Police launch investigation into woman’s 1981 disappearance

CONCORD, N.H. – When a New Hampshire woman disappeared 35 years ago, her family assumed she and her boyfriend left town to avoid money troubles. But on Tuesday, authorities said they consider her a missing person and have begun a criminal investigation based on new information.

The state attorney general’s office said Denise Beaudin’s family last saw her on Thanksgiving 1981, when she was 23, with her boyfriend, Robert “Bob” Evans, and her infant daughter. When relatives went to visit her Manchester home a few days later, the couple and baby were gone. The family did not contact police at the time, said Jeffery Strelzin, senior assistant attorney general and chief of the homicide unit.

“It was a different time, you had no cellphones, no social media, so it was different,” he said.

Investigators have been in touch with Beaudin’s daughter, Strelzin said.

“We know where she is, we’ve identified her, she’s alive and well,” he said of the daughter. “She doesn’t want her identity released at this time, but she’s OK.”

Evans, who was 37 at the time, is now 72, and authorities know where he is, Strelzin said. He declined to provide more information about Evans, or what led authorities to begin investigating. Beaudin’s name has been added to the National Crime Information Center’s missing persons database, which includes records of people missing under circumstances indicating they may be in physical danger or their disappearance may not have been voluntary.

Strelzin said authorities will provide more details in a few weeks, but they wanted to get the word out this week, when those who knew Beaudin might be back in the area for the holidays.

Police want to hear from anyone who knew Beaudin or Evans between 1976 and 1981, including her high school classmates or neighbours in the area around Hayward Street in Manchester.

Beaudin graduated from Goffstown High School in 1976 and later worked at General Cable and the Demers Nursing Home in Manchester.