The Butcher Baker (Part Two: Catch & Release)

"Guys, I've got a map here... with a lot of X's."

Just after 5:00 AM on 13 June 1983, police in Anchorage, Alaska arrive at a seedy motor inn on Gambell Street. Inside room 110 is a young girl huddled on the bed, barefoot, shivering, and still wearing a pair of handcuffs. Her name is Cindy Paulson, and minutes earlier she had made a run for her life.

Through Cindy's extraordinary account, police link her case to a local resident, Robert Hansen. Hansen, a local baker and avid hunter, was well-known and liked by almost all who knew him, including members of the Anchorage P.D. Investigators bring him in for questioning but are ultimately forced to let him go. However, Cindy's report quickly ends up on the desk of Alaska State Trooper Glenn Flothe, who - along with some others - had been investigating the mysterious deaths of local sex workers and dancers...



Part two of four

Research, writing, hosting, and production by Micheal Whelan

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Episode Transcript

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. December
nineteen seventy one, Anchorage, Alaska. A young housewife steps out
of a grocery store into the dim Anchorage afternoon. Snow

(00:45):
crunches under her boots as she crosses a nearly empty
parking lot, arms full of shopping bags. She doesn't notice
the man watching her from behind a pickup truck as
she reaches her car. Suddenly, a pistol digs into her ribs.
Get in a low voice hisses. The housewife's heart leaps
into her throat. Gun metal presses against her coat, trembling,

(01:06):
she fumbles with her keys. The stranger shoves her into
the driver's seat and slides in behind her. He's wiry,
pockmarked with intense eyes. In the silence, she hears only
her own pulse, just barely audible. Over the man's breathing,
he ties her hands. The shopping bag's topple apples rolling
across the floorboard. The man's breathing is rapid excited. With

(01:27):
the barrel of the gun under her chin, he growls
an unspeakable demand. Tears sting her eyes as she realizes
the man's intent. In a flash of terror fueled adrenaline,
she wrenches the door handle and throws herself onto the pavement, screaming.
Panicked by her screams and headlights sweeping into the lot,
the attacker peels off into the night. The young woman

(01:48):
collapses and sobs on the icy ground, alive and free.
This woman would later go on to identify her attacker
as Robert Hanson. He was arrested and charged with the
attempted rape of this housewife an Anchorage in nineteen seventy one,
but prosecutors bargained the charges down. The rape charge was
dropped entirely, and Hansen pleaded no contest to a lesser

(02:10):
offense of assault with a deadly weapon. He was sentenced
to five years in prison, yet served only six months
before being put on a work release program and sent
to a halfway house. Robert Hansen was effectively caught and
then released. Little did anyone know this catch and release
would embolden a predator. Hansen walked free by nineteen seventy

(02:31):
two and soon began stalking new prey. Over the next decade,
women in Anchorage would vanish without a trace, their fates unknown.
The justice systems mercy in nineteen seventy one had given
a budding serial offender a second chance. This is part
two of the Butcher Baker Catch and Release. A little

(03:06):
past five am on June thirteenth, nineteen eighty three, Anchorage
police cruisers sped toward a CD motor inn on Gamble Street.
Inside Room one ten of the Big Timber Motel, officers
find a young girl huddled on the bed, barefoot, shivering
and still wearing a pair of handcuffs. Her name is
Cindy Paulson, and minutes earlier she had made a run

(03:27):
for her life. Cindy is just seventeen years old, a
dancer who had been working on the streets to survive
through terrified sobs. She tells police a nearly unbelievable story
that a potential customer kidnapped her a gunpoint, chained and
raped her in his basement, and then tried to load
her onto a private plane, possibly to take her into
the Alaskan wilderness to hunt her down like an animal.

(03:49):
She claims that she escaped only by jumping out of
his car and fleeing while he was distracted at the airport.
The officers are astonished. Cindy's ordeal sounds like something out
of a horror move, and at first some are skeptical
that such an elaborate cruelty could be real, but Cindy
is frantic, begging them to believe her. She can even
describe the man's home interior in detail, the layout of

(04:12):
the basement, wreck room where he changed her to a post,
the bearskin rug on the floor, the mounted hunting trophies
on the walls. She describes her attacker as a short, wiry,
middle aged man, maybe early forties, with acne scarred skin
and a stutter in his voice. His name, she says,
is Robert. He never told her his last name, though,
but she remembers where he was taking her, Merrill Field,

(04:35):
the small municipal airport. He had a blue and white
bush plane waiting there. Cindy claims that she even had
the presence of mind to leave behind evidence. During her escape,
she intentionally left her blue sneakers on the back seat
floor of his car, hoping that police could find them later.
Rather than dismiss this teen sex worker as just making
up a wild tale, the Anchorage police followed through on

(04:57):
her leads, as standard protocol after sexual assault. They escort
Cindy to the hospital for an exam. On the drive,
Cindy suddenly points out the window, there's the airfield, Merrill Field,
and over there in the lot is the man's plane.
The patrol car pulls over as Cindy insists they stop
sure enough, exactly where she guides them. They find a

