lan Roy and his friend Tony have come to South Lawrence to tell Melanie about an incident they haven't revealed to anyone in more than 20 years - not police, not even their friends.
Melanie Perkins, center, surveys an area in Lawrence where Alan Roy, right, and his friend Tony say they saw a grave-like hole about a year after Andy Puglisi disappeared. (Globe Staff Photo / Suzanne Kreiter) |
The meeting place this October day, 1998, looks unremarkable: a parking lot and playing fields at South Lawrence East School. But 22 years ago, this was an abandoned municipal dump with mounds of sand and refuse fringed by a thicket of woods, a short distance downhill from the pool where 10-year-old Andy Puglisi was last seen. The Stadium Housing Project, where Melanie and Andy grew up, sits just across the street.
Melanie, 32, is a Boston-area filmmaker trying to find out what happened to Andy and filming the saga for her first independent documentary. Alan, 32, is a tool and die worker from Haverhill. Tony, 33, who asks that his last name not be used, lives in Lawrence, where he owns a cleaning business. The two men grew up in Andy's neighborhood and played in these woods. When they heard about Melanie's project, Alan wrote to her post office box:
Sometime after Andy's disappearance, maybe a year or 2, a friend and I were walking through [the woods] and came upon a hole that wasn't there the day or so before, about 4' deep and long enough for a child...
It's a clear, brisk autumn day and leaves of sumac, oak, and maple crackle underfoot as the three head into the woods.
"The weird thing is the way this hole was dug," explains Tony as they walk. "It was perfectly rectangular, with a flat bottom and flat, even walls. It was like something had been removed from it -- like a chest, or a crate, or maybe a coffin."
"I jumped down inside and it was long enough to lie in," says Alan, who was about 10 years old at the time. "It was creepy."
The boys knew that some locals believed Andy had been killed and buried in these woods. Then they saw a bent chrome bicycle rim in a nearby tree. It was squashed on one side, as if it were pointing toward the hole, like an arrow.
"Al said, 'This isn't fun anymore.' And we hightailed out of there," says Tony, who was then 11. "We ran out of the woods and when we hit the pavement we kept on running. I ran all the way home. There was something there that really scared us."
"Two days later, we went back and the hole was completely gone. Somebody had filled it in," Alan says.
"We never, ever brought it up again until we heard about your film," Tony tells Melanie.
Alan adds, "I've seen fire pits, forts, holes, caves, ropes hanging from trees, all kinds of things in these woods. But I never saw anything like that."
The three arrive at a ridge of land flanked by some scraggly bushes and several tall oaks, near a bend in the river. This, as best the two men can remember, is where they saw the hole.
Melanie has learned that police after a few weeks pretty much eliminated the possibility that Andy had run away or gotten lost. They concluded that he probably was abducted -- either by a family member, as a pawn in some domestic conflict, or by someone who wanted to molest him -- and that afterward he was killed, intentionally or accidentally.
Melanie says that about a year after Andy vanished, there were rumors that police intended to dig in this area for Andy's remains. Could someone have buried Andy here, heard about the impending search, and exhumed the body so it wouldn't be discovered, she wonders?
Or perhaps the hole was dug to receive a coffin, and Andy is lying under her feet.
Melanie Perkins, center, walks near the shallow grave with Alan Roy, right, and Tony. (Globe Staff Photo / Suzanne Kreiter) |
As the days pass, Melanie sifts through many other tips sent to her PO box, some ludicrous, others alarmingly plausible.
On the day Andy disappeared, says one writer, he saw the boy and a teenage girl get into a black van driven by someone they apparently knew. Melanie is unable to locate this girl or corroborate other aspects of the story -- although other letters mention an odd black van seen in the neighborhood that day.
The same writer also refers Melanie to another woman who says her younger brother believes he saw two men stabbing Andy behind the pool. Police tell Melanie they hypnotized the boy several years after Andy's disappearance to assess his story, but concluded that, though sincere, he was mistaken.
Two other writers urge Melanie to look into the life of one of her neighbors in the Stadium Housing Project where she and Andy were raised: Gary Thibedeau.
The housing project, originally built for World War II veterans, is a large collection of wood-framed apartment buildings in dull shades of yellow, green, and brown. Melanie and Andy lived near the northeast corner of the complex. Thibedeau's apartment building was nearby. It was one of the units closest to the pool where Andy disappeared.
Melanie learns that Thibedeau was born in Acushnet in 1956 and was raised from infancy by an adoptive mother, Teresa Martin. His birth mother handed him to Martin through a car window, according to a neighbor who knew him well. He was Martin's only son, and she was doting, demanding, and protective.
A high school dropout, Gary Thibedeau worked sporadically as a housepainter. He spent a lot of time in the woods, where a friend had a small shack and Gary tried for a time to grow marijuana. Today, he has an extensive arrest record and is well known to police for drug and alcohol abuse.
When police confirm that he is still a suspect in the case, Melanie decides to visit him in December in his current home, a ground-floor apartment in a three-story building in Lawrence, about two miles from the housing projects. Police, who also visited him recently on another matter, described the apartment as "clean, but cluttered, with clothes strewn everywhere."
After many knocks, Gary answers the door: a tall man wearing a Gap T-shirt, blue cotton drawstring pants, and sandals with socks. He has blue-gray eyes and a large egg-shaped face. Stringy brown hair hangs from a receding hairline. He is 42.
He remembers Melanie as a child, but declines to invite her in, opening the door just a foot or so for a brief conversation. "The place is a wreck," he says. "My mother's retired but she doesn't do anything."
Investigators questioned him about Andy "because someone told them I had touched another little boy," he says, when Melanie asks how he came to be a suspect. "But I don't get into that [expletive]," referring to child molestation.
On the day Andy disappeared, "I was working from 3 o'clock on." He remembers watching the search for the boy, but didn't join in because he "didn't want to get in the way."
The conversation with Thibedeau is short and unsatisfying. For Melanie, it also is difficult. "It's disconcerting to think that if somebody took Andy, I may know the person, that they may have been involved with my family, that I may have talked to the person before," she says after the encounter. "Maybe I talked to him just now."
No charges have been filed against Thibedeau in the Puglisi case, and he denies any involvement in it. Police, however, say he did not have a convincing alibi for the time Andy vanished. They also point to documents showing complaints, never proven, of inappropriate behavior toward three local boys over the years.
Melanie is not ready to rule out Thibedeau as a suspect. Her suspicions are about to focus on someone else, but first, she wants to learn more about Andy's family.
Chapter 3: The Mismatched Parents
