In search for clues to slayings, long-dead Richmond-area killer IDd – SFGate

Terrance Peder Rasmussen, 1959

Terrance Peder Rasmussen, 1959

In search for clues to slayings, long-dead Richmond-area killer IDd

For years, police in California and New Hampshire knew Robert Bob Evans was a killer, murdering and dismembering his wife in a home outside Richmond decades after presumably killing an unidentified woman and three young children in New Hampshire.

They just never knew his real name.

He was actually Terrance Peder Rasmussen, New Hampshire authorities announced Friday.

Law enforcement officials believe the discovery of Rasmussens identity is a breakthrough in the decades-old murder mystery of the four victims in Allenstown, N.H.

Using DNA with living relatives and comparing fingerprints connected with aliases, police pieced together the identity of the man as well as much of his whereabouts from his birth in 1943 to his death in 2010 in a California prison. But they are hoping that the public release of Rasmussens name will help fill in holes from his timeline, including substantial time spent in the Bay Area in the 1970s, to help identify the nameless woman and children.

Rasmussen used several aliases, in addition to Evans, including Curtis Kimball, Jerry Gorman, Gerald Mockerman, Gordon Jenson and Lawrence William Vanner while living in California during the 1980s. He died in 2010 while serving a life sentence for his wifes murder. He was listed by the California state corrections department as Kimball.

Police believe Rasmussen killed the woman and three girls in New Hampshire, one of whom was his biological daughter, stuffing them in metal drums on a rural property. Police found the first barrel with two victims in 1985 and the second with the other two in 2000. Its unclear when they were killed.

New Hampshire authorities also believe Rasmussen is responsible for the death of another woman, Denise Beaudin, 32, who disappeared after leaving with him for what police believe was a cross-country trip.

Rasmussen was convicted of only one murder, however, that of his wife, Eunsoon Jun. Contra Costa County police in 2002 found her partially dismembered body under a pile of cat litter. In 2003, he pleaded guilty to her murder.

Jun was his second wife. His first wife, along with their children, are alive, police said.

According to the New Hampshire Attorney Generals office, Rasmussen served in the U.S. Navy in California from 1962 to 1967 and lived in Santa Cruz, Contra Costa and San Mateo counties from the early 1970s until his arrest in 2002.

He was employed as an electrician and handyman while in California.

In a timeline provided by the authorities, Rasmussen moved to Redwood City in 1970 and worked as an electrician in Palo Alto.

In 1974, he visited his first wife and children in Arizona, accompanied by an unidentified woman. Investigators are particularly interested in whom he was traveling with at that time.

By 1986, Rasmussen was living in Santa Cruz County, working in a Scotts Valley RV park under the name Gordon Jenson, and after several years of unknown whereabouts, he was again in California, living as Vanner.

Police ask anyone with any information about Rasmussen to contact New Hampshire State Police-Cold Case Unit at (603) 223-3856 or coldcaseunit@dos.nh.gov.

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker

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In search for clues to slayings, long-dead Richmond-area killer IDd - SFGate