On November 17, 1981, in Eklutna, Alaska, White/Caucasian female Sherry Morrow, age 23, told friends she was meeting a man posing as a photographer who had offered her $300 for a nude photo session; she never returned. A dancer at Anchorage's Wild Cherry bar, she was reported missing that same day, and her disappearance quietly joined a growing stack of cases involving young women vanishing from the Anchorage area.
Months later, on September 12, 1982, hunters found a shallow grave along the Knik River near Eklutna. The remains were identified by dental records as those of Sherry Morrow on September 27, 1982. Evidence at the scene told a stark story: she had been shot three times in the back with. 223-caliber rounds, likely from a Ruger Mini-14; ace bandages suggested she had been blindfolded; and though the body was fully clothed, there were no bullet holes in the clothing—implying she had been killed while naked and then redressed before burial.
Investigators began to sense a grim pattern. Other women—often dancers or sex workers—had been disappearing, and there were earlier remains found north of Anchorage, including the unidentified victim nicknamed “Eklutna Annie.” The accumulating evidence pointed to a single predator operating in and around Anchorage, hunting in the wilderness outside the city.
The break came in 1983, when a 17-year-old victim escaped and led detectives to local baker Robert Hansen. A search of his property uncovered a trove of jewelry from victims and a marked map of remote burial sites. In 1984, Hansen pleaded guilty to four murders—including that of Sherry Morrow—and to the abduction and rape of the teenage survivor; he admitted to at least 17 killings in all. He received a sentence of 461 years without parole and died in prison in 2014.
