All right, welcome back to the Deep Dive. So
for this one, we're pointing the compass north.
And I don't mean just a little bit north. No,
we're going way up. All the way up to Anchorage,
Alaska. But we're not there for the beautiful
scenery or the northern lights. Or the Iditarod,
no. We are basically stepping into a time machine.
Yeah. And we're setting the dial for a very specific
and I think very volatile era. We're talking
the 1970s and early 80s. It is the perfect setting
for the story we're about to unpack. You really
have to understand the... the whole atmosphere
of Anchorage in that window of time. Right. This
was the era of the Trans -Alaska Pipeline. It
was, I mean, it was an absolute boom town. Money
everywhere. Money was flowing like water. People
were just flooding in from the lower 48. And
there was this... This palpable sense of chaotic
energy. It was a place where you could go to
get rich or to get lost or to just completely
reinvent yourself. And that idea, reinvention,
that's really the anchor for this whole thing,
isn't it? Absolutely. Because if you were walking
down the street in Anchorage back then, you might
have bumped into this guy, a guy named Bob. and
bob was you know the picture of the alaskan dream
he was a family man married two kids and he owned
a local business a bakery which was you know
a staple of the community a baker by all surface
metrics he was a pillar of that society he was
described as mild -mannered soft -spoken Maybe
a little socially awkward, but, you know, generally
well -liked by his neighbors. And he was this
incredible outdoorsman. Oh, fiercely dedicated.
He held multiple world records with the Pope
and Young Club for bow hunting. This was the
guy you'd ask for tips on, you know, tracking
doll sheep or where the best fishing spots were.
Right. Bob the baker. That was the whole persona.
But the reason we're here today, the reason for
this deep dive is the terrifying reality that
lived just underneath that apron. We're talking
about Robert Hansen. The man who would eventually
be known not as the baker, but as the butcher
baker. And that nickname, as gruesome as it is,
it really only just scratches the surface. We're
looking at one of the most prolific serial killers
in the history of the United States, and without
a doubt, the darkest chapter in Alaska's history.
I mean, the numbers are just staggering. Hansen
confessed to murdering 17 women. But the authorities,
and all the evidence we're going to look at,
they suggest the true number is... is likely
much higher, possibly into the 30s. What really
gets me looking through the source material for
this case is the method. It's not just that he
killed. It's how he did it. It feels like something
a screenwriter would invent for a horror movie.
But this was real. It was very real. We're talking
about a modus operandi that involved a private
airplane, the vast, empty wilderness of Alaska,
and an... Literal hunt. It's uniquely horrifying.
And we're going to unpack the psychology of a
man who was, you know, professionally diagnosed
as having an infantile personality, yet he had
the cunning to evade capture for more than a
decade. And he was doing it all in plain sight.
Right in plain sight. Using the rugged nature
of Alaska as both a weapon and a shield. We have
a massive amount of ground to cover here. We're
going to go all the way back to his roots in
Iowa to see where the cracks really began to
form. And we have to talk about the truly shocking
judicial failures. And I mean shocking. The times
he was let go when he should have been put away
for years. Absolutely. And then there's the incredible
survival story of Cindy Paulson, the teenage
girl who finally, finally brought him down. And
the investigation itself is fascinating, especially
the role of criminal profiling. This case is
basically a master class in behavioral science.
You have a profile from the FBI that was so accurate
it practically gave the detectives the guy's
home address. It's one of those real truth is
stranger than fiction moments. So, OK, let's
start at the beginning. Before the bakery, before
the pilot's license, before any of the murders.
We have to go back to Iowa. We need to look at
Robert Christian Hansen, born February 15th,
1939, in Estherville, Iowa. When you look at
the early reports, the biographical data, it
just. Yeah. The trajectory seems to be set so
early on. It really does. We always look for
the why in these deep dives, right? Trying to
find the seed of the pathology. With Hansen,
the environment he grew up in was, it was rigid.
