Hunted on Ice: The Search for Alaskan Serial Killer Robert Hansen (3 page)

Thanking Bob Hansen for his help, the police next paid a visit to his two alibi witnesses. The two men corroborated what Hansen had told them, agreeing that he had been with them all evening.

The Anchorage police were puzzled. The young prostitute had seemed so credible, so undeniably terrified and in shock, but now they were beginning to wonder. Could Bob Hansen be telling the truth? Could this girl be making the whole story up in an effort to extort money from him?

Wanting to be sure, they asked the girl if she would be willing to take a polygraph, and when she refused, their doubts increased. As bad as that was, it would actually be the medical findings that would sink the girl’s case. Doctors reported finding no signs of bruising or tearing of her genitals, no semen, and no indication of rape at all.

With no physical evidence against Bob Hansen, and two respected businessmen willing to give him an alibi, the case came down to the word of a 17-year-old prostitute against that of a well respected, married father. For the District Attorney, it was a no-brainer on who would win that one, and he quickly declined to press charges.

Chapter Three

While some police officers chose to believe that the young prostitute was lying about being kidnapped by Bob Hansen, there were others who weren’t so sure. State Trooper Glenn Flothe was one of them. He believed the girl’s story, and was determined to keep an eye on Bob Hansen. 

Less than two months after the young girl's kidnapping, on September 2, 1983, the body of 17-year-old Paula Golding was found buried in a shallow grave near the Knik River. The proximity of the remains, so close to the other murdered women, and the fact that police found an ace bandage and the casing from a .223 caliber bullet in the grave, finally convinced them that they were dealing with only one killer.

Only a week later, 20-year-old DeLynn Frey was reported missing. Frey had not been seen since March, so could have vanished anytime between then and September. No one was really sure when she had gone missing, nor could they recall where she might have been going when she disappeared.

Trooper Glenn Flothe was disheartened by the news that another girl had vanished, and he thought often about the young prostitute who had accused the Anchorage baker of kidnapping her. Although it had been nearly three months since he last saw Bob Hansen, Flothe had not forgotten him. Just who was Bob Hansen, the detective wondered?

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Robert Christian Hansen was born on February 15, 1939, in Esterville, Iowa, the only child of Christian and Edna Hansen, an extremely religious couple. His father was a strict disciplinarian, and his mother seemed to acquiesce to anything her husband suggested.

Christian Hansen was mortified to see that his son had been born left-handed, a condition he considered a defect, and he and his wife forced the little boy to use his right hand for everything, demanding that Bob sit on his left hand while he wrote or ate.

When Bob was still small, the family moved to California, but returned to Iowa when he turned 10. There his father opened his own bakery, and ordered his son to work in it daily. The little boy would be there before school and after, working long hours for a salary of $1.00 a day.

By the time Bob reached the age of 12 he was considered a loner in his school with few friends. This was not by choice, but due to the fact that Bob portrayed the image of the All-American ‘nerd’. The boy had a severe speech impediment, stuttering wildly whenever he spoke, and he was small, with bright red hair and large framed glasses. Worse yet, he had a severe case of acne that covered his entire face. He was teased mercilessly by both boys and girls, and continuously referred to as ‘zit face’, ‘pizza face’, and ‘pimple puss.’

Bob was under a lot of stress at school because of this, and felt just as much anxiety at home. His parents were constantly yelling at him at work, and the pressure he felt whenever they berated him for using his left hand greatly exacerbated his speech impediment. He took to dealing with his stress by picking at his pimply face, tearing open the sores that would later heal into deep, indented scars.

Bob wanted to fit in, he just never seemed able too. His heavy workload at the bakery kept him from socializing with his peers or making new friends. At the age of 14 he tried out for the school’s basketball team and was thrilled when he made it. But he was greatly disappointed to spend most of his time warming the bench. He did much better on the track team, competing in long distance running and the broad jump, two areas he earned a letter in. But neither of these accomplishments helped to endear him to his fellow students.

