Diane Kloepfer: Okay. I think the recorder is working, Fleta.
Fleta Zadakus: It is.
Diane: Do I have permission to share this recording with other people?
Fleta: Sure.
Diane: Okay. And we're at your assisted living?
Fleta: Yeah.
Diane: And I have some questions for you.
Fleta: Alright.
Diane: And they relate to Terry.
Fleta: Alright, I'll do the best I can…
Diane: Okay.
Jason Moon, Narrating: Diane Kloepfer made this recording in 2024. She’s preparing to interview her mother, Fleta Zadakus. Diane wants to see what her mother remembers about her father. The last time she saw him, she was a small child, when Fleta left him. His name… Terry Peder Rasmussen.
Diane: Did he like puzzles and stuff?
Fleta: No.
Diane: Riddles?
Fleta: No.
Diane: Being tricky and deceptive with his words?
Fleta: Oh, he was always that.
Diane: Was he always thinkin’ about something else when he was telling you somethin’? Was he always tryin’ to… ?
Fleta: …Always tryin’ to hand me a line of shit.
Diane: Okay. Was he really smart, though? Did he appear that he was very smart?
Fleta: He was very smart.
Diane: Okay.
[MUSIC IN]
Terry Rasmussen, on interrogation tape: You’re not my priest and you’re not my doctor, and bull– stories have their place.
Diane: Okay. Was he smart in a good way or a bad way?
Fleta: In a bad way, I think.
Diane: Okay.
Ben Agati, at press conference: Thirty years ago this month, a mystery began when the remains of an adult and what we will find out will be the oldest child will be discovered in a bag next to an overturned 55-gallon drum… [FADES OUT]
Jeff Strelzin, at press conference: We believe that we have identified their killer, a man that we’ve come to know went by many different names across the country. In New Hampshire, he was known as Bob Evans.
Diane: I'm going to give you some names. You tell me if they sound familiar. Robert Evans?
Fleta: Nope.
Jesse Morgan: When I rode up on it, I remember just seeing a barrel and we got hit with this smell of rotten milk.
Diane: Larry Vanner?
Fleta: No.
Elaine Ramos, on the phone: I think that she found out about him or found out that somethin’ wasn’t right and confronted him. I’m sure she fought.
Diane: Curtis Kimball?
Fleta: No.
Roxane Gruenheid: Who the heck is this guy, really? And who is that little girl? So, it was just… it was pretty goofy.
Terry Rasmussen, on interrogation tape: I’ve always tried to live by the motto that there’s no defense against the truth. But sometimes, it’s hard to find out what the truth is.
[MUSIC UP AND OUT]
Diane: So, I got one more question to ask you and I know it’s going to be unpleasant.
Fleta: Okay.
Diane: So, remember, we were at the police department and they told you about Terry and what all he did?
Fleta: Yeah?
Diane: What's the first thing that came to mind?
Fleta: I don't believe it.
Diane: Do you still believe it or do you still not believe it?
Fleta: Well, I have to believe it because it's a fact. Do I want to believe it? No.
Diane: Okay. [FADES OUT]
Moon, Narrating: This is what the past several years have been like for Diane, trying to dig up and process the truth about her father, no matter how hard it is to hear. The truth that her dad, Terry Peder Rasmussen, was a serial killer, responsible for at least five murders and probably more.
That one of his victims was a half-sister to Diane that she didn't know she had. That he discarded her 3-year-old body in a barrel near Bear Brook State Park.
It was all dropped on Diane one day without warning and it’s only left her with new mysteries.
Maybe the biggest mystery haunting Diane – one that her mom will never be able to answer – is her half-sister. Who was she?
It’s a reminder of the sheer strangeness of this case, how it seems to reverse the usual patterns of a murder investigation. We know the killer before we know the victims. We mourn the victims before we know who they are.
But Diane is far from the only person who has been desperate to learn who her half-sister was. Because her half-sister is one the final missing pieces of the Bear Brook case. The only victim whose identity is still unknown… until now.
Becky Heath, on the phone: Oh my God, this is it. This is it. This is her. This is… the baby that we have been looking to name. And we had her name all along.
[THEME MUSIC IN]
Moon, Narrating: From the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio, this is Bear Brook. I’m Jason Moon.
[THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT]
Moon, Narrating: It’s been six years. Six years. The last time there was big news in the Bear Brook case was 2019. Looking back, I almost can’t believe all the twists in the story that got us here.
[MUSIC IN]
Moon, Narrating: It began in 1985. Two sets of human remains found inside a barrel in the woods near New Hampshire’s Bear Brook State Park. There was a second barrel with two more bodies, but police didn’t find it until the year 2000. The victims were a woman and three children. But no one knew their names. And that’s how it stayed for years.
Meanwhile, in California, another story was unfolding. In 2003, Eunsoon Jun was killed by her new boyfriend, Larry Vanner. Larry was sent to prison. But Larry wasn’t his name. At least, not his only name.
Police discovered Larry Vanner was also Curtis Kimball. And they learned that before he ever met Eunsoon, Curtis had abandoned his daughter in another part of California. Her name was Lisa.
But after Eunsoon’s murder, police discovered Curtis was not Lisa’s father, which meant he’d likely kidnapped her. But nobody knew from where or whether Lisa was even her real name.
The mystery of Lisa would eventually lead investigators to New Hampshire, to the barrels near Bear Brook State Park.
[MUSIC UP]
Moon, Narrating: Thanks to a new technique called genetic genealogy, the California detectives discovered that Lisa’s real name was Dawn Beaudin. Dawn and her mother Denise had gone missing from New Hampshire in 1981. They were last seen with a guy named Bob Evans.
Police wondered if Denise might be the adult victim in the barrel Bear Brook case. So, in 2016, they DNA test and there’s no match. Denise is not the adult victim.
But what they discover instead is that Bob Evans was the father of one of the three child victims. Bob, who also went by the names Curtis Kimball and Larry Vanner.
So, the same man who murdered Eunsoon and who kidnapped Lisa, was likely responsible for the Bear Brook murders. And one of the Bear Brook victims was his own daughter.
[MUSIC UP]
Moon, Narrating: In 2017, we finally learned the killer’s true identity. Bob, Curtis, Larry… His real name was Terry Peder Rasmussen. “Peder” spelled with a D.
And finally, in 2019 we learned the identities of three of the four Bear Brook victims. Marlyse Honeychurch and her two children, Marie Vaughn and Sarah McWaters. Marie was estimated to be about 9 years old, and Sarah, about 2.
But that left one more. One last victim, whose name we never learned. Terry’s daughter. The one investigators often called “the middle child.” Another little girl, estimated to be just 3 years old when she was killed.
Who was she?
[MUSIC UP AND OUT]
Moon, Narrating: Like so many other parts of this story, the answer came to me in reverse. Not from the source of the discovery, but through a chain of coincidences.
It began with Ronda Randall.
Ronda Randall, on the phone: Becky and I, over the last number of years, have built a huge, huge family tree and tracked down lots of tips and leads and worked on this almost every day in the intervening years and she, um…
Moon: Wow, so you guys never stopped?
Ronda: Oh, never, never, nope.
Moon, Narrating: You remember Ronda, a private citizen who for years threw herself into trying to solve the Bear Brook case because it seemed to her that nobody else would.
Ronda, from episode 2: What grandmother let this happen, or what neighbor, or what bus driver or, you know – I mean, where were all of you?
Moon, Narrating: Lately, Ronda has been working with Becky Heath. You’ll also remember her, a fellow traveler in the volunteer websluething community, who in 2018 managed to identify three of the Bear Brook victims by searching through online forums.
Becky, from episode 7: Listening to this podcast makes me think it is this person, these, these girls!
Moon, Narrating: Becky and Ronda head up what you might call the unofficial investigation. Both have deep ties to this case, but they don’t work directly with law enforcement.
They’ve been working parallel to the official investigation, which includes New Hampshire law enforcement and professional genetic genealogists who work with them.
It’s a dynamic that’s not so unusual – especially in cold cases. But there are some quirks to it.
Even though both teams want the same thing, generally speaking information flows in only one direction, from the unofficial side to the official side. Becky and Ronda find something? They send it over to the police. If the police find something, Becky and Ronda won’t know about it until we all do, when it’s announced at a press conference.
But sometimes… sometimes the parallel investigations cross paths. That happened in 2019 when, in an amazing coincidence, Becky and genetic genealogist Barbara Rae-Venter both independently identified the three Bear Brook victims at almost the same time. Becky with websleuthing. Barbara with genetic genealogy.
