S3 Ep277: Bear Brook Murders: The Barrel in the Woods (Part 1)

On November 10, 1985, a hunter walking near the edge of Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown, New Hampshire, stumbled upon a rusted 55-gallon barrel tipped over in the woods. Inside, he found the skeletal remains of a woman and a young girl, both wrapped in plastic. Authorities searched for answers, but the victims remained unidentified, and the case went cold. Then, 15 years later, investigators returned to the scene and made a chilling discovery—another barrel, just 150 yards away, containing the remains of two more young girls. And as the investigation continued, the dark truth behind the Bear Brook murders slowly began to unravel. We're coming to CrimeCon Denver! Use our code CRIMEWEEKLY for 10% off your tickets!https://www.crimecon.com/CC25Try our coffee!! - www. CriminalCoffeeCo.comBecome a Patreon member -- > ｿ https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeeklyShop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> ｿ https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shopYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcastWebsite: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.comInstagram: @CrimeWeeklyPodTwitter: @CrimeWeeklyPodFacebook: @CrimeWeeklyPodADS:1. HelixSleep.com/CrimeWeekly - Get 27% off sitewide!2. Hero.co - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY for 10% off your order!3. LiquidIV.com - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY for 20% off your first order!4. EatIQBAR.com - Text WEEKLY to 64000 for 20% off ALL IQBAR products and FREE shipping!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  On November 10th, 1985, a hunter walking near the edge of Bear Brook State Park in Allentown, New Hampshire stumbled upon a rusted 55-gallon barrel tipped over in the woods. Inside, he found the skeletal remains of a woman and a young girl, both wrapped in plastic. Authorities searched for answers, but the victims remained unidentified and the case went cold. Then, 15 years later, investigators returned to the scene and made a chilling discovery: another barrel, just 150 yards away, containing the remains of two more young girls. It was almost impossible to believe, and as the investigation continued,

• 0:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  the dark truth behind the Bear Brook murders slowly began to unravel.

• 1:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow.

• 1:18Derrick Levasseur?

  And I'm Derrick Levasseur.

• 1:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  And today, as you could hear from the teaser, we're diving into a brand-new series, The Bear Brook Murders, also known as The Allentown Four. So, we are going to get right into it. But first, is there anything you want to talk about, anything you want to get out of the way before we get into case mode?

• 1:37Derrick Levasseur?

  No, ready to go. Let's do it.

• 1:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right. So, on November 10th, 1985, a police officer in Allentown, New Hampshire, received a call from dispatch to meet a hunter near the edge of Bear Brook State Park, the largest developed state park in New Hampshire, spanning over 10,000 acres. When this officer arrived, he found the hunter looking pale and shaken. The hunter told him, quote, "There's a barrel up in the woods, and I think there's some bones in there," end quote. The officer followed the hunter's lead and located a slightly rusted Dark blue, 55 gallon steel drum, just off a trail on private property. The barrel had been tipped over, exposing a plastic bag inside.

• 2:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  When the officer opened to the bag, he found the skeletal remains of two victims. Both were nude, wrapped in plastic, and bound with carol cable electrical wire. Authorities searched the area for additional evidence, clothing, personal items, or other remains, but they didn't find anything else. The victims' remains were flown to a hospital in Augusta, Maine, where they were examined by Dr. Marcella Sorg and Dr. Henry Ryan. At that time, Dr. Sorg was the only forensic anthropologist in all of New England, and she was typically brought in to examine skeletonized remains, cases that a standard pathologist wasn't trained to handle. Through their examination, Sorg and Ryan determined that the remains belonged to two females.

• 3:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  One was an adult between 23 and 33 years old, and the other was a young girl between 8 and 10 years old. The adult victim was between 5'4" and 5'7", with curly, light brown hair, and the child was around 4'3", with light brown to blond hair. Based on Sorg and Ryan's initial analysis, both victims were believed to be either Caucasian or Native American. Later advancements in technology would refine these descriptions, but at the time, this was the best estimate they could provide. Both victims had been killed by blunt force trauma to the head, though the doctors couldn't rule out the possibility of additional injuries.

• 3:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  Their remains showed evidence of some dismemberment, and based on decomposition, they had been dead for at least a year. As you can imagine, the autopsies weren't easy to complete. Dr. Sorg later explained that severe decomposition always made identification difficult, but in this case, the plastic wrapping around the bodies complicated things even further. She said, quote, "The presence of plastic reduces our ability to predict because it diminishes the access of insects, which delays decomposition. Since the bodies were wrapped in plastic, it could mean that the bodies could have been there longer," end quote.

• 4:25Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, that's interesting that the plastic, obviously it's used for whatever methodology because of the offender, what they're trying to do, maybe transportation, they don't want to have trace evidence left behind in a vehicle or whatever it might be. And yet it actually throws off investigators as well because it almost serves as like a preservation. And by no means am I a pathologist, but in many instances, experts will use the development of fly larvae insect activity to determine how long a body has been there. And that will obviously be contributed to also the decomposition levels that you have and where they are in that process. So without that, this plastic may have actually helped the offender because it almost serves

• 5:08Derrick Levasseur?

  as kind of like this preservation technique where it throws off the time of death and they can't determine how long the bodies have been there. That may have been intentional, it may have been just luck, but either way, the facts are the facts and that's what they're left with. And all these variables in these cases can definitely have an impact on it. I remember we worked a case where we found a body and the body was out there, you know, different types of weather. It was at a certain stage in the decomposition process, but there was a theory that potentially the body had been wrapped at one point and then the offender revisited the crime scene and unwrapped the body to throw investigators off, right? To make it look like, hey, this body has been exposed to the elements the whole time,

• 5:53Derrick Levasseur?

  so it's only been here a very short duration. So what we actually did, and I know some people won't agree with this, but they had a pig fetus that was available and they put it out there during the same time of year and to see what type of insect activity would be caused and how long it would take and how long before that pig fetus would be at the same level of decomposition of the body that we found to determine whether or not it aligned. So these are the types of techniques, although I'm a big animal person, not a huge fan of it, but that's what we had at the time and that's what was done. But yeah, these are the types of complications.

• 6:35Derrick Levasseur?

  That can happen in any case that you don't often hear about, but these are the hurdles that you have to uh jump over throughout the investigation, just to try to determine when the bodies were left there.

• 6:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's interesting because we're talking about Dr. Marcella Sorg, and it seems like she's the person to kind of, she's the go to person. It reminds me of that show, Bones. Um, I don't know if you ever saw it, but there's this

• 7:00Derrick Levasseur?

  I know, I haven't watched it.

• 7:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, there's like this, but she's, she's got this specific talent. And, and at that time, especially the only one really on the East Coast who did have this specific talent. Because sometimes when you're going to find these human remains, they are going to be, you know, greatly decomposed. And all of these factors, like she was talking about, like you were talking about, are going to affect that. And she's going to be able to sort of piece things together and see behind the curtain. She's got, she's got this talent for doing it. And luckily, she was at the University of Maine at the time. And she says that um, I, I read an article where she was interviewed just a few years ago, because she's still doing this. And she said that analyzing human remains is kind of like the side gig for her, that this wasn't her

• 7:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  main job. Her primary focus was public policy and epidemiology. But she's analyzed hundreds of these kinds of cases in her 42 years of examining human remains. And she says that the first step she would do is to catalog the condition of each bone before she handles them. Sometimes she even x-rays them to see if there's any foreign objects lodged in them. And then she examines their condition and completes an inventory of what she has and what's missing. And she says sometimes it's even necessary to have to clean the bones. You can see the surfaces better. Then you look at every single bone to rule out any sign of trauma and to better understand what happened at death. And she says there's a decreasing curve when it comes to how much can be learned from remains that have been degraded by time and exposure.

• 8:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  She said, there's always something that can be learned. And she's cited many cases where she had cremated remains that she was still able to get information from.

• 8:41Derrick Levasseur?

  That's crazy.

• 8:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  I know. It's very, very interesting. And I think she just has this sort of eye for it, this sort of brain for it. But to, to be able to understand that. The plastic covering the remains stops the insect activity, which we would think almost as the layman would be better because you'd have more.

• 9:00Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it's like, oh, it's preserved.

