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I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Roseland Weyborg Thun. And welcome to the fifth installment of the Robert Hansen saga. As you listen to this, we have all finished our voyage around the sun during the 12 months of 2020. And I wish you all a very happy new year and welcome to 2021.
The promise of better things to come for many is lighting up the horizon. Hopefully, this podcast can aid in offering some respite in these trying times, and so it is that we continue our journey alongside Alaska's most famous serial killer. Last episode, I left you with Hansen having just dropped off 18-year-old Barbara Fields after having abducted and raped her repeatedly.
She was one of Hansen's very few victims who managed to survive encountering the Butcher Baker. Tonight, we meet some of those that did not. Enjoy. As always, I want to publicly thank my elite TSK Producers Club.
This club includes 25 dignified members of exquisite taste, and their names are Anne, Anthony, Brenda, Cassandra, Christy, Cody, Colleen, Corbin, Evan, Fawn, James, Jennifer, Kathy, Kylie, Lisa, Lisbeth, Mark, Mickey, Monica, Russell, Samira, Samina,
Skortnia, Trent, 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.
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In addition to the new bonus episode, there is now a brand new feature published as I am writing this episode.
It is an exclusive AMA Ask Me Anything on Patreon, where all my Patreones that have pledged $5 or more can participate. Comment on the AMA post on patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast and I promise to answer any question. So don't miss out and join now. Barbara Fields
is sitting in the shower, crying. She's at home with her parents, her brother having recently picked her up from where her abductor had left her outside the Nevada café. What the young woman was going through is difficult for anyone to imagine. She had kept her cool throughout the entire ordeal that Robert Hansen had put her through. An ordeal that, to her, had felt like a lifetime.
She had not broken down, but now the tears were flowing along with the water from the shower. Her rapist, her abductor, had both her parents' and her son's name and addresses, and had made it very clear that if she told anyone what had happened to her, especially to the police, he would hunt them down and kill them. She hadn't been able
to not tell her family what had happened, but only parts of it. The most gruesome and explicit details she kept to herself. The police were not called for at her behest. However, something happened only three days after she came home that made her change her mind. Imagine, if you will, dear listener, a typical suburban house in Anchorage on Kinnick Avenue.
The date is the 22nd of December, 1971, and it is completely dark outside. It has been dark for several hours, and now the clock says 9 p.m. A beautiful young woman named Celia Van Zanten, Beth to her friends and family, is dressed in winter clothes, and she looks happy.
It is only a couple of days until Christmas, and she is on her way to the grocery store on Northern Lights Boulevard to get some soda. Her appearance is similar to Barbara Fields, as she too is petite. Celia has long blonde hair, is almost eighteen, and is a freshman at Anchorage Community College.
In many ways, she looks strikingly similar to the girls that Ted Bundy was killing down in Washington State and Utah. I've tried, dear listener, to find more details about Celia. Often, I find the details of serial killers' victims just as fascinating, if not more so, than the killers themselves. However...
Unfortunately, there is very little information available, other than the basics of age, appearance, name, and where she went to college. The film Frozen Ground, again a film I could not recommend more, is dedicated to Hansen's victims, and Celia is listed at the end with accompanying photograph. What happened to Celia has never been completely solved, especially because Hansen never admitted to abducting her,
but a highly likely scenario is easy to assemble. Also, we do know quite a bit about what happened to her based on how she was discovered. Christmas Day, 1971, in Anchorage, Alaska, broke at a balmy 4 degrees Celsius, a welcome relief from the Arctic Sub-Zero cold front that had gripped the city only days before.
At the height of the storm, gale-force winds snapped power lines and lifted a 20 by 20 foot overhanging mass of hardened snow off the side of a mountain, depositing it in the middle of the Seaward Highway. But now, with the promise of blue skies, folks in Anchorage were propelled out of their houses and into the light. Among those driven into the sun were Gary Lawler and his brother, Dennis.
They had traveled south, on the Seaward Highway, along a strip of water called Turnagain Arm, to take photos of the wilderness that lay at their feet. Armed with Dennis's ancient camera, they decided to stop at Bird Point, one of their favorite spots, and then work their way north again, taking photos along the way.
Almost by chance, they stopped at McHugh Creek State Park, 12 miles north of Bird Point. Built between two intersecting ridges on either side of its namesake creek, there was a waterfall that Dennis wanted to capture. On a small ledge, about 20 feet below a picnic area,
he found the perfect spot, a steep overlook that cast the gnarled creek bank in a perfect cone of sunlight. Dennis struggled to focus the camera from this awkward perch, pushing it deep into his ribcage to maintain his balance. Then, behind a bush no more than ten feet in front of him, he spied what looked like a mannequin, dropped at an odd angle and partially covered with snow.
