Question

1-Summarize the article briefly in your own words.

2-Explain the main theme of this case and its implications for the future of forensic science.

3-Several genealogy sites (including ancestry.com, 23andme.com, familytreedna.com, findmypast.com) were used in this case -- do you believe that law enforcement should have access to these databases as a standard practice? Why or why n

Article

How a Jane Doe child case uncovered a serial killer, identified victims and changed the use of DNA forensics

Investigators and researchers worked to find the origins of a child named Lisa.

By

Lauren Effron

,

Boaz Halaban

and

Marc Dorian

March 19, 2020, 5:57 AM

31 min read

Barrel with human remains found in Bear Brook State Park launches mystery: Part 1

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Barrel with human remains found in Bear Brook State Park launches mystery: Part 1

In 1985, police were alerted to a suspicious barrel in some New Hampshire woods. Inside, they found the decomposing unidentified bodies of a female adult and child who had died of blunt force trauma.

Former California homicide detective Roxane Gruenheid had helped put a murderer behind bars, and yet, there was something about the suspect that nagged at her -- something in his murky past that told her this wasn’t the end of his story.

It was 2003. The killer, who by then was known to authorities as “Curtis Kimball,” stunned the court when he suddenly stood up at a pre-trial hearing and announced he wanted to plead guilty to murdering Eunsoon Jun.

Jun was a 44-year-old California chemist he had been dating before she disappeared and her dismembered body was found in her Richmond, California, home. Kimball had originally pleaded no contest to a second-degree murder charge. He had also first told police his name was "Larry Vanner," and they knew he had also used the name "Gordon Jenson."

Gruenheid, a former captain for the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office who is now retired, had helped uncover the body. She couldn’t stop thinking about how this man -- a proven liar -- had already served time on child abandonment charges for deserting a little girl he called his 5-year-old daughter Lisa, 15 years prior.

“I was really centered on the little girl, on Lisa,” she said. “Like, was this really his daughter? … If it's not his daughter, where did he get her? Who did he get her from?”

She believed Kimball’s sudden decision to plead guilty was because he had overheard her telling another investigator in court that she was requesting a paternity test for Lisa, who by 2003 was in her early 20s.

“I think … he believed if he pled guilty ... I would stop investigating that aspect of his past,” Gruenheid said.

She refused to stop pushing for answers. Although she and her fellow investigators knew Kimball had a lengthy criminal record, they wouldn’t know the full scope until years later.

Eventually, Gruenheid's efforts to uncover Lisa’s past helped launch new investigations that eventually led police to believe that Kimball, whose real name was Terry Peder Rasmussen, was in fact a prolific serial killer who used multiple aliases for years as he murdered women and children on both coasts.

Investigators referred to him as “The Chameleon.”

The Rasmussen case helped change forensic investigations forever with the introduction of the use of genetic genealogy -- a technique that has helped point to suspects in other major cases, including the Golden State Killer case.

Chasing a ‘ghost’

In 2003, as far as Gruenheid and her team knew, Rasmussen’s criminal record had started in 1985.

He had been arrested in ‘85 as “Curtis Kimball” after he was involved in a car accident in Cypress, California, with Lisa in the car with him. He was charged with driving under the influence and endangering the welfare of a child. He failed to appear in court for these charges, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

By January 1986, authorities said Rasmussen was living with Lisa in an RV park in Scotts Valley, California, where he worked as a handyman under the name “Gordon Jenson.”

Richard and Katherine Decker, an older couple also living in the park, helped care for Lisa and had concerns about her well-being — so much so that they tried helping their daughter, who lived in San Bernardino, California, adopt the little girl. Authorities believe Lisa was 4 or 5 years old at the time.

The Deckers brought Lisa to Southern California to meet their daughter, but called police after they say Lisa said things that seemed to indicate she had been abused. Eager to finalize the adoption so that she would not be returned to him, the family discovered that Gordon Jenson had fled the RV park in June 1986. When police realized “Gordon Jenson” was a false identity and fingerprint records from the previous DUI arrest matched him to “Curtis Kimball,” they issued an arrest warrant.

