Cold Open: Alaska. The most remote part of the United States. So much uninhabited land. In total area, it’s twice the size of Texas. With over 375 million acres, it’s bigger than Texas, California, and Montana combined. And it has less people living there than North Dakota and just slightly more people than Vermont.

You can really get away from people in Alaska. So many places where you can find yourself with NOBODY else around for miles and miles and miles.

And Alaska resident Robert Hansen, an Anchorage-based baker, chose to use this uninhabited remoteness to his raping and murderous advantage for over a decade.

In the late 1970’s, Anchorage police began receiving steady reports about missing prostitutes and topless dancers. Initially these disappearances caused little concern, as such girls were notorious for leaving at a moments notice, usually without telling anyone where they were going. But their bodies began to be found. And soon, Alaskan police knew they had a serial killer in their midst.

We take a look at Alaska, America’s 49th state, and it’s most notorious serial killer, Robert Hansen aka the Butcher Baker, today, on Timesuck.

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO

I.Welcome!

A.Happy Monday:

Hello Meatsacks. Happy Monday! Welcome back to the Cult of the Curious. Welcome back to more True Crime after a brief historical break.

I’m Dan Cummins, aka Master Sucker, aka the Suck Lord, aka Prophet of Nimrod and neither a butcher nor a baker. Unless tater tot casserole counts. I can bake the shit out of one of those. Cream of mushroom soup. Green beans. Ground beef. Tater tots. Lawry’s seasoning salt. 350 degrees. And then get the fuck into my belly where you won’t stay long because you will tear my insides apart.

You are listening to Timesuck.

Recording today in the Suck Dungeon in Couer d’Alene, Idaho. withReverend Doctor Joe Motherfuckin’ Paisley and Zaq Script Keeper Flannary, the last day before a vacation. Recording this two weeks ahead of time. Hope the world still exists. Hope you’re not listening to this in a dystopian, post apocalyptic nightmare. Hope the world didn’t fall apart in two short weeks.

Hail Nimrod! Hail Lucifina! Praise Bojangles! And fuck Robert Hansen.

B.Charity: Thanks again to our Patreon Space Lizards for helping us to donate $2600 this month to

100+ Abandoned Dogs of Everglades Florida Rescue. Link in the episode description if you’d like to find out more or donate to this no kill shelter yourself.

http://100plusabandoneddogsofevergladesflorida.org/

C.Tour Dates:

July 26-27 Cincinnati, OH West Liberty Funnybone

August 1-3 Charlotte, NC, The Comedy Zone

August 4 Richmond, VA, The Funny Bone

August 9-10 Orlando, FL, The Improv

The next live Ant Hill Kids Cult Suck in Orlando on August 11th.

Thursday August 29th, Comedy Store Hollywood, CA

August 30,31 & September 1st - Comedy Store, La Jolla, CA

D.Merch Announcement: My new vinyl album, Feel the Heat, out TODAY. Hail Nimrod!

The Fuck Chuck story, the burning my ween on a heater story and more on WAX. Various limited edition pressings available right now from the Romanus Record vinyl Gods.

The link to buy this album is in today’s episode description. Just click that bad boy to go the Romanus Records Shopify store.

https://romanusrecords.myshopify.com/pages/dan-cummins-feel-the- heat-space-lizard-early-access-pre-order

E.Merch: Another cool tee in the store today. Reminds me of the shirts I wore as a kid in the best possible way. Reminds of tees I wore in first and second grade in Anchorage Alaska actually. Old school He Man Master of the Universe vibes.

It’s a Suckmaster King of the Lizards ringer tee and if you don’t like or need a ringer tee, check it out just for the Axis Apparel design. Very pulp fiction sci-fi. It’s a work of tee shirt art.

It’s an Anvil 100% cotton ringer also made out of 100% Lemurian three-and-a-half dimensional invisibility ability. Also made out of 100% David Icke power chakra. Also made out of some shit I can’t even talk about because the Raelians have told me to stay quiet about it. Those alien worshippers told me to tell you guys just to wear it and don’t ask too many questions or worry about it.

But for real - at LEAST check out the design. Hail Axis Apparel!

F. Segue to Topic: And now … it’s time to dive into another Space Lizard chosen topic.

Robert the Butcher Baker Hansen.

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTERLUDE II.Intro/Establish Premiss:

Robert Hansen was a serial rapist with at least 30 victims that survived and a minimum of 17 who were raped and murdered.

Hansen, like too many others, was a serial killers who got away with serial killing because he didn’t come across like a serial killer to the people around him.

He seemed like a nice, family-man, donut baker. Who makes delivious chocolate cake donuts AND hunts women in the woods? In a perfect world - no one. In this world, at least Robert Hansen as done that.

Hansen was an award winning hunter who put his hunting skills to use on human beings. He was also successful bakery owner. So weird. Local police buying donuts made by the guy they’re thinking about how they’re gonna catch while they’re eating them.

The majority of today’s suck is gonna take place in a big ol’ Timesuck Timeline we’re gonna jump into after today’s first sponsor.

III.Away Midroll:

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Link in the episode description. Timesuck Timeline right now.

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE INTRO

IV.Timesuck Timeline

1.February 15, 1939:

February 15th, 1939, the day after Valentine’s Day, a baby boy is born in Estherville Iowa’s, Coleman Hospital. This baby will grow up to be a man who will NOT become some romantic lover. Maybe if he would’ve just been born ONE day earlier? Maybe that would’ve fixed everything? Maybe Cupid could’ve softened him? Probably not..

This baby is Robert Christian Hansen. He’s born to a Danish immigrant baker named Christian Hansen and his wife Edna. And he’ll soon become an insecure, troubled, angry monster.

Jobs were scarce in Estherville, a quaint little town of roughly 6,000 people, a town most famous for a 455 pound meteorite that fell to Earth a few miles north of the town in 1879.

2.1942: So, in 1942, when Robert was three, his family headed west. They moved to Richmond, California just north of San Francisco on the San Francisco Bay where they would live for five years.

And in Richmond, Christian and Edna would quickly tire of the hustle and grind of trying to pound out a living in a much more populated area. They longed for the comparatively simple life of small town Iowa and they saved money to move back and open their own bakery.

3.1947: In 1947, the Hansens returned to Iowa with their now ten- year-old son and their two-year-old daughter and they settled in Pocahontas, a small town 125 miles northwest of Des Moines.

Founded in 1870 within the county of the same name, Pocahontas was one of many towns created during the rapid settlement of the flat, fertile Midwest “Cornbelt” after the Civil War. The town was named after that famous Virginian Indian princess whose benevolence and interventions on behalf of the Jamestown settlers in the 1600s had made her the symbol of the American Indian welcoming Europeans into the "new world."

The basic ethnic mix of the town and its surrounding farms was established by German, Bohemian, Scandinavian, and Irish immigrants. Lots of immigrants. Robert’s dad was one of them.

Pocahontas epitomized the “wholesome” small town Americana of mid-20th century America. A lifestyle portrayed in shows like Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best.

Pocahontas had a town-grain elevator, the railroad came through town, it had a cute little main street with a hotel, a blacksmith, machinery and car dealers, grocery stores, produce stores, hardware and repair stores. It had a nine-hole golf course and a 60- by-120-foot swimming pool built by the Works Progress Administration during the Depression. On Main Street there was also the Rialto Theatre, showing the latest in Hollywood movies. Showbiz!

And then in 1949, Pocahontas got a donut shop.

The October 20, 1949, edition of the Pocahontas Record Democrat carried an ad for Robert’s parent’s new bakery: “Mr. and Mrs. Chris Hansen announced the opening of their "Home Bakery," inviting people "to come in and get acquainted and inspect the modern bakery, and enjoy free coffee and doughnuts."

Chris Hansen had learned the baking trade in his native Denmark - HOME OF THE DANISH! - sweet ass bread with some cream or maybe some cheese or maybe some fruit compote in the middle - before immigrating to the United States at the age of twenty.

Danes - masters of the pastry. If you had to pick one nation to buy tasty as bread from - Denmark is not a bad choice. Followed closely by North Korea - origin of the apple fritter! You ever had a North Korean apple fritter? You haven’t lived in constant fear and poverty and sadness, unless you’ve had a stale, moldy North Korean apple fritter that’s the first nourishment of any kind you’ve been allowed to eat in days.

But seriously, Chris Hansen was a skilled baker, and his bakery on the main street of a small town in Iowa thrived.

Also this Chris Hansen NOT the same Chris Hansen of To Catch a Predator. Same name, different era.

When they first moved to Pocahontas, the Hansen family lived in a small apartment above the family bakery. And at 2 AM, the Hansens would walk downstairs and work would begin.

The bakery did well enough to allow the Hansens to buy a modest three-bedroom house just two or three houses from the edge of town, putting a whole four blocks between their workplace and their new home.

This new commute to work changed Hansen family life drastically.

Now, having to account for distance and traffic since they no longer worked directly above the bakery, the Hansens would have to get up even earlier. They’d have to get up at 1:58 AM instead of at 2 AM.

In the winter, when it was important to put on more layers of clothing. They Hansens would have to get up at 1:57AM. And some think that Chris’s frustration with this new commute is what led to Robert becoming a serial killer. For two to three minutes every morning, he’d storm around his house yelling,

“I could still be ASLEEP right now! But NO - we had to move WAY OUT to the edge of town! It’s killing me, Edna! I never wanted to live in the suburbs. I’m a city man, Edna! You knew that when you married me!”

And of course that’s not true.

Acquaintances recalled that "the Hansen house was very well kept . . . always very clean. Edna was a meticulous housekeeper."

Chris Hansen was described as being a "hard-nosed authoritarian figure . . . an 'old world father,' very religious and very strict."

SWEET! Another one of those parents. Over and over again we come across them in the Suck-verse. Very religious plus very strict upbringing seems to create SO MANY monsters.

I can’t think of one serial killer I’ve read about, where, when researching their childhood, I came across something like:

“He was raised by laid back, firm-but-fair loving parents who made him go to church on Sundays until he was thirteen and then they stopped forcing him. Instead, they just hoped that he would carve out his own relationship with god, for they were wise enough to understand that once he was an adult and left their home they wouldn’t be able to force him to bend to the will of their God as they interpreted it, so why cram their religion down his fucking throat in the first place, which would probably just cause him to resent it later and have anger issues.”

Chris worked himself and his family hard, especially his only son, Robert. Robert started working around the bakery shortly after the family opened it, and his responsibilities and hours steadily increased as he grew older.

Getting up to work for several hours BEFORE you go to school, probably not gonna enhance anyone’s junior high or high school scholastic experience.

Robert would later express resentment over how hard he was worked as a kid, saying: "When I was a young boy, I worked at my dad's shop and I'd get maybe thirty-five to forty-five cents (a day). When I got to be a sophomore, junior, senior ... I wouldn't even get a dollar (a day).”

That would work out to about ten bucks a day now when adjusted for inflation, so, he really did have a reason to gripe about it.

In addition to being angry over feeling like he had to work too much as a kid, and that he wasn’t paid enough for that work, Robert Hansen also had a severe stutter which added further frustration to his childhood. He’d stutter his whole life, and he’d feel that his stuttering was part of the reason that the girls he was interested in, weren’t very interested in him.

He stuttered so badly in junior high and high school, he’d try and talk to a teacher or classmate and literally not be able to get any words out that made sense and he’d end up just walking away mid- stutter, humiliated.

And, of course, this being the 1950s when “bully-shaming” wasn’t something anyone really talked about - he was ruthlessly mocked. He also wasn’t a real big dude and I imagine he was pushed around in the hall more than a few times. Books slapped out of his hands and then kicked down the hall. Tripped. All that fun stuff. Also, once he got into high school, he developed horrible acne to make life just a little bit sweeter. He had acne that would leave his face severely scarred for the rest of his life. In later years, he would recall his face as being "one big pimple.”

Boys and girls alike made fun of Robert for his stutter and for his acne, but it stung more when the girls made fun of him. And he came to hate all the cruel, pretty girls he coveted but could not have.

HELLO future serial killing motive. Ding, ding, ding!

Scholastically, Hansen was an average to below-average student. It’s possible he could’ve gotten much better grades if he just didn’t have to work such long hours in the bakery. He suffered from that age-old dilemma of the donut maker’s son - too many maple bars, not enough calculus. Too many chocolate old-fashioned’s, not enough social studies. Too many cinnamon-sugar twists and long johns and glazed doughnut holes and strawberry-frosted and jelly doughnuts and crullers, and not enough, well… you get the idea.

One of Robert’s high school teachers noticed he always seemed tired in her afternoon typing class, often falling asleep. She figured it was because he had to get up too early to work in his father's bakery.

This same woman would also later say she felt extremely guilty and later regretted the method she chose to try and motivate Robert to stay awake in her class. She said when he’d fall asleep she’d encourage his classmates to sing along with a cruel little ditty she whipped up:

“R-r-r-robert P-p-p-pimple face, how are you such a d-d-d- disgrace! Your f-f-f-face looks like t-t-t-tomato paste, now w-w- w-wake up you lazy p-p-p-ile of of human w-w-w-waste.”

Not cool, you know?

Reflecting on this song years later, she says she could see how it could’ve come across as insensitive or hurtful to Robert.

She also said that, when he’d wake up and hear that song and start crying, she wishes she wouldn’t have pointed at him and laughed and yelled things like, “Uh-oh! L-l-l-ooks like the cheese is melting on Robert’s p-p-p-pizza face!!!”

And then she REALLY regretted literally running around the room and getting high-fives from the other kids after saying stuff that.

No - she didn’t do any of that.

I’m pretty sure a teacher behaving that way would’ve been frowned upon back in Pocahantas.

BUT - you know some of his classmates probably did say shit similar to that.

You KNOW he was mocked. Savagely.

Basically, Robert’s childhood was pretty shitty. And some people have the inner-strength to overcome that later in life. Some people choose to lack back at high school and think, “Fuck those clowns.” Not Robert. School would haunt him. He had no real friends and was described as a “loner." He’d later say that school “was hell” and that, "All through high school, if I knew there was a possibility that I would have to say anything in class or make a comment, I would literally break out in sweats, and, of course, getting excited made my stuttering worse. . . ."

