish without a trace. In the beginning of my search, I thought what happened to Andy was an anomaly. There was no Center for Missing and Exploited Children then.

It wasn't created until the early 1980s because of a spate of missing children's cases in the 1970s. Child pornography was barely even illegal then. It actually wasn't even illegal to take boys over state lines. Ironically, as I was completing the documentary, I was really only beginning to understand how many other children vanished, like Andy.

And I found [00:34:00] myself wondering, could any of these cases be related?

Next time on Open Investigation, Episode 1, Return to Andy. 

Faith Puglisi: He came to my house and had said to me, if I confronted him on this, that he would deny ever telling me these things. But he had told me that he had to stop investigating Andy's case. Disappearance because he was getting threat, death threats, not just for him, but for his family.

Melanie McLaughlin: As we return to the investigation into the disappearance of Andy Puglisi, more than 15 years after the original documentary, Have You Seen Andy?, was broadcast on HBO, we learn about other missing and murdered children in Massachusetts, discover additional suspects in Andy's disappearance, listen to never before heard audio from Wayne Chapman, And begin gathering clues to a much bigger story from the 1970s, [00:35:00] a decade when more children went missing than any other time in the modern history of the United States.

This episode is written, produced, and hosted by me, Melanie Perkins McLaughlin Original music, sound design, editing, and mixing by Drew O'Doherty. 
Additional editing by Mike Gioscia and Rachel Clark
Consulting producer, Anngelle Wood 
Website and graphic design by Cheryl Crawford and Anngelle Wood

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