Butcher, Baker: The Untold Story, Part 2
February 27, 1984 Sgt. Glenn Flothe of the Alaska State Troopers was hosting a post-sentencing get together at the Corsair restaurant. The place seemed a stellar choice. The restaurant was downstairs, off the street, a Sinatra-era hideaway. The ceiling, littered with rope and wooden pulleys, evoked a wooden ship. There was German comfort food and caviar. Plus high backed booths to guarantee privacy. It seemed the perfect rendezvous for a camera-shy Cindy Paulson.
Inside the Corsair restaurant, everything is swirling. A bubble of voices and thoughts are in the air, but they don’t belong to me. I vaguely remember Glenn saying he owned a gold mine. There’s escargot on the menu, with roasted quail and some kind of pate stuff, but I’m not hungry. I’m somewhere else. I’m thinking about my future. I’ve been a prostitute since I was still a child. What am I going to do next? I can’t go back to what I was doing. It almost got me killed. That part of my life was over. Or supposed to be over.
Cindy Paulson
Honored Guests
Flothe’s wife, Cherie, was there, playing the role of hostess. As one of Cindy’s guardian angels, she took the teen’s random phone calls night and day. Helped maintain a tenuous connection to a young woman on the run. Also there were folks who watched over Cindy while she awaited Hansen’s trial. The trial that, thankfully, didn’t happen.
One of them was the woman from the safe house. The woman Cindy called the Roto Rooter lady, because of her intimate ties to that franchise. Then there was the woman from the Gentlemen’s Retreat massage parlor, where Cindy took refuge after the Hansen debacle. That woman once cooked her frog legs –- a strange way to be remembered, but there it was. She frantically called Flothe when Cindy ditched the massage parlor and disappeared into the night.
That escape — Cindy’s escape — was a low point. Indeed, one of the lowest points in the entire Hansen investigation. Cindy was, to be blunt, the key to Flothe’s case. He knew it all too well. No amount of caviar could wipe that reality. We take you back to that time…
When Cindy Went Missing
Glenn Flothe: “What you’re looking for is out there, but you’ve got to talk to fifty people before you can come up out of this… And when I located the scene where she was dancing and doing all this cocaine and she, you know… She heard I was looking for her and she came out and she started dancing. G-string, very – very thin top. Her boobs were hanging out…
“And she looked like death. Her legs were all skinny and her skin was all white. She was bruised all up and down her arms and legs, and she was shaking. Her hair was just a mess. She looked like death warmed over. Big scabs on her arms and picking at herself. Just bad strung out.
“She was… She looked terrible. Terrible! Worse than when I first met her. She had just gone downhill fast. The pressure was getting to her. She was having a hard time. And that bothered me.
“But she won’t tell me where she’s at. I saw her that night, but she wouldn’t tell me where she’s at. That’s because they would only allow her to see me with another girl. And she was scared to say, ‘I want to go now.'”
There was, to coin a phrase, no caviar at that raggedy joint. It was the end of the line. A place where only the most desperate deigned to tread. Even Cindy knew that.
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