Hansen went out for basketball all four years of high school, but failed to win a letter each year. Same thing with football.

Crushing it! Dude was CRUSHING it.

Outside of school and working in the bakery, when Robert did have free time, he’d go out in the woods and day dream about rape and murder.

Actually not kidding here.

He did start to fantasize about raping and hurting all the girls who made fun of him pretty early on.

Started dividing women in his mind into good girls and bad girls. Bad girls who made fun of him should be punished. Bad girls who weren’t sexually interested in him should be punished. He also hunted, fished, and became pretty good at archery. Great. Not a good combo for some women he’d meet later on.

I imagine he also started fantasizing about hunting those bad girls.

Robert loved being out in the woods. Out alone in nature, he was good with a gun and bow. He was powerful. He wasn’t riding the basketball or football bench. No one was making fun of his acne. No one was making fun of his stutter.

I picture him killing a deer and then yelling, “Haha! Take that you fucking stupid d-d-d-d-d-d-deer! G-g-god d-d-d-d-d-DAMN it!”

And by the way, I only feel ok making fun of his stutter because how what a complete piece of shit this guy was. Getting bullied no excuse for what he’d later do.

4.1957: In May of 1957, Hansen graduated with thirty-one other students. About like my high school in Riggins when I graduated with twenty-three kids.

And his tiny high school’s yearbook got his name wrong. Robert’s name was misspelled as “Hanson” with an “o.” Jesus. How insulting.

Under his misspelled name was the slogan: “Worry never made men great, so why should I worry?”

Years later, he didn’t seem to worry too much about getting caught for TAKING WOMEN OUT IN THE WOODS AND HUNTING THEM.

But back to that misspelled name in the yearbook for second. This is so sad to me. To me, this speaks volumes about how truly unpopular he was.

He graduated with thirty-one other kids. A class of thirty-two kids! So small! So, in their high school, about one-hundred- and-twenty total kids to put in the yearbook. Most of whom, I’m guessing, lived in town most, if not all of, their lives.

You don’t misspell the starting quarterback’s name in a little school like that. You don’t misspell the prom king or the captain of the cheerleaders. You don’t misspell the name of any other kid who hangs out with those kids or any the name of any kid you least talk to in the halls or know casually- which is 99% of the other kids. I went to a tiny high school and you know everybody. It’s not big enough to really break up into cliques.

I feel like you only fuck up the name of some kid, a kid who has gone to school in town since the fifth grade, if that kid barely exists to you.

I mean, MAYBE it was just a mistake anyone could have made. MAYBE the high school yearbook committee just dropped the ball.

I think more likely, they just didn’t give a shit about Robert. He didn’t matter to them. He was forgettable in a class of thirty- two. Or, even worse, one final insult some other classmate or classmates intentionally gave him on his way out.

I could be reading way too much into this.

Mistake or not - High school was clearly a very rough for Robert Hansen.

5.1957 - Robert joined the Army Reserves in 1957 after graduation. He did his basic training at Fort Dix in New Jersey where he became proficient as a marksman. He then went to Fort Knox, Kentucky. He served for just one year before being discharged. Actually, some sources say he was discharged, others say he completed his active duty after a year and then was on reserve duty status for several years after that.

I’m guessing in the army, Robert’s drill sergeant may have mocked him as well.

“Look at your bed, private H-h-h-hansen! Does that look clean to you, you pizza-faced f-f-f-fuck!?!”

I don’t know that to be true, but I’ve heard that many a drill sergeant, especially back in the time when Robert was young, were quite fond of aggressively breaking men down through verbal abuse before, hopefully, building them back up.

Before leaving his brief active duty stint in the military, Robert had his first sexual encounter with a prostitute. And I’m gonna say that was his first sexual encounter with any woman. And then he had many more encounters with prostitutes. Encounters that rarely left him satisfied. He was frustrated with how quickly the encounter was over. He’d say It was just “wham, bam, thank you ma’am.” He wanted more time with these women. This poor, sick bastard wanted them to want him.

6.1958: In 1958, after leaving the army, Robert would return to Iowa and work in his dad’s bakery. So, again, CRUSHING it! Moving back home after a year on his own.

A few months later, he gets his own apartment in Pocahontas, and according to someone who would be interviewed years later, “He'd have high school boys over to his apartment to talk about guns, hunting, and who or what he didn't like in Pocahontas."

So, you know, he was now becoming super duper cool. The cool guy who doesn’t have friends in high school, then moves away, then comes back and hangs out with the new high schoolers. I knew kids like that back where I grew up. So cool. Always the cream of the crop those guys. I always thought, good for them not moving on with their lives.

7.1959: In 1959, Robert started dating a woman who is mentioned in all kind of biographies but isn’t named in any articles about Robert online, or in the two biographies, the two that seemed the most comprehensive, that I bought about this dirtbag. In one the sources she is referred to as a “girl who’d graduated a year after he did. The daughter of the town’s chiropractor.” This same source said that this chiropractor and his family “had little contact with the community outside of his practice.”

8.December 7, 1960 - Then, on December 7th, 1960 Robert burns down his old high school’s school bus garage.

CLEARLY still angry about high school. CLEARLY harboring some grudges.

As retribution for the abuse he once received, Robert talks a sixteen-year-old employee at his father’s bakery to help him set fire to the school bus garage. Not only do they successfully burn it to the ground, they also destroy three of the seven school buses.

“T-T-T-Take THAT, P-p-p-poca-h-ho-ho-hp - aargh GOD D-D-D- DAMN IT!”

Unfortunately for Robert, his accomplice turns himself in and rats Robert out.

9.March 29, 1961: On March 29, 1961, Robert Hansen is charged with arson. His bail is set at $2,500.

Three days later, his mother Edna went to the courthouse and bailed him out.

And then that same evening, Robert marries the chiropractor's daughter in a ceremony at the Lutheran church. The newlyweds left for a week in Florida for a honeymoon, then returned to live in Robert's apartment while he awaited trial.

Man. Fuuuuun wedding. Getting married in front of your new in-laws who now know their daughter is getting hitched to a vengeful arsonist. They must have THRILLED. And, stress and anxiety made Robert’s stutter worse. Those vows must’ve been something to watch.

“I promise to l-l-l-love you f-f-f-forver. I promise not to s-s-s-set any more f-f-f-fuh, f-f-f- GOD D-D-D-Damn it! S-s-s-sorry, everyone! No more, f-f-fires.”

That September, Hansen was indicted for the arson charge.

Considering the case against him, Hansen waived his right to a trial and plead guilty. He would later say: "I guess I burned down the bus barn because I hated the school with a divine passion. I would do whatever I could think of to get back at that monster school that did Bob Hansen a personal wrong."

Yup. Clearly had not moved on from high school. In a way, Robert never moved on. He’d desperately want to make some of those girls pay for the rest of his life.

10. October 9, 1961: On October 9th, 1961, Robert was sentenced to three years at the state reformatory at Anamosa (pronunced like it looks, like Mimosa). Now known as the Anamosa state penitentiary. Shortly afterward, his first wife divorced him.

In Anamosa, home of the National Motorcycle Museum by the way which looks pretty awesome actually, a psychiatrist diagnosed Hansen as having "an infantile personality” based on Robert's description of fantasies of revenge and destruction. Hansen revealed he imagined doing vicious things to girls who'd rejected or made fun of him, and he talked about wanting to blow up the town water tower and shoot out the lights of the town police car. He was obsessed with "getting even.”

In late 1962, another psychiatric assessment done on Hansen stated that while he still had an infantile personality, his antisocial attitudes had diminished. This report, coupled with his record of good conduct, earned him an early parole on May Day, 1963.

The winter before Hansen was released, his parents had closed their successful bakery in Pocahontas and left town. The shame of everyone knowing that their son was the town arsonist was too much for them.

They purchased the Stony Point resort on Leech Lake, two-hundred miles north of Minneapolis-St. Paul, and moved up to northern Minnesota to get everything ready for the coming fishing season. The Hansens' resort was located in the Chippewa National Forest, on a peninsula on the southwest side of the big, 110,000 acre lake.

When Robert was released from Anamosa, he took his parole in Minnesota and went to work at his parents' resort, spending the first weeks helping paint the boats and cabins and putting out the docks. When the season began, he guided fishing parties. He loved it. I’m sure shit was a LITTLE bit tense between him and his parents, but, he liked his new, wilderness environment.

In the summer of ’63, he also met the woman who would become his second wife. Gloria Deacon. She was one of the girls his folks had hired to clean the cabins. She aso came from Iowa; her parents ran a motel in Pocahontas.

Gloria went back to Iowa University that fall while Robert completed a three-and-a-half week short course at the Wilton School of Cake Decorating in Chicago.

Soon after that, Robert got a job at a bakery in Minot, North Dakota through a friend of his parents. He and Gloria got married a month later. And then Robert got into some kind of trouble at this new job and came back to work at his parent’s resort. The troubled son returns.

Based on what kind of trouble he’ll get in soon, I’m gonna guess and say that Robert got fired in Minot for stealing something. Robert loved stealing stuff almost as much as he loved raping, killing, and setting things on fire.

Shortly after returning home Hansen got another job at a big bakery chain, Cox Bakeries, and the couple moved to Moorhead, Minnesota.

This chain doesn’t seem to exist anymore. But there is a Cox Bakery and Doughnuts in El Paso. If anyone working there listens to this, I think you should talk the owners into hiring me to write some radio jingles.

(Radio Jingle) “Cox Bakery is running a new contest this summer - whoever can eat the most donuts in ten minutes gets free donuts for LIFE!!! So come on down to McCombs Street and find how much cox you can fit inside yourself!

Cox! Put ‘em in your mouth!!”

“Nothing’s gonna kick start your day COX… (Whisper) bakery and donuts.”

“Wake up and the smell the COX! … … (Whisper) bakery and donuts.”

“Set down that bag of dicks buddy and instead EAT A BAG OF COX! (whisper) Bakery and Donuts.”

Anyway, Robert was supposed to rotate among the bakery chain's thirty-two shops scattered throughout the Midwest, filling in for the regular managers while they took their vacations. His first assignment was a two-week stint in Rapid City, South Dakota.

When he got back from slanging so many donuts and maple bars in Rapid City, when he got stuffing Rapid City to the gills with muffins and pumpkin bread, he and Gloria decided they didn't like Robert having to travel so much for work and so they moved to Minneapolis.

Robert was done with cox. He decided, from that day forward, he didn’t want anymore Cox in his life.

Robert and Gloria lived at the Collins Trailer Park on East Seventy- eighth Street in the suburb of Bloomington. Gloria attended the University of Minnesota and Robert worked at the Myhr Bakery in uptown Minneapolis, on West Fiftieth.

(Radio Jingle) “Myhr Bakery! Since 1953, tasting better than a bag of cox!”

Robert was hired by Myhr to be a foreman and cake decorator. And his new boss found him to be an excellent worker. The people of Myhr also discovered he had quite a temper. Apparently, he’d go off on people working under his supervision all the time. But he was always polite to his boss, so they kept him.

11. February 22, 1965: Two years later, on February 22nd, 1965, Robert got into some criminal trouble again.

A Bloomington policeman arrested Hansen for stealing some fish line and lures worth eleven bucks from a sporting goods store. He had the money, he just didn’t want to pay for it.

As it turned out, Robert had gotten really into shoplifting, and had been stealing shit for months.

Robert’s interest in shoplifting is best summed up by that Jane’s Addiction song, Been Caught Stealing:

“I enjoy stealing, It's just as simple as that Well it's - just a simple fact When I want something, and I don't want to pay for it Then I walk right - through the door. Yeah I walk right through the door.”

Just like the song, dude just enjoyed stealing stuff. He liked it.

Gloria Hansen persuaded the couple’s Lutheran pastor to vouch for Bob, and these first shoplifting charges were dropped. But Robert wasn’t done stealing. Not even close.

A couple months later, Robert's bakery boss came into the shop early one day and found out that Robert had broken into his office by using a knife on the lock. Hansen was rifling through a desk drawer where the cash for customer change was kept.

This guy would later say he was, obviously, furious. He said, “I called the county attorney about pressing charges. But then Bob came to me and said he'd been offered more money to work at the Northside Bakery. That simplified things-I told him to go ahead and take the job.”

Hilarious.

“You’re going to jail, asshole!

Wait, what?

You got offered a job by someone else?

Fine! Just take it and get the hell out of my hair forever. Stay gone and I won’t press charges. I just want to be rid of you. Best of luck”

Sounds like maybe he’d been wanting to get rid of Robert for awhile. Or maybe he enjoyed thinking about Bob stealing from a competitor.

12. May, 1965: That May, Robert was arrested again for theft. This time at a Montgomery Ward store for stealing a softball.

At his new job, he’d actually started bragging to the other employees about how he could go into a store and try on a suit, then walk' out of the store wearing it. 13.1967: In the spring of 1967, Gloria graduated from the University of Minnesota and she and Robert decided to leave Minnesota. They both loved the Great Outdoors and she and Robert choose to move to the state with the greatest amount of wilderness in the United States, by far. They decide to move to Alaska.

In June, the couple stuffed their belongings and a tent into a new Pontiac and headed for the Pacific Northwest, hitting all kinds of campsites and National Parks along the way.

They stayed in the Grand Teton National Park to take mountain- climbing lessons. They spend time enjoying the beauty of Glacier National Park.

Glacier IS beautiful by the way. Holy shit is it ever. Lynze and I and the kids camped there two summers ago. Incredible. Highly recommend. Love everything about it. Three out of five stars.

Then they drove up through Canada to Alaska, arriving in Anchorage in mid-August. Anchorage - the city my sister Donna was born in. A city I went to kindergarten through second grade in.

Alaska would provide Robert with plenty of room to hunt. He’d end up hunting all kinds of animals in Alaska, including, of course, human beings.

Alaska's 591,004-square-mile area equals one third of the lower forty-eight states' combined total land area. It’s fucking HUGE. And, SO full of land no one else is living on. Wilderness where you can walk for days and days and never run into another person. Plenty of room to take someone out into the wildness and kill them. They can scream all they want. No one else is around for miles and miles and miles. Alaska’s 1967 population was only 278,000 total people.

To understand Alaska’s population in proportion to its size - imagine Manhattan only having eleven people living on it.

