← Bear Brook
Bear Brook
The Middle Child
00:49:48
Investigators make a discovery that brings the case of the Bear Brook murders to a close after 40 years – and reveals a new mystery.
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- [01:23]
E
Okay, I think the recorder is working. Fleeta, do I have permission to share this recording with other people?
- [01:30]
F
Sure. Okay.
- [01:32]
E
And we're in your assisted living.
- [01:33]
B
Yeah.
- [01:34]
E
And I have some questions for you.
- [01:35]
F
All right.
- [01:37]
E
And they relate to Terry.
- [01:38]
F
All right. I'll do the best I can. Okay.
- [01:43]
B
Diane Kloepfer made this recording in 2024. She's preparing to interview her mother, Fleda Zadikas. Diane wants to see what her mother remembers about her father. The last time she saw him. She was a small child when Fleeta left him. His name? Terry Peter Rasmussen.
- [02:04]
E
Did he like puzzles and stuff?
- [02:06]
B
No.
- [02:07]
E
Riddles?
- [02:07]
F
No.
- [02:08]
E
Being tricky and deceptive with his words?
- [02:10]
F
Oh, he was always that.
- [02:12]
E
Was he always thinking about something else when he was telling you something? Was he always trying to.
- [02:16]
F
Always trying to hand me a line of shit. Okay.
- [02:21]
E
Was he really smart, though? Did he appear that he was very smart?
- [02:24]
F
He was very Smart. Okay.
- [02:29]
G
You're not my priest and you're not my doctor. And both stories have their place.
- [02:36]
E
Was he smart in a good way.
- [02:38]
F
Or a bad way? In a bad way, I think.
- [02:41]
H
Thirty years ago this month, a mystery began when the remains of an adult and what we will find out will be the oldest child were discovered in a bag next to an overturned 55 gallon drink.
- [02:54]
B
We believe we've identified their killer. A man that we've come to know went by many different names across the country. In New Hampshire, he was known as Bob Evans.
- [03:06]
E
I'm gonna give you some names. You tell me if they sound familiar. Robert Evans.
- [03:12]
F
Nope.
- [03:14]
B
When I wrote up on it, I remember just seeing a barrel and we got hit with this smell of rotten milk.
- [03:22]
E
Larry Vanner.
- [03:26]
F
I think that she found out about him or found out that something wasn't right and confronted him. I'm sure she fought Curtis Kimball. Yeah.
- [03:38]
E
Who the heck is this guy, really? And who's that little girl? So it's just.
- [03:44]
B
It was.
- [03:45]
F
It was pretty goofy.
- [03:47]
G
I've always tried to live by the model that there's no defense against the truth. But sometimes it's hard to find out what the truth is.
- [04:03]
E
So I got one more question to ask you. I know it's gonna be unpleasant.
- [04:05]
F
Okay.
- [04:06]
E
So remember we were at the police department and they told you about Terry and what Ollie did?
- [04:10]
F
Yeah.
- [04:10]
E
What's the first thing that came to mind?
- [04:13]
F
I don't believe it.
- [04:15]
E
Do you still believe it or do you still not believe it?
- [04:18]
F
Well, I have to believe it because it's a fact. Do I want to believe it? No. Okay.
- [04:28]
B
This is what the past several years have been like for Diane. Trying to dig up and process the truth about her father. No matter how hard it is to hear the truth. That her dad, Terry Peter Rasmussen, was a serial killer responsible for at least five murders, probably more. That one of his victims was a half sister to Diane that she didn't know she had. That he had discarded her three year old body in a barrel near Bear Brook State Park. It was all dropped on Diane one day without warning. And it's only left her with new mysteries. Maybe the biggest mystery haunting Diane, one that her mom will never be able to answer, is her half sister. Who was she? It's a reminder of the sheer strangeness of this case. How it seems to reverse the usual patterns of a murder investigation. We know the killer before we know the victims. We mourn the victims before we know who they are. But Diane is far from the only person who's been desperate to learn who her half sister was because her half sister is one of the final missing pieces of the Bear Brook case. The only victim whose identity is still unknown. Until now.
- [05:51]
F
Oh my God. This is it. This is it. This is her. This is the baby that we have been looking to name. And we had her name all along.
