A
‘REBEKAH
HELPED US
GET ANSWERS.
SHE’S PART
OF OUR
FAMILY NOW’
—VICTIM
MARLYSE
HONEYCHURCH’S
BROTHER DAVID
SALAMON
The Victims
MARLYSE
HONEYCHURCH
Born in 1954,
she was last
seen in 1978.
“We’re all glad
that we have
closure now,” says
her brother.
MARIE
VAUGHN
Marlyse
Honeychurch’s
oldest
daughter, she
was between
10 and 11 years old
when she died.
SARAH
MCWATERS
Between 3 and
4 years old when
she died, the
little girl had light
brown hair and
a gap between
her teeth.
THE KILLER’S
CHILD
While the girl’s name
is unknown, she
was Rasmussen’s
daughter. She
was between the
ages of 2 and 4
when she died.
PEOPLE August 12, 2019 59
As a librarian in Windsor, Conn., Rebekah Heath
was always fascinated by the true-crime genre.
She followed crime blogs, listened to crime pod-
casts and read all the murder mysteries she could
get her hands on, especially Agatha Christie’s Miss
Marple series. “There’s something about a little
old lady solving crimes,” she says. “Nobody thinks
she’s out there looking for clues and answers.”
But it was the real-life cases of unidentified mur-
dered women that cut to her heart. Having grown
up in a strict religious community she describes
as a reclusive sect, Heath recalled how naive and
alone she was when she finally ventured out into
the world. She might have been easy prey—and
since her parents, in accordance with their beliefs,
cut off all contact, “my family would never have
been looking for me,” she says. “I’d see these Jane
Does and think that I could have easily been those
girls. There’s no one fighting for them.”
So Heath, 33, decided to become that fighter. In
2018 her dogged determination and amateur de-
tective work helped crack one of the biggest crime
mysteries in New Hampshire history: the identities
of the victims in the Bear Brook Murders. In two
separate incidents—in 1985 and again in 2000—
police found the dismembered bodies
of one woman and three girls in steel
barrels near Allenstown, N.H.’s Bear
Brook State Park. Although a drifter
named Terry Rasmussen would lat-
er be identified as the killer—and one
of the murdered children as his
daughter—the other three victims’
identities had been a mystery for years
until Heath put the puzzle pieces to-
gether. “Rebekah is to be commended
for the diligence of her search,”
says Jeffery A. Strelzin, an as-
sociate attorney general in New
Hampshire. “It’s very impressive
that she achieved those results.”
The Bear Brook Murders were
by any measure a chilling story.
Authorities concluded the victims
had all been killed before 1981, but
by the time the bodies were discov-
ered, their skeletonized remains
were unidentifiable. Forensic sketches of
the victims were distributed to the media,
but no one came forward to identify them,
and they didn’t match any outstanding
missing persons reports. Frustratingly the
case grew cold. But Heath, who had be-
come fascinated by the story the first time
she heard it on the news, couldn’t forget it.
Then in 2017, while scouring the Internet
looking for clues on ancestry websites, she read
messages about a missing woman named Marlyse
Honeychurch and her daughter Sarah McWaters
and came to wonder if they could be among the
Bear Brook victims. Heath reached out to Facebook
groups but got no response. A year later, after listen-
ing to a podcast about the murders, her suspicions
grew even stronger, and she decided to track down
relatives of Honeychurch and her daughter Sarah
on social media. “She asked, ‘Do you guys know
Terry Rasmussen?’ ” recalls Honeychurch’s brother
David Salamon. “And then it’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s who
my sister was last with.’ And after that everything
started lining up.” Honeychurch and Rasmussen
had been dating, a detail that Heath was sure au-
thorities did not know. So she called a detective
close to the case. “I said, ‘I bet you hear this all the
time, but I am almost 100 percent confident that
this is the answer to your case. I promise
this is the one.’ ” Through DNA testing, au-
thorities positively identified the adult vic-
tim as Honeychurch. The two unidentified
girls were her daughters Marie Elizabeth
Vaughn, approximately 10, and Sarah Lynn
McWaters, approximately 4.
Rasmussen won’t have his day in court
for these murders—he died in prison in
2010 while serving a life sentence for the
murder of his girlfriend. But Heath hopes
that having Honeychurch and her daugh-
ters identified will finally bring their family
some closure. As for herself, Heath, who is
single, says she has found some peace as
well. Although it’s been 13 years since she
spoke to any of her relatives, she’s proud
of the life she has made. “I knew I was sup-
posed to help people,” she says.“I listened
to that voice, and it’s led me to this place.”•
THE KILLER
Terry Rasmussen, who carried out a
crime spree that spanned decades across
many states, died in prison in 2010.
CLOCKW
ISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: NEW
HAMPSHIRE STATE POLICE; JESSICA RINALDI/THE BOSTON GLOBE/GETTY IMAGES;
NEW
HAMPSHIRE STATE ATTORNEY’S OFFICE(3); NCMEC; AP/SHUTTERSTOCK; JIM COLE/AP/SHUTTERSTOCK
