Cindy’s Courtroom Escape

Run For Cover

You’d think I could make it all the way through Hansen’s sentencing. After all, I was determined to get my justice and to see him off to jail. That’s where he belonged. And, yes, I’ll admit that part of me wished for something bigger. If anyone deserved a death sentence, it was him.

I’ve Got Questions

Leland: Ok, let me get this right… So you’re directly behind Hansen?
Cindy: Not even behind him. I was to the… to his left. So I could see his face. And so when he stretched back, he could turn and look at me. And I can look at him and say, “Yeah, motherf….r. Now what, bitch?”
Q: Except it came back to bite you, right?
A: Still gives me the chills. All right? Like, “get out of here!”

Exit Strategy

That’s when I ran. I was so scared. I was scared to death. I was gone. I was gone right out the door. I knew where all the exits were, because at that point I got really good at that. When I came into the room I memorized it… I knew everything about that place and the people in it. Had it down perfect. So…

I ran as fast as I can, out of the courtroom and into the hallway. I sort of froze until I saw the ladies restroom and I dashed inside. ‘Cuz he couldn’t follow me there, could he? The door closed behind me and I’m balled up with my arms across my chest, my butt against the wall. I’m crying. Sobbing and heaving, gasping for air. My knees started to buckle. I’m sliding down the wall.

Then somebody comes in, a lady bailiff. And she says, “It’s OK. He’s not gonna hurt you no more. He can’t hurt you no more.”

Well, yeah. She has a gun… Can she imagine how my mind is working? […] After the way he treated me, all I can think is: Why does he deserve to even live?

Two of Hansen’s luckier victims — ones who survived — sobbed through much of Monday’s hearing. A 17-year old girl who was kidnapped and raped by Hansen last June ran crying from the courtroom when District Attorney Victor Krumm announced that the 44-year-old bakery owner had admitted the slayings.

Sheila Toomey, Anchorage Daily News, Tuesday, February 28, 1984

And yes, I missed some things when I ran. I missed the fact that just as I ran, Anchorage District Attorney Victor Krumm was telling the court that Hansen had confessed to seventeen murders. Or, who knows? Maybe that was the trigger that finally got me out of there? I definitely missed Anchorage prosecutor Frank Rothschild’s speech. The best one of his life. I had to read that later — except I couldn’t. I couldn’t make myself.

Frank Rothschild Speaks

Your Honor, Rothschild said, “before you sits a monster, an extreme aberration of a human being. A man who has walked among us for seventeen years, serving us donuts, Danish, and hot coffee, all with a pleasant smile. Mellow, mild-mannered, bespectacled, Bob the baker. A family man. A man so cunning, so clever, that his friends and acquaintances are in shock at what he now admits to before this court. Not even his wife of nearly twenty years had any idea of his dark, evil side.”

“He’s a man,” Rothschild told them, “who has manipulated his family, his friends, countless women, the police and the courts of our state for the many years he has been here. He is, to be blunt, the most prolific mass murderer in modern Alaska history. A man who purposely, coldly plotted and planned the kidnap, the terrorizing, and the rape of scores of women who lived here in Anchorage, who admits to murdering seventeen women, seventeen young, helpless, frightened women, and then burying them in our wilderness. His crimes numb the mind.”

Four Hundred Sixty One

I also missed the judge – Judge Ralph Moody – who said, “There are many people out in the wilderness today that, if we had resolved ourselves to not overlook people’s weaknesses, would be living today. I don’t have any choice, sir, and if there can be any compassion for your family — and certainly there’s no indication that they should be blamed — it’s a miracle that you could do what all you’ve done and keep it from your family.”

He gave Hansen the maximum sentence of 461 years plus life, saying, “I hope when we leave this courtroom today that I have, to the best of my ability, provided this man shall never walk the streets of America or any other place as a free man.” I missed that part. The best part came after that, when Moody called Hansen’s career an indictment of society as a whole. “We have to take our blame all the way up to the Supreme Court.”

Over, But Not Done

And then, finally, it was over. Except, of course, it wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

While the speeches were winding down inside the courtroom, I was in a blur, drifting into recovery mode in the hallway. Or at least I tried to pull myself together long enough to weave out of the courthouse and into a fancy restaurant. We’re supposed to be celebrating Hansen’s demise.

After that, I was going home. Which, of course, was another matter entirely.

---

Purchase Butcher, Baker

Copyright 2026. All rights reserved.

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!

You can also order “What Happened In Craig,” HERE and HERE. True crime on Epicenter Press about Alaska’s Worst Unsolved Mass Murder.