To say the least. He was the son of a Danish
immigrant baker, Christian Hansen. And the records
describe the father as domineering, a very strict
kind of old world disciplinarian. And Robert
himself, he didn't exactly fit in with the, you
know, the rough and tumble boys of rural Iowa
in the 40s and 50s. Oh, far from it. He was at
a disadvantage from day one physically and socially.
He was described as painfully shy. And he had
the stutter. A severe stutter, which made any
communication a source of constant anxiety for
him. And then, as if that wasn't enough, he hits
adolescence and develops a severe cystic acne
that left his face permanently scarred. We've
seen this kind of narrative before in other profiles
we've looked at. That combination of a really
domineering father and intense social isolation
at school just creates a pressure cooker. It's
a textbook example. He was the classic outcast.
The sources describe this deep, festering sense
of rejection, especially from women. He couldn't
talk to girls without stuttering. He felt ugly
because of the scars. He was just a quiet loner
who... Felt like the whole world was laughing
at him. Exactly. And when a young man feels completely
powerless in all his social interactions, he's
often going to seek out a domain where he can
exert absolute power. And for Robert Hansen,
that domain was the woods. Precisely. He turned
to hunting and archery not just as a hobby, but
as a refuge. A total escape. Think about the
psychology of that. In the woods, he didn't need
to speak, so his stutter didn't matter. The animals
didn't care about his acne scars. In the woods,
he was the master of the situation. He became
obsessed with it, didn't he? Yeah. He got really,
really good at it. Yeah. This wasn't just some
casual weekend thing for him. No, he practiced
incessantly. And this is such a crucial insight
for anyone listening. He established this pattern
very early on of finding his self -worth and
his sense of control through the act of stalking
and killing. It was the one place he succeeded.
The one place he felt powerful. The one place
where he could dictate whether another living
thing lived or died. And that transfer of power
from feeling helpless in high school to feeling
godlike in the forest, that is the foundation
for everything that comes later. It's a coping
mechanism that just... curdled into something
incredibly dangerous. And we know it wasn't just,
you know, teenage angst because we have the clinical
data from his early adulthood. Right. During
an early incarceration, which we'll get to in
a second, he was diagnosed with manic depression,
what we'd now call bipolar disorder. There were
also notes about periodic schizophrenic episodes.
But there was another diagnosis that really stands
out. The one that, to me, explains the butcher
baker. The infantile personality. Exactly. Let's
unpack that term because it sounds almost contradictory
for a guy who's capable of such organized, calculated
violence. It's all about emotional maturity,
or in his case, the complete lack of it. It suggests
a person who processes the world like a coddler,
entirely egocentric, totally unable to handle
frustration. And prone to these huge rages when
they don't get what they want. Disproportionate
rage, exactly. The psychiatrist who examined
him noted he had an obsession with getting back
at people who he felt had wronged him. So if
a girl in school rejected him, he didn't just
feel sad or embarrassed. He felt this burning
need for vengeance. Exactly right. He couldn't
process rejection as a normal part of life. To
him, it was a personal attack that required a
counterattack. And we see this manifest violently
for the very first time in 1960. This was the
arson incident. Yes. He's 21 years old at this
point. He burns down the Pocahontas County Board
of Education's school bus garage. A school bus
garage. I mean, that is such a specific, symbolic
target. It was explicit revenge. He told the
authorities he did it because he felt he'd been
mistreated in high school. Think about that.
He's 21, technically an adult, but he is still
stewing over high school grudges so much that
he commits a major felony. That perfectly illustrates
that infantile obsession with revenge. It really
does. He was arrested for that and got a three
-year sentence. He ended up serving 20 months.
And you would hope that, you know, prison time
would be a wake -up call, but it seems like it
just hardened him. It was just a pause, not a
stop. It's a good way to put it. After he got
out, He had a string of rennans for petty theft.
His first wife divorced him while he was locked
up, which, you know, likely just poured gasoline
on that fire of resentment toward women. But
the real turning point, the moment the trajectory
shifts toward the serial killer we know, that's
in 1967. That's the move to Alaska. Right. He
marries his second wife, a woman he met after
his release, and they head north. And you have
to remember what we said about Anchorage in the
late 60s. It was the perfect place for a guy
with a record to just... Disappear into the crowd.
