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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did and how. I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Roseland Weyborg Thun. Tonight, I have some very special and exciting news for you, dear listener. This episode is the first launched on a new platform.
Acast is the world's biggest podcast company and I am proud to have partnered up with them. The Serial Killer podcast is now in company with great podcasts such as Canadian True Crime, Let's Talk About Sex, and none other than The Joe Rogan Experience. Truly, I am honored. But enough about me.
Let's take a look at what morsels of depravity I have dug up for you tonight, dear listener. For my truly avid fans, do you recall the 11th of March episode in 2019? You see, this was the date I released the episode on Israel Keyes, the Alaskan serial killer.
His reign of terror started in Anchorage, and the story didn't end until as recently as 2012. As a Norwegian, I nurse a special kind of fascination and love for the great state of Alaska. The last frontier state is in so many ways very similar to my beloved homeland of Norway.
Both have invested heavily in the oil industry. Both are very dependent on the fishing industry. And both have the gorgeous northern nature filled with fjords, snow-capped mountain ranges, and the magical Aurora Borealis. However, unlike Norway, Alaska is also the home state of
of one of the truly infamous and fascinating serial killer superstars. Books and films have been made about him, the most famous perhaps being Frozen Ground. I am, of course, talking about none other than the Butcher Baker himself, Robert Hansen. Enjoy. As always, I want to publicly thank my elite TSK Producers Club.
This club includes 23 dignified members of exquisite taste, and their names are Ann, Anthony, Cassandra, Christy, Colleen, Corbin, Evan, Fawn, James, Jennifer, Jessie, Julie, Kathy, Kylie, Lisa, Lisbeth, Mark, Mickey, Russell, Samira, Skortnia, William, and Zarsia.
You are the backbone of the Serial Killer podcast, and without you, there would be no show. You have my deepest gratitude. Thank you. If you want to donate to the show, you can easily do so at patreon.com slash theserialkillerpodcast. You can choose from many different tiers, ranging from $1 to as much as you would like.
Bonus episode access starts at $10, while the TSK Producers Club starts at $15. I have, as I am recording this, just released a fresh new bonus episode. It is the third and final part in my expose covering the Australian female Hannibal Lecter. So don't miss out and join now. Imagine if you will, the Alicenat.
The city of Anchorage, in the great state of Alaska, on the 13th of June, 1983. A beautiful young woman is running. It is summer, but still the asphalt beneath her feet is cold and so rugged that it feels like the soles of her feet are on fire.
She doesn't stop running, though. She knows with absolute certainty that if she stops, if she hesitates even for a second, the hunter behind her, somewhere, will catch her and kill her. The young woman is not properly dressed for the Alaskan outdoors. She has a mini-skirt on and a short jacket that's obviously meant to be pretty rather than practical.
The name she goes by these days is Kitty Larson, but her parents always knew her as Victoria Matthew. She's only 17 years old and doesn't know the name of the hunter behind her, only that she never wants to see him again. Several hours before, he had introduced himself to her as either Don or Bob. She wasn't sure. He had offered her $200 for a blowjob,
and desperate for money, she hadn't taken the time to consider how this clearly was way too much for a lousy BJ. It was one mistake she would regret for the rest of her life. He had picked her up at Fifth and Denali Street, right in the heart of Anchorage, the area where most of the city's street-walking prostitutes ply their trade. Instead of parking the car in an alley and letting Kitty do her job there,
He had taken her home with promises of even more money. This was another mistake she blamed herself for. Never go back to a John's place. It is not safe. She had been told many times, but she hadn't listened. As soon as they had gotten to his place at Old Harbour Road, a bland blue-grey bungalow-style house, he had placed handcuffs on her hands and quickly dragged her inside.
At first, she had thought he was one of those S&M practitioners, and was only mildly annoyed as she hadn't agreed to sex like that. But when she saw the extensive dark basement with the dozens of mounted animal heads looking lifeless down upon her, as he forced her down on the rug on the floor, she was less confident.
