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Robert Hansen was a notorious American serial killer who operated from Anchorage, Alaska. Active from the years 1972 and 1983, Hansen reportedly kidnapped, raped, and murdered at least seventeen women.
According to Oxygen True Crime, Hansen was born in 1939 and raised in Estherville, Iowa. His parents were Edna Margret Hansen and Christian “Chris” Hansen, and he was their eldest son. His father has been described as a “big old mean guy” who was overbearing. Furthermore, Hansen had a strutter and severe acne. He gradually became interested in hunting and tracking, which he used while committing crimes.
Reports suggest that Hansen took his first life in the 1970s. According to the Anchorage Daily News, the serial killer assumed that his first victim was a topless dancer or prostitute. He first pulled a gun on her and then stabbed her to death and buried her in a shallow grave. Even though investigators discovered her body in 1980, her identity remains a mystery.
Robert Hansen admitted that he assaulted 30 women in the 1970s and 80s. After offering them money, he would make them submit at gunpoint and rape them. However, the most brutal part was his method of killing. The serial killer would fly or drive his victims to isolated areas, where he released them as prey. He then proceeded to hunt and kill them and get rid of their bodies.
Authorities finally arrested him in 1983 after he abducted a teenage sex worker named Cindy Paulson. Upon searching his home, investigators discovered that his room was soundproof. Furthermore, his murder weapon was a .223-caliber rifle, and he kept his victim’s jewelry as trophies.
What was the nickname of American Serial killer Robert Hansen?
Robert Hansen was nicknamed Butcher Baker because of his family bakery business in town, reports Heavy.com.
According to a 1984 New York Times report, Hansen stated that he murdered women because they rejected him all his life. He even blamed the acne and strutting problem he suffered as a young boy.
According to the New York Daily News, he said, “Going back in my life … I was, I guess what you might call very frustrated. 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.”
He further said, “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. 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.”
Robert Hansen pleaded guilty to four murders; however, the Anchorage Daily News reported that he admitted to killing 17 women. In February 1984, the court sentenced him to 461 years in prison plus life without parole. Even though he agreed to help investigators recover the bodies of his victims, only 12 of them were found.
According to The New York Times, Robert Hansen died of natural causes on August 21, 2014, aged 75. He was imprisoned at Spring Creek Correctional Center, Seward, Alaska. A year before his death, Scott Walker directed a film titled Frozen Ground, where John Cusack portrayed the serial killer.
