Body Barrel /// Part 1 /// 87 | Forensic Files

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grab a chair grab a beer and let's talk some true crime [Music] in 1985 Hunters found a large metal drum
in allentown's Bear Brook State Park then in 2000 the second drum was found by Cody in all four unidentified
victims a woman two girls related to her and another girl were found inside the two to threeyear olds little
girl that looks like like a brick has been used to you smash her head in retired New Hampshire state police
detective John Cody vividly remembers the moment when he stumbled upon a rusty metal drum two bodies stuffed
inside I took my flash and looked in and you could see there was something white
inside the plastic bag so I peel back a little of the plastic bag and that's when you can see that there was bones in
there and Lisa that's why investigators want to come back here to search the very same spot in the spring where the
bodies of a woman and three girls were found they're also hoping all this media coverage will help bring their loved
ones forward [Music] November 10 1985 there is this little town in New Hampshire called Allenstown
and in 85 the population was less than 4,000 people in Allenstown we have the Bear Brook State Park so on that
November day there's two brothers they're out hunting this of course would be deer hunting season and they're on
the outskirts of the Bear Brook State Park you say of course like like you're the best hunter in the world I'm I'm
constantly scouting he's a Avid Hunter people this is off of a Wooded Trail which is off of Everwood Drive these two
brothers spot a bunch of trash and amongst the trash is a tarp the tarp is covering something so under the tarp
they discover a barrel and it's lying on its side this is one of those big 55g metal drums you know I've seen pictures
of this site and the barrel appears to be like a dark blue or maybe even a black color I'm sure everyone's familiar
with these types of barrels and the barrel that the hunters find it's sealed yeah and the two brothers they decide
that they're going to investigate so of course they open up the barrel inside they find trash bags and inside one of
those trash bags they find remains these are human remains so technically this Barrel is found on private property on
this property there had once been a camp store that had operated for the park goers of Bear Brook State Park this was
called The Bear Brook store but this small store burned in July of 1983 so now it's just a shell of the store that
remained so on this private property basically the whole place kind of looks like a dump in my opinion it has been
described as having a small burnt building which is was the store a mobile home a camper several broken down
Vehicles several barrels and appliances that were scattered on on the grounds of
this property back then the Allenstown Police Department was run by Chief Norm Connor and like you said this is a very
small community yeah small population so of course the police department is very
small and they certainly are limited as far as investigative resources goes so Chief Connor brings in the State Police
to assist in the investigation back then this may sound crazy today but back then
New Hampshire didn't even have a medical examiner's office so the remains were flown to Maine to be examined once in
Maine what they discovered in regards to the human remains in the barrel was that
they were actually two sets of remains stuffed into the barrel wrapped in these trash bags we now know that we have the
remains of two females we have the remains of an adult woman and a young girl the girl probably not even old
enough to be like a teenager they do the tough work and they put together a SC sketch of the woman
and a sketch of the girl they release these sketches to the media and to the public in hopes that someone would
recognize these two and put names to these bodies obviously when you have a victim or victims usually you have means
of identifying the victim sometimes you'll find identifiers with the body you know like a photo ID credit card
driver's license something with a name and or a face on it or you have family friends or neighbors that can identify a
body so you start by making an identification to the victims and then once you have
that established you can start investigation by interviewing the persons in in the victim's Inner Circle
right usually that will provide you with you know the victim's timeline you know
who who were they last with where were they last seen what were they doing the day they went missing yeah or in this
case did they have a husband or a boyfriend or you know they normally look at that first yeah you know what were
they planning to do do they have any enemies unfortunately we have a situation here where we have no
identifiers we have decomposed remains so you're left with creating and releasing sketches yeah Sketch that you
don't even know how clear the sketch is and this is also before the the technology that they had where they take
the DNA to reconstruct you know like a a drawing or an image of the person so without victim's names and knowing very
little about these people we have no Inner Circle to interview hell we have we have no Circle at all basically right
one possibility being here that the remains are related um that the grown woman could be the mother of the girl
that was found with her that was certainly a possibility and something that investigators were considering as
they try to put names to these bodies so they don't know who these people are who
the victims are so you'd think at some point they'd have to start looking in that area for possible missing person
mhm and maybe try to connect the dots that way yeah and that's one thing that they were able to cover a lot of ground
on they they were able to eliminate persons as not being the identities of the bodies found right however of course
they were unable to actually identify the bodies the investigative efforts did not lead to answers and eventually the
two bodies were released for burial the Allenstown police chief Connor he organized a gravide service complete
with a priest and a minister because they didn't know what religion these these people could be um so you know we
gota I give a little Applause there to the police chief for doing right by the people that that were found these
unknown victims yeah but they might not have wanted a priest or you Pastor or anybody of course but they didn't want
to be in a barrel either right right um so the the two were buried um together in a single steel casket uh and this was
kind of a wellth thought out plan as far as their burial goes because the thought
