The In-Between

Podcast: Bear Brook
Source: whisper-base
Language: en
Duration: 2285s
URL: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/0bDcdoop59bdTYSfajQW/stitcher.simplecastaudio.com/bc53232d-d115-4799-937b-75b732433fa2/episodes/72e21a99-0fe8-4736-8954-cadd3d2cec3a/audio/128/default.mp3?aid=rss_feed&awCollectionId=bc53232d-d115-4799-937b-75b732433fa2&awEpisodeId=72e21a99-0fe8-4736-8954-cadd3d2cec3a&feed=RGpV1rjX
Fetched: 2026-03-03 05:07:12

Here lies the mortal remains known only to God, of a woman aged 23 to 33 and a girl child aged 8 to 10. Their slain bodies were found on November 10, 1985 in Bearbrook State Park. May their souls find peace in God's loving care. Previously on Bearbrook. What we saw was that the three victims that are related by DNA, they kind of have the same oxygen isotopic signal, which tells us that they were all living together. And in the case involving the four murder victims in Allenstown, we believe we've identified their killer. It was fascinating about Lisa and to know his other life, but to still not know who they were and know so much was difficult. Sometimes when people go missing, it's obvious. They didn't come home from work. Their car is found abandoned on the side of the road. The police are called. The last hours before their disappearance are scrutinized for clues. Who are they talking to? Where were they going? There's another way that people go missing, where they fade slowly from the lives of the people around them, where their absence grows until it's expected, where there are no final moments to pour over, just a sense that you haven't heard from them in a while. How do you find a relative who's gone missing like that? Someone who you're not even really sure is missing. You probably wouldn't call the police, but you might go online to forums and message boards, where tens of thousands of other people also come to look for someone. I'm looking for Elsa de Jesus, looking for half-brother Jason Wayne Hill. One of the most popular of these forums is on Ancestry.com. It's called simply lost family and friends. Scrolling through it can be overwhelming. It's like looking at a bulletin board for people missing after a natural disaster, only there was no disaster. In some ways, these forums are like the official missing persons reports that police rely on. The difference is that the posts aren't standardized. Some have a lot of detail, some have very little. Others are inaccurate, and a lot of them are just out of date. That's kind of the tricky part is because you could find a listing. When you follow up on it, it could be like, oh no, no, we found them. There could be a lot of times with the older ones that just broken email addresses. It's messier. It's like the in-between. Becky Heath spends a lot of time in these forums, in the in-between. Becky is a research librarian, but in her free time, she becomes what you might call a web sleuth. I met with Becky several months ago because of something she found in the in-between. Three names, names that we now know belong to the Bearbrook victims. On June 6th, 2019, authorities officially announced their identities at a press conference in Concord, New Hampshire, may have heard about it on the news. We're going to take you to that press conference and tell you everything we learned from it. But first, I want to walk you through how the discovery was made. Because just like in every other piece of this story, it does not go the way you think it does. Becky Heath solved it, but she wasn't the only one. This is Bearbrook. I'm Jason Moon. When I met Becky Heath at her home in Connecticut, the first thing I noticed was how well decorated it was. It was like walking into a magazine cover. Everything seemed perfectly in its place, carefully chosen. Becky's the same way with her words. When she speaks, it's almost like she's tiptoeing from one word to the next. I do love mysteries, any type of real life, murder mysteries. Becky first came across the Bearbrook murders about 10 years ago. Four unidentified victims found in two barrels, 15 years apart. She was at work looking through newspaper archives. She saw an article about the case from the 80s, and she realized that the first barrel was found just three days before she was born. That's interesting. I'm going to check that out later. And little by little, I would look more into it. Little by little became more and more. By the time police announced in 2017 that they knew the killer, Terry Rasmussen, but not the victims, Becky was obsessed with the case. This kind of embarrassing, but I would go to work and I'd come home and I would just research and research. There's got to be something here. Becky was convinced that somewhere in the online forums of people looking for people, someone was looking for the Bearbrook victims, even if they didn't know it. As she tried to imagine, who would be searching for them? The parents of the adult victim could be dead or estranged. Maybe it would be a cousin of one of the child victims, or a step sibling. Maybe they weren't searching for the whole family. Maybe they only knew the adult victim or one of the girls. There's certain terms that I'll use, stepdaughter, step sister, half sister, nieces. Casting this wide net, Becky started scanning through the online posts. Each time she came across something that looked like it could possibly match one of the victims, she would see if she could rule it out. We'll try and look through public records, birth certificates, through different websites and see, okay, can I find a record of this person? And is it recent? If Becky was able to find a record of that person