Known Only To God

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Tammy regularly haul stuff to her kids at college. That's why she shops at BJ's wholesale club, saving up to 25% off grocery store prices. Beef jerky, microwave meals, laundry pods, even they can't screw up. Have you met my kid? And with BJ's gas, she gets there for less. They call me the road warrior. This is your home, road warrior mom. Home of the save. Join for just $20 at BJ's.com/maskete and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon, limited time offer new members only. BJ's home of the save. Previously on Bear Brook. I believe it was Keith who said that he found a barrel just out in the woods. You know, there was a barrel out there. The barrel was on the ground and it was a bag. And when I opened the bag, well, the face was the decomposed face was looking right at me. The next thing I know, the town's getting together to put a headstone on these bodies. Where are these people? When I picked up the Allen's town case, I was trying to almost walk through their footsteps. And that's when I came across the barrel. When I looked at it, I said, "This does not look good." For 15 years, the second barrel was sitting just 300 feet away from where the first barrel was found in the woods of Allen's town, New Hampshire. It was 300 feet away when the Morgan sun, Jesse and his friends pushed over the first barrel in the summer of 1985. It was there later that year when a hunter saw the bodies and called the police. It was there 100 yards away as detectives searched in vain for clues about the first two victims. And it was there when detectives left. When the case went cold and people started to forget. It sat there as Jesse Morgan grew up and left the trailer park for college. As Ron Mont Pleasure, the officer who found the first barrel, neared his retirement. It sat there through 15 New Hampshire winters. The blue paint slowly turning brown with rust. It sat there until State Trooper John Cody spotted it. Late one spring afternoon as dusk was settling in. The first thing going through my mind, do we have a dump site here? Is somebody using this area to dump the bodies of people that they've killed? And I was kind of like, "No, this is New Hampshire. We don't expect this stuff." For people like Anne and Kevin Morgan who lived on the edge of the park, it was startling to think that police had missed something so important. I mean, it's hard to believe, isn't it? I was mortified. They had been there that long. I mean, what does that tell you about the investigation? Really, I mean, I mean, it says something about the investigation that basically was not. 15 years, 15 years. Why wasn't that barrel found? This is Barebrook. I'm Jason Moon. Before we talk about what happened after the second set of bodies were found, we're going to spend some time trying to answer that uncomfortable question. Why did it take so long to find? The second barrel has always been an awkward topic for police in New Hampshire. They know the fact that it took them 15 years to find it doesn't look good. Here's Ron Mont Pleasure, the officer who found the first barrel in 1985. Um, I got kind of, it's a geese, you know what? I set up the perimeter. I guess I didn't set it up, kind of kind of slapped myself saying, wow, why, why, why? Why didn't we do a bigger perimeter? But we were just focused on that first barrel. I mean, you have to understand that this is a wooded area. This is a very thick forest and it was a lot of clutter. And like looking for a needle in a haystack, you know, who would think, you know? In case you're wondering, investigators today are confident. Both barrels were there in 1985. But it's not just Mont Pleasure who argues that finding the second barrel was easier said than done. Authorities at the state level who are in charge of the case today will say pretty much the same thing. This came up at a press conference a few years ago. When a reporter with the state's largest newspaper put the question to Benjamin Agate, a prosecutor with the New Hampshire Attorney General's office. It took 15 years to find the second oil drum. It wouldn't have been there. It was only 300 feet away. Was it buried or was it hidden or was it just overlooked? It doesn't seem like it was that far away. Well, I think if we were talking about an area that had more, let's say, you know, bike trails, it was more marked, then I could certainly see your point on that. But with regards to this, it was 300 feet away. We're also talking about an area that's just heavily wooded. And quite frankly, I don't think that finding that second barrel any sooner would change the information that we have to present today. So either the barrel was only 300 feet away or it was 300 feet away. As you can hear, your opinion on this is open to interpretation. And, uh, okay, so you're barrel one. Okay, I'm barrel one and you're found. It is hard to imagine what 300 feet actually looks like. So producer Taylor Quimby and I went to a local high school football field to get a better idea. Taylor stood at one goal line