On Thursday, New Hampshire authorities revealed the identities of a woman and two girls whose bodies were found in steel barrels at a state park in 1985 and 2000.
WMUR reported that Associate Attorney General Jeffrey Strelzin identified the deceased woman as Marlyse Elizabeth Honeychurch, and two of the girls as her daughters, Marie Elizabeth Vaughn, and Sarah Lynn McWaters. Investigators said they ascertained their identities after listening to the “Bear Brook” podcast. In it, researcher Rebecca Heath contacted the user who made a missing person post on Ancestry.com, where they claimed Honeychurch was last seen with Terry Peder Rasmussen.
In 1985, hunters reportedly found the bodies of a woman and a tween girl in a barrel in Bear Brook State Park. Fifteen years later, a police sergeant working the case reportedly discovered a second barrel containing the remains of two more girls, ages 3 and 4, in the same Allenstown park, the Boston Globe reported.
In January 2017, authorities released Rasmussen’s name as the prime suspect in the slayings of the woman and three girls, which is widely known as the “Bear Brook Murders.”
DNA testing previously confirmed the woman and two of the girls were related and that Rasmussen was the father of the unidentified 4-year-old girl. Authorities said they believe the four victims were murdered at the same time, between the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The Boston Globe reported that investigators also said Rasmussen, who used the alias Bob Evans, was living in Manchester, New Hampshire, with his girlfriend, Denise Beaudin, and her 6-month-old daughter when the trio disappeared after Thanksgiving 1981. While Rasmussen allegedly abandoned the child at a California trailer park in 1986, authorities said they believed he killed Beaudin—whose remains were never found.
Rasmussen died in 2010 while serving a prison sentence for killing his wife, Eunsoon Jun, in California in 2002. He was never criminally charged for the other five murders.
Authorities said they’re still working to officially identify the suspected serial killer’s slain daughter.
Strelzin said, “One of the goals is to locate the mother of that middle child and determine whether she’s still alive.”
[Featured image: Marlyse Elizabeth Honeychurch, Marie Elizabeth Vaughn, Sarah Lynn McWaters, and Jane Doe/National Center for Missing and Exploited Children]