from later than 1985, she moved on. If they were generating records, they probably weren't dead. Becky did this over and over again, ruling out names for months. How many was 82,000 messages? Yeah. So how many of these did you look through? Lots. Lots. Finally, in the fall of 2017, Becky came across a name that she couldn't rule out. It came from a post dated February 11, 2000. It's written by someone searching for their long lost half sister. The poster says their half sister was born in California in the mid-1970s, that both of the half sister's parents are dead, and that the mother died in a car accident. Now you might not make much of that, and I probably wouldn't have. But this detail triggered something for Becky. She remembered that a car accident was one of the lies Rasmussen had told about one of his other presumed victims, Lisa's mother Denise Bodum. So Becky decided to fact check that story of the mother dying in a car accident. She searched the mother's name in California death records. I said, OK, well, if they passed away, they're going to be in the death index. There is no, there is no. Death records are generally pretty easy to find, pulling up nothing got Becky even more interested. So she went back to the post and kept reading. In 2003, someone replies to the original post, it's a man who's looking for his sister and her two kids. He thinks his sister might be the mom who supposedly died in a car accident. So now we're talking about three missing people, a mother and her two daughters. In 2013, a decade later, someone posts the marriage records of the missing mother. Then in 2014, there's another reply. This time it's from someone who thinks the missing mother might be her sister. She's been looking for her for years. Three separate people rooting around on the internet for someone they'd lost, each of them helping to outline the silhouette of a missing family. Becky was able to track down the dates of birth for each member of the missing family. And they all fit within the estimated age ranges for the three related bearbrook victims, the adult, the oldest child, and the youngest child. Becky was beginning to think that this really could be something. So in the fall of 2017, she shared all this with some of her fellow web sleuths in a Facebook group. And then nothing happened. I don't know why I didn't pursue it more the first time. I didn't really get feedback from anyone, so I didn't really pursue it more. The post about the half-sister just kind of fizzled. Either the web sleuth community was focused on something else, or maybe they just didn't think it was a very good lead. So Becky went back to searching the message boards for other posts that might line up with the bearbrook case. And for almost a year, she didn't think too much about it. Then late last year, Becky heard about something that got her thinking about that post again. Becky started listening to this podcast. Becky knew most of the twists and turns in the case already, but she listened anyway, listened closely. For any tiny details she didn't already know about that might help her refine her search. She even kept notes of each episode. Becky says that listening to episode 3, the one about the isotopic testing and the updated composite images of the victims, it triggered something. I remember stopping the podcast, going back, listening to what he said again, writing it down again. Her mind went back to the post, the one that had fizzled out. The more she listened, the more she remembered. The ages had lined up. The location had lined up. All the details fit. It was almost like she was getting the feedback she hadn't gotten when she first found the post. And what it was saying was that she might just have a lead. After that one, I was like, you know what? Listening to this podcast makes me think it is this person, these girls, it fits, it just fits. There was still a small specter of doubt, but it would be another dead end. But eventually, Becky decided she had to do something about it. Becky reached out to the person who was looking for their half-sister. She showed me how the conversation played out on her phone. So here it says 9.04 p.m. on October 10th, and I said, I'm trying to track down this post. Could this be you? And almost instantly she responded back and she said that she was the person and said, you have my heart pounding. This person tells Becky that the family has wondered for years about what happened to their half-sister, but they've never been able to find any answers. Then Becky asks if they had any more information about the half-sister's mother. And this is where you can see right there. She says she married again to a man with the last name, Rasmussen. And like... Oh my God. Right there was where they say you're stomach, just like something just hits. And I was like, there is no way, there is no way, that's a coincidence. Wow. I actually started, I was shaking, it was just like, what? Becky then quickly tracked down some siblings of the missing mother. She asked them if they remembered anything about their sister's husband. And one of the sisters was like, I think his name was Terry. It was just like, okay, it was just no, there's no way that she remembers Terry, this side remembers Rasmussen, that's too crazy. So they happened to Wednesday night and by Friday, I was talking to Detective Headley from San Bernardino and I was talking to him, I said, you know, you probably get this all the time. I was like, but I truly think that this is the break. What Becky didn't know was that at the same time she was pouring over internet message boards, genetic genealogist Barbara Ray Venter