while I walked across the length of the football field to the other. Can you hear me? Just barely. Just barely. I can definitely see you. At this point, 300 feet was feeling like an absurdly short distance for someone to have missed the second barrel. But of course, the barrels weren't found in an open field with clear lines of sight. They were found in the woods. This will be a good test because we're both wearing very brightly colored flannel. I paced out the same number of steps in the woods with Taylor again staying behind to mark the location of the first barrel. One, two, three, five, four, six, five, six, seven, ninety eight. Okay, turning around and I cannot see Taylor at all. In the woods with trees and brush and boulders in between, 300 feet seemed to mean something different than it did on the football field. Even when we tried to find our way back to each other, it took a while just to figure out where that was. I'm at the top of the hill now, can you see me? I'm not sure. I can't see you. Can you see me? Nope. Where the hell are you? I thought you're sure it was. That's a bit different. Yeah, that is. I think, yeah, in terms of like how far would I search? I'm now thinking like I would never go that far. You know what I mean? Like if I take that distance and then like imagine like the radius, like circling it around in every direction from the crime scene, you know, that's huge. That's a lot of like-- Well, you can't do it one person. That's true. Because I disagree. Like I think, I would like to think that if you found two bodies in a barrel, anywhere that you would do at least that much. But I picked, I'm picturing a team of people and maybe some dogs, you know? Like I'm picturing this like prison break scene where you got a whole bunch of people coming through fields and forests and one of you. So it's definitely much harder to find something 300 feet away in the woods, even when that thing is shouting at you. But clearly the barrel wasn't impossible to find. And in the end, it was a single investigator on his first trip out to the scene who found it. Which brings us back to that same question. Why didn't they find it in 1985 with the other barrel? Why weren't there large teams of investigators walking shoulder to shoulder? to shoulder through the woods after the First Barrel was found. Why wasn't it more like that prison break scene that Taylor was imagining? One explanation, maybe you'd call it an excuse, is that the Allentz town PD was just a small town police force, a few officers and few resources. Remember they were deputizing local residents just to secure the area. But then state police didn't find it either, and they were the ones ultimately in charge of the investigation. In either case, there's a big reason why investigators may have felt in over their heads. Just before the first bodies were found in Bearbrook, there was another murder, just a few miles away. Let's just go through the whole case. What's the best place to start? Yes, I guess we started on November 9th, 1985. Kevin Flynn is a true crime author and a long time reporter, my new hamster. Danny Pauquette was a welder, lived in Hookset, New Hampshire. He was working in his backyard welding a bulldozer, and two of his friends were in his garage repairing and restoring a car, and they heard a noise. They came out, they found Danny lying on the ground, they thought he had electrocuted himself with the arc welder, but he was bleeding from the chest. Danny Pauquette had been shot and killed. It wasn't exactly clear from where or by whom, but the only explanation seemed to be that the bullet came from the woods near his house. When state police first arrived at the scene, they wondered if Danny Pauquette had died in a hunting accident, but they couldn't be sure, so a homicide investigation was open. That was Saturday. On Sunday, the first barrel in the Bearbrook case was discovered. New Hampshire average is only about 15 murders a year, so starting two cases on the same weekend put a real strain on state police. Some of the detectives who started on the Pauquette case were called off the next day to go work the Bearbrook murders. It was the beginning of two parallel investigations, two separate mysteries. They would end up influencing each other for decades to come. In Allenstown, officers began by interviewing people in town, but no one seemed to know anything. In Hookset, people seemed to know a lot. Investigators quickly realized that if Danny Pauquette's death was a homicide, there would be no shortage of possible suspects. Danny was a really interesting character because there were a lot of folks who had a reason to, you know, want to hurt him. He was a ladies man. He had a black book that was filled with the names of girlfriends and wives, people in town. On the Bearbrook case, detectives were going through stacks of missing persons reports, still just trying to identify the victims. On the Pauquette case, police had the victims ID and half a dozen people who might have a grudge against him. They had plausible theories and potential evidence, lots