Bridging A Forty Year Gap
In this segment, we’re sharing some of Cindy’s contrasting personas, using paired audio recordings, both historic (1983) and contemporary. And stay tuned! Our podcast, Cindy Paulson: This Is My Story, will debut this June. Keep an ear out!
ALERT: People Magazine Investigates, Tuesday, June 2 on ID (Investigation Discovery). Surviving the Butcher, Baker, featuring Cindy Paulson. Don’t miss it!
(copyright Alaska State Troopers and Leland E. Hale)
The first Cindy Paulson I “met” was eighteen years old, just months past her seventeenth birthday — and fresh off her daring escape from serial killer Robert Hansen. Our “meeting” came by way of a sometimes faint cassette tape, recorded at the Alaska State Trooper headquarters on September 27, 1983. In other words, our first meeting was completely “virtual.”
A Haunting Voice
Years later, as I transcribed that tape, her teen voice haunted me with both its trauma and its stern determination. Cindy came across as streetwise. Sometimes profane. She stood in stark contrast to Sgt. Glenn Flothe. He: Serious. Meticulous. Trusting. Speaking in slow, soothing tones reminiscent — as Cindy puts it — of Mr. Rogers. If, that is, you can imagine Fred Rogers as an ace homicide detective.
(courtesy Finch Productions and People Magazine Investigates)
There is, of course, also a bit of a fast forward inherent in this story… As you might surmise, the entire Butcher, Baker saga is thirty plus years of traipsing through what I call “long, strange trip” territory. For instance… After its initial run, “Butcher, Baker” went out of print. Then came the movie, The Frozen Ground, on which Cindy and Glenn Flothe played advisory roles. That film, in turn, brought new attention to Butcher, Baker (including a second publisher and, now, a third one, who added eBook and Audible versions). To close that circle, Cindy and I have finally connected “in real life,” through trusted intermediaries. She is the latest twist in our shared Robert Hansen serial killer saga. Our task: to publish the book detailing her amazing life story.
The People Magazine Investigates episode featuring Cindy Paulson is scheduled for Tuesday, June 2, 2026 / 9:00 pm ET on Investigation Discovery (ID), Discovery + and available to stream on HBO Max soon afterwards.
One of the best parts of our real-life connection, in fact, is that she’s not only shared her life experiences with me, but let me fill in her missing years. You know, the cop stuff, the Hansen stuff, the courts and… all the things she missed when she decided she’d had enough of Alaska. (Or, perhaps, when the State of Alaska decided they’d had enough of her).
(Age 14, Echo Glen Children’s center, Washington State)
A Saga, A Journey
As the photo above — her most famous image — illustrates, Cindy got into “the life” at a very early age. She spent a number of years transiting through the criminal justice system. But… She’s also a mother, a Spanish-speaker (after a decade spent in Mexico) and a proud member of AA.
One major turning point in her life: she was finally diagnosed and treated for PTSD, a breakthrough jumpstarted by Robert Hansen’s death in 2014. Part of that “delay” came about because… The mental health community was slow — too slow — to recognize that women are — surprise, surprise — also affected by severe traumatic events. There are, it turns out, battles besides those found in wartime. Like, you know, being kidnapped and threatened with death by a serial killer.
Cindy Paulson first met Robert Hansen at this spot. She was 17.
Let us share an incident that chillingly illustrates this conundrum. One night, while at her home, a stranger crossed Cindy’s yard and entered her neighbor’s home. She awoke to the flash of police lights. The neighbor family’s relatives had called 911 after checking on their grandparents. They found Jose and Rafaela Navarro, critically injured and unresponsive. When paramedics arrived they pronounced them dead. Someone had ruthlessly assassinated the couple who lived next door.
Cindy had only one thought. Robert Hansen, though dead, had finally found a way to finish what he’d started. In Cindy’s mind, the assassin had merely gone to the wrong house.
Purchase Butcher, Baker
Copyright 2026. All rights reserved.
You can also order “What Happened In Craig,” HERE and HERE. True crime on Epicenter Press about Alaska’s Worst Unsolved Mass Murder.
NOW available: Kill Brother, Kill Sister, part three of my Alaska Trilogy. Don’t miss this one! Three millionaires face off and only one of them survives!
