July 27, 2025 • 42 mins
“On this day we should only remember his many victims and all of their families... As far as Hansen is concerned, this world is better without him.”
In August 2014, 75-year-old Robert Hansen took his last breath at a hospital in Anchorage, Alaska. The notorious serial killer spent his final decades alive incarcerated, first in Pennsylvania and then in Alaska, saying little of importance to anyone.
But even now, more than a decade after his death, questions remain. Not only of the victims Hansen confessed to killing, such as Eklutna Annie, but those he refused to accept responsibility for...
Part four of four
Research, writing, hosting, and production by Micheal Whelan
Additional writing by Amelia White
Learn more about this podcast at http://unresolved.me
If you would like to support this podcast, consider heading to https://www.patreon.com/unresolvedpod to become a Patron or Producer
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/unresolved--3266604/support.
In August 2014, 75-year-old Robert Hansen took his last breath at a hospital in Anchorage, Alaska. The notorious serial killer spent his final decades alive incarcerated, first in Pennsylvania and then in Alaska, saying little of importance to anyone.
But even now, more than a decade after his death, questions remain. Not only of the victims Hansen confessed to killing, such as Eklutna Annie, but those he refused to accept responsibility for...
Part four of four
Research, writing, hosting, and production by Micheal Whelan
Additional writing by Amelia White
Learn more about this podcast at http://unresolved.me
If you would like to support this podcast, consider heading to https://www.patreon.com/unresolvedpod to become a Patron or Producer
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/unresolved--3266604/support.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This episode contains graphic content that may not be suitable
for all ages. Listener discretion is advised. If you or
someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available,
call or text nine eight eight, or chat with someone
at nine eight eight lifeline dot org. Those outside of
the US, reach out to someone at your local crisis
(00:24):
center or hotline. Please do not suffer in silence. April
nineteen eighty four, on the remote shores of Horseshoe Lake,
two hundred miles north of Anchorage, Alaska, state troopers guided
(00:45):
by Robert Hanson's confession, stumbled upon a grave hidden in
the wilderness. There, they found a shallow burial site where
the body of a young woman had lain for over
a year. There were no personal belongings, no clues to
her identity, just scattered bones, fragments of clothing, and the
haunting reality of yet another victim of Robert Hanson's terror.
(01:07):
At first, she was just another nameless Jane Doe, buried
under the grim nickname Porseshoe Harriet after the lake where
her body was found. Despite the chilling details of Hanson's
confession and the precise location of her grave, no one
knew who she was. Hanson had taken her life, but
refused to give her a name, leaving behind only the
(01:28):
cold certainty of murder. For decades, this young woman remained
a mystery. Though authorities knew her killer, they could not
identify the young woman. There were no missing persons reports
that matched, and without a name, her story remained suspended.
In time, most of Hanson's other victims were buried, named
(01:49):
in given closure, but Horseshoe Harriet was lost to the void.
It wasn't until twenty twenty one, nearly four decades later,
that modern forensic technology genetic genealogy to be specific, finally
gave her back her name. The woman once known as
Horseshoe Harriet was finally identified as Robin Pelke, a nineteen
(02:11):
year old from Colorado who had disappeared in Anchorage in
nineteen eighty three, just before Robert Hanson was arrested. After
all those years, she was no longer another anonymous victim.
But as Robin Pelke's identity came to light, the questions
did not stop there. You see, while Robert Hanson's crimes
have been mostly uncovered, there are still missing victims, unsolved cases,
(02:35):
and haunting ambiguities that remain. Hanson's death in twenty fourteen
did not close the door on all of his crimes.
Some names are still missing, and some remains are still
out there waiting to be found. This is the story
of the Butcher Baker, Part four unfinished. After his February
(03:04):
nineteen eighty four plea bargain and sentencing, Robert Hanson disappeared
from public view, swallowed by the American justice system. He
had confessed to the brutal murders of seventeen women in
the rape of thirty others, receiving four hundred sixty one
years in prison without the possibility of parole. Any strategic
move to avoid a spectacle of endless trials, prosecutors only
(03:28):
formally charged him with four of the murders, those of
Sherry Morrow, Joanna Messina, Eklutna Annie, and Paula Golding, in
exchange for his full cooperation. Hanson had agreed to this
deal on the condition he served his time out of
state and that there be no publicity in the press
about him. For the moment, the man now known as
(03:48):
the Butcher Baker wanted to vanish, and vanish he did
for a while Hanson was initially remanded to the United
States Penitentiary in Louisbourg, Pennsylvania, far from the Alaskan community
whose trust he had betrayed. In the confines of a
federal prison, he was just another lifer with no name,
no bakery, and no hunting ground. His notoriety meant little there.
(04:13):
He reportedly kept a low profile for four years. The
man who had once stalked the frozen Alaska wilds now
paced in a concrete cage. In nineteen eighty eight, Alaska
quietly brought Robert Henson back, having secured the conviction and
with the media fearer calming, officials transferred him to Lemon
Creek Correctional Facility in Juneo briefly, and then to the
(04:36):
Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward, Alaska, the state's only
maximum security prison. Spring Creek, nestled in a remote coastal valley,
became Hansen's home for the next quarter century. Surrounded by
razor wire and towering mountains, he could see the raw
wilderness beyond the prison walls, the wilderness where he had
(04:56):
once tried to become the Apex predator. But he would
never get a venture out into it ever again. Inside,
Robert Hanson was an inmate in a system of hundreds.
He was an odd figure among the prison population, slight
of build, soft spoken, and known to be a former
baker and family man. Durned serial killer. Prosecutor Frank Roth's
(05:17):
child remembered of seeing Hanson during the trial, noting how
unimposing he seemed to first glance. He was a small guy,
a little mild mannered sort of fellow in prison, Hanson's
mild demeanor persisted. Fellow inmates knew of his infamy the
quote unquote butcher baker who hunted women, but by most accounts,
(05:37):
he did not boast or cause trouble on the cell block.
He was no alpha predator behind bars. He just did
his time quietly. Guards and inmates alike observed that Robert
Hanson rarely spoke of his crimes. In fact, he rarely
spoke at all. Decades earlier, an evaluating psychiatrist had described
Hanson as having an infantile personality fueled by z but
(06:01):
in captivity that rage seemed contained. He worked routine prison jobs,
avoided fights, and faded into the background. One can imagine
the bitter irony and maybe take a little pleasure in it.
A man who had exerted ultimate control over his victims
now controlled nothing in his daily life. Following prison schedules
and orders, like any other convict, for years, Hanson had
(06:23):
no visitors beyond the occasional attorney or investigator. His wife, Darla,
had divorced him soon after his arrest. She and their
two children changed their names and disappeared into anonymity, having
learned the horrific double life of the husband and father
they once trusted and loved, and since own parents had
passed away in the nineteen eighties, he had no remaining
(06:45):
family willing to go see him. Inmates say he spent
his free hours reading, perhaps the Bible or mystery novels,
intending to some small hobbies. Some convicts at Spring Creek
took up painting or woodworking, though it's unclear if Handsome
ever did. If the memories of his crimes haunted him
at night, he never shared it with anyone. Remorse never came.
(07:07):
Hanson granted no interviews to the media during his incarceration,
maintaining the press silence he had bargained for. The world
largely forgot about him for a time, even as Hollywood
produced a film in twenty thirteen about his case, the
aptly named Frozen Ground, starring Nicholas Cage and John Cusack.
It's surprisingly pretty good, but Robert Hanson, true to form,
(07:29):
stayed silent. But there was one place where Hanson had
to speak. In his deep briefings with investigators. As part
of his plea deal, he was obligated to help authorities
locate his victim's remains and explain the fates of the missing.
In nineteen eighty four, shortly after his conviction, Hanson was
flown in handcuffs over the Alaskan wilderness he once prowled,
(07:51):
pointing out marked grave sites on a mapia drawn. In total,
Hanson pointed out seventeen grave sites scattered in the remote
reaches of South Center for Alaska Grizzly landmarks of his
killing Spury. The police were stunned. Twelve of those sites
were revelations previously unknown to investigators. With Hanson's guidance, recovery
(08:12):
teams exhumed as many bodies as they could. Twelve victims
remains were ultimately found and returned to their families, but
five sites yielded no bodies either because the remains had
been scattered by animals or were too well hidden. Hanson
coldly confirmed the police theories of how he abducted and
killed these women, adding some chilling details. Sometimes he would
(08:34):
even let a potential victim go if she convinced him
she would not report him to police. He admitted that
he began killing in the early nineteen seventies, earlier than
authorities had suspected. Yet even as he cooperated, Hanson held back.