• 9:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, you have more to go from, but it doesn't help her at all when trying to consider time of death because they use this insect activity as an indicator of time of death. So this threw it all off. And remember, they said, listen, they could have died within the past year, but initially they were saying, they really, they really didn't know. And I have the notes here, initially, they said that it could have been, they could have been killed sometime between 1977 and 1985.

• 9:31Derrick Levasseur?

  That's a big window.

• 9:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  That's a big window, right? And mainly that's because of the plastic deterring that insect activity.

• 9:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Is it stupid for me to say, like, when we talk about insect activity and how these pathologists or these medical examiners are able to do this, is it, is, do you, from your perspective, is that common knowledge, how they do that? Or should I give a little bit more detail on that? Because I'm a little self-conscious, I'm not gonna lie, I was reading some of the reviews, and I know that's the worst thing you can do, but I always like the feedback. And I've been accused lately of mansplaining. And it's like, I would call it cop splaining, that's kind of my role in this whole thing, is to give you guys some insight as far as what we do as investigators, because not everybody who does these types of crime cases has that actual experience.

• 10:18Derrick Levasseur?

  But is it, would it be, as a woman, would it be considered mansplaining if I explain how insect activity is used to determine how long a body's been there? Or do you think that's common sense?

• 10:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't think.

• 10:30Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm asking that not sarcastically.

• 10:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I don't think it's mansplaining. I think that's probably not common knowledge, maybe for people who consume a lot of true crime content, but simply because they've heard it in other content. I don't think this is something that they teach you in school, so I would, I would encourage you to mansplain away.

• 10:49Derrick Levasseur?

  Quick version of it, when obviously there's a body out there, you've seen it with food or whatever, insects are going to be drawn to that, right? So the insects will be drawn to that, they will, they will leave behind eggs, larvae. Right? Those eggs will then develop into babies. I don't know what the correct terms are. And then the insects will develop into full grown, whatever they are, flies, whatever it might be. And so then you can have medical examiners and entomologists come in, take those fly, those fly insects, the larvae, whatever it might be, all the different stages. And they can determine a relative amount of time that the insects have been here because when that body is left out there, pretty quickly, the insects are going to find it. So based on what they can find in the different stages of the insects that are found on the body,

• 11:34Derrick Levasseur?

  they can determine how long the body has been there. How's that?

• 11:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  That's good.

• 11:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Right? The different cycle that the insects are in, they will take a Petri dish, they'll take multiple samples. They'll put them under a microscope and an entomologist will say, yeah, based on what I'm seeing here, based on the colony or whatever they would call it that's on the body. I would say that this is probably four or six weeks into development. So they're not even using the body's decomposition. They're using the insect activity. They will also use the body. It's not like they completely just don't look at it.

• 12:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's just one of the tools.

• 12:06Derrick Levasseur?

  This is a very good tool that's a lot more accurate for them and easier to kind of dissect.

• 12:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes.

• 12:12Derrick Levasseur?

  So there's my mansplaining for the, for the episode.

• 12:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay. So the mansplaining for the episode is done. We can check that off the list of things you have to do.

• 12:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Couple of people. Now, mind you, there's hundreds of thousands of people who listen to us. So two comments on it, I think we're okay. But I do see it and you're always trying to make adjustments. And I'm like, man, I, I gotta really understand as a man, what mansplaining is because I feel like whenever I go into something, more than likely it's something of I thought value as a law enforcement officer, but I do think what happens in some cases is true crime is so advanced now, right? Where there are people who are watching our episodes, they're watching other people's episodes and they've kind of become, you know, an expert on some of this stuff where they've heard these terms before. It's been explained to them multiple times. So when they hear someone like me saying, oh, this is what we're talking about. They're like,

• 13:03Derrick Levasseur?

  man, that's mansplaining. I already know that, you know, but not everybody does. That's what I would say.

• 13:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  I, I would absolutely agree. I have not seen the comments accusing you of mansplaining, but I believe that they are there.

• 13:14Derrick Levasseur?

  They are there. We actually had someone do that in person too, by the way. Do you remember that?

• 13:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  I do. I thought they were joking.

• 13:21Derrick Levasseur?

  It was a weird, we talked about it, I think, on this, one of these episodes. It was years ago.

• 13:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 13:26Derrick Levasseur?

  But someone came up to us and was like, oh, I love you guys. Derek, you do do a lot of mansplaining. And I was like, awesome, cool.

• 13:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  You were like, nice to meet you.

• 13:38Derrick Levasseur?

  I was like, have a good day.

• 13:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't know. I, I, I like it. I like to learn. So, and I don't know everything. And even if I do know, like a little bit of it, like I knew a little bit how insect activity worked as far as dating, you know, time of death, but I didn't know to that extent. I just know it is. So.

• 13:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, now we all have a little bit of know. I'm, I'm, I'm not an expert on it either. That's why we were there. Many times you won't even collect it. They'll, you know, they'll have someone out there who's collecting it to make sure

• 14:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:07Derrick Levasseur?

  They can analyze it. But yeah, and that's what we did with the pig, right? Because they went out there, they collected all different samples from all over the pig. And they said, yeah, you have, this is the beginning of one cycle. This is the start of two cycles. Okay. So they've gone through three reproductive cycles on this fetus, which means 14 days, whatever it is. It's pretty cool.

• 14:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's very interesting. I find it very interesting.

• 14:30Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 14:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. Well, despite all of the unknowns, authorities felt confident that the bodies had been left at the scene at the same time. What they weren't sure about was whether the two had been killed in the woods, or if they'd been murdered somewhere else and then dumped there. Authorities worked to identify the victims, checking state and federal databases for any missing persons cases that matched, but they couldn't find anything. Investigators also went door to door in a nearby mobile home park, interviewing nearly all of its residents to see if anyone had noticed anything suspicious around the time that the bodies were left there. Now, this mobile park was called Bear Brook Gardens. It was located several hundred yards from the bodies

• 15:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  and the residents there were basically long-term, mostly working people. And one of the residents said, quote, "This is a nice secluded area. We've been here for four years now, and this is an extremely stable park with no rental units," end quote. So basically what he's saying is like, hey, there's not just people coming and going.

• 15:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 15:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Coming for short-term rentals, staying here three months and leaving. We've all pretty much been here. Even if the bodies were found five years ago, or if they found one year ago. We've all pretty much been here for a while.

• 15:44Derrick Levasseur?

  That is my first thought too, by the way. Like, when you said where it is, the location. You would think that the offender had some type of familiarity with this area. It doesn't seem like the bodies were meant to be found. You know, so they put them there for, for a reason.

• 15:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  I'm sure that they weren't meant to be found, right?

• 16:01Derrick Levasseur?

  So, so they, the person who put them there felt like this was a location that would go undiscovered. And how would they know that? They would have a familiarity with the area. They would know that it's not, not a high-traffic location. Pretty consistent residents there. People wouldn't necessarily go over to this specific area. So, how do you get that knowledge? Well, you've been there before. You've spent some time there. At least that's the initial thought.

• 16:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, another resident said, quote, "It's kind of surprising that nobody found them before. But as I understand it, there are some woods, roads that come down right into there from Deerfield Road. You could drive a truck right into there and nobody would think much about it. Everybody's a little shook up. It's kind of scary, actually. Living out in the boonies, you expect to be immune from that sort of thing." End quote. So, basically what he's saying is, hey, you wouldn't even have to walk out here with this barrel. You know, you can, there's a, there's a road there. It goes through the woods. You can drive a truck right up here, dump these barrels off, and go on with your day. But here's the thing.

• 17:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  Decades later, it would be revealed that someone had found the barrel months earlier. During the summer of 1985, 11-year-old Jesse, who lived in that mobile home park. He was playing hide-and-seek with his friends when one of the kids ran up to him saying he'd just come across a barrel in the middle of the woods off the main trail. Jesse thought it was strange that a barrel would be out there in the first place, so he hopped on his four-wheeler and he went to check it out with the other kids. When they got there, the boy who had first spotted the barrel tried to lift the top. The second he did, a putrid smell hit them so hard that they immediately recoiled. Then one of the kids gave the barrel a shove, knocking it onto its side.

