Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty five, a hunter in Bearbrook State Park
Speaker 1: stumbled across a rusted fifty five gallon drum laying out
Speaker 1: in the woods, and inside there were the decomposed bodies
Speaker 1: of a woman and child. They were beaten to death
Speaker 1: and left without names. Years later, a second barrel was
Speaker 1: discovered just the same holding the remains of two more
Speaker 1: young girls. What followed was a decades long investigation, one
Speaker 1: that would expose a serial killer who lived under multiple identities,
Speaker 1: pioneer the use of genetic genealogy in criminal cases, and
Speaker 1: never stop trying to give names and identities back to
Speaker 1: the unknown victims he tried to erase. This is the
Speaker 1: story of the Barbrook murders. My name's Ben, I'm.
Speaker 2: Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked and Grim, a true
Speaker 2: crime podcasting.
Speaker 1: The following podcast and material intended more mature audience. Listener discription.
Speaker 1: So I just want to start off today by saying
Speaker 1: one of the worst mass shootings occurred in Canadian history
Speaker 1: not far from where we live. Recently, eight victims were
Speaker 1: shot and killed at tumblr Ridge Secondary School in tumblr Ridge, BC.
Speaker 1: In addition, about twenty seven people were injured, with at
Speaker 1: least one still fighting for their life in hospital right
Speaker 1: now as I speak. The suspect of the incident was
Speaker 1: also found dead from a self inflicted injury at the school,
Speaker 1: bringing the death total to nine. And we just want
Speaker 1: to say that despite political stance, religion, ideology, race, gender
Speaker 1: and everything else, monsters are the ones who commit these acts.
Speaker 1: This world will try and divide us from one another,
Speaker 1: painting others in a certain light, whether it's this horrible
Speaker 1: incident or the next. Don't let them do that. Our
Speaker 1: hearts go out to the victims and those who were affected.
Speaker 1: Tumblr Ridge is an amazing community and we've visited many times.
Speaker 1: This horrible act it will not define this beautiful.
Speaker 2: Place, No, it really won't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a heartbreaking incident.
Speaker 2: It's been a heavy week. Yeah because just as a
Speaker 2: little side note to tumbler Ridge, it's a community of
Speaker 2: less than twenty five hundred people, Like, it's small, So
Speaker 2: for an insidant like that to happen and that many
Speaker 2: people die, it's I don't know, it's almost unmanageable what
Speaker 2: it would feel like there right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they're pretty isolated too. There's not many community
Speaker 1: around like close to them to go to the next one,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's a decent drive to go find the
Speaker 1: next town over. It's not like neighbors in the next
Speaker 1: town or you can see them from a distance. It's
Speaker 1: it's a ways. They're pretty isolated. And it's a devastating
Speaker 1: thing that happened, and it's it's it's heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like it's consumed me a little bit
Speaker 2: this week. I just I've been watching all like the
Speaker 2: news releases and reading so much about it and gosh,
Speaker 2: wishing that you could do something to help, you know.
Speaker 1: But I actually went hiking over in Monkman Provincial Park
Speaker 1: just outside of tumbler Ridge before with Ripley. Ripley and
Speaker 1: I went on an adventure with some friends. There's dinosaur
Speaker 1: footprints along a river there. You can go, like see
Speaker 1: dino footprints along this gorgeous river. There's mountains and wildlife.
Speaker 1: It's such a beautiful place. And for tragedy to mark
Speaker 1: this place like that, it's it hurts. Yeah, Rip was
Speaker 1: just a puppy when you did that. Well, not a puppy,
Speaker 1: but she was young, she was one or two something
Speaker 1: like that, young little dog. Maybe I should post something
Speaker 1: like that in our story if you want to go
Speaker 1: over to Instagram, maybe you can see a photo of
Speaker 1: us back in the day hiking that area. It is
Speaker 1: really beautiful, it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyways, we're not going to eventually cover this on this case.
Speaker 1: We do have a rule on the show that we
Speaker 1: don't cover anything north of Kamloops, British Columbia. It's just
Speaker 1: a little too close for home. So if you want
Speaker 1: to find more about this case, I'm sure people will
Speaker 1: be covering it and discussing it. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: articles online and I do recommend you go look into
Speaker 1: it and just remember that no matter what you read
Speaker 1: in those articles, don't let don't let articles and news
Speaker 1: sway your opinion. People are people. Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of political stuff around this case too, and it's heartbreaking
Speaker 1: as well on that side. But anyways, I think we
Speaker 1: should move on to today's case. Are you ready?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do it. Okay, it sounds like.
Speaker 1: A dozy, it's definitely. It's definitely one. It's different from
Speaker 1: what we've covered recently. A lot of stuff have been
Speaker 1: like murders and all these sort of things. This one,
Speaker 1: it's a lot more of a slow burn.
Speaker 2: Oh, a slow burn, A slow burn. That's like a
Speaker 2: romance novel term.
Speaker 1: You know that, right, that's just a regular term what
Speaker 1: we're talking about.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Nowadays, I feel like that's associated with
Speaker 2: like romance novel is.
Speaker 1: It slow burn? We're getting we're not getting steamy up
Speaker 1: in this one, I'll tell you that.
Speaker 2: Well, that's where my head went, and I was like,
Speaker 2: what the shit?
Speaker 1: Okay, well, no, slow burn is just a typical say like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna okay, I'm gonna google this, right, let's see.
Speaker 2: I mean I think maybe the urban or new age
Speaker 2: term of it. It's definitely like romance novel term.
Speaker 1: Do slow burn? Okay? Well, Google's dictionaries is a state
Speaker 1: of slowly mounting anger or annoyance.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 1: I mean oh but then also people ask what is
Speaker 1: a slow burn in romance?
Speaker 2: Okay? So think I think it's a little bit of
Speaker 2: a new age term in like romance novels.
Speaker 1: Right. So maybe now I didn't realize slow burn was
Speaker 1: specifically to like anger annoyance. I thought it was just
Speaker 1: like a slow burn of like a story it's taken
Speaker 1: a while, it's you know, slowly playing out.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: Now this I mean it does still apply to this case.
Speaker 1: But it's just not exactly what I thought it meant.
Speaker 2: And it ain't a romance story.
Speaker 1: It has nothing to do with spiciness. Just because it
Speaker 1: says burn does not mean it's spicy. Okay, holy, and
Speaker 1: if it burns, you should probably get checked out. I
Speaker 1: just can't say that anyways. There are certain places that
Speaker 1: feel untouched in this world. Not untouched in a dramatic way,
Speaker 1: but I mean, but just like quiet, there's ordinary and
Speaker 1: it's kind of place, you know, where people go to
Speaker 1: walk their dogs, and this place certainly was. It's a
Speaker 1: place where people hunt deer in the fall, they go
Speaker 1: on adventures, let their kids run ahead of trails without
Speaker 1: worrying too much about what might be waiting around the corner.
Speaker 1: Bear Brook State Park was just this kind of place.
Speaker 1: If you've ever been in the woods in late autumn
Speaker 1: in a place like New England, you know the feeling
Speaker 1: the air is damp but crisp, leave stick to your boots,
Speaker 1: walking in trees, thin out in patches where you can
Speaker 1: see more, and then they close back in again, and
Speaker 1: it's just so peaceful. Small towns orbit places like this.
Speaker 1: Trailer parks tuck off just main roads and mills that
Speaker 1: once employed half the towns sit there. In towns like Allenstown,
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, life doesn't move quickly. People come and go, sure,
Speaker 1: but it's not in ways that usually raise alarms. If
Speaker 1: someone packs up and leaves, most assume there's a reason.
Speaker 1: You know, there's maybe a new job or money troubles
Speaker 1: and a fresh start is waiting for them somewhere warmer.
Speaker 1: In the late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, that's
Speaker 1: how things were. No one was looking for a mystery.
