Joann Cooper Hansen feeds wedding cake to her groom. This probably happened in early 1957, although some believe they weren’t legally married until 1962. She had great hopes for the marriage—a safe place for her first son and, hopefully, more children.
Joann Hansen with her first two babies with Bob Hansen: Nick and Kandy Kay (in bouncy chair).
Joann and her fourth child, Ty, on a camping trip.
Patricia Martin and Joann Hansen were best friends for years, and Patricia tried to save Joann. It was she who heard Joann’s last horrifying words over the phone: “Pat! Oh no! He’s in the basement . . . he’s coming up—” Then there were only screams.
Christmas at the Hansens’ house in about 1961. They look like a happy family, and Joann had done her best to decorate the way Bob preferred, but the holiday was tense. Joann (left), Nick, Bob, and Ty. Kandy Kay has her back to the camera.
Left to right: Ty, Kandy Kay, and Nick no longer had their mother, and babysitters came and went. “One thing I never understood,” Ty said. “Why didn’t someone notice our black eyes, broken teeth, and bruises?”
Ty, Nick, and Kandy Kay show off the fish they caught. They went on scores of hunting and fishing trips with Bob, and tried to smile as he snapped their pictures with the dead animals.
Mrs. Rilda Moses’s kindergarten in Des Moines. Nick Hansen is in the top row, third from left. My daughter, Leslie Rule, is in the front row, fourth from right. And yet, I didn’t know the Hansen family at all.
Kandy Kay was a Brownie in a North Hill troop. She told friends that her mother had been hit by a train. None of them knew the truth.
Kandy Kay was her father’s favorite; Bob bought her Poker Chips, her own horse, and urged her to show off her riding skills to his male friends.
Kandy Kay was crowned Miss Des Moines in 1977. She went on to compete in the Miss Washington pageant.
Bob Hansen was proud as he escorted his daughter into one of the Miss Des Moines formal functions.
Miss Des Moines, 1977, in her royal robes. Kandy had mother figures in her chaperones for the pageant, but it was too late; she had grown up too fast, without her mother.
Kandy Kay Hansen was an absolutely beautiful young woman. Bob Hansen was full of pride when he brought her to the Danish reunions he organized.
Kandy Hansen and her best friend since third grade—Barbara Kuehne Snyder. Bob Hansen embarrassed the girls when they were younger, and ruined prom for them. Barbara fought to save Kandy from the evil that was permeating her life—and she failed.
Nick Hansen felt he had disappointed his father because he wasn’t an athletic star—nor did he have much interest. In 1981 and 1982, he helped Bob build a cabin in Westport, Washington. That helped—but a bigger shock was coming after Nick married.
One of the last “family photos” with the Hansens. Left to right: Nick, Kandy Kay, Ty, and Bob share dinner at the Black Angus restaurant in Burien, Washington.
Bob Hansen was pleased when Nick married Melissa. Bob posed with his two sons: Nick (center), and Ty. It wasn’t long, however, before Bob reneged on his gift of a house to the newlyweds. That ended their relationship—forever.
If anyone could have saved Kandy Kay Hansen, it was Tom Yarbrough, who rescued her and loved her completely after she hit bottom in a broken-down car on the border of Utah and Nevada. Tom was old enough to be her father, but he was very kind and caring. Tom managed a casino. He wanted to marry Kandy, and, strangely, her father said yes. But their wedding was never to be.
Bob Hansen, at 61, discovered Costa Rica and it seemed the answer to everything he wanted. He hadn’t been successful in dating American women, but he discovered any number of dark-haired beauties in Costa Rica in their late teens and early twenties. He eventually bought a luxury condo there on March 7, 2007, for $250,000 and spent less and less time in the Northwest.
Bob Hansen’s second wife, Cecilia, a lovely young Costa Rican woman who celebrated her twenty-first birthday in November 1987.
Ty Hansen, in his late twenties, was a master mechanic, and sold a few cars. When he moved to a new location, a fast-talking con man walked into his office one day and convinced him to become “the Loan Arranger.” This was taken on his opening day in June 1988.
Bob Hansen, celebrating his sixty-fourth birthday in October 1988.
Bob Hansen expected to move into this plush condo, Los Amigos, in Rohrmoser, Costa Rica, and retire there forever. But he was denied citizenship and was shocked and disappointed.
Bob Hansen, 64, and his second wife, Cecilia, 21, in Costa Rica, posing next to a truckload of palm nuts.
Cecilia Hansen roller-skating in front of Bob Hansen’s home on Green River Road. She was tiny enough to be a child.
Cecilia in the kitchen of the yellow house in Auburn. Her marriage to Bob Hansen was coming to a close. She felt like a possession and he called her “MY Beauty.”
Flory Hansen, Bob’s third wife. She felt she should marry him because she “owed” him for building her parents a safe and sturdy home in Costa Rica.
Flory Hansen, basting salmon that Bob caught. Bob wouldn’t allow her to go beyond their property line without him. U.S. Immigration officers found out he’d brought her into the country illegally.
Flory standing in a burned-out forest on Blewett Pass in the Cascade Mountains in 2002.
Worth an estimated $5 million, Bob Hansen was alone now. He shows his age as he displays a king salmon in his yard in 2004. He was estranged from his sons and grandchildren, and he pinned his hopes on a new life in Costa Rica.
Bob Hansen’s last home was this simple rambler in Auburn, Washington—and not the new condo in Costa Rica.
Cindy Tyler and Ty Hansen, friends since junior high, worked together to solve the mystery of his mother’s disappearance almost fifty years earlier. The platonic friends cheered each other up when they ran into one frustration after another.
Kathleen Huget was helping a Realtor friend clean an empty house when she discovered eerie clues to a mystery of major proportions! She chose to fight for justice for a long-missing woman. (Huget Family Collection)
Left to right: Bobby (Joann’s son by her first marriage), Ty Hansen, and Nicole Hansen (after her transgender surgery). Ty and Nicole didn’t even know they had a half brother until Ty began to investigate his mother’s disappearance. They were happy to finally meet him, but they have once again lost touch and are trying to find him.
Ty Hansen promised his mother’s murder suspect, “I won’t stop until I find her bones!” Forty years after Joann Hansen vanished, he literally moved tons of earth looking for her remains. Radar imaging indicated there was something buried here.
A photo of Joann Hansen shortly before she vanished in August 1962. The shape of her face is mirrored in the artist’s rebuild of the woman’s skull found in Suncadia, an area where the chief suspect once hunted.
The artist’s reconstruction of the woman’s skull found in Suncadia, a new resort east of the Snoqualmie Mountains of Washington. It resembled Joann Hansen a great deal.
* The names of some individuals have been changed. Such names are indicated by an asterisk (*) the first time each appears in the narrative.
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Ann Rule, Don't Look Behind You and Other True Cases
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