Original subtitles

Hansen: I showed her firearms,

told her what was gonna happen, told her, you know,

that she would not be hurt in any way, shape, or form

if she would just go along with me.

If things went exactly as I wanted them to,

by that evening, she'd be back.

Then, all of a sudden, she just turned around

and trying to scratch me in the eyes

and fight with me and so forth,

and, uh, it just went from bad to worse.

♪♪

Welcome to "Very Scary People."

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

In the early 1980s,

a steady stream of young dancers and sex workers

were vanishing off the streets of Anchorage, Alaska.

Soon bodies started turning up in the wilderness,

buried in shallow graves.

When investigators found matching bullet casings

in two of the sites,

they suspected that a serial killer was at work.

But who?

Investigators believe they may have a suspect.

A teenage prostitute told police a man assaulted her

and tried to fly her to his cabin in the woods.

Could it be the same man investigators were looking for?

This is part two of "The Butcher Baker."

♪♪

Daily: There was a big rumor on the streets

about something going on.

There have been reports of dancers and prostitutes

suddenly turning up missing.

♪♪

Then they found a body around the Knik River.

Daily: One of the first things that became visible after

was the victim's head.

Hale: And she has an ACE bandage wrapped around her head.

There was a .223 shell casing

that they ended up finding there.

Hale: The .223 caliber

come with a number of semi-automatic weapons.

They're designed to kill.

Beeman: One of the first inklings was,

"It's probably someone who knows his way around hunting."

Kasnick: I've thought a number of times

about what those women must have gone through,

the horror.

♪♪

They all knew they were gonna die.

No question about it.

Rice: One of these girls

got out of the car on the way to the airport.

She'd been able to escape.

Hale: Cindy Paulson got away.

She was absolutely able to identify Robert Hansen.

Evans: Robert Hansen had a bakery downtown.

Just about everybody frequented that bakery.

Bivins: He always usually worked the graveyard shift.

Like all bakers, they bake all night

so they can have fresh goods in the morning.

Beeman: That's why it wasn't unusual for him to be out

at all hours of night --

and the other thing, with the hunting...

Hale: He's a world-class hunter.

Beeman: ...he would be gone for days at a time.

But it was a woman of the streets

versus a respectable guy.

Two folks gave some pretty strong alibis.

Our assumption was the matter was over and done with.

Jordan: And then the body of Paula Goulding

was found near the Knik River.

Duclos: Both Sherry Morrow's and Paula Goulding's graves

contained one single shell casing from a .223 rifle,

and that linked the two cases immediately.

Hale: And they're starting to think now

that they have a serial killer on their hand.

♪♪

Jordan: Alaska state trooper Glenn Flothe has been trying

to dig up everything that exists on Robert Hansen.

Glenn Flothe is pretty sure he has a potential suspect.

♪♪

Evans: When they started digging,

they found out that Robert Hansen

actually had quite a history.

♪♪

Jordan: In November of 1971,

a real-estate secretary named Susie Heppeard

exchanged glances with a man at a traffic light.

And it was kind of a reflex smile

'cause he was looking at her, apparently.

And the light changed, and then they drove on.

This young woman, this real-estate secretary,

was all of 18 years old.

Duclos: Heppeard got back home,

and, uh, she decided to take a shower.

Hale: And he decided to come up to the house

and knocked on her door.

[ Knock on door ]

And he had an excuse that nobody would use now, but it was,

"Hey, I need to use a phone book.

Do you have a phone book? I need to make a phone call."

Duclos: And she agrees...

amazingly.

Hale: And he goes in,

and he says, "Can we have a date?"

And Susan Heppeard says, "No, I've got a boyfriend."

And so Hansen departs.

♪♪

Heppeard gets up at a very early hour, 5:00,

and dresses and goes out to her car.

He's there waiting for her with a gun.

♪♪

She was petrified. She started to scream.

Duclos: And one of her roommates comes to the window

and sees her down there with this guy holding a gun

and calls the police.

Hale: He runs -- ditches his gun,

ditches his hat.

Duclos: The police show up relatively quickly.

Rice: They had a K-9 unit.

The K-9 unit tracked him, found some clothing, I believe,

and a .357 revolver.

They see this guy walking, and he doesn't have a coat,

and he looks kind of out of place and they stop him,

and...it's Bob Hansen.

Duclos: His excuse of why he was on foot

was that he had been driving and started to feel woozy

and had stopped his car and got out.

And when he was told about what he was considered

a suspect for, his response was,

"Well, if I did that, I don't remember it

'cause I blacked out."