- [06:11]
B
From the document team at New Hampshire Public Radio. This is Bear Brook. I'm Jason Moon.
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- [08:24]
B
It'S been six years. Six years. The last time there was big news in the Bear brook case was 2019. Looking back, I almost can't believe all the twists in the story that got us here. It began in 1985. Two sets of human remains found inside a barrel in the woods near New Hampshire's Bear Brook State Park. There was a second barrel with two more bodies, but police didn't find it until the year 2000. The victims were a woman and three children, but no one knew their names. And that's how it stayed for years. But meanwhile in California, another story was unfolding. In 2003, Eunsoon Jun was killed by her new boyfriend, Larry Vanner. Larry was sent to prison, but Larry wasn't his name, at least not his only name. Police discovered Larry Vanner was also Curtis Kimball. And they learned that before he ever met Eunsoon, Curtis had abandoned his daughter in another part of California. Her name was Lisa. But after Eunsoon's murder, police discovered Curtis was not Lisa's father, which meant he'd likely kidnapped her. But nobody knew from where or whether Lisa was even her real name. The mystery of Lisa would eventually lead investigators to New Hampshire, to the barrels near Bear Brook State Park. Thanks to a new technique called genetic genealogy, the California detectives discovered that Lisa's real name was Don Bowden. Dawn and her mother Denise had gone missing from New Hampshire in 1981. They were last seen with a guy named Bob Evans. Police wondered if Denise might be the adult victim in the Bear Brook case. So in 2016, they DNA test, and there's no match. Denise is not the adult victim. What they discover instead is that Bob Evans was the father of one of the three child victims. Bob, who also went by the names Curtis Kimball and Larry Vanner. So the same man who murdered Eunsoon and kidnapped Lisa was likely responsible for the Bear Brook murders. And one of the Bear Brook victims was his own daughter. In 2017, we finally learned the killer's true identity. Bob Curtis, Larry. His real name was Terry Peter Rasmussen. Peter spelled with a d. And finally, in 2019, we learned the identities of three of the four Bear Brook victims. Marlise Honeychurch and her two children, Marie Vaughan and Sarah McWaters. Marie was estimated to be about nine years old and Sarah about two. But that left one more. One last victim whose name we never learned. Terry's daughter, the one investigators often called the middle child. Another little girl, estimated to be just three years old when she was killed. Who was she? Like so many other parts of this story, the answer came to me in reverse. Not from the source of the discovery, but through a chain of coincidences. It began with Rhonda Randall.
- [12:08]
F
Becky and I, over the last number of years, have built a huge, huge family Tree and tracked down lots of tips and leads and worked on this almost every day in the intervening years.
- [12:21]
B
Well, so you guys never stopped?
- [12:23]
F
Oh, never, Never. Nope.
- [12:25]
B
You remember Rhonda, a private citizen who for years threw herself into trying to solve the Bear Brook case because it seemed to her that nobody else would.
- [12:34]
C
What grandmother let this happen?
- [12:36]
F
Or what neighbor?
- [12:37]
C
Or what bus driver? Or, you know, I mean, where were all of you?
- [12:41]
B
Lately, Rhonda has been working with Becky Heath. You'll also remember her, a fellow traveler in the volunteer websleuthing community who, in 2018, managed to identify three of the bear Brook victims by searching through online forums.
- [12:57]
F
Listening to this podcast makes me think it is this person.
- [13:01]
B
These girls, Becky and Rhonda head up what you might call the unofficial investigation. Both have deep ties to this case, but they don't work directly with law enforcement. They've been working parallel to the official investigation, which includes New Hampshire law enforcement and professional genetic genealogists who work with them. It's a dynamic that's not so unusual, especially in cold cases. But there are some quirks to it. Even though both teams want the same thing, generally speaking, information flows in only one direction, from the unofficial side to the official side. Becky and Rhonda find something, they send it over to the police. If the police find something, they, Becky and Rhonda might not find out about it until we all do when it's announced at a press conference. But sometimes, sometimes the parallel investigations cross paths. That happened in 2019, when, in an amazing coincidence, Becky and genetic genealogist Barbara Ray Venter both independently identified the three Bear Brook victims at almost the same Becky with websleuthing, Barbara with genetic genealogy. And just recently, In July of 2025, the paths crossed again. One day, Rhonda Randall is at work when she gets a text message from a stranger, a woman from Texas.