And just recently, in July of 2025, the paths crossed again.
[MUSIC IN]
Moon, Narrating: One day Ronda Randall is at work when she gets a text from a stranger. A woman from Texas.
Ronda, on the phone: And she said that a friend of hers in Houston had gone missing in the 1970s. She’d been dating Terry Rasmussen. She’d been pregnant. They moved away and that the family had never heard from her again.
Moon, Narrating: Just like that – out of the blue.
Ronda: And at first, I just didn't put a lot of stock in it, because I've gotten a lot of kind of texts and emails like this over the years from kind of, you know, crazy folks. But, um, anyway… [FADES OUT]
Moon, Narrating: But what this stranger said next made Ronda think. According to Ronda, the stranger explained that their missing friend’s name was Pepper Reed. And that recently, they’d heard from Pepper’s brother that he’d been approached by New Hampshire State Police about DNA testing… in connection with the Bear Brook case.
Ronda: And so, apparently, she Googled the case, came across my blog. My phone number was on it, and so she reached out to me.
Moon, Narrating: To Ronda, it sounded plausible enough, like the sort of thing that would be happening if the official investigation was closing in on the answer.
The story the stranger told about Pepper also sounded eerily familiar… A woman dating Terry Rasmussen who becomes estranged from her family and is never seen again. Just like with Eunsoon Jun, Marlyse Honeychurch, and Denise Beaudin.
Elaine, from episode 4: And then, she got angry at me. She said, 'Nobody wants me to be happy!' And that was the last time I spoke with her.
Jeff Strelzin, at press conference: Bob Evans left New Hampshire in 1981 with Denise Bowden and her infant daughter Lisa, and Denise was never seen or heard from again… [FADES OUT]
Moon, Narrating: Maybe this was a rare moment where information was flowing in the opposite direction it usually did. Maybe Ronda had just gotten an accidental glimpse of where the official investigation was at. That they were close to solving the case.
But she wasn’t sure. It was just some texts from a stranger. So, Ronda called Becky.
Becky Heath, on the phone: Eh, I don’t know. It seems a little too good to be true. Like, we’ve had our hopes up so many times that you just tend to be very cautious. So, we kind of start looking into it and the locations fit and we're like, “Mmm… Well, that's interesting.”
Moon, Narrating: Starting from just Pepper Reed’s name, Becky and Ronda build out a family tree using publicly available records online. They can see that one of Pepper’s parents had lived in Texas and one in California – two states that Terry Rasmussen was known to have lived in.
But they can’t find Pepper. No address. No phone number. No obituary. And no missing persons report.
Ronda and Becky start to wonder if there’s a birth certificate for Pepper’s child. According to the stranger, Pepper was pregnant the last time she was seen. Could that child be the final Bear Brook victim? The timeline would match. The stranger said Pepper was last seen in Texas in the 1970s. The unknown child victim was estimated to be 3 years old when she was killed, and police believe the barrels were dumped in the woods near Bear Brook by 1981. That would put the child’s birthdate somewhere in the late 1970s.
On websites like Ancestry.com, birth index records are searchable, but only to a degree. For some states, like California, the index only lists the name of the child and the last name of the mother. No father’s name.
And now, thanks to the stranger who texted, Becky and Ronda had the last name of the potential mother… Reed. Pepper Reed.
So, Ronda goes to the Ancestry.com search bar, and types in what they know, just like you or I or anyone else could.
Moon: Okay so, last name of child… Rasmussen. [SOUND OF TYPING] Birth year… Let’s guess 1978. [TYPING] And we’ll say plus or minus five years to be safe. [MOUSE CLICKING] Last name of mother… Reed. [TYPING] And we’ll click the box for “exact matches only.” [CLICK] And… search. [ENTER KEY PRESSED EMPHATICALLY]
[MUSIC IN]
Moon, Narrating: And when you do that, like I just did, you get one result. One. A child born in 1976 in Orange County, California.
But this could all still be a coincidence. Rasmussen is not the most unusual name. And this birth index record doesn’t list a father.
To be sure, Becky and Ronda want to get their hands on the actual birth certificate. That would list the mother and father’s full names.
Becky, on the phone: So, we pulled the information we had together and I was like, “Yeah, what the heck? I'm just going to try and get the birth certificate from the Department of Public Health at the State of California.”
