Robert Hansen

Robert Hansen was born in Estherville, Iowa, in 1939. He was the son of a Danish immigrant and followed in his father's footsteps as a baker. In his youth, he was painfully shy, afflicted with a stutter and severe acne that left him permanently scarred. Not receiving the attention he wanted from the attractive girls in school, he grew up hating them and nursing fantasies of cruel revenge.[3]

Throughout childhood and adolescence, Hansen was described as being quiet and a loner, and he had a difficult relationship with his domineering father. Hansen started to practice both hunting and archery, and often found refuge in these pastimes.[3]

In 1957, Hansen enlisted in the United States Army Reserve and served for one year before being discharged. He later worked as an assistant drill instructor at a police academy in Pocahontas, Iowa. There, he began a relationship with a younger woman. He married her in the summer of 1960.

On December 7, 1960, Hansen was arrested for burning down a Pocahontas County Board of Education school bus garage, revenge for his unpopularity in high school.[4] He served 20 months of a three-year prison sentence in Anamosa State Penitentiary.[2] During his incarceration, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (at that time called “manic depression”) with periodic schizophrenic episodes.[5] The psychiatrist who made the diagnosis noted that Hansen had an “infantile personality” and was obsessed with getting back at people he felt had wronged him.[6][5] Hansen's wife filed for divorce while he was incarcerated.

Over the next few years, he was jailed several times for petty theft.[7] In 1967, he moved to Anchorage, Alaska with his second wife, whom he had married in 1963 and with whom he had two children. In Anchorage, he was well liked by his neighbors and set several local hunting records.

In December 1971, Hansen was arrested twice: once for the abduction and attempted rape of a housewife, and again for raping a prostitute. He pleaded no contest to assault with a deadly weapon in the offense involving the housewife; the rape charge involving the prostitute was dropped as part of a plea bargain. He was sentenced to five years in prison; after serving six months of his sentence, he was placed on a work release program and released to a halfway house.[8]

In 1976, Hansen pleaded guilty to larceny after he was caught stealing a chainsaw from Fred Meyer, an Anchorage department store; he was sentenced to five years in prison and required to receive psychiatric treatment for his bipolar disorder.[9] The Alaska Supreme Court reduced his sentence, and he was released with time served.[10]

Hansen is believed to have begun killing around 1972.[2] His modus operandi was to pick up a prostitute in his car, and force her at gunpoint to his cabin, where he would rape her; he would then fly her out to a secluded area and "hunt" her as if she were wild game before shooting or stabbing her.[1]

On June 13, 1983, Hansen offered 17-year-old sex-worker Cindy Paulson $200 to perform oral sex; when she got into the car, he pulled a gun on her and drove her to his home in Muldoon. There, he held her captive, and proceeded to torture and rape her. She later told police that after Hansen chained her by the neck to a post in the house's basement, he took a nap on a nearby couch.[11] When he awoke, he put her in his car and took her to Merrill Field airport, where he told her that he intended to "take her out to his cabin" (a shack in the Knik River area of the Matanuska Valley accessible only by boat or bush plane). Paulson, crouched in the back seat of the car with her wrists cuffed in front of her body, saw a chance to escape when Hansen was busy loading the airplane's cockpit. While Hansen's back was turned, Paulson crawled out of the back seat, opened the driver's side door, and ran toward nearby Sixth Avenue.[12]

She later told police that she had left her blue sneakers on the passenger side floor of the sedan's backseat, as evidence that she had been in the car. Hansen panicked and chased her, but Paulson made it to Sixth Avenue first and managed to flag down a passing truck. The driver, Robert Yount, alarmed by Paulson's disheveled appearance, stopped and picked her up. He drove her to the Mush Inn, where she jumped out of the truck and ran inside. While she pleaded with the clerk to phone her boyfriend at the Big Timber Motel, the truck driver continued on to work, where he called the police to report the barefoot, handcuffed woman.

When Anchorage Police Department (APD) officers arrived at the Mush Inn, they were told that the young woman had taken a cab to the Big Timber Motel. APD officers arrived at Room 110 of the Big Timber Motel and found Paulson, still handcuffed and alone. She was taken to APD headquarters, where she described the perpetrator. Hansen, when questioned by APD officers, denied the accusation, stating that Paulson was just trying to cause trouble for him because he would not pay her extortion demands. Although Hansen had several prior run-ins with the law, his meek demeanour and humble occupation as a baker, along with an alibi from his friend John Henning, kept him from being considered as a serious suspect, and the case went cold.

