Something Hansen Wanted To Extinguish
Now, for the first time, I share additional info about Sgt. Glenn Flothe insights into Hansen’s formative years. One of the crucial things he knew — even before taking him “face-to-face” — were the details of his first arrest. That was for torching a bus barn in his hometown of Pocahontas, Iowa, on March 29, 1961. Hansen was 22 years old and fresh out of the U.S. Army. If there was a precursor to this shocking outrage, it was when he ambled onto a rifle range during basic training. Not when it was safe, mind you. No, he waited until soldiers were performing live fire drills. Yeah, something was amiss about Mr. Robert C. Hansen.
Not surprisingly, Hansen’s classmates at Pocahontas High School also had insights. While generally noting that they didn’t see anything particularly “disturbing” in his behavior, some did witness something strange. What was his thing about killing house cats? This takes us to the “deeper shit.” As Hall et al point out, many writers and psychological profiles link the combination of fire setting, enuresis and cruelty to animals as key characteristics of a potential serial killer. Now there’s some deep doo-doo!… And, no, I don’t have evidence that Hansen was a bedwetter.
I do have evidence from Sigmund Freud.
For his part, Freud saw arson as interconnected with sexual drive. (With Freud, what wasn’t.) Ivan Fras, M.D., building on Freud, notes the strong similarity between arson and sexual offending, especially in its compulsive nature. Other researchers see arson as a “displaced form of sadism.” That said, not all investigators find sexual motives among arsonists. Hall et al note that arsonists in institutional settings often present as model clients, with no urge toward aggression by other means. There are other, more damning, critiques [1].
My takeaway? Maybe we should look elsewhere.
A Man Who Knew Him Well
Which takes us to an expert of another type: Alaska State Trooper homicide investigator Sgt. Glenn Flothe. Flothe was among a handful of people who studied Robert Hansen in depth. Studied Hansen, in fact, when his crimes were in full flower. There was, he thought, something more sinister at work. Something that had transformed arson into serial murder.
“I think he felt he wanted to take what he couldn’t have when he was younger and he wanted to take what he felt he had a right to – and that was women.”
Sgt. Glenn Flothe, May 11, 1985, interview by Leland E. Hale
Flothe continues:
So I don’t think his initial exploits were simply to take them out and kill them. He wanted to dominate them, he wanted to use them, he wanted to feel power around them – so in a way, I think it was getting back at women. I think it’s a general hate for women – but back then, initially, it was hate coupled with sexual desire. I think, as he went on, I think his sexual desire lessened and in fact disappeared. And it was simply the hate and the thrill of the chase, the hunt and the capture and the kill. Simple as that. And he was like an animal that’s tasted blood. He couldn’t stop.
Insights Into a Killer
Flothe’s theorizing is based on his observation that Hansen’s crimes against women evolved over time. Again, this from a man who dug deep into Hansen’s consciousness. Flothe would be the first to admit he got lots of help.
Apple Maps illustration by Leland E. Hale
In early 1972, Hansen’s lawyer had him examined by Dr. J. Ray Langdon, a psychiatrist at the Alaska Clinic in Anchorage. The precipitating incident was Hansen’s attempted kidnapping of a young woman at gunpoint. Serious stuff. Hansen told Langdon that, as a teenager, “he fantasized about doing all sorts of harmful things to girls who rejected him.” The woman in question had, it turned out, told Hansen “no” when he asked for a date. No surprise. She had a boyfriend. And Hansen was a total stranger who’d followed her home and presented himself at her door unbidden. So he left — and came back with a handgun. Creepy.
No More Fantasies
By 1983, however, Hansen had slipped from fantasy into the utmost extremes of his reality. Notes Sgt. Glenn Flothe:
[I]t got to the point where he was not just shooting them once – like Morrow or Goulding – he was shooting them multiple times with multiple weapons. He’d empty one gun, empty another gun, then he’d take out a knife and just savagely stab the bodies. Their clothes were totally intact. They hadn’t been raped, hadn’t been molested, hadn’t been chained up, you know, for long periods of time.
The Paula Goulding incident — she went missing in April of 1983 — is telling. In his 1984 confession, Robert Hansen talks about a frightened Goulding attacking him at a remote spot along the Knik River. She had reason to: a persistent pilot was flying overhead, dipping his wings in a gesture of recognition. Fearing the worst — the pilot coming down to interrupt his up-to-then successful kidnapping — Hansen hurried her into a nearby meat shack with a sinister warning.
"Don't say a goddamn word to him, I don't want to have to - if you raise hell and he starts for me I'm going to have to shoot the son-of-a-bitch and if I've got to shoot him I'm going to shoot you and you don't want to die do ya?"
When the pilot eventually flew off, Hansen finally released Goulding from the meat shack. She was beyond fright. She was unconsolable, fearing her imminent demise.
