The Discovery
In the summer of 1985, a group of kids was playing in the Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown, New Hampshire, when they discovered a large steel drum that looked suspicious.
The little kids decided to open it, but as soon as they moved the lid, a foul smell overcame them. The smell was so bad that they just ran away without looking at what was inside the barrel.
Getting Help
The kids made their way back home and told their parents about the strange discovery they had made. They described the smell as being similar to 'rotten milk' and that it was so strong and disgusting that they just had to get out of there immediately.
Meanwhile, a hunter came across the steel drum that the kids had left open in the middle of the woods. The man got close and, despite the smell, decided to look inside. What he found was an absolutely horrific crime scene.
The Bodies
The hunter found two bodies wrapped in plastic inside the steel drum. They were so badly decomposed that it was almost impossible to determine their gender and age, but one was significantly bigger than the other.
This meant that one body belonged to an adult and the other one to a child. He immediately called the police and, within a few minutes, the whole area was secured and several officers were investigating it.
No Luck
Because of decomposition, it was impossible to identify the bodies and police could not even tell their ethnicities. However, police managed to figure out that both bodies were female. The adult woman was probably in her 20s and the little girl was around 9 years old.
Their autopsies also revealed that their murders had probably taken place somewhere between 1977 and 1985. Both victims had been beaten to death by trauma to the head.
The Investigation
The police tried everything they could to identify the victims, but it was impossible. They checked missing persons reports but found no matches, and also interviewed everyone in the area to see if anyone would recognize them.
The case quickly went cold and the woman and child found in the barrel were soon forgotten. There were no leads as to who the victims were, where they came from, and what happened to them - that is, until 15 years later.
Reopening The Case
In the year 2000, 15 years after the bodies had been found in Bear Brook, the case was assigned to a new state trooper. Every few years, cold cases are looked over again, so this wasn't out of the ordinary.
The state trooper came up with an idea that somehow, for some reason, hadn't occurred to anyone before: he was going to examine the entire park rather than just a perimeter around the site where the barrel was found, and he actually made a discovery.
Another Barrel
The state trooper went back to the scene of the crime and just outside the perimeter of the crime scene, he stumbled upon another steel drum that looked exactly like the first one.
This made people wonder whether the police actually did their job the first time around. How come nobody saw that second barrel? Why didn't they look around the whole area instead of drawing a small perimeter around the first barrel? The truth is, we will never know.
More Victims
The second barrel was located 300 feet away from where the first one had been discovered. Inside, two bodies belonging to young girls were found. The drum had been there the entire time, probably put there at the same time as the first one.
The cause of death of the two new victims was exactly the same, and they were each believed to be younger than 4 years old. Unfortunately, their identities could not be found. However, thanks to DNA technology that did not exist in 1985, police did manage to find something interesting.
DNA
Thanks to DNA testing, it was discovered that the oldest child and youngest child were related to the adult woman maternally. This meant that they were relatives, but did not reveal their exact relationship.
The woman could have been their mother, aunt, or older sister. The middle child, interestingly enough, was not related to any of them. How could a family of three just vanish and have no one ever report them missing? And why was this other girl with them?
More Evidence
The isotopes found in their bodies led police to believe that they were residents of Allenstown, the place where they had been found and yet, nobody knew who they were. It would take several more years to finally figure out who they were and what happened to them.
But before that, we have to go back to 1985 when it all began, in order to understand what happened next. Back then, something happened all the way in California that caught the attention of the police...
Lisa's Story
In 1985, a single dad named Gordon Jensen moved to a trailer park with his daughter, Lisa. A neighboring family, the Deckers, quickly noticed that Lisa looked unwell. They befriended Jensen and learned his story.
He told them that his wife had died of cancer and that he had to take care of Lisa all on his own. The Deckers felt bad for them and offered him to adopt Lisa, since it was clear he could not provide for her. He agreed, and Lisa started living with the Deckers. But only a few weeks into living with them, they would discover something truly horrifying about her.
The Truth
Lisa started showing signs of having been sexually assaulted, and the Deckers found marks all over her body that suggested she had been tortured. They contacted the police, and an investigation began.
Obviously, the prime suspect was her father, Gordon Jensen. When the police went back to the trailer park, he was nowhere to be found. Luckily, his trailer was still there, and his fingerprints were taken off of it. When the prints were entered into the system, the police found that they were registered under another name: Curtis Kimball.
His Real Name?
As it turns out, 'Gordon Jensen' was a fake name used by a man named Curtis Kimball, who had a criminal records and whose fingerprints were already in the system. As the investigation continued, more disturbing facts came to light.
The police discovered that Lisa wasn't Kimball's real daughter and that she had been kidnapped by him when she was just a toddler. Sadly, her identity could not be found. Still, Kimball was eventually caught and arrested for child molestation and abandonment. What happened next, however, is infuriating...
