Episode One: In A Dark Room

[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. [00:00:36] 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, Hansen 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 1. [00:01:14] Speaker C: I'm in Dark room and it's like a green tabletop and these police are grilling me. Did you try to rob him? Did you try to rob him? What's going on? What happened? And I said, no. I said, and I'm telling them what Hanson did to me. You know, he. He put a chain around my neck. And I'm trying to tell him that I peed on the floor in a towel, so there's pee there. And I'm telling them about all these animals on the walls and that he had a.357 Magnum. And I'm telling about the basement and I'm terrified. And so they're looking at each other like, what. What the was that about? [00:02:22] Speaker A: Let's stipulate that the police describe meeting a, quote, very distraught white female adult in handcuffs. That's their first contact. That's the very first report. Let's also stipulate that in that initial report they talk about a male adult performing anal and vaginal sex and laying down on the couch and went to sleep. Let's also stipulate that that initial report says that after awaking, he again vaginally assaulted her. And after that second act, advised the victim that he brought seven other women to the residence in the past, and he usually kept them there for a week. [00:03:23] Speaker C: But the quickness that he got the handcuffs on me and flipped me over in the chair. He just said he wanted to take me to his plane and make love to me, take me to his cabin out in the forest and make love to me one more time. And then he was going to let me go, but I knew if I got on that plane he was going to kill me. And they were saying, well, Mr. Hansen, don't say that. He says, you wanted more money and you were threatening him. And I'm just. I just remember my shoulders feeling so thin and closed in. And I remember the. The blonde hair cop. I don't remember. The only cops names I really remember besides Glenn are Baker and Gentili, you know, and he says, well, get dressed in and we'll have a car take you home and take you back to your motel. And that was it. [00:04:30] Speaker A: Let's cut to the chase and put it in plain English. The Anchorage police did not believe her. Well, most of them didn't. The hang up seemed to be the particulars, the specifics of her sexual assault. Was she assaulted three times, twice vaginally and once rectally? Did the act occur on a mattress or was it on a bearskin rug? That question loomed so large in the eyes of at least one officer that they called her back in a second day, the next day, the following day, to ask her point blank, describe what happened. Very short, very brief, in response to how many times she'd been sexually assaulted. Cindy said, and I quote, her answer to this was only one time, and that was vaginally as to where it occurred. Her answer was that she was assaulted while laying on a black bare skin rug. The cops thought they had an easy way to resolve that discrepancy, not just talking to her and asking her response. But they wanted you to take a polygraph. [00:06:00] Speaker C: And I, I would have took it. And they had the tampon as evidence. Yeah, that's what saved my case. That's what saved my life. [00:06:10] Speaker A: In fact, Cindy refused to take the polygraph. She'd already been through the wringer, and let's face it, she was, whether she knew it or not, experiencing the first signs of ptsd. So, no, she wanted out of there. She left. And somehow, one way or another, they were going to punish her for that. Cindy's counterpoint was to provide the police the kind of details only an eyewitness could know. Deep details about Robert Hansen's house, every bit of it. [00:06:51] Speaker B: I gave him a lot more details about the bathroom and more stuff than I can remember because I could count the steps. And I showed him, told him about how when you first come in this kitchen door, his little table thing is right there. And how many steps to get up to the door to go into the kitchen. And what was past the kitchen? I could see that. And there was a. A dresser there that had paper and stuff on it. And there's a window and the TV stand and the tv and I mean, and the toys that were in the toy box. [00:07:31] Speaker A: There's more, much more. And yes, they did want to talk about the sex, because that was what this was all about. That's the allegation. So let's go there. [00:07:42] Speaker C: Yeah, they're saying, so what happened? And there's. And they're asking me, I'm And I'm telling them. He called me and he wanted me to come out, give him a blowjob for 200 bucks. He handcuffed me and changed me and raped me on the bearskin rug in the. In the room right there where the TV was. And I was freaking out. I just was trying to do everything he said. When I went to the bathroom, I had a tampon in, so I just left it. And then he. I heard some chains, and I thought he was gonna do something to me. I didn't know what was gonna happen. I was looking for a way out. And then he said he was gonna take a nap and he was gonna chain me to a pole. He chained. Put the chain around my neck and chained me to the pole next to the pool table while he slept on the couch. [00:08:49] Speaker A: One of Hansen's dirty little secrets was that he