And most of Alaska’s people lived in or around Anchorage. The rest of the HUGE state - so rural.

Anchorage is located in south-central Alaska at the northeastern end of the Cook Inlet Basin, a 37,000-square-mile area shaped in a horseshoe by a quintet of mountain ranges. On the west, the Aleutian Range extends 160 miles to the north to overlap with the Alaska Range as it curves across the top of the basin. On the east, the Talkeetna Mountains go from the Alaska Range to the Matanuska [ mat-uh-noo-skuh ] River Valley. Across that valley the Chugach [chew gach] Range stretches to the southwest along the Gulf of Alaska coast to the Kenai Mountains, which buttress the basin from the rough gulf waters on the south and the tides of Cook Inlet on the north.

Anchorage is a relatively new city. It came into existence in 1915, when President Woodrow Wilson proposed a rail route to connect the interior coal fields of the Matanuska [ mat-uh-noo-skuh ] and Nenana [nee nana] valleys to the ice-free port of Seward, Alaska.

Anchorage was the staging area for the project, and overnight a tent city of two thousand railroad workers and a handful of merchants sprouted up.

And the on July 10, 1915, there was an auction of 655 town-site lots, the land comprising today's Fourth Avenue area of Anchorage.

City planners tried to keep the new community from becoming a den of sin, stipulating that: "[The lots] are not to be used for the sale of liquor, gambling or immoral purposes. Violation means forfeiture of property." However, Anchorage would still become a rough frontier town full of all kinds of gambling, liquor, and prostitution. And, ironically, it’s seediest area would be the area around that original Fourth street town center.

By 1940, Anchorage had doubled its original population, and with the arrival of Fort Richardson and Elmendorf Air Force Base, it expanded sixfold to 30,000 people by 1950, making it the largest city in the territory.

Think about that - a city of 30,000 people being the LARGEST city in all of Alaska. And it was still a territory. Alaska didn’t become a state until 1959.

In 1964, south-central Alaska was hit by the greatest recorded earthquake ever to strike the North American continent. Anchorage shook for five terrifying minutes as the quake reached 9.2 on the Richter scale. My dad lived in Alaska at this time, on Kodiak island where my grandpa Bill was a Pentecostal minister and he remembers this quake well.

I actually have a memory of feeling a much smaller earthquake in Alaska when I was around five. I remember the floor shaking in our apartment and some of my mom’s knick knacks rattling on a shelf. I remember my mom getting scared which made me scared.

My grandpa Bill would later live in Cordova, Alaska and I spent a week with him and my grandma Carol when I was a kid and he showed me a stretch of old highway that was folded up and busted in that 1964 earthquake. It was crazy seeing the asphalt just bent and torn apart.

Anchorage survived this huge quake - Alaskans are tough-ass people - and by 1967, Anchorage's 108,000 people made up thirty- nine percent of the state's population, and in the next fifteen years its number of city residents would double.

The Hansens had no trouble finding employment in a booming Anchorage job market hungry for people with a trade or a degree. Robert went to work as a baker and cake decorator for the Safeway Bakery at Ninth and Gambell, and Gloria got a job teaching on Government Hill.

Life was good for the Hansens in Alaska.

They rented an apartment by the Safeway, then soon moved to a better one on Dawson Street. After only a year of renting, the young couple was able to buy a duplex on Sixth Avenue in South Mountain View, where they lived in one half and rented out the other. Mrs. Hansen became active in the Lutheran Central Church, and she and Robert went hiking, camping, climbing, and fishing together.

Life was WAY better for Robert in Alaska than it had been in Pocahontas. He’d make matching custom t-shirts for he and Gloria that said, “We l-l-l-luh-lOVE Alas-k-k-k-k-ka!”

Of course he didn’t do that.

But he did love Alaska. Robert threw himself into archery and bow hunting, and joined the Black Sheep Bowmen and the Alaska Archery Association.

14.1969: In 1969, Hansen got into the Pope and Young record book twice, shooting a fourth-ranked mountain goat on the Kenai Peninsula, and bringing down a thirty-third-ranked Barren Ground caribou. The Pope and Young Club, by the way, is an organization dedicated to bowhunting which continues today and includes its own world record book for North American game.

15.1970: In 1970, Robert bagged the third largest Dall sheep taken down by a bow.

And the heads of all these animals would line the walls of his den. And I feel like later, if he could’ve gotten away with it, he would’ve had the heads of various women mounted alongside them. Dude loved his trophies. Visual reminders of lives he’d taken.

16.1971: In 1971, Robert and Gloria, prepared for the arrival of their first child. They sold their duplex at a substantial profit and moved a few blocks north to a larger house on Thomas Circle, and Robert took a second job at another bakery. And then the Hansens had a baby girl.

And this girl’s name does not seem to exist on the internet. I get the feeling she doesn’t want to be found and I can’t blame her. Even on genealogy websites, and on the death database Find-A-Grave, Robert’s children’s names are not listed. Neither is his wife Gloria’s name. I’m guessing after he was arrested Gloria refused interviews, changed the her name and the name of her kids, and I can’t blame her.

After the birth of this first child, the Hansens began to go their separate ways, no longer going on wilderness outings together. As a couple, they continued to participate in church and social functions but their lives became more and more separate outside of that.

This separation will soon give Robert more time to fulfill his darkest urges.

Also in 1971, Robert brought down the biggest Dall sheep ever taken by a bow. Hansen signed the Pope and Young "Fair Chase Affidavit," wherein he swore no firearm was used.

Hansen also bagged the second-ranked Barren Ground caribou that year. Dude loved to hunt. And he was good at it.

But he would never enter his name into the Pope and Young record book ever again. He kept hunting, but by the time of the winter of 1971 and 1972, he’d changed his prey to women.

In the early 70s, Anchorage had an extremely rough "tenderloin" district full of all kinds of vice. Largely run by Seattle Mafia boss Frank Colacurio, it was centered on Fourth Avenue, again - where the city began, where those lots had been sold back in 1915 to be used for anything but sinful debauchery, and now that’s about all they were used for.

Young women flooded into the area in the hopes of making big money 'dancing' in full-nude strip clubs that also operated as brothels. These clubs had names like Wild Cherry, Arctic Fox, Booby Trap, and Tits and Tots, Alaska’s first strip club and pre- school combo, where the kids could hang out and color and drink grape juice and eat grilled cheese sandwiches and their moms could dance naked and give lonely guys boners.

Of course there was no Tits and Tots.

That was just an excuse to throw one of my old standup jokes into this Suck.

One real place was the Great Alaskan Bush Company, maybe the best name for a strip club ever - and I imagine there was SO much bush there in the 70s. This place is actually still in operation, although in a different location. I may or may not have spent too much time on their website verifying that fact. Begone Lucifina!

One of the girls currently working there as an “entertainer” goes by the state name of Paisley. CLEARLY a nod to Reverend Doctor Joe Paisley. CLEARLY catering to the micropeen demographic he represents.

Anyway, as the population and disposable income skyrocketed in Anchorage during Alaska’s big oil boom, the bigger strip clubs were skimming off tens of thousands of dollars a month or more in cash. Which is why the mob got involved.

Lots of cash money

In 1974, construction on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline would begin carrying oil roughly 800 miles from Prudhoe Bay up at the top of Alaska to Valdez, east of Anchorage. There was an oil boom and with an oil boom comes lots of blue collar jobs paying lots of money. Young dudes making oil money and looking to blow it on coke, alcohol, strippers, and prostitutes in the wild party scene of the tenderloin district of Anchorage. And so, lots of prostitution flowed in to meet this demand. Some of these prostitutes would become Hansen’s victims and the fact that they often weren’t from the area made it that much harder for investigators to solve their cases. When girls went missing, law enforcement had no idea if they’d just returned to wherever they’d lived before Alaska or if something terrible had happened to them.

Also, as one might imagine, the seedy underbelly of Anchorage was also violent. The police were kept busy with plenty of beatings, armed robberies and even firebombs and more than a couple murders.

Between 1979 and 1983, police responded two-hundred-and-seven times to disturbances at just the Booby Trap club alone.

In this chaotic world, Robert Hansen found his new prey. Prey he figured the police wouldn’t spend a lot of time looking for if they went missing. And sadly, he was right.

In Anchorage’s red light district, Robert soon realized could easily find women who, for an offer of $300 cash, would go anywhere with him.

But first, more legal trouble.

17. November 1971 - In November of 1971 Hansen gets arrested for an incident in the Spenard [spi-NAHRD] neighborhood of Anchorage.

On November 15th, eighteen year-old Susie Heppeard was driving home to relax after work on a Monday afternoon.

On Northern Lights Boulevard she stopped at a red light, and in a casual pan of her surroundings her eyes met those of a man in a car next to her. She gave a reflex smile, the light changed, and she drove home to an apartment she shared with two roommates in the Spenard [spi-NAHRD] section of Anchorage. And then she thought no more about the dude she’d just smiled at. A man named Robert Hansen.

Robert, however, thought a lot about her.

Robert followed her to her apartment. After she got home and started taking a shower, there was a knock at the door. She answered it and there stood thirty-two year-old Robert.

Robert pretended he was trying to find someone in the apartment complex. "Ah, well, maybe could I see your phone book a second?" It was on the table by the door and Susie let him look.

After looking Robert said, “Hmmm, must be unlisted." and then he tried to start up a conversation. He told the young woman he was new in Anchorage, didn't know many people, and would she like to go out with him on a date?

"No thanks," Susie said. "I'm engaged." And then Hansen left. His casual approach hadn't worked. And he was pissed. She’d rejected him just like all those girls had rejected him in high school. He’s show her. He decided to try a more aggressive approach the next week. He decided that she was going to have to p-p-p-puh- puh pay! God D-d-d-duh-d, God d-d-duh-damn it!”

The following Monday, Susie left her apartment at 5:15AM to drive some friends to work. She dropped them off, then drove back home, where Robert waited for her in the darkness.

As her car's headlight beams swept across the yard when she turned into the driveway, Susie saw a man in an orange cap hurry behind a neighboring building. She parked her car in the carport and got out. Suddenly, the man in the orange cap stepped in front of her and pointed a gun in her face. It, of course, was Robert. He snarled, “Shut up, sweetheart, or I'll blow your brains out!" and Susie instinctively screamed.

Robert cocked the revolver and said "Scream again and I'll blow your h-h-h-huh-head off!"

And that’s when another Susie - Susan Scott - who was in a back bedroom ironing a blouse heard another scream outside.

She hurried into the living room, looked out the window and saw a man standing with her roommate in the lighted area at the base of the stairway. She could see he was holding a gun and she opened the door and yelled, "What's going on, Susie? Are you all right?"

When she didn’t get a reply, she closed the door and called the police.

Robert got nervous now, walked away from Susie, and wandered off down the street.

Moments later the cops arrived and they found him wandering around the neighborhood a little over an hour later.

Hansen's vehicle was then located, and a loaded .22-caliber pistol was found under the driver's seat. Another officer found his orange cap in the snow, and a .357 Magnum revolver nearby.

The cap, revolver, and some of his hair was sent to a crime lab for testing, Susie positively identified Robert, and then a grand jury charged Hansen with assault with a deadly weapon. His trial was set for January of 1972.

While awaiting this trial he was arrested again. This time, Hansen was accused of having picked up an eighteen-year-old prostitute named Barbara Fields outside a bar in downtown Anchorage, kidnapping her, and then raping her at gunpoint.

He was accused of tying up Barbara up and then driving her eighty- miles away to an empty field out on the Kenai peninsula. He made her strip naked, fondled her for about fifteen minutes like she was on a date with him as opposed to being held against her will, then had her get dressed again, drove her to a motel called the Sunrise Inn, took her in a room, tied her to a bed, and raped her.

Then he drove her back to Anchorage, told her he’d kill her baby and her parents if she ever ratted him out to police, and then she let him go.

And then she went to the police.

And unfortunately, the district attorney ended up being forced to drop this case when Barbara became to scared to testify and failed to appear in court.

Superior Court Judge James Fitzgerald then sentenced Hansen to five years for drawing the gun on the first woman, basing this punishment on a psychiatric evaluation that revealed that Hansen was still obsessed with revenge.

Robert WAS obsessed with revenge. Revenge on any women who reminded him of the girls who made fun of him back in Pocahontas. Revenge against women who rejected him in any way. He wanted to hurt them. He wanted to kill them.

Judge Fitzgerald could see that Hansen was dangerous.

However, Hansen was still able to get out of jail quickly despite objections from the prosecutor due to another, more forgiving pscyh eval. He immediately applied for parole and got it quickly - only staying in jail for three months - from March to June.

18.June 1972: In June of 1972, Hansen was assigned to a halfway house upon his release, where he received psychiatric treatment until November.

In December, he was let out of the halfway house on a work furlough program. In the confession he gave to investigators later, he stated that the very first night he was free he went down to Fourth Avenue in Anchorage and started cruising the area, watching the prostitutes and fantasizing about how he would capture one of them again.

The very FIRST night he’s free, this is what he does. Again - he’s obsessed.

Also, that December, a petite, blond eighteen year old Anchorage resident Celia Beth Van Zanten, a freshman at Anchorage Community College goes missing on Dec 22nd. Three days later, on Christmas, her partially-nude frozen body is found in a ravine twenty miles south of Anchorage. Her hands had been tied behind her back.

Robert would never confess to her murder but is strongly suspected of having killed her. A map would be found after his eventual serial- killing arrest with X’s on the map. Many of those X’s would be revealed to be the locations of known Hansen murder victims. There was an X where Celia’s body was found.

And while all this is going on, Robert is still happily married. His wife Gloria stays with him despite the recent very strong kidnapping and rape allegation and despite the recent conviction for assault which was obviously a rape attempt.

Don’t do that anyone.

If your man gets arrested for attempted rape, and then, because a witness doesn’t show up in another incident of obvious rape - pack up your shit and start a new life. Do that right away! Wishing someone will change and become better won’t make them better. When people go this dark, no part of me believes they’ll ever be good again.

They’ve gone past the point of no return.

It’ll be hard to start over, but, at least you won’t still be living with a rapist who will almost certainly rape again. And again. And again. And again.