Investigators noticed several X marks on his personal aviation map
that Hanson refused to address, including three marks in Resurrection
(08:56):
Bay near Seward. These were ominous gaps in him story.
By the terms of his deal, Hanson had to confess
to the seventeen known murders, but nothing forced him to
volunteer information about other potential victims. Authorities suspected those three
mystery marks corresponded to at least two missing women from Seward,
Mary Phyl and Megan Emeric. Hanson denied killing them, but
(09:21):
his map suggested otherwise. Even confronted with the evidence of
the marks, he would not budge. In one interview session,
as prosecutors presented Hanson with his own marked map, they
saw his true nature flare up. Frank Rothschild recalled of
that moment, describing how Hanson suddenly erupted in anger and
had to step away, screaming at his lawyer's in frustration,
(09:42):
he transformed, his face turned red and the hair stood
up on the back of his neck. He got really upset.
Robert Hanson knew what those extra marks on the map meant,
but he took those answers back to his cell, sealed
behind a tight grin. It seemed like a few secrets
would remain his For decades, Robert Hanson lived the monotonous
(10:04):
life of a prisoner. Only occasional flashes of news reminded
the public that the butcher Baker was still alive behind bars,
An appeal filed and denied here a mention in a
documentary there. He aged into his seventies, reportedly with declining health.
In his final years. In early twenty fourteen, Hanson's condition worsened.
(10:25):
The Alaska Department of Corrections quietly transferred him from Spring
Creek to the Anchorage Correctional Complex's medical unit on May eleventh.
By summer, the once prowling hunter was frail, suffering from
lingering conditions of age. The exact ailments were never made public,
but officials referred to natural causes and lingering health issues,
(10:46):
likely things like heart disease or diabetes, the mundane killers
that time inflicks. On August twenty first, twenty fourteen, Robert
Hanson died after slipping into declining health for about a year.
He took his last breath death in a hospital bed,
under guard alone. The news of Robert Hanson's death reverberated
briefly through Alaska. Families of victims noted the grim milestone.
(11:10):
Investigators like Glenn Flota, who had devoted years to stopping Hanson,
voiced relief that the world is better without him. Frank Rothschild,
speaking from retirement, admitted a vindictive satisfaction. He's one of
those guys you hope every breath he takes in life
there's some pain because he caused such pain. In the end,
(11:32):
Hanson had spent thirty years imprisoned, far less than his
four hundred and sixty one year term, but long enough
that he never saw freedom again. His body was reportedly
cremated with little ceremony. There was no public memorial, no
grieving crowds. Robert Hanson's story could have ended there tied
up with the neat bow of justice. The serial murderer
(11:54):
lived out his days in a cell and died in
shame alone. Case close, except it wasn't. One. Mystery that
Robert Hansen left behind is as poignant as it is
troubling the identity of his first known murder victim, a
(12:18):
young woman known only by the nickname A Klutina Annie.
The body of the young woman known to us as
at Klutna Annie, was found back in July nineteen eighty
in a quiet wooded area near a Klutna Lake Road,
roughly twenty miles north of Anchorage. Her body was discovered
in a shallow grave by some construction workers, having decomposed
significantly and been partially scavenged by wildlife. Authorities exhumed all
(12:42):
they could find at the site, bones, fragments of clothing,
a few pieces of jewelry. There was no identification. Due
to the location she was found, Investigators gave her the
placeholder name at Klutina Annie. That name would stick. An
autopsy determined that the woman had been killed by a
single stab wound to the back. She was petite, about
(13:02):
five feet tall, likely in her late teens or early twenties. Crucially,
this was July nineteen eighty three, years before Robert Hanson
was caught. At the time, police did not know who
had killed her. A cluteon to Annie became a Jane
Doe case, and despite efforts, no missing person's report matched
her description. It was only after Hanson's arrest in nineteen
(13:23):
eighty three that he admitted to murdering this young woman.
During his confession, Hanson said she was probably either a
topless dancer or a prostitute. He had picked up an anchorage,
and he claimed she was his first murder victim. He
recounted picking her up downtown and telling her that he
would take her to his home. When she realized he
was lying and driving her out of the city, she panicked.
(13:45):
She begged him to turn back. Hanson pretended to oblige,
but instead drove deeper into the woods along a power
line trail. The girl tried to escape his car, and
in that desperate moment, Hanson stabbed her in the back
as she fled, killing her bare worried her hastily in
the lonely spot where those workmen would later stumble upon
her bones. Hanson recalled a few other details that the
(14:08):
young woman wore blue jeans, a sweater, and a brown
leather jacket, which matched what was found of the scene.
He could not remember her name and claimed he wasn't
sure if she was a dancer or a sex worker.
Hanson thought she might have been from Kodiak, Alaska, though
investigators suspected she may have come from California. Like many
others during the pipeline boom, none of this gave her
(14:30):
an identity. Hanson certainly did not know or care to
know who she really was, and so decades passed without
a name for a Klutna Annie. She was buried in
Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery under a small marker that simply
reads Jane Doe died nineteen eighty. Imagine that an entire
(14:51):
life distilled to an anonymous grave and a year for investigators.
This was an open wound. This young woman deserved a name, story,
a family to claim her. She deserved, as one advocate
later said, just as much of a search for her
people as any other victim, as any other survivor. A
klutinat Annie's plight highlights how society failed to notice someone
(15:14):
like her in life. No one seemingly reported her missing
in a way that could be traced if she had family,
They never knew where she disappeared to. In death, she
nearly became lost in a file of unsolved cases, but
in Alaska, people did not forget at Klutina Annie. Over
the years, numerous efforts were made to identify her. Forensic
(15:35):
artist created several facial reconstructions of what she may have
looked like. In the nineteen eighties, a clay sculpted bust
of her face was made from her skull. Later, digital
recreations were done, one by the FBI in the early
two thousands and another by the National Center for Missing
and Exploited Children in twenty thirteen. Each time her image,
(15:57):
a pretty young woman with high cheek bones and a
tentative smile, was circulated in the media, hoping someone would
recognize her. Leeds came in, but none of them seemed
to ring true. Dozens of missing women were compared against
her remains. We know who she isn't. Authorities have ruled
out at least four other missing women, Roxanne Eastland, Karen Even,
(16:18):
Megan Emeric, and Teresa Davis as possibilities for Eclutna Annie.
Yet her true identity remains elusive. While decades have passed,
the case has not gone cold in the hearts of
the cold case detectives. In fact, in the last few years,
science has seemingly offered some new hope. By twenty twenty,
investigators turned to genetic genealogy, the same method that caught
(16:42):
the Golden State Killer, to finally put a name to
Eclutna Annie. They exhumed to remains and generated a DNA profile,
uploading it to genealogical databases. In twenty twenty one, this
cutting edge effort succeeded in identifying another of Hanson's previously
unnamed victims, to Harriet, who we touched on in the intro,
(17:02):
But as of this recording, it Clutant Annie is the
last of Hanson's victims who remains unidentified. The Alaska Bureau
of Investigation is actively working her case even now, using
every modern DNA technique available. Each year that passes without
answers is painful, but there is determination. As Advocate Autumn
Smith puts it, identifying it Clutant Annie means that no
(17:26):
matter how you lived, even after death, there is an
equality here. She deserves just as much of a search
for her people as any other victim it clutant. Annie
may have been a sex worker or a dancer, vulnerable
and far from home, but she was someone's daughter, someone's friend.
Her life had value. Society owes this young woman her
(17:47):
identity even decades after her death at Kluton, Annie at
(18:11):
least was found, but several of Hanson's confessed victims have
never been found at all. These women are supposedly still
out there in the Alaskan wilderness, the remains unrecovered, leaving
families without closure and graves without bodies. By Hanson's own admission,
he murdered seventeen women, and as we've touched on, only
(18:31):
twelve were ever located. That leaves five who remained missing
to this day. Despite Hanson's confessions, who were these lost
victims and what happened to them? There was Roxanne Eastland,
twenty four years old. Roxanne was last seen in Anchorage
on June twenty eighth, nineteen eighty. She had been staying
at a motel on Anchorage's Fourth Avenue with her boyfriend
(18:54):
working as a dancer. That day, she planned to meet
a man downtown. She vanished without a true Years later,
Hanson admitted he picked up Roxyanne Eastland and killed her.
Though he did not or could not lead authorities to
her body, her remains have never been discovered. Whether Hanson
buried her in a grave that has yet to be found,
or whether animals scattered her bones remains unknown. All we
(19:17):
have is his chilling confession and the sorrow of her family,
who have waited years for answers. Then there's Andrea Fish Altieri,
also twenty four. Andrea was an exotic dancer who disappeared
on December second, nineteen eighty one. She was last seen
getting into a taxi heading to meet a man in
a downtown Anchorage club for a supposed photoshoot. She never returned.