• 17:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  They stood there for a moment staring at it before all of them scrambled onto Jesse's four-wheeler and got out of there just as fast as they could. None of them had any idea what they had just come across. So this is very interesting because remember the barrel is found on its side. And now we kind of know that whoever left the barrel there originally probably didn't leave it on its side, right? Like Derek said, this person was not hoping for these bodies to be found. Otherwise, he would have wrapped them in plastic, put them in a barrel with a top on it. When the person or persons left the barrel there, it was standing upright and these kids, you know, these curious kids, they knocked it over.

• 18:29Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. And now I do, now I'm kind of going back on what I said as, you know, two minutes ago, as, as it's kind of developing here where it does appear that even if you weren't familiar with the actual mobile park, there is a trail there, there's a road there.

• 18:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  Snowmobile trails too, yeah.

• 18:47Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. So could it be someone who has no familiarity with the, the trailer park, but, or I should say the mo- mobile park, whatever you want to refer to it as, and could have been just driving by and happened to leave it near the Bear Brook mobile park? That's also possible. So.

• 19:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Not knowing that it was even there.

• 19:03Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. I do retract my statement now, hearing a little bit more, maybe, maybe we can't, we can't pinpoint it to that mobile park. It could have been anybody just driving by who said, hey, listen, this is a remote location. That's where I'm going to leave the barrel.

• 19:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, it could, it could have been any of those things though.

• 19:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 19:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  We can't, we can't discount anything right away.

• 19:22Derrick Levasseur?

  I don't want to go too far off the path here because we're on part one of a multiple parts series and we're in like the first 20 minutes of it, but there's so many things running through my head already because I'm envisioning this barrel and I'm thinking about transportation to get it to that location. If it's not someone from the mobile park and they didn't just roll it out there, well then how did they transport it by vehicle? That would have to be some type of pickup truck more than likely. So that's some of the thoughts that are running through my head right now. That's subject to change, but I got a million things that I'm writing down right now. I gotta slow down.

• 19:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right. Well, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.

• 20:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, we're back and we're continuing on. So, two days after the bodies were officially recovered on November 12th, New Hampshire Attorney General Stephen Merrill held a press conference to update the public. He confirmed that investigators were treating the case as a double homicide and said they were hopeful that the victims would be identified soon, possibly within the next week. Merrill explained that the dental remains were in good condition, which is a good sign because hopefully you can identify them through their teeth.

• 20:30Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 20:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  And authorities believed they would be able to make a positive identification. But surprisingly, even though the dentals were in good shape, that identification never came. Weeks passed, then months. No one stepped forward and investigators began to consider the possibility that the women and child weren't from New Hampshire at all. Maybe they'd been killed somewhere else, then brought to the private property near Bear Brook State Park. If that was the case, it would explain why no one in the area had recognized them or called in with information after seeing the media coverage.

• 21:05Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, that also might explain why if they're looking for local missing persons cases, nothing's coming up. These two young women could be from completely different parts of the country, or at least another state.

• 21:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, they said that they compared their teeth to dental records of any highly publicized cases of missing persons in New Hampshire. No match was found. There was no clothing or pieces of evidence found at or around the scene, which also once again speaks to the idea or the theory that they were killed elsewhere, put in the barrel, and then brought to the park because there's no...

• 21:38Derrick Levasseur?

  Makes a lot of sense.

• 21:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, there's no evidence around. But even if they weren't from New Hampshire, you know, there's the ability to check other missing persons cases and things, right?

• 21:50Derrick Levasseur?

  The case that's running through my mind right now is the case that we're currently working on for Criminal Coffee down in Houston. There's been some movement in that case, that's all I'll say. But we are running into a situation now where we're trying to find the family members of a particular... Missing persons case that may be linked to what we're working on. But it's easier said than done. Put it that way. So when you think about it, we have a specific location and family that we're looking for, and it's still difficult. Think about the New England area. We're, you know, we're, I'm from Rhode Island, you're from New York, you're not in the New England area, but there's, it's a lot around there. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island.

• 22:32Derrick Levasseur?

  Many, many, many, many missing persons cases over a variety of years. They could be any of them. And so without having a unified database, you have obviously Namus and things like that that you can look into, but it's a needle in a haystack. It really is unless you start going through each one, one by one, and looking at the descriptions of each victim to see if they match. And how many victims are you going to find between, what would, what did we say 23 and 33 that approximately that height? It's going to be in the, it's going to be in the hundreds, if not thousands. And that's what makes it so difficult. And it is a painstaking process, but someone has to do it. Somebody has to do it.

• 23:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, they kind of did, right? So in February of 1986, the state police issued a drawing of the older of the two victims, the adult victim, after trying for months to match descriptions and dental records from the corpses with info about missing persons on file at the National Crime Information Center in Washington DC. And the computer came up with almost 800 matches. And Lieutenant Martin Hian, who was a spokesperson for the state police major crime unit at that time, said, quote, "We've eliminated close to 300 as of last week. We still have more than 400 to go, but the bottom line is the remains do not match any descriptions we have received." End quote. And it's not usually necessary for law enforcement to have to circulate a drawing of a victim. You

• 24:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  know, we've seen them do that in the instance of offenders, but usually not of a victim. But the remains were so badly decomposed that no fingerprints or other identifiable marks existed to help the investigators. So they had a drawing done by Peggy Caldwell, who is a forensic pathologist from New York. At that time, she was one of the few people trained to create images of people based on their skeletons. And so she used information and photos provided by Dr. Marcel Sorg. And she was able to come up with a drawing that they then used to help them, you know, sort of circulate these pictures. Like, have you seen this person? Have you seen this person?

• 24:38Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm all over the place here. I know. I'm just, this case is fascinating already. But the number one question I have, and I'm sure a lot of the listeners and viewers are going to have as well. And we're probably going to get there. But what's the number one question everyone should be asking right now? Are they related? Are these two related? Is it a sister sister? Is it a mother daughter? Number one thing that you can do, you have both bodies, run the DNA test, and you want to figure out if they're related. Why would we want to do that, Stephanie? Pretty simple, right?

• 25:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, it's easier to find, you know, two people from the same family that are missing. Yeah.

• 25:11Derrick Levasseur?

  Right? Bingo. So not only is an eight to 10 year old something that you would expect to see more in the news, right? Because an eight to 10 year old goes missing, everybody should be looking for them, right?

• 25:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  Of course, yeah.

• 25:21Derrick Levasseur?

  23 year old to 33 year old, it could be a case where they think this person is just traveling or something like that. They have the right to be on their own. But an eight to 10 year old goes missing, people are going to be aware of it. More importantly.

• 25:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  Unless, unless that eight to 10 year old goes missing with her mother.

• 25:37Derrick Levasseur?

  There you go. There you go. Look at you. Here we go. Here we go.

• 25:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  And then they might think, oh, she just took off. Maybe there's a custody battle. Maybe the mother took the daughter, so the father wouldn't get her. And so maybe they're not going to look as hard because they think this child is in the custody of a responsible adult who is their parent.

• 25:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. Or if these two people are missing now, it's going to be easier to narrow down your pool of people you're searching for. What's easier than trying to find a 22 to 33 year old woman? A 22 to 33 year old woman who also went missing with her eight to 10 year old daughter.

• 26:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes.

• 26:10Derrick Levasseur?

  Not as many of those cases out there. And so that's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to make our job easier. We're trying to narrow down our search pool.

