Criminology - Robert Hansen

Episode Date: August 14, 2022

In the 1970s and 1980s, Robert Hansen hunted women in the last frontier of Alaska. He lured women with offers of large amounts of money for sex. Once a woman got into a car with Robert Hansen, they were trapped. He even bought his own plane in order to transport women out into the wilderness of Alaska. All of this occurred while Hansen was operating a bakery and playing the role of a husband and father. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the notorious serial killer Robert Hansen. Hansen admitted to authorities that he would take women to secluded areas, like his cabin near the Knik River, a place you can only get to by boat or in a bush plane, and then let them go there in the wilderness. As they ran for their lives, naked and barefoot, he hunted them the same way that he was known for hunting animals. His confessions shocked even seasoned investigators. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, it's Wayfair here, where delivery and setup are as easy as a few taps on your phone. You're relaxing in an old hammock, scrolling Wayfair's app, when you spot it, a brand new patio set. Next thing you know, Wayfair delivers it right to your patio and sets it up. Oh, you need a new grill, too? All right, Wayfair's got you covered. With Wayfair's room of choice delivery and fast experts set up on qualifying orders, life gets a little easier. Visit Wayfair.com or the Wayfair app. Wayfair, every style, every home. Whether you're looking for a new true crime podcast with minimal side talk or one that focuses on the victim and their story, you've got to check out our show, Going West.

Going West is a true crime podcast hosted by me, Heath, and my partner Daphne. Hello. In each episode, we dive into various U.S.-based disappearance and murder cases. Whether it's the bizarre stalking story of Dorothy Jane Scott, a young mother who received harassing phone calls before she went missing from a hospital parking lot in 1980, or our recent, our recent two. 200th episode on The Man Upstairs, where we discussed the 1950 murder of Janet Christman and the urban legend that came of it. We drop episodes twice weekly on Tuesdays and Fridays, so go check out Going West True Crime wherever you listen to podcasts.

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 219 of the Criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And I'm Mike Morford. Mr. Morford. How you doing, buddy?

Good, good. Kids are back in school now. It's official and I've got a little bit of peace here and I'm trying to get some extra work done. What's going on with you? Yeah, my family's gearing up to go back to school. My youngest goes back to school. I think next week. My oldest is in college.

She might have another week and then my wife is a teacher and she goes back, I think, at the end of the month. So, yeah, there's a lot going on. A lot of school shopping, you know, supplies, clothes. It's, it's been, uh, got to get your, uh, hair done, right before the, the school year. So we got a lot going on. Yeah. It's that time of the year, everyone's doing a little bit of something here is summer's ending. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Kathleen Frette, Lisa Gallegos, Kelsey Panza, Anita Mitchell and Amy Brown. So a lot of great new support. We can't thank everyone enough. Yeah, thanks to everyone that takes the time and effort to support

the show. We appreciate that. And for anyone that would like to help support the show, you can go to patreon.com slash criminology. All right. So we got all of that out of the way. It's time to jump into this episode. And today we're heading out west to Alaska, the state nicknamed the last frontier due to its abundance of wild unsettled land. You know, this is a place where all kinds of wildlife makes their home bears, moose, wolves on land. you know, salmon and orca whales in the water. Alaska draws sportsmen from all over the place who come to the last frontier, hoping to take advantage of the state's fishing and hunting.

In this episode, we're talking about one such hunter, but he wasn't after big game. He preferred to hunt humans. We're talking about the crimes of serial killer Robert Hanson. Alaska officially became the 49th state on January 3, 1959. Almost a decade later in 1968, oil is found at Prudeau Bay in the northern part of the state. Surveys done by the state of Alaska's division of geological and geophysical surveys found that the site in Prudhoe Bay may have held billions of barrels of oil and natural gas by the trillions of cubic feet. It was going to be a large and expensive undertaking to build the infrastructure necessary to drill and process oil, especially in the vast expanse of land that is Alaska.

When the King of Saudi Arabia placed a complete embargo on oil exports to the United States and also reduced the amount of oil being produced, leading many other oil-producing countries to do the same, an oil crisis was triggered. There wasn't enough oil to meet the demand, and it was getting more and more expensive to buy what did exist. By that point, finding a way to produce oil in Alaska wasn't too expensive to be worthwhile. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, stretching 800 miles from Prudeau Bay to Valdez, in southern Alaska was built in order to get oiled down to Valdez.

This pipeline brought jobs, which brought people to the area. Many pipeline workers, as well as opportunistic people who could start their own businesses in Alaska, traveled from all across the United States. Some people came to start a new life or to find adventure. People also came to make a quick buck, some selling drugs or sex, to the lonely people who were there away from their family. when their job was done or when they found the state too harsh for them. They went back home.