Speaker 1: No one suspected that something had already been hiding out
Speaker 1: in the woods. Because the unsettling truth about some crimes
Speaker 1: isn't how they're discovered. It's more or less how long
Speaker 1: they go unnoticed. Sometimes answers sit quietly in the background
Speaker 1: of everyday life, beneath the leaves and beyond mark trails,
Speaker 1: just close enough to stumble over if you happen to
Speaker 1: wander a little too far, of course, and in this story,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what happened. On November tenth, nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: a hunter walking through Bearbrook State Park in Allenstown, New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: They noticed something that didn't exactly belong in the quiet
Speaker 1: stretch of woods. There, lying on its side amongst the
Speaker 1: trees was a rusted fifty five gallon steel drum. It
Speaker 1: was long since abandoned and looked like it had been
Speaker 1: sitting there for years. Curious, the hunter moved towards it
Speaker 1: and he took a look inside. That's when he immediately
Speaker 1: realized this wasn't a drum just filled with trash or anything.
Speaker 1: Inside there he saw, wrapped in plastic were human remains
Speaker 1: two bodies, one adult woman and one young girl. Police
Speaker 1: were quickly called to the scene, and the bodies inside
Speaker 1: were badly decomposed to the point where determining an exact
Speaker 1: time of death was extremely difficult. Investigators estimated the victims
Speaker 1: had been dead at least several months and possibly as
Speaker 1: long as two to even three years before they were
Speaker 1: ultimately discovered. Autopsies on them later determined that both the
Speaker 1: woman and the child had died from blunt force trauma
Speaker 1: to the head, and this immediately solidified the idea on
Speaker 1: the spot that this was not an accident. It was
Speaker 1: instead clearly a homicide.
Speaker 2: Holy shit. First of all, good for him for even
Speaker 2: looking in there, because I don't think I would. I
Speaker 2: I'm uncertain that I would because I would. I mean,
Speaker 2: you probably should, because you want to make sure it's
Speaker 2: all good. But that's scary.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I've been out in the bush a
Speaker 1: few times. I've looked in some random weird finds, have you.
Speaker 1: But it's not out of like, oh I wonder what
Speaker 1: I'll find. It's just like, oh, this is a cool thing.
Speaker 1: I'm just looking and curiosity is taken over and I'm
Speaker 1: just investigating a cool thing, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I guess. I mean I did tell you that
Speaker 2: one time too. There was the random car seat that
Speaker 2: was in the woods. Oh yeah, and I did look
Speaker 2: in it. I felt I needed to look in there,
Speaker 2: so maybe I would. But a car seat's a bit
Speaker 2: different than like a rusted barrel.
Speaker 1: A car seat, I think that would trigger more in
Speaker 1: my mind. There might be something in there a barrel.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know what's in here? Is there
Speaker 1: an animal hiding in there? Is there trash? Is it
Speaker 1: rusted out? Could I use this for something taken home?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: There treasures in here?
Speaker 1: Maybe, but instead, no, there's bodies aw now. The adult
Speaker 1: victim was believed to be between twenty three and thirty
Speaker 1: three years old. She was Caucasian, possibly with Native American ancestry.
Speaker 1: She had wavy, light brown or dark blonde hair and
Speaker 1: stood somewhere between five foot two inches and five foot
Speaker 1: seven inches tall. Her dental work was pretty extensive, including
Speaker 1: multiple extractions and fillings. Now, the child found with her
Speaker 1: was estimated to be between eight and ten years old.
Speaker 1: The later evaluation suggested that she could have been as
Speaker 1: young as five or as old as eleven. She also
Speaker 1: had wavy, light brown or dark blonde hair and stood
Speaker 1: approximately four foot three inches and between four foot six
Speaker 1: inches tall. She had a small gap between her front teeth,
Speaker 1: two earrings in each ear, and several dental fillings, but
Speaker 1: no extractions. There were also signs that she may have
Speaker 1: suffered from pneumonia at some point in her life. Now,
Speaker 1: there was no identification, no clothing could be traced, no
Speaker 1: personal items that could lead back to a name. It
Speaker 1: was just two bodies sealed inside a barrel and left
Speaker 1: in the woods. Now Bearbrook State Park sits in a
Speaker 1: relatively quiet area, not far from a trailer park and
Speaker 1: an old mill property. It wasn't right off a major
Speaker 1: highway or anything like that, so whoever left the barrel there,
Speaker 1: likely knew the area well, and it wasn't just a
Speaker 1: random dumping ground that someone accidentally stumbled upon.
Speaker 2: Well, and that would be very difficult to move a
Speaker 2: barrel full of two bodies into the woods, would it not.
Speaker 1: It could definitely be, I mean, depending on their weight
Speaker 1: and the size of the individual carrying them. Maybe how
Speaker 1: he carried them, or they carried them, or maybe rolling
Speaker 1: the barrel.
Speaker 2: Who knows, Rolling it, I guess could be an option,
Speaker 2: but yeah, just to carry it, you think you'd need
Speaker 2: more than one person.
Speaker 1: Now, the barrel itself was a standard industrial drum, nothing
Speaker 1: unique enough to trace it easily either. All the investigators
Speaker 1: had to go on at this point was that the
Speaker 1: bodies had clearly been concealed intentionally in this place. Now, obviously,
Speaker 1: they didn't know who these people were, and so without identities,
Speaker 1: it was almost impossible to build any sort of timeline.
Speaker 1: They didn't know where the victims had come from, when
Speaker 1: they had last been seen alive, or who might have
Speaker 1: even wanted them dead. So although the investigation had officially
Speaker 1: begun on this story, it began with almost nothing to
Speaker 1: go on. Now, the New Hampshire State Police began running missons.
Speaker 1: Persons report through every available system they had to try
Speaker 1: and identify any potential names. They checked local records first,
Speaker 1: then expanded outwards towards statewide databases and national systems, and
Speaker 1: even federal records in Washington, d C. If a woman
Speaker 1: and young girl had vanished anywhere in the country during
Speaker 1: the late nineteen seventies or early nineteen eighties, the investigators
Speaker 1: wanted to know about it. However, nothing came back as
Speaker 1: a match. Police also canvassed nearby areas, including the trailer
Speaker 1: park not far from where the barrel had been found,
Speaker 1: to see if they could find any information. They went
Speaker 1: through the woods walking. They knocked on doors and asked
Speaker 1: if anyone had seen a barrel dumped in the woods,
Speaker 1: or if anyone noticed strangers in the area years earlier.
Speaker 1: Maybe there were some families that even disappeared quietly without
Speaker 1: much attention, even being paid, But no one could provide
Speaker 1: anything useful. The barrel could have been sitting there for
Speaker 1: years for all anyone knew. Sketch artists began working from
Speaker 1: the remains to create facial reconstructions. Those photos they came
Speaker 1: up with were circulated across New England and even parts
Speaker 1: of Canada as well. Authorities released detailed descriptions of the
Speaker 1: victims physical features and dental work, hoping that maybe a
Speaker 1: dentist or a relative, a friend, anyone might recognize a
Speaker 1: feature or even them themselves. Tips soon began coming in
Speaker 1: as well, hundreds of them over time. In fact, each
Speaker 1: one was followed up, but unfortunately each one also led nowhere.
Speaker 1: The lack of identification of the remains it became its
Speaker 1: own kind of cruelty. It meant that these people like
Speaker 1: basically vanished without anyone ever reporting the missing, if they're
Speaker 1: not in any database or anything like that, and if
Speaker 1: they had been reported, no connection had been made. So
Speaker 1: it was pretty kind of sad in its own world.
Speaker 1: Super odd, especially for a child for sure. You know,
Speaker 1: you think that would be reported unless it was just
Speaker 1: like this mom and a child and they were kind
Speaker 1: of on their own, I guess. But well, and there's
Speaker 1: also the potential that they might not have even been
Speaker 1: from the area, and that's what investigators started to think,
Speaker 1: like the possibility that they'd been killed elsewhere, brought here
Speaker 1: and you know, discarded in the bare Brook State Park
Speaker 1: afterwards as a part of trying to hide or distance
Speaker 1: from the.
Speaker 2: Crime, right, it would make sense.
