Notable Fact
Some (investigators) think Hansen played a kind of hunt-and-kill game with his victims, releasing them in the wilderness and then hunting them down with a bow and arrow or gun.
If Robert Hansen were murdering women today, the chances of him being caught would be a lot greater than they were in the early 1980s, when he was finally tracked down. For one thing, films, books, television, and other media have made the average person - and average police officer - much more aware of the existence of serial killers. For another, many people now know that serial killers often prey on prostitutes. Prostitutes had complained about how Hansen had treated them long before he was apprehended, but the police had a jaundiced view of them and doubted their credibility because of their profession. Also, record keeping is a lot better now. Robert Hansen’s criminal record was revealing, but it was kept by separate police jurisdictions, and therefore not all the people who needed to know about his past were aware of it. And, of course, there is that remarkable new investigative tool, DNA.
The bottom line, though, was that no one put it all together before it was too late for Hansen’s victims. Although he was a serial killer, Hansen was not, of course, a wild-eyed hunchbacked monster slavering at the mouth. He was a wiry, 5´10½ forty-four-year-old who was married with children. He lived in a log cabin on Old Harbor Avenue in Anchorage, Alaska, and owned and operated a successful bakery there. He was even the object of sympathy: He had a severely pockmarked face, a remnant of his teen years when he suffered from very bad acne, and he stuttered.
But he was extremely dangerous. In the end, he admitted to having raped and killed seventeen women - mostly dancers and prostitutes who worked the strip joints in Anchorage on Fourth Street - but state troopers who investigated the case believe Hansen’s death toll to be a lot more. Glenn Flothe, one of the state investigators, believes that Hansen killed four or five women a year from the early 1970s until police tracked him down in 1984.
Fire Starter
Hansen was raised in the tiny town of Pocahontas, Iowa. His first recorded offense against the law was in 1960, when at the age of twenty-one he and a friend set fire to the Pocahontas school bus garage, burning it to the ground and destroying three of the seven school buses. He would have gotten away with it, but his accomplice friend was seized with a surge of guilt over the act and confessed, implicating Hansen.
For this, he was sentenced to three years in the Iowa Men’s Reformatory with recommended psychiatric treatment. Hansen spoke in a forthright way with the psychiatrists about his compulsion to set fires, until one day in court he got a rude awakening: Prosecutors were using the information Hansen had given the doctors against him.
Hansen said to himself, as reported much later in the Anchorage Daily News, “Wait a minute, Bob, you Goddamn fool, they suckered you . . . So right away I think, well now boy, you know you’re never going to make that mistake again.”
Hansen was paroled in May 1963 but had some more interaction with the law in Minnesota - he was picked up for shoplifting, an activity that he had been enjoying for a long time and one that continued even after he started to kill. In a confession to police, he explained that it aroused him sexually to steal. Once outside the store, many times he would give away the stolen articles. The stealing was its own reward. He was not incarcerated on the shoplifting charge.
He had been married for one year and then in 1967 married for the second time and moved to Anchorage, where he opened his bakery. His father had been a baker - in fact, the only one in Pocahontas - and Hansen had learned the trade from him.
Criminal Escalation
In November 1971, Hansen was arrested - he was driving in the town of Spenard, had stopped for a light, and glanced over at the woman in the car next to him. She smiled at him, and he regarded this as an open invitation to point his gun at her and demand she come with him. The woman didn’t oblige him.
He was released on his own recognizance, but while awaiting trial he was arrested again, this time accused of having picked up an eighteen-year-old prostitute outside a bar in downtown Anchorage, kidnapping her, and raping her at gunpoint. But the district attorney was forced to drop this case - the prostitute who filed the complaint failed to appear in court.
Superior Court Judge James Fitzgerald sentenced Hansen to five years for drawing the gun on the Spenard woman, basing the punishment “heavily on the psychiatric evaluation.” Judge Fitzgerald could clearly see that Hansen was dangerous. However, because of the way offenders like Hansen were treated in those days in Alaska, he got out of jail quickly despite objections from the prosecutor. He had immediately applied for parole and was in jail only from March to June. In June he was assigned to a halfway house, where he received psychiatric treatment until November
In December, he was let out of the halfway house on a workfurlough 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 them again.
Then he started to hang around the strip joints, trying to lure dancers and prostitutes with the promise of money for a good time. He was always flashing a big wad of money, which was tempting to some women even though, at the time, many thought of Hansen as weird.
