Barrels in the Pines

Barrels in the Pines: The Bear Brook Breakthrough

Allenstown, New Hampshire – 1985–2020

The first barrel was found by a hunter. It was the kind of place you wouldn’t stumble across unless you knew the back trails—deep in Bear Brook State Park, down a gravel road and tucked in behind a long-forgotten brush pile. It was November 10th, 1985. Cold, gray light filtered through the trees. The barrel was rusted, partially tipped over, with something spilling out of the cracked plastic lid.

It wasn’t garbage.

Inside were the remains of a woman and a young girl, wrapped in plastic. Unrecognizable. Decayed. Their bones coming apart at the joints, skin reduced to leather. Blunt force trauma had crushed their skulls. No identification. No purse. No wallets. Not even names.

The girl was between 5 and 11. The woman, perhaps 23 to 33. They hadn’t just been murdered. They’d been discarded—sealed up in that barrel like waste, like someone didn’t want them found.

They wouldn’t be the last.

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The Second Barrel

For fifteen years, the case sat in silence. State police entered the victims into databases. Local missing persons were compared. The barrel was examined. Nothing. No fingerprints, no known suspects. A woman and child, dead and nameless, buried together in the woods like forgotten ghosts.

Then came May 2000. Another barrel. Same location—Bear Brook State Park. Same kind of container. Same horror inside.

Two more children.

Both female. One between 1 and 3. The other around 2 to 4 years old. Small bones. Tiny teeth. Again, plastic-wrapped. Again, murdered by blunt force trauma. Same method....Read More