- [14:30]
F
And she said that a friend of hers in Houston had gone missing in the 1970s. She'd been dating Terry Rasmussen. She'd been pregnant, they moved away, and that the family had never heard from her again.
- [14:45]
B
Just like that, out of the blue.
- [14:48]
F
And at first, I just didn't put a lot of stock in it because I've gotten a lot of kind of texts and emails like this over the years from kind of, you know, crazy folks. But anyway.
- [15:00]
B
But what this stranger said next made Rhonda think. According to Rhonda, the stranger explained that their missing friend's name was Pepper Reed and that recently they had heard from Pepper's brother that he'd Been approached by New Hampshire State Police about DNA testing in connection with the Bear Brook case.
- [15:21]
F
And so apparently, she Googled the case, came across my blog. My phone number was on it. And so she reached out to me, to Rhonda.
- [15:30]
B
It sounded plausible enough, like the sort of thing that would be happening if the official investigation was closing in on the answer. The story the stranger told about Pepper also sounded eerily familiar. A woman dating Terry Rasmussen who becomes estranged from her family and is never seen again. Just like Eunsoon Jun, Marlise Honeychurch, and Denise Bowden.
- [15:55]
F
And then she got angry at me, and she said, nobody wants me to be happy. And that was the last time I spoke with her.
- [16:02]
B
Bob Evans left New Hampshire in 1981 with Denise Bowden and her infant daughter Lisa. And Denise was never seen or heard from again. Maybe this was a rare moment where information was flowing in the opposite direction it usually did. Maybe Rhonda had just gotten an accidental glimpse of. Of where the official investigation was at, that they were close to solving the case. But she wasn't sure. It was just some text from a stranger. So Rhonda called Becky.
- [16:34]
F
I don't know. It seems a little too good to be true. Like, we've had our hopes up so many times that you just tend to be very cautious. So we kind of start looking into it, and the locations fit, and we're like, hmm. Well, that's interesting.
- [16:50]
B
Starting from just Pepper Reed's name, Becky and Rhonda build out a family tree using publicly available records. Online, they can see that one of Pepper's parents had lived in Texas and one in California. Two states that Terry Rasmussen was known to have lived in. But they can't find Pepper. No address, no phone number, no obituary, and no missing persons report. Rhonda and Becky start to wonder if there's a birth certificate for Pepper's child. According to the stranger, Pepper was pregnant the last time she was seen. Could that child be the final Bear Brook victim? The timeline would match. The stranger said Pepper was last seen in Texas in the 1970s. The unknown child victim was estimated to be three years old when she was killed. And police believe the barrels were dumped in the woods near bear Brook by 1981. That would put the child's birth date somewhere in the late 1970s. On websites like Ancestry.com, birth index records are searchable, but only to a degree. For some states, like California, the index only lists the name of the child and the last name of the mother. No father's name. And now thanks to the stranger who texted, Becky and Rhonda had the last name of the potential Reed, Pepper Reed. So Rhonda goes to the Ancestry.com search bar and types in what they know, just like you or I or anyone else could. Okay, so last name of child, Rasmussen. Birth year. Let's guess 1978. And we'll say plus or minus five years to be safe. Last name of mother read. And we'll click the box for exact matches only and search. When you do that like I just did, you get one result. 1. A child born in 1976 in Orange County, California. But this could all still be a coincidence. Rasmussen is not the most unusual name. And this birth index record doesn't list a father. To be sure, Becky and Rhonda want to get their hands on the actual birth certificate that would list the mother and father's full names.
- [19:15]
F
So we pulled the information we had together, and I was like, oh, what the heck? I'm just going to try and get the birth certificate from Department of Public Health, State of California.
- [19:27]
B
In California, the public can access redacted versions of birth certificates. So Becky goes online, she fills out a form, pays a small fee, and then she waits.