was that if they ever needed to exume the bodies this would make that whole process a lot easier right they were
buried in St John Baptist cemetery and it's a local uh a local company the Epson memorials service they donated
donated a granite Stone complete with a carved rose and a picture of a woman and
a child holding hands the reading on the stone is pretty vague because again not
knowing who these people are but but it starts off saying here lies the Mortal remains known only to God of a woman and
a girl all right so we we know it's a woman and we know it's a girl but what else do we know do we know anything okay
so both are female victims they're both found November 10th 1985 and we will refer to the grown woman as victim
number one so in 1985 this is what we can tell you about victim number one she was a Caucasian female approximately 23
to 33 years of age she was approximately 5' 4 to 5' 7 in tall MH she was about 120 to 140 lb she had shoulder length
brown hair and she has had some dental work done she had three fillings and she is missing some of her teeth
investigators believed that she had been bludgeon to death she is listed as up number
2174 with the namus organization now we have the girl as well and we will call her Victor number
two she too is and for people that don't know what namus is uh namus is an organization where they they try to
identify uh the the remains unknown remains that are found and they keep a big catalog of those and they can be
accessed by somewhat by the public but mainly it's for uh law enforcement law enforcement resources yeah so like Jane
do's and John do mhm so the girl will call her victim number two she too is a Caucasian female believed to be between
the ages of 5 and 11 she would have been somewhere in the area of 4 2 in maybe 4'
4 in tall and weighing 65 to 85 lbs she too had brown hair uh this is believed to be collar length hair uh she has both
of her ears pierced with two piercings each so double pierced ears and she is listed as up number 2173 with namus so
both were believed to have been bludgeon to death both were dismembered and basically basically they're stuffed into
this barrel and thrown out like trash the investigation as far as the investigation goes let's let's go
through this m I believe and I think that that you'll agree with me that police really did try everything that
they could think of um at the time so in the beginning of this investigation the
New Hampshire State Police started off by sifting through missing people cases from the 7s and the ' 80s right okay but
of course they were unable to identify these bodies in 1986 the New Hampshire State Police they get a strong lead and
they actually believed that this lead was going to solve the case so this is when they suspected two missing people
named Grace Reeb and her 5-year-old daughter Gracie as being the unidentified bodies in the barrel which
would fit with the ages of the victims that we have yeah it was a very strong lead but unfortunately the dental
records proved that the unidentified remains were not those of Grace and her daughter Gracie in 1985 with a small
town you know you'd assume this would be big news well yes of course it was and that's one thing that they used to try
to help gather leads regarding the the identities of these two people uh they they received hundreds of leads uh and
they distributed composite drawings of the victims throughout the northeastern part of the United States and actually
all the way up into Quebec Canada several people in Allenstown said that the unidentified adult woman resembled
someone who had left town with several children a few years ago but this this actually proved to be a dead end as well
because later this woman was found alive in Arizona with her children you would assume that there'd be a lot of dead
ends in this case yeah and and one of one more that we run into here is out of a lot of those lead s that the New
Hampshire State Police received there was a lead about a mother and a daughter who had vanished from an Indian
reservation in Maine not only did the descriptions match the victims found in the barrel but also the time of their
disappearance seemed to match up perfectly with this whole case uh but here is just another case where the
mother and the daughter were actually located alive and they were found to be living just in some other town in Maine
MH um so and you would assume at this maybe not soon but you know it's 1985 so it's more likely that we would have
these you know mothers that were taking their kids to get away from a maybe abusive husband or something and maybe
just didn't want to be found and sometimes people have little to no ties to where they live at all you know and
maybe someone goes and takes a job elsewhere and decides to up and move with their children and they have no
parents local to notify that we've moved yeah or maybe you get like a really good
offer to move to parts unnown and do a podcast a local podcast there and maybe jump ship you know well we are selling
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garage but I wanted I know that these were all kind of deadend leads here but we wanted to include these because I
didn't want it to make it sound like e you know the police couldn't identify these people so they just kind of sat
around it it wasn't that case at all you know they're they're pouring through missing person's cases they're checking
the databases that are available at the time and they're going out and physically looking for these people to
to determine if if they match up or not and again receiving leads and following up on these leads so I I see a situation
here where we have a police chief of a very small Police Department I think he does the right thing by immediately
bringing in the state the New Hampshire State Police yeah yeah always always a good thing bring bring yeah EX exactly
bring in these people that have the resources that have the funding and have the manow or woman power to to do the
hard work well here's what gets me is just imagine you know first of all just go back to the hunters right you're a
hunter you're just you're hanging out with your brother Pro do you do people drink beer when they hunt I think some
people do yeah don't I've been shooting and stuff but I I'm not a hunter myself but so you find this Barrel one I don't
think I'd have the guts to open the damn thing yeah you made a bit of a noise when we we were going through the barrel
portion and I actually I had I had thought that we would say like like don't open up that Barrel you know what
I mean like cuz I don't know that I would like it it and actually I happened to I wanted to look up what what hunting
