Episode Transcript
[00:00:08] Speaker A: My name is Leland Hale.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: I'm the author of Butcher the True Crime Story of serial killer Robert Hansen.
[00:00:16] Speaker C: My name is Cindy Paulson. This is my story.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: 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, Hansen confessed to 17 murders, but there were more, at least 24.
Cindy was one of the lucky ones.
This podcast features adult themes and some salty language. Listener discretion is advised.
Episode 6.
[00:01:23] Speaker D: SA.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: That, of course, was the short version.
Leland has questions, and fortunately, Cindy has answers. So here we'll go into a little more depth.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: December.
Have to have 83. December 28, 1983, to be exact.
The.
The offense files a defense motion. In other words, they say, we want to advise Hansen's lawyers that we're going to start bringing charges against this guy. Okay. On the 18th of January, 1984, you were served. You were served a subpoena to appear in court at Gentleman's Retreat.
[00:02:54] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:02:58] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: So it's. It kind of stands to reason that in December, you were also probably a gentleman's retreat.
[00:03:07] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Then you serve the subpoena. This is an important. This is an important date. The 18th of January, 1984.
[00:03:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: Okay. On February 3rd, 1984.
Uhhuh. You move and you leave Gentleman's Retreat court without warning.
[00:03:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
Albanians.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: No, I know. Because Support Flo finds you the next day.
Huh. And he's, quote, you're working at a topless dive.
[00:03:50] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Okay, so that's probably Kitties, right?
[00:03:54] Speaker C: No, that is someplace far away from the Albanians and the dive. I just kind of wanted to go and be on my own. And there was a new club that opened up, and I didn't have any money, and I was hiding from Gentleman's Retreat and Floe, and I was tripping out.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: Okay, so this is the next day. Right. So you've left Gentleman's Retreat and you're working somewhere else.
[00:04:28] Speaker C: I'm just like, in a.
I can't find my bearings.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:38] Speaker C: I don't know what to do.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: It's coming to real.
[00:04:44] Speaker C: Yeah, it's too real. And I don't know.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: You don't remember the name of it. So when did you work at Kitties? I mean, didn't you go from the.
[00:04:54] Speaker C: Kitties way before I.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Before gentlemen. Before Gentleman's Retreat.
[00:04:59] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Because Hansen hadn't been picked up yet. He was still on the loose.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:05:07] Speaker C: And he came in kitties.
And I saw him, and the bouncers ran him off.
He hadn't been Arrested yet.
[00:05:16] Speaker A: So would you say that's that period between July of and September of 83?
[00:05:23] Speaker C: Yeah. You worked at K Loose?
Yeah, I was there with John and Morgan. Yeah.
Yeah. Wait. Yeah.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: Okay, let me get this right.
So you don't remember the name? You don't remember the club you were working in, where. Where Flowy find you?
[00:05:45] Speaker C: No, I just was telling him I was in trouble, and that's when I called him and he said, you're coming with me.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: And where he picks you up is 11th of February, huh? 1984.
[00:06:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: At an apartment on Government Hill.
[00:06:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: And whose apartment was that?
[00:06:10] Speaker C: John and Morgan's.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:06:18] Speaker C: And I remember there's a pay phone down the road. And I went and called my dad, my stepmom, and told her. She answered the phone and I told her, if anything happens to me, I want you to know I love you and I love dad, both. And it's not my fault.
And I'm calling to let you know that shit's popping off and I ain't got nothing to do with it. And they wanted me to tell them what's going on. I said, I can't, but I'm. I'm not safe up here, you know, just give my family my love, you know?
And I don't remember, but it was a lot of crazy.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: It was because what's.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: What's happening here and the reason, you know, that Flothi served the subpoena on you.
Remember, this is the same time they're sort of been checking up on you because they're making you do drug tests and all sorts of other crazy.
[00:07:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: Okay. And the other thing to know here is that at that time, and you may or may not have known it, when you were a gentleman's retreat, huh, You. You had what I'm going to call a guardian angel. There was somebody, I believe, who worked at Gentleman's Retreat who was keeping an eye on you.
