There are no known photographs of Rea, so investigators are continuing to use NCMEC’s facial reconstruction to provide the most accurate visual of what Rea may have looked like. Credit: New Hampshire State Police/NamUs
Nearly 50 years after her serial killer father allegedly murdered her, the DNA Doe Project has identified the little girl found in a barrel in Bear Brook State Park in 2000.
Her name was Rea Rasmussen, and she was the biological daughter of Terry Rasmussen—also known as the Chameleon Killer—and Pepper Reed. Rea was born in 1976 in California, and is thought to be between 2 and 4 years old at the time of her murder. Her mother, Reed, went missing in the late 1970s and may also be a victim of Rasmussen. Her body has never been recovered.
Discovery of the bodies
In 1985, a hunter walking along woods near a New Hampshire state park found a rusted 55-gallon drum. Inside, wrapped in plastic, were two badly decomposed bodies—a female adult and a female child. With no missing persons reports in the area, the case went cold quickly.
It didn’t heat back up until 15 years later when a New Hampshire trooper investigating the case went back to the area and found a second drum about 100 yards from the first. It was the same story—the drum contained the decomposed remains of two children, 2 to 4 years old and 1 to 3 years old. All four victims had been beaten, possibly to death, and some were dismembered. The killings are believed to have been committed by Rasmussen around the same time.
Over the years, multiple agencies got involved in the case, piecing together Rasmussen’s many identities and uncovering chilling details about his life. In 2018, a tip helped point to the identities of three of the four victims, and in 2019, advanced testing and genetic genealogy confirmed them as Marlyse Honeychurch and her two young daughters, Marie and Sarah.
According to police, Honeychurch was last seen in California around November 1978 when she introduced her family to her new boyfriend, Terry Rasmussen. After that, the family never saw Honeychurch or the young girls again.
Still, the identity of the fourth victim, the 2-to 4-year-old girl was unknown—until now.
Identification of "the middle child"
The New Hampshire State Police brought the case to the DNA Doe Project in January 2024. At this time, it was already known that the little girl was the biological daughter of Rasmussen, but her mother was still unknown.
A team of expert investigative genetic genealogists was assigned to the case, but research was complicated by a lack of DNA matches and a number of misattributed parentage events. As a result, they had to build family trees many generations back in time to make connections, ultimately amassing a tree containing 25,000 people. Eventually, the team identified a couple born in the 1780s as likely ancestors of the young Jane Doe. The descendants list led to a family of interest.
A 2005 obituary for one of the great-great-great granddaughters of the couple stated that she was survived by a daughter named Pepper Reed. Reed was born in 1952 and was from Houston, where Rasmussen was known to be living in the 1970s. But, further research indicated that Reed had disappeared from all records in the 1970s.
The team then found additional connections between Reed’s ancestors and the unidentified girl’s DNA matches, which confirmed that Pepper Reed had to be the mother of Jane Doe.
Within half an hour of identifying Reed as the child’s mother, the team found a birth record for a girl named Rea Rasmussen in Orange County, California in 1976. The mother’s listed maiden name was Reed. There were hundreds of girls with the surname Rasmussen born in the late 1970s in California alone, but with the Reed connection now known, a member of the team drove to Orange County to retrieve a copy of the birth certificate. The certificate listed Rea’s parents as Terry Rasmussen and Pepper Reed.
“To figure out the identity of our Jane Doe, we first had to find her mother,” said team leader Matthew Waterfield. “It took us almost 18 months to identify Pepper Reed, but once we knew her name, it led us right to her daughter.”
“Due to her young age and life circumstances, we were prepared for the possibility of only being able to identify her mother,” said investigative genetic genealogist Jeana Feehery. “Returning both Pepper and Rea's names to them, their families, and the greater community is the best possible outcome we could have hoped for.”
Reed was last seen by her family in Texas during Christmas 1975. At the time, she was pregnant and, according to the family, Rasmussen was the child’s father. However, after Christmas, the family said Reed moved to California and they never met the child or saw Reed again.
Investigators believe Reed may have also been a victim of Rasmussen. Police are looking for any information on her whereabouts. She was last seen in the late 1970s.
Timeline of the Bear Brook Murders
Rasmussen's web of lies, murder and false identities first began to unravel in 2002 when he was arrested for the murder of his girlfriend, Eunsoon Jun. Despite being arrested as Larry Vanner, his fingerprints came back belonging to Curtis Kimball, a California parolee who had disappeared after being released on a child endangerment charge. That charge stemmed from Rasmussen abandoning his 5-year-old child, Lisa Jenson, at a neighbor’s house. Subsequent DNA testing confirmed Rasmussen was not Lisa’s biological father.
In June 2003, Rasmussen was convicted of Jun’s murder and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison, where he would stay until 2010 when he died of natural causes. His death did not mean the end of the case, though. Investigators, amateur sleuths, professional genealogists and others continued their dogged pursuit for answers and identities.
In 2016, DNA testing revealed one of the children in the barrels was Rasmussen’s biological child—now identified as Rae Rasmussen.
Police also announced then that Denise Beaudin, one of Rasmussen’s girlfriends, was officially listed as missing and a suspected victim of the probable serial killer. Beaudin is the biological mother of Lisa Jenson. She, nor her remains, have been found.
In 2017, authorities revealed Rasmussen’s true name, and that he was suspected in the deaths of at least six people.
In 2019, genealogical research, including a message on ancestry.com, lead authorities to the identities of Honeychurch and her children Marie Elizabeth Vaughn and Sarah Lynn McWaters. Marie and Sarah were the oldest and youngest child victims, as Rae Rasmussen was aged between them.