Moon, Narrating: In California, the public can access redacted versions of birth certificates, so Becky goes online, she fills out a form, she pays a small fee, and then, she waits.
Becky: Like, the whole time I'm going, “It's not going to be him. There's no way.” But it was still, like, it seemed possible. I'm like, “Well, maybe… I, you know… maybe, maybe…” So, I'm waiting for it to come in the mail. I'm waiting and waiting. I, I don't think I've ever kept an eye on my mailbox so much, but… [LAUGHS] The day I knew it was coming, like, run out there and I'm like, okay, just grab the, grab the paper and I'm like, trying to bring it back into the house. And I'm like, “I wanna look, I want to look!” But I wait until I get inside. And I rip it open and… father of the child, Terry Peder Rasmussen, and Peder is spelled P-E-D-E-R, which, that's what Terry’s middle name was spelled like.
[LOW TONE IN]
Moon, Narrating: I’ve seen the birth certificate. Not only does it show Terry Peder Rasmussen’s full name... it also lists his age at the time of the birth in 1976. 32 years old. Exactly how old the Terry Rasmussen we know would have been that year.
So, the right name. At the right age. In a state we know Terry spent time in. It all fit.
Becky: So, there was no doubt in my mind at this point… Oh, my God, this is it. This is it. This is her. This is the baby that we have been looking to name. And we had her name all along… Just, ugh. It ju– Still, I can't, like, think about it. Like, my stomach churns. Like, how, how, how could it have been this easy? It's so disappointing. Like, argh!
[LOW TONE UP AND OUT]
Moon, Narrating: Listening to Becky tell this story on the phone, I had two thoughts. First… holy shit. Second… why is she disappointed? Isn’t this what we all wanted for so long?
But the more Becky talked, the more I got it. For years, many of us had assumed that the only way that the final Bear Brook victim could possibly be identified would be through genetic genealogy. My own assumption was that child’s birth wasn’t recorded. Like, that there was no birth certificate and that’s what was making this so hard.
And to be clear, what Becky and I both assumed in this moment was that genetic genealogy had solved the case. We figured the genetic genealogist working with the police finally got a hit for a close relative of the unidentified child in a DNA database, and that had led them to Pepper Reed.
But to find out this whole time, there was a birth certificate with Terry Peder Rasmussen’s name on it – like, his real name, not one of his aliases… for Becky, it was like the official investigation had taken the long way around. They’d spent several years using a complicated, tedious DNA analysis technique, when they could have just looked through some paper records.
Becky: When you think of it, overall, the amount of resources – like, thousands of hours, thousands of dollars, everything that has been put into this case, and they're like, “The only way it's going to crack i-is genetic genealogy….” when that wasn't true at all. It was… If someone had done their job and just requested his name be put through the system to see if he's on any birth certificates.
Moon, Narrating: If someone had done their job. The “someone” in that sentence is the official investigation. The police. Though I should say, Becky is also kicking herself over this.
Becky: It feels like a bad dream. Like, this could have been solved, like, years ago.
Moon, Narrating: I wanted to know if that was true. So, I spent some time going back and forth with the California Department of Public Health, Vital Records Division. They maintain the state’s database of birth certificates.
What I learned is that for a member of the public to request a redacted birth certificate, you need enough info for Vital Records to locate one specific birth certificate. You can’t go fishing.
But according to a spokesperson for California’s Health Department, for law enforcement, there’s another option. They can request a court-order from a judge. And if they get it, then a search like the one Becky is describing would have been possible.
So, bottom line… Becky may have a point. Ever since 2017, when genetic genealogy revealed Terry Peder Rasmussen was his real name, it was possible for law enforcement to find this birth certificate.
[MUSIC IN]
Moon, Narrating: This is not the first time New Hampshire authorities have been accused of taking too long to find something in this case. The second barrel sat undiscovered for 15 years after the first one was found just 300 feet away. As it happens, the child in question was found in that second barrel. So, you could say this is the second time law enforcement didn’t notice her when they should have.
Or you could say this is all just Monday morning quarterbacking. That it’s easy to say how we could have solved the case after it’s been solved. And to be fair, it’s not like it occurred to me to search California birth records for Terry’s name.
