Don't Look Behind You Read online

  “We had a band for a while,” Barb said. “Kandy, Ty, me, and Greg Hardman.”

  Nick Hansen wasn’t a member of their band; he got together with his own group of friends who enjoyed music.

  Nick played all the woodwind instruments—clarinet, saxophone, flute, and bassoon. His prime musical skill, however, was as an arranger. When he was in sixth grade, he did his first arrangements for the school band, as he would for the bands of every school he attended.

  “My dad really didn’t want me to be a musician,” Nick says. “When I wanted to go to Kent-Meridian High School—which was out of our school district—he didn’t approve. But he was finally convinced when my teachers said that was where the best music curriculum was. They also had a good math program.”

  Kent-Meridian High School was more than a dozen miles from where Nick lived in Des Moines, and he rode his bicycle there and back every day, rain, snow, or shine. Later, he was able to find a bus route where he could get off and walk several miles to get home.

  But Nick Hansen spent as little time at home as possible. He stayed after school in Kent often, or he went to his friends’ homes to play music. Alan Hall’s, Todd Froy’s, and Jeff Barclay’s parents all welcomed Nick and he often stayed for supper or overnight.

  Nick knew that he was something of a disappointment to his father. “He pushed me into playing baseball, but I hated it and I wasn’t any good at sports.”

  “It’s kind of difficult to explain our relationships,” Ty says. “Nick went to a different high school than Kandy and I did. He wanted to take advantage of the advanced science, math, and music courses offered there. In a way, it was always the three of us against my dad—just to survive. But when it came down to it, it was every man for himself. Nick just stayed out of Dad’s way, Kandy Kay was his favorite, and, as I said, I got the brunt of his fists.”

  Of them all, Ty, who was not yet two when Joann disappeared, was the “target child.” He was the one who irritated his father more than the other two. Sometimes he and Nick wondered if Bob Hansen really was Ty’s biological father because he singled Ty out for the very worst physical punishment. Maybe their mother had been starved enough for love that she had been with another man.

  That was really just conjecture because Ty had Bob’s height, his chin, and his physical prowess. And Joann Hansen had been too panicked by her husband to do anything but simply try to survive.

  “Dad didn’t like Ty at all,” Nick says. “He wasn’t wanted. I don’t know why.”

  One of Bob’s most egregious punishments for Ty happened when he and his children were camping on the shore of Banks Lake.

  “Maybe Ty didn’t tell you about this,” Nick suggests. “It was so awful I don’t think he chooses to remember it.”

  Banks Lake is a twenty-seven-mile-long manmade reservoir with clear blue water, formed by the north dam near Grand Coulee and the Dry Falls Dam near Coulee City, and filled with water from Lake Roosevelt. Surrounded by rocky outcroppings—basalt cliffs and talus slopes—the land around Banks Lake looks like it belongs on another planet, or in a desert. It is a draw for vacationers and tourists, an unexpected oasis.

  “Dad was trying to teach us to water-ski while we were camping on the beach at Banks Lake,” Nick recalls. “Ty was about six or seven and he just couldn’t seem to get up on his skis, and Dad got really angry. He got out of the boat, took the rope, and wrapped it several times around Ty’s neck. Then he got back in the boat and revved it up.”

  Ty was almost strangled. If Bob Hansen hadn’t cut the throttle when he did, Ty could have broken his neck—or been decapitated.

  “That was the worst day of my life,” Ty remembers today. “I really thought he was finally going to kill me.”

  “Kandy slept in our tent on the beach that night,” Nick said, “but Ty and I were so shaken about what could have happened that we slept up on the hill—away from Dad.”

  Remembering the incident, Nick mused, “The only thing that ever kept us alive was that my dad wanted the public to see him as a great family man.”

  Unlike some of the other true cases I’ve researched, the mystifying story of the Hansen family was told to me by a score of witnesses who related it with almost identical memories and opinions. There was general agreement that Bob Hansen was an alarming man.