Often, there were new faces in town and sometimes familiar faces would seem to vanish. Because of this normal rotation of residents in the newly booming area, when someone stopped coming around, it was normally assumed that they had just split town. Adding to the chaos, the Anchorage Police Department had jurisdiction only over the city of Anchorage and the Alaska State Troopers, though a much smaller force had to oversee the entire Anchorage borough, including a business district and the suburbs. Crime, sex work, drug dealing and murder was easier to get away with outside of the city's borders, where the many Anchorage Police Department officers readily patrolled in the book Murder at 40 below. True

crime stories from Alaska by Tom Brennan, Trooper Major Walt Gilmore is quoted as saying, we had rows and rows of Cadillacs driven by bad people who came to town and moved outside the city into the trooper area. Alaska is huge. It's almost two and a half times bigger than Texas. The majority of the population lives in and around Anchorage, but there's still only about 736,000 people in the entire state to this day. Some of the areas in Alaska can only be accessed by boat or by small plane or helicopter, and about 5% of the state is covered by glaciers. With such a vast expanse of wilderness and such a small population concentrated to a few areas, a lot of the state is uninhabited, or even unexplored. This large amount of uninhabited wilderness and the many

wildlife scavengers combined with the multi-agency policing and the bustle of the growing city created the perfect conditions for a serial killer to go largely unnoticed. Due to wild animals, a body dumped in the open land could largely disappear and quickly. When women and young girls started disappearing, most people didn't notice a pattern. But for those who did, it seemed to start in the fall of 1971. On November 15th, 1971, 18-year-old Susie Hepard, a real estate secretary,

was interrupted by a knock at her apartment door. It was strangely a man she had seen on her drive home on Northern Lights Boulevard. She had just finished a morning shopping outing when she noticed him in the car next to her at a red light. Now, at her apartment,

he asked for a phone book. He also hit on her, but she told him she was engaged and he left. One week later, she saw the man again. This time, just like the last, he was wearing a neon orange hunter's cap. It's what had caught her eye about him both times she saw him. Susie was getting out of her car when he pointed a gun at her. As per murder at 40 below, the man told her,

shut up, sweetheart, or I'll blow your brains out. Susie screamed anyway. Her two roommates were alerted to the noise, and they looked out the window to see the man. They immediately called the police and tried to intervene, one of them on the phone making the call, and the other shouting down that the authorities were on their way. But this didn't seem to frighten the man. And he tried to abduct Susie, forcing her toward the street with his gun pushed into her back. But when he heard the sirens, he ran off. Officer Archie Hutchins responded and found a man named Robert Hansen walking nearby without a jacket in the freezing cold.

Hansen claimed that he was just getting fresh air after feeling car sick, but in his nearby car, Officer Hutchins found a loaded 22-caliber pistol. The officer and his canine followed Hanson's trail in the snow and found an orange cap as well as an additional gun, a 357 magnum revolver hidden on the wheel well of a car. Susie saw Hanson and Officer Hutchins patrol car and positively identified him as her attacker. He was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon and released on his own recognizance pending trial. He was also ordered to have no contact with Susie Heppard. So we're talking to early 70s here, Morp, but this did strike me as a little bit odd.

You know, definitely by today's standards, you have an individual with multiple guns who just tried to abduct a woman at gunpoint. People saw him. She identified him. Now, he's arrested, but released on his own recognizance. I found that to be quite odd. Yeah, nothing really surprises me when we look back on some of these early 70s cases and see things like this because the law seems so different. Today, you would think that that's just crazy, that's unheard of, that they would let someone go. Then again, I wonder if maybe it's Alaska, maybe a lot of people did carry guns around. And, you know, for protection from animals, what have you. And maybe they didn't look at the gun necessarily as a major crime having the gun. But definitely trying to force this woman into a car to kidnap her seems like something they should have taken seriously.

Well, I do think a lot of Alaskans carry guns because. because, you know, there's some threats, bears, there's all kinds of stuff going on out there. I just found, you know, not even bail, just released on his own recognizance. And, hey, please show up at the trial for this attempted kidnapping at gunpoint. The next month in December 1971, an 18 year old topless dancer named Barbara Fields stopped at the Nevada cafe around 4 a.m. for a drink. A man later determined to be Robert Hansen hit on her there, but she rejected him. Hansen then forced her into a Pontiac at gunpoint. He used shoelaces to tie her ankles together and then her hands together and then pushed her down onto the floor of the car. He drove to an isolated

dead end road and actually asked for her permission to rip off her black lace braw. She bravely told him not to because it had cost her a lot of money. So he untied her hands and told her to take off her dress and her bra. As detailed in murder at 40 below, Hansen told Barbara, you won't run if you're naked. She convinced her updoctor to stop for cigarettes. And then he took her to a cabin. He had rented at the Sunrise Inn at the Knais Peninsula.

