'Chameleon' Serial Killer Left Children in Barrels — and the Newly Identified Victim Adds a Sickening Twist By KC Baker

Her tiny body was found stuffed in a barrel in the New Hampshire woods, one of four victims of the so-called Chameleon Killer.

No one knew who she was, where she was from or how she got there, until now.

On Sunday, Sept. 7, authorities announced that the final unidentified victim in the cold case slayings known as the Bear Brook murders has been identified as Rea Rasmussen, who was born in 1976 in Orange County, Calif., and was two to four years old when she was killed.

Known for years as “Jane Allenstown Doe 2000,” Rea was the daughter of Terry Peder Rasmussen, who became known as “the Chameleon Killer” for using many aliases including “Bob Evans,” according to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC.)

He was later identified as the person responsible for the four murders and is suspected of at least one more. Convicted of the 2002 murder of his common-law wife, he died in prison in 2010.

“This case has weighed on New Hampshire and the nation for decades,” Attorney General John M. Formella said in a press release. “With Rea Rasmussen’s identification, all four victims now have their names back.” 

The chilling case came to light in 1985, when hunters came upon the unidentified remains of a woman and a young girl in a 55-gallon drum barrel in Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown, N.H., according to NCMEC, which became involved in the case in 2008.

Fifteen years later, on May 9, 2000, a New Hampshire state trooper found a second barrel containing the remains of two young girls close to where the first barrel was found, according to NCMEC.

Authorities determined that the two children were killed in the late 1970s or early 1980s and were left inside the barrel in the park, according to the FBI.

The case was one of the first to use genetic genealogy to identify unknown victims. In 2019, DNA testing revealed the identities of three of the victims found in the barrels: Marlyse Honeychurch and her daughters, Marie Vaughn and Sarah McWaters, who were last seen in California in 1978. 

Authorities, however, did not know how the fourth victim, who became known as “the middle child,” was connected to the other three. 

In 2024, New Hampshire State Police began working with the DNA Doe Project, which identified Pepper Reed as Rea’s mother, which led them to identify Rea. Born in 1952, Reed has not been seen since the late 1970s.

Then came a big break this month, as DNA testing confirmed the identity of Jane Allenstown Doe 2000 as Rea Rasmussen.

“We never forgot Rea,” New Hampshire State Police Detective Sergeant Christopher N. Elphick said in the AG’s release. “We never stopped looking.”

Who Was The Chameleon Killer?

Wherever Terry Rasmussen went, people seemed to disappear, according to NCMEC.

After years of investigating, authorities learned that Terry Rasmussen used many different aliases in New Hampshire and California, where he lived — and preyed upon unwitting victims.

His knack for being able to disappear and resurface with a whole new identity led authorities to dub him the Chameleon Killer.

“Our suspect started in 1984 as ‘Curtis Kimball.’ Then we had ‘Gordon Jenson.’ Then he was using ‘Larry Vanner.’ And now, it turns out, in the early 1980s back in New Hampshire, he was using ‘Bob Evans,’” San Bernardino County, Calif. Sheriff’s Deputy Peter Headley said, ABC News reported. “All the same guy.”

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Rasmussen is suspected in other missing persons cases — and other murders.

“I fear that he continued the pattern of killing people,” Elphick told NHPR. “He’s one of the only serial offenders that killed victims he actually knew and had relationships with, which is certainly unique. And he — I do not mean this [in] any way, shape or form as a compliment — but he was extremely skilled.”

He is glad that authorities were able to finally identify the little girl in the barrel.

“Naming her brings a sense of justice but also reminds us of the unanswered questions that remain,” Elphick said in the release. “We continue to seek answers about the disappearance of Pepper Reed.”