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True Detective Night Country brings a new twist to the thrilling series. This man disappeared 48 hours ago. In this podcast, we hear from the show's creators and creatives. I love the feeling of a darkness. There's things deeper than what you can see. Alaska felt like a natural place to explore these themes.. I'm Alice Khanniklen, and this is the True Detective Night Country podcast. Listen wherever you get your podcast. Watch the HBO original True Detective Night Country exclusively on Max. A cast recommends, Podcasts We Love.

Chris and Rosie Ramsey here. Listen to our British podcast award and Comedy Award-winning podcast.

I also won the most handsome podcast co-host award, didn't I? Yeah, okay. About that, I might have made that one up. What? Yeah. In our podcast, we talk beefs, parenting, grown up, and so much more. What about me most improved podcaster trophy? Yeah, that one as well. Just search married annoyed wherever you get your podcast. Don't you dare tell me that you made up my podcast participation certificate as well. We need to have a chat.

Acast is home to the world's best podcasts, including The Blindboy podcast, Ready to be Real with Sheila Shoiger, and the one you're listening to right now.

This podcast explores themes of murder and rape. Listener discretion is advised. Outside the oil boom town of Anchorage, two young women, one a possible sex worker and the other, a 24-year-old dancer named Sherry Morrow, have been found murdered in the space of two years. For Detective Maxine Farrell, these bodies are part of a much bigger picture.

Of the number of girls I was collecting as missing persons, I think it was about 10, 12 girls. I've got a feeling that maybe there's a serial killer out there. It was everything for me to stop this.

All I needed to do was get this guy. I I was like, stuck on, We got to get this guy. I'm Dr. Michelle Ward, and this is Mind of a Monster: The Butcher Baker. In this seven-part series, we're taking you back to the summer of 1983 in Alaska. Episode 2, There Were Stuffed Animals Everywhere. One of the most recent additions to Maxine's list of Missing Girls is a young woman named Delin Frey. Her mom calls the Anchorage Police Department in July of 1983. She hasn't heard from her daughter since June. I have a picture of Delin here around the time she went missing. She is shortish with blonde hair in a wavy '70s style, and she has these enormous eyes. I want to give you a sense of Delin's backstory, because as you will hear, this becomes important.

My name is Deborah Frey-Benner. I am a first cousin of Delin Frey. I was raised with her father. We lived in a neighborhood in Baltimore that had lots of row homes. It was a city. In the city, it was called Greek town.

What was the rest of the family like when you were growing up?

My grandmother raised 10 kids by herself. That's including me. They all grew up, and they pretty much got out early because my grandmother was very strict.

What was your relationship like with Delin?

Well, she was six years younger than me. But when she was there, my uncle would bring her to stay. So I took care of her. I played dolls with her. I read her stories. We took walks. Delin, her mom and dad separated, divorced at a very young age. She was different. She had these dark or green eyes, but they were like almond-shaped and very sad, just sad. I mean, she did all the things that a little girl would do. But then there would be times that he would bring her over and leave her, and she would be very quiet. I mean, you can get a word in edgewise with her.

Deborah tells me that Dylan split her time between her dad's house with his new wife and new kids and her mom's house in New Mexico. Do you think she was being mistreated at home?

I think it was other things, and I hate to say it, but I know it happened with one of our relatives because he was that way. And at that time, everything was hush-hush. You didn't tell anybody about what happened, even though you found out a few things and said, Uh-oh, we have this man that's here, and he's doing things to people in our family that he shouldn't be doing things to. You It's very hard.

You think she might have been abused?

I think she was, and I hate to say it, by her own father. I hate to say it.

I just want to step back here for a moment to be clear that Deborah is speculating that Delin was sexually abused as a child by not one, but two men within her large family, including her father. I read somewhere that she was eager to leave home.

Yes, yes, because who could blame her? I mean, I did, too.

She just wanted to get away from her situation?

I think she did. I think she did.

The last time you remember seeing Delin, could you tell me about that?

She came over. My grandmother was babysitting for me, and we just went out. We went and saw old friends.

How old was Delin during that last meeting?

She was 13. She was restless, just like any teenager that has family issues.

