EP 78 | Andy Puglisi & The Failed Children of Massachusetts, with Melanie Perkins McLaughlin (part two) - Crime of the Truest Kind

Episode Transcript
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Anngelle Wood (00:00):
Well, hello, my name is Anngelle Wood and this
is Crime of the Truest Kind.
This is a true crime, localhistory and storytelling podcast

(00:30):
.
My focus is advocacy,supporting victims and families
of violence and crime who'vesuffered catastrophic loss.
I advocate for those people,all of those people.
I write about crimes.
Yes, I set the scene, connectstory themes.
I talk about things thathappened here in Massachusetts,

(00:52):
in New England.
In this episode we continue ourconversation about what we
learned after a boy went missingin the summer of 1976 in
Lawrence.
This episode is about murderedand missing children, about
child sexual abuse, csaattitudes, about child
exploitation, systemic abuse,and we do talk about the role

(01:15):
the Catholic Church has playedin the serial abuse of children.
But it doesn't stop with theCatholic Church.
The systemic abuse inorganizations is on the
forefront of this particularsubject matter.
It is important for me to say,if this is a subject matter that
might hurt you, impede your ownhealing or possibly offend you,

(01:37):
it may not be something youwish to listen to and this often
goes unsaid that this podcastis not for children.
Please listen with care.
Big thanks to newest patronHolly you rule.
I do have merch that I willshare.
And also I should tell you I'mdoing a redesign for the look of

(02:00):
the show.
Thanks to all of our patrons.
The show.
Thanks to all of our patrons,most especially to our superstar
, ep Lisa McColgan.
You also rule.
Thank you for those who cameout to the Kodo show in Lowell
Mass.
That turned into kind of afireside chat.
We have a way of doing that.
New show Thursday, february20th at Stoneham Public Library,

(02:24):
stoneham Massachusetts.
It is free.
There are no tickets.
I guess you just show up thesecond part of my conversation
with Melanie Perkins McLaughlin,who spent decades researching
the disappearance of herchildhood friend.
His name is Andy Puglisi.

(02:45):
He disappeared without a tracefrom a pool that had been filled
with children.
We return to the MerrimackValley, an area that was greatly
impacted by what was happeningto children, particularly in the
1970s, and we talk about whythat period was so active we'll
call it and what role LawrenceMassachusetts had.

(03:11):
We return to the stadiumprojects, summer 1976.
It's the bicentennial year.
We were celebrating thecountry's 200th anniversary.
Everything was eagles, libertybells, waving flags and
commemorative coins.
They even sold bicentennialwallpaper.

(03:33):
It was both a time ofcelebration in America and for
tremendous marketingopportunities.
Ten-year-old Andy Puglisivanishes from the public pool.
Here's what we know about thatday and what came after, but we
also have much more informationabout what came before.

(03:57):
This is episode 78.
I continue my conversation withMelanie Perkins McLaughlin,
andy's childhood friend, wholived in the stadium projects
back in the summer of 1976.
Someone who decided the dayAndy disappeared that she would

(04:20):
one day set out to discover whathappened to her friend, and
someone we owe a debt ofgratitude for the work that she
has done In researching Andy'scase, in making the documentary
have you Seen Andy, foruncovering the stories of so
many other children like him andfrom what we've learned in
season one of her podcast, openInvestigation.

(04:42):
First, the city's origin story.
What is the history of the cityof Lawrence?
I have certainly talked abouthallmarks of the city through
the years.
Do go back and listen to thetwo prior episodes I did about

(05:02):
Andy Puglisi's case.
Start with those Americanmerchants and philanthropists
for whom Groton's LawrenceAcademy was renamed Abbott and
Amos Lawrence.
They were instrumental in thedevelopment of the textile
industry here.
In 1845, the brothers foundedthe city of Lawrence as a

(05:22):
textile town, building a complexof mills producing cotton and
wool.
By the early 20th century, witha soaring population close to
95,000, its highest ever, thecity was a world leader in the
production of textiles.
In those massive mills theypurchased the seven square miles

(05:43):
of lands on either side of theMerrimack River and called on
engineer Charles S Sturrow ofthe Sturrow family, for which
Boston's Sturrow Drive is named.
This Sturrow would design theindustrial city that would rival
all textile makers.
In the late 19th century, thecity hadn't forgotten about the
Pemberton Mill collapse, thoughAn epic disaster.

(06:06):
On January 10, 1860, itcrumbled under the weight of
poor design, the weight of theworkers and the machinery, the
floor separated from the wallsand the floors collapsing on top
of those workers, mostly womenand children, like the mill
girls who came from Maine andNew Hampshire and many Irish

(06:28):
immigrants who escaped thepotato famine, a time known as
the Great Hunger, where theIrish starved to death.
Respect to my people.
I got my DNA back 48% Irish andIrish.
Hey, I'm working on it.
The rubble formed a pyramid 50feet high.

(06:49):
The Pemberton Mill disaster wasthe worst industrial accident
in Massachusetts history,rivaling the Triangle Shirtwaist
Fire in Greenwich Village inNew York City.
Some 50 years later, in Octoberof 1910, the air mill opened,
built to spin and dye yarn, thetreasured icon of Lawrence and

(07:10):
its contribution to theIndustrial Revolution.
The Airmill Clock Tower is thelargest mill clock in the world.
It stands as a legendarylandmark of the Merrimack Valley
, an absolute crown jewel, and Ihope you think about its
history when you drive by now.
The Ayer Mill operated for thenext four decades, slowly

(07:32):
shrinking in production as millcompanies moved to the southern
states with cheaper labor by theearly 20th century and that
population swelling to almost95,000,.
The city of Lawrence was a worldleader in the production of
textiles and a workforce thatwas run by those hardworking
people.
Work that was done inoppressive conditions, didn't

(07:55):
they learn from the Pemberton?
Lawrence had the eighth highestdeath rate per 100 in the
country.
Lowell was the worst 36 ofevery 100 mill workers died by
the time they were 25.
Many worked in extremely dampand humid space.
They were vulnerable totuberculosis, pneumonia.

(08:16):
Then, when their hours were cutand their pay was threatened,
the workers rose up for what isnow known as the Bread and Roses
strike of 1912.
It was one of the mostsignificant labor movements in
US history.
It was a milestone for the city, for labor and American
immigration.
On March 14th the nine-weekstrike ended.

(08:40):
15,000 mill workers gathered inLawrence Common to agree to the
new terms.
The Bread and Roses strike wasnot just a victory for Lawrence
workers.
By the end of March, 275,000New England textile workers
received similar raises andother industries also followed

(09:01):
suit.
But its post-war history looksvery different.
The textile boom went bust inthe 1950s.
A once flourishing city was nowstruggling with a declining
population.
That went from over 80,000residents in 1950 to
approximately 64,000 residentsby 1980.

(09:23):
Replacing the loss of thosejobs proved very difficult.
Though Malden Mills makers ofpolar fleece run by the
Feuerstein family for decades,they remained in Lawrence, even
rebuilding, after a fire nearlydestroyed the entire mill in
December of 1995.

(09:43):
Aaron Feuerstein, who took overrunning the mill for his family
, was known as the mensch ofMalden Mills for caring for his
employees while they rebuilt.
Malden Mills would eventuallybe sold in 2007, and the company
that bought it left Lawrence in2015.
And today, today, the citycelebrates their place in that

(10:08):
history.
The Bread and Roses HeritageFestival happens every year on
Labor Day to recognize the laborhistory and the cultural
diversity of the city.
I really do love learning aboutall of this regional history.
I find it very interesting.
Maybe you do too.

(10:28):
Coming up the second part of myconversation with Melanie
Perkins-McLaughlin, she producedthe film have you Seen Andy,
the documentary about her searchfor information about her
missing friend, andy Puglisi.
What that investigationuncovered and what she continues

(10:51):
to uncover about Andy andchildren just like him who went
missing or were found murderedin Massachusetts in the 1970s,
support Crime of the Truest Kind, and there are many ways you
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(11:14):
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(11:35):
Thank you.
By supporting the show, youhelp send me to AdvocacyCon that
happens at the end of March inIndianapolis.
It is exactly what it soundslike a conference about advocacy
in the true crime space.
You brought up a very importantpoint.

(11:57):
When Andy went missing, it wasway before we knew of little
Etan Pates and Adam Walsh someof the names that were in the
news after and that really didchange how we deal with missing
children Absolutely.
When Andy went missing, we knowthat there are some other
implications.
He was a kid in the projects.

(12:20):
Police didn't take it.
They took it far less seriously.
Look at what we learned.
They didn't even report itright.
They didn't even file thereport for this missing boy.

