Criminal profiling is a tool quite often used in policing and crime investigation. However, it is quite a recent development. And this is the story of the case that made criminal profiling more mainstream.
Robert Hansen was born on February 15th, 1939 in Estherville, Iowa. He was the son of a Danish baker, and quickly took up baking in order to take over for his father. Hansen was often described as “skinny and painfully shy, afflicted with a stutter and severe acne”. He was unassuming.
He was also teased and taunted mercilessly by classmates. From a young age, Hansen developed an ideology of hatred and a need to enact cruel acts of revenge against those who wronged him. And he believed it was women, especially women who rejected him, who needed to pay the most.
Hansen honed skills particularly suited for acting out his most sadistic revenge fantasies – he took up hunting and archery. As a social outcast and an introvert, he had ample time to practice and perfect his methods. He let his rage take over when he was hunting – the act of stalking the animals he was after momentarily satiating his immense hunger for revenge. His fantasies always steered towards those he perceived had wronged him – the women who rejected him.
By the time Hansen was 18 years old, in 1957, he put his finely honed skills to good use by joining the United States Army Reserve. He was discharged after serving on year, but was employed as an assistant drill instructor at a police academy in Pocahontas, Iowa. He also opened a small bakery, keeping the memory of his father alive. In 1960, he married a young woman he’d been courting.
In December of that same year, Hansen was arrested. He’d felt “abused” by the people of this town, and vowed to enact revenge. He coerced a 16-year-old employee from his bakery to help him commit arson. Rightfully terrified, the teen went straight to police. Hansen was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison, though he only served 20 months. While incarcerated, Hansen’s wife left him. Hansen was in and out of prison for petty theft after that.
After a stint wherein he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he married his second wife in 1963. In 1967, he moved with her to a small community near Anchorage, Alaska. Hansen opened a bakery, which was beloved by the community. He became known as a gentle man, the local baker, and a skilled huntsman who set local records.
What the community didn’t know was that Hansen had a criminal history, and he’d opened his bakery under false pretences by falsely claiming that a burglary had occurred at his residence, and using the insurance payout to open the bakery.
The façade of the ‘happy baker’ didn’t last long, though. In 1972, Hansen was convicted of assault. He served six months in prison, then was placed on a work release program. In 1976, Hansen pleaded guilty to larceny, and was sentenced to five years in prison which also required treatment for his bipolar disorder. He was eventually released with time served after the Alaska Supreme Court reduced his sentence.
For all intents and purposes, Robert Hansen remained squeaky clean after that. Until it all came to a head in 1983.
Cindy Paulson was 17 years old on June 13th, 1983. And she had a terrifying story to tell.
She told police that she’d escaped from a man who had tried to load her into his Piper Super Cub, a two-seat single-engine monoplane (colloquially called a bush plane). She reported that a man had pulled up in a car and offered her $200 for oral sex. She got in. But as soon as she was in the car, he held her at gunpoint and took her to his home in Muldoon. She was held captive, tortured, repeatedly raped and assaulted, and chained by the neck to a support post in the houses’s basement. The man then took a nap.
After the nap, the man unchained Cindy and restrained her hands in front of her, ordering her into the backseat of the car, telling her to stay down and remain unseen. He drove them to Merrill Field airport, informing Cindy that he intended to take her to his cabin – a secluded shack in the Knik River area of the Matanuska Valley. The area was, and still is, only accessible by boat or bush plane – such as a Piper Super Cub.
Cindy, terrified and brutalized, had the instincts of a survivor. As the man had his back turned, she saw her chance and bolted from the car, leaving her blue sneakers behind on the floor of the passenger side of the backseat so that there’d be evidence in case things did not go her way. She ran for Sixth Avenue, which was nearby. The man gave chase.
Cindy got to Sixth Avenue first, and managed to flag down a passing truck driver, a man named Robert Yount. Alarmed by her frantic, frenzied, and restrained appearance, he picked her up and drove her to the Mush Inn. Once there, she jumped from the truck and ran for the front desk. Yount continued on his way to work where he called the police and reported the incident.
At the Mush Inn, Cindy begged the front desk clerk to call her boyfriend at the Big Timber Motel. Anchorage Police arrived at the Mush Inn, and followed the taxi Cindy took to the Big Timber Motel. Once there, they found Cindy alone in room 110. Her hands were still restrained.
Police officers quickly took her to Anchorage Police Department headquarters where Cindy told her harrowing tale, and described the man who’d brutalized her. The man she described fit the description of Robert Hanson.
When he was questioned by APD officers, he flat out denied everything Cindy had told them. He provided a strong (and false) alibi from a friend, and relied on his “meek demeanour” as well as his position as a beloved baker in the community to get him off the hook. It worked. APD didn’t consider him a serious suspect, and the case went cold.
But it wouldn’t remain cold for long.
Before Cindy escaped her captor, an investigation had been taking place around the Anchorage, Seward, and Matanuska-Susistna Valley area. Alaska State Trooper Detective Glenn Flothe was part of a team that had discovered several bodies. The first, discovered near Eklutna Road by construction workers and dubbed “Eklutna Annie”, has never been identified.
A second discovery was made in a gravel pit near Seward. It was the body of Joanna Messina. In 1982, 23-year-old Sherry Morrow was discovered in a shallow grave near the Knik River. The similarities between the three discoveries could not be discounted. Flothe had three bodies, but he knew they were left there by one killer.