This was the mid '70s. Deborah never saw Delin again. I asked our research team to try to work out what happened next. They found some court documents that put De Linn in Anchorage in their early '80s, working at the Shangri-La Health Club. We tried to find out exactly what this place was, but we kept hitting dead ends until we went back to police officer John Daley. He said this was a massage house on 27th Street. It apparently had a pretty impressive sunken grotto. The court documents also mentioned that the police department at this time knew De Linn as a heroine addict. Why do I want you to know about all of this? Because victims of crimes and their histories are often overlooked. Actually, knowing about a victim's background is crucial to understanding what type of person may have committed a crime against them. This is where criminal profiler Dr. Brent Turvie comes in again. Over the years, he's developed something called behavioral evidence analysis.

Behavioral evidence analysis has three parts. The first part is examine training the physical evidence to reconstruct the crime. The next thing is you look at what we call forensic victimology. These are the traits that indicate the intersectionality or the vulnerability of the groups or the individuals being targeted for crimes. We conceptualize those mostly as things related to modus operandi, how the offender got there, how the victim was selected, what they did with the victim during the crime, whether or not they let them live, if they killed them, how did they kill them, if they restrained them, how they do that. That is used to suggest motive. Then finally, the fourth step, if you haven't done those first three steps, you don't have a fourth step. But if you do the first three steps, you can then start doing the profile, which is What's the skill level of the offender in this context with this type of crime? You can have an offender who's very good at burglary, who's very poor, and leaves a lot of evidence behind when they commit sexual assault. When I describe this to new students, they always say, Oh, my God, that's a lot of work.

Yeah, it is. That's the point. If you haven't done that work, then you don't actually know what you're doing. You don't actually know what you're profiling. So it's not a guess. It's a concrete analysis of established behavior, established victimology, and established crimes in characteristics.

Now, I want to be clear here, there's no evidence-based forensic investigation going on in 1983. Far from it. Sherry Morrow's murder case is languishing at the Alaska State Troopers, and the missing dancers are being ignored by everyone except Maxine. But I want to go down part of this road with Brent now to see what Maxine's list of missing dancers and sex workers can tell us about a possible perpetrator. You've got these girls brought in by Talents West. They have similar backgrounds. They have complex trauma. They're also marginalized, right?

So in the context of complex trauma, let's talk about it. There's two kinds. There's trauma, which is from a single event, usually something very traumatic, like witnessing a murder or being sexually assaulted or being the victim of domestic violence. Those are events, and that results in what we call PTSD, right? A specific event that you're reliving because you have not learned how to integrate it into your world or into your sensory experience. Now, complex trauma is things that happen over time that you're not allowed to talk about, that you're not allowed to give voice to, that you're not allowed to reference, that you have to be quiet about. And that is unresolved trauma. Society will not let you acknowledge it or deal with it, or you don't have the resources to deal with it.

When you look down that list and you look into their backgrounds, almost everyone, just like Dylan, who may have been sexually abused or like Sherry Morrow, who also had a difficult past, they all have something that indicates complex trauma.

Exactly. The ones that have that history of, let's say, trauma or violence, that have those addiction problems, that have that financial illiteracy, those are the ones that are going to wind up getting hurt the most. Those are the ones that are going to be the most vulnerable. And sex traffickers are experts at identifying those girls and separating them from the herd.

Yeah, they know what they're doing. They know how to select their talent.

Yeah, it's a business model. It works very well.

And you definitely see that in my area of study as well. Serial killers can become experts at identifying the right victims. They become almost victimologists.

Anyone who's committing successfully or unchecked committing serial crime, whether it's burglary, sexual assault, or serial murder, They learn who they can target and exploit and who will not be protected by the system, by law enforcement or by the government.

The pattern here, the MO of this guy, is to pick up the most of the vulnerable girls. That fits right in with what Susan Bradford said in our last episode, right? Correct. Just to remind everyone, Susan was the friend of Sherry Morrow. She walked her to a date from which she never returned, and she spoke to Sherry's date at the club a few days before. This is her talking to the mind of a monster team in 2020. He'd ask me, Do you have family up here? Where'd you come from?

It's big drill. Do you have sisters and brothers? Where are you from? What you're doing?

