In the Oxygen documentary, Mark of a Killer: Hunted to Death, assistant D.A. Frank Rothschild points to a critical turning point in the confession of a man he came to call “a monster.” That moment comes when Anchorage District Attorney Vic Krumm confronts Hansen with an ultimatum. Cooperate or face a spring search for more graves — and new murder charges with each body we find.
In Rothschild’s telling, that’s the moment when the hard-bitten killer in Hansen showed its ugly face. After hours of pretending he was Mr. Nice Guy, Hansen could no longer hide his inner beast. We share some of Krumm’s confrontation below.
“Your flight charts have the 21 little asterisks on it, include the five places where we found bodies that you’ve talked about, leading us to conclude that there may well be 21 girls out there. Now, wh..where we sit is this: we are prepared and will in fact go into court as we indicated we would on Monday, avoiding the publicity for you, and bring you over as early as we talked about and taking care of all the matters that we have discussed at this point.
“But come spring time, we’re not going to let this sit. We’re going to go out there and we’re going to be looking for 16 more graves…
To the extent that you tell us that there is a body there, we would like to, you know, pinpoint a little more closely where those are so that we don’t have to spend an inordinate amount of manpower looking for it.
On the other hand, if you tell us today or don’t want to tell us today, well, if you tell us today that a certain asterisk does not have a body assigned, we’re still going to look for that body. If we find that body, we’re going to charge you with murder and every body we find, we’re going to charge you with murder.”
Vic Krumm, Anchorage District Attorney, Robert Hansen’s Confession, February 22, 1984
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