CHAPTER 7
Melanie's Roller Coaster
| |
 |
|
Andy,
and the main
characters
in his case
Andy Puglisi,
a 10-year-old Lawrence boy who vanished without a trace in 1976.
Melanie Perkins,
Andy's childhood playmate, now a filmmaker working on a documentary about his disappearance.
Alan Roy,
a neighborhood resident who came across what may have been a grave in the area where Andy was last seen.
Tony,
Alan's friend, who was with him when they discovered this oddly shaped hole.
Gary Thibedeau,
a troubled neighbor interrogated by police in connection Andy's disappearance.
Faith Puglisi,
Andy's grieving mother, questioned by police.
Angelo Puglisi Sr.,
Andy's irate father.
Jerome Phillips,
Faith's spurned boyfriend.
Wayne W. Chapman,
a convicted pedophile whom police consider the prime suspect in the case.
Charles E. Pierce,
a necrophiliac who Melanie believes may have been involved in Andy's disappearance.
|
|
Hoping to find the truth about a Lawrence boy missing since 1976, Melanie Perkins tries to confront a vicious killer. And her passion for the truth leads into her own past.
By Judith Gaines, Globe Staff, 07/10/99
Melanie has been anticipating and dreading a face-to-face encounter with Charles E. Pierce, the Haverhill man she now thinks probably is responsible for the disappearance of her friend, Andy Puglisi.
She will not say out loud that Andy is dead until she's certain of it. But she says she has a gut instinct that Pierce "did Andy" -- although she doesn't know precisely what he did. A necrophiliac suspected in the disappearance of more than a dozen children, Pierce has twice confessed that he killed a Lawrence boy, and Lawrence police acknowledge that no other Lawrence boy is missing from 1950 to 1980.
As Andy's friend, Melanie is revulsed at the thought of looking Pierce in the eye, taking the full measure of this perverted killer. But as Andy's filmmaker, she knows she must try to enter Pierce's monstrous mind.
Perhaps she will be able to extract a few vital details from him about the Lawrence boy he said he murdered and then raped. Perhaps he will reveal some information that will finally lay to rest the haunting case of Andy Puglisi.
She ponders other possibilities: Will Pierce recognize her from times he spent ogling potential victims by the pool where she and Andy played as children in their bathing suits? Will she recognize him from somewhere, some time when their lives intersected in Lawrence or Haverhill?
But the most immediate question: How to get to see this guy?
Pierce is incarcerated in the medium-security prison in Shirley, serving a 20-year sentence for the murder of 13-year-old Michelle Wilson of Boxford. Prison rules require that an inmate agree in writing to be interviewed. But Pierce has not responded to two letters requesting a meeting.
For 10 years, law enforcement officials have said Pierce is dying -- from tuberculosis, or cancer, or both. Now it's Feb. 13, 1999, and they don't expect him to live much more than a week.
Desperate to see him before he dies, Melanie decides to go alone to the prison and try somehow to arrange a deathbed conversation.
Hoping to appear young and nonthreatening, she's wearing tan overalls, a black T-shirt, and no makeup. Her hair is drawn back with a headband, a popular teen style 20 years ago, when Andy disappeared.
"Perhaps he'll be perverted enough to enjoy meeting one of his victim's friends," she says.
That morning, some mail she requested arrives from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. It's a computerized age progression picture of Andy, showing how he might look if he were alive today.
The image is startling. "They caught his cheeks, his nose, his smile, the kindness in his eyes," she says, crying. "It's really hard to see him like this, like he grew up right before my eyes."
She stares at the photo, sniffling quietly, wondering about what might have been, what Andy could have done with his life if he'd lived.
Before she leaves to try to meet Pierce, Melanie calls the Shirley prison to confirm that he's there. She's shocked to find he has been moved.
"I went through this whole bureaucratic rigamarole, and they say he's not there!" she says in exasperation. Pierce has been transfered somewhere -- to a hospital? another prison? Prison officials won't say. Time is running out.
Three days later, Melanie finally learns that Pierce has been sent to Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain. His condition is steadily worsening. Melanie calls to arrange to see him, but an attendant says she can't because she's not on his approved visitors' list.
She's frustrated again, and losing valuable time.
She appeals for help from investigators working the case, retired detectives, family friends, anyone who might be able to help her see the dying inmate. No success.
The bad news comes the morning of Feb. 17. "Pierce died at 5 a.m.," Sergeant Jack Garvin tells her.
Melanie is devastated. "I can't believe the answer to what happened to Andy seemed so close and now it feels as elusive as ever," she says.
The pressure Melanie feels is enormous -- and not just because she keeps hitting walls in her search for Andy.
At the same time that she's fully engaged in this draining detective work, she's trying to raise $350,000 to finance her documentary. She's also working full time with a separate film company called Smash Entertainment Group, where she's producing 200 one-minute documentaries about the millennium. And somehow, some way, in the middle of all this, she's planning a wedding in September -- her own -- to Terry McLaughlin, an Irish stonemason.
With so much happening in her life now, why is she so obsessed with Andy? Why is she putting herself through all this?
Throughout the long investigation into Andy's disappearance, Melanie's answer to such questions has been more or less the same: "If it were me, if I had been missing 22 years, I'd hope somebody would still be looking," she always has said.
Now she comes to a new realization: For her, the film is a healing, a way to overcome her own fear of abandonment.
The Globe has been interviewing Melanie since August, when research for this serial began. In March, for the first time, she talks at length about her childhood.
Her father, Larry Perkins, left home when she was a baby. Her mother, Marcia, who has been sober for 16 years, was an alcoholic and a drug dealer. While welfare checks supported their mother's addictive habits, the children's basic needs, such as food and clothing, often went unattended.
When Melanie was about 12, she and her brothers left home after her mother had one particularly bad alcoholic binge. Melanie moved in with a beloved aunt and uncle who nurtured her through the difficult teenage years.
Under her aunt's attentive care, Melanie soon became a cheerleader and a member of the National Honor Society, with a scholarship to New Hampshire College in Manchester.
Then her aunt died.
Melanie transferred to Fitchburg State, where she graduated cum laude with a degree in human services and communication, with special emphasis on TV production. She went on to help produce films for "Nova," "The American Experience," and the History and Discovery channels.
Now, at 32, she remains keenly affected by her aunt's death and other losses in her life.
"Have You Seen Andy?" is more than just a documentary-in-the-making. Andy was Melanie's pal and playmate, and she identifies with him deeply. Both came from broken homes, both were raised in poverty in the Stadium Housing Projects. And in the summer of '76, they made a connection that remains profoundly compelling to her.
Melanie's aunt may have died and her parents may have abandoned her, but she is determined not to abandon Andy.
Chapter 8: The Search Intensifies
|