- [19:37]
F
Like, the whole time. I'm going, it's not going to be him. There's no way. But it was still, like, it seems possible. I'm like, well, maybe, maybe. So I'm waiting for it to come in the mail. I'm waiting and waiting. I don't think I've ever kept an eye on my mailbox so much. But today I knew it was coming. I, like, run out there. I'm like, okay, just grab the paper. And I'm, like, trying to bring it back into the house. I'm like, I want to look. I want to look, but I wait till I get inside and I rip it open. And father of the child, Terry Peter Rasmussen. And Peter is spelled P, E, D E, R, which that's what Terry's middle name was. Felt like.
- [20:23]
B
I've seen the birth certificate. Not only does it show Terry Peter Rasmussen's full name, it also lists his age at the time of the birth in 1976. 32 years old. Exactly how old the Terry Rasmussen we know would have been that year. So the right name at the right age in a state we know Terry spent time in, it all fit.
- [20:51]
F
So there was no doubt in my mind at this point. Oh, my God. This is it. This is it. This is her. This is the baby that we have been looking to name. And we had her name all along.
- [21:08]
G
Just.
- [21:11]
F
Still, I can't wait to think about it. Like, my stomach churns. Like, how? How could it have been this easy? It's so disappointing. Like.
- [21:25]
B
Listening to Becky tell this story on the phone, I had two thoughts. First, holy shit. Second, why is she disappointed? Isn't this what we all wanted for so long? But the more Becky talked, the more I got it. For years, many of us had assumed that the only way the final Bear Brook victim could possibly be identified would be through genetic genealogy. My own assumption was that the child's birth wasn't recorded like that. There was no birth certificate. And that's what was making this so hard. And to be clear, what Becky and I both assumed in this moment was that genetic genealogy had solved the case. We figured the genetic genealogist, working with the police, finally got a hit for a close relative of the unidentified child in a DNA database, and that had led them to Pepper Reed. But to find out the whole time there was a birth certificate with Terry Peter Rasmussen's name on it. Like his real name, not one of his aliases. For Becky, it was like the official investigation had taken the long way around. They'd spent several years using a complicated, tedious DNA analysis technique when they could have just looked through some paper records.
- [22:43]
F
When you think of it overall, the amount of resources, like thousands of hours, thousands of dollars, everything that has put into this case, and they're like, the only way it's going to crack it is genetic genealogy. When that wasn't true at all. It was if someone had done their job and just requested his name be put through the system to see if he's on any birth certificates.
- [23:18]
B
If someone had done their job, the someone in that sentence is the official investigation. The police, though I should say Becky, is also kicking herself over this.
- [23:29]
F
It feels like a bad dream. Like, wait, this could have been solved, like, years ago.
- [23:36]
B
I wanted to know if that was true. So I spent some time going back and forth with the California Department of Public Health Vital Records Division. They maintain the state's database of birth certificates. What I learned is that for a member of the public to request a redacted birth certificate, you need enough info for vital records to locate one specific birth certificate. You can't go fishing. But according to a spokesperson for California's Health Department, for law enforcement, there's another option. They can request a court order from a judge, and if they get it, then a search like the one Becky is describing would have been possible. So, bottom line, Becky May have a point. Ever since 2017, when genetic genealogy revealed Terry Peter Rasmussen was his real name, it was possible for law enforcement to find this birth certificate. This is not the first time New Hampshire authorities have been accused of taking too long to find something. In this case, the second barrel sat undiscovered for 15 years after the first one was found, just 300ft away. As it happens, the child in question was found in that second barrel. So you could say this is the second time law enforcement didn't notice her when they should have. Or you could say this is all just Monday morning quarterbacking that it's easy to say how we could have solved the case after it's been solved. And to be fair, it's not like it occurred to me to search California birth records for Terry's name. And anyway, maybe this all just gets in the way of what's important here, that we now know Terry Rasmussen had another child. Her name, Rhea. R E A Rhea Rasmussen. Diane's half sister. How are you feeling right now, Diane?
- [25:42]
E
But it's kind of loaded, isn't it, Jason? I've been wanting to vomit since Becky sent me the birth certificate. Like, all day. I just want to puke.
- [25:51]
B
For Diane, the news comes with some incredibly complicated feelings. She's upset she didn't learn about this from the official investigators first. She's grieving all over again, but also trying not to. She's not quite willing to fully buy into the idea that Rhea is the last Bear Brook victim. Not until it's official.
