Welcome back to the third installment of the Barrels of Bear Brook. This week we’ll be covering both parts 1 and 2 of Episode 5 The Bloodline, Episode 6 The Chameleon, and Episode 7 The In-Between. These last 4 episodes took a turn, revealing more leads and more discoveries than the episodes before it. By the end of this blog post, the mystery will be uncovered and your mind will be blown.
Throughout each episode more is revealed about the identity of the Bear Brook killer. As his fake identities are slowly peeled away, the killer is identified as Terry Rasmussen. These identities were falsified by following leads that connect across the country, and narrator Jason Moon takes advantage of the intricate interconnectedness of the details of this mystery. Moon organizes the podcast in a way that evaluates each aspect of the mystery. Each episode seems to jump around focusing on different things but gets pieced together in the final two episodes. At first, this was quite confusing because it was hard to know how all of these things could be related, but as Jason Moon says, “This is the kind of stuff you can’t make up.” Moon does a great job of displaying the interconnectedness between episodes. For instance, in episode 7 he starts by reading the tombstones of the Bear Brook victims which was a key part in the first two episodes. This helps focus on the idea that their identities were still unknown but three out of the four of them would be revealed in the final episode. Moon also brings back the first two people he interviewed in the podcast series, the man (once young boy) who originally discovered the first barrel and the first officer to respond to the found bodies. Moon tells both parties what happened and the identities of the victims they’ve found. The amount of time, effort, and eagerness that went into this case and the production of this podcast is evident and Moon does a great job of bringing it all back together. This also gave the listeners an incentive to keep listening in order to connect all the pieces we’ve been given.
Another aspect of this podcast that really pulled me in is the inclusion of cliffhangers after new developments. Moon would start out giving background information, suspenseful music would build to the revealing of a new lead, and Moon would refrain from giving you the new information right away. Instead, he would explain how this information was uncovered, not only informing the audience but encouraging them to keep listening to hear this big new development. He does this when he hears the discovery of three of the victims’ identities. Rather than coming out and saying the names right away, he explained how Becky Heath and Barbara Ray Ventor both worked in individual ways in the same week to discover the missing identities. It was arguably more interesting to listen to how they both discovered the names in different ways using genetic genealogy and searching online missing forums. What are the odds that two people would work separately to figure this out? I was hooked. The continual usage of cliffhangers kept pulling me in, revealing new things little by little, resulting in multiple out loud gasps in a coffee shop. Yes I got some stares, but it was so worth it.
The names of three out of the four victims were: Marlise Honeychurch (the adult), Marie Vaughn (the oldest child), and Sarah McWaters (the youngest child). I couldn’t believe how many people contributed to the case and helped get to the point where they are now. Moon made a point to note that while they made these discoveries, it still is not over. It is still a sad thing. Moon acknowledges that this isn’t just a puzzle or a fun mystery to solve. They are real people with real family members feeling real grief. I think this was really important to establish because it is really easy to get wrapped up in the twists and turns and thrills of a mystery, but he does a great job in mentioning the emotional toll this takes on people. In these last four episodes he includes interviews with people close to the victims or killer of the case and how emotionally distraught they were. Terry Rasmussen’s daughter Andrea was interviewed and she was overcome with pain and grief that her father would do something like that and that those girls couldn’t live out the rest of their lives. The families of the victims were also filled with pain. However, the victims are always in peoples’ thoughts and prayers, and one of the original investigators even made a point to write their names on rocks in memorial.
The podcast Bear Brook is a compelling, emotional, and thrilling podcast with too many twists and turns to count. Narrator Jason Moon brings you on a journey that is still in progress, showing you all of the new developments in this case. I am greatly impressed with this podcast, and there is still so much more to discover. Keep your eyes peeled for more episodes because there is still more identities to find and secrets to be revealed. I will definitely be looking more into this Bear Brook case on my own and many other people across the nation could be looking into it as well. This mystery could be solved sooner than you think.
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