Despite newspaper coverage of the recent charges against Robert, the conviction and the rape accusation - there was a preliminary trial for the rape allegation - Robert didn’t seem to suffer much of a status drop in the Anchorage community.

Coworker Irma Knight would later recall, "We took it with a grain of salt, because Bob was a hard worker, the best cake decorator, and he had that little girl, so we figured he had a good marriage."

What? You took his conviction and the other near conviction with a grain of salt? Are you fucking stupid? So strange how we Meatsacks can rationalize things.

(coworker) “Sure. I read about the kidnapping and rape charges. Yeah, I knew he was arrested for pulling a gun on that other eighteen-year-old girl.

BUT -

I also knew the guy decorated cakes like nobody’s business. SO GOOD. And REALLY TASTY! How can you decorate cakes, like, REALLY WELL, and be married, AND have a kid, and go around kidnapping and raping. You can’t! You just can’t! ”

I’ve love to see that type of logic used in court.

(Defense attorney) “Your honor, we all know my client has been charged with multiple rapes and murders and that there are witnesses and tons of forensic evidence and even a signed confession. He even looks PRETTY rapey with his combover and his thin mustache and his tee shirt that says spread those legs or I’ll kill you.

BUT!! YOUR HONOR!! PLEASE…check out this sweet cake.

I mean, REALLY look at it. Look at the detail. It’s the leaning tower of Pisa in german chocolate form. Each section has a boston cream filling layer inside. Taste it! Taste that frosting that looks like Italian marble but tastes like German chocolate.

Do you honestly think a rapey-serial killer could make a cake that delicious AND beautiful? Impossible!

I mean, if this cake was a cake of a naked lady with her tits cut off, then yeah - throw him in a cell. If it tasted like a moldy old gym sock that someone with a severe case of athlete’s foot wore, someone who like do walk around barefoot on a floor of dog shit and cum before putting the sock back on - then SURE send him to death row. But this cake is a work of delicious art. So please, let my cake-maker go home to his cake-family.”

In the summer of 1973, Hansen in all likelihood killed again after his wife and daughter headed back to Minnesota to spend the summer with his wife’s parents.

19. July 7, 1973 - And while Gloria is chilling in the land of 10,000 lakes, on July 7th, 1973, a 17 year old girl named Megan Emerick disappears from Anchorage, AK. Hansen would never confess to her murder but is still considered the prime suspect.

Then, in late 1973, Hansen has an encounter with Seward police while he was still on parole for assault. They find a stolen boat motor and a depth finder, with the serial numbers filed off, aboard the Christy M, a boat Hansen owned.

Hansen contended he'd bought the stolen goods through private sales but had lost the receipts. And then he passed a lie detector test and wasn't charged.

Consequently, with no record of bad behavior or misconduct during his general furlough, he was paroled in December of '73.

20.1974: in 1974, Hansen in all likelihood, raped a sixteen-year-old girl in Anchorage but the crime wasn't reported.

Thirty-five years-old and still getting back at those Pocahontas high school girls.

Ten years after the assault, this victim would tell her story to Sheila Toomey, who was writing a series of articles about "the hidden victims of violent crimes" in the Anchorage Daily News.

In the June 12, 1984 story, this victim was given the pseudonym "Leila."

“Leila” said that on a brisk September night, she was walking home to Gambell Street after a party.

As she crossed a street, Hansen, waiting in a parked car rolled down his window and asked if she wanted a ride. Though she didn't usually hitchhike, the man was soft-spoken and polite-he didn't seem threatening. She accepted.

"He sort of looked like the perfect dork," Leila told Toomey. "I thought he was a dud." At her house, Robert Hansen wouldn't let her out of the car, and pulled a gun when she tried to resist. As they drove away. Leila remembered Hansen getting very talkative, asking about her boyfriend: Did she sleep with him? How many boys had she slept with?

She said, “I had the feeling he had done this kind of thing before."

Hansen made her take off everything except her blouse, and then he forced her to perform oral sex on him while he held the gun to her head.

Next, and this is so strange, he made her flash a passing motorist. This guy just loves flirting with getting caught. So reckless.

Some think Hansen did this to just further humiliate her. He had been humiliated by pretty girls in high school, and now he’s making this pretty high school girl humiliate herself.

After several hours of sexually assaulting young Leila, Hansen drove around trying to find, as he told her, "another girl to make us do things."

He didn't find anyone then he “drove around aimlessly for a long while," Leila said. "I thought he was trying to decide what to do with me."

And then, he did something else super odd and very unexpected. Robert Hansen handed Leila the gun and said, "Okay, now you can do whatever you want with me, or you can order me to drive you to the police station."

What the fuck? Did he want her to kill him?

"I had the gun in my hand," Leila told Toomey. "I could have shot the bastard. But I thought it was a trap, that the gun wasn't even loaded."

I think that’s what I would think too. He’s tricking her. OR - is this further humiliation? Did he want her to find out that the gun wasn’t even loaded? Did her want her to know he’d just done what he’d done to her, even though she could’ve just ran away when he first pointed an unloaded gun on her?

And then Hansen let her go, threatening, "If you go to the police, I'll hunt you down." The terrified Leila responded, "Just let me live, I'll never tell."

And she didn’t tell for many years.

21. 1975: On July 5th, 1975, twenty-three year-old Mary K. Thill, disappears from Seward, AK. Seward is 126 miles south of Anchorage. Another suspected Hansen victim.

Thill's husband was away from home, working up at Prudhoe in the new oil field on the North Slope. Finding out his wife was missing, he returned home and put up a $1,000 reward for any information as to Mary's whereabouts or disappearance. It went unclaimed.

Hansen later admitted he was in Seward the day Thill disappeared, but denied any involvement in her case. Nevertheless, police believe she was one of his victims.

Also in 1975, another prostitute complained about Hansen to a rape crisis center, and the center reported the assault to the police.

But Hansen was lucky again because this victim also refused to cooperate with law enforcement. She was a schoolteacher who’d travelled to Alaska to work at a strip club to make extra cash that summer and she didn’t want the publicity of a rape trial. She claimed Hansen drove her to the foothills of Chugach [chew gach] State Park, raped her at gunpoint, and then let her go.

Hansen wasn’t charged even though officers at the time were convinced he was guilty. They just didn’t have enough of a case.

Also, in 1975, as a Teamster, Robert Hansen took a second job as a laborer on the loading dock at Alaska Cold Storage. And the Hansens had another baby, this time a son whose name also appears to have been hidden, and they were also saving to buy a larger home.

Dude is crushing it! Building his family, making tons of money, and killing and raping whoever he wants to kill and rape.

Despite doing well financially, Robert is still stealing lots of shit too. And Robert’s kleptomania will come back to bite him real soon. 22. July 1976: In July of 1976, Robert and Gloria put a $37,000 downpayment on an $88,000 house on Old Harbor Avenue in Muldoon.

Hansen's parents came to visit in September and see their son's new home. How proud they must of been of their rapey, murdering little fire-starter!

And then Robert went back to prison for, of all things, stealing a chainsaw from Fred Meyer’s.

PLOT TWIST! DID NOT SEE THIS COMING.

Can’t get a rape charge to stick on this sick fuck but he almost ends up in prison for five years for stealing a chainsaw.

Robert would later say, when he shoplifted, he'd come close to ejaculating in his pants. Said it gave him the same sexual satisfaction he got with a prostitute.

(Hansen) “Oh shit. Look at that sexy ass c-c-c-c-chainsaw, that I did’t have p-p-p-pay for! Makes me s-s-s-so h-h-h-h-hard!!”

Before going over the details of his CHAINSAW theft conviction… one final sponsor.

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Now back to that chainsaw arrest.

24.November 3rd, 1976: On November 3rd, the day after election day in 1976, when Jimmy Carter won the race for he Presidency against incumbent Gerald Ford, Hansen walked into the Fred Meyer Store at the intersection of Northern Lights Boulevard and the New Seward Highway.

Security guard Jessie G. Smith watched a shopper act suspiciously in the sporting goods section. At the chain-saw display, the man's pockmarked face turned one way, then the other, as he examined a saw. It appeared to Smith that the fellow was looking to see if anyone was watching him. Smith watched Hansen take a chainsaw through a closed checkout lane and out of the store. He pursued and apprehended Robert Hansen eighty yards from the entrance.

A week later Hansen was indicted for a felony-larceny in a building. The District Attorney could have prosecuted the offense as a shoplifting misdemeanor, but sought a felony charge because of Hansen's previous convictions. At his arraignment, Hansen pleaded not guilty and was released on $500 bail.

Hansen took immediate steps to prepare for a psychological defense: He went to see psychologist Dr. Allen Parker. The same man who’d examined him when he’d been charged with assault back in 1972. Parker’s evaluation back in 1972 would help him get out of jail early. Parker’s findings now will NOT help his case.

After administering a series of tests, Parker wrote the following evaluation:

“Emotional and personality testing indicate a markedly disturbed man who is somewhat antisocial, paranoid by nature, and with a relatively weak ego.

There are indications of severe heterosexual conflict, both with a desire for women and a fear that he will not be able to relate to them. He is capable of acting out impulses, and he's aware of many of the impulses within his personality. He has a great deal of free floating anxiety.”

Since Parker had also done an analysis of Hansen in 1972, he was now able to also do a longitudinal analysis of Hansen. He wrote:

“The retesting indicates the presence of disintegration of personality to a highly potential psychotic level or high schizophrenic scale, high manic scale, and high antisocial scale . . . there's some narcissism and magical thinking involved in this also.”

“disintegration of personality to a highly potential psychotic level” - I’m no psychiatrist but that sounds really, really bad.

I don’t think you can feel good about anyone getting that diagnosis.

“Good news everyone! Dad’s gonna be just fine. Turns out he’s not clinically depressed. He’s totally psychologically healthy other than suffering from a disintegration of his personality to a highly potential psychotic level.”

25.January, 1977: On January 19th, 1977, before Judge James K. Singleton, Hansen pleaded guilty to the theft of the chain saw.

And then the judge chose to wait to sentence Hansen, deciding to wait on the results of additional psychological tests.

26.March 22, 1977: And on March 22nd, 1977, another psychiatrist, Dr. McManmon testified he'd diagnosed Hansen as suffering from a bipolar effective disorder, a variant of a manic depressive disorder.

The doctor distinguished Robert's affliction from the classic manic- depressive pattern by the absence of any serious depressive episodes. Hansen's impulses, he said, were poorly controlled during his mood and energy upswings, in which he would develop an abnormal preoccupation with a single activity.

Dr. McManmon said, “His kleptomania was a manifestation of this monomania, and his determination as a trophy hunter was a socially acceptable example of his mono-manic behavior, "where he'd be looking to do things no one else had done [in order] to consume his energy."

McManmon also said that after his third session with Hansen, it was evident to him that Robert's antisocial urges were escalating, so he prescribed Thorazine to put an immediate check on those impulses. McManmon described Thorazine as a tranquilizer.

And then the doctor switched Robert to lithium, stating it allowed him to function normally while learning how to control his antisocial behavior.

If only that would’ve been true.

Judge Singleton sentenced Hansen to five years in prison.

But then just two days after his sentencing, Hansen's attorney filed a notice of appeal and his appeal was successful.

On August 11, 1978, the Supreme Court of Alaska decided to be lenient with Robert, ruling “The record before us reveals a man suffering from a clearly diagnosed mental illness that until recently offered little hope of recovery . . . Hansen's psychiatrist prescribed a course of drug treatment and therapy, and reported to the sentencing court that Hansen had been cooperative and had a positive attitude toward the treatment ...

The court expressed optimism about the treatment Dr. McManmon was giving his patient, and considering Hansen's stable home and work environment, their decision concluded that he be put on probation for the remainder of his five-year sentence and released from confinement immediately.

And then just a few weeks after his release from prison, Robert Hansen murdered a woman at Summit Lake on the Kenai Peninsula.

She was the first of at least seventeen women he would kill between that fall of 1978 and his arrest in 1983.

“G-g-g-guh, g-g-g-gAWD d-d-d-DAMN IT!

Robert had been initially sentenced to five years, and he served only one.

Also in 1978, Hansen applied for a pilot’s license. On his application he said he was taking lithium, a drug used to control bipolar disorder. He was denied a license because of this. So then he just filed a new application not saying he was on lithium and did get his pilot’s license.

Sweet.

There would only be one more legal complaint filed against Hansen from this time until he was eventually tracked down for multiple murders. The lone complaint was filed by yet another prostitute.

She claimed that he held her hostage in his camper in Anchorage and that she had become convinced that Hansen was going to rape and kill her.

Nude and desperate, she’d broken a window in the trailer and gotten out, running down the street, screaming as she went. The police got involved, but again - nothing came of the case. There was no physical evidence and it came down to the word of a kind- of-somehow-still-respected businessman against that of a prostitute.

27.October 14, 1979: In 1979, Robert Hansen finds another woman he wants to hurt.

On October 14, 1979, Christie Hayes was dancing at the Embers, a club in downtown Anchorage. She did a table dance for a fellow who was sitting by himself, nursing a beer. He flashed a roll of money, and with a stutter asked if they could meet later.

"I'll be off in twenty minutes," she told him. And he said, ”Good. We'll meet outside . . . look for a gold camper."

Later, after Hayes got into the back of the camper on an agreement to perform oral sex, Hansen pulled a gun. He forced his victim to strip, then he bound her with a snare wire. Fearing for her life, Christie began to scream. And then Hansen’s threats didn't shut her up, they made her more hysterical.

Worried that someone would hear the screams and call the police, Hansen jumped out of the back of the camper and into the cab to drive out to the wilderness. As he maneuvered the pickup through the streets of Anchorage to get to Glenn Highway, Christie managed to squirm out of her bonds.

Now, besides screaming, she was pounding on the camper walls. Hansen slammed on the brakes, causing this poor woman to fall forward and bash her head against the camper wall. Hansen then got out and ran around to the back of the camper but he couldn’t get in because Christie had locked the camper door!

I’m loving Christie. She’s a fighter!

Christie then crawled through the sliding glass window between the camper and the cab and locked the cab doors as well.

Unfortunately, the driver's window was rolled partway down, and Hansen stuck his arm through to pull up the lock. As fast as she could, Christie then cranked the window up, trapping Robert's arm.