  Attorney Duncan Bonjorni, perhaps, summed him up most accurately: “He was warped. I never saw a man so devoid of a real personality. He was an aberration all the way. Bob Hansen was evil personified!”

  Kandy Kay’s best friend, Barb Snyder, is not as vehement as Bonjorni is. She was more puzzled by the dynamics in Kandy’s home, but she came to feel used to the way things were there.

  “Who took care of the Hansen kids while their father was out on the job?” I asked Barb.

  “They took care of themselves.” She shrugged. “One time, I asked Kandy where her mother was—I didn’t know any other family where there wasn’t a mother. She told me her mother was hit by a train and killed. We were both eight, and I accepted that. She didn’t talk any more about her mother.”

  Barb said she stayed at the Hansen house for supper many times. “Bob cooked, and he was pretty good. I was kind of scared of him, though. It was his temper. Something would irritate him and he got angry so quickly. It didn’t last long, but it was frightening for me. His own kids got real quiet when he blew up. We were all afraid of him.”

  Although the Hansen children could do pretty much what they wanted if they didn’t get in their father’s way, there was one area that was forbidden to them. None of them was ever allowed in Bob’s bedroom. Beyond his warning of what would happen to anyone who snooped in there, they couldn’t get in anyway; he had deadbolt locks to keep them out.

  Barb Snyder remembers incidents where Kandy’s father acted inappropriately and she and Kandy were both embarrassed.

  “Bob took us to the circus once when we were eleven or twelve. We were watching the elephants, and Bob pointed out that one of the elephants was mounting the elephant in front of him. We didn’t even know what an erection was then, but Bob poked us and made us look at its penis. He said, ‘Wow! Look at the size of that!’ I was just mortified.”

  When they were older, Barb recalls that a man whom Kandy called “Uncle” told someone she knew that Bob was sexually molesting Kandy. Incest was something Barb had never heard of and, again, she was far too embarrassed to ever question Kandy. And Kandy had certainly never even hinted at that. If it was true, it wasn’t anything the two girls could talk about.

  “Kandy got whatever she wanted, and her ‘uncle’ said that was because Bob was messing with her,” Barb said. “I never thought that. But, as we got older, she had so much freedom and Bob gave her so many expensive presents. I just thought it was because they were rich. My family was very ordinary, and we lived in an ordinary house. We weren’t rich at all, but we were comfortable.”

  Asked if they ever suspected that their father had sexually molested their sister, neither Ty nor Nick is sure about that—but both have suspected it.

  When Kandy was eighteen and nominated for Miss Des Moines in the pageant that was part of the town’s Waterland Festival every summer, Bob beamed with pride.

  More persuasive that Bob Hansen was molesting Kandy Kay were her statements to the beauticians who worked with her in her pageant days. The wife of a man on Bob’s construction staff went to the same beauty parlor. When it was far too late to have helped Kandy, the hairdressers said Kandy had confided in them. She said her father had taken sexual advantage of her for many years.

  Bob Hansen dated a number of women. He was a man in his prime and well-to-do; his dark hair was thick and had no gray at all in it. He had never liked his large chin, and he had gone to a plastic surgeon who surgically broke Bob’s jaw, moved it back, and shortened it by about an inch. It made a big difference and Bob was now much handsomer. He was tall, in great shape, and tanned from being on construction sites or tromping through sun-washed fields in
search of animals to shoot. And to the outside world, he seemed to be a perfect father to three adorable children. He had no trouble at all getting dates.

  But he had trouble keeping a relationship going. He wasn’t nice to women, and they sensed that beneath the surface he didn’t really like them. This sometimes led to no third date, and often to no second date.

  Although she no longer had anything to do with Bob Hansen, Patricia Martin learned about one of his longtime girlfriends when she attended a pinochle group she had belonged to for decades. She mentioned Bob Hansen that night, and the hostess’s husband overheard her comments and took her aside.

