MP of the week: Melissa Espinoza

This week’s featured missing person (I’m sorry it’s late) is Melissa Ann Espinoza, a twelve-year-old girl who disappeared from Rancho Cordova, California on December 2, 1993.

She was last seen hanging out at her old apartment complex; her family had moved after a fire. The complex was in a bad neighborhood and Melissa is considered missing under suspicious circumstances and a probable abduction victim, but no suspects have been made and one seems to know anything.

Later today, I’m off to the zoo. Perhaps I’ll run into CrimeBlogger1983 again.

Three more of Terry Rasmussen’s victims identified

It hit the news today (see here on Boston 25 news and here on the Daily Beast, among other places) that authorities have identified three of the four victims found in Bear Brook State Park in New Hampshire.

It’s an infamous case. The bodies were found wrapped in plastic and electrical wiring, in two barrels, close to each other: one barrel was located in 1985, and another in 2000. One young woman, and three little girls, two of whom were shown by DNA to be her own daughters. They all died around the same time, sometime between 1977 and 1981.

Now, three of them have names: Marlyse Elizabeth Honeychurch and her daughters, Marie Elizabeth Vaughn and Sarah Lynn McWaters. They disappeared from California in 1978, shortly after Marlyse started dating Terrance Peder Rasmussen. Marlyse was then 24, and the girls were 7 (Marie) and 11 months (Sarah). It doesn’t look like they lived long afterwards.

Rasmussen is a very unusual serial killer, in that he formed romantic relationships with women and sometimes even had children by them before killing them. He committed his final murder in 2001, that of his wife Eunsoon Joon, and died in prison in 2010. At the time, his other crimes were mostly undiscovered.

Denise Beaudin, who disappeared in 1981 at age 23 and listed on Charley, is presumed one of his victims, but her body hasn’t been found. She had an infant daughter at the time of her disappearance (not Rasmussen’s kid), and that little girl was abandoned by Rasmussen in California in 1985. It was the best thing he ever did for her, because as a result she was raised by a good family and apparently doing well. She has chosen not to speak to the media or let her current identity be known.

The fourth person found in the barrels at Bear Brook State park is still unidentified, but DNA proved she’s Rasmussen’s biological daughter. She was a toddler, about two to four years old when she died. She may have Native American ancestry.

There’s a good chance the little girl’s mother is also dead. Rasmussen was arrested under the name Robert “Bob” Evans for minor charges in New Hampshire in 1980, and he had a woman living with him who called herself Elizabeth Evans and said she was his wife. Perhaps this is the mother of the child in the barrel.

MP of the week: Randy Spring

This week’s featured missing person is Randy Charles Spring, a 28-year-old Army veteran and volunteer firefighter who disappeared while on a solo hiking and camping trip in the Whitewater area of Riverside County, California. That was on October 10, 1988.

Spring was physically fit and had survival training. That didn’t prevent him from disappearing. From the books I’ve read about people who disappeared in wilderness areas, it seems like a lot of people become overconfident in their skills and abilities.

Me, I would never go on a wilderness trip alone, especially not a multi-day one. Perhaps that’s being overcautious but I’ve read too many horror stories.

I think I’m getting back in the saddle

The past week has been a bit unproductive as I was afflicted with what was either a severe cold or severe allergies, not sure which. I was pretty miserable with coughing and general yuckiness and couldn’t get much done.

In the meantime, people have disappeared, people have been found (including Delilah Dawn Hopkins, finally identified after being missing almost twenty years), the wheel turns.

The good news is that, per FBI data, the rate of missing persons and missing kids in particular is at its lowest since 1990. It’s the start of a lovely summer, people. Let your kids play outside, provided the pollen count’s down.