was also narrowing in on the identities. By this point, Barbara had been working on this case for four years. She, along with Detective Peter Headley from San Bernardino, identified Lisa, the girl Rasmussen abandoned at an RV park. Barbara was the one who identified Terry Rasmussen's real name. Then she went on to identify the alleged Golden State Killer and has provided breakthroughs in lots of other cases too. But all the while, she's also been working to identify the Bearbrook victims. But there was a problem. Forensic scientists hadn't been able to get an out of Somal DNA sample that was complete enough to be used for genetic genealogy. The remains of the Bearbrook victims had been exposed to the elements for years. Yeah, everything was coming back so contaminated when we're talking 98% bacterial DNA and 2% human. But then, through pure luck, Barbara gets an idea for how to get around this problem. It happens while she's in the hospital. I'm recovering from open heart surgery. I'm, you know, lying at bed, bored to death and, you know, so scrolling through stuff and see this article. The article she sees is about a new technique for extracting autosomal DNA from rootless hair. It caught her eye because that's supposed to be impossible. But a scientist named Richard Green at the University of California at Santa Cruz had apparently found a way. And Barbara realized this could be the key to getting a good DNA sample from the Bearbrook victims. If I had not been confined to my bed at that time, I would have been up in his lab instantly as it was. I had to, you know, phone them and, you know, have lunch later on. Richard Green's new technique is a very complex process that reassembles broken shards of autosomal DNA that exist in rootless hair. Barbara and Richard knew it could work, but it wouldn't be easy. For months, the two of them worked together to try and get a DNA profile that could be used in genetic genealogy. There were many false starts and failed attempts. But finally, last fall, they succeeded. They had genetic profiles for the three related victims that could be uploaded to Jedmatch. The same week, Barbara uploaded the DNA to Jedmatch, Becky sent in her tip. Barbara hadn't even had a chance to look over their matches when the names Becky submitted were passed along to her. Lesson 40 hits the bubble that was just easy enough and they really quickly do a family tree and sure enough just to confirm that, yeah, this is who we had. That was who the adult female was. The final twist in the bearbrook case is that after 34 years of dead ends, it was solved by two different people using two different techniques at almost exactly the same time. And now we can confirm the identities of the three related bearbrook victims. The adult was Marliese Honeychurch. The oldest child was Marie Vaughn. The youngest child was Sarah McWaters. In the days after she submitted the tip, Becky stayed in touch with the family of the victims. She got to know them a little bit. She had any doubts about whether these were the correct identities. She says they disappeared once the family sent her some photos. I wasn't ready for that. I wasn't ready for that. It's really heartbreaking and seeing pictures of the girls and how they look like that. You just know it's insane how close the composites were. Becky's right. The photos of Marliese and her two daughters bear a stunning resemblance to the composite images released in 2015. And she's also right about how heartbreaking it is to see those photos. To see Marie at her birthday party, ready to blow out candles on the cake. To see Sarah as a baby in a diaper in a Mickey Mouse t-shirt. To see their mom, Marliese, with a big smile as she gets ready to lick the batter off a mixer. It makes it really real. Really real is a really good way to put it. I've never imagined. I've never thought about the day that like, oh, one day I might see actual photos of them. And now seeing them, it's like a lot. It's really, it's really heartbreaking. I've, you know, had like this high feeling of, oh, my goodness, it's going to get solved. There's going to be closure in this, like, the reality is, like what the family is going to have to endure. That's really, it's not going to be easy. It's not a happy ending. Becky and Barbara both discovered the identities in October of last year. I interviewed Becky at her home just a few weeks later. I left the interview that day personally convinced that Becky had it right. But we didn't report any of this until now because there was a chance she was wrong. Or that police could have found out more after the tip came in. Until the identities could be totally confirmed with DNA testing, we couldn't risk publishing the story. And more importantly, if it was true, then the family of the victims deserved to know before anyone else. And so we waited. On June 5, 2019, something happened that I've been waiting for for seven months. I was sitting in the New Hampshire Public Radio newsroom when I got an email from the state attorney general's office announcing that there would be a press conference the next day to discuss new information in the Bearbrook case. It was held at the same place where I had learned about Terry Rasmussen in 2017 in an auditorium at the main offices of the New Hampshire DMV. I got there early, just like before. Just outside the auditorium, it was a normal day. People were waiting in line to take driving tests or renew their licenses. But inside, there was a nervous energy. Like everybody knew what was about to happen. And for at least some of the people there, like Becky Heath, they did. When I'd been here in 