Bear Brook Murders: Gruesome Crimes Solved By a Librarian

What Were the Bear Brook Murders?

The case confounded police for decades: four bodies were found dismembered and decomposed, wrapped in plastic bags and tied with electrical wire, and stuffed into two 55-gallon steel drums that were dumped in the Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown, New Hampshire. The bodies remained unidentified for decades, and the case was named the “Bear Brook Murders.”

Discovery

The first drum was found in 1985, with the second drum being discovered in 2000.

On November 10, 1985, a hunter was walking through Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown, New Hampshire, and saw a large steel drum. Inside, he discovered two skeletonized bodies.

Police later determined the victims had been killed between 1977 and 1985 and died from blunt force trauma.

The bodies were of a young woman with wavy brown hair and significant dental work, and the other was a female child between 8 and 10 years old. Both remained unidentified for years.

The bodies were eventually buried at a local cemetery with a headstone that read:

“Here lies the mortal remains known only to God of a woman aged 23-33 and a girl child aged 8-10. Their slain bodies were found on November 10, 1985, in Bear Brook State Park. May their souls find peace in God’s loving care.”

Authorities publicized the case throughout the United States and even Canada, but the case went cold—very cold.

A Second Discovery

Almost 15 years later, on May 9, 2000, the remains of two young girls were found near the first site, also in a 55-gallon industrial steel drum. A detective working the case returned to the location and discovered the barrel.

“I peel back the plastic, and I saw white, you know, I think, I was still second-guessing myself,” New Hampshire State Trooper John Cody told the NewsTimes. “I had to go back out to my car, get my flashlight, come back in and shine it, and that’s when I saw bones.”

One of the girls was estimated to be between 2–5 years old. She had a gap in her front teeth and a noticeable overbite.

The youngest child was estimated to be between 1 and 3 years old, and she, too, had a gap in her front teeth.

Despite not finding the drum in 1985, police believe all four victims were killed around the same time by blunt force trauma.

The discovery did not yield any immediate clues as to who had murdered the four, and the case again went cold.

Genetic Genealogy

In 2017, using genetic genealogy, authorities were able to name the killer. His name was Bob Evans, but that was an alias. His real name was Terry Rasmussen, a California inmate who had died in 2010 while serving a sentence for murdering his girlfriend, Eunsoon Jun.

The man had been using different aliases for decades, and it was not his first time in prison. According to the Los Angeles Times, the man was a drifter who authorities linked to the disappearance of a New Hampshire woman and the murders of the four victims discovered in steel drums.

Scroll to Continue

One Punch Man Jumps Into Action In 2025

Why I don’t Believe Cold Fusion is Possible

Why People are Quick to Talk to a Fool

The New Hampshire Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Strelzin called the man a chameleon, and people who knew him said he was a generally strange guy they had little information on.

Missing Woman

During the 1980s, Rasmussen was using the name Bob Evans and living in Manchester, New Hampshire, with Denise Beaudin, 23, and her infant daughter.

Right after Thanksgiving in 1981, Denise went missing. Her family wanted to believe she left town to avoid her financial problems, so they did not report her missing. Authorities believe Rassmussen murdered Denise and dumped her body. He left New Hampshire and showed up in California with Denise’s daughter.

Denise has never been heard from again and she remains missing.

Rasmussen's Known Movements

Rasmussen was born on December 23, 1943, in Colorado. He attended school at Whittier Elementary School in Phoenix, Arizona. He then attended North High School, where he dropped out during his sophomore year.

In April 1961, Rasmussen enlisted in the United States Navy and was discharged in 1967.

In July 1968, Rasmussen married his first wife in Hawaii.

In 1969, he moved his family to Phoenix, Arizona, where his twin daughters were born. He also worked as an electrician during this time.

In 1981, Rasmussen (Bob Evans) and his girlfriend Denise Beaudin went missing shortly after Thanksgiving with Beaudin’s six-month-old daughter.

During 1985 and 1985, Rasmussen lived in Los Alamitos, California, and was hired to work as an electrician. He was using the name Curtis Kimball at that time.

In 1985, Rasmussen was arrested for driving while intoxicated and endangering a child. He had Denise Beaudin's daughter with him.

After the arrest, he began living and working at a trailer park in Santa Cruz. One day, Rasmussen abandoned the little girl with a family. The family waited for him to return but eventually contacted the police. The little girl was placed in foster care; she was later adopted.

California authorities were investigating Rasmussen in 1986 for child abandonment, and felony warrants were issued. The warrants revealed he also used the alias “Gordon Curtis Jensen.”

In 1988, Rasmussen was arrested in San Luis Obispo for driving a stolen Utah vehicle and using another alias, “Gerry Mockerman.”

While he served time for vehicle theft, authorities found his fingerprints matched the same man wanted for child endangerment, but they still hadn’t identified him as Terry Rasmussen.