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. After a while the woman refused to cooperate - prostitutes worry about talking to the police and he was not charged, even though officers at the time were convinced he was guilty. Hansen, however, claimed that it was merely a dispute about money. Then, in 1976, Hansen was picked up for shoplifting a chain saw from a Fred Meyer’s store in Anchorage. This time the law treated Hansen’s offense severely because of his two previous felony convictions, the fire in Iowa and pointing his gun at the woman in Spenard. The judge sentenced him to five years - the sentence may have been harder if the judge had known of the two rape charges that had been filed against Hansen but thrown out.
Hansen appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court, arguing that his sentence was excessive - the court agreed, setting Hansen free in August 1978. In doing so, the court cited Hansen’s apparently stable family life and his job. Other than his shoplifting and two prior felonies, the court believed that Hansen lived a fairly normal life and thought that with psychiatric help he should be fine. They recommended that he be put on probation and treated, but the treatment never happened. Hansen was free again.
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. In a subsequent application he did not list any drugs - and was granted the license.
There was only one complaint on record against Hansen from that time until he was tracked down for murder, a complaint filed by a 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 had 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 respected businessman against that of a prostitute.
Finding a Suspect
Anchorage city police - and then Alaskan state police - had been receiving complaints about missing topless dancers and others who frequented the strip joint scene on Fourth Avenue, complaints that the police dismissed at first. Topless dancers tend to be a fairly transient group; when a few disappear, it doesn’t necessarily mean foul play.
Added up, though, the complaints were significant. The police realized that, since 1980, six dancers had disappeared from the Fourth Avenue clubs, and Anchorage police quietly formed what they called a “dancer task force” to look into the disappearances. Then, on September 13, 1982, a female body was discovered in a shallow grave by the Knik River, in the wilds about fifteen miles northwest of Anchorage. She had been shot once with a .223 caliber bullet; a shell casing was found nearby. In late September, the police got an ID: The victim’s name was Sherry Morrow, and she was a dancer at the Wild Cherry Club who had disappeared in November 1981. With the discovery of this woman - with a profile identical to that of the other missing women - the police department’s fears that a serial killer was at work in Anchorage were confirmed.
Since Morrow’s body was found outside the jurisdiction of city police, the state and city police combined forces to develop a list of suspects. One of the most important things they did was question again and again the women on the Fourth Avenue scene, women who had been bothered at the clubs, or who had been approached and offered money. One of the names that came up repeatedly in their questioning of these women was Robert Hansen.
Then, on June 13, 1983, a patrolman saw a seventeen-year-old prostitute running down Fifth Avenue. She was handcuffed and screaming, terrified. The patrolman, Gregg Baker, tracked
the woman through two motels and found her in one of them, still wearing handcuffs. She told him a man had taken her to his house and raped her. Baker found out about Hansen’s criminal history and passed it on to the task force. Immediately, Hansen became a prime suspect. Then something happened that made him the only suspect.
The remains of Paula Goulding were found in a remote area near the Knik River about twenty miles north of Anchorage. The grave site could not be reached by foot or vehicle - only by plane. Robert Hansen was the only one of the suspects who owned and flew an airplane.
The cops gathered everything they could and on October 27, 1983, brought Hansen in on the kidnapping and assault charges of the seventeen-year-old prostitute. They questioned him for five hours and were convinced that they had their perp, not only on the kidnapping and assault but also on the killings. But Hansen didn’t confess, even though police were able to blow away his alibi. (The wife of the friend who supplied him with the alibi said her husband had lied.)
The trial was held for the kidnapping and assault, while the investigation into the killings continued. Police, armed with search warrants, came up with some very damaging evidence against Hansen in his home, including an aeronautical map of south-central Alaska with twenty-one sites marked off, presumably for the graves of murder victims; a gun hidden under attic insulation, which was eventually linked to the killings of two women; a bag of jewelry containing a distinctive necklace worn by a missing dancer; and business cards of two missing dancers. These things, of course, were the trophies that Hansen used to relive the killings.
A Chilling Confession
At one point, Hansen “gave it up,” in police lingo (though no officer believes he gave it all up). He gave police a twelve hour confession during which he admitted to killing seventeen women and burying their remains in the wilds outside Anchorage.