A clean slate. And for a while, it seemed like
he did it. He made it. He opens the bakery. He
starts racking up those hunting records. He's
getting featured in the local newspapers for
his archery skills. He's building the mask. He's
building that Bob the Baker mask piece by piece.
It's the classic mask of sanity. On the surface,
he looked like a hyperproductive member of society.
But the geography of Alaska didn't cure his pathology.
It just gave him a bigger, wilder playground.
The old resentments were all still there, just
bubbling under the surface. And this is where
the story becomes so incredibly frustrating.
I think for our listeners, this next section
is just, it's going to be the hardest to hear
because it really highlights. how preventable
these murders were. Oh, absolutely. Before the
killing started in earnest, there were these
massive flashing red flags. We're talking about
the period between 1971 and 1976. This section
of the timeline is just a scathing indictment
of the judicial system of that era. In December
1971, Hansen was arrested twice. And we're not
talking about, you know, stealing a candy bar.
Okay, let's break down those two incidents. The
first one involved him abducting a housewife.
He held her at gunpoint. He attempted to rape
her. I mean, that is a violent predatory felony.
There's no gray area there. And the second one
in the same month. The second incident involved
the rape of a sex worker. He was picked up and
charged for both of these crimes. So you have
a guy with a known history of arson and theft.
Now he's arrested for abduction, attempted rape
and rape. In any logical world, this man goes
to prison for a long, long time. 10, 20 years.
In a logical world, yes. But here's what actually
happened. He pleaded no contest to assault with
a deadly weapon for the abduction. And the rape
charge involving the sex worker, it was dropped
completely as part of a plea bargain. Gone. And
for the assault charge, the one he pleaded no
contest to, he was sentenced to five years. But,
and this is the part that just hurts to even
say, he served only six months. Six. Wait, six
months? Six months. And it wasn't even, you know,
a hard time. He was put on a work release program.
Six months. He abducted a woman at gunpoint and
he served less time than a school year. Just
how does that even happen? It was a perfect storm
of things. Overcrowded prisons, for one. A kind
of frontier justice mentality that sometimes
prioritize second chances for, you know, hardworking
family men. And let's be honest, a deep bias
against the victims. A huge bias. The court looked
at Robert Hansen and they saw Bob the Baker.
They saw a businessman, a neighbor. They did
not see the monster. So they minimized the threat
he posed. It's terrifying. He basically learned
a lesson from this. And the lesson was, I can
attack women and get a slap on the wrist. It
absolutely emboldened him. And then you fast
forward to 1976 and he gets caught stealing a
chainsaw from a Fred Meyer store. A pretty petty
crime compared to the violence, but still. Right.
And he gets sentenced to five years for larceny.
The court even orders him to get psychiatric
treatment. So they recognize something is deeply
wrong with this guy. But the Alaska Supreme Court.
reviews the case, and they reduce his sentence.
He's released for time served. So again and again,
the system had him in its grip, and again and
again, it just let him go. And authorities now
believe the murders began right in the middle
of all this leniency, around 1972. While the
courts were letting him out on work release,
he was very likely already killing. He realized
that if he was careful, if he picked the right
victims, nobody was going to stop him. Which
brings us to the modus operandi, because once
he realized he could get away with it, he escalated
from these, you know, crimes of opportunity to
a highly ritualized, horrifying system. This
is where the plane comes in. A pilot's license,
yeah. Yeah. Hansen owned a Piper PA -18 Super
Cub. Now, for any aviation geeks listening, the
Super Cub is a legendary bush plane. It's small.
It's got a powerful engine for its weight. And
most importantly, it can land almost anywhere.
Exactly. It has these high -lift wings and big,
fat tundra tires. It can take off and land on
a dime. You don't need a runway. You just need
a gravel bar, a frozen lake, a patch of flat
ground. Which means he had access to parts of
Alaska that were... Completely, totally inaccessible
to police cruisers or any regular vehicle. Precisely.