"She just slapped at me and she started running you know, she started running - the river's out this way - and she started running this way. I caught up to her and ah, I got her stopped. I said now look, it's over. There is no real problem the guy is gone. It's all cool now, you know. But she had got hysterical and I couldn't get her calmed down. She just ah, the more I tried to talk to her, maybe it was because I was getting excited, but she just got more and more hysterical and she broke away from me again and ah, started to run you know. I just reached back you know, the rifle was laying there and ah - or leaned up against the building, I grabbed - reached back - I took a couple steps back and grabbed that, I ran and caught - and I caught her again and I said now look - I said don't make a bad thing worse. Don't - stop - it's okay.
But then I had a gun in my hand and [she said] 'you're going to kill me right now.' Then she - it just went completely, things just went completely bad again."
In Bob Hansen’s lexicon, “completely bad” meant murder — strange how he couldn’t make himself say the actual word for the act. He buried her in a hastily dug grave and escaped the scene. With Paula Goulding in the rearview mirror, however, things started to get… Really. Interesting. Hansen went to the next extreme, determined never to be stopped, never to be confronted, never to face the specter of live witnesses. As Flothe notes in a 1984 interview, over time Hansen’s victims were found farther and farther from his landing sites. In a February 1984 statement to the Anchorage Daily Times, Flothe described the full scope of Hansen’s metastasizing madness:
Let ‘Em Run
A Man’s Obsessions
Capturing and convicting Robert Hansen required Glenn Flothe to go spelunking into his chief suspect’s motives and methods. It’s no surprise that his insights go deep. Of course they do. By the end of his murderous career, Flothe discovered, Robert Hansen was living a single-minded existence.
“It became his life,” Flothe notes. “Say before it was every couple weeks or months he’d get the urge and go out and snatch some prostitute, right? Knock her around a little bit, rape her then throw her out of his camper — but every time that happened – or it happened enough — he’d end up in jail — or under investigation or hassle with the police. He didn’t want no more hassle. Enough of this hassle bullshit. I wanna go out and have a good time, don’t wanna be hassled by the cops… ‘cause sooner or later the stupid cops are gonna put it together – and he was probably right – so I best start killing ‘em and leaving less evidence.”
Sgt. Flothe’s takeaway is all too true: “I think he felt the cops were stupid – and deservedly so, I guess probably.”
The Cindy Paulson Insights
Every sweeping analysis deserves — begs for — an exception. It doesn’t take long for Flothe to find one. Her name was Cindy Paulson. Knowing Cindy as I do, this won’t make her happy. But… We’re talking obsessive-compulsive behavior here. We’re talking about a man who wasn’t entirely in touch with his inner being, much less in control of his impulses. His diminishing sexual impulses took a left turn when he met Cindy.
“And I think she (Cindy) just happened to be one among this series that he felt sexual desire again. I don’t think it was a pattern – that everyone he wanted to have sex with – I think it just happens that out of the latter group of victims, she was one that the sexual desire came back.
Sgt. Glenn Flothe, May 11, 1985, interview by Leland E. Hale
Flothe adds: “[Hansen] had fantasies of relationships that really didn’t exist – like when he kidnapped that gal, he thought she liked him type thing and “if you’ll only come with me I’ll make love to you.” That’s the type of thinking that went through his head. “If I could just prove my greatness, she’ll like me” –- but the trouble is he’s gotta snatch them and hold them and secure them and chain them in order to attract –- to gain their attention.”
And that was a recipe for disaster. A disaster that had only one outcome. Murder was not only inevitable, it was a necessity. Dead women don’t talk.
Flothe Wonders About Hansen’s Insights
“He knew that we knew he was ‘the great hunter,’ Flothe notes of Hansen, “and a great outdoorsman. I think that in his own mind he thought he could convince us that he was truly out and about so much as to leave a shell casing from his gun at each grave site, particularly at one gravesite where the shell casing was in the gravesite with the body. It was the ultimate arrogance.”
“But look how many times the police had screwed up, look at how many times they bought the story. I mean, there’s questions that I want to ask Robert Hansen – at what point did you think that these weren’t dummies? Was it the first interview or when we were doing the search warrant or two weeks later after he sat in the slammer or at what point did he realize these guys had their shit together and they weren’t gonna fuckin’ gonna… “
“And in order for me to ask that question, I think it’s obvious that I wasn’t sure myself at what point he was willing to give it all up. I just knew, though, from his past experience that if I kept dumping on him, dumping on him more pressure, file more charges – I mean, I had ‘em file burglary charges on him, rape charges, I was gonna charge murder charges on him, and I was gonna dump… and we told him that – every time we find a body, Mr. Robert Hansen, we’re gonna bring your ass back up here and we’re gonna go through another trial. I don’t care if it’s 22 trials. We’re gonna go through 22. Every time we find a victim, every time we find a bullet that matches your gun, we’re coming back.
“And so, in my own mind, I’m very curious to know at what point did he realize these guys – for once – had their shit together?”
[1] See: Not the Sum of Its Parts: A Critical Review of the MacDonald Triad
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