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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did. Episode 139. I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Roseland Weyborg Thun. And welcome to the seventh and penultimate installment of the Robert Hansen saga. Last episode, we witnessed together the murder of Iklutna Annie.
one of the victims of Hansen that never has been positively identified. Hansen himself claimed Eklutna Annie was his first murder victim. I do not believe him. Serial killers, especially sadistically, sexually motivated psychopathic serial killers such as Hansen, lie and lie again.
Killers such as him enjoy lying to people. It gives them a sense of power. The joy of depriving a fellow human being of something was to Hansen satisfying. His tale of how he ended up killing Eklutna Annie also does not ring true, only part of it, as I stated at the end of part six in this long-running expose.
In this episode, we have finally arrived at the bottom of the pit of depravity and destruction Hansen wrought. Like Dante on his travels with Virgil, we find ourselves on frozen ground. And before us stretches horrors almost unimaginable. As Dante told his reader all those centuries ago...
If I had rhymes that were as harsh and hoarse as would be fitting for the dismal hole on which lean all the other circling rocks, I'd squeeze the juice of my conception out more fully. But because I have them not, not without fair, do I resolve to speak. And Virgil, Dante's guide, answered, "'Lo, dees!'
and lo the place where thou must arm thyself with fortitude. Enjoy. As always, I want to publicly thank my elite TSK Producers Club. This club includes 26 dignified members of exquisite taste, and their names are...
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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 support the show, you can do so at patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast. Link in the show description.
To join the TSK Producers Club costs $15. To access all bonus material, and new material is coming shortly, it costs $10. So don't miss out and join now. ♪♪♪
Imagine, if you will, dear listener, Anchorage, Alaska, in the late 1970s. The absolute peak of the golden age of serial killing. It was a very different place a bit over 40 years ago than today's northern metropolis. Although there still are remnants of the city's dirty underbelly.
Back then, Alaska was again a place similar to what it had been in the 1890s. A frontier. A place for opportunity and adventure. For young men who wanted to make a name for themselves. Young men are thirsty for adventure. But they are also, well, horny. And in the oil industry, there worked almost no women.
But a steady stream of young, beautiful girls and women flowed up from the lower 49. These ladies were also looking to score, and their commodity on offer was tits and ass. Sex in all shapes and sizes. Back then, the mafia ran most, if not all, avenues for sex work. Strip clubs, massage parlors, pornography outlets. They controlled it all.
In Anchorage, the ruling operation was Frank Cola-Curcios, who was based in Seattle. He was a seedy character who was in many ways the exact opposite of the godfather trope-type mobster. He didn't run things silently, sitting in a fancy office in a double-breasted suit and bowtie. Oh no, he thrived on getting his hands dirty. Real dirty. His nickname was Papa Frank.
probably due to his large stock of prostitutes he ruled by fear and intimidation from his base in seattle he sent capos to anchorage to run prostitutes strip joints and illegal pornography one such store was the anchorage book and magazine company
The store offered regular pornography, but for those in the know, it also peddled pornography featuring children as young as three years old being raped. The main strip joints for Kolokurcho's gang was The Good Times and The Wild Cherry. These bars were located in the so-called Tenderloin district of Anchorage.
The area was rife with outbursts of extreme violence reminiscent of the Wild West. People carried guns in holsters, and drunk men fired those guns, sometimes hitting innocent bystanders. Angry, disillusioned, and drunk young men often frequented the area, and this resulted in these men often getting into brutal fights.
Between 1979 and 1983, police responded 88 times to the wild cherry alone, and that were just the actual reported incidents. For the mob, the violence didn't matter a bit. The money kept rolling in regardless. A typical month meant that the so-called skim would be between $50,000 and $100,000.
The girls and women employed in these places came and went rapidly. No one paid much attention. To describe the girls' living quarters would mean describing destitution, single-room, run-down places with poor hygiene. There were often no laundromats nearby, and the girls often resorted to hand-washing their clothes.
