Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: My name is Leland Hale. I'm the author of Butcher the True Crime Story of serial killer Robert Hansen.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: My name is Cindy Paulson. This is my story.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: At age 17, Cindy Paulson escaped from serial killer Robert Hansen. Her escape ultimately led authorities to Hansen's arrest and conviction on four charges of murder. Ultimately, Hanson confessed to 17 murders, but there were more, at least 24.
Cindy was one of the lucky ones.
Note this podcast features adult themes and some salty language. Listener discretion is advised.
Episode 6.
In episode 3, we learned that Cindy had left the ramble scramble of working the street and the soul numbing work at Kitty's topless Bottomless club for the more climate controlled existence of a massage parlor. No question, Cindy felt safer. Much safer. Make no mistake, though, the massage parlors in Anchorage were run by professionals. Though it was quaint on the outside, gentleman's retreat was all business on the inside.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Okay. It was on a little side street and you walk in the front door and I remember my wife in law, Peggy and me, when it would be slow, we would cut our pubic hairs and burn them outside the front door to make. That was like a ho-tell to make men come in.
That's what we do. You walk in the front door.
[00:02:18] Speaker C: A ho-tell? [Note: a reference to prostitutes calling themselves "ho's."]
[00:02:20] Speaker D: Yeah, that's.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: That's like a secret, you know. If you burn your pubes outside the front door, that makes more company come in.
[00:02:29] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: And you walk in the front door.
That's a little jigsaw.
[00:02:36] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: And then you walk in the front door and it's a sunken living room and there's a heat, a wood stove to the right, and there's chairs all around the bottom. And they would come in and sit down, and we'd sit down and talk to them, see what they wanted to do. And then you go up the steps and there would be a kitchen counter and a huge glass table. And then you would go to in between and there would be a bedroom on the right, a bathroom in the middle, and another bedroom.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: This is gentleman's retreat, a world ostensibly controlled by a single man, a pimp named Billy Joe.
[00:03:18] Speaker E: Wasn't bad because Billy Joe had.
[00:03:22] Speaker D: He had a lot of girls.
[00:03:24] Speaker E: I was the youngest, and his main.
[00:03:27] Speaker D: Girl was Peggy and Dee.
[00:03:31] Speaker E: And then there was me, Janice and.
[00:03:34] Speaker D: A couple other girls.
[00:03:36] Speaker E: So I worked it. And he knew all about the me doing the thing with Hanson, and he didn't care. He didn't bother me. I stayed in the.
The massage parlor.
I pretty much had free reign on whatever I wanted to do.
I gave him my money, though. Of course you know, and he was older.
And I got to spend my money on my jewelry and clothes for a minute or two.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: Let's take a look at the inside.
What goes on inside of Gentleman's Retreat?
[00:04:18] Speaker B: It was just a parlor, just a massage parlor, you know, where you come in.
[00:04:23] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: And guys, you know, pay some 100.
[00:04:27] Speaker D: And if.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Usually we did out calls or in the late of the night, my friend Benny would come and he'd line up lines of coke along the glass table.
[00:04:37] Speaker D: And we'd snort them.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: But he liked my friend Peggy. Peggy was short and she looked small for her age.
[00:04:47] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: And he would go with her. And Peggy had a regular that he liked to come, and he'd give her money just to stay in there and hold her in the dark.
I kind of that up.
[00:05:00] Speaker D: But how did you do that?
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Because I couldn't stand being in there with him laying there dark and letting him hold me, you know, I heard noise out there. I wanted to get in the mix.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: There are at least two other women you need to meet. Peggy and Dede, their sisters. And they're from the south, finding themselves all the way up North.
And of course, we're going to give you a peek into how things worked.
Hour by hour, day by day, week by week, month by month.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: Dede and her sister, they worked the bars. So when. When the bars would close, they would bring their guys to the motel.
I mean, to. To the retreat from. And have do turn their tricks in the rooms.
And then we would have regulars come, and then people would call and they would want out calls. And we had certain cab drivers that we knew.
They got good weed, because by then I'm smoking weed constantly. And they would take us on alcohol dates.
And we give them a certain percentage more than the fare to drop us off and pick us up. So they would remember where we are. And we would go out. Calls started at $200 an hour.
And we'd go out there and the cab would drop us off and know where we were, and the books would.
[00:06:28] Speaker D: Know where we were.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: We'd get our money and we'd stay.
[00:06:31] Speaker D: There for however long.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Overnight was the thousand easy, you know.
