Don’t Look Behind You

me.’”
    Ty had no intention of killing his father, but he wanted some justice for his mother. He had frightened Bob, long after the years when he had been terrified by his father.
    Later, Ty tried once more to speak to his father but was unsuccessful. “Whenever I’d come up to Washington State, I’d make it a point to drive by his house,” Ty recalls. “I didn’t feel there was any chance of talking to my dad, but I wanted him to see my car go by and know that I hadn’t given up trying to find what had happened to our mother.”
    The encounter on his birthday only served to convince Bob Hansen that he needed to move to Costa Rica for good as soon as possible. He contacted an attorney in Washington and asked him to do research on how he could become a Costa Rican citizen.
    He planned to take all his assets with him and hide them in Costa Rica.
    Bob thought it would be far easier than it was. Bizarrely—since he didn’t trust either of his living children—Bob had made friends with an American couple who had become Costa Rican citizens decades earlier. Herb Stuart* and his wife, Lily,* were about the age of Ty and Nicole, and they seemed to dote on the aging man. He had known them for twenty-five years.
    But Costa Rican officials made immigration more and more difficult, and the Stuarts assured Bob that they couldbe his sponsors so he could achieve citizenship in Costa Rica.
    But Herb Stuart said it would take money. Lots of money.
    Although Bob usually kept his financial business close to his vest, Marv Milosevich believes Bob advanced as much as half a million dollars to the Stuarts. Either they told him or he had heard somewhere that it would take that much to prove his good faith to the proper government offices.
    When Marv Milosevich heard that, he attempted to warn Bob that it sounded fishy to him. “I spent an hour and a half drinking coffee with Herb Stuart when he came up here,” Marv said. “Apparently, he had told Bob that he had to prove to the Costa Rican government that he had enough funds to take care of himself so he wouldn’t be a burden on his chosen country. Herb figured it had to be at least a million dollars. He told me that he and his wife were going to be Bob’s ‘personal advocates.’
    “In my opinion, that guy was a con man, and Bob fell for it. I tried to warn him but he trusted Herb Stuart.”
    Bob Hansen wasn’t the kind of immigrant that most countries would covet. There was still the mystery of the missing girl who’d gone hiking with him, and although he never served more than overnight jail time—including the sentence (then) Judge Duncan Bonjorni gave him—Bob had a record of numerous arrests in the Northwest. Most of them stemmed from fights where he’d physically hurt people or destroyed property.
    He was required to present many documents to validate statements he’d given Costa Rican officials. He scrambledto get his birth certificate and proof of his place of birth in Junction City, Oregon, and he filled out a number of forms that he sent to the capital in Salem. He asked that his documentation be taken care of with all possible speed.
    Hansen also contacted the Washington State Patrol offices to obtain a record of any rap sheet of arrests he might have. He seemed to luck out there; his record came back clean. It wasn’t luck, however. Bob had cleverly changed his answers on the WSP form. He gave his birthday as October 16, 1924, instead of October 13, 1924. He also changed his name slightly—from Robert Milton Hansen to Robert Melvin Hansen.
    The WSP report said that they had not found any felony offense under that
exact
birth date and
exact
name.
    Whether Bob Hansen had any proof that Herb and Lily Stuart had actually
given
the half-million dollars he said he’d sent them to immigration authorities in Costa Rica—or not—nobody knows. Marv Milosevich doubts that they did.
    Robert Milton Hansen had hurt people in one way or another all his life. Suddenly,
his
world was crumbling.
    His efforts to get into Costa Rica as a citizen came to nothing. Officials there refused his application, and much of his fortune was gone. Nevertheless, he drew up a will leaving everything he owned—including his house—to Herb and Lily Stuart! It would be his final revenge on his sons.
    But it wouldn’t be a surprise. Ty had known for decades that he and Nick would get nothing in their father’s will,just as the money set aside for them to collect on their