2017, I'd been working on the Bearbrook story by myself. Now there were three other producers from NHPR there with me. Like Becky, we all had a pretty good idea of what was coming. Is this about Bezier than the last time? Yeah, it is a little bit easier, actually. We've got Becky Heath is here. Ronda Randalls should be here any second. I can see Jeff Strelson over the podium. It's a little bit of a reunion. Yeah, all here to see you the next chapter. Ronda Randall, the amateur sleuth who's been following the Bearbrook case longer than most of the people in this room, got to the briefing just a few minutes before it started. Next to her was Andrea Rasmussen, one of Terry Rasmussen's living daughters. Ronda brought with her some stones from Bearbrook State Park. She's had them for years in hopes of one day riding down the names of the victims as a sort of memorial. Ronda, did you bring the rods? I did, they're in my bag. Yeah, like the Sharpie ready to go. I think so. After a few more minutes, the crowd instinctively hushed. And then, just like before, Jeff Strelson, with the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office, walked up to the podium. Okay, here we go. Good afternoon again. We've called this press briefing today because we have additional information regarding the Allenstown in the Hampshire murder case. In 2017, we knew the identity of the Allenstown killer, but his victims' identities remained in mystery. We here to report that for three of the four Allenstown victims, that's now changed. The mother has been identified as Marleys Elizabeth Honey Church. The photo on the left is her high school photo from 1970. Marleys was born in Connecticut in 1954, and at the time this picture was taken, we estimate she was about 16 years old. Up on the screen were some of the same photos that I'd seen in Becky's living room in October. A blurry yearbook photo of Marleys smiling at the camera. Little Sarah, just a baby, sleeping in someone's arms. The oldest Allenstown child victim has been identified as her oldest daughter. And here she is, Marie Elizabeth Vaughn. This is Sarah Lynn McWaters. The life photo is on the left and her facial reconstruction is on the right. For so long, police were only able to call them by their age, the adult victim, the middle child. But now these baby pictures in birthday photos. Once Becky's tip and Barbara Raeventer's DNA work, police had been interviewing family members, collecting stories and establishing timelines. And what they learned was that Marleys has always had a complicated family history. She was the second oldest of five girls. In approximately 1961, Marleys' parents separated. Her mother took the three younger girls to the state of California, while Marleys and her older sister remained in the state of Connecticut with their father. Marleys moved around a lot. In 1969, when she was 15, she moved back in with her mom in California and enrolled in a local high school. She married young at 17 and had Marie not long after. Later, there were custody battles, another marriage, and then baby Sarah. In the summer of 1973, Marleys traveled to Lakewood, California and took custody of Marie. Sergeant Matthew Kohler from the state cold case unit outlined Marleys' life and the lives of her two kids, Marie and Sarah. It was like a memorial service, led by someone who only knew the deceased from pictures and secondhand stories. This is a photograph of Marleys and Marie Vaughan. We believe it was taken around the holidays. And then the last detail in her timeline, a scene that after all that had come before sounded eerily familiar. Thanksgiving time of 1978 in La Puente, California, Marleys and her children went to a family event at Marleys' mother's house with a man she identified as Terry Rasmussen. She identified him as Terry Rasmussen to multiple people at that event. An argument ensued between Marleys and her mother over a trivial matter. Marleys left that event with her children and Terry Rasmussen and was never seen by her family again. In 2000, Unsun Jun had taken Rasmussen under a different student of then to a New Year's party. It was the last time her family ever talked to her too. And Denise Bowden, another Thanksgiving party. The last time she would ever have contact with her family. We don't know what the argument was that Marleys had with her mother in 1978. But in each of the other cases, Rasmussen found a way to separate his victims from the people who loved them. And it's hard to imagine he wasn't taking advantage of the same situation with Marleys. After that, the rest of the press conference sort of blurred into the ones that had been held before, a parade of different officials describing all the twists and turns that had gotten us to this point, and all the loose ends that are yet to be tied up. February 11, 1980, at the time of his arrest, he wrote down Elizabeth as a spouse. Again, could be Marleys. They credited various agencies and individuals that had taken part in the investigation, amateur and professionals alike. They never stopped trying to identify the four victims in these barrels. And then towards the end, FBI agent Phil Cristiano acknowledged that all the work done could never undo the reasons we were all there. But make no mistake today is bittersweet while we're proud to be here to stand before you to announce that this decade-old homicide has been solved. We also recognize the pain and anguish that the subject of this investigation has caused to the family and friends. In the hushed moment, just before the press conference began, a line of seven people had walked from the back of the room and quickly taken