was bipolar, which meant he could go days and days without sleeping. In fact, the night before he first met Cindy, he'd been up all night fixing an airplane seat. And while Hanson slept, Cindy had a chance to memorize every single detail. [00:09:13] Speaker C: But while I was chained, I seen the fish, the bass fish, the paperwork on the dresser that goes up to the window, the ram horns, the TV was the old style TV on one of them rickety stands. But he went from being somebody's grandpa to a monster that quick. And it was just about force. He wanted to have the force. [00:09:48] Speaker A: And. [00:09:50] Speaker C: There was no passion, just pure, violent control. [00:09:57] Speaker A: With that level of detail, it's hard to see how anyone could doubt Cindy. But one of them, lead investigator Bill Dennis, was, to say the least, professionally skeptical. Cindy refers to him as the blonde. [00:10:13] Speaker D: Guy, but the blonde guy, no, he. That was Hanson's friend. I don't care what they say. I don't care what. What anybody says. He kept calling me a liar. He said, no, you just wanted money, but money. [00:10:34] Speaker C: And. [00:10:34] Speaker D: And you know what? I'm going to tell you what. I still had my jewelry on, and I still had my 200 in my back pocket. [00:10:44] Speaker A: In other words, Cindy didn't need the money as much as she needed to get the hell out of Hanson's house. As it turned out, Cindy would soon get a chance. They were leaving the house, and she thought at first she would run as soon as they went outside. But they didn't go outside. They went instead to the garage, where Hansen put her in the backseat and covered her with a blanket as they drove, she considered putting the blanket over his head, throwing it over him, but thought better of it. What if they Crashed and killed someone. That would be worse. Finally, they were at Merrill Field at the airport, at Hanson's plane. It was her very last chance. [00:11:33] Speaker B: Car was parked right here. He was. And the hood was up, and he was. And the plane door was open, and he was getting stuff out of his trunk and going to the plane and kept doing that. And when I seen him in the trunk and I seen him go to the plane, I picked up, and he couldn't see me. The door. I don't know how the door opened, but the door was just opened. And I just heard thousands. These voices in my head say, run, run. And I just ran as fast as I could. And then I seen him coming after me with a gun, and I was just hoofing it. [00:12:13] Speaker A: It's important to remember that Cindy was not the only one to escape Hanson. Years before, there were several others, including one woman named Christy Hayes. She had a similar experience. She, too, heard voices in her head telling her to run. [00:12:33] Speaker E: And that's it. I mean, there was. Christy Hayes could talk about him a little bit, but her experience was really kind of, you know, she got away right away. And what's interesting about her, she had the same mental image. When she got away, there was voices telling her to run, run, run. [00:12:57] Speaker B: Yeah, same. [00:12:58] Speaker D: It just overtakes you, and you go. They're not. You're not you. They're all telling you, go. [00:13:08] Speaker B: And I was barefoot, and it was that big gravel, so you couldn't know my. I don't remember the cuts on my feet from the gravel, but I look back, and he had that.357 Magnum, and it was chasing me, and I just kept going. And the fence was so high, so I had to run far. I would say blocks. [00:13:31] Speaker A: Now, of course, I had to ask her, how did she exactly pull this off? I mean, okay, she's telling me she's in the car, he's at the plane. But at what point did he realize, you know, she's not there. [00:13:52] Speaker B: He was at the plane. So by the time I got. Got out the door and started running, he heard a noise, and he probably came back to the car and seen me running down the way, and so he knew he up. So he had to shut the plane, get the car door, and get the hell out of there. But instead, I got one fly in my room. He started chasing me with the gun, telling me, stop, stop. And I didn't. I just kept going, you know, so he had to do what he had to do, and I just kept running. And by then, by the Time he had this done, I had already stopped a car because that's a busy street right there. Yeah, Everybody could see what's going on because the fence wasn't enclosed. It was just one of them cyclone fences. You know, you could see somebody running and somebody chasing you with a gun. [00:14:53] Speaker A: At this point, Fifth Avenue runs east and west. The Chugach Mountains are to the east. And Kinik Arm, the water is to the west. In front of her or behind her? I'm. I'm not sure. I. I need to know. [00:15:10] Speaker B: No, I'm running. I'm running away. [00:15:12] Speaker C: I'm. [00:15:13] Speaker B: I'm headed for the hills. [00:15:15] Speaker A: Okay. [00:15:16] Speaker B: Yeah, the mushin's behind me. Okay, okay. Everything's behind me. I'm leaving everything I know that's dear to me. Far away because I. Merle Field is so big that I got to run opposite direction just to get out away from him. So he could have shot me. Nobody would have known. First car that came, I just jumped out in front of it. [00:16:13] Speaker A: Cindy's rescuer was a man on his way to work. According