12

An early signal that Bob Hansen had taken a wrong turn somewhere was his arrest and conviction for arson in Iowa during the early 1960s. It happened, predictably enough, right after Bob got back to Pocahontas, Iowa, from six months of basic training in the Army Reserves at Fort Dix, New Jersey. His Army experience had made him a man.

Not only had he walked onto a firing range at Ft. Dix, but he managed to earn a one-day pass to New York as the USO’s “Soldier of the Week.” It was in New York that Bob had his first sexual experience. He tagged along with another soldier who had been so honored and they went downtown to “get a piece of ass.”

They met some girls and went to their hotel. It was a disappointing experience for Bob. They jumped in bed and jumped right back out. “I got to feel it, but that was about it,” he complained. “Everything was strictly ‘slam, bam, thank you ma’am.’”

The young man who returned from basic training was a troubled one. Pocahontas Police Chief Marvin Wiseman, who had once promoted Bob to a position as Junior Police instructor, eased him out of the organization after his return from the Army. Wiseman probably knew Bob Hansen better than anyone.

Bob Hansen’s dad owned a bakery, and Wiseman was in the shop for an hour or so every day it was open. He remembers Bob showing off his skill with a bow and arrow by shooting at targets he’d placed on cardboard boxes at the rear of his father’s bakery. Once, almost ominously, Bob shot an arrow into the target, then turned to Wiseman.

“You can’t hardly hear that, can you?” he said.

Later, Bob whipped out a knife and threw it into the wall in front of the police chief. “You can’t hardly hear that, either,” he said.

And when he returned from the Army, Bob became the ringleader of a younger group of kids. They didn’t have much use for the “Poky” Police Department. They were a bunch of rural smart-asses, full of mischief and capable of almost anything.

In the months before the arson fire, according to Wisemen, Bob and his friends were suspected of blowing up a tractor in the town of Rolfe, just north of Pocahontas. They were apparently practicing for an attempt on the Pocahontas water tower, and had used a single stick of dynamite in their rehearsal run. Only a fire in a bus barn intervened to thwart their attempt on the water tower.

Bob planned the arson of the Pocahontas Community School bus barn several days beforehand, at the back of his father’s bakery. His accomplices were two sixteen year olds who also worked for his father. On the night of the arson they were to give their parents some excuse and come to the bakery instead. Once there they would paint the ovens so they would have an alibi.

On the morning of December 7, 1960, while one of his cohorts was at work in the bakery, Bob passed the word. “Tonight is the night,” he said. “We’ll meet at the bakery as planned.”

At 6:00 Bob drove to the house of his other accomplice. The family was eating supper. His friend came out to the car, which Bob parked in front of the house, and talked to him there. Bob told his friend to meet him at the bakery at seven. Tonight the school bus barn would burn. Bob pointed with pride to a five-gallon can at the rear of the car.

Only one of Bob’s recruits bothered to appear at the bakery at the appointed hour. The other recruit took a drive into the country with his parents. The guy who did show up got there before Bob did, and rode around town with another friend until Bob finally came slightly after seven o’clock.

Inside the bakery, they began painting the ovens, setting up their alibis. At seven-thirty they got into Bob’s car and drove to a spot behind an abandoned Pontiac Garage. They parked, and Bob gave the order for his accomplice to carry the gasoline.

As they scrambled to the bus barn, Bob’s friend slipped on a small incline and spilled some gasoline. “Gimme the can,” Bob demanded, “before you spill it all.”

Soon they had crossed the school playground and were standing at the foot of the ladder leading to the loft of the dusty old building. It was Bob who clambered up the ladder with the can of gas. His friend stayed behind with a flashlight and pointed the way of his return. The gas made a splashing sound as Bob doused the loft.

“Don’t light the gas from the loft,” the friend warned. “It’ll blow up.”

The next thing he heard was a great rush of fire. Bob’s friend immediately ran out of the bus barn and across the playground, instinctively returning to the spot where the car was parked. Bob was right behind him.

They drove to the bakery and got there just as the fire siren sounded. Bob hastily threw the gas can into the back of the bakery, then drove the two of them back to the fire. As a member of the Volunteer Fire Department it was Bob’s duty to fight the fire, even if he was the one who had started it.