of potential evidence. One of the weirdest details was in their investigation, they found out that somebody had been in a hot air balloon and was videotaping the scenery and went right over Danny's house, you know, about the time of the shooting. I saw the videotape, there was nothing on there, but it was just like, I mean, could this get any weirder? The hot air balloon camcorder tape would turn out to be a giant waste of time, but at least in the Pauquette case, there was stuff like this to sift through. It had momentum where the Bearbrook investigation was spinning its wheels. So maybe it makes sense then that, according to Flynn, the Pauquette investigation ended up receiving more attention from state police. Probably the best detective of that era on the state police was a guy by the name of Roland Lamy and he was on this case along with John Bartholomew, who is the current commissioner of safety. Those were the two sharpest guys they had and they were over and hoax it, they weren't over and out. Meanwhile, the two cases weren't just dividing the attention of state police. They were also creating false leads for each other. There aren't so many homicides in New Hampshire, and when you have two on the same weekend, you know, a relatively short distance apart, you got to at least think, well, I don't know, could this somehow have, you know, one thing to do with the other? It wasn't a totally crazy idea. A mysterious shooting and discovering two bodies in a blue barrel on the same weekend, only a few miles apart. It was a coincidence that this couldn't be ignored, but in the end it was just a coincidence and another dead end that detectives found themselves in. Eventually, after enough of these dead ends, both cases ground to a halt. In the Bearbrook investigation, detectives felt there was nothing else they could try. In a pocket case, investigators just decided their initial hunch was right. It was a hunting accident. No arrests, just a stray bullet, case closed. For months, the Bearbrook and Pocket investigations had fought over resources, and who knows how things might have gone differently if that hadn't been the case. But ironically, the same case that distracted investigators from Bearbrook would later give them hope that it could be solved. That's because in 1999, 14 years later, the pocket investigation was reopened. It wasn't a hunting accident after all, then a pocket was murdered. The case was solved by a private investigator. He'd been hired by the Hookset Police Chief, who didn't have the manpower to assign one of his own detectives to work a cold case full time. That private investigator found a hole in the alibi of Danny Pockett's teenage stepdaughter and a friend of hers from school. That revelation ultimately led to a confession and a conviction. And I think that, you know, after the Hookset case, after the pocket case, you know, there was really a feeling that, you know, this could be done if the resources are set aside. Is it the biggest, most famous cold case in New Hampshire or the pocket case? I think up until yours. This episode is sponsored by Quince. The best pieces in your closet are the ones you can count on, whether you're heading to work, going out, or keeping things casual. In this time of year, Quince wants to make finding something great for everyone else on your list, just as easy. Quince focuses on high-quality wardrobe staples, made with premium materials like 14-karat gold and Italian leather, timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap, and become everyday favorites long after the holidays. Quince says everything is priced 50-80% less than similar brands. Their cashmere sweaters started $60. They're going for luxury quality without the luxury price tag. I'm partial to my Quince sunglasses, which honestly, I think would look good on anyone. And when it comes to gifting, Quince has more than clothes. 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Before I started reporting this story, it had never really occurred to me just how hard it is to solve a murder when you don't know who the victim is. That might sound obvious. But I think it's easy to underestimate just how much of a hurdle it is to finding a suspect. When you don't know the victim, there's no motive. There are no neighbors to talk to, no friends, no enemies, no disgruntled exes. There's a line from a local news article written about the Bearbrook case that reads, "Police hoped to solve the mystery in three steps. Learn where they're from, discover who they are, and then find the killer." When State Trooper John Cody found the second barrel in 2000, police were 15 years into the case and still very much at step one. I ended up seeing this plastic and I peeled it back and then I saw what appeared to me to be a bone. And of course, you're trying to talk yourself out of it saying there's no way this is happening. On that day, after he peered into the second barrel with his flashlight, Cody immediately called his superiors. And at first, they didn't really believe him. You know, I think it was probably one of those