On a summer afternoon in 1976, ten-year-old Andy Puglisi went to a neighborhood swimming pool in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
The pool was only across the street from the housing project where he lived. It was a familiar place where local children gathered, and there was nothing about that afternoon that suggested Andy would never return home.
But sometime after his last confirmed sighting, the boy disappeared.
Nearly five decades later, Andy’s whereabouts remain unknown.
The Boy Behind the Missing-Person Case
Andy was born Angelo Puglisi on September 2, 1965, to Faith and Angelo Puglisi. He was the oldest of five children and was commonly known by his nickname, Andy.
His parents had divorced the year before his disappearance, and his father had moved to New Hampshire. Around the same period, Andy and the rest of his family had moved into the Stadium Housing Project in Lawrence.
The Higgins Memorial Swimming Pool was situated directly across from the housing complex and was a regular gathering place for neighborhood children.
On August 21, 1976, Andy went there with his brothers, siblings and friends.
No one knew it would be the last day they would see him.
The Last Hours
During the afternoon, Andy’s friends gradually began leaving the pool.
At approximately 2:00 p.m., Andy’s friend Melanie Perkins left with her 11-year-old brother, who walked her home. Andy chose to remain at the pool because he wasn’t ready to leave.
About an hour and a half later, Andy called his family.
At around 3:30 p.m., he spoke with one of his brothers. Nothing in the conversation indicated that he was frightened, in trouble, or planning to go somewhere else.
Then came the last known sighting.
At approximately 5:45 p.m., a lifeguard saw Andy walking around the swimming-pool grounds.
After that, the trail disappeared.
Andy never came home that night.
He has never been seen or heard from again.
A Massive Search
At first, investigators considered the possibility that Andy had run away.
His parents’ divorce led authorities to wonder whether the family situation might have influenced his decision to leave. But when Andy remained missing, investigators increasingly suspected that something far more serious had happened.
The search expanded quickly.
National Guard personnel and Green Berets joined efforts to search the surrounding neighborhood. Dogs were used around the swimming pool and nearby areas, while scuba divers searched the Shawsheen River.
Despite the extensive operation, no trace of Andy was discovered.
After six days, the official search was called off.
But the mystery was far from over.
The Strange Story of a Hole in the Woods
Years later, a potentially significant lead emerged.
In 1999, Melanie Perkins returned to Lawrence and spoke with two local residents who told her about something they had allegedly encountered in the woods near the swimming pool.
They said that a hole had been dug into the ground sometime a year or two after Andy disappeared.
When they returned the following day, they reportedly found that the hole had been filled in.
The story prompted renewed interest in the wooded area.
Police have searched those woods on several occasions, including searches involving trained dogs capable of detecting human remains.
Nothing connected to Andy has been found.
Charles Pierce
One person whose name has been associated with Andy’s disappearance is Charles Pierce, a Massachusetts resident with a history involving crimes against children.
Pierce confessed to two child abductions during the 1970s. One involved a girl who disappeared in Connecticut in 1973, while the other involved a boy from Lawrence.
According to reports, Pierce claimed that he sexually assaulted the Lawrence boy before burying him near the location where he said the girl had been buried.
Neither body was ever recovered.
Pierce had also been linked by investigators to numerous child disappearances throughout New England spanning several decades. However, his history of making confessions and later withdrawing them complicated efforts to determine which of his claims were genuine.
He was convicted in the 1969 killing of 13-year-old Michelle Wilson of Boxford and was serving a 20-year sentence when he died in 1999.
Despite the suspicions surrounding him, Pierce was never charged with Andy’s disappearance.
Wayne W. Chapman
Another name became prominent shortly after Andy vanished.
Approximately two weeks after the disappearance, Wayne W. Chapman was arrested in Waterloo, New York.
His van reportedly resembled a vehicle that one of Andy’s friends had seen near the swimming pool.
What investigators found inside the vehicle raised serious concerns. Among the items reported were photographs of naked children, maps showing wooded locations, a fake police badge, a starter pistol, duct tape, child pornography, camera equipment, rope, and a sock that appeared to contain blood.
Chapman later confessed to sexually assaulting two boys in Lawrence after luring them away from the same general swimming-pool area where Andy had last been seen.
He was eventually convicted of sexually assaulting six boys in the Lawrence area during the 1970s.
Chapman was released from prison in 2018 following a psychological evaluation that determined he was no longer considered a threat. He died in October 2021 at the age of 73.
Although he became one of the major suspects discussed in connection with Andy’s disappearance, Chapman was never charged in Andy’s case.
Still No Answer
The evidence and suspicions surrounding Andy’s disappearance have generated several theories over the years, but none has produced a definitive answer.
There has never been a confirmed explanation for what happened after Andy was last seen at the pool.
No body has been recovered.
No one has been convicted.
And Andy’s family has been left without the certainty of knowing what happened to him.
Melanie Perkins Keeps Looking
Andy was not forgotten by the people who knew him.
His childhood friend Melanie Perkins eventually turned her attention to the mystery and created the documentary Have You Seen Andy?, released in 2007.
The documentary examined Andy’s disappearance and the decades of uncertainty surrounding the case. In 2008, it received an Emmy Award for Best Investigative Journalism.
The story brought renewed public attention to a disappearance that had remained unresolved for generations.
Andy’s Description
When Andy disappeared, he was a 10-year-old Caucasian boy with brown hair and brown eyes.
He was approximately 4 feet tall and weighed about 65 pounds.
He was last known to be wearing a bathing suit, towel and sneakers.
He also had three scars along his spine and a distinctive area of skin discoloration on his chest. The original case information also noted that Andy had mild epilepsy.
A Question That Has Never Been Answered
Andy went to a swimming pool only a short distance from his home.
He spoke with his family during the afternoon.
A lifeguard saw him later that day.
Then, somehow, he vanished.
The searches, investigators, suspected offenders and later attempts to locate evidence have all failed to explain what happened to him.
For Andy’s family and those who continue to remember his case, the unanswered question remains painfully simple:
What happened to Andy Puglisi after he was last seen at the Higgins Memorial Swimming Pool?