On June 13, 1983, a seventeen-year-old girl ran barefoot through an Anchorage, Alaska airfield in the early morning hours, handcuffed, and flagged down a passing truck. What happened in the hours before that moment — and what she did in the months that followed — ended the twelve-year killing spree of Robert Hansen, a man who had murdered at least seventeen women and who, without her escape, would almost certainly have killed more. Cindy Paulson is not a peripheral figure in this story. She is the reason it ended.
Quick Bio Table
| Detail | Info |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Cindy Paulson |
| Hometown | Yakima, Washington |
| Age at Time of Abduction | 17 |
| Date of Abduction | June 13, 1983 |
| Location | Anchorage, Alaska |
| Perpetrator | Robert Hansen — known as “The Butcher Baker” |
| Hansen’s Crimes | At least 17 confirmed murders, 30+ kidnappings and rapes, 1971–1983 |
| Key Investigator | Sergeant Glenn Flothe, Alaska State Troopers |
| Hansen’s Sentence | 461 years plus life without parole |
| Hansen’s Death | August 21, 2014, in prison |
| Film Depiction | The Frozen Ground (2013) — Paulson portrayed by Vanessa Hudgens |
| Documentary Coverage | ID’s Very Scary People, “The Butcher Baker: Terror in the Wilderness” |
| Current Status | Grandmother, now sober, living privately — gave interviews in 2025 and 2026 |
Who Robert Hansen Was
Before explaining what Cindy Paulson did, understanding who Robert Hansen was matters — because his public image was precisely what made her case so hard for police to take seriously.
Hansen was a bakery owner in Anchorage. He was a father of two, a husband, and a community member with a reputation for giving free baked goods to local charities. He was also a competitive hunter with numerous trophies and a private pilot. He appeared, to almost everyone who knew him, to be an ordinary, upstanding man.
What no one publicly knew until 1983 was that Hansen had been abducting women from Anchorage’s streets since at least 1971. His method was consistent: he targeted sex workers, exotic dancers, and other women he calculated would not be believed if they reported him. He brought them to his home, restrained them, and then flew them in his private Piper Super Cub aircraft to a remote cabin in the Alaskan wilderness, where he released them and hunted them with a rifle. At least seventeen women died this way. He marked their locations on an aviation map he kept hidden in his home.
He had been reported before. Women had come forward. Police had consistently dismissed their accounts because Hansen — white, middle-class, a business owner with alibis — was the kind of man whose word outweighed that of the women he targeted.
What Happened on June 13, 1983
In the early hours of June 13, 1983, Hansen approached Cindy Paulson in his car. She was seventeen years old, living in Anchorage with her mother, and working as a dancer and sex worker. When she got into his vehicle, he immediately pulled a gun, placed her in handcuffs, and took her to his home, where he restrained her.
He then drove her to Merrill Field, Anchorage’s general aviation airport, intending to load her onto his plane and fly her to his remote cabin — the same route he had used with women he subsequently killed.
What happened at the airfield changed everything. While Hansen was occupied loading the plane, with his back turned, Paulson managed to crawl from the back seat to the front. She opened the driver’s door. She ran barefoot — she had deliberately left her sneakers behind in the car as physical evidence of her presence there. A truck driver named Robert Yount saw her on Sixth Avenue and stopped. She was taken to help.
That split-second decision — that run — ended the case. Not immediately, and not without a fight. But that moment was the beginning of the end for Hansen.
What Police Did — And Did Not Do
What happened next is one of the most documented institutional failures in the case. Paulson went immediately to authorities and named Hansen specifically. She described his home. She described the airfield. She described the handcuffs, the gun, the plane.
Anchorage Police Department detectives did not believe her. Hansen was well known as a respectable community member. He produced alibis — two acquaintances who said he had been with them. Detectives concluded the encounter was a transaction dispute rather than an abduction, and declined to pursue the case.
One APD patrol officer — deeply troubled by this dismissal — photocopied the case file and sent it to the Alaska State Troopers. That act of individual conscience kept the case alive.
Meanwhile, Paulson left Anchorage, moved to Portland, was arrested twice, and eventually made her way back to Alaska. She had no professional support. She had not spoken to a therapist. She was carrying what had happened entirely on her own.
