We know a lot about the Bear Brook State Park murders.
We wish we knew more, though.
We know the killer’s name is Terry Peder Rasmussen, not Bob Evans or Gerry Mockerman or any of the other aliases he once used. We also know he fathered four children, he left New Hampshire with a Goffstown High School graduate, he killed a woman in California and, after his conviction for that murder, he died in prison seven years ago.
But Sgt. Mike Kokoski of the state’s Cold Case Unit still wonders about the woman and three little girls found in barrels near the park, one in 1985, the other 15 years later.
They remain unidentified more than three decades after their deaths.
In short, we’re not done with this nightmare yet. There’s more information yet to be discovered.
“The Allenstown case will be closed when those victims are identified,” Kokoski told me Thursday by phone.
The attorney general’s office released more pieces to a scattered puzzle Thursday, following the announcement in August that the killer was Rasmussen and he grew up in Arizona.
There wasn’t much new here, other than a few tidbits added to a timeline that takes several reads before fully sinking in.
And even then, it proves perplexing.
Not only are police still trying to figure out the names of the four females found near the park, but they’d also like to know what happened to Denise Beaudin, the Goffstown girl who left the state with her daughter and Rasmussen in 1981.
She hasn’t been heard from since, and police believe she was killed by Rasmussen as well. The point is, the more authorities feed the media information about this awful tale, the better the chance that someone will come forward and unlock these mysteries.
As Kokoski told me, “Admittedly, the press release today isn’t any kind of bombshell, really. It’s just kind of a revision and a small update to the timeline. We want to keep that out there and keep that current just for that reason.”
The story of Rasmussen, who’s probably killed six people that we know of, spreads across the country. He was raised in Arizona, he lived in Hawaii, he moved to California and he worked in Texas.
And then there’s his connection to New Hampshire, the epicenter of a madman’s evil behavior.
It was here that Rasmussen took the name Bob Evans and worked as an electrician. It was here that he convinced Beaudin to leave the state with him, along with her 6-month-old daughter, who was later abandoned and whose DNA linked her mother to Rasmussen/Evans.
And it was here, in about 1980, that Rasmussen killed those three little girls and that woman, none of whom have yet to be identified. The woman, estimated to be 23- to 33-years-old, and a girl whom forensics revealed was between 5 and 11, were found near Bear Brook in a 55-gallon drum.
Then, 15 years later, two girls, both around 2 years old, were found in another barrel in the same area.
In the years since, DNA showed that the woman was somehow related to two of the girls, although officials could not determine if she was their mother.
The other younger girl, science showed, was Rasmussen’s daughter, leading investigators to wonder who the mother was and whether she was alive or dead.
Looking through the maze-like timeline shows that Rasmussen and an unknown woman visited his then-wife and their four children in December of 1975 or ‘76 in Payson, Ariz. That woman may very well be the mother of the dead girl found here, and, of course, she may well be dead herself.
“We’re very interested in this unidentified woman who he was seen with in Arizona by family members,” Kokoski said. “That woman we think potentially could be critical to all of this and it could be the mother of that child here in Allenstown, or maybe not. It could be some other woman.
“But whoever it is,” Kokoski continued, “she certainly has insight into that critical period, and if she is in fact the mother of the child here in New Hampshire, obviously we want to identify her.”
In other words, police will continue searching, continue sending press releases, continue using media to spread the word and find some answers.
They want to know what happened to Beaudin, who was 23 when she disappeared.
“The Manchester Police Department case with Denise Beaudin will remain open until they find, presumably, her remains,” Kokoski said.
The Bear Brook State Park murders are wide open as well.
Not who committed the crime.
Who these four people were.
“The primary objectives here are to identify the Allenstown victims and find Denise Beaudin,” Kokoski said. “I think for all intents and purposes, once those goals are met, the case would end in terms of New Hampshire.”
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(Ray Duckler can be reached at 369-3304 or rduckler@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @rayduckler.)