• 26:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, they, they couldn't. But even so, they couldn't, right? Which is kind of crazy to me because you'd think that they would have put that together and kind of maybe done that. Like, hey, go to the surrounding states even. Hey, is there any cases of a mother and a daughter? Who went missing or who took off? Or maybe they weren't reported missing because? The family thought that they were together, so they were fine. Maybe there was a reason for them to leave. I mean, this mother and daughter could have left for a legitimate reason. Maybe they were escaping an abusive home. Maybe they were just looking for some new place to live and then foul play befell them as they were on this journey. We don't know. But are there any cases like this? And they just couldn't find anything like

• 27:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  that. So by 1987, with the victims still unidentified, they were buried together in a local Allentown Cemetery under a donated gravestone. The inscription read, "Here lies the mortal remains known only to God of a woman aged 23 to 33 and a girl child aged 8 to 10. Their slain bodies were found on November 10, 1985 in Bear Brook State Park. May their souls find peace in God's loving care." End quote. And after that, the case pretty much faded from the public eye. For the next 15 years, there was little to no reporting on it at all. But in 2000, the case was reopened and investigators decided to search the wooded area where the first barrel had been found, this time with a fresh

• 27:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  team and a renewed focus. On May 9, a state trooper was combing through the woods when he spotted another 55 gallon barrel. This one sitting about 150 yards away from where the first had been discovered. And that's not a very far distance, 150 yards, not a far distance. Close. And what you got, what you got here is it's not only is it not a far distance, but it's the same MO, which Oh, yeah. Kind of definitely means the same person, unless you have a copycat who saw the 1985 case, that's a whole nother can of worms. So when investigators opened the barrel, they found the remains of two young girls. Forensic testing later concluded, one of the children was between two and four years old. She had brown hair and stood somewhere between three

• 28:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  foot three and three foot nine. She also had a noticeable overbite. The other child was even younger, between one and three years old, with brown or blond hair standing between two foot one and two foot six. She had a distinct gap between her two front teeth. Based on early forensic analysis, both girls were believed to be either Caucasian or Native American. Given the circumstances, authorities believed the second barrel was directly connected to the first. They determined it had likely been there the entire time, somehow missed during the initial search back in 1985. Unbelievable. Believe it or not. Yeah.

• 29:07Derrick Levasseur?

  What do you want me to say?

• 29:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't know anymore.

• 29:11Derrick Levasseur?

  You think they would have known, I mean, I, I hope there's something more to it where they just.

• 29:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  A hundred and fifty yards, dude?

• 29:17Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, that's not, that's not that far.

• 29:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's like, what do you want me to say? And I'm like, at this point, I, I can't even, I can't, I, I feel like we are all on the same page where it, it's pretty important to do a thorough search of the area. And if you're gonna say something like, you know, no clothing, no evidence was found, but there's a whole ass another barrel there.

• 29:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's a little messed up.

• 29:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, no, not good. And, and, and listen, I've talked about a case, some of you heard it, some of you maybe not, where we had an officer go into an apartment and they're like, yep, apartment's clear. And then we went in there and looked behind the door. And there were two bodies. This is a small apartment. These mistakes happen. So it could just be a absolutely ridiculous mistake by law enforcement, or maybe if we were there. I don't know. I don't know how you would explain a hundred and fifty yards. The area should have been, should have been searched. I'm not gonna make excuses. I don't understand it. Unless the barrel was buried, there's no excuse.

• 30:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  The barrel was not buried.

• 30:18Derrick Levasseur?

  Then that's, then there you go.

• 30:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  And I don't know how they would have determined like, oh, we believe it's been here this whole amount of time. They could be wrong about that. I'm just gonna say they could be wrong about that.

• 30:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, absolutely. They could be. I mean, there's probably ways they can tell, but.

• 30:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, they could have said, oh, based on erosion, it looks like it's been out here this long, but it could have been outside somewhere else. Like, I'm just hoping that that barrel was not there. In the, in the eighties, when it was, when the first one was found. I, I'm hoping that they're wrong about that barrel being there, but. So the authorities later exhumed the remains from the first barrel to compare them with the bodies in the second. And forensic testing was conducted to determine whether any of the victims were related. The results showed that the adult woman and at least two of the children were likely related, perhaps a mother and two of her daughters.

• 31:08Derrick Levasseur?

  There you go.

• 31:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  But the child between two and four years old was not biologically connected to the others, which just deepens this mystery. Now, despite this major development, there was little media coverage of the case. A detective with the New Hampshire State Police later said that although investigators continued working the case, it eventually hit a dead end and went cold. Without the kind of widespread attention that cases receive today through the 24-hour news cycle and social media, awareness of the Bear Brook murders faded into the background. Then, in early 2013, authorities announced they were officially reopening the case. They revealed that even after nearly three decades, the identities of all four victims

• 31:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  were still unknown, and no one had ever come forward to report a woman and multiple children missing from their family. New Hampshire Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Strausen called it one of the most unusual cases the state and the country had ever seen. He stated, quote, "This is a very unusual case for New Hampshire. It's an unusual case nationwide to have four people go missing and no one come forward." End quote. Strausen also shared that the investigation had received a major boost. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children had provided $30,000 in funding to support enhanced DNA testing, which would help conclusively determine how or if the victims were related.

• 32:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  State officials were also working on new forensic sketches to try and capture what the victims could have looked like when they were alive. Strausen said that while tips had trickled in over the years, none had led to a break in the case. He shared, quote, "It's horrifying that someone has gotten away with something like this for so long. Have they harmed someone else in the meantime? And could they harm additional people in the future?" End quote. Strausen acknowledged that the passage of time was both a help and a hindrance to the investigation. On one hand, witnesses who may have once held valuable information could have since passed away. But on the other hand, those who had been too afraid to speak up years ago might finally feel safe enough to come forward.

• 33:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  In June of 2013, updated sketches of what the victims might have looked like were released to the public. The sketches were in grayscale as certain physical characteristics such as skin tone and eye color were still unknown. The forensic artist who was working on the images for NCMEC explained the reasoning behind this approach, saying, quote, "We want the public to look at them with some level of ambiguity. Ambiguity is the big word. They're not meant to be photographic." End quote. At the same time, authorities also shared an important update regarding the victims' relationship to one another. DNA testing had confirmed that the adult woman was related to two of the girls, meaning she could have been their mother, older sister, or aunt.

• 34:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  But the third child, the one estimated to be between two and four years old, was not related to the others, and this new detail added another layer of mystery to the case.

• 34:13Derrick Levasseur?

  Let me weigh in here real quick, because to me, what this looks like, what you could have is you have this older woman who's related to the eight to 10-year-old, to the one to three-year-old. The two to four-year-old could be a friend or a neighbor of this...

• 34:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  Or a stepchild.

• 34:30Derrick Levasseur?

  Or a stepchild, yeah, that's possible too, or stepchild, but there's definitely a relation here. These four were, I don't think they were brought there at different times. I don't think this was a dumping ground for a serial killer, and all four victims were killed at different, on different occasions. It could be a serial killer, I'm not saying that it's not, but it's, it appears that all four of these, these women are somehow connected, and if we had the answers to this, to this, to this case, we're probably going to find that there's a correlation here, even though the two to four-year-old isn't familial in match, she is someone who is going to be connected to them in some way, shape, or form.

• 35:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, absolutely. I, I think exactly right where they might not be related by blood, but there's some relation. They're not randomly connected, yeah.

• 35:17Derrick Levasseur?

  There's a story there.

• 35:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  The investigation continued, and in November 2015, on the 30th anniversary of the first barrels discovery, the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office held a press conference to share... Several new findings. One of the biggest developments was that forensic testing had been conducted on the remains in an effort to learn more about who these victims were and where they may have come from. One of the key tests performed was an isotope analysis, a forensic technique that examines elements in a person's teeth, bones, hair, and nails to determine patterns in their diet, travel history, and region of origin. I'm actually very interested in isotope

• 35:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  analysis. They can show you, based on the analysis of things like your teeth specifically, and yes, your hair too, but I think to a lesser extent, but your bones and your teeth, how old you were, or if you lived on the earth at a time when like a nuclear bomb was detonated because of the radiation released into the atmosphere, even if you weren't in the same location of the world that it happened, it still went into the atmosphere and goes into your teeth and bones, almost like rings in a tree trunk. It's super, super interesting.

• 36:32Derrick Levasseur?

  I mean, it sounds interesting, other than the fact that I feel like you're women-splaining to me, but you know.

• 36:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  I am woman-splaining you.

• 36:38Derrick Levasseur?

  I had to. I had to.

• 36:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  I know, little Derek, you don't know about isotope analysis. No, there's a mystery, and I don't know if you've ever heard of it, it's called the Isdell Woman. And she was a woman who was found dead in a hotel room, and they couldn't figure out where she was, like all the labels had been torn out of her clothes, everything that could have been identifying about her, she personally removed. So people thought she was a spy, maybe from Russia, and they used isotope analysis on her remains to sort of glean more information about her, where she was born, where she was raised, things like that. Very, very interesting. If anybody's interested in looking more into that, I did do a video about it, but I think that they did it on Unsolved Mysteries as well. Super interesting. I love isotope analysis.

