Robert Hansen: the Anchorage baker, a teenager’s escape and the map behind the headboard

• Born1939, Estherville, Iowa; described in 1984 as a native of Pocahontas, Iowa
• Known asThe ‘Butcher Baker’; he owned a bakery in Anchorage
• Convicted ofFour first-degree murders, by guilty plea, Anchorage, 1984; he confessed to 17 killings and was never charged with the rest
• ArrestedOctober 1983, Anchorage, after a 17-year-old escaped from him that June
• Sentence461 years, reported by UPI as life plus 461 years without parole, 27 February 1984
• Victims found12 bodies recovered, 11 of them identified as of 2021; five never found
• Died21 August 2014, aged 75, at Alaska Regional Hospital in Anchorage, while serving his sentence

Robert Hansen ran a bakery in Anchorage, Alaska, flew his own small plane and hunted big game. For about a decade, from the early 1970s until 1983, he also abducted women in the city – most of them, the Associated Press reported, dancers and sex workers – and killed some of them in the wilderness outside it, flying them there or driving them. He was caught after a 17-year-old escaped from him, still handcuffed, in June 1983. On 27 February 1984 he pleaded guilty to four murders and was sentenced to 461 years in prison. By then he had confessed to killing 17 women and raping about 30 more. He was never charged with the other killings. He died in custody, in an Anchorage hospital, on 21 August 2014, aged 75.

The case is remembered for two things besides its size. The first is how often the courts had already had him: at his sentencing Judge Ralph Moody noted that Hansen had been arrested three times in 12 years, twice on charges involving kidnapping or sexual assault, and had gone free each time, most recently when a 1978 larceny sentence was cut to time served, UPI reported. The second is the map, marked with what turned out to be graves. Even so, the numbers have never closed: four convictions, 17 confessed killings, 12 bodies found.

This account rests on United Press International reports from 1984, the Alaska Supreme Court’s 1978 opinion in his larceny case, later reporting by the Anchorage Daily News, the Associated Press, UPI, CBS News and the Juneau Empire, profiles by Oxygen and EBSCO, and documents published by Leland E. Hale, co-author of the 1991 book Butcher, Baker, all listed at the end. Where they disagree, it says so. In line with this site’s rules, the women he killed, the women who survived him and his family are not named.

Estherville and Pocahontas

Hansen was born in 1939 in Estherville, a small town in northern Iowa – on 15 February, according to both Oxygen and EBSCO. UPI described him in 1984 as a native of Pocahontas, another small Iowa town, where the earliest events in his record took place. His father was a baker. According to the Alaska Supreme Court’s 1978 opinion, Hansen worked in the family bakery while he was at school, trained as a baker himself, and described his father as very demanding and never satisfied with his work; Oxygen calls the father domineering.

The first crime on his record was a fire. In December 1960, Oxygen and EBSCO report, he set fire to a school-bus garage belonging to the Pocahontas County Board of Education; both say he was sentenced to three years and served less than two – 20 months, according to Oxygen. The Alaska Supreme Court, summarizing his record in 1978, described that conviction differently: as a 1961 Iowa conviction for ‘wilfully and maliciously setting fire to and burning a motor vehicle’, for which, the court said, he served 23 months in a reformatory and then completed a year’s parole.

Anchorage

In 1967 Hansen moved to Anchorage, a date the Alaska Supreme Court, Oxygen and EBSCO all give. He worked as a baker, and in the 1970s and 1980s he owned his own bakery in a mini-mall downtown, the AP reported. He was married with two children; the AP said his wife and children, who lived with him across town, knew nothing of his other life. He got a pilot’s license and bought a small plane, which he used for hunting.

The construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline in the 1970s brought money and people into Anchorage, and with them, the AP wrote, prostitutes, pimps, con artists and drug dealers; disappearances were common. Glenn Flothe, the Alaska State Trooper who helped bring Hansen in, told the Anchorage Daily News in 2008, according to the AP, that Hansen came to choose strippers and prostitutes because they were harder to track and less likely to be reported missing.

Earlier arrests

In 1972 he was convicted in Alaska of assault with a dangerous weapon, the Alaska Supreme Court recorded; he was sentenced to five years, with a recommendation for psychiatric treatment, served six months, moved to a halfway house on work release and was paroled about a year later. Oxygen likewise reports an arrest for assault with a dangerous weapon followed by little time in custody.

On 3 November 1976 he was caught leaving an Anchorage department store with a chainsaw he had not paid for. He pleaded guilty to larceny in a building, a felony, and was sentenced to five years. On 11 August 1978 the Alaska Supreme Court, with one justice dissenting, ruled the sentence excessive for shoplifting by a man with a steady job, a family and a psychiatric illness that his doctor said was responding to lithium. He had served more than a year; the court ordered him released on probation. EBSCO and Oxygen also record that he served only part of the sentence.

