By Colin McCandless
Contributing Writer
GRAFTON – Journalist Richard Price lives in a town still haunted by an unsolved crime that took the life of one of its young residents more than 30 years ago.
Ten-year-old Grafton resident Holly Piirainen was vacationing at her grandparents’ house in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, on Aug. 5, 1993, when she disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
She and her younger brother Zach had taken a five-minute walk to see a litter of collie puppies play on a neighbor’s property. Zach returned home shortly afterward, leaving his sister alone. When her father Richard sent both her brothers Zach and Andy to search for her around lunchtime that day, she was gone. The brothers found one of Holly’s shoes near a wooden fence, but no sign of Holly. Hunters discovered her remains 79 days later in the woods about nine miles away in Brimfield. Her death was ruled a homicide, but her killer has never been found.
True crime podcast
This is the harrowing backstory behind “Holly’s Been Taken: A True Crime Podcast,” researched, written and produced by Price. He is currently an independent journalist and is the former editor of the Grafton News who has written for various newspapers for over three decades. It spans six episodes released over 2022 and 2023.
The case involved a massive search effort that included officers, 20 police dogs, dive teams, the FBI, volunteers and Boy Scouts. It captivated mainstream media outlets and the family even contacted the true crime television show “America’s Most Wanted.”
Initially, the cops’ prime suspect entailed a white, middle-aged man in a pickup truck who had been reported earlier that same day leering at teenage girls checking their mailbox. One of the teenage girls later told police the man drove off in the direction of Allen Road and South Shore Drive where Holly was last seen with the puppies. No one has ever been arrested for the crime, and 33 years later, Holly’s murderer remains at large.
An opportunistic crime
Unsolved murder cases are more common than you might think. According to data provided by the Murder Accountability Project, nearly half of murders in the U.S. go unsolved.
What made this unsolved murder case so intriguing to Price was that Holly was a 10-year-old girl abducted in broad daylight in a traditional, run-of-the-mill suburban community. “A community everyone would consider safe,” he said. “It was an opportunistic crime. The fact that it’s still unsolved today has contributed to a certain aura.”
One reason it remains unsolved, said Price, is its complexity. “This is a case that is definitely not simple. There’s more to it than meets the eye.” He views his podcast as an expansion of the conversation surrounding the case.
For example, three persons of interest scrutinized in “Holly’s Been Taken” – David Pouliot, convicted child murderer Lewis Lent and convicted murderer Rodney Stanger – all had familiarity with and connections to the area of Brimfield woods where Holly’s body was found. But no concrete evidence has ever been produced directly linking any of them to her murder.
Price’s podcast dives into typical investigative journalist work, weaving a narrative based on police department documents and interviews conducted with people listed in various reports, but he also speaks with Holly’s family members, such as her cousin and close friend Leah Jolin, who spent a week together with Holly at summer camp just before her death.
“She gives you the personal side. I think that’s something you don’t see enough of in true crime podcasts,” stated Price. “It’s also a story about the people that she (Holly) left behind.”
Keeping the case in the public eye
Price said Holly’s family was cooperative from the start and remained so during the entire process of researching the podcast. He called it an honor to work with them on the project and expressed his sincere gratitude. While some family members are understandably overwhelmed and are dealing with this tragedy in their own way, others such as Jolin and Holly’s aunt Carla Jackman (Richard’s sister), who serves as the family spokesperson, have been open to discussing the murder and its aftermath.
“We want to keep her case out there, so people are talking,” explained Jackman in a Zoom interview. “It’s basically keeping the case out there and hoping for answers.”
Price said the Hampden County District Attorney’s Office has also kept the case in front of the public, hosting a Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy (FIGG) event in Brimfield on Nov. 9, 2025, dedicated to advancing Holly’s case.
Holly’s death still profoundly affects the family. Jackman said they cope with the grief the best they can. “It’s still a struggle. I think of her every day.”
Reminders are everywhere, including the fact that Holly’s niece is now 10, the same age as when Holly passed. Seeing similar cases on the news triggers painful memories. “It just doesn’t go away,” she recounted.
While Price noted that every family deals with traumatic situations differently, he added to Jackman, “I think that your family becomes a source of inspiration for a lot of people, as far as building your strength, and just finding a way to get through.”
Despite the anguish, Jackman said that while she can’t speak for other family members, she still holds out hope that Holly’s killer will be found, citing murder cases that have been solved 30 to 40 years later because of DNA evidence or new technological advances. The Hampden County DA (Anthony Gulluni) gives her hope as well. “I think he feels confident it’s going to get solved. So that gives me hope too – that he feels that way.”
Jackman said police are still looking into the same half-dozen persons of interest from the start of the case and keeping track of them. Price added that the investigative team seems sensitive to the family, and the lead investigator responds immediately to Jackman’s questions via text or email. “We do have good communication with the police,” she asserted. “A lot of cases, people don’t.”
The man in the pickup truck
In the final episode of “Holly’s Been Taken,” Price revisits the man in the pickup. On the day of Holly’s disappearance, a team of retired investigators allege that a white, middle-aged man in a brown pickup truck sporting facial hair and a hat slowed to a crawl along Allen Road so he could leer at two teenage girls as they checked their mailbox. He returned a short time later to leer at them again. Holly was standing about 200 yards away up Allen Road from where the encounter occurred with the litter of puppies. The investigators concluded that the man was allegedly responsible for Holly’s abduction and murder.
Price did a deep dive into the man’s background, examining public records and interviewing scores of people. Over time, he was able to create a detailed picture of his whereabouts, past, personality and family. Based on the police incident report, he also a developed a comprehensive timeline on the moments before and after Holly’s abduction, which revealed new details. The alleged suspect has never been charged or publicly identified by the district attorney as a person of interest in the case. As such, Price chose not to share his name publicly in the episode and refers to him as “the man in the pickup truck.”
Other intriguing details are disclosed in the episode including Jackman telling Price in an interview with family members that investigators informed them the man in the pickup truck correctly identified the shirt Holly was wearing on the day of her abduction. It was not the same shirt she was wearing in the missing person poster. It was a detail only an individual who saw her that day would have known.
However, two key facets of his background didn’t match the teens’ description. His ex-wife said her husband drove a dark brown truck and was always clean shaven. The man they described drove a tannish or white truck and was bearded.
The “burning question,” as Price muses in his podcast, is “Do the police have his DNA from Brimfield?”
Meanwhile, the search for answers continues. Price urged that people reading this should know that “every little crumb of information can lead to something else.”
If you or someone you know has information surrounding the abduction or homicide of Holly Piirainen, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, please contact the Hampden District Attorney’s office in Springfield, Massachusetts. The website is hampdenda.com. You may also call the Massachusetts State Police Detective Unit at 413-505-5946 or the State Police Unresolved Cases Unit at 855-627-6583. You can also text the word Solve to 274637 from your cell phone.
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