Online Post Leads To Bear Brook Park Murder Victims Being ID’d

CONCORD, NH — A researcher from Connecticut has helped investigators identify three of the four body bodies found dismembered in Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown in 1985 and 2000. Rebecca Heath, a librarian, is credited with linking aspects of the case and connecting investigators with family members which led to the identification of Marlyse Elizabeth Honeychurch of La Puenta, California, and her two daughers, Marie Vaughn, and Sarah McWaters, as three of the four victims.

The fourth victim – a young girl – has not been identified beyond being the daughter of the presumed killer of all three, Terry Rasmussen, who used the alias of "Bob Evans" during the time he lived in Manchester.

Heath, according to Det. Sgt. Matt Koehler of the New Hampshire State Police Cold Case Unit, was utilizing an ancestry posting board in late 2017 when she saw a post written in 2000 noting that Marlyse McWaters and her daughter Sarah were missing.

Heath posted a note to the board saying that she thought they might be two of the victims found in Allenstown but never received a response.

About a year later, Heath was listening to the NHPR Bear Brook Murders podcasts and remembered the posting from 2000. She found and contacted the person who posted the note and asked more questions about Marlyse and Sarah. The person that posted the note identified a man named Terry Rasmussen as the last person to have contact with Marlyse, according to Koehler.

The poster was not aware of Rasmussen – but Heath was.

The next day, Oct. 12, 2018, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children was contacted by investigators in California and made away of the lead.

During the course of the investigation, state police and Manchester police were told that Marylse, Marie, and Sarah were all last seen with Terry Rasmussen around Thanksgiving 1978.

The Bear Brook Murders have been a mystery for many years but may not have been solved had New Hampshire State Police not been contacted by the San Bernardino County California Sheriff’s Department with some information about a case from the mid-1980s involving an abandoned 5-year-old girl, Lisa Jensen, who was later identified as the daughter of Denise Beaudin, missing from Manchester since 1981.

Rasmussen – using another alias, “Curtis Kimball,” was arrested in 1989 on a child abandonment charge, trying to give away Lisa. He served a short prison sentence and then disappeared while he was out on parole in 1990. Rasmussen was a fugitive for about 12 years but believed to be in California.

In 2002, then using the name “Larry Vanner,” he was arrested for murdering and dismembering his common-law wife, Eunsoon Jun.

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Rasmussen was convicted of the murder and died in prison in 2010.

During the investigation of the missing child case, California investigators confirmed that Lisa was not related to Rasmussen which then spawned another investigation into finding out who Lisa was.

A genetic genealogist identified Lisa’s relatives which led them to discover that her real name was Dawn Beaudin, the daughter of Denise Beaudin, who last saw her with her boyfriend, “Bob Evans,” another alias used by Rasmussen.

Investigators in New Hampshire and other states begin looking into "Bob Evans," connected his DNA to one of the girls found in a barrel in the park, proving he was her father, and identified him as Terry Peder Rasmussen, a Navy veteran who lived in Hawaii, Arizona, California, and New Hampshire, between the late-1970s and 1981.

Rasmussen worked at the Waumbec Mill as a mechanic and electrician, performed electrical work at the Bear Brook Store near where the bodies were found, and knew the man who owned the property where the bodies were found. Investigators believed that he killed the victims and dumped them in the park.

Jeffery Strelzin, an associate attorney general with the NH AG’s Office, said investigators don’t believe that Rasmussen had accomplices. They do not know of any other killings that he may have been involved in. Strelzin also wouldn’t comment on whether or not investigators had built a psychological profile of Rasmussen.

Investigators are looking into the possibility that Marlyse Honeychurch may have used the name “Elizabeth Evans” when she was in Manchester with Rasmussen, since documents from 1980 connect a woman with that name to him (Elizabeth is Honeychurch’s middle name). They are also trying to identify the mother of the middle child – Rasmussen’s daughter – and where Denise Beaudin is, although she is presumed dead.

The middle child was born in the mid-1970s, possibly in Arizona, California, or Texas. DNA testing has proven she is not related to the other three victims.

Investigators are also looking for information about Denise Daneault, a 25-year-old woman last seen leaving a social club in Manchester in June 1980. She was reported missing at that time and again in 2017, after the Rasmussen investigations.

Public awareness about this case led New Hampshire investigators to identify another woman, Elizabeth Lamotte, missing from Manchester since 1984 when she was 17, from a DNA database hit. She was murdered in 1985 in Tennessee. Until recently, she was identified only as “Tennessee Jane Doe."

Family members of Marlyse Elizabeth Honeychurch, Marie Vaughn, and Sarah McWaters, some of whom were in New Hampshire Thursday, thanked the press and the public for helping investigators identify three of the four victims.