Detective A Tireless Hunter But Hansen Says His Family Is His Greatest Achievement
Dirty Harry, he’s not.
Not once, in 25 years of chasing the baddest men and women imaginable, did Jim Hansen ever squeeze the trigger of his revolver. Not a single shot in the line of duty.
Hansen didn’t have to. He out-hustled his prey, nailing down witnesses, fingerprints and confessions. As a Spokane County sheriff’s detective, he tracked scores of natural born killers across Spokane and the West, capturing most in the end.
“He had a lot of passion,” says Lt. John Simmons, who heads the homicide unit. “He liked the tough ones, the whodunits.”
Before retiring earlier this year, Hansen put his stamp on some of the biggest, bloodiest cases:
He was one of two detectives who spent six hours interviewing Kevin Boot before Boot confessed he was present for the execution-style murder of Felicia Reese in December 1994.
Last week, a judge sent Boot to prison for life.
Hansen spent months hunting the Green River killer as a member of the law enforcement task force.
He headed the investigation of the shooting rampage at Fairchild Air Force in 1994 that left four people dead and injured 22 others.
But what Hansen is perhaps most proud of was the role he assumed off the job: family man.
He says some peers sacrificed time with family for promotions. “Quite a large percentage would have liked that time with the kids,” Hansen says.
He retired in January, opting for a second career in management. He’s now director of security for Rosauers supermarkets.
Born and raised in north Spokane, he graduated from Shadle Park High School. His mother was a cook for several Spokane schools and his father was a parts manager for a heavy equipment company.
Growing up, he remembers his parents’ friendship with a police officer who sometimes stopped by for coffee while on the beat.
But Hansen didn’t become serious about a career in law enforcement until he went to Washington State University and befriended some criminal justice students.
When he graduated in 1970, he married nursing student Sydney Robbins after an eight-year friendship blossomed into romance.
Looking for work, Hansen took advantage of a job opening at the Sheriff’s Department.
Hansen was hired temporarily with the understanding he’d stay on permanently if he passed a screening test in the top 10. He made the grade, becoming one of Spokane County’s first college-educated deputies and, later, a member of the first SWAT team.
He learned on the job how to be a cop. Other deputies taught him how to use a gun.
“When I showed up, they handed me a gun and a belt. There was no training,” he says. “It was kind of like they needed bodies.”
His bride, meanwhile, received a startling indoctrination into life as a deputy’s wife - from another woman married to a cop.
Women like men in uniform, Sydney Hansen was advised. Some might try luring her husband by making phony calls for help and coming to their doors in skimpy negligees.
As the years passed, the Hansens watched the marriages of many law enforcement friends collapse. For some, the job’s strain and stress was too much.
“You just kind of wonder, ‘Am I going to be next?”’ Sydney Hansen remembers thinking.
But 25 years later, they remain happily married.
They say that’s because Hansen devoted himself to maintaining a normal family life and didn’t bring his often grisly work home.
“Most homicides aren’t pretty,” he says. “It’s not something you discuss over the dinner table.”
During the day, he’d investigate murders. At night, he’d drive his three children to soccer, softball and hockey games - or hang out by the pool at his North Side home.
Sometimes, though, Hansen was called away to investigate a homicide and the timing was atrocious.
The bodies of Kimberly Palmer and her boyfriend, Scott Currier, were discovered in 1980 about the time Sydney Hansen was expecting to give birth to a third child. Later, members of the Gypsy Jokers motorcycle gang were convicted in the slayings. Donald Paradis and Thomas Gibson were sentenced to death row in Idaho.
When she went into labor, Hansen was busy and a sergeant drove her to the hospital.
Hansen did make a brief appearance at the hospital, she recalls.
“He says, ‘Let’s name this baby. I have to get back to work.”’
Most of the time, she didn’t fear for her husband’s safety.
There were exceptions, like when Hansen worked undercover early in his career, busting drug dealers. One suspect pulled a gun and pointed it at Hansen and his partner.
“We were able to wrestle him and get the gun away from him,” Hansen says.
In 1976, he became a detective.
He spent months months chasing leads in the Green River killings after a prime suspect appeared with Eastern Washington connections. The suspect, William J. Stevens Jr., died in 1991.
Authorities believe the killer was responsible for the deaths of more than 40 women between 1982 and 1984 in Washington and Oregon.
When the Green River Task Force found him, Stevens was living with his parents in Spokane and attending Gonzaga Law School. But sources tipped Hansen and other detectives to his dark side, including an obsession with prostitutes.
That investigation ended in frustration. Hansen says there was never enough evidence.
Other cases also remain unsolved.
In 1990, Hansen and Spokane police Detective Jim Peterson teamed up to tackle the killings of three prostitutes. Tips poured in, but there wasn’t enough time to pursue them all before the trail grew cold.
“The frustrating part was that we didn’t have enough manpower,” Hansen says.
A combination of patience, persistence and luck helped Hansen solve some tough cases.
Take the 1983 murders of Garry Junior High students Elizabeth Marks and Rhonda Rima.
Weeks after the girls were last seen at a carnival in the Spokane Coliseum parking lot, their bodies were pulled from the Spokane River.
Hansen spent years chasing leads. The big break came in 1990, when a jailhouse informer led him to Martin Sanders, who was doing time in the Montana State Prison for rape and kidnapping.
Sanders later pleaded guilty to raping and killing the Spokane girls. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Sandra Rima, Rhonda’s mother, found Hansen to be understanding and honest about the odds of finding the killer.
“He told us that the only way it would get solved was if someone talked,” she says. “And someone did.”
Sanders also admitted killing two Grant County women found shot to death in 1980.
Hansen was junior only to Mike Massong among the five homicide detectives at the Sheriff’s Department. Massong and Hansen teamed up so much they could predict each other’s next move.
“We got to know each other so well we didn’t have to talk,” Massong says.
One of Hansen’s biggest whodunits is expected to go to trial this year. More than three years after Hansen completed his investigation, prosecutors decided in January to charge Michael Tarbert with the 1991 killings of two West Central girls, Nicki Wood and Rebecca West. The body of Wood was discovered, but West was never found.
For years, then-Spokane County Prosecutor Don Brockett wouldn’t prosecute the case, believing it was too weak. When Brockett retired, that changed.
“That’s all the evidence we had. It wasn’t going to be better than that,” Hansen says. “Let’s let a jury say he’s not guilty.”
Even Hansen admits to being shocked at today’s senseless, random violence. Young killers with no remorse, smirking at the victim’s family in court.
“The type of person you’re dealing with now is just cold,” he says.
Some of it may be due to “poor family backgrounds,” he says.
“Times now are a lot worse than 10 years ago,” Hansen says. With his two oldest children - Andy, 21, and Camie, 18 - he didn’t worry much about their safety. But he’s concerned about 15-year-old son Nick. “I think Spokane’s grown into a big city. You see it with the traffic, the crime.”
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