Speaker 1: Now. Months passed by as the investigation continued to march on,
Speaker 1: and then those months turned into years. Eventually, with no
Speaker 1: names or identity, authorities made a very difficult decision. The
Speaker 1: women and child were buried in Allenstown Cemetery as Jane does.
Speaker 1: On their shared headstone were the words that reflected the
Speaker 1: frustration and sadness of the case, and it read, quote
Speaker 1: here lies the mortal remains known only to God of
Speaker 1: a woman aged twenty three to thirty three and a
Speaker 1: girl child aged eight to ten. Their slain bodies were
Speaker 1: found on November tenth, nineteen eighty five, in bear Brook
Speaker 1: State Park. May their souls find peace in God's loving
Speaker 1: care end quote.
Speaker 2: Gosh, that gave me goosebumps. That's really sad. Imagine stumbling
Speaker 2: across that in a graveyard.
Speaker 1: That's really sad.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Now, as time kept ticking away into the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: the Barebrook case had become one of those mysteries that
Speaker 1: lingered in the background. It wasn't closed, it wasn't forgotten,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't moving forward either. Investigators continued to chase
Speaker 1: Leeds as they came in. Every tip was checked. Every
Speaker 1: possible man match of any missing persons was examined, Dental
Speaker 1: records were compared, physical descriptions were cross reference, but nothing
Speaker 1: ever stuck. There were no fingerprints to run, no identification
Speaker 1: in the barrel, and the witnesses nothing. They just had
Speaker 1: a barrel and two victims. That was about it now.
Speaker 1: Based on the level of decomposition, the medical examiner had
Speaker 1: estimated the murders may have happened sometime between nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: seven and nineteen eighty five, a window of time that
Speaker 1: was so wide it was pretty much useless. Eventually, investigators
Speaker 1: tried thinking outside of the box for this case, and
Speaker 1: no matter how they thought of it, though, the one
Speaker 1: troubling possibility kept resurfacing. Maybe the victims weren't from New
Speaker 1: Hampshire at all, and if that were the case, it
Speaker 1: would make solving this that much harder. As the years passed,
Speaker 1: the case slowly lost its momentum. Detectives retired, files were
Speaker 1: put in boxes and stored away in the woods of
Speaker 1: bar brooks Well. It remained quiet. The memorial stone and
Speaker 1: ouns Town became the only visible reminder that two people
Speaker 1: had been murdered and left in the forest. Locals remembered
Speaker 1: the shock of the discovery and the fear that followed,
Speaker 1: and the uneasy feeling too that someone responsible had never
Speaker 1: been found. For fifteen years, that's where the case sat,
Speaker 1: but by the year two thousand the files were still there,
Speaker 1: but no one had identified the woman and child. Now
Speaker 1: that same year, the case was reassigned to a new
Speaker 1: Hampshire State Police trooper, and rather than simply reviewing the paperwork,
Speaker 1: he decided to return to Bearbrook State Park and walk
Speaker 1: the grounds again himself. His goal was to better understand
Speaker 1: the original scene, you know, distances or terrain and how
Speaker 1: the search had been conducted in nineteen eighty five. Sometimes
Speaker 1: physically revisiting a location can reveal something that reports and
Speaker 1: photographs can't. Right, maybe he could understand how he got
Speaker 1: the barrel in there. Maybe there's a spot he could
Speaker 1: roll it down a hill, something like that. Right, So
Speaker 1: it was on May ninth, in the year two thousand,
Speaker 1: while examining the area near the original discovery site, he
Speaker 1: expanded his search slightly beyond the perimeter that had been
Speaker 1: established fifteen years earlier, and as he was walking outside
Speaker 1: that original perimeter, roughly one hard one hundred yards away
Speaker 1: from where the first barrel had been found, he came
Speaker 1: across another object, partially concealed in the woods, another rusted
Speaker 1: fifty five gallon metal drum. No way, the similarities to
Speaker 1: the first discovery was very immediate and unsettling, and when
Speaker 1: investigators opened the second barrel, their worst fears were confirmed
Speaker 1: because inside that old metal drum they found the skeletal
Speaker 1: remains of two more young girls. Just like the first victims,
Speaker 1: the remains were wrapped in plastic, and the conditions of
Speaker 1: the body suggested that they had been there for many years,
Speaker 1: likely placed in the park around the same time as
Speaker 1: the woman and child found in nineteen eighty five. The
Speaker 1: proximity of the barrels, the identical method of disposal, and
Speaker 1: the condition of the remains all pointed to this being
Speaker 1: a single event. What investigators have believed to be a
Speaker 1: double homicide. Well now it was, in fact a quadruple homicide.
Speaker 2: I was not expecting that to be the person who
Speaker 2: found them. Someone investigating this like fifteen years later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And so, like the big detail about this,
Speaker 1: and like the frustrating detail is that it simply fell
Speaker 1: outside the original search boundary. In the original like nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five search of the grounds. So for fifteen years
Speaker 1: you have two additional victims that basically just remained undiscovered,
Speaker 1: sitting alone in that same stretch of woods.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not saying any fault to the original investigators,
Speaker 2: but because yeah, you do have to have that stopping
Speaker 2: point right at some point. But it's just crazy. This
Speaker 2: person's like, I'm going to just explore a little bit
Speaker 2: further and boom.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, this discovery forced investigators to reassess everything they
Speaker 1: thought they understood about the case, even if it wasn't
Speaker 1: a lot. Now, upon examination, the two girls found in
Speaker 1: May of two thousand were significantly younger than the first
Speaker 1: child discovered in nineteen eighty five. One of them was
Speaker 1: estimated to be between one and three years old, while
Speaker 1: the other was believed to be between two and four.
Speaker 1: Both of them had been wrapped in plastic, just like
Speaker 1: the woman and the older child in the first barrel. Now,
Speaker 1: determining an exact cause of death was unfortunately difficult for
Speaker 1: these two. However, over time, further examination and forensic review
Speaker 1: led investigators to conclude that these two children also likely
Speaker 1: died from blunt force trauma to the head. Which was
Speaker 1: the same cause determined for the other two found fifteen
Speaker 1: years earlier. Investigators believed all four victims were killed with
Speaker 1: a similar timeframe, most likely between nineteen seventy eight and
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, and the realization that this barrel had
Speaker 1: been sitting in the woods this whole time was deeply frustrating.
Speaker 1: To say the least, officers had which the surrounding areas,
Speaker 1: but because of that search zone, it just went undiscovered. Now,
Speaker 1: Speculation ranged widely at this point on what had happened
Speaker 1: to these four. Some wondered whether the killings could be
Speaker 1: connected to organized crime, and others questioned whether this was
Speaker 1: the work of a local. You know, offenders are simply
Speaker 1: familiar with the area. There was also the possibility that
Speaker 1: the victims had been brought from somewhere else entirely and
Speaker 1: dumped here to hide and distance themselves from the original crime.
Speaker 1: But despite the expansion of the case, though, investigators were
Speaker 1: still facing the same central problem. They didn't know who
Speaker 1: the victims were without names, you know, there's no clear
Speaker 1: starting point. The case had grown larger and more disturbing, sure,
Speaker 1: but it remains just as confusing up until now. Investigative
Speaker 1: methods had failed to identify the women and three children,
Speaker 1: so the remaining path forward was through the evidence preserved
Speaker 1: in their remains. In the years following the second barrel discovery,
Speaker 1: advances in DNA testing began to offer some new possibilities.
Speaker 1: Early on, authorities conducted mitochondrial DNA testing, which examines maternal lineage. Now,
Speaker 1: the result of this testing revealed a very critical detail.