The escape, June 1983

In June 1983 Hansen picked up a 17-year-old in Anchorage. She later told police that he had held her captive at his home, raped her and was taking her to his plane. She got away from him while he was loading the aircraft, Oxygen reports, and ran, still in handcuffs. Accounts of what happened next differ in detail: the Anchorage Daily News and UPI say she ran into a motel on Fifth Avenue; Oxygen says she reached a road and flagged down a truck driver, who took her to the Anchorage Police Department.

Her report did not lead to an immediate arrest. EBSCO writes that police at first doubted her account; Oxygen, by contrast, says they recognized in it the pattern of a killer they were already looking for. Her allegations led to a renewed investigation into women who had disappeared from bars and clubs in Anchorage’s downtown, UPI reported in 1984. Bodies of women had already been found in shallow graves outside the city. One of them, a woman never identified whom Hansen later said was his first victim, had been found in 1980.

The investigation

Flothe has been described by the Anchorage Daily News as instrumental in Hansen’s capture and by the AP as one of those who helped put him behind bars. To get search warrants, according to EBSCO and to documents published by Hale, investigators relied in part on an FBI behavioral profile.

Several months after the escape, armed with warrants, police searched Hansen’s home, the Anchorage Daily News reported; Hale’s account of the investigators’ timeline adds his bakery, vehicles and plane. He was arrested in October 1983, according to Hale and to the Juneau Empire, citing the Alaska Department of Public Safety. The searches found jewelry belonging to missing women, hidden in the attic, and a collection of firearms, according to Oxygen and EBSCO.

The map

The most important thing investigators took from the house was a map. Oxygen and Hale both say it was hidden behind the headboard of Hansen’s bed. Hale describes it as an aviation chart; Oxygen as a map of the Anchorage region. It was marked with small crosses. How many is one of the points on which the sources differ: Hale writes that Flothe counted 24; Oxygen says more than 20; the Anchorage Daily News, describing the meeting at which prosecutors confronted Hansen with it, says it was marked with 17 locations where they believed bodies lay.

Hansen had kept what UPI called exact records of where he buried the women. After his plea he flew with investigators over the country north of Anchorage and pointed out graves – 17 of them, the AP reported in 2021. In April 1984 UPI reported that he had led police to three more graves, two along the Knik River and one near Horseshoe Lake; the AP later reported that troopers recovered the remains of eight women that year. Twelve bodies in all have been found. Five women he confessed to killing have never been found.

The plea, February 1984

On Monday 27 February 1984 Hansen appeared before Judge Ralph Moody in Anchorage Superior Court. He pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the deaths of four women whose bodies had been recovered, UPI reported, and to several other felonies, according to the Alaska Department of Public Safety as quoted by the Juneau Empire. The hearing record published by Hale lists among those other charges the kidnapping and rape of the 17-year-old who had escaped.

By then he had confessed to far more. UPI reported that he admitted killing 13 other women whose bodies had not then been found, which with the four made 17, and raping 30 women he did not kill; the AP gives the same totals. Under the deal, he agreed to help investigators find the graves. The district attorney said he would not be charged in the other disappearances because it was not necessary, according to UPI, and the AP has described the deal as sparing him 17 separate trials. The prosecutor Frank Rothschild told the court there might well be more victims, UPI reported.

Moody sentenced him the same day. The sentence is usually given as 461 years; UPI reported it in 1984 as life plus 461 years, with no parole, and the hearing record published by Hale gives 460 years plus a life sentence.

Prison and death

Hansen began his sentence in a federal prison in Pennsylvania, at his own request, the Anchorage Daily News reported, and returned to Alaska in 1988. He spent most of the rest of his life at Spring Creek Correctional Center, the maximum-security prison in Seward.

His health declined over his last year. On 11 May 2014 he was moved to the Anchorage Correctional Complex for medical care, and in August he was taken to Alaska Regional Hospital in Anchorage, where he died early on Thursday 21 August 2014, aged 75. The Department of Corrections said he appeared to have died of natural causes, with the cause to be determined by the medical examiner.

His death did not close the case. It was reopened in 2014, the AP reported, and the Alaska State Troopers’ cold case unit has used genetic genealogy to put names to remains. By October 2021, 11 of the 12 women whose bodies were found had been identified. The one still unnamed is the woman found in 1980, believed to have been his first victim. The Department of Public Safety told the Juneau Empire in 2021 that there were no active searches for the five who were never found, but that searches could resume if new evidence emerged.

The book and the film

The case was the subject of the 1991 book Butcher, Baker, by Walter Gilmour and Leland E. Hale, and of the 2013 feature film The Frozen Ground, with Nicolas Cage as an Alaska State Trooper and John Cusack as Hansen. The film dramatizes the investigation; it is not a documentary, and its scenes should not be taken as a record.