Really loving, Christie! Fight, Christie, fight! Hail Christie!

Enraged, Hansen freed his arm by breaking the window. Then he yanked naked Christie out of the cab and threw her on the ground.

Shit, right? It’s all over, right? Wrong! Christie Motherfuckin’ Hayes isn’t done.

After getting thrown naked to the ground, Hayes bounces back up to her feet and runs down the street. And despite being barefoot, despite getting her head bashed into the camper, Hansen can’t catch her. He chases her and then gives up after a couple of blocks.

Then he runs back to his camper, throws Christie's clothes on the ground, and drives off.

Naked with a badly bruised face, Christie Hayes keeps running and screaming for help. She eventually finds someone to help her and reports the assault to police, but she wasn't able to identify her assailant from mug shots or provide them with any leads.

She got away though. She lived.

No word on what Christie Hayes did with the rest of her life. I like to imagine that she stopped working at the strip club, walked away from prostitution, and became a really successful martial arts instructor who specialized in teaching women how to defend themselves from attackers. Let’s believe that. We don’t know it’s true, but, we also don’t know it’s NOT true. Hail Lucifina!

That same month, in October of ’79, Hansen picked up a sixteen year-old girl outside the Fourth Avenue Movie Theatre and drove her out to the wilderness with the intention to rape her. But when his captive told him she was homeless and hadn't eaten for two days, he let her go without assaulting her.

Guess he decided she wasn’t like the girls who mocked him. Rare moment of humanity for Hansen. He actually took pity on someone. Took pity on a sixteen year old he initially totally wanted to rape, but still, he did one kind of good thing.

Later that fall, however, things turned out differently. Hansen cut a deal for sex with a young woman who would come to be called "Eklutna [ee-KLOOT-nuh] Annie,” thought to have come to Anchorage from Kodiak Island.

She was wearing blue jeans, a sweater, brown leather jacket, and high-heeled, red calf-length zip-up boots when she got into his gold camper. Hansen would later recall: “I can't remember if she was a prostitute or dancer. I picked her up downtown and told her I was going to take her to my home. I was heading up to Eklutna [ee- KLOOT-nuh] Road, and there are several offshoot roads there.”

When it became obvious to the woman that Hansen wasn't driving her to his home, as he said he would, she told him she wanted to go back. "We're just going a little further," he told her.

''Well, I'm not," she replied. And then Robert pulled out a gun and pointed it at her. “Yes, you are. You do exactly what I say and you won't get hurt."

Continuing north on Glenn Highway toward the Knik [kuh-nick] River, he turned off onto Eklutna [ee-KLOOT-nuh] Road, heading east toward Eklutna [ee-KLOOT-nuh] Lake.

Fall rains had combined with the summer runoff from Eklutna [ee- KLOOT-nuh] Glacier to make the lake's and streams' water levels high, and many of the capillary roads and trails off the main road contained water hazards. The one Robert turned onto did; it quickly became a muddy swamp and he got stuck.

Robert had to use his winch to try and get his vehicle free and when he was working on that, the woman he’d kidnapped started to try and sneak off into the woods.

He yelled to her to stay put and then she started running. He ran after her and unfortunately she wasn’t as fast as Christie Hayes and he caught her and grabbed the terrified woman by the hair.

Then she reached into her purse and pulled out a big, black- handled Buck knife.

Buck knives! Made right here in Northern Idaho about ten miles fro the Suck Dungeon in Post Falls. Own a few myself. Great knives.

She swung her Buck knife toward Hansen, but he was able to block the blow and grab the hand that held the knife and then he tripped her to the ground. She pleaded, "Don't kill me! Don't kill me!”, and then while she was on the ground face down he plunged the knife into her back. And then he buried her in a quickly dug shallow grave.

28. 1980: In June of 1980, Roxanne Easlund, a twenty-four year old woman, disappeared from Anchorage. Another Hansen victims.

Twenty-three year-old Joanne Messina went missing from Seward in July.

Despite the Butcher Baker murders seven years earlier beginning in 1973, when Hansen was finally caught, he would initially claim that his first victim was Joanne Messina

Side note about Joanna.

Joanna Messina was forever known to troopers as “The Bear Lady.” This was because when an investigator named John Lucking found her dead body at her hasty gravesite, he also found a very alive black bear.

Walter J. Gilmour, author of Butcher, Baker: The True Account of an Alaska Serial Killer and the Director of the Trooper Academy in Sitka wrote this of this incident:

“If you have ever been the object of a two-hundred pound black bear’s attention, especially one intent on protecting its food source, you know that these beasts can be troublesome. While some people believe black bears are less dangerous than grizzlies, that’s not true in Alaska, and even less true if they’re feeding.

As Lucking and his fellow investigators stared down the possibility of becoming another link in the food chain, they determined they had better scare the bear away. Scare tactics didn’t work, though, and the bear became yet more menacing and protective of its food. They couldn’t let the bear destroy their evidence, either, so the only logical course was to destroy the bear.

The black bear is a protected species in Alaska, so to kill one is tantamount to homicide. The wildlife in Alaska, moreover, have some pretty zealous protectors in the form of Fish & Wildlife Police, also somewhat derisively known as ‘fish cops.’ Although it was quickly evident — once the bear had been taken care of — that we had a homicide on our hands, the hue and cry that was raised focused almost exclusively on Lucking’s destruction of the hapless bear. Needless to say, that element of the case became an unwanted distraction.”

Such an Alaskan detail. Homicide investigators having to deal with a bear. And, investigators having to detail with people losing their shit over a bear being killed. People worried more about that than the woman. That also feels very Alaskan to me.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1578335442/ref=as_li_tf_tl? ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1578335442&li nkCode=as2&tag=yukonalaskacom

https://lelandhale.com/butcherbaker/wordpress/2018/11/13/facing- new-decade-homicides/

It would be another two years before the troopers got a break in Joanna’s homicide.

In 1980, Hansen really began to ramp up his killing of Anchorage- area prostitutes.

His MO was pretty consistent.

After paying for their services, he’d kidnap and rape them. Then, he’d then fly them out to a hunting cabin he’d bought in the Knik kuh-nick] River Valley in his airplane. He would then release his victim into the woods to stalk and kill with either a hunting knife or a .223-caliber Ruger Mini-14, a semiautomatic weapon similar in appearance to the military M-16.

And while the body count continued to rise, it was hard for investigators to link all of the deaths to one killer Prostitutes were disappearing from Anchorage all the time, just not always because they were being killed. Due to the transient nature of many of the people passing through Anchorage at this time - people popping in to make some quick cash and then go back to wherever they lived - it wasn’t easy to determine why someone suddenly disappeared.

Also complicating the investigation, Hansen’s rape and murder tactics generally left little to no evidence. In one case in 1980 he allegedly shot the dog of a woman he had murdered, to make sure the dog wouldn't lead anybody to her shallow grave.

29. September 6, 1980 - In the fall of 1980, more young women continue to disappear.

On September 6th, 1980 Lisa Futrell, a forty-one year old white female, is last seen in Anchorage and her death will later be traced to Hansen.

30. January 1981 - In January of 1981, Robert opens a new bakery at 9th and Ingra in Anchorage. No reason to let constant killing get in the way of your bakery career.

So fucking weird. Murder, rape, and donuts. Who knew they could go together? This has been such a strange episode to research. Keep finding myself both disgusted and also very hungry for donuts. Keep thinking weird shit like, I bet he did make a really, really good donut.

What a weird thing if you were a detective trying to solve these murders, but also a detective who really, really loved Hansen’s donuts. Like, what if he made, by far, the best donuts in Anchorage. And then you catch him and want to celebrate by grabbing a dozen fresh donuts from… ah fuck! I wonder if he can make a few more donuts from prison?

Robert got the money to open his new bakery by using a $13,000 cash settlement he received from a false insurance claim he’d made. Ha.

Bob had claimed that his home was robbed and that the thieves had stolen his hunting trophies. Allegedly, after the “missing” hunting trophies were found in his backyard, Hansen said he’d just forgot to report the recovery.

I want to try that. Go hide my truck somewhere, report it stolen, get the insurance money, and then just go pick up my truck and start driving it again. And then if I get caught, just say I forgot to tell anyone I’d found it.

“Oh yeah! That’s right! I did get enough insurance money to buy a new truck. I totally forgot about that when I found me truck. Huh. Can we just not worry about it, and then then next time someone steals a truck from me we can just be even Steven?”

1981 was a great year for Bob. Hansen was somehow still happily married to Gloria despite all of his past legal problems. He had two healthy kids, and a new bakery. His business prospered and he was considered a successful and respected member of the community.

Does anyone think life is fair? After hearing about a story like this, can you still think life is fair? Or that karma is real?

31. 1981 - Also in 1981, at least two more Alaskan women disappear after Robert rapes and murders them. Twenty-two-year-old Andrea Altiery and twenty-three-year-old Anchorage Sherry Morrow.

32.November 17th, 1981: Sherry Morrow had been a dancer in Anchorage for three years, bouncing from club to club. The Wild Cherry would be her last booking. Friends described the five-foot- six blonde as a pretty girl, quiet and shy. Her roommate saw her as a lonely, troubled, twenty-three-year-old girl who just wanted to meet the right guy and get married.

"I kept telling her there were only jerks that came into the clubs," her roommate said. "Sherry was gullible, easily talked into anything."

When Sherry was last seen leaving a friend's house around noon on November 17, 1981, she was wearing jeans, a baby-blue ski jacket, a pair of blue moon boots, an arrowhead necklace, and wire- rimmed glasses that framed her blue eyes. She was going to Alice's 210 Cafe to meet some supposed photographer she’d met who was going to pay her $300 for posing nude. Some photographer who smelled like donuts.

Shortly after meeting his intended victim at the cafe, Robert Hansen had blindfolded Morrow with Ace bandages, and while she knelt handcuffed and helpless on the floor board of the front seat of his brown Subaru, he drove her to the Knik [kuh-nick] River.

He eventually turned left off Glenn Highway, followed a winding road past cultivated potato fields, and then drove through some brush flats and onto a sandbar along the riverbed. Hansen then let Sherry out of the car, but before he could get the handcuffs off her, she started kicking and screaming.

Deciding to let her cool off, Hansen took his .223-caliber Mini-14 out of his trunk and then calmly walked over and sat down by a tree while she screamed.

Eventually, she ran towards Hansen. Hansen would later say he was just sitting on his ass while she was stood above him, kicking and screaming, and then, "I just pointed the Mini-14 up toward her and pulled the trigger.”

Damn. He just loves to toy with them.

Hansen, with bruises on his legs from being kicked by Sherry, then took a fold-up spade that was part of his murder-kit and dug a shallow grave in the silt and the sand. After rolling Morrow's body into the hole, he removed her arrowhead necklace for a souvenir.

He loved taking little reminders off of his victims.

Before he covered over the corpse, he bent down, picked up the spent .223 shell casing and tossed it into the grave. Then he walked back to his car fondling her necklace. Two weeks later he'd collect another trophy.

33.December 2nd, 1981: On the morning of December 2nd, Andrea Altiery left her apartment to meet some "older man" she’d just mt for a shopping spree at the Boniface Mall. Some dude who smelled like donuts.

Andrea, whose stage name was "Enchantment," danced at the Bush Company.

She hadn't felt suspicious about an older man, probably wealthy, taking her to buy nice things. Some of the guys who came to the strip clubs just did that sometimes. She'd put on jeans, a red sweater, her gold chain with the fish charm on it, a pearl ring, and a black leather jacket. She gave her roommate, another dancer who went by the stage name of “Magic” a "see you later" hug. And then Andrea took a cab to the Boniface Mall and disappeared.

And then Robert did to her what he’d done to so many other girls by now.

Altiery ended up handcuffed and blindfolded and Hansen drove her to the Knik [kuh-nick] River area. Turning onto a service road off the Palmer Highway, he headed for an isolated spot by the Knik [kuh- nick] River railroad bridge. He told her he’d raped a woman there the week before, and, according to Hansen, "everything had gone fine and I let her go."

Side note, Robert did continue to let an untold number of victims go. He’d drive women to these remote places, rape them repeatedly, and then often times, if he’d decided they were “good girls” who’d done what he’d told them, “good girls” who hadn’t made fun of him or reminded him of those mean girls bak in Iowa, he’d drive them back to Anchorage chatting them up in a friendly manner as if he hadn’t just tied them and raped them, and he’d let them go.

Still in the car, Hansen fondled Altiery's breasts for a while, as if they were on a consensual date, and then he held a .22 Browning automatic pistol to her head - VERY UN-date like, and he forced her to perform oral sex. Soon, Andrea told him she had to go to the bathroom. They got out of the car, and Robert laid his gun on the hood. Andrea walked off a ways to go to the bathroom, and Robert captor did the same, unzipping his pants and starting to urinate.

Suddenly, Hansen heard a noise and pivoted to see Andrea running back and reaching for the pistol on the car. She managed to get her hand on the butt of the revolver before Hansen got to her.

So close. She came So close.

But Robert grabbed the gun by the barrel, twisted it out of her hand and threw it back on the hood. Then Andrea started clawing at the acne-scarred face of her assailant and he snatched the gun off the car and shot her.

And then Hansen got a canvas duffel bag and folding shovel out of his car and filled the bag with gravel from the railroad bed. After lugging the bag out to the middle of the railroad trestle, he went back for Altiery's body. He tied the duffel to the dead woman's neck and pushed it and the body off the bridge and into the Knik [kuh- nick]. As he walked back to his car, Hansen fondled the pearl ring and fish charm necklace he'd taken off his victim's body.

Another trophy.

34. January 1982 - Due to a booming bakery business, in January of 1982 Robert was able to buy himself a new plane - a Piper Super Cub.

This would be the plane he used for transporting the rest of his victims to his remote cabin on the Knik [kuh-nick] River.

His modus operandi would now be picking up a woman along Fourth Avenue, binding her hands at gunpoint, and then flying her out to the Knik [kuh-nick] River where he would rape her and then decide if he was going to fly her back and let her go or shoot her.

The Knik [kuh-nick] River was his favorite killing location. It was still close to town yet remote enough that he could hunt the women without anyone around to hear them scream for help. It was also a place with hundreds of sandbars to easily land his plane on.