Speaker 1: The adult woman was maternally related to two of the
Speaker 1: three girls, so that meant she was either their mother,
Speaker 1: their maternal aunt, or possibly an older sister. At that stage,
Speaker 1: the exact relationship it couldn't be confirmed, but it was
Speaker 1: clear that they shared that maternal line. Now, the third child, however,
Speaker 1: the middle aged girl in terms of age among the three,
Speaker 1: did not share that maternal DNA. She was not related
Speaker 1: to the woman or to the other two girls whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Now this upset the theory that investigators were already considering
Speaker 1: for years, which was that the victims might have been
Speaker 1: a mother and children. But since science had officially ruled
Speaker 1: that out, at least for one of the girls, they
Speaker 1: needed to consider some other options. Now. Later, more DNA
Speaker 1: analysis would eventually confirm that the adult woman was in
Speaker 1: fact the biological mother of the oldest and the youngest,
Speaker 1: but that unrelated middle child remained genetically separate from the others,
Speaker 1: though it is important to clarify. Investigators found that despite this,
Speaker 1: all four of them had been living together prior to
Speaker 1: their deaths. Now that conclusion was based not only on
Speaker 1: the DNA but also on environmental testing. Isotope analysis was
Speaker 1: conducted on hair and bone samples, and isotopes are chemical
Speaker 1: signatures that can reflect the geography where a person lived,
Speaker 1: particularly through drinking water and diet. The results suggested that
Speaker 1: the woman and all three children had lived in the
Speaker 1: northeastern United States for a period ranging from roughly two
Speaker 1: weeks to three months before their deaths, meaning they were
Speaker 1: likely living in or near New Hampshire shortly before they
Speaker 1: were killed, and likely altogether.
Speaker 2: That's fricking interesting.
Speaker 1: That's a bit of a twist, for sure.
Speaker 2: I was like, how on earth are they going to
Speaker 2: be able to figure that out? But yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: Now. This discovery also challenged the earlier assumptions that the
Speaker 1: victims had been brought from far away, at least in
Speaker 1: the final months of their lives. Anyway, they seemed to
Speaker 1: appear to be local to the region. However, the isotope
Speaker 1: testing also revealed that the unrelated middle child had spent
Speaker 1: much of her early life somewhere else. Initial results suggested
Speaker 1: she may have grown up in the upper northeastern United
Speaker 1: States area, or possibly the Upper Midwest. Later testing eventually
Speaker 1: expanded the possibility or suggested warmer regions such as maybe Arizona, Texas, California,
Speaker 1: or Oregon, could also match her isotope profile too. The
Speaker 1: results may not have provided a precise location, but they
Speaker 1: made one thing clear her background at least differed from
Speaker 1: the others. Now, despite the scientific progress, investigators were still
Speaker 1: missing the most basic piece of information. They were after
Speaker 1: their names. They now knew the family structure among the victims.
Speaker 1: They knew the likely time frame of the murders. They
Speaker 1: even had clues about where at least one child may
Speaker 1: have grown up. Forensic science had drawn a rough outline
Speaker 1: of who these victims were in relation to one another,
Speaker 1: but without names and missing persons reports that match, there
Speaker 1: was still no clear way forward. Then, thousands of miles away,
Speaker 1: a different thread began to surface, one that at the
Speaker 1: time seemed unrelated to bear Brook at all. In nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six, one year after the first barrel was discovered
Speaker 1: in New Hampshire, a man living under the name Gordon
Speaker 1: Jensen was staying at an RV park in Cyprus, California.
Speaker 1: He worked as a technician and electrician and kept mostly
Speaker 1: to himself. With him was a small girl he introduced
Speaker 1: as his daughter named Lisa. Neighbors in the park noticed
Speaker 1: that Lisa appeared unwell and withdrawn at times. She seemed
Speaker 1: neglected entirely, and Gordon jens And told people that her
Speaker 1: mother had died of cancer and that he was raising
Speaker 1: her all alone. Over time, though, a neighboring family called
Speaker 1: the Deckers. They started to grow concerned about the child's
Speaker 1: condition and began helping take care of her. Then, without warning,
Speaker 1: Gordon Jensen just left. He abandoned the five year old
Speaker 1: girl at the RV park, and he just simply disappeared.
Speaker 1: The Deckers eventually took the girl in and she was
Speaker 1: later adopted. Authorities investigated, and fingerprints recovered from Gordon's RV
Speaker 1: which he left behind, tied him to another name, Curtis Kimball,
Speaker 1: a man who had previously been arrested in California for
Speaker 1: drunk driving. Now during that dui arrest in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: A young girl had been in the car with him,
Speaker 1: who was the same child he would later abandon, Lisa.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty eight, using that name Curtis Kimball, he
Speaker 1: was arrested again. This time the charges included child abandonment
Speaker 1: and driving a stolen vehicle. He ultimately pled guilty to
Speaker 1: the child, a Badminton vehicle charge, and also some molestation
Speaker 1: charges had been raised but were ultimately dropped, and he
Speaker 1: served less than two years in prison and was released
Speaker 1: on parole in October of nineteen ninety, now shortly after
Speaker 1: his release, though he vanished once again. At the time,
Speaker 1: none of this was connected to the Bearbrook murders. Lisa
Speaker 1: the Child in California had no known link to New Hampshire,
Speaker 1: and the names Gordon Jensen and Curtis Kimball meant absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing to investigators back east. The abandoned girl was placed
Speaker 1: into a new life, and the man who left her
Speaker 1: behind simply adopted another identity and moved on. For more
Speaker 1: than a decade these two cases, the four identified victims
Speaker 1: in New Hampshire and Lisa the abandoned child in California,
Speaker 1: remained completely separate stories. Years passed by, and the abandoned
Speaker 1: girl from California grew up under a different name, raised
Speaker 1: by adoptive parents who had no clear answer about where
Speaker 1: she came from. She only knew fragments of what she'd
Speaker 1: been told as a child, that her mother died of
Speaker 1: cancer a man who claimed to be her father simply left.
Speaker 1: But as she got older, those stories began to feel uncertain,
Speaker 1: and soon as an adult, she decided to look for answers.
Speaker 1: So in the early two thousands, people had already begun
Speaker 1: trying to determine whether the man known as Curtis Kimball
Speaker 1: or Gordon Jensen was biologically related to her. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, a DNA test confirmed he was not
Speaker 1: her father, and that revelation it raised a lot of questions,
Speaker 1: a lot more than it really answered for investigators. Honestly,
Speaker 1: if he was her biological parent, then who was she
Speaker 1: and how had she ended up in his custody. The
Speaker 1: real breakthrough came years later, as consumer DNA testing and
Speaker 1: genetic genealogy began to change the world. Cold cases were
Speaker 1: beginning to look at this as a potential tool. By
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, genealogy experts were working extensively on what became
Speaker 1: known as the lease A Project. It was named this
Speaker 1: because Lisa was this abandoned girl's name that she was given,
Speaker 1: or at least what she was told was hers. So
Speaker 1: volunteers and forensic genealogists spent thousands of hours building out
Speaker 1: this family tree. There were cross referencing distant relatives and
Speaker 1: narrowing down possibilities to try and find her biological family,
Speaker 1: And in twenty sixteen, all that hard work and effort
Speaker 1: finally paid off. The girl once known as Lisa learned
Speaker 1: that her real name was Don Boden and her biological
Speaker 1: mother's name was Denise Boden. She was a woman from Manchester,
Speaker 1: New Hampshire. However, Denise had disappeared in nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 1: It seemed like all of a sudden, this child abandoned
Speaker 1: in California was now linked directly back to New Hampshire,
Speaker 1: the very same state where four unidentified victims had been
Speaker 1: found in Beryl's years earlier. Investigators knew that her mother,
Speaker 1: Denise Boden, had left Manchester around Thanksgiving in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: one with her young daughter and and her boyfriend, a
Speaker 1: man at the time known as Bob Evans. But after that,
Speaker 1: Denise was never seen again, and she was never formally
Speaker 1: reported missing because her family believed she and her boyfriend
Speaker 1: had simply left the area due to financial troubles.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it wasn't alarming at all, exactly.
Speaker 1: So, Now authority showed Denise's family booking photos of Curtis
Speaker 1: Kimball and of Gordon Jensen, and the family recognized him immediately.
Speaker 1: That man they confirmed was in fact who they knew
Speaker 1: as Bob Evans the boyfriend.
Speaker 2: Yes, holy moly, Okay, this is almost there's a lot, Hey,
Speaker 2: there is. I feel I've been a little bit quiet
Speaker 2: because I'm just like wrapping my head around all this.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like a wild story, and you really
Speaker 2: have to pay attention.
