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Excerpt From<\/strong>: Walter Gilmour & Leland E. Hale. \u201cButcher, Baker.\u201d<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n That informant was a teenage prostitute who had been kidnapped in downtown Anchorage, then raped and nearly murdered in a two-day ordeal along the Seward Highway.<\/p>\n Patty Roberts was 18 and working the streets to pay for her heroin habit. She told Sgt. Gilmour that on the night of December 19th, she was in the parking lot of the Nevada Club when she was kidnapped at gunpoint by a man who said he\u2019d kill her if she didn\u2019t do what he wanted. She described him in detail. Between 23 and 28 years old. Probably 5\u2019 8\u201d or 5\u2019 9\u201d. Slender. Wearing horn-rimmed glasses.<\/p>\n After binding her hands with leather shoelaces, he drove her south on the Seward Highway. Along the way, he kept pulling off the road, telling her he wanted to make love to her. He tried to kiss her. Made her strip down so she couldn\u2019t escape. Said he wanted to slash her bra with his knife.<\/p>\n She kept telling him, \u201cNo, I don\u2019t want to do it in the car.\u201d<\/p>\n He finally got a motel, deep into the Kenai Peninsula at Cooper Landing, 98 miles south of Anchorage. They tried to have sex, but he failed to orgasm; Patty didn\u2019t want him to snap again \u2013 he\u2019d already slapped her hard across the face \u2013 and her passivity seemed to thwart his pleasure. He expected her to fight, just like other girls he\u2019d had; from the way he acted, she was sure he had killed them. On the way back to Anchorage, he threatened to kill her if she ratted him out. Once, he drove her deep into the wilderness, and she had to talk him back.<\/p>\n In those days before computers, cops had what they called the \u201casshole book,\u201d with photos of every pervert and predator they\u2019d come across. Troopers pulled out the book and showed it to Patty. She scanned it page-by-page and column-by-column.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s it,\u201d she finally said. \u201cThat\u2019s him.\u201d<\/p>\n Robert Hansen<\/strong> (courtesy Murderpedia)<\/p>\n \u201cHim\u201d was Robert C. Hansen, later known as the \u201cButcher, Baker.\u201d Gilmour learned that he\u2019d been arrested barely a month before on an Assault with a Deadly Weapon charge involving a real estate secretary. When he kidnapped Patty, he was out on his own recognizance, awaiting trial for the November incident. This man had no shame. Patty, meanwhile, was ready to speak her piece.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know,\u201d she said, \u201cI may be doing something that some people don\u2019t think is totally acceptable, and it may not be. But that\u2019s not why I\u2019m here. I\u2019m here because that Robert Hansen guy is probably a premeditated, cold-blooded killer, who has killed before.\u201d<\/p>\n Patty stubbed out her cigarette with force before continuing.<\/p>\n \u201cHe said he killed before, and everything he said was absolutely true. Everything he said he would do to me came true, everything he said he would do, he did. Every threat he made, I believed. And if he says he\u2019s killed people, I believe he\u2019s killed people. And if you\u2019ve got a young girl who\u2019s been killed around the same time and in the same area, then I believe it was Hansen who killed her. I believe he\u2019ll kill me, too.\u201d<\/p>\n From all appearances, troopers had the informant who could help them solve Beth van Zanten’s murder.<\/p>\n When the Anchorage Police interviewed Robert Hansen on December 29, 1971, he claimed to have only vague memories of the Patty Roberts incident, at one point claiming, \u201cI can\u2019t remember going down there (to the Nevada Club)\u2026 just doesn\u2019t seem like I would just before Christmas.\u201d Then he abruptly called off the interview, saying he wanted to talk to his attorney \u2013 and his doctor.<\/p>\n
\n![\"Informant\"](\"https:\/\/lelandhale.com\/butcherbaker\/images\/anchorageedit002.jpg\")
\nAnchorage in the 1970’s<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Informant\"](\"https:\/\/lelandhale.com\/butcherbaker\/images\/hansen-murderpedia-lineup.jpg\")
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