Bear Brook Barrels, Allenstown Four
On November 10, 1985, a hunter found a 55-gallon metal drum near a burned-down store site in Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown, New Hampshire, containing the bludgeoned, plastic-wrapped remains of an adult woman and a young girl. On May 9, 2000, investigators searching the same area discovered a second drum about 300 feet away that held the bodies of two more young girls, and authorities concluded that all four victims had been killed between the late 1970s and early 1980s.
For decades, the four victims, known as the Allenstown Four, remained unidentified despite facial reconstructions, DNA testing, and a national search for their names. In 2017, investigators named serial killer Terry Peder Rasmussen, also known as Bob Evans, as the prime suspect and used forensic genealogy to finally identify three of the victims in 2019 as Marlyse Honeychurch and her daughters Marie Vaughn and Sarah McWaters, with the fourth girl later confirmed as his own daughter, Rea Rasmussen.