Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast · Ben Gibson

The Bear Brook Murders

·1 hr 1 min·4 clips

The abandoned girl in California was identified as Dawn Bowden, and her mother was Denise Bowden from Manchester, New Hampshire.

Wicked and Grim opens with a loose, conversational rhythm before settling into the Bear Brook murders. The central crime begins in 1985, when a hunter finds a rusted 55-gallon drum in Bear Brook State Park. Inside are the decomposed bodies of a woman and a child. They have been beaten to death and left without names. Years later, a second barrel is found in the woods. That one contains the remains of two more young girls. The show treats the discovery as the start of a much longer puzzle. The investigation stretches across decades. At first, the obvious questions are simple ones about who the victims were and where they came from. Forensic work eventually challenges the idea that the victims were brought from far away in the final months of their lives. The evidence instead suggests they were local to the region. Isotope testing also shows that the unrelated middle child had a different background from the others. Early results point toward the upper northeastern United States or the upper Midwest. Later testing widens the possibilities to warmer places such as Arizona, Texas, California, or Oregon. The science does not pin down a single location. It does, however, make clear that her history was different. The episode stays with that uncertainty. Even with more clues, investigators are still missing the most basic thing they need. They do not have the victims' names. The family structure is becoming clearer, but the missing-person records still do not line up neatly. A separate thread then surfaces thousands of miles away. In 1986, a man living under the name Gordon Jensen is staying at an RV park in Cypress, California. He works as a technician and electrician and keeps to himself. He is with a small girl he introduces as his daughter, Lisa. Neighbors notice that the child looks unwell and withdrawn. She appears neglected, and Gordon Jensen tells people that her mother died of cancer. A neighboring family begins helping care for her. Concern grows over time, and then Gordon Jensen suddenly leaves. He abandons the five-year-old girl. The show uses that thread to widen the investigation and show how identities can stay hidden in plain sight. The story keeps moving through clues, timelines, and the slow work of connecting one life to another. The hosts return again and again to the fact that the victims were treated as unknowns for years. Genetic genealogy eventually becomes part of the answer. The episode frames that development as an important turning point in the case. It also keeps the focus on the people at the center of the case. The tone is somber, but not cold. The narration is accessible, and the hosts keep translating the science into everyday terms. The pace is measured, with room for reactions, questions, and pauses. The emotional shape of the episode comes from the attempt to restore identity after years of erasure. By the end, the show is not just recounting a crime. It is tracing the long effort to give the victims back their names and place them back into the world that forgot them. The ending settles on that human work. It leaves the listener with the sense that the investigation mattered because the names mattered.

As heard by us

A patient, atmospheric case study that follows the search for names and identities.

This episode offers an atmospheric true-crime retelling that follows the Bear Brook murders from the rusted barrel in the woods through the long work of restoring names and identities to the victims.

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Why you'd press play

You want a cold case that becomes a names-restored investigation.

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