(05:18):
small blue and white Piper supercub airplane, tail number visible
on the side. A security guard on duty approaches the
officers to ask what's happening. He has just seen a
suspicious scene minutes earlier, a man chasing a barefoot, handcuffed
girl across the tarmac. The guard even wrote down the
license plate of the man's vehicle as it sped away.
Now putting two and two together, he hands that plate

(05:40):
number over to police. Anchorage PD runs the registration on
both the plane and the vehicle. Both come back to
the same local man, Robert C. Hansen. Moments later, as
Cindy is being led into the emergency room, an officer
gets confirmation over the radio blue supercub tail number xyz
Z registered to Robert Hansen, Anchorage, same for the car

(06:04):
that plane belongs to Hanson. Cindy's eyes widen. She was
telling the truth, and now they have a name. The
responding officers now realized they may have stumbled upon something
far bigger than a single rape attempt, As stated by
Assistant District Attorney Frank Roth's child later, we had him
pretty cold on a kidnapping and rape case, a case

(06:25):
which was eerily like what we suspected was happening to
all these other women. Unbeknownst to Cindy, police and the
DA had been grappling with a string of unsolved murders
of young women around Anchorage, victims who, like Cindy, were
either dancers or sex workers. Her report was the first
real break in the case. By the end of that day,

(06:46):
June thirteenth, nineteen eighty three, Anchorage police bring Robert Hansen
in for questioning. He's a forty four year old local baker,
married with two children, known around town. As a soft
spoken family man. Investigators arrive at Hanson's modest ranch style
home on Old Harbor Avenue. The description Cindy provided is
chillingly accurate. From the blue gray paint on the siding

(07:09):
to the basement den outfitted with hunting trophies and a
chain fixture on a support pole, it all matches what
Cindy told them. This corroboration gives police cause to detain
Hanson foreign interview? Could it be that this unassuming baker
is a dangerous predator? In the interrogation room at Anchorage
p D Headquarters, Robert Hanson sits almost mild mannered, seemingly

(07:33):
more nervous than angry. He has a slight build, thinning hair,
and a timid demeanor. Detectives note the way he avoids
eye contact and the subtle stammer in his speech. Cindy
had mentioned that her attacker spoke with a stutter. Hanson
certainly doesn't look like anyone's idea of a serial rapist,
let alone a serial killer. He's polite, almost ingratiating as

(07:54):
he answers questions in a soft voice. When detectives confront
him with Cyndy Paulson's account, the abduction at gunpoint, the
violent rape and torture, the attempted flight to the wilderness.
Hanson's demeanor shifts from anxious to almost affront it. He
shakes his head, insisting it's all a lie. Instead, he
begins to spin a story that paints him as the victim.

(08:15):
Robert Hanson claims that Cindy Paulson is just trying to
extort money from him, a false accusation, he says, to
punish him for refusing to pay her demands. According to
one investigator, when told of Cindy's rape allegations, Hanson said,
you can't rape a prostitute, can you? That single sentence
hangs in the air. It's a shocking display of Hanson's attitude.

(08:37):
In his mind, a sex worker's consent or coercion must
not even count. He begins attacking Cindy's character, asserting that
no jury would ever believe a quote unquote hooker over
an upstanding man like himself. Detectives present the facts Cindy
identified as plane and car. A witness saw him chasing her.
She accurately described his home. But this Hanson grows more agitated,

(09:00):
but sticks to his story. He claims that he was
with friends the previous night and thus couldn't have assaulted Cindy.
In fact, he names two of these friends and insists
they can vouch for him. Sure enough, when police call
these men, both initially back up Hanson's alibi, saying that
they hung out with him that night and that he
was with them during the hours in question. Hansen also

(09:21):
mentions truthfully that his wife and children were out of
town on vacation, implying that he was lonely but certainly
not out kidnapping girls. Throughout the interview, Hanson maintains a calm,
almost pathetic demeanor. Detectives can't help noticing that, when pressed,
he scammers and trips over certain words, just as Cindy
had described her abductor's speech pattern. It's a tiny red flag. Still,

(09:45):
Hanson's meek persona is disarming. He plays the part of
the falsely accused nice guy extraordinarily well, a strategy that
had worked for him in the past. After all, this
isn't the first time he's been accused of violence against women.
His criminal wrecks heard quietly includes that nineteen seventy one
assault of a housewife at gunpoint and even a rape

(10:05):
of a sex worker that same year, though both of
those incidents resulted in mere slaps on the wrist. But
the Anchorage detectives in nineteen eighty three may not have
immediately dug that far back. Sitting in that interrogation room,
they see a man who appears utterly ordinary and insistently
claims to be innocent. One of Hanson's friends, one of
his supposed alibi witnesses, even shows up at the police

