From unsolved homicides to missing persons and suspicious deaths, here’s what the state is doing to solve its 126 cold cases

Eleven-year-old Debra Horn disappeared from her Allenstown home in January 1969. Eight months later, her decaying body was uncovered in the trunk of an abandoned car located in Sandown. The mystery of her death remains unsolved.

Betty Place, a mother of six, has been missing for 47 years. She was last seen at her Warner home in June 1978. No body was ever found. Her family is still searching for answers.

Plymouth resident John Labbe, 54, was shot and killed in his home in 2011. A friend found his body in a shed on the property. Police never identified the killer.

Each of these cold cases carries far more questions than answers for families mourning their loved ones, aching to know what happened and find justice. With 126 such cases across New Hampshire, the state recently added two new full-time investigators to the New Hampshire Department of Justice’s Cold Case Unit earlier this month.

What is a cold case?

A criminal investigation is considered cold after five years have passed without resolution, and “limited leads or resources” means the investigation is no longer active, according to the Department of Justice.

The state’s Cold Case Unit takes over the investigation to determine what happened and find those responsible for these unsolved crimes.

“Our goal is to answer questions. Who did these horrible crimes? What happened? And how can we hold someone accountable for the thing that they’ve done?” said Chris Knowles, a senior assistant attorney general who serves as chief of the Cold Cases Unit.

A cold case can fall into one of three categories — homicides with no culprit determined; people who vanish with no body ever found; and deaths under suspicious circumstances but not enough evidence to be classified as a homicide.

Of the 126 total cases without resolution, 16 of those are missing persons, 97 are unsolved homicides and 13 are suspicious deaths, with the subjects of these cases spanning all ages. The cases themselves date as far back as the 1960s and as recently as the 2010s.

The unit has solved over a dozen cold cases since its inception in 2009.

“I see these cases as being solved one of two ways: Either someone coming forward and providing an account of what happened, or through modern forensic or investigative techniques,” Knowles said. “And so there’s no piece that’s too small, that’s not worth following up on.”

His team, staffed by a collaboration between the Department of Justice and the State Police Major Crime Unit, now has four investigators, in addition to Knowles and Assistant Attorney General Rachel Harrington. They also receive part-time support from Major Crime Unit auxiliary troopers, a retired Manchester Police captain and a retired FBI supervisory special agent.

Revisiting a case

When the Cold Case Unit begins investigating, the team first conducts a comprehensive review of the facts.

“Sometimes it’s reading thousands of pages multiple times and seeing if there was something that was missed or if there’s something that can be picked up on,” Knowles said. “Then there’s always applying modern forensic and investigative techniques to cases that are older. We’re in such a place now where we have advancements at the state forensic laboratory that would allow us to do things that weren’t even imagined as possible in the past by past generations of detectives.” 

For Harrington, who has served on the unit since 2019, this comprehensive review leads to taking a “holistic approach” to uncovering new information. Still, each case requires a different strategy.

“It really depends a lot on what the nature of the case was originally, what work was done originally, how well things have been able to be preserved,” she said. “And we talk a lot about physical evidence, but there are cases, too, that just don’t have that. And then you’re looking at other ways to try to access information.”

Relationships change over time, she explained, and the hope is that someone comes forward with new information or someone who previously lived in fear of speaking up now feels able to do so.

In recent years, advances in both scientific technology and investigative techniques have yielded answers to long-cold cases.

Just last month, the unit announced that it had identified the final female in the Bear Brook murders, a decades-long mystery beginning with the 1985 discovery of a barrel stuffed with the bodies of a woman and a girl in Allenstown’s Bear Brook State Park. Fifteen years later, another barrel with two additional girls was uncovered in the vicinity.