Justice?
in 1988, Kimball was caught driving with a stolen vehicle. The police were able to identify him and connect him to Lisa's case, which had been going on for 4 years. He was charged with child abandonment, child molestation, and driving with a stolen vehicle.
In a very frustrating turn of events, Kimball pleaded guilty to the stolen vehicle charges and got the other charges dropped, meaning that he would not pay for what he did to Lisa. He went to jail in 1989 and just one year later, he was released.
Lisa's Identity
It took police almost three decades to figure out Lisa's real identity. The official investigation began in 2003, and the case did not have a break until 2013, a shocking 28 years after Lisa was saved from Kimball.
After many ups and downs, police were finally able to find a DNA match and figure out Lisa's real identity: her name was Dawn Beaudin, and she was the daughter of Denise Beaudin, a woman who disappeared in New Hampshire in 1981. Now, you must be thinking: 'What does all of this have to do with the bodies in the barrel?' Well, you'll see...
Bob Evans
Denise Beaudin was living in the Bear Brook area when she met a man named Bob Evans. The two became a couple and dated for a while until her disappearance. She was never reported missing, and Bob simply fell out of the map.
The police believed that Bob Evans could be Curtis Kimball, so they showed his picture to Denise's dad and sure enough, he recognized him. It was clear as day now: Jensen, Evans, and Kimball were all the same person, and he was responsible for Denise's disappearance and Dawn's ( a.k.a. Lisa's) kidnapping.
Making A Connection
The fact that this case took place in Bear Brook in the 1980s made police believe that there was a connection to the bodies found in the barrels all those years ago. They believed that the adult woman found in the barrel could have been Denise Beaudin, and the children may have been Dawn's siblings.
This man was clearly dangerous and could have hurt many other people throughout the years - and he in fact, did. While the police tried to find him, they discovered even more twisted parts of his story, including the fact that he had many more fake names and had committed countless crimes.
Finding Him
The police eventually figured out where Curtis Kimball, a.k.a., Bob Evans, a.k.a. Gordon Jensen was, and the truth was incredibly frustrating and unsettling: he was dead.
All the way back in 2002, this man called himself Larry Vanner, one of his countless fake names. He married a woman named Eunsoon Jun, who was reported missing shortly after they tied the knot. Her friend hadn't seen her for months, so she called the police. The first suspect was, of course, her husband.
His Real Name, Finally
As it turns out, this man could not get away with the things he did in the 1980s anymore, thanks to DNA analysis. The police quickly identified him as all of these fake people: Evans, Kimball, Jensen, Vanner, and more. Not only that, but they found his real name: Terry Peder Rasmussen.
They also found Eunsoon Jun's body in his garage, who had been bludgeoned to death. He actually pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life. In 2010, he died in prison.
The Chameleon
Rasmussen was a serial killer known as the Chameleon for his ability to change his identity and move from state to state without being caught. Because of the lack of DNA technology in the past, he managed to get away with countless crimes all the way up to 2002 when he was caught for Eunsoon's murder.
Because he lived in New Hampshire at the time of the Bear Brook murders and the victims fit his pattern, police were convinced he was responsible for them. However, after some investigation, it was determined that Denise Beaudin wasn't the woman in the barrel. What happened to Denise was never discovered, but it is believed that the Chameleon was responsible for it since he kidnapped her daughter, Dawn.
Another Twist
However, this investigation revealed another shocking twist. Remember that three of the four barrel victims were related except for the middle child? Well, it was discovered through DNA testing that the middle child was the Chameleon's daughter. Sadly, her real name was never discovered.
It was very clear that the Chameleon murdered the four barrel victims and that one of them was his daughter, but who were the other three? This was not figured out until 2019, 40 years after they were murdered.
The Barrel Victims
It took police four decades to finally identify them, but they managed to in 2019. The adult woman in the barrel was Marlyse Elizabeth Honeychurch, and was last seen in California in 1979. But how did she end up in a barrel in New Hampshire?
Marlyse was dating the Chameleon at the time, who was probably using another fake name. She had an argument with her mother and ran away with him and her two daughters, Marie and Sarah.
The End
Marlyse was seemingly happy with the Chameleon and officially changed her name to Elizabeth Evans in 1980. This helped police establish that Marlyse and her daughters, Marie and Sarah, were murdered by the Chameleon somewhere between 1980 and 1981.
After he murdered the three of them and his own daughter and dumped them in the barrels, he went on to meet Denise Beaudin and her daughter. Although the case has finally been closed after all this time, it does not feel like justice has been served. The Chameleon only went to prison for one of his many murders and died in prison ten years ago, without ever paying for what he did to his other victims. What did you think of this case?