  “My first wife dated Bob Hansen,” he told Pat. “Marge and Bob really hit it off at first. They got along fine for a couple of years, and Bob was building a house for her. He bought her a huge rock—I don’t know how many carats that diamond was—and things seemed to be going great.”

  But the host said it all blew up on one night. “She was at Bob’s house and they made dinner. She has a son from her marriage before ours, and he was fifteen then. Lonny* was down in the basement, and Marge called him to come up and eat. As kids will, he dawdled and she had to call him twice.

  “When he didn’t come right up, Bob went down there and beat the shit out of him.”

  Marge had been horrified. Her teenage son wasn’t a big kid; he was actually kind of scrawny, and he didn’t have a chance with Bob Hansen. Marge grabbed her battered son and left hurriedly.

  “She would never go out with him again, naturally. She saw what a bully Bob was. Bob tried hard to get her back, but she wouldn’t even consider it.

  “Funny thing happened, though. Somebody cut her brake line one night. Luckily, she didn’t get far before she realized it, or she could have been killed.”

  Not surprisingly, Bob’s own children suffered years of physical punishment. Bob knocked out a couple of Ty’s baby teeth when the little boy made him angry.

  Asked if his father spanked him hard, Ty laughs, but only slightly. “He hit me with his fists, threw me down the stairs and against walls. He was very violent, and I was the one who got hit eighty percent of the time. He hit me with belts and any object he got his hands on.

  “I’m still perplexed, all these years later. Why didn’t anyone ask us about our cuts, scratches, black eyes, and broken teeth? We were young kids, and teachers and neighbors saw us—but no one ever asked us what had happened to us. The only person who noticed was once when I went to the dentist with my broken teeth.

  “He asked me, ‘Did your dad do this to you?’ And I said yes. I heard him arguing with my dad in another room later, but nothing changed.”

  Ty and Kandy Kay were very close, while Nick lost himself in studying and music. Bob gave his daughter almost everything she asked for. Nick didn’t get in his way, but Ty grated on Bob, and suffered for it.

  Although they got minimal affection at home, perhaps the saving grace for Nick, Kandy, and Ty was that they could depend on their friends. Barbara Snyder loved Kandy like a sister and Ty met a girl at Pacific Junior High who was shocked and saddened to learn that he had lost his mother so early in his life that he barely remembered her.

  Cindy Tyler and Ty Hansen were in either the eighth or ninth grade when they met. Although they were both good-looking young teens, they would never be romantically attached, but Cindy would listen to Ty as he talked about his problems. She thought it was terribly sad that he had grown up without a mother.

  Ty was only two when Joann went away. It was clear that Ty was going to be very tall—like his father—but he was quite thin at that age. Even so, he was a good athlete—especially when it came to baseball. Even that didn’t endear him to Bob Hansen.

  Joann Hansen had once had wonderful plans for her children’s futures. However difficult her marriage was, she loved all four of her children devotedly. They were extremely intelligent children with natural musical talent, and their mother had encouraged them in whatever they wanted to do. She had been forced to give up Bobby because she feared for his life, her first baby girl had died in the night without warning, and she was extremely grateful to have Nick, Kandy Kay, and Ty. She hoped to find a way to raise Bobby, too. He was her firstborn and she loved him so much.

  She was a natural mother, ready to endure whatever she had to to keep them safe.

  Any mother’s greatest fear is not for her own life—but that fate will take her away from her children’s lives. In both the human and the animal kingdom, there may be nothing stronger than a mother’s love and her need to protect her young.

  When Joann disappeared, her children suffered—as they would for the rest of their lives—even if they managed to pick up the shattered pieces and rearrange them into a semblance of normalcy.

  Chapter Ten

  KANDY KAY

  All three of Bob and Joann Hansen’s children had inherited their father’s elongated chin and his height, but his daughter—Kandy Kay—looked the most like him. She had strong features like Bob, but hers were feminine. She had thick long brown hair and a slender figure. As she grew up, she became more and more beautiful.