Hale: There's really something insidious about this guy,

that he looks so harmless.

His answers don't make any sense.

Rice: I thought at least we had the beginnings of a kidnap

'cause he's moved her with a gun,

and anytime you do that, that's kidnapping.

I couldn't convince the D.A. of that,

and what they finally wound up doing

is charging him with assault with a dangerous weapon,

which is a felony.

♪♪

We knew we were not gonna see the last of him.

So I took my own camera down and started a --

what we called a sex-offender book.

And he's the first picture in it.

We all knew that we were gonna see him again

and it was gonna get worse the next time.

♪♪

♪♪

Beeman: Prostitutes and dancers were being murdered.

They were finding bodies.

They knew there was something happening.

Jordan: Cindy Paulson was the 17-year-old sex worker

who had I.D.'d Robert Hansen as the man

who had kidnapped, tortured, and raped her.

Evans: When they started looking back,

they realized that Robert Hansen had quite a track record.

♪♪

♪♪

Hale: Bobby is out on his own recognizance,

so there's no bail required.

It's just, "You promise to come back for your court date."

♪♪

It's very late at night,

3:00 in the morning.

Duclos: A young woman, Patty Roberts,

had done some dancing at some nightclub in Anchorage.

She stopped at a café

to get a cup of hot tea.

♪♪

Her stopping at that café was just a random thing.

She ordered her tea.

And then she recalled that she'd left her car running,

so she went back out to shut off the engine.

Hale: Here comes this man with a gun,

forces her into his car,

and he's kidnapping her.

♪♪

They drive down the road, and then he stops

and binds her with shoelaces.

He said, "I'm taking you down to the Kenai.

We're going to be together for a few days.

If you try to do anything,

I'll kill you and anybody who sees you."

Kenai is about three hours South of Anchorage.

Hale: You are in the bush.

There are only pockets of people living that far south.

♪♪

He undresses her at various points

because he doesn't want her to get away.

Duclos: Hansen drove them down and stopped at the Sunrise Motel

and of course told her

she better not do anything stupid or he'd kill her.

He did rape her.

Hale: He's really kind of looking for rough sex.

Patty is trying her best to do whatever he wants

'cause she feels it's her life if she doesn't.

♪♪

Duclos: He told her that she was good,

that he liked her,

and so he was gonna then take her to some cabin.

♪♪

Hale: Now she's really scared.

But she just keeps talking.

"I'm not gonna tell on you.

Don't worry. Don't worry."

Pat told him that she was a single mother,

that she had a baby.

Hale: And he learns that her child

is staying with her parents.

It certainly -- It was a double-edged sword for her

because he's going to use this as power over her

because when he goes through her purse,

he finds a slip of paper

that has her son's name

and her father's name and address.

He told her, "I know where your parents are,

so if you ever mention this or I get called up on this,

I'll harm your parents and your child."

That sort of gave him enough confidence --

"Okay, I can let her go" -- because he has the address

and their names.

For him, it's the threat, "I'll come after you."

Duclos: Hansen took her back to the café

where her car was parked and let her go.

Rice: She never told him that her dad was a state trooper.

At no time did she ever tell him that.

♪♪

Duclos: Patty was reluctant.

She didn't come forward immediately,

but she eventually came forward and filed a complaint.

I got a call from a state trooper investigator

who said he had a victim with him

and that they wanted to look at the book.

They knew we had started this book,

what we called a sex-offender book.

Hansen was number one in our sex-offender book

for assault with a deadly weapon.

The case with Susan Heppeard.

Rice: She immediately identified Robert Hansen

as the person who did it.

So, we got an arrest warrant,

went to his residence, arrested him.

His wife was there.

She didn't say much -- the wife didn't.

It had to be terribly difficult for her.

Hale: And, of course, Hansen,

when he was confronted by police

with the story about Patty Roberts,

mentions "She's a prostitute,

and we had a fight over the money.

That's all that happened."

♪♪

Rice: What I would have hoped

that the D.A.'s office would have done

is taken those two,

combine those two together, then let him plead to 20 years.

And he probably would have done it.

But, unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

Hale: They have a strong case

against Robert Hansen in both cases,

but the problem is that one of the victims was a dancer.

Rice: For some reason or other, D.A.s are scared to death

to take a case like that before a jury,

thinking the jury will prejudge her.

Hale: So, they essentially said, "We're gonna drop the case

against Patty Roberts,

go hard on the case with this Susan Heppeard."