Speaker 1: Well, I generally specifically only talk about one man. There's
Speaker 1: gonna be a lot of names to this one man, Okay,
Speaker 1: so keep that in mind. He goes through a lot
Speaker 1: of different identities. It's the same guy. Okay.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, when you go through a lot of
Speaker 2: different identities, you might not be a super good person. Sometimes, say,
Speaker 2: if you're going to have to change your name numerous
Speaker 2: times in your life, you're.
Speaker 1: Clearly trying to hide from something. Yes, Now, for the
Speaker 1: first time, New Hampshire investigators had a tangible person to examine,
Speaker 1: someone who had lived in the Allenstown area around the
Speaker 1: time of the Bearbrooks victims being found or when they
Speaker 1: believed had been killed. The case that was dormant for decades,
Speaker 1: it started to shift. Now Denise Boden was not in
Speaker 1: fact one of the women found in the barrels though.
Speaker 1: Oh her DNA was tested, but it did not match
Speaker 1: the adult victim, so she herself was in fact still missing.
Speaker 1: But if that was the case, then that meant where
Speaker 1: was she? As investigators began rebuilding the timeline, every everything
Speaker 1: led back to the fall of nineteen eighty one. At
Speaker 1: the time, Denise was twenty three years old, living in
Speaker 1: Manchester in New Hampshire, and she had a six month
Speaker 1: old daughter named Don who grew up thinking she was Lisa.
Speaker 1: Right around that time, she was in a relationship with
Speaker 1: the men who called himself Bob Evans. He was older,
Speaker 1: worked as an electrician and a handyman, and seemed capable
Speaker 1: of providing some stability in Denise's life. On Thanksgiving weekend
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty one, Denise and Don while they visited
Speaker 1: her family in Gofston. It was that last time that
Speaker 1: she was ever confirmed to be seen by her family.
Speaker 1: Not long after that, Denise and her daughter and Bob
Speaker 1: were just all simply gone. When Denise's father later stopped
Speaker 1: by her Manchester apartment to invite her over for Christmas,
Speaker 1: the place was empty. A neighbor told him that they'd
Speaker 1: packed up and moved out. There was no sign of
Speaker 1: a struggle, no obvious indication of violence. In Denise's family assumed,
Speaker 1: like I mentioned earlier, she just kind of left for
Speaker 1: financial difficulties or whatever without saying goodbye.
Speaker 2: Still heartbreaking, though, hey.
Speaker 1: It is, but it's not like she didn't exactly maintain
Speaker 1: constant contact before. Oh okay, And at the time, there's
Speaker 1: no immediate reason to suspect something darker, so they thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: she basically just left without saying goodbye. And the result
Speaker 1: was no missing person's report was filed.
Speaker 2: But here the dad's coming over, Let to come and
Speaker 2: have Christmas with us and find out they're just gone.
Speaker 2: Didn't say goodbye? Like that's okay.
Speaker 1: At least the father was inviting him over for Christmas, right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now the result of not ever filing a missing person's report.
Speaker 1: That decision it would ultimately have consequences years later, because
Speaker 1: when baar Brooke investigation first unfolded in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: detectives they searched extensively through missing persons databases in New
Speaker 1: Hampshire and the surrounding states, and Denise's name well, it
Speaker 1: was not in the system. Neither was her daughter's, and
Speaker 1: that was a big, big mistake. Well not a mistake.
Speaker 1: They had no idea what they were doing, but that
Speaker 1: was a big piece of this puzzle. So by the
Speaker 1: time investigators identified Dawn in twenty sixteen through DNA, Denise
Speaker 1: had effectively vanished from records for more than three decades.
Speaker 1: At that point, only once Don's true identity was confirmed,
Speaker 1: authorities were able to formally open a missing person's case
Speaker 1: for Denise Boden, and they were actually starting to able
Speaker 1: to target this individual responsible for it. So they searched
Speaker 1: Denise's former Manchester residence years later, hoping to uncover any
Speaker 1: sort of forensic evidence that might clarify what happened in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, but nothing significantly was ever publicly disclosed.
Speaker 1: And Denise's body, well, it has never been found either.
Speaker 1: She to this day is still missing.
Speaker 2: Okay, I okay, as soon as you started going there,
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh my gosh, slam dunk, that's who's in
Speaker 2: the barrel. But no in case, okay, So we're back
Speaker 2: to kind of square one with those the people.
Speaker 1: In the barrel exactly now. At this stage of the investigation,
Speaker 1: one thing was clear. The man known as Bob Evans
Speaker 1: had been in New Hampshire at that exact same time
Speaker 1: the bear Brooks victims were likely killed. He had left
Speaker 1: the state with Denise and her infant daughter, who survived,
Speaker 1: but Denise had simply disappeared, and he had taken custody
Speaker 1: of her daughter and then abandoned her. So we have
Speaker 1: a likely suspect. By twenty sixteen, invest stigators made a
Speaker 1: lot of progress, but the problem the problem that they
Speaker 1: had that they were looking for a men who seemed
Speaker 1: to have lived multiple lives in New Hampshire. He was
Speaker 1: Bob Evans, an electrician who worked at Wombeck Mill in Manchester,
Speaker 1: and he had no connections to the property near Bearbrook
Speaker 1: State Park in California. He had gone by Curtis Kimball,
Speaker 1: a name tied to his DUI arrest and the child
Speaker 1: abandonment charges, and at other times he used Gordon Jensen.
Speaker 1: He also used Jerry Mockerman and later even Larry Vayner.
Speaker 2: How could you even keep up with that yourself?
Speaker 1: Right? It's like, wait, what's my name again?
Speaker 2: Yeah? What do I go buy in this state?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Now? Fingerprints were the only thread that tided all
Speaker 1: these identities together. Every time he was arrested under a
Speaker 1: new name, his prints were quietly connected back to the
Speaker 1: previous alias. On paper, these seemed to be different men,
Speaker 1: but in reality they were in fact the same person,
Speaker 1: someone who is reinventing himself over and over to try
Speaker 1: and stay hidden. He drifted from state to state, off
Speaker 1: and living in trailer parks, motels, or temporary housing. He
Speaker 1: worked jobs that required mechanical or electrical skills, and he
Speaker 1: drank heavily. He frequently presented himself as a single father
Speaker 1: to try and gain sympathy and trust, and he formed
Speaker 1: relationships with women who had children, then isolated them. Then
Speaker 1: when problems arose, he disappeared and resurfaced under a new name.
Speaker 1: For investigators, his movements were very difficult to track. Before
Speaker 1: the digital era, there were no centralized databases linking employment
Speaker 1: records or vehicle registration or marriages across states in real time.
Speaker 1: So as long as he stayed ahead of the law
Speaker 1: enforcement and used a different alias, he could essentially just
Speaker 1: start over with a fresh slate. Now. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and two, he married a South Korean immigrant named Yunsun Jun.
Speaker 1: Two outsiders, it appeared to be a very fresh start,
Speaker 1: another life built on another new identity. But within months
Speaker 1: of their marriage, Us in June suddenly disappeared. Friends of
Speaker 1: her quickly became concerned after not hearing from her, and
Speaker 1: eventually a missing person's report was filed. When police came
Speaker 1: knocking on his door, they questioned Larry Vayner, the name
Speaker 1: he was going by the time. They questioned him about
Speaker 1: her disappearance, and he claimed that he didn't know where
Speaker 1: she was. In fact, he even suggested to investigators that
Speaker 1: she may have left or even harmed herself. Now, that
Speaker 1: last suggestion was ominous and worried investigators, but still they
Speaker 1: continued asking him questions and remained calm during the interview.
Speaker 1: They avoided, you know, giving any direct He avoided, sorry,
Speaker 1: giving any direct answers when possible. Now to clarify at
Speaker 1: this moment, it's not really like a they have him
Speaker 1: in custody or anything. They're just at his front door
Speaker 1: questioning him right where she was.
Speaker 2: But it's very odd that you would say something like that.