  Bob Hansen owned a number of horses, which he kept in rented pasture land a few blocks away. Des Moines was far more rural in the fifties and sixties, and there were several meadows a block or so from “downtown.” Today, most of the fields are covered with sprawling apartments and their parking lots.

  Bob bought Kandy her own horse—Poker Chips—and she loved him dearly, but she resented it when her father wanted to show off her riding skills to his friends. She longed to ride free with Poker Chips.

  Kandy sensed early on that she was part of the facade that her father had contrived to impress other people, and she wasn’t comfortable with it. The Hansen children all knew that the smiling glad-hander that their father was in public was very different when their front door closed behind them.

  Bob still owned the Willows Apartments that he built at the bottom of the hill just below the brown house: red-brick, flat-roofed, small apartments surrounded by concrete. Because the town had long since dammed up a small lake unwisely, during heavy rains the Willows’ parking lot flooded, and sometimes the units themselves were endangered.

  When Kandy was just sixteen, Bob let her have her own apartment—the end unit to the west. Bob Hansen also moved his son Ty into the Willows Apartments when he was in high school. It appeared that Bob felt sixteen or seventeen years was long enough to raise any child. He had his own life to live.

  Bob sold the brown house and moved to Kent, several miles away.

  Nick Hansen was a genius. After high school, he joined the navy and studied nuclear physics; he was the top honors graduate in 1984 with a grade average of 98.43 percent.

  Living in her own apartment meant far too much freedom for Kandy—a teenager in the eleventh grade. Bob Hansen also bought Kandy a new car. Since they were old enough to have licenses, the Hansen teenagers had shared the use of an old station wagon, each handing it down to the next youngest when they were able to buy their own cars.

  Bob bought Kandy her own car when she got her apartment. It was white and detailed with orange, yellow, and red bursts of fire.

  A sixteen-year-old girl with an apartment of her own was an easy target for men who were attracted to her. Kandy didn’t have the protection and parental concern she needed, although it may be that she had never had that. Underage students could drink in Kandy’s small apartment as well as smoke marijuana or experiment with other drugs if they wanted to.

  Barbara Snyder was very upset when she heard rumors that Kandy was “easy.” She tried not to believe that her best friend since third grade was promiscuous. But Kandy had no adult supervision or anyone to turn to with problems.

  And the whispers grew louder.

  Kandy gravitated to men who were five to seven years older than she was, and she didn’t mind if they were married. Amateur psychologists might say that she was looking for a father figure who would really look after her, but h
er life was far more complicated than that. Did she really believe that her absent mother had been hit by a train, or was that a lie she told herself so that she didn’t have to believe Joann had abandoned her?

  Bob Hansen was boorish and kinky when it came to sex; he apparently had no inkling of what was appropriate whether he was talking to peers, women, or even children.

  In the spring of 1976, when it came time for Kandy and Barbara’s big prom, Bob insisted on cooking dinner for several of the young couples before the dance. At that time, he lived in a new place he’d built, right across the street from the Green River. It was white stucco with high arches in the front, and much nicer than the house in Des Moines. There were flowers in the stucco planter boxes on his front patio—but they were all artificial.

  One selling point about Bob’s new place was a ringside seat to a drive-in movie just beyond the river. He didn’t have sound, but it was free, and the theater often showed pornographic films that didn’t need any dialogue.

  The prom dinner was an embarrassment and a disappointment for the girls, who were dressed in lovely gowns, with the matching corsages their dates had given them. This was supposed to be a time for teenagers, and Kandy Kay’s father didn’t fit in at all. It was almost as if he was usurping a special, memory-making evening that belonged to them.

  Whether Bob Hansen knew beforehand that the drive-in was showing a pornographic movie—however soft- or hard-core it might be—or if it was a surprise for him, he quickly called the boys over to the window and pointed out what was on the screen.

  “It was kind of like when he took us to the circus,” Barbara remembers. “We were all humiliated, and it ruined our evening. The guys were glued to that window, we girls ate dinner alone, and we were really late for the prom. It seemed like Bob had planned it.”