Robert Hansen

Robert Hansen
Robert Christian Boes Hansen (February 15, 1939 – August 21, 2014), known in the media as the Butcher Baker, was an American serial killer. Between 1971 and 1983, Hansen abducted, raped, and murdered at least seventeen women in and around Anchorage, Alaska; he hunted many of them down in the wilderness with a Ruger Mini-14 and a knife. He was arrested and convicted in 1983 and was sentenced to 461 years without the possibility of parole. He died in 2014 of natural causes due to lingering health conditions at age 75.
Early life
Hansen was born in Estherville, Iowa, at Coleman Hospital on February 15, 1939, the elder of two children to an American mother and a Danish father. His mother was Edna Margret Hansen née Petersen (October 27, 1916 – April 24, 2005) and his father was Christian "Chris" Hansen (September 16, 1907 – August 12, 1983) who owned a bakery in the town. Robert was employed at the bakery. The family moved to Richmond, California in 1942, but returned to Iowa in 1949, settling in Pocahontas. In his youth, he was painfully shy, had a stutter and severe acne that left him permanently scarred.
Throughout childhood and adolescence, Hansen was described as being quiet and a loner and he had a difficult relationship with his domineering father. He started to practice both hunting and archery and often found refuge in these pastimes. 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.
First crimes
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. He served twenty months of a three-year prison sentence in Anamosa State Penitentiary. During his incarceration, he was diagnosed with manic depression with periodic schizophrenic episodes. The psychiatrist who made the diagnosis noted that Hansen had an "infantile personality" who was obsessed with getting back at people he felt had wronged him. Hansen's wife filed for divorce while he was incarcerated.
Over the next few years, Hansen was jailed several times for petty theft. 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: first for abducting and attempting to rape an unidentified housewife and then for raping an unidentified 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. Hansen 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. In 1976, Hansen pleaded guilty to larceny after he was caught stealing a chainsaw from an Anchorage Fred Meyer store. He was sentenced to five years in prison and required to receive psychiatric treatment for his bipolar disorder. The Alaska Supreme Court reduced his sentence, and he was released with time served.
Murders and capture
Hansen is believed to have begun killing around 1972. His modus operandi was to pick up a prostitute in his car and force her at gunpoint to his home, where he would rape her; he would then take her out to a secluded area and "hunt" her as if she were wild game before shooting or stabbing her. It is believed by authorities that Hansen's first murder victim was 18-year-old Celia van Zanten. Van Zanten was kidnapped on December 22, 1971, and froze to death in the wilderness after escaping from her abductor; her body was discovered on December 25. Van Zanten's abduction occurred three days after Hansen assaulted a prostitute and four days before the prostitute turned him in. While there are some similarities to Hansen's modus operandi and Van Zanten's abduction, there is no conclusive evidence that he was her attacker and he himself denied involvement in her death.
On June 13, 1983, Hansen offered 17-year-old Cindy Paulson $200 to perform oral sex; when she got into the car, he pulled out a gun and drove her to his home in Muldoon. There, he held her captive and proceeded to rape and torture 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. 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-Susitna 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 cockpit of his airplane, a Piper PA-18 Super Cub. 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.
Paulson 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, Yount continued on to work, where he called the police to report the barefoot, handcuffed girl.
When Anchorage Police Department (APD) officers arrived at the Mush Inn, they were told that Paulson 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.
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. Flothe believed all three women had been murdered by the same perpetrator.
Flothe contacted Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent John Douglas and requested help with an offender 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.
Supported by Paulson's testimony and Douglas's 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 37 little "x" marks on it, hidden behind Hansen's headboard. Many of these marks matched sites where bodies had been found previously (others were discovered later at the locations marked on Hansen's murder map).
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 girls or young women, usually between ages 16 and 19 and not prostitutes, unlike the victims who led to his discovery.
Victims
Hansen is known to have raped and assaulted over thirty Alaskan women and to have murdered at least seventeen, ranging in age from 16 to 41, although based on evidence law enforcement suspect that Hansen killed at least twenty-one female victims.
The following is a list of Hansen's known victims and several other additional women who have been mentioned as possible victims. Of these eighteen 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.