After a while, Bob quit trying to fit in, instead spending all his free time alone, pursuing solitary activities. He loved to hunt and fish, and became skilled at archery. To most of the kids he went to school with, Bob was a loser.

In 1957, at the age of 18 he was ready to graduate, but not before his high school sent him away with one last humiliation. Leafing through his yearbook, he noted with embarrassment that they had spelled his name wrong.

Bob wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life but he was anxious to try something other than the bakery. He joined the Army Reserve and was sent to Fort Dix, New Jersey to complete his basic training. Here, Bob seemed to break free. He had never had a girlfriend, not even a date, but now, while visiting Fort Know Kentucky, he threw caution to the wind and picked up a prostitute. Bob was a virgin, and the two of them had sex in a motel room, the more experienced woman telling him what to do. After that, Bob discovered that he liked sex, and he continued to visit prostitutes on a regular basis.

In 1959, at the age of 20, Bob was relieved from his service and returned to Iowa. He immediately went back to work with his father at the bakery, but he remained in the Army Reserves military police, fulfilling his obligation one weekend a month. He volunteered to become a drill instructor for the junior police, and enjoyed working with the youngsters.

During this time Bob met a much younger girl and the two began dating. In 1960, after just turning 21, the couple married and settled into a rental house not far from his father’s bakery. Bob became active in the local fire company and signed up as a volunteer fireman around the same time.

On December 7, 1960, a fire broke out at a school bus garage in Pocahontas Iowa, and Bob was one of the firemen responding to the scene. Unbeknownst to his fellow firefighters, he was also the one who started the blaze. Bob had convinced a 16-year-old fellow worker at the bakery to join him in this endeavor, explaining to the kid that it was ‘retribution’ for what he called ‘perceived abuses’ by the townspeople.

It was a stupid thing for him to do, as the youth soon cracked and confessed everything. Bob Hansen was quickly arrested, charged and convicted of arson.

Sentenced to three years in prison, he was released after only 20 months and returned home to find that his wife had divorced him, and he had deeply shamed his parents. His father refused to allow him to work in the bakery any longer, and the young man drifted aimlessly, taking on one low-paying job after another.

In 1963, when he was twenty-four-years old, Bob met a pretty young lady named Darla and the two fell in love. In the fall of that same year they were married in a small ceremony and attempted to settle down and start their life together.

  Although from outward appearances things seemed to be improving for Bob, it was not all peaches and cream for the young couple. Several times over the next few years, Bob would be caught stealing and shoplifting, although he was never charged with these crimes.

His arson conviction made life difficult for him in the small town. It had ruined his reputation, and labeled him as untrustworthy, and he had not been able to secure a decent job since his release from prison. He was still on the outs with his parents, and he spoke often of moving away and starting over. In the summer of 1967 he finally convinced his wife to do so.

The Hansens chose Alaska as their new destination, in part because the state gives its residents special benefits to live there, but mainly because it was the optimum terrain for an avid hunter. The two were excited by the move, and purchased a house in the middle-class section of Muldoon, just outside of Anchorage. They were anxious to begin anew, and hopefully start a family.

In Anchorage, Bob’s past was completely unknown, and his dream of starting over was within easy grasp. He got along well with his fellow citizens, and became known as an avid outdoorsman and a skilled shot with the rifle. For three years in a row, 1969, 1970, and 1971 he had four animals entered into the Pope & Young Trophy Hunting World Record Book. He gained much attention one year when he brought down a Dahl sheep with his bow and arrow.

Things seemed to be going well for the Hansen’s up until 1977 when Bob was arrested for stealing a chainsaw. Sentenced to five years in prison, he underwent psychiatric testing and was diagnosed as having bipolar defective disorder. Doctors prescribed a Lithium program to control his mood swings, and ordered him to remain on it even after his release. Bob served only one year of his five year sentence, and immediately quit taking his medication when he left prison. He returned home to his wife, who had stuck by him this time, and their two children.

In the early 1980’s, Bob reported that someone had broken into his house and stole several of his hunting trophies, along with jewelry and electronics. The break-in netted him $13,000 in insurance claim money, and he used this to buy his own bakery in downtown Anchorage.

