Authorities unveil true identity of N.H. serial killer

By NICK REID

Monitor staff

Published: 08-18-2017 11:49 PM

Authorities on Friday unveiled the true identity of a serial killer who used an alias while he murdered five people tied to two New Hampshire cold cases.

The man who killed a woman and three children and stuffed their bodies into barrels near Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown was called Bob Evans locally, but his real name was Terry Peder Rasmussen, originally of Colorado, according to DNA evidence.

Rasmussen died of natural causes in 2010 in a California prison while serving out a sentence for killing a woman whom he claimed was his wife, Eunsoon Jun.

The state attorney general’s office believes that Rasmussen is also responsible for the 1981 disappearance and likely murder of a Manchester woman, Denise Beaudin.

The identities of the woman and three children found in Allenstown remain unknown, decades after the first two bodies – a woman and elementary school-age girl – were discovered in a 55-gallon drum in 1985.

The other two bodies – children from one to four years old – were discovered in a second barrel 15 years later on the same property near the state park. DNA testing revealed he was the father of one of the children.

For Ronda Randall, a Maine geneologist formerly of New Boston who has dedicated years trying to identify those victims, she said it’s a “red-letter day” in the case, but mostly because the revelation may bring investigators one step closer to the victims’ identities.

“You almost don’t even want to give (Rasmussen’s) name the time of day, but you just hope now that knowing his name and more of a timeline on him is going to lead to the identity of those victims,” Randall said Friday, praising the dedication of the investigators.

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Attorney General Gordon MacDonald announced Rasmussen’s name in a statement Friday, months after it organized a press conference in January to release photos and details about the killer. At the time, he was known only as Evans, one of several aliases he has employed.

In addition to his time in New Hampshire in the late 1970s, when he worked at Waumbec Mills in Manchester, Rasmussen spent time in Colorado, Texas, Arizona, California, Oregon and Virginia.

Assistant Attorney General Jeffery Strelzin has said Rasmussen “certainly fits the profile of a serial killer.”

“This has been a cooperative venture with a lot of agencies involved,” said Strelzin said Friday. “Because he left victims from one end of the country to the other, a lot of people have been working together on this and continue to work together, and we very much appreciate that.”

Gordon said in a statement that investigators obtained a DNA sample from Rasmussen’s adult son, which helped to confirm the killer’s true identity.

Investigators are still working to account for Rasmussen’s whereabouts between 1974 and the time he arrived in New Hampshire in the late 1970s posing as Bob Evans, Gordon said. They hope this new information “will generate tips from the public as to Rasmussen’s whereabouts during the mid to late 1970s, and the identity of any females or children accompanying him.”

(Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Nick Reid can be reached at 369-3325, nreid@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @NickBReid.)

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