(10:27):
station vouching that Bob was with me all evening, a
carefully crafted lie that for now holds up under cursory scrutiny.
Faced with a lack of physical evidence at that moment
and a suspect who presents as a cooperative, harmless family man,
the police find their case weakening. Cindy Paulson, by contrast,
is a teenage sex worker with no family in the area,

(10:49):
a girl who had been living on the margins of society.
It's an unfortunate truth that in nineteen eighty three, the
word of a young woman with Cindy's background often carried
less weight with lawn enforcement than that of a middle
aged male business owner. Robert Hanson knew this, and exploited it.
He cast Cindy as a vindictive prostitute trying to ruin him,

(11:10):
and some officers were inclined to believe him, or at
least doubt her. The fact that Hanson was also well
well liked local baker, known to serve free coffee to
cops who stopped by, only helped his credibility. It was
hard for Anchorage police officers to imagine that Bob the baker,
the mild man who baked their mourning doughnuts, could also

(11:30):
be a sadistic sexual predator. After hours of questioning, no
formal charges are filed. Incredibly, the Anchorage police decide to
let Robert Hansen go home. They have Cindy's statement, but
Hanson has an alibi and no prior felony convictions that
immediately come to their attention. His few past offenses like
theft and a short stint for arson, were not front

(11:52):
of mind. Moreover, the physical evidence, like Cindy's handcuffs, her clothing,
or the gun, was all at Hanson's house or on
his person, and without a warrant they could not search
his property. Yet investigators were left with what they believed
was a classic he said she said quandary complicated by
the biases of the era, and in the end, Hanson's meek,

(12:13):
indignantly innocent act, coupled with his friend's support, convinces the
higher ups that they lack probable cause to hold him
on Cindy's allegations alone. One detective notes how Hanson's meek
demeanor and humble occupation as a baker, along with an
alibi from his friend, persuaded police not to consider him
a serious suspect, and so Robert Hanson walks free that night,

(12:35):
just hours after Cindy Paulsen had escaped from his chains.
For Cindy, it's an unimaginable blow. She had survived a
night of torture and found the courage to go to
the authorities, only to see her attacker calmly stroll out
of the station, not even charged. One can only imagine
her level of frustration and fear. Hanson, for his part,

(12:55):
must have felt a sick confidence in that moment. Once
again he had been caught and released, but this time
things will be different, Unlike a decade prior in nineteen
seventy one, when Hansen's violence was kind of swept under
the rug Cindy's voice will not be silenced so easily.
Unbeknownst to Robert Hanson, some in law enforcement believe Cindy's

(13:18):
story and are determined to dig deeper. Among them is
an Alaska state trooper named Glenn Flota, who has been
hunting an unknown serial killer for months now. Hansen is
not off the hook yet. In fact, he's about to
become the prime suspect in a far reaching investigation. Will
be right back after a quick word from the sponsors

(13:39):
that support this show. Anchorage in the early nineteen eighties
was a frontier boomed down. The construction of the Trans
Alaska oil plane in the seventies had flooded the city

(14:02):
with transient workers, flush with cash, and with them came
a vice economy of drugs, strip clubs, and sex work.
This was a rough and tumble era, a time and
place where a great many people had come to start
anew often leaving families and past lives behind. In such
an environment, it was sadly common for drifters to arrive
and depart abruptly. If someone went missing, especially a prostitute

(14:24):
or a dancer. Few noticed, As one observer put it,
Anchorage was filled with those without roots or community ties,
those whom, if they disappeared, would hardly be missed. This
harsh reality created the perfect cover for a predator like
Robert Hanson. The women he targeted lived on society's fringes.
They were, as Hanson saw them, bad girls who he

(14:46):
thought no one would bother looking for. Indeed, for a while,
he was kind of right. In the late nineteen seventies
and early nineteen eighties, several young women did vanish from
the area surrounding Anchorage with disturbingly little outcry. Many were
actually never reported missing, or if they were, the reports
got buried in understaffed police files. Law enforcement, too, was

(15:07):
jaded by the transient nature of this population. Detective Maxine
Ferrell of Anchorage PD later admitted that early on, when
topless dancers started disappearing, even she struggled to get traction
on the cases. She recalled, we were used to dancers
being reported missing only to turn up later. But by
nineteen eighty Ferrell noticed a new troubling pattern. Dancers and

(15:29):
sex workers were vanishing at a much higher rate than before,
and not very many of them were turning up again.
She recalled, She and others in APD suspected something was
very wrong, but proving it was difficult. The transient lifestyles
of the victims, their use of stage names, and their
general distrust of police meant that solid information was hard
to come by. Often, when a woman from the streets

(15:51):
went missing, other sex workers assumed she had simply moved
on to the next city on their circuit Seattle, Honolulu,
et cetera. Even the local newsp papers lost interest when
a few missing women eventually resurfaced alive. Elsewhere, those who
truly disappeared remained largely invisible, except to the killer, who
knew exactly what had happened to them. By nineteen eighty three, though,

(16:13):
the facade of coincidence was beginning to crack. The bodies
of several young women had been discovered in remote areas
just outside of Anchorage, confirming at least some of the
missing had met foul play. In July nineteen eighty, construction
workers found the decomposed remains of a woman buried along
a Klutna road on the outskirts of the city. She
was never identified and became tragically known only as a

(16:36):
Klutna Annie. Later that same year, in a gravel pit
near Sewart, the body of another missing woman, twenty four
year old Joanna Messina, was found partially devoured by a bear.
In September nineteen eighty two, the shallow grave of twenty
three year old Cherry Morrow was uncovered beside the Kinnick River.
She had been an exotic dancer missing for about a year.