And anyway, maybe this all just gets in the way of what’s important here. That we now know Terry Rasmussen had another child. Her name… Rea. R-E-A. Rea Rasmussen. Diane’s half-sister.
Moon: How are you feeling right now, Diane?
Diane: That's kind of loaded, isn't it, Jason? I've been wanting to vomit since Becky sent me the birth certificate. Like, all day. I just wanna puke.
Moon, Narrating: For Diane, the news comes with some incredibly complicated feelings. She’s upset that she didn’t learn about this from the official investigators first. She’s grieving all over again, but also trying not to.
She’s not quite willing to fully buy into the idea that Rea is the last Bear Brook victim. Not until it’s official.
Diane: I want so hard, I want so bad… [TEARS UP] Sorry. I want so bad to be hopeful that it is her. Because I thought I'd be, like, really old when it happened, but I don't want to…. I don't want to hope because that's just more sadness for other people. I want, I want this Pepper lady, if she…. if that's who… I want her to be alive. I want her to be well. I want everyone to be wrong. But, you know, it never tends to happen around here. But I just don't want to get my hopes up that this is, you know, it for now, because I'm always, I've always been afraid that there's always going to be something else later.
[MUSIC IN]
Moon, Narrating: Diane doesn’t want to hope. Not yet. And I can see the wisdom in that. Because if the middle child is Rea, it only opens the door to new tragic mysteries.
If Rea is one of the children found in the second barrel, where’s her mom? Where is Pepper? And if we find out, what horrible discoveries will come next?
And at that moment, on the phone with Diane, all we knew for certain was that Pepper Reed and Terry Rasmussen had a child together in 1976. We couldn’t be absolutely sure that Rea was the middle child. And we didn’t know how investigators found Pepper’s name to begin with.
To learn those answers, we had to wait until the other side of the investigation – the official side – was ready to talk. That’s after the break.
[MUSIC UP AND OUT]
Taylor Quimby, Narrating: If there’s one thing the Bear Brook case has taught us, it’s that investigative journalism takes time.
I’m Taylor Quimby. I worked with Jason on the initial episodes of Bear Brook back in 2018 and 2019. But while I moved on to other projects, Jason has stuck with it. All told, he’s been reporting this story for nearly 10 years. And this kind of painstaking work is at risk.
Federal cuts to NHPR, the station that produces this podcast, have reduced our funding by hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, if you’re one of the millions of people who’ve followed our reporting, you can help support it by donating $20.
The Bear Brook case has unfolded over 40 long years. If we don't want to abandon these types of stories, we need to fund the journalists willing to stay the course.
You can make a gift right now on your phone with Applepay, or on the app of your choice. Just hit the link in the show notes. And thank you.
Moon: …Just, um, just say your name and who you are and where we are?
Chris Elphick: Sure. Uh, my name is Chris Elphick. I'm a detective sergeant with New Hampshire State Police. We are at New Hampshire State Police troop D. I've been assigned this case for many years, and I kept it with me after I was promoted out of Cold Case.
Moon: And why did you invite me here on a Sunday morning?
Elphick: I had some information to share with you.
Moon: Okay.
Moon, Narrating: Meet the official investigation. Chris Elphick with New Hampshire State Police. Decidedly more understated than Becky or Ronda.
The morning of Sunday, September 7th, 2025 – about a month after Ronda first told me about the text from the stranger – I met with Chris and a prosecutor with the state Attorney General’s Office.
They both looked sharp in their gray suits, like maybe they had dressed for the occasion. It was, after all, an important day.
Chris: So, the information is that the, uh, middle child is no longer only known as the middle child. We've identified her.
[MUSIC IN]
Moon, Narrating: It was official. Or it would be later that day, when the state sent out a press release.
Rea was the child in the second barrel. The accidental glimpse into the official investigation had turned out to be correct. They had solved it. But how? What had been happening on their side of the fence these past few months?
[MUSIC OUT]
Moon, Narrating: To answer that, you need to meet Matthew Waterfield.
Moon: Is this your first trip to New Hampshire?
Matthew Waterfield, on the phone: This is my first trip to New Hampshire, yes.
Moon: Well, welcome to New Hampshire.
Matthew: [LAUGHS] Thank you very much. It's great to be here.
Moon, Narrating: On Sunday, the same day I spoke with Chris Elphick with New Hampshire State Police, I reached Matthew on a scratchy phone line from across the state. He had just arrived after a long flight from London.
