Body found in barrel near NH park is forgotten child of serial killer, DNA shows

A decades-old mystery involving a body in a barrel found in New Hampshire has been solved and the answers are unsettling, according to the DNA Doe Project.

Rea Rasmussen was around 4 years old when she was murdered, and the killer was likely her father, Terry Rasmussen, a convicted serial killer who died in prison in 2010, the project reported in a Sept. 7 news release.

“In the year 2000, the bodies of two young girls were found in a barrel in Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown,” the project says.

“Fifteen years prior to this, the bodies of a woman and a girl had been discovered in a separate barrel nearby. It was later determined that all four of them had been murdered and their bodies left in the park sometime around 1980. None of these individuals could be identified and the case became known as the Bear Brook murders.”

DNA testing began in 2017, eventually revealing three of the bodies were members of the same family: Marlyse Honeychurch, and her daughters, Marie Vaughn and Sarah McWaters, officials said.

The mystery of the fourth body proved to be more complex.

Discovered May 9, 2000, on private property near the park, the girl came to be known as “The Middle Child,” officials said.

DNA proved she was a daughter of Terry Rasmussen, but everything about her origin was a mystery: her name, her age, her mother and even whether her birth had been registered, the project noted.

A team of expert investigative genetic genealogists was assigned to the case in January 2024, resulting in the creation of a family tree containing 25,000 people, officials said.

Among them was a woman named Pepper Reed, who was from Houston, “where Terry Rasmussen was known to be living in the 1970s,” the project says.

“The team then found additional connections between Pepper’s ancestors and the unidentified girl’s DNA matches, which confirmed that Pepper Reed had to be the mother of Jane Doe,” officials said.

“Within half an hour of identifying Pepper Reed as the child’s mother, the team made a shocking discovery. They found a birth record for a girl named Rea Rasmussen in Orange County, California in 1976 – to a mother with the maiden name of Reed. ... A member of the team drove to Orange County to retrieve a copy of the birth certificate. This certificate listed Rea’s parents as Terry Rasmussen and Pepper Reed.”

There are still questions that may never be answered in the case, including Rea’s age at the time of her death. It’s believed she was between 2 and 4 years old, officials said.

“This work resonates with people because it’s disturbing to think someone you love could disappear and die and you never know what happened to them,” Pam Lauritzen, executive director of media and communications at the DNA Doe Project, told McClatchy News.

“Our mission is to restore names to people who die without names. ... It’s trying to figure out how to identify a person and get them back to families.”

Born in Colorado, Terry Rasmussen was a high school drop out and Navy veteran who lived under multiple names, including Robert “Bob” Evans, according to a timeline on NH.gov. He was convicted in 2003 of killing his girlfriend, Eunsoon Jun, and died while serving a sentence of 15 years to life, the site reports.

In 2016, Rasmussen was linked to the Allenstown homicides and the 1981 disappearance of another former girlfriend, Denise Beaudin of Manchester, officials say.

His life became the basis for a 2021 TV mini series called “The Chameleon Killer.”.

This story was originally published September 8, 2025 at 2:33 PM.