The investigation determined that all four of them had been murdered in the late 1970s or early 1980s. The perpetrator, Terry Rasmussen, was first named in 2017, a decade after he died in prison as “a known serial offender,” according to information provided by the state. Then, in 2019, investigators identified three of the four victims: Marlyse Honeychurch and her daughters, Marie Vaughn and Sarah McWaters. They had last been seen in California back in 1978.

But despite finding answers in a large portion of the case, a mystery remained: who was the fourth victim?

The team determined she was Rasmussen’s biological daughter but still needed an identity. That final piece of the puzzle fell into place in September of this year: Rea Rasmussen, born in Orange County, California in 1976 to Terry Peder Rasmussen and Pepper Reed, is the “middle child” long unidentified in the Bear Brook murders.

Yet with the discovery of Rea Rasmussen’s identity comes a full set of questions surrounding the fate of her mother, who has not been seen since the late 1970s. Reed was born in 1952 and grew up in Texas. Investigators are now searching for any information about her and Terry Rasmussen’s activities between 1974 and 1985, especially in the states of New Hampshire, California, Arizona, Texas, Oregon and Virginia.

The use of forensic genetic genealogy played a key role in Rea Rasmussen’s identification, according to Knowles. His unit spent thousands of hours with dozens of people poring over the case, working towards a breakthrough. That dedication applies to every case they review, he said.

“With the new staffing, the new investigators, comes a new look at each of these cases, new investigative knowledge and experience, and we’re hopeful that it will resolve or result in us being able to give answers to victims and their families and their loved ones and their communities that have gone so long without,” he said.

Just this week, the state released a renewed call for information in the case of Lynne Brennan, a 53-year-old Manchester woman killed in an unsolved homicide in 2010. Brennan was discovered dead in her home after last being seen in public a week prior. Investigators believe she was killed at least a day before her body was found.

In hopes of someone coming forward with new details, the cold cases team released footage of Brennan’s last public sighting at Bunny’s Superette on October 4, 2010.

Supporting families through the unthinkable

Many of the cases tackled by the unit have gone decades without developments. For the families of those missing or dead, the endlessness of not knowing what happened to their loved one becomes all-consuming.

“There’s generations of families that carry the trauma of what happened, even to the point of maybe family members that didn’t know the person personally,” Harrington said. “But these cases, for communities and for families, become so generational in the way that that trauma gets carried.”

The state’s Office of Victim/Witness Assistance devotes itself to supporting such families.

Amy Cerullo, one of the five victim/witness advocates, explained that she and her counterparts sit in on meetings between families and law enforcement or prosecutors, helping them stay updated in the event of a search or any changes in the investigation and coordinate media events for people to share their experiences and participate in open calls for information.

“No matter how much time has passed, they’re still feeling that loss,” she said.

Cerullo wants to help families feel like they have a voice in the process, especially since in solved cases, they would have the chance to share a victim impact statement but don’t get that chance in lingering cold cases.

“It’s something traumatic that can never be healed, or even like steps toward closure and healing, because they just don’t have answers for years, decades, however long it may be,” Cerullo said.

If a case ends up being solved with active criminal charges, the advocates continue to support families throughout the prosecution process. If a perpetrator is no longer alive or the case isn’t prosecutable, they’ll sit down with families to help answer as many questions as possible.

“Our goal is to ensure that it’s not something that they’re reading about on the nightly news, but that they hear it from us first, and that we are able to answer questions that they may have,” Knowles said.

His team operates with the understanding that “every time we’re talking to them, it may be re-traumatizing.”

Ultimately, Knowles wants the message to be one of hope — the unit is actively working on these cases, which is why he wanted two more investigators to bolster its capacity.

For Harrington, the message is also that “people haven’t been forgotten.”

“It matters to us to be able to do as much as we can for them,” she said.

More information

To learn more about the Department of Justice’s Cold Cases Unit or view the list of cases, visit doj.nh.gov/bureaus/new-hampshire-cold-case-unit.

The Cold Cases Unit has tip forms on its website if you or anyone you know has information pertaining to a specific case.

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