http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2011/11/possible-break-unsolved-holly-piirainen-and-molly-bish-cases/fFkUXKdLMCM4pVrUVipxNL/index.htmlPossible break in unsolved Holly Piirainen and Molly Bish cases11/18/2011 12:55 PM
By Kim Ring, Telegram & Gazette Staff
She was tough as nails, never flinching as she described how the man she married hit her, asked her to download child pornography for him and forced her to put on children’s underwear.
But when she looked at a picture of Gerald B. Battistoni placed next to a sketch of a man wanted for questioning in the murder of Molly Anne Bish of Warren, the woman, his second wife, covered her face, shook her head slightly and the tears came.
The second wife asked that she not be identified. It is the policy of the Telegram & Gazette not to identify victims of sexual abuse.
Battistoni, 49, is behind bars, serving 10 to 12 years in state prison for raping the daughter of a woman he dated, but never married, around 1991. He was convicted in Springfield last August. That charge came last year after licensed private investigator and former Vermont State Trooper Daniel E. Malley, working on a child custody case involving Battistoni, tracked down information that Battistoni had raped a young girl years earlier.
When he found the victim and asked her about the allegations, she admitted she’d been raped by Battistoni, possibly 100 times or more when she was between 13 and 16 years old, and except for one of her childhood friends, had never told a soul.
The teen’s mother said Battistoni plied her daughter with cigarettes, soda and other things she wasn’t always allowed to have. The mother said he seemed to want to protect her daughter, who had been raped before by another man.
But Malley discovered Battistoni was certainly not “protecting” the teenager at all.
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During the course of the child custody investigation, Malley learned Battistoni could be linked to the area where 10-year-old Holly Kristin Piirainen disappeared in August 1993.
His rape victim’s mother, a real estate agent, had listed a home for rent with her name and photo on the sign in the yard near a home owned by Holly’s grandmother, Maureen Lemieux. Holly had been staying there when she vanished after walking to a neighbor’s with her younger brother to look at some puppies. A little checking revealed that the girl Battistoni raped in the early 1990s was, in 2000, grown and living close to Comins Pond in Warren when Molly worked as a lifeguard. Malley learned that Battistoni had been to Comins Pond in the past. He’d lived in Warren and was familiar with the area.
One of his wives said that when they lived in Ware, Battistoni often cut over Whiskey Hill to buy drugs from a dealer in Warren. Three years after she disappeared, Molly’s remains were found in a wooded area of Whiskey Hill.
When Malley compared a sketch of the man seen at Comins Pond the day before Molly’s disappearance, it bore a striking resemblance to Battistoni.
“I didn’t set out to get involved in these cases,” said Malley, the owner of Allegiant Investigations of Worcester.
“I was working a child custody case. But there were things here I could not ignore,” he said.
A review of records by the Telegram & Gazette in Palmer, Springfield, Westfield, Belchertown and Dudley courts reveals that many of Battistoni’s relationships ended with restraining orders and women swearing under oath that they were terrified of him.
At every turn, Malley became more concerned. He worked to get Battistoni prosecuted for the rapes, and with that done, started taking a closer look at possible connections to the Bish and Piirainen cases — with the blessing of the families. No one is paying him.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do. Whether he did it or not, he deserves to be looked at, and if he’s not the one, then we need to figure that out, too.”
Women who’d been involved with Battistoni described him as initially charming with underlying violent tendencies.
In an interview with the second wife, she said she called him a “hero” because he had fixed her car — a white Chevrolet. On the day Molly disappeared, he told her he had been working on the car and had taken the car out for a spin in the Warren area.
“I remember thinking that was weird for him to say,” she said, adding that Battistoni did not have a license at that time. Molly Bish’s mother, Magi, remembered seeing a man sitting in a white car smoking when she dropped off Molly for work the day before she disappeared.
When she worked with a sketch artist to produce a drawing of the man, Mrs. Bish talked about the distinctive way the man held his cigarette and glared at her.
Battistoni’s second wife said she used to get very annoyed with the way he “effeminately” held his cigarettes.
“It used to be one of those things that drove me crazy,” she said, holding her hand to her face, her fingers splayed.
She also recalled how, in the days after Molly disappeared, Battistoni took to the couch, rarely moving. He shaved his moustache and went out very little.
From the outside, Battistoni seemed to be on the right side of the law, working as a confidential informant with a drug task force; something police confirmed, and serving as a bouncer, complete with a shirt labeled “Security,” at the seedy Wolf’s Den bar in Palmer, before it closed.
But behind closed doors, he changed. In interviews, his wife and girlfriend said he used drugs, was so paranoid he once climbed into the crawl space of a ceiling in an apartment he shared with the girlfriend and barricaded himself inside his home because he was convinced the FBI was coming for him.
He rarely worked a regular job and passed the time watching “The Simpsons” and Court TV, seeing the same crime shows over and over, never tiring of them. He suffered from various mental health issues and sometimes he cut out stories about violent crimes from the newspaper leaving them where whatever woman he was with at the time would see them.
Three of the women he’d been involved with said he told them he’d killed a man in Ludlow hiding the body, which had never been found, according to court records and interviews. He threatened to do the same to them. He fancied himself to be “smarter than the cops,” his second wife said, and when they discussed the Bish case, he refused to talk about it, though he once told her, “Sometimes there’s just no evidence.”
He has a lengthy criminal record that dates to 1980, according to documents obtained by the Telegram & Gazette.
His second wife said he’d lecture her and often presented himself as an authority figure.
Twice, according to court documents, he’d been accused of impersonating a police officer. On one occasion, he carried handcuffs on a police-style belt and a Mag-Lite flashlight, a Springfield officer wrote in a 2001 report after a bartender called to report Battistoni was causing a disturbance.
Police have theorized that Molly might have been convinced by someone to leave her post at the beach. Her family said someone who seemed to be a police officer might have lured her that way.
While much of what Malley has uncovered is interesting, none of it means that Battistoni did anything more than what he’s been convicted of.
Detective Capt. Peter Higgins from Hampden District Attorney Mark G. Mastroianni’s office said prosecutors have looked at Battistoni and vigorously prosecuted him for the rapes.
He said the new district attorney’s staff has familiarized themselves with the case and met with Holly’s family.
“We are following up on leads,” he said. “We did prosecute this case (the rape case) because the evidence was there.”
The captain declined comment on any possible connection between the Piirainen case and Battistoni.
Timothy J. Connolly, a spokesman for Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr., said detectives there, “continue to investigate the Bish case and look at any information we get.” He declined to say whether detectives believe Battistoni could be a suspect in Molly’s abduction and murder.
While both families have ridden a roller coaster of emotions with possible suspects popping up from time to time and eventually being discounted, neither Holly nor Molly’s families have given up.
Heather Bish said each time her family hears of a new suspect or a possible break in the case they’re cautiously hopeful and even if a lead is unfounded, it brings new attention to her sister’s case and might, someday, prompt someone with information to come forward.
Holly’s mother, Tina Harrington, said she also holds out hope and wonders whether Battistoni might be the one.
“If he is the guy, it’d feel really good because he’s already in jail,” she said. “It seems like a possibility, and I think they should be looking at him.”
Malley has been quiet about the case but now, he believes, is a good time to talk about it. He’s talked with investigators in the Worcester and Hampden District Attorneys’ offices and told them what he’s found.
He’s hoping that, with Battistoni securely behind bars in Walpole state prison, people with information might feel safer coming forward.
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