Robert Hansen – The Butcher Baker

In 1983 a 17-year-old sex worker started a chain of events that would force one of the most prolific serial killers in Alaska’s history to atone for his crimes.  Listen to the horrific tale of how Robert Hansen would take his love of hunting to a whole new level.

Anchorage, Alaska – 1983

In the 70s,  when oil piping was being laid down, Anchorage became a beacon for day laborers looking for work. Along with the workers, growth in family populations took place. There was also growth in the number of drug dealings, sex workers, and other criminal opportunities.

On June 13, 1983, the Anchorage Police Department got an unusual call. A truck driver described picking up a barefoot, partially clothed woman running down Sixth Avenue. She was handcuffed and hysterical. She had flagged the driver down, and, when she got in, he could see bruises and other evidence that she had been assaulted. Rather than go to a hospital, she asked him to take her to a motel. Once he dropped her off, he called the police.

Sex Work

At the motel, police found 17-year-old Cindy Paulson, still handcuffed, huddled fearfully in a room. When police were able to interview her, she explained her grizzly tale in detail.

She had been engaging in sex work. One night she picked up a small, skinny client with a pock-marked face who wore glasses and spoke with a stutter. She got into his car and as soon as she was inside, he handcuffed her to the door and pulled a gun on her. He then drove her to his house in the middle-class suburb of Muldoon, just outside of Anchorage.

Paulson described the den she was taken into. The walls were covered with mounted hunting trophies and there was a pole in the center of the room. She was chained to that pole, she told police, while the man repeatedly raped and tortured her.

At one point the man laid down on a nearby couch and slept. When he woke he had her get dressed and forced her back into his car. He told her they were going to his cabin in the woods. He took her to a small municipal airport nearby and began loading the plane with firearms and other equipment. While he was distracted, she fled from the vehicle and ran.

Piper Super Cub

As the detective was taking her home she insisted on stopping by the airfield so she could identify the plane. When they arrived she was able to identify the blue and white Piper Super Cub airplane. It was easy enough to get the registration information from the airport along with the owner’s name, Robert Hansen.

Hansen was well known to the local police. He was the owner of a local bakery that a lot of the officers frequented and was also an active member of the Lutheran church.

How Can You Rape A Prostitute?

The detective obtained Hansen’s address and they immediately went to interview him. When they arrived at his home both the house,  Hansen’s car, and Robert Hansen himself matched Paulson’s description exactly.

Hansen was polite and cooperative but denied all allegations. He said that Paulson was trying to extort him and that in any case, he didn’t see how you can rape a prostitute. Robert Hansen gave police an alibi for the night of the attack: he had been visiting with friends. The friends confirmed Hansen’s alibi.

Something Is Off

Even with the alibi, Officer Baker couldn’t shake the suspicion that something was off. He began to dig deeper into the life of Robert Hansen and found that he was not a clean as he appeared. Hansen was born into a strict, austerely religious, and devoutly conforming family in a small Iowan town in 1939.

He was a sickly and small child. Robert Hansen often worked extremely long hours at his family-run bakery. The bakery was ruled with an iron fist by his domineering father. He was born left-handed but was forced by his father to use only his right hand. Some say this, paired with the emotional abuse is what caused his stutter. The one thing that Hansen and his father connected on was their love of hunting. His father taught him and he became an extremely accomplished hunter.

During this time, Hansen often felt powerless under his father’s harsh control and his mother’s acquiescent attitude of the situation. Hansen later expressed great resentment for the long work hours at the bakery and signaled that he often felt alone and caged in. Hansen was the polar opposite of what one would refer to as all-powerful. He was under the absolute control of his intimidating father. His ‘yeah-saying’ mother also played a marked role in his later development. She provided Hansen with the perception that women are weak and easily subjugated.

Tortured Adolescent Years Lead To Homicidal Tendencies

By the time Robert Hansen was 13, he was a loner in school with very few friends. Hansen became classified as the ‘all-American nerd’. This paired with his now acute stutter and the severe acne made his teenage years extremely difficult. 