In the summer, they hung up their laundry to air dry outside at the rear of the strip joints. There, they could see in the distance the Alaska Railroad Station, where well-to-do tourists disembarked, smiling and happy and ready to explore the great Alaskan outdoors. Looking the other direction, south, they saw straight into the maw of the Tenderloin.
an area where they were nothing but a commodity. It was in this area that Robert Hansen truly thrived. When he wanted to go hunting for something other than wildlife, the Tenderloin district was his hunting ground, and it was full of game.
Robert Hansen's power center involved his trophy-laden den and the Alaska wilderness, where he was the hunter, in control. He fit the category of what is called a power rapist. His violence stemmed from feeling inadequate in interpersonal and sexual relationships.
To this category of assailant, the rape is meant as a means of reassuring self-identity and sexual adequacy. Magical thinking deludes the power rapists in their crimes. Hansen, for example, convinced himself that his victims found him attractive, or that they really wanted the sex but just wouldn't admit to it.
But deep down, the power rapist is not satisfied by the assault and will go out again and again to find the right one. Subsequent analysis of Hansen's eventual confession would reveal some of the elements of his magical thinking. He did not start out hating all women or his victims, but rather felt he was falling in love with them.
He wanted their friendship, and he wanted them to like him. But in his own mind, he would classify them as either good or bad women. He had no respect for the so-called bad women, viewing them as subhuman. And with them, it was like a game. The ball had to be pitched before Robert Hansen could bat.
The woman had to approach him to enable him to play out his fantasy. She had to come out and say, we could do it, but it's gonna cost you some money. Then, she was no longer a good girl. She was what Hansen defined as fair game. Sometimes, when Hansen wasn't satisfied with holding power over a woman's body, or denied that power altogether, he would take control of her life.
In May 1980, down in Seward, his deadly game continued. Youthful Joanne Messina had thick auburn hair. Her five-foot-eight-inch body moved gracefully among the fishermen on the Seward docks, her demeanor not revealing that she was down on her luck and laid off from her job at the cannery. She had straight teeth and a confident smile. In other words, she was beautiful.
She smiled at Robert Hansen, who was on the dock, and he initiated a conversation. She told him she was camped in the state campgrounds. He invited her out to dinner, thinking, and I quote, Gee whiz, maybe I can talk this girl into spending the night with me. End quote. After Hansen and Messina finished their meal at the Harborview restaurant, they went out and got into Hansen's camper.
Then the woman said something Hansen alleged changed everything. I quote from Hansen's confession. She just came right out and said, you know, I don't have a job. We could have a real nice time if you have some money. It just went from day to night. She was a prostitute. Anyway, she propositioned me and that changed the whole thing. End quote.
Joanne Messina had pitched the ball, and Robert Hansen pretended to go along with the deal. He drove her in his camper north, on a seward highway to a spot by the Snow River. Since we have no witnesses, we are forced again to take Hansen's recollection of what happened at face value. Once Hansen stopped the camper by the Snow River, he told her he shouldn't have to pay her.
Messina became furious at him, saying how he had tricked her to come with him under false pretenses. She started screaming at him to take her back to Seward, immediately. Hansen was by now furious with the girl. In his view, she was a no-good prostitute, subhuman. He told her, and I quote,
Hey, bitch, this is as far as it's going. As far as the money goes, here's all you're worth. If you don't like it, that's too bad. He had thrown five dollars in her face as he said this. Unsurprisingly, a struggle ensued, where Messina managed to scramble outside. Hansen was, as usual, prepared. He grabbed a .22 caliber revolver in the camper's closet and jumped out and ran after her.
It did not take long for him to catch up with the by now terrified girl. Once he reached her, he clubbed her over the head with a revolver. Joanne Messina laid at his feet, crying. According to Hansen, she suddenly jumped up and clawed him in the face, screaming hysterically. In reply, Hansen shot her twice, killing her. His confession does not state where he shot her.
He stated he'd dragged her lifeless body to a gravel pit nearby and pushed some sand and rock over her corpse. Joanne had brought her dog with her. Fearing it might lead someone to its master's grave, Robert shot the dog too and threw it into the adjacent woods, along with Messina's camping gear. He took his Smith & Wesson .22 Magnum revolver and flung it into the snow river before driving away.
