S3 Ep281: Bear Brook Murders: The Middle Child (Part 3)

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. ZipRecruiter.com/CrimeWeekly - Try Zip Recruiter for FREE!2. 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.

• 0:11Stephanie Harlowe?

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

• 0:15Derrick Levasseur?

  And I'm Derrick Levasseur.

• 0:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  And today, we are diving into the third and final part of the Bear Brook murders.

• 0:21Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes, yes, we are.

• 0:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  So is there anything you want to say before we dive in? I'm kind of wanting to just dive right in.

• 0:27Derrick Levasseur?

  I am too.

• 0:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, this case has me in a chokehold, honestly.

• 0:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, we've covered a lot on last week's episode. I feel like I need to have the conclusion to the story because basically where we left off, we still don't know the original victims' names. And that's how this whole case came to be. So at minimum, we got to find out who they are.

• 0:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, so after more than 30 years of searching, investigators finally uncovered the true identity of the man responsible for the Bear Brook murders, which is Terry Rasmussen, a drifter and a con man who used multiple aliases to hide his violent past. So they now knew he was the one who had brutally murdered a woman and three young girls, stuffing their bodies into barrels and leaving them in the woods of Bear Brook State Park. But there's still one thing they didn't know: the names of the victims he had tried so hard to erase. Authorities were determined to uncover their identities, no matter how long it took. Now, authorities were hopeful that genetic genealogist Dr. Barbara Ray Venter would be able to work her magic again, this time to identify the Bear Brook victims.

• 1:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  Because remember, Dr. Ray Venter had figured out that the little girl Terry Rasmussen had with him when he was going by one of his aliases, that it was not his daughter Lisa. It was a completely different person, with completely different parents, Dawn. Yep, she was able to do that. Dr. Ray Venter was also able to build out Terry Rasmussen's family tree to identify him, because, like we said, he went by so many names. Now, they're hoping, hey, can you figure out who the victims in the barrels are? But this task was far more difficult than identifying Lisa and Rasmussen. The victim's DNA was significantly degraded, making it unusable for the traditional testing

• 2:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  methods that Dr. Ray Venter relied on. With no immediate solution, he pretty much had to wait for technology to catch up. Meanwhile, Becky Heath, a research librarian who had become deeply invested in the Bear Brook case in the late 2000s, was conducting her own search. In her free time, she scoured online forums where people looked for long-lost relatives, hoping that someone out there had been searching for the unidentified victims. She believed there was a chance that a distant relative of the Bear Brook victims had left a clue on one of these forums without realizing its significance. In November of 2017, Becky came across an ancestry message board post from the year 2000.

• 2:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  The post listed a missing woman named Marliese McWaters and her two daughters, Sarah and Marie. The post had been made by someone searching for the family who had ties to both California and New England. Becky looked for a death certificate for Marliese, but she couldn't find one, meaning that Marliese was either still alive or unidentified. Then Becky compared the birth dates of Marliese and her daughters to the estimated age ranges of the three related Bear Brook victims, the adult, the oldest child, and the youngest child. The numbers lined up. She later said, quote, "The age is fitting, and then the location's also fitting. I'm like, oh my goodness, you know what? This seems like something. I think that this could be them." End quote.

• 3:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  Becky shared her suspicions with a group of fellow amateur investigators, but she didn't really get any feedback, so the tip was never submitted to law enforcement. Nearly a year later, in October 2018, Jason Moon, a reporter with New Hampshire Public Radio, launched a seven-episode podcast about the Bear Brook case. His goal was to untangle the complicated investigation and explore the many unanswered questions surrounding it. On October 11th, Becky started listening to the podcast, and as she absorbed the details, something Clicked. She suddenly remembered the old forum post about Mary Lee McWaters. She had a gut feeling that Mary Lee was one of the Bear Brook victims.

• 4:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  So Becky tracked down the family member who had made the post nearly two decades earlier and reached out with some questions. Then, in the middle of their conversation, the person casually mentioned something that changed everything. They said, quote, "Oh, and by the way, Mary Lee married a guy with the last name Rasmussen."

• 4:41Derrick Levasseur?

  There you go.

• 4:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  End quote. Yeah.

• 4:42Derrick Levasseur?

  Boom. Can I, can I interject real quick, something that's on topic, but also off topic and really relevant to this week's CWN, Crime Weekly News? Because if you don't, if you haven't seen the CWN, this will make a lot of sense to you, but we were talking about AI-generated true crime content. And how it's, it's not good for the industry. And basically, our pushback is you gotta have real people who really care about these cases, weighing in with facts, making sure everything's, the i's are dotted, the t's are crossed, and presenting it in an empathetic way, but also still being factual in nature. This podcast that was created regarding the Bear Brook murders, that's how, that's how Becky found this.

• 5:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes.

• 5:20Derrick Levasseur?

  So a true crime podcast.

• 5:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  Crime. That's true crime.

• 5:23Derrick Levasseur?

  That is true crime. And that person created it so that everyone would know those stories. And because they shared it in this, would you say, seven-part series, whatever it was?

• 5:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yep, seven-part series.

• 5:33Derrick Levasseur?

  They didn't know Becky, who had seen this thing earlier on an ancestral, then, and then posted it on an ancestry board and then kind of forgot about it. They didn't know that Becky was gonna come and listen to their podcast, and it was gonna lead to this. But it can. It doesn't always happen, but it does. And it just, it reminded me of it as we were talking about the AI-generated stuff that's fake. That's not gonna do this. And this at its core is what I hope true crime is always about. Community members helping out other members of the community who have been victims of crime.

• 6:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  Real people who care, telling the stories of real people who no longer have voices.

• 6:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Absolutely.

• 6:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  That's what true crime is.

• 6:11Derrick Levasseur?

  And I want to give them one more shout out. So it's Jason Moon. And so he's from New Hampshire Public Radio, launched a seven-part series about this. Good for you, Jason Moon. You've had an impact already. Good for you.

• 6:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  And so now we find out that Mary Lee McWaters. She disappeared, but she married somebody with the last name Rasmussen.

• 6:32Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep, not good.

• 6:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  Right? Like Terry Rasmussen, not good at all. So the family member obviously had no idea of the significance of that name, but Becky did. She immediately realized what this meant. Quote, "Oh, my God, it's them, it's them, it's them. This is it, this is it, this is real." End quote. That's what Becky said. The next day, October 12th, Becky contacted authorities to report the lead, and police quickly got in touch with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to begin verifying the information. Now, at that exact same time, Dr. Ray Venter came across an article about a new forensic technique that extracted autosomal DNA from rootless hair. Dr. Ed Green, an associate professor of biomolecular engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz, had been developing this technology,

• 7:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  which had the potential to recover DNA from degraded samples, something that had not been possible before. Ray Venter immediately reached out to New Hampshire authorities and requested that they send hair samples from the Bear Brook victims to Green's lab. They agreed, and for the first time, Green helped law enforcement use the technique in a criminal case. So not only is this case the first one where this mitochondrial ancestry DNA thing is being used.

• 7:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep.