Matthew is a genetic genealogist with a group called the DNA Doe Project. He and his team of volunteer researchers, scattered across the world, were actually all meeting together in one place for the first time in New Hampshire. They had all traveled here to take part in a press conference about the Bear Brook case scheduled for the next day.
Matthew: It feels pretty, definitely exciting. Um, pretty impactful as well. I think we've kind of run the gamut of emotions today and, and in the last few days, too, actually.
Moon, Narrating: For the past 20 months or so, Matthew and the DNA Doe Project have led the official genetic genealogy work on the Bear Brook case. They took over that mantle from Barbara Rae-Venter. You’ll probably remember she was responsible for many of the previous breakthroughs in this case.
BARBARA: I mean, basically, I would get up in the morning, I would start working on it and I would work on it all day until late into the night.
Moon, Narrating: In January 2024, the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit decided they wanted a fresh set of eyes. So, the DNA Doe Project was brought in. The group is a big player in the world of genetic genealogy. Like Barbara, they were among the first to use the technique to solve criminal cases.
Matthew was in charge of the team at the DNA Doe Project tasked with identifying the middle child. Like Barbara, Matthew is someone who got into genetic genealogy first as a hobby. And then got good at it. Like, really good. But while Barbara did all that in retirement, Matthew got hooked much younger.
MATTHEW: I, a few years ago, um, was a university student, I think I was 20 years old at the time and I was just fascinated by this field.
[MUSIC IN]
Moon, Narrating: So, Matthew and a team of four other volunteer researchers take over this case. And one of the first things they do is update what’s called the “kit” for the middle child, who they’ve been calling simply Bear Brook Jane Doe. You can think of the kit as the digitized version of a DNA profile. The actual file that you can upload to a genetic genealogy database.
The Bear Brook case was such an early use of genetic genealogy, that Matthew says more sophisticated methods of developing kits have come along.
And with an updated kit, came updated results, which gave them a better idea of Bear Brook Jane Doe’s ethnicity. She was 100% European descent, which helped the team narrow their search.
[MUSIC IN]
But it’s one thing to get a better sense of the demographics of the person they’re looking for. It’s another to find the actual person. So, Matthew and his team look at who Bear Brook Jane Doe is matching with on online DNA databases like GED Match and Family Tree DNA.
All of the matches are very distant relatives – too distant to make an immediate identification – so they have to build out family trees that go back in time until they can figure out the common ancestor between those distant relatives and Bear Brook Jane Doe.
They end up building a tree with more than 25,000 people on it.
It’s a huge amount of information. And it’s made even more difficult by the fact that Matthew and his team keep discovering what genealogists call “non-paternity events.” Basically, someone’s biological dad wasn’t the dad who got listed on the birth certificate. When that happens, the paper genealogical records and the DNA results no longer line up. It can be a huge headache for genealogists.
Still, after lots of work, Matthew and his team are able to narrow their search down to a list of families they think Bear Brook Jane Doe is likely descended from.
So, they carefully trace those specific branches of this massive family tree forward in time. And as the branches grow out toward the 1970s, they’re keeping an eye out… for a woman who would have been in her 20s, who might be Bear Brook Jane Doe’s mother.
And because they assume she was also murdered by Terry Rasmussen, they’re looking for someone who shows up in the records and then doesn’t.
[MUSIC UP AND OUT]
Matthew: So, the sort of clues we look for, you know, lack of a death record, um, lack of obituary, um, no marriages after a certain point, no social media presence.
Moon, Narrating: One clue they looked for was people who are named in obituaries as survivors, but with no location given for them. It’s a hint that maybe that person’s family doesn’t know where they are or if they’re alive.
In a way, Matthew and his team are looking for a dead end, a thin branch on the family tree that’s been snapped.
Moon: Do you remember, uh, the particular, um, clue or first indication that your team found that that Pepper might be the right, the right person?
Matthew: Yeah, I do. It was her mother's obituary.
Moon, Narrating: Her mother's obituary. It was a breakthrough.
Matthew: We were building out the, the descendants of this family. And we came across this woman who had moved to the Houston area and she died in 2005, and we found her obituary in the Houston Chronicle. And it listed a son and a daughter and the daughter was called Pepper Reed.
Moon, Narrating: Pepper Reed.