to the police report, he said he was driving westbound on 5th Avenue. At approximately 5:00 clock in the morning. He observed a white female with handcuffs running out of Merrill Field and onto the roadway. [00:16:32] Speaker B: Even though it was early. I. I had on a blue and white striped shirt. I stuck out like a sore thumb. [00:16:40] Speaker A: Her rescuer stopped. She was hysterical, screaming, he's going to kill me. He took her to her destination, the Mush Inn, dropped her off and went to work. Notably, he said he did not observe anyone chasing Cindy. [00:16:59] Speaker B: I get in the truck. When I get in the truck, I don't see him. I see his car, but I don't see him. And then we go a little ways, maybe the length of Merlefield, till I can get him to turn right. Maybe half a mile, maybe. Maybe a mile or two. And he turns right to the mush in. And then he goes there. And then I use the phone. And I freaked out because I told him, turn here, turn here. [00:17:40] Speaker E: Yeah, yeah, yeah, stuff. [00:17:41] Speaker B: And I screaming, ah. And I still had handcuffs on and my. They were bleeding. I remember that a lot. That really bothered me because my hands were bleeding. It felt like. I felt like just my arms were like my hands were going to be cut off and just blood was dripping down my hands. [00:18:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:03] Speaker B: But wasn't really the case. But it was. [00:18:09] Speaker A: Robert Hansen, meanwhile, had apparently given up the chase. We know now he was headed home. He had a lot of cleaning up to do. Cindy, meanwhile, wanted to get Back to the Big Timber Motel. She wanted to see her pimp. [00:18:31] Speaker B: And then I got a cab there and then I went to my motel. [00:18:37] Speaker E: Actually, I think Mr. Franklin, I think. [00:18:40] Speaker A: Nathan picked you up from the motel. [00:18:48] Speaker E: And so what happened was when you got to the motel, some kind of damn Moose. [00:18:56] Speaker A: Moose Motel. [00:18:58] Speaker E: It's the Moose Motel. [00:19:01] Speaker C: Something. [00:19:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Buzz, for the record, the name of the motel we're talking about is the Mush Inn. It's about a block away from the Big Timber. And yes, we are both have really stuffy noses. I. I don't know about that. I'm sorry. [00:19:22] Speaker B: I just know that when we got to the motel, he took me in the bathroom and he started running water in the bathtub to try and wash all the blood off my hands. And he's asking me what happened. And he had on a yellow shirt, a white shirt, yellow shirt, button up, with jeans and two tone boots, cowboy boots, cream and brown. And he's trying to get the cuffs off me. And he says what? [00:19:55] Speaker C: We're. [00:19:55] Speaker B: And I'm telling him everything that happened. And the guys at Murrowfield, right over there, he says, I'm gonna go get my brother Exy and we're gonna go take care of this. And he leaves, okay? He's freaking out, you know, right. I'm out and he can't control me. [00:20:11] Speaker C: And he. [00:20:12] Speaker B: And he leaves. And his brother Exy and Tiffany, they were staying across the street in the annex of the Timber Lodge. And so I think that's where he went. I don't know. But then a little bit later, here comes a knock at the door and it's the police. [00:20:31] Speaker C: And. [00:20:34] Speaker B: I, I say I didn't. I just remember saying, they said, let us in. Let us in. I said, wait a minute, I'm in handcuffs. I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't do anything wrong. I going to let you in. But, but don't, don't, do not. Don't freak out. I didn't do anything wrong. So I opened the door and I backed up till that minute. I said, I didn't do anything wrong. Take them off. Take them off. And then they took the cuffs off me. [00:21:01] Speaker A: Among those there to help take the cuffs off was an Anchorage police officer named Greg Baker. He would go on to play a key role in this unfolding trauma. It was Baker who transported Cindy to the Alaska Hospital and Medical center for her rape kit exam, stopping along the way at Merrill Field, where they ran into a security guard who said, yeah, I saw some guy running. He slowed down when he noticed. I saw him, went to his car, and I got his license plate number. Of course, Cindy also pointed out Hanson's airplane. That led eventually to the first contact with Mr. Robert Hansen. Police were soon at his door. Unfortunately, Robert Hansen had a head start. [00:21:51] Speaker B: I don't know the time frame from when I left Merrill Field, got in the truck, got to the other motel, caught the cab, got to my motel, put my hands in the water with Nate, and tried to get the crack cuffs off. And then from him coming there, I think that would be about 30 minutes. [00:22:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:13] Speaker B: Yeah. So Hansen had a 30 minute head start on us. [00:22:19] Speaker A: 30 minutes. But Cindy didn't get to the hospital until 6, 53 hours later. In fact, she finally got to the police department for her interview. So lots of time had passed. And during that time, the police had taken Hansen's alibi, had talked to his alibi witnesses. It was roadblock in front of her that said they seemed to follow all the protocols. In fact, they