He used the plane to create this huge disconnect
between the abduction site and the eventual crime
scene. He would target women in Anchorage, usually
sex workers, dancers, transients. Women he felt
society wouldn't miss, or at least wouldn't miss
immediately. That was the calculation. He would
stalk them, learn their movements, and then abduct
them at gunpoint, usually forcing them into his
car first. But he didn't just take them to a
basement, though we know he did torture victims
in his home sometimes. Yeah. The endgame was
always the wilderness. Always. He would drive
them to Merrill Field or another small airstrip,
load them into the Super Cub, and fly them out
to the Nick River Valley or the Mataniska -Susitna
Valley. These vast, empty places. I mean, try
to put yourself in the victim's shoes for just
a second. You've been abducted. You're in this
tiny, noisy plane. You look out the window and
all you see are mountains, glaciers, and just
endless forest. You know that even if you land,
there's absolutely nowhere to run. That psychological
terror was a huge part of his gratification.
He was isolating them completely from the world.
And once he landed on some remote gravel bar
or a secluded strip, that's when the game would
begin. He didn't just execute them. No. He would
strip them naked or partially naked, and he would
tell them to run. He turned it into a sport.
He hunted them. He used a Ruger Mini -14. It's
a .223 caliber semi -automatic rifle. It's a
serious weapon, lightweight, reliable, high capacity.
It's often used for hunting small game or varmints.
And that's what he saw them as. He treated these
women exactly like the animals he tracked for
a sport. He'd give them a head start, and then
he would track them down and shoot them. It's
the ultimate expression of that infantile need
for control. I am the hunter, you are the prey.
There's no ambiguity there. It is the most dangerous
game. It satisfied every single dark impulse
he had, the deep resentment of women, the desire
for total dominance, and the thrill of the hunt
that he was so good at. And because of where
he did it, the evidence was just... swallowed
by the wilderness. Swallowed up. Scavengers,
bears, wolves, eagles, they would destroy the
remains very quickly. The harsh weather would
bleach the bones. He was dumping bodies in a
landscape that's literally designed to hide secrets.
And this went on for over a decade. He was living
this complete double life, baking bread in the
morning, hunting women in the afternoon until
June 13th, 1983. The day the house of cards began
to fall. And that brings us to Cindy Paulson.
Cindy was 17 years old. I think it's really important
to emphasize that. She was a child, essentially,
even though she was working as a sex worker on
the streets of Anchorage. She was vulnerable,
and that's what he looked for. Hansen approached
her, offered her $200 for sex, and she got into
his car. But almost immediately, the dynamic
shifted. You pulled the gun. He pulled a .357
Magnum. The client disappeared, and the monster
came out. He took her to his house in Muldoon.
And what happened there is just incredibly disturbing.
He chained her to a post in his den. He tortured
her. He raped her repeatedly. He kept her there
for hours. But then, then we see this moment
of just staggering arrogance from him. After
terrorizing her, Robert Hansen decides to take
a nap. He went to sleep. He went to sleep on
the couch while she was still chained up. It
just shows how little he feared her. He saw her
as an object, something totally secure in his
possession. He was just resting up for the final
hunt. So when he wakes up, he tells her they're
going to his shack in the valley. Right. He loads
her into his car to drive to the airfield. And
this, this is the moment where Cindy Paulson
saves her own life. She's handcuffed in the backseat
of his car. They get to Merrill Field. Hansen
gets out to prep the Super Cub. He's distracted,
you know, moving gear around, checking the plane.
He thinks she's paralyzed with fear and physically
restrained. He's not worried about her at all.
But she wasn't paralyzed. She was terrified,
of course, but she was fighting. She somehow
managed to crawl out of the back seat while his
back was turned. And as she ran, she did something
that criminal profilers still talk about to this
day. The blue sneakers. She kicked off her blue
sneakers and left them right there next to his
car. Why did she do that? What was the thinking
there? It was a conscious decision to leave a
marker. To leave evidence. She knew that if he
caught her or if she disappeared forever, those
shoes would be physical proof that she had been
there. It was this desperate, brilliant breadcrumb.
So she's running barefoot across the tarmac,
handcuffed, screaming, trying to get to 6th Avenue.
