The Butcher Baker – Robert Christian Hansen –1.A Hunter of Human Prey

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A Hunter of Human Prey
"The best sport in the world," agreed Rainsford.

"For the hunter," amended Whitney. "Not for the jaguar."

"Don't talk rot, Whitney," said Rainsford. "You're a big-game hunter, not a philosopher. Who cares how a jaguar feels?"

"Perhaps the jaguar does," observed Whitney.

"Bah! They've no understanding."

"Even so, I rather think they understand one thing—fear. The fear of pain and the fear of death."

"Nonsense," laughed Rainsford. "This hot weather is making you soft, Whitney. Be a realist. The world is made up of two classes—the hunters and the huntees. Luckily, you and I are hunters. Do you think we've passed that island yet?"

"I can't tell in the dark. I hope so."

—"The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell

Richard Connell wrote his famous short story "The Most Dangerous Game" (also known as "The Hounds of Zaroff") in the early 1920s. By the 1930s it was a movie. The story involved two big game hunters ending up stranded on an island where they intended to hunt jaguars. Instead, they become the prey as a man named Zaroff hunts them with his hounds. A perennial fixture on high school reading lists, the story would take on a macabre new popularity because of a man born over a decade after it was published. Beginning in the early 1970s, Robert Hansen would put his own spin on "The Most Dangerous Game." In his version, women would be sent into the Alaskan wilderness naked and blindfolded and then hunted down like animals.

Raised by strict, religiously overbearing parents, afflicted with a stutter and acne scars, Robert Hansen grew up to become a withdrawn loner. Slowly, a hatred for people, especially women, began to build. He began his life of crime by burning down a city garage used to house school buses. Moving on from there, he became a small-time thief and then discovered the world of prostitution. His anger, though, wasn't satisfied by paying for sex: He would hold working girls at gunpoint, handcuff them, and then rape them. And once he had the wilds of Alaska for his backyard, he turned to murder.

Nevertheless, Robert Hansen was regarded as a polite—if quiet—youth during the early years when he worked in his father's bakery. He ended up purchasing and running a bakery of his own in Alaska. He also became a skilled hunter who collected magnificent trophies of the state's big game. Anchorage residents had no idea what was hiding under the surface. Even after he was arrested, his standing in the community made rape victims reluctant to come forward. Many people just couldn't believe that the man they knew for his fresh donuts and hunting prowess had been killing more than just elk.

The unassuming loner blended in so well that local investigators ended up needing the help of the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit and the expertise of criminal psychologist John Douglas. Douglas is well known for his book Mindhunter and his work on many high profile murder cases. He was able to complete a profile that matched Hansen perfectly, helping investigators sift through the false alibis behind the public persona to find the evil man hiding in plain sight.

Once the profile was complete, it wasn't hard to match it to Hansen. One of his victims, Cindy Paulson, had escaped his clutches only months before and had actually identified him as her rapist. However, Paulson was a prostitute, and Hansen was a respected member of the community, so in a "he said, she said" situation, his word had prevailed—with a little help from a seemingly convincing alibi. But when police got Douglas's profile, Hansen matched. With only the alibi to prevent the evidence from lining up perfectly, they took a harder look at it—and it wasn't long before that alibi fell apart and the truth came out.

Hansen had habitually targeted prostitutes and strippers. He'd gone as far as sending his family away on vacation so he could use his basement as a torture chamber where he held women handcuffed to a pole or hanging from a meat hook, biting, scratching, beating, and raping them. And then he got an airplane. His victims became prey, forced to run naked and afraid through the woods of Alaska as he hunted them down and shot them. Their bodies were buried in shallow graves or dumped along rivers. Hansen took a nightmarish tale and made it a real life scenario for his victims.

Understanding the psychology behind hunting and killing vulnerable people in this manner requires some insight into Hansen's history and how he grew up. Although the great debate of nurture versus nature is still going strong, it's fairly clear that what people live through as they're growing up—and how they adapt to it—has a reflection in their adult lives. Even with the best intentions, overbearing parents can cause an inward dip in a child's self-esteem and self-confidence. Hansen's parents went further than most, instilling a need for normalcy and perfection. They wanted a hard worker. They forced him to write with his right hand instead of his dominant left hand. They pushed him toward certain religious beliefs. Adding that to Hansen's acne issues and severe stuttering problem, he had a difficult time fitting in with kids his age. Puberty was a challenge, and girls weren't very kind. His anger turned inward and grew. Although there's no record of it, it seems entirely possible that he was killing animals and setting fires long before his teen years. And when he did get into hunting, an acceptable form of killing animals, he did so with a passion.

Robert Hansen, dubbed the "Butcher Baker," killed at least 19 women. Taking the crime escalator to the top, Hansen went from petty thief and arsonist to rapist to serial killer over his lifetime, all while maintaining the facade of a shy and gentle family man. He was a baker in Anchorage, Alaska, a husband, and the father to two children. But there are at least 30 women who lived through the horror of being kidnapped, raped, and abused by Hansen—and at least 19 who did not survive their encounters with the hunter at all.