Rasmussen was captured and charged with child abandonment as “Curtis Kimball” in March 1989. Two months later, he pleaded guilty to child abandonment and received three years in prison. He served less than two and was paroled in October 1990.

Then he disappeared again.

Authorities said Rasmussen resurfaced in California as Eunsoon Jun’s new boyfriend -- she introduced him to her family in December 1999, and he told them his name was “Larry Vanner,” according to authorities.

Headley said he had Lisa sign up for Ancestry.com first and received two hits on fourth and fifth cousins, which were very distant relatives. Headley said he then reached out to DNAAdoption, a website that helps adoptees identify birth families through their DNA matches, and genetic genealogist Dr. Barbara Rae-Venter responded.

“The Lisa ... case was actually kind of difficult, because, normally when you're working with adoptees, you have some information,” Rae-Venter said. “You know where they're born, you have a birth date."

“In Lisa's case, we had no idea where she was from,” she continued. “All we had was her DNA.”

Authorities had estimated Lisa was born around 1981 based on her dental development at the time she was recovered in 1986, Rae-Venter said. So when Rae-Venter started working on the case in 2015, she assumed Lisa was about 35 years old. She also had Lisa do a 23andMe test to narrow down her region of origin, which turned out to be the U.S. and Canada.

ABCDr. Barbara Rae-Venter, an investigative genetic genealogist, got involved in the Rasmussen case through Lisa.Dr. Barbara Rae-Venter, an investigative genetic genealogist, got involved in the Rasmussen case through Lisa.

ABC

Meanwhile, Headley reached out to the cousins who matched with Lisa to ask them to submit DNA samples and one of them agreed.

Rae-Venter said she also uploaded Lisa’s DNA profile to two other genealogy databases, FamilyTreeDNA and GEDMatch.com, and asked the cousins Lisa had already matched with to do the same. From there, Rae-Venter said she sculpted various family trees to try to find possible parent or grandparent matches for Lisa.

(MORE: Serial killer Terry Rasmussen's victims, known and unknown)

As more cousin matches revealed themselves and more agreed to submit their DNA, Lisa’s family tree began coming into focus.

“Lisa's cousins became very, very involved,” Rae-Venter said. “We ended up with over 200 of Lisa's genetic cousins in this project.”

After thousands and thousands of hours working on “the Lisa Project,” Rae-Venter said her search ultimately pinpointed a man in New Hampshire named Armand Beaudin.

“I was contacted one day by my nephew, and he was working with the sheriff's department out in California,” Armand Beaudin said. “They requested for me to do a DNA [test] … and they discovered that I was the actual grandfather.”

Turns out Beaudin’s daughter, Denise Beaudin, had been missing for decades. Rae-Venter had figured out Beaudin was Lisa’s mother.

ABC“I don't think they're ever going to find her,” Denise Beaudin’s father Armand Beaudin said. “There's always that hope,... more“I don't think they're ever going to find her,” Denise Beaudin’s father Armand Beaudin said. “There's always that hope, but nothing's definite.”

ABC

Once they had confirmed a DNA match from the grandfather that showed Lisa was related to him on her mother’s side, Headley called Lisa to give her the news.

“I called Lisa up to let her know that … we knew who she was. She got very quiet,” Headley said. “I asked her, ‘Do you want to know your name?’ Then she just very quietly said, ‘Yes.’”

Lisa’s birth name was Dawn Beaudin.

The last time Armand Beaudin said he saw his daughter and granddaughter was around Thanksgiving 1981, when Denise was with her then-boyfriend -- a man named “Bob Evans.”

“Dawn was born in 1981,” Armand Beaudin said. “She was only 5 months old … when they left Manchester, [New Hampshire].”

Beaudin said Evans announced they were leaving town because they owed people money.

Courtesy of Armand BeaudinIn 1981, Denise Beaudin went missing shortly after Thanksgiving with her 6-month-old daughter and her boyfriend,... moreIn 1981, Denise Beaudin went missing shortly after Thanksgiving with her 6-month-old daughter and her boyfriend, Rasmussen, who she knew as Robert T. Evans, according to the New Hampshire Department of Justice.

Courtesy of Armand Beaudin

“I went over [to their house] to invite them here for Christmas, and found out that they were already gone,” Beaudin said. “The neighbors told me that they had packed ... and just left and I never saw her [again].”