Hansen had not gotten sexual gratification from his encounter with Joanne Messina, and although he had enjoyed killing her, he was left unfulfilled. By now, sex and murder was becoming more and more intertwined in his life, and he was hungry for more.
Roxanne Eastland had come up from Seattle, in the bars on Fourth Avenue and at the Budget Motel on Spenard Road, where she lived. She was known as Karen Boundsgarden. She was petite, blue-eyed, and had brown hair that she bleached blonde.
On the 28th of June, 1980, the 24-year-old Roxanne dressed in black leather pants, a fur-trimmed leather jacket, a sweater, and black leather boots and went to meet a date in the Tenderloin district. She was never heard from again. Four days after her disappearance, friends filed a missing persons report with the Anchorage police.
Police took the missing persons report and asked a few questions, but there was no indication of foul play, and the case halted. The following month, on the 8th of July, Joanne Messina's remains were discovered by Seward police at a gravel pit at the 14-mile post on the Seward Highway. The body was half eaten by bears.
Robert Hansen never gave a detailed confession as to what really happened to Roxanne. What we do know is that he was in no way sated by the encounter. His bloodthirst only seemed to increase with each kill.
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Real Noom user compensated to provide their story. In four weeks, the typical Noom user can expect to lose one to two pounds per week. Individual results may vary. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. As a family man with three kids, I know firsthand how extremely difficult it is to make time for self-care. But it's good to have some things that are non-negotiable. For some, that could be a night out with the boys, chugging beers and having a laugh.
For others, it might be an eating night. For me, one non-negotiable activity is researching psychopathic serial killers and making this podcast. Even when we know what makes us happy, it's often near impossible to make time for it. But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever.
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Visit BetterHelp.com slash Serial Killer today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Serial Killer. On the 6th of September, 1980, the Saturday crowd was gathering in the Great Alaskan Bush Company at 531 Fifth Avenue.
No one would guess that Lisa Fattrell was 41 years old as she walked in and was greeted by her employer and Bush Company owner, Edna Cox. Her 5'2 frame was neatly dressed in dark corduroy pants, green sweater, light blue down vest and black shoes.
Her gait was confident. After all, she had come up from Hawaii and was holding her own as one of more than two hundred dancers working the clubs in Anchorage. Most of those dancers being in their early twenties or younger, Lisa nodded hello and headed for the dressing room in the basement. Downstairs, she got out of her street clothes and hung them in the plywood locker assigned to her.
After putting her purse containing a .25 caliber pistol up on the shelf, she slipped into her robe. Lisa greeted the other dancers as they arrived for their shift. The women helped each other with their hair, wigs and rollers and settled down to do their makeup. In front of her dressing table mirror, Fatrell carefully affixed eyelashes to what would accent her soft blue eyes.
She opened her robe and let it drop from her shoulders, so she could cream her shaved arms. Next, she stood up and creamed her legs and body. After slipping into her satin G-string and abbreviated bra, she strapped on high-heeled sandals. Surveying herself in the frame of bright light surrounding her mirror, the dancer made some adjustments to her lustrous black hair and touched up her makeup.
Satisfied, Lisa went to find a floor manager for whom she would do a slow twirl for final inspection. Upstairs, the evening crowd was building. Young men in military uniforms were at what the dancers called the meat rack, the seats next to the stage that offered the best view of the dancers.
Rounding out the crowd were office workers, businessmen, and laborers, all looking for the same thing, the only difference being the amount of money each could or would spend to get it. A serviceman nursed a beer, while a businessman paid $100 for a bottle of champagne that cost $1.92 wholesale.
As Lisa walked across the astroturf in the darkened room of the main floor, a man offered her some champagne from a bottle he had just purchased for his table. She flashed an appreciative smile as he poured a glass for her. When he sat the bottle down and turned toward the pulsing strobes to look at the dancer on the stage, Futrell emptied the contents of her glass onto the carpet.
Speaking through the loud, pounding music, she thanked the man and moved on. Lisa wanted to get her first dance over with. The first one of the night was always the hardest. She would think about anything when up on the stage, about cleaning, doing laundry, cooking, and kept her eyes just above the customers.