Celia Beth van Zanten, then 18-years-old, was at home with two of her three older brothers on December 22, 1971. The three of them shared a house on Knik Avenue in south Anchorage, close to Northern Lights Boulevard, with their older brother and cousin. Her parents resided in a different home in Anchorage. In the late evening, Beth left her house and walked a few blocks to the nearby BI-LO supermarket. The BI-LO closed at 9:00 p.m., and she left at 8:30. Between 8:45 and 9:00 p.m., a witness spotted Beth go to the BI-LO. At around 9:00 p.m., a neighbour claimed to have spotted her on Northern Lights Boulevard. She never reached the BI-LO. Her disappearance was reported two days later. On December 25, 1971, her body was discovered at Chugach State Park, close to Anchorage. Her chest had been sliced with a knife, and she had been bound and subjected to a sexual assault. She had been dumped, still alive, into a deep ravine before passing away from exposure. According to forensic evidence, she attempted to climb back up the slope but was unable to do so due to her bindings. Hansen has been accused of killing her because of an "x" on his aircraft map but he denied responsibility for both her death and other women's homicides who were not involved in the prostitution.
Megan Siobhan Emerick, then 17, vanished on July 7, 1973, in Seward, Alaska. She was last spotted leaving a dorm laundry room while attending the boarding school Seward Skill Center. She has not been seen or heard from since. Megan left behind all of her personal items, including her identification. Before contacting the police, her roommate conducted a three-day search for her. Hansen denied killing her to authorities, but he did admit he was in Seward on the day Megan vanished. Due to an "x" on his aircraft map in the Seward region, he is thought to be responsible. Apparently, Hansen admitted to a former inmate that he transported Megan to a cabin in the Seward region that was only reachable by boat, where he killed and buried her.
On July 5, 1975 Mary Kathleen Thill, aged 22, disappeared from Seward, Alaska. Her husband was away working on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and she lived on Lower Point Road. She was driven into town by a friend, who then dropped her off at a local bakery. Between 1:30 and 2:00 pm, a different acquaintance saw her by a waterfall on Lowell Point Road. She has not been seen or heard from since. Hansen acknowledged being in Seward on the day Thill vanished but denied killing her. An "x" on his aviation chart in the vicinity of Resurrection Bay raised suspicions about him. Hansen admitted to killing her and discarding her body in Resurrection Bay, according to a former prisoner.
The remains of Eklutna Annie were discovered buried next to a power line in a wooded area, one mile south of South Eklutna Lake Road in Eklutna, Anchorage, Alaska on July 21, 1980. Hansen admitted to stabbing her in the back after she made an effort to flee from his car. She was either a topless dancer or a prostitute, according to Hansen, who also claimed that that she was his first murder victim. Despite his claim that Eklutna Annie might have come from Kodiak, Alaska, troopers think she might have arrived in Alaska via California. Her body had already been largely consumed by wildlife when it was found in a shallow grave near Eklutna Lake Road.
Local topless dancer 24-year-old Joanne Messina went out to dinner with Hansen on May 19, 1980, while she was working in Seward, Alaska. Before she offered him sex in exchange for cash, Hansen claimed that everything was going smoothly. Hansen refused to pay and refused to release her, so he drove her and her dog to a distant place by the Snow River. He hit her with a .22 calibre revolver before shooting her twice and the dog once. He brought Messina's body to a gravel pit nearby and dumped gravel over her body. The dog and Messina's belongings were thrown into the woods, and the gun was thrown into the Snow River. On July 8, 1980, her severely decomposed body was found after it had been eviscerated by wildlife.
On June 28, 1980, Roxane Easland, then 24-years-old, vanished. She had been residing at the Budget Motel on Spenard Road in Anchorage, Alaska, with her boyfriend for the previous two weeks. On that day, she was scheduled to meet an unnamed man downtown on 4th Avenue. She has not been seen or heard from since. Although Hansen admitted to killing her, her body was never discovered.
At the nightclub she worked at in Anchorage, Lisa Futrell met and was subsequently kidnapped by Hansen on September 6, 1980. When the 41-year-old failed to return home following her September 7 shift at the club, her two younger housemates reported her missing. Her body was discovered on May 9, 1984, buried next to a gravel pit south of the former Knik Arm Bridge.
Sherry Morrow, a 23-year-old topless dancer who would receive $300 for nude images, told friends she was seeing a photographer on November 17, 1981. She was never seen again. A shallow grave was discovered by hunters on the banks of the Knik River, which borders Anchorage, on September 12, 1982. Morrow, who was reported missing a year earlier, was identified from the remains. She had received three gunshot wounds to the back, and cartridges discovered close to the body revealed that a .223 Ruger Mini-14 hunting rifle had been used to deliver the shots. An odd feature was that although the body was found fully clothed, there were no bullet holes in the clothing, suggesting that Sherry had been naked when shot, and had been redressed after death before being buried.