This guy is checking her support system. He's checking how vulnerable she really is. As we mentioned in the last episode, Maxine's list of suspects in the Trail of Missing Girls starts small, just three men, a transient worker who fled to Hawaii, a local photographer asking girls for their picture around town, and a middle-aged guy named Robert Hansen. Hansen owns a bakery downtown. He has a wife and two kids. He's last on Maxine's list for a reason, but all that is about to change.

We get in the car and I'm laying down on the back seat with a cover over me. We get to the airport and in the passenger seat, he had a rope and a gun.

You're hearing the voice of 17-year-old sex worker Cindy Paulson in a police interview. Sometimes she's hard to hear, and I'll jump in to tell you what she's saying. It's around 5:00 3:00 AM on June 13, 1983, at Merrill Airfield, just outside of Anchorage. It's summer, so it's been light since around 3:30. Cindy is handcuffed and hidden under a heavy green wool blanket. She watches as a man takes stuff from the car to a small single-engine Bush plane, a Super Cub, parked right next to all the other planes.

Mom, can you take me back to the truck to the plane. Then when he went back to the plane, I looked up and I see him. I couldn't see him from the waist down. And a front driver's door was open, so I went to the back door.

Cindy describes seeing Hanson When with his head right inside the plane, turned away from her, she knows it's her only chance to get away.

And I ran, and he started chasing me again.

Cindy races across the parking lot next to the airfield, barefoot, ducking behind cars to hide from the armed man behind her. She makes a final sprint toward the highway.

And then this guy, I don't want you to stop me because I had handcuffs on my hands and I didn't have no shoes. That was hysterical.

The truck driver asks the handcuffed crying Cindy if she wants to go to the police. She says no. She wants him to drop her at a motel.

And he gave me a ride up the street to the machine, and that's when I call. When am I to come and get me.

Cindy calls her pimp using the motel phone, and the truck driver continues on to work. But by now, he is sufficiently shaken up to call the police himself.

We got the call from dispatch that a white female was running down Fifth Avenue with some pants on and a jacket and handcuffed.

This is the patrol who got sent to check on the report, Greg Baker. He was interviewed for the Mind of a Monster documentary in 2020.

We approached the room with some caution, but after knocking on the door, we realized that Cindy was in a room by herself. She was still handcuffed. I took the handcuffs off of her, tried to calm her down. She was physically shaking when I contacted her. She was extremely distraught and trying to tell me what It happened in one sentence. So it took a while to get her calmed down enough so that I could realize what the situation was.

Slowy, Cindy reveals that she'd been taken hostage and raped by a guy who paid her for oral sex.

She was pretty sure she was going to get killed because she was also aware that women had been disappearing in Anchorage. Only she was probably... She probably had more insight into the problem than I had at the time. I asked her if she would go to a Humana Hospital with me and consent to a sexual assault exam. And she said she would. On the way over there, we passed by Merrill Field. He pointed at a small single engine Bush plane and screamed, There it is, there it is.

Cindy is certain that the plane she sees is the one her attacker was loading up with supplies.

I contacted the ground control, asked them to give me the name of the owner of that tail number, and the name of the owner was Robert Hanson.

True Detective Night Country brings a new twist to the thrilling series. It's meant prepared 48 hours ago. In this podcast, we hear from the show's creators and creatives. I love the feeling of a darkness. There's things deeper than what you can see. Alaska felt like a natural place to explore these themes. Uvunga Khannik. I'm Alice Khanniklen, and this is the True Detective Night Country podcast. Listen wherever you get your podcast. Watch the HBO original True Detective Night Country exclusively on Max. A cast recommends podcasts. We We love.

Chris and Rosie Ramsey here. Listen to our British podcast award and Comedy Award-winning podcast.

I also won the most Handsome Podcast Co-Host Award, didn't I? Yeah, okay. About that, I might have made that one up. What? Yeah. In our podcast, we talk beefs, parenting, grown up, and so much more.

What about me most improved podcaster trophy?

Yeah, that one as well. Just search married annoyed wherever you get your podcast. Don't you dare tell me that you made up my podcast participation certificate as well. We need to have a chat.

Acast is home to the world's best podcasts, including The Blind Boy podcast, Ready to be Real with Sheila Shoiger, and the one you're listening to right now.