"'The Hunter, for that was how she thought of him, "'sure didn't want normal vanilla sex. "'He was rough, and he wanted to degrade her as much as possible. "'She told him intercourse was out of the question "'as she was having her period, but he didn't listen. "'As he raped her, he kept saying to her to tell him how she loved it, "'how she wanted it. "'Blessedly, he didn't last long before he ejaculated inside her.'
To her terror, he scoffed at the notion of wearing a condom. She knew she was healthy, but looking at his ugly pockmarked and wart-ridden face, she wasn't sure about how healthy he was. Afterwards, he hoisted her up by the hands with a chain that was secured in the basement roof with a steel ring. At this point, she was more and more sure he was planning on killing her. As she hung there, naked and afraid,
She told herself that she refused to let some asshole creep psycho kill her. She was going to get out, no matter what. All she needed was a plan. After her initial bout of panic, she noticed the bathroom door not far away from the foosball table a few feet away from where she hung. "'Please, mister, I really need to go to the bathroom. Like, right now. I don't want to soil your floor.'
The hunter was obviously not happy about this, but apparently the thought of some hooker soiling his precious carpet made him relent, and in a gruff voice told her to hurry up. But before he let her go in, he put a leash around her neck and held it tight until she had closed the bathroom door behind her. The moment she felt the leash go limp, she jumped for the small window where she could see faint streetlight flowing in.
But her hopes of escape was dashed as quickly as they came. The window was not only closed, it was bolted shut. Apparently this hunter had done this before and knew what tricks he could expect from his victims. As soon as she left the bathroom, he rushed at her and shoved her hard against a wooden post. Then he raped her again, standing up, before wrapping a chain around her neck tight.
Almost so she suffocated. His eyes were hard and flint-like during the whole ordeal. He looked straight into her eyes as he forced himself on her. But then, just as he finished, it was as if a new persona came through. From somewhere, he grabbed a brown, yellow and orange Afghan coat. He looked almost kind as he wrapped her in its comforting folds. "'I'm tired,' he told her. "'I haven't slept in a long time.'
i'm gonna go to sleep on the couch and d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-
Kitty tried to look compliant. He reacted by walking away without even changing his expression. Then he turned on the television. He told her she could watch TV while he slept. And while he slept, she thought about her mother and father and all the people she loved. She was growing confident that the chance of seeing any of them again was fading fast.
Looking around the den, dimly lit by the dusky rays of the Alaskan midnight sun, she took proper stock of her surroundings. A clock, its hands never seemed to move, a computer, a rack of women's clothes, a pool table, the foosball table, but what sent a chill through her were the sheer amount of all the hunting trophies. On the floor was the bearskin rug where he had raped her.
In the corner were piles and piles of wolf hides. Huge caribou and goat heads graced the paneled walls. Stuffed ducks and other game birds appeared to fly from their mountings. A stuffed fish rested on a coffee table. She had known hunters, after all, this was Alaska, but this guy took it to a new level. He clearly loved to kill.
it did not seem like a long time had passed since he had fallen asleep but suddenly he was wide awake and by her side again she began to cry and told him all she wanted was to see her mother again a small crooked smile came upon his lips as she said this he told her not to worry
He had taken seven other girls to his basement, and usually kept them there for a week. But he really liked her. He was going to treat her special. Sobbing now, she asked why he was doing this. His face wasn't moved at all by her tears, but, surprisingly, he answered her. I quote, "'I used to work on the North Slope, and I'd come down to Anchorage and have to spend two hundred dollars for a girl.'
and to go to some room for no more than ten or maybe fifteen minutes. Well, I'm gonna get my money's worth now. I'm gonna bring him to my house and do what I please. But I like you so good, I'm gonna take you to my cabin and make love to you one more time. Then I'll have you back here around eleven o'clock in the morning." Kitty didn't believe him for a second.