The Investigation Turns
Separately, Alaska State Trooper Sergeant Glenn Flothe had been investigating a pattern of missing and murdered women in the Anchorage area. Bodies were being found in the wilderness. The pattern pointed toward a specific kind of perpetrator — someone with access to a private aircraft and knowledge of remote terrain.
Flothe found Paulson. He earned her trust. On September 27, 1983, she gave him a formal recorded statement. Her account was specific, detailed, and internally consistent. She had been inside Hansen’s home. She could describe it. She could identify the plane. Her sneakers had been left at the scene.
Using aviation records, investigators linked the plane she described to Hansen. In October 1983, search warrants were executed at Hansen’s home, his vehicle, and his cabin. What investigators found confirmed everything Paulson had said. The layout of his home matched her description precisely. Investigators found firearms later connected to victims. They found a collection of jewelry — souvenirs kept from women he had killed. They found the aviation map with locations marked.
Confronted with this evidence, Hansen confessed. He admitted to killing seventeen women. He admitted to abducting and raping Cindy Paulson. He was charged with four murders — Joanna Messina, Sherry Morrow, Paula Goulding, and a victim known as Eklutna Annie — and with the abduction and rape of Cindy Paulson.
In February 1984, Robert Hansen was sentenced to 461 years plus life without parole. Cindy Paulson was present at the sentencing. She has described the experience as both frightening and necessary. The morning after Hansen was convicted, with Sergeant Flothe and his wife taking her to dinner at the Corsair Restaurant in Anchorage as a quiet acknowledgment of what she had done, she boarded a plane and left Alaska.
The Failures the Case Exposed
Cindy Paulson’s case is studied in law enforcement training and victim advocacy precisely because of what it reveals about institutional failure. Her report was dismissed not because her account was inconsistent or her evidence was weak — it was neither. It was dismissed because of who she was, and who Hansen appeared to be.
The pattern of disbelief she encountered was not unique to her case. It reflected a documented, systematic problem in how law enforcement agencies of that era — and in many places still — evaluated the credibility of certain victims against the credibility of certain suspects. Women in vulnerable economic circumstances reporting crimes by men with social standing faced structural skepticism that had nothing to do with the evidence they provided.
Paulson’s case is also notable for what she did despite that failure. She cooperated with Sergeant Flothe when he approached her, even after having been dismissed by the initial investigating detectives. She provided a formal statement. She took an enormous personal risk in going on record against a man who had not yet been arrested and who had already demonstrated he was dangerous. That required a different kind of courage than the escape itself.
The System That Failed Her, and the One Person Who Didn’t
Sergeant Glenn Flothe’s role in this case deserves specific acknowledgment. He was not the first officer to hear Paulson’s account — he was the one who listened to it seriously after others had not. Earning her trust took time and deliberate effort. His handling of the September 1983 recorded statement — ensuring it was detailed, specific, and preserved as evidence — was instrumental in building the case that ultimately put Hansen away.
The unnamed APD patrol officer who photocopied the file and forwarded it to the Alaska State Troopers also played a crucial role. Without that act, it is possible the case never reaches Flothe at all. The names of people who do the right thing in systems designed to discourage it are often not the ones remembered.
Where She Is Now
Cindy Paulson did not live the years after Hansen’s conviction cleanly or easily. By Flothe’s own account, she returned to sex work after leaving Alaska. She carried the trauma without professional support for roughly twenty-five years. Filmmaker Scott Walker, who tracked her down in the late 2000s while researching the case, found that she had never spoken to a therapist.
In more recent years, she has spoken publicly about her experiences and her recovery. As of 2025 and 2026, she is sober and a grandmother. She has given interviews to Investigation Discovery and other outlets, including a 2026 account describing the moment of her escape with characteristic precision — she still does not know exactly how she got the back door of Hansen’s car open, but she remembers clearly what she was thinking as she ran.
She lives privately. She does not seek public attention. She reflects, in recent interviews, on the women she may have saved by stopping Hansen when she did — the women who might have been his next victims had she not escaped and eventually given that formal statement.
The Film and Media Coverage
The Frozen Ground, released in 2013, depicts the case with Vanessa Hudgens as Cindy Paulson and Nicolas Cage as a composite of the state trooper investigators. The film is broadly accurate in its major factual points while taking dramatic license with details. Paulson served as a consultant on the project.