(16:57):
Cherry had been shot in the back three times, and
investigators discovered two twenty three caliber shell casings buried in
the dirt near her remains. The shells suggested a Ruger
Many fourteen hunting rifle had been used, a firearm favored
by some local big game hunters. When another dancer, twenty
year old Paula Golding, turned up dead in the Kinnick

(17:17):
River area in light nineteen eighty three, killed in the
exact same manner, it erased any doubt Anchorage had a
serial abductor and murderer on the loose. At this point,
four bodies had been found, including Annie, Joanna Messina, Sherry Morrow,
and Paula Golding, all dumped in the wilderness, and there
were many other names on the police missing person list

(17:39):
feared to be additional victims of the same killer. It
wasn't a coincidence that the victims were all from the
same mix of streets and clubs. Tragically, in the eyes
of some investigators at the time, these women had been
considered less likely to be missed if they had vanished
precisely what their killer had been counting on. Alaska State
trooper Glenfota would later explain of the killers evolving victim profile.

(18:02):
Hanson quickly learned that strippers and prostitutes were harder to
track and less likely to be missed. This systemic failure,
the skepticism and neglect surrounding missing sex workers, allowed Hanson
to operate in the shadows for years. When Cindy Paulsen
came forward in nineteen eighty three with her horrifying tale,
she was bucking a cruel trend, speaking up when so

(18:24):
many others could not. Yet, even then, biases nearly derailed
the case. Hanson's dismissive statement that you can't rape a
prostitute perfectly encapsulated the ugly mindset the predators like him exploited.
He counted on society treating sex workers as unrapable, as
if their profession nullified their victimhood, and for a moment

(18:46):
it almost worked. Again, the police release of Hanson after
Cindy's initial report shows how ingrained those prejudices were. But
with that being said, not everyone in law enforcement was
willing to write off Cindy Paulsen or the other victims.
There were investigators who believed that a serial killer was
at work, and they were determined to try and stop him,

(19:06):
but it would take some unusual cooperation between agencies and
a new approach to finally break the case open. The
same day that Robert Hanson walked free from that interrogation room,
a report of the incident and Cindy's detailed statement made
its way to the Alaska State Troopers. It landed on
the desk of Sergeant Glenn Flota, one of the troopers

(19:26):
actively working the string of unsolved murder cases. When Sergeant
Flota read Cindy Paulson's account, alarms went off in his mind.
The method of abduction, the talk of a private plane
and a remote cabin, the chaining, and the amount of violence.
It all fit the emerging pattern of the killer that
he had been chasing. Cindy was describing exactly the kind
of scenario that might precede those bodies turning up in

(19:49):
the wilderness. She was a survivor who had lived to
tell the tale, and Flota realized this could be the guy.
Glenn Flota was a tenation investigator with the Alaska State Troopers,
and by mid nineteen eighty three he was deeply involved
in the hunt for the unknown serial murderer, operating around
Anchorage Seward and the Matsu Valley. In fact, Floda had

(20:12):
been part of a special team investigating the murdered women
by the time of Cindy's escape that summer, he and
his colleagues strongly suspected that one perpetrator was responsible for
at least three, and now likely four of those bodies
found in the wilderness. Each new find added urgency. When
Paula Golding's remains were discovered on September second, nineteen eighty three,

(20:32):
near the Kinnick River, not far away from where Shecheri
Morro had been found, Troopers confirmed that both women had
been killed with the same high powered hunting rifle. The
two twenty three shell casings at both scenes were matched
by ballistics, essentially proving that one man was hunting these women.
Trooper Floda had pieces of a puzzle multiple victims a

(20:53):
similar mo and hints that the killer might be an
experienced hunter, But who was he? Flota received the Anchorage
PD's report on Cindy Paulson's kidnapping. He immediately noticed the parallels.
Here was a dancer who had been abducted from Fourth
Avenue and taken to a remote air field by a
man who talked about a cabin by the Kinnick River,
the very area that these bodies were being found. The

(21:16):
suspect's name was given as Robert Hanson, a local baker.
Flota began digging into Hanson's background. It did not take
long to uncover the checkered past. Just beneath his quiet exterior, Hanson,
Floata learned had prior arrest. There was an arson conviction
back in his home state of Iowa, several thefts, and disturbingly,
those nineteen seventy one sexual assault cases in Anchorage, including

