Turn on desktop notifications for breaking stories about interest? These versions incorporated their dental information, showing how their teeth could have affected the appearance of their faces. Billy Jensen on the Bear Brook 4 Update and Remembering the Victims of Ted Bundy | CrimeCon, Debra and Terra Newell and Laura Richards Discuss Dirty John & Coercive Control, Nancy Grace Speaks About Fighting For Victims at CrimeCon 2019, Nancy Grace on Her New Oxygen Series Injustice, the Chris Watts Case, and More | CrimeCon, Photo: Four Bodies Are Discovered In Bear Brook State Park 15 Years Apart On Nov. 10, 1985, a hunter trekking through Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown, New Hampshire came across a large, industrial steel drum. Although this moment is bittersweet, they had their names back on this day. Bodies In Bear Brook Barrel Murders Linked To 'Worst Serial Killer Out There' Police believe Terry Rasmussen, a man one expert deemed the worst serial killer, murdered the four women and children found stuffed into barrels in a New Hampshire state park decades ago. I don't remember exactly what happened, Paula Hodges, Honeychurchs other sister, told 20/20. I just heard that they had an argument, Marlyse and my mom., My mom might've said something to her as, He's too old for you. When somebody's story keeps changing, it means that they [have] either made something up, can't remember what they told you the first time or that they're lying to you, she added. The abandonment of five-year-old Lisa in Scotts Valley, California. [20], In January 2017, it was announced that Denise Beaudin, who had been missing since 1981, was connected to the murders. I wished he'd lived longer, so he would have suffered longer in prison, myself.. More than 30 years later, is it possible to get to the truth and who gets to tell it? Host Jason Moon documents how those involved grapple with the idea that the prevailing story about who killed Sharon Johnson could be a lie. To make a donation in support of Bear Brook, click here. 1954) was the mother of Marie Elizabeth Vaughn (b. Police believe Terry Rasmussen, a man one expert deemed the worst serial killer, murdered the four women and children found stuffed into barrels in a New Hampshire state park decades ago. She also may have suffered from anemia. Bear Brook murder victims remembered. Rebekah Heath, a research librarian who said shed become obsessed with the case, helped identify the woman and the two children through her own sleuthing. Big, like 4 or 5 feet around and probably 2 or 3 feet high, she said. Check out never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! of Corrections, he broke parole and fled, Gruenheid said. Rasmussen had been convicted of the murder of aromantic partner in 2003. Known by a lengthy list of aliases, Terry Peder Rasmussen has been dubbed The Chameleon Killer for assuming so many different identities as he infiltrated families and destroyed lives in New Hampshire and California. Jesse Morgan, who grew up in a small trailer park surrounded by Bear Brook, was 11 when he and his friends stumbled upon the first barrel. Denise Beaudin has never been located. [11], San Bernardino detective Peter Headley got Lisa's case in 2013 and genealogy website databases had grown since the case had started. Rasmussen killed at least six people in a series of crimes that spanned decades and stretched across the continental United States. [29], In June 2017, police released a video of a police interview of Evans in hopes of finding his true identity. The identities of Honeychurch and her two children were not known until they were confirmed by DNA profiling in 2019. A fourth victim in the . At the same time, Barbara Rae-Venter, a genetic genealogist, independently used the victims DNA to identify them in a cutting-edge technique that required using autosomal DNA, which is found inside the cell nucleus. A fox, a wolf and a spaceboy: Felix, Zo and Arlo Duff posed up a storm ahead of their school day in celebration of World Book Day. New Hampshire authorities have referred to her as the middle child because of how her suspected age compares to the other two children found in the barrels, but DNA tests confirmed she is not related to Sarah and Marie, nor their mother. The murder of Eunsoon Jun in Richmond, California. Ultimately, the body was identified as Jun, who police determined had died of blunt force trauma to the head. Gruenheid said she later determined a man matching Vanners description had bought 10 bags of cat litter from a nearby pet store. [5], The guilty plea came as a surprise to the court; Contra Costa County homicide detective Roxane Gruenheid has stated that she thinks he pleaded guilty after overhearing her say that she was going to request a paternity test for Lisa. She had brought her two daughters and a man she identified as Rasmussen to hermothers house in La Puente, California. Inside were the bodies of an adult female and young girl, wrapped in plastic. But 15years later, a similar barrel was discovered in the same area, this time containing the remainsof two girls. He was 62 years old when he passed away in prison. Terry Rasmussen poses as "Bob Evans" in an arrest photo from 1985. an investigative journalist and the author of the book "Chase Darkness With Me." . Let's talk about the Bear Brook murders. January 23, 2023 Jason Carroll is serving life in prison for a murder he says he didn't commit. She left the home after a trivial argument with her mother and was never seen alive again. [13], Police released a video of a police interview of Evans in June 2017 in hopes of finding his true identity. She was previously known as San Joaquin Jane Doe and the Lady in the Fridge.