Melanie Perkins McLaughlin (12:30):
No, not right away.
And also, you know it wasn'tjust that.
Yeah, andy was a poor kid fromthe projects and we lived in a
very classist community at thetime.
You know, Lawrence was the 23rdpoorest city in the country and
probably still is.
I don't know what the rating isnow, but it's still a very,
very poor city and it's also acity very much built on class,

(12:57):
which is so ironic for so manypoor people to live there and
for it to be so classist.
But it was, and I guess part ofthe reason is that when you're
just a little bit higher thanthe lowest, you know, then you
feel like you have a little bitof capital or something like
that.
Higher than the lowest, thenyou feel like you have a little
bit of capital or something likethat.
So for people that lived inLawrence that maybe owned a
single family home wereconsidered much higher on the
sort of class scale than kidsthat lived in the projects, that
had single moms and again, thiswas the 70s and that was a big

(13:18):
part of it and Andy's mother hadhad a biracial child.
She had had three caucasianchildren and then she had his
baby sister, Mandy, a biracialchild.
Right, she had had threeCaucasian children and then she
had his baby sister.
Mandy was biracial and again,this was 1976.
That was noticeable.
People noticed that a lot.

Part of the investigation really did focus
in on the relationship with herpartner at the time, who was an
African American man, and weknow that as part of many other
aspects of the investigationwhich we can talk to a little
bit about how they handled theinvestigation and how short of a
time they actually looked forthis boy.

And you know there are still people,
up until recently you know afew detectives that have passed
away but there is still peoplethat were on the force, on the
Lawrence police force, that were, that are convinced that it was
that individual, the boyfriend,right, or that it was, you know
, a family member, or that itwas what have you.
But you know, I think therecould be a million theories out
there, but what I want to see isevidence, right.

(14:14):
What I want to see is okay,well, what evidence do you have
that suggests that it was theboyfriend, Okay, and you know
the boyfriend was in the houseand you know he was not seen
outside, he was not seen at thepool.
He had been, you know, exceptfor a 10 minute window when
Faith went to the store that hehad been on, you know,
unattended, if you will, and in10 minutes.
That wouldn't have been enoughtime, you know, to do anything

(14:37):
at that point, and he was stillwith Faith later.
So it just is not reasonable tosuspect that he had an alibi.
But there are things that arereasonable, right, Like the
police officer who was, you know, later found with a boy in his
cruiser and he was, you know,allegedly molesting this boy and
wearing women's clothes and,you know, had to leave the

(14:59):
police force quietly as a resultof that in the early to mid 80s
.
And that was a boy from theproject, or Wayne Chapman, who
was identified by multiplepeople as being at the pool that
day the day before the yearbefore, who we know had an
incredible record of abusingover 100 boys.
Wayne Chapman also had a lot ofcamera equipment.

(15:20):
He had a lot of high-end,expensive camera equipment.
So Wayne Chapman was not justabducting boys, he was producing
photos which I think he wasvery likely selling because I
don't know where else he wouldget the money for the high-end
camera equipment because he wasa janitor.
It was him.
There was a neighbor who youknow we talk about, who

(15:41):
allegedly we had gottenanonymous tips that he knew
Wayne Chapman.
But also there were severalchildren in the projects who had
been approached by thisneighbor and so they had shared
that information.
So the neighbor was known to bea pedophile.
There was a lifeguard that wefound out way late in the game.
This was not until the podcastthat we found out that there was
a lifeguard or he says hewasn't a lifeguard, he says he

(16:03):
worked for the youth servicessystem, but he assisted at pools
.
I don't know the exact details,but certainly we had someone
contact us that said thatchildren had been abused by him
in pool settings, in swimmingpool settings in Massachusetts,
in Lawrence, at the time, and soI found that too incredible to
be true.
I really couldn't believe itwhen they said that and I
thought for sure it had to be adifferent summer, it had to be a

(16:25):
different summer.
And then when they told me thatthe person was arrested and
that there was a court record,and I went back and found the
court record and the arrestrecord and it was literally
weeks after Andy disappeared.
The same summer this guy wasarrested for sexually abusing a
five-year-old and a two-year-oldin swimming pools in Lawrence,

(16:50):
Massachusetts, and had never,ever been questioned.
As far as we know, His name hadnever been brought up, Nothing
had ever come up about this guyat all, and, as it turns out,
the guy knew the family.
Right, the guy knew the Puglisifamily.
So you know I did have thedistrict attorney.
One of the district attorneyssay to me that the podcast was
really incredible and they foundit so informative, but the
problem that they said theyfound with it was that now that

(17:10):
felt like there are so manysuspects right, Not just you
know a few and I said, yes,exactly, that's the point.
There were so many becausethere were so many pedophiles in
the area, because there washuman trafficking happening in
this area, because it was ahotspot for this kind of
activity.

There's an incredible piece of film in the
documentary and I know thatyou've used it subsequently of
Faith Puglisi saying that lawenforcement told her that there
were at least five pedophiles inthe vicinity of the pool that
day that Andy went missing.

The way she says it is, there were
five known child molesters atthe pool that day.
So back then that's the otherpiece is we didn't have this
lexicon human trafficking.
We didn't have the wordpedophile, right.
We didn't say that they calledhuman trafficking of children,
child prostitution, as though achild can prostitute themselves.
They called pedophilia, childmolestation or child molesting.

(18:11):
There weren't terms for it likethat.
But she did say law enforcementtold her there were five known
child molesters at the pool thatday and that haunted me from
the day I heard it, like whowere these people?
And so I started to try to puttogether a list of who were the
five known child molesters atthe pool that day.

And while I don't know who, exactly was at it was
a longer list.

Yes, it was a much longer list.
It was longer than five, wasn't?

it.

Yeah , it was more than five.
I think we're up to like 13 nowat this point it's crazy, but
again, within a half mile radius, put it that way.
If they weren't at the poolthat day, they were within a
quarter mile, half mile radiusfrom a little league coach to a
bus driver, to a lifeguard, to aneighbor, to a cop, to a priest

(19:01):
to.
I mean, it just went on and on.
It was crazy.
Priest too, I mean.
It just went on and on.
It was crazy.
And it's like is this typical?
Like, are there that manypedophiles concentrated in one
area?
I don't know, but therecertainly were.
At that time there was noregistry.

There was no registry and a lot of these
people didn't have any kind ofcriminal record at that time.

Or if they did, in some cases it
could be covered up like apolice officer or a priest.
They wouldn't arrest peoplelike that for this behavior, as
we know all too well from BostonGlobe Spotlight right Like they
would just sort of ignore it,let them go on and sort of hope
it went away and not talk aboutit.
But yes, that's very importantto note that there was not a sex
offender registry at the time,which you know.

(19:44):
How do you think a sex offenderregistry came about, angel?

It was after children went missing and it was
discovered there were peoplearound there.

It was.
Yes, I forget exactly.
The law Isn't it Johnny Gosch.
It wasn't Johnny Gosch, it mighthave been Jacob Wetterling, was
it Jacob Wetterling?
I can't remember which of thecases it was, but the point is
it was a child who went missing,who was a high profile case,
whose parents and whose lovedones advocated for legislation
to change the system.

(20:12):
And that's how sex offenderregistry came about.
That's how the Amber Alert isan Amber Alert, because you know
these cases, and that's why wehave the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Childrenand that's why we have child
pornography laws.
I mean literally, if you listento the podcast, the reason the
child pornography laws werecreated in 1978 is because there

(20:34):
was so much effing childpornography Like.
And then people are like oh, Idon't know if this was really
true.
It's like listen to the youknow, or look at the transcripts
of the congressional hearings.
It was true to the you know, orlook at the transcripts of the
congressional hearings.
It was true, it was true, andthat's why the law was created.

But and that's how and why laws are created,
you know, and that's why weencourage families and loved
ones and people who care aboutthis cause to advocate, and it's
been something that really thegeneral public still still now,
even after all of these yearsand after all of this
information, and after all ofthese years and after all of
this information and after allthis evidence, quite frankly,
that has been presented, thegeneral public still doesn't

(21:09):
want to think about these kindsof things.
Is it possible that people werestealing children off the
street and putting them into sextrafficking?

Yes, and not just into sex
trafficking, into unwillingbeing unwilling participants in
a child sex abuse image industry, and so, yes, abusing, being
abused, but also for photographs, and there was a lot of money
to be made.
There was a lot of money thatwas being made, but I just
wanted to fact check.
The sex offender registry wasactually part of the Amber Alert

(21:39):
.
So in 1996, bill ClintonPresident, bill Clinton signed
the Amber Hagerman ChildProtection Act law into law,
creating the Amber Alert Systemand the National Sex Offender
Registry.
You can read more about AmberHagerman if you want, if you
Google her, whose murder isstill unsolved it's still
unsolved and thank her and herfamily for all of the hard work

(22:03):
they did to create the AmberAlert.
It's probably saved thousands,if not hundreds of thousands, of
lives and the sex offenderregistry.
So, yeah, it's children and thelegacy of these children that
change systems.

We simply, as a society, couldn't function
without things like this, and westill need so much more.
There's so much morelegislation that we need.
You summed up a couple of thosethings, but there's so much
more that still needs to be putin place.