They made a deal.

Hansen didn't have to go to trial.

He learned a lesson there, albeit indirectly --

"Oh. So, I'm not getting in trouble for the dancer,

but I'm getting in trouble for the real-estate secretary.

Okay. I got it."

Jordan: But Hansen told officers

he couldn't remember attacking Susie Heppeard,

so a psych eval is ordered.

Hale: They say he's schizophrenic.

He has dissociative personality with schizophrenia.

And they're like, "He needs counseling more than he needs prison."

♪♪

♪♪

Rice: I still can't believe it.

I mean, with his history, why he did three months --

I don't have a clue.

"He's reformable, you know? He's got skills.

He's got a family. He's got kids."

He was right there, and of course he couldn't help it.

He was just in the shadows.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Jordan: In 1983, Glenn Flothe,

who's been investigating this case of the missing dancers,

approached the FBI and asked the Behavioral Science Unit

to develop a profile of the subject

responsible for these crimes.

Profiles were one of the most important tools in the toolbox

for solving murder cases.

What do you look for when you're investigating a serial killer?

Jordan: The FBI would help work up a profile.

They pointed to so many things that fit Robert Hansen,

who he was.

He's an avid hunter.

He had a speech impediment.

A man who had a wife who would be extremely religious,

and he would probably be a very successful businessman.

Someone living a double life, compartmentalized to the max.

♪♪

In 1976,

Robert Hansen attempts to steal a chain saw

from a Fred Meyer department store.

His explanation of that was so circuitous,

I never quite followed that.

Hale: He wanted to steal a chain saw

to give to his dad for his birthday.

I mean, here's a guy that's got plenty of money.

Beeman: Then when he stole this chain saw,

they looked at that, and that was his third felony.

And there was a lot of, "Should we throw the book at him?"

Hale: His wife, Darla, had this whole coterie of people

to come forward -- "He's a good guy, deserves a break."

Beeman: I think that she thought that she could help him,

and each time that he would get arrested,

he would go back to church for a while

and try to, you know, walk that kind of path with her.

Duclos: He was sentenced to five years,

and then his lawyer appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court.

Jordan: They argue that as long as Robert Hansen

can get treatment for his mental illness,

he can be a productive member of society.

♪♪

Duclos: Things had fallen through the cracks.

Hansen's release in 1978

ended up being totally unsupervised.

He still had the obsessions.

When he was out on parole,

he'd still glide down to Fourth Avenue

just like he always did to see the girls.

♪♪

Evans: The fantasy that he built up about this,

being out in the wilderness

and having that opportunity

to do with these women what he wanted to do,

had something to do with his wilderness experience.

It's a harrowing drive.

It's rutted roads.

He ended up getting stuck out there.

What kicks in there is this sort of flight-or-fight reaction.

She fought.

♪♪

He can't believe he did that.

♪♪

Her body is not discovered until the following year.

Beeman: They found her body in 1980,

and they have not identified her since.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome back to "Very Scary People."

Investigators looking into the disappearance and murder

of several dancers and prostitutes

suddenly discovered Robert Hansen

had a disturbing criminal history

dating back to the 1970s.

Could the quiet baker be the man

terrorizing the streets of Anchorage?

♪♪

Duclos: Probably the most important case

that existed in Alaska at the time

was the missing dancers case.

Rice: The state troopers -- they had a group

that was just looking at what's happening to these girls.

Jordan: The bodies of Sherry Morrow and Paula Goulding

had both been found in the same general area

along the Knik River,

and in both their graves were matching shell casings.

Hale: So, they're sending off the shells

to the FBI lab at Quantico

and they come back and they say, "Same gun" --

not just that they're the same kind of shell,

but they have the same kind of markings,

so they're definitely tied

to one particular weapon.

Specifically, the Mini-14.

They really want that Mini-14.

Kasnick: What really started the focus on Hansen

was the escape of Cindy Paulson.

I think that's when the realization

that there was a connection with the bodies

that we were recovering from the Knik area

may have been related to Bob Hansen.

Jordan: The police have circumstantial evidence

connecting Bob Hansen to these crimes,

but they don't have proof.

And remember -- DNA was in its infancy.

They had no DNA connection.

They had some bullet casings,

but they didn't have the gun that they came from.

It was going to take something very specific --

a hair, a fiber, or a piece of jewelry, a memento --

something that could link these women

directly to Robert Hansen.

♪♪

Hale: What they know about serial killers is they tend

to keep mementos from their kills and hide them

and bring them out in select periods of time

and relive the kill.