Rasmussen was paroled in 1990 and, from there, became a fugitive.

In 2001, Rasmussen still worked odd jobs under the name Lawrence Vanner in California. He married Eunsoon Jun, though a proper marriage certificate was never filed.

A year later, Eunsoon was found dismembered and buried in her basement.

Rasmussen was arrested and sentenced to 15 to life for Eunsoon’s murder.

According to the Los Angeles Times, after he was arrested, the authorities who had tied him to the child abandonment case used DNA evidence to prove he was not biologically related to Denise Beaudin’s daughter, and they tried to identify her.

In 2010, Rasmussen died in prison of natural causes, but authorities still had not identified the inmate as Rasmussen. He was still Bob Evans.

In the meantime, Denise’s daughter, now a mother of three herself, submitted her DNA to an ancestry website and learned who her mother was.

Though there were many gaps in Rasmussen’s history, now investigators knew that "Bob Evans" or "Lawrence Vanner" lived in New Hampshire during the mid-1980s.

DNA connected Evans to the Bear Brook Murders because investigators discovered that one of the victims was his daughter. But who were the victims?

Investigators knew who the killer was, but had no idea of his real identity or who the victims were.

An Amateur Sleuth

In October 2018, a 34-year-old research librarian was inspired to begin investigating the Bear Brook Murder case after listening to a New Hampshire podcast about the unidentified victims.

Becky Heath was from Connecticut and began searching the internet for any clues about the Bear Brook Murder victims.

“There are nights that I would just research and research,” Becky Heath told WCVB 5 about the case. “Seemed much easier to be solved than any other case because there was a family.”

One night, Becky found a post from someone who mentioned a missing child named Sarah McWaters and claimed to be Sarah’s half-sister. Sarah was one of a family of three who had vanished during the late 1970s.

The mother was named Marlyse Honeychurch, her infant Sarah McWaters, and her older sister Marie Elizabeth Vaughn.

Becky began messaging Marlyse's family members and came up with the name Terry Rasmussen. Marlyse had been seeing him around the time she went missing.

Becky couldn't believe it and knew this tidbit of information might blow the case wide open. She contacted the authorities with her tip in October 2018.

At the same time, a genetic genealogist, Barbara Rae-Venter, independently tested the four victims' DNA. After several months, she used an innovative autosomal DNA method found inside a cell nucleus to identify the victims.

Three of the murder victims were officially named in June 2019. But who was the fourth?

The Middle Child

The Bear Brooks Murders middle child remains unidentified. Investigators now have her remains, her DNA, and a composite sketch of what she may have looked like. Joe Mullins of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) created the composite.

“I couldn’t believe, as I was unpacking the skulls, that these are—how could these people just disappear?” Mullins told the NewsTimes. These are of a mother and two of her children, another unidentified little girl. I just was blown away by this case.”

Mullins is a senior forensic imaging specialist at the NCMEC and uses anthropology, technology, and his artistic abilities to create an image of what the child may have looked like.

DNA proved that Terry Rasmussen was the “middle child’s” biological father, but so many questions remain.

Who is she? Was her mother yet another victim of serial killer Terry Rasmussen?

Another Victim?

On November 14, 2018, the identity of a Manchester teenager, missing since November 22, 1984, was released.

Elizabeth Lamotte was found dead in Tennessee in 1985, and her remains were not identified until 2018.

She disappeared on November 22, 1984, when she left the Youth Development Center (YDC) on a furlough to Gill Stadium in Manchester, New Hampshire.

The YDC closed Elizabeth’s case on July 27, 1985, on her 18th birthday, even though she never returned to the facility.

Her body was found on April 14, 1985, along Interstate 81 in Greene County, Tennessee.

Her cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the head about two to three weeks before her body was found.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigations was unable to identify Elizabeth for decades. Investigators submitted a sample of her remains to the University of North Texas for Human Identification in 2006 that was entered into the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Combined DNA Index System.

Elizabeth was not officially reported missing until 2017 when authorities received a tip after concluding a press conference regarding the bodies found in the barrels of Allenstown.

Investigators had been trying to determine information about an “Elizabeth
Evans,” who had been listed as the wife of murder suspect Bob Evans on a 1980 arrest report. Bob Evans was one of the many aliases used by Terry Rasmussen.

The tip authorities received was that Elizabeth had disappeared from Manchester during that time and could be the Elizabeth Evans that New Hampshire authorities were trying to identify.

Police obtained DNA samples from Elizabeth’s brothers, resulting in the identification of her remains in Tennessee.

Although the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office stated Elizabeth Lamotte was not Elizabeth Evans, investigations into Elizabeth LaMotte’s disappearance and the identity of Elizabeth Evans continue.

A string of victims. Some identified and some not. Rasmussen took answers to his grave, but these cases still require investigation with hopes of solving the enduring mysteries.

© 2023 Kym L Pasqualini