but she enthusiastically agreed to this as she knew it would buy her some time before she could make fake promises of not telling anyone about what he had done to her he spoke again i quote even if you are stupid enough to tell on me well i'll have an alibi my friends will say i went to the lake with them then he took the chains off her and told her to get dressed
He was going to take her out to Merrill Field, where he had a small plane. Then he would fly them both out to his cabin in the woods. Kitty planned to bolt immediately after they got outside. She carried her pretty shoes in her hand. It was hard to run in pumps, and she wanted to dump them when she made her break. She would wake up this slumbering middle-class neighborhood with blood-curdling screams if she had to. It did not matter—
if he shot her they did not go outside though the car was waiting in the garage far away from nosey eyes he made her lie on the floor in the back seat then gingerly laid a green army blanket on top of her soon they were driving through the half-light presumably on the way to downtown anchorage in the car kitty momentarily considered a surprise attack she had seen the gun and the rope in the front seat next to her captor
The idea of throwing the blanket over him, thus covering his head so he could not see, occurred to her. However, the thought of him then losing control of the car and wrecking it, killing them both, stayed her hand. Kitty struggled to stay under control. As they drove on, another plan came to her, and this one could perhaps even work.
Kitty had a room at the Big Timber Motel, and Merrill Field was just down the street from it. She thought her captor had no way of knowing where she was renting a room, and her idea of escape began to bloom in her mind. At the airport, the man parked near his plane, then went to the rear of the car and began pulling things out of the trunk. He started making a steady pilgrimage between the car and the plane.
The driver's door had been left ajar, and Kitty watched him go back and forth, waiting for her chance. She told herself again that this motherfucker could forget about killing her, and that she could escape. She had to. Let the word go. In her head, she leapt.
She sprung through the door like a startled doe and started to run frantically, driven by pure fear. Barefoot in the gravel, handcuffed, tears swimming down her eyes, she looked back for just a second. He was coming after her with a gun. He was screaming furiously. "'I'm gonna get you!' His short legs—he was not a tall man—were pounding as fast as they could."
It seemed like hours before her feet carried her into a used car lot. Not sure what to do next, she ducked behind one of the cars. No, that wouldn't work, she told herself. The guy was right behind her. Just as the assailant started to close in, Kitty spied a truck coming down the road. She dashed into the street and waved madly. But the guy in the truck didn't stop. Kitty screamed. Finally, the driver slammed on his brakes.
"'Are you all right?' he asked as she leapt into the truck and slammed the door behind her. "'No. He's gonna kill me. Who's gonna kill you?' Kitty didn't answer. The truck lumbered forward, slipping up through the gears. Kitty looked back at the man who was chasing them, only a few yards behind the lumbering truck. She remembered what he had told her when he forced her onto the floor of his car.
"'Don't cause problems,' he had said. "'Because whoever sees you in my car, I'm gonna have to kill them and you.' She frantically told the driver to take her to the Big Timber Motel. The driver suggested they instead head to the local police station, considering the man who he by then had noticed chasing them with a gun. For some reason, and here I truly am at a loss, dear listener, Kitty refused this offer.'
She yelled at the driver to just stop and let her out instead. She had seen the hunter give up and retreat and considered herself safe. The truck pulled up at the Mush Inn Motel, right down the street from the big timber where she had her room. A dazed Kitty Larson got out, went to the front desk and had the desk clerk call her pimp, who came by cab a few minutes later.
The driver of the truck, meanwhile, drove straight to the Anchorage Police Department and reported the incident. Back at the Big Timber Motel, Kitty's pimp was having a hard time figuring out what to do with her. She was shaking with tears. She was hysterical. Between sobs, she demanded that he get the handcuffs off. The pimp wasn't having much success.
He couldn't calm her down, and the handcuffs stubbornly resisted his best efforts to remove them. The hunter hadn't used those silly handcuffs you can buy at sex shops. This was police-standard heavy-duty steel handcuffs that required the correct key to open, a key he did not have. The pimp tried to calm Kitty down, but to no avail. She was completely out of it.
Finally, he ran down to his brother's room down the hall and got his gun. He told Kitty he was going to kill the motherfucker who had caused her such harm. Then he raced off for the airfield, but the man Kitty had described was nowhere to be seen. However, Kitty's heroic escape and subsequent police investigation would prove to be the downfall of Alaska's most prolific serial killer of all time.
Whoa, easy there. Yeah.
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Visit betterhelp.com slash serialkiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash serialkiller. Let us now pause, dear listener, and wind the clock. The earth spins backwards, and its voyage around the sun reversing all the way back to 1939.