That's how Flothi knew that you left Gentleman's Retreat without warning.
Your guardian angel gave him a call and said, she's not here. She's split. We don't know where she went.
And you're trying to figure out who the hell was it?
[00:08:08] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: I mean, it has to be somebody who worked there. My guess. My guess would be Peggy.
Yeah, that seems kind of odd.
[00:08:17] Speaker C: No, it don't. Peggy or Billy.
Peggy or Billy Joe.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: Yeah. No, but there. There seemed to be a very tense. From Flo's point of view, there was a tense relationship between him and Billy Joel. He talks, for example, about him. He was trying to figure out why Billy Joel wasn't more nervous about having you there, knowing that you are working very closely with the cops.
For example, Floi knew at one point that Billy Joe had a quantity of received a quantity of cocaine and that that sort of gave. That was a very kind of nervous relationship because he knew if you told him too much that he would probably have to bust you or bust him. And he considered arresting you. He didn't want to do that.
And he. At some point he just figured, this is Flo figure that Billy Joel probably is okay with this because he thinks as long as he has someone who's important to us, we're not going to do anything to him.
[00:09:37] Speaker C: Does Fluffy know what we did with the cocaine?
[00:09:40] Speaker A: No.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: No, no.
[00:09:41] Speaker C: Well, I mean, but me and Dee took it to the north slope, so.
[00:09:47] Speaker B: It should be clear that at this point early on in our conversations, my timeline is off.
So we keep going until dummy here figures it out.
Thankfully, Cindy's memory is incredible.
[00:10:08] Speaker C: Yeah, right.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: Okay, so it's not Kitty's. Do you know where it was out of town?
[00:10:17] Speaker C: The other parlor, the other dance place?
[00:10:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:21] Speaker C: Oh, it was this trashy place down past.
Down there by the wild chair. When the Wild Cherry closed.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:31] Speaker C: Oh, my God, it was horrible place. No tips, no dancing. It was just a place for me to get out of the cold.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: So it was. It was it the was. It used to be the Wild Cherry?
[00:10:45] Speaker C: Maybe. Or maybe it was on the same street, but it was down in the grunge.
But I just need Wild cherry in.
[00:10:55] Speaker A: In 1984, they lost their liquor license.
[00:11:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: And they opened it up as a topless, bottomless bar with no booze.
[00:11:10] Speaker C: Yeah, well, maybe it could have been that, but it was.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: But I think Floaty would remember the Wild Cherry. He talked about it like this was not prime time. There were no starlets there. There were no good looking women there. They were just old guys. It smelled like booze and urine.
[00:11:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
I danced in the Wild Cherry.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:34] Speaker C: Once and met some people.
Oh, gosh, I don't even know their name. And they turned me on to. That's how I met John and Morgan.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:48] Speaker C: But, you know, you gotta do what you got to do when you got to do it.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:11:54] Speaker C: You know, you got to put fillers out.
And that's only because I had work in that part of town so I could, you know, make money without being terrified of Hanson, because he was still up there and I knew it, but he would never come down to them places I didn't think.
And then I danced at kitties because I didn't need nothing to work to dance at kitties.
You know what I mean? John and Morgan took me under their wing. And lo and behold, one night, here comes Hanson. He's in the door. And I'm like, oh, my God, you guys, there he is. There he is. That's Hanson. And they chased him out in the parking lot.
And everybody knew it was his green Buick with the slice in the back.
And they ran him off.
[00:12:47] Speaker B: At the risk of being a nag, I keep going. I have more questions. Let's get this right. Luckily, I have the help of Glenn Fl's contemporaneous notes.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: Okay, so what?
[00:13:04] Speaker B: She's.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: What does he say?
[00:13:05] Speaker B: He says, I just had it and I lost it.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: So. So what you're looking for there? But you.
They're looking for you. But he said, you got to talk to 50 people before you come out of this. I heard. She heard. He went into the club. He said, she heard I was looking for her. She came out and she started dancing. G String. Very, very thin top. Her boobs were hanging out, and she looked like death.