I mean just the statute of
limitations.
You know the fact that there'sa statute of limitations on
child rape.
You know that should not be thecase and that a lot of folks,
you know, don't even start todeal with their trauma till
they're in their 50s, which isincredible.
The statute of limitations haslikely passed at that point and
now in Massachusetts it's 53.
It was changed in 2015.
But we're trying to eliminatethe statute of limitations

(22:53):
altogether because thereshouldn't be a limit on
individual trauma and especiallyif there's corroborating
evidence, if people, you know,if there's other people come
forward that have been abused bythe same person, there's lots
of ways to determine whether thestories or how the stories are
accurate.
So there's that no-transcriptthe Catholic Church was able to

(23:23):
do.
They let people go quietly.
You know, if there's anallegation, they generally can
just offer them to leave theirposition and the person can go
down the street and get a job atanother school and not
necessarily have anything intheir record, especially if
there wasn't a criminalconviction.
So there's lots and lots ofwork to be done and also, even
with the material that had beencreated, there's people who are

(23:46):
actively advocating against thesex offender registry right.
So there's the defense counselfor a lot of registered sex
offenders who try to claimdouble jeopardy or that.
This is, you know, unfairlylabeling people or any number of
things.
So and they stay active, theystay.

Yeah, how does that go over?

in the court of law.
Well, it's interesting becauseMassachusetts is generally
pretty lenient on defenseattorneys.
So I would hate to see the daythat that would ever happen and
I would hope that there would bepeople out there who would
advocate against, you know, asex offender registry being
taken away.
I would certainly think thatthere would be, but you know,
the people who are on the otherside of that argument don't rest

(24:28):
.
They continue to advocate.
So that's why it's so importantto have families and loved ones
and people who care about thesestories advocating.
So if you're listening andyou're interested in advocacy in
Massachusetts to prevent childsex abuse and to help support
families of missing and murderedloved ones, please, please,
reach out to us and let us know,because we're working on

(24:48):
getting that rolling and reallyoffering some resources for that
.

Having the experience of meeting family
members, speaking to familymembers who have a missing loved
one, who have a murdered lovedone, an unsolved case, hearing
the stories about how thishappened to them and they had
absolutely no idea what to do,where to go, who to talk to.
They go to law enforcement.
Law enforcement has said oh,they're not missing.

(25:13):
They're not missing, which isnot that different from Andy's
case, let's face it.
He was a child but and you cantell me exactly how this
happened for you when you wereresearching it but he went
missing.
His mother could not find him.
His mother went around askinghave you seen Andy?
Have you seen Andy?
No one saw him.

(25:34):
And then she tried to reporthim, which eventually they
showed up.
They didn't file it and foronly six days they looked for a
missing child and there are allkinds of excuses and theories
that came into play, one ofwhich became after speaking with
you about this.
I learned that they started,they, law enforcement started to

(25:56):
say well, he's really notmissing.

Yeah , you know there was Faith talks
about having been approached bylaw enforcement a couple of
days into the search.
They wanted to call the searchoff.
Police chief was Chief Hart atthe time and I believe he was
the person who had approachedthe Puglisi family.
And they approached with theidea that they would call the
search off, not because theydidn't think he was missing, but

(26:21):
because whoever was holding himmight have been intimidated by
all of this search activity andthat this would help them get
their defenses down.
Let the person who might beholding Andy sort of put their
defenses down and be less likelyto be so sensitive to the issue
and what have you?
So Faith agreed to letting thesearch be called off.

(26:42):
She says she would have nevercalled the search off had it not
been for that and you know, sixdays is not a long time to look
for a 10 year old missing boyand at the same time in some
ways it felt like forever.
It was a slow start and then,once it started, it was like it
felt like the entire world wasdescending on us.
There were helicopterseverywhere, national guards

(27:02):
everywhere and they had set up a, of all things, a CB trucker
station which was the which wasthe search headquarters, which
we find out later.
As you hear in the podcast, thatamateur radio and CB radio was
a really one of the ways thatpedophiles communicated with
each other back in the day,because they didn't have the
internet.

So they Twitter of the day.

It was actually, to be honest, it
was a major way that theycommunicated.
Who knew that?
And truck driving, and so youknow, the truck driving could
transport children across statelines, right?
So, and a lot of the truckdrivers were the ones who were
running the CB radios, rightLike, if you remember, that was
what was the?
What was the um think aboutthis in the 70s and 80s?

(27:45):
10-4 Big Trucker, I forget 10-4.

Big Daddy.

Yeah , something I forget, but
everybody had like a handle,just like they had a nickname.
Yeah, you know you had a handle, like you do on Twitter.
I mean you had everybody.
You know people had a handle.
And you know, right before Andywent missing he got a really
nice CB radio for his birthday.
And it wasn't an amateur, Imean, it wasn't a kid's, it
wasn't like a little plasticFisher parties toy thing.

(28:09):
It was a heavy duty.
I remember putting this realthing, it was the real deal.
I remember putting the walkietalkie in my hand and being like
this is the real deal.
It was like a heavy one, it waslike a police radio, you know,
it felt really real and I justyou know one of the very few
memories I have of me and Andyis playing with that and it was
just such a funny scene becausewe just walked out of each

(28:31):
other's sight.
We weren't, you know, weliterally went around the corner
so we couldn't see each other,but we would use the radio to
communicate and you could hearour voices in the air, nevermind
over the radio.
So like it wasn't even.
It was kind of funny.
It was a child's way of youknow, out of sight, out of mind,
so you don't you think thatlike you can't see each other.
So the CB radios were, you know, sort of effective, but it was

(28:54):
kind of this cute scene where wejust were like probably you
know, 10 or 20 feet away fromeach other but blocked from each
other's sight, while we wereusing this very nice CB radio
set that he had gotten, justbefore he disappeared and do you
remember who gave that to him?
You know what it just occurredto me to ask?
You know, as you were saying,that I was just like who gave
that CB radio set to Andy.

I mean, it raises my red flags.
Is this something that may havecontributed to his
disappearance?

Well , it's interesting that you say
that, because Wayne Chapmantalks about having taken the boy
from the pool with a muchyounger child and the boy
talking about CB radios.
So that was another sort ofpiece of information that was
interesting with Chapman.
But you know, it's so funnythese are the things that happen
, angel, in the course of thisdecades of stories that you get

(29:39):
so caught up in the facts andall of the information or
whatever, and then, just as Iwas telling you that story, I
literally was thinking in mybrain gee, you know, I never
asked who gave him the CB radioright, and not that that I mean
it could be completelyinconsequential who gave him.

It's not going to crack the case, no, no, it's an
important thing to maybe try tofind out, if it's possible.
It's an interesting question.

Melanie Perkins McLaughli (29:59):
Right , it's an interesting question
and again, it wasn is relevantfor a long time because I didn't
know until probably the lastcouple of years that CB radio
was the way that you knowpedophiles communicated.
I didn't know anything aboutthe trafficking and use of
amateur radio and CB radioreally until I was reading Ann
Burgess's work and also, youknow, interviewing her for the
podcast, where she confirmed andtalked about that that was the

(30:22):
way that they communicated butalso that truck drivers would
transport the children.
That was a big way oftransporting children.
And again, her research comesfrom the 70s and 80s.
She was out of BostonUniversity a forensic nurse and
again is featured in Mindhunter,I believe, for Netflix, as the
forensic nurse and she did a lotof research back in the day on

(30:44):
these cases and quite remarkablein the work that she's done and
the way that she studied thisand actually wrote a book called
Child Pornography and Sex Ringsfrom the 1970s and 1980s, which
you know.
I love to bring that book withme as like a hard copy book when
I go to share a presentationwith law enforcement .

(31:09):
I literally just put it on thedesk and I say when people try
to tell me that no, this wasn'treal, I mean just having this
tangible book and say really,because here's a book written
about it.
Here's a book from an esteemedprofessor at Boston University
that a lot of the history, notthe entire history, but a lot of
the history of the traffickingof these children, and again,
they didn't call it trafficking,they called it child

(31:31):
prostitution.
So even the ring that wasbroken up in Revere in 1977,
they call these kids childprostitutes.

And, once again, the victims of crime get
essentially blamed for their ownabuse

Melanie Perkins McLaughli (31:44):
100%, , especially if they're poor
kids without a lot of socialcapital whose parents can't
defend them while they're beingblamed.
So these kids were beingenticed with, you know, pizza
and beer and maybe some smallchange and money to come to this
apartment.
And, yeah, guys would ask them,you know, they would have to
perform sex acts or, you know,be raped, essentially by adult

(32:04):
men, and maybe have somepictures taken and everything.
But hey, they got some pizzaout of it, right?
So that must mean that they,you know, wanted to do this.
is so vile and so wrong.
But the interesting thing is,I've talked to adult survivors
of these crimes who,particularly men, who I'm sure
very much, still struggle withthe experience.

(32:27):
And I will have men who say tome I knew what I was doing at
the time and I will say you were13 or you were 15.
And they'll say, yeah, but Iknew what I was doing at the
time and you were under the ageof consent.
You might think that youconsented, but you legally were
unable to consent andpsychologically you were unable

(32:49):
to consent.
And we know that, along thelines of their interaction with
law enforcement and otherentities, that they were told
that yes, you agreed to it.
So actually a lot of thesechildren, now adults, are
programmed to believe that.
Well, you were there there andyou kept going.
The same thing we see in sexabuse cases or sexual assault.

(33:10):
Well, you went back.
Yeah, yeah, it's just wrong.
And so again, thank you forsaying that, because if there
are survivors out there that arelistening that experience this
sort of trauma, we want to letyou know that you're not alone.
It was not your fault.
We believe you.
And the age of consent was 16.
And actually not even at thetime I don't think.