things where they figured it's close to the weekend, they'll come out, they'll take a look. They know it's not what I thought it was and then they'll be on their way home, but it didn't turn out like that. Instead, officers found the remains of two young girls in the second barrel. One was about three years old. The other, only about two. The remains were skeletal and wrapped in some sort of plastic. Like the other victims, they were killed by blunt fourth trauma to the head. And this put the total number of victims in the Barabra case to four, a woman and three kids. Their estimated ages, late 20s for the adult, nine for the oldest child, three for the middle child and two for the youngest child. The adult and the oldest child were found in the first barrel, the two youngest in the second barrel. - It became apparent. I mean, we're talking about how does an entire family just go missing. (soft music) Several years later, DNA testing of the remains would sketch the rough outline of a family. The results showed the adult female is maternally related to the oldest and youngest children. Most likely their mother, though it's possible she's a cousin or a sister. But interestingly, those DNA tests showed no relationship between the middle child and any of the other victims. Investigators have speculated that she might have been a stepchild or an adoption. Back in 2000, after State Trooper John Cody discovered the second barrel, he and other investigators went back over everything they knew about the case. They re-interviewed people in town, entertain new theories and searched again through national databases of missing persons. Investigators hope the second barrel would be the key that one of the new victims would be matched to a missing persons report, an identity, and a timeline, a list of possible suspects, finally emotive. They hoped it would become like a normal homicide investigation. Instead, it was a tedious case of deja vu. Investigators in 2000 combed through the same information as detectives in 1985 had, with the same disappointing results. - A couple little specs here and there, which would lead to a couple of other things, but it's sort of like getting lost in the city and you take it right, you take a left and you end up on dead end streets or alleyways at every turn and that's pretty much where this case goes. - Did you guys ever get as far as they have any suspects? - No, not even close, no. - As important as Cody's discovery of the second barrel was, in the end it did little to move the case forward. If anything, it was like the case was moving backwards, getting worse as time went on. In 1985, there were two bodies in a barrel and no leads. 15 years later, all investigators had to show for their efforts or four bodies in two barrels with no leads. But that didn't mean that people gave up on the case. In fact, the daunting nature of the challenge even attracted new people. While the official investigation into the bearbrook murders remained pretty much static, an amateur investigator named Ronda Randall picked up the case. - Certainly there's a lot of people looking for people in this country for one reason or another. - Ronda is someone who knows how to find someone. By day, she's a social worker. In the rest of her time, she's a genealogist who specializes in adoption searches. That's reuniting adopted people with their biological parents. - Well, in the 80s, when I first started doing it, I mean, I didn't even have a personal computer at home. It was a lot of phone calls. I mean, there was a time when my phone bill for a month ran at around $1,100 and my husband was like, I don't know about this hobby, you know? - I first met Ronda through her blog, Oak Hill Research. It chronicles the history of the bearbrook murders and her own efforts since 2011 to identify the victims. I should mention two things here. First, Ronda isn't really the true crime type. She wasn't interested in criminology before this case. She wasn't binge-watching episodes of forensic files. In fact, she doesn't really watch TV. Second, she grew up in New Hampshire, but didn't hear about the murders until later in life. After she had moved to a town in Maine, about two hours from Alunstown. She said she only really became interested in the bearbrook case after the internet came around and online messaging boards started making adoption searches too easy. - I think right around the time my kids left home, I was looking for something a little bit different, but still in a genealogy and research world and had come across the story of the Alunstown victims and being unfamiliar with it. I am a genealogist, I thought, surely we can turn up some identities for these folks. And that's really where it began. - Later, Ronda would tell me she had a two-year-old niece who died of leukemia, not long before she started on the bearbrook case. Now she wonders if that may have had something to do with how she felt about the mystery. - I just thought of the process our family went through and fighting to keep her alive and then grieving her death and then to think