A few weeks before Charles Pierce died, the convicted child killer confessed to killing two more children in Lawrence, Mass., more than 40 years ago. During an almost two-hour interview, in which he sometimes fell asleep or became confused, the former carnival worker provided the location of where the children's bodies and other details about the slayings. On January, 1999, Pierce, who was serving time for killing a 13-year-old girl in 1969, was cancer-stricken and wheelchair-bound when he asked a corrections officer to bring the police. "He told one of the guards he wanted to clear his conscience," Molchan said.
Pierce hooked up to an oxygen tank, told police a horrific story of how he allegedly killed a boy he had befriended at an old theater and buried the child's body in a nearby field. He also recounted that sometime in the eight months prior to that killing, he had abducted a girl in Connecticut, murdered her and buried her body in the same field, about 30 feet from the boy.
Pierce gave vague directions to the field, leading investigators to what is now a ball field. But before proceeding, police say they want to put together some of the many problematic pieces of Pierce's story. For example, while the name of the girl Pierce gave is similar to the name of a girl who did disappear in Connecticut, that abduction happened in the early 1970s -- not in the 1950s. To confuse matters further, Pierce had a history of confessing to things and later recanting. When Connecticut authorities showed up at prison to ask him about his statements to Molchan, Pierce allegedly became agitated and denied the claims.