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| Case file: Robert Hansen On June 13, 1982, a police officer at Anchorage Airport, in Alaska, encountered a distraught young prostitute. She claimed to have been kidnapped at gunpoint, taken to her attacker's home, and raped violently. Then he had told her that he intended on flying her to a backwoods cabin for more sex. While he had been loading the airplane, she had escaped. The woman's description of her attacker matched that of a local businessman, Robert Hansen, who owned an airplane that he used on hunting trips. Although she identified Hansen's airplane and house, he denied everything, saying that she had attempted to blackmail him. Moreover, two business associates gave him a cast-iron alibi. Nevertheless, the police were suspicious, particularly since they had found bodies of two women in the wilderness in 1980. In September 1982, a woman's body was found in the remote Knik River region. She had been shot with a high-powered rifle, apparently while naked, since there were no bullet holes in her clothing. A year later, another body was found in the same area in similar circumstances. Convinced that Hansen was the prime suspect, the police called in a profiler, who suggested that, because of his appearance (Hansen was short, had disfigured skin and spoke with a stammer), he could have had trouble with girls as a teenager and that the murders were a mean of venting his anger against women. All of the victims had worked either as prostitutes or topless dancers and tended to live a transient lifestyle, which meant that they were the sort of people who were unlikely to have been missed for some time. It was thought that initially Hansen would have used the airplane to dump the bodies where they were unlikely to be found, but later to satisfy a bizarre need he would have began stripping his victims, releasing them and hunting them down like wild animals. The profiler suggested that since Hansen was a hunter, he was likely to have trophies of the game he had shot in his home; similarly, it was thought that he would have taken trophies from his female victims to remind him of his achievements. Then Hansen's business associates admitted they had lied, and the police raided his home. They found a concealed Ruger hunting rifle, jewelry and ID cards from the victims, and a map marked with the locations of the bodies. Ballistics tests on bullets fired by the rifle matched them to bullets that had killed two of the women. Hansen confessed to four murders, a rape and kidnapping; he was jailed for 499 years. |
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