(21:38):
the attempted rape of a housewife that had been plea
bargained away. To Floda, this was a huge red flag.
Hanson had a documented history of violence against women, even
if the system had largely wiped it clean. That alone
warranted a closer look. Floda also noted Robert Hanson's lifestyle.
Hanson was an avid big game hunter, known to Brad

(22:00):
about the record sized doll, sheep and bears that he stalked.
His home was literally full of mounted animal trophies. He
owned a Ruger Mini fourteen rifle, the very model that
used two twenty three rounds, the same caliber found at
the murder scenes. And then there was the matter of
Hanson's private plane. The suspect in Cindy's case had a plane,
so whoever was killing the women and dumbing them in

(22:21):
distant wilderness locations could plausibly be using a small bush
plane to access those sites. Hanson fit that criteria exactly.
He was a licensed pilot who kept a bushplane at
Merrill Field. Each new detail that floweda uncovered tightened the
noose around Hanson as the prime suspect. In an investigative report,
Floda later wrote that by the end of the summer

(22:42):
of nineteen eighty three, all evidence pointed to Hanson as
the man behind this string of murders. Still, in order
to move decisively against a well liked local citizen, Floda
needed to be sure and to build an air tight case.
A gut feeling and circumstantial clues weren't enough. He would
need hard evidence or a credible psychological profile to sway

(23:03):
the courts and get a warrant, So Flota decided to
enlist help from the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit. He provided
crime scene details from the known murders at Klutona, Annie
Joanna Messina, Cherry Morrow, and Paula Golding, as well as
information from Cindy Paulson's account to one of the pioneers
of criminal profiling, FBI Special Agent John Douglas. If anyone

(23:24):
could sketch the portrait of an unknown predator, it was Douglas,
the legendary profiler whose work hunting serial killers would later
be popularized in the show Mind Hunter. Douglas analyzed the
data and offered a profile of the likely perpetrator. It
was astonishingly specific. The unknown killer, Douglas believed would be
an experienced hunter with low self esteem and a history

(23:46):
of feeling rejected by women. He would likely have a
stutter or some speech impediment, and might have some troublesome
acne or scars that contributed to a sense of inferiority.
Such a man might try to compensate for his insecurities
through trophies in hunting game and in hunting women. The
profile also predicted that the offender would keep souvenirs from

(24:06):
his victims, particularly items like jewelry, as a way to
relive his conquest. Crucially, given the geography of the crimes,
Douglas suspected the killer might have accessed to a plane
or at least be very comfortable in the bush. Many
of the dump sites were in areas one could reach
only by off road vehicle, boat, or small aircraft, indicating
a perpetrator who was at home in Alaska's wilderness and

(24:29):
possibly a pilot. This profile matched Robert Hanson almost perfectly.
Hanson was indeed a diminutive, socially awkward man, with a
lifelong stutter and a pock marked face from severe acne
in his youth, yet a long history of being rejected
or ridiculed by women. As a teenager, he had been
painfully shy and was often turned down for dates, developing

(24:50):
a deep resentment toward attractive women who he felt looked
down on him. To cope, he had immersed himself in hunting,
becoming an excellent marksman. Now in middle age, he had
a respectable veneer, a wife, kids a successful bakery, but
underneath all that, he still simmered with rage and feelings
of inadequacy. The profiles mentioned of trophy keeping rang true

(25:12):
with something else Floda had learned. Years earlier. Hanson had
been caught shoplifting a chainsaw from a store and was
required to get psychiatric treatment as part of his sentence.
The evaluating psychiatrist had noted Hanson's infantile personality and his
obsession with getting back at those who wronged him. Someone
like that very well might take trophies from victims as

(25:32):
a twisted form of getting even with a womankind. Armed
with the FBI profile in Cindy's testimony, Sergeant Floyda was convinced.
He famously remarked that Robert Hanson fit the profile down
to the stutter. Now it was time to act, But
Floda and the task force knew that they only had
one shot to get this right. If they moved too soon,

(25:53):
Hanson could lawyer up or destroy evidence, and if they
waited too long, who knew how many more women might
fall prey. Hanson, oblivious to the investigation closing in, was
still trolling Anchorage's streets at night in search of victims.
Police surveillance in those weeks caught him cruising the red
light district repeatedly, though he did not strike again while

(26:14):
under watch. Investigators needed concrete evidence to tie Robert Hanson
to the murders, not just the kidnapping of Cindy Paulson.
The simplest way to get that evidence was to obtain
a search warrant for Hanson's home, his vehicles, and his plane,
and to hope that physical proof of his crimes could
be found more after the break. Over the next few

(26:56):
weeks in late summer nineteen eighty three, the investigation accelerated.
Anchorage PD and Alaska State Troopers worked together, keeping Robert
Hanson under twenty four hour surveillance while quietly reinterviewing witnesses
and re examining old case files. Detectives paid a visit
to Hanson's two friends, the ones who had provided his
alibi for the night of Cindy Paulson's abduction. With mounting

