0:06 [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome, listener. 0:08 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm glad you're here. 0:10 [SPEAKER_01]: Take a seat. 0:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Next to the fire. 0:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Obscura, where we shine a light on the dark. 0:46 [SPEAKER_01]: Listener, we're all familiar with the oxymoron that silence is deafening. 0:51 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure you know what that sounds like. 0:53 [SPEAKER_01]: An awkward silence in a rainfall people. 0:55 [SPEAKER_01]: The silence so intense, you can hear your heart pounding. 0:59 [SPEAKER_01]: If you've ever experienced snowfall in the wilderness, it's probably struck you that not only can you not hear a sound, but you've likely contemplated the more unsettling thought that if you screamed, no one would be able to hear you. 1:11 [SPEAKER_01]: When you can hear the snowflakes falling in the middle of nowhere, and there's no animals or people in sight for miles around. 1:18 [SPEAKER_01]: You could feel like the only person on Earth. 1:20 [SPEAKER_01]: Most of us are familiar with reality TV shows where people are isolated and remote locations around the world to test and demonstrate their skills. 1:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Extreme temperatures, exposure, hunger, dehydration and exhaustion. 1:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Not to mention threats from native wildlife, all pose additional complications. 1:38 [SPEAKER_01]: It's difficult to imagine how we'd cope with such a grueling test of our mental and physical limits. 1:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Even when the most experience of survivalists are navigating challenging terrain, using unusual methods of sourcing food and water, and only their smarts to extricate themselves from difficult situations, it's easy for us to be reassured and entertained. 1:59 [SPEAKER_01]: On TV, people are usually equipped with protective clothing, tools, and all five of their senses to help them get to where they need to go. 2:08 [SPEAKER_01]: We generally know that at the conclusion of each episode, people are generally not at too great a level of personal risk. 2:14 [SPEAKER_01]: And in an emergency, are always within easy reach of being transported by rescue helicopter. 2:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Should they require emergency assistance? 2:21 [SPEAKER_01]: And sure, we might scoff at some elements of the escape plan and say we might do things differently, but it's easy to do 2:28 [SPEAKER_01]: So, from the comfort of our couch. 2:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And there's one additional challenge we don't often see a survivalist or contestants on TV overcoming in their battle against the elements. 2:38 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's fear. 2:39 [SPEAKER_01]: The people we see have no reason to fear death from exposure, starvation, sudden changes in weather, dehydration, feeling scared and highly anxious and survival situations is obviously a completely expected human reaction. 2:53 [SPEAKER_01]: but it also compromises our ability to solve problems and think clearly when we're racing against the clock. 2:59 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, helps people find their way to safety is not fearlessness and it's not because we wouldn't ordinarily fear certain things if some part of the situation was different. 3:09 [SPEAKER_01]: What increases the chance of survival is that the people we watch in these orchestrated scenarios are not running from anyone. 3:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Almost shows, people certainly have no reason to fear death at the hands of any person they encounter during their travels. 3:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, listener, what happens when you're stranded and don't have the experience and those survival skills? 3:29 [SPEAKER_01]: No idea how far away you are from the closest town. 3:32 [SPEAKER_01]: No way of knowing when or if you'll be rescued. 3:36 [SPEAKER_01]: To make things even more sinister, when if you've been strip naked, handcuffed and blindfolded, and listener, one if stranded in the middle of nowhere, the movement of the person you could suddenly hear has made their way through the trees towards you. 3:51 [SPEAKER_01]: Along with someone who wasn't coming to help you, but to hunch you. 3:59 [SPEAKER_01]: In the late sixties, the city of Anchorage and South Central Alaska was by no means as cosmopolitan or populist as other major cities across the country. 4:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Despite the South Central region being home to over half of Alaska's population, the state is completely geographically isolated from the forty-eight mainland states of America, making Anchorage more of a sleepy frontier town. 4:22 [SPEAKER_01]: When abundant oil and gas reserves were discovered in nineteen fifty-seven at the Swanson River, on the Kinai Peninsula, 4:29 [SPEAKER_01]: In southern Alaska, in later, in nineteen sixty-eight, at the Prado Bay, in the north-solab region of the state. 4:36 [SPEAKER_01]: At the time, there was no immediate need for these natural resources. 4:40 [SPEAKER_01]: But in nineteen seventy-three, the United States was plunged into the oil crisis, thanks to the skyrocketing price of what became a valuable commodity. 4:48 [SPEAKER_01]: A method of delivering the available oil in Alaska, 4:51 [SPEAKER_01]: To the lower forty-eight states, we need to be swiftly remedied. 4:55 [SPEAKER_01]: This came with the construction of the eight hundred mile transelask and a oil pipeline, which commenced in nineteen seventy-three. 