He took a plane ride with the police and pointed out the burial sites he remembered. During his confession, Hansen went to great pains to rationalize his behavior. He said he would never kill “good women,” but prostitutes were something else. He could kill them with impunity. He explained that he had had problems with women since he was a teenager in Iowa and that women wouldn’t go out with him because of his acne and his stutter.
He said he always “loved” women, but he made a distinction — a sharp distinction — between good girls and bad girls. Bad girls could die. In the portion of his confession that follows, District Attorney Victor Krumm is questioning Hansen. The excerpt provides some insight into the mind of Robert Hansen. The final question is from Glenn Flothe, state investigator, and Hansen’s simple answer is quite chilling when one realizes its homicidal implications.
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. 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.
Afterword
In the spring of 1990, Robert Hansen was moved from the Lemon Creek Prison in Juneau to the maximum-security facility at Spring Creek in Seward, about 120 miles southwest of Anchorage. It was discovered that Hansen was collecting materials - including aeronautical maps - that indicated he was planning to try to escape from Lemon Creek.
More than one investigator thinks Robert Hansen has killed many more women than he has admitted to. He played a kind of hunt-and-kill game with them, releasing them in the wilderness and then hunting them down with a bow and arrow or rifle.
Some killers, police officers will tell you, have something likable about them. Monsters with charm, you might say. But according to exmajor Walter Gilmore of the Alaskan state police, there were no redeeming qualities about Hansen, and others have reflected Gilmore’s sentiments. The house where Hansen lived on Old Harbor Avenue is still there.
Hansen was raised in the tiny town of Pocahontas, Iowa. His first recorded offense against the law was in 1960, when at the age of twenty-one he and a friend set fire to the Pocahontas school bus garage, burning it to the ground and destroying three of the seven school buses. He would have gotten away with it, but his accomplice friend was seized with a surge of guilt over the act and confessed, implicating Hansen.
For this, he was sentenced to three years in the Iowa Men’s Reformatory with recommended psychiatric treatment. Hansen spoke in a forthright way with the psychiatrists about his compulsion to set fires, until one day in court he got a rude awakening: Prosecutors were using the information Hansen had given the doctors against him.
Hansen said to himself, as reported much later in the Anchorage Daily News, “Wait a minute, Bob, you Goddamn fool, they suckered you . . . So right away I think, well now boy, you know you’re never going to make that mistake again.”
Hansen was paroled in May 1963 but had some more interaction with the law in Minnesota - he was picked up for shoplifting, an activity that he had been enjoying for a long time and one that continued even after he started to kill. In a confession to police, he explained that it aroused him sexually to steal. Once outside the store, many times he would give away the stolen articles. The stealing was its own reward. He was not incarcerated on the shoplifting charge.
He had been married for one year and then in 1967 married for the second time and moved to Anchorage, where he opened his bakery. His father had been a baker - in fact, the only one in Pocahontas - and Hansen had learned the trade from him.
Criminal Escalation
In November 1971, Hansen was arrested - he was driving in the town of Spenard, had stopped for a light, and glanced over at the woman in the car next to him. She smiled at him, and he regarded this as an open invitation to point his gun at her and demand she come with him. The woman didn’t oblige him.
He was released on his own recognizance, but while awaiting trial he was arrested again, this time accused of having picked up an eighteen-year-old prostitute outside a bar in downtown Anchorage, kidnapping her, and raping her at gunpoint. But the district attorney was forced to drop this case - the prostitute who filed the complaint failed to appear in court.
Superior Court Judge James Fitzgerald sentenced Hansen to five years for drawing the gun on the Spenard woman, basing the punishment “heavily on the psychiatric evaluation.” Judge Fitzgerald could clearly see that Hansen was dangerous. However, because of the way offenders like Hansen were treated in those days in Alaska, he got out of jail quickly despite objections from the prosecutor. He had immediately applied for parole and was in jail only from March to June. In June he was assigned to a halfway house, where he received psychiatric treatment until November
In December, he was let out of the halfway house on a workfurlough 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 them again.
Then he started to hang around the strip joints, trying to lure dancers and prostitutes with the promise of money for a good time. He was always flashing a big wad of money, which was tempting to some women even though, at the time, many thought of Hansen as weird.