Hansen spops her. He panics. The control is gone.
He runs after her with the gun, but she reaches
the road. She flags down a passing truck driver,
a man named Robert Yount. And we have to give
all the credit in the world to Robert Yount here.
He sees a girl in handcuffs screaming for her
life, and he slams on the brakes. He stops. He
absolutely saved her life, no question. Hansen
saw the truck stop, and he knew the game was
up. He retreated. Yount drove Cindy to the Big
Timber Motel, which was nearby, and they called
the police. Okay, so you would think this is
the end of the story. Police arrive. They find
a handcuffed girl who says Robert Hansen kidnapped
me. They see the cuffs and they go arrest him.
Case closed. But that is not what happened. No.
And this brings us right back to the bias we
talked about earlier. The police arrived at the
motel. They found Cindy. She's hysterical. She's
still in the handcuffs. She tells them everything.
The torture, the plane. She identifies Hansen
by name. But when they go to talk to Hansen.
Hansen is calm. He's cool. He's Bob the Baker.
He admits he was with her, but he claims she
was trying to extort him. He flips the story
completely. He claims she was the unstable one.
And he had an alibi. He had an alibi. A friend
named John Henning, who vouched for him, said
he was with him. And the police believed him
over a 17 -year -old girl they found in handcuffs.
They believed the respectable married business
owner over the teenage sex worker. They actually
let him go. They didn't search his car. They
didn't search his plane. Not initially. They
viewed it as a he said, she said. And they just
defaulted to trusting the man with the social
status. It just makes my blood boil. She did
everything right. She escaped. She left the shoes
as evidence. She told the truth. And because
of who she was, they didn't believe her. It's
a total tragedy of credibility. But thankfully,
the story doesn't end there because there was
a detective working in the shadows who wasn't
so quick to just dismiss all of this. Detective
Glenn Floth. Yeah. Alaska State Troopers. Floath
was working on a totally different angle. He
had been looking at several bodies that had been
found out in the wilderness over the years. A
woman they dubbed a Klootna Annie, found in 1980,
another named Joanna Messina, and another Sherry
Morrow. And Floath had a theory that these weren't
just random, unrelated murders. Right. He saw
the pattern, the remote locations, the way the
bodies were discarded. He suspected a serial
predator was at work. And when he heard about
the Cindy Paulson incident, even though the Anchorage
PD had basically shelved it, he saw the connection.
But he needed more than just a hunch. So he called
in the cavalry. He reached out to the FBI's behavioral
science unit at Quantico. Specifically, he contacted
Special Agent John Douglas. And for any true
crime fans listening, that name is. It's legendary.
Douglas is one of the fathers of modern criminal
profiling. So Floth sends the case files to Quantico
and asks for a profile. He does. And what John
Douglas sent back was practically a photograph
of Robert Hansen. I mean, it wasn't just vague
guesses. No, it was chillingly specific. Douglas
looked at the victimology, the geography of the
body dumps, and he deduced the following. The
killer would be an experienced hunter. He would
have very low self -esteem, but a massive ego.
He would have a history of rejection by women.
He would be compelled to keep souvenirs like
jewelry to relive the crimes. But there was one
detail. One specific detail in that profile that
made everyone's jaw just drop. The stutter. Douglas
predicted the killer would have a speech impediment.
How? I mean, how on earth does someone look at
a crime scene photo of a shallow grave in the
woods and figure out the killer's stutters? It
comes down to the psychology of the attack itself.
Douglas reasoned that the killer's need for absolute
total dominance and the specific way he silenced
his victims, it suggested a man who felt completely
unable to communicate effectively in the real
world. He theorized that the killer felt socially
impotent and a speech impediment is a common
driver of that specific type of insecurity and
rage. So Floth gets this profile. He's reading
down the list. Experienced hunter. Check. Owned
a plane. Check. Low self -esteem. Check. Keeps
souvenirs. Plausible. Stutters. It was a lightning
bolt. He must have realized immediately. It's
the Baker. That profile gave Fluff the ammunition
he desperately needed to go to a judge and get
a search warrant, despite Hansen's sterling public
reputation. So on October 27, 1983, the troopers
and the FBI descended on Hansen's world. They
searched everything. The plane, the cars, the
house, and the evidence they found was just...