The trick was to create a private world that could ensure survival in the real one. That night, among the crowd, Robert Hansen sipped a beer as Fatrell danced. She finished her shift and disappeared, never to be seen alive again.
On the 18th of February, 1981, three dancers from the Wild Cherry, Molly Casey, Michelle Strong, and Maria Schmidt, were reported missing. The police asked around, but no one could tell them anything of value. Also, there were no evidence of filed play, so the police left the case cold.
Anchorage police had no idea that a killer was prowling the streets, killing vulnerable women in a frighteningly increasing pace. Malai Larson was a dancer who wanted to return to her native Thailand, so she looked for ways to get some extra cash fast.
The 28-year-old, auburn-haired Malai vanished from downtown Anchorage sometime in June of 1981. Her disappearance wasn't reported to Anchorage police until the 10th of July. Still, there was no acknowledgement from Anchorage authorities that something was going on in the Tenderloin district as far as women disappearing, and five months later, it happened again.
Sherry Morrow had been a dancer in Anchorage for three years, bouncing from club to club. The wild Sherry would be her last booking. Friends described the five-foot-six blonde as a pretty girl, quiet and shy. Her roommate saw her as a lonely, troubled 23-year-old girl who just wanted to meet the right guy and get married.
Her roommate had described Sherry as gullible and easily talked into anything. When Sherry was last seen leaving a friend's house around noon on the 17th of November 1981, she was wearing jeans, a baby blue ski jacket, a pair of blue moon boots, an arrowhead necklace and wire-rimmed glasses that framed her blue eyes.
She was going to Alice's 210 Cafe to meet a photographer who was going to pay her $300 for posing nude. Shortly after meeting his intended victim at the cafe, Robert Hansen, who was no photographer, got control.
He blindfolded Morrow with ace bandages, and while she knelt handcuffed and helpless on the floorboard of the front seat of his brown Subaru, he drove to the Knick River. Crossing the bridge, he turned left off Glen Highway, followed a winding road past cultivated potato fields, then went through some brush flats and onto a sandbar along the riverbed. Hansen got his captive out of the car.
But before he could get the handcuffs off her, she started kicking and screaming. Deciding to let her cool off, Hansen took his .223 caliber Mini-14 out of the trunk and sat down by a tree. But the angry woman pursued him. When it happened, Hansen said in his later confession, he was just sitting on his ass and she was standing over him, still kicking and screaming.
In his own words, and I quote, I just pointed the Mini-14 up toward her and pulled the trigger. End quote. The killer, with bruises on his legs from being kicked by his victim, took a fold-up spade and dug a shallow grave in the silt and sand. After rolling Morrow's body into the hole, he removed her arrowhead necklace for a souvenir.
Before he covered over the corpse, he bent down, picked up the spent .223 shell casing and tossed it too into the grave. He walked back to his car, fondling the necklace. Two weeks later, he would collect another. On the morning of the 2nd of December, Andrea Altieri left her apartment to meet an older man for a shopping spree at the Boniface Mall.
Andrea, whose stage name was Enchantment, danced at the Bush Company, as did her roommate, Royale Delcaza, whose stage name was Magic. The two women had spent nearly every day together for the last two years, and they were very close. Delcaza described Andrea as a kind, quiet 23-year-old woman who everyone loved.
She had been given the nickname Fish, and a friend had given her a necklace with a fish charm. The two roommates had not been suspicious that an older man, probably wealthy, would want to take Andrea shopping to buy her nice things. She had put on jeans, a red sweater, her gold chain with a fish charm on it, a pearl ring, and a black leather jacket.
After primping her brown hair, she gave Magic a see-you-later hug. Andrea took a cab to the Boniface Mall and disappeared. Robert Hansen followed his routine and drove the handcuffed and blindfolded Altieri to the Knick River area, by now his favourite recreation spot.
Turning onto a service road off the Palmer Highway, he headed for an isolated spot by the Canick River Railroad Bridge. He had raped a woman there the week before, and according to Hansen, and again I quote, everything had gone fine and I let her go. In the car, Hansen fondled Altieri's breasts for a while.
then held a .22-caliber Browning automatic pistol to her head and forced her to perform oral sex. Andrea had very large breasts. Hansen proceeded to fondle them some more, until his captive told him she had to go to the bathroom. They got out of the car, and Robert laid his gun on the hood.