• 7:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  But the first time that they're going to use this forensic technique that extracts autosomal DNA from rootless hair, from degraded samples.

• 7:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 7:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  That is cool. So this case has a lot of hallmarks in the true crime community and the true crime landscape.

• 8:04Derrick Levasseur?

  It's a basic down for the dummies like me. Essentially, back before this, you needed flesh to be attached to the hair follicle in order to get any type of DNA from it. If it didn't have the root, the flesh attached to it, it was useless. Now they can pull from actually inside the follicle.

• 8:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  Didn't they do this technique in the Kaylee Anthony case as well?

• 8:23Derrick Levasseur?

  They might have done it after the fact, maybe not initially. I don't know. I don't remember exactly, but a lot of cases where originally they've had hair, they've had hair, but there was no root attached, no skin attached. They basically discredited. They keep the hair, but there's nothing that's been done with it. Now with mitochondrial DNA testing, they have to go back because now you can extract the DNA from the actual hair follicle itself, which opens up the doors to solve so many more cases.

• 8:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Absolutely. And once the DNA profiles were extracted from the hair shafts, Ray Venter got to work. She uploaded the profiles into genealogy databases and began building family trees, just like she had done before to identify Lisa and Terry Rasmussen. After extensive research, she finally had the answer. She identified three of the four Bear Brook victims, and the names she found matched the ones Becky had just uncovered. The adult woman found in the first barrel was Mary-Lise Honeychurch. She'd been married twice before, but Honeychurch was her maiden name. The child found with her in that barrel was her daughter, Marie Vaughn. And the youngest child, found in the second barrel, was Mary-Lise's

• 9:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  other daughter, Sarah McWaters. After decades of being nameless, three of the victims finally had their identities restored.

• 9:43Derrick Levasseur?

  And I don't want to discredit anybody or take away credit from anyone, but I don't think they'll mind me saying this, although it took a lot of really brilliant people, scientists, you know, people to actually do the hard work. At the root of it, no pun intended, it's Becky Heath, a research librarian who just really cared about the Bear Brook murders. Think about that. Because even with all these smart people and all this technology, they wouldn't have these names without Becky, who just happened to be listening to a true crime podcast.

• 10:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, they wouldn't have the names without Becky and the podcaster, what was his name? Jason Moon?

• 10:20Derrick Levasseur?

  Jason Moon. So that's, that's what it's all about. It's so funny. We didn't time it this way, and I didn't know this happened. But man, this is what it's really about. And the, these stories, they give me chills because it's like Becky just happened to be listening to it because she was passionate about these cases, not knowing that something that was going to be said in that episode would trigger this. And would lead to these results.

• 10:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  And this is the upside, and I will say like, there is obviously a downside to consuming a lot of true crime.

• 10:47Derrick Levasseur?

  Of course, of course.

• 10:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  Even for us, right?

• 10:49Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh yeah, it's tough.

• 10:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  I am mentally affected. I am emotionally affected. It affects my personal life. You know, where I'm like, I can't trust anyone. Um, so there's, and, and I, and I do have regular therapy for these kinds of things. So I can like, decide the difference between what's like, just an over kind of indulgence in the true crime space and what's kind of real life. Like I have to keep that balance. But here's the positive part. If you consume enough true crime, you start to notice patterns. So for instance, last episode, we were talking about a vehicle that Terry Rasmussen used to drive and they described this vehicle. I remembered that there was a missing persons case, a child kidnapped from in front of a store in California in the eighties.

• 11:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  And the suspect's vehicle was described like one of the vehicles that Terry Rasmussen was driving. Terry Rasmussen was in that area in the eighties. So I jotted that down. And now later, when I'm done with this, I'm going to look and cross-reference and just see like, could he have been in that area at that time? Did they ever look at him as a suspect? Because this would fit his MO kind of thing. Um, if you consume enough true crime, you have these little snippets of information in your brain and you don't even know they're in there. It's like a library catalog. But when you hear something in another case, you're like, oh wait, two-toned station wagon, the top was blue or the, the bottom was green. Here, let me look because I know that this case that I covered two years ago had a vehicle that the suspect drove that looked like that. And this was like a 15-year-old girl that, that went missing.

• 12:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  And she still hasn't been found, unsolved still. So let me look into that. It, it kind of all is there. You just don't know until you need it. So that's the upside. And what happened here is Becky was very invested in the Bear Brook case. So she knew a lot that maybe wasn't in her necessarily her working memory, but was in her long-term memory. So when she's listening to Jason Moon's podcast, she must've heard something that clicked back to something else she remembered from seeing on these forums. And now she's putting these connections together and making, making these parallels and these connections. Which is great.

• 12:52Derrick Levasseur?

  I couldn't agree more. Makes me feel good and it kind of reiterates what we were saying in that previous episode on Crime Weekly News. This is what it's all about and many of the people in the space that are doing what we're doing are in it for the exact same reason, but you just never know. You never know what case you're going to cover, what it's going to trigger. I just had a case I covered as well in Houston where somebody reached out to me and actually had, they believe they dated a person in a photo that I showed of a suspect that hasn't been identified. So now I'm working with Houston PD and this person to see if it's actually them. Now, maybe it doesn't work out, maybe it isn't, but that's what you hope for. Even if you get one of those a year, it's more than than what they had before.

• 13:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  And it's more than an AI-generated person telling a true crime story would get, right?

• 13:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Exactly. If you guys know, you know, we don't like Paul.

• 13:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  Paul, man, lazy loser. So we're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come back and talk about what investigators did with this new information.

• 13:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  So investigators began piecing together a timeline of Marleese's life, hoping to determine how she had crossed paths with Terry Rasmussen. They learned that Marleese Elizabeth Honeychurch was born on January 28, 1954 in Connecticut. She was remembered as a bubbly and quirky person with a great sense of humor. Her parents separated around 1961, and while her mother took her three younger sisters to California, Marleese and her older sister remained in Connecticut with their father. In 1969, at the age of 15, Marleese moved to La Mirada, California to live with her mother and stepfather. Around that time, she began using her mother's last name,

• 14:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  Salomon, and started dating a young man. Two years later, in June of 1971, Marleese and her boyfriend got married in Las Vegas. Her husband was in the Navy and the couple moved frequently throughout California. On December 6, 1971, they welcomed a daughter, Marie Elizabeth Vaughn. Marleese loved being a mother and doted on her children. In June of 1972, Marleese, her husband,

• 15:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Their baby daughter moved to Stamford, Connecticut to live with her father. A few months later, in early 1973, they relocated to Fall River, Massachusetts. However, by July of that year, Marlese's husband, Adam Marie, moved to Lakewood, California, while Marlese's whereabouts during that time were unknown. That summer, she traveled to Lakewood and took custody of Marie while her husband was not present. In February of 1974, Marlese's husband divorced her and she was awarded custody of Marie. That September, she married her second husband in Los Angeles, California. By early 1975, Marlese and Marie were believed to be living in Downey, California, and a

• 15:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  few months later, they had moved to Camp Pendleton, a military base in San Diego County. In January of 1976, Marlese and Marie were living in Santa Ana, California. In August, Marie's father saw her and Marlese for the last time. On December 13th in 1977, Marlese gave birth to her second daughter, Sarah Lynn McWaters, in Hawaiian Gardens, California. By March of 1978, she and Sarah's father had separated. That August, Sarah's father was awarded temporary custody of the baby while Marlese was granted visitation rights. In October of 1978, Sarah's father began a new relationship and Sarah was no longer in his care. It was presumed that she was back with Marlese.