of a little child about her age who nobody seems to be coming forward for. That was, if the case struck me so hard because I saw those little unidentified children, you know, and felt like who's mourning for them? (gentle music) - The way Ronda looked at it, this wouldn't be all that different from an adoption search. Over the years, Ronda says she's identified upwards of 150 people using public records, a phone, and a lot of hard work. In this case, the only difference was that the people she wanted to identify were murder victims. So Ronda got to work. And I don't think Ronda would disagree if I said she can get a little obsessive about her research projects. The first time we spoke on the phone, she told me she's just well suited for it. She doesn't mind doing the kind of grinding, monotonous research that most people hate. One time I went to the New Hampshire State Library and I read the Concord 1984 phone book, every name, every page. It took me 14 hours, it took two days, and I was motion sick by the end of every day. Like severely motion sick. (gentle music) I've been called whether it's a compliment or not, I don't know, but you know, a pit bull, that kind of thing, you know, I tend to be tenacious. I sink my teeth in something and I don't let go. (gentle music) Ronda began her research on the Bearbrook case with her usual level of dog and interest. But it became something more than just a research project in the summer of 2011. That's when she decided she needed to see the area where the barrels were found in person. It was Memorial Day, a weekend of 2011. I enlisted one of my brothers, Scott Maxwell. He lives in New Hampshire to accompany me. And we kind of just figured we'd go out to the area and talk to some neighbors and just learn a little bit more about it. But it was that trip, that day out there that really kind of sparked an obsessive interest in the research on this case. - I wanted to see what Ronda and her brother, Scott, saw that day when they first visited the area where the bodies were found. So one day we parked on the shoulder of a winding road in Allenstown and then set off into the woods. - That's beautiful. - It really is. It's kind of an interesting juxtaposition of a terribly morbid event in a beautiful setting. - It was December 2015. And I can remember my hand was freezing from holding the mic. But I was also riveted. It was my first trip out here, just a few weeks after I first learned about the case. - Yeah, the first time I came, I think it just had a really profound impact on me. There was kind of a hush out here and I felt like there was a spirit and kind of a sacred feel to where they were found. - Ronda and Scott led me down a snowmobile trail toward the site of the first barrel. They'd piece together the approximate location based on interviews with retired Allenstown cops like Ron Montgomery Pleasure and his former chief as well as residents of the trailer park like Kevin Morgan, who was deputized to keep the press away from the site. The snowmobile trail led down a slight incline. All around us, the forest floor was covered in a thick blanket of leaves. a few boulders peeked through here and there and then suddenly we had arrived and by all sounds it was about 20 feet off to the left on this area so I'm not sure you know in this little strip you know was it there or there but I was struck by just how quickly we reached the spot. We had set out from the side of a road along the northern edge of the state park and from there it had taken us less than five minutes to reach the site of the first barrel. Bearbrook State Park may be vast and unknowable but from where the first barrel was found you can look back toward the road and catch glimpses of passing cars. And on top of that I learned we're not even technically in Bearbrook State Park. The victims in the case commonly known as the Bearbrook murders weren't actually found in Bearbrook State Park. They were found on a narrow lot of private property that sits in between the trailer park and the state park. The lot is small not even a tenth of a square mile. On a map it looks like a little rectangular bite taken out of the top of Bearbrook State Park. The private lot is owned by a guy named Ed Gallagher. In the early 1980s he also owned and ran a small camp store on the property. It was called the Bearbrook store. People camping in the state park could stop in for a couple bags of ice or a case of beer and people who lived in the nearby trailer park could walk here for a gallon of milk. So right over there the ship is where the foundation of the store was and where you know there was an apartment above it that the property owner lived in. The Bearbrook store burned down in 1983 just two years before the first barrel was found. Today there's almost no sign of the old store must you know what to look for. The foundation that's mostly overgrown an old disconnected power pole standing in the woods. Rhonda's brother Scott says the fact that the barrels were found so near the site of the former store on private property was one of the things that