It's the 13th of June, 1983.

Officer Greg Baker has a lead lead on the rape and kidnapping of sex worker Cindy Paulson. A plane she identifies as belonging to her attacker is owned by Robert C. Hansen, living on Old Harbor Road.

Ask a couple more patrol officers to go over to the address and to stand by.

As the officers wait for Hansen to return home, Cindy Paulson gives the police a full statement about what happened to her the night before. But before we dive into With that, I want to get some background on Cindy from author Leland Hale. Tell us about Cindy Paulson.

Cindy Paulson had grew up in a very fractured family and started working as a sex worker at age 13 or 14.

Oh, my gosh.

And she'd worked in Portland. Then they came up to Alaska. Actually, by the time she got to Alaska, she was fairly new working in Alaska.

She was new to the area. She was young. She had a traumatic past. I hope you see where I'm going with this. She fits right in with the profile of the other girls who have been reported missing in the last couple of years. In Anchorage at this time, she's working with a pimp and staying with him in a motel room near the airfield. Most nights, she heads to the main Anchorage Strip, named, as we mentioned before, the World's Longest Bar, and it's here on 4,000 Avenue that she plies her trade.

So one night, she's working the street and a guy stops and talks to her. She asks for money for cigarettes, and he says, I don't have change. And then he goes to his wallet. And one of the things she sees is there's lots of bills in there. They look like 20s and they look like 100s. And so this is his come on. So they make an appointment, not for tonight, for the next day, she oversleeps. She oversleeps. So she doesn't make the connection with him. But the next night, lo and behold, here's this guy again.

What you're about to hear is audio of Cindy recounting her ordeal a few months later to an Alaska state trooper. It closely matches her police statement that she gave at the time.

I was on a corner shift in Denali, and this gentleman here, he was by in a parking and offered me. I got in the car voluntarily. I was talking with this man and he offered me $20 for a low job in the car. I said, Fine, no problem.

Just a note about this. I'm going to play Cindy's story for you pretty straight because I want you to get a sense of exactly how detailed her account is. But every now and again, she's hard to hear, so I'll fill in the gaps. And in this next bit, it's really hard to hear. So I'm going to summarize. Cindy and this guy pull over in his car, and she starts to give him oral sex. But while she's doing this, he starts to play around with the necklaces on her neck and somehow handcuffs one of her hands.

And I was trying to get loose, and he pulled out a gun. And he got my other hand cut just for inciting him because I didn't really... I fought, but not a lot because I knew I was going to do something.

She's saying, I fought, but not a lot because I knew he would do something.

What did the gun look like? It was a big revolver gun, like a police gun. The handle was brown. It had a long barrel. Describe this man for me. He's got that same darkish-brownish hair. Really short. He's got like, frog warts in his face. Butt teeth. And if I'm not missing, I think he got I was wearing the blue eyes, more as class. And he's about 5'6, played that 170 times. He took me to his house on Old Barber Road, Marble. Take a ride to Jams, and we go all the way down to a blue house on the right-hand side, just past the dead-end sign. Do you know your way around town well, or why Did you happen to remember so well where it was at? No. But see, when he was driving, I observed everything because this motherfucker wasn't getting away with it. I knew I was in trouble. And I really, really If there was any chance of me getting away, he wasn't getting away with it. You come into the garage. Now, tell me what happens then. He takes me out of the car and takes me to the house. He took me downstairs.

I was handcuffed the whole time. There was fish, there was wolfskins, there were stuffed animals everywhere. Big old caribou and goat heads, big ones stuffed everywhere. Ducks, birds, the foosball table, the pool table, and then there's another window on the street side. I sat down on the chair next to the coffee table. He tied a rope around my neck in the coffee table. He pulled a bearskin right around. All the time, he kept telling me, Don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you if you call up for a minute. He had an infection from me on the I'm not going to risk it. This is the same time you're tied with your neck to the coffee table? Yes. So if I move too far, it will choke me.

Once he was done, Cindy says her attacker wrapped a chain around her neck four times, handcuffed her, and He left her.