• 16:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  The last confirmed sighting of Marlese was around Thanksgiving in 1978 when she visited her mother's home in La Pointe, California. At that time, 24-year-old Marlese introduced her family to her new boyfriend, 34-year-old Terry Rasmussen, who apparently, at that time, was going by his actual name.

• 16:47Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, 34 years old, lot younger. He hasn't, he probably hasn't built up quite the, I hate to use this word, resume at that point. But it almost seemed like maybe later in life is when he really started to get into it, but.

• 17:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, he was like, oh shit, like I've piled up a lot of like, you know, closets full of stuff I don't want to come out.

• 17:07Derrick Levasseur?

  Exactly. At this point, maybe what he's done is low level, animals, things of that nature, nothing that's going to raise too many red flags.

• 17:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Electricity, yeah.

• 17:15Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. And so that is, I will say from an investigative perspective, it's not a, it's not a guarantee certainty, but it may be a potential indicator of when he started doing these types of crimes because when you see where he changed his name, maybe that's an indicator of when he started conducting this type of behavior. Not a guarantee. You still got to vet everything, but it would make sense that he started using aliases once he started carrying out these types of crimes.

• 17:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  Absolutely. Or maybe after he did something to Marliese and her daughters.

• 17:46Derrick Levasseur?

  That's it. That's what I'm saying. Up to that point, he's living the straight and narrow, again, doing low level stuff, nothing of this nature. But once he commits his first offense, now he takes on these different personas.

• 17:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so Marliese is 24, she's got two kids, Terry Rasmussen, 10 years older than her, right? And Marliese's sister Paula later recalled that Marliese and their mother got into a heated argument that night. And Paula couldn't remember exactly what had been said, but she believed her mother had made a comment along the lines of, you know, he's too old for you, why are you with him? So after the argument, Marliese left with Rasmussen and her daughters, and no one in her family ever saw her again. Paula later said, quote, "They never called, never contacted, nobody, just disappeared," end quote. Investigators believe that after leaving California, Marliese, Rasmussen, and the children traveled to Manchester, New Hampshire.

• 18:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  Once they arrived, authorities suspected that this is when Rasmussen began using the alias Bob Evans, and may have even asked Marliese to pose as his wife Elizabeth Evans. Authorities were unable to determine exactly what happened next. The only clue they have comes from a photograph taken in December of 1978 or 1979, which suggests that Marie may have celebrated her seventh or eighth birthday with relatives in an unknown location. However, after That there was no further evidence of the family being alive. Marlees family searched for her and her daughters for years, but never found any answers. Her brother David later said, quote, "It was just a situation where every time we searched, we came to a dead end," end quote.

• 19:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  Their mother, unable to shake the feeling that something was wrong, would often ask, quote, "Something's not right. Where is she?" end quote. The search never stopped. David recalled, quote, "It tore my mom up. She took the blame for her leaving," end quote. Which of course she's going to, you know, you have a fight with your daughter, your daughter takes off, you don't hear from her again.

• 19:46Derrick Levasseur?

  Can you imagine?

• 19:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, no. I don't want to imagine.

• 19:50Derrick Levasseur?

  Exactly.

• 19:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  And you're going to blame yourself and you're going to be like, "Oh, I'm so stupid. I shouldn't have said anything about him." But these people, Marlees's family, just like Insoon's family, right? They sensed, maybe there's something not right with this guy. Maybe his intentions for you aren't so pure. And so they're trying to communicate these red flags with these young women. But this guy, Terry Rasmussen, for some reason, came off creepy to everyone else, but to the women that he was trying to win over, super charming, super like it's us against the world, Bonnie and Clyde, you know? F the haters. If they don't want you, if they don't accept us, we're just gonna go rogue.

• 20:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  You know, he was able to isolate these women from their family members, from their loved ones, which is honestly the number one red flag.

• 20:36Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep.

• 20:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  For abuse when something like this happens. If somebody, your partner or somebody you're dating, is talking badly about your family, like, "Oh, they don't understand you. They don't accept you. They'll never accept us. You know, let's just go no contact." It's not a great sign. Now, obviously, some family units are toxic and you have to have a good indicator of whether that's the case or whether the person you're with.

• 20:58Derrick Levasseur?

  Has an ulterior motive.

• 20:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  Has an ulterior motive for not wanting you to have these level-headed people who are trying to communicate to you that something is not right with this situation.

• 21:07Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, and that is something we can take from these cases where we start to look at like the MO of these individuals, not only in the middle of their crimes, but also beforehand, like Stephanie was just saying, the separation from family members, knowing what type of person. That they are, that being, that being Rasmussen, knowing who he is, he doesn't want you to have a, an outlet to, to confide in to talk to because that makes him lose control. And this is a common pattern you see with a lot of abusers, even abusers that may not go to the extreme of serial killing, but just want to separate you from any outlet you can go to.

• 21:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  Complete power.

• 21:39Derrick Levasseur?

  If, if you need it, if you're the only game in town, then your victim has to stay with you. And that's what they try to create this bubble where they are judge and jury at all times.

• 21:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, where, where there's no, you're in an echo chamber that they create. There's no room for third party opinions or second opinions. It's, this is the narrative that I say our relationship is, this is our life, and you shouldn't have anybody close to you who's going to make you think there's something wrong with that. It's very toxic.

• 22:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Agreed.

• 22:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  So in 1985, Marlees's family hired a private investigator in an effort to locate her and her daughters, but no trace of them was found. The family had been right though, something was terribly wrong. Authorities estimate that Marlees and her children were killed sometime between one and two years after Thanksgiving of 1978, making her 25 or 26 at the time of her death.

• 22:32Derrick Levasseur?

  Mid twenties.

• 22:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  And Marie was believed to have been between eight and nine years old when she was murdered, while Sarah was between two and three. This is very much to me like the level of evil and depravity and emptiness that you have to have in you to take the life of a child, much less a child that's two or three years old, you know, it brings me back to Chris Watts.

• 22:53Derrick Levasseur?

  Okay, that literally was thinking about the same thing. That story haunts me.

• 22:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  Think about it every day almost. I can't, I don't, I can't.

• 23:01Derrick Levasseur?

  That was one of the ones I do wish we didn't cover. Like I remember you talking, and we're not even going to discuss it, I'll start crying right now, but the dialogue, right? We'll just say the dialogue of their last moments, like, man, brutal. Anyways, no, no, they're terrible, but it does take a special person to kill anyone, but. The to to hurt a child, we've talked about it a million times. It's just a different level of evil, even beyond killing another human being. It's just, I I just don't get it.

• 23:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't, I don't, I don't get it. It's like, I don't, I don't get it.