It was overwhelming. They found the jewelry,
the souvenirs that Douglas predicted. They were
hidden away in the attic, necklaces, IDs, earrings
belonging to women who were known to be missing.
And they found the murder weapon. the Ruger Mini
-14, and ballistics eventually matched it to
the bullets they'd recovered from the bodies.
The case was solidifying, but then they found
something else in his bedroom. Something that,
to me, is the single most terrifying object in
this entire case. The map. The map. Describe
it for us. What did they find? Hidden behind
the headboard of his bed, they found an aviation
chart, a map of the area surrounding Anchorage.
And on that map... Hansen had drawn little X
marks, small, precise, hand -drawn Xs. How many
were on there? There were 37 Xs. 37? It was a
scorecard, a secret diary of death that he slept
just inches away from every single night. It
is the ultimate symbol of his compartmentalization.
His wife slept in that bed, completely unaware
that right behind her head was a document detailing
the murders of dozens of women. Seeing that map
must have just changed everything for the investigators.
They weren't looking for a guy who killed three
or four people anymore. No, it completely redefined
the scale of the horror. They realized in that
moment that they were dealing with a monster
of historic proportions. So we really need to
take some time now to talk about the women. The
women represented by those exes. Because 17 confessed
murders and 37 marks on a map. That's a number
that can feel abstract. But each one of those
was a human being with a life and a story. Absolutely.
We have to humanize the statistics. Let's talk
about Aklutna Annie. That's the name investigators
gave to the first body they discovered back in
1980 near Aklutna Road. And to this day, we still
don't know her real name, do we? We don't. She
is still unidentified. Hansen confessed to killing
her. He claims she was his first murder victim,
although the timeline on that is a bit fuzzy.
He admitted to stabbing her in the back as she
tried to run away from him, but she remains nameless.
Just a Jane Doe in a cold grave somewhere. And
then there was Sherry Morrow. Sherry was 23.
Her case, it really reveals the depth of Hansen's
twisted rituals. Her body was found in a shallow
grave near the Nick River. She'd been hunted
down and shot with the Mini -14. But when the
investigators analyzed the scene, they found
something very bizarre. She was fully clothed.
She was fully clothed, but there were no bullet
holes in her clothing. Which can only mean one
thing. It means she was naked when he shot her.
And then, after he killed her, Robert Hansen
took the time to carefully dress her corpse before
he buried her. That is... That is so deeply disturbing.
It's like he was trying to fix his toy after
he broke it. It just speaks to his need for control
extending even beyond death. He wanted to control
the final image of the victim. It's chilling.
We also have to remember Paula Golding. Paula
was 30 years old, and by Hansen's own account,
she fought him. She didn't just run, she struggled
with him. He shot her while she was fleeing.
And Andrea Fish Altairi... She was nicknamed
Fish because she always wore a fish necklace.
That's right. And Hansen took her to the Nick
Armbridge, and he kept that necklace. It was
one of the items, one of the souvenirs they found
in the attic stash. This is also the case of
Celia Van Zanten. It's a bit different. It is.
Authorities believe she might have been the...
first victim way back in 1971. She froze to death.
Now, Hansen always denied killing her, but there
was an X on that map that matched her location
perfectly. And that brings up a really important
issue about his confession, doesn't it? Even
when he was caught, even when he was finally
talking, he was still trying to manipulate the
narrative. Constantly. He steadfastly refused
to admit to killing any women who weren't sex
workers. For example, there were two women, Megan
Emrick and Mary Phil. There were Xs on the map
in the locations near Seward where they disappeared,
but Hansen denied them to his dying day. Why?
Why confess to 17 but draw the line at those
two? It was all part of his internal justification
system. In his warped, infantile mind, killing
sex workers was somehow different. He could rationalize
it to himself as cleaning up the streets. A form
of vigilantism. Exactly. But admitting to killing
innocent women, in his view, would destroy that
delusion. It would force him to admit that he
was just a psychopath who killed indiscriminately,
not some kind of twisted moral crusader. It's
a final insult to the victims and their families.