5:01 [SPEAKER_01]: The population of Alaska's largest city boomed as construction workers flooded into the area. 5:07 [SPEAKER_01]: A total of twenty-eight thousand people converged on the state to work in the construction industry alone and an anchorage. 5:13 [SPEAKER_01]: The employment rate dropped nearly zero. 5:16 [SPEAKER_01]: By the time the pipeline was completed in nineteen seventy-seven, 5:19 [SPEAKER_01]: It could pump two-point-one million barrels of crude oil per day. 5:23 [SPEAKER_01]: The most of any crude oil pipeline in the US, along with the construction, came an unprecedented amount of disposal's wind come to be spent in Anchorage. 5:31 [SPEAKER_01]: In addition to new legitimate businesses opening up, there was an influx of sex workers, dancers, and sand drug dealers in the red light tenderloin district. 5:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Strip clubs and bars popped up overnight on Fourth Avenue, which became known colloquially as the largest bar in the world. 5:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Young women, lured by a quick buck, flocked to Anchorage to work as exotic dancers and clubs like Wild Cherry, the Embers, the Red Guarder, good times lounge, KitKack Club, Arctic Fox, and Nevada Club, and the Great Alaskan Bush Company, when they can run up to five hundred dollars a day. 6:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Talonagids and booking agencies scouring guy are exotic dancers and sex workers with cycle girls out. 6:10 [SPEAKER_01]: I know well known Ralph from California, North to Portland, and on to Seattle, Onalulu, and Alaska. 6:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Many of the exotic dancers and sex workers who drifted into and out of town had issues with drug and alcohol dependency. 6:25 [SPEAKER_01]: So it wasn't unusual when some of these women, single-leave town is quickly as they arrived. 6:30 [SPEAKER_01]: For pimps and owners of the clubs, employees overdosing or skipping town without notice to get clean, horror void paying a drug dead, came with a territory. 6:39 [SPEAKER_01]: The population boom had a downside though, and the demand this place on local law enforcement agencies 6:46 [SPEAKER_01]: Soon outweighed their capacity to adequately deal with the escalation of violent crime, including assaults, firearm offenses, armed robberies, and murders. 6:55 [SPEAKER_01]: The city of Anchorage itself was controlled by the Anchorage Police Department, or APD. 7:00 [SPEAKER_01]: Elisca State Troopers were a smaller agency. 7:03 [SPEAKER_01]: But their jurisdiction were areas both just outside the city limits of Anchorage, as well as the rest of the entire state of Alaska. 7:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Prior to the nineteen seventies, there hadn't been any identified need for the state troopers to have specific protocols for dealing with the cases of sexual assault. 7:20 [SPEAKER_01]: And any forensic evidence that needed to be processed had to be sent outside of Alaska. 7:25 [SPEAKER_01]: This would soon prove problematic when it came to adequately investigating the increase in the rate of sexual violence against women. 7:33 [SPEAKER_01]: On July, twenty first, nineteen eighty. 7:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Workers conducting electrical maintenance on including the lake road outside Anchorage discovered a shallow grave. 7:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Containing badly decomposed human remains that been partially consumed by animals. 7:47 [SPEAKER_01]: The body was that of a Caucasian Burnett woman estimated to be aged between sixteen to twenty five years old. 7:54 [SPEAKER_01]: Who's wearing knee high, reddish brown, high-heeled boots, jeans, a sleeveless knit top, and a brown leather jacket. 8:02 [SPEAKER_01]: She was also wearing a silver cuff bracelet with polished stones, which appeared handmade. 8:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Very little other evidence was located at the scene, law enforcement struggled to identify the young woman, but clearly met a brutal and lonely end. 8:17 [SPEAKER_01]: When an identification failed to be made in the days following the discovery, police named their Jane Doe after the road where she was found, she became known as Ecludnaianny. 8:28 [SPEAKER_01]: That same month, the badly decomposed and partially frozen remains of another woman were found in a gravel pit near the Kinai lake, just south of Moose Pass. 8:38 [SPEAKER_01]: When law enforcement arrived at the scene, the remains were being eaten by a bear, which eventually had to be shot by troopers, to gain access to the site and preserve evidence. 8:49 [SPEAKER_01]: The body was identified of that of twenty-four-year-old Joanna Messina, who disappeared on May, nineteen-eighty, and was also known as Joanna McCoy. 8:58 [SPEAKER_01]: Joanna was a married dental assistant, but left her husband in New York and headed to Alaska with her German shepherd. 9:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Arriving across the other side of the country, Joanna had hoped to find work in a canary, but soon started working as an exotic dancer. 9:13 [SPEAKER_01]: She lived in a rooming house in Seward, owned by a local vet and his wife, and spent most of her time in a room reading. 9:21 [SPEAKER_01]: But it wasn't long before Joanna was evicted. 9:24 [SPEAKER_01]: So she moved into another rooming house, run by a local woman. 9:27 [SPEAKER_01]: So all living at this rooming house that Joanna disappeared, and her alien lady reported her missing. 9:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Also telling police that Joanna had been having an affair with the same vet, she rented a room from previously. 