• 23:30Derrick Levasseur?

  So many options.

• 23:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  This is a bad person. And like I said, when you look at Terry Rasmussen, we know he died in prison, right? He had lung cancer and emphysema and probably less than he deserved. But when you look at somebody like this, what they're capable of when it comes to women and children, and then you look at all of these cold cases, disappearances of young women, disappearances of children in the area of New Hampshire, in the area of California. I've already started pulling them now. How many of those could he have been responsible for? The unsolved ones that have gone decades with no movement.

• 24:03Derrick Levasseur?

  Also, like I said, that maybe they started when he changed his name. But then we think about someone like allegedly Rex Hureman, who started younger from what we know and and just the ones we're catching are the ones now. But you just don't know. Once you, oh, once you pull off that scab, who knows? Who knows how many? It could be 10, could be 20, could be in the hundreds. You just, you, you may never know all of them because think about what it took just to solve this one. It was good investigative work, using science and technology, but also luck. Just luck of Becky Heath happening to listen to that podcast. Because again, if that doesn't happen, you don't get these connections.

• 24:44Derrick Levasseur?

  It takes Lisa slash Dawn's cousins uploading their DNA profile to a database, not knowing that it would end up solving all of these cases. It's just, some of it is just the right timing and you're not going to get lucky in all of these cases. So there's a lot of unfounded cases out there right now that may still be connected to to Rasmussen, and we just don't know it.

• 25:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, there, I, I 100%. I would be stunned if there wasn't.

• 25:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Shocked. Think about how hard it would be to catch everything this guy did.

• 25:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  And the fact of the matter is, he's dead, right?

• 25:16Derrick Levasseur?

  That's it. He's never gonna admit to it.

• 25:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, you can't even go to him and be like, hey, like, you know, like, you're here for the rest of your life, man. Just at least tell your story.

• 25:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, he wouldn't. It's kind of like BTK. BTK wouldn't either. I mean, he did the drawings, but he's not gonna tell you how deep it goes. It's just, it's part of their gratification to keep you wondering.

• 25:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, and, and I'm, you know, yeah, I would be stunned if we knew about all of his victims. There's no way.

• 25:41Derrick Levasseur?

  No, especially up in New Hampshire, there's just such a vast area of just woods and...

• 25:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  California, man, exactly the same. It's like there's desert there and ocean and, yeah, it's awful. So on June 5th, 2019, authorities held a press conference to announce that they had identified three of the four victims found in the Bear Brook barrels as Marley's Honeychurch, her daughters Marie Vaughn and Sarah McWaters. It had taken decades, but finally they had their names returned to them. At the press conference, Susan Morrell, the New Hampshire Senior Assistant Attorney General, acknowledged the tireless efforts of professionals and volunteers from across the country. She said, quote, "They never stopped trying to identify the four victims in these barrels, and they worked together to bring the answers to the victims' families today.

• 26:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  Today, we've returned the identities and the dignity to Marley's Honeychurch, Marie Vaughn, and Sarah McWaters," end quote. Associate Attorney General Jeffrey Strozen also spoke, emphasizing how crucial it was to expose Rasmussen's crimes. He said, quote, "Together, we have been able to uncover the identity of the Allentown Killer, a murderer who tried to erase his victims and hide in the process. He tried to hide who he was and what he did, but ultimately, he wasn't successful. We know what he was. We know what he did. And now we know who his victims were." And in the front row of the press conference sat members of Marlees's family, flanked by victims advocates and members of law enforcement.

• 27:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Though they had requested privacy, they provided a statement that was read aloud by Straussen. Quote, "This day comes with heavy hearts. Marlees, Marie and Sarah were so loved by our families and they are greatly missed. We take solace in finally having the answers we have longed for." End quote. Authorities shared that they now believed the fourth victim, Rasmussen's biological daughter, had been born between 1975 and 1976 in California, Texas, or Arizona. They said identifying her remained a top priority. Police were also searching for the remains of Denise Bowden, whose body had never been found. Straussen explained, "We don't know where she is.

• 27:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  What we know is that Terry Rasmussen left four victims behind in New Hampshire. It is possible that Denise Bowden is in fact somewhere in New Hampshire and we haven't found her. Collectively, we think it's more likely he probably left New Hampshire with her." End quote. Which is interesting because although Terry Rasmussen has a similar MO as far as like what his victims are like, what age range they're in, they got kids, things like that. The way he disposes of them is different. So, he left his last wife under a pile of kitty litter in the basement. Four of his victims were found in barrels in the woods. Some of his victims, they've never been located.

• 28:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Correct.

• 28:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  What's the deal with that?

• 28:39Derrick Levasseur?

  I think it's just also luck again because the barrel, as you said, the second barrel took 15 years to find and it was only 150 yards away. What if there's another barrel?

• 28:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't want to talk about that, it's so bad.

• 28:49Derrick Levasseur?

  What if there's another barrel 600 yards away? You get what I'm saying? It's just very, it's a vast area, it's a needle in the haystack.

• 28:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  Or in one of these redwood forests in California, man.

• 28:57Derrick Levasseur?

  And that too, that too. So, I mean, if she did leave New Hampshire, it's going to be very difficult to find her because obviously he had to travel across the country to get there, so many places he could have...

• 29:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  And he went so many places, yeah.

• 29:08Derrick Levasseur?

  And, and also, she could still be in New Hampshire somewhere.

• 29:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  She could be in New Hampshire, she could be anywhere along the way. Like, let's say... You know, he's driving with her.

• 29:18Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes.

• 29:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  At this point, she's like, because he ends up in California with her child, right? But not with her.

• 29:26Derrick Levasseur?

  Right.

• 29:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  So on your drive from New Hampshire to California, cross country, something happens to Denise and he keeps the child alive, but something happens to Denise.

• 29:37Derrick Levasseur?

  If I had to guess, I don't think Denise was with him in the car. That's just my guess. I think he left New Hampshire without Denise and tells Dawn, at that point, mommy's staying behind, mommy didn't want to come with us, something like that.

• 29:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, but remember Dawn said she remembered having siblings.

• 29:52Derrick Levasseur?

  Right.

• 29:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  And that they died. She never said anything about what Terry Rasmussen had said about her mom.

• 29:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, who knows? We may never know.

• 30:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 30:00Derrick Levasseur?

  There could be another Jane Doe out there in one of these states that has gone unidentified all these years because there's no connection and it's Denise.

• 30:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna look into it, actually.

• 30:12Derrick Levasseur?

  Why not?

• 30:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  Sometimes late at night, when I don't have the brain power to dive into like a full case, I will sometimes do this, like, are there any other bodies found in like parks or forests or things like this? Because that does seem, if he's not leaving them in the basement in kitty litter.

• 30:28Derrick Levasseur?

  Think about how many Jane Doe cases we get submitted just for Criminal Coffee, there's thousands.

• 30:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, but they have her DNA because of Dawn slash Lisa.

• 30:35Derrick Levasseur?

  But they do have Dawn's DNA, but if they find Denise and her body is badly decomposed, they may not be able to pull any DNA from her unless they start to do like the mitochondrial DNA.