Her legs were all skinny. Her skin was all white. She was bruised all up and down, her legs and arms. And she was shaking.
Her hair was just a mess. She looked like death warmed over. She had scabs on her arms. She was picking at herself. She was bad, strung out, and she was. She looked terrible. Terrible.
I'm trying to do his voice. She looked worse than when I first met her. She had just gone downhill fast.
[00:14:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: Then he says the pressure was getting to her. So she was having a hard time.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: And that bothered me.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: I kept asking her, the pimp knows I'm coming here to scoop you up. Because I'd come some. I would. I. Because I'd come by once a week and we go have coffee.
[00:14:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:24] Speaker D: And he didn't care. Billy H. Didn't care.
He knew what I was doing was the right thing. He didn't care.
[00:14:33] Speaker A: So in Flo's mind, though this is interesting. The two of you disagree here.
According what Flo perceived was the pressure.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: And the pressure was the pimp was.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Worried that she was dumping on him.
She kept telling the pimp that that's. That it's because of the Hansen case.
[00:14:53] Speaker D: He didn't care.
He said, do what you got to do.
You know that man killed a lot of people.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: Right? So. So this is kind of the cops and robbers thing, right? Like the cops, you know? People in that business don't trust the cops, and the cops don't trust people in that business.
And. And it's really hard for that. Them to ever reach that point where.
Right.
Yeah.
[00:15:21] Speaker D: But really look at Joe. Didn't care. I didn't even see him that much, really. It.
That's because. Why he always let me do my own thing.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: Well, that's good, right?
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
He never got mad at me in the real sense.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: Cindy is of course, a cog in a much bigger clock work.
Bunch of parts, disparate parts, all trying to move in the same direction, not always succeeding.
So we get kind of to the crescendo, to the point where Cindy finally says, enough.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: There's been some stuff going on that's kind of going on in the background without you, but it. It affects you because as. As Flothi says, she's really feeling the pressure.
You know, you leave. You leave Gentleman's Retreat.
Well, you stop living there is what they had. You were still working there, apparently, and then you disappear entirely a couple days later.
[00:16:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: And they have to go find you.
[00:16:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: They don't find you. They just find you at that little stupid club and they don't. You won't tell them where you're staying, but you're staying with Morgan and John.
[00:16:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
Yeah. And that's a whole different bunch of people in the clubs.
That's a whole different character. That's a whole chameleon Al together.
That's a different. You know, them are different after hours, different party people.
They know. They know different pimps and stuff.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: All right.
[00:17:18] Speaker C: You know, that's a whole new click.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:22] Speaker C: That's a whole new bunch of people doing weird.
Putting drops in your drinks.
You know, you waking up in strange places.
You don't know where you've been, what's going on. Your clothes are all gone through. You know what I mean?
That's some crazy.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: So that's. Thank you for saying that. Because that's. I mean, you say, you know, it was. I was in. I was in a world of trouble.
And. Yeah, now I understand why. That's the details.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: And.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: And that's the sense Fluti got when he came there to pick you up.
[00:17:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: This is not a good scene.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: This is not a good scene.
[00:18:03] Speaker A: So you Left Gentleman's Retreat, February 3, 1984.
[00:18:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:10] Speaker A: The next day, Flo finds you working at that dive bar wherever.
[00:18:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:15] Speaker A: Okay.
By 11th of February, you're tired of all that and you call Flo and say, come get me. And he picks you up at John and Morgan's Government Hill apartment.
Yeah, And Flo, by the way, had the impression that John was. Was acting as a pimp.
[00:18:42] Speaker C: He could have probably had that impression, but that wasn't the case.
It was just not going good.
There was other couple other people there, and it was just like, come get me. I got to get out of this situation.
[00:19:04] Speaker D: Sam, Cindy and I both thank you for listening.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: We acknowledge that her story is often gritty and sometimes painful.
That said, we promise not to sugarcoat anything.
See you next time.