(33:31):
Yeah, they did have the age ofconsent at 16.
And NAMBLA was trying to lowerit to 13 and the law would not
allow it because 13 year oldscannot consent, 14 year olds
cannot consent, 15 year oldscannot consent, and even I mean
I think back to my I wasthinking about this the other
day because I was thinking aboutmyself as a 15 year old and boy
did I think I knew everything?
Right?
I mean like I literally thoughtI knew everything.

(33:52):
I was what?
Maybe a freshman in high school, a sophomore in high school,
and I thought like I knew it all.
I knew what it meant.
You know, I knew what all thisstuff sex and, you know,
physical intimacy, whatevermeant, you know, I had no idea.
I had no idea.
And even at 18, I rememberthinking what else is there to

(34:14):
know?
I literally was like I thinkI'm good.

I pretty much Were you the.
What do you want to know?
I'll tell you.
Totally, there was always thatperson around that was like you,
were young and having the sextalk, somebody that professed to
know everything they clearlydidn't.

Well , I mean, I didn't necessarily
in that realm because I hadn'tbeen active earlier in life, but
you know, 16, 17, 18, but I didseek out friends.
I did, that's for sure, andwhen I got the skinny then I
would let other people know,that's for sure.
Friends, that did, that's forsure, and when I got the skinny
then I would let other peopleknow, that's for sure.
But I did I always and I saythis now and it's one of my, you
know, one of my with I say itwith all the humility that I,

(34:59):
for a very long time,unfortunately, thought everyone
was entitled to my opinion.
Yeah, so that took years ofwork to be able to understand
that.
You know what?
I don't know everything andeveryone's not entitled to my
opinion.
But that's why facts are soimportant, right?
That's why having hard factsand data is important.
And so when we're tellingstories like this, to be able to
say, well, here's the data.

(35:19):
And, like you know, in the filmand have you seen, andy, I
never say in that film what Ithink happened.
I never say for people this iswhat I think happened.
I do in the podcast because somuch time has passed at this
point and I feel like I havedecades and decades of research
to say oh, I know Andy was usedfor human trafficking.
I believe he was taken for that.

(35:40):
I believe he was likely beingscouted before he was taken.

And that's what the CB radio red flag comes up
for me.

And the Polaroid.
Yeah, remember the Polaroidthat he gave to his mother, you
know, a couple of weeks beforehe disappeared, and when she
said, where did you get this?
I mean, polaroid film wasexpensive back then, you know,
it was fairly new technology andit was expensive.
And you know, she asked Andywhere he got this picture.
He had given her a Polaroid andhe said, you know, oh, some man
had asked him to take hispicture, you know.

(36:08):
And she said don't ever letanyone take your picture.
And we've come to find outthrough the podcast that there
were actually individuals in theprojects taking Polaroid
pictures of children and sellingthem for child sex abuse
material.

And subsequently that put him.
It may have happened prior tothat, it may have happened after
that, but that put himunfortunately on a radar Yep.

And I believe that people and it's
not just my belief but it's, youknow, scientific evidence that
pedophiles have a type or acertain type sells better.
And you know there's all thismisinformation out there that
they would say Wayne Chapman'stype was blonde hair, blue eyed
children.
And there's all thismisinformation out there that
they would say Wayne Chapman'stype was blonde-haired,
blue-eyed children.
And it's so interesting becauseif you look at his victims,

(36:52):
none of them were blonde-hairedand blue-eyed.
None of them were.
They were dark-haired anddark-eyed and in some of the
cases of some of the childrenthey look so similar.
Some of the cases of thechildren that went, you know, I
see resemblance with MichaelO'Gorman and Andy Puglisi.
Michael O'Gorman disappeared inthe 70s and his body was
subsequently found.
Or even Lee Savoy.

(37:13):
I see similarities in theircoloring, in their brown eyes,
their wavy hair, you know, justsort of things like that.

Lee Savoy is another child that has been
blamed for their owndisappearance.

Not by me.

No, certainly not , savoy is another child that
has been blamed for their owndisappearance.

Not by me?
No, certainly not by me, not byyou.
Lee Savoy was a little boy whowent missing from Revere,
massachusetts, where there werecertainly five known pedophiles
within a quarter mile radius ofwhen Lee went missing.
We know that for sure.
And he was also only 10 yearsold.
He was very independent and hewas shining shoes that day

(37:50):
outside of Suffolk Downs.

It was a very different time.
We were all feral children.

It's true, we would be gone all day
long, Could be gone all day long, and people wouldn't even ask
where you were.
You know, you came home atdinner and that was pretty much
it, and we had no phones.
You know, we didn't tell peoplewe're going.
We had bikes where you could gomiles away from where you
actually were.
So, yeah, it's true, we werejust all out on our own, which
again leads me to believe.
I know the data says that theseventies is the highest number
of missing children of anydecade.

(38:20):
Unsurprising, um, because youknow, there was not a lot of
laws in place, but I also thinkit was because it was the onset
of a booming industry.

They started to realize how lucrative that this
sort of thing could be, so muchso that they wanted to basically
make it an organization.

Yeah , they had to monetize it.
Yeah, they had to monetize it.

So you did all of the decades and decades of
research that you created thedocumentary have you Seen Andy?
Several years passed and youreleased Open Investigation
eight episodes that came out injust this past fall.

It's technically nine, by the way,
Because we have an episode zero.
You know it's actually nineepisodes.

That's right.
I forget the zero thing always.

I know, I know it was a weird
little pilot thing.
Nine episodes.

So that was one plan and, as we know, the
research never ends, and thatleads you to what will be season
two, which is coming very soon.
Let's talk a little bit aboutwhere you're going next.

Yeah .
So first of all, it was thefirst podcast I have done, which
I cannot thank you enough,Anngelle Wood of Crime of the
Truest Kind, for really justputting my feet to the fire and
making me do it.
You know we met.
I didn't realize it was Andy'sbirthday the day that we met.

(39:54):
You said we met for coffee in acoffee shop a year or so before
the podcast actually came out.
I had been working on thepodcast on and off for years.

I've been looking for it for once.

I learned about the documentary
and went to the website and Isaw you talking about how we're
working on a podcast and thiswas I don't know how many years
2017 is when we started workingon the podcast, started the idea
and again, if you listen to thepodcast, something happened
that made me decide, you know,okay, I need to go back in and
you know, and podcast was afairly new genre at that point

(40:29):
and it was less expensive thancreating a full scale
documentary.
So I decided I would try thisroute and but I had no real
experience with it, and so whatI did was I listened to a lot of
podcasts, and I listened topodcasts that I liked and
podcasts that I didn't like, andI really thought about what
made me like what I liked andwhat made me not like what I

(40:50):
didn't like.
I'm very much a storyteller,obviously as a documentary
filmmaker, so I wanted realstories from real people.
I know how much music mattersand how evocative.
You know, being able to tell astory with music matters.
So I was so grateful that wegot Drew O'Doherty to score the
podcast and, you know, gotediting help from Mike Gioscia

(41:11):
and, again, recommendations fromyou, angel, and just, really,
you know I kept saying I was sostuck on the RSS feed.
I'm like what's the RSS feed?
And like the technical piece ofit and it was just like you know
what, just you know, do it andyou know, and you helped me with
some of the technical, and nowjust it's one of those things
where you don't know what youdon't know and then, once it's
done, you're like, oh, thatwasn't so bad, I can do it again

(41:32):
.
And although there were partsof it that were pretty bad I
mean staying up till midnight onsome nights, getting the show
out the next morning becausesomething had gone awry or just
because it was the nature ofdoing what we were doing.
And I also really have to throwmyself into this story in a way
that you know, andy's family,andy's mother and father and

(41:57):
brothers and sisters, have hadto live with their brother
missing at the table you knowmissing at life events for their
entire lives.
You know, every day they aredealing with his disappearance
and they are victims andsurvivors in this case.

Our friend Julie Murray calls it ambiguous loss.

Amen .
It's such ambiguous loss and Ilove when Julie says that
because she articulates it sowell and sometimes just giving
words to something matters,right, like human trafficking,
and you know, and naming itreally matters.
So that ambiguous loss is realand I think for a long time I
didn't identify myself as avictim of Andy's disappearance
because I was so focused on thetruth telling and the getting

(42:46):
the story out and amplifying thevoices so that you know, more
people knew about this injusticethat had happened to this
little boy and all these otherchildren across the country that
I had really forgotten aboutthat nine-year-old girl that was
there that day and I don'tthink I really honored that
experience for her or for me ina way that needed to be honored.

(43:13):
And I, you know, um, I have beensober for 20 years and I
actively attend a 12 stepprogram and I learned a lot
about myself through thatprogram and I also about, you
know, eight years ago maybe, youknow, or so probably coinciding
around the time that I startedthe podcast, or you know, a few

(43:35):
years maybe before I startedactively doing trauma therapy
and so I had had a therapist onand off throughout my life.
I had, you know, a very complexchildhood and a lot of trauma
as a child, but I never had aname for it.
I did not call it trauma.
In fact, when my traumatherapist, who was just a

(43:56):
therapist but had had adoctorate, got a doctorate in
trauma and I didn't know thatwhen I, you know, got this
therapist, it just, you know,the universe collided and I
ended up with this fantastictherapist who had a doctorate in
trauma, unbeknownst to me, butI remember the first time she
called what I had experienced asa child trauma.