season they would be in in New Hampshire at that time right to to actually verify
that it was an actual hunting season because part of me thought well is this strange because in some cases you do
have the perpetrator of a crime is actually the person that will later report right right that they found that
they found the body and so it was actually hunting season but it seemed a little strange to me that these guys are
just out and they're like oh we found a barrel check out that Barrel over there let's go uh let's let's go pop that baby
open and see what's inside well I think what's weird about that is that there there are cards just around there's you
know old cars there's trash so it's not like it's just like this middle of a field and there's a barrel and we should
open it like it's it's kind of odd that they decided we're going to open it but that's creepy enough and then imagine
being the chief of police and this small community and you're going okay now we got these two victims and uh you know I
think it becomes more horrendous because one is a child and that but then you can't even start really the
investigation because you can't even figure out who they are mhm I mean there's so many different levels of
horror here and I actually came across an interview with one of the brothers one of the hunters that was out there
that day that discovered the barrel and this is many years after the fact and they they had said that they got like
some form of PTSD from finding this thing that these guys were like Avid outdoor guys they were always hunting
and they found this thing and it really affected them big time there's some things you can't unsee yeah and and the
one the one brother said you know I you know he said I didn't return to the woods or to a wooded area for almost 10
years because it just kind of he's he's like I got afraid of what I might see out there or what I might find or who
might be out lurking in the in the woods well and if you think with Avid Hunters
that there's possibly you know the hunters would have to deal with you know carcasses of animals so maybe they
wouldn't be as affected by this but this probably takes on a whole different meaning or whole different psych there's
some psychological thing there where this is human remains this is not a deer yeah and you're right it's something you
can't unsee it's probably something that unfortunately creeps into your dreams at
night over and over again so they make this discovery in 1985 and the leads are going dead M
there you know everything's a dead end and it seems like it's just going to we're going to have to chalk it up and
put it to the side and just say we don't even know who the these victims are we we we don't even know what to do with
this case and this is just going to be become cold yeah and you can tell by some of those leads that they were
following that it appears that I bet you these investigators thought several times that they had this thing solved or
at least had placed names to these to these remains and unfortunately they were able never able to do so and
actually not only that the the bad part here though is they end up learning nothing new about the female victims
throughout the course of this investigation uh and I really do think they tried everything that they could
think of um from checking out they they started doing other things too where they were checking elementary schools in
New Hampshire you know they're going to go out and look for a situation where maybe there is a girl that was attending
school one day and no longer was attending the next day right and for whatever reason just wasn't reported
missing or the paperwork didn't get filed or or something mhm the other thing that they did and this sounds EXT
extremely tedious to me uh they were checking medical records for every person um that was listed as missing uh
or or persons that they could find medical records for from everywhere from basically Cape Cod all the way out to
California and they find nothing in this as well I mean think about how long of a
process that has to be MH that's that's a task that I'd give you to do I don't think I'd want to do that so after the
case goes cold we we have a new person enter the story and this is in 2000 there's a state police serent his name
is John Cody and so 15 years later yes he was assigned to take over the case so back then the state of New Hampshire did
not have a cold case unit so what they would do is the state troopers would be assigned old cases you know you put
fresh eyes to an old case so John might been a little bit of fun for the state TR Troopers yeah he they're doing more
like you know footwork mhm investigative type work so John Cody he decides that he is going to go down to the site where
the body where the bodies and the barrel were found uh he wants to see the location for himself and see if he can
search out and maybe find some Clues I mean it seems like a fruitless effort to me because it's 15 years later but I
don't know what what you know the things that John Cody knows uh and who knows what he thinks he could find well I
don't I don't think it's fruitless on the fact that we like we mentioned there's it's almost a little bit of a
junkyard down there so I mean there's possible Clues around every corner this is on May 9th 2000 officer Cody goes to
the location of the privately owned wooded lot that is near the trailer this is near a trailer park and it's also on
the outskirts of the Bear Brook State Park so this is where the story is going to take a very strange twist while
officer Cody is examining the area he located another Barrel this one is approximately 100 yard from the where
the first Barrel was found mhm so just about a football field away from where he found the first Barrel so we have
this situation here Captain right we have the the Cold Case state trooper he's out there checking out this area
mhm he knows what was found in 1985 right he's fully aware he's on the investigation and he's out there and he
spots an identical Barrel knows what there were what was found in the barrel yeah and and so now we have a similar
Barrel not that far away but again it's been 15 years mhm so I mean there's you know the other question is as you're
searching this area do you see any other kind of barrels and containers you probably see a bunch of stuff um but
this is very similar and and he's probably been looking at these pictures for a long time mhm and so what's going
through his mind at that time yeah well I I I would guess that he's probably hoping to find clothing or maybe some
type of murder weapon or or he's probably thinking that there were may have be other things that were dumped at
that same site along with those two first victims and this is different than when the hunters found the barrel
