15 Disturbing Facts About The Serial Killer Who Hunted Human Beings For Sport

Out of all the serial killers that have marred the landscape of American history, the most sadistic killer of them all was Robert Hansen, the “Butcher Baker.” While many of his serial killing compatriots murdered for their own sick reason, there’s nothing worse than someone hunting another human for sport, but that’s exactly what Hansen did. If his shocking story sounds like something from a pulp novel that’s because in a way it was one. Robert Hansen was playing the most dangerous game for close to a decade before he was caught by a joint police and FBI investigation that made the first real use of criminal profiling that’s still used to this day. Keep reading to find all the gruesome details about how Hansen killed, and why he did the terrible things that he did.

Robert Hansen felt he was above his victims and he had no problem taking them to the Alaskan wilderness where he would track them down on foot, murder them, and leave them to rot in a shallow grave. As you’ll soon come to learn, Robert Hansen was a true monster who had zero regard for any human life other than his own. 

Hansen wasn't always a guy who kidnapped women and hunted them to death in Alaska. Prior to moving to the Last Frontier, Hansen lived in Iowa where he supposedly felt he was abused by the people of his small town. Because of that he forced a 16-year-old employee at the bakery to help him burn down the school bus garage. The teen dropped the dime on him and Hansen ended up serving 20 months of a three year prison sentence. It's possible that while he was in the clink he decided to start killing people for sport, or maybe he just decided to get out of Iowa. 

The one thing you can always count on when it comes to serial killers is that they will be creatures of habit. Like any kind of addict they have a ritual they observe, and while it may mutate over the years it never fully changes. Hansen is no different. His main jam was to fly a woman to the Knik River northeast of Anchorage and park on one of the river's many sand bars. He would then go about his business and bury them on one of the sandbars. 

Of all the serial killers you've heard about, Robert Hansen is easily the best hunter of them all. Hansen's modus operandi was to kidnap women, take them to the Alaskan wilderness, and hunt them like an animal. There's no word as to whether or not Hansen was a fan of Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game, a book about a Russian aristocrat hunting another man. He had to have read it, right? If not that's some very intense parallel thinking. 

How did the construction of the 800-mile oil pipeline in the 1970s ensure that Hansen had a healthy supply of victims? With the influx of oil workers flush with cash, Anchorage was engulfed with prostitutes looking to get a cut of that disposable income. Due to the transient manner of many of the people who passed through Anchorage at this time no one batted an eye when they disappeared.

Glenn Flothe, one of the state troopers who helped put the Butcher Baker behind bars, told the Anchorage Daily News in 2008 that initially Hansen killed anyone who piqued his fancy, but he quickly realized strippers and prostitutes were easier prey. 

Even though Hansen was obsessed with hunting women and collecting the trophies of his kill he knew that he had to keep up appearances as to not be discovered. In the '70s he opened a bakery in a downtown Anchorage mini-mall, and after the discovery of his crimes he earned the name the "Butcher Baker." How does a convicted felon who burned down a building get a business loan? He doesn't. Instead Hansen opened his business using $13,000 from the insurance settlement of a false burglary perpetrated on his home where he stole his own hunting trophies. Later, when they were discovered in his home he claimed he found them in his backyard some time after the events of the "theft."

This is an all too common comment about serial killers, but according to everyone who knew Robert Hansen he was just a regular guy. When he was growing up he had terrible acne that ended up scarring his face, which supposedly gave him a shy demeanor, but other than that he had the classic baby boomer look of a man whom you wouldn't glance twice at on the street. In fact, he was so average that one of his rape victims reported, "He sort of looked like the perfect dork."

If there was a guy who you didn't want chasing you through the Alaskan wilderness it was Robert Hansen. He was so good at hunting that in 1969, 1970, and 1971, he had four animals entered into the Pope and Young record book. After his arrest the folks from Pope and Young said that Hansen's crimes didn't invalidate his bow hunting records, but they finally acquiesced and removed his name from their record books. 

It's important to remember when Hansen was arrested, America wasn't the nation of serial killer fanatics that we are now. In 1983 - the year of his arrest - only Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy had been given national attention. Richard Ramirez wouldn't be caught for another two years. And Dahmer, who is arguably the most popular serial killer, hadn't even begun making zombie love slaves yet. So when Hansen gave himself up and admitted to killing 17 women the FBI accepted his answer and left it at that. But it's likely that his body count is somewhere in the high 30s. 

Robert Hansen buried his victims in shallow graves on various sand bars in his favorite secluded spot in Alaska and drew a big red X where each body is buried on a map. It was the beginning of the end for Hansen when the FBI were able to get their hands on his map after searching his home. Rather than freak out when the map was found, Hansen actually helped the feds find 12 of the bodies. 

As if hunting women for sport and pleasure weren't bad enough, he also sexually assaulted them. In many of the instances where he would rape a woman, Hansen would return the women to Anchorage and warn them not to tell anyone. Due to his predilection for preying on prostitutes, he was correct in thinking that even if the women went to to police it's not likely that they would be believed. Especially since Hansen was viewed as an upstanding citizen who ran his own business.