Altieri walked off a ways to go to the bathroom, and her captor did the same, unzipping his pants and starting to urinate. Suddenly Hansen heard a noise and pivoted to see Andrea reaching for the pistol on the car. She managed to get her hand on the butt of the revolver before Hansen got to her. He grabbed the gun by the barrel, twisted it out of her hand and threw it back on the hood.
The woman became hysterical and started clawing at the pockmarked face of her assailant, kicking and poking her fingers behind his glasses and into his eyes. Hansen responded by snatching the gun off the car and shooting her dead. Hansen got a canvas duffel bag and folding shovel out of his car and filled the bag with gravel from the railroad bed.
After lugging the bag out to the middle of the railroad trestle, he went back for Altieri's corpse. He tied the duffel to the dead woman's neck and pushed it and the body off the bridge and into the Canique River. As he walked back to his car, Hansen fondled the pearl ring and fish charm necklace he had taken off his victim's body.
Sherry Morrows and Andrea Altieri's friends and family now pressured authorities to investigate the women's disappearances. After taking a hard look at the situation, Anchorage police finally sensed a link between what appeared to be a total of seven women vanishing from the Tenderloin district over an 18-month period and began an investigation of the missing dancers' case.
Meanwhile, as the bodies of his victims piled up, Hansen had put the frosting on his image as a hard-working provider for his family. He opened his own bakery.
Hansen's Bakery was located in a block building off the southwest corner of 9th and Ingram, having the address of 828 East 9th Avenue, and clearly marked by a large white and black sign over the business front entry doors, stating clearly Hansen's Bakery. The building exists to this day, and today it hosts a food mart.
Hansen installed ovens and hired John Henning to build cabinets and counters for the shop. Hansen had acquired a good chunk of the capital to finance his bakery from a fraudulent insurance claim. Having come up with no leads in the missing dancers case, Anchorage police went public and requested anyone with information about the women or their disappearances to please come forward.
Shortly thereafter, in February 1982, the police announced that the three dancers who disappeared at the same time from the Wild Cherry a year earlier had actually been spirited out of Anchorage by a church agency and were living safe and sound in the Pacific Northwest. The women, feeling trapped and desperate, had gone to the church group for help
They were given tickets and travel money to escape. The Anchorage police's list of missing dancers thus dropped down to four. A few blocks from downtown, the Hanson Bakery was already firmly established and was doing a booming business. In July of 1982, Robert took some of his profits and bought a Super Cub, a Piper Cub airplane with a big engine to allow short takeoffs in the bush.
Hansen took off the standard tires it came with and mounted Tundra tires in their place. The oversized tires permitted landings on rough terrain and swampy ground. He learned how to use them for shoreline landings, turning large tires into pontoons by locking the brakes as the aircraft landed in the water, then releasing them as soon as the tires hit the land on shore.
For take-offs, he just reversed the procedure. Hansen began to scout for isolated landing spots around the lakes and rivers of the Matsu Valley, particularly his beloved Kenick River. Serial killer Ted Bundy once stated that to the serial murderer, mobility is very important.
Hansen's airplane enhanced his ability to quicken and extend distancing himself and his victims from the point where he abducted them, and to access more remote locales in which to complete his crimes.
This is a particular aspect of Robert Hansen's modus operandi that became quickly apparent to John Douglas, the FBI agent who drew up the serial killer profile for the missing dancers case. Douglas has later stated, and I quote, Hansen was able to adapt his fantasy of total domination of his victims in a way he couldn't have done, say, for instance, in New York City.
There, he would have been limited to the back of a van or something. In Alaska, he had the tools, the aircraft, to take his victims to isolated areas where no one was around for miles. He could turn them loose if he wanted to and hunt them down like wild animals. I've never seen that in another case. End quote.
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And with that, we come to the end of part seven of the saga of Robert Hansen, the Butcher Baker. I hope you enjoyed listening to me telling it to you. Next episode, number 140 in number, will be the final episode in the saga of his life and crimes. 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 theserialkillerpodcast, 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.