• 37:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  Very interesting. Now, the results of this analysis offered the most detailed information yet, because that's how isotope analysis rolls as a boss. And it showed where the victims had lived before their deaths. According to the isotope testing, the woman and All three girls had spent the last two weeks, two, three months of their lives together in the New Hampshire region before they were killed, which they now estimated was somewhere between 1980 and 1984. But before that, the analysis suggested that the woman and her two biological daughters had lived in a different location than the non-related child. This is so interesting. Once again, we're going to take a quick break and then we're going to talk more about it when we get back.

• 38:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, we're back. So the isotope testing showed that the woman and the two children that were biologically related to her had spent at least two weeks, two, three months of their lives together in New Hampshire before they were killed. But that testing also suggested that this woman and her two biological daughters had lived in a different location than the non-related child, which means they now know where they lived before being in New Hampshire and they know where the non-related child lived. Investigators now believed that the woman and her two daughters had likely spent much of their lives in New Hampshire or a neighboring state close to the coastline. There was also a chance that they could have been from the West Coast or from a stretch of states ranging from Arizona

• 38:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  to Minnesota. But the most probable scenario was that they had lived somewhere in the Northeast. Based on this new forensic evidence, their estimated ages were also adjusted. The woman was likely in her mid twenties with the two girls being around nine to 10 years old and two to three years old. The non-related child, who was now believed to have been three to four years old when she was killed, had a very different geographical history. The isotope analysis suggested that she was born and raised in a separate area before ending up with the others in New Hampshire. She may have spent her early years in northern New Hampshire, northern Maine, Vermont, upstate New York, or further west in places like

• 39:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Nevada, or even a small section of southeastern Wyoming. The Attorney General's Office was quick to- Point out that the isotope results were not exact and should not discourage anyone from coming forward with tips, especially if they had information that didn't perfectly align with these forensic findings. The office said that while it was more likely than not that all four victims were from the northeast, similar water sources in other parts of the country meant that the possibility of them having lived elsewhere could not be ruled out entirely. To generate new leads, authorities announced plans for a media blitz targeting areas where the victims may have lived based on the isotope results.

• 40:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  They remained hopeful that their renewed effort would finally lead to an identification. The New Hampshire State Police said, quote, "Thirty years is not a period that causes us so much concern that we think it can't be solved," end quote. At that same time, NCMEC, which is the Missing Persons Database, it released updated lifelike computerized images of what the victims may have looked like in life. While authorities in New Hampshire were working to uncover the identities of the victims found in the barrels, investigators on the other side of the country, more than 3,000 miles away in California, were unknowingly putting together another critical piece of the puzzle.

• 41:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  It all started in 1999 when Insoon Jun, a chemist in her early 40s, found herself feeling lonely. Born in Korea, Insoon had moved to the US with her family as a teenager. She'd earned a master's degree and built a successful career as a chemist at BioRad Laboratories. She loved to travel, she was warm and accepting, and she had a natural curiosity about the world around her. But despite all of that, she was still lonely. At some point that year, she placed an ad for a handyman. She wanted someone to help her fix up her house in Richmond, California. A man named Lawrence William Vanner, who went by Larry, responded. Larry was quick to charm her, and by the end of the year, Insoon was smitten.

• 41:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  On New Year's Eve, she decided it was time to introduce him to her friends and family. She brought him to a party that night, hopeful that the people she loved most would welcome him into their lives. But... It didn't go well. Her friends and family didn't like Larry, not even a little bit. In Soon's friend Renee later said that there was something off about him right away. Quote, "He didn't even look healthy. His face was gray. He smoked constantly. Larry would just grab and gobble up everything on the table and belch and eat more and then he'd go sit on the couch." End quote. In Soon's cousin Elaine had an even stronger reaction. She said, quote, "The first time I laid eyes on him, I knew he was pure evil. I opened the door to him and it was the first time in my life that the hairs in the back of my hand raised up. A chill came over me.

• 42:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  I couldn't even reach out my hand to shake his hand. He was the creepiest person ever." End quote. Elaine explained that Larry had a hostile stare, an unbelievable backstory, and an attitude that set off alarm bells. He claimed he was a self-made millionaire who owned multiple properties, that he'd once been a colonel in the army, and that he had worked for the CIA. Elaine, skeptical of his stories, pressed him for details about the properties he supposedly owned. Instead of answering, he grew angry. He turned to Elaine, staring her down, and said, quote, "Don't you ever question anything I ever tell you." End quote. Elaine knew something wasn't right, and she later voiced her concerns to her cousin In Soon, but her cousin didn't want to hear them.

• 43:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Over time, the relationship soured, and eventually, In Soon sent angry letters accusing Elaine of not understanding their love, and she cut off contact immediately and completely. Isn't it funny? And we've seen so many cases where the sketchiest people always tell their new girlfriends or, you know, the people that they meet through their new girlfriends, "I worked for the CIA. I worked for the government." So it's almost this like, warning, "Don't ask more about my background because I won't be able to tell you anyways." It's very convenient, actually.

• 43:50Derrick Levasseur?

  It's convenient, and I also understand, like, there's an element that's like, I guess, sexy, kind of. It's like, "Oh, I work for the government. I'm like this secret agent." You know? Is that a thing? Would that be a thing for women?

• 44:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, if it was true, but at this point, like, maybe back in the day, they could have pulled that off, but I feel like at this point, women have smartened up to the point where if you say you work for the CIA, I immediately think you're just lying about everything now.

• 44:12Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I think it's, I think we can put that under the red flag category.

• 44:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's a red flag, yeah.

• 44:17Derrick Levasseur?

  Because there's no way to verify. That they are in fact working for the government. And I will say this for everybody out there. If they are some top secret agent for the government and you're just starting your dating relationship and they're saying, hey, I'm a secret agent for the government, they're already lying to you.

• 44:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  Exactly.

• 44:35Derrick Levasseur?

  They're not supposed to say that. So if they start with that, eject. Get out of there as fast as possible.

• 44:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, if they're telling you that they worked for the CIA or do currently work for the CIA, they are either the worst CIA agent ever and wouldn't have survived this long, or they're lying and they just don't want you to question their background and saying that they worked for a secret agency where they have to have a secret identity is the best and easiest way to prevent any more questions being asked. So officially in the red flag category, I can't believe that in 2025, we have to add lying about working for the CIA in the red flag category, but here we are.

• 45:12Derrick Levasseur?

  Here we are. Let's take another break. We'll be right back.

• 45:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  In August of 2001, Insoon and Larry held an unofficial backyard wedding ceremony and the two settled into Insoon's home in the 6200 block of Bernard Avenue. And for a while, everything seemed fine. But then in June of 2002, Insoon stopped answering calls from friends and family altogether. It was as if she had vanished into thin air. Her friend Renee grew increasingly concerned and confronted Larry about it, but instead of giving her a straight answer, he gave her a different excuse every time, saying things like, she's busy taking care of her mother, she's getting some therapeutic help,

• 45:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  she doesn't like you anymore, she doesn't want you in her life, etc. And Renee didn't buy any of it. She told Larry, quote, "I want Insoon, not you, to tell me that she's done with our relationship, or I'm going to get the sheriff involved," end quote. Of course, Insoon never contacted Renee, so Renee followed through on her threat to go to the authorities. Renee went to the police and homicide detective Roxanne Grunheid was assigned to the case. In September, Grunheid brought Larry in for questioning, hoping to get answers about Insoon's whereabouts. Later, she would recall that he was polite, soft spoken, and highly intelligent. The kind of man who, with his twinkling blue eyes, could easily charm people into trusting him.

• 46:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  Which seems like a complete opposite description that Insoon's family and friends gave, where they were like, oh, he was a creep, like, right off the bat. I could tell that he was evil. He was just eating and belching everywhere. But the detective here, Roxanne Groenheit, kind of makes him sound way better. He's polite, he's highly intelligent, soft spoken, twinkling blue eyes, charming, you know, things like that. So maybe this guy, Larry, or whoever he is, can sort of become who he needs to be in the moment, when, I guess, sitting across the table from a police officer, who could mean your freedom or not at that point.