At the fire his friend borrowed a dollar, wanting to go to the Pocahontas Catholic High School basketball game. Picking the night of the big basketball game had been a stroke of inspiration, for Pocahontas was surely preoccupied that cold December evening. The fire was first discovered by Ronald Walker, a vocational agriculture instructor who was getting ready for his regular farmers’ night school class. The building, built of Army “surplus” materials shortly after World War II, rapidly became a torch. Three of the school’s seven buses were declared “total losses,” and the bus barn itself, valued at eleven thousand dollars, was thoroughly destroyed.

Injured while driving one of the buses out of the burning building was Pocahontas fireman Dutch Leonard. He received burns and cuts when the gas tank of a bus exploded. A face respirator he was wearing at the time of the explosion was credited with saving him from more serious injuries.

The spectacle of the arsonist returning to watch his fire is a well-known one. The volunteer fireman as arsonist is hardly a new twist either. The primitive power of a fire that is savagely out of control is truly mesmerizing — even with the possibility of criminal charges looming in the background.

The act itself was in its purest sense nothing more than the thrill seeking. Yet the episode had far more disquieting meanings. Bob told his buddies he wanted to torch the barn because it wanted to see if he could get away with it—as he surely would—and because he hated School Superintendent Waldo Mick, who just happened to be a close friend of his father.

The post-fire investigation eliminated faulty wiring as the source of the fire. It pointed instead to a combustible substance. It was arson, not an accident. That’s about all that was established. No arrests were forthcoming.

Simultaneously, there were persistent rumors that somehow the Hansen boy was involved. Police Chief Wiseman, who’d heard the rumors, couldn’t help think of the bus barn fire when, some months later, the Farm Bureau was broken into, or when he found the front seats of his police car slashed with a knife. Was it Bob Hansen and his buddies who were responsible?

Bob, meanwhile, started his first romance. She was Phebe Padgett, daughter of Dr. Padgett, the town chiropractor.

Dr. Padgett was widely regarded as a non-social person, and his daughter shared some of those characteristics. Not very attractive, she was a loner, definitely not part of the “in-crowd.” One of her few “pals” was Rosemary Shaw, the gifted daughter of Frank Shaw, one of Pocahontas County’s more capable attorneys. Phebe and Bob seemed to be well matched: They were two loners who found each other. As if proof of that assertion, it wasn’t long into 1961 before the couple announced their wedding engagement.

By the end of March 1961, however, the jig was up. One of Bob’s high school buddies, a GI on leave back in Pocahontas, happened to hear about the arson at a party attended by some of the teenagers who were hanging around Bob Hansen. The teens’ only intention had been to to show off for the GI, but he went to the authorities with the story. Under questioning Bob’s accomplice admitted his role, and on March 29, 1961, Deputy State Fire Marshall D.S. Hutchinson brought arson charges against Bob Hansen.

All hell broke loose in Pocahontas. Chris Hansen reacted with typical passion. “Bobby?” he angrily replied when Chief Wiseman brought the news. “No, no, not my Bobby. It better not be my goddamned Bobby.”

“Yes, it is your Bobby,” Chief Wiseman told the senior Hansen. “He’s under arrest.”

Chris Hansen came unglued. A string of harsh Danish words erupted from his slight form. And then he found his English. “You framed him,” he raged. “You framed him.”

“A lie detector will tell if I framed him, Chris.”

From that point on, Pocahontas was divided over the issue of Bob’s innocence or guilt. Chris Hansen made a point of hiring the best attorney in town. Frank Shaw.

No one loomed larger in Bob Hansen’s life than his domineering father. His mother, Edna, was a frail, soft-spoken woman whom everyone considered the dutiful model wife. She usually took a backseat to her headstrong husband.

As a parent, Chris Hansen was very strict, and a man full of definite ideas. His son was born left-handed but Chris forced him to use his right hand instead. A psychologist later told his parents it may have caused Bob to have language disabilities.

The son’s first training as a baker came, quite naturally, at the father’s hands, and started almost from the time Chris Hansen bought the bakery in Pocahontas. But Chris Hansen was never satisfied with Bob’s work. Worse yet, Bob’s dad often described him as “worthless.”