because the hunters find a barrel and it's like well you could open it up it could be anything MH but now you're in a
situation as the detective where there's kind of two possibilities it's nothing or or it's more of the same
or could be be evidence of towards the first victims that were found right this could be the Smoking Gun the big
question would be do you open up this Barrel that of course is the big question but one question that he must
be asking himself too is was this something that was searched in 1985 you know how much of this land and things on
the land were searched in 1985 yeah maybe they miss something mhm uh let's get into that right after this beer
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everybody so in 1985 two Hunters discovered this first barrel with two sets of remains in it
and now we have this situation in 2000 where police Sergeant John Cody is back at the scene and he's looking for Clues
and scoping out the area what he discovers while he's there is he finds a second Barrel opening it up looking for
Clues unfortunately what he does find inside is the sets of two more remains now the question becomes is this just a
Dumping Ground or is this connected to the first Barrel yeah and what they find inside is again these are dismembered
remains uh wrapped in plastic and these people were disposed of like trash just like the first two uh but again we have
a situation here where these are two unidentified bodies what they do learn and what they now know is as follows the
remains found were that of two young girls both younger than the girl that was found with the woman in
1985 so we will call these two victims victim number three and victim number four victim number three or what some
would call the middle child is well this is because she is younger than victim number two the girl found in 1985 and
she is older than the girl that she is found with in 2000 mhm she is believed to be 2 to 4 years of age she is listed
at 3' 10 in tall weight unknown she had wavy brown hair and a pronounced overbite she is listed as up number 2175
on namus now victim number four is the youngest of all of the victims she is believed to be 1 to 3 years of age 2' 5
in tall her weight too is unknown and she had blonde wavy hair she had a large gap in her Upper Front Teeth and she is
listed as up number 2176 on namus both of these girls were Caucasian they just like the first two
victims were believed to have been bludgeoned and they were again dismembered 100%
Caucasian um well we'll we'll get into that the single steel casket idea is going to pay off a bit because in 2000
after the discovery of the new body Barrel this led to the exclamation of the woman and child found in 1985 this
of course is going to be for multiple reasons but one of the things that they really want to do here is to set up a
DNA comparison okay so here is what we have learned from the DNA testing the testing
found that the woman was biologically related to the oldest child this is victim number two the girl that was
found with the woman it is also determined that the woman was biologically related to the youngest
girl found this being victim number four yeah the baby so victim one is biologically related to victim victims 2
and four I believe when DNA was not so Advanced originally they could prove that the woman was related in the sense
that she was either the mother the aunt or possibly a sister to victims 2 and four of course science gets better and
then they are later able to determine with further testing MH that she is in fact maternally related to victims 2 and
four so she is the mother now we have this weird thing here though because there are all these people but who is
this unrelated middle child victim number three is not maternally related to victim number one but there is a
possib ility at the time that she is related to the other girl victims meaning that she could have possibly the
same father or maybe some more distant type relative to the two right so they can't say that she is related to the
other girl victims for sure but they also cannot officially rule that out with knowing the ages of these victims
does that kind of pinpoint a time of when they were actually murdered yes and this is kind of weird to me because this
is what the investigators are able to to say and this is their statement as being
and quote all four victims were killed between 1980 and 1985 and possibly as early as
1977 can't you kind of see the press conference right there and that that being delivered uh between 80 and 85 but
maybe 77 so let's touch on something real quick here the the first two victims were described as having been found in
trash bags inside the 55 gallon barrel victims and four were described as having been found in plastic inside of
the second 55g Barrel but what I did find later was a statement where an office Officer says we believe this
plastic to be trash bags as well matching the trash bags from the first Barrel so maybe maybe that's their
connection so most likely I'm guessing after sitting there for an additional 15 years just like you know the bodies were
far more decomposed than the first two these trash bags could have either been cut up or maybe they deteriorated over
time as well and I know that might sound dumb because you know we're told that plastic does not break down and that is
pretty much true but there are a few types of bacteria that will in fact break down plastic also there's this
thing that happens with sunlight over time that can create a situation that will eventually begin to break down
plastic that the murders take place somewhere and then where they put into bags transported and just maybe happen
to find you know happen stance that they happen to find these barrels mhm because
you're talking about a 55 gallon barrel they're probably somewhat weight to them
yeah so or did the murders take place somewhere else and then put in the barrels and then
transported to the scene in the barrels those are all very good questions and and one thing one theory that locals
have brought up was that they had locals thought that this would have been somebody that would have been local to
the area or knew the area because the area where these barrels were found is not like easily accessible from the
highway or anything like that it's not like somebody just pulled over and dumped these things out and kept on
going and then you have the the other issue because we talked about the trailer park that was close mhm the the
one of the issues there is you know it is the 80s late '70s early ' 80s and what kind of records were kept on
rentals there yeah you know somebody could have been renting you know and who would know when somebody's coming and