• 30:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, well, they have this autosomal DNA.

• 30:49Derrick Levasseur?

  They don't do that in every case.

• 30:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  They don't, but if there's a strong enough likelihood that it could be Denise, they could.

• 30:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes, they could. That's where, that's where we come in. It's like five, $6,000 just for one case with no guarantees it's going to work. It's expensive.

• 31:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, it is, but I think it's worth it. And I think for Dawn slash Lisa to know what happened to her mother and to have that final like piece put into place, because so many answers for Dawn came with all this DNA stuff, but not the mystery of what happened to her mother. And I think she probably would want to know that.

• 31:21Derrick Levasseur?

  I would guarantee it.

• 31:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.

• 31:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, months later, in November of 2019, Marleese and her oldest daughter Marie were laid to rest together in Allentown, New Hampshire, under a new headstone bearing their names. Marleese's youngest daughter Sarah was buried in Connecticut, near her father's family. That makes me sad that they were all separated.

• 31:47Derrick Levasseur?

  I know.

• 31:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  That makes me very sad that they're not buried together. I don't know why, but that is, that's very upsetting. So Diane, Terry Rasmussen's daughter, the woman who had helped authorities unravel his past, she was invited to attend the funeral. While there, she met Marleese's family for the first time. She later said, quote, "I don't know that I ever could make up for my father's sins. How do you ever make up for something like that? They all said the same thing, that it wasn't my fault. But because of my father, they lost their sister and their nieces. The thing that binds us together is this horrible thing that has happened here, but they treated me just like I was their sister." End quote. Oh.

• 32:26Derrick Levasseur?

  I know. It's amazing how these people take these horrific situations and find ways to see the silver lining in it. Like, I don't know if I could be that optimistic.

• 32:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, I think you definitely could be, because if you think about it, Diane's just as much of a victim as anybody else in this.

• 32:41Derrick Levasseur?

  Of course she is, yeah.

• 32:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, so it's like, we, we're related and we, we can come together on that, which is, yeah, of course, this wasn't your fault and you have to live with the fact that your father did this. That's punishment enough for anything, you know, that you never even deserved and didn't ask for. So at the funeral, Marleese's brother David addressed the crowd. He said, quote, "We're here today to bury my sister and my nieces. We, as a family, would like to thank the community for caring and loving our sister Marleese and our nieces Marie and Sarah. We have looked and searched for over 30 years for them with no luck. We have never stopped looking. Although this moment is bittersweet, they have their names back on this day. They can rest in peace. Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts." End quote. Now, with three of the four victims laid to rest,

• 33:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  investigators continued trying to identify that third child. In January of 2021, former detective John Cody sat down with ABC News to discuss- ...the case. He explained why he continued to speak about it even years after Rasmussen had died. He said, quote, "You know, people ask me why I do these interviews. It's because there's still one victim out there. There's one girl who we don't know who she is. That's why I do these, to get her identified and so that there's closure for the families involved here. That's the only reason." End quote.

• 33:58Derrick Levasseur?

  Good for him. Good for him.

• 34:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  And once again, just like Diane, this child of Terry Rasmussen's didn't ask for this, didn't ask to be born to this monster, didn't ask for what happened to her. And as Diane said, and we talked about in episode two, or part two of the series, this could have been her. She could have become a victim, an actual physical victim of Terry Rasmussen's as well, if she hadn't gotten away with her mother.

• 34:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. No, it's, again, the forks in the road. What could, and also it could have gone better, you know, like there could have been, you just never know. We hear about both sides of it, but fate, man, it'd always find you.

• 34:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  Marley's brother, David, said he and his family had given the girl a name of their own. He said, quote, "We call her Angel." End quote. He added, quote, "The focus from this day forward should be to find the family of that little girl." End quote. In addition to trying to identify the fourth child, investigators also sought to determine whether Marley's honey church had been posing as Elizabeth Evans, the supposed wife of Bob Evans, which was the alias Rasmussen used while living in Manchester, New Hampshire. Investigators also needed to locate Rasmussen's ex, Denise Bowden, and figure out whether there were more unidentified victims. To do this, investigators continued examining Rasmussen's past, hoping to uncover patterns in his behavior that might help them find additional victims. Through

• 35:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  their research, they came to believe that Rasmussen repeatedly targeted single mothers. He would enter relationships with them, gradually taking control of their lives. Once he had gained complete dominance, he would kill them. His victims often had young children who he would take with him, using them as a way to lure in his next victim. He presented himself as a struggling, single father, playing on the sympathies of others. Meanwhile, he abused the children in his care, and as soon as they grew old enough to talk about what was happening, he killed them too.

• 35:54Derrick Levasseur?

  What a scumbag. What an absolute scumbag.

• 35:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  This is the definition of somebody that gives nothing and just uses people and leeches off people and takes everything and drains everybody around them dry.

• 36:07Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep, and you can see it's when you have all the pieces of the puzzle, you can see this pattern that they're describing now, right? And it takes an entire investigation to kind of put it all together. But now you can step back and you can look at it from a macro level and see, okay, here's what we got. Here's what we got. And you can actually see the pattern of behavior through the years. And you start to notice that it repeats itself, right? And unfortunately, in this case, it took too long to find him.

• 36:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, I can tell you that toxic men and bad men will often target single mothers. It's this vulnerability thing that these single mothers, you know, they don't want to raise their children alone. They feel like their children need a father figure, especially back in these times, right? The 80s. Well, my children need a father. I need somebody to help me raise them. And so they're not as, I guess, discerning. And I count myself amongst them, trust me. Like, we've all been there. But they're not as discerning. And especially when you have a charmer like Terry Rasmussen was, you know, described to be, you feel like, okay, I don't have to take care of everything on my own now. Somebody's

• 37:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  here to help me. And then they turn around and stab you in the back.

• 37:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I can see it. I can absolutely see it. Like he says, he sees that person who's looking for someone to step in and help them raise a child. Oh, here I am. I'm here for you. And then the light switch goes off and they change it and they show who they really are. But at that point, it's too late.

• 37:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  Once they've isolated them from their friends and family and gotten them alone.

• 37:41Derrick Levasseur?

  At that point, they don't even have anybody to turn to.

• 37:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, yes. Well, Detective Peter Headley, who had helped Lisa identify her real name, Dawn, he said it was almost certain that Rasmussen had other victims. He said, quote, "I'm sure there's a lot more." Again, if he took two to three years to groom each victim and you start adding the years up, there's definitely more out there, end quote.

• 38:03Derrick Levasseur?

  100%. And we've talked about that.

• 38:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  And Hadley said Rasmussen was also known to string along multiple women at the same time grooming his next victim while still living with the previous one.

• 38:15Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, this goes back to what we were talking about in episode two, where there are other women who have gone missing or turned up dead, who were in the proximity of Rasmussen. And we talked about how law enforcement essentially ruled them out as possible victims of of Rasmussen, which we both were kind of a little curious about because it does, I don't know how they would come to that conclusion without having the answers, without having a body, without having an offender. So when we go back and we revisit the fact that there were other women in that area who fit the general description of what Rasmussen would target, and the fact that they were so close to him, and yet now they're gone, I think that's where this comes from, where he could have had multiple victims that he was grooming

• 39:00Derrick Levasseur?

  at the same time, and for one reason or another, he decided to abort that plan and instead just cut to the ending, which was to kill them. I just don't know how the detectives can say there's definitely more, but it's not these women who are literally living on the same street as him.

