ONE of the world's most brutal serial killer's dubbed the "Butcher Baker" used the Alaskan Bush as his "ultimate weapon" during an 11-year killing spree, an expert has said.
Robert Hansen was a respected husband and father to those who knew him but a twisted lust for young women unearthed a hidden monster beneath.
At least 17 women were brutally murdered between 1971-1983 in Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, although authorities suspect Hansen had more than thirty victims.
When kidnapping, raping and torturing his victims still wasn't enough, he would use his trusty Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle and Hunting Knife to finish the job.
But what Hansen thrived off was mother nature itself, using the Alaskan wilderness, commonly known as the Bush, to conduct his meticulously planned and thought out murders.
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American author Leland Hale, who co-wrote the book 'Butcher, Baker: The True Account of an Alaskan Serial Killer', said Hansen used the region as his "ultimate weapon".
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, he said: “I say this a lot about Hansen and this is my cliche of him, but he used the Alaskan Bush as his ultimate weapon.
“Almost anywhere in Anchorage, you can walk five miles and be in the Bush. Mother Nature is right there.
“Alaska is not a population-dense place, it’s very isolated and Hansen used that.
“He knew it was somewhere he could not be bothered."
Hansen also had plenty of strategy to his game, picking his time to prey on women.
An experienced hunter, he knew the area by heart and would only take women to the wilderness in the off-season, when no one else would be around.
"Their bodies wouldn't be found until September when the hunters came back," Hale said.
The Butcher Baker, a nickname derived from owning his own bakery, stalked Alaska's sex workers and exotic dancers.
His earliest victims were girls or young women, usually between the ages of 16 and 19, who he would kidnap, rape and attack before setting free.
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But as time went on, particularly in the final few years prior to his capture, Hansen began murdering his victims.
Hansen would fly them in his plane to a remote area of the Bush, convincing them he had a "cabin" on an "island" along the Knik River.
But when they landed and the women realised there was, in fact, no cabin, they would panic and flee into the wilderness, running in any direction they could.
"That’s where this escalation in violence started," Hale said. "Once he started flying them to the Knik, these women couldn’t escape."
“All of these women wanted to live, some of them fought back, but it was a sure way to get killed.
“None of them could really run fast enough, either, especially if they're up in the Bush or the Knik River.
"Even though the river is not that long, it’s vast, and there’s a lot of gravel beds, scrub bushes, willow… so he’s going to find you and he’s going to get you."
When bodies were found scattered throughout the Bush and far from where Hansen landed his plane, theories soon circulated that maybe he had, in fact, hunted these women.
And after authorities found a map in his home marked with tiny "X" symbols showing the locations of where he murdered and buried his victims, it was even more reason to believe he had conducted a sick game.
The twisted serial killer appeared to have found his new thrill - and no one could stop him.
"He knew that area quite well and once he had the plane, his access to it grew exponentially," Hale said.
"When the women began to figure out what was going on, they panicked and ran.
“They then found these women quite a long way from where he had to land his plane. so maybe he did release them as one last thrill."
Hale claims that Hansen's crimes stemmed from a need to dominate women "physically and sexually".
But in the latter stages of his killing spree, Hansen "lost his sexual urge" and solely focused on murder - a significant point of no return.
“As time went on, it became more and more apparent that he lost the sexual urge and started killing," Hale told The Sun.
"If you want to measure it by the ‘high’, think of it as this scale of ever escalating thrills and adrenaline.
“He associated this thrill of doing something illegal and getting away with it as this sort of sexual high.
“It was about dominating them, being able to kidnap them, and planning it all out."
The stretch of land along the Knik River became Hansen's "ideal" killing fields for several reasons - chief among them its proximity to Anchorage, coupled with its relative isolation.
But while some victims were found with gunshot wounds, others had been stabbed.
“The knife is such a personal weapon, it’s destroying someone with pure hatred," Hale said.
"His very first killing is with a knife, where he stabs her in the back with her face down in the gravel.
“But was it a callback, bringing the knife back into it? It certainly came full circle."
Killing his victims was a way of removing the evidence - but it was an act he became obsessed with.
“Absolutely at the end, the walls are closing in and he has to get rid of these women because if they come back, he knows it’s all over," said Hale.
“But because he’s so obsessive, he can’t stop.
All of these women wanted to live, some of them even fought back, but it was a sure way to get killed
Leland E. Hale
“He can’t keep them, he can’t send them back, so the only thing he could do was eliminate them."
Hansen was married twice, with his first wife divorcing him after he was arrested for arson in 1960, while his second wife, with whom he had two children, left him following his eventual arrest in 1983.
But despite his violent behaviour and mass murdering spree, he never laid a finger on either woman.
“There’s this thing called the Madonna–whore complex, where there are things he would not do sexually with a good woman," Hale explained.
“He wouldn’t ask his wife to do certain things because he put her on a pedestal.
“He saw the sex workers beneath him, so he would do anything with them.
“As time went on, he became more vulnerable with his relationships with the sex workers because women going missing was plastered all over the news.
“But he didn’t want to stop and he couldn’t stop because of his compulsive behaviour, he’d become obsessed."
One of Hansen's most famous victims is Cindy Paulson, who was 17 at the time of her kidnapping and one of the few who managed to escape.
Before trying to fly her out to the Bush, Hansen chained her by the neck to a post in his basement while he took a nap on his sofa.
After a terrifying night of being raped and tied up, Hansen said they were going to hop on his small plane and go to a cabin in the woods, telling her he’d taken seven other women there before.
That’s when Paulson said she knew he would kill her if they went there.
When they eventually got to the plane, Paulson managed to sneak out the back of his car as he was loading up the aircraft, running to safety and flagging down a truck driver who drove her away.
One victim who wasn't so lucky was 'Eklutna Annie', a girl named after the area she was found in because she was unidentifiable by the time cops found her a year later.
To this day, no one knows who she is, but her murder was a "precipitating" moment that would make Hansen an obsessive murderer.
Hansen ended up stabbing her in the back following a scuffle between the pair after she pulled a knife out on him.
Hale describes this moment as one that “broke the dam" on murder for Hansen.
Hale has covered Hansen's story for more than two decades, interviewing investigating officers on the case such as Sergeant Glenn Flothe.
The now-retired Alaskan state trooper was instrumental in Hansen's 1984 capture, securing a warrant to search his plane, vehicles and home after he fit the profile of possible suspects.
In his interview with Hale on May 11, 1985, Sgt. Flothe said he believed Hansen's crimes were based off a "hatred" for women.
“I think he felt he wanted to take what he couldn’t have when he was younger and he wanted to take what he felt he had a right to – and that was women," he said.
"He wanted to dominate them, he wanted to use them, he wanted to feel power around them — so in a way, I think it was getting back at women."
Having seen the way he preyed on women, stalked them, raped them and killed them, Flothe concluded that Hansen "was like an animal that’s tasted blood".
"It was simply the hate and the thrill of the chase, the hunt and the capture and the kill. Simple as that," he told Hale in 1985.
"And he was like an animal that’s tasted blood. He couldn’t stop."
Hansen was eventually apprehended in 1983 following 11 years of abduction, rape and murder.
He was sentenced to 461 years' imprisonment without the possibility of parole and died in 2014 of natural causes, aged 75.
Despite showing investigators 17 grave sites, there remain marks on his map that he refused to give up, meaning at least three bodies have never been found.
The remains of 12 of a probable 21 to 37 victims were exhumed by police and returned to their families.
The story of Hansen’s horrific 12-year killing spree later became the subject of the 2013 movie The Frozen Ground, based off Hale's book - 'Butcher, Baker'.