One of the things they're looking for

is something

that Sherry Morrow's boyfriend talked about,

which is the arrowhead necklace.

♪♪

It's like a mini invasion.

They have to hit the plane. They have to hit his house.

They have to hit the bakery.

So it's a very coordinated operation.

Really, it felt like it was a race against time.

They brought Hansen in.

This was an emerging FBI technique

where you confront a witness

with some of the evidence you have

that may scare them into a confession.

So they had case files all over the desk,

they had photos of the victims,

and they had a big map of the Knik

with a circle drawn,

saying, "Bob Hansen was spotted here."

And so it wasn't subtle.

♪♪

They ask Hansen, "We found some of your brass

out there on the Knik.

What was it doing there?"

"Oh, I just go up there and practice shooting wolves."

"Oh, you do?" "Yeah. In my plane.

I just fly over and shoot at wolves in my plane."

He's got an excuse for it all.

He's not biting.

And all they're really looking for is something to hold him,

keep him in jail, continue to develop their evidence.

While they're doing that,

they're in touch with the people in the house.

"Are you finding anything?"

And they keep saying, "No, we haven't found the .223.

No, we haven't found any mementos."

And Flothe's freaking because he's not breaking, either.

And they have a long interrogation.

It takes several hours.

And then at some point, you know, he asked for a lawyer.

And so that's over.

Evans: The search took hours.

I mean, they are going through boxes in storage rooms

out in the garage.

Hale: They're at the house so long

that Glenn Flothe finishes with Hansen

and comes to the house to help look.

So, they're going through the basement.

That's where all the trophies are.

They find guns.

They don't find the one they're looking for.

They were not finding what they had hoped to find.

Hale: The strongest case they had

was kidnapping, rape,

assault with a dangerous weapon --

Cindy Paulson.

And then when they're doing the investigation,

the wife of one of the alibi witnesses

showed up at the Hansen house,

and she sees everything that's going on

and she gets ahold of her husband and say,

"That story that you told the cops

about your good buddy Hansen --

you better tell them the truth."

And he rolls over.

And once he rolls over, they both roll over.

The whole story kind of falls apart.

♪♪

But they still need to make the murder case.

They need something that that's gonna tie him.

♪♪

Jordan: Behind Robert Hansen's headboard,

the police discovered an incredible piece of evidence.

It's kind of like a light clicked

and they went, "Oh, my gosh."

♪♪

♪♪

[ Gulls crying ]

♪♪

They met in the harbor area where he had his boat.

Things kind of started off being a little flirtatious.

He always kind of craved having a normal relationship.

Hale: She was originally from New York State.

She trained as a nurse.

And he thinks, "Maybe I'll have a real kind of date with her."

She asked him for money, and, in his brain,

she's now a prostitute.

And they ended up, he says, struggling and fighting.

[ Two gunshots ]

He stuffed her in a sleeping bag and just left her.

She had a dog. He shot the dog.

[ Gunshot ]

♪♪

Kasnick: The house had been being searched

by several investigators

throughout the course of the entire day.

Hale: And then there's only one place left to look,

and that's in the attic.

And they send a guy named Kasnick up there.

The search actually required you to be down on all fours.

He's going batt by batt, pulling it up,

gets to the very rear of the house.

Kasnick: And it was about a third of the way up

from the end of the structure under the insulation

that I found the stash of guns

and the Mini-14.

Evans: And then as the one officer is getting ready

to come down out of the attic,

he pulls up a couple of batts,

and that's where they find the bags.

I found the plastic bag with the jewelry in it,

and that was pretty chilling.

I was absolutely convinced

that it was, in fact, a collection of jewelry

and items from the women that he had murdered.

There were rings. There were watches.

There was driver's licenses.

They find the arrowhead necklace

that belongs to Sherry Morrow.

♪♪

So, they're searching the house. They find a map.

It's an aviation map. It's got some marks on it.

It's behind the headboard of his bed.

And they don't initially think much of it.

They think it's maybe hunting spots.

But they show it to the guy who investigated

the murder of Joanna Messina,

and they say, "Hey, where did you find her body?"

And he said, "Right here, but you've already marked it.

You've already got it marked."

And Flothe says, "We didn't mark it.

Bob Hansen marked it."

And then they knew.

That was -- That was really the, "Oh, my."

So, immediately, they assumed all those other X's

represent relatively the same thing.

There was 24 X's.

Hale: These are where bodies are buried.