He was teased and bullied relentlessly and viewed himself as inadequate and inept. In later years, Hansen gave a fascinating self-diagnosis of his pathologies. He attributed his homicidal tendencies to his tortured adolescent years and being rejected by his fellow peers, especially girls.

Discovered He Doesn’t Like Quickies

Upon graduating from high school, Robert Hansen enlisted in the army reserves and was sent to New Jersey. There he had his first sexual encounter with a prostitute. Hansen started to frequent prostitutes around this time and found that he didn’t like “quickies”. He wanted situations where he had more control.

Upon returning to Iowa at the age of 21, he once more began working for his imperious father and soon he met a young woman and married her in the summer of 1960. On December 7th, 1960 Hansen decided to burn down his school’s bus garage to exact revenge on the school. Hansen was sentenced to 3 years in a state reformatory after this incident but only stayed in custody for 20 months. While he was away his divorce was finalized.

Kleptomaniac Tendencies

Around this time, Hansen’s choice of criminal activity changed and he developed almost kleptomaniac tendencies. He loved committing petty thefts so much that in later interviews he admitted to almost “ejaculating in his pants” when he stole items.

Hansen was often arrested for shoplifting but never charged with any of these crimes which further built his confidence.

Robert Hansen Remarries

In 1963 he married Darla Marie Henrichsen Hansen. Darla was a very religious woman with strong morals. She was working to get her master’s degree in education. By the time they were married Hansen had been caught and arrested so many times that he felt it was time to relocate.

They decided to move to Anchorage, Alaska. He settled into a quiet lifestyle with his wife and welcomed two children into the world in quick succession. Around this time, Hansen became an increasingly skilled hunter and broke several records for taking down the biggest dahl sheep. Which, it seems acted as a replacement activity to the petty thefts he had been committing.

No Longer Satisfied With Petty Crimes

By November 15th, 1971, Hansen was no longer satisfied with committing petty crimes. Hansen made eye contact with a young woman, Susie Heppeard at a stop sign and followed the young woman. He unsuccessfully attempted to kidnap her with a gun. Heppeard identified Hansen as her attacker and he was court-ordered to see Dr. Ray Langdon who was a psychiatrist. He served no jail time or probation.

Six days before Christmas in 1971 Robert Hansen kidnapped and raped 18 year old, Barbara Fields. She pressed charges and at trial, Dr. Langdon reported that Hansen experienced periods of dissociation and recommended that he receive counseling and be put in a work-release program. Again, he served no time.

Even with this past, Officer Baker was ordered to drop the case.

On September 2, 1983 a road construction crew working in an area near the Knik River so remote it could only be accessed by a boat or plane, unearthed another woman’s body. The woman was identified as 17-year-old Paula Goulding. She was another sex worker. Found in her grave was a .223 cartridge.

Topless Dancer Task Force

It was at this point that Officer Baker could no longer hold his tongue. He wrote up a report detailing his suspicions, and delivered it, along with a copy of Hansen’s arrest record, to Sgt. Glenn Flothe, who was in charge of the Alaska PD’s “topless dancer” task force.

This task force was investigating several murders.

In July 1980, a road crew working in an area near Eklutna Road found the skeletal remains of a young woman. An autopsy revealed her cause of death was a stab wound to her back. However, with no identification or other clues, she could not be identified. Thus the case of “Eklutna Annie.” She was clothed but not much evidence could be recovered due to the state of decomposition.

Later that month, another woman’s badly decomposed body was found in a gravel pit near Seward, Alaska. She was identified as Joanna Messina, a cannery worker. She had been shot with a .22 caliber weapon. But her case, too, went cold.

Then, in August 1982, two off-duty Anchorage police officers were moose hunting in a remote area of the Knik River when they stumbled across a shoe sticking out of the mud. Upon closer inspection, they could see the shoe was attached to a partially buried leg. They called in the crime scene unit, which uncovered the body of a young woman in a shallow grave, her eyes blindfolded with gauze. They also found .223-caliber bullets in her skull and chest.