When Headley got that information from Armand Beaudin, he said he sent photos to the Manchester police of the man they knew in California as “Curtis Kimball/Larry Vanner/Gordon Jenson.”

Authorities in New Hampshire went to Beaudin to show him Kimball’s mugshot. He identified him as Bob Evans.

New Hampshire Dept. of JusticeTerry Rasmussen poses as "Bob Evans" in an arrest photo from 1985.Terry Rasmussen poses as "Bob Evans" in an arrest photo from 1985.

New Hampshire Dept. of Justice

“So our suspect started in 1984 ... as Curtis Kimball,” Headley said. “Then... we had Gordon Jenson... then he was using Larry Vanner. And now it turns out in the early 1980s back in New Hampshire, he was using Bob Evans.”

“All the same guy,” he added.

At this point, investigators had connected three mysteries back to the same person. The man who killed Eunsoon Jun also had “Lisa,” now identified as Dawn Beaudin, with him for a time and he had been with her biological mother, Denise Beaudin, who hadn’t been seen since 1981.

So in 2016, more than 30 years after Denise Beaudin went missing, New Hampshire authorities opened a missing persons case for the first. She had not been reported missing before then because her father said, “we had no idea what to do, or where to go, or which way to turn.”

And unbeknownst to Gruenheid, Headley and other California authorities at the time, investigators in New Hampshire had been baffled for decades by a complete different, yet strange, cold case: Two barrels each containing two bodies had been found 15 years apart in Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown, New Hampshire.

That case was soon going to get its biggest break in three decades.

The Bear Brook murders: Two barrels, four bodies found 15 years apart

In 1985, while “Curtis Kimball” was in California with “Lisa,” New Hampshire police said a large, rusted blue barrel was found containing the remains of an adult woman about 23 to 33 years old and a female child they believed at that time to be 5 to 11 years old.

A second, similar rusted blue barrel was discovered about 100 yards away in 2000. Police said it contained the remains of two female children, one believed to be 2 to 4 years old and the other between 1 to 3 years old.

By 2016, none of the four victims nor their killer had been identified, but after the discovery of Lisa’s real identity, police wondered if the adult victim was Denise Beaudin.

New Hampshire authorities knew a man named “Bob Evans” had been in the state as far back as the late ‘70s, working as an electrician and handyman.

“We knew that Bob Evans actually spent a good amount of time on that property where the barrels were found, because he used to fix up and do some electrical work at a camp store that was right there on the property” in Bear Brook State Park, said Carol Schweitzer, a supervisor of the Forensic Services Unit at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

New Hampshire State PoliceOne of the barrels New Hampshire state police found in Bear Brook State Park.One of the barrels New Hampshire state police found in Bear Brook State Park.

New Hampshire State Police

In 2017, New Hampshire authorities held a press conference announcing that Lisa’s DNA did not match the adult victim, meaning she was not Denise Beaudin. But authorities said they had decided to test Bob Evans’ DNA with the four bodies found in the barrel, and it had led them to a huge discovery.

“They know Bob Evans is Gordon Jenson/Larry Vanner. They have his DNA from California,” said Billy Jensen,

Answer 1

1. In 1985, police were alerted to a suspicious barrel in some New Hampshire woods. The killer, who by then was known to authorities as "Curtis Kimball," stunned the court when he suddenly stood up at a pre-trial hearing and announced he wanted to plead guilty to murdering Eunsoon Jun. Jun was a 44-year-old California chemist he had been dating before she disappeared and her dismembered body was found in her Richmond, California, home. Kimball had originally pleaded no contest to a second-degree murder charge.
Gruenheid, a former captain for the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office who is now retired, had helped uncover the body. She could not believe he had already served time on child abandonment charges for deserting a little girl he called his 5-year-old daughter Lisa, 15 years prior. She believed Kimball’s sudden decision to plead guilty was because he had overheard her telling another investigator in court that she was requesting a paternity test for Lisa, who by 2003 was in her early 20s.
The Rasmussen case helped change forensic investigations forever with the introduction of the use of genetic genealogy -- a technique that has helped point to suspects in other major cases, including the Golden State Killer case.
In 2003, as far as Gruenheid and her team knew, Rasmussen’s criminal record had started in 1985. He had been arrested in ‘85 as "Curtis Kimball" after he was involved in a car accident in Cypress, California, with Lisa in the car with him.
So when Rae-Venter started working on the case in 2015, she assumed Lisa was about 35 years old. She also had Lisa do a 23andMe test to narrow down her region of origin. Barbara Rae-Venter, an investigative genetic genealogist, got involved in the Rasmussen case through Lisa. Barbara Rae-Venter, an investigative genetic genealogist, got involved in the Rasmussen case through Lisa. Meanwhile, Headley reached out to the cousins who matched with Lisa to ask them to submit DNA samples and one of them agreed.