Robert Hanson sexually assaulted her there and then put her back in the Pontiac and drove back to her. Anchorage. Hanson tried to go one direction, telling Barbara about a cabin he had taken another girl to the previous weekend, but the heavy snow made it impossible to get to, and he had to turn around. After a short while, he pulled over and told Barbara to get out and run. He pointed his gun at her. Barbara was once again defiant, telling him no. And thinking quickly, she told him that it wasn't necessary to kill her, and she added that, in fact, they could start dating. After all, she thought he was Hansom. She also told him about her young son who needed her. Hansen decided to write down her

names and addresses, which he found in her purse, and he threatened to kill them if she ever told anyone about the attack. She knew he was serious. He took her back to Anchorage and dropped her off a few blocks from where she had parked her car. Barberfields was lucky to have escaped with her life. On December 15, 1971, Robert Hanson participated in an indictment hearing for his attack on Susie Heppard. Hanson's attorney, a man named Jim Gilgill, Wilmore tried to convince the court that Robert Hanson had a chemical imbalance. The court ordered Hansen to undergo a psychiatric examination at his own expense before his trial, and he promised the judge he would, and he was released.

A week later, around 8.30 p.m. on December 22nd, 1971, 18-year-old student Celia Beth Van Zan left her home to buy soda at the nearby Bilo store. She never returned, and it was determined that she never even made it to the store. Her body was found on Christmas Day in a ravine at McHugh Creek Campground. Her hands were still bound with wire behind her back. She had been sexually assaulted and there were cuts on her chest. Investigators don't believe she was murdered and dumped there. They believe she was actually thrown down the ravine while she was still alive.

And horribly, because she was bound, she couldn't climb out. She froze to death in the cold temperatures of Alaska's harsh winter. Yeah, that's got to be a horrible way to die, to not have any way to move, to get yourself out of a position. You know, your hands are bound. And even if you somehow can get up and start walking, you're still so far away from anything in the freezing cold. There wasn't much that this poor girl could do. No, you know, extreme cold. What it does to the body and what it does.

to the body so quickly. It's extremely dangerous. Yeah, I think maybe it speaks to her killer thought process or habits that they would let someone die in such a manner. You know, obviously, if you murdered, that would be awful as well, but this seems beyond cruel to let her die in this, this manner. Yeah, it's often strange to kind of weigh the sadistic scale, right, of things that these people do, because anytime you're killing someone, that's brutal, it's nasty. But I understand what you're saying. Is it even more sadistic to throw somebody down a ravine and temperature so cold that you know they're going to freeze to death?

Is there another layer there to the sadism? News of Beth Van Zenton's murder caught the eye of Barbara Fields, the dancer who had been abducted at the Nevada Cafe. Though she had been silent about her attack due to her attacker's threats on her family, she felt deep down that the man who abducted her was the same man who abducted Beth and threw her under the ravine. She couldn't let him do it again. Barbara went to the Alaska State Troopers.

As it turns out, her father was a trooper, which Hansen luckily didn't discover during her abduction. She was able to identify her attacker from mugshots as Robert Hansen. Hansen was arrested again, his second arrest in two months. He had been out of jail for just days before he attacked Barbara. And this morph is exactly why, you know, I thought it was so strange that he was released the way that he was. And now, looking back, we know. As soon as he was released, he went back to being a predator and committed some serious crimes before he was caught again.

I'm just going back to 1971 and thinking, okay, what value was. being placed on that type of crime, the attempted abduction of a woman at gunpoint. To me, that is an extremely serious crime, and it doesn't seem as though it was being treated as such. So now this is two attacks that Robert Hanson is responsible for. So it seems like there's no doubt this guy was capable of some very dangerous stuff. And then you have this other 18-year-old Celia who was found dead. So it seems like she could also be linked by some of this guy's activity to him. At the Alaska State Jail, when an officer was cataloging Hanson's belongings,

Robert Hansen asked the officer if he could see his wallet to check for anything that may have been missed in their inventory. Hansen was allowed to look through his wallet and was able to sneak a small scrap of paper. from it into his hand. Another officer came to fingerprint Hansen, and at the request of the officer who had let him get into his wallet, he was searched. The paper scrap with a name and an address on it

was found in his pocket. An officer copied down the contents of the scrap, but gave it back to him. As he had claimed, it was the name of someone who could post his bail. Eventually, it dawned on officers that the scrap of paper was the one that the abducted dancing,

had talked about, detailing her family's information. But by the time they realized what this paper scrap was, Hansen ate it before officers could search him again. So since the scrap was gone, it meant a valuable piece of evidence was lost. Barbara Fields was completely dragged through the mud by Jim Gilmore, Hanson's lawyer, who called character witnesses, including a minister and an environmental health officer. Gilmore stated that Barbara Fields could not be trusted and that she had no credibility due to her background as a topless dancer who had used drugs. Hanson's minister and some of his hunting friends, on the other hand, painted him as the picture of an upstanding family man.

And as a result, the charges related to the abduction of Barbara Fields were dropped. Despite those charges against Robert Hansen being dropped in the attack on Barbara Fields, In March of 1972, he was convicted of assault with a dangerous weapon for attacking Susie Heppard. He was sentenced to five years in prison, which was to include psychiatric treatment. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, which one doctor testified could have caused him to have no memory of his attacks. He was expected to improve with therapy twice a week and medication. Remarkably, he served just three months before being sent to a halfway house, where he was able to participate in a work release program,

after one year there, he was released on parole in June 1973. As a result of the late sentence, there would unfortunately be more victims. And man, how many times have we seen this? And every time we do, it infuriates me. All right, I get it five years in prison. Now, you could argue that in itself is liked for the attempted abduction of a woman at gunpoint. But then, you know, when you find out that, that the man was let out in a year.