[00:06:37] Speaker D: And we just did what we want.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: And at the time, I was with Billy Joel, and I could go four or five days without seeing him.
He didn't bother me.
[00:06:48] Speaker A: That said, moving into the parlors meant that a certain tariff had to be paid. Always a tariff. It was, in fact, a steep tariff. And the rules were rigorously enforced. It didn't matter if you were in Billy Joe's stable or not.
[00:07:06] Speaker D: In the massage parlors in Alaska, they kept 20%, 20 on every hundredth, you know, and usually most of the massage parlors were owned by a pimp.
So if your girl wanted to come work there, you had to give up twenty dollars on every hundred.
A couple times that happened at gentleman's retreat. The girls, they would have to put the money in the thing at the lockbox and get it the next day when Billy came to give it to her peoples or give it, you know, it's kind of weird because we couldn't give it to her.
He would have to give it to him.
You know, it's kind of hard.
It's a difficult situation.
But, you know, if it weren't, it weren't, you know, that's your money. You earned it.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: You know, Sometimes there was trouble closer to home, much closer to home at the parlor inside those walls, they were, after all, in close quarters. Sometimes there were too many people there.
Note in this clip, Cindy is referring to Billy Joe.
[00:08:29] Speaker E: And then there was a couple times he was letting other people he knew that were pimps let them girls work in the parlor because we would just be too busy, you know what I mean?
And sometimes that didn't turn out bad. Good, it would turn out bad.
One of them went at me one time and I remember she was coming up the stairs to come at me and Janice put her arm out and blocked her and dropped her dead on her traps. Whoa.
Janice was pretty cool.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Cindy also knows this. Janice is more observer than participant.
[00:09:19] Speaker E: Janice hardly ever makes any money.
She just goes to watch her sister. She's this blond headed hillbilly girl, right?
Bleach, blonde hair. Cooler than, though.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: So we've talked a little bit about the girls who work at gentleman's retreat.
Let's switch and talk about the clientele, shall we?
[00:10:20] Speaker C: And your experience. If we're going to say who was I expecting as a customer, as a john, how would you describe that person generally, like age, race, etc.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: White male with the wife and kids.
[00:10:43] Speaker D: That don't get sex more than maybe once every two weeks or his wife won't give him a blow job.
Hey, yeah.
[00:10:57] Speaker C: Or go ahead.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: She won't let him do it from behind.
[00:11:01] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:11:02] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: And.
[00:11:03] Speaker C: And what age?
[00:11:08] Speaker D: Maybe from late 30s, 60.
[00:11:14] Speaker C: Okay, so middle aged. Yeah, middle age.
And then part of that is because they have money or they're married a long time or all those things.
I mean, it's not free.
Yeah, it's not free, buddy.
[00:11:35] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:11:37] Speaker C: So they need a certain amount Of, Of.
And would you say something different?
Yeah. Would you say most of them are middle class?
[00:11:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:50] Speaker D: Upper middle class. Yeah, middle class.
[00:11:52] Speaker C: The upper middle class.
[00:11:53] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:11:54] Speaker E: Okay.
[00:11:55] Speaker D: And then even really church goers.
[00:11:59] Speaker C: A lot of them.
Some maybe a course quarter A quarter church goers.
[00:12:09] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:12:09] Speaker C: So the true hypocrites.
[00:12:11] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:12:13] Speaker C: The double they're leading to seek a double life.
[00:12:17] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:12:19] Speaker C: And would, would they become. Would some of them become regulars?
[00:12:23] Speaker D: Some would, yeah. Because it's safer for them.
[00:12:27] Speaker C: Right.
And they knew how to find you.
[00:12:31] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:12:32] Speaker C: Even when you're, Even when you're on the track.
[00:12:35] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:12:37] Speaker C: And then you're gone.
[00:12:40] Speaker D: And then they gotta look all over again. But see, they've been there before, so they, they, they can pick and choose.
[00:12:47] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:47] Speaker D: You know, they've, they've got others and they pay just a little bit more. So they get just what they want and be done with it, you know?
[00:12:57] Speaker C: Right, right.
[00:12:58] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:12:59] Speaker C: Is there some, is there some amateur psychology going on too? Like they're talking about what it is they want or what is they need or what they're not getting or.
[00:13:09] Speaker D: Sometimes.
But you already know because you. They want. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they don't want to talk. They just want to do it and be done with it.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:13:22] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:13:23] Speaker C: Gotta go home.
[00:13:24] Speaker D: So they gotta go and clean the car out real good.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:27] Speaker D: Make sure you leave anything.
