Story highlights New Hampshire officials, center for missing children release composite images

They are of woman and three girls found in barrels in 1985 and 2000

Cold-case unit asks public's help

(CNN) Recent testing on the teeth, hair and bones of a woman and three girls whose bodies were crammed into two metal barrels has yielded information that New Hampshire authorities hope can finally give them their names back -- more than 30 years after they were killed.

Cold-case investigators on Tuesday released updated composite images of the four and said they likely were killed at the same time between 1980 and 1984.

State Senior Assistant Attorney General Benjamin Agati, at a press conference in Concord, displayed maps showing that the woman and two of the children were from New Hampshire or a nearby state. Radio isotope testing shows the middle child, who had no known biological relationship with the other three, spent her childhood farther inland, perhaps in Nebraska, Minnesota or the Dakotas.

The oldest victim is believed to have been in her mid-20s.

What is known, Agati said, is that they all were together in the New Hampshire region between two weeks and three months before they died.

With results in on the scientific testing of water and food consumed by the victims, officials once again are turning to the public for help in identifying them.

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