(19:41):
In Hanson's confession, he provided some ghastly detail After abducting
and sexually assaulting Andrea Altieri, he tied a metal weight
to her body and threw her off a bridge into
the Kinnik River. Andrea's body was never found, lost in
the silty depths of the river or swept out to
sea plice. They searched Hanson's home, they found a fish
(20:02):
shaped necklace that belonged to Andrea, a trophy he had kept.
That necklace helped confirm her fate, but her physical remains
have never been recovered. Her family was left to presume
her death without the comfort of burying her. In the
case of Andrea fish Altieri, Robert Hanson weighted her down
and consigned her to the depths of the kinic arm.
(20:23):
It was an act of final control. Even in death,
he sought to erase evidence of her existence. That is
the cruelty that we as society have grappled with. These
women did not just lose their lives, They almost lost
any record of their death. Only Hanson's confession kept their
memories from being completely lost. For the families of Roxanne
(20:44):
and Andrea in particular, there has been no closure, just
the painful knowledge from Hanson's own mouth that their daughter
or sister was murdered without a grave to mournat. Investigators
have not entirely given up on finding remains where possible.
Over the years, there have been renewed searches when technology
or tips allowed. In nineteen eighty nine, for example, a
(21:05):
map drawn by Robert Hanson or by someone he told
in prison, hinted at a possible grave site on the
Kenai Peninsula. This sparked a search for the body of
Megan Emeric will get to her in a moment by
law enforcement and volunteers, though nothing was found. Even today,
if hikers or construction crews stumble upon human remains in
the wilderness around Anchorage, troopers quietly check against Hanson's missing
(21:28):
victim's list For now. However, those lost victims remain out
there under the snow and moss, and Hanson, who could
have definitively helped locate them, chose to stay silent on
certain details. In doing so, he maintained one last bit
of power, keeping the full truth of their fates known
only to himself, something that was absolutely infuriating to investigators
(21:51):
like Glenn Floda. As Floda said years after the case,
even though Hanson was already behind bars, those missing women
were still on my list. He never stopped considering it
his mission to find them. The fact that he couldn't
remained a source of sadness and anger for him. Were
there more victims than the seventeen Hanson confessed to. This
(22:14):
question has loomed for decades. Investigators and experts have long
suspected that Hanson's real body count might be higher, possibly
twenty one or more. The evidence is disturbing unexplained marks
on Hanson's kill map, unsolved cases that fit his m O,
and even prison cellmate rumors of additional confessions from the start.
(22:36):
When Hanson finally cracked and detailed his crimes in nineteen
eighty four, law enforcement noted a discrepancy on Hanson's aviation map,
on which he had marked burial sites. There were a
few more exes than the seventeen he acknowledged. Troopers counted
at least twenty one marks in total. Hanson accounted for
seventeen of them, which corresponded to the seventeen murders he admitted,
(22:59):
but that left four marks unexplained. When pressed, Hanson either
denied involvement or simply refused to talk about those locations.
So let's first touch upon Celia van zanton also known
as Beth van Zanten, who was eighteen years old. Celia
was a young woman who vanished on December twenty second,
nineteen seventy one, in Anchorage, which would make it very
(23:21):
early in Hanson's timeline. She left her house to buy
soda and never returned. Three days later, on Christmas nineteen
seventy one, her body was found in the snow at
McHugh Creek in Chugach State Park on the outskirts of Anchorage.
She had been bound, sexually assaulted, and slashed with a knife,
and ultimately died of exposure after attempting to crawl out
(23:42):
of a ravine. Crucially, this was a year before Hanson's
first official murders. At the time, no one connected it
to him, But years later, when Hanson's map was studied,
investigators noticed an axe near where Celia's body had been found.
This raised strong suspicion that Hanson was her killer. Hanson, however,
denied killing Celia van Santen to police. It's possible he
(24:05):
did not want to admit to an earlier, clumsier crime.
After all, Celia was not a sex worker and her
death did not fit the pattern he later established. Maybe
he truly wasn't the killer, but most investigators believed that
his map did not lie. The tragedy is that without
a confession or additional evidence, Celia's murder remains officially unsolved.
(24:26):
If Hanson was responsible, she would be his earliest known
murder victim. Then there's seventeen year old Megan Schabbon Emeriic.
Megan was a teenager who disappeared on July seventh, nineteen
seventy three, from the seaside town of Seward. She was
last seen leaving the laundry room of her vocational school
dormitory and simply vanished. No trace of her has ever
(24:48):
been found. Hanson denied killing Megan Emeric when questioned, but
evidence suggests otherwise. Hanson had a boat and happened to
be in Seward around the fourth of July in nineteen
seventy three, the same time that Megan Emeric went missing.
On that mysterious map of his there was indeed an
X mark on the Keen Eye Peninsula near Seward. Years
(25:08):
after Hanson's conviction, two incarcerated men who had been Hanson's
cellmates at Spring Creek claimed that Hanson confessed to them
about Megan Emeric. According to one of these inmates, Hanson
said he had taken Meghan out to a remote cabin
accessible only by boat, murdered her, and hidden her body there.
In two thousand and eight, this rumor prompted a fresh investigation.
(25:29):
Alaska state troopers and even the FBI became involved in
trying to verify the inmate's claims. A witness from the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children found the inmates
information credible and considered it good info. There was even
talk of a copy of Hanson's hidden map showing Meghan's grave. However,
searches did not yield Meghan's body, and Hanson himself, when
(25:51):
confronted in prison, continued to deny it. Still, retired trooper
Glen Floda said flatly that if he were still on
the case, mean Out and another victim, Mary Thyl, would
still be on his list of possible victims. The latter
of those two names, Mary Kathleen Thil, was a twenty
two year old who vanished from Seward on July fifth,
(26:12):
nineteen seventy five, almost exactly two years after Megan Emeric.
She was last seen heading toward a waterfall just outside
of town. Like Megan Emrick, Mary's remains have never been found.
Hanson also denied killing Mary Phil, but again, there was
an ex on his map near Resurrection Bay in Seward.
In fact, there were three axes around Resurrection Bay, and
(26:33):
authorities believed that at least two correspond to Mary Thyl
and Meganameric. The same inmates who spoke of Megan said
Hanson also admitted to killing Mary and throwing her body
in the deep waters of Resurrection Bay. If that's true,
Mary's body may rest on the ocean floor in nineteen
seventy five. Her disappearance was a mystery. In hindsight, she
(26:55):
fits the profile of an early Hanson victim, though she
was not a dancer or a sex word of any kind.
She was a local woman who perhaps caught Hanson's eye.
Her case, too, remains unsolved and officially separate from Hanson's ledger,
but investigators strongly suspect his involvement. These three cases, Celia
van Santen, Megan Schabbon Emrick, and Mary Kathleen phil are
(27:19):
the most prominent potential Hanson victims beyond the seventeen that
are known. If Hanson killed them, his total count would
be at least twenty, possibly even more. It's chilling to
think that there could be others even beyond these. Hanson
was active from about nineteen seventy one to nineteen eighty three.
In his early years before he huned in his victim profile,
(27:40):
there may have been crimes that went under the radar
or were even blamed on others. For instance, Celia van
Santon's murder in nineteen seventy one was initially not linked
to any suspect. Only hindsight pointed to Robert Hansen. Are
there other unsolved cases from that era that might tie
back to him? Some experts of Speke related about a
few missing women in the late nineteen seventies that might fit,
(28:03):
but no concrete evidence has ever emerged. What we do
know is that Robert Hanson himself cultivated ambiguity. In his
nineteen eighty four confession, Hanson admitted what the police could
prove and what he thought would satisfy the deal. No
more no less. He had negotiated for no public trial
and minimal publicity, and likely he wanted to keep certain
(28:25):
crimes off the record, perhaps to spare himself any additional infamy,
or simply out of stubborn pride. Investigators noted at the
time that Hanson seemed to enjoy holding back some information.
One could sense that he liked having a few secrets left.
There's also a practical aspect to all of this. Any
murders Hanson denied could not be closed and thus left
(28:47):
a sliver of doubt. Hanson may have hoped that by
not confessing to certain early murders like Celia's, he would
avoid tarnishing his own twisted self image. In his mind,
he seemingly focused on prostitutes and dancers. If he had
killed an innocent teenage girl in nineteen seventy one, maybe
while he was on vacation with his family, that broke
the pattern and might have made him look more like
(29:08):
a reckless killer than the methodical hunter he fancied himself
to be. This is speculative psychology, of course, but not
far fetched. Serial offenders often rationalize or reframe their crimes.