[00:13:30] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:32] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:13:34] Speaker C: So it's, it is really kind of secret. Secret. Secret, yeah.
[00:13:39] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:42] Speaker C: So there, I mean, when would you say, how many of them do you think? I mean, it's obviously like.
Is kind of a question, but, but you know, like there's how kind of. I mean, it's obviously on the down low.
Right?
[00:13:59] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:14:00] Speaker C: So there's. Is there. You think there's some guilt around it too?
[00:14:04] Speaker D: Of course, yeah.
[00:14:06] Speaker C: But not, not always.
[00:14:09] Speaker D: Not always, but mostly. Yeah.
[00:14:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:13] Speaker D: Always more than left, more than less.
[00:14:17] Speaker C: I shouldn't be doing this, but I.
[00:14:20] Speaker D: Gotta do it because the, the need is insatiable.
[00:14:25] Speaker C: Right?
[00:14:26] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:14:27] Speaker C: Otherwise there would be nobody on the planet.
[00:14:30] Speaker D: Exactly.
[00:14:31] Speaker C: There would be no humans. The need has to be strong.
[00:14:35] Speaker D: Yeah. It has to be fulfilled.
[00:14:37] Speaker E: Right.
[00:14:38] Speaker C: I mean, you just think of animals. We are animals.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:14:42] Speaker D: Is there an animal that holds back like dolphins? Yeah, it, it's, it's a, it's a.
Something that has to be fulfilled.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:55] Speaker C: It's probably the strongest.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: It's.
[00:14:57] Speaker C: I would say it's, it's because it's reproductive. Because it's the reason we're on the. Could stay on the planet.
[00:15:05] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:15:05] Speaker C: Way it has to be the strongest Thing of all.
[00:15:09] Speaker D: Yeah.
Something motivates them. Like the something they see just triggers it, and it's like, you know, and they can't stop until they have it.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: There's something else we know about sex. During the act, the person involved, the person most engaged, is so focused that lots of other things can take place without the person. The recipient in this case, being even minutely aware that something else is going on.
I apologize for the fuzziness of this recording. It's worth straining to hear, but it's about 40 years old, so, you know, that's the breaks.
[00:16:01] Speaker E: If they're in your car and you're given.
So this girl says, amy W. You only know they got $25.
Well, chances are you probably got more money in your wallet than you're like, we not, Right?
[00:16:16] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:18] Speaker E: Or you got it in your pocket, your pants are down at your ankles, and you're getting your rocks off.
And she's doing. And there's other things you can do to make the sensation greater. Right.
And she's going through your wallet and everything else to get her money.
You're not even gonna know.
[00:16:47] Speaker C: Not even gonna know that Said, Alaska.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: Is also a collector for men on the run, men running away, men who are lost, men who just don't know what to do next.
And, of course, some of them find their ways to the massage parlors and the clubs.
That's where Cindy met Howell.
[00:17:18] Speaker E: He was all coked out, and his wife had left him with the kids, and he was just dropped off the edge of the world.
[00:17:29] Speaker C: You said dropped him off with the kids. Does that mean that she left him with the kids?
[00:17:34] Speaker E: No, she took them.
[00:17:35] Speaker C: She took the kids and said, I'm sorry.
Was that because he was doing coke?
[00:17:42] Speaker E: I don't know what. Okay, what had happened there. But he needed to be.
He. He went away from the world. He figured Alaska was the last place they'd find him.
And he had this little cheesy apartment in the most cheesy place there was.
And.
And he had a good hookup.
[00:18:10] Speaker C: And he had a What?
[00:18:11] Speaker A: I'm sorry.
[00:18:12] Speaker E: He had a good hookup, okay. And there he was at the top of the world in the middle of nowhere, doing his thing.
You know? That's what he wants.
And he just got himself in love with me.
And he would. He would walk in front of Gentleman's Retreat with a sign, hulk if you're in love.
[00:18:40] Speaker C: Did he. Was it a handmade sign?
[00:18:42] Speaker E: Yeah, poster sign.
[00:18:44] Speaker C: Oh, but he actually had poster board.
[00:18:47] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:18:47] Speaker D: And he made that sign and stapled.
[00:18:49] Speaker E: It to a stick and he'd use it. And he'd walk in front, back and forth in front of the.
The Gentleman's Retreat like he was protesting.
But it brought us more.
More business.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: In some ways, of course, this man was kind of like a puppy dog and overly eager.
Puppy dog.
[00:19:16] Speaker E: He used to send me I. This crazy.