9:40 [SPEAKER_01]: There were several suspects in Joanna's death. 9:42 [SPEAKER_01]: The first was of that, based on the allegations around the affair, when interviewed by state troopers The vet denied knowing Joanna, but when a polygraph test revealed the vet it was being deceptive, he finally admitted to having a relationship with Joanna. 9:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Other residents of the rooming house were Joanna Wiv. 9:59 [SPEAKER_01]: reported that she had an exactly made friends with her fellow borders. 10:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Due to her own behavior and that of her dog, Joanne also had a fractious relationship with the Rooming House manager, who reported her missing. 10:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And who also reportedly kept a cash of guns, but she too was eventually eliminated. 10:16 [SPEAKER_01]: On September, twelve, nineteen eighty-two, two off-duty, staying troopers, were out hunting moose along the Connecticut River, twenty-five miles outside Anchorage, when they noticed a boot sticking out of a gravel sand bar. 10:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Upon close to her inspection, her own so realized that a partially decomposed bone joint was also protruding from the ground. 10:36 [SPEAKER_01]: As train law enforcement officers, both men were treated from the scene, leaving it undisturbed and reported the grizzly discovery to their senior colleagues. 10:45 [SPEAKER_01]: When investigators attended the scene the following day, they noted the area was only accessible by motor vehicle, river boat or a smaller craft. 10:53 [SPEAKER_01]: After painstakingly sifting through the sand, single shell casing from a two twenty-three caliber bullet was found in the grave. 11:01 [SPEAKER_01]: The kind of ammunition used in high powered rifles such as M- sixteen's, many fourteen's or AR- fifteen's. 11:08 [SPEAKER_01]: The body was that of a woman in her early twenties, who was barefoot, but wearing blue jeans, a baby blue sky jacket, with dark blue trim on the shoulders. 11:18 [SPEAKER_01]: A sweater, underwear and a bra, a lack of bullet holes in the victims' clothing, indicated she had been naked when shot, and then redress after she was killed. 11:28 [SPEAKER_01]: An elastic bandage had been wrapped around her head and face from forehead to nose, and was secured with metal clips. 11:35 [SPEAKER_01]: The victim was identified as twenty-three-year-old Exotic Dancer Sherry Maro. 11:39 [SPEAKER_01]: It was also known as Sherry Graves. 11:41 [SPEAKER_01]: Sherry worked at the Ronald Cherry Bar as a waitress and Exotic Dancer where she didn't send her the name of Georgia. 11:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Her boyfriend reported her missing on November, twenty-third and nineteen eighty-one. 11:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Six days after he last saw her, Sherry was found in the clothes she was reported to be wearing when she disappeared. 11:58 [SPEAKER_01]: But a gold arrow had shaped appendix she wore that was a gift from her boyfriend was missing. 12:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Nautopsie found pieces of copper jacket at Bullet Fragments in Sherry's chess cavity. 12:09 [SPEAKER_01]: She had been dead for around six months. 12:11 [SPEAKER_01]: In three gunshot wounds in her back, from two twenty-three caliber bullets from a Ruger many fourteen rifle where identified as the cause of death. 12:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Police re-interviewed Jerry's boyfriend, who stated he hadn't seen her since he dropped her off to work on his fourth avenue and approximately eleven thirty p.m. 12:28 [SPEAKER_01]: On November, sixteenth. 12:30 [SPEAKER_01]: After her shift, Jerry stayed the night with a girl friend in, playing to attend a doctor's appointment the following day. 12:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Her boyfriend checked with Jerry's doctor, who said Jerry did not attend her appointment. 12:41 [SPEAKER_01]: Old Sherry's boyfriend, Andrew Girlfriend, told police that Sherry had also planned to meet up with a man on November, Seventeen, and Ellis' two-ten restaurant, who'd pay her three hundred dollars for a photo shoot. 12:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Investigators told the Anchorage Daily News that they doubted the grizzly discovery was related to the disappearance of at least two other women in the area in recent years. 13:01 [SPEAKER_01]: I look for denying any connection. 13:03 [SPEAKER_01]: As the months passed following Sherry's murder, no more body surfaced, police openly rejected the idea of a serial killer. 13:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Treating Sherry's murder has an isolated event, but the book, but your baker, the true count of an Alaskan serial killer, by Walter Gilmore and Leeland Hale, explains how behind closed doors, a discovery of Sherry Maro's body actually gave police their first significant break and was becoming a concerning pattern of disappearances. 13:32 [SPEAKER_01]: Someone was targeting the young women of Anchorage. 13:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Police just didn't know who. 13:38 [SPEAKER_01]: Listener. 13:39 [SPEAKER_01]: To find out how this started, what happened next? 13:42 [SPEAKER_01]: We first need to go back in time and over three thousand miles away to the Midwestern state of Iowa. 13:58 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert Christian Anson was born on February fifteenth, nineteen thirty-nine. 14:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Ines Therville, in the Midwestern state of Iowa, his parents were Christian Anson, a Danish immigrant and baker by trade, and his wife Edna. 14:14 [SPEAKER_01]: The aunts and family later moved to California, but returned to Iowa after seven years, moving to Pocahannas, where Christian purchased a bakery. 14:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert's father was exceptionally strict and very demanding. 14:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Despite Robert making every effort to please his father, Christian was a harsh discipline area, and always found a fall with Robert, often referring to him as worthless. 14:35 [SPEAKER_01]: When Robert showed a tendency to be left-handed, Christian forced him and said to use this right hand. 14:41 [SPEAKER_01]: This was believed to have caused Robert such psychological stresses of child, but he developed a debilitating stutter. 14:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert didn't exactly have an ally in his mother head, no. 14:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Who's known as a diminutive woman, have always deferred to her overbearing husband, and didn't make waves. 14:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Throughout childhood, Aina and Alessan's robber was described as being quiet and a loner who had difficulty making friends. 15:03 [SPEAKER_01]: As well as being of slight build, robber wore glasses and had acne so bad that he almost never socialized. 15:10 [SPEAKER_01]: Unsurprisingly, robber was relentlessly bullied at school and straight out rejected by girls who refused to go on with him. 15:16 [SPEAKER_01]: During Robert's high school years, he worked part-time, but long hours in the family's bakery, often starting work at two a.m. 15:23 [SPEAKER_01]: on school days. 15:25 [SPEAKER_01]: His strict religious parents say in the lack of extra money, prevented him from participating in the same type of social activities as his peers. 15:32 [SPEAKER_01]: During high school, he played basketball and achieved letters and track for long distance running in broad jump, unlike many shy and socially awkward adolescents who are isolated from their peers. 15:43 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert preferred to keep to himself, finding solace in hunting, fishing, and archery. 15:48 [SPEAKER_01]: In nineteen fifty-seven following his high school graduation, eighteen-year-old Robert enlisted in the army reserves, completing his basic training at Fort Dix in New Jersey. 15:58 [SPEAKER_01]: During his training, he was awarded Soldier of the Week and received a weekend pass, which he used to take a trip to New York with another soldier to see the sights of the Big Apple. 16:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert lost his virginity to a sex worker and an unsatisfying encounter. 16:12 [SPEAKER_01]: He continued to serve for a year in the army reserve. 16:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Before being discharged, Robert went on to receive training as a military police officer in Fort Knox, Kentucky. 16:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Spide his bad experience in New York, he continued to visit sex workers in Fort Knox. 16:26 [SPEAKER_01]: By nineteen fifty-nine, he returned to Polka Honest to work in his father's bakery. 16:31 [SPEAKER_01]: Also working as a junior police drill instructor for the Polka Honest Police Academy. 16:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert liked to shock and impress his co-workers at the bakery by shooting at targets in the shop after hours with a bone arrow and throwing knives into the wall. 16:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Both, without making a sound. 16:46 [SPEAKER_01]: In the summer of nineteen sixty, Robert married a girl called Phoebe, who was the daughter of the local chiropractor. 16:53 [SPEAKER_01]: Less than six months later, had December seventh nineteen sixty, Robert into a complex set fire to the Poccahnis community school bus barn. 17:01 [SPEAKER_01]: I splashing around gasoline and setting it a white. 17:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert claimed he wanted to see if he'd get away with the fire and said he held a grudge against the school superintendent. 17:10 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert was aided by a sixteen-year-old coworker from the bakery, whose conscious soon got the better of him, and he reported the fire to the police. 17:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert's dumb and hearing father found out his son had been charged with ours, and he was rightfully outraged. 17:24 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert, who attended the scene of the fire in his capacity as a volunteer fireman, blood guilty, and was jailed for three years. 17:31 [SPEAKER_01]: A parole after only serving twenty months of his sentence. 17:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert told the prison psychiatrist he looked the fire because he wanted to get even with everyone in Polka Honours. 17:40 [SPEAKER_01]: He spoke of his seating resentment for school and embarrassment about the bullying he received as a result of his stutter and severe acne. 17:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Despite the psychiatrist's success in Robert is having an infantile personality. 17:53 [SPEAKER_01]: During the incarceration he did help inmates who couldn't read or write, and he also received some speech therapy for his stunner, which seemed to help slightly. 18:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Meanwhile, when a bliss forever proved to be short-lived, Phoebe had initially believed that her new husband was innocent of any wrongdoings regarding the fire at the bus barn, but when she found out he'd line about his involvement, she divorced him, despite only being married for six months. 