Update: Mysterious serial killer linked to 'Allenstown 4'; identities sought
Solve This Crime 05/31/2017 1:17 pm PDT
UPDATE June 6, 2019:
A woman and two girls whose bodies were found in steel drums dumped in a state park in Allenstown have been identified, investigators said Thursday, but the identity of a third girl is still unknown, WMUR-TV reports.
According to authorities, Marlyse Elizabeth Honeychurch and her two children, Marie Elizabeth Vaughn and Sarah Lynn McWaters were among the four victims who had been found near Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown, NECN-TV reports
Authorities say a professional researcher and librarian from Connecticut made the suspected connection of the victims' identities after looking into missing persons cases and listening to a podcast on the Bear Brook murders.
Authorities say Honeychurch was dating Terry Peder Rasmussen, who had been identified as the prime suspect in the unsolved murders.
Jeffery Strelzin, associate attorney general of New Hampshire, told reporters at a news conference Thursday that in 1978, Honeychurch visited her family in La Puente, California, with her two daughters, KTLA-TV reports. Strelzin said one of the daughters was about 6 years old at the time and the other was about 1 year old. They had different fathers.
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May 31, 2017:
It was a crime as gruesome and heartless as it gets: In New Hampshire's Bear Brook State Park, two barrels were discovered containing the remains of a woman and three young girls.
For decades, the identities of the woman and three little girls in police composites remained unknown. And who killed them became the ultimate murder mystery.
Forensics revealed the unknown bodies in the barrels were likely a 23-to-33-year-old mother and her two daughters around the ages 10 and 2 years old.
But there was a third child around 4 years old inside the barrels too, and not biologically related to the others.
Within the last couple years, forensic artists rendered 3-dimensional facial reconstructions of the missing woman and children, hoping that will lead to information regarding their identity. But sadly no new leads have come in.
"We still don't know who our four victims are in Allenstown," said Jeff Strelzin.
But a year later, a huge new break in the investigation: It begins 3,000 miles away on the opposite coast, in Northern California, where Contra Costa Sheriff's Captain Roxane Gruenheid is in the middle of her own missing-persons case.
"Our Crimes Against Persons Detail received a missing-persons case for a woman named Eunsoon Jun," said Gruenheid.
Eunsoon Jun, a bio-tech worker, was reported missing by a friend after she hadn't been heard from in months. Contra Costa County Sheriff's deputies track down her live-in boyfriend, Lawrence Vanner.
"In Richmond, California, where he was working at a corner convenience store, they spoke with him and he agreed to come back to our office," said Gruenheid.
On the ride to the sheriff's office, Captain Gruenheid sits in the back seat of the patrol car with Vanner. They strike up a friendly conversation.
"Kind of, 'Where are you from?' Just making small talk. He stopped in his tracks what he was saying and he turned towards me and he got really close, kind of in my personal space in the back seat of the car, and he said 'That's none of your damn business,'" said Capt. Gruenheid.
His reaction is odd, but so is something else: his name.
"The name 'Larry Vanner' or 'Lawrence Willam Vanner' that that he provided us, the name and the date of birth, there was no driver's license associated with it, there was no prior criminal history associated with it," said Gruenheid.
So who is this Lawrence Vanner?
"The detectives asked him if he would be willing to go down to our records bureau for fingerprinting, and he agreed to do that," said Gruenheid.
And when they run his prints, there's a match -- to someone else.
"He was identified as Curtis Mayo Kimball, and he had been absconded from parole for approximately 12 years. Upon learning that knowledge, he was under arrest and he was no longer free to leave," said Gruenheid.
Cops then search his house, hoping to find clues to the disappearance of his missing girlfriend Eunsoon Jun.
"We went to his residence to see if there was some you know, if Ms. Jun was perhaps in the house, being kept in the house or something like that," said Capt. Gruenheid.