(27:18):
pressure and perhaps a dose of guilt, those men began
to waver in truth. They had not been with Hanson
the whole night in question. Hanson had approached them after
the fact and had spun a story He claimed that
he had a quote run in with a hooker quote
who was trying to shake him down for money, and
he begged his friends to say they had been hanging
out together so he would not get in trouble with

(27:40):
his wife. Wanting to help their buddy Bob avoid domestic strife,
the friends had agreed to lie, but now faced with
state troopers who made it clear that this was a
serious criminal investigation, not just a marital spat, the friends
confessed to the cover up. They admitted that Robert Hanson
was not with them during the time that Cindy was attacked,
so the false alibi I collapsed. Investigators now had another

(28:02):
piece of probable cause. Hansen had attempted to obstruct the
investigation by getting his friends to lie. This showed consciousness
of guilt. Why would an innocent man need an alibi
fabricated after the fact. Additionally, officers began taking a closer
eye at Hansen's firearms. As an award winning hunter, Hansen
owned a sizeable collection of guns. Particularly interesting was whether

(28:25):
he owned a weapon chambered in two twenty three caliber.
While Alaska did not require registration of hunting rifles, the
task Force located records from a few local gun shops
and hunting clubs. Indeed, Hansen was known to use a
Ruger Mini fourteen semi automatic rifle, a common and powerful
small caliber rifle favored by many hunters for its accuracy.

(28:46):
It does fire two twenty three rounds, the same type
extracted from Sherry Morro's body and found near the Kinnick
River graves. It was not definitive proof, yet it was
another point of connection. If they could find that rifle
in Hanson's possession and match at viabilistics to the crime
scene casings, the case would be closed. Investigators also gathered
statements from anyone who had crossed paths with Hanson and

(29:09):
the victims. One of Hanson's hunting buddies mentioned something eerily telling.
He and Hanson would occasionally take trips by boat or
in Hanson's Piper supercub to go hunting near the Kinnick
River and in the Acclutna area north of Anchorage. Those
were the exact areas where bodies had been found. This
friend likely had no idea of Hanson's dark hobby, but

(29:29):
his statement unintentionally put Hansen at the murder scenes. This
was unexpected gold for Floda and the team, more circumstantial
evidence that Hanson was intimately familiar with the dumping grounds.
By mid October nineteen eighty three, the puzzle pieces were
finally in place. Cindy Paulson's first hand victim testimony, Robert

(29:49):
Hanson's criminal past and suspicious behavior, the matching FBI profile,
the broken alibi, the gun link, and now the geographic
link to the body sites. Alaska State troopers and APD
detectives compiled all of this into a detailed affidavit for
a search warrant. The Anchorage District Attorney's office, led by
Frank Rothschild and assistant da Vic Frumm, were on board

(30:12):
and helped present the case to a judge. The moment
of truth came on October twenty sixth, nineteen eighty three,
when a judge reviewed the evidence and signed off on
several search warrants. They finally had the green light to
search Robert Hanson's property top to bottom. Early morning, October

(30:46):
twenty seventh, nineteen eighty three, it's still dark and Anchorage's
late autumn. A team of troopers and APD officers quietly mobilize,
planning simultaneous moves. One team will arrest Robert Hanson, while
others execute searches of his house, his bakery, his cars,
and his airplane. The element of surprise is key. They

(31:06):
don't want Hansen to have even a second to destroy
evidence or arm himself. Hanson by now likely suspects that
he's under scrutiny. He's noticed on Mark Carr's trailing him
at times, but he does not know about the warrant,
and he certainly doesn't expect what's coming. This morning. At
Hanson's bakery, the morning bread baking is well underway. The
smell of dough and sinnamon rolls wafts onto the street

(31:29):
as a few early patrons trickle in for coffee. Suddenly,
police quietly enter through the back. Trooper Glenn Flota and
a couple of APD detectives approached Robert Hanson, who is
clad in a flower dusted apron, pulling trays from the oven.
Before the baker can even register shock. Floda produces the
warrant and an officer steps forward with handcuffs Robert Hanson.

(31:50):
Floida announces you're under arrest. Hanson's shoulders slump. He offers
no resistance In fact, he cooperates calmly and even miles
weekly at his bewildered employees, assuring them that it must
be a mistake. It's as if he's still in meek
Bob the Baker mode. Customers sipping coffee watching confusion as
this unassuming man is let out in handcuffs. Flanked by

(32:13):
multiple officers. Hanson is placed in a squad car headed
for the station once again, but this time he's not
going to be released. Meanwhile, at seven two three Old
Harbor Avenue in East Anchorage, another team of officers converges
on Hanson's family home. Hanson's wife, Darla, and their two
children are caught completely off guard as police polightly but

(32:34):
firmly enter with a search warrant. The warrant is for
evidence connecting Robert Hansen to multiple abductions and murders. When
she learns this, Darla Hanson's face goes pale. For years,
she had known her husband to disappear on occasional hunting trips,
sometimes coming home late from the bakery, but murder. She
and the kids are escorted to a sitting area while

(32:55):
investigators begin a systematic top to bottom search of their home.
It's an awkward, intense scene, uniformed officers methodically ransacking a
neat suburban home as a family looks on in horrified disbelief.
Detectives head straight for the basement wreck room that Cindy
Paulsen had once described. There. It is a windowless den
with wood paneled walls, a pole in the center supporting

(33:18):
the ceiling. Cindy had said, Hans and chained her by
the neck to that pole, And indeed they find scratch
marks on the pole in some kind of bolt or
hook installed nearby. The room is just as Cindy Paulsen depicted.
There's an old brown couch, a pool table, a bear
skin rug on the floor, hunting trophies, deerheads, and a
prized doll sheep starre classy eyed from the walls. It's

(33:41):
an eerie feeling for the officers. Cindy's nightmare is no
longer abstract. It feels real. They can almost picture the
terrified teenager chained there for hours on end. One investigator
notes that the basement was exactly as Cindy had described it,
down to the hidden alcove that's been soundproofed. That alone
gives them con confidence Cindy never set foot in this

(34:02):
house after that night, so how else could she know.
This corroboration emboldens the case that Hanson did abduct her,
But the team needs physical evidence linking Hanson to the murders,
and for that they'll have to search everywhere. Officers scatter
throughout the house, the kitchen, bedrooms, garage. Officers carefully bag

(34:22):
any suspicious items, ropes, chains, firearms, catalogs, floor mats from
Hanson's car in case they hold fibers or hares. For
a while, they come up empty on any smoking gun.
Hanson's wife observes anxiously as they rifle through drawers and closets,
apologizing softly each time they disrupt her neatly folded linens.

(34:43):
It seems like a fruitless hunt until one investigator decides
to take a closer look at the master bedroom. Against
one wall stands a large, king sized bed. The detective
runs his hands along the headboard. It feels unusually thick.
Remembering that the warrant covers any personal records, ernal's maps,
et cetera, he wonders if something could be hidden inside.

(35:04):
He discovers a small panel or a false back in
the headboard that comes off behind it. Stuffed into the
void of the headboard's cavity is an aviation map. Unfolding
it on the bed, the officer feels a jolt of adrenaline.
The map is of the anchorage area and the Matsu Valley,
and it's marked with dozens of hand drawn xes. Each
ax is placed in remote locations along rivers, near wooded

(35:28):
glens deep in the wild. There are dozens of them. Quickly,
he recognizes a few one X sits by Eklutna Lake
where Eklutna and He was found, Another near seward where
Joanna Messina was discovered, another on the Kinnick River, just
about where Sherry Morrow and Paula Golding were discovered. The
exes seem to match up. This officer calls out to

(35:51):
his colleagues, heart pounding. In total, they count marks, the
number in the high twenties, possibly thirty or more. Eventually,
authorities will determined that there are thirty seven X marks
on this map, each one believed to denote a victim's
burial spot. At that moment, though they only know its
far more sights than the four bodies that they found
so far. To them, this is the mother load of

(36:13):
evidence a literal killer's scorecard. Carefully, they bag them up
to preserve it. The officers exchange glances of grim satisfaction.
This alone could be the case breaker. One of them
later says it was circumstantial, sure, but seeing those exes
was like seeing into a murderer's mind. Next, an investigator
climbs up into the attic crawl space above the master bedroom.

(36:37):
It's dark and sweltering as he pokes around with a flashlight.
At first he sees nothing but pink insulation in some
old boxes, But as he lifts a section of fiberglass insulation,
he notices something glinting. Pieces of jewelry are scattered atop
a ceiling joist, as if stashed hastily and forgotten. He
collects them in evidence bags. They're inexpensive trinkets, things like chains,

(36:59):
when's rings, and necklaces. Among them is a pendant in
the shape of an arrowhead. This catches one detective's attention immediately.
They'd heard her from friends of Sherry Morrow that she
always wore a pendant necklace with a small arrowhead charm.
It was missing when her body was found in nineteen
eighty two. Presumably taken by her killer now here it
appears to be hidden in Robert Hanson's attic. These are

(37:23):
trophies kept from victims, exactly as the FBI profile predicted.
One officer holding a handful of dusty jewelry reportedly had
a moment of confusion. I thought, why would Hanson's wife
had her jewelry up here? He said later, before the
realization hit him like a truck. This isn't his wife's jewelry.
These are the souvenirs of murder. They begin cataloging every

(37:45):
found item. Many will later be identified by families of
missing women, confirming their worst fears. Finally, amid an array
of firearms piled up in the corner of the attic,
searchers find what they've been hoping for, a two twenty
three kits caliber Ruger Mini fourteen rifle. It's the kind
of gun that Robert Hanson would plausibly own for hunting,