Then I think it's just even more infuriating. But that's the 1970s for you, man, and other decades as well. It still makes me mad, though. It sounds as if it's almost some kind of probation or something like that as opposed to a full prison sentence because he's really out and about. Well, he was out and about after three months. You know, so he's participating in a work release program after three months.

after a year released on parole. I just don't get it. On July 7, 1973, 17-year-old Megan Emmerich disappeared from Seward, Alaska, about 125 miles south of Anchorage. The last time anyone saw her, she was leaving the laundry room at the Seward Skill Center, where she was a student. She left behind all of her things, even her ID, which obviously worried her roommate, after three days of searching, with no word from Megan, her roommate reported her missing two authorities. Almost two years later to the day, on July 5, 1975, 22-year-old Mary Kathleen Till disappeared from Seward.

Her husband was a pipeline worker, off in the North Slope, constructing the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. And Mary was home alone. She was dropped off at the Seward Bakery in downtown Seward by a friend, and another friend saw her in the afternoon, sometime between 1.30 and 2 p.m. Her friend saw her that afternoon about a half mile south of Seward Bakery at the Lowell Creek waterfall. It's a beautiful waterfall with the lookout point that you can pull over into driving or hitchhiking on that road. You would pass the waterfall. Now, it's unclear what she was doing there. but she was never seen again.

Just weeks after Mary Till's disappearance, Robert Hanson was at the Kit Kat Club on old Seward Highway, where he met a dancer. She got into his car and he drove her at gunpoint to a state park where he sexually assaulted her and left her. The woman, who was a teacher from out of state, had just been in Alaska to make money. She reported the attack but didn't file charges before she left Alaska.

She was even able to provide police with Hansen's license plate number. But Hansen claimed that he had gone out with the woman consensually, and she only said he attacked her because he refused to pay her after their date. With the victim out of state and refusing to press charges, there was nothing police could do, even though Hanson was on parole. In 1975, Robert Hanson's three years of parole were successfully completed. Although his parole was over, obviously Robert Hansen was not rehabilitated. Because he had already been getting into trouble. He got into trouble. he got into more trouble in November of 1976 when he was 37 years old.

He was arrested for shoplifting a chainsaw from a department store in Anchorage. He had taken advantage of the commotion caused by a man suffering a medical emergency outside the store to go back inside the store and take this chainsaw. Hansen claimed he had been cutting wood with his 69 year old father about a month before the theft, when his father mentioned that he wanted a new saw. And seeing the older man, apparently having a heart attack, made him think of his father. According to Hansen and court records, he said, I guess many thoughts went through my mind. As I looked at the saws,

I wanted almost more than anything to please my father and could just imagine the expression on his face on Christmas Day. For this theft, he was sentenced to five years in prison, which he quickly appealed. All right. So let's go back to his original conviction, five years for the attempted abduction at gunpoint of a woman. Now he gets five years for stealing a chainsaw.

Now, hopefully they're adding up the things that he's already done, the fact that he had been on parole, but you can still see the difference here, right? The chainsaw is equal to a woman's abduction. Come on now. That's definitely a head scratcher. It's hard to fathom how they come to this kind of sentence for a chainsaw when it's the same sentence, basically, that he was given for the attack on someone.

It's crazy. But this was his third felony offense, and the judges on the appeals board considered the factors in the case. And because this was his third felony charge, sentencing laws and the norms at the meant that Hansen could receive close to the maximum sentence. But Hansen claimed he had a family they had provided for. He owned a home, and he had a stable job. He had also shown during his last prison stay that he was capable of improving his behavior with therapy and treatment.

He was incarcerated at the Juno Correctional Center, which didn't have much in the way of psychiatric care. Rather than therapy or medication, there were inmate-led self-help sessions. The five-year sentence prohibited him from being placed at Eagle River Correctional Center. Center where there was a psychologically based rehabilitation program. According to the appeal decision documents related to the chainsaw theft, Hansen's

theft involved no physical aggression or threats, nor did it result in any physical injury. The property was restored in full to the owner. Prosecutors also had the option of classifying the theft as a misdemeanor, but instead chose to charge Hanson with a felony. Due to those factors, Hansen's appeal was granted, and he was released after serving just over one year. There was one dissenting judge, Justice Burke, who wrote, given Hansen's prior record, I am unable to agree that the trial court erred in imposing a five-year sentence. Well, at least there's one judge who's thinking clearly here.

Now, I get it. Judge is trying to follow the letter of the law, and it's true. that this was a theft that didn't involve physical aggression. He wasn't threatening anybody. He didn't brandish a gun or anything like that. And the property was restored to the owner. I get all of those things. But I also get this dissenting judge,

looking at this guy's prior record and factoring it in. Upon release, Hanson was supposed to receive court-ordered psychiatric treatment, including medication, but unfortunately, someone in the district attorney's office, drop the ball and Hansen completed his parole with no supervision and no treatment at all. It's always a little scary when you hear things like that. Anytime the term drop the ball is thrown out there, when it relates to a prisoner who is supposed to follow certain conditions.