caught his interest on that first trip out here. You've got hundreds of acres of state park and old logging roads that go in and why you would choose to come in past a burned out building so close to a trailer park to dump the bodies when you had you know all that area that you could no you know no fear of anybody seeing you. It changed how I thought about the case too. Before in the version of this story where the barrels were found deep in the forest the mystery of the Bearbrook murders seemed impenetrable like a maze but standing in the spot where the bodies were actually found in this place where people used to come and go I found myself thinking there must be something that someone remembers even they don't realize it the name or a face or a family that came through the park years ago. Some clue that could begin to unravel the case after all these years. On their first trip here in 2011 Scott and Rhonda also knocked on a few doors in the Bearbrook Gardens trailer park and found another surprising detail many people who had vivid memories of when the first barrel was found told them that they had never even heard about the second barrel. You know there were times when I almost felt like we were arguing with people you know no really there were there were a second set of bodies found and they'd be like well I lived here 32 years I think I'd know. It figured that if there were long time residents of the trailer park who had never even been told about the second barrel maybe someone who used to live there knew something and just hadn't been asked the right question. So Rhonda and Scott decided to embark on a massive project to track down every single person who lived in the Bearbrook Gardens trailer park from 1977 to 1985. A few weeks after we visited the area where the barrels were found I took a trip up to Rhonda's home in Maine about two hours northeast of Bearbrook. I wanted to get a better sense of the scale of their project and what they'd been able to find. They didn't take long to see they collected an overwhelming amount of information about the case. Because we never knew where it would go we were never prepared for what happens when you have 5,000 pages of interviews and information and how best to organize it that's still a work in progress. Hanging on the wall in the dining room of Rhonda's home is a huge aerial photo of the Bearbrook Gardens trailer park. It's the sort of thing you'd expect to see in an episode of a police procedural like those cork ports with the strands of yarn connecting all the evidence. The photo was maybe 6 feet across, 4 feet high, it's black and white, taken some time in the late 80s. In the photo you can make out each lot in the trailer park. Rhonda and Scott have them labeled with the names of the families and the years that they lived there. You know we found that 1979 you know a George Moore lived there 1980 Patrick and Alice more and so forth and so we would plug in them in the names into what years you know we knew people lived at and are still doing that you know that's always a it's a work in progress. I like to imagine Rhonda staring at the map over her breakfast or maybe pacing in front of it after dark. The excitement of discovering another name of coming that much closer to tracking them all down. But Rhonda and Scott have been more than armchair investigators on this case. They've done a lot of hands-on detective work too. Something police generally discourage. When it comes to Rhonda and Scott and the New Hampshire state police, they actually enjoy a pretty good relationship. I think detectives figured out early on they wouldn't be able to talk Rhonda out of researching the case. And for their part Rhonda and Scott generally share whatever they find with state police. Transcripts of phone calls, photos from the area where the bodies were found. More than a few times state police have followed up on the information they provided. Over the past seven years since their first trip to Allentown, Scott and Rhonda's work on the case has taken many shapes. When they learned that motorcycle gangs were active in the trailer park during the 80s, Rhonda and Scott passed out flyers with info on the victims at the Laconia bike week. An annual event where hundreds of thousands of bikers from around the country meet in New Hampshire. There was the time they flew down to Florida to interview the retired Allentown police chief who told them he never stopped thinking about the case. They've made a number of trips back out to Allentown following up on things they'd heard from the former trailer park residents they were tracking down. Rhonda shows me a plastic ziplock bag with something she found on one of those trips. A child's white shoe. You know just under in the leaves and dirt under a tree you know we see this shoe and an old-school little child shoe and I'm sure it couldn't have lasted for 30 years out there probably even though it is quite worn but it still just was really ominous to see it you know I picked it up and put it in a bag and brought it home and you know I sometimes wonder what you