- [26:15]
E
I want so hard. I want so bad. I was sorry. I want so bad to be hopeful that it is her, because I thought I'd be, like, really old when it happened. But I don't wanna. I don't want to hope, because that's just more sadness for other people. I want. I want this Pepper lady. If she. If that's who.
- [26:42]
F
Who.
- [26:42]
E
I want her to be alive. I want her to be well. I want everyone to be wrong. But, you know, that never tends to happen around here. But I just don't want to get my hopes up that this is, you know, it for now. Because I'm always. I've always been afraid that there's always going to be something else later.
- [27:10]
B
Diane doesn't want to hope. Not yet. And I can see the wisdom in that. Because if the middle child is Rhea, it only opens the door to new tragic mysteries. If Rhea is one of the children found in the second barrel, where's her mom? Where's Pepper? And if we find out what horrible discoveries will come next. And at that moment, on the phone with Diane, all we knew for certain was that Pepper Reid and Terry Rasmussen had a child together in 1976. We couldn't be absolutely sure that Rhea was the middle child, and we didn't know how investigators found Pepper's name to begin with. To learn those answers, we had to wait until the other side of the investigation, the official side, was ready to talk. That's after the break.
- [28:19]
I
If there's one thing the Bear Brook case has taught us, it's that investigative journalism takes time. I'm Taylor Quimby. I worked with Jason on the initial episodes of Bear brook back in 2018 and 2019. But while I moved on to other projects, Jason has stuck with it. All told, he's been reporting this story for nearly 10 years. And this kind of painstaking work is at risk. Federal cuts to nhpr, the station that produces this podcast, have reduced our funding by hundreds of thousands of dollars. So if you're one of the millions of people who followed our reporting, you can help support it by donating $20. The Bear Brook case has unfolded over 40 long years. If we don't want to abandon these types of stories, we need to fund the journalists willing to stay the course. You can make a gift right now on your phone with Apple Pay or on the app of your choice. Just hit the link in the show notes and thank you.
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- [30:05]
F
Use this.
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B
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- [31:08]
B
Just Just say your name and who you are and where we are. Sure.
- [31:13]
J
My name is Chris Elphick. I'm a detective sergeant with the New Hampshire State Police. We are at New Hampshire State Police Troop D. I've been assigned this case for many years and I kept it with me after I was promoted out of cold case.
- [31:25]
B
And why did you invite me here on a Sunday morning?
- [31:27]
J
Had some information to share with you.
- [31:29]
B
Okay. Meet the official investigation Chris Elphick with New Hampshire State Police. Decidedly more understated than Becky or Rhonda. The morning of Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025, about a month after Rhonda first told me about the text from the stranger, I met with Chris and a prosecutor with the State Attorney General's office. They both look sharp in their gray suits, like maybe they had dressed for the occasion. It was, after all, an important day.
- [31:58]
J
So the information is that the middle child is no longer only known as the middle child. We've identified her.
- [32:06]
B
It was official, or it would be later that day when the state sent out a press release. Rhea was the child in the second barrel. The accidental glimpse into the official investigation had turned out to be correct. They had solved it. But how? What had been happening on their side of the fence these past few months? To answer that, you need to meet Matthew Waterfield. Is this your first trip to New Hampshire?
- [32:33]
G
This is my first trip to New Hampshire, yes.
- [32:35]
B
Well, welcome to New Hampshire.
- [32:38]
G
Thank you very much. It's great to be here.
- [32:40]
B
On Sunday, the same day I spoke with Chris Elphick with New Hampshire State Police, I reached Matthew on a scratchy phone line from across the state. He had just arrived after a long flight from London. Matthew is a genetic genealogist with a Group called the DNA DOE Project. He and his team of volunteer researchers scattered across the world were actually all meeting together in one place for the first time in New Hampshire. They had all traveled here to take part in a press conference about the Bear Brook case scheduled for the next day.
- [33:13]
G
It feels pretty, definitely exciting, pretty impactful as well. I think we've kind of run the gamut of emotions today and in the last few days, too.
