In The Courtroom, Pt. 2
CINDY PAULSON: One thing for sure: I didn’t choose to seat myself directly behind Robert Hansen. And that interaction with him, the one I described in Part One? My therapist calls that an invasive memory. Like sometimes I can’t help myself. The past interrupts the present and everything goes completely out of whack. So, with that… Let’s get back to the story of Robert Hansen’s sentencing.
BACK ON PLANET EARTH, I realize I’m late to the party, as usual. And the lights in the courtroom are starting to get me. Too bright. Almost blinding. From out of nowhere a bailiff comes up behind me. There’s an open seat nearby. She guides me toward it. As I near my seat, I hear the girls’ voices again. The dead girls’ voices. They’re in my head like an echo. Run, Cindy. Run. Run. Run. Run, Cindy. Run. The last time I heard those voices, I was escaping him. I have a sudden urge to tell the families their girls are all right; that they’re in a good place. But I don’t. I can’t. My voice is locked.
It’s not long before I shake it off. It’s my shock talking. I’m right behind what turns out to be the Plaintiff’s table. I spot Frank Rothschild, all six-foot-four-of him, sprawled next to his crutches. That was the seat they picked for me. The only vacant seat in the entire place.
Then, suddenly, my eyes jump. It looks like Hansen. It is Hansen. He’s there, wearing a starched white shirt. He looks almost comfortable, stretched in his chair. He isn’t handcuffed, so I feel a sudden emotion, a small tremble. Take a deep breath, I tell myself. Take a breath.
Luckily, I’m not right behind him, but it’s close; he’s off to my right, at the defense table. His back is to me, mostly. His shoulders hunched. I’m wondering whether he could leap that distance — then think that maybe, if he had to, he could. Let it go, I tell myself. Let it go.
Only minutes after I sit down I see the people in suits start moving. Everything was moving. Legal talk. Courtroom talk. I hear, “All Rise.” The sentencing is set to begin. And Hansen is like… From… from the table to where I was sitting, I now realize he could have reached out and touched me.
(Courtesy Alaska State Troopers)
And Then
SUDDENLY, in the midst of everything else that was going on with his sentencing… It was just him and me. We were back at that place. His place. He was in my head, and I was in his head. And he was doing to me what he was doing. But I had switched everything around. He wasn’t getting away with it. He didn’t have the gun no more: I was the one looking at him and he was the one that didn’t have power and control over me. He was the one sitting there, stuck in that chair. You know what I mean? And he was the one that they were talking about.
So when you… when it comes down to it, he looks at me. And it’s me giving him the back look. It’s “I got you.” I’m looking at him like, “You shouldn’t have did that you bad boy,” you know?
Then Hansen leans back in his chair and turns and looks at me. He could have almost touched me. He isn’t handcuffed. And he turns and he gives me the most blackest look in his eyes. It was… It was so devilish, like he could just chop me up and chew me out. And it was pure evil. It made me wanna just… Run.
And it’s like he is so infuriated at this point that our eyes are locked and stuff. He turned around and gave me, like this look… He looked me dead in the eye. And all I seen was the devil. If he could have grabbed me and choked me without having any repercussions… He would have choked me out. At that moment, I realize that he wants to kill me. When he leans back that chair to reach out his hand, he could have killed me. And not one person in that courtroom could have stopped him.
He's coming to get me. There was nobody in that courtroom. It was just him and me.
He’s coming and I don’t have a whole Merrill Field Airport to run away from him, like I did the first time. I gotta run and hide. You know, like you see in the movies, you gotta run and hide somewhere? So the bad monster can’t get you? So I was just running and hiding so the monster couldn’t come get me.
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