Okay, a little scary. Now Hansen had learned a lot while he was in prison. mostly what he learned was how to lie to psychiatrists, and he learned what put him there, not his behavior, but the witnesses to his crimes. And this was huge because moving forward, he was determined to take extra care to ensure that wouldn't happen again. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer.

For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. On June 28, 1980, 24-year-old Roxanne Eastland disappeared from Anchorage. She and her boyfriend had been staying at the Budget Motel on Spinnard Road together for the two weeks before her disappearance. She headed out the 4th Avenue to meet someone and never returned. It's unknown who she was supposed to meet, but this person was only described as an unidentified male. She was reported missing four days later.

Just days after Roxanne Eastland disappeared, in July 1980, 24-year-old Joanna Messina disappeared. She was last seen on the dock and seward. She's been described as both a topless dancer and a cannery worker in the area in different reports. She met a man who took her to dinner at Harbor View Restaurant, and she was never seen again. Her dog, a German Shepherd, who was always with her, was also reported missing. On July 17, 1980, the remains of an unidentified female were found there south of Clutna Lake Road. Construction workers found her in a shallow grave near Power Lines. Investigators called this Jane Doe, a Clutna Annie.

It was estimated that a cloutina Annie had been dead for a year before she was found. Jewelry and a Timex watch presumed to belong to her were found nearby. She was buried still unidentified at Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery. Weeks later, the body of Joanna Messina was found in a gravel pit ensured. She had been shot with a 22-caliber bullet. Lisa Futrell also called Betty. Disappeared from Anchorage on September 7, 1980. she left her job at the great Alaskan Bush Company,

planning to head out on a date that night, but was never seen again. Lisa or Betty, as she was known, was listed as both 24 and 41 years old at the time of her disappearance by various news articles with no birthday ever listed. And, you know, this is something more that we struggle with in a lot of cases,

especially older cases. Newspaper reporting can be spot. to say the least, especially when it comes to the victim's ages. Sometimes they're all over the place with their ages. Yeah, some of the discrepancies in these older cases really make the research harder to do. While police had their hands full with missing and murdered women in that area, Robert Hanson, who was now 41 years old, opened his own bakery in 1981 in the downtown Anchorage area called Hanson's Bakery.

Not long after, 23-year-old Sherry Morrow vanished. She was last seen in Anchorage around 11.30 p.m. on November 17, 1981. She was reported missing a week later by her boyfriend, Dale Yonkoski. He had dropped her off at Wild Cherry Bar on 4th Avenue on the 17th and never heard from her again. She was supposed to meet and then spend the night with her friend named Lisa and then go to a doctor's appointment in the morning. Police verified that Sherry and Lisa had indeed spent the night together, but Sherry had left Lisa's house to meet a man at Alice's 210 Cafe to do a nude photo shoot,

where she was supposed to make $300. Sherry never made it to her doctor appointment the next morning. On December 2nd, 1981, at 11 p.m., 22-year-old Andrea Altieri, got into a cab, headed to a mall on Anchorage. She was on her way to do a photo shoot with a man who said he was going to take her on a shopping spree. It was unclear who this man was, but police suspected that Andrea could have met someone who spotted her physical beauty through her work as an exotic dancer. She was never seen or heard from again. Just a month later, in January 1982, Robert Hanson bought a small plane, a piper supercub, N30-89 Z. Hansen would use the plane to hunt in remote areas of wilderness in Alaska.

He didn't get his pilot's license, though, because he was taking lithium. So he just flew illegally. On May 26, 1982, 23-year-old Sue Luna, a dancer at the Good Times bar, disappeared from Anchorage. She was headed to Alice's 210 Cafe to meet a man who was going to pay her $300 for an hour of her time. Sue was reported missing four days later. Three months later in August, 1982, dancer, Tamara Peterson headed to a photo shoot

she had agreed to in order to earn $300. She left her home with all of her costumes and was never seen again. The following month on September 12th, the body of Sherry Morrow was found in a shallow grave by off-duty police officers who

had been hunting near the Kinnic River about 25 miles north of Anchorage. She was fully clothed, even wearing a ski jacket, except she was barefoot. A pair of snow boots were found with her in the grave, but they weren't on her feet. She was handcuffed, and she had also been blindfolded with an ace bandage, wrapped around her eyes and nose area, clipped on with the metal hooks that come with the bandages. She had been shot with a

223 caliber weapon. One shell casing was found on the gravel sandbar. She was buried on. There were no holes in her clothing, despite the fact. that she had been shot, suggesting that her killer had redressed her. Sometime in February, 1983, a woman named Angela Fedron disappeared from Anchorage. Although she had left her five-year-old daughter alone in Fairbanks, she wasn't reported missing until May for some reason. On March 25, 1983, Teresa Watson, who was in her early 20s, was abducted. Her body wouldn't be found for years. Thirty-one-year-old Paula Golding, who danced at the Great Alaskan Bush Company, like Lisa Futrell did, disappeared from Anchorage on April 25, 1983.

