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What happened to Holly Piirainen? This cold case has taken investigators down many dark and twisted paths, including multiple suspects, ties to an unsolved murder—to exhuming a letter buried in a coffin.

On a humid August morning in 1993, ten-year-old Holly Piirainen vanished from a quiet neighborhood in Sturbridge, Massachusetts after walking with her little brother to see a litter of collie puppies.

Moments later, the only sign of Holly was her lost sneaker discovered along the edge of a dirt road—an image that would haunt an entire state.

In this episode, former prosecutor Margaret McLean revisits the day Holly disappeared: a summer morning boat ride on South Pond, laughter with her family at her grandparents’ cottage, and a five-minute walk that ended in tragedy.

Through interviews, police reports, and eyewitness accounts—including the chilling sighting of a man in a brown pickup truck—Margaret unpacks how a peaceful community became ground zero for one of New England’s most disturbing unsolved crimes.

👉 What you’ll hear in this episode:

• The timeline of Holly’s last morning—breakfast, boat ride, and the walk to see the puppies
  
  
• How her brother’s discovery of a single sneaker caused police to suspect a kidnapping and mobilize a massive search effort 
  
  
• Exclusive analysis of police theories about the abduction scene
  
  
• Investigators' analysis and conclusions drawn from the girls who saw the “man in the truck”
  
  
• The race against time in the first critical hours of a child abduction with an FBI agent’s input
• The mysterious suspect pulled over nearby—and later caught surfing porn in a library
  
  This is a story of innocence lost, a predator lurking in the woods, and a family’s thirty-year fight for justice.
• 🎧 Subscribe to It’s A Crime with Margaret McLean for Episode 2 —
  “Skeleton in the Woods” — where new suspects emerge, a disturbing letter is unearthed, and long-hidden secrets finally rise to the surface.
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