Hansen was known to blame his victims at times and
justify his actions, such as when he referred to them
as bad girls stuff like that. Even in prison, Hansen
(29:30):
occasionally hinted at things but never fully spilled. The reports
of him confiding in cellmates like Manfred West and Kenneth Gage,
the two inmates from two thousand and eight, showed that
he might have dropped partial truths, possibly for bragging rights
or out of boredom. But when those inmates tried to
leverage that info for their own benefit, one demanded freedom
in exchange for the map he copied from Hanson's hints.
(29:52):
The full story became muddled. Hanson was capable of lying
to other criminals as much as he lied to authorities.
As author Leland mused, Hanson could have easily lied to
the cons about Emeric and Thill, just a toy with them,
or to elevate his own dark legend. However, Alaska State
troopers treat every hint seriously. They did back in two
(30:13):
thousand and eight, and they still do today. The possibility
of more victims means the case is technically open ended.
In official records, Hanson is suspected and up to twenty
one or more murders, even though only seventeen are confirmed
and he was only ever convicted for four. It's a
remarkable and troubling thing. Even after all these years, we
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can't say with certainty that we know the full scope
of Robert Hanson's crimes. This lnkering uncertainty is in part
a testament to the era in which Hanson operated. The
nineteen seventies and early eighties and Anchorage were a chaotic time.
Sex workers, dancers, drifters. They came and went, often without
anyone keeping close track. Sudden disappearances were commonplace in that scene.
(30:57):
Hanson learned to exploit that. As Frank Rothschild explained, Anchorage
at the time was perfect for someone like Robert Hanson.
His victims were mostly runaways who had no family support.
For many, Anchorage was a place to make money and survive.
In other words, the community and police weren't watching out
for these women the way they would have for, say,
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a well to do suburban housewife. Hanson himself eventually acknowledged this,
telling investigators that he deliberately learned he needed to take
women who weren't easily believed or cared about by the
community or police. Or, as Trooper Flota put it, bluntly,
Hanson figured out that strippers and sex workers were harder
to track and less likely to be missed. Those words,
(31:40):
staying less likely to be missed. The implication is that
our society failed to miss them, failed to notice when
they were just gone. Robert Hanson's killing spree was facilitated
by systemic apathy. Early on, when some of these women
went missing, there was no big search party, there were
no headlines. Law enforcement, strapped and perhaps biased by the
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victim's lifestyles, did not pour resources into finding them. That
allowed a predator like Robert Hanson to continue relatively unchecked
for about a decade. Even Cindy Paulson, the seventeen year
old who miraculously escaped Hanson in nineteen eighty three and
sounded the alarm, was at first not fully believed by authorities.
An APD officer initially dismissed parts of her story. After all,
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she was a teenage sex worker, and Hanson was a
mild mannered local businessman with a family. It took persistence
by Alaska state Trooper Glenfloda and others to dig deeper,
to trust Cindy's account and to break the case open.
How many others might have tried to escape or sought help,
only to be doubted or ignored by those they trusted.
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This is where our anger at the system comes in,
because yes, we should be angry at Robert Hanson, undoubtedly,
but also at the circumstances that allowed him to prey
on these women so freely. The haunting possibility of more victims,
unidentified victims, and untold stories is a direct result of
how society viewed these women. They were often seen as
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less than as transient, as trouble, and Hansen knew that
he weaponized society's neglect against his victims. August twenty first,
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twenty fourteen, Alaska Regional Hospital, Anchorage. The fluorescent lights cast
a sterile glow on a frail seventy five year old
man lang restrained by tubes and wires. Heart monitor beeps
steadily at first, then begins to stutter. In the hallway,
a corrections officer shifts nervously. Robert Hansen, Alaska's most notorious
(33:57):
serial killer, is taking his final breaths. Nurses rush in
is the alarm sound. Moments later, the monitor flatlines. A
doctor checks for a pulse, then quietly notes the time
one thirty am. The officer steps outside and speaks into
his radio. Robert Hanson is dead. Word travels fast through
official channels. Glenfloda, a retired state trooper who spent years
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hunting Hanson, offers only one thought to the press that morning.
On this day, we should only remember as many victims
and all of their families. As far as Hanson is concerned,
this world is better without him. Hearing of Hanson's death,
former prosecutor Frank Rothschild does not mince his words either.
He will not be missed. Good riddance to him. Thirty
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plus years after Robert Hanson's reign of terror ended, his
story remains a cautionary tale, not only of the darkness
one human being can harbor, but of the cost of
an difference toward the vulnerable. Hanson died in a prison
hospital bed, but the aftermath of his crimes is far
from over. When we reflect on Hanson's final years in
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the mysteries that persist, there is an uneasy realization that
some justice is yet incomplete. True Robert Hanson faced earthly justice.
He was imprisoned until his final breath, condemned in nineteen
eighty four, so that he could never hurt another soul.
But for his victims and their families, justice includes remembering
their names, telling their stories, and, when possible, finding the
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lost and giving them back their identity. In that sense,
work remains at clutnat Annie must get her name back.
She is the last of Hanson's known victims to remain nameless.
Investigators press on with modern forensic methods to identify her,
refusing to let her fade into a statistic. Her unidentified
status is a stark reminder of how easily a young
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woman's entire existence can be erased, but also a rallying
cry that, even forty plus years later, we will not
let that stand. The unrecovered victims deserve to be found.
Even if Hanson tried to thwart discovery, The search isn't
truly over. Alaska's wilderness does give up its secret. Sometimes
hikers might find a bone, erosion might uncover a shallow grave.
(36:18):
Every so often, state troopers still get calls about possible
human remains in remote areas, and they quietly check them
against Hanson's missing victims list. Hope remains that one day
someone might stumble upon a skull or a fragment that
finally closes a case. Until then, families like those of
Roxanne Eastland and Andrea Altieri live in a painful limbo.
(36:39):
The shadow of additional victims must be acknowledged. While we
may never confirm beyond doubt the fates of Megan Emeric,
Mary Thyl or others Robert Hanson likely killed, we remember
their names. We acknowledge that justice did not officially reach
those cases. They serve as haunting what ifs. If only
Hanson had been got sooner, if only someone had connected
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the dots back in the nineteen seventies, if only we
could compel the truth from a liar's mouth. The possibility
of more victims means there may be families out there
who never even knew to mourn parents or siblings of
a runaway who disappeared in nineteen seventy two or in
nineteen seventy six, not realizing she crossed paths with a
serial killer. Those families, too, were failed by the system.
(37:24):
In the end. The story of Robert Hanson, or the
Butcher Baker, is one of contrast. On one hand, it's
a story of incredible police work and survival, brave young
Cindy Paulson escaping and insisting her story be heard, Dogged
investigators like Glenn Floda and prosecutors like Frank Roth's child
piecing together clues and bringing Hanson down, the community's outrage,
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pushing for justice for women who were often marginalized. On
the other hand, it's a story of society failing. How
easy it was for Robert Hanson to get away with
what he did for so long because his victims were
women on the fringes, women he correctly assumed the world
would not rally to find Hanson's crimes provoke outrage, not
just for their sick brutality, but for how preventable they
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might have been if the victims had not been so
easily dismissed in life. We think of the seventeen year
old dancer turned informant who had to literally run for
her life, shackled in handcuffs to make the police notice,
and even then they didn't give a shit until another person,
a man, validated her story. We think of how many
times Robert Hanson was lightly punished for earlier offenses, like
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the nineteen seventy one attempted abduction and assault, for which
he served just a few months in prison, giving him
confidence that he could continue, that he could escalate. We
think of how many warnings were missed or minimized because
the victims were considered troublesome or unreliable. It's ok to
be pissed off in knowing that had things been different, some,
if not most, of these young women might still be alive.
(38:53):
Yet from that we must do better. Law enforcement in
Alaska has evolved since the Robert Hanson era. The attitude
towards missing persons, especially missing sex workers or Indigenous women,
has markedly changed. Each unidentified victim case now received at
tension and resources that were unheard of in the nineteen eighties,
evidenced by the advanced DNA work being done for Aklutna Annie.
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Society too, has grown, perhaps learning in part from tragedies
like this, to recognize that every life, every person matters.
Robert Hanson is gone, but the responsibility of remembering falls
to us. We must not remember his name with fascination,
but rather the names of those he harmed. Cherry Morrow,
Paula Golding, Joanna Messina, Deleen Frey, women who loved and
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were loved, whose lives were cut short, but whose voices
echoed through the brave testimony of survivors and the dedication
of investigators. We speak of a Klutna Annie in Horshoe,
Harriet ack A, Robin Pelke once Jane Dowes now symbols
of why we never give up on a victim's story.