• 39:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, and we're not going to tell you why we don't think they're connected.

• 39:18Derrick Levasseur?

  I don't know. I don't know.

• 39:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  In February of 2020, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and New Hampshire authorities released a new forensic sketch of the unidentified third child. Associate Attorney General Jeff Strousen stated, quote, "The picture is the best information we have right now of what this victim looked like in life. The hope is that this would trigger a memory on someone's part, maybe not only of the child, but also the mother," end quote. Through continued genealogical research and forensic testing, authorities determined that the little girl was primarily Caucasian, but she also had small amounts of Asian, Black, and American Indian ancestry. They believe she was born between 1975 and 1977, and described

• 40:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  her as having slightly wavy brown hair and standing between three feet, three inches, and three feet, nine inches tall. She also had a slight overbite that may have been noticeable during her life. Investigators believed she was not originally from New Hampshire, but was possibly from Texas, Arizona, California, or Oregon, though no location had been ruled out. Analysis of her bones suggested that she may have had anemia at some point in her life, though this could not be confirmed. Authorities continued working to identify the third child. In 2021, police in Louisiana announced that new genealogical research suggested the girl may have relatives from Pearl River County, Mississippi.

• 40:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  Research indicated that both she and her biological mother were descendants of one of two men born in the mid 1800s. Thomas Deadhorse Mitchell, born in 1836, or William Livia, born in 1826. This meant that the unidentified girl was likely the fifth or sixth great grandchild of one of these men. While investigators believe the girl's maternal relatives were most likely from Pearl River County, they had not ruled out other possibilities. Police encouraged people in the Pearl River County area to submit their DNA to Jedmatch or Family Tree DNA if they were comfortable doing so. This could help increase the chances of identifying the child and her mother.

• 41:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  While investigators continue working to identify the fourth victim, many people online speculated about what other unsolved cases Terri Rasmussen could be responsible for. One of these cases was known as the Lady in the Fridge, a decades-old mystery from San Joaquin County, California. In 2021, former County Assistant Sheriff John Huber publicly stated that he believed she could be another of Rasmussen's victims. He explained that in 1995, scavengers searching for scrap metal came across a discarded refrigerator in a San Joaquin County canal. The appliance had been tightly secured with a rope, and when the scavengers waded through the mud to open it, they were met with a horrifying sight. Inside the refrigerator was the decomposed body of a woman.

• 42:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  Her facial features were no longer discernible, making identification nearly impossible. She had been placed in the refrigerator with a pillow, a sleeping bag, and what appeared to be several blankets. Investigators also found an unusual brand of milk inside the refrigerator, one that had been Distributed in a specific area. That area happened to overlap with locations where Rasmussen had been at the time. Additionally, Huber noted that the circumstances of her murder were strikingly similar to Rasmussen's other victims. She had died from blunt force trauma to the head, a hallmark of his previous crimes. She had been placed inside a container and dumped in a remote location, much like the Bear Brook barrels. Despite these similarities, the case stalled because the woman remained unidentified.

• 42:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  Huber explained, quote, "First thing we need to do is find out who she is because without knowing who she is, it's pretty hard to track back and find out where she stayed and who her relatives were and who she was associated with. It well could be Terry. It well could be somebody else. But I think until we know her identity, we're not going to solve the case." End quote. Now, two years later, in 2023, authorities identified the lady in the fridge as 30-year-old Amanda Lynn Schuman-Daza. According to her family, Amanda was last seen in 1994 at an unknown apartment complex in Napa, California, where she had been staying with a man she had met at her rehabilitation facility.

• 43:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  At the time of her disappearance, she had been separated from her husband and was the mother of three young children. Tragically, Amanda had never been reported missing. Her family was stunned when they received the news of her identification. Investigators explained, quote, "She was a 30-year-old woman out on her own and had her own life, so the family just didn't know." End quote. To this day, Amanda's murder remains unsolved. See, I don't, I just don't understand this, I'm sorry. I don't understand being shocked that your family member who you haven't heard from in decades is, is no longer with us. And, oh, she was a 30-year-old woman, she had her own life, so nobody knew.

• 44:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  Like, my sister is a 33-year-old woman, but if I didn't hear, who has her own life? Her own boyfriend, she lives in her own house, she's got her own pets and her own hobbies. But if I didn't hear from her for a few weeks, I'd probably report her missing.

• 44:36Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. Well, you have a different relationship with your sister, though.

• 44:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  You're telling me nobody had a relationship with Amanda where they were like, and, and she was, she just came out of a rehabilitation facility. So you're not worried that some foul play has befallen her? Come on, man.

• 44:51Derrick Levasseur?

  Listen, there's, we gotta be real here. There are definitely cases and family members, and I know this to be true because I know instances of in my own circle where this is true, where for all we know, this was something that was a reoccurring issue. And maybe this was the time where her family said, you know what? We're done. We're not getting involved. You do what you gotta do. And this was unfortunately, the time where she fell or met some, fell into some bad habits, met the wrong person. And it wasn't intentional. I'm sure for the family members knew that she was in danger, they would have acted sooner, but they thought it was just another recurrence. And I'm not saying it's right.

• 45:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  That lasted forever?

• 45:29Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, yeah. Again, I, I, we can't, everybody is different and family dynamics are so complex. I, I really try not to, to hold them accountable for, for certain things. Now, I will say this, if they had a close relationship and we knew that, and they just felt like, oh, they didn't need to report it. That's a problem. But without knowing the specifics of their relationship, it's hard to judge too hard. But maybe I'm, maybe I'm being the softie here. Lay it down in the comments. Let me know.

• 45:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  It makes me sad because this woman didn't have one person, not even a family member, but one person in her life.

• 46:05Derrick Levasseur?

  That would care enough to, to.

• 46:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  That would care enough to report her to the police because she wasn't answering calls. Nobody had seen her. She apparently had a drug or, or alcohol problem. Like this is a vulnerable person. And not one person in her life cared about her enough to just call the police and say, hey, can you just do a wellness check? You know, like, I just want to know she's alive. She doesn't have to come home. She doesn't have to call me. I just want to know she's alive. Oh, don't get me started on Armand.

• 46:31Derrick Levasseur?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 46:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Cause I feel the same way. Armand was close to his daughter, dude, apparently.

• 46:36Derrick Levasseur?

  That, that's why I was a little bit more side eye with that one. It's like, what are we doing here? You know, what are we doing? Oh, I didn't think I needed to? What? I don't know.

• 46:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's just, it's very sad.

• 46:47Derrick Levasseur?

  I don't know. I try not to get caught in the weeds when we're talking about these cases because would it have made a difference in this investigation? No, what was going to happen was going to happen, but it wouldn't maybe take this long to figure it out. If she had been reported.

