ALLENSTOWN, N.H. — Thirty years ago, children playing in the woods bordering Bear Brook State Park found the heavy steel drum and made a game of rolling it around the towering pine trees. They abandoned it when the cover popped off, dumping a trash bag onto the ground.
Some days later, on Nov. 10, 1985, hunters stumbled upon the scene and discovered that the tattered plastic covered the naked, partially dismembered, and decomposing bodies of a young woman and little girl. Investigators learned the pair were beaten to death but were unable to identify them.
By 2000, the trail had long grown cold when New Hampshire State Police Sergeant John M. Cody, who was newly assigned to the case, was trekking through the woods and made a startling discovery some 100 yards from where the first bodies were found: another steel drum containing the skeletal remains of two more little girls.
On the 30th anniversary of the first discovery, the killings of the woman and three children — whose ages and identities are unknown — remain one of New Hampshire’s most baffling mysteries.
Mitochondrial DNA tests performed years ago indicate that the woman found in Allenstown is related to the oldest and youngest girls found in the woods but don’t distinguish whether she was their mother, sister, or aunt. It’s unclear whether the third girl is related to any of the other victims.
“This is one of the larger unidentified familial-related sets of remains in the country,” said New Hampshire State Police Lieutenant Joseph Ebert, who has been investigating the Allenstown slayings for about six years. “It’s so difficult for me to wrap my mind around the thought that there is a whole family that disappeared . . . and nobody reported it.”
Authorities said the case has been hindered over the years because so little is known about the victims. Police said they believe the woman, who was between 23 and 32 years old, and the children were killed at the same time, probably between 1980 and 1984.
Kim Fallon, chief forensic investigator for the New Hampshire Medical Examiner’s office, provided the following descriptions of the girls: a 9½- to 10½-year-old with light brown hair and double-pierced ears who might have been suffering from pneumonia; a brown-haired 3- to 5-year-old who had a noticeable overbite and might not have been related to the others; a 2- to 3½-year old with fine, long blond hair and a slight gap between her two front teeth.
A forensic anthropologist concluded that the woman had Native American characteristics but listed all of the victims as Caucasian.
The woman and oldest girl died of blunt force trauma to the head, but the cause of death could not be determined for the younger two. Police said it appeared that the woman and oldest girl had been partially dismembered to fit into the steel drum.
The first 55-gallon generic steel drum was found on private property that borders Bear Brook State Park, a popular site for campers, hikers, and snowmobilers, located 10 miles north of Manchester. The bodies were not far from a trail that snakes from a trailer park to the charred remains of a convenience store that was destroyed by fire in 1983.
