With the authorities, Robert Hansen sounds so… rational, reasonable, matter-of-fact. Even as he gets to the part where he puts Cindy Paulson in his car and drives her to Merrill Field. Where her next stop is the Knik River. Where we know what is supposed to happen once they get there.
And that’s what shines through for me. The planning. All the planning. All the fake planning, as it turns out. Take this one example: after the rape, he has to wait until dawn to make his next move. His next move being that he wants to “spend the weekend together” with Cindy (yeah, right). But he can’t fly his plane to the Knik at night. Hence the need to tie Cindy to the basement post, so he can sleep a little before moving to the next phase in his sickness.
It’s a flawed plan. Cindy continually plots her escape during this time. She has nothing else to do — and Bob is sleeping. No surprise, then, that Cindy makes her break at the airport. She’s running for her life.
And yet, in his vapid retelling of this incident, Bob Hansen purposely downplays his reaction to Cindy’s escape. He had, after all, chased her along Fifth Avenue with a firearm. He was, by all accounts, in a full-blown panic, as his subsequent actions demonstrate.
Instead, he pretends that even at this desperate time, he is cool, calm and collected. “She got out of the airplane and ran around the hanger there at Polar Airways and uh left. Then I left there and drove to my home.” Flat. Blank.
It’s here you know — finally, completely — that this man has a hole in his heart.
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