From a shy and bullied teenager, to one of the most brutal serial killers in modern times.
Robert Christian Hansen, or the "Butcher Baker", was an American serial killer who abducted, raped, and murdered at least 17 women in and around Anchorage, Alaska.
Hansen's method was quite interesting; he hunted many of them down in the wilderness with a Ruger Mini-14 and a knife. He was arrested and convicted in 1983, and was sentenced to 461 years and a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Robert Hansen was born in Estherville, Iowa, in 1939. He was the son of a Danish immigrant and followed in his father's footsteps as a baker. In his youth, he was skinny and painfully shy, afflicted with a stutter and severe acne that left him permanently scarred. Shunned by the attractive girls in school, he grew up hating them and nursing fantasies of cruel revenge.
Throughout childhood and adolescence, Hansen was described as being quiet and a loner, and he had a difficult relationship with his domineering father. Hansen started to practice both hunting and archery, and often found refuge in these pastimes.
In 1957, Hansen enlisted in the United States Army Reserve and served for one year before being discharged. He later worked as an assistant drill instructor at a police academy in Pocahontas, Iowa. There, he began a relationship with a younger woman. He married her in the summer of 1960.
On December 7, 1960, he was arrested for burning down a Pocahontas County Board of Education school bus garage, for which he served 20 months of a three-year prison sentence in Anamosa State Penitentiary. During his incarceration, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (at that time called “manic depression”) with periodic schizophrenic episodes. The psychiatrist who made the diagnosis noted that Hansen had an “infantile personality” and was obsessed with taking revenge against people he felt had wronged him. Hansen’s wife left while he was incarcerated.
Over the next few years, he was jailed several times for petty theft. In 1967, he moved to Anchorage, Alaska with his second wife, whom he had married in 1963 and with whom he had two children. In Anchorage, he was well liked by his neighbors and set several local hunting records.
In 1972, Hansen was convicted of assault; he was placed on a work release program after serving six months in prison. In 1976, Hansen pleaded guilty to larceny after he was caught stealing a chainsaw from an Anchorage department store; he was sentenced to five years in prison and required to receive psychiatric treatment for his bipolar disorder. The Alaska Supreme Court reduced his sentence, and he was released with time served.
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