♪♪

♪♪

It was very difficult to have an airtight case against Hansen,

and at the end of the day,

Hansen had not confessed to any of the homicides.

And so it was still a circumstantial case

and very complicated, a lot of legalities.

They put Hansen in jail, and he stews,

and they keep dropping hints

that they're finding more information.

In February, they get a call from his attorneys,

and the exact quote is, "He wants to clear the decks."

It was clear to us that what he wanted to do was confess.

We weren't quite sure the extent of the confession,

but it was clear that what he wanted to do

was go over and...

confess his sins.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Evans: I think the driver in all of this was the publicity,

that he was very, very concerned about the long-term effects

that it would have on Darla and the children.

They start the interview off very low-key, very slow.

Hale: He knows they've got four,

and the four are the ones they've already found --

so, Sherry Morrow, Paula Goulding,

Eklutna Annie, and Joanna Messina.

That's it. That's all.

There's no more.

Evans: When they got down to specific details about murders,

he would try and shift the responsibility,

the blame, to the women.

"She attacked me. She tried to run.

She tried to escape.

She started screaming.

If they'd only done what I'd asked them,

I would have brought them back."

♪♪

The minute that a girl stood up for herself,

that hit a very vulnerable Achilles' heel

that Bob Hansen had never gotten over from his teen years.

He just wanted an excuse to kill these women

almost as a symbolic revenge

on every woman that had ever rejected him.

Hale: So, he does confess to some of the killings,

but he makes a mistake,

and he reveals one that's not one of those four.

He doesn't know their names,

and he doesn't really know their pictures.

He just knows locations.

And so now he's up to five.

But by this point, the troopers have a map,

an aviation map that they found.

There's at least 24 marks on this map.

Beeman: They do believe there's more people who he killed

because of how many X's there were.

It was certainly clear to me that it was not five.

It was an eye-opener, to say the least.

From the beginning, he had not been open with us.

It was like a scorecard for him.

Evans: I think he insisted

that only 17 of them had a body there.

For some of those, he specifically said,

"There's nothing there."

♪♪

Hale: So, they fly up to the Knik River.

Bob Hansen's wearing nothing but a sweatshirt and some snowshoes.

And he just leaps out like a rabbit, and he says,

"There's one there" and then "There's one there."

He went with investigators around the area

and pointed out various gravesites.

Hale: In a very real way, he's reliving his crimes.

This is better than mementos.

He's at the scene.

Duclos: Then he went down on his knees

and started frantically digging through the snow with his hands.

Jordan: And the recovery of the body

is really irrelevant to him.

It's the idea that he can taste it, feel it, smell it.

The fantasy is gonna flood over him all over again.

He was able to recall within a few feet

where he had left bodies.

That in itself is pretty remarkable,

pretty chilling.

♪♪

♪♪

I was up on the banks of the Knik River

with a number of other people

and had been to a number of the gravesites

and recovered remains.

That's one of those things that will stay with me forever.

It's hard to think about what those women went through.

It really is.

Jordan: The final autopsy reports

on the victims of Robert Hansen

indicated that, towards the end,

he was literally spraying them with bullets in the back.

Hale: He wasn't content to shoot them,

but he had to stab them, as well.

He's destroying them.

He's trying to utterly destroy them.

Jordan: So, he did become the big-game hunter,

and the women became his prey.

♪♪

Hale: The judge hands down

the longest sentence he can

under the sentencing guidelines,

which is 461 years.

The judge is unsparing.

He condemns the courts and the police.

Everybody along the line failed.

He called this case an indictment of society.

Hale: If they'd have stopped him in 1971,

there would've been a lot of women alive right now.

We let those gals down. I mean, we did.

Beeman: Law enforcement chose to...

follow their biases that...

just because a woman

is living as a prostitute

or a topless dancer,

she's not to be trusted.

♪♪

I think Robert Hansen was very adept

at fooling everybody.

He was really good at hiding his evil side.

Hale: I always think of Darla.

"Darla, did you know he was doing these things?"

And, you know, her response was, "Who could imagine anybody

was doing these things, much less your husband?"

Daily: And he basically looked like Joe Citizen.

He gave off an impression of being mild-mannered,

but he was able to take that in a flick of a switch

and turn into the monster.

♪♪

Investigators are still trying to identify Eklutna Annie

using modern forensics

and genetic genealogy.

They're hopeful that one day

they will be able to give Annie

a proper name.

In 2014,

Robert Hansen died in prison

of natural causes.

He was 75 years old.

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

Thanks for watching.

Good night.