Jun is not in the house, but when they pop the padlock on the garage:
"I could see from my vantage point was a very large pile of cat litter approximately 3 feet high by approximately 4 and to 5 feet around, of just a pile of fresh cat litter," said Gruenheid.
And then a horrifying discovery sticking out from under the pile of cat litter.
"A mummified human foot," said Capt. Gruenheid.
The badly decomposed body is transported to the coroner's office.
"An autopsy was performed, the victim had suffered from blunt-force trauma to the head and dismemberment," said Gruenheid.
A couple of weeks later, the victim is identified as missing person Eunsoon Jun. Her boyfriend Lawrence Vanner, also known as Curtis Kimball, is charged with killing his girlfriend. He pleads guilty to second-degree murder and is sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
And while prosecutors and police are certain they got their man, they still aren't certain exactly who their man is.
"There were numerous 'AKA's," said Gruenheid. "There were numerous Social Security numbers, numerous dates of birth that he had been using. The investigators at the time tried to ascertain a true identity on him."
In California alone, this convicted murderer has used the aliases Lawrence Vanner, Curtis Kimball and Gordon Jenson, an alias the drifter began using after he skipped out on parole. The parole violation was for abandoning a child under the age of 14, according to Capt. Gruenheid.
And just who was that child? Her name was Lisa, a 5-year-old little girl living with the man then known as Gordon Jenson at a trailer park in Santa Cruz, California.
"At the time, everyone believed he was the father. That's what he said," said San Bernardino County Sheriff's Deputy Peter Headley.
Whatever happened to this little girl Lisa?
"Lisa was put into foster care and was adopted," said Headley.
But after learning so much about this convicted murderer's legacy of lies, Captain Gruenheid gets a gut feeling.
"I didn't believe that he was related to her," said Gruenheid.
In fact, Gruenheid worries that Lisa may have been abducted by the man with multiple aliases.
That's when she alerts the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department in Southern California, the same agency that investigated the abandonment case against Lisa's so-called father. And that's when San Bernardino detectives tell her about potentially explosive evidence.
"They had taken a sample of her blood," said Gruenheid. "I received a report back that was conclusive that Lawrence William Vanner or Gordon Jenson, Curtis Mayo Kimball, was not biologically related to Lisa."
So who does she belong to? And what could it mean for the bodies in those barrels?
"Lisa wanted to know who she was, who her family was. That's when the process started of finding out who Lisa is," said Peter Headley.
Two giant barrels are found, each containing something more gruesome than the next.
Detectives say they may finally have some answers to this troubling murder mystery, but they need the public's help to piece together the final clues.
Hikers discover two bodies murdered and hidden away in a barrel; years later, another barrel and two more murder victims. Investigators are having a hard time finding the killer or killers because they don't even know who the victims are. But that is all about to change thanks to a little luck and one determined investigator.
A convicted murderer with multiple aliases sits behind bars in a California prison. But years before he was locked up, the deadly drifter abandoned a 5-year-old girl named Lisa. He claimed she was his daughter, but DNA tests revealed they weren't related.
"The concern was that she had been abducted from somewhere," said New Hampshire State Police Detective Michael Kokoski.
Lisa's ancestry DNA is sent out for testing, and there's a hit. The abandoned girl is from New Hampshire.
"San Bernardino called us, the state police, and also the Manchester Police Department and said 'It appears that this lady that we've been trying to identify actually has family in New Hampshire,'" said Det. Kokowski. "Her grandfather, in fact, still lived in New Hampshire."
And he had a daughter named Denise Beaudin.
"And it came to light that that man's daughter had left Manchester in 1981 with her then-boyfriend," said Kokowski.
And a 6-month-old baby girl. Denise Beaudin was never seen again. As for her baby?
"We were able to determine that Lisa was actually Dawn Beaudin and her mother was Denise Beaudin," said Peter Headley.
The one-time abandoned little girl has a name and a hometown full of relatives. So why didn't any of them file a missing-person report for Lisa's mother?