going or possibly somebody just shacked up with somebody for a brief period of time and weren't technically listed as a
tenant right on the lease yeah so we have this very weird situation right Captain we have four victims well I
don't even think well it's weird but I think it's it's gruesome I mean we got four bodies that were mutilated and put
into a barrel mhm into two separate barrels all with unknown identities but even more strange there is one you know
there is not even anybody listed in any database that matches this criteria you would think that with the advancement of
DNA and all of the the items that were collected that you would know something about these victims and that maybe you
would have a young mother with two children listed in some database somewhere that you could link to at
least three of the four victims right right you have a mother of two and you'd think that somebody at some point would
come forward and say that's possibly mine uh you know possibly my daughter it's it's almost like these uh
it's almost like these four victims are the the Forgotten it's conceivable that if you could identify any of these that
victims that you would have some kind of leads to go off of but then you have this other girl victim that that is not
related to the others that you know you would think you would have a situation where you have this woman and her two
kids were last seen here or they were last living here right and if we could identify her right or if we could
identify any of them then the question for me would be asking the family why didn't you report her missing right was
she not your favorite daughter so you just just figured all she went off and with somebody and look I know it's a
different time you know late 70s early 80s it's a different time there was a lot of times that people like I said
they ran away from their abusive husbands now rightfully so right right but but people still reported children
as missing and and and I get what you're saying it is a little more believable that a that a mother and a couple of
kids possibly go missing and something tragic happened to them but then you throw this whole wrench in the thing
where you have this unidentified third girl who's not related to the others and so it's weird to have a situation where
you basically have most of one family disappear something tragic happened to them not reported missing and then on
top of that they're linked to this other victim who's not reported missing as well right that's what and blows my mind
you know what I mean it's like you know if it if this was your sister you'd report her missing right if this was
your girlfriend you'd report her missing unless you're the one that put her in the these barrels right but but still or
maybe maybe this person was a orphan maybe there maybe this girl um didn't have family members maybe she was a
Runway the thing that bothers me to on this is what if this what what if the girl okay just just go down on this
little rabbit hole with me mhm but what if this girl was actually abducted you know in the 60s right and
then she was reported missing in the 60s and this person was groomed or was was captive oh like a JC Dugard situation
where it's where you take somebody captive and you keep them as a family member or keep them in your home then
father children with with them right and so now you have these these two children
right mhm and and we know that they're connected to um the oldest victim but we have no record of them going missing
yeah so as much as I there's a part of me that doesn't want to believe that there's I mean look we all have douchy
family members right mhm but do you want me to list mine I don't think we have enough time
on this show met some of his family members not not the best of people um but it seems unlikely to me that nobody
would report this girl missing yeah and you're doing exactly what everybody does
once they review the victim list here your mind starts to run wild and you try to make sense of this whole situation
you kind of start to come up with your own stories was this was this middle child somebody that the mother was
babysitting you know or was this an adopted kid um you know or or was it a kid that she was forced to take care of
mhm you know some psycho kidnapped her when she was a kid or a teenager and that's what they should really be diving
into were these people living with somebody were they living with a man that did this to them and was this man
potentially not living but I I would assume cap they were captive you know they were taken captured by this guy
they were kidnapped this girl was kidnapped and then she was probably forced to have these children and now
there's this other child and she has having to raise that child as well yeah so there there's a question of where is
the father why didn't he report anybody missing but the other thing too is then you have a situation where there has to
be another mother involved in this Inner Circle of victims that didn't report anybody missing too so there's so what
we end up here with is a few answers as far as the DNA testing goes in their findings in 2000 but we all we
ultimately just get a whole bunch of more questions well the other thing that they're able to do with the DNA is to do
the DNA Rec you know uh profile picks M where they can take uh and make an image
of the person based off a DNA yeah and that advances some of the sketches that were released from 1985 they they
further Advanced them and put more likelihood and more likeness to to those sketches in 2000 and the middle child
which we don't know if she is related or not we can't rule that out but to me she
looks like uh possibly Poss possibly Filipino or possibly some kind of Asian dissent yeah and there there are some
differences in her her look compared to the others let's let's step aside though
and go into some suspects because in 2000 they did start coming up with some some suspicious people here uh the New
Hampshire State Police started to look at a serial killer his name was John Edward Robinson uh as being a suspect in
this case now this does make some sense here because John Robinson was apprehended in June of 2000 so less than
1 month after the discovery of the second body Barrel he's apprehended and we see this happen a lot where police
apprehend a serial killer and in some cases if not most cases they can be unaware that they even have a serial
killer running around at all and then they arrest someone for an individual murder and then they quickly become
aware that hey this you know this guy's a serial killer and sometimes that means
