Childhood rejection turned him into a killer who liked to hunt down his victims like animals
Celia Van Zanten was never going to celebrate another Christmas again. On December 22, 1971, she popped out to buy some soda but wouldn’t be popping home again any time soon.
Her body was found a few days later on Christmas Day partially covered in leaves and snow at the base of a cliff, naked from the waist down. Frozen blood from the slashes across her chest contrasted starkly against the fresh snow she was half buried in.
Her hands had been bound, she had been sexually molested, and she had only been 18 years old when her killer had pounced and robbed her of her future.
That killer’s name was Robert Christian Hansen. Celia Van Zanten, known as Beth to her family and friends, was his first victim. She was going to be the first of many.
Robert Christian Hansen was born in Iowa in 1939, in a city of fewer than 6,000 people. His hatred of women began at an early age, festering like a sore throughout his teens, the local girls ridiculing him at every opportunity over his stuttering and the scars pockmarking his face from a severe outbreak of acne.
Their rejection forced him inwards, branded him a loner, and caused him to fantasize constantly about ways he could take out his frustration and his boiling rage against them.
Going into the Army Reserves in 1957 only lasted a year and didn’t straighten him out much. Even getting married in 1960 couldn’t extinguish the hatred that was constantly simmering just below the surface, waiting for the right victim to cross his path.
A brief 20-month stint in prison for arson saw the demise of his marriage, and then his second marriage ended in a similar fashion after he was incarcerated again but this time for rape. While inside he was diagnosed as manic depressive, and due to a plea deal and this diagnosis only served 6 months of his 5-year sentence.
The year was 1971. This was the year that he killed Ceilia Van Zanten.
Honing his newfound talent for murder, Hansen specialized in abducting sex workers, torturing them, raping them, and then hunting them down like animals.
He reveled in taking them to secluded areas sometimes by plane after violating them in his home near Anchorage in Alaska where he now lived. Afterward, he would let them run for their lives, offering them hope that they could escape, survive, and prolong his fantasies while extending their torment.
He would take a perverse pleasure in tracking them down, feeding off their terror, and then shooting or stabbing them to death when fear robbed their legs of energy, when they just couldn’t go any further no matter how much they tried to crawl away.
For the next decade, Hansen raped, tortured, and killed women at will, their half-naked bodies found in shallow graves, gravel pits, and frequently along the banks of the Knik River.
It was along the Knik River in 1983, that Hansen transported 17-year-old Cindy Paulson. He had already raped her in his home, had already tortured her to increase his pleasure, and now it was time to dispose of her in his usual fashion — the hunt.
Plasti-cuffed in the back of the car, Cindy Paulson instinctively knew that she was about to be killed. All the working girls in Alaska had heard of the killer picking them off at random over the years. She felt in the trembling core of her soul that her time had come.
When the unexpected opportunity presented itself to escape her survival instinct kicked in.
Hansen was preoccupied with preparing his airplane to fly them to his hunting ground, and the brief moment to escape was there.
She snatched at the chance, her heart thudding in her chest as she snuck out of the driver’s side door, terrified that at any moment he would catch her in the act.
He didn’t, and once out of the car, she ran as if her life depended on it. Which it did.
Still handcuffed, her bare feet bleeding, Hansen chasing after her, she barely made it to Sixth Avenue where a truck driver picked her up before Hansen caught up to her. The driver, shocked at her appearance, transported her to the nearest Inn and called the police.
When Hansen was brought in for questioning, the first thing he did was discredit his accuser. He didn’t deny picking her up for sex but he then accused her of reporting him to the authorities because he had not paid the exorbitant price she had tried to extort from him.
Not knowing who to believe, the police let him go.
One person who wasn’t fooled by Hansen’s meek demeanor, however, was Detective Glenn Flothe. He had been investigating the recent murders of Joanna Messina and Sherry Morrow, both women found around the Knik River area, and fancied Hansen as the killer.
A recent FBI profile report had described the serial killer as someone with low self-esteem, a loner who liked to hunt, had a hatred of women, and even maybe had a stutter. What caught Detective Flothe’s attention from the profile was the mention of a plane as a viable method of transportation, and that the killer would most likely be collecting souvenirs from his victims.
On October 27, 1983, those souvenirs were found after a search warrant was granted for Hansen’s plane and home, souvenirs that were quickly linked to several of the women. Additionally, guns and rifles were discovered that ballistically, later on, were going to be matched to recovered bullets
Incredibly, those weren’t the most damning pieces of evidence.
An aerial map was found behind his headboard with 37 x’s on it. Dozens of those x’s marked the spots where bodies had already been found. Arresting Hansen, further investigations into the map x locations helped the FBI to unearth more of his victims.
Hansen’s denials didn’t last long before he confessed, confessed, and confessed some more. The evidence against him combined with the testimony of Cindy Paulson was too damning to ignore. The only thing that could have been worse would have been photographic evidence of him actually burying the bodies.
At his trial, he was jailed for a total of 461 years. He spent 30 years locked away from a society that he preyed upon before dying of natural causes in 2014. His hunting days were over. And his many victims could finally rest in peace.