18:17 [SPEAKER_01]: When Robert was enrolled in May, in the early century, at age of twenty-four, he joined his parents in Leech Lake, Minnesota, where they'd moved from Iowa while he was in prison. 18:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert spent his days painting boats and cabins, and pursued his passion for the outdoors. 18:33 [SPEAKER_01]: It was in Minnesota, the Robert-Manus II wife, Darla Henrickson, whom he married in the fall of nineteen sixty-three. 18:41 [SPEAKER_01]: The marriage wouldn't always be a happy one, but the robber prone to unproductive while burst of anger for no apparent reason. 18:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Baldurlowe was finishing college, rubber took up work in bakeries in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. 18:55 [SPEAKER_01]: He was far from being on the street in narrow. 18:58 [SPEAKER_01]: By this stage, rubber had taken a stealing, and was college shoplifting in a sports store in nineteen sixty-five. 19:05 [SPEAKER_01]: His wife Darla saw help from their local pastor to vouch for her husband and luckily for Robert, the charges were dropped. 19:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Over the next few years, Robert continued to trip from one job to the next. 19:16 [SPEAKER_01]: His frequent changes to an employment punctuated by arrest for petty theft. 19:30 [SPEAKER_01]: In nineteen sixty-seven, at age twenty-eight, Robert and his wife decided to leave them in west behind them when Darla graduated from college with her master's degree in education. 19:40 [SPEAKER_01]: A couple moved about as far away from Minnesota as you can get without leaving the country. 19:46 [SPEAKER_01]: They decided that their new home was going to be in Alaska, which only a year previously had been admitted as the Fortnite state of the US. 19:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Two point three times the size of the state of Texas. 19:58 [SPEAKER_01]: Alaska has the largest US state by an area bigger than France, Germany, and Britain combined. 20:04 [SPEAKER_01]: But in nineteen sixty seven and only had the population of two hundred and seventy eight thousand people making it the most largely populated of the fifty states the vast terrain of Alaska consists of one hundred and sixty million acres of unspoiled wilderness 20:20 [SPEAKER_01]: Six thousand six hundred miles of sweeping ocean coast to the north, West and south, large rivers, one hundred thousand glaciers, national parks, over three million lakes, rainforests, active volcanoes, and in abundance of wildlife. 20:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Of the twenty-highest mountains in the United States, seventeen are found in Alaska that connect River Valley is located only twenty-five miles outside Anchorage near the two-gatch mountains, and may as well be a world away. 20:50 [SPEAKER_01]: The valley is a popular spot for hunters looking for mountain goats, dull sheep, black bears, wolves, moose, and migratory birds. 20:59 [SPEAKER_01]: The forty kilometer river itself runs from the connect glacier, flowing northwest until empty's close to the mouth of the meta-nusca river. 21:07 [SPEAKER_01]: But despite its spectacular natural beauty, it's not unusual for an experienced hikers and hunters to get lost in Alaska's mountainous and remote expanse. 21:16 [SPEAKER_01]: The hazards can be deceiving. 21:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert found work in Anchorage as a baker in a warehouseman, where his co-workers noticed that he liked to brag about stealing and how much he loved hunting. 21:27 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert worked hard though, and was initially the primary breadwinner for Darla and their two children, managing to save enough to eventually purchase a home in two cars. 21:36 [SPEAKER_01]: And Darla returned to work she tutored children with learning disabilities from the nearby elementary school. 21:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert got along with his neighbors, and he and his wife became active in the local Lutheran Church. 21:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Following his father's death, Robert inherited an collection of firearms, including revolvers and seventeen hunting rifles. 21:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert continued to home with Gusto by now a skilled marksman who proudly displayed his hunting trophies in the form of mountain animal heads and hides on the walls of his stand. 22:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert had become so experienced that from nineteen sixty nine through nineteen seventy one, he had four titles entered into the world record books of hunting. 22:13 [SPEAKER_01]: He set records in nineteen seventy one for killing Caribou. 22:17 [SPEAKER_01]: and become adult sheep with a bone arrow, along with other records fronding mountain goats and black bears. 22:31 [SPEAKER_01]: She was surprised to find that the man had followed her. 22:33 [SPEAKER_01]: The man has Susan for a date as he didn't know many people in town. 22:38 [SPEAKER_01]: But Susan declined and thought that that was the end of it. 23:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Ten days later, Susan arrived home to our apartment, when the same man confronted her editor, he held a gun to her head, threatening, shut up sweetheart, or I'll blow your head off. 23:13 [SPEAKER_01]: Susan ignored this threat and screamed for her life, prompting the man to run from the scene. 23:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Susan's roommates immediately called the police to report the terrifying ordeal. 23:22 [SPEAKER_01]: When the man was located by police nearby, they quickly identified him as thirty-two-year-old Robert Hanson. 