Trophies Are Taken

The woman was identified as Sherry Morrow, a sex worker who had been missing for almost a year. Her boyfriend said the last time he saw her, she was going to meet with an unidentified client who had offered her quite a bit of money to pose for nude photos. She never returned.

When he was shown the clothes and jewelry Morrow had been wearing, her boyfriend noted to police that an arrowhead necklace, a good-luck charm that she never took off, was missing.

Now with four murdered women found in two years, and 12 more women having gone missing during the same time, the Alaska State Police began to suspect what many of Anchorage’s sex workers already knew: there was a possible serial killer preying on the city’s most vulnerable women.

So now we have 4 murdered, 12 missing, and one victim that survived. Even though there was a connection with the attack on Cindy Paulson and the murders there was no physical evidence and they couldn’t even get a search warrant.

FBI Develops Profile

So Flothe went to the FBI for help. There, John Douglas developed a profile of the killer: someone who was well integrated and liked in the community, who worked for himself so he would have no one to answer to for his time, an avid outdoorsman, but with low self-esteem who was afraid to talk to women. Douglas said the suspect would likely have a speech impediment of some type.

Now they had Paulson’s statement (but she had since left Alaska) and the profile. They were also able to push the friend who Hansen said he was with during Cindy’s attack to retract the alibi.

Oct. 27, 1983, Alaska State Police met Robert Hansen at his bakery and persuaded him to come to the station for questioning. While he was in the interrogation room, other officers searched his plane, vehicles, and home while his wife and children waited outside.

Police Find Stash Of Weapons

In the attic, underneath some insulation, they found a stash of weapons — including a .223 Mini-14 rifle, which would prove to be the weapon used to kill Morrow and Goulding. Hidden behind a panel in his trophy room they also found several items of jewelry and IDs belonging to the victims. 

Behind the headboard of his bed was an aviation map of the Anchorage area with more than 20 “X” marks drawn on it. Three of the marks were locations where victims had been found, leading investigators to believe that there were more yet to be discovered.

He denied everything but through questioning, they were able to obtain a confession to 17 murders and over 30 rapes. 

Robert Hansen Began Attacking Women In 1971

He told police that he had begun attacking any woman who caught his eye in 1971. He was getting caught for those attacks, so he began targeting sex workers, who wouldn’t be missed. Hansen said he would take his victims out to the bush in his plane, and if they resisted or upset him in any way, he would turn them loose, naked, in the Alaska wilderness, and hunt them like prey. He would toy with them, allowing them to believe they had escaped, before killing them. He would then re-dress them as an act of control, taking pieces of jewelry or other “trophies” to keep for himself.

On February 27, 1984, Robert Hansen pled guilty to the only four murders that could definitively be tied to him by ballistics. That of still-unidentified “Eklutna Annie,” Sherry Morrow, Paula Goulding, and Joanna Messina. He was also charged with the kidnapping and rape of Cindy Paulson.

Hansen was sentenced to 461 years plus life with no possibility of parole. He also assisted police in recovering the bodies, but 5 remain unfound.

Hansen was held in several prisons before eventually ending up in the Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward, Alaska, where he was incarcerated until May 2014. He was then transported to the Anchorage Correctional Complex for medical care due to his failing health. Three months later, in August of 2014, he died of natural causes. He was 75.

Resources

• Wikipedia – Robert Christian Hansen.
• Convicted serial killer in Alaska, dies at 75
• Robert C Hansen, the ‘Butcher Baker’ Serial Killer Who Hunted His Victims Like Animals in the Wild
• Robert Christian Hansen
• (Bob the Baker) Hansen blamed his tortured adolescence for the rape and murder of dozens of women in Alaska in 1970s
• Robert Christian Hansen, A Serial Killer in Alaska
• The Frozen Ground (2013)

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