Barrels in the Pines: The Bear Brook Breakthrough
Allenstown, New Hampshire – 1985–2020
The first barrel was found by a hunter. It was the kind of place you wouldn’t stumble across unless you knew the back trails—deep in Bear Brook State Park, down a gravel road and tucked in behind a long-forgotten brush pile. It was November 10th, 1985. Cold, gray light filtered through the trees. The barrel was rusted, partially tipped over, with something spilling out of the cracked plastic lid.
It wasn’t garbage.
Inside were the remains of a woman and a young girl, wrapped in plastic. Unrecognizable. Decayed. Their bones coming apart at the joints, skin reduced to leather. Blunt force trauma had crushed their skulls. No identification. No purse. No wallets. Not even names.
The girl was between 5 and 11. The woman, perhaps 23 to 33. They hadn’t just been murdered. They’d been discarded—sealed up in that barrel like waste, like someone didn’t want them found.
They wouldn’t be the last.
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The Second Barrel
For fifteen years, the case sat in silence. State police entered the victims into databases. Local missing persons were compared. The barrel was examined. Nothing. No fingerprints, no known suspects. A woman and child, dead and nameless, buried together in the woods like forgotten ghosts.
Then came May 2000. Another barrel. Same location—Bear Brook State Park. Same kind of container. Same horror inside.
Two more children.
Both female. One between 1 and 3. The other around 2 to 4 years old. Small bones. Tiny teeth. Again, plastic-wrapped. Again, murdered by blunt force trauma. Same method. Same silence.
Four victims. Two barrels. No names.
No justice.
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Cold Trails, Silent Bones
Investigators knew the barrels were linked. The proximity. The wrapping. The container type. But they didn’t know who the victims were, or when they had been killed.
The deaths could have occurred years before the first barrel was even found.
At the time, there were no matching missing persons reports. The case wasn’t just cold—it was frozen solid. No fingerprints on file. No known dental matches. Not a single lead that stuck.
In 2015, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children released updated facial reconstructions. They showed three young girls with wide-set eyes and straight dark hair. The woman had a tired face, early-thirties maybe, wearing a generic shirt.
Forensic anthropologists estimated the murders occurred sometime between 1977 and 1981.
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The Science Awakens
In 2016, forensic scientists turned to isotope testing on the bones and teeth. The results gave a clue: the woman and two of the girls had likely spent their early lives in the Northeast U.S. One of the youngest girls, however, seemed to come from a different region, possibly the Southwest or Midwest.
But the real breakthrough came in 2017, when investigators turned to an emerging forensic technique—genetic genealogy.
They submitted DNA from the victims to open-source DNA databases used for ancestry research. Slowly, painstakingly, scientists built partial family trees. With enough matches from distant relatives, they were able to triangulate identities.
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The Mother, the Children, the Killer
The adult woman was identified in 2019 as Marlyse Elizabeth Honeychurch, born in 1954 in California. One of the girls was her daughter, Marie Vaughn, born in 1971. A second girl, later confirmed as Sarah McWaters, was the child of a later relationship.
The two had last been seen at a family gathering in California around Thanksgiving 1978. Marlyse had brought a new boyfriend to dinner. There’d been an argument. She left and was never heard from again.
The man’s name? Terry Rasmussen—though he used many aliases.
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The Chameleon Killer
Terry Rasmussen was a drifter, an alcoholic, and eventually a killer known to law enforcement under several names: Bob Evans. Curtis Kimball. Gordon Jenson. He had a habit of changing identities and starting over, dragging his partners and children along for the ride—and into the grave.
He had served time in California for child abandonment. In 2002, he was convicted of murdering his common-law wife in New Hampshire and died in prison in 2010. But nobody knew then that he was tied to the Bear Brook barrels.
In 2017, DNA confirmed it: Rasmussen was the biological father of the unidentified girl in the second barrel. She wasn’t related to Honeychurch or her daughters. Her identity remains unknown.
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Aftermath
By 2020, three of the four victims had names. The fourth—a little girl, Rasmussen’s daughter—has yet to be identified. Investigators believe she may have been born under an alias or with no legal documentation at all.
The Bear Brook case wasn’t just solved. It changed how cold cases are handled.
It was the first major case in the U.S. to be solved using forensic genealogy—a method that would later unmask the Golden State Killer, solve dozens of Jane and John Doe cases, and become one of the most powerful tools in modern forensics.
Bear Brook was the beginning of a new era. One where the dead could speak again—not through eyewitnesses or confession—but through the blood in their bones.
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Timeline of Key Events
• 1978 (approx.) – Marlyse Honeychurch and daughters last seen in California
• 1985 – First barrel discovered in Bear Brook State Park
• 2000 – Second barrel discovered, 100 feet from the first
• 2015 – New facial reconstructions released
• 2017 – DNA submitted to genetic genealogy databases
• 2019 – Three victims identified: Honeychurch, Marie Vaughn, Sarah McWaters
• 2020 – Rasmussen named as killer and biological father of fourth (unidentified) girl
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Forensic Spotlight: What Is Genetic Genealogy?
Genetic genealogy uses DNA profiles submitted to public ancestry databases (like GEDmatch) to build partial family trees of unknown individuals. Unlike traditional CODIS matches (which look for exact offender profiles), this method identifies distant relatives and triangulates identity through careful tree-building.
In the Bear Brook case, it helped track down Honeychurch’s family and later link Rasmussen to his daughter—despite his use of false names.
This technique has now been used to crack hundreds of cold cases—including decades-old homicides, sexual assaults, and even WWII remains.
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Sources & Credits
• Primary source: New Hampshire State Police case summaries and public statements
• News article: New York Times, “DNA Leads to Identities in 30-Year-Old Bear Brook Murders” (2019)
• Secondary/contextual: Jason Moon, Bear Brook podcast, NHPR (2018–2020)
