The Golden Age of Murder: A True Crime Podcast · Golden Age of Murder

The Most Dangerous Game - Robert Hansen

·2 hr 45 min

The episode opens by treating hunting as a ritual of domination, not just a sport. It then folds Robert Hansen into that frame and argues that his murders grew out of the same need for control. Hansen targeted prostitutes in Anchorage, Alaska. He abducted them and kept them in a cabin or house for a time. Then he flew them to a remote location. There, he released them and hunted them on foot. The hosts spend time on the way the hunt turned the landscape itself into part of his private mythology. They describe him as a man who made the outside world serve an internal fantasy. In that fantasy, he was never the rejected boy or the overlooked man. He was the victor. He was the hunter. The show also leans into the way organized killers script their crimes. Hansen fits that pattern. He controlled the terms of the encounter. He forced reactions. He created a situation where the victim’s choices could not change the outcome. That control, the episode suggests, is central to understanding why the murders took the form they did. The discussion widens to compare Hansen with other serial killers who relied on staged power rather than spontaneous violence. It brings in later examples and points toward the broader taxonomy of organized predation. The hosts return again and again to the idea that the killer made women stand in for old humiliations and resentments. They do not soften that motive. They treat it as part of the machinery of violence. Near the end, the episode moves into the investigation and discovery. Bodies were found by the Knik River. More than a dozen remains were uncovered there. Some victims, Hansen confessed, would never be found. He was charged with several murders, including those of Lunta Annie Joanna Messina, Sherry Monroe, and Paula Gordon. On February 18, 1984, Robert Hansen was sentenced to 461 years plus life for assault, kidnapping, theft, insurance fraud, murder, and rape. He remained in Spring Creek Correctional Facility until his death from natural causes on August 21, 2014, at age 75.

As heard by us

A study of hunting, control, and the murderous fantasy behind Robert Hansen.

The episode is at its best when it links Robert Hansen's hunting life to the murders, especially through Anchorage, the cabin or house, and the flights out to remote locations.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play if you want a serial-killer case built around hunting as control.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify