Sadistic Killers: Profiles of Pathological Predators (16 page)

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mother – was expected to help his father for hours on end in the family bakery. As a result, he often fell asleep at school.

His IQ tested at 91, which is slightly below average. He was further hampered by his parents’ insistence that he become right-handed, despite the fact that he’d been born left-handed.

(They thought that left-handed children had been tainted by the devil.) Constantly overworked and under praised, he began to stutter like his father and he rarely played with the other children at his Catholic school. Instead he attended church, sang in the choir and studied his Bible every night. His father frequently criticised his schoolwork and his work in the bakery, and supposed infringements resulted in harsh corporal punishment. He was frequently victimised – and men who feel victimised often go on to rape.

He was also very slim and small in stature, so found it hard to be taken seriously. In his fantasies he was king, but to the outside world he was a wimp.

Miserable, he began to eat sweets in vast quantities, a diet which played havoc with his already poor complexion.

Awareness of his chronic acne made him stammer even more fiercely when he talked to girls. On the few occasions that he asked a girl to go out with him she always refused and he stored up more and more resentment. He also had panic attacks when asked a question in class by the teacher, and would break into a heavy sweat.

It’s a safe bet that the youthful Robert often cried himself to sleep, his mind filled with thoughts of the other school kids’

taunts, his body bruised from heavy blows by his father. He would later recall these incredibly painful years and admit that everyone regarded him as a freak. Criticised for his voice, his left-handedness, his facial appearance, his height and his schoolwork, he believed his father’s frequent comments that he could do nothing right.

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Robert Hansen

By high school he found that he excelled at particular solo pursuits such as hunting and fishing. Some boys would have been able to increase their self-esteem by nurturing this talent but for Robert Hansen it was too little too late. His fantasies now revolved around demeaning and hurting women, just as he himself had been demeaned and hurt all his life.

Photos of him taken at age 18 show a smartly dressed boy with very short hair, sticking out ears and a smile which doesn’t reach his eyes. His invariably downcast expression would become more and more unhappy over the years.

Cheated by a prostitute

For a while after leaving school he continued to work in his father’s bakery then joined the Army Reserves and did his basic training in New Jersey. Moved to New York, he and another soldier hired two prostitutes but as soon as Hansen ejaculated, the prostitute left with the cash. He felt angry, cheated and deeply unsatisfied – after all, this wasn’t the control-based sex which dominated his increasingly cruel fantasies.

When his army training ended, Robert returned to working in his father’s bakery, though he found himself an apartment.

He also began to date a girl he’d met in church and he became a volunteer fireman in a desperate bid to gain the authority he craved. The 20-year-old was living the life his parents had mapped out for him, and he was overworked and constantly angry. Something had to give.

Arson and two marriages

He set fire to a barn which was used by his former school, this being a way to get back at the school superintendent who had disciplined him. Referring to the incident years later, he spoke of ‘that monster that did Bob Hansen a personal wrong’.

Superficially, it looked like an act of revenge but arson is often 135

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a tool of the sadist, who takes sexual pleasure from destroying property and thinking about the suffering this destruction will cause. Sadists often masturbate whilst watching the flames devour a building, and masturbate again later to the memory.

In March 1961, he was jailed for this destructive act but his mother paid his bail so that he could marry his girlfriend, after which he was sentenced to three years at the state reformatory.

There, the young outsider spent his time preaching the gospel to other inmates, glad of a captive audience. He was paroled a year early in May 1963, but by then his first wife had been granted a divorce.

Ashamed of his arsonist son, Christian Hansen now relocated the family to Minnesota. There Robert met and married his second wife Gloria, who was also deeply religious. He found work in a bakery whilst she went to university. He loved oral sex but felt that he couldn’t ask a good, religious woman to perform this act so he began to pay prostitutes for fellatio.

Soon desperate for other thrills, Hansen began to steal radios, athletic goods and clothes. Once the family’s pastor spoke up for him and persuaded a store owner not to press charges. He was eventually arrested for stealing a sports ball, an item he could easily afford. These were clear signs of an anti-social personality, but his community continued to view him as a decent family man who had made one or two mistakes.

When Robert was 24, Gloria graduated from university and the couple decided to move to Alaska. There she became a teacher and he found work in yet another bakery. They again became active in the church and in 1971 had their first child, a girl. Meanwhile he revived his favourite hobby of hunting and began to win records for bagging the biggest Dall sheep and caribou.

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Robert Hansen

Attempted rape

On 15 November 1971, Hansen was in his car at the traffic lights when he noticed that the girl in the adjacent vehicle was an attractive teenager. He followed her home and pretended that he was looking for someone else in her apartment block.

They talked for a few minutes then he asked her out but she explained that she already had a fiancé. For the next few days Hansen fantasised about what he would like to do to the 18-year-old if he could get her completely alone.

Then he acted, ambushing her one night as she walked towards her apartment, holding a gun to her head and pushing her towards his car. Thankfully her screams alerted nearby residents who immediately called the police. They arrived quickly and found Hansen acting suspiciously in the vicinity.

The traumatised victim identified him and he was taken into custody.

Back at police headquarters, Hansen reluctantly admitted that he might have held the young woman at gunpoint, adding that he’d had a blackout and still felt dizzy. He was charged with the crime of assault with a deadly weapon and given bail.

A few days later the court ordered him to see a psychiatrist and return for sentencing in January.

Rape

Freed on bail, Robert Hansen committed his first known rape.

On 19 December 1971, he intercepted an 18-year-old dancer as she got into her vehicle late at night in a cafeteria car park.

He forced her into his car at gunpoint, hit her and tied her up, binding her wrists tightly behind her back. He hit her again then drove to a secluded location and ordered her to strip, which she did. After that he kissed and caressed her, before driving on to a highway inn. Leaving her tied to the inside door of the car, he booked accommodation. Unfortunately the 137

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nature of the building meant that he didn’t have to walk past a reception desk, so was able to smuggle the victim directly to his room.

Inside the room, he raped her, often using the line, ‘Try harder or I’ll put you in the hospital.’ It’s telling that this is the kind of phrase an abusive parent will say to a child.

After the rape, Hansen ordered the dancer to dress then said that he was taking her to his cabin in the mountains. Fortunately for the teenager, they found the mountain road blocked with snow and, after driving around for a while, he got out his gun and told her to run. Aware that he was about to shoot her in the back, she begged for her life, explaining that she didn’t want her baby to be left motherless. In turn, he said that he couldn’t let her live because she’d go to the cops. Thinking fast, she gave him her identification, saying that now she couldn’t report him because he knew where she lived. Satisfied, he drove her back to the area where he’d abducted her.

Many years later, Hansen would tell the authorities that he’d raped over 30 such women and let them go. He claimed that most were prostitutes and that he told them he had connections and could have them arrested for soliciting. He said that if they gave him free sex he’d let them go without harming them, but that if they still demanded money he took their lives. This is unlikely – he only let the 18-year-old dancer (who wasn’t a prostitute) go because he found the road to his cabin impassable and because he’d terrorised her into keeping quiet.

A local murder

The teenager initially kept her word and didn’t report the kidnapping and rape to the police – but three days later she read that a young woman named Celia VanZamen had been abducted, partially stripped and had her hands tied behind her back. Her assailant had thrown her into a ravine where 138

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Robert Hansen

she’d died of exposure. (Hansen was never formally linked to this death.)

The girl now reported the rape, and Hansen was arrested with her name and address still in his wallet. In court, the defence tried to suggest that she wasn’t a reliable witness because she was a dancer who’d had a child out of wedlock. In contrast, they painted Robert Hansen as a devoted family man – and his pastor said that he was a peaceable man with a good reputation and that he wouldn’t feel threatened if Hansen was released.

He said that he was convinced his parishioner was innocent.

The jury were unconvinced and on 26 January 1972 they indicted Hansen for kidnapping, rape and assault with a deadly weapon. He was remanded in custody at the South Central Regional Correctional Facility in Anchorage.

At the plea-bargaining stage, the case involving the teenage dancer was dismissed but Hansen pleaded guilty to holding a gun to his previous teenage victim’s head in November. His defence team pointed out that he’d now been diagnosed as schizophrenic but was considered treatable. He was sentenced to five years in jail, with the recommendation that he soon be given work release. Three months later he was transferred to a halfway house and began working in the community, with his wife driving him to work and back.

But he was such a model prisoner that he was soon allowed to drive himself every morning and would park on Fourth Avenue to watch the prostitutes. He knew that one day he’d have the chance to abduct and rape another of these girls.

By the end of 1972 his cruel dream was closer to becoming a reality since he was now allowed to live at home, though he still had to have psychiatric treatment twice a week. He bought a boat, took his wife fishing and learned to scuba dive. But his need for sadistic and control-based sex built and built, so he was delighted at the start of July 1973 when his wife said that 139

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she was taking their baby daughter to see her grandparents, and that she’d be out of town for several days.

It’s probably no coincidence that three days later – on 7 July 1973 – 17-year-old Megan Emerick went into town and was never seen again.

Forced fellatio

The following year, Hansen offered a 16-year-old girl a lift.

He seemed unthreatening so she got into his car, but he was soon questioning her about her sex drive. When she tried to get out of the vehicle, he produced his gun and ordered her to strip. She obeyed him, after which he demanded fellatio and humiliated her further by making her flash her breasts at a passing motorist. He sexually assaulted her again and again over the next few hours then handed her his gun and said that she could shoot him or make him drive to the police station at gunpoint. Thankfully she refused his offer

– it’s most likely that the gun wasn’t loaded and he wanted an excuse to commit further sadistic acts on her or even take her life. He warned her not to tell the police and she kept her word for many years.

Another woman goes missing

Many months passed and it was July 1975 before Hansen committed a murder that he would later admit to. 23-year-old Mary Thill got a lift from friends to Seward, then promptly disappeared. Her distraught husband put up a $1,000 reward asking for clues to her whereabouts but no one – except the predatory Robert Christian Hansen – knew where she was. Hansen later brought detectives to an area along Resurrection Bay where he’d buried her body, but it was never found.

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Robert Hansen

Another rape

In late summer 1975, Hansen travelled to Oregon for a few weeks to play the dutiful son. But by October his need for control had resurfaced so he returned to Alaska and propositioned a dancer. She agreed to party in his car, but when she entered the vehicle he grabbed her by the hair, pulled it brutally backwards and put his gun to her head. When she was acquiescent, he drove to a secluded location and raped her, making it clear with his body language, voice tone and pistol that he was in charge.

She was able to identify Hansen from police photographs but chose not to press charges as she was a respected schoolteacher moonlighting as a dancer. And when Hansen was confronted by his parole officer, he said it was a date and that when he refused to give her money she cried rape. He would later tell detectives he felt prostitutes were ‘even lower than he was’ and he believed that no one cared about their fate.

A second child