[8][19]. Her age at the time of death was estimated to be 23 to 33. Investigative reporter Billy Jensen, who wrote about Rasmussen in his upcoming book Chase Darkness With Me," told Oxygen Digital Correspondent Stephanie Gomulka at CrimeCon 2019he thinks Rasmussen is responsible for killing other people, too. Hes your atypical serial killer, Strelzin said. Curiously, the first drum was way back in 1985 and the second wasnt discovered until 2000. The family was comprised of Sarah McWaters, an infant, her older sister Marie Elizabeth Vaughn, and their mother Marlyse Honeychurch. On Nov. 10, 1985, a hunter trekking through Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown, New Hampshire came across a large, industrial steel drum. MORE: Suspected Potomac River Rapist, who 'terrorized' women in '90s, caught with genetic genealogy July 2017 Terry Peder Rasmussen (December 23, 1943 December 28, 2010) was an American serial killer. Subsequent investigations led to Honeychurch and her daughters being identified as three of the four victims found in Allenstown; the identity of the fourth victim, his daughter, remains unknown. He later abandoned that child, whom he had pretended to father and called Lisa, in a trailer park. While searching Vanners California home, Gruenheid and a fellow detective located an enormous pile of cat litter in a crawl space. And we watched the barrel fall on its side, Morgan said. Police have not been able to link Rasmussen to other cases, according toStrelzin. "The Middle Child" was found on May 9, 2000 on private property next to Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown, NH. The woman, the oldest child and the youngest child . Honeychurchs sisters, Roxanne Barrows and Michelle Chagaris, remember her as bubbly and quirky, and said she had a good sense of humor.. [10], Rasmussen resurfaced in December 1999 under the pseudonym Larry Vanner when California-based chemist Eunsoon Jun introduced him to her family. The poster claimed to be McWaters half-sister. The bodies were certainly killed around the same time as the first two, but with no way to identify them, and lacking any other insight, the investigation once again reached a dead end. Which says, yeah, there's more victims out there, definitely.. An estranged cousin goes missing. The podcast had reignited interest in the case, and captured the attention of a 34-year-old librarian from Connecticut named Becky Heath. Lisa was born Dawn Beaudin in 1981, Armand Beaudin said. Wikimedia CommonsFrom left: Marlyse Honeychurch, Marie Elizabeth Vaughn, a still unidentified victim, and Sarah McWaters. A family tree begins to take shape. Curiously, against the advice of his attorneys, Vanner pleaded guilty to the murder during his trial. Police officials announced on May 6 that three bodies two discovered in 1985 and a third discovered in 2000 were identified asMarlyse Elizabeth Honeychurch, 24, and her two daughters, Marie Elizabeth Vaughn, 6, and Sarah Lynn McWaters, 1. [41] Sarah was laid to rest in Connecticut, closer to her father's family. "So our suspect started in 1984 as 'Curtis Kimball.' Then we had 'Gordon Jenson.' [7] Based on the date they disappeared, available documents and Rasmussen's activities, the victims most likely died between 1978 and 1981. The second child found in the second barrel has not yet been identified although DNA evidence has confirmed thatRasmussen wasthe parent of this unknown victim and that she was not biologically related to Honeychurch or her daughters. Police built the case against him around his own taped confession. The Bear Brook murders in Allenstown, New Hampshire. We do regrettably fear that his daughter's mother is probably another victim somewhere, Carol Schweitzer, of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said. And the last story, the one that would tie them all together: the disappearance of a woman named Denise Beaudin from Manchester, New Hampshire. A search leads authorities to his basement. [4], While using the pseudonym Bob Evans, Rasmussen dated Denise Beaudin, who disappeared from Manchester, New Hampshire, after Thanksgiving of 1981 with her six-month-old daughter. Jun disappeared from Richmond, California, in June 2002, approximately two years after Vanner met her family and friends. It is later learned that three of the four victims are . [3] He married in 1969, had four children and lived with his family in Phoenix and Redwood City, California. Jesse Morgan, who grew up in a small trailer park surrounded by Bear Brook, was 11 when he and his friends stumbled upon the barrel. It was just odd that the barrel was out there It was [a] slightly rusted, dark blue barrel. Inside The Horrifying Mystery Of The Bear Brook Murders. In 1981, Denise Beaudin went missing shortly after Thanksgiving with her 6-month-old daughter and her boyfriend, Rasmussen, who she knew as Robert T. Evans, according