White/Caucasian female Paula Goulding, age 21, was reported missing in late April 1983, and the date associated with her death is April 25, 1983, in the Palmer, Alaska area. Remembered on regional gun-violence rolls for Palmer, she is listed as having been lost to gunfire that day.
In the weeks prior, she had recently been working the Anchorage nightlife circuit, where investigators later determined she crossed paths with a quiet small-business owner and avid hunter named Robert Hansen. Accounts assembled by investigators and later case histories describe how Hansen lured the young woman under the pretense of a paid modeling date, forced her into his control, and flew her in his private plane to remote country north of Anchorage. When she fought and tried to run, he shot her with a high-powered rifle and buried her in a shallow grave.
On September 2, 1983, road work in the Knik River area—Matanuska-Susitna Borough, a short drive from Palmer—uncovered remains that were identified as Paula. Evidence at the grave included a. 223 cartridge; the body showed a gunshot wound to the back, and investigators noted the absence of bullet damage to her clothing, suggesting she may have been shot before being dressed and buried. The Knik River find echoed other clandestine burials tied to the same predator and helped investigators realize a serial offender was operating in and around Anchorage and the Palmer–Matanuska-Susitna backcountry.
The suspect was already on law enforcement's radar thanks to a surviving witness who had escaped his custody that June. Building on that witness's account, ballistic leads, and a suspect profile, Alaska State Troopers executed warrants and, on October 27, 1983, arrested Robert Hansen. He ultimately admitted to a series of abductions and killings and was charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder, including Paula's. In 1984 he received an aggregate sentence of 461 years without parole, and he died in prison in 2014.
Although some public records and memorials conflict on details such as Paula's exact age and where she was living in the days before she vanished, the official case narrative ties her disappearance and death to Hansen's hunting grounds stretching from Anchorage into the Palmer-adjacent wilderness. Subsequent retrospectives and investigative reconstructions continue to place her among the victims whose graves marked the path that led to Hansen's arrest and conviction.
