Filmmaker Melanie Perkins has been interviewing neighbors, friends, relatives, and suspects in the case of Andy Puglisi, a Lawrence boy who vanished nearly 23 years ago. Now the case takes a bizarre turn.
By Judith Gaines, Globe Staff, 07/08/99
y 1982,
Lawrence police investigating the disappearance of Andy Puglisi were stumped. The case had been reopened three times since 1976, when Andy disappeared, but with no real progress.
Police had identified five suspects: Andy's parents, Faith and Angelo Puglisi; Jerome Phillips, Faith's spurned boyfriend; Gary Thibedeau, a neighborhood rowdy; and Wayne Chapman, a convicted pedophile who previously had sexually assaulted two boys he met near the same pool where Andy was last seen.
One of these people, police believed, had either kidnapped Andy as part of some family conflict, or raped and killed him.
All the suspects had plausible motives and an opportunity to act on them. Wayne Chapman seemed the most likely culprit, but detectives did not have sufficient cause to arrest him -- or anyone else, for that matter.
Frustrated by the difficulties in the case, they were ready to try anything. Patrolman Mike Carelli had an idea.
For her film, Melanie Perkins asks Carelli to join her near the site where Andy disappeared -- a public pool in South Lawrence -- to relate the strange events that ensued.
Carelli, now 55 and living in Dracut, began working voluntarily on Andy's case in 1982. "I always felt for Andy's family," he says, as the camera rolls. "Was Andy dead? Did he suffer? No body ever was found. There never was an ending. No headstone where they could come and put a flower down. No funeral. No nothing."
In the spring of 1982, the department sent Carelli to a seminar on forensic and investigative hypnosis at Texas A&M University, in College Station. The featured speaker was psychic Andrew Barnhart, and Carelli was impressed.
Psychic Andrew Barnhart was brought into the Andy Puglisi case in 1982. He says he knows where Andy is buried. (Globe Photo / Manny M. Chavez) |
After the session, he collared Barnhart. "We have a missing person back home," he said. "Do you see anything?"
Barnhart's response stunned him.
"The boy's dead," the psychic replied, although Carelli had not told him the victim's age or gender. "The body's still there."
He added that it was buried somewhere that was sometimes wet, sometimes not -- as in a tidal flat, for instance, or a river that occasionally goes dry.
Carelli was amazed. He had not told Barnhart anything about the crime or the place it occurred. When he returned to Lawrence, he got permission to discuss the case further with the psychic.
Retired Lawrence patrolman Mike Carelli surveys the site where psychic Andrew Barnhart said Andy Puglisi is buried. (Globe Staff Photo / Suzane Kreiter) |
In subsequent conversations, Barnhart described the burial site in what Carelli considered extraordinary detail. The body was "three feet down, with three feet on top," Barnhart said, although he admitted he wasn't sure what that meant. Pipes and "two white towers" were nearby.
Barnhart said "a middle-aged man, with salt and pepper hair, a paunch, and screwed-up front teeth" had walked all over the grave, which had been covered with brush and twigs. The location had something to do with some alphanumeric designations: M19, M20, M21, and M23.
When Carelli checked out the area that had been a municipal dump, just downhill from the pool where Andy was last seen, he was surprised to discover that a soccer field was being built over it, with two white goal posts already at one end. The contractor fit Barnhart's description of the man who had walked over Andy's grave.
Carelli also discovered that a city engineer had photographed the area and assigned a series of grid numbers to it. The numbers of the dump were M20, M21, and M23. Only the M19 area didn't seem to fit.
The psychic said Andy had not been murdered, not exactly. "He said the boy died as a result of a rape. Something had been stuffed in his mouth, like to keep him quiet, and he choked," Carelli says. The psychic said he might have had a seizure; Carelli later learned that Andy was mildly epileptic.
Barnhart also described Andy's assailant: a man with a mustache, a slight build, limp dirty hair, and a gimpy left leg. When Carelli relayed this information to Captain Joseph Fitzpatrick, the lead investigator, the captain told him something no one but investigators knew: Chapman had a slight limp in his left leg, the result of childhood polio. At the time, Chapman also was "on the thin side and had a mustache, and greasy-looking hair," Carelli says.
All this specificity about the crime -- the location, the boy, the prime suspect -- was almost unbelievable to Carelli. He decided he had to bring Barnhart to Lawrence.
Police officials were unwilling to foot the bill, so Carelli organized an Andy Puglisi Memorial Fund. Jars were put out at stores, cafes, and other spots around the city and eventually, according to Carelli, about $1,500 was collected. The money was used to bring Barnhart and his wife to Lawrence twice.
Now Melanie, who is highly skeptical of psychics, wonders if Carelli's enthusiasm about Barnhart really was warranted. After all, Andy had disappeared six years earlier, and much of what Carelli called the amazing specificity of Barnhart's statements referred to facts that had appeared in newspaper articles through the years or could have been gleaned from conversations with Carelli and other detectives.
Carelli disagrees. "He didn't know who I was, or anything about Andy," he replies. "I'd given him no names, no dates, nothing for him to look up."
Carelli shows Melanie the area where the psychic said Andy's body was buried: a swath of land about 50 feet by 15 feet, just up from the riverbank and near the edge of the woods. If the grave were there, it would be three feet below the original grade, which had later been covered by three additional feet of soil when the soccer field was made. Could this be Barnhart's "three feet down with three feet on top?"
To Melanie's surprise, the site is only about 75 feet from the place where two men, Alan Roy and his friend, Tony, told her they saw what may have been a gravesite when they were kids. (Chapter 2 of this serial.)
In July 1982, Carelli says, police decided to dig. But by the time the backhoe reached the most crucial area, members of the Puglisi family, reporters, and curious onlookers also had arrived.
To Barnhart, the crowd was unnerving. "All those emotions in the air interfered with his abilities. He wanted the place as sterile and serene as possible," Carelli says. Instead, the dig became "a circus. The only thing lacking was vendors."
The dig was discontinued without ever unearthing the main area where the body allegedly was buried. Barnhart went home.
Barnhart returned to Massachusetts in January 1983. Police planned for him to confront Chapman in the Bridgewater prison where he was incarcerated. They hoped that, because of his unusual abilities, Barnhart could get Chapman to confess, or at least to reveal important information.
Barnhart spoke with Chapman by phone, but the call upset the inmate. Chapman and his lawyer nixed any more conversations.
Barnhart left, taking some of Andy's belongings, which his mother provided: his favorite teddy bear, a toy giraffe, a shirt, and a notebook with some of Andy's poems. Barnhart hoped to get additional insights by meditating on them.
Carelli thought the dig might be resumed later. But interoffice politics got in the way, he says.
"Other officers had worked on the case. They didn't want me, Mike Carelli, to solve it.... There was a lot of petty jealousy. I got fed up."
The Andy Puglisi fund was closed. The possibility of digging up the boy's remains -- which once had seemed so real, so close -- was set aside.
Then the psychic himself disappeared. After repeated phone calls to Barnhart went unanswered, Carelli asked Texas police to locate him, so at least the Puglisi family could get back their treasured mementos.
But police could find no trace of him. "It was like the world just swallowed him up." Carelli says.
Later, almost everything the psychic said proved true, according to Carelli. M19 on the engineer's grid turned out to be the place where two Lawrence boys were raped -- the 1975 crime for which Chapman was convicted in 1977.
Only two clues haven't yet made sense. "Barnhart said a red arrow would be pointing to the body, and that the number 5 has something to do with it," Carelli says. "Maybe now those last clues will fall into place and we'll figure out what it all means."