After a while Bob began to think his father was right. As a result Bob was full of trouble and would do almost anything. He had learned, however, never to go directly against authority. That was a sure way to get caught and, given his father’s temper, that was something he wanted to avoid.

Though his father wanted to pass the bakery on to him and Bob didn’t want anything to do with it, Bob simply avoided the issue, never showing his true feelings. By being sneaky he could be as rebellious as he wanted and still avoid paying the price. For as strong as his need was to act out his violent, rebellious fantasies, somehow Bob still didn’t want to disappoint his father.

That helped explain the widespread belief among Bob’s supporters that he’d been railroaded on the arson charge. Bob’s reticence, however, made it necessary to waive his preliminary hearing and bind him over to the Grand Jury. There was not much Shaw could do.

At the Padgett household there was a debate whether the marriage should go forward as planned. Phebe believed Bob was innocent, and decided to marry him despite her father’s opposition. But Phebe also issued a warning: She’d divorce Bob if she ever found out he was lying.

Had the Padgett’s known the results of Bob’s polygraph test, they might not have given in to Phebe’s wishes. When the polygraph operator finished administering the test, he nearly ran out of the testing room.

“Which one of you is Wiseman?” he asked.

“I am,” Chief Wiseman volunteered.

“Man, you better watch it,” the operator said, his voice strong and serious. “That boy is hot on you. You’ve been living in danger.”

“Yeah? What kind of danger?”

“That kid was planning on blowing up your house.”

The minister at Bob and Phebe’s wedding as much as challenged Bob to proclaim his innocence. Bob so proclaimed. Now he was married.

Some town cynics dismissed it as a move designed to get him clemency in his sentencing. Still, Bob had his supporters, mostly the town businessmen, who seemed to honor each other. Because of their mutual admiration they felt they could do no wrong, and neither could their offspring. In this group, the feeling was strong that Bob Hansen was in jail because of Chief Wiseman’s railroad.

Things took a turn for the worst at the September Grand Jury proceedings. There were three primary witnesses against Bob: The sixteen-year-old who was with him, a seventeen-year-old to whom Hansen and his accomplice had admitted their involvement, and the now seventeen-year-old bakery employee who had been invited but didn’t go along.

As a result of the grand jury proceeding, formal charges were brought against Hansen. He was charged with willfully and maliciously setting fire to, and burning, a motor vehicle and other personal property belonging to the Pocahontas Community School District.

Instead of facing the publicity of a trial, Bob decided to plead guilty. He was essentially throwing himself on the mercy of the court, because he steadfastly maintained he’d been framed. A least Phebe and Bob’s father were able to buy this explanation.

On October 9, 1961, however, Judge Joseph P. Hand sentenced Bob to the State Reformatory at Anamosa, Iowa, for a term of not more than three years. Almost immediately Chris Hansen was making the rounds of the town with a petition. It declared that Bob had been framed for the bus barn arson and demanded that he be freed from jail.

Six months into his jail term, Bob admitted his part in the arson. Phebe Padgett divorced him immediately. Chris Hansen was devastated by Bob’s confession. As quickly as he could, he sold the bakery and bought a resort at Leech Lake, Minnesota, the same spot where, some two years later, Hansen would meet his second wife, Darla Henrichsen.

Whenever Bob talked about Pocahontas, he emphasized the unhappiness of his years there. “If you look real close at my face,” he said, “you’ll see that I used to have a tremendous amount of pimples on my face. All through high school, and even all through service, it embarrassed me no end to even be around people. My speech was another thing—my gosh, I looked like a freak, and I sounded like one. I never had many girls that were interested in me. When they can go out with some guy that can at least talk to them halfway intelligently and not be with a pimple-face, they would sure rather do that. I can probably count on one hand the number of dates I had through high school.”

Hansen was a social outcast in Pocahontas and he desperately wanted to get back at those who mocked him. “I was always so embarrassed and upset by people making fun of me that I hated the word ‘school.’ I guess that is why I burned down the bus barn. I just hated that place with a divine passion. I would do anything and everything I could think of to get back at that monster school that I convinced myself was out to do Bob Hansen personal wrong.”