A man who died in a California prison in 2010 while serving a sentence for killing and dismembering his wife is responsible for killing five people in New Hampshire in the 1980s, authorities said Thursday.
New Hampshire State Police and the attorney general’s office said they believe the killer was a man known as Bob Evans, the one-time boyfriend of a New Hampshire woman who disappeared in 1981.
They believe he killed that woman, Denise Beaudin, and, separately, a mother and three girls who were found in steel drums in a park. They said he was the father of one of those girls.
Authorities say Evans used a number of aliases. Under a different name, he was convicted in California of the 2002 killing of his wife, Eunsoon Jun, who was found dead in their basement.
“This was a guy who was a chameleon,” said Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeffery Strelzin, chief of the attorney general’s homicide unit.
He said Evans — not believed to be his real name — fits the criteria for a serial killer and that authorities want to know more about him, because they fear there are other victims.
Police recently searched a Manchester home where Beaudin lived with Evans and her infant daughter. Beaudin’s family said they last saw her in 1981, when she was 23 years old. Her family assumed the three left town to avoid financial troubles, and they never called police.
The attorney general’s office said it has been in touch with Beaudin’s daughter.
The case of the four bodies found in drums in a state park in Allenstown has long stymied investigators.
In 1985, a hunter discovered the first two bodies — the woman and a girl believed to be 9 or 10. In 2000, an investigator found the other two girls — one believed to be 2 or 3 and the other 3 or 4. They believe the woman is likely the mother of the eldest and youngest girls.
The time of their killings was narrowed to 1980 to 1984.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.