to the New Hampshire Department of Justice. The scavengers actually walked out in the middle [of the canal], because it was just mud cut the rope and opened it up here and that's when they saw what they thought was a human being inside, Huber told 20/20.. Also in the refrigerator, was a unique brand of milk that was only delivered to a certain area that matched up with where Rasmussen had been at the time, Huber said. It just made me angry and curious.. [9] By 2020, New Hampshire Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeff Strelzin said there was no "evidentiary connection" between Daneault and Rasmussen but that the interest in his case brought renewed attention to Daneault's disappearance. Then a Conn. librarian listened to a podcast", "Funeral for mother and daughter brings closure to longtime mystery", National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bear_Brook_murders&oldid=1130144089, This page was last edited on 28 December 2022, at 20:07. On June 8, 2000, the remains of Marie and Honeychurch, which were still unidentified at the time, were exhumed from the grave by authorities for DNA testing. ALLENSTOWN "Love conquers all things. This is the story of the Allenstown Four. [10] These bodies were also in a metal 55-gallon drum, and police believe that all four murders occurred at roughly the same time, despite investigators inexplicably missing the second drum in 1985. Ongoing genealogy efforts have revealed that Jane Doe's mother's relatives may have come from Pearl River County, Mississippi. I got a little crazy with it, she said. The Bear Brook murders: Two barrels, four bodies found 15 years apart . Rasmussen is believed to be responsible for several other murders, including that of Denise Beaudin, his known girlfriend,[5] who disappeared in 1981. Rasmussen was born on December 23, 1943,[1] in Denver, Colorado. [14] Denise Daneault, a 25-year-old woman who lived two blocks from the Rahn residence, went missing from a bar in June 1980. Investigators have concluded the woman and two of the children lived in the area where their bodies were found. According to investigators, the reason that it took so long for the second drum to be recovered is that it was located outside the proximity of the initial crime scene. Marlyse Elizabeth Honeychurch (b. In 2017, using genetic genealogy techniques, investigators were finally able to name their man: Terry Rasmussen, an inmate who had died seven years earlier, in 2010, while serving a sentence for the murder of his then-girlfriend, Eunsoon Jun. This is somebody who forms relationships and clearly is having social attachments. This new discovery didnt offer any immediate clues as to who the killer had been, though. Together we have been able to uncover the identity of the Allenstown killer, a murderer who tried to erase his victims and hide in the process, tried to hide who he was and what he did, but ultimately he wasnt successful, Strelzin said, according to The Washington Post. Josh is charged under the federal death resulting law a new and growing strategy for prosecutors and faces a sentence of two decades or longer. The bodies of his girlfriend, California woman Marlyse Elizabeth Honeychurch, her two daughters, and his own daughter were discovered in two barrels in Allenstown, New Hampshire, in 1985 and 2000. He holds a bachelor's degree in screenwriting (widely considered to be a bad move) from Point Park University. Police believe she died one to two years later, making her 26 to 27 when she died. Show 8 More Episodes. She said her mother and Rasmussen got married in 1968 in Hawaii. With the confirmation, police believe theycan officially implicate serial killerTerry Peder Rasmussen, who had passed away while in prison in 2010, in their deaths. After his stint in the 1990s, Rasmussen stayed off authorities radar for a little over a decade. Thanks for your support. After reading about the long journey to identify the Chameleon Killers victims, read about the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway. Public DomainTerry Peder Rasmussens 2002 mugshot after his arrest for the murder of his girlfriend Eunsoon Jun. Marie E. Vaughn was first, born in 1971, then Sarah L. McWaters was born in 1977, according to the New Hampshire Department of Justice. The first barrel was discovered in 1985, the second in 2000. [8], Honeychurch and Vaughn's funeral was held in November 2019 in Allenstown, during which they were given a new headstone bearing their names. 1971) and Sarah Lynn McWaters (b. My father's real full name is Terry Peder Rasmussen, and he was born Dec. 23 of 1943, Diane Kloepfer told 20/20.. During this hunt, one of the brothers noticed an oil barrel while walking down a trail. There were still many questions to be answered and gaps in Evans history to fill in, but now investigators had a crucial piece of evidence Bob Evans, or Lawrence Vanner, had lived in New Hampshire in the mid-1980s. Bear Brook Starting February 20 Jason Carroll is serving life in prison for a murder he says he didn't commit. She was born in Hawaiian Gardens, California, when her father was in the Marines. Replies were filled with other people who also believed they were related to Sarah one member of a family of three who had gone missing sometime in the late 1970s. The only evidence against him? Four months later, Ron Montplaisir, who was an Allenstown, New Hampshire police officer at the time, got a call from dispatch to meet a hunter at the edge of the woods. [1] The use of genetic genealogy to identify Rasmussen represented new possibilities in forensic investigations. [36] The senior Rasmussen, known as the Chameleon killer, is believed to have used "at least five different aliases in a decades-long run of crimes across the country, including at least five homicides, and likely more. After an argument with her family, she left with Rasmussen and her two daughters, six-year-old Marie Elizabeth Vaughn and one-year-old Sarah Lynn McWaters. [5] His wife left him and took the children in 1975 after he was arrested for aggravated assault. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. As Heath was calling in the tip to authorities, investigative genetic genealogist Barbara Rae-Venter was also uncovering the three victims identities through a new technique that involves extracting DNA from the shaft of a strand of hair. The last time Honeychurch was seen by her family wasonThanksgiving 1978, according to a timeline released by the attorney general's office. November 7, 2018 The case that was solved in reverse leaves many questions unanswered. Diane Kloepfer is one of four biological children Terry Rasmussen fathered in his marriage. [3][4] Rasmussen enlisted in the United States Navy in 1961 and served until he was discharged in 1967. Police believe her answer indicates they may have been killed by Rasmussen, too. The crime goes by many names, but one thing that is certain-it is one of the most horrendous and baffling crimes in American history. More than 30 years later, is it possible to get to the truth - and who gets to tell it? DNA is wrestled from rootless hair. Thanks for your support. June 7, 2019 A clue is found buried on an internet message board. Although the Allenstown barrels were discovered during his lifetime, Rasmussen was not named as the culprit until 2017, when DNA profiling connected him to the crime. For more on the case and to see a timeline of Sharon's last day, visit bearbrookpodcast.com. Upon Rasmussen's release from prison, according to the State of California Dept. Rasmussen fell off the radar after that but resurfaced in California under a different name in 2002 when police found adismembered body in his basement. [10][25] In 2015, the woman was identified as the mother of the two girls. Vanner died in prison in December 2010 of natural causes. When Lisa was taken into protective custody in 1986, police asked her if she had any siblings. [7], By 1978, Rasmussen was dating Marlyse Elizabeth Honeychurch. She had symptoms of pneumonia, a crooked front tooth and a diastema (space between her top teeth), two earrings in each ear, and was between 4ft 3in (1.30m) and 4ft 6in (1.37m) tall. Heath submitted her tip to authorities in October 2018. [8], San Joaquin County, California Assistant Sheriff John Huber speculated that Rasmussen may have been responsible for killing Amanda Schumann Deza, In 1995, her body was discovered by scavengers inside of a refrigerator which had been dumped in a canal. If you have any information about these missing cases or others, please call the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678) or visit its website at www.missingkids.org. She was only 5 months old when they left Manchester, [New Hampshire], Armand Beaudin said. 9 min. Crime News is your destination for true crime stories from around the world, breaking crime news, and information about Oxygen's original true crime shows and documentaries. Jenson said after those two weeks, the Deckers could arrange for their daughter to adopt Lisa, police said. There could be a variety of women out there who could be potential victims.. Authorities believed that Evans was the killer of the four Bear Brook victims, but did not elaborate. At the time, Morgan and his friends didnt know there were remains inside the barrel. Terry Rasmussen poses for arrest photo from 1973. Through the years my mother always said, You know, something's not right. [15], The fourth victim's identity is not yet known, but investigators stated that through advanced DNA testing they could confirm the child was Rasmussen's. Two brothers were hunting in Bear Brook State Park on the 10th of November 1985. Authorities were able to link him then, using his fingerprints, to the earlier child abandonment case. The guys jumped on my four-wheeler and we booted out of there and that was the last time that we saw the barrel.. "[15], On May 9, 2000, the remains of two young girls were found near the first discovery site. Oxygen Insider is your all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! 3, 2023 at 9:04 AM PST | Updated: 20 minutes ago. [38], Marlyse had previously married Marie's father in June 1971 and divorced by 1974. The woman also told Heath that her missing family member had once married a man with the last name Rasmussen. [20] The organization later released an updated version of the child's facial reconstruction. His own taped confession. Their hard work, along with that of a dogged researcher, ultimately unraveled a long trail of missing and murdered women and children all leading back, police say, to a serial killer.