- [33:24]
B
Actually, for the past 20 months or so, Matthew and the DNA Doe Project have led the official genetic genealogy work on the Bear Brook case. They took over that mantle from Barbara Ray Venter. You'll probably remember she was responsible for many of the previous breakthroughs in this case.
- [33:41]
F
I mean, basically, I would get up in the morning, I would start working on it, and I would work on it all day until late, until the night.
- [33:47]
B
In January 2024, the New Hampshire Cold Case unit decided they wanted a fresh set of eyes. So the DNA Doe Project was brought in. The group is a big player in the world of genetic genealogy. Like Barbara, they were among the first to use the technique to solve criminal cases. Matthew was in charge of the team at DNA DOE Project tasked with identifying the the middle child. Like Barbara, Matthew is someone who got into genetic genealogy first as a hobby and then got good at it, like, really good. But while Barbara did all that in retirement, Matthew got hooked much younger.
- [34:24]
G
I, a few years ago, was a university student. I think I was 20 years old at the time, and I was just fascinated by this field.
- [34:36]
B
So Matthew and a team of four other volunteer researchers take over this case. And one of the first things they do is update what's called the kit for the middle child, who they've been calling simply Bear Brook Jane Doe. You can think of the kit as the digitized version of a DNA profile, the actual file that you can upload to a genetic genealogy database. The Bear Brook case was such an early use of genetic genealogy that Matthew says more sophisticated methods of developing kits have come along. And with an updated kit came updated results, which gave them a better idea of Bear Brook Jane Doe's ethnicity. She was 100% European descent, which helped the team narrow their search. But it's one thing to get a better sense of the demographics of the person you're looking for. It's another to find the actual person. So Matthew and his team look at who Bear Brook Jane Doe is matching with on online DNA databases like GEDmatch and Family Tree DNA. All of the matches are very distant relatives, too distant to make an immediate identification. And so they have to build out family trees that go back in time until they can figure out the common ancestor between those distant relatives and Bear Brook Jane Doe. They end up building a tree with more than 25,000 people on it. It's a huge amount of information, and it's made even more difficult by the fact that Matthew and his team keep discovering what genealogists call non paternity events. Basically, someone's biological dad wasn't the dad who got listed on the birth certificate. When that happens, the paper genealogical records and the DNA results no longer line up. It can be a huge headache for genealogists. But still, after lots of work, Matthew and his team are able to narrow their search down to a list of families they think Bear Brook Jane Doe is likely descended from. And so they carefully trace those specific branches of this massive family tree forward in time. And as the branches grow out toward the 1970s, they're keeping an eye out for a woman who would have been in her 20s, who might be Bear Brook Jane Doe's mother. And because they assume she was also murdered by Terry Rasmussen, they're looking for someone who shows up in the records and then doesn't.
- [37:04]
G
The sort of clues we look for know lack of a death record, lack of obituary, no marriages after a certain point, no social media presence.
- [37:15]
B
One clue they looked for was people who are named in obituaries as survivors, but with no location given for them. It's a hint that maybe that person's family doesn't know where they are or if they're alive. In a way, Matthew and his team are looking for a dead end, a thin branch on the family tree that's been snapped. Do you remember the particular clue or first indication that your team found that Pepper might be the right person?
- [37:50]
G
Yeah, I do. It was her mother's obituary.
- [37:53]
B
Her mother's obituary. It was a breakthrough.
- [37:56]
G
We came across this woman who had moved to the Houston area, and she died in 2005. And we found her obituary in the Houston Chronicle and listed a son and a daughter. And the daughter was called Pepper Reed.
- [38:10]
B
Pepper Reed. To you or I, this obituary in the Houston Chronicle from 2005 would probably look entirely unremarkable, but to Matthew, it had the telltale signs. Pepper's name was listed, but not where she lived or who she might have been married to. For two hours, the team searched for any evidence that Pepper was alive. Marriage records, court records, social media, whatever they can think of. But they can't find anything. Wow. It's fascinating that it's like the more you didn't find, the more it seemed like you were on the right track.
- [38:49]
G
I mean, the lack of evidence is evidence.
- [38:53]
B
The lack of evidence is evidence. And there seemed to be a lot of evidence. By the end of the same day, they came across the obituary of Pepper's mother. Matthew and his team were confident that Pepper was the mother of Bear Brook Jane Doe.