"The boyfriend of Denise Beaudin, he was able to convince the family that they owed money to everyone, and when they left town they did not make a missing-persons report because they believed they were on the run from bad debts," said Headley.
But who is Denise's boyfriend? His name is Bob Evans.
"Manchester began investigating the circumstances of Denise Beaudin's disappearance and the connections that it had to this Bob Evans," said Kokoski.
When New Hampshire detectives compare photographs of Lisa's mother and her boyfriend with photos of the California drifter who abandoned her:
"Turns out from looking at photographs that Bob, this Bob Evans from New Hampshire, is in fact the same guy who was known in California with another alias," said Jeff Strelzin.
The drifter going by the name Bob Evans in New Hampshire is also known as Curtis Kimball, Gordon Jenson and Lawrence Vanner from California -- leaving detectives with one chilling conclusion: Denise Beaudin isn't missing. She's dead.
"Evans killed her as well," said Strelzin.
But where's her body?
Investigators compare Denise Beaudin's DNA with the woman's body found in barrels along with three little girls, a case known as the Allenstown Four. And the result?
"Turns out she's not the person in the barrel," said Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeff Strelzin.
Then detectives get a hunch and test Bob Evans' DNA against the bodies in the barrel. This time, there's a match.
"He in fact is the father of the middle Allenstown child, the one that appeared non-related to the other three victims," said Kokoski.
And not only is Evans the father of the third child: "Putting it all together, we're convinced that he's our killer of those four people in Allenstown," said Strelzin.
Plus two girlfriends: Eunsoon Jun from California and Denise Beaudin from New Hampshire, putting Evans' body count at six.
"We don't think Bob Evans is his real name," said Strelzin.
But investigators from both coasts believe that the man known in New Hampshire as Bob Evans is just another alias to add to an ever-growing list.
And detectives tell Crime Watch Daily that Evans is more than a murderer -- he's a serial killer.
"We've attributed multiple victims to him that is a great concern that there is others we don't know about," said Kokoski.
So authorities are turning to the public for help.
They want to identify the man who used six known aliases: Larry Vanner; Curtis Mayo Kimball; Gordon Jenson; Bob Evans; Jerry Gorman; and Gerry Mockerman.
The suspect resided in several states, but mainly New Hampshire, California, Idaho and Texas.
Authorities confirm that Evans lived in New Hampshire from 1977 to 1981, and all over the state of California from 1984 to 2002, up until he was arrested for murder.
Also, detectives claim Evans had a specific M.O.: dating single mothers.
"He does show a pattern of befriending vulnerable women and isolating them," said Kokoski.
But before investigators in New Hampshire can interview Evans about all the new clues and victims, he dies in prison from natural causes.
But there is one person who spoke to this cold-blooded killer when she arrested him for what she thought at the time was his only murder: Contra Costa Sheriff's Captain Roxane Gruenheid. The investigators from opposite coasts meet for the first time and discuss the case.
Crime Watch Daily reached out to Evans' only known living victim, Lisa. She prefers to keep her life private, but released this statement:
"I'm so thankful to be reunited with my grandfather and cousins after all of these years. I want to send out a heartfelt thank you to all of the organizations and tireless individuals who made this possible. ... Please turn your focus toward the unidentified victims and other potentially unknown victims in this case, and hopefully their families will also be offered some closure as this investigation continues. Thank you. -- Lisa"
With potential unknown victims all across the U.S. this case is far from over. And still, three of the four bodies found in those barrels remain unidentified.
"This case is backwards," said Strelzin. "Usually we solve our cases by knowing who our victims are and that those connections lead us to our perpetrator. Here we know who our perpetrator is -- at least who we think he is -- but we have a lot more work to do to figure out exactly who they are, who he was, and who the rest of his victims were."
Here are three composite sketches of what the still unidentified victims would have looked like at the time they were murdered.