We acknowledge those still lost in the Alaskan wild, Roxanne Andrea, Megan,
(40:05):
Mary Celia, and commit that they will not be forgotten,
no matter how long it takes to find them or
learn their truth. The case of Robert Hanson leaves us
with unanswered questions that may never be fully resolved, but
it also leaves us with a sense of moral clarity.
The women he targeted were human beings who deserved protection,
and in many ways, the system failed them. We can't
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rewrite the past, but we can ensure that, going forward,
we see and value those on the margins, those that
are different. We can ensure that predators like Robert Hanson
find no dark corners to hide in, no indifferent shrug
from authorities to enable them. So let's take this story
and try to fuel some positive change. Because the final
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chapter isn't truly about Robert Hanson at all. It's about
the victims, those that were named and remain unnamed. It's
about restoring dignity to those who were once deprived of it.
It's about memory and justice living on even after the
monster who caused this harm is long dead. With all
that being said, this story remains unresolved, no
This episode contains graphic content that may not be suitable
for all ages. Listener discretion is advised. If you or
someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available,
call or text nine eight eight, or chat with someone
at nine eight eight lifeline dot org. Those outside of
the US, reach out to someone at your local crisis
(00:24):
center or hotline. Please do not suffer in silence. April
nineteen eighty four, on the remote shores of Horseshoe Lake,
two hundred miles north of Anchorage, Alaska, state troopers guided
(00:45):
by Robert Hanson's confession, stumbled upon a grave hidden in
the wilderness. There, they found a shallow burial site where
the body of a young woman had lain for over
a year. There were no personal belongings, no clues to
her identity, just scattered bones, fragments of clothing, and the
haunting reality of yet another victim of Robert Hanson's terror.
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At first, she was just another nameless Jane Doe, buried
under the grim nickname Porseshoe Harriet after the lake where
her body was found. Despite the chilling details of Hanson's
confession and the precise location of her grave, no one
knew who she was. Hanson had taken her life, but
refused to give her a name, leaving behind only the
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cold certainty of murder. For decades, this young woman remained
a mystery. Though authorities knew her killer, they could not
identify the young woman. There were no missing persons reports
that matched, and without a name, her story remained suspended.
In time, most of Hanson's other victims were buried, named
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in given closure, but Horseshoe Harriet was lost to the void.
It wasn't until twenty twenty one, nearly four decades later,
that modern forensic technology genetic genealogy to be specific, finally
gave her back her name. The woman once known as
Horseshoe Harriet was finally identified as Robin Pelke, a nineteen
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year old from Colorado who had disappeared in Anchorage in
nineteen eighty three, just before Robert Hanson was arrested. After
all those years, she was no longer another anonymous victim.
But as Robin Pelke's identity came to light, the questions
did not stop there. You see, while Robert Hanson's crimes
have been mostly uncovered, there are still missing victims, unsolved cases,
(02:35):
and haunting ambiguities that remain. Hanson's death in twenty fourteen
did not close the door on all of his crimes.
Some names are still missing, and some remains are still
out there waiting to be found. This is the story
of the Butcher Baker, Part four unfinished. After his February
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nineteen eighty four plea bargain and sentencing, Robert Hanson disappeared
from public view, swallowed by the American justice system. He
had confessed to the brutal murders of seventeen women in
the rape of thirty others, receiving four hundred sixty one
years in prison without the possibility of parole. Any strategic
move to avoid a spectacle of endless trials, prosecutors only
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formally charged him with four of the murders, those of
Sherry Morrow, Joanna Messina, Eklutna Annie, and Paula Golding, in
exchange for his full cooperation. Hanson had agreed to this
deal on the condition he served his time out of
state and that there be no publicity in the press
about him. For the moment, the man now known as
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the Butcher Baker wanted to vanish, and vanish he did
for a while Hanson was initially remanded to the United
States Penitentiary in Louisbourg, Pennsylvania, far from the Alaskan community
whose trust he had betrayed. In the confines of a
federal prison, he was just another lifer with no name,
no bakery, and no hunting ground. His notoriety meant little there.
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He reportedly kept a low profile for four years. The
man who had once stalked the frozen Alaska wilds now
paced in a concrete cage. In nineteen eighty eight, Alaska
quietly brought Robert Henson back, having secured the conviction and
with the media fearer calming, officials transferred him to Lemon
Creek Correctional Facility in Juneo briefly, and then to the
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Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward, Alaska, the state's only
maximum security prison. Spring Creek, nestled in a remote coastal valley,
became Hansen's home for the next quarter century. Surrounded by
razor wire and towering mountains, he could see the raw
wilderness beyond the prison walls, the wilderness where he had
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once tried to become the Apex predator. But he would
never get a venture out into it ever again. Inside,
Robert Hanson was an inmate in a system of hundreds.
He was an odd figure among the prison population, slight
of build, soft spoken, and known to be a former
baker and family man. Durned serial killer. Prosecutor Frank Roth's
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child remembered of seeing Hanson during the trial, noting how
unimposing he seemed to first glance. He was a small guy,
a little mild mannered sort of fellow in prison, Hanson's
mild demeanor persisted. Fellow inmates knew of his infamy the
quote unquote butcher baker who hunted women, but by most accounts,
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he did not boast or cause trouble on the cell block.
He was no alpha predator behind bars. He just did
his time quietly. Guards and inmates alike observed that Robert
Hanson rarely spoke of his crimes. In fact, he rarely
spoke at all. Decades earlier, an evaluating psychiatrist had described
Hanson as having an infantile personality fueled by z but
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in captivity that rage seemed contained. He worked routine prison jobs,
avoided fights, and faded into the background. One can imagine
the bitter irony and maybe take a little pleasure in it.
A man who had exerted ultimate control over his victims
now controlled nothing in his daily life. Following prison schedules
and orders, like any other convict, for years, Hanson had
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no visitors beyond the occasional attorney or investigator. His wife, Darla,
had divorced him soon after his arrest. She and their
two children changed their names and disappeared into anonymity, having
learned the horrific double life of the husband and father
they once trusted and loved, and since own parents had
passed away in the nineteen eighties, he had no remaining
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family willing to go see him. Inmates say he spent
his free hours reading, perhaps the Bible or mystery novels,
intending to some small hobbies. Some convicts at Spring Creek
took up painting or woodworking, though it's unclear if Handsome
ever did. If the memories of his crimes haunted him
at night, he never shared it with anyone. Remorse never came.
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Hanson granted no interviews to the media during his incarceration,
maintaining the press silence he had bargained for. The world
largely forgot about him for a time, even as Hollywood
produced a film in twenty thirteen about his case, the
aptly named Frozen Ground, starring Nicholas Cage and John Cusack.
It's surprisingly pretty good, but Robert Hanson, true to form,
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stayed silent. But there was one place where Hanson had
to speak. In his deep briefings with investigators. As part
of his plea deal, he was obligated to help authorities
locate his victim's remains and explain the fates of the missing.
In nineteen eighty four, shortly after his conviction, Hanson was
flown in handcuffs over the Alaskan wilderness he once prowled,
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pointing out marked grave sites on a mapia drawn. In total,
Hanson pointed out seventeen grave sites scattered in the remote
reaches of South Center for Alaska Grizzly landmarks of his
killing Spury. The police were stunned. Twelve of those sites
were revelations previously unknown to investigators. With Hanson's guidance, recovery
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teams exhumed as many bodies as they could. Twelve victims
remains were ultimately found and returned to their families, but
five sites yielded no bodies either because the remains had
been scattered by animals or were too well hidden. Hanson
coldly confirmed the police theories of how he abducted and
killed these women, adding some chilling details. Sometimes he would
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even let a potential victim go if she convinced him
she would not report him to police. He admitted that
he began killing in the early nineteen seventies, earlier than
authorities had suspected. Yet even as he cooperated, Hanson held back.
Investigators noticed several X marks on his personal aviation map
that Hanson refused to address, including three marks in Resurrection
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Bay near Seward. These were ominous gaps in him story.
By the terms of his deal, Hanson had to confess
to the seventeen known murders, but nothing forced him to
volunteer information about other potential victims. Authorities suspected those three
mystery marks corresponded to at least two missing women from Seward,
Mary Phyl and Megan Emeric. Hanson denied killing them, but
(09:21):
his map suggested otherwise. Even confronted with the evidence of
the marks, he would not budge. In one interview session,
as prosecutors presented Hanson with his own marked map, they
saw his true nature flare up. Frank Rothschild recalled of
that moment, describing how Hanson suddenly erupted in anger and
had to step away, screaming at his lawyer's in frustration,
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he transformed, his face turned red and the hair stood
up on the back of his neck. He got really upset.