Detective Glenn Flothe of the Alaska State Troopers had been part of a team investigating the discovery of several bodies in and around Anchorage, Seward, and the Matanuska-Susitna Valley area. The first of the bodies was found by construction workers near Eklutna Road. The body, dubbed "Eklutna Annie" by investigators, has never been identified. Later that year, the body of Joanna Messina was discovered in a gravel pit near Seward, and in 1982, the remains of 23-year-old Sherry Morrow were discovered, in a shallow grave near the Knik River.[13] Flothe now had three bodies and what looked like one killer.

He contacted Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent John Douglas and requested help with a criminal psychological profile, based on the three recovered bodies. Douglas thought the killer would be an experienced hunter with low self-esteem, have a history of being rejected by women, and would feel compelled to keep "souvenirs" of his murders, such as a victim's jewelry. He also suggested that the assailant might stutter. Using this profile, Flothe investigated possible suspects until he reached Hansen, who fit the profile and owned a plane.[14]

Supported by Paulson's testimony and Douglas' profile, Flothe and the APD secured a warrant to search Hansen's plane, vehicles, and home. On October 27, 1983, investigators uncovered jewelry belonging to some of the missing women as well as an array of firearms in a corner hideaway of Hansen's attic. Also found was an aeronautical chart with little "x" marks on it, hidden behind Hansen's headboard. Many of these marks matched sites where prior bodies had been found (others were discovered later at those then unexplored).

When confronted with the evidence found in his home, Hansen denied it as long as he could, but he eventually began to blame the women and tried to justify his actions. Eventually confessing to each item of evidence as it was presented to him, he admitted to a spree of attacks against Alaskan women starting in 1971. Hansen's earliest victims were women, usually between 16 and 19 and not sex workers, unlike the victims who led to his discovery.[15]

Hansen is known to have raped and assaulted over 30 Alaskan women, and to have murdered at least 17, ranging in age from 16 to 41.[16] Those with an * beside their "Date Found" were found with the help of Hansen after his arrest.

Of these 17 women, Hansen was only formally charged with the murders of four: Sherry Morrow, Joanna Messina, "Eklutna Annie", and Paula Goulding. He was also charged with the kidnapping and rape of Cindy Paulson.

Spring Creek Correctional Center, where Hansen was incarcerated for many years

Once arrested, Hansen was charged with assault, kidnapping, multiple weapons offenses, and theft and insurance fraud. The last charge was related to a claim filed with the insurance company over the alleged theft of some trophies; he used the proceeds to purchase the Super Cub. At trial, he claimed he later recovered the trophies in his backyard but forgot to inform the insurer.

Only after ballistics tests returned a match between bullets found at the crime scenes and Hansen's rifle did he enter into a plea bargain. He pleaded guilty to the four homicides the police had evidence for (Morrow, Messina, Goulding, and "Eklutna Annie") and provided details about his other victims, in return for serving his sentence in a federal prison, along with no publicity in the press.

Another condition of the plea bargain was his participation in deciphering the markings on his aviation map and locating his victims' bodies. He confirmed the police theory of how the women were abducted, adding that he would sometimes let a potential victim go if she convinced him that she would not report him to police. He indicated that he began killing in the early 1970s.

He showed investigators 17 grave sites, in and around Southcentral Alaska, 12 of which were unknown to investigators. There remained marks on his map that he refused to give up, including three in Resurrection Bay, near Seward (authorities suspect two of these marks belong to the graves of Mary Thill and Megan Emrick, whom Hansen has denied killing). The remains of 12 (of a probable 21) victims were exhumed by the police and returned to their families.

Hansen was sentenced by jury to 461 years plus life in prison, without the possibility of parole. He was first imprisoned at the United States Penitentiary, Lewisburg in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.[6]

In 1988, he was returned to Alaska and briefly incarcerated at Lemon Creek Correctional Center in Juneau. He was also imprisoned at Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward until May 2014, when he was transported to the Anchorage Correctional Complex for health reasons.[1]

Hansen died on August 21, 2014, aged 75, at Alaska Regional Hospital in Anchorage, due to natural causes from lingering health conditions.[2]

• List of serial killers in the United States
• List of serial killers by number of victims

• Du Clos, Bernard (1993). Fair Game. ISBN 978-0-312-92905-3.
• Gilmour, Walter; Hale, Leland E. (1991). Butcher, Baker: A True Account of a Serial Murder. ISBN 978-0-451-40276-9.
• Martin, Reagan (July 9, 2013). Hunted on Ice: The Search for Alaskan Serial Killer Robert Hansen. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. pp. 116 pages. ISBN 978-1490959061.

• "Serial Killer Series: Article 7: Robert Hansen". Gather.com. August 7, 2007. Archived from the original on March 14, 2012.
• Lundburg, Murry. "Robert Hansen: A Serial Killer in Alaska". ExploreNorth.
• Doogan, Sean (March 19, 2014). "Municipality has buyer for beleaguered Big Timber Motel". Alaska Dispatch.