Her age listed in various news articles fluctuated between being either 17 or 21 years old. But according to her find a grave profile, she was born on June 4, 1951 in Arizona, confirming that she was 31 years old. It was around the same time that Paula Golding vanished, that 19-year-old dancer DeLind Faye disappeared. In May, 1983, Angela Thurie. Fetteran's body was found in figure eight lake. The next month, on June 13, 1983, a young woman who was abducted and assaulted in Anchorage

was able to escape from her attacker, still handcuffed, she ran into traffic and stopped a truck driver near Merrill Airfield. The truck driver dropped her off at the nearby mush in, where she asked to be taken. This truck driver immediately went to the Anchorage Police Department and told them what had happened. Officer Greg Baker responded and went to the mush in to investigate and was told that the distressed young woman had gone over to the Big Timber Motel.

So Baker headed over there and that's when he found 18-year-old Cindy Paulson in a hotel room still wearing the handcuffs. She told Officer Baker what she had been through. She had been abducted and taken to a man's home where she was chained up and sexually assaulted. The man took her to Merrill Field,

where he told her he was going to put her on his plane and fly her to a cabin somewhere, but she escaped and fled. Officer Baker took Cindy to Merrill Field, and she was able to point out a parked plane as the one her abductor tried to force her into. This plane belonged to Robert Hanson. Police immediately went to Hanson's home,

but when they got there, Hansen was able to provide police with an alibi. One of his fishing buddies verified that Hansen had been with him that night. During a tape-recorded interview, Cindy Paulson was also able to give an incredible amount of detail about her captor's house, right down to its location. On his website, leelanhall.com, Leelan Hal, author of Butcher Baker, the true account of an Alaskan serial killer, includes a detailed account of Cindy's recollection to police in which she said. It's blue with a big old picture window in the whole houses. If you drive down Old Harbor Road, the window's on the right side and the garage is to the left. She also remembered that there were no trees in the front yard and that there was a cream-colored Dotson in the driveway.

She was able to recall that the room she was kept in had a lot of hunting trophies in it, as well as a bare-skin rug. And there were bars on the windows. Cindy Paulson's account against Hansen was damning. but the eyewitness giving Hansen an alibi left police at an impasse. They were highly suspicious of him that he may have been the person responsible for the series of missing and murdered women. But they waited patiently until they had more to move on. While police plotted their next move, the body of Paula Golding was found on September 2nd, 1983, buried in a shallow grave along the Kinnick River,

in the same area where Sherry Marrow's body had been found. Paula had been redressed after she was killed. On October 27, 1983, officers met Robert Hansen at his bakery, and they asked him to come in for questioning. He went voluntarily. The same day, investigators searched Hanson's home and plane. In his home, hidden in the attic, they found multiple guns, including a Remington 552 rifle,

and a Thompson contender, 7-millimeter. single-shot pistol. They also found an aviation map hidden in his headboard that had been marked with an X in 37 different spots. Also hidden in the attic was women's jewelry. Some definitively belonged to some of the missing and murdered young women, as well as identification cards and licenses belonging to some of the victims. So police finally had solid evidence linking Hansen to several area cases. He was arrested for the abduction of Cindy Poulson. And, and, you know, on suspicion of murder. After this arrest, his fishing buddy, John Henning, admitted that the alibi he had provided Robert Hansen with was false. Henning admitted Hansen had called him that

night and told him that he had brought a sex worker home while his wife and children were gone, but that she was threatening to accuse him of assault if he didn't pay her more money. At the time, it seemed like the family man and local baker had simply made a mistake in straying during his marriage. But after the news broke and the media started referring to Hansen as the butcher baker, it was clear to Henning that his hunting buddy story was a lot. And once Robert Hansen realized that he was cornered, he came clean. Robert Hansen pleaded guilty to four charges of homicide as part of a plea-agre agreement, the four victims were Sherry Morrow, Joanna Messina, Paula Golding, and a cloutna

Annie. As part of the plea, Hansen agreed to help investigators use his aviation map to find the rest of his victims. He would also be allowed to serve his sentence in a federal prison, rather than a state prison. He admitted to investigators that he was responsible for 17 murders and 30 sexual assaults, although he denied killing Beth Van Zanton, Megan Emmerich, and Mary Till. What Robert Hansen told investigators shocked them, Hansen admitted that he would take women to secluded areas, like his cabin near the Canick River, a place you can only get to by boat or in a bushplane, and then he would let them go there in the wilderness. As they ran for their lives, naked and barefoot, he hunted them the same way he was known for hunting animals.

