The Bear Brook Murders

My last blog, about the infamous Girl Scout Murders took a lot out of me but it is time to move on to the next one. There are actually a few similarities between that case and this one. This case too technically considered unsolved from a legal standpoint and like the other case there is a main suspect. That being said from an official standpoint I do expect that this one will be considered solved. And, in my opinion, as long as all of the information is correct, it will be the correct move to make.

As we all know DNA has been able to do amazing things. Quite often it can prove or disprove a case. Today we are almost too used to it. In fact, I have heard prosecutors complain that without any DNA evidence jurors are reluctant to convict someone and this has been a hindrance to them. For decades the rule was that until a conviction was obtained in a case it would remain unsolved no matter what investigators would believe. In a majority of cases that would end in an acquittal or even the death of a suspect that investigators and prosecutors were “certain” was guilty, the case just lingered. There would little to no movement made on the case and from a legal standpoint the case would be classified as unsolved. Take the case of Casey Anthony. Despite her acquittal the state of Florida stands by the fact that not only was she the only suspect in the death of her daughter as they had presented the court with everything they had, or expected to ever have, that she was in fact guilty and the jury simply got it wrong. It does not seem that they have ever pursued another suspect nor does it seem that there is any evidence available for more testing to prove anything one way or another.

There are only two cases that I can think of that have resulted in the closing of a case and the name of a murderer without a conviction and to be fair I only agree with one of them. Mel Ignatow was tried in Kentucky in the 1988 murder of Brenda Sue Schaefer. He was acquitted at trial based much on the fact that the jury did not believe his former lover had told the truth in her testimony. Some years later conclusive evidence revealed the woman had been telling the truth when pictures were found and there left no doubt that Ignatow had murdered Schaefer. Prosecutors were not able to charge Ignatow with murder again but they did get around it by charging him with other things including lying under oath. And officially the case is considered to be solved. The other case involves the murder of Adam Walsh. Convicted murderer Otis Toole confessed to murdering Adam more than once and recanted those confessions. It was also known that Toole and his accomplice in many cases, Henry Lee Lucas, confessed to many crimes that it was proven they had not actually committed. Toole died in 1996 and in 2008 officials announced that they were confident that Toole had in fact murdered Adam Walsh and classified the case as solved and closed. There was nothing announced saying how or why they came to this decision, including any forensic evidence or DNA. As sad as the Adam Walsh story is and despite all of the wonderful things his family has done for justice for him and others, I disagree with this decision and feel it was done simply for the appearance of closure to the family.

This brings us to the Bear Brook Murders (AKA Allenstown Four) in Allenstown New Hampshire. On November 10, 1985 a hunter was out near Bear Brook State Park when he came across a 55 gallon drum near the area of an old, burned down store. It is indicated that the hunter somehow opened the drum and discovered a body had been put inside. Investigators would arrive on the scene and it would be discovered that there were in fact two bodies in the drum. The bodies were wrapped in plastic and appeared to be the bodies of an adult female and a female child. Autopsies were conducted and a cause of death was listed as “blunt force trauma” but authorities were not able to identify the woman or the child. There was some indication that the bodies had been dismembered to accommodate the drum but I am unsure how truth this is although it does sound as if it would be a reasonable assumption. For nearly two years authorities attempted to identify the bodies but after failing to do so they buried the bodies together in a grave in May 1987. A tombstone read “Here lies the mortal remains known only to God of a woman age 23-33 and a girl child age 8-10.”

Then on May 9, 2000 a state trooper was in the same area in which the drum had been discovered back in 1985 and stumbled across another identical drum. This time the drum contained the bodies of two female children. One was estimated to be between one and three while the other seemed to be between two and four years of age. Like the previous victims their cause of death was listed as blunt force trauma.

All four of the found bodies were said to be either partially or completely skeletonized by the time they were found so reconstruction was made more difficult. Surely someone knew about a woman who disappeared, let alone three children. Over the years the bones were examined and “guesses” were made as to the race and origins of the victims as well as where they may have lived within a weather region throughout their lives. I have to see the latter issue seems very far fetched to me and in the end I think it proved to be useless, if not wrong completely. Some of the things reported over the years was that all four victims appeared to have some Native American ancestry; all three girls had gaps in their front teeth; the adult woman and two of the children (the oldest and youngest) had lived in the northeastern portion of the U.S for between two weeks and three months of their deaths, now estimated to have occurred between 1978 and 1981. In 2014 it was thought that the middle child had spent most of her life in the upper northeastern portion of the U.S or even the upper midwest. An assessment in 2019 believed it was more likely she lived in the western portion of the United States with several states such as Texas, California and Oregon suggested. It was also noted that other states could not be excluded in this group. It was this latter information that had me really questioning the science behind this theory.

By June of 2013 the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children had released their second version of facial reconstructions of the four victims. The pictures were released in black and white because it still was not determine what their skin tone or eye colors were. Then sometime in 2014 it was determined through DNA that the adult woman and the oldest and youngest children were “maternally related.” By the following year they were able to determine that they were indeed a mother and two children, but still they did not know who they were. They had also determined however that the middle child, the one estimated to be between the ages of two and four, was not related genetically to any of the other three. Yet, it seemed obvious that all had been associated with the same killer.

