Update: Ripple Effects

Podcast: Bear Brook
Source: whisper-base
Language: en
Duration: 527s
URL: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/0bDcdoop59bdTYSfajQW/stitcher.simplecastaudio.com/bc53232d-d115-4799-937b-75b732433fa2/episodes/15a6f810-60e2-4ad8-915a-931b3a6c5fea/audio/128/default.mp3?aid=rss_feed&awCollectionId=bc53232d-d115-4799-937b-75b732433fa2&awEpisodeId=15a6f810-60e2-4ad8-915a-931b3a6c5fea&feed=RGpV1rjX
Fetched: 2026-03-03 05:09:23

I'm producer Taylor Quimby and this is the first in unknown number of updates to the story of the Bearbrook murders that we'll be producing to let listeners know about any breaking news in the case. For quick updates, I'm going to be interviewing Jason to find out what is happening and down the road, should there be any big breaks and we expect there will be, we will likely put out another full episode of Bearbrook. So just to temper expectations, I want to say off the bat that this is not the information that Jason and I are expecting to come down eventually, which is to say, please have not discovered any new victims of Terry Rasmussen nor have police determined the identities of the unknown Bearbrook victims. The new information that we do have that just came out of the New Hampshire Attorney General's office yesterday, November 15th, is that while searching for more possible victims of the serial killer Terry Rasmussen, police followed a tip that led to the identification of an unconnected murder victim. In other words, someone who was murdered, but not by Rasmussen, a young woman who went missing in Manchester in the 1980s. So Jason, what did we learn? Who is this woman? Yeah, her name is Elizabeth Lamont, apparently she went by Liz. She went missing on November 22nd, 1984, from Manchester to New Hampshire. She was at the Youth Development Center, today it's called the Student Youth Center. That's basically juvenile lockup in the state. And she was released for some sort of trip to a baseball stadium in Manchester and she never returned. So again, that was on November 22nd, 1984. And was the Youth Detention Center, so how old is she? She would have been 17 when she went missing. This missing persons report was not filed until, until recently until 2017 as a result of the investigation into the bearbrook case. And according to the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office, it came in the aftermath of that big press conference in January 2017 that we visit in episode five of the podcasts where we were getting all the connections to the California cases for the first time. We're going to start our presentation by going through a PowerPoint this morning. We're going to do that to try and explain all the new information that we have that pertains. Now, during that press conference, police were also asking for any tips regarding other possible victims of Terry Rasmussen. And here's some tape we didn't actually include in that episode. And something to remember, police back then were still calling Rasmussen by his New Hampshire alias Bob Evans. During the time that Mr. Evans had been living at 925 Heywood Street, an interesting note, there were some certified mail sent to that residence, and it had been signed for by somebody reporting to be Elizabeth Evans. We don't know who Elizabeth Evans was, whether or not she, in fact, was a real person or if the mail had been signed for by somebody else. Also it's interesting, during the time in the 1980s, Bob Evans had been arrested three different times by local authorities. He was arrested in February and June of 1980, and he gave his spouse's name as being Elizabeth, as you can see here in the slide. And so sometime after that press conference, they got a tip from someone who said, well, I knew a Liz who went missing from Manchester during that same time period, Liz Lamont. And so I think initially the thinking was, could Liz Lamont be Elizabeth Evans? Once they listed her as a missing person, her case was uploaded to Namus, which is sort of the national database of missing persons, cases in unidentified bodies. And some of Liz Lamont's family members provided DNA to that database, and they did find a match in Namus to a previously unidentified murder victim from Tennessee, who was found on April 14, 1985. Okay, so less than a year after she went missing in Manchester, New Hampshire, Elizabeth Lamont's body is found in Tennessee. But then it was unidentified, just like the bear broke victims, for over 30 years. Exactly. So this has been a Tennessee cold case that began in 1985, murdered unidentified woman, found along the side of a road. And when her body was found, it appears that it had only been there for maybe two to three weeks. How was she killed? Blunt forced trauma to the head. Yeah, you can imagine that police would have right away been thinking, what if this is the mother of Rasmussen's daughter, the middle child found in the barrels? Oh yeah. And that was basically my first question when I called the AG's office last night. I spoke with Susan Morrell. She's now the chief of the cold case unit. Are we ruling out that this murder could have been committed by Terry Rasmussen? Is that still an open question? Well, I don't think that there's any information that would connect the two. It just happened that the press conference about Terry Rasmussen and our request for information about an Elizabeth Evans generated this tip. So law enforcement is confident that this is not another Rasmussen victim. Well, the big reason that it was probably not is the timeline. This doesn't quite match up. So she went missing in 1984 from Manchester. According to what we know about Rasmussen's timeline, he was already in California by that time with Lisa. So he's already gone from New Hampshire when Liz Lamott goes missing. And in terms of the connection to Elizabeth Evans, the evidence that she existed comes from 1980. So that's when that package was signed. I see. And at that point, Elizabeth Lamott would have been like 13. Exactly. On the Lamott case, do we have any leads to who was responsible for this? Or is that something that the Tennessee Bureau investigation is going to be handling, I assume? Right. Now that they have an identity for the victim, they will probably look at this case again and bring more energy and focus to it. They've sent out their own press release in Tennessee. And they're asking for the public's help if they have any information to let them know. And they would be the agency to investigate her death. Okay. Well, we talked about in episode six how the genetic genealogy that was pioneered in the Bearbrook case, you know, it's had all these ripple effects on all these other cold cases. But it's not just the science because this is an example of another ripple effect that hasn't had anything to do with the work of Barbara Reventer who we talk about extensively in the podcast. This is like just plain old tips coming in. Yeah. Well, it's a ripple effect in terms of the interest that the case has generated. Folks looking into answers in this case have been turning up answers to other cases just through sheer coincidence. You know, sheer coincidence that Liz Lamott went missing at a similar time frame as some of the other victims. And it's not the only other case that's been solved. There was a missing unidentified child abandoned at an airport that some people thought might have been somehow related to Terry Rasmussen in his trip across the country. Turns out that child abandoned in at an airport was this other woman who was adopted after being found in Idaho. And yeah, she, you know, she learned her name basically through because of the interest and work by citizen sleuths, by web sleuths on the bear broke case. So yeah, here we are again with just like another ripple effect. Thanks Jason for letting us know what's going on. You bet. We'll continue to let you know what's happening in the bear broke case either in the form of these breaking news updates or if there is ever a big enough break in the case possibly with another full episode of bear broke. We really expect that is going to happen sometime in the near future, but you know nothing is confirmed yet. We're still waiting on details and so we can't make any guarantees but really do stay subscribed. We'll be back as soon as we've got something more to say. Thanks a lot.