A place to collect more trophies.

His den was loaded with dead animal heads from those hunts, while his basement was accruing more and more trophies from his human hunts.

Thank God he kept these trophies. These trophies would soon help investigators finally convict him.

https://murderpedia.org/male.H/h/hansen-robert.htm? fbclid=IwAR0YuTCY69xYMG3yQ9bFHuxz7bJ17dAVks6DgI7M5xSU mEavw504Q56jEy0

35. May 26, 1982 - On May 26th of 1982, another of Hansen’s victims, Sue Luna, twenty-three, is last seen in Anchorage.

Her case was very similar to Sherry Morrow’s.

Sue met Hansen at the Good Times strip club.

Like Sherry Morrow, Sue had agreed to meet Hansen at Alice’s 210 club, another seedy spot downtown. Although Luna was not offered money for nude photos, she was to be paid $300 for an hour of sex.

Sue's roommate eventually reported that Luna did not appear for work on May 26th and that she had not seen her since. And then Sue’s sister reported her missing.

Finally, Anchorage city police - and then Alaskan state police - began to accept that many of the city’s dancers weren’t just heading back to wherever they normally lived. Someone was killing many of them.

The police realized that, since 1980, six dancers had disappeared completely from the Fourth Avenue clubs - dancers who had told no one they were leaving town, and Anchorage police quietly formed what they called a “dancer task force” to look into these disappearances.

36. September 12, 1982 - Then on September 12th, 1982, two off- duty police officers were hunting and found a shallow grave on the banks of the Knik [kuh-nick] River.

A possible break in this new case.

According to the book Butcher Baker, the two men had little luck hunting and as darkness began to fall they decided to call it a day.

These guys were cutting across a wide sandbar when they noticed a boot sticking out of the sand.

Upon closer inspection, what they saw sticking out of the sand was a partially decomposed bone joint. Once their minds registered what they were looking at, both men backed up from the scene.

The last thing they wanted to do was disturb or contaminate any evidence. After making note of the location, both men made their way out of the gorge and back to their camp and then back to Anchorage.

Sergeant Rollie Port had been assigned to cover this investigation. A decorated Vietnam veteran, Port was considered one of the top investigators on the force. He was meticulous with every crime scene and was known to spend hours going over the smallest area.

Before disturbing the body, Port had photographs taken from every angle and carefully examined the body itself for trace evidence before having it bagged. Afterwards, he pulled out a large screen and began sifting through the sand around the body.

It took several hours for him to finish sifting, but in the end it paid off. Lying on the screen before him was a single shell casing from a .223-caliber bullet. Port was familiar with this type of ammunition and knew that it was used in high-powered rifles like M-16s, Mini-14s, or AR-15s.

Back in Anchorage, a preliminary autopsy revealed that the victim was a female, of undetermined age, and had been dead for approximately six months. The cause of death was three gunshot wounds from .223-caliber bullets. Ace bandages were found mingled in with the remains, causing investigators to suspect that the victim had been blindfolded at the time of death.

It took a little over two weeks to finally identify the body. She was, of course, Sherry Morrow - who had been reported missing a year earlier.

Morrow had been shot in the back three times, and cartridges found near the body suggested that she had been shot with a .223 Ruger Mini-14 hunting rifle. A strange element to the scene was that although the body was found fully clothed, there were no bullet holes in the clothing. This lead investigators to believe that Sherry had been naked when shot, and had been redressed after death.

Anchorage police also knew by now that Sherry Morrow's murder was not an isolated incident.

However, they didn’t want to spread fear or tip off the killer by going public. When discussing Morrow's murder with The Anchorage Daily News, investigators said they doubted that it was related to the disappearance of at least three other women since 1980. "We don't believe we have a mass murderer out there, some psycho knocking off girls," said Anchorage police detective Maxine Farrell.

Privately they absolutely thought this was the work of some psycho out there knocking off girls, and of course they were they were right.

Alaska State Trooper sergeant Lyle Haugsven was now assigned to determine whether or not Sherry Morrow's murder was an isolated incident.

One theory he pursued had Morrow’s killer going back and forth between Fairbanks and Anchorage.

Another investigator, Lt. Patrick Kasnick, later explained this theory. He said:

“At the same time that dancers were disappearing in Anchorage, evidently to meet the same fate as Sherry Morrow, other women were being killed in Fairbanks. It was natural to take a look at those cases to see if there was any connection. The attempt to establish a link between the Fairbanks and Anchorage serial murders was both extensive and expensive, with our investigation relying on some of the most sophisticated computer systems available at the time.

In the Fairbanks serial murders, the killer tied the victim’s hands behind their backs and we thought that was a key similarity to the Anchorage murders. A high caliber weapon was also used and the Fairbanks killer blew the women’s heads off in an attempt to destroy their faces. The bodies were left close to the road, moreover, with no effort to hide them.

The FBI psychiatrist told us there was something ritualistic about the killings, but no apparent connection between the serial murders in Fairbanks and Anchorage. The minicomputer analysis also told us “No,” there was no concrete link between the killings in the two cities. Even the autopsy results pointed in different directions.”

In 1982, the Fairbanks killer was identified. His name was Thomas Richard Bunday. Bunday was suspected of killing six women but was never arrested. On the day his arrest warrant was issued, he drove his motorcycle into oncoming traffic and killed himself.

No one from the other vehicle was seriously injured and he saved the taxpayers a lot of money by doing that. Thanks Richard. You did at least one kind of good thing before you died.

After realizing the Anchorage and Fairbanks murders were not connected, investigators reduced their area of investigative focus to just Anchorage and the surrounding towns, but, they still didn’t have a decent suspect.

37. April 25, 1983 - Then on April 25, 1983, Hansen struck again, killing Paula Golding, a seventeen year-old.

And then finally, Hansen would slip up and investigators would realized they’d found their man.

https://murderpedia.org/male.H/h/hansen-robert.htm? fbclid=IwAR0YuTCY69xYMG3yQ9bFHuxz7bJ17dAVks6DgI7M5xSU mEavw504Q56jEy0

38. June 13, 1983 - On June 13th, 1983, a nineteen year-old Anchorage prostitute named Cindy Paulson was on an Anchorage street corner when she was approached by Hansen.

When she agreed on a price with him, he asked for oral sex and she got into his truck. While she was going down on him she looked up and saw the barrel of a .357 magnum looking back down at her.

And then Robert produced a pair of handcuffs from underneath his seat and snapped them on to Cindy’s wrists.

Hansen would brag later that he had gotten good at the process of handcuffing women at gun point. He’d had way too much practice.

And then he drove Cindy to his actual home. He’s getting more reckless now. Maybe part of him wants to get caught. Maybe he’s just getting cocky. Thinks he can take these girls to his actual house and still not get caught.

He forced Cindy inside and then was dragged down to a basement, and once down there, she saw all those trophy mounts on the walls.

Robert then handcuffed Cindy, naked, to a pillar in the centre of the room, and was repeatedly raped and sodomized for hours. And then he casually took a nap.

After five hours in Hansen’s basement, Cindy had to relieve herself. But Hansen was asleep and he’d warned her not to wake him up. And, of course, she was in chains. So she peed on a towel that was sitting just within her reach on the couch. A towel with the potential now to become evidence.

When Robert finally woke up, he made Cindy get dressed, then re- handcuffed her and drove her to the Merrill Field airport, where he pulled up alongside his small blue and white aircraft.

On the way there, Robert told her that they were going to fly up to his cabin in the Alaskan wilderness. Told her that he’d taken lots of girls up there, “for fun”.

Cindy saw her chance to escape as they arrived at the plane, and the hunter got out. She pushed through the driver’s door and ran towards the lights of Fifth Avenue. As she ran she could Hansen shouting, “ Stop you bitch! Stop or I’ll kill you”.

Or, more likely, “S-s-s-stop, b-b-buh-b-b-bitch! Stop or I’ll k-k- k-kuh-k GOD D-D-D-Duh-DAMNIT! I’ll kill y-y-y-ou!”

Cindy never looked back. As she reached the road she saw a truck’s headlights approaching her, and waved it down, still in handcuffs. The driver, 36 year old Robert Yount, slammed on his brakes, and Cindy jumped into the truck, screaming, “He’s going to kill me.”

Yount sped off with her in the truck and, as instructed by Cindy, he took her to the Mush Inn Motel. When he got there, Cindy demanded to be let out. Yount drove on to where he worked and then immediately called the police.

Sgt Glenn Flothe (pronounced “Flowthie”) said, “If Yount hadn’t called the police, Cindy would not have reported it. Yount, through a phone call, put Hansen back into police scrutiny. Need more good citizens — we can’t do it alone.”

Good job, Yount! Next to the former Brewers baseball masher Robin Yount, you’re my favorite Yount!

Officer Greg Baker of the Anchorage Police Department was called to room 110 of the Big Timber Motel. When he entered the room, he came upon a deeply agitated Cindy Paulson, her hands still secured in front of her with handcuffs. She had a single demand: get these handcuffs off my wrists. He did. Then he took Cindy to the hospital to complete a sexual assault exam.

The examination revealed vaginal bruising and shackle marks around her neck and wrists, corroborating her story of being abducted.

She was then taken to Anchorage police headquarters to be interviewed. Cindy managed to give the police detailed descriptions of Robert’s house, car, plane and looks. It did not take the police long to find him. http://butcherbaker.net/

When police interrogated Robert, he told them he was going to take Cindy out for a nice, romantic weekend getaway. He said he was shocked that she wanted to escape. This lunatic said - and I’m reading this verbatim, not adding stutters this time. The “uhs” are written in:

“Uh, I told her, you know, I was going to take her out uh, and I wanted to since I… I told her the truth. I was going to take her out and we was going to spend the weekend together… Uh, but I couldn’t at this time cause it was still dark you know, and you can’t fly the damn airplane in the dark. That was the reason for waiting.

Um, then I waited until that, uh, I could see out that it was beginning to um, get light enough so as… so as I could see. Uh, I went and got her and uh, uh, put her in my car and uh, I drove out to the airport and uh, uh, I drove up to uh, to uh my airplane and uh, got out and started to put the seat in my airplane and uh, when I was putting that seat in the airplane, uh, she uh, got out of the airplane and ran around uh, the hanger there at uh, Polar Airways, and uh left. Then I left there and drove to my home, uh, (pause). I went in uh, I drove back… back to my home.” http://butcherbaker.net/

This guy reminds of an evil Elmer Fudd. “I hope you can hewp me mister game warden. I've been towd I can shoot wabbits, mongooses, pigeons, dirty skunks and ducks. Can you teww me what season it weawwy is??!!”

“Kill dd wabbits, kill da wabbits!!”

Overall, Hansen was co-operative, polite and did not demonstrate any characteristics that suggested his guilt, although he was strangely calm for someone falsely accused.

Hansen gave a detailed account of his movements, claiming that his wife and family were away in Europe and that he had been with two friends, John Sumrall and John Henning, at the time he was accused of raping Cindy. Both men, when interviewed, did back up his story. Hansen readily agreed to police searching his house, car and airplane, and signed waivers agreeing to this.

Hansen had begged these guys to back him up, telling them that a prostitute who was mad at him over a money disagreement was trying to destroy him. He guilt-tripped them into giving him an alibi, talking about how if they didn’t his wife and kids would have their lives ruined.

When police searched these, it became clear from Cindy’s detailed descriptions that she had been inside the house and car at some time. However, once again, it came down to a he-said/she-said, the word of a respected local businessman - this time with an alibi - against that of a prostitute with a police record.

And then, upset that the police didn’t just belive her over Hasen, Cindy refused to take a lie detector, and that convinced William Dennis to close the case.

HOWEVER - officer Greg Baker, the policeman who had taken Cindy’s complaint, DID still believe her. Thank God.

And he’d keep thinking she was telling the truth, keeping Hansen in mind as more women went missing, waiting to catch him.

Around this time, Anchorage investigators received an FBI profile on the man killing this prostitutes. The profile said “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 or even body parts.” The profile also said the man would likely be in his forties, and married to a woman who was deeply religious and oblivious to his crimes.

Obviously, Hansen fit this profile perfectly. https://murderpedia.org/male.H/h/hansen-robert.htm? fbclid=IwAR0YuTCY69xYMG3yQ9bFHuxz7bJ17dAVks6DgI7M5xSU mEavw504Q56jEy0 39. September 2, 1983 - On September 2nd, 1983, three months after the rape and kidnap of Cindy Paulson, a third grave was found on the banks of the Knik [kuh knick] River. The victim was identified as another of the missing topless dancers, this time seventeen year- old Paula Goulding.

Paula had been murdered in exactly the same way as Sherry Morrow, and had also been redressed after death.

Officer Greg Baker, still convinced Hansen was their man, looked into Hansen’s background and personal life back in the days before internet databases made this so easy.

Hansen eventually found the paperwork on Hansen revealing his prior convictions and prior charges against him.

And then The Butcher Baker case set a legal precedent in 1983 when psychological profiling was used as the main basis for issuing search warrants on Hansen's property.

40. September, 1983 -

A report detailing Greg Baker’s suspicions and a copy of Hansen’s criminal record was sent to Sgt Glenn Flothe of the Alaska State Troopers, who was heading the “topless dancers” taskforce.

Flothe agreed that Hansen should be considered a suspect, and he began his own investigation into Hansen’s background. The more he learned, the more he became convinced he’d found his killer, and Flothe decided to reopen the Cindy Paulson case, in an attempt to obtain evidence against Hansen.

Sgt Flothe put in a shitload of work into determining Hansen had to be the guy - the muscle inside his skull working overtime for weeks and weeks to do what an investigator with a computer now can do in minutes.

Flothe conducted a systematic review of the state’s missing persons data. Slowly and methodically, he developed a matrix of possible serial murder victims, one that included pictures of the women, their files, the dates they were last seen and anything else he could come up with. If it fit, it went on the list.

Classic old-school detective work you’ve seen in so many true crime movies. I love it.

“It was tedious work,” Flothe would later state,”sorting through these disrupted lives. There were women who had fought with abusive lovers and presumably left town for good, leaving nothing but a few darkened, one-minute photos behind. There were teenaged runaways, some missing one night and found the next, many more cast adrift to become who knows what.”

