460 years plus life seems like a long time. Certainly no known human has lived that long. Some folks wanted more. They wanted the death penalty. They wouldn’t get it. Couldn’t get it. Alaska doesn’t have the death penalty. A life sentence was the most they could expect. The most they could expect, that is, until Judge Moody upped the ante.
“It wasn’t until approximately 2:45 on Monday afternoon that Bob Hansen appeared before Judge Moody. Attorneys, law enforcement officers, members of the press, and friends and families of the victims packed the third-floor courtroom. When Vic Krumm announced that Hansen had admitted to the serial murders, Cindy Paulson ran crying from the room. Other who had known the dead women also cried, some throughout the proceeding. Frank Rothschild, meanwhile, launched into the best courtroom speech of his career.
“Your Honor,” Rothschild said, “before you sits a monster, an extreme aberration of a human being. A man who has walked among us for seventeen years, serving us donuts, Danish, and hot coffee, all with a pleasant smile. Mellow, mild-mannered, bespectacled, Bob the baker. A family man. A man so cunning, so clever, that his friends and acquaintances are in shock at what he now admits to before this court. Not even his wife of nearly twenty years had any idea of his dark, evil side.”
Excerpt From: Walter Gilmour & Leland E. Hale. “Butcher, Baker.”
2/27/84: On 2/27/84 at approximately 2:45 pm HANSEN is sentenced before Superior Court Judge MOODY. HANSEN pleads guilty to the rape and kidnapping of CINDY PAULSEN, the theft of items from cabins found in his residence, the insurance fraud, and the murders of PAULA GOULDING, SHERRY MORROW, JOANNA MESSINA, and EKLUTNA ANNIE. HANSEN is subsequently sentenced to 460 years in prison plus a life sentence. The sentencing is concluded at 5:30 pm.
Judge Ralph E. Moody (Sentencing Judge, State of Alaska v. Robert C. Hansen)
MR. ROTHSCHILD: For those people that he has slain, for those lucky enough to have survived, for all of us, Your Honor, we ask that you rid us of this beastly man forever.
THE COURT: Counsel want a recess?
MR. DEWEY: No, Your Honor.
THE COURT: You may proceed.
MR. DEWEY: Your Honor, it’s my client’s wish and desire that nothing further be said on his behalf at this proceeding by his counsel. And that concludes my remarks.
THE COURT: Mr. Hansen, you may stand. Do you have anything to say before the court pronounces judgment?
MR. HANSEN: No, sir, I don’t.
THE COURT: Well, it’s hard to believe that humanity produces and sustains people who have the ability and propensities to commit such enormous, such beastly, such undescribable crimes… And we might as well face the music and resolve now and forevermore that we’re not going to allow people like this to remain on the streets. And I know we’re going to hear hue and cries from civil libertarians and everyone else that you can’t keep people out of public for life. But if there ever was a case in which a man or defendant needed to be surveillanced for the rest of his life it is this gentleman here.
Purchase Butcher, Baker
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