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. After a while the woman refused to cooperate - prostitutes worry about talking to the police and he was not charged, even though officers at the time were convinced he was guilty. Hansen, however, claimed that it was merely a dispute about money. Then, in 1976, Hansen was picked up for shoplifting a chain saw from a Fred Meyer’s store in Anchorage. This time the law treated Hansen’s offense severely because of his two previous felony convictions, the fire in Iowa and pointing his gun at the woman in Spenard. The judge sentenced him to five years - the sentence may have been harder if the judge had known of the two rape charges that had been filed against Hansen but thrown out.
Hansen appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court, arguing that his sentence was excessive - the court agreed, setting Hansen free in August 1978. In doing so, the court cited Hansen’s apparently stable family life and his job. Other than his shoplifting and two prior felonies, the court believed that Hansen lived a fairly normal life and thought that with psychiatric help he should be fine. They recommended that he be put on probation and treated, but the treatment never happened. Hansen was free again.
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. In a subsequent application he did not list any drugs - and was granted the license.
There was only one complaint on record against Hansen from that time until he was tracked down for murder, a complaint filed by a 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 had 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 respected businessman against that of a prostitute.
Finding a Suspect
Anchorage city police - and then Alaskan state police - had been receiving complaints about missing topless dancers and others who frequented the strip joint scene on Fourth Avenue, complaints that the police dismissed at first. Topless dancers tend to be a fairly transient group; when a few disappear, it doesn’t necessarily mean foul play.
Added up, though, the complaints were significant. The police realized that, since 1980, six dancers had disappeared from the Fourth Avenue clubs, and Anchorage police quietly formed what they called a “dancer task force” to look into the disappearances. Then, on September 13, 1982, a female body was discovered in a shallow grave by the Knik River, in the wilds about fifteen miles northwest of Anchorage. She had been shot once with a .223 caliber bullet; a shell casing was found nearby. In late September, the police got an ID: The victim’s name was Sherry Morrow, and she was a dancer at the Wild Cherry Club who had disappeared in November 1981. With the discovery of this woman - with a profile identical to that of the other missing women - the police department’s fears that a serial killer was at work in Anchorage were confirmed.
Since Morrow’s body was found outside the jurisdiction of city police, the state and city police combined forces to develop a list of suspects. One of the most important things they did was question again and again the women on the Fourth Avenue scene, women who had been bothered at the clubs, or who had been approached and offered money. One of the names that came up repeatedly in their questioning of these women was Robert Hansen.
Then, on June 13, 1983, a patrolman saw a seventeen-year-old prostitute running down Fifth Avenue. She was handcuffed and screaming, terrified. The patrolman, Gregg Baker, tracked
the woman through two motels and found her in one of them, still wearing handcuffs. She told him a man had taken her to his house and raped her. Baker found out about Hansen’s criminal history and passed it on to the task force. Immediately, Hansen became a prime suspect. Then something happened that made him the only suspect.
The remains of Paula Goulding were found in a remote area near the Knik River about twenty miles north of Anchorage. The grave site could not be reached by foot or vehicle - only by plane. Robert Hansen was the only one of the suspects who owned and flew an airplane.
The cops gathered everything they could and on October 27, 1983, brought Hansen in on the kidnapping and assault charges of the seventeen-year-old prostitute. They questioned him for five hours and were convinced that they had their perp, not only on the kidnapping and assault but also on the killings. But Hansen didn’t confess, even though police were able to blow away his alibi. (The wife of the friend who supplied him with the alibi said her husband had lied.)
The trial was held for the kidnapping and assault, while the investigation into the killings continued. Police, armed with search warrants, came up with some very damaging evidence against Hansen in his home, including an aeronautical map of south-central Alaska with twenty-one sites marked off, presumably for the graves of murder victims; a gun hidden under attic insulation, which was eventually linked to the killings of two women; a bag of jewelry containing a distinctive necklace worn by a missing dancer; and business cards of two missing dancers. These things, of course, were the trophies that Hansen used to relive the killings.
A Chilling Confession
At one point, Hansen “gave it up,” in police lingo (though no officer believes he gave it all up). He gave police a twelve hour confession during which he admitted to killing seventeen women and burying their remains in the wilds outside Anchorage.
He took a plane ride with the police and pointed out the burial sites he remembered. During his confession, Hansen went to great pains to rationalize his behavior. He said he would never kill “good women,” but prostitutes were something else. He could kill them with impunity. He explained that he had had problems with women since he was a teenager in Iowa and that women wouldn’t go out with him because of his acne and his stutter.