There was a trailer park close to where the drums had been found but it was impossible to know if the killer had lived there. The residents here were largely transients and ex-convicts from the nearby New Hampshire State Prison. Just between the years that the murders were suspected to have taken place there had been hundreds and hundreds of residents there and many with few trails to follow. It was also reasonable to believe that there were more than a few that never even left a trail there. The property in which the drums were found seems it was basically on the edge of the State Park and during the time that it was suspected that the murders were committed the land seemed to be owned by a local mill and it was determined that the drums themselves likely also came from the mill. It appears that at some point authorities must have gotten employee records but whether a name stuck out, got them anywhere initially, or would simply be of help later in their investigation is unclear.

In the meantime during all of this a man by the name of Terrance “Terry” Rasmussen was making his way across the country and leaving more than a few mysteries and women in his wake. In 1963 Terry Rasmussen would marry and sometime before he left his wife between 1973 and 1974 they had four children. The couple lived in the areas of Phoenix Arizona and Redwood City California. His family would reportedly last see him in December of 1974. By 1981 Terry was now using the name Robert “Bob” Evans and it seems had for several years. He apparently used other names also, even using his real name at times. But, in 1981 it was said Terry, using the name Robert Evans, was dating Denise Beaudin. In November of that year both Denise and her six month old daughter disappeared from Manchester New Hampshire. No one reported them missing as it was assumed that she left for financial reasons. Beaudin has never been found but authorities have said that they believe that Rasmussen murdered her and left her somewhere in California. However, it seems that Rasmussen kept Denise's daughter, who he called Lisa, for several more years posing as her father.

In 1985 he was arrested in California on charges of driving under the influence and endangering the life of a child under the name Curtis Kimball. Apparently he was released, retrieved “Lisa” and started using another alias Gordon Jenson. In 1986 he abandoned “Lisa” at a RV park in Scotts Valley California. In 1988 he was using yet another name and was arrested driving a stolen vehicle. It apparently seems clear that authorities were able to trace him back to being Curtis Kimball and he was charged with child abandonment. He pleaded guilty to reduce charges and was sentenced to three years. He was paroled in 1990 and pretty much took off.

There seems be nothing more for almost ten years when he shows up again in 1999 using the name Larry Vanner. He had met a woman named Eusoon Jun, a chemist and this is the name he used when introduced to her family. “Larry” and Eusoon would marry in 2001. She would disappear in the spring of 2002 and her body was found that June dismembered. He would plead no contest to her murder in 2003. Prosecutors would later say they believed that he decided to plead guilty in this case because he overheard detectives talking about the fact that his fingerprints also led back to the Kimball and Jenson alias' and they were discussing finding “Lisa” and performing a DNA test. Sometime in 2003 that test was done and while it was confirmed that she was not Rasmussen's child it appears no more information was discovered for quite some time. Terry Rasmussen would die in prison on December of 2010 of among other things, lung cancer.

In 2015 “Lisa” sought the help of a genetic genealogist to help determine who her mother was. Tracing things back they discovered that her mother was Denise Beaudin and she had never been reported missing. It was discovered that Denise was dating a man named Robert “Bob” Evans at the time of her disappearance. This allowed authorities to realize that “Robert Evans” was in New Hampshire at the time of the Bear Brook Murders. In 2017 authorities in New Hampshire revealed that while Robert Evans was not his true name, based on information they had collected, as well as DNA from the suspect, apparently before his death, he was the father of the middle child in the Bear Brook case.

In June of 2017 authorities released an interview that had been done with Robert Evans hoping someone could determine who the man really was. Once again genetic genealogy was used. A test was taken from one of Terry Rasmussen's known children from his first marriage. It showed that “Robert Evans” was his father and previous testing had already shown that Evans was the father of one of the children found in the drums.

In June of 2019 authorities revealed the names of three of the four victims from Bear Brook. The adult woman was identified as Marlyse Honeychurch. The child found with her, the oldest of the three, was her daughter Marie Vaughn. They were also able to determine that the youngest of the four victims was Marlyse's daughter Sarah McWaters. Marlyse's family had stated that they had last seen her and her children around November of 1978. It seems Rasmussen was still using his real name at that time as while different family members knew parts of his name it all came together. It was also discovered that “Robert Evans” had worked as an electrician at the mill that owned the property where the drums were found. It had also been speculated that at some point in 1980 Marlyse had used the name Elizabeth (her middle name) Evans in some sort of paperwork.

In November of 2019 a funeral was held for Marlyse and her daughters in Allenstown. Marlyse and Marie were buried there with a new headstone erected. Sarah would be buried in Connecticut near her father's family. Currently the other child has still not been identified and her mother is unknown. In February of 2020 the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children released what would be their fourth reconstruction sketch of this child.

Terry Rasmussen was given the name “The Chameleon Killer” and it may never be known how many people he murdered over the years. Officially his body count stands at five.... the four Bear Brook victims, and Eusoon Jun. Authorities also believe Denise Beaudin is no longer alive and have said he is responsible despite there not being a body found. So this goes back to what I discussed in the beginning about someone being attributed as committing a murder although there was not a conviction. When it comes to the Bear Brook victims it may have taken forty years to get justice for the victims, but there was justice eventually and good police work is what got them there.

So this leads back to the what I stated in the beginning about attributing a murder to someone without a conviction. When it comes to the Bear Brook victims while it is true that there did not appear to be any kind of forensics or DNA of any kind linking Marlyse and her children to Rasmussen, the fact that one of his biological children had been in the second drum found and was with Marlyse's daughter, Sarah leaves no doubt they were associated in some way. There was also the proof of Rasmussen being in the area at the time the murders were believed to happened, as well as working for the company that made the drums and owned the property they were left on. It is unclear how many other murders he is suspected as committing. There does appear to be several gaps in time where authorities may not know where he was and it is not unreasonable to believe there are more bodies out there caused by him.