(44:17):
I was like, oh, I think you'rebeing a little traumatic, aren't
you Like, really trauma.
I mean I had a tough childhoodbut come on and um, and I didn't
name it and I had dismissedthat and sort of um and not just
Andy's abduction.
A lot of things happened.
I was, I went into foster care,you know a lot of other things.
I lived in a, in a home wherethere was a lot of abuse and
neglect, but I didn't name itbecause I didn't know that it

(44:42):
had a name and the name is andit's complex childhood trauma,
cptsd, complex post-traumaticstress disorder from complex
childhood trauma, which meanssustained trauma over a long
period of time, specificallydevelopmentally, when you're
developing as a child.
So I didn't know any of thatand I learned it all, and by no

(45:05):
means all, because, right, I'llgo back to that.
I don't know it all at.
And I learned it all and by nomeans all, because, right, I'll
go back to that, I don't know itall at this point.
The older I get, the more Irealize, the less I know.
But I learned about traumathrough this trauma therapist
and I read this fantastic bookin the sense that it named it,
and it showed brain scans ofpeople who had been traumatized

(45:26):
as children and what theirbrains look like today and how,
you know, we have a higher levelof cortisol in our bloodstream
and how we don't processinformation the same way,
because, you know, when we'retriggered by that cortisol, our
hippocampus stops.
You know.
I don't know the exact words interms of the brain, so don't
hold me literally here, butbasically, you, you know your
trait.
I could be triggered in asituation and I might not be

(45:48):
able to function where I, youknow, might be trying to call a
phone number or pay a bill orsomething like that, and I'm
triggered and I can't rememberthat basic stuff and I get
frustrated and I'll be like whycan I not remember this number
right now?
Or why cannot I not, you know,whatever stir, you know, get
open this can of soup orsomething very basic right now.
And it's like because I'mtriggered at a higher level and

(46:08):
I'm on a fight.
I'm in a fight, flight or fleeor fawn or whatever mode where
my body is just trying tosurvive and doesn't know that
it's not in danger anymore,because I had, you know, lived
this way for so long as a child.
I also didn't know that when Iwould share these stories of
childhood trauma, when I wouldtell somebody about Andy's story
.
In fact, when I was telling youabout Andy's story and the

(46:29):
history of my relationship withAndy and friendship with Andy in
our childhood, I remember I wasshivering and I going to your
main organs so that it'sthinking a lion's chasing you
and you have to fight.
And so you know yourextremities will get cold and

(46:55):
you might shiver, and peopledidn't know.
You know this biologically, youknow back in the 70s, but since
so much trauma research hashappened since then, they do,
and for me, that data and thatinformation was tremendously
important and I wanted to sharethat information with survivors
as well, because survivors aretrauma survivors and
understanding one's trauma helpsus to learn, a, that we're not

(47:20):
alone and and B, that what'shappening to us physiologically
is not our fault, like it's not.
You know, you can't remembersomething because something's
wrong with your memory.
You can't remember somethingright now because you're
triggered, right, you're in atrauma mode.
And so what do you do whenyou're in that trauma mode?
Well, you ground yourself,right.
You do things where you might,like, you know, feel your feet
on the ground or chew some iceor, you know, just make yourself

(47:43):
sort of be present in themoment, which is why mindfulness
is so important, right?
So I learned all about traumathrough, you know, trauma
therapy, years of trauma therapyand this book the Body Keeps
the Score, and then also JudyHerman's book, who's featured in
our podcast, open Investigation.
Judy Herman wrote a book calledTruth and Repair and Judy is
considered the mother of traumaresearch, which essentially

(48:04):
happened in the 90s.
And Judy is considered themother of trauma research which
essentially happened in the 90s,where you know they really
identified that trauma is notjust for war veterans, that it
exists in, you know, witheverybody, and what that looks
like again in brain slices,right brain scans, how that
affects us physiologically, allof those things.
And so she wrote a bookrecently, in her 80s, actually

(48:25):
called Truth and Repair, a bookrecently in her 80s, actually
called Truth and Repair.
And I remember reading chapterfive of that book and I was so
blown away because it was likereading about my life and you
know the reason again, traumasurvivors might be overachievers
or just all of these otherthings that I didn't know but
also the way in whichtruth-telling and advocacy helps
repair trauma and I was like,oh my God, like my whole life
I've been doing this.

(48:45):
Truth-telling and advocacyhelps repair trauma and I was
like, oh my God, like my wholelife I've been doing this truth
telling and advocacy and notknowing that that was me healing
myself and not realizing thatthat's what I was doing.
And so you know, kudos to thatnine-year-old little girl who
knew a hell of a lot more thanyou know the adult Melanie, I
think, when you know I wasstanding outside that tree that

(49:06):
day knew that what happened toAndy was such an injustice and
that when I grew up I was goingto try to find him.
You know, and um, that littlegirl went through a lot and, you
know, continues to go through alot by telling this truth and
telling these stories.
But now I know that it's, youknow, helps with the healing.
It helps with empowerment.
Empowering other families isincredibly meaningful to me and

(49:30):
empowering other victims isincredibly meaningful to me.
And you know one of the you knowthe podcast got downloaded, you
know, 80,000 times, I mean foryour first podcast.
I thought that was prettyfucking amazing.
I was like, really, I was sohappy and part of the reason
that I was you know that thathappened too was because you
know another podcast or anotherwoman featured the story.
You know she had done a storyon Andy years ago and then she

(49:52):
featured the podcast rightbefore it came out and it was
women helping women, which Ilove in this business and this
industry, and it's so important,like you and Jal helping me and
you know doing this story aswell, and you know it's so
meaningful and it's funnybecause when I listened to your
podcast about Andy's story thefirst time and you're like, oh,

(50:20):
I reached out to Melanie but Ididn't hear back.
You know, oh, you know thatthat happens, or whatever, and I
was like, wow, you know, thankyou for telling the story.

And there are things that I left out because I
couldn't quite.
I didn't quite, you know,talking to you, I know that that
was another piece of it that Icould very well have included,
but I didn't quite there's.
There are things about theGeorgetown case, yeah, that I
removed.

Yeah .

Because it didn't quite all line up for me.

Yeah , yeah, a lot of people don't
even know the associationbecause it was never mentioned.
You know, when it came out inthe news about you know the
Georgetown witness and victim Xor whatever, that it was no
indication that the way that youknow he had come to police was
you know, sort of shortly afterwatching the you know
documentary.

And I'm not being secretive about that.
You talk about.
That I do In the podcast.

I do , I do and so, but to that end
is I guess what I was saying isthat you know women helping
women, but you know thedownloads are so important to
let people know that it doesmatter and people are listening.
So thank you, you know you, tofolks out there who downloaded
the show, who are following theshow, who are subscribed to the
look at season two, listen toseason two.

(51:31):
We so appreciate you doing itand we know it's a hard listen
but it's an important listen.
And so there's been hundreds ofreviews as well and the podcast
has gotten hundreds of fivestar reviews.
And when I was making thepodcast and I was really in the
middle of the trauma, right,like to do this you have to,

(51:51):
especially if you're a victim,right, like it's one thing if
you're a person telling thestory from the outside and you
didn't really live it, like Ican tell the other children's
stories, you know, other thanAndy, with a little bit of a
distance, of a perspective,right, because I wasn't involved
in that particular story theway that I had been with Andy's.

(52:12):
But with Andy's, you know I am avictim of his disappearance and
it has affected me for my lifeand it will affect me for my
life and I know that now andthat's okay, like, like, it's
okay in the sense that I canacknowledge that and, um, I
don't need somebody else to tellme that I know why I do what I
do, um and um, why it'simportant to me and why I'll

(52:35):
continue to do what I do.
And so season two you know,part of what I found with Andy's
story is that there's a wholeother character in the story,
right, one of the people when Iwas making the documentaries,
one of my mentors, said oh, youknow, the pool needs to be a
character in the story and I waslike right, like the pool, is a

(52:57):
character in the story in thedocumentary and Lawrence is a
character in the story andLawrence is a big character and
people.
It's very hard to understandLawrence and the community and
the culture not havingexperienced it.
However, there are Lawrence,massachusetts, city-like places
all over the country.

(53:17):
It's an urban mill city,extreme poverty, lots of
immigrants, lots of corruption.

For a period of time it was really up and coming
for all of the textileproduction that was coming out
of.
Lawrence, and things shifted asthey did when we hit the Great
Depression, etc.

Yeah , when the mills closed it
turned things around a lot forit and I didn't know why there
was so much Irish in Lawrenceand I was surprised to find out
that when they couldn't findwork here they would walk the 30
miles to the textile mills.
You know, and there's a lot ofgreat Lawrence History Center's
great and the Bread and Roses,you know.
I mean there's a lot offantastic history in Lawrence.
So I don't want anybody outthere to be like Lawrence

(53:58):
bashing.
I do have a sign literally inmy office that says you can take
the girl out of Lawrence butyou can't take the Lawrence out
of the girl.
And it's true, you know we cantalk about our city, but anybody
else talk about our city andyou know we'll, we'll.
Those are fighting words, youknow.