Robert Hanson knew what those extra marks on the map meant,
but he took those answers back to his cell, sealed
behind a tight grin. It seemed like a few secrets
would remain his For decades, Robert Hanson lived the monotonous
(10:04):
life of a prisoner. Only occasional flashes of news reminded
the public that the butcher Baker was still alive behind bars,
An appeal filed and denied here a mention in a
documentary there. He aged into his seventies, reportedly with declining health.
In his final years. In early twenty fourteen, Hanson's condition worsened.
(10:25):
The Alaska Department of Corrections quietly transferred him from Spring
Creek to the Anchorage Correctional Complex's medical unit on May eleventh.
By summer, the once prowling hunter was frail, suffering from
lingering conditions of age. The exact ailments were never made public,
but officials referred to natural causes and lingering health issues,
(10:46):
likely things like heart disease or diabetes, the mundane killers
that time inflicks. On August twenty first, twenty fourteen, Robert
Hanson died after slipping into declining health for about a year.
He took his last breath death in a hospital bed,
under guard alone. The news of Robert Hanson's death reverberated
briefly through Alaska. Families of victims noted the grim milestone.
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Investigators like Glenn Flota, who had devoted years to stopping Hanson,
voiced relief that the world is better without him. Frank Rothschild,
speaking from retirement, admitted a vindictive satisfaction. He's one of
those guys you hope every breath he takes in life
there's some pain because he caused such pain. In the end,
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Hanson had spent thirty years imprisoned, far less than his
four hundred and sixty one year term, but long enough
that he never saw freedom again. His body was reportedly
cremated with little ceremony. There was no public memorial, no
grieving crowds. Robert Hanson's story could have ended there tied
up with the neat bow of justice. The serial murderer
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lived out his days in a cell and died in
shame alone. Case close, except it wasn't. One. Mystery that
Robert Hansen left behind is as poignant as it is
troubling the identity of his first known murder victim, a
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young woman known only by the nickname A Klutina Annie.
The body of the young woman known to us as
at Klutna Annie, was found back in July nineteen eighty
in a quiet wooded area near a Klutna Lake Road,
roughly twenty miles north of Anchorage. Her body was discovered
in a shallow grave by some construction workers, having decomposed
significantly and been partially scavenged by wildlife. Authorities exhumed all
(12:42):
they could find at the site, bones, fragments of clothing,
a few pieces of jewelry. There was no identification. Due
to the location she was found, Investigators gave her the
placeholder name at Klutina Annie. That name would stick. An
autopsy determined that the woman had been killed by a
single stab wound to the back. She was petite, about
(13:02):
five feet tall, likely in her late teens or early twenties. Crucially,
this was July nineteen eighty three, years before Robert Hanson
was caught. At the time, police did not know who
had killed her. A cluteon to Annie became a Jane
Doe case, and despite efforts, no missing person's report matched
her description. It was only after Hanson's arrest in nineteen
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eighty three that he admitted to murdering this young woman.
During his confession, Hanson said she was probably either a
topless dancer or a prostitute. He had picked up an anchorage,
and he claimed she was his first murder victim. He
recounted picking her up downtown and telling her that he
would take her to his home. When she realized he
was lying and driving her out of the city, she panicked.
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She begged him to turn back. Hanson pretended to oblige,
but instead drove deeper into the woods along a power
line trail. The girl tried to escape his car, and
in that desperate moment, Hanson stabbed her in the back
as she fled, killing her bare worried her hastily in
the lonely spot where those workmen would later stumble upon
her bones. Hanson recalled a few other details that the
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young woman wore blue jeans, a sweater, and a brown
leather jacket, which matched what was found of the scene.
He could not remember her name and claimed he wasn't
sure if she was a dancer or a sex worker.
Hanson thought she might have been from Kodiak, Alaska, though
investigators suspected she may have come from California. Like many
others during the pipeline boom, none of this gave her
(14:30):
an identity. Hanson certainly did not know or care to
know who she really was, and so decades passed without
a name for a Klutna Annie. She was buried in
Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery under a small marker that simply
reads Jane Doe died nineteen eighty. Imagine that an entire
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life distilled to an anonymous grave and a year for investigators.
This was an open wound. This young woman deserved a name, story,
a family to claim her. She deserved, as one advocate
later said, just as much of a search for her
people as any other victim, as any other survivor. A
klutinat Annie's plight highlights how society failed to notice someone
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like her in life. No one seemingly reported her missing
in a way that could be traced if she had family,
They never knew where she disappeared to. In death, she
nearly became lost in a file of unsolved cases, but
in Alaska, people did not forget at Klutina Annie. Over
the years, numerous efforts were made to identify her. Forensic
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artist created several facial reconstructions of what she may have
looked like. In the nineteen eighties, a clay sculpted bust
of her face was made from her skull. Later, digital
recreations were done, one by the FBI in the early
two thousands and another by the National Center for Missing
and Exploited Children in twenty thirteen. Each time her image,
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a pretty young woman with high cheek bones and a
tentative smile, was circulated in the media, hoping someone would
recognize her. Leeds came in, but none of them seemed
to ring true. Dozens of missing women were compared against
her remains. We know who she isn't. Authorities have ruled
out at least four other missing women, Roxanne Eastland, Karen Even,
(16:18):
Megan Emeric, and Teresa Davis as possibilities for Eclutna Annie.
Yet her true identity remains elusive. While decades have passed,
the case has not gone cold in the hearts of
the cold case detectives. In fact, in the last few years,
science has seemingly offered some new hope. By twenty twenty,
investigators turned to genetic genealogy, the same method that caught
(16:42):
the Golden State Killer, to finally put a name to
Eclutna Annie. They exhumed to remains and generated a DNA profile,
uploading it to genealogical databases. In twenty twenty one, this
cutting edge effort succeeded in identifying another of Hanson's previously
unnamed victims, to Harriet, who we touched on in the intro,
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But as of this recording, it Clutant Annie is the
last of Hanson's victims who remains unidentified. The Alaska Bureau
of Investigation is actively working her case even now, using
every modern DNA technique available. Each year that passes without
answers is painful, but there is determination. As Advocate Autumn
Smith puts it, identifying it Clutant Annie means that no
(17:26):
matter how you lived, even after death, there is an
equality here. She deserves just as much of a search
for her people as any other victim it clutant. Annie
may have been a sex worker or a dancer, vulnerable
and far from home, but she was someone's daughter, someone's friend.
Her life had value. Society owes this young woman her
(17:47):
identity even decades after her death at Kluton, Annie at
(18:11):
least was found, but several of Hanson's confessed victims have
never been found at all. These women are supposedly still
out there in the Alaskan wilderness, the remains unrecovered, leaving
families without closure and graves without bodies. By Hanson's own admission,
he murdered seventeen women, and as we've touched on, only
(18:31):
twelve were ever located. That leaves five who remained missing
to this day. Despite Hanson's confessions, who were these lost
victims and what happened to them? There was Roxanne Eastland,
twenty four years old. Roxanne was last seen in Anchorage
on June twenty eighth, nineteen eighty. She had been staying
at a motel on Anchorage's Fourth Avenue with her boyfriend
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working as a dancer. That day, she planned to meet
a man downtown. She vanished without a true Years later,
Hanson admitted he picked up Roxyanne Eastland and killed her.
Though he did not or could not lead authorities to
her body, her remains have never been discovered. Whether Hanson
buried her in a grave that has yet to be found,
or whether animals scattered her bones remains unknown. All we
(19:17):
have is his chilling confession and the sorrow of her family,
who have waited years for answers. Then there's Andrea Fish Altieri,
also twenty four. Andrea was an exotic dancer who disappeared
on December second, nineteen eighty one. She was last seen
getting into a taxi heading to meet a man in
a downtown Anchorage club for a supposed photoshoot. She never returned.
(19:41):
In Hanson's confession, he provided some ghastly detail After abducting
and sexually assaulting Andrea Altieri, he tied a metal weight
to her body and threw her off a bridge into
the Kinnik River. Andrea's body was never found, lost in
the silty depths of the river or swept out to
sea plice. They searched Hanson's home, they found a fish
(20:02):
shaped necklace that belonged to Andrea, a trophy he had kept.
That necklace helped confirm her fate, but her physical remains
have never been recovered. Her family was left to presume
her death without the comfort of burying her. In the
case of Andrea fish Altieri, Robert Hanson weighted her down
and consigned her to the depths of the kinic arm.
(20:23):
It was an act of final control. Even in death,
he sought to erase evidence of her existence. That is
the cruelty that we as society have grappled with. These
women did not just lose their lives, They almost lost
any record of their death. Only Hanson's confession kept their
memories from being completely lost. For the families of Roxanne
(20:44):
and Andrea in particular, there has been no closure, just
the painful knowledge from Hanson's own mouth that their daughter
or sister was murdered without a grave to mournat. Investigators
have not entirely given up on finding remains where possible.