Speaker 2: They may have harmed themselves, but yet you didn't report
Speaker 2: the missing exactly. Now.
Speaker 1: What he didn't know was that the authorities were already
Speaker 1: looking very closely at him, and they found the identities
Speaker 1: attached to his fingerprints. So when confronted about this, he
Speaker 1: stuck to his strategy and avoided answering and denied knowing
Speaker 1: any of the names tied to him. But investigators weren't
Speaker 1: buying his excuses, and they quickly obtained a search warrant
Speaker 1: to search his home because something wasn't right inside the home.
Speaker 1: They searched for any clue of where Yunson June could
Speaker 1: be and any clues that might explain Larry's identity. It
Speaker 1: was during the search that they found something hidden Beneath
Speaker 1: a mound of cat litter stored in a basement area
Speaker 1: under the garage, they discovered Unson June's partially dismembered remains.
Speaker 2: Are you serious?
Speaker 1: She was dead and had been killed by blunt force trauma,
Speaker 1: the same cause of death later associated with bear Brooks victims.
Speaker 2: And he just put cat litter on her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the cat litter. It appeared to be likely an
Speaker 1: attempt to slow decomp and conceal odor. Basically, holy, okay,
Speaker 1: lot of cat litter. That's what it does. It like
Speaker 1: it covers odor and stuff, right, soaks up you know, liquids.
Speaker 2: I know, I get that, but it's also like, holy shit,
Speaker 2: I know that's what cat litter does, but I don't
Speaker 2: think I would ever been like, I'm going to use
Speaker 2: this for this, Like that's crazy.
Speaker 1: Well, Devil's advocate here, things like that are used often
Speaker 1: in shops. He's an electrician, handyman, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So he's like, you know, an oil spill. They don't
Speaker 1: use cat litter, but they call it, like in the shop,
Speaker 1: they'll call it cat litter because it looks the same,
Speaker 1: but it's something you throw down to absorb these liquids
Speaker 1: and stuff.
Speaker 2: Right, that's true because I used to work in a shop, right,
Speaker 2: and I yeah, I do remember them putting stuff like
Speaker 2: that down.
Speaker 1: You know, they call it cat litter or whatever, like
Speaker 1: it's a nickname, but it's actually meant for automotive spills
Speaker 1: and chemical spills.
Speaker 2: Right Okay.
Speaker 1: Now, obviously Larry was arrested and immediately taken into custody
Speaker 1: after this. Fingerprints confirmed what detectives already suspected that Larry
Speaker 1: Vayner was the same part previously arrested as Curtis Kimball
Speaker 1: and connected him to pass charges including a DUI child
Speaker 1: abandonment and parole violations too. Now, facing the evidence in
Speaker 1: front of him, Larry made a decision. He decided to
Speaker 1: plead guilty to Yinsun June's murder in two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: He avoided a trial and was ultimately sentenced to only
Speaker 1: fifteen years to life in prison.
Speaker 2: Gosh.
Speaker 1: Now, importantly, he likely chose to plead guilty rather than
Speaker 1: proceed to trial, possibly for the reason to try and
Speaker 1: prevent deeper scrutiny into his past. A public trial would
Speaker 1: have opened the door to examination of his history, relationships,
Speaker 1: earlier movements across multiple states, a full on investigation. But
Speaker 1: if he pled guilty, well it just kind of stopped
Speaker 1: that in its tracks and has shut the case off
Speaker 1: from investigators.
Speaker 2: But also too, there's no way of boat go and
Speaker 2: hide in this one either.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, well that single one, yeah, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: But if he's got multiple, if he's got more, it
Speaker 1: prevents that from coming to light because it shuts the
Speaker 1: case and they're not going to look into him further.
Speaker 2: Right, And then there's the chance of him potentially getting
Speaker 2: out one day exactly.
Speaker 1: So, then on December twenty eighth, twenty ten, he ultimately
Speaker 1: died behind bars. By the time he passed away, he
Speaker 1: had spent a measly eight years in prison for the
Speaker 1: murder of yunsn June. At that moment, officially, he was
Speaker 1: simply a convicted murderer with a history of aliases pro
Speaker 1: violations one murder, and there was no public understanding of
Speaker 1: his connection to the New Hampshire stuff yet, and no
Speaker 1: confirmed link to the four victims in the bear Brook
Speaker 1: State Park whatsoever. And he died without ever revealing his
Speaker 1: real name. He was still under an alias even behind bars.
Speaker 1: For New Hampshire investigators, the fact that they still didn't
Speaker 1: know this guy's real name created a unique challenge years later. Normally,
Speaker 1: in homicide investigations to active start by identifying victims and
Speaker 1: working towards identifying the suspect. But in the bare bookcase,
Speaker 1: it would eventually unfold in reverse. By the mid twenty tens,
Speaker 1: authorities would know more about the killer than they would
Speaker 1: about the victims.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm actually kind of angry about this because
Speaker 2: this bastard probably thought that he just died winning, you know,
Speaker 2: he got away with all this shit and like I
Speaker 2: did it kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I don't like that at all, I know.
Speaker 1: I mean, at least he was convicted for something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: died behind bars.
Speaker 2: She did, which is good, but I'm not saying like that.
Speaker 2: He you know, was charged.
Speaker 1: Charging, yes, but it got off so easy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also just got away with like you know,
Speaker 2: in his mind, like me going and moving and changing
Speaker 2: my name and stuff like it worked.
Speaker 1: Yeap, it did it, honestly did. Yeah, he got away
Speaker 1: with it for a long time. The one thing that
Speaker 1: happened he finally got caught for and that he served
Speaker 1: time for that. And I mean there more happens, of course,
Speaker 1: but in his lifetime he died thinking he got away
Speaker 1: with it all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a lot. It's kind of a yucky feeling.
Speaker 2: I don't like it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, it was by twenty sixteen that investigators had
Speaker 1: reached the point where traditional methods of investigating had taken
Speaker 1: them as far as they could go. They had fingerprints
Speaker 1: tying him to multiple aliases. They had a confirmed homicide
Speaker 1: conviction in California. They had DNA linking the man known
Speaker 1: as Bob Evans to the middle child now found in
Speaker 1: the bear Brooks barrels because of his DNA. What they
Speaker 1: did not have, though, was his true identity. Yeah, dropping
Speaker 1: a bomb on you? Okay?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I was like, did I miss something? Or is
Speaker 2: that literally it being dropped? Okay? So that okay? So Lisa,
Speaker 2: who's actually down right yes, is related to that pert? No,
Speaker 2: she wouldn't be.
Speaker 1: No, she's not. Holy shit, trust me, I'll explain.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So all this change when authorities turned to investigative genetic genealogy,
Speaker 1: trying to tie all these things together that you're trying
Speaker 1: to tie. Yeah, So, working with genealogists doctor Barbara ray Vetner,
Speaker 1: investigators used the killer's DNA profile and uploaded it into
Speaker 1: public genealogy databases. The allowed law enforcement access to all
Speaker 1: of this. From there, ray Vetner began building family trees
Speaker 1: based on distant DNA matches, sometimes fourth, fifth and even
Speaker 1: more distant cousins. It was very painstaking work, and each
Speaker 1: match required research into family lineages, marriages, relocations, and descendants,
Speaker 1: narrowing possibilities generation by generation. After thousands of hours of analysis,
Speaker 1: a pattern emerged. The DNA they had pointed back to
Speaker 1: a man born in Colorado in nineteen forty three and
Speaker 1: his name was Terry Peder Rasmussen. That was his real name,
Speaker 1: oh Terry, and for the first time, this man had
Speaker 1: a confirmed birth identity. Terry Rasmusen had an listed in
Speaker 1: the US Navy at seventeen. He served as an electrician,
Speaker 1: and after leaving the military, he married and had four children.
Speaker 1: His marriage eventually ended, but by the mid nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: he began drifting, arrested for assaults and other offenses that followed,
Speaker 1: and at some point he had a divorce that was
Speaker 1: finalized in nineteen seventy eight. But Terry left his previous
Speaker 1: life behind and that's when he began using these aliases.