He said he always “loved” women, but he made a distinction — a sharp distinction — between good girls and bad girls. Bad girls could die. In the portion of his confession that follows, District Attorney Victor Krumm is questioning Hansen. The excerpt provides some insight into the mind of Robert Hansen. The final question is from Glenn Flothe, state investigator, and Hansen’s simple answer is quite chilling when one realizes its homicidal implications.
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. 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.
Afterword
In the spring of 1990, Robert Hansen was moved from the Lemon Creek Prison in Juneau to the maximum-security facility at Spring Creek in Seward, about 120 miles southwest of Anchorage. It was discovered that Hansen was collecting materials - including aeronautical maps - that indicated he was planning to try to escape from Lemon Creek.
More than one investigator thinks Robert Hansen has killed many more women than he has admitted to. He played a kind of hunt-and-kill game with them, releasing them in the wilderness and then hunting them down with a bow and arrow or rifle.
Some killers, police officers will tell you, have something likable about them. Monsters with charm, you might say. But according to exmajor Walter Gilmore of the Alaskan state police, there were no redeeming qualities about Hansen, and others have reflected Gilmore’s sentiments. The house where Hansen lived on Old Harbor Avenue is still there.
Never used a bow and arrow.
ReplyDeletealaska
Not mentioned was that he was an trophy hunter.
ReplyDeleteThe house on Old Harbor Road was not a log cabin, as has been stated. Also, Hansen did not limit his hunting to just hookers and strippers. Any vulnerable girl or woman might be "fair game" to him. See Sheila Toomey's articles in the Anchorage newspapers right after he was arrested. She did some interviews with survivors.
ReplyDeleteIam Brenda Fowler in book Fair Game and I know the real story about this man I testedfid on the stand and I I.D. some of the womens dead bodies.I was with Sherry Morrow when we met with him and I seen him take her and much more to the story,he tried to come and get me many times because he knew I knew it was him.Iam writing book HELL FREEZES OVER if you want to talk to me call 303-484-1267 BRENDA
ReplyDeleteiam Brenda Fowler and I am in the book Fair Game,I testedfid agaisnt him in court.Iwas with Shery Morrow when we met with him and I knew he took he and he came after me many times to kill me because he knew I knew it was him.I am writing a real story about him and what we women went through its called HELL FREEZES OVER.If you want to talk to me call 303-484-1267 brenda
ReplyDeleteTheres a young woman missing to this day her name is Samatha Koenig and she is missing from Alaska,We need to help this youg woman to come home.If any one knows anything about her please contact your local police or me 303-484-1267 Brenda
ReplyDeleteI know this site is for Robert Hansen and I am Brenda Fowler from Fair Game by Bernard DuClos.Iam writing to everyone there is a young woman missing now from Alaska and she needs all of our help,Her name is Samantha Koenig and her fathers name is James Koenig and if you have a daughter you know it would kill you if something happened to her,We as people on this earth need to stop this kind of stuff.It's not doing any good but to those that have these young women and can you sleep at night knowing that theres a woman paying for all kind s of things.Please print this,she needs to come home before it's to late.
ReplyDeletetontak eangst
Well, I'll try to do my best to help Samantha Koening parents, OK
ReplyDeleteThank you Andrea,Your help and kind heart will be doly noted and once again THANK YOU .Brenda Fowler
ReplyDeleteFrozen Ground coming out soon and there's alot of talk about how dare they make a movie let the strippers and whores be they don't need to be talked about and it was not just strippers,it also was women that he put an add in the paper for a woman and he got women calling and I know he killed many of them and I know he killed over 40 women .Shame on the state for not catching him before he really went crazy and killed anything he could get his hands on,They could have really caught him if only they would have listen to the women that were telling them we are missing well thats what strippers do.Thats what we were told. I just want to say there are more dead women out there and god bless them and I am so sorry that their story wont be told.My BOOK TELLS ABOUT ALL WOMEN THAT HE KILLED.HELL FREEZES OVER WILL BE OUT SOON!!!THE REAL STORY OF ROBERT HANSEN
ReplyDeleteThis is a very good blog, keep up!