know what its story is and hopefully it had nothing to do with the victims but I'd like to tell you that one of these trips led somewhere that this shoe was the missing key that investigators needed that it had a worn initial on the inside of the tongue or some other small detail that would have led to an ID of the bearbrook victims but of course that wasn't the case. Rhonda and Scott gathered more information but it was never quite the information they needed observe the North American dad 50s great polo collection he enters his vehicle information on Carvana and offer appears in minutes remarkable he squints reads it again smiles and says dang that's a good offer the highest form of approval no haggling no hassle no one called him boss he's still on the couch astonishing sell your car today on Carvana.com pick up fees may apply my life is booked and busy I don't have time to try on a million outfits that still don't feel right that's why I get styled with stitch tricks my personal stylist sends outfits picked for my size style and budget so I can get dressed and get on with my day feeling confident it's no risk all style free shipping free returns no subscription required get started today at stitchfix.com that stitchfix.com Tammy regularly haul stuff to her kids at college that's why she shops at BJ's wholesale club saving up to 25% off grocery store prices beef jerky microwave meals laundry pods even they can't screw up have you met my kid and with BJ's gas she gets there for less they call me the road warrior this is your home road warrior mom home of the save join for just 20 dollars at bj's.com/maskete and save 10 cents per gallon for six months open soon limited time offer new members only bj's home of the save still waiting in line again that's time you'll never get back save time and money with stamps.com over four million businesses have skipped the line with stamps.com join them to save up to 90% off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now print postage for certified mail register mail and packages in seconds then schedule a pickup right from your home or office for a limited time go to stamps.com and use code podcast for a free welcome gift taxes and fees apply the shoe wasn't even found near where the barrels were more than anything it was a symbol of what drove ronda still she sent photos of the shoe to state police it's just the sort of thing she would do just in case all their time spent working on this has changed both ronda and scots lives this is my brother who you know I probably spoke to him once a year on the phone prior to this and now sometimes I speak to him like seven times a day you know it's just If you haven't noticed, Scott doesn't talk as much as Rhonda. It's just one of the ways. They seem to balance each other out. Rhonda is always ready to dive in while Scott's more measured. And somehow, those contrasts seem to add to the bond they formed over this case. A bond that can be hard for others to understand. If I think for a year or two, like at family, get together, there's no one want to sit near us. You know, because that's all we talked about, you know? Those that know us, well, know we have OCD. Well here's a picture that might illustrate this a little bit, so this is Scott's wife. Rhonda reaches for a photo and hands it to me. It shows two people standing next to two different size barrels. Where would you cut to fit in barrels? So we asked them, you know, they were using them as standings in place of the corpses of the victims so they could get a sense of how you might dismember them to fit inside. Because we were trying to figure out and you can tell they're just like, oh brother, here they go again. But you know, we just, so they've helped us along the way, but no, right, right. When I first spoke with Rhonda, to be honest, I wasn't sure what to make of her or this project. I mean, who reads the phone book for 14 hours? And could her research really be helpful, or was it just getting in the way of the real investigation? The more time I spent with Rhonda and Scott, the more I felt like they were playing an important role. The case hadn't been solved, but it had done a lot. They reunited a whole community of neighbors from Allensdown, some of whom didn't even know about the second barrel, were all now invested in solving the case. They've collected a huge repository of information about the case on their blog, all the media coverage, all the theories that have been floated, the fruits of their own research. A lot of my own reporting for this series was built on the work that Rhonda and Scott had already done. But perhaps most importantly, they stepped into the role of victim's advocate, something that would usually come from the victim's family. Today, Rhonda and Scott are as close to being a victim's family as it gets in this case, pestering police to look into things, handing out flyers about the victims. Since 2011, they have refused to let anyone forget about this case. Rhonda and Scott kept the torch lit. And some days I find myself a little, maybe even angry, thinking, you