Speaker 1: Investigators now understood that by the late nineteen seventies he
Speaker 1: had moved east and settled into New Hampshire under the
Speaker 1: name of Bob Evans. From there, the pattern scene in
Speaker 1: later years began to make a lot of sense. He
Speaker 1: was targeting women, often single mothers, moving frequently, and he
Speaker 1: reinvented himself whatever pressure mounted. But now the DNA testing
Speaker 1: also confirmed something critical to this story. Terry Rasmusen was
Speaker 1: found to be the biological father of the middle child
Speaker 1: found in the second barrel. She was his daughter. Gosh,
Speaker 1: what the problem with this is? They do not know
Speaker 1: her name or who her.
Speaker 2: Mother is, right, and she isn't She was the one
Speaker 2: that's not related to the other three exactly.
Speaker 1: So the other three victims not biologically related to him,
Speaker 1: is the case, and it's just him and that one.
Speaker 1: So they have the relation figured out. But the problem
Speaker 1: is still no names. So this whole revelation shifted the
Speaker 1: structure of this case. Authorities now knew the killer's real
Speaker 1: name and could reconstruct much of his adult life even
Speaker 1: if he was dead. Military records, prior addresses, former employers,
Speaker 1: family members who'd not seen him in decades, all this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff were useful, but the central question remained.
Speaker 1: Who were the other three victims, What were the names?
Speaker 1: What was the name of his daughter? All these things,
Speaker 1: but the central question of it all remained, how did
Speaker 1: this all fit together? By twenty seventeen, the bar Brook
Speaker 1: case had drawn national attention. The announcement that Terry Petter
Speaker 1: Resmussen had been identified through genetic genealogy made headline all over,
Speaker 1: not just because it solved the mystery of the killer's identity,
Speaker 1: but because it demonstrated a new investigative tool that would
Speaker 1: soon be used in major cases across the country. Among
Speaker 1: the people that followed the developments closely was a librarian
Speaker 1: from Connecticut. She had listened to coverages of the case, and,
Speaker 1: like many others, became deeply interested in the unanswered questions,
Speaker 1: especially the identities of the three victims still unnamed. Now,
Speaker 1: Unlike investigators who were bound by jurisdiction and official records,
Speaker 1: she on the other hand, had time and access to
Speaker 1: online archives, missing persons forums, genealogy sites, and family history posts,
Speaker 1: and soon she began combing through websites where families had
Speaker 1: posted about missing loved ones and people who were never
Speaker 1: entered into national databases. She was effectively an online web sleuth.
Speaker 1: She paid close attention to timelines, ages and mentioned of
Speaker 1: New Hampshire or any name that related to Terry Rasmussen.
Speaker 1: Eventually she came across to post about a young California
Speaker 1: woman named Marle's Honeychurch. Now, according to the Post, Marle's
Speaker 1: had left her family in nineteen seventy eight after an argument.
Speaker 1: She'd been accompanied by her two daughters and a boyfriend,
Speaker 1: and after that they were never seen again. Oh in
Speaker 1: the boyfriend's name, by the way, they didn't have it all,
Speaker 1: but they remembered his last name was Rasmussen.
Speaker 2: Oh okay.
Speaker 1: Now this detail stood out obviously, but because ras Muse
Speaker 1: is not exactly a common last name, and the librarian
Speaker 1: began to reach out to the family connected to the Post,
Speaker 1: sharing what she had learned about Rasmussen's history and the
Speaker 1: Bearbrook case. The family told her that they had no
Speaker 1: idea what happened to Marleice and her daughters. They assumed
Speaker 1: she chosen to leave, and that there'd been no confirmed
Speaker 1: death in no official missings person's report, Deck declared at
Speaker 1: the time, and it had simply become one of those
Speaker 1: painful family stories that lingered with uncertainty. They hoped that
Speaker 1: one day they could reconnect, but that was about it.
Speaker 1: It seemed like now though the first time, there was
Speaker 1: a possibility that Marlice and her children had not simply disappeared,
Speaker 1: that they may have been murdered. The tip was quickly
Speaker 1: passed to law enforcement and investigators, and they began comparing
Speaker 1: the timelines. Marlee's Honeychurch and her daughters vanished in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight. Terry resurfaced in New Hampshire not long after that.
Speaker 1: The age of the children they matched closely with the
Speaker 1: estimated age of the two girls found in the barrels.
Speaker 1: The adult victim's age reign also closely aligned with Marlee.
Speaker 1: To be sure of this, though, DNA testing will be required,
Speaker 1: and it was in twenty nineteen, more than three decades
Speaker 1: after the first barrel was discovered in Bearbrook State Park,
Speaker 1: that investigators announced that the three of the four victims
Speaker 1: had finally been identified by name. The adult woman found
Speaker 1: in the first barrel was in fact a positive DNA
Speaker 1: match for Marlee's.
Speaker 2: Honey Church Holy Shit, and the.
Speaker 1: Young girls discovered alongside her were her daughters. The one
Speaker 1: in the barrel with her was Mary Vaughan, and the
Speaker 1: second contained the remains of Marlice's other daughter, Sarah mick Waters.
Speaker 2: Huh that is just wild, hey, that because you always
Speaker 2: think after that long of a span, like three decades,
Speaker 2: like how that shit is something like this going to
Speaker 2: be solved.
Speaker 1: Genetic There we go. Genetic genealogy has done wonder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the world of crime and stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, all three of these individuals had disappeared in California
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy eight, when Marlee had been in a
Speaker 1: relationship with none other than Terry pettor Russ Musen. After
Speaker 1: an argument with her family, she left California with him,
Speaker 1: bringing her two daughters along. When her family never heard
Speaker 1: from her again, years turned into decades without any sort
Speaker 1: of answers.
Speaker 2: And really it was because she was not alive exactly.
Speaker 1: Terry moved meanwhile east and eventually appeared in New Hampshire
Speaker 1: under the alias Bob Evans. At some point after arriving
Speaker 1: in the state, Marleice and her daughters were then killed,
Speaker 1: the bodies replaced into two separate fifty five gallon steel drums,
Speaker 1: wrapped in placid stick on the inside, and left in
Speaker 1: the wood in the woods in bear Brook State Park.
Speaker 1: But how it exactly played out and why, Well, since
Speaker 1: Terry had already passed away in jail before ever being
Speaker 1: connected to the story, it's something we will never.
Speaker 2: Know well, and who knows if he would even have
Speaker 2: shared any of this. I'm kind of doubting you would
Speaker 2: have exactly now.
Speaker 1: The identifications, however, did allow for proper funerals and memorials
Speaker 1: to finally be held, and after years of being known
Speaker 1: only as forensic sketches and anonymous remains, Marlice, Mary, and
Speaker 1: Sarah had finally returned to their extended family by name.
Speaker 1: For investigators, this marked a major milestone in the case
Speaker 1: that had once seemed impossible to solve, but still one
Speaker 1: victim who was found inside the barrels still remained unnamed.
Speaker 2: Okay, well yeah, and I was like, why is I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess she's with them because that's his child.
Speaker 1: We won't know because he's dead. He won't ever tell
Speaker 1: us why or how this happened. All we know is
Speaker 1: they were found in the barrels. The least we can
Speaker 1: do is to try and identify them.
Speaker 2: And like, really, we don't even one hundred percent know
Speaker 2: that it was him, but it's most likely him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like very high percentage we know.
Speaker 1: But he would never be convicted of right, So, yeah, everything,
Speaker 1: everything matches, everything is laid out, there's evidence, strong evidence
Speaker 1: to say he did it, but technically speaking, no, he's
Speaker 1: not convicted of them because he's dead. He can't be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it is he is responsible.
Speaker 2: Jeez, Okay. And then also there's probably like many more
Speaker 2: out there, I'm thinking potentially, because like he I'm I
Speaker 2: just feel like sitting here listening to this. He you know,
Speaker 2: commits a serious crime and then he changes his identity,
Speaker 2: and then he commits a serious crime and changes his identity.
