Bill Porter, Associated Press writer
WAYLAND -- For 12 years, Sarah Pryor's relatives and friends agonized over her whereabouts.
Yesterday, the day Sarah would have turned 22, they said goodbye.
In a funeral service in the Trinitarian Congregational Church near the center of the town where she disappeared, Sarah's family and friends painted a portrait of girl who was curious, athletic, shy, kind and forgiving, and whose death teaches important and powerful lessons.
"There is evil among us," Dr. Carl Saylor, the church's pastor, told the packed congregation. "Sometimes ugly, sometimes pretty, always deadly. Evil doesn't have the last word. Grace does."
"We are all responsible for all the children all the time," said the Rev. David Jones, who had been the Pryors' pastor in Pennsylvania -- their home before moving to Massachusetts.
Sarah vanished without a trace on a brilliant autumn day in 1985 after telling her father she was going for a walk.
After years of bogus leads, authorities announced last week that a skull fragment had been found less than 2 miles from Sarah's home that DNA testing showed had to be hers.
Sarah's mother, Barbara, delivered a tearful and humorous eulogy of a lanky, energetic 9-year-old girl who, in her yellow jumpsuit with her bright blond hair sticking straight up on top of her head, resembled the bird Woodstock from the "Peanuts" comic strip.
Barbara Pryor concluded with her recollection of Sarah's answer to the question, "How do people know you love God?"
"She wrote, 'I forgive them'," Mrs. Pryor said. "Many people live decades, and they don't get it. Sarah got it. At the age of 3, Sarah got it."
"The 'it' she got is to live life with gentleness, compassion, playfulness, wisdom, curiosity, gusto, optimism, faithfulness, trust, loyalty and, most of all, love."
Sarah is memorialized by a statue comprised of a marble plaque, bronze sled and bronze likeness of the girl's border collie, Katie, at the Hannah Williams Park.
Saylor opened with a prayer "to deliver us from crippling bitterness and a sour spirit," as a well as a "renewal of faith."
Andrew Pryor, Sarah's father, recalled how he held Sarah for the first time the day she was born. He also recalled that, as an older child, Sarah would leap into the water "with no fear, knowing that I was going to catch her."
Sarah taught a lesson about love, her father said. "Love never fails," said Andrew Pryor.
The time has come, he said, for Sarah's family and friends to move on. Sarah would be the first to tell them that, he said.
A private burial for the girl followed the ceremony.
Middlesex County District Attorney Tom Reilly, who also attended the funeral, had said he's hopeful the case can be solved despite the passage of time.
Reilly told WBZ-TV that he believes the Pryor case is connected to that of Cathy Malcolmson, a 17-year-old from nearby Stow who disappeared less than two months before Sarah, and whose body has never been found.
A Boston newspaper reported that John Robert Whirty, the prime suspect in the abduction, failed at least two lie detector tests about the missing girl 12 years ago.
"When we finally got him hooked up (to the polygraph) and we started asking about her, he would balk," one source said. "He'd start saying he wasn't feeling well and he'd start shaking."
Authorities have said Whirty, 52, was working in the Wayland area putting up swing sets when Sarah disappeared Oct. 9, 1985. He couldn't account for his whereabouts at the time.
Whirty is currently in a Texas prison, serving time for violating parole. He had been convicted in 1967 of murdering Rose Marie Martin, 15, in that state. He was paroled in July 1984 -- 15 months before Sarah vanished.
He will be eligible for parole again in August 2000.
Pallbearers carry the casket of Sarah Pryor from the Trinitarian Congregation Church in Wayland after her funeral yesterday. A bone fragment from the skull of Pryor, who disappeared at the age of 9 in 1985, was identified last week using DNA testing, nearly three years after it was found. Yesterday would have been the girl's 22nd birthday.
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