(38:06):
but it's also very likely the murder weapon used on
at least Sherry Morrow, Paula Goulding, and who knows how
many others. The rifle is seized and sent for immediate
ballistics testing. If the bullets and shell casings from the
crime scene match this weapon, it will be irrefutable physical
evidence tying Robert Hanson to the killings. Later that day,
the forensic lab confirms a match test. Firings from Hanson's

(38:29):
ruger have the same markings as the spent two twenty
three shells recovered near the Kinnick River graves. The probability
of that being a coincidence is effectively zero. This is
literally their smoking gun. Over at Merrill Field, officers also
search Hanson's plane, inside the small Piper supercub for the
owned they find lengths of nylon rope, some duct tape,

(38:50):
and an odd custom built seat in the back, possibly
used to tie down cargo or restrain victims. There's also
a rug and blanket in the back of the plane.
It's all collected as evidence. Hanson's vehicles are similarly searched.
In the car trunk, they find a few two twenty
three shellcasings and bullet holes, later suspected to be from
him sighting in his rifle or potentially from struggles with victims.

(39:13):
Bit by bit, every piece seems to fortify the case.
By the afternoon of October twenty seventh, nineteen eighty three
news breaks in Anchorage that an arrest has been made
in the case of the murdered dancers. The community is
stunned as reporters name Robert Hanson, the baker and quiet
neighbor as the suspect. But investigators are not celebrating publicly yet.

(39:34):
They still have a lot of work to do, namely
confronting Hanson with the mountain of evidence and ideally getting
confession for all the murders represented by those exes on
the map they found. Back at the station, Robert Hanson
sits in an interrogation room once more, now as an
officially arrested suspect. This time, the tone in the room

(39:56):
is entirely different. Gone is the tentative questioning in the
place disbelief that marked his June interview. In its place
is the steely certainty of lawmen who know that they
have their man on the table before Hanson, investigator's methodically
layout item after damning item, a stack of jewelry bags,
the recovered rifle, enlarged photos of the marked map. Hanson's

(40:18):
eyes flick over them, but he maintains a meek facade,
at least at first, insists those things prove nothing He
claims the jewelry was acquired innocently, they were found items
or gifts, and that plenty of people in the area
own a many fourteen. For hours, he denies and deflex
clinging to his story. For the moment, He's still Bob

(40:40):
the Baker, mild and cooperative, playing a chess game with
detectives in the hopes of outsmarting them. Frustrated, the head
prosecutor on the case, Frank Rothschild, joins in the interrogation.
In a calculated move, Roth's Child and his fellow da
lay out a grim future for Hanson if he does
not start telling the truth. They explain that they have
his map of death, and comes springtime, when Alaska's frozen

(41:03):
ground begins to fall, they intend to take Hanson in
chains to every single marked spot. They will bring kidaver
dogs dig up remains, and for each victim that they find,
they will prosecute him again and again, stacking life sentences
until he never breathes free air again. Hanson listens, still
trying to appear unmoved, but as Roth's Child later recounted,

(41:26):
a visible transformation comes over Robert Hanson. At that moment,
his face turns a deep red a vein pulses at
his temple. The polite mask he's been wearing slips for
a split stackond. Pure rage flashes in his eyes, and
the mild stutter disappears. Hanson's lip curls and he spits
out a few snarling words. At least one detective will

(41:46):
recall him sneering something like those dirty fucking horrors, they
deserved it, or words to that effect. In that instant,
everyone in the room sees it the real Robert Hanson,
the predator who was hunting women for sports. Rothschild later
stated it was like watching Bob the Baker turn into
Bob the serial killer right in front of us. The

(42:07):
hair on the back of his neck literally stood up.
The charade was over. Robert Hanson has been caught, and
after denying it, he finally knows it. And so, after
nearly twelve years of terror and at least seventeen murders,
the Butcher Baker of Alaska is finally unmasked and in custody.
The evidence against him is overwhelming. Trophies of the dead

(42:29):
in his attic, ballistic matches to his rifle, a personalized
kill map hidden in his bedroom, all of it, corroborating
the accounts of the few who survived his cruelty. It
is a triumph of police work and the courage of
a seventeen year old girl who refused to be dismissed.
Cindy Paulson's escape set off the chain of events that
led here, and the system, despite its stumbles, ultimately came

(42:51):
together to end Robert Hanson's lethal game. As Robert Hanson
is formally charged and led away to a jail cell,
investigators breathe a sigh of relief. There will be no
more catch and release for this offender. This time they
caught him for good. But their job isn't over now.
They've faced the grueling task of accounting for every X
on that map, giving names to the unknown victims, and

(43:13):
securing justice and court. The saga is far from over,
but on this October day in nineteen eighty three, one
thing is certain. The nightmare and anchorage has finally been
brought to an end. But even that doesn't end. Our
story to be continued on the next episode of Unresolved