Flothe then did something a little out of the ordinary for the time. He contacted the FBI and got in touch with Special Agent Roy Hazelwood. Flothe asked him to help compose a criminal psychological profile – something that was very rarely asked for or used.
Hazelwood suggested that 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.” Armed with this information, Flothe began scouring for possible suspects. He came across Robert Hansen – who fit this profile extremely well, and had the means to get to the Knik River.
It seemed that Cindy’s account of what she’d endured wasn’t so ridiculous, after all. Flothe knew he had his man.
With Cindy’s statement and the profile at hand, Flothe and the APD secured a warrant. The warrant granted searches for Hansen’s residence, plane, and vehicles. The searches were executed on October 27th, 1983 – four months after Cindy had escaped.
During the searches, investigators found jewelry belonging to multiple missing women. They also found a hidden corner in the attic of the residence which contained “an array of firearms”. Behind the headboard of Hansen’s bed, investigators found an aviation map. On the map were a series of ‘x’ marks. Some of the marks matched sites where prior bodies not linked together had been found. Other marks indicated bodies that were yet to be uncovered. There were 17 ‘x’ marks in total.
Hansen was immediately arrested. He attempted to deny all the evidence presented against him – the firearms, Cindy’s statement, the map, even the bodies found at the locations marked. Eventually, Hansen began to confess – he tried to justify himself. The women had it coming, he said. They deserved it, he cried. He admitted to investigators that he’d been attacking women in Alaska since 1971.
He stated that his earliest victims were young – teenagers – somewhere between the ages of 16 and 19. He targeted them specifically.
Hansen had it figured out, he told investigators. He would abduct, attack, and rape women – especially sex workers. And then he’d warn them not to tell anyone. No one would believe them, he said. They were sex workers, or would be seen as such. The police wouldn’t be inclined to believe anything they would have to say, he warned them. And it worked. The women he set free never told a soul. And those he didn’t wouldn’t survive to tell anyone at all.
Working to Hansen’s benefit was the transient nature of Anchorage at the time. There was in influx of oil workers looking to spend money. Anchorage became a hub for sex work as a result. Many people passed through, in and out, never to be seen again. No one batted an eye.
Hansen was also a known hunter, and took advantage of Anchorage’s come-and-go atmosphere. Akin to “The Most Dangerous Game”, he would abduct, torture, and rape his victims for days at a time. And then he would fly them to his cabin, where he’d tell them to run. He would arm himself with a hunting knife and a rifle, and then do what he did best – he’d go hunting. He raped over 30 women. And he killed 17 that are known. Some of them he acknowledged, others he didn’t. And these are only the ones that investigators know about.
This is a list of the women who should not be forgotten (and sit tight, this is a long list. And yes, this is directly quoted from Wikipedia.): Lisa Futrell (41), Malai Larsen (28), Sue Lana (23), Tami Pederson (20), Angela Feddern (24), Teresa Watson, DeLynn “Sugar” Frey, Paula Goulding, Andrea “Fish” Altiery, Sherry Morrow (23), “Eklutna Annie” (true identity never discovered), Joanna Messina, “Horseshoe Harriet” (true identity never discovered), Roxanne Easland (24), Ceilia “Beth” Van Zanten (17), Megan Emerick (17), Mary Thill (22).
Hansen was formally charged with four of the seventeen murders – Sherry Morrow, Joanna Messina, “Eklutna Annie”, and Paula Goulding. In addition to these first-degree murder charges, Hansen was charged with the kidnapping and rape of Cindy Paulson. He was also charged with assault, multiple weapons offences, theft, and insurance fraud for his bakery and the same stunt he pulled in order to buy his bush plane. He became known as The Butcher Baker.
Despite his confession, Hansen thought he might win a jury over. Until ballistics came back. The tests matched all the bullets found at the crime scenes to his rifles. Defeated, he entered a plea bargain.
Hansen pleaded guilty to the four charges of first-degree murder, and provided details about his other victims. In return, he would serve his sentence in a federal prison, and would have no publicity in the press. He ended up leading investigators to the grave sites of the 17 women listed above, though they suspect there are more. But The Butcher Baker didn’t agree to spill all his secrets.
Hansen was sentenced to 461 years plus life in prison without the possibly of parole.
In 2014, Hansen (75) died in prison. The cause of death – “lingering medial issues”.
The ADA who helped prosecute Hansen had this to say to the Anchorage Daily News: “He will not be missed. Good riddance to him. He’s one of those guys that you kind of hope every breath that he takes in his life, there’s some pain associated with it, because he caused so much pain.”
For nearly a decade, Robert Hansen got away with murder. Had an astute Alaska State Trooper not asked the FBI for a criminal profile, he may never have been caught. It is thanks to the hard work of Detective Glenn Flothe and S.A Roy Hazelwood that criminal profiling has become increasingly mainstream in policing today.
HUGE shout out to my friend Stu for bringing this case to my attention! You rock, bud!
— — —
Like what you’re reading? Follow me on Twitter or Facebook for the latest updates.
Sources
Robert Hansen – Katie Serena – All That’s Interesting
15 Disturbing Facts About the Serial Killer Who Hunted Human Beings For Sport – Jacob Shelton – Ranker
Robert Hansen dead – David Usborne – The Independent
Robert Hansen Wikipedia page