Anchorage District Attorney Frank Rothschild presciently noted that, if Robert Hansen had a soft spot, it was for his family. “He is a hell of a humanitarian for his family, isn’t he,” was how Rothschild put it, after the “Butcher, Baker” held up his confession over concerns about his wife and kids. That small button of empathy was the one Christy Hayes pushed when she told Hansen about her kids.
She was desperate, yes, but the mere mention of her kids was enough to give Robert Hansen pause. Maybe she could crack his resolve. Even if she couldn’t, it disrupted Hansen’s plan. That alone gave her half a chance.
[Transcript Lightly Edited for Clarity]
FR: [After you abducted her] I assume that then you, that’s when you tied her up and then you were going to drive somewhere else? Go back in the back of the camper and and get it on and then drive her back. Was that kind of the plan?
RH: Well, uh, right. Uh, uh, she, even when I was tyin … tying her up here in, uh, in North Mountain View, she kept, I kept on telling her, you know, “Just do exactly what I tell you. You’re not going to get hurt in any way, shape or form.” Uh, I said (inaudible), “I’m even going to pay, I’m going to – everything’s going to be just cool.”
I said, “Just that it’s going to be me deciding when we’re done, not you.”
Uh, I think that was part of the reason, you know, I was always so (inaudible). They always wanted to say when we were done, you know. I figured that, uh, if a person was going to pay for it, uh, they, they, they should be in the driver’s seat, not the gal as to when it was done.
Anyway, uh, then she kept on saying I’ve got to get home. I think she even, uh, was saying something about she had two or three kids at home, that they… they was going to be by themselves or, or uh, or something or other. I don’t know. She was going on [about] something or other and I said, “Oh, well, all right.”
She started — I went back around the pickup and started driving — and she started yelling and stuff and, and I got thinking, “Well, gee whiz, what if she’s telling the truth and I take her out here and we spent a long ti…time together? I don’t want to be responsible for somebody if their kids are home by themselves.”
I said, “Well, bullshit, okay.” I come down off that drive — I can explain it better… (background noise, sigh). I think (pause) I can’t remember exactly how, how the… [stutters] the streets go. I can’t remember how I got up in, in there. Uh, drove up, down, uh, I know that main street drag that goes out through North Mountain View up there…
Mush Inn to Commercial Drive (Google Maps; Note the proximity to Merrill Field)
JE: Commercial Drive?
RH: Co… Commercial Drive. I got on that, I think I got on… on the street that goes past the Mush Inn and so forth and turned off the highway, uh, I was heading out the highway going out towards — I’m going out to Muldoon to do the normal bit out there.
Mush Inn in 2017 (Leland E. Hale)
And, uh, right, right away she, uh, started in about she had to be back (inaudible) so quick, so quick, so quick. Uh, and um, think I, I think I turned off right there (inaudible) drove up into uh, to, uh, Mountain View, up in there, pulled off one of the side streets and stopped.
And, uh, went through the deal where I was inside with her and got her tied up and so forth, I got… got back in the pickup and drove around and drove out — I think I was going to drive just out the back by Safeway and down the — I can remember, I went around the block (pause), uh, down past Safeway, down to the intersection.
She was yelling all this here time, uh, that she had to get back, had to get back. Uh, that she had her kids back home or some — her babysit… sitter, if she… if she wasn’t back… I don’t know if she had a kid or not.
Anyway, she was saying something about, urn, uh, uh, she had to be, uh, be back, and before I got to the highway there, I thought, “Aw, bullshit, what if she’s telling the truth,” you know? Uh, she has got a little child back there?
Uh, so I just drove across the highway and drove — I don’t know — I can’t remember how many blocks it is down there — and pulled in on one of the first side streets. I pulled off to the side. I thought, “Well, uh, we’ll make it short and quick right, uh, right here and I’ll take her back up and drop her off and, and, uh, won’t go all the way on out and go all through (inaudible).”
Anyway, it was going to all — all was going to happen right there and then, wouldn’t you know, didn’t take as long to get there, didn’t take as long to get back.
FR: Then it went bad.
RH: Yeah.
RH = Robert Hansen; FR = Frank Rothschild; JE = Joe Evans (Hansen counsel)
Source: Statement of Robert C. Hansen, District Attorney’s Office Anchorage, February 22, 1984
(CONTINUED)
Purchase Butcher, Baker