He craned his neck forward to get a better look. It was a body. A young woman, nude from the waist down, a soft cover of downy snowflakes across her exposed thighs. Back in the parking lot, Dennis told his brother about his gruesome find, and they quickly reported it to state troopers.
Troopers with Sergeant Gilmore at the helm soon learned that Celia had been reported missing on the 23rd of December. At the crime scene, they found a woman who seemed to match the description. Young, fair complexion, long blonde hair. Her wrists were tied behind her back with speaker wire. She had been raped, and her chest and breasts slashed with a knife.
before her death she had either been let go or managed to escape her assailant she had literally run for her life her first fall was fifty feet from the presumed location of the murderer's car
With her hands bound behind her and in snow three feet deep on a dizzying slope, it would have taken almost a superhuman effort to regain her feet and continue the descent into what must have seemed a black hole. She got within ten to fifteen feet of the waterfall, but somehow turned away at the last minute. In the days since she had gone missing,
Temperatures ranged from a low of minus 20 degrees Celsius to a high of minus 5 degrees Celsius. At the time of her death, she only had on a thin blouse that had been slashed open. Otherwise, she was completely naked. In the deep snow in freezing temperatures, she would not have stood a chance. In a matter of hours, if that long, her body would have started to shut down.
Now, let us pause here for a second and address something. In movies, especially romantic ones such as Titanic, dying of cold is portrayed as almost peaceful and not very painful. Survivors also tell of feelings of calm and warmth before passing out. The latter may be true, but there is a long period before that occurs, and it is not pleasant.
As your central nervous system notices that your body is exposed to cold, it will start to defend its vital organs. This means less blood to your extremities, such as your fingers, toes, nose and so on. This is painful. And your body will also start to shiver and shake uncontrollably. This too is a survival mechanism as the body tries to heat itself.
In Celia's case, it would have been futile. Being slender and petite, she would also have been especially at risk for cold exposure, having little fat to insulate her organs against the freezing temperatures. A very common feeling of early-state hypothermia is pain in your fingers and toes. The pain is sharp.
often described as needles being inserted into your fingertips. The rest of your body can often get a tingly feeling, similar to what you feel if you sit on your leg and it quote-unquote falls asleep. For Celia, however, this feeling would not have abated, only progressed, until she would start to feel numb. Judging from her location,
Celia appears to have been trying to hide, and this might explain why she was in the ravine in the first place. It can also be the case that hypothermia had caused her to experience confusion and delirium, making her unable to get her bearings in order to escape to the nearby road.
As Celia's core temperature continued to fall, her body would start to stop sending distress signals to the brain, and the well-publicized feeling of calm might have enveloped her. She would also have been getting very sleepy, and she did, in all likelihood, die as a result of her heart stopping to beat from the cold while in her sleep.
Based on what we know of Robert Hansen's modus operandi, two scenarios are plausible regarding what preceded her death. The media has made it out that Celia escaped from her abductor and that Hansen directly afterwards drove around the nearby area looking for her. However, I think this seems unlikely. First off,
Her hands were tied behind her back, and she was naked from the waist down, with no shoes. There were tire tracks nearby indicating that she was in a car as she was assaulted. It also seems to me odd that Hansen, an experienced hunter, would be unable to catch her if she had tried to run while he was otherwise occupied, for example, urinating.
he would have had his shoes on and celia would have easily been heard as she ran through the snow no to me a far more likely scenario is that celia was released by hansen you can imagine the scene he has just finished raping her perhaps after having done so several times already
He drags her out of the car in front of the car's headlights. It is very dark, and the area beyond the headlights appear like a black wall. He has a smirk on his face, and he tells her calmly to run, just as he told Barbara. Unlike Barbara, Celia does exactly that. She runs for her life directly into the woods, as fast as she can.
Hansen is impressed with her speed, calmly loads his rifle before walking after her, following her trail. However, it is in the middle of the night, and even with a flashlight he can only see a few meters in the overcast weather. Soon he is enraged as he encounters something he had not counted on, a steep cliff looking straight into an abyss.
Her trail ends at the edge of the cliff, and even though he shines a light down, he can't see anything. Nearby is a roaring waterfall, so he can't hear anything either. He curses under his breath and paces about a bit, but decides that a fall down that cliff will surely have killed her. So, he turns around, walks back to his car and drives off.
Meanwhile, Celia would have been lying beneath a cliff and under a snow-covered brush, desperately trying to calm her breathing as she saw the light from his flashlight dance above her.
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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. When Barbara Fields read about the Van Zanten murder, she went to State Trooper Headquarters to press charges against Hansen.
She felt guilty for not coming forward earlier and told the police that if he was the murderer, she wished she had come forward earlier and have him arrested before he could kill. After giving a statement at Trooper HQ, Barbara accompanied Alaska State Trooper Sergeant Donald Hughes on the route Hansen had taken her to the Kenai Peninsula.
