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Robert Christian Boes Hansen (February 15, 1939 – August 21, 2014), also known as the Butcher Baker, was an American serial killer and serial rapist active in Anchorage, Alaska, between 1971 and 1983, abducting, raping and murdering at least seventeen women. Hansen released many of his victims into the wilderness and hunted them with a Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle and hunting knives. Hansen was captured in 1983 and sentenced to 461 years' imprisonment without the possibility of parole. He died in 2014 of natural causes at age 75.

Early life

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

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

First crimes

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

Over the next few years, Hansen was jailed several times for petty theft. In 1967 he moved to Anchorage, Alaska, with his second wife, whom he had married in 1963 and with whom he had two children. In Anchorage, Hansen opened his own bakery, was well-liked by his neighbors and set several local hunting records.

In December 1971, Hansen was arrested twice, first for abducting and attempting to rape an unidentified housewife, then for raping an unidentified sex worker. He pleaded no contest to assault with a deadly weapon in the former offense; the rape charge involving the sex worker was dropped as part of a plea bargain. Hansen was sentenced to five years in prison. After serving six months of his sentence, he was placed on a work release program and released to a halfway house.

In 1976, Hansen pleaded guilty to larceny after he attempted to steal a chainsaw from an Anchorage Fred Meyer store. He was sentenced to five years in prison and required to receive psychiatric treatment for his manic depression. The Alaska Supreme Court reduced Hansen's sentence, and he was released with time served.

Murders and capture

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

It is believed by authorities that Hansen's first murder victim was eighteen-year-old Celia van Zanten. Van Zanten was kidnapped on December 22, 1971, and froze to death in the wilderness after escaping from her abductor; her body was discovered on December 25. The abduction occurred three days after Hansen committed his assault on the sex worker for which he was imprisoned. While there are some similarities between Hansen's modus operandi and Van Zanten's abduction, there is no conclusive evidence linking him to the attack and Hansen himself denied involvement.

On June 13, 1983, Hansen offered seventeen-year-old Cindy Paulson $200 to perform oral sex; when she got into the car, he pulled out a gun and drove her to his home in the Muldoon neighborhood of Anchorage. There, he held her captive and proceeded to rape and torture her. Paulson later told police that after Hansen chained her by the neck to a post in his basement, he took a nap on a nearby couch. When he awoke, he put her in his car and took her to Merrill Field, where he told her that he intended to take her to his cabin near the Knik River area of the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, accessible only by boat or bush plane. Paulson, crouched in the back seat of Hansen's car with her wrists cuffed in front of her body, saw a chance to escape when he was busy loading the cockpit of his airplane, a Piper PA-18 Super Cub. While Hansen's back was turned, Paulson crawled out of the back seat, opened the driver's side door and ran toward nearby Sixth Avenue.

Paulson later told police that she had left her blue sneakers on the passenger side floor of the backseat of Hansen's car as evidence that she had been inside. Hansen panicked and chased her, but Paulson reached Sixth Avenue and managed to flag down a passing truck. The driver, Robert Yount, alarmed by Paulson's disheveled appearance, stopped and offered assistance. He drove her to the Mush Inn, where she jumped out of the truck and ran inside. While Paulson pleaded with the clerk to phone her boyfriend at the Big Timber Motel, Yount continued on to work, where he called police to report the incident.

When Anchorage Police Department (APD) officers arrived at the Mush Inn, they were told that Paulson had taken a cab to the Big Timber Motel. APD officers arrived there and found Paulson in Room 110, still handcuffed and alone. She was taken to APD headquarters, where she described her attacker. Hansen, when questioned by investigators, denied Paulson's accusation, stating that she was trying to cause trouble for him because he refused to pay her extortion demands. This excuse became one Hansen used on other occasions, but although he had several prior run-ins with the law, Hansen's meek demeanor and humble occupation as a baker, along with an alibi from his friend John Henning, persuaded police not to consider him a serious suspect.

Detective Glenn Flothe of the Alaska State Troopers had been part of a team investigating the discovery of several bodies in and around Anchorage, Seward and the Matanuska-Susitna Valley area. The first of the bodies was found by construction workers near Eklutna Road. The body, dubbed "Eklutna Annie" by investigators, has never been identified. Later that year, the body of Joanna Messina was discovered in a gravel pit near Seward, and in 1982 the remains of twenty-three-year-old Sherry Morrow were discovered in a shallow grave near the Knik River. Flothe believed all three women had been murdered by the same perpetrator.

Flothe contacted Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent John E. Douglas and requested help with an offender profile based on the three recovered bodies. Douglas thought the killer would be an experienced hunter with low self-esteem, have a history of being rejected by women and would feel compelled to keep "souvenirs" of his murders, such as a victim's jewelry. He also suggested that the assailant might stutter. Using this profile, Flothe investigated possible suspects until he reached Hansen, who fit the profile and owned a plane.

Supported by Paulson's testimony and Douglas' profile, Flothe and the APD secured a warrant to search Hansen's plane, vehicles and home. On October 27, 1983, investigators uncovered jewelry belonging to some of the missing women as well as an array of firearms in a corner hideaway of Hansen's attic, which…