We also leave the frozen ground of Alaska and find ourselves in the more rural familiarity of Iowa. World War II has not yet begun for the United States, but it is not far off. The year is 1939, and the date is the 15th of February.
The town is Esterville, and Ronald Reagan stars in the blockbuster film Girls on Probation. At the Coleman Hospital, a few blocks from the town square, a son was born to Mr. and Mrs. Christian R. Hansen from nearby Armstrong. They named their firstborn Robert Christian, and when he was three years old,
the hansons moved to richmond california in nineteen forty nine the hansons returned to iowa with their ten-year-old son and two-year-old daughter and settled in pocahontas a small town one hundred and twenty-five miles northwest of des moines and fifty miles south of armstrong
Founded in 1870 in a county with the same name, Pocahontas was one of many towns created during the rapid settlement of the flat fertile Corn Belt after the Civil War.
The basic ethnic mix of the town and its surrounding farms was established by German, Bohemian, Scandinavian, and Irish immigrants, the community's ethos evolving from the old country morals of hard work, temperance, religion, frugality, and patriarchy.
The first church, St. Peter's and Paul's, built in 1875 by Bohemian Catholics, was soon followed by Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches. A second Catholic parish was founded because of some residual old-country bitterness between ethnic groups.
The first public school opened in 1892, followed by a Catholic school in 1896. By 1949, rural America was in the final stages of being groomed for the automobile, and the Hansons' new hometown sat at the crossroads of State Highways 3 and 17, later renumbered Highway 4.
Pocahontas' commercial and aesthetic framework had been cemented, with its courthouse dominating the north end of a three-block main street that was paved in 1933. It had the typical businesses of a rural town. Grain elevator, railroad, hotel, blacksmith, machinery and car dealers, grocery stores, chicken and poultry stores, and hardware and repair stores.
On Saturday night, when the farmers and their families came into town, parking spaces were at a premium. Pocahontas did have a few perks, including a nine-hole golf course and a 60 by 120 foot swimming pool built by the Works Progress Administration during the Depression. And on Main Street was the Rialto Theatre, where the philosophy was, and I quote,
The movie is the thing. With television in its infancy, it was indeed the only thing entertainment-wise. There was no concession stand, and food wasn't allowed in the theater. Anyone sneaking something in would have it opened or unwrapped to avoid any crinkly noises that might expose their transgression.
The best films arrived relatively soon after their release and were viewed in quiet reverence, fortified by a cry booth to which mothers could take their noisy infants and watch the movie from behind a glass partition. The 20th of October, 1949 edition of the Pocahontas Record Democrat
End quote.
chris hansen had learned the baking trade in his native denmark before immigrating to the united states at the age of twenty he had opened a bakery in armstrong in nineteen thirty seven and married a woman from nearby ringsted who joined in the business
The Hansons' move to the West Coast had not met their expectations, the lifestyle and bustle of post-war California Bay City not affording them the pace and stability of a small Midwestern community, so they decided to move to Iowa. Chris Hanson also stuttered, an impediment exacerbated by his not learning to speak the English language very well.
But he was a skilled baker, and good product spoke as well as words on a small main street in Iowa. At first, the family lived in a small apartment above the bakery, meaning that at 2 a.m. work would begin, just through the door and down the stairs. The bakery prospered.
The kids got bigger, and the Hansons bought a modest three-bedroom house just two or three houses from the edge of town, putting their workplace four blocks away. Acquaintances recalled that the house was very well kept and always very clean. Mrs. Hanson, Edna, was a meticulous housekeeper.
mr hanson chris was described as being a hard-nosed authoritarian figure a typical old-world father that was very religious and very strict he worked himself and his family hard especially his only son
Robert started working around the bakery at a very early age, and his responsibilities and ours increased as he grew older, similar in many ways to what boys experienced on the surrounding family farms. Like his father, Robert Hansen stuttered. Also, he was born left-handed.