Well, we're mass holes, so we'll you know I.

I.

I wear it as a badge of honor.
I wear my mass wholeness as abadge of honor.
It's like we're kind of in onthe joke and sorry people from
elsewhere, it's like we'll letyou in on it eventually maybe
Right Right, and I'm proud to befrom Lawrence.

You know I, you know the systems
weren't good to me as a kid, andit was.
I tell people it was part.
You know.
I hope if you've seen the filmsyou'll know, but I say it was
part stand by me, part Lord ofthe Flies, right.
So Stand by Me is a story ofthese kids, that sort of stick

(54:52):
together through this trauma,and Lord of the Flies are these
kids who kill each other throughthis trauma.
And so it was those extremes,literally it was a tough place
and it was a tough place forkids from the projects and it
was a tough place for kids thatdidn't have an adult who could
stand up for them.
There were a lot of us.
There were a lot of us and I100% believe that there are
hundreds of victims thatexperienced trauma, child sex

(55:16):
trafficking in Lawrence in the1970s, in the Merrimack Valley
in the 1970s, and the MerrimackValley includes, you know,
haverhill, lawrence, lowell,methuen, I think, but it wasn't
technically on the Wikipedia,which I was like what, like how
could that be?
But of course, methuen, methuenis like almost Lawrence really,
and you know some of theSouthern New Hampshire cities as

(55:39):
well they say is MerrimackValley.
But essentially I felt likeAndy and kids like Andy were
targeted.
We were targeted by people whowere of higher means, who had
more than we did, and exploitedus for their benefit.
Exploited us for their benefitbecause they knew they could,

(56:06):
because they knew they had powerand we as children, and more so
as marginalized,underrepresented children, did
not have power.
And I want to reclaim some ofthat power and I am hoping that
in season two, and I am hopingthat in season two we will be

(56:44):
able to share andack Valley atthe time in the 1970s, who were
credibly accused of abusingchildren.
So I wanted to show systemicabuse and I think that I showed
that in season one in OpenInvestigation.
But this is sort of just adeeper dive into some of the
systemic abuse of children inthe Merrimack Valley through the
clergy abuse stories and whatwas happening.
And it's interesting because Ithink I've talked to some people

(57:08):
about this and they think thatthey know this story and they
don't know this story.
They know what they've read innewspapers perhaps, and they
know what they've seen on theAcademy Award-winning Spotlight
film and in the PulitzerPrize-winning Boston Globe
Spotlight series.

I do have to take a moment to say this, though
Kristen Lombardi in the BostonPhoenix reported on that before
Amen, amen.

Melanie Perkins McLaugh (57:31):
Kristen Lombardi in the Boston Phoenix
uncovered that story, and howmany people know Kristen
Lombardi's name right?

I've tried to reach out to Kristen Lombardi.
Me too I understand why sheprobably wouldn't want to talk
about it with me.

I've tried to reach out to her as
well.
And so, kristen, if you're outthere and you're listening, we'd
love to elevate you and tellyour story, because we think
you're amazing and, havinggotten the story out there, and
really making a difference inthousands, if not hundreds of
thousands of children's lives.
So thank you for that.

Because the Boston Globe had so many more
resources, they were able toattack it in a different way.

Melanie Perkins McLaughl (58:07):
That's right.
That's right.
That's a huge part of why, youknow, it takes so long sometimes
to make podcasts or to do thethings that it's been.
You know decades of me doingthis work because I'm not an
organization or an entity thathas a lot of resources, but I
keep on doing it because it'simportant.
Getting back to the way thatpeople think that they know this
story, I think that they knowthat you know there was clergy

(58:30):
abuse and know that.
I don't know that theyunderstand the systemic nature
of it.
I also don't know that theyunderstand what actually
happened to children.
And when I think you knowpeople, like maybe listening and
thinking, well, why do I wantto hear that which people have
said about open investigation aswell?
Like, well, why would I want tohear you know these stories?
And I think that if you readthe reviews, you'll see why you

(58:50):
want to hear the stories have tolisten because it's real life.

I mean, people watch the keepers and that was
really, really uncomfortable, inaddition to so many other
things, for those people whohaven't aren't aware of the
keepers.
It's a case of a murdered nunin Baltimore in the you know 60s
, late 60s.

Yeah , baltimore, maryland, late 60s.
She was Catholic school, keoughschool, because children were

(59:39):
being abused in the school andit's's believed she knew
something, and have all been inBear Brook and they've all been
inspiration to me to tell thetruth about.
You know what happened and asmuch of the truth as I can find
in terms of people willing totell the stories.
And, you know, come forward Ifthere are people listening that
have experienced abuse in theMerrimack Valley.
I do want to hear from you thathave experienced abuse in the

(01:00:02):
Merrimack Valley, I do want tohear from you.
I do think it's important, andeven if you're not ready to
share your story on the record,it's important just to
understand the scope and scaleof what was going on at the time
and also to understand any ofthe organized nature of it.
So I appreciate anybody willingto reach out.
Openinvestigationpod atgmailcom.
I'm sure you know Angel willput this in the notes and stuff

(01:00:22):
as well.
But so what I really want tofocus on is the survivors.
But I'm going to be profilingthe priest and so I want to
characterize these priests,because too often I think people
see them as oh, it was onepriest, it was just this bad one
, bad apple priest, you know,and what have you?
And it's like I actually want toget into who were these priests
, what were they doing, whatwere they about and why did they

(01:00:45):
do?
You know what they did, and notthat there's any excuse for any
of the things that they did, butthere's generational trauma as
well and there's a lot of youknow, I know with Ronald Paquin.
You know he talked about havingbeen abused by a priest when he
was a child, and so how wasthat perpetrated?
And also sort of looking at thegrooming process and the hidden

(01:01:05):
nature of this story and theways that boys in particular
because Lawrence is such astrong city in terms of
resilience and being tough,right, we always consider
ourselves tough as kids, and soboys in particular had to be
tougher than girls, and so thattoughness made them much more

(01:01:26):
unlikely to tell what washappening to them sexually as
kids.
And I think that there ishundreds, if not thousands, of
survivors out there who haven'theard this story, who haven't
told their stories because theythink that they're the only one,
and I don't want them to thinkthat they're the only one
anymore.

Anngelle Wood (01:01:44):
And the shame of it?
Right, the shame of it needs tobe placed on the people who did
this.

Melanie Perkins McLaughl (01:01:49):
That's right.
That's right and I love that.
You know, I love the way thatGiselle Giselle Pellicot, who is
the hero in France, who cameforward and wanted to publicize
her story because she said theresponsibility needs to be
placed on the abusers, not thevictim, and she was so brave and
really I think should have beenthe time person of the year and

(01:02:10):
I just admire the woman so much.
And if you know, giselle Pelico, who has been through so much,
was willing to come forward andgo public nationally and
internationally.
What a brave soul.
And the people that were on mypodcast, open Investigation,
were incredibly brave souls forsharing what they did and I
think if you talk to any of themtoday they would say that it

(01:02:32):
helped them and it continues tohelp them.
In fact, they're active inadvocacy and legislative
advocacy.
I think that we also try to bevery trauma-informed when we're
doing interviews.
I do pre-interviews before I doany interviews, but I also make
sure that there's supportsystems in place for the person,

(01:02:53):
that they have other peoplethat they can talk to, that we
stop if they want to stop, thatwe don't use information, that
if they don't want it to be used, that they have power over
their story, that they haveagency over their story.
But, most importantly, I want tomake sure that people in the
Merrimack Valley, that survivorsin the Merrimack Valley and I
know you're out there know thatwe believe you, that you're not

(01:03:15):
alone, that it's not your faultand that you can make a
difference.
If you're not ready to shareyour story, that's okay too.
You don't have to.
When you're ready, there arepeople who are ready to listen
and there are people who areready to help you.
If you are ready and you wantto share, we're here.
If you're not sure, if you'reready and you want to share,
we're here.
But really, it's about namingtrauma and calling it out and

(01:03:39):
telling truth and speaking truthto power and hoping that by
speaking that truth it changessystems down and, as you said it

(01:04:00):
, the body does tell the score,doesn't it?

Because it's going to come out one way or the
other.
Yeah, folks that have, you know, addiction issues and and just
traumatic responses to things intheir own lives, who haven't
been able to deal with thesethings for all of these reasons
and more, who wants they, havean opportunity to try to just
even talk about that.
There's a relief that comes.

Melanie Perkins McLaughli (01:04:25):
Right , and I love what Billy Giblin
says, you know, in our finalepisode, when we're talking
about advocacy as well, though,and he talks about how it's so
important to have a supportsystem in place before you start
to tell your story, because ifyou don't, it can be even more
detrimental, right, because allof these things can, especially
if you don't have substance likethere's a lot of substance
abuse in these situations,because people think it quiets

(01:04:46):
the sort of memories, it quietsthe whatever, but eventually it
doesn't right.
Eventually they come up anyway,and you know, like I said, I'm
in a 12-step program, and inthat program there's a saying
we're only as sick as oursecrets, and you know being able
to, I think, no-transcript whatcan be done today, because

(01:05:30):
there's still a lot thathappened that people weren't
held accountable for.
You know, like in Louisianathey're trying.
There's a lot.
You know there was a Louisianawas one of the oldest um
archdiocese in the country.
Long history of abuse, notunlike boston um, a lot of
clergy abuse across the country.
This is not unique tomassachusetts, right.
This is not unique to theunited states.