Investigation Discovery’s Very Scary People devoted an episode — “The Butcher Baker: Terror in the Wilderness” — to the case, featuring Paulson speaking in her own words. The People magazine exclusive in May 2026 quoted her directly from a recent interview, making it one of the most current firsthand accounts available.
What This Case Means Beyond the Facts
Cindy Paulson’s story is documented extensively now. True crime coverage has made her name widely known. But the coverage sometimes reduces a complex human story to a single dramatic moment — the run across the airfield — without fully accounting for what came before or after.
Before the escape: a seventeen-year-old who had already experienced significant trauma, living in difficult circumstances, who nonetheless recognized danger, thought quickly under extreme duress, and acted with deliberate intention — leaving her shoes as evidence.
After the escape: years of being dismissed, then years of struggling without support, then the patient work of cooperating with investigators who took her seriously when others had not, then presence at a sentencing that sent her abductor away for the rest of his life, then more years carrying the weight of all of it.
She is, in the documented record, the reason Robert Hansen’s twelve-year killing spree ended in 1983 rather than continuing. That is not a small thing to carry.
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FAQ
1. Who is Cindy Paulson?
A survivor of Alaskan serial killer Robert Hansen. In 1983, at age seventeen, she escaped from Hansen’s custody at an Anchorage airfield, reported the crime, and ultimately provided the key evidence that led to his arrest, confession, and conviction for seventeen murders and numerous other crimes.
2. Who was Robert Hansen?
Known as “The Butcher Baker,” Hansen was an Anchorage bakery owner and private pilot who abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered at least seventeen women between 1971 and 1983. He flew victims to remote Alaskan wilderness locations and hunted them. He died in prison on August 21, 2014.
3. How did Cindy Paulson escape?
While Hansen was loading his plane at Merrill Field airfield with his back turned, she crawled from the back seat to the front of his car, opened the driver’s door, and ran barefoot. She deliberately left her shoes in the car as physical evidence. A passing truck driver stopped and helped her reach safety.
4. Why did police initially not act on her report?
Anchorage Police Department detectives dismissed her account because Hansen had social standing as a business owner and family man, and because he produced alibis. The systematic credibility gap between certain victims and certain suspects led investigators to decline pursuing the case.
5. Who eventually took her case seriously?
Alaska State Trooper Sergeant Glenn Flothe, who was independently investigating a pattern of missing and murdered women and who earned Paulson’s trust over time. He took her formal recorded statement on September 27, 1983.
6. What evidence did Paulson’s testimony lead to?
Search warrants executed at Hansen’s home, cabin, and vehicle in October 1983 found firearms linked to victims, jewelry kept as souvenirs from women he had killed, and an aviation map marking locations of victims. The layout of his home matched Paulson’s description precisely.
7. What sentence did Robert Hansen receive?
He was sentenced to 461 years plus life without parole in February 1984 for four murders and the abduction and rape of Cindy Paulson. He died in custody in 2014.
8. Was The Frozen Ground based on this case?
Yes. The 2013 film stars Vanessa Hudgens as Cindy Paulson and Nicolas Cage as a composite investigator character. Paulson served as a consultant. The film depicts the major factual events while taking some dramatic license.
9. Where is Cindy Paulson now?
As of 2025 and 2026, she is sober and a grandmother, living privately. She has given recent interviews to Investigation Discovery and People magazine, reflecting on her survival and the women she may have saved by stopping Hansen.
10. How many victims did Robert Hansen have?
He confessed to killing seventeen women and admitted to kidnapping and raping approximately thirty others. He was formally charged with four murders and Paulson’s abduction and rape. The actual number of victims may be higher — the investigation identified remains across remote Alaskan wilderness locations over several years.
11. What does this case reveal about how victims are treated?
The case is studied in law enforcement training and victim advocacy because of how systematically Paulson’s credible, detailed, evidence-supported report was dismissed based on who she was and who Hansen appeared to be. Her case is a documented example of how institutional credibility gaps can protect perpetrators.
12. How long after the escape was Hansen convicted?
Hansen was arrested after the October 1983 search warrants were executed — roughly four months after Paulson’s escape. He was sentenced in February 1984, approximately eight months after the escape that set the investigation in motion.