To you or I, this obituary in the Houston Chronicle from 2005 would probably look entirely unremarkable. But to Matthew, it had the telltale signs. Pepper’s name was listed. But not where she lived or who she might’ve been married to.
For two hours, the team searched for any evidence that Pepper was alive. Marriage records, court records, social media – whatever they can think of. But… they can’t find anything.
Moon: Wow, it's fascinating that it's like the more you didn't find, the more it seemed like you were on the right track.
Matthew, on the phone: I mean, the lack of evidence is evidence.
Moon, Narrating: The lack of evidence is evidence. And there seemed to be a lot of evidence.
By the end of the same day they came across the obituary of Pepper’s mother, Matthew and his team were confident that Pepper was the mother of Bear Brook Jane Doe.
Matthew: It was very emotional. Um, we, we jumped on a zoom call together and… there was a, there was more silence than you'd imagine, actually.
Moon, Narrating: It was June 2025, several weeks before Ronda and Becky would piece together what was happening and then tell me.
Matthew: It's that moment where, for a brief second, you're the only person in the world who knows the name of this person. And soon, you know, a lot more people are going to know their name. But for that brief period of time, you're the only one and that's… a lot.
Moon, Narrating: From this point, Matthew and his team take the same steps that Becky and Ronda would later replicate. They track down a birth certificate with Pepper Reed’s name on it in California. And they alert their partners on the official side – the police.
Chris Elphick: Uh, a member of the DNA Doe project went and obtained that birth certificate, and it was what we were lookin’ for. Her name was Rea Rasmussen, and the father listed on the birth certificate was Terry Rasmussen.
Moon, Narrating: And as for whether police should have searched for that birth certificate sooner?
Chris: A search for those records would have been conducted if it was possible. Um, a search of California Vital Records based upon the father's name only, I-I was told directly from California Vital Records that that's not a possible search.
Moon: Really? That’s – ‘cause they told me that you could do it if you had a court order.
Chris: That's not the information they provided to me.
Moon, Narrating: Honestly, I really don’t know what to make of this discrepancy. But after they got the birth certificate, Chris says he took a trip to Texas.
Chris: We contacted Pepper's next of kin. I traveled to go meet with them in person and share some of the news, and this was confirmed through DNA testing, uh, after they provided samples just on Friday. We got the confirmation.
Moon, Narrating: Rea’s identity was confirmed on Friday. I talked with Chris from state police and Matthew from DNA Doe Project on Sunday. And the next day, Monday, there was a press conference.
John Formella, at press conference: Hello, good morning and thank you all for, for being here. My name is John Formella, Attorney General for the state of New Hampshire. And I'm joined up here from, with a number of folks from our office and also partners that we have collaborated with on this case… [FADES OUT]
Moon, Narrating: It happened in a carpeted conference room in a state building.
Behind the podium, the official investigators stood in a line. State police. Prosecutors. Matthew and the other DNA Doe Project investigators. So many people, they stretched across the entire back wall.
The mood was formal, a little stiff. But it wasn’t long before the gravity of the moment started to move people.
One of the prosecutors who spoke was Ben Agati. You might recognize his voice, too. He’s been on the case as long as I’ve been reporting on it for New Hampshire Public Radio.
Ben Agati, at press conference: Some of the colleagues from NHPR here in the room, um, you asked seven years ago whether I still thought about this case after I left the cold case unit, and you asked whether I was frustrated that the victims remained unidentified. The answer was yes, I did, and yes, I was and stayed frustrated. But today, I and everybody in DOJ, State Police, DNA Doe project, NCMEC, everybody are sharing the most beautiful and rare of days because today we're no longer frustrated. But we can find ourselves for once, just today, fulfilled. Because today we have that name of Rea.
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Moon, Narrating: After Ben spoke, a victim witness specialist read a statement from Pepper and Rea’s family. They said they love and miss Pepper deeply, and they’re grateful to know her daughter’s name.
Amy Cerullo, at press conference, reading: “Your relentless determination has brought our family together, and we cannot thank you all enough for keeping Rea close in your hearts when our family could not…”
Moon, Narrating: As the statement was read, nearly all the members of the DNA Doe Project were crying. In all the cases they’ve worked on, Rea is the youngest person they’ve identified.
Diane and one of her sisters also sent a statement to be read from the podium. They asked reporters for privacy while they navigate this “deeply traumatic and personal matter.”
