The Bear Brook Murders!
This is one of the famous cold cases in modern US history. The bizarre thing is they found the identity of the killer but not of the victims. It’s usually the other way around.
Old cold case from Allentown, New Hampshire from 31-39 years ago. The bodies were discovered 31 years ago and 16 years ago in two separate sets of two bodies each. The victims were a woman aged 28, a girl aged 10, another girl aged 4, and a girl aged 3. The woman and the 10 year old were found first in 1985 in a state park. The girl may be the woman’s daughter. The 3 year old girl may be a second daughter of the same woman. The 10 year old may be her sister.
Fifteen years later, the 4 year old and 3 year old were found in another 55 gallon drum elsewhere near the state park off a road leading to a mobile home park. There was a trailer and a burned camp stove on the property. It is now known that Evans was living in that camper doing electrical work from 1980-1981. So he was living on the property where two of the bodies were found, and he was also living close to the state park where the other barrels were found.
The 10 and 3 year old girls are related to the mother somehow. Either she is their mother or their sister or aunt.
The girl aged 4 is not related to the others. Instead she is the daughter of the man now named as the killer, Bob Evans. He killed his own 4 year old daughter and he also killed a woman and two young girls related to her. The woman, the 10 year old and the 3 year old had been living in the northeastern US for at least a few months before they were killed. However, Evans’ daughter age 4 had spent most of her life in the Central US. So she was born via Evans in the Central US in 1976. It looks like he may have taken her with him to New Hampshire in 1979 when she was 3 years old. Around this time, he signed for a mail package at his home in the name of a woman he said was his wife, Elizabeth Evans. It is possible that this woman may be dead if she existed at all.
These four people were probably killed between 1980-1981. He used wire taken from the phone company where the girlfriend worked to bind the bodies. He buried the bodies in 55 gallon drums taken from a mill where he worked as a mechanic and electrician. To this date, we have absolutely no idea who any of these four victims are. One problem is that we know the father of the murdered 4 year old. That’s Evans. But no one knows who the mother was. I believe authorities are very worried about the fate of this woman. But no one even knows who she is!
If the barrel victims were his first kills, then that means that Evans did not start killing until age 37. But maybe he has other victims from before. That is a bit late for a serial killer. They often start in their late 20’s. No one knows the faintest thing about Evans life from birth in 1943 in Wyoming until age 34 in 1979 in New Hampshire. It is thought that he may have been in the military, possibly in the Navy. He wandered around the country as a hardcore alcoholic, seldom living more than months in one place. A lot of people knew him during these times, but most describe him as aloof and weird.
He was arrested repeatedly in the 1980’s, and it’s doubtful that he started a criminal career at age 38. But we know nothing about the first 34 years of life, so that’s a blank area.
In addition, he left Manchester, New Hampshire in 1981 with his girlfriend, Denise Beaudin and a 6 month old girl. The girl was Denise’s daughter but Evans was not the father. Denise Beaudin was never seen again, but she was not reported missing until 35 years after her disappearance. I believe that the police are also concerned about the mother of the girl fathered by Evans, even though they have no idea who she is. Evans lived in Manchester from the late 1970’s-1980’s, and he listed a certain woman, Elizabeth Evans, as his wife. He listed her as his wife once again in California in 1985 when he was arrested again.
Evans was a man of many aliases. He had more names than the average phone book! He was a chameleon, constantly traveling all over the country and using new names in many places. He often spent time in RV parks and campgrounds. He stayed with the girl from 1981-1985 in California until people become suspicious about his relationship with her. He then abandoned her in a campground and gave her to some other campers for safekeeping. Campers notified authorities and she was taken into foster care. She is still alive and to my knowledge she has said nothing about the first five years of her life with Evans in New Hampshire. Denise Beaudoin disappeared 35 years ago and no one knows where she is. Authorities now believe that she is dead, but we do not know where the body is.
Bob Evans was probably born in 1943 in Wyoming, was in Colorado until 1953 and then lived in Arizona until 1973. After that, he may have lived in all sorts of states, including Hawaii, Missouri, Virginia, Washington, Oregon, Georgia, Texas and Quebec, Canada. He spent most of the 1980’s in California, at least from 1981-1986. He was in Idaho from 1986-1988. He left Idaho in a car stolen from the town where he had been living and drove to California. There he was arrested in San Luis Obispo for auto theft. He was also arrested in Cypress in 1985. He lived in Anaheim in 1984. Around 1986, he was in Felton and Scott’s Valley, where he abandoned the five year old girl to a family in the park who then adopted her as an orphan.
She reported that he had abused her in some way either physically or sexually, probably sexually. The problem he keeps getting wanted as a suspect in Crime A committed in Year A and then he gets arrested again for Crime B in year B and he has a warrant out but every time he’s on the lam for some crime, he goes and gets a new name. So the guy arrested in Year B does not have the same name as the wanted man from Year A, so they had a hard time tracking him from one crime to the next because he changed his name all the time.
In 1989, Evans vanishes off the face of the Earth for 12 years and is not seen again until 2001, when he turns up on Contra Costa County where he was working on a Korean woman’s house. He soon married the Korean woman in a backyard ceremony that was never officially recognized. Within only one year, this woman, Eunsun Lee, is dead. Evans murdered like the others, beating her to death and then chopping up her body into pieces. He buried her in the cellar. This time he got caught for homicide and in 2002, he was sentenced to 15-life for Lee’s murder. Eight years later in 2010, Evans is dead in prison of natural causes at age 67. He had been an alcoholic from at least age 34 until age 59 when he was arrested.
No one even knows how old Evans was when he died because he gave different birth dates for every new alias, so he listed dates from 1934-1952 as birthdates. So according to him, he was anywhere from 58-76 years old when he died, depending on when he was born. I lean to towards the latter or possibly the early 1940’s. These guys don’t make it into their 70’s. They lived too hard for that. Their lives tend to be short, nasty and brutish.
One major problem. Although “Bob Evans” died in Susanville Prison in California in 2010, no one even knows if that is his real name. People do time under aliases all the time. Some people get arrested and never tell the police or jail people their name. I was told that quite a few guys do time as John Doe. Incredible.
So we know that “Bob Evans” is a murderer of six females, but who in the Hell is Bob Evans? Is that even his name? If not, what is his real name? Where was he born and when? Who were his father and mother. So this guy is a known serial killer, but we’re not even sure if we know his name!
This whole case is absolutely insane! We hardly even know the names of the killers or the victims and some of the bodies are missing. Good God.
Enough material here for a great mystery novel.
The Web Sleuths are on the case! I love this site, and there are some really fine amateur detectives on there. You can literally spend entranced hours on the site if you like unsolved homicide murder mysteries. You should go over there sometime if you are into this gruesome stuff. A lot of people probably think it’s horrible, but I would rather read about unsolved murders than current politics. The latter almost makes me suicidal, but a good murder mystery is a barrel of ticks!