Rae-Venter said she also uploaded Lisa’s DNA profile to two other genealogy databases,FamilyTreeDNA and GEDMatch. Com, and asked the cousins Lisa had already matched with to do the same. From there, Rae-Venter said she sculpted various family trees to try to find a possible parent or grandparent matches for Lisa. As more cousin matches revealed themselves and more agreed to submit their DNA, Lisa’s family tree began coming into focus.
Rae-Venter said her search ultimately pinpointed a man in New Hampshire named Armand Beaudin who was Lisa's Grandfather and his daughter Denise Beaudin was Lisa's mother. Rae-Venter had figured out Beaudin was Lisa’s mother.
Once they had confirmed a DNA match from the grandfather that showed Lisa was related to him on her mother’s side, Headley called Lisa to give her the news that her birth name was Dawn Beaudin.
The last time Armand Beaudin said he saw his daughter and granddaughter was around Thanksgiving 1981 when Denise was with her then-boyfriend a man named "Bob Evans." Dawn Beaudin was born in 1981.
The man who killed Eunsoon Jun also had "Lisa," now identified as Dawn Beaudin, with him for a time and he had been with her biological mother, Denise Beaudin, who hadn’t been seen since 1981.
In 1985, while "Curtis Kimball" was in California with "Lisa," New Hampshire police said a large, rusted blue barrel was found containing the remains of an adult woman about 23 to 33 years old and a female child they believed at that time to be 5 to 11 years old. By 2016, none of the four victims nor their killer had been identified, but after the discovery of Lisa’s real identity, police wondered if the adult victim was Denise Beaudin. New Hampshire authorities knew a man named "Bob Evans" had been in the state as far back as the late ‘70s, working as an electrician and handyman. Later that Bob Evans is Gordon Jenson/ Larry Vanner.

2. We need to work on closed cases or unsolved cases by using our new and improved technologies which were not available decades back. This case shows a lot of hope and promise in the field of forensic sciences and how important it is to crack down any crime or mystery. Forensic science is one of the most important aspects of any criminal investigation, as it can allow the authorities to do everything from positively identify a suspect in crime to determine exactly when and how a crime occurred. According to the National Institute of Justice, forensic science is the application of sciences to matters of the law and can be used to match DNA to an individual, understand blood spatter patterns, and learn the makeup of an unidentified drug. With forensic science, the authorities can analyze physical evidence and feel confident in almost every decision they make regarding a criminal case. Additionally, the results of a forensics test can be used in the court of law to support evidence admitted at trial.

3. Yes, I believe that law enforcement should have access to these databases as standard practice as genealogy sites like (ancestry.com, 23andme.com, familytreedna.com, findmypast.com) are very powerful in solving crimes. Genetic or forensic genealogy combines direct-to-consumer DNA tests, like those purchased through 23andMe or Ancestry.com, with the age-old hobby of tracing a family tree with public records, such as birth certificates and land deeds. The technique relies on the simple principle that, if you go back far enough in history, everyone is related and therefore has thousands of relatives. Assuming that an average family has two to three kids, then a typical person would statistically have nearly 200 third cousins, 950 fourth cousins, and 4,700 fifth cousins. If a genealogist can find a cousin of an unknown suspect who has left behind DNA at a crime scene, then they can use old school family trees and sometimes literally drawn on paper or whiteboards to track down the perp. That’s how the Golden State Killer and about 70 other suspects behind brutal cold cases like rapes, murders, and assaults have been caught since April 2018.