MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) – When Edward Bessette Jr. fled Vermont in 1988, he had three children and was wanted on five counts of sexual assault of a minor. When authorities found him last week in New Hampshire, Bessette had at least two more children, a different name and he was dead.

The discovery ended nearly two decades of searching for one family; it sent another into a spiral of unanswered questions.

“Now that it’s over, it’s over, that’s pretty much our take on it,” said Ed Bessette, 23, a son from Vermont. “It’s just starting for them. He was a good person but he had a dark side, and he hid it from these people.”

The families met Thursday at the Manchester apartment of the elder Bessette’s girlfriend. A phone directory listed a Pam Boobuck for the Spruce Street address.

The younger Bessette, whose mother declined to be interviewed, said his family was trying to help the other family come to terms with his father’s past. The elder Bessette was accused of sexually assaulting his daughter in Vermont. In New Hampshire, he worked as a baby sitter and had at least two other children, including an adolescent daughter.

Authorities said Bessette used the names Edward Bissette and Edward Davies. When he was admitted to the emergency room of a city hospital last Friday, his lack of proper identification prompted authorities to check his background. A fingerprint comparison confirmed that Davies was Bessette. He died of complications from liver failure before the identification was completed.

While U.S. marshals, state and local police searched for Bessette in Vermont, Manchester law enforcement had no knowledge of him.

“We never had contact with him under either name,” Manchester police Sgt. Mark Fowke said Thursday. Vermont State Police said a check showed Bessette came in contact with Keene Police in 2000. Police from both states were interested in any information about possible misconduct by Bessette in New Hampshire. Vermont authorities also were looking to North Carolina and Florida, where Bessette may have traveled.

“It’s our hope to identify other possible victims and help them seek closure,” said Lt. Mark Lauer, commander of the Vermont State Police computer crimes unit. “We have other people who are dangerous but this person was actively preying on young females.”

Lauer took on the case last year, after meeting the mother of Bessette’s three children. “She has never stopped looking. She has recounted numerous incidents where she has gone places and looked for him,” he said.

But she never was able to find him, despite friends’ and family members’ sightings of the man in Burlington, Vt.

“He lived out his life,” said Lauer. “He was never caught and whether he lived the lifestyle he really would have liked, he still managed to elude police until the end of his life.”