23:29 [SPEAKER_01]: And found a twenty-two caliber pistol under the driver's seat of his car. 23:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert denied assaulting Susan, telling police his seemed like a bad dream, but he was charged with assault with a deadly weapon. 23:40 [SPEAKER_01]: After Robert was charged to court ordered psychiatric report 23:43 [SPEAKER_01]: stated that he suffered from a mental illness in the form of bipolar, effective disorder, commonly by memory loss and thought disorder, suggesting that this is what caused him to engage in criminal activity. 23:54 [SPEAKER_01]: A teen-year-old students, Sylvia VanSan, lived in Anchorage with her three older brothers and cousin, Greg Nicholas, in a large house on Connecticut Avenue in South Anchorage. 24:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Near Northern Lights Boulevard, known as Beth, she attended Anchorage Community College and was close with her family. 24:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Who remembers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? 24:16 [SPEAKER_01]: On the afternoon of December, twenty-second, nineteen-seventy-one, Beth, who was looking forward to Christmas, when shopping with her mother, aunt, and cousin. 24:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Beth arrived home later that day, she watched a movie with two of her three older brothers. 24:31 [SPEAKER_01]: Around eight thirty PM, Beth decided that she wanted some soda. 24:35 [SPEAKER_01]: As there was none in the house, she decided to head to a nearby bi-law convenience store. 24:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Only a few blocks away. 24:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Before she left, she told her brothers that she was supposed to babysit for one of their cousin Greg's friends. 24:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Beth told her brothers that if Greg arrived to pick her up while she was out, but I'm to have him wait until she returned. 24:54 [SPEAKER_01]: Beth didn't have much time to get to the store, which she knew closed at nine p.m. 24:59 [SPEAKER_01]: She was seen walking to the by-low between a forty-five to nine p.m. 25:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Namer also claimed to have seen her on Northern Lights Boulevard at this time. 25:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Beth never made it to by-low, when she didn't return, her brothers assumed that their cousin Greg 25:13 [SPEAKER_01]: Big Beth up on the way to the store, and taken our tour babysitting appointment. 25:18 [SPEAKER_01]: As a result, Beth's brother didn't report her missing until two days later. 25:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Beth's body was discovered on Christmas Day, in the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of Jesus Christ. 25:37 [SPEAKER_01]: One of the brothers saw what he thought was a mannequin partially buried in the snow, inland at an odd angle. 25:43 [SPEAKER_01]: It was Beth's body, naked from the waist down. 25:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Her jeans, green barca, and rubber sole-tiking boots were all missing. 25:52 [SPEAKER_01]: A founder or body were pieces of yellow tissue paper. 25:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Beth's bra had been sliced with a knife, and her hands found behind her back with speaker wire. 26:01 [SPEAKER_01]: They were also a gag on her face. 26:04 [SPEAKER_01]: In the days following our disappearance, temperatures in the state park range from a low of negative five degrees Fahrenheit, to a high of twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit, handcuffed in face with the impossible climb up a steep slope. 26:17 [SPEAKER_01]: Beth was unable to fight the effects of exposure and had frozen to death. 26:21 [SPEAKER_01]: It appeared that Beth had temporarily managed to escape from her silent. 26:25 [SPEAKER_01]: However, the snow was three feet deep and she fell fifty feet from where Killer's car had been. 26:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And then nearby parking lot, investigators found circular tire marks on the asphalt, indicating that Beth's attacker had been tearing through the area, searching for her before he left. 26:41 [SPEAKER_01]: A search of the surrounding area later revealed a silver belt buckle on and a black leather belt. 26:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Ebeth's on top see the following day. 26:49 [SPEAKER_01]: It was confirmed that she'd been sexually assaulted, and it also sustained a diagonal slash mark between their breasts. 26:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Side from the wire used to tie Beth's hands. 26:59 [SPEAKER_01]: There was little forensic evidence. 27:01 [SPEAKER_01]: No hair belonging to anyone else was found on Beth or clothing. 27:05 [SPEAKER_01]: This even found in her vagina couldn't be tested for DNA at the time. 27:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Forensic scientists could only match blood samples, not DNA. 27:13 [SPEAKER_01]: That's the exact time of death was unclear, due to low temperatures that froze in her body. 27:19 [SPEAKER_01]: State Troopers had difficulty identifying the source of the wire restraint. 27:23 [SPEAKER_01]: It was a double strand, black and white stereo wire. 27:26 [SPEAKER_01]: With indications, it was made in Japan. 27:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Troopers contacted local businesses and Interpol in an effort to track down the manufacturer and identify an American outlet for the product. 