I wasn't for five hours. What did he do? Slept on the couch. Did you leave anything in the house? Just a towel I had peed on. What did he do when he woke up? He came over to me and sat down and just staring at me. I start crying. He said, Mom, I wanted to go home until at night. To your mom? Yeah.

What did he say to dad?

He just said, Well, don't worry about it. Everything's going to be okay. I'm not going to hurt you. And then he does when he told me about the other girls. What did he say about the other day? He had seven other girls there before.

Cindy's saying that this guy mentioned other girls he'd done this to, seven of them.

And he told me that since he liked me so good, he would take me to his cabin. He would make love to me one time and bring me back. I told him, Okay, fine. That's good. I acted like I wanted to go. What if he would have acted differently? What would he have done? I would have killed me there in the house. Nobody would have known. It was so dark when it was downstairs. Quiet. He had an animal. But what time was it that You left the house? Probably it was early in the morning. And he said that he had a plane over at Mell Airfield, that we would go there, and he would take me to his cabin and bring me back. And I knew that I was not going to come back.

I wasn't going to come back. Cindy was convinced she would die out in the wilderness. Oh, my God, Leland, that is heartbreaking. It's so hard to listen to.

She sounds so young.

She's a kid. She's not even 18.

Then soon she starts talking and you get this other sense of this woman is talking about every little microscopic detail. She knows the street. She can actually talk you through Going downstairs into the basement, what the basement looked like, all the stuffed animal heads, the foosball table, the pool table, the couch, the TV.

For Greg Baker, hearing this story for the first time, just hours after the attack took place, it has a profound effect on him.

She was genuinely afraid that she was going to die and that nobody would know how, where, or ever find her body again. So I believed her and followed up as if I would follow up any sexual assault complaint. Contact us today with The officers waiting outside Hansen's house radio Greg to say that they've made contact with Robert Hansen.

At this point in the police report, Greg notes, Officer Baker was advised by units who have now located the scene that matched not only the description by Cindy Paulson, but was the address indicated by the registration printout of the plane. Hansen agrees to come down to the station voluntarily.

He looked like an ordinary guy. He said he owned a bakery at ninth of Ingra. He said that he hadn't been involved with any prostitutes that morning. He He was just confused as to why we were contacting him. I told him pretty straight up what the situation was. He said, Well, she's lying because that certainly wasn't what he was doing last night. Then I took him over to investigations.

Okay, so here is what we need to understand about police hierarchy. Greg is a beat cop. When he encounters a crime like this, he takes down information, starts following leads, even takes Hanson's statement. But this is a rape and kidnapping case. He must hand it over to a more senior officer, someone in investigations. And that is what he does. And it's this senior officer who starts interviewing Hansen.

I went back to a patrol, and I started doing my paper on the call because I thought that Robert would He'd probably be arrested. I finished up my paper, went back over to the investigator to ask him what happened, how he had progressed with the interview. He said that he, of course, believed Mr. Hansen, and that the story was probably more likely to be that Cindy and Mr. Hansen had, in fact, engaged in some activity for money, and that he had either refused to pay her the agreed price or she had jumped the price on him and he refused to pay it. But in retaliation, she had made up this story and had called or had arranged for the police to become involved.

Hansen claims he did pay Cindy Paulson for sexual services, but not on the night of the 12th or 13th June. On that night, the night of Cindy's attack, he has an alibi. I have the police report of the Cindy Paulson rape right in front of me. It's 27 pages long, typed out on aging cross-checked paper with a typewriter. The notes from Hansen's interview state, I did not pick up any women or prostitutes downtown last night. I was over at a friend of mine's house. Then he says around 11:30, he went to another friend's house and stayed until 5:00 AM before driving to Merrill Field to put a seating his airplane.

The investigator did call, made a phone call to this friend of Mr. Hansen's, where he had supposedly been all night. And over the phone, he verified that the alibi was true. It was about a two-minute phone call.

In fact, two short calls are made to both of Hansen's friends, and they both corroborate his whereabouts. At least one of the friends is telling the truth. His wife and kids also had dinner with Hansen that night.

So now the cops have this dilemma. Do we believe Cindy or do we believe his friend? And in fact, one of the cops confronts the friend and say, Now is the time to tell me the truth. No, I'm telling you the truth. Not lying. And so that sets up this situation where you have a tendency to believe the important people, and they just happen to be males.

