American serial killer known in the media as the “Butcher Baker”; between 1971 and 1983 he abducted, raped, and murdered at least 17 women in and around Anchorage, Alaska. He hunted many of them down in the wilderness with a Ruger Mini-14 and a knife. He was arrested and convicted in 1983, and was sentenced to 461 years and a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
In his youth Hansen began a relationship with a younger woman and married her in the summer of 1960. On 7 December 1960, he was arrested for burning down a Pocahontas County Board of Education school bus garage, revenge for his unpopularity in high school. He served 20 months of a three-year prison sentence in Anamosa State Penitentiary. During his incarceration, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (at that time called “manic depression”) with periodic schizophrenic episodes. The psychiatrist who made the diagnosis noted that Hansen had an “infantile personality” and was obsessed with getting back at people he felt had wronged him. Hansen’s wife filed for divorce while he was incarcerated.
Over the next few years, he was jailed several times for petty theft. In 1967, he moved to Anchorage, Alaska with his second wife, whom he had married in 1963 and with whom he had two children. In Anchorage, he was well liked by his neighbors and set several local hunting records.
In December 1971, Hansen was arrested twice: first for abducting and attempting to rape an unspecified housewife, and then for raping an unspecified sex worker. He pleaded no contest to assault with a deadly weapon in the offense involving the housewife; the rape charge involving the sex worker was dropped as part of a plea bargain. He was sentenced to five years in prison; after serving six months of his sentence, he was placed on a work release program and released to a halfway house.
In 1976, Hansen pleaded guilty to larceny after he was caught stealing a chainsaw from an Anchorage Fred Meyer. He was sentenced to five years in prison and required to receive psychiatric treatment for his bipolar disorder. The Alaska Supreme Court reduced his sentence, and he was released with time served.
Hansen is believed to have begun killing around 1972. His modus operandi was to pick up a sex worker in his car, and force her at gunpoint to his cabin, where he would rape her; he would then fly her out to a secluded area and “hunt” her as if she were wild game before shooting or stabbing her.
After Hansen was accused of kidnap and rape by one of his victims who escaped from him, the Anchorage Police Department secured a warrant to search Hansen’s plane, vehicles, and home. On 27 October 1983, investigators uncovered jewelry belonging to some of the missing women as well as an array of firearms in a corner hideaway of Hansen’s attic. Also found was an aeronautical chart with 37 little “x” marks on it, hidden behind Hansen’s headboard. Many of these marks matched sites where prior bodies had been found (others were discovered later at those then unexplored).
When confronted with the evidence found in his home, Hansen denied it as long as he could, but he eventually began to blame the women and tried to justify his actions. Eventually confessing to each item of evidence as it was presented to him, he admitted to a spree of attacks against Alaskan women starting in 1971. Hansen’s earliest victims were girls or young women, usually between 16 and 19 and not prostitutes, unlike the victims who led to his discovery.
Hansen is known to have raped and assaulted over 30 Alaskan women, and to have murdered at least 17, ranging in age from 16 to 41. Of these 17 women, Hansen was only formally charged with the murders of four: Sherry Morrow, Joanna Messina, “Eklutna Annie”, and Paula Goulding. He was also charged with the kidnapping and rape of Cindy Paulson.
Only after ballistics tests returned a match between bullets found at the crime scenes and Hansen’s rifle did he enter into a plea bargain. He pleaded guilty to the four homicides the police had evidence for (Morrow, Messina, Goulding, and “Eklutna Annie”) and provided details about his other victims, in return for serving his sentence in a federal prison, along with no publicity in the press.
Another condition of the plea bargain was his participation in deciphering the markings on his aviation map and locating his victims’ bodies. He confirmed the police theory of how the women were abducted, adding that he would sometimes let a potential victim go if she convinced him that she would not report him to police. He indicated that he began killing in the early 1970s.
He showed investigators 17 grave sites, in and around Southcentral Alaska, 12 of which were unknown to investigators. The remains of 12 (of a probable 21) victims were exhumed by the police and returned to their families.
Hansen was sentenced by jury to 461 years plus life in prison, without the possibility of parole. He died on 21 August 2014, aged 75, at Alaska Regional Hospital in Anchorage, due to natural causes from lingering health conditions.
Link to Wikipedia biography