Over the years, there have been renewed searches when technology
or tips allowed. In nineteen eighty nine, for example, a
(21:05):
map drawn by Robert Hanson or by someone he told
in prison, hinted at a possible grave site on the
Kenai Peninsula. This sparked a search for the body of
Megan Emeric will get to her in a moment by
law enforcement and volunteers, though nothing was found. Even today,
if hikers or construction crews stumble upon human remains in
the wilderness around Anchorage, troopers quietly check against Hanson's missing
(21:28):
victim's list For now. However, those lost victims remain out
there under the snow and moss, and Hanson, who could
have definitively helped locate them, chose to stay silent on
certain details. In doing so, he maintained one last bit
of power, keeping the full truth of their fates known
only to himself, something that was absolutely infuriating to investigators
(21:51):
like Glenn Floda. As Floda said years after the case,
even though Hanson was already behind bars, those missing women
were still on my list. He never stopped considering it
his mission to find them. The fact that he couldn't
remained a source of sadness and anger for him. Were
there more victims than the seventeen Hanson confessed to. This
(22:14):
question has loomed for decades. Investigators and experts have long
suspected that Hanson's real body count might be higher, possibly
twenty one or more. The evidence is disturbing unexplained marks
on Hanson's kill map, unsolved cases that fit his m O,
and even prison cellmate rumors of additional confessions from the start.
(22:36):
When Hanson finally cracked and detailed his crimes in nineteen
eighty four, law enforcement noted a discrepancy on Hanson's aviation map,
on which he had marked burial sites. There were a
few more exes than the seventeen he acknowledged. Troopers counted
at least twenty one marks in total. Hanson accounted for
seventeen of them, which corresponded to the seventeen murders he admitted,
(22:59):
but that left four marks unexplained. When pressed, Hanson either
denied involvement or simply refused to talk about those locations.
So let's first touch upon Celia van zanton also known
as Beth van Zanten, who was eighteen years old. Celia
was a young woman who vanished on December twenty second,
nineteen seventy one, in Anchorage, which would make it very
(23:21):
early in Hanson's timeline. She left her house to buy
soda and never returned. Three days later, on Christmas nineteen
seventy one, her body was found in the snow at
McHugh Creek in Chugach State Park on the outskirts of Anchorage.
She had been bound, sexually assaulted, and slashed with a knife,
and ultimately died of exposure after attempting to crawl out
(23:42):
of a ravine. Crucially, this was a year before Hanson's
first official murders. At the time, no one connected it
to him, But years later, when Hanson's map was studied,
investigators noticed an axe near where Celia's body had been found.
This raised strong suspicion that Hanson was her killer. Hanson, however,
denied killing Celia van Santen to police. It's possible he
(24:05):
did not want to admit to an earlier, clumsier crime.
After all, Celia was not a sex worker and her
death did not fit the pattern he later established. Maybe
he truly wasn't the killer, but most investigators believed that
his map did not lie. The tragedy is that without
a confession or additional evidence, Celia's murder remains officially unsolved.
(24:26):
If Hanson was responsible, she would be his earliest known
murder victim. Then there's seventeen year old Megan Schabbon Emeriic.
Megan was a teenager who disappeared on July seventh, nineteen
seventy three, from the seaside town of Seward. She was
last seen leaving the laundry room of her vocational school
dormitory and simply vanished. No trace of her has ever
(24:48):
been found. Hanson denied killing Megan Emeric when questioned, but
evidence suggests otherwise. Hanson had a boat and happened to
be in Seward around the fourth of July in nineteen
seventy three, the same time that Megan Emeric went missing.
On that mysterious map of his there was indeed an
X mark on the Keen Eye Peninsula near Seward. Years
(25:08):
after Hanson's conviction, two incarcerated men who had been Hanson's
cellmates at Spring Creek claimed that Hanson confessed to them
about Megan Emeric. According to one of these inmates, Hanson
said he had taken Meghan out to a remote cabin
accessible only by boat, murdered her, and hidden her body there.
In two thousand and eight, this rumor prompted a fresh investigation.
(25:29):
Alaska state troopers and even the FBI became involved in
trying to verify the inmate's claims. A witness from the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children found the inmates
information credible and considered it good info. There was even
talk of a copy of Hanson's hidden map showing Meghan's grave. However,
searches did not yield Meghan's body, and Hanson himself, when
(25:51):
confronted in prison, continued to deny it. Still, retired trooper
Glen Floda said flatly that if he were still on
the case, mean Out and another victim, Mary Thyl, would
still be on his list of possible victims. The latter
of those two names, Mary Kathleen Thil, was a twenty
two year old who vanished from Seward on July fifth,
(26:12):
nineteen seventy five, almost exactly two years after Megan Emeric.
She was last seen heading toward a waterfall just outside
of town. Like Megan Emrick, Mary's remains have never been found.
Hanson also denied killing Mary Phil, but again, there was
an ex on his map near Resurrection Bay in Seward.
In fact, there were three axes around Resurrection Bay, and
(26:33):
authorities believed that at least two correspond to Mary Thyl
and Meganameric. The same inmates who spoke of Megan said
Hanson also admitted to killing Mary and throwing her body
in the deep waters of Resurrection Bay. If that's true,
Mary's body may rest on the ocean floor in nineteen
seventy five. Her disappearance was a mystery. In hindsight, she
(26:55):
fits the profile of an early Hanson victim, though she
was not a dancer or a sex word of any kind.
She was a local woman who perhaps caught Hanson's eye.
Her case, too, remains unsolved and officially separate from Hanson's ledger,
but investigators strongly suspect his involvement. These three cases, Celia
van Santen, Megan Schabbon Emrick, and Mary Kathleen phil are
(27:19):
the most prominent potential Hanson victims beyond the seventeen that
are known. If Hanson killed them, his total count would
be at least twenty, possibly even more. It's chilling to
think that there could be others even beyond these. Hanson
was active from about nineteen seventy one to nineteen eighty three.
In his early years before he huned in his victim profile,
(27:40):
there may have been crimes that went under the radar
or were even blamed on others. For instance, Celia van
Santon's murder in nineteen seventy one was initially not linked
to any suspect. Only hindsight pointed to Robert Hansen. Are
there other unsolved cases from that era that might tie
back to him? Some experts of Speke related about a
few missing women in the late nineteen seventies that might fit,
(28:03):
but no concrete evidence has ever emerged. What we do
know is that Robert Hanson himself cultivated ambiguity. In his
nineteen eighty four confession, Hanson admitted what the police could
prove and what he thought would satisfy the deal. No
more no less. He had negotiated for no public trial
and minimal publicity, and likely he wanted to keep certain
(28:25):
crimes off the record, perhaps to spare himself any additional infamy,
or simply out of stubborn pride. Investigators noted at the
time that Hanson seemed to enjoy holding back some information.
One could sense that he liked having a few secrets left.
There's also a practical aspect to all of this. Any
murders Hanson denied could not be closed and thus left
(28:47):
a sliver of doubt. Hanson may have hoped that by
not confessing to certain early murders like Celia's, he would
avoid tarnishing his own twisted self image. In his mind,
he seemingly focused on prostitutes and dancers. If he had
killed an innocent teenage girl in nineteen seventy one, maybe
while he was on vacation with his family, that broke
the pattern and might have made him look more like
(29:08):
a reckless killer than the methodical hunter he fancied himself
to be. This is speculative psychology, of course, but not
far fetched. Serial offenders often rationalize or reframe their crimes.
Hansen was known to blame his victims at times and
justify his actions, such as when he referred to them
as bad girls stuff like that. Even in prison, Hansen
(29:30):
occasionally hinted at things but never fully spilled. The reports
of him confiding in cellmates like Manfred West and Kenneth Gage,
the two inmates from two thousand and eight, showed that
he might have dropped partial truths, possibly for bragging rights
or out of boredom. But when those inmates tried to
leverage that info for their own benefit, one demanded freedom
in exchange for the map he copied from Hanson's hints.
(29:52):
The full story became muddled. Hanson was capable of lying
to other criminals as much as he lied to authorities.
As author Leland mused, Hanson could have easily lied to
the cons about Emeric and Thill, just a toy with them,
or to elevate his own dark legend. However, Alaska State
troopers treat every hint seriously. They did back in two
(30:13):
thousand and eight, and they still do today. The possibility
of more victims means the case is technically open ended.
In official records, Hanson is suspected and up to twenty
one or more murders, even though only seventeen are confirmed
and he was only ever convicted for four. It's a
remarkable and troubling thing. Even after all these years, we
(30:33):
can't say with certainty that we know the full scope
of Robert Hanson's crimes. This lnkering uncertainty is in part
a testament to the era in which Hanson operated. The
nineteen seventies and early eighties and Anchorage were a chaotic time.