At the Sunrise Inn, the sergeant verified that a man named Robert Hanson had indeed rented a room there on the 19th of December. It was a difficult trip for Barbara to make. Sergeant Hughes was a friend of her father's. She knew he was a good person, and he was being genuinely nice to her. But it was extremely uncomfortable for her to be alone with a man on that route.
and she wished a woman were there with them. As they drove along, she felt herself shrinking towards the car door, pressing up against it. Back in Anchorage, Hughes and the other troopers put Robert Hansen under arrest. They asked him to display the contents of his wallet, and they saw the piece of paper Barbara had told Hughes contained her sons' and parents' names and address in Hansen's handwriting.
At the jail, the booking officer was told there was evidence in the prisoner's wallet and that someone would be returning with a warrant to seize it. During the booking process, Hansen was spotted attempting to remove the incriminating paper from his wallet, so the duty officer took him away for a shakedown. The search produced a piece of paper, all crumpled up in the pocket of the suspect's overalls.
When asked what the paper was, Hansen answered that it was the names of people who were going to post his bail. The duty officer didn't understand the evidentiary value of the piece of paper and failed to preserve it. Instead, he copied the names and addresses onto another piece of paper and put the copied information into the case file envelope.
When troopers returned to pick up the piece of paper with Robert Hansen's handwriting from his wallet, it was gone. On the 29th of December, Hansen was arraigned and held on $50,000 bail.
On page 2 of its afternoon edition that day, the Anchorage Times reported the charges against him, also noting the court action pending in the Heppert case and the fact that Hansen had been at large on his own reconnaissance at the time of this second offence. Right above the report was a short ten-line article with the headline, and I quote,
Celia Van Zanten funeral is held. This was the early 70s in America. Back then, victims of rape would routinely be asked if they did anything to provoke the rape, were often asked about what sort of clothing they had on and what their job was.
if you were a prostitute the chances of getting a rape conviction against your rapist were very low a viable defense back in those days in the u s a was the colloquially she asked for it defense
the shopping list of behaviour of the victim that would tip the scales in the rapist's favour included such things as not reporting the assault immediately sleeping with a boyfriend suspicion or allegation of prostitution working as a dancer in a bar a criminal record having so-called illegitimate children
involvement with drugs, accepting a ride from a stranger or hitchhiking, walking alone at night, drinking alone in a bar, or even just wearing a miniskirt. It was under these conditions that on the 7th of January 1972, Robert Hansen faced his accuser Barbara Fields in a preliminary hearing.
Before the court and an audience, which included witnesses for the defense, she identified Hansen as her assailant and calmly told the story of how he kidnapped and raped her at gunpoint. When prosecutor Justin Ripley finished questioning her, the attorney for the defense, James Gilmore, began his cross-examination.
Asked when and where she worked last, Barbara replied it was about a month ago as a dancer at a bar called The Embers. Gilmore asked her if she had to pay rent to live at her parents' house and she said no. "'Did you or do you have any other sources of income?' he asked. "'No, I don't,' Fields responded. "'Did you ever work as a prostitute?' "'No.'
"'Never propositioned anyone?' "'No, I never propositioned anyone,' Fields answered. "'Miss Fields, how long have you lived up here?' "'All my life.' "'And are you related to any law enforcement officer?' "'Yes, my father is a state trooper.' "'And Miss Fields, are you—' "'Have you ever been married?' "'No.' "'Do you have any children?'
Barbara answered yes, and Gilmore made her explain that her parents had custody of her son because she wasn't in a position to support him. Gilmore questioned the plaintiff about drug use. She acknowledged some experimentation with heroin, but never any addiction, and she hadn't used any for quite some time.
Then the defense attorney began a vigorous series of questions that required Barbara to describe the event of the 19th of December in great detail. In repeated attempts to fluster her, he jumped back in the chronology of the story to ask for a diagram or for her to recall a specific detail. Did you say right or left turn? Which hand was the gun in? Was it 5 a.m. or 6 a.m.?
But Fields was unflappable. She brushed off Gilmore's strategy and stuck to her story. When he asked why she'd waited a week to report the incident, she said she reported it because she read about a girl being murdered at McHugh Creek. Asked if her father had brought the matter to police attention, she said she didn't know.
Gilmore circled back to the veiled innuendo he'd pursued at the beginning of the cross-examination, dwelling on what Fields wore on the 19th of December. A floral miniskirt, knee-high black leather boots, and a leather coat. His last questions were about the rape. When you were having intercourse, was he on top or you? He was. Were you having a menstrual period at the time? No.