seats in the front row of the auditorium. Several of those family members have come to New Hampshire today and are here. They've asked us to read a statement on their behalf. On behalf of our families, we would like to thank everyone who spent decades working tirelessly to identify loved ones. This day comes with heavy hearts. Marleys, Marie and Sarah were so loved by our families and they are greatly missed. We take solace and finally having the answers we have long for. Thank you to everyone who never gave up on the Allen's Town Victims. During this difficult time, we are asking for privacy as we process the events that have unfolded over this week. That concludes our presentation and at this point, we'd be happy to take any questions that people have. Sir, can you talk about the role? Despite all the information police shared at the press conference, there is so much we don't know about Marleys, Marie, and Sarah. Sure, we know where they lived and when some of the details that might get listed on court records are in City Hall, but we don't know what kind of movies Marleys like to watch. What Sarah's laughs sounded like, and where the Marie struggled with her math homework. But that's okay. They deserve the dignity of being buried with a name. But I'm not sure we've earned the right to know everything about them. Those decisions are up to their families. After the press conference ended, the family got up silently and filed out of the room. After the crowd thinned, I was left standing with Rhonda Randall and Becky Heath. Rhonda got out the rocks. The ones she'd been saving for just this occasion and put them down on the empty auditorium stage. Yeah, so what's it been eight years, Rh? Eight years, yeah, my moral day weekend was eight years. She handed the Sharpie to Becky, wrote a name on each stone. Oh, it's kind of emotional. See you around. Thanks. You're going to go back to Allen's town and we'll hold on to the last rock until, until that little girl has her name back to you, I actually hope to visit Allen's town before I leave. I've never been out to anyone. I mean, I was just a young kid that stumbled upon a barrel. You know, I don't, I'm speechless to the fact of, you know, how sad and crazy that it is, you know. Yeah, you can't make this stuff up. No. No. It's been a long, long time. I can picture that first that day when I responded to that call and I guess they'll take me to my grave. I don't know if I get that. Would you like to hear their names? Yeah, sure. Yes. So the adult was Marleys Honey Church. Oh, wow. It's a sad, it's a sad day, Jason. The day they were found was sad and all the, all the in between, but when it's all hidden down, it's very sad. I haven't talked to Jesse because I know once I do, I'm going to cry. She does have a family. She did have a family that we're looking for her, that will miss her, that will love her. Yeah, it's not a happy ending. No. No. Good luck to you and we'll be in touch. Yeah, that'd be great. We'll be in touch. This news was a huge leap forward in the Bearbrook case, but it was also a painful reminder of the many unanswered questions that still remain. The middle child victim is still unidentified. The middle child's mother, another presumed victim, is still unidentified. Denise Bowdoin's body has never been recovered. Rasmussen may have had other victims. But the mysteries of the Bearbrook case have attracted some tenacious investigators. And they're the sort of people who I don't think will ever give up trying. In the house right there, you've got a path coming through the woods here from the mobile home park where the kids would walk up to the store and get cigarettes for their parents and by candy and soda. And the barrel was right there, tipped over on its side. This close to the road. Just a couple of hours after the press conference, Ronda Randall and Becky Heath, along with Andrea Rasmussen, Terry Rasmussen's daughter, took a walk out near Bearbrook State Park, about a 20-minute drive away. There was a blueberry patch with some birch trees growing there. A really serene spot, you know, when I came and saw it, just looked so peaceful and hard to kind of equate it with its history. I feel like there's still answers here. I don't feel like I'm really done with this property. Meanwhile, genealogist Barbara Reventer continues her work on the unidentified middle child. Barbara has already uploaded the middle child's DNA to Jedmatch, but unfortunately she found only extremely distant relatives, not enough to get a foothold on a family tree. But in the time since we released the last episode, there's a new genetic database available to law enforcement. It's called Family Tree DNA. Barbara says they'll be uploading the middle child's DNA there as early as next week. If Barbara is lucky, some of the middle child's family is already there waiting for her. Barbara is reported and produced by me Jason Moon. Additional reporting in this episode by Todd Bookman. Taylor Quimbee is Senior Producer. Editing help for this episode came from Corey Prinsel, Dan Barrick, and Maureen McMurray. The executive producer is Erica Jannick. Dan Barrick is NHPR's News Director. Director of Content is Maureen McMurray. Photos for this episode were taken by Ali Oshinsky, additional photography and video for this series by Ali Gutierrez, Interactives and Graphics by Sarah Plourd. Original music for this show was composed by me Jason Moon and Taylor Quimbee, additional music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions and Lee Rosefear. Barbara is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Thanks for watching. Thanks for watching.