Robert Hansen

Early life

Robert Hansen was born in Estherville, Iowa, on February 15, 1939, the elder of two children to an American mother, Edna Margret Hansen (née Petersen; October 27, 1916 – April 24, 2005) and a Danish father, Christian "Chris" Hansen (September 16, 1907 – August 12, 1983). The family moved to Richmond, California, in 1942, but returned to Iowa in 1949 and settled in the city of Pocahontas, where Hansen worked at a bakery owned by his father.

In his youth, Hansen was painfully shy, had a stutter and suffered severe acne that left him permanently scarred. Throughout childhood and adolescence, he was described as a quiet loner who had a difficult relationship with his domineering father. Hansen took to practicing both hunting and archery, often finding refuge in those pastimes. In 1957, Hansen enlisted in the United States Army Reserve and served for one year at Fort Polk in Louisiana before being discharged. He later worked as an assistant drill instructor at a police academy in Pocahontas. There, he began a relationship with a younger woman, whom he married in 1960.

First crimes

On December 7, 1960, Hansen was arrested for burning down a Pocahontas County school bus garage, as revenge for his mistreatment in high school. He served twenty months of a three-year prison sentence in Anamosa State Penitentiary, during which his first wife divorced him. During his incarceration, Hansen was diagnosed with manic depression with periodic schizophrenic episodes. The psychiatrist who made the diagnosis noted that Hansen had an "infantile personality" and was obsessed with getting back at people he felt had wronged him.

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, Hansen opened his own bakery, 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, then for raping an unidentified sex worker. He pleaded no contest to assault with a deadly weapon in the former offense; the rape charge involving the sex worker 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 attempted to steal a chainsaw from an Anchorage Fred Meyer store. He was sentenced to five years in prison and required to receive psychiatric treatment for his manic depression. The Alaska Supreme Court reduced Hansen's sentence, and he was released with time served.

Murders and capture

Hansen's modus operandi is believed to have been to stalk a woman to learn her habits, eventually picking her up in his car and forcing her at gunpoint into his home, where he would rape her, then stab or shoot her. Some of the women Hansen murdered were sex workers; many were teenagers.

It is believed by authorities that Hansen's first murder victim was eighteen-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. The abduction occurred three days after Hansen committed his assault on the sex worker for which he was imprisoned. While there are some similarities between Hansen's modus operandi and Van Zanten's abduction, there is no conclusive evidence linking him to the attack and Hansen himself denied involvement.

On June 13, 1983, Hansen offered seventeen-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 the Muldoon neighborhood of Anchorage. There, he held her captive and proceeded to rape and torture her. Paulson later told police that after Hansen chained her by the neck to a post in his basement, he took a nap on a nearby couch. When he awoke, he put her in his car and took her to Merrill Field, where he told her that he intended to take her to his cabin near the Knik River area of the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, accessible only by boat or bush plane. Paulson, crouched in the back seat of Hansen's car with her wrists cuffed in front of her body, saw a chance to escape when he 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 backseat of Hansen's car as evidence that she had been inside. Hansen panicked and chased her, but Paulson reached Sixth Avenue and managed to flag down a passing truck. The driver, Robert Yount, alarmed by Paulson's disheveled appearance, stopped and offered assistance. He drove her to the Mush Inn, where she jumped out of the truck and ran inside. While Paulson pleaded with the clerk to phone her boyfriend at the Big Timber Motel, Yount continued on to work, where he called police to report the incident.

Victims

Hansen is known to have raped and assaulted over thirty 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 confirmed 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 abduction and rape of Cindy Paulson.

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 on July 21, 1980. Hansen admitted to stabbing this victim 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 she was his first murder victim. Despite his claim that Eklutna Annie might have come from Kodiak, troopers think she might have arrived in Alaska via California. Her body had already been largely consumed by wildlife when it was found.

Celia Beth van Zanten, age 18, left her house on Knik Avenue, Anchorage, in the late evening of December 22, 1971, and walked a few blocks toward a nearby BI-LO supermarket. She never reached the supermarket. Her disappearance was reported two days later. On December 25, Van Zanten's body was discovered at Chugach State Park. 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 dying from exposure. According to forensic evidence, Van Zanten attempted to climb back up the slope but was unable to do so due to her bindings. Hansen has been accused of killing Van Zanten because of an "x" on his murder map that matched the location of her body, but he denied responsibility for both her death and those of other women who were not involved in sex work.

Megan Siobhan Emerick, age 17, vanished on July 7, 1973, in Seward. She was last spotted leaving a dorm laundry room while attending the Seward Skill Center, a boarding school. She has not been seen or heard from since. Emerick left behind all of her personal items, including her identification. Before contacting police, her roommate conducted a three-day search for her. Hansen denied killing Emerick to authorities, but did admit he was in Seward on the day she vanished. Due to an "x" on his murder map in the Seward region, he is thought to be responsible. Apparently, Hansen admitted to a former inmate that he transported Emerick to a cabin in the Seward region that was only reachable by boat, where he killed and buried her.

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 his insurance company over the alleged theft of some hunting 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.

Following his capture, Hansen's second wife and their two children left Anchorage permanently and moved to Arkansas. The children's names have never been publicized and they live in anonymity.

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 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 seventeen grave sites in and around Southcentral Alaska, twelve 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 are the graves of Thill and Emrick, whom Hansen has denied killing. The remains of twelve of a probable twenty-one to thirty-seven 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, age 75, at Alaska Regional Hospital in Anchorage due to natural causes related to lingering health conditions.

In popular culture

Films

Naked Fear (2007), about a serial killer who hunts and abducts 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.

The FBI Files episode "Hunter's Game" (1999) depicts Hansen's murderous rampage.

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.

Most Evil Killers series 7, episode 2 on Sky Crime tells Hansen's story.

"Mind Hunters" and "The Woods", two episodes of the CBS TV series Cold Case that aired in November 2004 and May 2005, respectively, 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.

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

The lyrics to "Human Trophies" from American brutal death metal band Deeds of Flesh depict a serial killer with similar characteristics to Robert Hansen