(01:05:51):
This is around the world andsort of what still needs to be
changed, like you know again thestatute of limitations right
and opening a window.
Even if they don't eliminatethe statute, you can open a
window where people they didthat in New York where people
could come forward for a yearand be able to make a claim and
unfortunately, what a lot of umorganizations are doing now is
they're claiming bankruptcy toavoid, you know um, to avoid

(01:06:14):
responsibility and for acriminal um uh case, I think
it's only no-transcript theseare problems that are going away

(01:06:55):
, but they're really not becausewe see it in school systems.

It's not just the Catholic Church, I mean we.
Because we see it in schoolsystems, it's not just the
Catholic church, I mean we knowwe see it in religious
organizations.
We sure as hell see it in cults.

Melanie Perkins McLaugh (01:07:06):
Schools , boy Scouts, anywhere there are
children, you know.
So that's why there's childabuse prevention at a larger, at
a larger level that needs to beaddressed.
And yeah, I mean, I'll never bewanting for work, you know,
working in this field.
I know that I'm not going tocure, you know, child sex abuse,
but I think I can help somepeople along the way and I know
that I'm, you know, certainlyhelping myself with being able

(01:07:27):
to share these stories andaffect change.
And you know, in the reviews,one of the reviews that you know
stays with me often is this onewhere a person wrote in and
said I knew what had happened tome as a child.
I didn't have a name for it, Ididn't know what it was called.
And now I know it was CSA, theacronym for child sex abuse, and

(01:07:52):
I'm going to begin to dosomething about it.
And I thought, yeah, that's it,name it, call it out, name it,
tell it what it is and then dosomething about it.
And that's really why I'm doingthis For the season two.
It's about Merrimack Valley,it's about the kids.
It's about as kids we were toldwe were to be seen and not
heard, and I'm not having thatanymore.

(01:08:15):
We're gonna be heard.

You're supposed to put up with it.
You're just supposed to justlet it happen and just go about
your day.

Right and forget about it.
You're grown up, now it doesn'tmatter.
But really, then, how come Ihave a hard time getting up for
work, or how come I can't stopdrinking, or how come I can't
stop doing drugs, or how come Ican't have an intimate
relationship?

Or how come I can't I'm filled with anxiety.

Right , I'm filled with anxiety.
How come I sweat every time Iwalk by a church?
You know what I mean?

It's all of those things it's like okay, I drive
by, there's this one particularchurch that I've driven by a
number of times and it's boardedup.
And I've seen conversations intown about this one particular
church that's boarded up and yousee the same conversations.
You see the oh, what a shame.
And then you see people bringup the comment.
You know lots of these comments.
Well, if they weren't expletiveexpletive you know CSA with

(01:09:05):
children then this wouldn't havehappened.
And then you see the people say, oh, you shouldn't be so
disrespectful to the Catholicchurch.
I drive by that church and Isay and I stand by this if you
weren't doing these things, ifyou weren't abusing children and
sweeping it under the rug andreassigning and sending these

(01:09:27):
priests to this secret camp orputting them on the island for a
little while to get fixed quote, unquote, fixed which they
never got fixed you wouldn't bebankrupt and losing churches.
People wouldn't be running fromchurches.
I mean they're losing members,membership is dwindling.

Melanie Perkins McLaughlin (01:09:48):
But I mean at the same time, it's
still a multi-billion dollarorganization and again, I'm not
out for the Catholic Church,believe me.
That's not what I'm interestedin.
I'm really interested inexposing the way that
underrepresented, marginalizedchildren are abused by systems.
Help prevent this fromhappening to future generations.
It's like if people reallydon't want this to happen

(01:10:28):
anymore.
We know that it's one in fourgirls and one in eight, they say
, boys, although I think it'shigher.
Boys tend to report less awhole bunch of other things.
But you know, if you lookaround a room and you're in a
room and you're with more thanfive women, one of them has been
sexually abused as a child.
I mean, it is such an epidemicin our society that nobody talks

(01:10:49):
about and I get it.
Who wants to talk about it?
I don't want to talk about it.
But guess what?
If you don't talk about it, youdon't get better.

Right.
And what angers me a lot aboutthis is these priests knew that
they would get away with itbecause they were allowed to the
archdiocese of Worcester, ofBoston, et cetera, across the
country, across the world.

they have shown us that they're
going to let them get away withit because they have Well, one
of the things that reallyinterests me about the story as
well is that you know, inMassachusetts, you know, unlike
other places like Philadelphia,we have not had a grand jury
report on all of the diocese inMassachusetts.
So we had Boston in 2003 by theAttorney General, tom Riley,

(01:11:37):
when the Boston Globe story cameout, excuse me or shortly after
.
You know, they reported on theBoston Archdiocese, but again,
that was 20 plus years ago.
We've learned a lot more aboutthe Boston Archdiocese since
then.
In addition, the other dioceseFall River, worcester and
Springfield have not had a grandjury report done on them and no
investigation into what wasgoing on.
They're not responsible forreporting all of the credibly.

(01:11:58):
Worcester and Springfield havenot had a grand jury report done
on them and no investigationinto what was going on.
They're not responsible forreporting all of the credibly
abused accused priests or all ofthe children and who came
forward with allegations ofabuse.
So there's so much more.
That is not like if you askMitch Garabedian, who was, you
know, played by Stanley Tucci inthe movie spotlight the
attorney who represent a lot ofthese victims.

(01:12:19):
You know, I asked him once andI have a soundbite from him
where I say do you think thatthe whole story has been told?
And he said we're not even atthe first layer of the onion.
Like this is so much more tothe story.
And again, like you said, it'sa lot of organizations.
So for me it's also, like youknow, dss at the time Department
of Social Services and DCF.
You know today, you know howmany of these foster kids were

(01:12:41):
part of this abuse.

You touched on that but it's huge.

That's a whole other season, I mean
literally, it's a whole seasonthat I hope to do at some point
in terms of the foster care andwhat continues to happen in
foster care.
And you know that's a system ofabuse and neglect that all too
often we, you know, is coveredup for so many reasons because
the kids don't have socialcapital, because you know
they're so hurt and damaged bythe time they become adults that

(01:13:06):
they're not allowed to do a lotof things about it Because
secrecy right.
If you try to get anything fromDCF or DSS, it's private,
everything's private.
We can't.
You know there's secrecy.
No, these records can't beshared because of you know these
are juvenile personal records.
It's like, well, you know howmuch abuse has not been shared
as a result of that.
I mean there's a lot.
There's a lot not just inMassachusetts, it's around the

(01:13:26):
country as well, and so that'sjust one part of the story.
But you know it's these systemsof abuse and you know, yeah,
law enforcement, that were.
You know you look at the SandraBirchmore case.
You know, I mean there arepeople and it's so heartbreaking
, it's so heartbreaking.
I look at that little girl and Ican't tell you how often I look

(01:13:47):
at that woman really.
You know when she was 23 andshe still looks like a little
girl to me and I just identifywith her so much.
I was that freckle face, littlelight skinned, you know girl
that looked way younger than Iwas even you know when I was a
teenager and and that so easilycould have been me.

You know she was so energetic and interested in
the program that she wasinvolved in and.
Stoughton, and as her abusecontinued and continued, and
continued, because we need toremember she was a child, yeah,
who was groomed by an adult.

She was yes, when they call it a
sexual relationship they did not, they were not dating she had
it by the time.

She was 23 when she died, and let's call it what
it is.
She was murdered and they triedto cover it up.
There was an arresteddevelopment that happened with a
woman 100%.
Because she didn't have anopportunity to have quote
unquote regular adolescence.

Melanie Perkins McLaugh (01:14:45):
Because of the abuses?
No, and she had been groomed forso long and she had lost all
these people that loved her andshe just wanted to be part of
and I mean a million differentthings.
But Laura Cromaldi of the BostonGlobe did an excellent job, I
think, covering this case and Ihope continues to cover this
case, and one of the things thatshe wrote in her series that
was in the Boston Globe magazinethat just tore my heart out and

(01:15:09):
it really hit home for me wasthat Sandra Birchmore was so
excited to be the mother thatshe didn't have and I identified
with that so much because whenI became a mother, that was all
I wanted.
It was all I ever wanted was tobe the mother I didn't have and
I had the opportunity to do that.
Thank God I had the opportunityto do that and I know how that

(01:15:32):
felt for her and how much shewanted that and that just broke
my heart.
And so Sandra Birchmore is oneof you know a thousand stories,
if not more, and and she's nothere to speak for herself
anymore and people have to speakfor her and for children like
her and to reveal these systemicabuses, and I think that you

(01:15:54):
know it's too easy for people tobe like oh, that was one bad
cop.
No, it was three bad cops andmaybe more.
And why is that not beinglooked at?