okay well now we need to figure out this guy's movements was this his first arrest I mean was he in jail during the
times where these barrels possibly would have been dumped um no he he would have
been out um and you know they want to figure out all the places that he would have lived all the places that he would
have worked Does He travel for work Does He travel a lot for fun all of these things because it always raises the
question if this guy was capable of killing a handful of people here he's probably capable of killing people
elsewhere of course what was his typical victim well that that's the thing and that's why I think
that they they looked at him so Robinson was suspected of having killed eight or
more people in more than one State uh they have linked him to deaths in Kansas and Missouri but the thing that I think
landed him on the suspect list was that he had a similar Mo that would fit this case Robinson had been known to pre upon
single mothers and in some cases he was able to convince or at least attempted to try to convince the victim's families
you know the the mom and dad of the single mother that the victim had moved away of their own will making it look
like you know he had written letters and sent them to moms and dads stating that
the the mother had taken a job elsewhere in another state what a piece of work she was doing well she didn't intend to
move back you know so these parents have their daughter who's actually been out and been murdered and they think that
she's of and fine and so therefore she's not reported as missing yeah yeah note to self if some dope writes you a letter
saying hey uh your daughter's with me and she's fine she just don't want to come home anymore uh that guy's a dope
don't listen to him and uh do your due diligence well just to go into how manipulative this guy was okay um he
there was a situation where he had killed a mother and he had convinced her family that she had moved away
and he needed to get rid of the lady's kid so what he did was he set up some fake adoption and adopted the kid out to
some other couple the only good thing here is that these people thought it was a legit adoption um they weren't like
some weirdos looking to illegally adopt a kid well and it's a very good thing that he didn't kill the kid you know
it's yeah and that shows you why his Mo matches this type of case you know they're looking for somebody that could
make people disappear go unreported um he is ultimately eventually ruled out of this case uh I'm guessing that they're
able to figure out that he would not have been in the area at the time of when they think that these barrels were
place there I'll post I'll post a couple of his pictures online I mean this guy is definitely a creepy looking dude has
this giant glasses you know mhm yeah and one of one of the things they call him they or refer to him as uh Robin they
refer to him as the internet's first serial killer because later in his killing career uh he he started using
chat rooms to to you know hook up with these victims this other site also says uh they call him the internet slave
master MH he's a creepy dude I mean this is this is El Creo this situation though
definitely fits a lot of theories that were going around at the time um you know of course one of the
theories was that this would be the work of a serial killer or maybe even possibly an organized crime member uh
because we've seen throughout time that that organized crime members seem to be pretty good at disposing of bodies um
some have believed that the killer was someone local we discussed that because of the the highway situation and it
being an area that wouldn't be familiar to people outside of the Town um and of course there's also the theory which is
a very plausible theory in my opinion is that the victims could have been killed
by a boyfriend or a husband so starting in 1985 this case quickly became a cold case and then it gets reopened in 2000
yeah but then you know now it's 2017 it send have gone cold again but we've noticed with a lot of these cold cases
and a lot of these armchair detectives as you know we're trying to be I guess uh or support the True Crime community
that people kind of get their pet cases yeah that they keep researching and I know I think I I believe our Facebook
girl aelia actually is really into this case yeah there are a lot of people out there that have followed this for the
entirety of the case we want to give a quick shout out to some very cool people that have worked very hard on this case
if you watched some of the police press conferences um you'll hear the investigators say that they've been
working with agencies and other states right and sometimes they mention that they've been working with a local lady
or local amateur investigator and I actually believe that they are talking about New Hampshire residents Ronda
Randall and Scott Maxwell This is a brother and sister amateur investigative pair and they have spent a minimum of 40
hours a week on this case for the past 5 years wow so in doing our work that I mean that's a lot of dedication yeah
yeah it's amazing I don't know how they have the means to do that but they've put in a lot of hard work on this case
so in doing our research for this case uh we used some of their hard work as a primary source for us as well as the
local agencies as well uh there have been many great groups involved in this investigation but I wanted to make sure
that we included Ronda and Scott because I feel like they have been a great source and a very positive force in this
investigation and they often get left out when police and media are you know kind of rolling through their credits
well cheers to them yeah what's their major Theory uh they they have a few theories that they review and we won't
we won't have to go all the way into every one of them because you can kind of get the gist of each to just put your
toe into the rabbit hole Yeah so so let's go this first Theory here is the Drunken rage Theory so this theory is
sounds like sounds like the captain throwing a beer bottle at the garage wall that is
not true that never never happened maybe once maybe last week uh so the drunken rage theory is a you know the woman with
the two kids is living in some sort of relationship with a man and a kid and in a drunken rage he ends up killing them
all you know this is pretty much similar to the theory that is out there from before that they established that the
mid child is not linked to the woman this being victim number one this is just like the family Annihilator theory
that a man annihilated his entire family either he either a then committed suicide or B moved away and assumed a
new identity not reporting anybody as missing obviously there's also the sexual predator Theory this is that a