But his parents wanted him to be right-handed, so they pushed him to do things with his right hand. The resultant stress from that pressure may have made his speech problems worse. During his junior high and high school days, Robert could barely control his speech at all. He said later that he came to hate the word school. He would be talking to someone, trying to say something to a teacher or classmate,
but wouldn't be able to get the words out, only managing a desperate stutter. Usually he just had to walk away, humiliated. Worst of all was when the girls made fun of him on the playground or in the halls. Perhaps if he'd been able to face their jokes and laugh along with them, their taunting him might have stopped. But he wasn't able, and the shame and humiliation he felt
turned into something else something sinister and dark that festered inside him like a black malevolent cancer and with that cancer of the mind came rage but also certain dark desires that only grew in intensity as he grew from a child into a man
Although Hansen was an average student and tested to have an IQ of 91, his scholastic performance and test scores may have been inhibited by his work schedule. A woman who taught commercial courses when Robert was in high school noticed he always seemed tired in her afternoon typing class, often falling asleep. She figured it was because he had to get up extremely early and work in his father's bakery.
The Pocahontas community's town and rural population had peaked in the late 40s, when, before the advent of chemical and capital-intensive methods of farming, there were about four farm families on each square mile of rich farmland. When Robert Hansen started high school in 1953, the town's population had leveled off at 2,300 people.
Recreational activities for teenagers continued to expand, and a skating rink was built, eventually converted to a bowling alley. The Chief Drive-In Theatre opened, with offerings of low-cost B-movies combined with an abundant variety of food at the snack bar.
and a completed highway system provided teenagers access to several dance halls within a 40-mile radius of Pocahontas. Up to the mid-50s, the dance halls catered almost exclusively to adults, but with the birth of rock and roll, teen dances became a regular fixture at the ballrooms.
frequently dance-party tours would roll in a busload of top forty stars to perform their hit songs for one dollar and fifty cents admission the kids got to dance and watch the performances but robert hansden's workload his strict and religious parents and having little money at his disposal limited his participation in social activities
generally he was perceived to be a loner and a loser shunned and ridiculed by most of his peers he did participate in a boys chorus at school as with so many people who suffer from stuttering the stuttering stops when singing outside of school and working in the bakery robert pursued the more solitary activities of hunting fishing and archery
the outdoors provided an escape from the oven of shame he found in social situations also when he was alone in the woods hunting he was the one in control he had all the power and the darkness inside him could be temporarily sated when he could kill something and butcher its corpse in may of fifty seven
Hanson graduated with 31 other students in his class. Robert's name was misspelled Hanson in the yearbook, under which was his chosen slogan, and I quote, Worry never made men great, so why should I worry? End quote. Robert continued to work in his father's bakery after graduation.
then enlisted in the army reserves and went to basic training at fort dix new jersey being away from home and in the more cosmopolitan northeast he discovered some new things he liked chinese food and matt helm detective stories also he had his first sexual encounters sadly i have not been able to gleam if those were with girls he managed to seduce or prostitutes he had to pay
While at Fort Dix, he was picked at random out of a chow line to be a USO Soldier of the Week, meaning he would have an all-expense-paid weekend in New York City. In New York, Hansen teamed up with another young soldier, and the pair decided that they should take advantage of New York City's extensive market of prostitutes. They ended up in a hotel room with two prostitutes.
The experience came up short of their expectations, however. It was just a quick jump into bed, and a few minutes later, it was all over. Robert had other encounters with prostitutes while he finished out his active-duty stint at Fort Knox, Kentucky. On the weekends, he'd go into Fort Knox, and again, it was strictly, wham-bam, thank you, ma'am.
These were rapid and short-lived sexual experiences, and they did nothing to St. Robert's burgeoning deviant desires. He wanted to take his time, feel in control, but the prostitutes wouldn't allow him more time than what his failing body could accomplish. So he was left wanting more, much more.
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And with that, we come to the end of part one of the saga of Robert Hansen, the Butcher Baker. I hope you enjoyed listening to me telling it to you. This will be a longer series consisting of several episodes, as Hansen's story is a lengthy and fascinating one. So, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. Finally, I wish to thank you, dear listener, for listening.
If you like this podcast, you can support it by donating on patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast by leaving a review on Apple podcasts, facebook.com slash the SK podcast, or by posting on the subreddit, the SK podcast. Thank you. Good night. Good luck.