It's a sex worker's word against not one, not two, but three men. Hanson's friends, one is a manager of a big insurance company, and the other is a professional boat builder. They are considered upstanding members of the community.

While I was over there, the investigator asked Mr. Hanson if he would give us a consent to search his residence. When he consented, that was great. That's less paper less time involved. I asked if I could go with the investigator to search the inside of the house. And we said, Sure.

Agreeing to a voluntary search of his home is like Hansen's calling card of innocence.

Hansen rode in in front past your side, and I got in the back of the investigator's vehicle, and we were driving over to Old Harbor. And he was talking about his hunting. He was real calm. He was almost too calm for being accused of sexually assaulting somebody.

Inside the house, Greg and the investigator head straight down to the basement, the scene of Cindy's rape and imprisonment.

Everything was like Cindy Paulson said it should be. And there was a pool table, the foosball table. There was a bear rug on the floor. There was a ram there, and there was another head or two up on a wall. It was all just like she described. To a T. And so I was searching and I found a hollow wall that was secured, not secured, but hidden by a piece of paneling. And inside that hollow cavity were quite a few guns, rifles, a few pistols. I remembered seeing a Mini D14, which is a Ruger semi The automatic 223.

The 223, it's a common hunting rifle. The weapon that Cindy described in her statement, the handgun with the long barrel, it isn't among the hidden cachet. So Greg superior asks Hansen if he owns a handgun. He says no.

So the investigator didn't push him when he denied having a handgun. Nothing was seized. I was a young rookie with APD at the time, so he was going to make that decision. And I was not going to suggest or get in his way. He was the experienced investigator.

As Greg and his boss finish up their search, Greg notices two things, some green army blankets that match the description of the blanket Cindy said she was covered with in her attacker's car, and a ladder propped up against an attic hatch.

I actually asked the investigator if we wanted to climb up and look. I mean, an addict is a very common place to hide things. He said, No. He said, Mr. Hansen has been cooperative enough. There's no sense to push him. We just thanked Mr. Hansen for his cooperation and left him there with his car.

There are no charges filed. Pending any further investigation, Hansen is a free man. We've gone over in detail Greg's recollection of the case and his opinion of how it was handled. But we also have the police reports written at the time, and I think these are important to look at because they don't just tell us the detail, they also reveal the attitudes of the officers writing up the case. So, Leland, the report here says that the basement where Cindy was held, quote, this room was searched with no signs of any chains, ropes, or either the towel the victim urinated on or the washcloth she stated she wiped herself off on after the assault. I mean, how many of us expect to find a completely untouched crime scene when hours have passed since the crime?

I mean, they're looking for a urine stained towel. Okay, do you guys think... I mean, maybe you don't do laundry. I don't know. Did you think to look in the washing machine?

Yeah, because if I have evidence in my house after I commit a crime, I'm not going to just leave it lying there.

It's just all these little pieces that the lead investigator was willing to overlook. And again, there's this whole thing of an alibi. And of course, what's the best way to contact an alibi witness? You go see them. No, no, just ring them up on the phone. That's fine. We don't have the time for that nonsense.

Exactly. Another thing that stands out to me written here says, During this entire search, it should be noted that the suspect was extremely cooperative, gave the officer's absolutely no problems regarding information or access to his residence, his vehicle, or his airplane. I'm sitting here wondering, what relevance does that have to this case or the allegations against him? None, right?

Zero.

None. But I think it does tell us how the officer's viewed this whole thing.

It's a shoddy job, and they've already got their pre-written conclusions. It's a hooker, and this guy is really nice.

Criminal profiler, Brent Turvie, agrees.

It's that he's one of them. This is the point to understand here.

It's like they look at him and they see this middle-aged white guy, big house, owns a business, We get him. He's just like us.

Yeah. When you see prostitutes or sex workers of other kinds being abducted or murdered and law enforcement doing their investigation properly and the people doing it escaping any accountability, that's not an accident.

And these women who aren't being believed, have we come any further from that? Do women still face an uphill battle to be believed about a sexual assault and a rape?

