Brother of missing Nashua woman identified as Arizona murder victim speaks out

A New Hampshire man whose daughter is now identified as the victim of a 3-decade-old Arizona killing says he still has questions about what happened to her. “She was born and raised in Nashua, New Hampshire”, says Pima County Detective Mark O’Dell.

He helped exhume her body in 2012 so investigators could use her skull to reconstruct her face and that’s when detectives noticed an uncanny resemblance to the picture of a mystery woman found in the collections of a convicted killer.

Arizona authorities said Brenda Gerow had been living with John Kalhauser at the time.

Police say they continue to build a case against Kalhauser, now 61, and that Gerow’s remains have been released to her family.

“It was a photo that showed Brenda sitting down, and she was in an area that looked like it might have been somewhere back East”, Suitt said Wednesday.

William Gerow said Arizona detectives visited him about three months ago. Police said she was sexually assaulted and beaten to death.

Police have announced they solved a 1981 cold case in Arizona.

Kalhauser is serving 20 years in prison for the murder of his wife, Diane Van Reeth.

When he was 17, a sophomore at Tyngsborough High School, he was sentenced for the 1971 shooting death of Paul W. Chapman, a 52-year-old man from Nashua; that shooting occurred in Tyngsborough.

Several years later, in 1979, Kalhauser shot Michael Renk, his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. That feedback led to contacting Gerow’s family. Renk survived the attack and Kalhauser served time in prison for attempted murder.