At 11:00 p.m. on December 2, 1981, Andrea Mona "Fish" Altiery, 24, was last seen boarding a taxi to go to the Boniface Mall in Anchorage, Alaska. She intended to meet an unnamed male for a photo shoot and to perform exotic dances. She has not been seen or heard from since. When authorities searched Hansen's house, several of Altiery's possessions, including her fish necklace, were discovered. Hansen claimed that after he met her, he threatened her with a gun and abducted her, blindfolding and handcuffing her. Near the Knik Arm Bridge, they took a car to a service road off Palmer Highway. He unbound her there and abused her sexually. He killed her with a .22 Browning automatic pistol after she retaliated. He then stole Altiery's necklace, weighted a duffel bag with gravel, tied it to the dead woman and threw her off the bridge and into the Knik River. Her body was never found.
Sue Luna, a 23-year-old exotic dancer, voluntarily agreed to a $300 photo shoot offer with a nightclub patron. On May 26, 1982, she met Hansen in a diner parking lot in Anchorage, Alaska. The following day, Luna was reported missing. Hansen had abducted and killed Luna then buried Luna in the Knik River. She was discovered on April 24, 1984. Hansen had her flee into the forest while hunting her like an animal while she was stripped naked. She had been shot to death.
The partial skeletal remains of Robin Pelkey, then 19, were found on April 25, 1984, in Palmer, Alaska, close to Horseshoe Lake. It was determined that she had been stabbed and shot. It is unknown if she was involved in sexual activity, as Hansen went for women fitting that description. In October 2021, forensic genealogy was used to determine her identity. She had the moniker "Horseshoe Harriet" before she was identified. Early in the 1980s, Pelkey resided in Anchorage, Alaska, and she vanished on July 19, 1983.
DeLynne "Sugar" Renee Frey, a 22-year-old former resident of Anchorage, Alaska, was last seen sometime in March 1983 but was not immediately reported missing. She was abducted and killed by Hansen. She was buried as "Jane Doe" in an Anchorage cemetery after her body was discovered on a Knik River sandbar by a pilot trying out new tires on August 20, 1985. It was not until 1989 that she was identified when an Alaska State Trooper recognised her jewelery in a case file photo.
Paula Goulding, 30, was a dancer in Anchorage when, on April 25, 1983, Hansen offered her money before kidnapping her. He drove her to his aircraft, shackled her, and demanded she exit the aircraft under threat of being shot. She fought with him and attempted to get away once they reached a remote spot, according to Hansen. She fled, and he fired a .223 rifle at her, killing her. On September 2, 1983, she was discovered on the Knik River, buried in a shallow grave. She had been wounded in the back, but because her clothing was unharmed, it is possible that she was shot while still naked and then clothed before being buried.
Cindy Paulson, 17, met Hansen on June 13, 1983, in Anchorage. After agreeing to pay for sex, Hansen instead pulled a .357 Magnum on her and kidnapped her. She was taken to his home, bound and sexually assaulted before Hansen took her to the Merrill Field, where his airplane was. Hansen left Paulson alone in his car while he began loading his plane, threatening to kill her if she ran away. She ran away, toward Fifth Avenue. There, she was picked up by a passing driver, Robert Yount. Yount took Paulson to a safe location and shortly after, called police. At about the same time, a security guard at the Merrill Field noticed some suspicious activity and although he made no contact, he noted the license tag for Hansen's car. Police located and interviewed Paulson about the attack.
On July 10, 1981, dancer Malai Larsen, aged 28, was reported missing from Anchorage, Alaska. On April 24, 1984, her body was discovered in a parking lot close to the Knik Arm Bridge.
Dancer Teresa Watson, 22, was last seen in Anchorage on March 25, 1983. She informed her roommate that she would meet a man who would give her $300 in exchange for an hour or two of company. At Scenic Lake, Hansen abducted her and killed her. Hansen was unable to bury her since the earth in the region was still frozen. He abandoned her where she had died. She was discovered on May 17, 1984.
24-year-old Angela Lynn Feddern was last seen on Fourth Avenue in Anchorage sometime in February 1983. She was not reported missing until May. The owner of a nightclub reported that Feddern, one of his dancers, had gone missing. Hansen had kidnapped and murdered her. Feddern's body was found on April 26, 1984, on a small lake near the larger Figure Eight Lake.