From this tragic assemblage Flothe was able to compile eight similar cases.

What Flothe was looking for was a pattern. And he found it. With one exception, the victims were in their twenties. They ranged in height from 5-foot-4 to five-foot-7, weighed between 120 and 125 pounds and were slim and usually busty.

Whoever was kidnapping and/or killing these young women had a definite type. And when Cindy Paulson’s file came across his desk, Flothe immediately saw that she fit this pattern. She, too, was the killer’s type.

Flothe re-interviewed Hansen’s friends Henning and Sumrall about Hansen’s alibi and informed them that he was threatening to charge them with perjury.

The threat worked and both men admitted they had lied to help Hansen out of what they thought was an embarrassing domestic situation. When both men had retracted their statements, an order was issued for Hansen’s arrest.

Fuck yeah! Hail Nimrod!

41. October 27, 1983 - Investigators followed Hansen to his bakery and asked him to come with them to the police station for questioning.

They did right after they bought all his remaining donuts and asked him if it was possible to preserve them for months and slowly enjoy them day after day.

They didn’t do that, but, I wish they did.

“Alright, buddy! Hands in the air! You’re under arrest!

Wait. Hands back down. What’s in the oven? Holy shit that smells divine? Maple bars? How long ’till they’re done. You mind if we sit here and have some coffee until you pop ‘em out? THEN -we’re gonna arrest the FUCK out of you.”

When he was arrested, Hansen never even bothered to ask why they wanted to talk to him and agreed to go along.

At the Anchorage trooper station, Sgt Flothe had stage-managed an interview room following pointers from the FBI.

Hansen was placed in an interview room that had been carefully set up for this exact interrogation. I love it. I love stories about people doing their jobs so fucking well. I got a hard-work boner right now. Rock hard over thoroughness and preparation right now.

There were maps of the Knik [kuh knick] River along the walls, pictures of the grave sites, the victims, on the desk. There were files and folders with the names of Hansen’s family, friends and acquaintances on them.

Robert was intentionally left to sit in the room alone for a while, in an attempt to make him uncomfortable - let him look at the maps and pictures, let it sink in that they fucking had him. They watched him through a two-way mirror.

A few minutes, later Flothe and Sgt Darryl Galyan entered the room, and began an interview with Hansen that would last for five hours.

Whilst Hansen was being interviewed, a team of officers was searching his house and plane. They found weapons throughout the house, but not the weapon they needed to implicate Hansen in any of the murders.

Towards the end of the interrogation, after all this work, it was starting to look like Hansen might get away with it all again.

But then, right before calling it a day, one of the officers searching Hansen’s home discovered a hidden space tucked away in the attic rafters.

Behind some wooden panelling in his trophy room, police found items of cheap jewelry - more trophies that would soon be traced back to his dead victims. Among the significant items, Hansen had kept a fish necklace that had been custom-made for victim Andrea Altiery.

There were also newspaper clippings, a driver's license, and various ID cards, some of which belonged to the dead women.

And then Police found the most damning evidence of all, the Ruger Mini-14 hunting rifle Hansen had used to kill multiple women. It was hidden under some floorboards.

Well done Anchorage PD! Love it! Got this motherfucker! Yip, yip, yaw!!

Ballistics testing would soon prove that this was the gun that killed Sherry Morrow and others.

And then, the cherry on the evidence sundae - investigators found an aviation map of the Anchorage region, dotted with twenty drawn on asterisks. Hansen’s X’s. Three of these corresponded with sites where bodies had already been found.

Hansen, of course, initially denied any connection with the murders, but when confronted with the wealth of evidence against him, he decided to confess.

He admitted that the asterisks on the map were grave sites of prostitutes that he had murdered.

And then Hansen told investigators that he hadn’t killed every girl he had taken up into the wilderness. As if that made him a decent dude. As if they’d understand that he’d only killed the bad ones.

He claimed that he only wanted oral sex, and if the girls complied, they were flown home. No big whoops. All in good fun.

And then he told them that if they resisted - if they rejected him - THEN he’d force them to strip at gunpoint and make them run.

These naked and afraid women would usually be given a head start, and then Hansen would stalk and hunt them like an animal. Sometimes, this sadistic fuck would allow them to think they’d escaped, and then track them down, capture them, rape them again, and then make them run again.

This would continue until they were too cold and exhausted to continue running, and THEN he’d shoot and kill them.

http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/Psyc%20405/serial%20killers/ Hansen,%20Robert%20-%20fall,%202005.pdf? fbclid=IwAR3lYtEtty6vdqd2mqTmAOQwWEKwspxtD3PFCz5VoV0B GnonQ9EUacCorN0

42. November 3, 1983 - On November 3, 1983, an Anchorage grand jury returned four indictments against Hansen. They were first- degree assault and kidnapping, five counts of misconduct in possession of a handgun, theft in the second-degree, and theft by deception in insurance fraud. His bail was set at a half-million dollars.

And don’t worry - more charges are coming.

43. November 20, 1983 - On November 20, 1983 ballistics test results came back from the FBI crime lab in Washington, D.C. and officials determined that the shell casings found at the gravesites had all been fired from Hansen's rifle. The firing pin and the extractor markings were identical.

44. February 18, 1984 - On February 18, 1984 Hansen pled guilty to four counts of first-degree murder in the cases of Paula Goodling, Joanna Messina, Sherry Morrow, and "Eklutna [ee-KLOOT-nuh] Annie.”

Hansen had his defense attorney, Fred Dewey, arrange a meeting with Anchorage D. A. Victor Krumm. During the meeting, Krumm offered Hansen a deal.

In exchange for a full confession, and in exchange for helping investigators locate more bodies, the D.A. agreed to only sentence him to ten years in prison.

In 1992, he’d be paroled a bit early for good behavior, and in 1995, he’d open a new bakery in Fairbanks. That bakery closed when Hansen retired in 2011. Now eighty years-old, Hansen lives with his wife Gloria in Fairbanks to this day.

And that takes us OUT of today’s Timesuck Timeline.

TIMESUCK TIMELINE ENDING

Kidding of course! Fuck that would suck if that was the real end.

No, in exchange for a full confession, prosecutors guaranteed Hansen that he would only be charged with the four cases that they knew of, and that he would be able to serve his time in a federal facility, rather than a maximum-security institution.

The deal also stipulated that the press wouldn’t be involved which I think is how Hansen’s kids were been able to be kept out of the papers.

After both sides signed off on the agreement, Hansen gave police a twelve hour confession during which he admitted to killing seventeen women and burying their remains in the wilds outside Anchorage.

Here is Hansen describing one of his typical abductions:

"I pull out the gun—I think the standard speech was, 'Look you're a professional. You don't get excited, you know there is some risk to what you've been doing.

If you do exactly what I tell you you're not going to get hurt. You're just going to count this off as a bad experience and be a little more careful next time who you are gonna proposition or go out with,' you know. I tried to act as tough as I could, to get them as scared as possible. Give that right away, even before I started talking at all. Reach over, you know, and hold that head back and put a gun in her face and get 'em to feel helpless, scared, right there I'm sure-- maybe it's not the same procedure for you--you always try to get control of the situation, so some things don't start going bad maybe I've seen some cop shows on TV, I don't know, OK?"

Hansen also indicated that he began killing as early as 1973.

Hansen told investigators that once he had a victim under his control, and up in the woods near his remote cabin, hunting them was like "going after a trophy Dall sheep or a grizzly bear."

For a little more insight into the mind of Hansen, here’s a portion of his confession to District Attorney Victor Krumm:

KRUMM: Why did you drive out to the road, instead of just going to a hotel or motel in town?

HANSEN: You know if you go to a motel or something with it, it’s more or less like a prostitution deal. I’m going and, or I’d — I guess I’m trying to even convince myself maybe I wasn’t really buying sex, it was being given to me, in the aspect that I was good enough that it was being given to me. Uh, if I can explain that a little bit better gentlemen. Going back in my life, way back to my high school days and so forth, I was, I guess what you might call very frustrated, upset all the time.

I would see my friends and so forth going out on dates and so forth and had a tremendous desire to do the same thing. From the scars and so forth on my face you can probably see, I could see why girls wouldn’t want to get close to me and when I’m nervous and upset like this here; if I, I’ll try to demonstrate if I can think about exactly what I’m going to say and if I talk slow I can keep myself from stuttering. But at the time during my junior high or high school days I could not control my speech at all. I was always so embarrassed and upset with it from people making fun of me that I hated the word school, I guess this is why I burned down the bus way back in Iowa . . . I can remember going up and talking to someone, man or woman, classmate or whatever and start to say something and start to stutter so badly that especially in the younger years I would run away crying, run off someplace and hide for a day or so.

The worst there was that I was the rebuttal of all the girls around the school and so forth. The jokes. If I could have faced it, I know now if I could have faced it and laughed along with them it would have stopped but I couldn’t at the time and it just, it got so it controlled me, I didn’t control it.

Jesus. He really did let the anger and shame of getting shot down in high school build inside of him until it lead to him killing women. He was that angry, or twenty years after graduating, over childhood disses. Fuck high school and junior high! It’s six years! Seven if you count sixth grade. Nothing in the big scheme of things. Get the fuck over it!

And then Robert said why he chose prostitutes for victims.

I didn’t start to hate all women, as a matter of fact I would venture to say I started to fall in love with every one of them. Every one of them become so precious to me ’cause I wanted their — I wanted their friendship . . . I wanted them to like me so much.

On top of things that have happened, I don’t want to, I’m not saying that I hate all women, I don’t. Quite to the contrary, if, I guess in my own mind what I’m classifying is a good woman, not a prostitute. I’d do everything in my power, any way, shape or form to do anything for her and to see that no harm ever came to her, but I guess prostitutes are women I’m putting down as lower than myself. I don’t know if I’m making sense or not.

And you know, when this started to happen I wanted —you know . . . It happened the first time there, you know, and I went home and I was literally sick to my stomach . . . Over the years I’ve gone in many many topless and bottomless bars in town and so forth and never, never touched one of the girls in there in any way, shape, or form until they asked. It’s like, it’s like it was a game — they had to pitch the ball before I could bat. They had to approach me first saying about I get off at a certain time, we could go out and have a good time, or something like this here. If they don’t, we weren’t playing the game right. They had to approach me. I’ve talked to, I suppose I made it a point to try to talk to, every girl in there.

Sometimes if I thought there was a possibility that she didn’t say it the first time but she might come back and say it again, now I’ve invited two or three table dances with her and comment to her how nice she looked and everything else and I try to keep it in a joking tone, “Gosh you know, you sure would be some thing, you know, for later on,” but that’s as far as it would go until she, then she had to make, I guess play out my fantasy. She had to come out and say we could do it but it’s going to cost you some money. Then she was no longer—I guess what you might call a decent girl. I didn’t look down at the girls dancing, what the hell they’re just trying to make a buck.

FLOTHE: But when they propositioned you, then it made things different?

HANSEN: Then, yes.

I don’t totally buy his prostitution explanation. I think he chose them because he knew it was easier to get away with killing them, but, whatever.

As part of that plea deal - Robert agreed to help detectives to uncover where he’d buried many of his victims. This was a task Hansen seemed to enjoy.

The Butcher Baker showed investigators 17 grave sites in the Knik [kuh knick] River Valley, 12 of which were unknown to the police.

During a helicopter tour of the grave sites, he would frequently become visibly excited, reliving the murders over and over in his head. Handcuffed, Hansen would plough through chest high snow drifts and triumphantly point out the graves of his victims.

Sometimes, he would drop to his knees and dig furiously with his bare hands, wild eyed with a broad grin on his face. Fucking psycho.

By the end of the summer of 1984, eleven bodies had been found of a probable twenty-one, ten of which had been formally identified.

45. February 27, 1984 - On February 27th, 1984, Robert Hansen who had not shown a flicker of remorse, was sentence to 461 years plus life, without the possibility of parole.

Less than three hours later, Hansen would be sent to the Lemon Creek Prison in Juneau.

Mr. Hansen also told Alaska state troopers he’d also raped more than thirty additional women that he didn’t kill. More trophies. Wanted to make sure those extra thirty rapes were put in the record books. Years earlier, he’d wanted people to know exactly how big the animals he’d killed with a bow were, and now he wanted the world to know how many women he’d hurt.

That’ll teach those girls back in Pocahontas!

When he was sentenced, Judge Moody, citing Mr. Hansen's previous records of abduction and either attempted or actual rape of prostitutes, said, regarding how our culture views prostitutes ''I cannot think of a bigger indictment of society than we have here.''

''This gentleman here has been known to us for several years,'' he said. ''We've turned him loose several times.''

Prostitutes had complained about how Hansen had treated them long before he was apprehended, but the police had doubted their credibility because of their profession.

Assistant District Attorney Frank Rothschild added, “Three of the four murders Mr. Hansen pleaded guilty to, were committed in the period that he would have been in prison had he served the full five years.”

Rothschild also told the judge: ''Before you sits a monster, an extreme aberration of a human being who has walked among us. Not even his wife of 20 years had any inkling of his dark, evil side. His crimes numb the mind.''

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/29/us/slayer-in-alaska-was- jailed-in-other-cases-judge-notes.html

46. 1988 - In 1988, Hansen became one of the first inmates in the new maximum security Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward.

He was moved there because it was discovered that Hansen was collecting materials, including aeronautical maps, that indicated he was planning to try to escape from Lemon Creek.

http://aboutserialkillers.blogspot.com/2010/01/robert-hansen.html

After two years of having her children harassed at school, Mrs. Hansen filed for divorce from Robert - can’t believe she waited two years! She moved with their two kids to the Lower 48 states. And I’m guessing changed their names.

No in Hansen’s family ever contacted him again.

47. August 2014 - On 21st, August, 2014 Robert Hansen finally passed away. He died at the age of 75 at the Alaska Regional Hospital in Anchorage due to undisclosed, lingering health conditions.

For his final meal, he had two chocolate long johns, one vanilla frosting with sprinkles on half of it, a french crueller, and glazed old-fashioned.

His final words were, “See you all in H-h-huh, h-h-huh, AW GOD D-D-D-D-DAH-DAMN IT! I’ll see you in H-H-H. Aw, f-f—fuh, fuck it.