• 46:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  You never, you don't know. I don't know.

• 47:00Derrick Levasseur?

  You don't know.

• 47:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, while Amanda's identification was a major breakthrough, investigators have not publicly linked her case to Terry Rasmussen. It remains unclear whether they believe he was involved as they have not mentioned him in connection to her murder since she was identified. Another case that some believe could be linked to Rasmussen is the disappearance of 14-year-old Lauren Ron, who vanished from her Manchester, New Hampshire home in 1980. At the time, Rasmussen was living just a mile and a half away. On April 27th, 1980, at 3:45 a.m., Manchester Police responded to 239 Merrimack Street for a report of a missing teenage girl. Lauren's mother told officers that she'd been out of town for the night, leaving Lauren at home.

• 47:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  When she returned home at around 1:15 a.m., she noticed that the back door was open and the front door was unlocked. Upon searching the home, she found that Lauren's friend was asleep in Lauren's bed, but Lauren was gone. According to the friend, the two had been drinking alcohol earlier that night. At some point, Lauren had left the bedroom, taking a pillow and a blanket to sleep on the couch, but when her mother came home hours later, Lauren was nowhere to be found. Investigators found no signs of a struggle inside the apartment. They believed Lauren may have left voluntarily, expecting to return soon. She hadn't taken any clothing, money, or personal belongings with her. Despite extensive searches, Lauren was never seen or heard from again. Now, though some have speculated that Rasmussen could have been involved, police have never

• 48:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  found any evidence linking him to Lauren's disappearance. Still, criminologist Jack Levin has pointed out that Rasmussen was living in the area at the time, and that another woman, Denise Denault, also disappeared from the same neighborhood during the same time period.

• 48:46Derrick Levasseur?

  Now, we're going out and saying here that it looks like Rasmussen could have been responsible for these, and if just sitting where I'm sitting, I don't think that has changed, but the scary thing is that there are many Rasmusens out there.

• 49:00Derrick Levasseur?

  And some of them haven't been apprehended yet. So could there have been somebody else operating in that vicinity and it's just a coincidence? Of course, but based on what we know about Rasmussen's pattern of behavior, the proximity to where these women disappeared. And knowing what he's capable of, it's not, it's, it doesn't look good. It's very, it's very possible that he is in fact connected to those murders as well, or those, at least at this point, disappearances.

• 49:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  Disappearances, right. Well, Levin hopes investigators take a closer look at any possible connections. And he said, quote, "It seems to me that when you see people missing who live on the same street as the killer, and it happens more than once, you have to believe he is the killer."

• 49:42Derrick Levasseur?

  I agree.

• 49:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  Thank you, Jack. That's what we said.

• 49:44Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep, agreed.

• 49:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  He continues in saying, "In my view, I think we have to look for the relationship Rasmussen had with all these missing people. I think if we find the relationship, we will also find the killer," end quote. Yeah, it's not, it's, that's, I don't believe in coincidences to this level.

• 50:00Derrick Levasseur?

  No, I'm with you. If I'm, if I'm betting my money on it, I'm saying that he's responsible for their disappearances as well. I think he was going on a rampage in that area. There's probably even more victims than we know that haven't been connected. New Hampshire's a good size state.

• 50:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  That's why he got the hell out of there and went all the way across the country to California.

• 50:17Derrick Levasseur?

  He, he had done his damage there and decided, I gotta go. And again, there's so many, so many wooded areas out there. There's so many places and locations that a body could be left behind and due to predation or just decomposition or whatever you have, there's a real possibility you would never find them. Even if they were left in an area to be found.

• 50:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, and I mean, he didn't seem to try to hide these first two barrels that well.

• 50:41Derrick Levasseur?

  No, he didn't. But that could have, listen, based on practices that could evolve over time, Rex Schurman, it evolved, you know, at certain points he was using duck blinds and he did other things and they do evolve as they go. And maybe that was at the beginning or maybe it was at the end, but maybe he smartened up and decided to really dispose of the bodies in a way that they couldn't be found. That's also possible.

• 51:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, I mean, his last victim, he buried her in cat litter. So maybe that was sort of the, what he was doing in the meantime, because at that point, DNA technology had.

• 51:15Derrick Levasseur?

  Caught up a little bit more, yeah.

• 51:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Kind of caught up and he would be aware of that. I feel like these criminals who commit crimes in the eighties and then they're kind of still going hard through the nineties and into the two thousands, they're like, oh shit. I wonder how much of my DNA is all over these these crime scenes. I need to be more careful from now on. And maybe this is when he started to change up his MO when when he realized technology was not in favor of the criminals any longer.

• 51:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, no, anything's possible to to to try to understand well how these guys think it's it's a good thing. We don't know.

• 51:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, we try, but there's only so far you can go. If your brain doesn't work in this way.

• 51:52Derrick Levasseur?

  Trying to rational rationalize the irrational.

• 51:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 51:54Derrick Levasseur?

  That's it's just, you know, these guys think differently than the normal everyday person. They we don't think about killing children, you know, that's not something that you should be considering, but yet these guys are doing it. And they're in there, and these are reoccurring offenders. They're not just one time thing that happens and, you know, just a crime of passion or whatever. They they get gratification from it. They're they need to be completely eradicated from this this world all at once. That'd be great.

• 52:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, there needs to be some sort of rapture, like a psychopath rapture.

• 52:28Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, that'd be great.

• 52:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  You know, there there's such a huge difference between somebody who, and I'm not saying that either are right, but somebody who kills in like a crime of passion or, you know, they they got too excited or they thought they were being threatened and then they turned around. You know what I mean? And then somebody who systematically and consistently goes their whole life, leaving a trail of bodies behind them.

• 52:53Derrick Levasseur?

  They know what they're doing.

• 52:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  They're animals, worse than animals. Yeah.

• 52:57Derrick Levasseur?

  They they know they know the ending of the story when they initially say, hello, I'm Terry. They know where it's going to go in their mind, and that's the scariest part about it.

• 53:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  It really is because you know that there's people out there that just use others and look at others almost as like NPCs. Like, you're not even real. You don't exist to me. You're here to further my needs. You're here to deliver me what I need and what I want. And when you're done, I'll dispose of you because you're less than trash to me.

• 53:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep, they're the main character in their own story.

• 53:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  So as the years passed, investigators remained committed to finding answers for the unidentified Bear Brook victim and for Denise Bowden. The most recent development came in October of 2024, when the DNA Doe Project announced plans to use advanced forensic DNA techniques in an effort to identify Rasmussen's daughter, the fourth victim found in the barrels. Whether their efforts will succeed remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: her name, her story, and her life mattered. Just as investigators refuse to let Denise Bowden fade into obscurity, they refuse to let this little girl remain anonymous. As long as her identity remains unknown, so does the full truth of Terry Rasmussen's crimes. Even decades later, the search for justice is far from over.

• 54:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  And I almost wonder, where did this child come from? Because we know Terry was married a few times, we know he had children

• 54:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep.

• 54:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  with his first wife, Diana's mother. But where's the mother of this little girl?