27:38 [SPEAKER_01]: In terms of gathering witness evidence, Tuperskauer at the Greater Anchorage area, interviewing Beth's friends and acquaintances, no one knew much at all. 27:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Beth's ex-boyfriends were also interviewed, but this too proved to dead end. 27:51 [SPEAKER_01]: Is our alibis all checked out? 27:54 [SPEAKER_01]: But within a week of Beth's disappearance, Tupers found two witnesses who'd reportedly seen her in the bathroom of the value mark at around three thirty or four p.m. 28:03 [SPEAKER_01]: on the day she went missing. 28:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, in a bathroom stall, one witness heard someone say, get up off the floor, Beth. 28:11 [SPEAKER_01]: When the witness texted in the stall, she saw a girl with long, wet blonde hair, sitting on the floor of the bathroom. 28:18 [SPEAKER_01]: She was wearing done gris. 28:20 [SPEAKER_01]: I had no shoes or stockings and her green coat was lying on the floor beside her. 28:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Her bare feet were purple from the cold, and she was smoking a cigarette. 28:29 [SPEAKER_01]: The witness asked her what was a matter. 28:32 [SPEAKER_01]: That told the woman her feet were cold, but she didn't have any shoes. 28:35 [SPEAKER_01]: So the witness asked Beth if she wanted to contact the store manager. 28:39 [SPEAKER_01]: Beth declined the offer and said she had walked a long way. 28:43 [SPEAKER_01]: Telling the woman she had to walk the by-low and meet someone in the parking lot. 28:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, Beth was answering the woman's questions. 28:50 [SPEAKER_01]: The woman noticed Beth kept looking at the wall, suggesting she didn't want to engage in the conversation. 28:56 [SPEAKER_01]: One friend described Beth as an extraver, but in scarier easily, and who liked to walk everywhere, even by herself at night, but that she wouldn't accept rides from strangers. 29:06 [SPEAKER_01]: Other friends told police that Beth was shy and reserved, and also that she didn't trust her cousin Greg, lived in the house with Beth and her brothers, and whose bedroom was next to Beth's. 29:17 [SPEAKER_01]: This game fully is caused to look at Greg more closely. 29:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Beth and Greg were said to have conflict in the relationship, and while he was suspected that Greg may have been sexually attracted to Beth, it was never proven. 29:30 [SPEAKER_01]: Greg told police he had been out drinking heavily with friends the night as cousin disappeared. 29:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Towards the end of the night out, Greg and his friends were stomped by a PD, who made the group take a cab home due to their state of drunkenness. 29:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Greg certainly had the opportunity to kill Beth. 29:47 [SPEAKER_01]: But to complicated matters, he later claimed he spoke to Beth at the house that evening. 29:52 [SPEAKER_01]: However, her brothers claimed they didn't see Greg at the house at all. 29:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Greg eventually took a polygraph test and passed. 29:59 [SPEAKER_01]: Some witnesses, meanwhile, reported seeing Beth hitchhiking as clean as eleven pm, a night she disappeared. 30:06 [SPEAKER_01]: But an unexpected break in the case came within twenty-four hours. 30:11 [SPEAKER_01]: A teen year old sex worker, Sandra Patterson, came forward to report that three days before Bethway missing. 30:17 [SPEAKER_01]: Sandra was kidnapped by a man she had an appointment to meet at the Nevada Club. 30:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Sandra was addicted to heroin and used sex work to fund her dependency. 30:27 [SPEAKER_01]: Sandra told police that when she met the man in the parking lot of the club, he kidnapped her at gunpoint and threatened 30:37 [SPEAKER_01]: in the local community. 30:39 [SPEAKER_01]: The men bound Sanders hands together with shoelaces, proceeded to drive herself along the seward highway. 30:45 [SPEAKER_01]: He kept pulling his car off the road, trying to kiss Sandra and telling her he wanted to have sex with her, but she refused. 30:54 [SPEAKER_01]: A man forced Sandra to take off her clothes, and said he wanted to slash her bra with his knife. 31:00 [SPEAKER_01]: He then told her he was going to take her to Kinai to some cabins. 31:04 [SPEAKER_01]: The pair eventually arrived at the sunrise in. 31:06 [SPEAKER_01]: On the Kinai Peninsula, two hours drive south of Anchorage. 31:11 [SPEAKER_01]: The man raped Sandra, but he failed to orgasm. 31:14 [SPEAKER_01]: They then left the motel, and the man drove into the last can wilderness. 31:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Getting further away from any nearby towns, Sandra managed to convince her captured her turn back, but on the way back to Anchorage, the man threatened to kill Sandra if she reported him to the police. 31:30 [SPEAKER_01]: Sandra later told the APD that the man's penis was, shaped funny, like he was deformed or something. 31:37 [SPEAKER_01]: It was short, but very large round. 31:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Sandra described the man as aged between twenty three to twenty eight years old, around five eight or five nine, with a slim build, and short bun hair, who is wearing horned rim glasses. 31:53 [SPEAKER_01]: He was also wearing a jacket, GI type pants, and dark heavy boots. 31:57 [SPEAKER_01]: Sandra was shown a picture of thirty two-year-old Robert Hansen. 32:01 [SPEAKER_01]: which police had taken following his arrest for his attack on Susan Hepburn at the month before. 32:06 [SPEAKER_01]: When Robert kidnapped Sandra, he was still waiting trial for the November assault on Susan. 32:13 [SPEAKER_01]: Sandra told police, you know, I'm maybe doing something that some people don't think is totally acceptable. 