Sex workers, dancers, drifters. They came and went, often without
anyone keeping close track. Sudden disappearances were commonplace in that scene.
(30:57):
Hanson learned to exploit that. As Frank Rothschild explained, Anchorage
at the time was perfect for someone like Robert Hanson.
His victims were mostly runaways who had no family support.
For many, Anchorage was a place to make money and survive.
In other words, the community and police weren't watching out
for these women the way they would have for, say,
(31:17):
a well to do suburban housewife. Hanson himself eventually acknowledged this,
telling investigators that he deliberately learned he needed to take
women who weren't easily believed or cared about by the
community or police. Or, as Trooper Flota put it, bluntly,
Hanson figured out that strippers and sex workers were harder
to track and less likely to be missed. Those words,
(31:40):
staying less likely to be missed. The implication is that
our society failed to miss them, failed to notice when
they were just gone. Robert Hanson's killing spree was facilitated
by systemic apathy. Early on, when some of these women
went missing, there was no big search party, there were
no headlines. Law enforcement, strapped and perhaps biased by the
(32:02):
victim's lifestyles, did not pour resources into finding them. That
allowed a predator like Robert Hanson to continue relatively unchecked
for about a decade. Even Cindy Paulson, the seventeen year
old who miraculously escaped Hanson in nineteen eighty three and
sounded the alarm, was at first not fully believed by authorities.
An APD officer initially dismissed parts of her story. After all,
(32:27):
she was a teenage sex worker, and Hanson was a
mild mannered local businessman with a family. It took persistence
by Alaska state Trooper Glenfloda and others to dig deeper,
to trust Cindy's account and to break the case open.
How many others might have tried to escape or sought help,
only to be doubted or ignored by those they trusted.
(32:47):
This is where our anger at the system comes in,
because yes, we should be angry at Robert Hanson, undoubtedly,
but also at the circumstances that allowed him to prey
on these women so freely. The haunting possibility of more victims,
unidentified victims, and untold stories is a direct result of
how society viewed these women. They were often seen as
(33:10):
less than as transient, as trouble, and Hansen knew that
he weaponized society's neglect against his victims. August twenty first,
(33:36):
twenty fourteen, Alaska Regional Hospital, Anchorage. The fluorescent lights cast
a sterile glow on a frail seventy five year old
man lang restrained by tubes and wires. Heart monitor beeps
steadily at first, then begins to stutter. In the hallway,
a corrections officer shifts nervously. Robert Hansen, Alaska's most notorious
(33:57):
serial killer, is taking his final breaths. Nurses rush in
is the alarm sound. Moments later, the monitor flatlines. A
doctor checks for a pulse, then quietly notes the time
one thirty am. The officer steps outside and speaks into
his radio. Robert Hanson is dead. Word travels fast through
official channels. Glenfloda, a retired state trooper who spent years
(34:22):
hunting Hanson, offers only one thought to the press that morning.
On this day, we should only remember as many victims
and all of their families. As far as Hanson is concerned,
this world is better without him. Hearing of Hanson's death,
former prosecutor Frank Rothschild does not mince his words either.
He will not be missed. Good riddance to him. Thirty
(34:50):
plus years after Robert Hanson's reign of terror ended, his
story remains a cautionary tale, not only of the darkness
one human being can harbor, but of the cost of
an difference toward the vulnerable. Hanson died in a prison
hospital bed, but the aftermath of his crimes is far
from over. When we reflect on Hanson's final years in
(35:10):
the mysteries that persist, there is an uneasy realization that
some justice is yet incomplete. True Robert Hanson faced earthly justice.
He was imprisoned until his final breath, condemned in nineteen
eighty four, so that he could never hurt another soul.
But for his victims and their families, justice includes remembering
their names, telling their stories, and, when possible, finding the
(35:33):
lost and giving them back their identity. In that sense,
work remains at clutnat Annie must get her name back.
She is the last of Hanson's known victims to remain nameless.
Investigators press on with modern forensic methods to identify her,
refusing to let her fade into a statistic. Her unidentified
status is a stark reminder of how easily a young
(35:55):
woman's entire existence can be erased, but also a rallying
cry that, even forty plus years later, we will not
let that stand. The unrecovered victims deserve to be found.
Even if Hanson tried to thwart discovery, The search isn't
truly over. Alaska's wilderness does give up its secret. Sometimes
hikers might find a bone, erosion might uncover a shallow grave.
(36:18):
Every so often, state troopers still get calls about possible
human remains in remote areas, and they quietly check them
against Hanson's missing victims list. Hope remains that one day
someone might stumble upon a skull or a fragment that
finally closes a case. Until then, families like those of
Roxanne Eastland and Andrea Altieri live in a painful limbo.
(36:39):
The shadow of additional victims must be acknowledged. While we
may never confirm beyond doubt the fates of Megan Emeric,
Mary Thyl or others Robert Hanson likely killed, we remember
their names. We acknowledge that justice did not officially reach
those cases. They serve as haunting what ifs. If only
Hanson had been got sooner, if only someone had connected
(37:02):
the dots back in the nineteen seventies, if only we
could compel the truth from a liar's mouth. The possibility
of more victims means there may be families out there
who never even knew to mourn parents or siblings of
a runaway who disappeared in nineteen seventy two or in
nineteen seventy six, not realizing she crossed paths with a
serial killer. Those families, too, were failed by the system.
(37:24):
In the end. The story of Robert Hanson, or the
Butcher Baker, is one of contrast. On one hand, it's
a story of incredible police work and survival, brave young
Cindy Paulson escaping and insisting her story be heard, Dogged
investigators like Glenn Floda and prosecutors like Frank Roth's child
piecing together clues and bringing Hanson down, the community's outrage,
(37:47):
pushing for justice for women who were often marginalized. On
the other hand, it's a story of society failing. How
easy it was for Robert Hanson to get away with
what he did for so long because his victims were
women on the fringes, women he correctly assumed the world
would not rally to find Hanson's crimes provoke outrage, not
just for their sick brutality, but for how preventable they
(38:09):
might have been if the victims had not been so
easily dismissed in life. We think of the seventeen year
old dancer turned informant who had to literally run for
her life, shackled in handcuffs to make the police notice,
and even then they didn't give a shit until another person,
a man, validated her story. We think of how many
times Robert Hanson was lightly punished for earlier offenses, like
(38:30):
the nineteen seventy one attempted abduction and assault, for which
he served just a few months in prison, giving him
confidence that he could continue, that he could escalate. We
think of how many warnings were missed or minimized because
the victims were considered troublesome or unreliable. It's ok to
be pissed off in knowing that had things been different, some,
if not most, of these young women might still be alive.
(38:53):
Yet from that we must do better. Law enforcement in
Alaska has evolved since the Robert Hanson era. The attitude
towards missing persons, especially missing sex workers or Indigenous women,
has markedly changed. Each unidentified victim case now received at
tension and resources that were unheard of in the nineteen eighties,
evidenced by the advanced DNA work being done for Aklutna Annie.
(39:17):
Society too, has grown, perhaps learning in part from tragedies
like this, to recognize that every life, every person matters.
Robert Hanson is gone, but the responsibility of remembering falls
to us. We must not remember his name with fascination,
but rather the names of those he harmed. Cherry Morrow,
Paula Golding, Joanna Messina, Deleen Frey, women who loved and
(39:42):
were loved, whose lives were cut short, but whose voices
echoed through the brave testimony of survivors and the dedication
of investigators. We speak of a Klutna Annie in Horshoe,
Harriet ack A, Robin Pelke once Jane Dowes now symbols
of why we never give up on a victim's story.
We acknowledge those still lost in the Alaskan wild, Roxanne Andrea, Megan,
(40:05):
Mary Celia, and commit that they will not be forgotten,
no matter how long it takes to find them or
learn their truth. The case of Robert Hanson leaves us
with unanswered questions that may never be fully resolved, but
it also leaves us with a sense of moral clarity.
The women he targeted were human beings who deserved protection,
and in many ways, the system failed them. We can't
(40:28):
rewrite the past, but we can ensure that, going forward,
we see and value those on the margins, those that
are different. We can ensure that predators like Robert Hanson
find no dark corners to hide in, no indifferent shrug
from authorities to enable them. So let's take this story
and try to fuel some positive change. Because the final
(40:49):
chapter isn't truly about Robert Hanson at all. It's about
the victims, those that were named and remain unnamed. It's
about restoring dignity to those who were once deprived of it.
It's about memory and justice living on even after the
monster who caused this harm is long dead. With all
that being said, this story remains unresolved, no
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