He was so spun out. He used to send me packages of rocks every half an hour on that half an hour in a taxi to me.
And I never had sex with him. I made Morgan do it.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: In case you're a little slow on the drug references, Rock means rock cocaine. It's big lumps, needs to be chopped or otherwise processed further before it can be ingested.
Meanwhile, Howell was not the only crazy man that happened to encounter Cindy.
There were more there.
We'll tell you about this one. I've been saving this one. We've both been saving this one.
[00:20:12] Speaker D: I. Okay, all I had this one gentleman. I. I don't even remember his name, but he would come when I was in Alaska working at Gentleman's Retreat. He was a regular Peggy's.
So one time Peggy wasn't there. So he let me go on an Al call.
And he lived way out in the middle of nowhere.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: He.
[00:20:36] Speaker D: And he was getting a divorce from his wife.
Really paranoid guy. But he was a professional motorcycle rider.
And he was just like this high, crazy high off of coke. We sit out there, I think for two days.
I. We lost track of time. But of course he paid me. But he was telling me all about his motorcycles. And we go in this garage and, you know, you. You.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: We.
[00:21:08] Speaker D: We were snowed in. There's no way I could have got out, even though he paid me. But he had the most amazing collections of motorcycles you could ever imagine.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: And.
[00:21:21] Speaker D: But he had the most amazing collections of motorcycles. He had over 50 different motorcycles in there. And they were like Kawasakis and stuff like that, but. But they weren't that kind. He says, I put these together. I make these. And he would be in there and he'd show me how he'd take this part apart and this would come off and do all this stuff. And then. And then all of a sudden he'd say, are you a informant?
And I would say, no. He says, did my wife send you here? I said, no.
Remember you had me come here from Gentleman's Retreat? I'm Peggy's friend. He says, what's your name?
I would tell him it's Felicia. And so we go back into the living room and he had like this living Room with a sunken in floor and the walls were glass and round and we would snort lines off this table. I mean, it was all about the drugs really back then. So that's, that's why I don't talk about that stuff because it's all drug stories.
But he was really paranoid and he just.
It got to the point where he would say, have you ever had any disease? And I said, no.
And then I thought, you know what? I'm getting tired of this. I said, well, one time I had a yeast infection. He said, what?
[00:22:51] Speaker B: What's that?
[00:22:52] Speaker D: I said, well, it's nothing you can get. It's just something women get sometimes, you know.
And he said, what?
The guy totally freaked out, went crazy. And you know what? I have never had a venereal disease while I was working as a hooker, a prostitute, nothing I've never had.
And he freaked out. He called, called a cab company, paid him triple the amount, gave me my money and called Peggy and said, don't ever come out here again. And sent me back so fast I couldn't believe it. But I was bored out there, you know, he says. And then from what I understand, he thinks that I was sent by his wife to get blackmail pictures and with a little camera and said, oh, man, it was hilarious. But like that happens, you know. But yeah, I, I just had to do that because you, you know, the devil made me do it.
Do you ever, you know, tell them.
[00:23:58] Speaker C: About, I mean, the yeast. Who knew the yeast infection would do it?
[00:24:02] Speaker D: Because you know why he asked me that question?
The devil. Because he asked that question, the devil on my shoulder said, just do it, do it, just do it. Peggy got really mad because I ruined her regular. I got yelled at for it. I got in some trouble.
[00:24:53] Speaker E: I think the only thing I got in trouble for is we would get calls, people would want us to go to the. We would go up to Prudhoe Bay and we take ounces of cocaine with us.
We'd sell it and we'd make a lot of money selling it.
And we'd make money, you know, dancing.
And we come back with $10,000.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: A point of clarification here. The person with whom she got in trouble was Billy Joel.
And the reason she, she had in trouble with Billy Joel was, hey, he had cocaine. He sold cocaine. What are they doing competing with him? No, no, no, no.
Meanwhile, it's worth noting that going to Prudhoe Bay was not the only outside activity that caught Cindy's eyes. As we noted in episode three, the After Hours Club was Also a potent tub for the men and women in the life.
It was their secret society.
A lifeline to reality or a sort of reality.
[00:26:07] Speaker C: Tell me about the after hours places, man.
[00:26:09] Speaker D: Some of them were cool.
Some of them I could go to and no pimps would bother me. The one I could go to, we used to play eightball with cocaine balls.
We had a little pool table and we would play snooku with cocaine balls.
That's how it was back then, you know? Yeah, that's $2,000 an ounce.
[00:26:36] Speaker E: But.