Speaker 1: Yep. Now, Terry Rasmussen's biological daughter, the one that still
Speaker 1: has no name, is the focus now. Investigators didn't know
Speaker 1: who her mother was, and they didn't know where she'd
Speaker 1: been born or anything. In fact, they didn't even know
Speaker 1: how long she'd been alive before becoming one of Terry's victims.
Speaker 1: They didn't know how old she was. Investigators had long
Speaker 1: referred to her as quote, the middle child, and she
Speaker 1: would have been estimated to have been around three or
Speaker 1: four years old at the time of her death. And
Speaker 1: that's about all authorities knew for a long time. They
Speaker 1: believed her mother may also have been a victim of
Speaker 1: Terry Rasmussen, possibly killed in another state, and never connected
Speaker 1: him too, but continuing to pursue answers even decades later,
Speaker 1: the new Hampshire State Police Cold Case unit partnered again
Speaker 1: with a DNA dough project in early twenty four, sorry
Speaker 1: so in early twenty twenty four to re examine the
Speaker 1: unidentified child using advanced genetic genealogy techniques again. By this point,
Speaker 1: investigative genealogy had matured significantly since it was first used
Speaker 1: in the bear Brooks case. Larger database and improved family
Speaker 1: tree analysis made it possible to explore distant matches in
Speaker 1: much greater detail, and after extensive genealogical research reportedly involving
Speaker 1: a construction of a massive family tree containing tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of individuals, investigators were finally able to identify the
Speaker 1: child's maternal line. That research led them to a woman
Speaker 1: whose name was Pepper Reed, originally from Texas, born in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two. From there, documentary records were located confirming
Speaker 1: that Pepper Reed had given birth to a daughter in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six in Orange County, California, and that child's
Speaker 1: name was Rhea Rasmussen. On September fifth, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: authorities officially confirmed the identification through documentary evidence and DNA testing.
Speaker 1: The last remaining victim of the bare Brick murder finally
Speaker 1: had her name an identity.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 1: Rear Rasmussen was Terry Petters Mussen's biological daughter. Her mother,
Speaker 1: Pepper Reid, had not been seen since the late nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies and also remains missing today.
Speaker 2: You're kidding me, Nope, holy shit.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. So we have four confirmed, five confirmed murders
Speaker 1: under his name and two missing persons as well related
Speaker 1: to his name. But like you said, how many more?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Okay, And because he's he had four children too,
Speaker 2: and so then but with this one woman, he only
Speaker 2: had the one correct. Okay.
Speaker 1: So with Rhea's identification, all four victims found in the
Speaker 1: bear Brook State Park had their names once again, marking
Speaker 1: their conclusion of a more than forty year effort to
Speaker 1: restore their identities. What began as a hunter stumbling upon
Speaker 1: a rusted barrel in the woods of Allenstown, Well It
Speaker 1: became one of the most influential cold case investigations in
Speaker 1: modern criminal history. The case unfolded in reverse, with investigators
Speaker 1: having to identify the killer first and only then could
Speaker 1: they begin the long process of restoring identities of those
Speaker 1: he had killed. It was an unusual path in when
Speaker 1: Genetic genealogy was first used to identify Terry Resmusen in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. It was still largely experimental in criminal investigations.
Speaker 1: The success of that effort helped demonstrate that publicly available
Speaker 1: DNA bases, combined with traditional investigative work could unlock cases
Speaker 1: that had been considered unsolvable. The techniques while it refined.
Speaker 1: All this refined during the Barbrook investigation would later contribute
Speaker 1: to the identification even of the Golden State Killer and
Speaker 1: countless other cold cases across the country, and that number
Speaker 1: is growing daily, making an extremely powerful tool to investigators
Speaker 1: and their kit today. But for Allenstown, New Hampshire, the
Speaker 1: case was never just about forensic innovation. It was about
Speaker 1: four murder victims left in barrels alone in the woods,
Speaker 1: unidentified for decades. It was about families who never filed
Speaker 1: missing persons reports because they believed their loved ones had
Speaker 1: simply left on their own free will. It was about
Speaker 1: a small town that buried strangers under headstones that read
Speaker 1: known only to God, hoping someday they would be known
Speaker 1: to someone. The identification of Marlise Honeychurch, Marie Vaughan, Sarah
Speaker 1: Macwaters and re arrest Musen didn't erase what happened. It
Speaker 1: didn't even answer most of the questions about Terry's full
Speaker 1: history or how many other victims had fallen to him.
Speaker 1: Denise Bowden remains missing. Pepper Reid remains missing. There are
Speaker 1: still gaps in Terry Rasmussen's timelines that investigators continue to examine.
Speaker 1: But the names matter. For thirty four years, three victims
Speaker 1: were buried without any sort of name. For nearly forty years,
Speaker 1: the fourth remained a question mark, and now they are
Speaker 1: no longer anonymous. While we often cover stories here about murders,
Speaker 1: and though this one may contain it, that's not what
Speaker 1: this story is. This story is about finding identities, ensuring
Speaker 1: those who were about to be lost to time and
Speaker 1: violence were reunited with their names and given that respect
Speaker 1: that they deserve. The woods of bear Brooks still stand quiet,
Speaker 1: but the silence that once surrounded those barrels has been
Speaker 1: replaced by answers, not perfect ones, not even complete ones,
Speaker 1: but enough to return identities to the people who lost them.
Speaker 1: And in the world of true crime, where so many
Speaker 1: cases go unresolved, that alone is so significant. And that's
Speaker 1: the story of the bear Brook murders.
Speaker 2: Okay, A like, what a wild ride that was?
Speaker 1: It is a wild ride.
Speaker 2: I almost want it. Okay, I don't feel like I
Speaker 2: feel like this often, but I almost want to listen
Speaker 2: to this one again just be like, you know, put
Speaker 2: my wrap my mind around all of it. And this guy, like,
Speaker 2: I'm sure that he's done way frickin' more. But the
Speaker 2: fact that these these four people in this barrel get
Speaker 2: to have it, you know, a head what is.
Speaker 1: It, headstone, headstone, tombstone however, yeah, whatever.
Speaker 2: You want to say that has a name is like
Speaker 2: it's huge phenomenal because the work behind having to get
Speaker 2: them that is like so great. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 2: can't even imagine how well obviously it took frickin decades,
Speaker 2: right in.
Speaker 1: Forty years, yeah, but they didn't give up. And thanks
Speaker 1: to genetic genealogy, which I'm pretty sure I said that
Speaker 1: in that term, like thirty forty times in this case alone.
Speaker 1: Thanks to that, they're progressing today and they have discovered
Speaker 1: you know, his name, many other people's names, and they're
Speaker 1: going to continue bringing people to justice and identifying those
Speaker 1: people lost because I mean, I mean, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: so important we do.
Speaker 2: It's very much so is. But if only we didn't
Speaker 2: have frickin monsters like Terry in the world have to
Speaker 2: do this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I know, right, but that's unfortunately the case,
Speaker 1: and here we are. So do you think that fits
Speaker 1: in the definition of slow burn a state of slowly
Speaker 1: mounting anger or annoyance.
Speaker 2: I guess actually, yeah, I guess so. It definitely was
Speaker 2: not the slow burn I.
Speaker 1: Was hoping it was, but you were hoping.
Speaker 2: I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: It was not a spicy podcast.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I'll read one of those later, yes, kidding.
Speaker 1: But I am very happy that they were identified, and
Speaker 1: that means a lot, if the very least, we get that,
Speaker 1: and that's that's important. Yeah, but I do want to
Speaker 1: thank you guys for being here. It means the world.
Speaker 1: And I also want to say again, not only to
Speaker 1: the victims of this story, but also to the victims
Speaker 1: of the tumblr Ridge incident that we discussed at the
Speaker 1: very beginning, our hearts go out to them. This world
Speaker 1: is a horrific place. Don't feed into the horrificness of it.
Speaker 1: Be a kind, understanding person, and yeah, our hearts go
Speaker 1: out to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tumbler Ridge Strong, Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: For being here, and until next time, stay wicked.