- [39:08]
G
It was very emotional. We jumped on a zoom call together, and there was more silence than you'd imagine.
- [39:20]
B
Actually, it was June 2025, several weeks before Rhonda and Becky would piece together what was happening and then tell me.
- [39:29]
G
It's that moment where for a brief second, you're the only person in the world who knows the name of this person. And soon, you know, a lot more people are going to know their name, but for that brief period of time, you're the only one. And that's a lot.
- [39:47]
B
From this point, Matthew and his team take the same steps that Becky and Rhonda would later replicate. They track down a birth certificate with Pepper Reed's name on it in California, and they alert their partners. On the official side, the police, a.
- [40:03]
J
Member of the DNA Dole Project, went and obtained that birth certificate, and it was what we were looking for. Her name was Rhea Rasmussen, and the father listed on the birth certificate was Terry Rasmussen.
- [40:13]
B
And as for whether police should have searched for that birth certificate sooner, a.
- [40:18]
J
Search for those records would have been conducted if it was possible. A search of California vital records based upon the father's name only. I was told directly from California vital records.
- [40:28]
B
That's not a possible search, really, because they told me that you could do it if you had a court order.
- [40:35]
J
That's not the information they provided.
- [40:37]
B
To me, honestly, I really don't know what to make of this discrepancy. But after they got the birth certificate, Chris says he took a trip to Texas.
- [40:48]
J
We contacted Pepper's next of kin. I traveled to go meet with him in person and share some of the news. And this was confirmed through DNA testing. After they provided samples just on Friday, we finally got the confirmation.
- [41:03]
B
Rhea's identity was confirmed on a Friday. I talked with Chris from State Police and Matthew from DNA Doe Project on Sunday. And the next day, Monday, there was a press conference. Well, good morning and thank you all for being here. My name is John Farmella, Attorney General for the State of New Hampshire, and I'm joined up here with a number of folks from our office and also partners that we have collaborated with. It happened in a carpeted conference room in a state building. Behind the podium, the official investigators stood in a line. State police, prosecutors, Matthew and the other DNA DOE Project investigators. So many people, they stretched across the entire back wall. The mood was formal, a little stiff, but it wasn't long before the gravity of the moment started to move people. One of the prosecutors who spoke was Ben Agade. You might recognize his voice, too. He's been on the case for as long as I've been reporting on it for New Hampshire Public Radio.
- [42:05]
H
Some of the colleagues from NHPR here in the room. You asked seven years ago whether I still thought about this case after I left the Cold Case Unit, and you asked whether I was frustrated that the victims remained unidentified. The answer was yes, I did, and yes, I was and stayed frustrated. But today, I and everybody in doj, state police, DNA, DOE Project, ncmec, everybody, are sharing the most beautiful and rare of days. Because today we're no longer frustrated, but we can find ourselves, for once, just today, fulfilled. Because today we have that name of Rhea.
- [42:59]
B
After Ben spoke, a victim witness specialist read a statement from Pepper and Rhea's family. They said they love and Ms. Pepper deeply and they're grateful to know her daughter's name.
- [43:11]
C
Your relentless determination has brought our family together and we cannot thank you all enough for keeping Rhea close in your hearts when our family could not.
- [43:20]
F
God bless you all.
- [43:23]
B
As the statement was read, nearly all the members of the DNA DOE Project were crying. In all the cases they've worked on, Rhea is the youngest person they've identified. Diane and one of her sisters also sent a statement to be read from the podium. They asked reporters for privacy while they navigate this deeply traumatic and personal matter. I took that to heart and resisted the urge to call Diane again. She knows how to get in touch.
- [43:58]
E
Before we close today, we want to be very clear this investigation is not over.
- [44:04]
F
While all four victims of Bear Brook have now been identified, there are still unanswered questions.