And she can't be the only student of that program
at Stoughton Police Departmentthat this was happening, amen.

And I think Kirk Minahan did a great
piece on one of his episodes onthe Sandra Birchmore podcast
where he talked about the policeexplorer program around the
country and how kids from thatprogram have been abused
regularly.
And because it is anothersystem of abuse where they have
access to kids, that isunquestioned right.

It's another organization that is so
completely supported by thepublic.
That's right.
It's hugely funded Right.

Law enforcement is hugely funded in
every town, every county,everywhere across the US by
somebody in authority a teacher,a Catholic priest, a Boy Scout

(01:17:01):
leader, a cop.
You know any of those thingsand you come from a
dysfunctional family background.
You're already experiencingpotentially neglect, abuse,
poverty, any number of thingsthat are social determinants of
health right, that sort ofchange outcomes for people, and
you know that person inauthority says to you who's

(01:17:24):
going to believe you.
That's right and it's you knowin your heart of hearts that
that is so true.
Who is going to believe me?
Who do I have to go to thatwould actually believe me.
And most victims that I know,that I've spoken with, told
people and they didn't believethem, or they told them to be
quiet because it was, you know,they didn't want, you know, the
attention or they didn't wantany number of things.

(01:17:46):
But it's like you know, it'sjust terrible.

And that's really what happened to her, right
down to the very ends, when thatofficer allegedly came in,
murdered her, tried to make itlook like she took her own life
and thought the same very thing.
Who's going to believe that Idid this?
I'm going to look like a crazybitch.

(01:18:10):
Quote unquote crazy bitchbecause I had a long
conversation with folks that arepart of the Sandra Bunchmore
movement.
Right, those are the thingsthat we said that they, that
these men, they did.

They wave the hands like well, not
only that, because they hadsystems, they had other systems
supporting them.
So you have the medicalexaminer's office supporting you
, you have the districtattorney's office supporting you
, you have all these otherpeople that aren't even
questioning your word.

We're saying this .
You have to look at this again.
It was the family that did this.

It was the family that advocated
and this is again another greatexample of advocacy, you know,
and the family did, you know,advocate for Sandra and for
justice for Sandra and to get anexpert that they had to hire
themselves to bring in, to getpeople to take another look at
this and to get publicity, andso that's some of the things
that we talk about when we'retalking about advocacy training

(01:19:00):
with MPAC.
It's like we can talk aboutways to get publicity and ways
to, you know, do appeal to yourlegislators and share your story
and, you know, get experts ifneeded and so many things that
are an approach that people cando to these, for these cases and
for people who don't havevoices.
So we're here and we're happyto help.

And you know all this information that we've
talked about will be availableand, you know, when you're ready
to roll out the next episode,we'll definitely be able to, you
know, spread that informationand let people know that it's
coming.

Thank you, and also Angel.
What we're going to do is wewant to go out and do some
events that we can talk withpeople.

Well, it's great that you bring that up, because
I was going to say we reallywant to have an in-person event
to talk about this and whathappens in Lawrence and what
happens, you know, and what weknow about the Merrimack Valley.
We want to have an in-personthing and I really, I really
want folks from Lawrence to comeand be part of this
conversation.

From the Merrimack Valley for sure,
and you know there are otherpeople from Essex County and the
Merrimack Valley that are partof that 27 unsolved cases that
I've talked about, a number ofother people, and so there are a
number of cases that we cantalk about as well.
You know, regarding some of youknow the unsolved situations
and ones that you know,regarding some of you know the
unsolved situations and onesthat you know I think
potentially could be related toAndy's and why.

(01:20:24):
So we'd love to have anin-person event, and that's
something that we are in theworks on planning.
So definitely follow us on oursocials and also on our websites
or what have you and you know,so you can be kept up to date on
the information, so that we cansee you at these events,
because we want to see you andwe want to move the issues
forward and you know, 2025 isgoing to be be a big year for a

(01:20:47):
couple of things.

it's going to be a big year because open
investigation season two iscoming out.
That's going to have massiveimpacts on the region, for sure,
and we're working on uh, you'vetalked about MPAC a number of
times, which I continue to talkabout too.
It's Massachusetts Missing andMurdered Persons Advocacy
Coalition.
It's Melanie, it's me, it's DrAnne-Marie Myers.

(01:21:10):
We have had great folksinvolved, like Shana from Light
the Way, which is a greatadvocacy missing persons
organization.
You know we have had input,consultation, maybe from Julie
Murray, sister of Maura Murray,who's been missing for almost 21
years, so we have people thatreally know about these things.

Right , and we host an annual event
and we'll be hosting more andyou know we'd love for people to
find out more because, again,it's about empowering families
to be able to make the systemicchange and being able to feature
your stories to be able to makethe change.
You know there's lots of folksout there whose cases have not
been heard and we think arereally important in terms of
being able to bring them forwardand and and we care and in the

(01:21:55):
open investigation piece.
It's, like you know, for seasontwo and you know I'm sure
there'll be seasons after thatand we'll see what those are as
we're moving forward.
But you know we'd love tointroduce you guys as well to Dr
Ann Marie Myers.
If you don't know Dr Ann MarieMyers, you can Google her.
But she is phenomenal.
She's a forensic anthropologistwith the medical examiner's
office for quite some time, isnow a professor at Anna Maria

(01:22:17):
College but had beeninstrumental in recovering a
number of missing children,including Molly Bish and Sarah
Pryor, holly Peranian she workedon the Lady of the Dunes case
in the early years.
She was the expert witness whorecovered, physically dug out of
the ground, the bodies of theinfamous crime boss Whitey

(01:22:38):
Bulger.
She recovered Whitey Bulger'svictims and was delivered
fascinating expert testimony inhis trial when he was found
guilty.
And I've known Dr Myers.
If you watch the documentary wemet you'll see.
The first day we met is on thisdig.
Dr Myers and I have known eachother since 1999 and became
friends while searching aclandestine grave.

(01:23:01):
What we were told was aclandestine grave, or believed
was a clandestine grave whereAndy might have been buried.
And we became friends, you know, through that experience and
have had many, many experiencessince then.
And Dr Meyer's commitment tomissing persons and to the cause
has been just incredible and somuch of the work she does is

(01:23:22):
just above and beyond what I'veseen, you know so many people do
, and she is just amazing.
And I think that at some pointwe'll have her as a guest as
well.
And, angela, it would be greatto have you be part of that.
And you know we can all talktogether and maybe just have a
conversation, that, even if it'sa live, maybe we'll do a
YouTube live.
That's.
The other thing is we'restarting a YouTube channel.

So when.

Angela and I get off the off the
recording here.
We're going to be updating myYouTube to have a YouTube
channel going, so I'lldefinitely be hosting guests on
the YouTube channel and we'll betalking more about these
stories.
And again, what makes it uniquein terms of the podcast and the
YouTube and all of those thingsis that I'm an experienced

(01:24:06):
investigative journalist,documentary filmmaker with lived
experience as well.
That is, telling these storiesin a fact-based way, in a
documentary style, to showpeople the truth and to elevate
the voices of theunderrepresented kids and
survivors.

Thank you, melanie Perkins McLaughlin.
Her podcast Open Investigationnine-part series available now
everywhere you listen.
Open Investigation Season 2 iscoming.
Massachusetts Missing andMurdered Persons Advocacy
Coalition, mpac onlinemassmissingandmurderorg you can
follow it online.

(01:24:47):
We are ramping up events comingsoon and going to AdvocacyCon
that happens the end of March inIndianapolis, and True Crime
Podcast Festival, which happensin July in Danvers, is coming to
Massachusetts this year.
That's cool.
Thank you for listening.
Sunday, february 9th, the vigilfor Maura Murray will be

(01:25:11):
happening in Woodsville, newHampshire.
I do plan to attend.
21 years she has been missing.
Please support Crime of theTruest Kind and follow at Crime
of the Truest Kind everywhere.
Everything about the showCrimeofthetruestkindcom.
Next live show Thursday,february 20th, free show

(01:25:32):
Stoneham Public Library,stoneham Massachusetts, 6.30
show.
It's early and I have anotherdate confirmed that I will tell
you about next show.
It's early and I have anotherdate confirmed that I will tell
you about next show.
I continue every other weekreleasing on Fridays because
that is what my work schedule isgoing to allow.
If I have a part two of anepisode, I try to get it out the

(01:25:54):
following week and please dosend me your show ideas.
All of you are really great atdoing that.
Crimeofthetruestkind atgmailcom.
Melanie's showopeninvestigationpodcastcom.
Haveyouseenandycom If you havenot watched the documentary.

(01:26:14):
Have you Seen, andy, aboutmissing 10-year-old boy, andy
Puglisi, who disappeared fromLawrence, massachusetts?
Please watch it.
All right, I gotta go now.
Lock your goddamn doors.
We'll be right back.

(01:27:33):
We'll see you next time.

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EP 78 | Andy Puglisi & The Failed Children of Massachusetts, with Melanie Perkins McLaughlin (part two)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}EP 78 | Andy Puglisi & The Failed Children of Massachusetts, with Melanie Perkins McLaughlin (part two)