• 47:21Derrick Levasseur?

  Kicks on the charm, they usually do.

• 47:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. But despite his seemingly friendly demeanor, he was completely uncooperative when it came to answering questions about his wife Insoon. Groenheit said, quote, "He was very smart, very intelligent, very calculated. When I asked him something about where he may have come from, or about his history, he stopped talking, kind of leaned in, and basically told me in no uncertain terms, that information was none of my business," end quote. Although Larry refused to discuss any personal information, he did agree to provide his fingerprints. And when the results came back, they revealed that Larry wasn't Larry at all. His fingerprints matched the name Curtis Kimball, a wanted fugitive from Santa Cruz County.

• 48:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  He had violated parole in a child abandonment case that went all the way back to 1986. Groenheit immediately started digging deeper, trying to understand who this man really was, and what had happened in his past. As it turned out, in 1986, more than a decade before he met Insoon, Larry slash Curtis had been living under yet another alias. That January, he moved to the Holiday Host RV Park in Scotts Valley, California, using the name Gordon Jensen. He had arrived there with a little girl, about four and a half years old. who he introduced as his daughter Lisa. According to Gordon, Lisa's mother had died, leaving him to raise her on his own.

• 48:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  Richard and Catherine Decker, an older couple who also lived in the RV park, became friendly with Gordon and Lisa. Over time, they grew concerned about Lisa's well being, so much so that they started looking into the possibility of having their daughter, who lived in San Bernardino, adopt her. So what are you thinking so far with what we've revealed about this, this guy? Whether his name is Gordon or Larry or Curtis?

• 49:12Derrick Levasseur?

  My gut, my gut is that that might not be his name, his name at all, but um. Well, first off, let's acknowledge the obvious. You're not telling me this story because it has nothing to do with their, the Bear Brook murders, right? There's going to be a tie to it. And I'm assuming this gentleman, whatever his real name is, is going to end up making a trip over to New Hampshire or somewhere in that area. That's my gut. But it seems like we have a very dangerous individual, someone who is obviously lying about their identity and maybe already a murderer by of multiple people, including Unsoon. And so that's my thoughts initially. I don't want to go too far down the road, but I, I know this is going to somehow tie back to our victims at Bear Brook.

• 49:56Derrick Levasseur?

  Although I don't think it's Unsoon, I think whatever happened to her happened in California. Obviously it's not going to be the same women, but this just means that there's more than one woman. And the, the victims that we have at Bear Brook are more than likely a family or a mother and their daughters. Something along those lines that this gentleman, I shouldn't even call him a gentleman, but this man has, is going to come into contact with.

• 50:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, what do you think about him 10 years before he knew Insoon in 1986? Showing up at this RV park in California with a child, a little girl about four and a half years old, Lisa.

• 50:33Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. Where did she come from?

• 50:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  Where did she come from?

• 50:36Derrick Levasseur?

  Where did she come from? Where's mom? And, and I say, when I say where's mom, I mean, as in, I know he's saying that she died. But is that the truth? Is any of this the truth? What is the real story?

• 50:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, and that would give you kind of the right age for one of these victims in the barrels.

• 50:51Derrick Levasseur?

  It would, but and that would maybe explain the one young girl that we isn't tied to the other three, but still it doesn't answer who these other three women are. So that's, that's the question right now.

• 51:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, in mid 1986, the Deckers took Lisa, with Gordon's permission, down to Southern California to meet their daughter. And right away, that's kind of like a red flag for me, where it's like, who are you that you would just let these people who you don't really know, like, yeah, they're your neighbors, but you're letting them take your child away from you and travel someplace to meet their daughter who they hope will adopt your child? You know, this, this seems kind of off.

• 51:31Derrick Levasseur?

  A little bit, just a little.

• 51:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. And while they're there, Lisa said some things to the Deckers that led them to believe that she either had been abused or was currently being abused. Alarmed, the family contacted the police and began pushing to finalize the adoption, hoping to keep Lisa from being returned to Gordon. But when they tried to reach him, they learned he had abruptly fled the RV park in June of 1986. The Deckers reported Gordon's disappearance to the police, prompting an investigation. And authorities quickly discovered that Gordon Jensen wasn't a real identity.

• 52:05Derrick Levasseur?

  Shocker.

• 52:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  His fingerprints matched those of Curtis Kimball, which is something that the other detective in the case of Ensoon had already figured out, that Larry wasn't Larry, he was Curtis Kimball, based on his fingerprints. Which is interesting, why he was willing to give his fingerprints to the police, knowing that it would show he wasn't who he claimed to be, and knowing it would make him seem more suspicious in the disappearance of his wife.

• 52:29Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, at that point, he's probably like, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna get out of here anyways, because maybe the, the actual encounter that happens is it was like, hey, they were asking him, but not really, you know, and so he had no choice. But then he knows at that point, they're gonna run me, and they're gonna figure out what's going on here. So he's already planning his escape plan at that point. He knows he's gotta go.

• 52:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, it's sad, because Gordon had abandoned Lisa without signing the adoption papers. So that meant she couldn't Legally be adopted by the Deckers daughter. Instead, she was placed in Child Protective Services in San Bernardino, where she would eventually be adopted by another family. And she grew up believing that this Gordon Jensen figure had been her biological father. And this is another stupid thing about the system, where it's like you have a family here or a woman here ready to adopt this child. And you're like, no, this creep who just abandoned his child didn't sign the papers. So we're going to put her in Child Protective Services for who knows how long. And anybody knows that this isn't the best place for kids, especially young kids.

• 53:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  And so they kind of, the authorities just kind of threw her life into a spiral a little bit more. But meanwhile, an arrest warrant was issued for Gordon, now identified as Curtis Kimball, on three felony charges related to child abandonment. But years passed without an arrest. Finally, in March of 1989, Curtis was picked up and taken to jail. He was later convicted and sentenced to three years in prison. But in October of 1990, he was granted parole. So literally, this dude abandons his quote unquote child. He's sentenced to three years. He doesn't even serve a full year, right? He goes in in March of 1989.

• 54:13Derrick Levasseur?

  Isn't it great?

• 54:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. Pretty gross. So he was granted parole. And then just one day later, surprise, he vanished. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but he was never caught. And he remained a fugitive for the next 12 years, that is, until September of 2002, when Detective Grunheid unknowingly put an end to his time on the run by bringing him in for questioning about the disappearance of his wife, Insoon Jun. So after Grunheid discovered the extent of Larry slash Curtis slash Gordon's past, authorities wasted no time in arresting him for being a wanted fugitive. While he was in custody, Grunheid and another detective searched the home that he had shared with Insoon, which remember was Insoon's house. And in the basement, they discovered something that immediately raised alarm bells,

• 54:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  an enormous pile of cat litter. Grunheid later described it as big, like four or five feet around and probably two or three feet high. Because at first, when they said they found a pile of cat litter, like a big pile of cat litter, I was thinking, you know, like maybe a bag or two. Jumped out on the floor, but four or five feet around and two or three feet high. That's, that's a lot of cat litter.

• 55:23Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. And you think about the uses of cat litter. Not good. Yeah. About the absorption of moisture, hides odors. Yeah, not good.

• 55:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  But there was no odor in this case, nothing that immediately signaled.

• 55:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Pounds of, uh, or 20 pounds of cat litter, would there be? No, I'm just kidding.

• 55:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, yeah, you're right. There wouldn't be, but you'd also, you'd also.

• 55:44Derrick Levasseur?

  Down there.

• 55:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  You'd also think like, is this dude really gonna, you know, just leave this here in the house? You know, if he killed In Soon, is he gonna put her body in the basement and just put cat litter on top?

• 55:56Derrick Levasseur?

  That might've been extra for a, a different location where he had buried her.

• 55:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  However, what we're gonna find out is he actually was stupid and or careless enough to do exactly that.

• 56:07Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh.

