One thing all these cold cases have in common is that they’ve finally been solved; some with incredibly shocking outcomes. From The Bear Brook Murders to the 1959 Slaying of Candice Rogers, these cases are sure to leave you shocked. Look back on these truly disturbing cases and learn the facts that finally broke all twenty-seven cases.
The following is the first chapter from the book “True Crime Solved: 27 Solved Cold Cases That Bring Closure to Disturbing Crimes”
The Bear Brook Murders
In Allenstown, New Hampshire, sat a gravestone 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 10th, 1985, in Bear Brook State Park. May their souls find peace in God’s loving care.”
For thirty-four years, it marked the burial site of two female victims, found brutally murdered and concealed in a fifty-five gallon drum. Until one day, DNA evidence submitted to a family tracing website finally helped police hunt down not only the victim’s identity but the identity of their ruthless killer too.
Discovery in Bear Brook State Park
On November 10, 1985, a hunter was passing through Bear Brook State Park. The large, heavily-wooded piece of land was located in Allenstown, New Hampshire. A small community of around four thousand people, over half the town’s acreage was taken up by the park. It was early deer season, and numerous residents were out and about, hoping for a successful hunt. One man got much more than he bargained for, however.
Shuffling through the fallen leaves and dry brush, he approached a fifty-five gallon drum lying on its side. It was disheartening to see such trash discarded in the natural landscape. As he got closer to the container, he noticed smaller articles of garbage scattered around the barrel. Spilling out from within it was a larger bundle meticulously wrapped in plastic. The form was rather odd, prompting the hunter to take a closer look. As he peeled back the layers of what appeared to be a garbage bag, he was met with a startling sight – human remains.
Bear Brook Park
Photo Credit: allthatsinteresting.com
He reported his find to the New Hampshire State Police, who promptly descended on the scene. The remains were skeletonized, but the coroner was able to determine that the bones belonged to a woman between the ages of twenty-three and thirty-three and a young girl aged five to eleven. They had been severely beaten, likely dying of blunt force trauma. After their grisly murders, both females were dismembered, wrapped in plastic, and shoved into the drum, only to be discarded in the woods of Bear Brook State Park, just behind the Bear Brook Gardens Mobile Home Park.
Though the older female had copious amounts of fillings and extractions, no identification could be made. Things looked even bleaker for the young girl, who had virtually no identifying attributes. Police initially questioned the residents of the mobile home park, who, like the rest of the community, were deeply disturbed by the discovery. When no leads turned up, they sifted through missing persons records, going as far back as the early nineteen seventies. However, Allenstown Police Chief Norman Connor was forced to announce they had no leads or information on the victims.
All police could deduce is that the victims’ murders occurred between 1977 and 1985. For a year and a half, the woman and young girl lay in a morgue, waiting to be identified; but no one ever came. In 1987, the pair was laid to rest in the Allenstown cemetery.
The Park Gives up Another Secret
The case went cold, though police refused to let the murders be buried and forgotten; they still kept their eye out for clues and frequently fought to keep the case alive in the public’s mind. On May 9, 2000, one state trooper was revisiting the crime scene when the State Park decided to give up yet another secret – a second barrel.
Inside were two more bodies, both female, badly decomposed and wrapped in plastic. Unfortunately, the remains were too far gone to determine the cause of death. Police speculated that the barrels were likely once near each other, but local children playing in the forest may have unsuspectingly rolled the second drum further away from the first. Chillingly, these children were even younger than the other girl victim. The third child was estimated to be between the ages of two and four, the fourth between one and three.
Photo credit: wikipedia.org
It had been fifteen years since the first barrel was discovered, and DNA analysis had advanced with each passing year. Testing proved that the woman and two of the children were related. Likely a mother and her two daughters. The third child was not connected by DNA to the slain family.
Unfortunately, police still had little to go on, despite technological advancements. They turned their attention again to the nearby mobile home park, hoping someone knew the “Allenstown Four.” But the one hundred fifteen-lot park had seen almost five hundred residents come and go during the time of the murders; many of who were ex-convicts newly released from the nearby New Hampshire State Prison or transients.
Investigators Won’t Give up
In 2013, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children created updated facial reconstructions of the victims while extensive testing revealed that the three related victims were likely from the New Hampshire area; the fourth was possibly raised further north.
In 2015, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children made composite sketches; for the first time giving police and the public an idea of what the victims may have looked like when they were alive. These victims, said the attorney general, had lived together for months before being slain between 1980 and 1984.
Photo Credit: hyaenagallery.tumblr.com
Police finally had something to go on, and it proved worthwhile. In 2017, they identified their primary suspect – Robert ‘Bob’ Evans. Evans had died in prison in 2010, where he was serving time for killing and dismembering his wife, chemist Eunsoon Jun.
Robert Evans was a pseudonym, but it didn’t lead to a dead end. Evans was dating Denise Beaudin in 1981 when she disappeared along with her infant daughter, both of whom were thought to have been murdered. Denise never turned up, but the daughter did; she was abandoned in California, where she lived on without her mother. DNA evidence found the living daughter was not related to Evans; however, another match returned a positive result. Robert Evans was actually Terrence ‘Terry’ Peder Rasmussen, the father of the third, unrelated Bear Brook victim.
Police slowly began to put the pieces together. Rasmussen worked as an electrician at a local mill during the time of the murders. His supervisor owned property where the barrels were dumped – barrels that were likely procured from the mill. The woman in the barrel was not Denise. However, all of the victims had two connections. They were slain by a serial killer, and that serial killer was Rasmussen.
Authorities pieced together his trail of crime and killings. Rasmussen went by Gorden Jenson, Curtis Kimball, Gerry Mockerman, Larry Vanner, and Bob Evans throughout his murder spree. His slayings stretched from New Hampshire to California, though only six victims have been positively identified as slain by him.
By 2019, the police were able to put a name to three of those victims – the mother and her two daughters found in the barrels. They were Marlyse Elizabeth Honeychurch, a young mother of two girls named Marie Elizabeth Vaughn and Sarah Lynn McWaters.
Honeychurch showed up at her family’s thanksgiving in 1978 in La Puente, California, along with her two daughters and her boyfriend – Terry Rasmussen. After an argument, the family of three left with Rasmussen, never to be seen or heard from again.
Finally, in 2019, Honeychurch and her two daughters were properly laid to rest. Thanks to a DNA donation from one of Rasmussen’s living children, authorities know that the middle child who was unrelated to Honeychurch was Rasmussen’s biological daughter. However, they have not been able to identify her. Similarly, her mother’s identity and fate are unknown, as are the whereabouts of Denise Beaudin. Unfortunately, Rasmussen’s track record of brutally killing and dismembering those close to him has led investigators to fear the worst.
For the past thirty-seven years, police have refused to give up on the Bear Brook case. They are still actively trying to identify the fourth victim to hopefully lift the veil on the “Allenstown Four” once and for all.
Written by : Sajjad A