Sometimes he would chase after them with a knife, and sometimes he would shoot them in the back. He would lure his victims in with the promise of money for sex, offering exorbitant amounts, like 200 hours for just one session of oral sex in his car. It was an offer that most couldn't and didn't pass up. $200 back then is the equivalent of about $600 now. But it was an offer that was obviously too good to be true. Once the victims got into the car with him, they were trapped and only got worse from there. Robert Hansen was also charged with insurance fraud because when his house was searched,

hunting trophies that he had filed insurance claims on saying they were stolen were found. He had used the money from his insurance payout to buy the Super Cub plane that he would use to transport the women into the wilderness. On February 27, 1984, Robert Hansen received a sentence of 461 years in prison with no possibility of parole. He was sent to the United States penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania to begin serving his time. With Hansen's help, authorities continued to search for the graves, marked off on his aviation map. Only seven more bodies were found. Though they are still technically missing, Hansen admitted to killing Roxanne Eastland and Andrea Altieri. The body of Sue Luna was found, buried by a parking lot near the Canick River,

on April 24th, 1984. The next day, 28-year-old Malai Larson's body was found near a parking lot near the Kinnick Bridge. There's virtually no information on her disappearance. That's why we haven't talked about her.

We just really couldn't find much. The same day, Malai Larson's remains were found, investigators discovered the partial remains of an unidentified woman near Horseshoe Lake in Palmar, Alaska. She was dubbed Horseshoe Harriet. She had been shot and stabbed. It wasn't until October 2021,

after 37 years, that Horseshoe Harriet was identified as 19-year-old Robin Pelke, using kinship DNA analysis at the state of Alaska scientific crime detection laboratory in Anchorage. Days later, the body of Tamer, Mera Peterson, who had been abducted in 1982, was found less than two miles away from Old Connick River Bridge. Lisa Futrell's body was found on May 9, 1984, south of the Old Connick Bridge. She was in a gravel pit covered by six inches of leaves.

On May 17, 1984, the body of Teresa Watson was found in the Kenai Peninsula. She had been left exposed to the elements near Scenic Lake. Because the ground was frozen when she was dumped there, Hanson hadn't been able to dig a grave. On August 20th, 1985, the body of Delin Frey was found on an island in the Kinnick River. Sadly, there are likely more victims of Robert Hansen that will never be found. Investigators were finding many of Robert Hansen's victims, but what they were stumped on was what had led him down the path in which he took so many lives. So they started to dig into his past.

Robert Christian Hansen was born on February 15, 1939. His father, who had moved to the United States from Denmark, was strict and made Hansen work in his bakery. Hansen was even said to have had to work late into the night, sometimes to 2 a.m. And then go to school later that day. One of Hansen's childhood friends, Mike Eichler, told oxygen that Robert's dad was a big old mean guy. Hansen grew up bullied by his peers. first due to a stutter in elementary and junior high, and later for severe acne on his face.

Profilers have noted this as the source of Hansen's rage toward women, who he found inaccessible, even though he was married twice in his life. Feeling like an outcast growing up, Robert Hansen spent a lot of time alone, exploring the woods near his home. He would hunt there with a rifle and also with a bow and arrow, and he was good at both. In 1957, he turned 18, graduated high school, and he joined the Army Reserve

for just one year. He completed his basic training at Fort Dix in New Jersey, but was discharged in 1958. After this, he worked in Pocahontas, Iowa, as a police academy drill instructor. In 1960, Hanson was a member of the Pocahontas Fire Department, but he was also apparently an arsonist. He set the Pocahontas County Board of Education's bus garage on fire. In 1960, he also married his first wife. They would divorce within the year. In 1961, Hanson was sentenced to serve three years in prison for that bus garage fire. He served just 23 months before his release, and he successfully completed one year of parole.

So I'm going to harp on it again. He served more time for the bus garage fire than he did for the later, attempted abduction of a woman. And if I sound incredulous, it's because I am. And I think also, we see sometimes that serial killers start out with things like arson. So you look back and you say, wow, this, this might have been a warning sign that other things were going to come later on in this guy's future. And we know they did. In 1963, Hansen remarried. He and his second wife, Darla, moved to Anchorage, Alaska, and, 1967 when Robert Hanson was 28 years old. There he worked as a baker like he had back in Iowa,

this time at a Safeway grocery store until he eventually opened up Hanson's bakery. People there called him Bob the Baker. He and his wife had two children and lived in a home on the outskirts of the eastern part of Anchorage. They attended a Lutheran church and had laid down some real roots in Alaska. Darla was a teacher who worked at the government Hill School. Hansen had gotten the fresh start that so many people look for in Alaska, a new job, a family, a home, and he threw it all away. In 1988, Hanson was moved back to Alaska to serve his time at the Lemon Creek Correctional Center in Juneau. In 1990, Hanson's wife Darla filed for divorce. She also reportedly moved out of Alaska. The same year, authorities found a hand-knit beanie, an aeronautical chart, and magazine clippings about using plastic explosives, hidden in Hanson's belongings.

He was then transferred to Spring Creek Correctional Center in sewer. While in prison, Robert Hansen suffered from various health conditions and died of natural causes on August 21, 2014. He was 75 years old, and still remanded to the custody of the Alaska Department of Correction. but he was receiving care at the Alaska Regional Hospital when he died. And I think we've talked about this before, Morph, but, you know, what is it like for the wife of someone like Robert Hanson? All right. You've got your husband.

