Hunter Finds Sealed Blue Barrel in Forest and Discovers Two Bodies Wrapped in Darkness: The Rasmussen Serial Murders
November 1985. A man walks through Bear Brook State Park in New Hampshire searching for deer. Instead, he finds a rusty industrial barrel sealed shut. Inside: human remains wrapped in black plastic, tied with electrical wire. A woman. A child. Dismembered. No one had reported them missing.
This episode explores the impossible mystery of invisible victims-women and children who vanished without triggering a single official investigation, a pattern of disappearances across eleven states and Canada, and the contradiction that would take fifteen years and a second barrel to reveal a connection. How does a family disappear without anyone noticing they are gone?
Victim: Marlis Hinyar, Mary Bow, Sara Maws
Date: November 1985 discovery; victims killed circa 1978-1981
Location: Bear Brook State Park, Allenstown, New Hampshire
Status: Solved 2019
- A hunter discovers a blue barrel containing a woman and child dismembered and wrapped in black bags tied with electrical wire in a remote New Hampshire forest.
- Fifteen years later, a second identical barrel is found 100 meters away, containing two more child skeletons, revealing the adult woman was the mother of multiple victims.
- DNA genealogy by civilian investigators-a librarian, genealogist, and DNA databases-solves what police could not, identifying the killer as Terrence Peter Rasmussen, who used five different names across eleven states.
- The victims' mother, Marlis Hinyar, disappeared in 1978 with her two daughters, reported missing only in a private notice published nineteen years later that police had never connected to the barrel investigation.
Marlis Hinyar, Bear Brook State Park, New Hampshire, 1985, Rasmussen serial killer, dismembered remains, genealogy investigation, invisible victims, forensic DNA, multiple identities, true crime English
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