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PUPPIES, A LOST SHOE, AND A PREDATOR IN THE WOODS
Manage episode 513209661 series 3458674
What happened to Holly Piirainen? This cold case has taken investigators down many dark and twisted paths, including multiple suspects, ties to an unsolved murder—to exhuming a letter buried in a coffin.
On a humid August morning in 1993, ten-year-old Holly Piirainen vanished from a quiet neighborhood in Sturbridge, Massachusetts after walking with her little brother to see a litter of collie puppies.
Moments later, the only sign of Holly was her lost sneaker discovered along the edge of a dirt road—an image that would haunt an entire state.
In this episode, former prosecutor Margaret McLean revisits the day Holly disappeared: a summer morning boat ride on South Pond, laughter with her family at her grandparents’ cottage, and a five-minute walk that ended in tragedy.
Through interviews, police reports, and eyewitness accounts—including the chilling sighting of a man in a brown pickup truck—Margaret unpacks how a peaceful community became ground zero for one of New England’s most disturbing unsolved crimes.
👉 What you’ll hear in this episode:
- The timeline of Holly’s last morning—breakfast, boat ride, and the walk to see the puppies
- How her brother’s discovery of a single sneaker caused police to suspect a kidnapping and mobilize a massive search effort
- Exclusive analysis of police theories about the abduction scene
- Investigators' analysis and conclusions drawn from the girls who saw the “man in the truck”
- The race against time in the first critical hours of a child abduction with an FBI agent’s input
- The mysterious suspect pulled over nearby—and later caught surfing porn in a library
This is a story of innocence lost, a predator lurking in the woods, and a family’s thirty-year fight for justice. - 🎧 Subscribe to It’s A Crime with Margaret McLean for Episode 2 —
“Skeleton in the Woods” — where new suspects emerge, a disturbing letter is unearthed, and long-hidden secrets finally rise to the surface. - https://itsacrimemedia.com/
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