Yes, they still do. Women still face an extremely uphill battle in this regard in terms of being believed and being credible. Cops, they withhold good justice and good effort from people that they just don't believe, that they just don't like. And they hold that out as some credential. I didn't believe her, so I didn't do this. Oh, really? You didn't believe her? If you didn't believe her, great. Do the investigation. And show what's true.

Yeah, but all of that notwithstanding, I actually think Greg does everything he's supposed to do because he takes Cindy to the rape center, he tracks down the plane, he sends officers to pick up Hansen. You can see from even how he writes up the case, he treats it really seriously, but it's his superior. He's made up his mind already. He just phones it in.

People working on the street, working the cases directly, hands-on, once they develop a relationship with a particular complainant or victim, They tend to be more empathetic once they get past that barrier of listening, once they can hear them and see their suffering and connect with them on a human level and allow that to penetrate their subconscious, now they're going to help them like a sister, daughter, or mother. Superiors don't have that problem.

I want you to remember here that while this whole Cindy Paulson case is going down, Maxine is investigating missing dancers and sex workers, but she's doing it on her own time with no resources. In fact, to show you how little the departments were talking to each other, we checked with Maxine after our interview and asked whether she knew about Cindy's case at the time it was happening. She said no. She only heard about Cindy's abduction and rape after everything was said and done.

The That case should have been given to me, and I should have been the one doing the search because I knew all the things to look for. These guys didn't even look for those things. And you get a guy with an alibi, you just don't take it right away like that. You pressure him a little bit. I sit down a little bit and talk further with the guy. If it's not true, and we're going to investigate what you said, you go to jail for the same in charge.

So just for a minute, let's step into an alternate world. One where Maxine brings up the missing girls to her superiors, and they set up a proper investigation with resources and manpower Then Cindy comes into the police station with this story. What would have happened? Some dots might have been connected. Further searches may have been done. Some malibis drilled down on. Maybe. It's more likely anyway. But that isn't what happened. In fact, as Greg Baker tells us, quite the opposite.

I had not heard anything about the also investigation for probably three weeks, maybe four. I figured investigations take a while sometimes. But I pulled a copy of a report. I think I just pulled it up on a computer at that time and noticed This is the disposition on the case. It was suspended. In other words, there was no more investigation going on about that case at all.

On the police report, the exact words read, This case is, and then it goes to all caps, Closed. Except clearance. No further action. It was closed on the 24th of June, 11 days after the rape. Brent got a word for this.

This is tone checking. That's what it is. It's tone checking. You're tone checking the female community there of sex workers saying, Hey, I don't think you guys matter enough. So you're on your own. Understand that you're less than the rest of us, and don't pretend that you aren't because you're not going to get help. When you're not helping a particular community and letting them suffer and die, that's a tone check.

For Greg Baker, just like Macteen Farrell, it wasn't good enough.

And I just... That bothered me because, I mean, damn it. I knew that Robert Hansen was lying to me because I saw where the assault happened, and it matched Cindy's description to a T. So I decided I couldn't let that go.

Greg makes a similar decision to the one Maxine made a couple of years earlier. He may be a patrol cop, but he's going to carry on investigating the case his superiors have shut down.

I knew that if I went over and talk to the investigator, he would tell me to go back to a patrol business and leave investigations to investigators. And that's just the way it had to be.

On our next episode, we dive deep into the past of Greg's main suspect, Robert Hansen.

I hated the word school. I guess this is why I burnt down the bus barn way back in Iowa.

Mind of a Monster: Butcher Baker is produced by AeroMedia for ID. The executive producer for ID is Jessica Lauher. Aeromedia's producer is Jess Liendivier. Editor, Millie Tappner. Audio engineering by Mahony Audio Post. Our Line producer is Philippa Wittle. Our production manager is Alexandra Kelly. Our junior production manager is Jody Tanner-Wild. Our production coordinator is Shannon Tunacliff. Our Archive producer is Katya Lung. Our Assistant Producer is Isabel Wilson. Aeromedia Series producer is Gabrielle Nash. And executive producer is Stuart Pender. I'm your host, Dr. Michelle Ward. You can follow this series wherever you get your podcasts. We'd love it if you could take a minute to leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. It really makes a difference.