The monster was good at what he did, good at running and hiding, good at covering his tracks, good at making his victims disappear.
Jeff Strelzin, the senior assistant attorney general, named the monster as Bob Evans at a press conference Thursday, but that was to simplify a decades-old story. Evans was just one of his names, the one he used while living in Manchester with Denise Beaudin. She’s yet to be found, but officials are confident he killed Beaudin after bolting the state with her and her daughter in 1981.
Beaudin was 23.
The monster killed at least five others, including four yet-to-be identified females found in two barrels in Allenstown years ago. He went by other names to cover his tracks, sometimes he was Curtis Mayo Kimball, or Gordon Curtis Jenson, or Gerald E. Mockerman, or Lawrence William Vanner.
He had other aliases as well, other variations on those names, a strategy that kept the monster in the shadows for so long. We don’t know the monster’s real name, his birthdate, where he was born, how many siblings he had, what his parents were like, where he was through the 1990s.
“This is a guy that was a chameleon,” Strelzin said.
We know some things after Strelzin, Manchester Police Detective Ryan Grant and Mike Kokoski of the state’s Cold Case Unit relayed information and answered questions for more than an hour.
We know the monster also killed a woman in California, Eunsoon Jun, and we know he died in prison from natural causes seven years ago, while serving a 15-to-life sentence for that murder.
We know the monster was an electrician at Waumbec Mills in Manchester, and that his supervisor owned the property where the two barrels were found.
We know the police hope you can help them identify the woman and three children found in those barrels, one barrel in 1985, the other in 2000.
“One theory is that he was using these children not just as an abuser, but as bait to lure other people to him,” Strelzin said.
And we know something really scary, something that will keep this case in the news, because the monster spent plenty of time on the run, enough time to have killed more people – more, even, than all those aliases he used.
“We’re hoping by releasing that information about the killer, that will help identify the victims in the case,” Strelzin said, before uttering his chilling follow-up: “and other victims we believe this killer is responsible for.”
Strelzin was certain that the monster’s trail of murder will lead in other directions, that it did not end with these six victims. No one was off the monster’s radar, including his own daughter, one of the three girls found in Allenstown, killed shortly before the monster left the area with Beaudin and her 6-month-old daughter in 1981.
Beaudin has not been seen or heard from since, and Strelzin said he’s confident the monster killed her somewhere between New Hampshire and California. He had been arrested for issuing a bad check and diverting an electric current before leaving here.
After his disappearance, more arrests followed in California, for driving under the influence, for stealing a car, then for the murder of Jun.
The photos we saw at the press conference showed a man with a thick beard, disheveled hair and a blank expression. They showed a man whose crimes were shocking, even to such hard-boiled and veteran professionals as the ones who spoke at the press conference.
“He certainly fits the profile of a serial killer,” Strelzin said, adding, “A very unusual case. Typically we don’t have victims unidentified for so long and then have someone who appears to be a serial killer.”
Questions connected to the monster remain. Where is the mother of the middle child found near Bear Brook State Park, the little girl fathered by the monster?
“We certainly have concerns about the mother of that little child in Allenstown, her whereabouts and whether she’s alive,” Strelzin said.
Also, what was the relationship between the monster and the other three females found in those two barrels? Where was the monster during the entire decade of the 1990s? Was he a member of the military, as police suspect? How did the monster avoid capture for so long? And, finally, who the heck was the monster?
“Frankly,” Kokoski said, “we do not know the true identity of the subject right now. He had five main aliases.”
“We have no idea what his life was like essentially prior to 1977,” Strelzin said. “We don’t even know exactly how old he was.”
There’s a light here, some happiness. The monster didn’t kill Beaudin’s daughter, Lisa, choosing, instead, to abandon her after staying with her until she was 5 or 6 years old.
“He had his reasons for keeping Lisa with him,” Strelzin said, “and then he decided he didn’t want her anymore.”
DNA testing led to a reunion with Lisa’s cousins and grandfather here in New Hampshire. Strelzin declined to reveal where Lisa lives, saying she had requested privacy. He read a letter from her.
“Currently I have three beautiful children and a loving husband, and would like our presently happy and secure life to remain intact and protected through the release of this story. Please turn your focus toward the unidentified victims, and other potentially unknown victims in this case.”
Unknown victims because the monster was good at what he did.
He was good at being a monster.