Barbara Fields was the only witness for the prosecution. Alaska State Trooper Sergeant Donald Hughes was subpoenaed to testify but for some reason did not appear. There was no testimony to collaborate Barbara's story and the existence and disappearance of the piece of paper containing her baby's and parents' names in Hansen's handwriting weren't established for the court record or the spectators in the courtroom.
Then, the court took its lunch break. After lunch, the defense offered three character witnesses in support of Robert Hansen. The first witness was a local Lutheran minister, who put no confidence in Barbara's account and firmly believed Hansen to be innocent.
The next two witnesses were hunting buddies of Hansen's, and they both believed Hansen to be unable to harm any human, and expressed their belief that Fields simply were mistaken about her attacker. The prosecutor didn't intervene during the defense's questioning of its character witnesses, and simply put Barbara back on the stand, where she had to retell her story one more time.
She was feeling very much alone, hopelessly frustrated, and after she stepped down, final arguments were presented. Prosecutor Ripley stressed that Hansen's skills as a woodsman made him capable of disappearing into the Alaskan wilderness and surviving off the land. The court continued Hansen's bail at $50,000, and he remained in custody.
On the 26th of January, Hansen was indicted by a grand jury on three counts, kidnapping, rape, and assault with a deadly weapon. A week later, he pleaded not guilty to all charges, but continued to remain in custody. Apparently, the judge wasn't as easily duped as Hansen's minister and hunting buddies were.
In the Happard case, Dr. Langdon's psychiatric report found Hansen competent to stand trial, so proceedings resumed before Superior Court Judge James M. Fitzgerald on the 2nd of March. The defense entered a plea of not guilty, and Gilmore put the state on notice of a possible psychiatric defense.
The Barbara Fields case was discussed at the hearing, and Judge Fitzgerald suggested having one case follow the other, setting the trial for both cases for the week of the 24th of April. Robert Hansen remained incarcerated at the South Central Regional Correctional Facility in Anchorage until his trial, until 1975.
Plea bargaining was an integral part of Alaska's adjudication of felonies, and it came into play in the Hepburn and Fields cases. By the time a change of plea hearing was held on the 22nd of March 1972, all charges in the Barbara Fields case were dismissed. In a later interview, Barbara stated how she felt. I quote,
For Hansen, a deal was finally made, and at the change of plea hearing, Hansen pleaded guilty in the Hepburn case. In turn, the prosecution recommended an eight-year sentence, with five of them being suspended.
At the 22nd of March hearing, the defense called Dr. Ray Langdon to the stand, who testified that he had diagnosed Hansen to suffer from schizophrenia. His conclusion was based on his interviews with the defendant and the psychiatric workups done on Hansen in Iowa in the early 60s.
Langdon said Hansen would suffer periods of disassociation during which he would commit violent acts and not remember them. He felt Hansen's condition was treatable and recommended twice a week psychiatric counseling for two to three years and close supervision. Hansen's strategy to pretend he could not remember had worked. Further on the trial, Hansen's two hunting buddies named
John Summerall and Gerald Goldschmidt once again vouched for his character. Even though a plea bargain was made, Hansen's defense lawyer, Gilmour, argued for an even shorter sentence than the three years with parole the prosecution argued for. Gilmour reminded the court of Hansen's eight-year marriage, his infant daughter, and that he had two jobs to support his family.
Judge Fitzgerald said he was impressed by the persons who had come forth as character witnesses for the defendant. He also stated, and I quote,
Eligible for parole if a psychiatrist can assure you're no longer a danger to the community. I recommend work release for you as soon as possible so you can pursue your employment and support your family. Robert Hansen had fooled the psychiatrist and played the system to his advantage.
He continued to be jailed at the South Central Regional Correctional Facility, where he was a model prisoner. In less than three months, he was transferred to a halfway house where he was on work release and received psychiatric treatment. In a later interview, after his final arrest,
Hansen gave an honest statement of what actually went through his mind as he was given such a light sentence. I quote, "'While I was at the halfway house, at first my wife, or an officer, would drive me back and forth to work. Then, before long, I could drive myself.'
"'I would drive downtown in a hurry "'and sit there and watch the prostitutes "'walking up and down the street, "'and I would get a tremendous hard-on. "'I was parking there just to watch the prostitutes "'walking Fourth Avenue, "'because it gave me this here sexual blow-up charge. "'I got to thinking, right at the time, "'even when I was in jail, "'that, boy, I couldn't wait till I could do it again.'
End quote.
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And with that, we come to the end of part five of the saga of Robert Hansen, the Butcher Baker. I hope you enjoyed listening to me telling it to you. Next episode, number 138 in number, will feature the worst of Hansen's crimes. A crescendo of depravity, if you will. 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 theserialkillarpodcast, by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, facebook.com slash theskpodcast, or by posting on the subreddit theskpodcast. Thank you, good night, and good luck.