- [44:11]
B
Unanswered questions. Denise Bowden has never been located. She was last seen in 1981 in New Hampshire. Police believe she is a victim of Terry Rasmussen. Pepper Reed, last seen in the late 1970s in Texas. Police believe she is a victim of Terry Rasmussen and Terry himself. There are still many gaps in his timeline where we don't know where he was or what he was doing, particularly between the mid-70s to mid-80s. Will we ever get all the answers we want? I don't know. But one thing to consider is that genetic genealogy has done all it can in this case. The technique can only identify human remains, not find missing people. So where does that leave us? In a way back at the beginning, 10 years ago, on the very first day that I learned about the Bear Brook case, I was there when a younger Ben Agade gave another press conference. It was the day investigators released the findings from the radioisotope analysis of the remains.
- [45:20]
H
At this point in time, we are almost at our full. If not, we are at the final line of what science can do to help us. So at this point, it really, really is the public's help that we're looking for.
- [45:34]
B
That line of what science can do may move again. But for now, official investigators are back to hoping for a tip. A tip from someone who knows something that could help them find Denise Bowden and Pepper Reed, that could help them learn what happened to them. After 40 years, the original mystery has been solved. For decades, we wondered, who were they? And now we know. Marlise Honeychurch, Marie Vaughan, Sarah McWaters, and Rhea Rasmussen. I tried to grapple with the meaning of this moment when I talked with Matthew Waterfield of the DNA DOE project. This is maybe a dumb question, given the whole purpose of your organization, but I was talking with someone the other day about the urge that we have to find out questions like this, like to identify remains that we don't know who they are. And it feels like there's this kind of profound urge to find that knowledge out. And yet, on the other hand, we want an answer so bad, and we get the answer. And the answer is a name. It's two words. And so what? I don't want to ask is it worth it? But I just wonder. I don't know. What do you think about it?
- [47:19]
G
No, I think I get where we're coming from. I think that there is a practical impact and there's something slightly deeper to it.
- [47:28]
B
A practical impact and then something deeper. The practical side, Matthew says, is that naming a victim can end the pain of ambiguous loss for that person's family. People who won't have to wonder anymore, who don't have to hold on to that last sliver of painful hope, who could maybe find some closure. And as for the deeper meaning, thinking.
- [47:53]
G
About somebody like Rhea, you know, she was murdered. She was murdered by her father. But there's. What more is there than that? Because she had a life. She had a life.
- [48:07]
B
Matthew said Riya was just a few years old, but she probably had birthday parties, went to the store with her mother, lived just like you and I are right now. And a name, he said, is a symbol of that life, an acknowledgment of personhood. Rhea was a person with a life, and if knowing her name, if knowing all their names can help us to appreciate that, then all of this just might have been worth it. Bear Brook is reported and produced by me, Jason Moon. Additional reporting in this episode of by Lauren Chulgin and Taylor Quimby. This episode was edited by Katie Culinary with help from Lauren Chooljian, Dan Barrick, Taylor Quimby and Rebecca Lavoy. Photos and video for this episode by Casey McDermott. Special thanks this episode to Kim Fallon. By the way, Bear Brook led to the creation of a whole team at NHPR dedicated to making more podcast series like this. We're called the Document Team and you can check out more more of our work at the link in the show. Notes Additional photography and video for this series by Ally Claire. Sarah Plord created our original artwork as well as our website bearbrookpodcast.com original music for this show was composed by me, Jason Moon and Taylor Quimby. Dan Barrick is NHPR's news director, Rebecca Lavoy is our Director of On Demand Audio and Leah Todd Lin is Vice President of Audience Strategy. Bear Brook is a production of the Document Team at New Hampshire Public Radio.
- [50:29]
D
If someone told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?
- [50:33]
B
No.
- [50:35]
D
But there is something to be said about leaping into the unknown. That's what our podcast Outside in is all about. It's a safer way to explore all the weird ways, wonderful and uncomfortable questions you have about the natural world. Like what's it like to decompose?
- [50:52]
E
All of the germs and bacteria is saying, okay baby, we gotta get rid.
- [50:58]
F
Of this person or why the hell.
- [51:01]
D
Do we have lawns?
- [51:02]
A
Who the hell needs five acres of ornamental grass?
- [51:09]
D
I'm Nate Hedge, host of Outside in A podcast where curiosity and the natural world collide. Sometimes it's serious, sometimes it's ridiculous. But it's always a wild journey. That's Outside in from New Hampshire Public Radio.