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Taylor Quimby, Narrating: I'm producer Taylor Quimby, and this is the first in an unknown number of updates to the story of the Bear Brook murders that we'll be producing to let listeners know about any breaking news in the case. For quick updates, I'm going to be interviewing Jason to find out what is happening. And down the road, should there be any big breaks – and we expect there will be – we will likely put out another full episode of Bear Brook.
So, just to temper expectations, I want to say off the bat that this is not the information that Jason and I are expecting to come down eventually, which is to say, police have not discovered any new victims of Terry Rasmussen, nor have police determined the identities of the unknown Bear Brook victims.
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Quimby, Narrating: The new information that we do have that just came out of the New Hampshire Attorney General's office yesterday, November 15th, is that while searching for more possible victims of the serial killer Terry Rasmussen, police followed a tip that led to the identification of an unconnected murder victim. In other words, someone who was murdered, but not by Rasmussen. A young woman who went missing in Manchester in the 1980s.
Quimby: So, Jason, what did we learn? Who is this woman?
Jason Moon: Yeah, her name is, uh, Elizabeth Lamotte. Apparently, she went by Liz. She went missing on November 22nd, 1984, from Manchester, New Hampshire. She was, um, at the Youth Development Center. Today, it's called the Sununu Youth Center. It's basically juvenile lockup in the state.
Quimby: Okay.
Moon: And she was released for some sort of trip to a baseball stadium in Manchester, and she never returned. And so again, that was on November 22nd, 1984–
Quimby: And it was a youth detention center. So, how old is she?
Moon: She would have been 17 when she went missing.
Quimby: Okay.
Moon: Um, a missing persons report was not filed uh, until, until recently, until 2017, as a result of the investigation into the Bear Brook case. And a-, and according to the New Hampshire Attorney General's office, it came in the aftermath of that big press conference in January 2017 that we visit in episode five of the podcast, where we were getting all the connections to the California cases for the first time.
Jeff Strelzin, At Press Conference: We're going to start our presentation by going through a PowerPoint this morning. Uh, we're gonna do that to try and explain all the new information that we have that pertains… [FADE UNDER]
Moon: During that press conference, police were also asking for any tips regarding other possible victims of Terry Rasmussen. And um, here's some, some tape we didn't actually include in that episode, and something to remember. Police back then were still calling Rasmussen by his New Hampshire alias, Bob Evans.
Unidentified Male Voice, At Press Conference: During the time that, uh, Mr. Evans had been living at 925 Haywood Street, uh, an interesting note, uh, there were some certified mail sent to that residence, and it had been signed for by somebody purporting to be Elizabeth Evans. We don't know who Elizabeth Evans was, whether or not she, in fact, uh, was a real person, or if it, the mail had been signed for by somebody else. Also, what's interesting, during the time, uh, in the 1980s, Bob Evans had been arrested three different times, uh, by local authorities. He was arrested in February and June of 1980, and he gave his spouse's name, uh, as being Elizabeth, as you can see here in the, in the slide.
Moon: And so, sometime after that press conference, they got a tip from someone who said, “Well, I knew a Liz who went missing from Manchester during that same time period, Liz Lamotte”. And so, I think initially the thinking was, could Liz Lamotte be Elizabeth Evans? Once they listed her as a missing person, she wa– her case was uploaded to NamUs, which is sort of the national database of missing persons cases and unidentified bodies. Um…
Quimby: Yup.
Moon: …And some of the, Liz Lamotte's family members provided DNA to that database. And they did find a match in NamUs to a previously unidentified murder victim from Tennessee who was found on April 14th, 1985.
Quimby: Okay, so, less than a year after she went missing in Manchester, New Hampshire, Elizabeth Lamotte's body is found in Tennessee. But then it was unidentified, just like the Bear Brook victims for over 30 years.
Moon: Exactly. So, this has been a Tennessee cold case that began in 1985…
Quimby, Under His Breath: God…
Moon: …A murdered, unidentified woman found along the side of a road. And when her body was found, it appears that it had only been there for maybe two to three weeks. Um…
Quimby: How was she killed?
Moon: Blunt force trauma to the head.
Quimby: Yeah, you can imagine that. Police would have right away been thinking, “What if this is the mother of Rasmussen's daughter? The, the the middle child found in the barrels.”
Moon: Oh, yeah. And that was basically my first question when I called the AG's office last night. I spoke with Susan Morrill. She's now the chief of the Cold Case Unit.
Moon, On the Phone: Are we ruling out that this murder was, could have been committed by Terry Rasmussen or is that still an open question?
Susan Morrill, On the Phone: Well, I don't think that there's any information that would connect the two. It just happened that the press conference about Terry Rasmussen and our request for information about an Elizabeth Evans generated this tip.
Quimby: So, law enforcement is confident that this is not another Rasmussen victim.
Moon: Well, the big reason that it's probably not is the timeline. It just doesn't quite match up. So, she went missing in 1984 from Manchester.
Quimby: Uhuh.
Moon: According to what we know about Rasmussen's timeline, he was already in California by that time with Lisa. So, he's already gone from New Hampshire when Liz Lamotte goes missing. And in terms of the connection to, um, Elizabeth Evans, the evidence that she existed comes from 1980. So, that's when that package was signed.
Quimby: I see. And, and at that point, Elizabeth Lamotte would have been like 13.
Moon: Exactly.
Quimby: Yeah, okay.
Moon, On the Phone: Um, on the Lamotte case, is there any, do we have any leads as to who was responsible for this? Um, or is that something that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is, is, um, gonna be handling, I assume?
Morrill, On the Phone: Right. Now that they have an identity for the victim, they will probably, um, look at this case again and, um, bring more energy and focus to it. They've sent out their own press release in Tennessee, and they're asking for the public's help. Um, if they have any information to let them know, and they would be the agency to investigate her death.
Moon, On the Phone: Okay.
Quimby: Well, we talked about in episode six how the genetic genealogy that was pioneered in the Bear Brook case… you know, it's had all these ripple effects on all these other cold cases. But it's not just the science, because this is an example of another ripple effect that, that hasn't had anything to do with the work of Barbara Rae-venter, who we talk about extensively in the podcast. This is like… just plain old tips comin’ in.
Moon: Yeah, well, it's a ripple effect in terms of the interest that the case has generated. Folks looking into answers in this case have been turning up answers to other cases just through sheer coincidence, you know, sheer coincidence that Liz Lamotte went missing at a similar time frame as some of the other victims. Um, and it's not the only other case that's been solved. There was a missing, uh, unidentified child abandoned at an airport that some people thought might have been somehow related to Terry Rasmussen in his trip across the country. Turns out, that child abandoned at an airport was this other woman who was adopted after being found in Idaho. And…
Quimby, Laughing: Yeah…
Moon: She, you know, she learned her name basically through, because of the interest and work by citizen sleuths, by websleuths on the Bear Brook case. So, yeah, here we are again with just like another ripple effect.
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Quimby: Thanks, Jason, for letting us know what's going on.
Moon: You bet.
Quimby, Narrating: We'll continue to let you know what's happening in the Bear Brook case, either in the form of these breaking news updates or if there is ever a big enough break in the case, possibly with another full episode of Bear Brook. We really expect that is going to happen sometime in the near future. But you know, nothing is confirmed yet. We're still waiting on details and so, we can't make any guarantees, but really, do stay subscribed. We'll be back as soon as we've got something more to say. Thanks a lot.
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