B is for...Butcher Baker
Who would have known the town's baker and hunter would collect trophies from another kind of kill...
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On a chilling summer in Anchorage, Alaska on July 21, 1980, a body was discovered by local construction workers. The body was so severely decomposed and torn through by animals that it was hard to identify. In the same month the body of another woman (Exotic dancer, Joanne Messina) was found in a gravel pit, she too was badly decomposed so little evidence was found on her.
Two years later another woman’s body (Sherry Morrow) was found on September 12, 1982, in a shallow grave along the Knik River. She had been missing since November 17, 1981. 223 caliber shells were found at the scene and the woman had three bullet holes in her back but no holes in her clothes. Clearly, she had been shot and then redressed when she was buried.
One year later (September 2, 1983) another woman’s body was discovered along the same river. A seventeen-year-old dancer, Paula Goulding had also been dressed after being shot to death. Again, the same 223-caliber shells were found.
A fourth body, Sue Luna, was found on April 24, 1984. She too had been taken to the river, stripped and then shot.
In 1983, a 17-year-old sex worker named Cindy Paulson was found running frantically down Sixth Avenue, barefoot, half-naked, and handcuffed. After being picked up by a good samaritan and returned to safety, Cindy went to the police. She told police the offender offered two hundred dollars to perform oral sex on him. She agreed and got into his car where she described being held hostage by a man who’d handcuffed her to his car, held her at gunpoint, and taken her to his house where he chained her up by the neck in his basement. He tortured, sexually assaulted, and raped her. He then told her he would take her to his cabin in the Matanuska Valley (about 35 miles north of Anchorage). As the man prepared the plane for takeoff, Cindy managed to escape, leaving her shoes behind as evidence.
Robert Hansen fit the description of the kidnapper. Cindy even described his stutter, described his house, and identified his plane. But police were still reluctant to bring him in. After all, the local baker was a well-liked businessman in the community.
Hansen admitted that he had met the girl but claimed she was setting him up because he had refused to pay her extortionate demands. When he told police about his strong alibi, provided by a friend, he was released.
Born Robert Christian Hansen on February 15, 1939, in Estherville, Iowa. He had a dysfunctional and somewhat strained relationship with his Danish immigrant father who owned a bakery. He was also a strict disciplinarian. He worked long hours in the family bakery from a young age.
In his youth, Robert was painfully shy, had bad acne, and was mocked for his stutter. He was often described as a loner. Throughout his school years, he was bullied. The girls he liked ignored him and he would fantasize about seeking revenge. As a social outcast, he took refuge in time spent alone.
He took to hunting as a way to escape. Over time, he won several competitions and ever hit hunting records.
At age eighteen, Robert Hansen joined the United States Army Reserve. After serving a year in the reserves, he became an assistant drill instructor for the police academy in Pocahontas, Iowa. In 1960 he met a young woman there and they got.
At age 21, he convinced a young bakery employee to help him burn down a school bus garage. When the boy later confessed, Hansen was arrested. His wife divorced him while he was incarcerated. Serving only 20 months out of his three years for good behavior, Robert would continue to get arrested several times for petty theft over the next few years.
By 1967 he managed to remarry another local woman, had two children, moved to Anchorage Alaska, and opened up his very own bakery.
In 1972, he was arrested twice: once for the abduction and attempted rape of a housewife, and again for raping a prostitute. Unknown to authorities, his killing spree began in 1973, likely emboldened by his ability to walk free after his early crimes.
The year of 1976 Hansen was arrested again and sentenced to five years for shoplifting a chainsaw. However, he appealed that sentence and was released — while he continued to prey on strippers and sex workers who he forced to act out his twisted fantasies.
Meanwhile, Alaska State Troopers were convinced a serial killer was on the loose. Several sex workers and dancers had gone missing, and troopers were beginning to find bodies.
Hansen had now become a prime suspect when two bodies were discovered in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, along with .223 shell casings near the bodies. But the police needed hard evidence.
The FBI put together a psychological profile of the killer based on the details of the case and the injuries inflicted on the recovered bodies. He theorized that the killer was an experienced hunter with low self-esteem and a history of being rejected by women — and that he likely had a stutter.
Though he had been cleared several times before, there was no doubt about it: Robert Hansen fit the profile almost exactly. What’s more, he owned a bush plane and a cabin in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley.
The police soon obtained a warrant to search Hansen’s plane, car, and home. What they found shocked them. The horror that Robert Hansen’s victims had endured was almost too macabre to believe.