[00:26:40] Speaker D: Don'T miss back there, you know, don't miss.
[00:26:42] Speaker A: So.
[00:26:43] Speaker C: So the a. When you talk about the after hours club. So what's the setup there? Where were they?
How do they define themselves?
I'm sorry?
[00:26:53] Speaker D: They're all strategically, strategically placed. You. You go in and it's like after all the bars close.
[00:27:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:05] Speaker D: Let's say Billy Joe would take us.
So he would go in, he would get our money or, or he would wait to get in there and then we'd all go hand him our money.
And he'd meet us one by one in the bathroom, right. And he'd be all in his mink furs and all his rings, big old nuggets and.
And we'd not. We'd knock on and he'd come in and he. We'd knock on the door and we see him and he'd tell us go in the back because the hose room was in the back.
And then we see all our wife in laws in there and we, we do lines. We get high in the back and he's sitting in the front talking to everybody.
And then he come back and get our money or have us come whatever one he wanted to show off that had the most get their money. You know what I mean? It's a big show thing.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: There were, however, changes afoot. The pursuit of a serial killer had finally started to take up all the oxygen. And Anchorage Cindy was not immune. The reality of her life starts to break her down.
We'll take a deep dive into this topic during our next episode. For now, it's crucial to know that the cops were up to something. Let's just say Glenn Flothy of the Alaska state troopers came looking for Cindy. He needed to talk to her.
He was, as they say, building his case.
Here he is in a recording made in 1985 a long time ago.
[00:28:50] Speaker F: I read the Paulson story and after I read her statement, I am just. From reading her statement, I am thoroughly convinced that Hanson turned out.
[00:29:10] Speaker C: Just like.
[00:29:10] Speaker F: The piece of the puzzle Fell in. It just seemed that clear.
And from reading her statement, the terror and honest fear that she knew she was going to be murdered, they're chained to the post.
She knew she was never coming back alive.
And it was just absolutely clear from reading that statement.
So the first thing I wanted to do was find her. I had to find her. I had to talk to this woman.
[00:29:45] Speaker A: But try as he may, as hard as he worked, he kept striking out. Four Feet was failing until he connected with one of our hero cops, John Chantilly.
[00:30:05] Speaker F: So I went to APD and I asked around. I wanted to find out who was the sharpest street cop around that really developed a rapport with the street.
And it gave me me a name and I wanted to rap with him for a while, kind of see what it was, and asked him questions about street people and who was where, where maybe I could find this gal.
And I really took a liking to him. I said, there's my connection.
And on top of that, come to find out he'd done him a favor on a theft charge. Some guy got rolled by her and her pimp and she took his ring or gold watch or something.
Well, it was one of these deals where the guy was sort of, the guy was a pool of the community kind of guy, right? And all he wanted was his checkbook and his watch back. He didn't want no poison and he didn't want to press charges, which set it up perfect for the. The investigator to make it look like to the prostitute that he was going to really do her a favor.
And so Cindy was in great gratitude to him because he didn't throw her in jail for that. He said, you give me the watch, you give me the checkbook back, it'll be forgotten about. The guy just wants the stuff back. I'll try to talk him out of it, that kind of thing.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: Just as a point of reference, it wasn't a checkbook and a watch. This is the gold nugget we were talking about in episode three.
Here's my conversation with Cindy about said gold nugget.
[00:31:54] Speaker C: When Fly is trying to get a little more savvy about talking to the working women, been striking out, he's not going at the right time and they won't talk to him. And he really wants to find you.
[00:32:14] Speaker A: Flofi does.
[00:32:15] Speaker C: And he talks to Gentilly and Chantilly says, this is from. This is from Flothi.
Oh, I know who you're talking about. But you know her by this name, I know her by another name. It's the same woman?
[00:32:30] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:32:31] Speaker C: And Flothy says, well, can.
Can you get her to talk to me? And Gentilly says, yeah, she. She owes me a favor.
Is that favor the. The nugget.
[00:32:44] Speaker D: Nugget.
[00:32:45] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:32:45] Speaker C: Yeah, that's what I thought.
[00:32:47] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:32:48] Speaker C: I think she'll talk to you.
[00:32:51] Speaker A: Yeah, Cindy talks to Glenn Floffy.
[00:32:55] Speaker C: All right.
[00:32:57] Speaker A: Boy, does she ever.
That stolen golden nugget finally paid off.
Cindy and I both thank you for listening. We acknowledge that her story is often gritty and sometimes painful.
That said, we promise not to. To sugar coat anything.
See you next time.