Even in the end, he was picking and choosing
which lives counted. It just shows that that
infantile personality diagnosed decades earlier
remained right until the very end. He could not
accept full responsibility for the reality of
what he had done. So how did the endgame finally
play out? They have the map, the gun, the jewelry.
They confront him with all of it. At first, he
denied everything. He played the outraged citizen.
How dare you accuse me? The whole performance.
But the physical evidence was just insurmountable.
The ballistics match on the rifle was the nail
in the coffin. And when they finally laid out
that map in front of him, he knew it was over.
And he made a deal. He did. He pleaded guilty
to four counts of first -degree homicide. Formaro,
Messina, Goulding, and Eklutna Annie. He did
this for two main reasons. to avoid a high -profile,
humiliating public trial, and to ensure he served
his time in a federal prison rather than a state
prison. But the police had a condition, a very
important one. A critical condition. He had to
help them decipher the map. He had to physically
go with the police in helicopters and point out
where the bodies were buried. Just imagine that
scene, sitting in a helicopter next to the man
who hunted women in these same woods, watching
him point down at the ground and say, There!
I buried one there. It must have been a gruesome,
surreal process. They did manage to recover 12
bodies that way, but many were never found. The
wilderness had reclaimed them forever. He was
sentenced to 461 years, plus life without the
possibility of parole. A sentence designed to
ensure he would never, ever breathe free air
again. He was sent to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
initially, but was eventually transferred back
to Alaska to serve his time at Spring Creek Correctional
Center in Seward. And that's where he stayed
until August 24th, 2014. He died of natural causes
at the age of 75. A quiet, banal end for a man
who had caused such explosive, unimaginable pain.
His legacy, for better or worse, lives on in
pop culture. I mean, the movie The Frozen Ground
with John Cusack as Hansen and Nicolas Cage as
the detective brought this whole story to a global
audience. It did. And you see echoes of his MO
and shows like Criminal Minds and Law and Order.
That idea of hunting humans just taps into a
very primal, deep -seated fear. It strips away
all the protections of civilization. It's the
ultimate nightmare scenario. So as we wrap this
up, let's try to synthesize what we've learned.
What's the big takeaway from the Robert Hansen
story? For me, it's a terrifying lesson on the
danger of compartmentalization. Here was a man
who could genuinely bake a cake for a neighbor's
birthday in the morning, and then go out and
murder a woman in the afternoon. And that map
behind his headboard is the perfect chilling
symbol of that. He built this wall between his
two lives, and because he was Bob the Baker,
society helped him keep that wall standing. It
also just screams about the catastrophic failure
of the justice system to take violence against
women seriously, especially women on the margins
of society. If they had just locked him up in
1971 for that abduction and rape, countless lives
would have been saved. All those exes would never
have been drawn. The infantile personality was
dangerous, yes, but the system's indifference
was the catalyst that allowed it to just explode
into this decade -long reign of terror. And we
have to circle back one last time to Cindy Paulson.
She really is the hero of this story. Without
a doubt. She was 17. She was terrified. She was
tortured. But she had the presence of mind to
leave those sneakers behind. She had the courage
to flag down that truck. Without her, the X's
on that map just would have kept multiplying.
She stopped a monster in his tracks. But, and
this is a thought that I think I want to leave
our listeners with, the map had 37 X's. We have
17 confessions, 12 bodies recovered with his
help. And that is the haunting reality of this
case. Robert Hansen took secrets to the grave.
There are almost certainly still bodies out there,
lost in the vastness of the Alaskan wilderness.
Women whose families are still waiting, still
wondering. Who are the other exes? We may never
know. It's a chilling reminder that even when
justice is served, the truth isn't always fully
recovered. It's a dark shadow that still hangs
over that beautiful wild landscape. Thank you
for joining us on this deep dive. Stay curious,
look out for one another, and please stay safe.
We'll see you next time.