did. [00:22:57] Speaker E: And one of the things, there was. [00:22:59] Speaker A: Two people in there. [00:23:02] Speaker E: Do you. Do you happen to remember them? Like, there was one guy asking the questions. His name was Kennedy and he was a black guy. He was actually one of the first two black guys to ever work for apd. [00:23:19] Speaker B: No, I don't remember him. [00:23:21] Speaker E: And then there was a woman there. Her name was Trisha, and she was with a group called Star. [00:23:31] Speaker B: I don't remember her. [00:23:32] Speaker E: And Star was Stand Together Against Rape. So she was essentially there as kind of a woman's advocate, huh? [00:23:46] Speaker D: I. I don't remember nothing about that. [00:23:49] Speaker A: You were. [00:23:49] Speaker D: She might have came in and gave me some brochures. [00:23:53] Speaker E: No, she was actually there as a representative. [00:23:56] Speaker D: Yeah, I don't remember that. [00:23:58] Speaker E: She was there during the interview. Did not say a word, as far as I know. Anyway, they would go up and be advocates for women who were raped because they knew the cops routinely mistreated the women, routinely sort of said, we don't believe you, we don't believe you. We don't believe. [00:24:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:24:20] Speaker D: Like in my case. [00:24:23] Speaker A: We don't have an exact accounting for how long she was in this interview. We estimate, based on the start time and how many tapes were used, at least 45 minutes. 45 minutes to an hour. Of course, during that time, she was focused on telling them what she needed to tell them. But it's also notable she didn't really remember either of the people who were there. And I'm particularly curious as to why she didn't remember the woman from Star who was there as an advocate. [00:25:02] Speaker E: It Probably. And maybe you were in just no mood for it. And, you know, I don't think. Honestly, I don't think she really understood. [00:25:10] Speaker A: The level of your trauma. [00:25:12] Speaker E: I don't think anybody did. [00:25:15] Speaker B: No, I don't. [00:25:16] Speaker D: I just want to get the hell out of there. [00:25:19] Speaker E: Yeah. Because the. The one piece that would have been like in their. In their sort of what I want to say their contract with the World Star was to provide counseling. [00:25:32] Speaker C: Right. [00:25:35] Speaker A: They had a. [00:25:36] Speaker E: They had. [00:25:38] Speaker A: Go ahead. [00:25:39] Speaker D: They couldn't have touched me. [00:25:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:42] Speaker D: I. I wasn't touchable. I had. Yeah, they couldn't even go there. [00:25:49] Speaker E: Yeah. No, interestingly enough, I came up with another piece of trivia. [00:25:55] Speaker C: Okay. [00:25:55] Speaker E: Bill Dennis, the blonde guy, apparently testified in court that he believed you. And the only reason they didn't do anything was because he blamed it on the D.A. [00:26:07] Speaker D: Rothschild. [00:26:09] Speaker E: No, not Rothschild. There was an assistant D.A. named Stephen Branch Flower. [00:26:15] Speaker D: Why? [00:26:16] Speaker E: Huh? [00:26:17] Speaker B: Why. [00:26:18] Speaker E: Why did they could. Branch Flower. Cardinally said. And there's a statement in. In the police report that he didn't think there was any proof that you'd actually been inside Hansen's house. [00:26:31] Speaker B: Oh, my God. [00:26:34] Speaker A: Sometimes, just sometimes, Cindy's anger at that period, when she looks back, spills over. It's unmistakable. Doesn't happen often, but, boy, when it does. You know, she's speaking here about the search at Merrill Field after she ran from Robert Hansen. [00:26:59] Speaker D: And then you could get out, and you could see my footsteps where I ran, you know, because I was barefoot. All you had to do was look, be a cop, Do a cop's job. [00:27:12] Speaker A: Well, they did. [00:27:14] Speaker E: Yeah, those guys did. [00:27:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:17] Speaker D: But the blonde guy, he. [00:27:19] Speaker B: He didn't. [00:27:21] Speaker D: That's his friend, the donut guy. [00:27:24] Speaker A: Let it be known also that Cindy doesn't feel the same way about all the cops she encountered. Some she picks out for special praise. [00:27:35] Speaker D: When Baker came into my room and I told him, I'm gonna open the door, but. But I'm. But I did not do anything, Okay? I got handcuffs on and I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything. The look on his face when I backed up and he took his handcuffs off. He wanted to grab me and hold me. He had so much empathy for me. [00:28:00] Speaker B: He knew he knew me. He knew it was. [00:28:05] Speaker D: Something was evil was about. He knew he is the only one. And I could tell. [00:28:18] Speaker B: That he knew. [00:28:21] Speaker E: And everything he did after that is consistent with. He knew. [00:28:27] Speaker C: He knew. And. [00:28:30] Speaker D: And then slow thing. [00:28:33] Speaker C: And. [00:28:33] Speaker D: And that's. Bond of trust is y. [00:28:41] Speaker C: Foreign. [00:28:48] Speaker A: Cindy and I both thank you for listening. We acknowledge that our story is often gritty and sometimes painful. That said, we promise not to sugarcoat anything. See you next time.