Where the sources disagree

• The number of killings: he was convicted of four. Most accounts, including UPI in February 1984 and the AP in 2014, say he confessed to 17; UPI reported in April 1984 that he had admitted killing 20 women over ten years; the Anchorage Daily News wrote in 2014 that he killed as many as 21. None beyond the four was ever charged.
• The Iowa fire: Oxygen and EBSCO describe a December 1960 fire at a Pocahontas County school-bus garage, a three-year sentence and about 20 months served; the Alaska Supreme Court in 1978 described a 1961 Iowa conviction for setting fire to a motor vehicle, with 23 months in a reformatory.
• Where he grew up: UPI in 1984 called him a native of Pocahontas, Iowa; Oxygen (2021) says he was raised in Estherville, where Oxygen (2020) and EBSCO say he was born.
• When he was arrested: the Juneau Empire, citing the state Department of Public Safety, and Hale give October 1983; one UPI report of 28 February 1984 says he had been arrested the previous June on charges of kidnapping and raping the 17-year-old.
• The escape: the Anchorage Daily News and UPI say she ran into a Fifth Avenue motel; Oxygen says she flagged down a truck driver, who took her to the police.
• How police first reacted: EBSCO says they doubted her; Oxygen says they recognized the pattern of a killer they were tracking.
• The marks on the map: 24 (Hale, citing Flothe), more than 20 (Oxygen), 17 (Anchorage Daily News, 2014).
• The sentence: 461 years (AP, Anchorage Daily News); life plus 461 years without parole (UPI, 1984; CBS News, 2014; Oxygen); 460 years plus life (the hearing record published by Hale).

If you notice an error in this account, write to hello@truecrimeart.com and it will be corrected.

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Questions people ask

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Sources

Every date and name on this page was checked against at least two of the following. Where they disagree, the disagreement is stated in the text rather than resolved silently.

1. Hansen v. State, 582 P.2d 1041 (Alaska 1978)Alaska Supreme Court, 11 August 1978 (Caselaw Access Project)
2. A Superior Court judge has sentenced ‘the most prolific…’United Press International, 28 February 1984
3. Sentenced to life plus 461 yearsUnited Press International, 28 February 1984
4. Killer recorded where victims were buriedUnited Press International, 26 April 1984
5. ‘Frozen Ground’ to be filmed in AnchorageAssociated Press (Alaska Public Media), 27 July 2011
6. ‘Butcher Baker’ Robert Hansen moved to Anchorage for medical treatmentAnchorage Daily News (Jerzy Shedlock), 22 May 2014
7. Infamous Alaska serial killer Robert Hansen diesAnchorage Daily News (Laurel Andrews), 21 August 2014
8. Serial killer Hansen dies; ‘World is better without him,’ trooper saysAnchorage Daily News (Laurel Andrews and Kyle Hopkins), 22 August 2014
9. Robert Hansen, notorious Alaska serial killer, dead at 75UPI (Frances Burns), 21 August 2014
10. Alaska serial killer Robert Hansen dies at 75Associated Press (Alaska Public Media), 21 August 2014
11. Alaska serial killer dies, decades after murdersAssociated Press (Rachel D’Oro), via KSL.com, 22 August 2014
12. Alaska ‘Butcher Baker’ serial killer Robert Hansen dies at 75CBS News / Associated Press, 22 August 2014
13. Arrest of Robert Hansen: Arrested & ArraignedLeland E. Hale, Butcher Baker (co-author’s case archive), 5 February 2018
14. Arrest of Robert Hansen: Mysterious Aviation MapsLeland E. Hale, Butcher Baker (co-author’s case archive), 8 March 2018
15. Arrest of Robert Hansen: 460 Years Plus LifeLeland E. Hale, Butcher Baker (co-author’s case archive), 26 April 2018
16. Robert Hansen, ‘The Butcher Baker’ serial killerOxygen (Benjamin H. Smith), 16 May 2020
17. Who is the ‘Butcher Baker,’ Alaska’s most notorious serial killer?Oxygen (Joe Dziemianowicz), 8 November 2021
18. Authorities identify serial killer victim with help from genealogy databaseJuneau Empire (Ben Hohenstatt), 21 October 2021
19. DNA match helps cold case investigators identify Alaska serial killer’s victim after 37 yearsAssociated Press (Mark Thiessen), via the Anchorage Daily News, 22 October 2021
20. Robert Hansen (serial killer)EBSCO Research Starters (Lindsay Rohland), 2024

The facts on this page come from public records and the published sources above. If you find an error, write to hello@truecrimeart.com and it will be corrected.

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