And that takes us out of today’s Timesuck timeline.

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE OUTRO

V. Additional Thoughts

A.Recap:

To be clear, I made up his final meal and last words.

But that is the real the story of the Butcher Baker.

Hansen was the most active serial killer in Alaskan history.

One has to wonder if Robert Hansen has ever read Richard Connell’s 1924 short story The Most Dangerous Game. The book recounts the story an esteemed old war general, bored with trapping animals, he lures a big game hunter to his island, forces his ship to be wrecked and then challenges him to a competition.

The point of the competition is that the general will hunt the hunter for three days, and should he elude him, the general will allow the hunter to live. In the end, the hunter emerges victorious, though the tale alludes to the fact that the moral ambiguity of hunting shall perhaps, never be resolved.

Since Connell’s short story was published in 1924, the concept of man hunting man for sport has captivated people.

Think about he Hunger Games movies!

Thankfully, that’s just fiction. While Robert Hansen was all too real.

Time now for today’s top five takeaways.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS INTRO

VI.Top Five Takeaways

1.Number One: Number one! Robert Hansen became known as the “the Butcher Baker” because, you know, he was a baker and people like alliteration so the press added the word butcher. Again - weird combo. Murder and donuts.

2.Number Two: Number two. Hansen committed the only known killing spree in which multiple women were flown into the wilderness, released, and then literally hunted down like animals. Thank God we don’t know of other serial killers doing this.

3.Number Three: Number three. Hansen’s case set a legal precedent in 1983 when psychological profiling was used as the main basis for issuing search warrants on Hansen's property.

Since then psychological profiling has become a big part of the hunt for the 25 to 50 serial killers walking the American streets at any given moment.

4.Number Four: Number four. Because of the “sex worker” stigma that prostitutes had, they received less help from the law and their murders were given arguably much less press than they would’ve received had they been quote/unquote “normal women”. Hansen got away with rape many times because he, like so many other serial killers, preyed on some of the most least valued members of society. Gotta work on reducing that stigma.

A friend of the show would like to add that message in his own words. A guy who really uses his own words.

a) CHICKEN JOE:

BAWK, BAWK, PLAYBOY, BAWK BAWK.

No reason to look DOWN on a working GIRL - we all just somebody’s CLOWN, we all SOMEBODY’S fool.

What make a baker think he better than a hooker? Slanging carbs and sugar - you just a diabetes pusher.

Not getting paid to touch a stranger’s taint don’t automatically make yourself a saint.

Rationalizing murder and rape - Poor Robert Hansen- all sour grapes cause he weren’t no good at r-r-r-r-romancin’

That was Chicken Joe’s way of saying not being a prostitute doesn’t make you better than being a prostitute and instead of judging them you should maybe focus on yourself. And I think he also just took a shot at Bob’s stutter.

5.Number Five: The last takeaway is something I didn’t mention.

Mr. Hansen was the subject of a decent 2013 film I watched to get in the right mindset for this suck - “The Frozen Ground,” which starred Nicolas Cage as an Alaska State trooper investigating the slayings. Actor John Cusack portrayed Mr. Hansen, and Vanessa Hudgens played a prostitute and victim who survived.

It’s not amazing, but, if you are really interested in this topic, you might want to check it out. Fun to watch Nicholas Cage to play Nicholas Cage in almost every movie he’s in including this one.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS OUTRO

VII.Final Announcements

A.Episode has been sucked!: Robert Hansen SUCKED! Another example of how NOT to live your life. DO make tasty donuts. DON’T hunt people in the woods.

B.Thank you to Timesuck Team (including episode researcher):

Thanks to the Timesuck Team! Thanks to the Queen of the Suck Lynze Cummins, High Priestess of the Suck Harmony Vellekamp, Jessie “Guardian of Grammar” Dobner, Reverend Doctor Joe Paisley. Timesuck High Priest Alex Dugan, the guys at Bit Elixir, Danger Brain Axis Apparel. Thanks to Zaq Script Keeper Flannary for going dark with me into the research this week!

C.Next episode: Next week on Timesuck, we tackle a subject that was considered the “Trial of the Century” when it occurred in 1994. Former National Football League super-star, broadcaster, and actor O. J. Simpson was tried on two counts of murder for the June 12, 1994 gruesome murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman.

Over 90 million people watched the final verdict of the trial, and about as many were watching his famous white Bronco when OJ took police on one of the slowest chases in L.A. history. While there is a ton known about the case and trial itself, we want to take an in-depth look at O.J.’s life BEFORE and AFTER the killings of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.

That’s what I’m curious about. We’ll still touch on the trial. But there was so much life lead before and after it.

This Timesuck isn’t a murder mystery; we know OJ killed his wife and her friend. This episode will be the story of OJ Simpson’s rise from poverty to record breaking athletic greatness and then his unforgettable fall.

We’ll also follow OJ’s unfortunate life choices AFTER the “Trial of the Century.” From a series of stupid crimes, a handful of accidental admissions of guilt to his epic and not at all ridiculous rap song and video he put out in 2006. Join us next week for a Timesuck on OJ Simpson that I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time. D.Segue to Timesucker Updates: And now, some Timesucker Updates. Keep in mind - all of these are from a few weeks ago. So, nothing since last week’s Revolutionary War Suck.

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES INTRO VIII.Timesucker Updates

A.First Update coming in from a kickass Sucker I’m going to leave anonymous because I don’t want to get her in troublel!

She writes:

His Sucksterness the Motha Sucksta-

I may or may not be a horrible mom. I am the one that drops the kiddo off in the morning as my husband needs to be to work earlier than I. Anyway, we listen to a lot of podcasts on the drive, and sometime I am in the middle of a Time Suck and I just don't want to turn it off. My little man is named Jack. He is five years old and was completely obsessed with the Moth Man episode. He loves creepy shit.

Anyway, my husband also appreciates the suck, but does not like it when I let Jack listen because obviously the content is a little 'mature' and also because my kid remembers EVERYTHING and it would not be out of the question for him to recite the clean ween commercial at a family function.

Jack loves a good commercial and recommending good products. I feel like I am a rebel because my parents wouldn't even let me watch PG 13 movies until I was 12...... so even though I know it may not be appropriate, in the end my need to rebel against my denial of PG 13 movies has me saying FUCK IT! For real though, it is hilarious how many times I hear myself say to Jack, "Now that was a bad word, just please do not repeat it" or "Suck Master is an adult and can swear, you are a kid so you can't" or "Just don't repeat any of what you just heard." It could be a drinking game actually. And Jack always asks, "Mom can we listen to Time Suck. I won't tell Dad."

Recently I was finishing the Anneliese Michel suck (again my kid likes creepy shit) and he was very interested in the the discussion of burned shit, and before he went to the bathroom he had to remind me that "human poo is the worst smelling poo." I am getting a little ADD here, but a tangent on that suck. I actually wrote a scholarly research paper for my undergrad degree on whether or not exorcisms do more harm than good and if they should still be performed.

I was inspired after the Exorcism of Emily Rose came, which is based on Michel's story. I did most my research at night after work and even though I find myself more an agnostic, I had a hard time reading Hostage to the Devil. I would think, "Damn, so like if the devil is real, is what I am doing going to make me more susceptible to the devil? Am I going to get possessed? It is too late to start a new project....why the fuck did I pick this topic?"

If you were able to follow my train of thought, you are one of the few and rock on!!

Thanks for adding to one of the many random things that my kid and I bond over. Also me and my husband, just not all together. :)

Anonymous.

Thanks anonymous! You sound like a fun mom in my book. Sounds like you communicate a lot with your kid which is so important, obviously.

Glad Timesuck is a place where you and your son can enjoy the same humor and where you and husband can enjoy the same info, even if it’s not all at the same time.

And, I now you did sign your name but I wanted to give you a chance to deny sending this if your husband is like, “C’mon, I know it’s you!”

No you don’t dude. Could be all kind of little Jacks out there. Calm down, buddy.

B.Soon to be dad JT Toner sends in some hilarious fake angst born out of temporary but real panic. JT writes:

Dan. You bastard.

I took a break from the podcast to binge others and am now catching back up. I just started the last suck of 2018 while I do some side work to earn a little extra cash because my wife is pregnant with our first child. We go tomorrow morning for our initial "long appointment" with the OBGYN to learn what to expect, what insurance will pay vs what we'll be responsible for, etc., and you're here talking about how processed peanut butter is so terribly bad for developing fetuses (fetusi?).

We believe processed foods are a legitimate concern and you had me freaking the FUCK out because my wife loves peanut butter- one of her only "vices"- and eats it all the time. I'm here thinking that while she's eating healthy during the pregnancy, we're dooming our future child to a likely life with no limbs.

Fuck you you stupid asshole. I hope my unborn, limbless child still has some type of cock, even if it's soft, to fuck you Chickatillo soft shame cock style when he comes of age.

Hail Nimrod you hilarious fuck head and here's to hoping for a completely healthy, strong-dicked Lucifeanien worshipper to pay you back for this worry with some sweet, sweet no shame cock fucking once the kid hits puberty.

J.T. Toner

C.Next Update from the awesome Sucker Justin Anderson. Messages like these motivate us to do the best job we can here. Justin writes:

Dear Lord, Master, Doctor Suckington, Walker of Bojangles and Retriever of his mighty turds. I am a huge fan of stand up comedy. It is because of this love that I started to listen to, and become a great fan of yours in or around 2012. Your pandora station has led me to find such great artists as Chad Daniel and K Trevor Wilson. The first Suck I listened to was HH Holmes and I've been hooked ever since. The Black Dhalia suck was one I had waited a long time for. You brought a level of clarity to a subject that had been waiting for an unbiased hand to show it some light. I have read many accounts of the killing and most were written from the perspective of someone trying to "solve" what is seemingly unsolvable. Many a writer has taken on a horrific murder (Truman Capote). You are no Truman Capote... down Bojangles... I'm sorry. O.K., O.K... Dan is waaaaay better than that Truman guy. Sorry, I was distracted. Back to the episode, I had never heard the story without a writer's bias. This was honestly the first time I heard Elizabeth Smart's story without someone claiming to know who killed her. You taught me more in one podcast about the life and death of the unfortunate Elisabeth Smart, than any three novels, or shit movies. Thank you. I've been curious for years, and now I can bury my curiosity. Just kidding, we will always be Curious!

D. And now, before I get too full of myself, a pronunciation update from Lisa Thompson-Clapp from the Black Dahlia episode. Lisa Thompson- Clapp:

Dear Lord Suckmaster Supreme, He who is most unholy: Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, I have a pronunciation correction in the Black Dahlia suck! Imagine my surprise when you mentioned my hometown of Lompoc, CA when talking about Vandenburg Air Force Base. You, like countless others, pronounced it as LomPOC, when in fact it is LomPOKE. This pronunciation issue is the bane of the town’s existence, with even people from neighboring towns saying it incorrectly, so I just had to jump in on this one. Anyway! My husband and I have been long time fans of your comedy, and after discovering the suck last year, I’m a weekly listener. I love what you do, keep on suckin’ and hail Lucifina!

E.And last, an iTunes review. I choose to share positive messages because I don’t want to encourage negativity and honestly, most messages we get are positive. But of course, plenty of people don’t like what I do. And, when I decided to check recent ratings and reviews of Timesuck on iTunes the other day - gotta see what the general consensus is, one person’s hatred made me laugh so hard. I know a lot of you are also creative types, and, while you obviosuly want to create art that pleases someone, hopefully someone in addition to yourself, and while pleasing a lot of people feels great - never forget you just can’t please everyone and don’t let negativity get you down. Learn to laugh at it.

I for sure cannot please Jake 92786 who left a one-star review the other day, and wrote “Final Straw” as a subject line. And then Jake wrote: The Black Dahlia is the last episode I’ll listen to. Within the first 20 minutes, about 10 minutes was him joking around. His long unfunny tangents. In fact, the first thing he talks about in this episode is a joke. I get that joking lightens the mood and can help listening. But come on, about a murder? And spend five minutes joking about her dad being a miniature gold maker? Seriously, listen from 16:45 to 20:10 and tell me this funny. At least get the story going before joking left and right. I also never have heard someone laugh at his own jokes as much as Dan. This dude has gone too far with it. I honestly don’t know how people can enjoy this anymore.”

Well Jake, first off, why do I think it’s okay to joke about murder? Because, “That is how they do it in Hollywood!” Second, “Showbiz!” Third, it’s listed in the comedy section you fucking half-it.

What made me laugh at this review almost as much as I laugh at my own jokes is the specific time code detail. Jake hated this episode so much, an episode he got to listen to for free by the way, that he went back and made timecode notes. Wow Jake, I am jealous of one thing about you - how much free time you apparently have to not do something useful and instead spend on writing needlessly specific one star reviews.

Also, Jake, if you’re mad about what I’m saying right now, go fuck yourself. You’re not supposed to be listening anymore.

Oh, and thanks for the laughs. I may not be able to give you any, but, you just gave me so many.

Hope I never see you, you sound like a real bummer to be around. Feel like you’d probably just GET MY ZAPPLES REAL ANGRY, MOTHER!

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES OUTRO IX.Goodbye!

A.Goodbye!: Have a great week, Timesuckers. Thanks to the many of you who do enjoy this show. Thanks for letting me have so much fun with it. Don’t hunt anyone this week. It’s really not nice. And keep on making delicious donuts if you’re doing that. And of course keep on suckin!

SOURCES:

BOOK: Fair Game by Bernard DuClos BOOK: Butcher, Baker: The True Account of an Alaskan Serial Killer https://murderpedia.org/male.H/h/hansen-robert.htm https://www.documentingreality.com/forum/f249/robert-hansen-man-who- killed-cindy-paulson-8945/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bunday https://www.thealaskalife.com/blog/15-alaska-names-youre-probably- mispronouncing/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxton_Pope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 1976_United_States_presidential_electionhttp://charleyproject.org/case/ mary-kathleen-thill https://unidentified.wikia.org/wiki/Eklutna_Annie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Alaska_Pipeline_System https://www.aoga.org/industry/history-1970s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamosa,_Iowa https://criminalminds.fandom.com/wiki/Robert_Hansen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hansen