• 54:26Derrick Levasseur?

  She's dead somewhere too.

• 54:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  We can only assume that she's another victim.

• 54:28Derrick Levasseur?

  That's, that's, that was my initial thought, and that's my thought as I sit here right now. She's dead somewhere else. There's definitely other bodies that have yet to be discovered. Now, maybe the daughter stayed alive a little bit longer than mom, and that's why she's in a different location. But it almost seems like to me, and again, I'm trying to just paint a picture here, it may be completely off, but it seems like the barrel incidents were the last crimes before leaving, and it was to tie up some quote-unquote loose ends. He wanted to get rid of anybody who could tie back to him, who could link back to him. He did that, and I think there are bodies buried in other locations, and that's when he left, in my opinion, with Lisa slash Dawn. I think that, I don't know if mom came with him, maybe, but I, I don't see it.

• 55:12Derrick Levasseur?

  I think before he left New Hampshire, he got rid of anybody who could connect him to any other crimes, or at least he thought he did. Keeping Lisa alive is what actually led to his undoing. That's what it was. Really leaving her, not only taking her with him, but then leaving her behind in California, that's what really started this ball rolling. And thank God for that.

• 55:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  So I'm looking at this. The, the child that's unidentified is thought to be between two and four years old.

• 55:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  And they believe she was born between 1975 and 1977.

• 55:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, blunt force trauma as well with her. That's what we're looking at.

• 55:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, and if you look at Russ Musson's movements, in June of 1975, he was arrested in Phoenix for aggravated assault. And it's believed that his wife and children left him shortly after this arrest. That would put him single and on, ready to mingle, you know, after June of 1975. Between 1975 and 1976, he has an unexpected visit to his wife and children in Pace in Arizona. At that time, he's in the company of an unidentified female. And he said he was living at the Casa del Rey Apartments in Angleside, Texas. This is the last time that Russ Musson's family sees him. So is that unidentified female the mother of this child?

• 56:32Derrick Levasseur?

  Could be, or it could be another woman. It could be another woman that he was seeing at the same time he was seeing this woman. That's his MO. And so maybe something happens where he gets rid of mom, keeps the baby around for a couple of years. We don't know the exact age. And then before leaving New Hampshire with Dawn slash Lisa, he gets rid of everybody. I still wonder, and I know he's dead, we can't ask him, I would like to know why. Why he decided not to kill Lisa slash Dawn as well?

• 57:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  He was, the investigators believe he was going to.

• 57:05Derrick Levasseur?

  But why travel all across the country with her?

• 57:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  Cause he wasn't done abusing her yet.

• 57:10Derrick Levasseur?

  And, yeah, the simple explanation.

• 57:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  He hadn't found the next relationship, the next single mother to monkey branch off to.

• 57:18Derrick Levasseur?

  And maybe that lowered the guards of women in his, the future that he would meet because he had a child with them. They see him as more of a safe person. Yeah, he could have been using her for multiple reasons, the abuse, but also as a, as a mechanism to lower the guard of potential victims in the future. Hey, look at my daughter, I'm a good guy. You know, mom, mom's no longer here.

• 57:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's like, you got away with killing all these people. And then, in 2002, you kill your girlfriend slash wife in soon.

• 57:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  For freaking what dude?

• 57:53Derrick Levasseur?

  That's he can't help himself.

• 57:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, he he must not be able to help himself. It's not like you don't say to yourself like I've gotten away with so much and technology's catching up. I better be careful. It's like, no. It's it's crazy.

• 58:07Derrick Levasseur?

  Sociopaths don't change.

• 58:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  Mm hmm.

• 58:10Derrick Levasseur?

  That's who they are.

• 58:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  They can't. Yeah.

• 58:11Derrick Levasseur?

  They they can't help themselves. And so they just they have to do whatever their whatever their mind tells them that they gotta do. They they they're not gonna change over time. They're not gonna become a better person. There's only one. Well, there's two. Two paths for for those types of people. One's dead and one's behind bars.

• 58:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, that's the only path they should have. But we know that a lot of these people stay out there in the wild.

• 58:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, they're still out there.

• 58:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  For decades and sometimes forever.

• 58:41Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep. And that's why we have to cover these cases because as unnerving and as scary as they can be, there are signs. They're minimal and you have to be aware of it. You have to be paying attention, but there are indicators where your spidey sense, your gut will go off and say, something just doesn't smell right with this person. Act on that. Believe in your intuition. The worst case scenario, you're wrong about them. It was a friend you could have had that never became. Oh, well, but you're alive. So trust your gut and rely on it and and and hope that you're making the right decisions because that decision to walk away from someone, to not get involved with someone, to not hang out with this person, to not go to that particular bar or party, may be the difference between life and death. I hate to be extreme with it,

• 59:25Derrick Levasseur?

  but as if there's anything you've picked up over these last four years from watching us talk about these cases, a lot of these tragedies come down to one decision. You can make the choice in many of them.

• 59:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, you're basically saying he didn't have a choice to make, though, that he couldn't make a choice.

• 59:40Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm not talking about him. I'm talking about from the victim's perspective, right? When you come in contact with people like a Terry Rasmussen. He's gonna do what he's gonna do. I want people to look at this case from the victim's side of things and say, what can I do to better protect myself? Because there are victims of abuse and there are victims who are right now living this nightmare, who are looking for a way out, maybe listening or watching this. And there are opportunities, which I know at the end of the script here, you have some information for people, but there's a lot of different resources. But if you have any information regarding these cases, or any other cases for that matter, authorities urge you to contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited

• 1:00:20Derrick Levasseur?

  Children at 1-800-843-5678, or you can visit www.missingkids.org. Or with this particular case, you can contact Deputy Peter Headley with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department at [email protected]. And I'll just spell that out for you in case you didn't know it. It's P-H-E-A-D-L-E-Y at S-B-C-S-D.org. And like I said, there's a lot of resources out there. If you know anything about this case or any other case, come forward, share that information. The worst case scenario, they already have it. Or maybe you end up being the Becky Heath, where your information leads to an outcome

• 1:01:04Derrick Levasseur?

  that would not have been possible without that little piece of information, that little nugget that you had, that opens up a whole new can of worms, which leads to all these new responses and these new results that would not be possible without you. Any final words from you? This was a fascinating series, obviously never the ending we want, but I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned here. And we talked about it, most of it. Number one, just stay safe out there. And I, we say it every episode, it sounds like a thing, I wear the hat, all that bullshit. But really, just, just go out there, live your life, enjoy it, but understand that life is precious and it can be taken in a second. So you gotta stay conscientious of your surroundings and be cautious of the people

• 1:01:44Derrick Levasseur?

  you associate with and do your best to protect yourself and those you care about. Any final words from you?

• 1:01:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, I'm just looking at the picture of this unidentified child. The picture that they created.

• 1:01:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, we could throw that up here as well and we can post that. Guys, as always, we appreciate you being here with us. This was a good series. I think we all took a lot from it and we're gonna be back next week with a new series. But until then, everyone stay safe out there and we'll see you soon.

• 1:02:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  Bye.