Robert Hansen: Alaska Serial Killer Dubbed ‘The Butcher Baker’ Dies At 75

Robert Hansen, a convicted Alaska serial killer, died on Thursday. Hansen was 75 years old.

According to The Associated Press, Robert Hansen died at Alaska Regional Hospital after a year’s worth of poor health. Alaska State Troopers claimed that Hansen was under a “do not resuscitate” order.

Hansen was accused of abducting women and hunting them in the Alaskan wilderness during the 1970s. He confessed to killing 17 women over a 12-year killing spree and raping at least 30 other women. Most of the women he killed were exotic dancers and prostitutes because he assumed that people would notice them missing or care about them the least. Robert Hansen was convicted in 1984 of just four of the crimes in order to avoid going to trial a total of 17 times.

Hansen used to kidnap the women and take them to remote places by driving or flying his own plane. Often he took them to Knik River outside of Anchorage. Sometimes he would rape his victims and let them return to the city with warnings to never contact the police, and at other times he would let them run into the wilderness where he would hunt them down with his rifle.

The 800-mile trans-Alaska oil pipeline was being constructed at the time of the killings, and many prostitutes, pimps, and drug dealers came to Anchorage to rake in some of the cash that construction workers were making at the time. Some prostitutes left fairly quickly without notice once they had made enough money, so certain disappearances were not that out of the ordinary at the time. Hansen took advantage of this fact when he chose prostitutes and exotic dancers as his victims, but not all of his victims were involved in these types of businesses. At first, Hansen victimized any woman who he fancied.

Only 12 of the victims who Robert Hansen confessed to killing were ever found.

According to China Topix, Hansen was ordered to serve a 461-year sentence for the crimes he committed.

Known as “the Butcher Baker,” Hansen was originally detained at the Seward state prison, but he was then transferred to the Anchorage Correctional Center in early May, 2014 because of medical reasons.

Robert Hansen refused to grant The Associated Press an interview in 2006, but wrote them an unsigned letter saying, “I do not care so much for myself, but you journalist [sic] have hurt my family so very much.”

Hansen once owned a bakery in the 1970s and 1980s located in a mini-mall in Anchorage, and he had a wife and children who knew nothing of the horrific crimes he was committing.

The Anchorage baker found more unwanted fame in the 2013 movie The Frozen Ground. John Cusack portrayed Robert Hansen in the film, and Nicolas Cage starred as an Alaska State Trooper investigating the gruesome killings.