ReplyDeleteYou are so right!!! He killed more than strippers.He would place a add in the paper or meet them at a friendly spot.The add was for wanting to meet someone special that enjoyed walks ,hunting,stars and the moon light.Yes he did prey on all women and alot were never found or the connection was never made.I want all to know that I and their families know it was him and it's time for them to get peace and to know that we all care and we are sad that they are no longer with us but their death can help other young women to beware and let others and others and others know.Brenda Fowler Iam in the book FAIR GAME
ReplyDeleteHELL FREEZES OVER coming out March,Robert Hansen told in a story not like no other.All stories need to be told about Robert so that the people invold will know what really happened to their loved ones.Its been along time but I have never forgotten.Brenda
ReplyDeleteThere is a Facebook Page under the name of Robert Hansen that some of us have tried to get deleted to no avail. What's up with this. Any ideas to get them to take the thing down we would appreciate. Some "Followers" should be investigated for crimes they may have committed or those that they are planning. Thanks,
ReplyDeleteHELL FREEZES OVER(How I Survived Serial Killer Robert Hansen) is now out.A different look at Robert Hansen .Lets take a moment to show respect for the young women that he killed.Thank you so much.Brenda Lee Fowler
ReplyDeleteI just seen Frozen Ground and what a let down.They show Sherri as the first young women that they found but it did not talk about her and it showed Paula getting killed but did not talk about her either.My book has mistakes but it also has the truth no matter how bad I look...It's not about Hollywood but what really went on in Alaska at that time and how I remember what happened.Like I said I don't look pretty in this book but it's what happened to me so there for you can see what all us girls were invold with and how scarey it really was and how we did live in HELL and the sad thing is we went on our own.....My God How Brave We Were.My life today has God and it was him that lets me talk about the girls and maybe we can save alife.Brenda Fowler
ReplyDeleteMs. Fowler - i have done a fair amount of research on this case, but cannot find your name anywhere. Can you describe when and how you came into contact with Hansen? Many thanks.
ReplyDelete"If Robert Hansen were murdering women today, the chances of him being
ReplyDeletecaught would be a lot greater than they were in the early 1980s, when he
was finally tracked down" From this statement, I will like to you ask, are you implying in this our time, there are no serial killers and are there not unsolved cases in the police force. The man started killing since 1971 till he was arrested in 1983. This proves that he kept changing his tactics. If he hadn't been arrested, he would have upped his game. We should all give thanks to Cindy Paula who escaped and saved a lot of teenagers who could have been his victim.
Yes indeed there are more killer's today .We give all kinds of info about our self's every day you go on the enternet and these killer's today are very smart and know how to cover them selves,they are right there watching everything you write about and also your kids.Yes God Bless Cindy,but there was women before her and it was 18 of my friends,They knew and I say they meaning Law enforcement but did not care because of the life that we chose to survive and yes it was not a pretty life.We too had dreams just like everybody else.People need to learn that they are not the judge and maybe more live's would be saved.God bless you for wanting to know about this unjust to young women that had dreams.Please keep a close eye out for someone that needs help,you never know who your saving.Brenda Fowler
ReplyDeleteYes I can,I'm in the book Fair Game by Bernard DuClos and I was with "Sherri" when we met Robert Hansen at Alice's two ten cafe and he thought he was going to take both of us...But my gut "which was GOD "told me not to go and I seen him hit her on her head and she went down and I ran after his car in 4 inch heels in 4 feet of snow it was Nov. and I beat myself up everyday that I didn't stop him.The reason I'm not talked about is because I was invold in a case that law enforcement thought was bigger than young women being killed which was Hells Angels...you see I married one and he was under cover and I'm in Hell's Angels Into The Abyss by Yves Lavigne's and a few more.When I first met Robert Hansen I was 14 and I testified in court at age 19 against him.I was to be put in the witness program but refused.My book tells some of the story"HELL FREEZES OVER(How I Survived Serial Killer Robert Hansen). My goal is to open shelter's for our young be boy or girl...they need us..If you really care about whats going "PLEASE HELP OUR YOUNG" for they are our future.I hope I was some kind of help for your answer's.GOD BLESS YOU.Brenda Fowler.
