Manfried West and Robert Hansen, Nature vs Nurture: Manfried West nicknamed Robert Hansen “The Worm”
This is his story.
Robert Hansen grew up hating his father who constantly subjected him to ridicule and mockery, and a mother who was compliant in the harsh treatment of her son. The bullying Hansen suffered as a child shaped his hatred of women. He was painfully shy, had a stutter and severe acne that left him permanently scarred. Not receiving the attention he wanted from the attractive girls in school, Hansen grew up hating them and nursing fantasies of cruel revenge.Robert Hansen doesn't have the same kind of name recognition that someone like Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy does but he was one of the country's most prolific serial killers.He admitted to a spree of attacks against Alaskan women starting in 1971. Hansen's earliest victims were girls or young women, usually between ages 16 and 19 and not prostitutes. After abducting them, he would either rape them and release them with a warning, or fly them in his personal plane out into a remote location, where he would hunt them like animals and kill them.Hansen is known to have raped and assaulted over thirty Alaskan women, and to have murdered at least seventeen, ranging in age from 16 to 41.Hansen slipped through the cracks of justice many times and would have again it if wasn’t for the heroics of victim Cindy Paulson and Detective Glenn Frothe.
