True Crime Podcast Recommendation: Bear Brook

You’ve likely heard about the Bear Brook Murders before, but if not, here’s a quick recap: In 1985, a barrel with two decomposed bodies was found in Bear Brook State Park, New Hampshire. The bodies were of a young adult woman and of a girl between the ages of 5 and 7. As much as they tried, authorities could not found out the identities of the victims, and the investigation turned cold.

Then in 2000, another barrel was found, a very short distance away from the first. The barrel had likely been there when the first one was discovered, but had been missed all this time. In that barrel, there were two more decomposed bodies, this time of two little girls. Again, they couldn’t identify the victims but they figured out that two of the girls (the one found in the first barrel and one of the ones in the second barrel) were related to the adult victim, while one of them was not connected genetically to the others.

The case continued unsolved for many years until in 2017 there was a huge twist: police had the identity of the killer.

I don’t want to give you more information than that, because it’s better if you listen to this podcast, which was done by  New Hampshire Public Radio and reporter Jason Moon. While it doesn’t have many new revelations, it delves deeply into the case and explains really well the amazing way in which they could find the identity of the Bear Brook killer, and how genealogy DNA helped solve this in partly (and actually inspired authorities to use the technique to identify the Golden State Killer). It’s only 6 episodes, plus two updates, and it’s definitely worth listening to.

I have been listening to the Bear Brook podcast - which is about 4x bodies they found in 2x barrels in New Hampshire in the woods - and how they tracked down the identities of the bodies and the serial killer behind them. A lot of the science is quite old now, and is about genealogy in the forensic space, which was novel at the time. It was also interesting to listen to the process by which they tracked the killer down.

He was not a typical serial killer either - many of his victims haven’t been found, a lot of them are women, and he didn’t have the showmanship of typical serial killers who are popularised - he didn’t leave a signature tag or anything and it seems he really just wanted to get away with it. He assumed many different aliases and names and then proceeded to do away with women and children after separating them from their families - it’s sad and interesting how few of the families made any effort to find their loved ones after they disappeared.

I wonder if there are that many serial killers still around these days, or as technology has advanced it just becomes harder and harder to get away with these things as the world becomes smaller and more connected and our data is ever present and recorded. I wonder a lot about this man’s motives, and what drove him to kill so many women and children - from a psychiatric perspective would it be put down to childhood trauma, anger issues, a mental health disease? And does that matter or impact whether or not he is culpable of inflicting so much injury to so many families?

Anyway, in terms of my goals I have come into the new clinical year with significant issues getting all of my things signed off which is frustrating and I suppose a testament to how painfully bad I have been all my life at organisational skills. I hate doing paperwork and following things up. Anyway, that is very important and a big goal for me if I am to progress my academic/career year.

Apart from that, I don’t have any huge goals because I’ve been trying to get more in the groove with individual hobbies, like watching a TV series (Lupin), filling out my diary and completing Hogwarts Legacy, as well as study, study, study.

My study group hasn’t really kicked off the way I thought it would which is okay, I am not too stressed because I think I can mostly do it on my own, it is just a bit stressful because I can’t tell overall if I am behind or ahead or going to pass this exam or what.

Today more briefly my goals would be to make some healthy snacks for work (carrot cake balls), plan my week for next week (manual lessons, spa day, ?nude painting with Yolanda), pick up more photo paper for my diary and maybe bring in some lunch for Claire and play a bit more Hogwarts. Yesterday was incredibly chill at work, I had literally 0 rapids, so we shall see how tonight goes. Hopefully it is just as chill - and then I get 3x days off! How excellent.