ReplyDeleteYou see there's many ?'s about who and if I'm real.Yes indeed I'm real and I tell what no other's tell.Are we really abscess with killer's that we don't care about the victim's?Do you know that when you want to get your fix about murder,that there's real people being killed?I'm not shocked that there's real killer's out there...I have known a few and you do too,but you don't know...Are these web site's for the good or bad?We can pray that some kind of help comes from these site's.Why I write on this one because I know this site tells the real story and they really are trying to tell you about these monster's.If you know or seen some thing thats not right please call your local police.Brenda Fowler
ReplyDeleteI believe I was almost a potential victim of hansen's in 1975. I had an appt with my dr. at the old community hospital on a miserable snowy day. My husband and I did not own a car so instead of hauling my new baby out in that weather I assured my husband I would be fine to walk by myself. About half way there i noticed a blue Volkswagen square back slowly circling every block I walked on. I made a mental note of it and told myself if it was there when I left I would call a cab to take me home. By the time I left, I had talked myself out of listening to my gut and proceeded to the long walk home. Within a block the car was back and this time the driver was asking if I needed a ride home. I didn't respond, kept walking and he kept following, circling every block like some four wheeled shark. I was so terrified that I walked into someone's house I didn't know(I'm sure I startled them) and told them what had happened. The lady called my husband and her husband stepped outside, saw the car pulled over to the side of the road with the engine still running. When he started toward that car, the driver took off. I KNOW that was this guy. He was the driver of the car that followed me. I never reported it to the police, there really was nothing to do, but I still have flashbacks to that day.
ReplyDeleteI would really like to talk to you,You put alot of work into looking up my story and I feel like you need to talk to me...I would like to talk to you and explain the real story...For some reason I trust you.Brenda Fowler
ReplyDeleteSpenard isn't a town, it is a road here in Anchorage.
ReplyDeleteLet me explain it again.Yes I am real and yes I tell a real story.I was also involved with a Hells Angels case at the same time and they thought busting Hells Angels was more important than dead women.I was to be put into the witness program but I said no.So theres not to much about me because of that.I am in the book Fair Game by Bernard DuClos and I did testified in court against Robert Hansen.I am also in Hells Angels books.One is Hell's Angels Into The Abyss. I feel the same way you do about not finding to much about me.But when you are to be put into a witness program that make all things about you disappear that is what they do.Can you find anything about me?NO,So before you are ready to judge me you need to know the facts and nothing but the FACTS. I'm here and I'm real.Get the court papers if your so willing to say I'm fake.I'm not hinding anymore and if you want to reach me do so and I'm more than willing to talk to you.Brenda Fowler.P.S. Have we really gotten to the point that we belive everything that is or is not on the enter net.Come on!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteDo you know that there are still case's that Robert Hansen has not been convicted for but they know he did it,there's women that are still missing to this day that answered his adds in the Anchorage Daily New's and Anchorage Time's personal adds and never been seen since.To this day they still don't know the truth about Robert Hansen and what he really did.Do you know that he kept the women for 2 weeks in his basement and abused and tortured them by burning with cigarette's and forks in the vagina,chains around their ankle's and wrist's and punching them over their whole body...I'm just one person that wants all the truths about Robert Hansen comes out.There are many killers moving to Alaska because they can get away with it.I just want to make people to beware of their surroundings and who they are with and if you don't know that much about some one and they are persistent about you going with them...don't go...If you have a gut feeling and I mean your belly ach's and your on edge and you think twice about going DON'T GO thats GOD talking to you.It don't matter if your a woman or man PLEASE BE CAREFUL...If you need help call me...303-484-1267 Brenda Fowler
ReplyDeleteIn a recent interview, the FBI profiler who worked on this case says he believes Hansen had killed in the lower 48 before he ever got to Alaska. He cites this as a reason for why he moved AK. Looking for a clean break.
ReplyDeleteFor a killer as dangerous, sadistic and brutally cruel as Hansen was...there's very little information on him, which I find rather strange.
He's just a really sickening man.
ReplyDeleteActually Spenard use to be a separate town from Anchorage. It is now considered a community but is also the name of a road that goes through the old town of Spenard. Most locals still call that entire area Spenard. Even the news still refers to that entire area as Spenard.
ReplyDeleteYes indeed he did kill before Alaska.He did say he killed over 50 women. I have done my share of Robert Hansen and I was there 37 years ago.HELL FREEZES OVER(How I Survived Serial Killer Robert Hansen) is my first book about Alaska and how at one time it was the WILD WILD WEST DAY'S and Women were a dime a dozen and there was the MOD and HELL'S ANGELS and Drugs and many SERIAL KILLERS in the 70's and 80's.My second book PIGS DO FLY will be out soon.I tell what no others tell about Alaska.Brenda Fowler.
ReplyDelete