• 56:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  Because there was an axe leaning against the pile and the police suspected that In Soon might be buried underneath this enormous pile of cat litter. So they started digging and first they found a human foot. It was completely mummified, still wearing a flip flop. They continued digging, eventually uncovering an entire body. And obviously authorities soon confirmed what they had feared. The remains belonged to In Soon. She'd been killed by blunt force trauma to the head and further examination revealed that she had also sustained some dismemberment. And this reminds us of what?

• 56:41Derrick Levasseur?

  The barrels.

• 56:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  In the barrels.

• 56:43Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. Same thing, same, same memo.

• 56:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yep. Groenheim later determined that a man matching Larry's description had purchased 10 bags of cat litter from a nearby pet store, which further tied him to the crime. In November of 2002, he was formally charged with In Soon's murder. He didn't run. I mean, by this time they had him in custody, he didn't run, but he pleaded not guilty. And for a time, it seemed as though he would fight the charges. I, I don't know how you possibly could. I don't know how you po- like, what are you gonna say? I didn't know that this body was in my basement of my missing wife, who I had not reported missing. Like, what could you possibly say? I don't care if you have Jose bias as your defense attorney. Try to get out of this.

• 57:22Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I mean, everyone pleads not guilty initially. You know, so it's kind of the way it goes.

• 57:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  In 2003, in a move that stunned the courtroom, he suddenly stood up at a pre-trial hearing and announced that he wanted to plead guilty to the murder. And he was only sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. But for Insoo's family, there was some relief in knowing that Larry, or Gordon, or Curtis, whatever his real name was, he was finally being held accountable. But Insoo's cousin Renee had a nagging feeling that this wasn't the end of the story. She had sensed something evil in him from the very beginning, and she believed without a doubt that Insoo was not his only victim.

• 58:01Derrick Levasseur?

  So, so much to unpack here, so much to unpack, and I don't, I will say during one of our breaks, I asked Stephanie if this case was solved or not, because I truly didn't know, and she did say it's solved. She didn't tell me how or whatever. So for anybody who's asking, there is some resolution to this. So, knowing that, little bit of information, there's a lot of thoughts running through my brain. So this one guy, we're calling him Curtis Kimble for now. He comes over to California in around 1986, right? So he gets out to California, he shows up to this trailer park, he's got a young girl with him. He says, hey, listen, her mom died, I'm taking care of her. But then he basically leaves this girl behind. And my first thought is, you had asked, you had posed a question like, oh,

• 58:45Derrick Levasseur?

  what does this sound like? It sounds like the girls that we have over in the barrels in New Hampshire. But obviously, it's not the same girl, because the girls there are already dead, they've been dead. So you think about this young girl that he left behind, and how she could tie into this whole thing, because at this point, we don't know who her mother is. And we know at this point that quote-unquote Curtis Kimble is a killer, right? He's a killer.

• 59:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, yes, obviously.

• 59:10Derrick Levasseur?

  And his modus operandi is similar to the murders in New Hampshire. So just kind of going down this path, if this is our guy, then the question that I have at this point in the story is, who was that young girl? Who was that young girl? And is she tied-

• 59:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  What's his relation to her?

• 59:29Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes, what's his relation to her? And if there's no relation, does she have any relation to the four victims that we have in New Hampshire? Because if she does, by using her DNA, it'd be very easy to determine that. So that's my initial thought right now is this this young girl came from somewhere. He clearly didn't care that much about her because he left her behind for her to basically end up in the adoption system. And where are we? How is she involved in all of this? We know what he's been involved in. We know what he's capable of. Why didn't he kill her? This young girl? Why did he take her with him? There's more to this story. I have way more questions than I have answers right now.

• 1:00:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, and you know what? So did Detective Groonhide. And we're going to take our last break and we're going to come back and talk about that.

• 1:00:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so Detective Groonhide felt that there was something about Larry Curtis, whoever, it just didn't sit right. Something in his past that told her this was just one chapter in a much bigger story.

• 1:00:34Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:00:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  The more she thought about it, the more she kept circling back to one thing, that little girl that he had abandoned years earlier, Lisa. Groonhide later said, quote, "I was really centered on the little girl, on Lisa. Like, was this really his daughter? If it's not his daughter, where did he get her? Who did he get her from?" End quote. And Detective Groonhide really believed that Larry's sudden decision to plead guilty had nothing to do with remorse or doing the right thing. Instead, she was convinced that he had overheard her speaking with another investigator in court, where she had mentioned wanting to request a paternity test for Lisa, who at that point was now in her early twenties. Groonhide shared, quote, "I think he believed if he pled guilty,

• 1:01:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  I would stop investigating that aspect of his past." End quote. But if that's what Larry was hoping for, he was wrong. If anything, Groonhide was more motivated than ever. She did order the paternity test using Larry's DNA from his recent arrest and a sample of Lisa's DNA obtained back in 1986. A few weeks later, the results came back confirming what Groonhide had suspected all along. Larry was not biologically related to Lisa.

• 1:01:47Derrick Levasseur?

  No.

• 1:01:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:49Derrick Levasseur?

  What a shocker.

• 1:01:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, which means that not only does Lisa have a set of parents out there somewhere alive or dead, but how did this man, who like you said is a killer?

• 1:02:01Derrick Levasseur?

  Right.

• 1:02:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Is not a good person, how did he come to be in?

• 1:02:05Derrick Levasseur?

  Possession of her.

• 1:02:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  Possession of this child? And?

• 1:02:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Why didn't he kill her?

• 1:02:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  Why didn't he kill her?

• 1:02:12Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  Right?

• 1:02:13Derrick Levasseur?

  There's something to it.

• 1:02:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, this revelation raised even more questions than it answered. If Lisa wasn't actually Lisa Jensen, the name she'd gone by her entire life, then who was she and what had happened to her real parents? Grunheim reached out to the authorities in San Bernardino who had taken custody of Lisa in 1986 to let them know that they had an active, living Jane Doe case, a missing child who had been found alive as an adult, but without an identity. San Bernardino made contact with Lisa and explained everything. Then they tried to use ancestry databases to uncover Lisa's real identity, but at that time, the databases were just too small. There was no immediate answer to the mystery of who Lisa truly was.

• 1:02:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, I have a feeling Lisa's gonna have ties to New Hampshire.

• 1:02:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, or ties to somehow she's going to tie back to these bodies in the barrels.

• 1:03:05Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, absolutely. He came out to California for a reason, and what's the furthest place from New Hampshire?

• 1:03:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, the West Coast, that's where everybody runs away to, right?

• 1:03:13Derrick Levasseur?

  I mean, if you're gonna avoid apprehension, go to the furthest place you can.

• 1:03:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, years passed with no leads. And during that time, Larry died in prison in December 2010 from a combination of pulmonary emphysema, pneumonia, and lung cancer. And when he died, he took his secrets with him, leaving behind once again more questions than answers. Lisa's case remained at a standstill. Then in 2013, Detective Peter Headley of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office took over the investigation, and he was determined to uncover the truth about Lisa's real identity. But despite his efforts, there were still no breakthroughs. By the end of 2014, Lisa herself suggested that they try checking ancestry sites again, pointing out that the databases had grown significantly. In the years since their last attempt and Hadley agreed.

• 1:04:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  They started by having Lisa submit her DNA to ancestry.com. The results yielded two distant matches, fourth and fifth cousins. Now, it wasn't much, obviously, fourth and fifth cousins. That's several times removed, but it was better than than the results they had gotten a few years prior. It was definitely a start. Wanting to expand the search, Hadley reached out to DNA adoption, a website that specializes in helping adoptees identify birth families through DNA analysis. In 2015, genetic genealogist Dr. Barbara Ray Venter responded, offering to help. Looking back, she later admitted that Lisa's case was especially difficult.

• 1:04:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  She said, quote, "The Lisa case was actually kind of difficult because normally when you're working with adoptees, you have some information. You know where they're born. You have a birth date. In Lisa's case, we had no idea where she was from. All we had was her DNA." End quote. So with no names, no locations, and no concrete details to work with, Dr. Ray Venter started working backwards, hoping to find more relatives who could help piece together Lisa's past. And she had no idea that the work she was about to do wouldn't just solve Lisa's case. It would lead to the long awaited answer in the Bear Brook murders.