I took that to heart and resisted the urge to call Diane again. She knows how to get in touch.
Mallory Littman, at press conference: Before we close today, we want to be very clear this investigation is not over. While all four victims of Bear Brook have now been identified, there are still unanswered questions… [FADES OUT]
Moon, Narrating: Unanswered questions. Denise Beaudin has never been located.
She was last seen in 1981 in New Hampshire. Police believe she is a victim of Terry Rasmussen.
Pepper Reed. Last seen in the late 1970s in Texas. Police believe she is a victim of Terry Rasmussen.
And Terry himself. There are still many gaps in his timeline where we don’t know where he was or what he was doing, particularly between the mid ‘70s and the mid ‘80s.
Will we ever get all the answers we want? I don’t know. But one thing to consider is that genetic genealogy has done all it can in this case. The technique can only identify human remains, not find missing people.
So, where does that leave us? In a way, back at the beginning.
Ten years ago, on the very first day that I learned about the Bear Brook case, I was there when a younger Ben Agati gave another press conference. It was the day investigators released the findings from the radio-isotope analysis of the remains.
Agati, at 2015 press conference: At this point in time we are almost at our full, if not we are at the final line of what science can do to help us. Uh, so at this point it really is the public’s help that we’re looking for.
Moon, Narrating: That line of what science can do may move again. But for now, official investigators are back to hoping for a tip. A tip from someone who knows something that could help them find Denise Beaudin and Pepper Reed, that could help them learn what happened to them.
[MUSIC IN]
Moon, Narrating: After 40 years, the original mystery has been solved. For decades we wondered, “Who were they?” And now we know. Marlyse Honeychurch, Marie Vaughn, Sarah McWaters, and Rea Rasmussen.
[MUSIC UP AND OUT]
Moon, Narrating: I tried to grapple with the meaning of this moment when I talked with Matthew Waterfield of the DNA Doe Project.
Moon: This is may be a, a dumb question given the whole purpose of your organization, but I was talking with someone the other day about the urge that we have to find out questions like this, like to identify remains that we don't know who they are. And, and it feels like there's this kind of profound urge to find that knowledge out. And yet, on the other hand, we want an answer so bad and we get the answer and the answer is… is a name. It's, it's two words. And so what? I don't want to ask… is it worth it? But I just wonder, um, I don't know… What do you think about that?
Matthew: No, I think I get where you’re coming from… I think that there is a practical impact, and there's something slightly deeper to it.
Moon, Narrating: A practical impact and then something deeper. The practical side, Matthew says, is that naming a victim can end the pain of ambiguous loss for that person’s family. People who won’t have to wonder anymore, who don’t have to hold on to that last sliver of painful hope, who could maybe find some closure. And as for the deeper meaning…
Matthew: Thinking about somebody like Rea, um… We know she was murdered. She was murdered by her father. But there's – And what more is there than that? Because she had a life. She had a life.
Moon, Narrating: Matthew said, Rea was only a few years old, but she probably had birthday parties, went to the store with her mother. Lived, just like you and I are right now. And a name, he said, is a symbol of that life, an acknowledgment of personhood.
Rea was a person with a life. And if knowing her name – if knowing all of their names – can help us to appreciate that, then all of this just might have been worth it.
[THEME MUSIC IN]
Moon, Narrating: Bear Brook is reported and produced by me, Jason Moon.
Additional reporting in this episode by Lauren Chooljian and Taylor Quimby.
This episode was edited by Katie Colaneri, with help from Lauren Chooljian, Dan Barrick, Taylor Quimby, and Rebecca Lavoie.
Photos and video for this episode by Casey McDermott.
Special thanks this episode to Kim Fallon.
By the way, Bear Brook led to the creation of a whole team at NHPR dedicated to making more podcast series like this. We're called the Document team and you can check out more of our work at the link in the show notes.
Additional photography and video for this series by Allie Claire.
Sara Plourde created our original artwork, as well as our website, bearbrookpodcast.com.
Original music for this show was composed by me, Jason Moon, and Taylor Quimby.
Dan Barrick is NHPR's News Director.
Rebecca Lavoie is our Director of On Demand Audio and Leah Todd Lin is Vice President of Audience Strategy.
Bear Brook is a production of the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio.
[THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT]