We've spent, I won't even, I couldn't even guess, maybe 10,000 hours
researching this case. It became, you know, every evening we'd work on it
every weekend. We're talking on the phone constantly about it.
Very important. Part of this is the interest of the community. The tips
that that interest brings in are invaluable. And the efforts between the
press and the public are volunteer genealogists and individuals who are
simply just interested in cold case investigations. Their efforts are to be
applauded Scott Maxwell. You and your sister have taken this on what kind of
first started being interested in this case. It was Rhonda, she's been ***,
she's worked on adoptions for the last, you know, since the early 80s helping
adoptees find their find their parents her kids got *** little older and we're,
you know, starting to move out of the house and she wanted to do something
little bit different. And somehow she came across the new Hampshire's cold
case, you know, website and saw this case and just became fascinated with it,
have *** background in carpentry and you know, I never had any interest in
anything like this. She read up on it, she called me and said, hey, I want to
go down there, do you want to go with me? And I said, you know, I figured I'd
just go along for the ride That was memorial day of 2011. She drove down
from Maine picked me up, I live in Manchester and on the way out here, she,
you know, filled me in,
We knew *** barrel had been found by *** hunter in 1985. Um and we we knew
that another one had been found in 2000 and but we didn't know much more than
that
at the time. There was only *** handful of articles we could find about the
case and we came out here and and walked the property, you know, not
knowing really where we were going or anything. We spent *** long time on
looking up births in Alan's town because we figured, you know, why not
start there. We tracked down every female that lived there that fit the
profile for the oldest victim. And uh you know, none of them, none of them
were missing, but that that's where we started and then it just grew from
there. She said okay now we're gonna go knock on doors. And I was like, What do
you mean knock on doors? That's that's not my thing, you know? Um she's like
no we gotta go talk to people and and I'd say probably for the 1st 20 or 30
visits, I didn't say *** word. I let her do all the talking. We went to the
trailer park and just started started knocking on doors. This is also 1988
um trailer park. We estimate about 400 families lived in here. What we want to
do is we wanted to talk to everyone that lived there from 1977 to 1985 and
we were able to pretty much do that either in person or on the phone email
facebook.
Um We contacted retired law enforcement because active law enforcement wasn't
gonna you know they were gonna talk to us because who are we and we talked to
everybody that we could that was mentioned in articles or
again just everybody that we could talk to about it. We went up and down this
road just knocking on every single door for probably *** mile that way and ***
half *** mile this way There was 10 families that had been there since the
late 70s and only one of those families had heard about the second set being
found. And so right away we were like okay you know why is that
Early on Rhonda flew down to Florida to visit the police chief chief Norman
Connors. He was the chief here in 1985. And uh he had *** suspect that he
always thought um you know that that he liked for it. And we had also looked at
him pretty heavily and you know since I found out that that was that was ***
rabbit hole we shouldn't have gone down. But we spent about two years
researching that guy in that family. Got to know everything about him
okay.
You have to be *** little bit O. C. D. I think to to work on something like
this because after you know after *** year or two it's it gets very
frustrating when you're not finding anything new. But but whenever we did
turn over anything new uh there was always more questions than than answers.
And it just you know, we just kept going and kept going and it sounds
almost like it was personal though explain that piece because there
because they were unknown, there wasn't any victims family that was advocating
for him, advocating for him. So that's what kind of what we did. And you know,
we tried to draw media attention to it and you know, kind of took him on as I
guess as our family, which I didn't even realize it happened until we've
been on it for three or four years. We found out who the owner of the property
was and went to his house and visited him. Uh he wasn't there the first time
we showed up, but we've been back many times since one time we're talking to
the property owner in I think it was July of 2014 after we've been talking
to him for three years after him telling us he had no idea, you know,
who might have done this one day. He just said, you know, I think uh I think
you ought to look at bob Evans, he called him bobby bobby Evans and you
know, immediately we're like well why should we look at him? And he said well
because he was *** strange, he was *** strange guy and he dumped, he dumped
trash on my property. And I think as soon as we got off the phone, we just,
you know, we went to the library and looked up city directories and and
looked everywhere for any bob robert Evans. The bob Evans name actually had
popped up for the very first time. And some of the research that Rhonda
Randall, the civilian researcher had done. So you did some bob Evans
sleuthing. You didn't really
Pan out at the time. Unfortunately, there was three Bob Evans. There were
electricians that lived in Manchester. There was many weekends spent at the
Manchester library and at the concord library
we contacted *** Um company topographic company and conquered. I think it was
to see if they had any aerial photos from, you know that time frame. And
they had some from 1988.
They printed us some apps. We are standing right in this area, right here,
right now. The first barrel In 1985 was found in this area right in here, maybe
30 ft off this trail. The second barrel was found right in here. You could see
all the trash and everything that was on the property. And then there was one
area that I think they noticed first and they said this looks like ***
barrel right here. And sure enough they zoomed in on it and you could clearly
see it was *** barrel down in the woods maybe about 500 ft down from the road.
Okay. And they said, you know, we can tell that the area around it has
recently been disturbed. Of course, that really got us interested. And so
we, we came back out here soon after that and using their GPS coordinates,
were able to find the spot. And sure enough, you could see where it was.
There was *** kind of an indent in the ground and it just looked different
than the area around it. We turned that over to state police. And after several
years of of not hear anything about that, we finally contacted him and said,
we have permission to dig, you know, is that okay? And they said, yeah, as long
long as if you find something, just give us *** call. We rented *** small
excavator and dug up that area. We didn't find anything. Um, just *** lot
of trash. We didn't, there wasn't *** barrel there anymore, but there was ***
lot of trash in that area. We provided them with *** lot of information. And,
uh, you know, obviously got nothing in return because we're just civilians and
they're not gonna share anything with us. Any civilian researcher wants to
help. Um, it's often *** bit of *** one way street where we take in information
and try to make use of it as best we can. But there's often not *** whole
lot that we can share back, certainly Rhonda and I had that discussion many
times the burden that we have is beyond *** reasonable doubt in the courtroom
and then the ethical standards, the safety concerns of, you know, making
sure that go to someone's house to speak with someone. You know, we don't
know what that person's reaction is going to be to having someone there
about the case. I think what the last decade has shown is that there is ***
place for that kind of work if it's done correctly.
One time when she was out here, she just gathered up four rocks and, and uh,
you know, for one for each of the victims. And, and uh, she said, you
know, she carried around *** magic marker and she said when we learned the
names, you know, we're gonna have somebody write them on them. And there
was *** few years where, you know, I was pretty discouraged
the first time that you heard those identities were made. How did you guys
feel after that?
Rhonda, I think felt pretty relieved and she kind of stopped researching it.
I didn't even go to that press conference. Um, and I didn't, I didn't
put it together till till months later that I kind of shut down on that. And I
think it was because for so long they were kind of like our family and then
all of *** sudden find out that they had names and they had people that
cared about them and loved them. That was, that was hard to that was hard to
accept. You know it was it was hard to release them to the family and uh I
just backed off the case and stopped probably for three or four months. I
didn't do anything at all on it. I need to apologize to the family because you
know I said the same thing *** lot of other people said and that was how can
they go missing? How come no one's missing them you know where where's
their family? You know and that was upsetting for Marley's siblings to hear
that you know because they were looking they were loved and they were people
looking for him but there's still 1/4. There is there still and we are still
working on that. No idea who the mom is or outside of the family. But I think
that's going to come from you know the right person giving taking *** D. N.
***. Test and being *** close match and I think that's how they'll identify who
she is.