• 1:05:21Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, this is a fascinating case. I'm completely hooked, but I think we should just do a quick recap before we put a pin in this episode because candidly, it's a lot of information and it's kind of skipping around a little bit. It all makes sense, but it's kind of skipping around a lot. And I wrote a lot of notes down and maybe there's some things that I got wrong. So just to kind of recap quick, we have these barrels that are discovered on November 10, 1985. Okay. You have the the four victims. I'm putting them all together. We know they weren't found at the exact same time, but all four victims, two different barrels, 150 yards apart, outside this Bear Brook Mobile Park, maybe connected to the Mobile Park, maybe not.

• 1:06:04Derrick Levasseur?

  Then you fast forward to 1986, where this guy shows up at this other trailer park in California, and he's got this young girl with him, Lisa, right? Fast forward through that, things go down, he has to, you know, take off, he takes off, he leaves the little girl behind. At this point in the story, she's approximately 20 years old, still doesn't really know who she is. Then, we fast forward after 1986 to 1999, Insoon comes into the picture, she meets this guy, his name's quote unquote Larry, we know how that story plays out, he ends up killing her, and what's important there is he kills her in a similar manner to what we find in New Hampshire. Now, that could be

• 1:06:49Derrick Levasseur?

  just coincidence, I'm sure a lot of cases involve dismemberment, but there was also some precautions taken to try to hide up the murder, right, as far as the kitty litter and all this stuff. So, I would say on the surface, if you're looking at these two murders, the Barrows and Insoon's murder, I'm not automatically coming to the conclusion that they're connected. What's important here is what you're laying out for the entire episode, is that this guy, different names, same person, and although there's no connection to New Hampshire yet, I think what we're gonna find is that this young girl Lisa, who, which is probably not even a real name, is somehow going to be that connecting factor,

• 1:07:29Derrick Levasseur?

  is somehow gonna be the link, the missing puzzle piece, to connect the Bear Brook murders to what we got going on in California. And it's, it's amazing how it turns out, because a lot of cases, and we're finding it more today, genetic genealogy, even the cases that we're solving through Criminal Coffee, it's genetic genealogy, that's the way it's happening. And at the time-

• 1:07:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, they're amazing.

• 1:07:51Derrick Levasseur?

  At the time, as you mentioned, in 2013, 2014, it was still relatively new, it wasn't as prominent. You, you think about it, the first time we really started hearing about it, wasn't until the Golden State Killer, right? And so that's, that's much later. So, this is definitely a case where, at this point, you have a, a few different stories going on, and then I think maybe next part, it's gonna all tie together, and it's gonna be like, okay, lightbulb moment, here's how this monster is connected to all three incidents.

• 1:08:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, and I mean, this whole genetic DNA thing, it's, it's solved a lot of-

• 1:08:28Derrick Levasseur?

  It's amazing.

• 1:08:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  A lot of mysterious sorts of cases in the past decades, and if you think about it, it's very interesting, because- They've known about the link to genetics and DNA and stuff since the 18, basically the 1860s, right? They realized that certain traits and things are passed down from parent to child, et cetera, et cetera. And they've known about this stuff since the 1860s. And then in 1902, they discover the chromosome theory of inheritance. In 1909, the word gene was used for the first time. It was coined. In 1911, they discovered that chromosomes carry genes. They did this with

• 1:09:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  fruit flies. It's very interesting. And then they kind of continue going through as the years go by. 1943, they discovered that DNA has a regular periodic structure. In 1944, they discovery that DNA transforms cells. They also discovered in 1944 that they have something called jumping genes. They're learning so much. It's moving at such a faster rate. But then, when you get the DNA databases put up and you kind of have an understanding of how genes work and how DNA is passed down, now it's up to basically people to put their information into these databases. And that's where things slowed right down because there was an issue of privacy and there was an issue of not understanding the technology.

• 1:09:54Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:09:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  And being kind of afraid of it. And then with the Golden State Killer, everybody was kind of in an uproar about that because they were like, hold on, like, we could be responsible for our family members going to prison for murder.

• 1:10:05Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  Without even our knowledge.

• 1:10:06Derrick Levasseur?

  Or even just law enforcement looking at their DNA profiles. A lot of people don't like that. They don't like the fact that law enforcement can go in there and use it as an investigative tool.

• 1:10:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Exactly. And I understand that.

• 1:10:16Derrick Levasseur?

  I actually, believe it or not, I do too.

• 1:10:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:19Derrick Levasseur?

  That's not what they're submitting their DNA for.

• 1:10:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, it wasn't. And now you have to, you have, when you submit to these places, you have to basically click something and agree that you understand your data may be used.

• 1:10:33Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  In criminal cases, in criminal investigations.

• 1:10:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep.

• 1:10:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  So, and, you know, a lot of people still don't want to do that.

• 1:10:41Derrick Levasseur?

  No, I get it. Can you imagine?

• 1:10:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Be well after us, but even no, not even well after us 10 years from now. Wait till you see how we're covering cases and how how frequent they're being solved. It's incredible. Like, I I say it all the time, the window of opportunity for the criminals is getting smaller and smaller and smaller, which is obviously a good thing. Because science is catching up so much now, especially you think about not only the actual science, but the technology portion of it with AI. Man, you really gotta dot your i's and cross your t's if you want to get away with a murder now.

• 1:11:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  You do. Still, people do.

• 1:11:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Still, people do, but I would argue that there's, you know, 50% of the homicides in this country are unsolved. A lot of them are older cases, and even those cases are now going back and they're applying that science and technology to those cases and solving them. So that number, in my opinion, is going to shrink rapidly over the next 10 to 25 years.

• 1:11:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, but here's the thing. This also, all of these advancements and all of these breakthroughs are being known by the criminals too, right?

• 1:11:51Derrick Levasseur?

  That's true.

• 1:11:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  In the 1980s, when these barrels are found, this whole connecting things through genetic genealogy wasn't a known thing that was done, right? So whoever left those barrels there, they're not going to think, oh, you know, that they may tie these people to me eventually through genetic DNA. But now the criminals know, so once again, they're just going to get more creative. You're not going to find bodies just being left out in the open anymore, which gives you, you know, a starting point. You're just going to find a bunch of missing people whose bodies we can't find.

• 1:12:23Derrick Levasseur?

  That's honestly the only way to, I mean, it's not like we're giving advice that they don't already know. The only way would be for that body to never be discovered. The problem is, just like in this case, they didn't plan on those bodies being found. Now, maybe they would take more measures if they thought it could be found, especially like you said, with the science and technology available today. But they're going to have to do that. Because any even microscopic amount left behind, if found by investigators, it can be uploaded to a database which may link them or their victims to another case and may ultimately tie back to the to the actual offender. So, yes, it's going to be a back and forth. They're good, we're going to make adjustments. The bad guys are going to make adjustments and so forth.

• 1:13:04Derrick Levasseur?

  My hope is that unless they just leave zero trace of any crime whatsoever. They're gonna get caught. They're gonna get caught. That's the hope. But um, I'm looking forward to next week. I really want to see how this one plays out. I know this is a three parter, so there's a lot more to go in the story and I really like where we are. I hope that little synopsis at the end kind of tied it all together as far as the timeline because it does jump around a little bit, but it really does make sense what we're looking at here. This, this young girl Lisa is going to be the link from California to New Hampshire. She's going to connect the two coasts and you have to tell the story of Insoon because that just gives you a little bit of a look into who we're dealing with. We might not know his name yet, but we know what type of person he is and he's a monster.

• 1:13:47Derrick Levasseur?

  So that's what we have. Anything else to say before we wrap this one up?

• 1:13:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, not I'm excited to do part two though.

• 1:13:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Absolutely. All right, guys. We appreciate you being here and we did hit 300,000 subscribers on the last video, that's Sunday. Again, thank you so much. We wouldn't be here without you guys and we're going to keep moving forward. We got more plans for the future. Ways we're going to become innovative, ways we're going to maybe see you guys a little bit more often. We've talked about different opportunities, but at minimum, we just enjoy what we do. We love covering these cases with you guys and we're looking forward to covering more in the future, which will bring us to next week when we see you again, right?

• 1:14:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  Absolutely.

• 1:14:29Derrick Levasseur?

  Everyone stay safe out there. Have a good night. Bye.

• 1:14:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  Bye.