know, what grandmother let this happen, or what neighbor, or what bus driver, or, you know, I mean, where we're all of you, you know. I understood Rhonda and Scott a little better after I did something that they and others I've talked to also felt compelled to do at some point. I paid a visit to where the first two victims were buried back in 1987. Okay, well, I'm in the cemetery, and there's probably a thousand grave stones here, and now I just have to find it. The St. John, the Baptist cemetery in Allen's Town, is on a quiet road lined with tall cypress trees. The headstones are neatly arranged into a grid. I started at one corner and began making my way up and down the rows until finally. Oh my god, here it is. So this is tucked in the very back, almost the very back row of this whole cemetery. It's got a rose on top of the headstone, and it reads, "Here lies the mortal remains known only to God, of a woman aged 23 to 33, and a girl child aged 8 to 10. Their slain bodies were found on November 10, 1985 in Bearbrook State Park." I mean, there's really faded here at the bottom. May their souls find peace in God's loving care. It's one thing to know, it's another to see this in person. Standing there by the grave, I tried to imagine what that day was like. In 1987, when the woman and the oldest child were buried here. And then I tried to imagine that day their bodies were exhumed. In the 15 years since the second barrel was found, investigators had failed to find a single solid lead in the Bearbrook murders. But while they were checking databases and wearing out shoe leather, a parallel investigation was taking place. One that required all four bodies to be held by the state medical examiner. This investigation is more like the high tech ones you might see on a TV crime show, employing scientific techniques rarely used in criminal cases. And it was this investigation that led to the first break in the Bearbrook murders. Thirty years after the first bodies were found, I want to thank everyone again for coming today. We have some new testing results that we want to share with basically the world. That's next time on Bearbrook. This episode was first released in 2018. In the years since, I learned of an error that I need to correct. The victims found in the second barrel did not have blunt force trauma to the head as I reported. There was no obvious trauma to their remains. Their deaths were categorized as homicides by "unspecified" means. Thanks to Kim Fallon, former Chief Forensic Investigator at the New Hampshire Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for bringing this to my attention. Bearbrook is reported and produced by me, Jason Moon. Taylor Quimby is Senior Producer. Editing help from Corey Prinsell, Todd Bookman, Lauren Schuljyn, Sam Evans Brown, Breed a Green, and Annie Ropeek. The executive producer is Erica Jannick. Dan Barrick is NHPR's News Director, Director of Content Is Maureen McMurray. NHPR's Digital Director is Rebecca LeVoy, Photography and Video by Ali Gutierrez, Graphics and Interactives by Sarah Plore. Original music for this show was composed by me, Jason Moon, and Taylor Quimby. Additional music in this episode from Blue Dot Sessions and Lee Rosevere. To see a video of some of the locations from the first two episodes like Bearbrook State Park and the cemetery where the first two victims were buried, go to our website, bearbrookpodcast.org. To learn more about the fascinating and complicated story behind the Danny Pockett murder, check out the book "Our Little Secret" by Kevin Flynn and Rebecca LeVoy. Bearbrook is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. This is Phil Brettison, former Democratic governor of the state of Tennessee. If you love digging into how history shapes U.S. policy, check out the new season of "You Might Be Right." And this is Bill Haslam, former Republican governor. This season we're asking the questions that is to find every pivotal moment in American political history. Is democracy really under threat? Or is that just a story as old as the Republican self? We're tackling the biggest question shaping the 2026 midterms. So join us. Follow You Might Be Right, Wherever You Get Your Podcast. Observe the North American dad, 50s, great polo collection. He enters his vehicle information on Carvana and offers appears in minutes. Remarkable. He squints, reads it again, smiles and says, "Dang, that's a good offer." The highest form of approval, no haggling, no hassle, no one called him "Boss." He's still on the couch, astonishing. Sell your car today on Carvana.com, pick up these may apply. Sell waiting in line? Again? That's time you'll never get back. Save time and money with stamps.com. Over 4 million businesses have skipped the line with stamps.com. Join them to save up to 90% off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now. Print postage for Certify Mail, Registered Mail and packages in seconds. Then schedule a pick up right from your home or office. For a limited time, go to stamps.com and use code podcast for a free welcome gift. Taxes and fees apply.