In Anchorage, Hansen was a respected business owner known for his skill as a bowhunter. The den in his home was decorated with hunting trophies and animals mounted on the walls, and he even set a few bowhunting records. But what no one knew is that for more than a decade, the hunter had also been collecting “trophies” from another kind of kill.
Hansen mainly targeted sex workers and exotic dancers from around Anchorage. He would kidnap the women and either drive or fly them in his private bush plane out to his cabin in the remote Alaskan bush.
If the women didn’t put up a fight, he would rape them and bring them back to town, threatening them into secrecy. But those who did not cooperate suffered a truly nightmarish fate.
Out in the wilderness — his favorite location was along Knik River — Robert Hansen would set the women free. For a moment they’d have hope that there was a chance to escape. Then, as they ran for their lives, he would track them down, taking his time, hunting them like wild animals.
Armed with a hunting knife and a .223-caliber Ruger Mini-14 rifle, he’d torture the women with this chase for hours or sometimes days at a time, until he located his prey and shot them like wild game.
While searching the Butcher Baker’s home, police found an aviation map of the area hidden in the headboard of the bed. It was marked with tiny “X’s” denoting the kill and burial sites of his victims.
Some of the “X” marks matched up with where police had found bodies. There were 24 “X’s” in all.
In the FBI's psychological profile of the killer, they predicted that the murderer would keep souvenirs from his prey. Sure enough, in the basement of Hansen’s home, police found a stash of jewelry. In the stash was a necklace that belonged to one of the victims.
Faced with the evidence in 1984, Hansen confessed to murdering 17 women and raping another 30 women over a 12-year period.
Robert Hansen was sentenced to 461 years plus life in prison without parole in 1984. He was imprisoned at Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward, Alaska, where he died in 2014.
As part of a plea bargain, the Butcher Baker was only ever charged with four of the 17 murders he confessed to — and some believe he actually killed more than 20 women.
In exchange for the reduced conviction, Robert Hansen agreed to assist police in locating the remaining bodies plotted on his kill map. Unfortunately, five of the bodies have still not been found to this day, and Hansen took the secret of their locations to his grave when he died of natural causes at 74.
LIST OF VICTIMS:
December 22, 1971 - Ceilia "Beth" Van Zanten, seventeen
July 7, 1973 - Megan Emerick, seventeen
July 5, 1975 - Mary Kathleen Thill, twenty-three
June 28, 1980 - Roxanne Eastland, twenty-four
July of 1980 - Joanne Messina, twenty-four
July 21, 1980 - "Eklutna Annie," sixteen to twenty-five
September 6, 1980 - Lisa Futrell, forty-one
November 17, 1981 - Sherry Morrow, twenty-four
December 2, 1981 - Andrea "Fish" Altiery
May 26, 1982 - Sue Luna, twenty-three
April 25, 1983 - Paula Golding, seventeen
April 25, 1984 - DeLynn "Sugar" Frey
April 26, 1984 - Teresa Watson
April 26, 1984 - Angela Feddern, twenty-four
April 29, 1984 - Tamera "Tami" Pederson, nineteen
Other victims, killed between 1980 and 1983:
Malai Larsen, twenty-eight
Jane Doe
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Disclaimer: by creating this blog & podcast on this topic, I am covering facts I have believed to be the most reliable from conducting my own research. If there are any details that are missing or inconsistent between this blog or podcast and the real case please feel free to leave a comment with any suggested edits. See the references below for more information.
REFERENCES:
D'oro, Rachel. “Alaska Serial Killer Dies, Decades after Murders.” AP NEWS, Associated Press, 22 Aug. 2014, https://apnews.com/article/6afc97f0e93b42668e5cd6a5743feb4b.
Dziemianowicz, Joe. “Who Is the 'Butcher Baker,' Alaska's Most Notorious Serial Killer, Who Turned the State into a Hunting Ground?” Oxygen Official Site, Oxygen, 11 Nov. 2021, https://www.oxygen.com/crime-news/who-is-serial-killer-robert-hansen-what-to-know-about-alaska-murderer.
Rosewood, Jack, and Rebecca Lo. “Robert Hansen.” The Big Book of Serial Killers: 150 Serial Killer Files of the World's Worst Murderers, Lak Publishing, Middletown, DE, 2019, pp. 173–175.
Serena, Katie. “The Serial Killer Who Hunted His Victims like Animals.” All That's Interesting, All That's Interesting, 10 Dec. 2021, https://allthatsinteresting.com/robert-hansen.
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