sexual predator offers a needy family a place to stay and eventually molests or attempts to molest the children and then
kills to cover up this crime mhm there is also the woman on the Run Theory which is kind of a two-parter so yeah we
kind of brought that up you know the a battered wife mhm yeah the thought here that that a woman on the run with her
two children runs into a situation that ends up being even more worse than what the situation she's running from or a
person they are running from catches up to them at some point uh but as you can see the mid child the one that's not
connected to the woman victim number one this mid child throws a big wrench in a
lot of these different theories and certainly adds a variable that is not easily explained Ronda and Scott they
uncovered some stuff that just doesn't seem like a law enforcement uncovered about the owner of the private property
yeah remember we had said that the barrels were actually found on private property that backs up to the state park
right so the landowner's name is Robert Callahan and Callahan lived on the land during some of the time that these
barrels could have been placed there uh so the thing here is though that Callahan spent time at the New Hampshire
State Prison this would be from 1991 until 1996 he was in there afterwards after
the first Barrel was found and he was in there for sexual assault of a minor oh his red flag and they revealed his court
transcripts to to figure out exactly what this means they didn't go into specifics but regarding those
transcripts they were able to determine that during the course of that trial he admitted to molesting both girls and
boys over a period of time the other thing to consider here is the trailer park that is nearby you brought up the
trailer park about possible people living there right uh people that might have been listed or not listed as living
there and I I do want to say something that I heard from a now famous Ohio detective who turned author and I'm not
going to say her name because I'm not sure how many people she intended for this statement to be heard by but she
had once said that in some of these trailer parks you can't swing a bat without hitting a sexual predator which
which makes you think you know it well note to self I will I'm not going to be living in a trailer park then and I'm
moving out of mine immediately yeah the where we're going to have to move the G out of our trailer park um yeah that's
well but you would think because of the codes now where you have to register and
you can't be a certain distance stuff like that times have certainly changed and that's one thing that we see in this
investigation as it goes on throughout the years anytime technological advancements were made and could provide
additional investigative tools the new the New Hampshire State Police and the FBI they took advantage of new
technology by apply applying it to this case running the necessary test and putting it to work yeah the FBI doesn't
mess around well they did this thing this is some weird stuff here well and and I would just like to say it's to me
just because of what happened with the the the case in Grove City in the Columbus case uh and then the the case
that's helping uh happening right now the ad Deli murders uh in Indiana and now I believe the FBI is involved in
that um you see now with more modern cases because and probably because of technology that when the FBI gets
involved it gets solved quickly mhm and so it's it's fascinating to me that the the FBI has been involved in this case
and they're not any further along well and the thing is and this is my understanding here Captain I could be
completely off base but my understanding is for the FBI to get involved in a case
there has to actually be a break in a federal crime somebody has to break a federal law now one bit
murder is not well but that's technically investigated by a state right so but the loophole in that
situation is kidnapping is considered a federal crime right and therefore you could one could argue that even if you
are even being held captive for a second or two before you're murdered that that's technically kidnapping anytime a
person is somewhere where they don't want to be is technically kidnapping according to the definition so oh so
like if you're at your job you don't want to be there well is that can can I call my boss is keeping me here you
might be stretching I just want to go to the garage and have a couple beers let's
talk about this isotope testing because this is this is yeah this is some weird stuff isotope yes isotope so basically
due to chemicals and pollutants that are in our environment and I'm sure there are several other things that I don't
understand nor could I explain uh that are involved but they can determine where someone may have lived basically
by determining where they wouldn't have lived right does that make sense and I think a lot of this has to do with
drinking water um and so here's the situation right they do this isotope testing so for victim one and her two
children this would be you know victim 2 and victim four they have a map of the United States showing that she could
have been from the Northeast and there is some of the Midwest on there and some of the West Coast as well M but it
basically which sounds like I just named the entire United States yeah you basically pulled the uh well they were
probably dumped or probably murdered between 80 85 maybe 76 so the thing here is though when you look at the map it uh
it really does eliminate a good 2/3 maybe 3/4 of the United States so it does narrow it down quite a bit they do
have a separate map containing some of the same testing results this being for the third girl victim number three and
the areas where she could have lived or been from closely resemble that of the other victims however the places she
could have lived in the Northeast are a lot smaller um so so some very interesting stuff here right so you
basically make a circle of one make a circle of the other and then there's probably going to be a section that's
overlapping and then you can really kind of focus there mhm and the other thing we see is like you touched on the
advancement as far as the facial reconstructions go for the four victims which have changed quite a bit over the
years as well again this is due to advancements in technology the most obvious in this situation would be
victim number one remember we said that she was missing some of her teeth right well that changed her appearance greatly
because eventually they were able to put together a facial reconstruction with what she would have looked like with