20-year-old Tamera "Tami" Pederson was a dancer at a nightclub in Anchorage. The last her family heard from her was during a phone call on August 7, 1982, where she claimed to have had been offered money to pose for photographs. She was kidnapped and murdered by Hansen. Her body was not found until after Hansen confessed and pointed to her body's location on a map. She was found 1.5 miles from the Old Knik Bridge on April 29, 1984.
Imprisonment and death
Once arrested, Hansen was charged with assault, kidnapping, multiple weapons offenses, 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 his plane. At trial, he claimed he later recovered the trophies in his backyard but forgot to inform the insurer.
Hansen entered into a plea bargain after ballistics tests returned a match between bullets found at the crime scenes and Hansen's rifle. 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. Hansen 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.
Hansen 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 to 37 victims were exhumed by the police and returned to their families.
Hansen was sentenced to 461 years in prison without the possibility of parole. He was first imprisoned at the United States Penitentiary, Lewisburg in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. 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. Hansen died on August 21, 2014, aged 75, at Alaska Regional Hospital in Anchorage, due to natural causes from lingering health conditions.
In popular culture
Films
Naked Fear (2007), about a serial killer who hunts naked abducted women in the remote wilderness of New Mexico, is loosely based on Robert Hansen.
In The Frozen Ground (2013), John Cusack portrayed Hansen opposite Nicolas Cage as Sergeant Jack Halcombe (a character based on Glenn Flothe) and Vanessa Hudgens as victim-survivor Cindy Paulson.
Documentaries
The FBI Files episode "Hunter's Game" (1999) depicts Hansen's murderous rampage.
Crime Stories featured a full 2007 episode of the case.
The Alaska: Ice Cold Killers episode "Hunting Humans" (January 25, 2012) on Investigation Discovery covered the Hansen case.
Hidden City season 1, episode 12 ("Anchorage: Robert Hansen's Most Dangerous Game, the Legend of Blackjack Sturges, Eskimo Hu"; airdate February 21, 2012) on the Travel Channel covered the Hansen case.
Mark of a Killer season 2, episode 6 "Hunted to Death" on Oxygen covered the Hansen case.
The Butcher Baker: Mind of a Monster aired on September 2, 2020, on Investigation Discovery.
Very Scary People season 3 episodes 3 and 4, "The Butcher Baker: Terror In The Wilderness part 1" and "The Butcher Baker: The Girls Who Got Away part 2", on Crime and Investigation aired June 5, 2022.
World’s Most Evil Killers series 7, episode 2 on Sky Crime tells Hansen’s story.
TV series
"Mind Hunters" and "The Woods", two 2005 episodes of the CBS TV series Cold Case, were inspired by Hansen's crimes.
In Criminal Minds, season 5, episode 21 ("Exit Wounds"; airdate May 12, 2010), Hansen is referred to by name.
Hansen's crimes inspired Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, season 13, episode 15 ("Hunting Ground"; airdate February 22, 2012), which depicts a serial killer who hunts women like wild game before killing them.
Kurt Caldwell, known as the Runaway Killer, played by Clancy Brown in Dexter: New Blood was loosely based on Hansen.
Two 2014 episodes of Silent Witness, series 17, 5 & 6, "In a Lonely Place" depict a serial killer who abducts rapes and then kills women by hunting them in a remote forest area.
Other
The case was covered in two parts on September 25, 2021, and October 2, 2021 by the Casefile True Crime Podcast
The case was covered in two parts on February 6, 2019, and February 13, 2019, by Morbid: A True Crime Podcast
In 2023, the electronic industrial band SKYND released a song titled, and about, Robert Hansen
See also
List of serial killers by number of victims
List of serial killers in the United States
References
Further reading
External links
1939 births
2014 deaths
1960 crimes in the United States
20th-century American criminals
American kidnappers
American male criminals
American murderers of children
American people of Danish descent
American people convicted of arson
American people convicted of murder
American people convicted of theft
American people who died in prison custody
American rapists
American serial killers
Crimes against sex workers in the United States
Criminals from Iowa
History of women in Alaska
Military personnel from Iowa
People convicted of murder by Alaska
People from Anchorage, Alaska
People from Estherville, Iowa
People from Pocahontas County, Iowa
People with bipolar disorder
People with speech impediment
Prisoners who died in Alaska detention
Serial killers from Alaska
Serial killers who died in prison custody
United States Army reservists
Violence against women in the United States