His business quickly flourished, becoming so successful that in January of 1982, Bob purchased his own airplane. Curiously though, he never bothered to get his pilot’s license. He was regarded as a well-respected member of the community, the type of guy who eagerly volunteered his time if it was needed, and regularly attended church with his family each Sunday. From all appearances, the Hansens of Anchorage, Alaska were living the good life.

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Although Trooper Flothe was willing to concede that there were some shady spots in Bob Hansen’s background, he still wasn’t convinced that the baker was the killer he hunted. It seemed unbelievable that a successful married man, the father of two small children, could be a sadistic serial killer. And yet, there were several things about Bob Hansen that fit.

For one thing, he was an avid hunter and an expert shot. The .223 caliber bullets found with the dead girls had been fired from a high-powered rifle, just the sort of weapon Hansen was bound to own. Even more intriguing was the fact that Hansen was familiar with the area where the bodies were discovered.

While interviewing a neighbor of Bob’s, the man told police that he and Bob often hunted out near the Knik River, adding that it was ‘one of Bob’s favorite spots.’ Hansen was a trophy hunter, the man explained, and always looking for the next bigger, better, more challenging kill. ‘That’s what trophy hunters do’, the man said.

This conversation led Flothe and others to wonder if the missing women were ‘trophies’ to Bob Hansen. As truly frightening as the thought might be, did the killer, after having flown his victims out to the Knik River, strip them, blindfold them, and then turn them loose in the wilderness? Did he then stalk them like wild game, hunting them down and killing them like he would a deer or a bear? As insane a thought as it was, law enforcement had to admit that the scenario tallied perfectly with the evidence.

Serial killers were a relatively new breed at the time, and even though Anchorage police and the Alaska state troopers kept returning to Bob Hansen as the most likely suspect in their case, they were still uncertain. Could such a brutal killer really function so well in society, they wondered? And although they believed that the four recovered bodies were linked, did that mean that all the missing women would be linked to them too?

Using a chart, law enforcement decided to assess what they knew so far. The city of Anchorage had a total of 17 missing girls, four of whom were found dead. All of the women had disappeared from Anchorage, with the exception of Mary Thill and Megan Emerick, who had both vanished from Seward. They were two of the thirteen women still unaccounted for. The others still missing were:

Roxanne Easlund, Lisa Futrell, Andrea Altiery, Sue Luna, Malai Larsen, DeLynn Frey, Teresa Watson, Angela Feddern, Tamara Pederson, Kathy Disher, and Karen Baumsgaurd.

  Most of these 17 girls had similar backgrounds. One worked in a massage parlor, one had been arrested for prostitution in the past, and the majority of the others worked as topless dancers in the bars and clubs on 4
th
Avenue.

 This was true for all the girls, with the exception of Megan Emerick, Mary Thill, and Joanne Messina. Curiously, none of these early victims appeared to have ties to prostitution or the bars and clubs on 4
th
Avenue. Police believed this difference in victims was nothing more than a matter of convenience for their killer. He probably preferred ‘nice girls’, but might have quickly changed his preference when he realized that prostitutes and topless dancers made far easier targets.

As police studied the disappearances, they found another similarity in what the missing women were known to have said just before they vanished. Five of them told friends and acquaintances that they were meeting a man in a downtown restaurant around noon. One claimed she was meeting a man to pose for nude photos, and another that she had been offered $300 for one hour of her time. Sherry Morrow, who was the third victim found, had told friends that she was offered $300 to pose for nude photos just before she disappeared.

Flothe thought a lot about what the women had said. What kind of man, he wondered, was available regularly at the noon hour? A typical lunch hour wouldn’t provide enough time to abduct and kill someone. Perhaps he was unemployed, or even retired. Or could he be someone who owned his own business and was able to get free time off whenever he wanted? Someone whose business might allow him to do a lot of his work at night? Someone like a baker who owned his own bakery in downtown Anchorage? Flothe knew that bakers often worked the night shift, and surely, if you owned the business, you could come and go as you pleased.