The body was exhumed, and samples were sent to create a DNA profile, which was added to the FBI’s national missing person database. 3, 2014, photo, workers and medical examiner crew members exhume the body of Robin Pelkey.
The remains of a woman known for 37 years only as one of 17 victims of a notorious Alaska serial killer have been identified through DNA profiling as Robin Pelkey, authorities said Friday, Oct. 3, 2014, photo shows the grave marker for Jane Doe #3 from a cemetery in Anchorage, Alaska. The case was reopened in 2014, the same year Hansen died in prison at the age of 75. There were no missing persons reports that matched, and she was buried in the Anchorage municipal cemetery as an unknown. He didn’t know her name or much else about her.Īn autopsy confirmed the body was that of a white woman between the ages of 17 and 23. He told investigators he flew her to the lake in his small airplane, murdered her and discarded the body. Hansen told investigators he abducted her from downtown Anchorage sometime in the winter of 1983. “We really got our fingers crossed that we may know, find out who Eklutna Annie is,” he said, adding it could take up to a year.Īmong the skeletal remains found in 1984, Pelkey - called Horseshoe Harriet by investigators - was discovered near Horseshoe Lake and the Little Susitna River northwest of Anchorage, troopers said. Genetic genealogy efforts are underway in hopes of also identifying her, Randy McPherron, an Alaska State Troopers cold case investigator, told The Associated Press. Her body was found near Eklutna Lake just north of Anchorage. The only woman not yet identified is known to investigators as Eklutna Annie, who is believed to have been Hansen’s first victim, McDaniel said. In total, 12 bodies have been found, and 11 of those have been identified, trooper spokesman Austin McDaniel said. In 1984, Alaska State Troopers returned to those areas, and the remains of eight women were discovered. This October 1971 file photo shows Alaska serial killer Robert Hansen. At one point, he flew with investigators over an area north of Anchorage, where he pointed out where 17 victims were buried. Hansen was convicted in the deaths of four women but confessed to killing many more, troopers said.
The 2013 movie “The Frozen Ground,” starring Nicolas Cage and John Cusack, chronicled the troopers’ investigation and capture of Hansen. Retired trooper Glenn Flothe, who helped put Hansen behind bars, told the Anchorage Daily News in 2008 that Hansen’s victims initially included any woman who caught his eye, but he quickly learned that strippers and prostitutes were harder to track and less likely to be missed. Many of those people looking for fast money left as quickly as they came, and exotic dancers traveled a circuit along West Coast cities, making sudden disappearances commonplace. Hansen, who owned a bakery, gained the nickname “Butcher Baker” for abducting and hunting down women - many of them sex workers - in the wilderness just north of Anchorage through the early 1980s, when the state’s largest city was booming because of construction of the trans-Alaska pipeline.Ĭonstruction of the 800-mile pipeline offered good-paying jobs for workers, but it also attracted those who wished to make money off them, everyone from sex workers to drug dealers. Pelkey may have never been known,” Alaska Department of Public Safety Commissioner James Cockrell said in a statement. Without their hard work and tenacity, the identity of Ms. “I would like to thank all of the troopers, investigators and analysts that have diligently worked on this case over the last 37 years. The victim was Robin Pelkey, who was 19 and living on the streets of Anchorage before she was killed by Robert Hansen in the early 1980s, the Alaska Bureau of Investigation’s Cold Case Investigation Unit said. (Alaska Department of Public Safety via AP)Ī woman known for 37 years only as one of a dozen or more victims of a notorious Alaska serial killer has been identified through genetic genealogy and a DNA match, authorities said Friday. The remains of a woman known for 37 years only as one of 17 victims of Alaska serial killer Robert Hansen have been identified, authorities said Friday, Oct. This undated photo released by the Alaska State Department of Public Safety shows Robin Pelkey just before her 18th birthday.