teeth of course you know this changes the appearance of the lower half of one's face almost entirely yeah and originally
we have evidence of blunt force trauma to the victim's heads but the law enforcement is able to shine a little
more light on possibly what happened to these uh victims yeah and that that's something that I really question here
because one thing that I've noticed that have changed in the the presentation of
this investigation in the last few years is that regarding the two younger girls
you know they they originally stated that they shared the same cause of death as the two older victims um which we
said originally was listed as being bludgeon um but to be more precise like the captain said it's actually blunt
force trauma to their heads now this the reason why I question this is I'm not certain if this was something that they
weren't making well known at the time or throughout the years or if it was something that they actually had to
scientifically reconstruct and have to spend a whole bunch of time on this situation to to determine that that was
in fact the situation I mean we have something that's very hard to investigate first of all when you don't
know the victims and their names but on top of that you have dismembered bodies that are found in these barrels that
create all kinds of problems when you're trying to forensically put this back together well right and then this case
really spans over 20 years and so the advancement of Technology you would think that you would be Leaps and Bounds
above where you were at on doing an autopsy even if you don't think that the the original autopsies were bad it
doesn't it makes a lot of sense just go back and do them again I mean back in you know ' 85 you know most houses
didn't have computers now people were walking around with computers in their pockets or on on their uh watches MH
yeah and I wonder if some of those autopsies contained speculation in them um I know that it's supposed to just be
report fact however if you cannot make a proper determination you can leave what would
be called an expert opinion now when you exume those bodies many years later again advancements in technology maybe
they're able to to actually determine that this is it what a frustrating case for law enforcement because not only do
you you're trying to figure out what happened to these individuals then you're also trying to find who is
responsible for this but you can't even get the first part together you can't even figure out who the actual victims
are and this this goes on like we said we're going on almost uh over 30 years now yeah and and it's not for the lack
of not trying right I mean we see the efforts that are being put forth uh this and efforts in multiple decades Yeah by
several agencies by multiple States even armchair you know amateur sleuths getting involved um this is a a case for
for a case where you don't have the identities of the victims this is a case that's huge and it's it's Spann over the
over across the USA you know looking for these people in every state medical records elemente schools uh everything
that they could do you have the you have the first Barrel in 1985 then the second
Barrel in 2000 and if that's not strange enough nothing none of this leads to two
answers yeah but this case is going to take a Twist in 2017 yeah it's this thing's going to
bust wide open um but I do and we we'll get to that tomorrow yeah because we're running out of time here but I do have
to throw this out here Captain this is this is one of the strangest cases I've ever I've ever read about it might be
the strangest case that we've reviewed so far and we've we've reviewed some very strange and odd cases and yeah and
we'll dive into that tomorrow and we'll dive in that to and we'll dive into that tomorrow I
want to I want to thank everybody for uh all the feedback on the Brandon Lawson case I did take it to some buddies of
mine everybody was asking for an update I did take it to some some of my audio engineering buddies to look at we just
couldn't really come up with anything clearer on what we found here right so we're just kind of stuck at this point
maybe uh a as technology gets more advanced in that case that will help us out with that 911 call if you are
looking for an update you can go to our website true Crim garage.com there are a
lot of people that have posted things that they think that they're hearing what Brandon is saying as well as
theories that they think that's going on and interesting enough to me a lot of the people chiming in seem to be from
Texas that are able to offer a little more insight as to the area that that case took place and make sure you
subscribe to the show make sure you tell a friend and we'll see you guys here tomorrow until tomorrow everybody be
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Body Barrel /// Part 1 /// 87

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In 1985 a 55 gallon barrel drum is found in a wooded area in Allenstown, New Hampshire. Inside are two decomposed female bodies. From the very start the investigation is an up hill struggle as the identity of the bodies is unknown. Usually this is reason enough to get into the garage, crack open a beer and the case file, but this case is one of the strangest we have seen yet. This investigation spans over 30 years, through several states and leads us to a man of many names. The body barrel found in New Hampshire is Pandora's box. Who knows what we will find? Join us in the garage for one of the strangest cases you have ever heard.

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Brief Summary

The Bear Brook murders involve four unidentified victims found in barrels, with ongoing investigations and numerous theories but no resolution.

Key points

Gift of Better Sleep. Your mattress purchase helps give the gift of better sleep to children in need.
Unidentified Victims Found. In 1985, two bodies were discovered in a barrel in Bear Brook State Park.
Investigation Challenges. Police struggled to identify the victims due to lack of identifiers and resources.
Burial of Unknown Victims. The victims were buried in a single steel casket, marked only by a vague stone.
Discovery of New Remains. In 2000, Sergeant John Cody discovers a second barrel containing two more sets of remains, raising questions about their connection to the first victims.
DNA Revelations. DNA testing reveals the woman found in 1985 is the mother of two of the victims, but questions remain about the third child.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

You normally can't read anyways.

Joking about the host's reading skills.

2:32WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

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