32:19 [SPEAKER_01]: And it may not be. 32:20 [SPEAKER_01]: But that's not why I'm here. 32:23 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm here because the hands and guy is probably a premeditated cold-blooded killer who was killed before. 32:30 [SPEAKER_01]: He said he killed before. 32:31 [SPEAKER_01]: And everything he said was absolutely true. 32:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Every thread he made, I believed. 32:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And if he says he's killed people, 32:39 [SPEAKER_01]: I believe he's killed people. 32:40 [SPEAKER_01]: If you've got a young girl who's been killed around the same time, and in the same area, then I believe it was Hanson who killed her. 32:49 [SPEAKER_01]: I believe he'd kill me too. 32:53 [SPEAKER_01]: Police impounded Robert's car, and on the twenty ninth of December, brought him in for questioning with both the APD and Alaska State Troopers. 33:02 [SPEAKER_01]: During Robert's interview, which was punctuated by numerous long pauses while he collected his thoughts, Robert was notably evasive and repeatedly claimed to remember nothing one questioned. 33:13 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert admitted that check-in documentation from the sunrise in, morning after Sandra was kidnapped, looked like his writing, but couldn't see whether he had written it. 33:22 [SPEAKER_01]: When he was asked to be had anything as whole at that board saying writing, he produced a piece of paper with a name, J. Patterson, and an Anchorage address. 33:32 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert claimed he didn't know what the no-was, who he were related to, or how it even came into his possession. 33:39 [SPEAKER_01]: Police asked him about meeting Sandra at the Nevada Club the morning of December nineteen, but he denied going to the club, or driving his car on the day in question. 33:49 [SPEAKER_01]: However, evidence against Robert was strong, and he was charged with kidnapping and reaping Sandra Patterson, and his soul with a deadly weapon. 33:57 [SPEAKER_01]: Bill was sent at fifty thousand dollars, following the charges, Robert received a psychiatric evaluation. 34:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Where was noted that now only did he have a mental illness which would be difficult to treat, but that he had also been fantasizing about harming women since his adolescence. 34:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert denied any involvement in Beth's murder. 34:16 [SPEAKER_01]: He stated that on December twenty second, in nineteen seventy-one, he went to work at four forty-five a.m. 34:22 [SPEAKER_01]: and had it home after finishing at two p.m. 34:25 [SPEAKER_01]: He spent the rest of the afternoon and evening with his family, going to bed at eleven p.m. 34:31 [SPEAKER_01]: He claimed that the following day, he got up at four thirty a.m. 34:34 [SPEAKER_01]: arrived at work at four 34:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, working until two PM, it didn't go unnoticed in his handwritten statement. 34:43 [SPEAKER_01]: Robert made nine references to the time of day. 34:45 [SPEAKER_01]: He didn't admit to usually carrying a twenty-two coal woodsman handgun in his car when he went out hunting. 34:52 [SPEAKER_01]: But eventually decided that he didn't want to continue the police interview without speaking to his attorney. 34:57 [SPEAKER_01]: While Robert denied being involved in bad subduction, police arrived at the conclusion that based on Robert's account of his movements on December twenty second, it was certainly possible for him to have kidnapped and raped Beth and abandoned her outside to die. 35:11 [SPEAKER_01]: The similarities between Beth's kidnapping and Sanders' experience show that both girls were taken to the same area. 35:17 [SPEAKER_01]: And their hands bound, or stripped to prevent escape, had their boss slash door threatened to be, and they were sexually assaulted. 35:25 [SPEAKER_01]: That's house was also within a mile of the apartment where Robert had a cost that Susan Herbert. 35:31 [SPEAKER_01]: In March, nineteen seventy-two, Robert went to trial for his assault on Susan Havard, and agreeing to a no-contest plea, the subsequent charges regarding Sandra Patterson were dropped. 35:42 [SPEAKER_01]: And trial, Robert's minister testified on his behalf, betraying him as a hardworking Christian family man, end up standing citizen who worked two jobs. 35:52 [SPEAKER_01]: His employer had testified he was a capable and willing worker. 35:55 [SPEAKER_01]: His psychiatrists asserted that the offense was resulted from Robert's diagnosis of bipolar disorder. 36:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Despite Robert's previous psychiatric assessment, identifying and desired harm women, the judge concurred with the psychiatrist. 36:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Sensing Robert to five years imprisonment on the condition that he continued to receive psychotherapy. 36:15 [SPEAKER_01]: But in June, nineteen seventy-two, after serving only six months, Robert was transferred to a halfway house and placed on a work-release program where he was considered to be a model resident. 36:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it was initially suggested in nineteen seventy-one and it would be difficult to treat Robert's bipolar disorder successfully. 36:35 [SPEAKER_01]: A subsequent letter from a different psychiatrist, some months later, indicated that Robert had made such an impression. 36:45 [SPEAKER_01]: After all, he had a trade, a family, was a church coer, and had an interest in the outdoors, particularly bow-hunting and fishing. 36:54 [SPEAKER_01]: November, nineteen seventy-two, Robert returned home to his family.
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