I'm assuming you think he's a good guy. He's working hard. He's running a business. You've got kids. He's helping to raise the family. And then all of a sudden, you find out that he has this. other life where he's an absolute monster. It always strikes me as odd as, or I just can't understand is how these guys get away with

some of the stuff that they do right under their partners' noses. You know, we look at Hansen took victims to his house. And other cases, we can go back to Green River Killer, Gary Ridgeway. He took victims to his house and would harm these women. attack them, torture them, whatever they did in their own homes. Now, obviously, I would guess that his wife wasn't there at the time, but you have to wonder, was there ever any time where that, you know, she might see something that was all, find something that wasn't hers, it's just very hard to grasp and understand what Closer might have been that might have stopped

Hanson sooner. And I'm definitely not blaming Darla. I don't think she was complicit or had any knowledge of this. But I just wonder, were there any clues that could have been seen? And maybe things that she found that she wondered about that he provided some false story with. You know, Gacy did it too, right? But here's my thing about these guys. As much as we hate to admit it, you know, some of these guys are extremely smart. And they go to great lengths. I mean, I think they spend a lot of time calculating. Okay. How am I going to do this?

Am I going to wait for a period of time, which is what I think Gacy did, where my family is gone and then I'm going to use that time to do these nasty things that I have floating around in my head? I think it's what's often underestimated about some of these serial killers. Number one is how intelligent some of them are. but number two, how much time they spend plotting and going over the details to ensure that they don't get caught. Now, ultimately, most of them are caught and we're glad because that allows us to tell the story and also get them off the street and keep them from doing these horrible things. Now, we mentioned earlier. We may never have a complete list of Hanson's victims.

and some aspects of his murders still are not resolved. Eklutna Annie is still unidentified. The bodies of Megan Emmerich, Mary Till, Roxanne Eastland, and Andrea Altairi have still not been found. And, you know, as we wrap up this episode more, to me, Robert Hanson is a guy who I believe has many more unknown victims. You know, we talked about his time in Iowa. Okay. How many victims could he have had there that police just never were able to link or put together? And we spent the first part of this episode talking about Alaska, the size, the population, and in the wilderness aspect to it.

I just believe in my heart that his number of victims is much. much higher than we'll ever know. Yeah, and I go back to when we were ringing some of those names and dates, the missing and murdered women were happening so quickly on such a toward pace for a stretch of time. And, you know, he basically owned up that most of this was all at his hands. So I think of the women living in that area at that time must have been incredibly frightened to know. that someone was out there doing this stuff and hadn't been caught. One of the thoughts that I always have

is for the most part, why would a killer because I don't believe they do cop to something that police don't bring up? I get it. He's got a plea agreement so he has to plead guilty to X number of murders.

But why would he throw out extra murders that police don't know anything about? Now, some killers do. And actually even he did, I think. He, he admitted to some that police might not have, have known about. But you have the other end of the spectrum where, you know, some killers, they want the notoriety. They think it's going to make them more infamous by, you know, actually admitting to more murders that police don't know about and sometimes inventing some that they didn't even have a hand in. And sort of on the opposite, and there were a few cases that we discussed that Hansen didn't own up to that he said he wasn't responsible for. So my thinking, if he's copping to all these 17 murders and attacks, why would he go out of his way to say these other few weren't his? And if that's the case and they really weren't his victims, then that means there's someone else out there that was operating at that same time. that hasn't been identified. And that's scary too. Yeah, yeah, very scary. I know in past cases,

some serial killers have refused to admit to certain murders or certain acts because they were so vile or, you know, it was due to the age of the person. You know, they were willing to admit to killing certain people, but not others due to the circumstances of the victim or the acts that occurred. to that victim. I don't know if that's at play here or not, but that does crop up in in a number of episodes. No doubt Robert Hanson was a monster. I mean, there's just no way around that. You know, we delved into his childhood a little bit and how authorities believe the bullying, the inability to form connections or relationships with women led to. to some of his feelings and crimes down the road.

Okay. Maybe true, maybe not, maybe partly true. Maybe there was more to it. But to me, you know, that's one of the fascinating aspects of any serial killer. Why? What drives them? What compels them to want to do these awful acts to other people? And what satisfaction do they get from these awful.

awful acts. Yeah, that's why I think it's great when these people are apprehended and they're brought in and they can be analyzed and sort of dissected and their thoughts, you know, recorded that might help future killers from them from getting away with these kinds of crimes. When it's that kind of work that has given us the information we have today, you know, you talked about arson. Okay. That comes up in the past of a lot of serial killers. animal cruelty. There's a whole host of things, including head injuries and things that could potentially be problematic with certain people.

The stutter. He stuttered too. Yeah, which was, I think one of the reasons why he was teased and bullied and, you know, how does that hatred build over the years? You know, to me, that's some of the fascinating pieces around how these individuals evolve, into what they ultimately become. But that's it for our episode on Robert Hansen. If you love the show, but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a rating,

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criminology podcast, discussion and fans. So that's it for another episode of criminology. But Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode

of criminology. So until then, for Mike. And Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.