Don’t Look Behind You

September. Most ofthem were barely making it. They were so happy to find six pairs of socks for a dollar, or a table for fifteen dollars. Before long, I cut the prices in half. An old bed meant so much to them, or some dishes that didn’t match. Some of them called relatives and they came to the sale, too. In the end, I was giving things away, and it was a wonderful experience to see how grateful they were.”
    Having heard of Bob Hansen’s stinginess and his scorn for anyone who gave to charitable causes, Kathleen admits that she took a certain satisfaction as she virtually donated all his possessions to people who basically had nothing.
    “I knew he would have hated my doing that,” she said with a smile. “He never believed in helping poor people, and now they were driving and walking away with the things he’d left behind, with their little kids jumping up and down with excitement.”

Chapter Nineteen
A LANDMARK LAWSUIT
    Ty had attempted to file a lawsuit against his father in 2006, believing that the only thing that might get the old man’s attention would be to threaten his bank account.
    “I didn’t want his money,” Ty says, “but I wanted to honor my mother, to somehow let her know that we were still fighting for her. We had run out of money to hire excavators and bulldozers in our search for her remains. If we could finally get the inheritance that our mother had left us, we could keep on looking for her. But I couldn’t find a lawyer who would take my case.”
    The Christmas season was in full swing in late November 2009, and Bob Hansen had been dead for four months when Ty Hansen and Cindy Tyler finally located an attorney who would represent Ty and Nicole.
    Dean Brett, a Bellingham lawyer, agreed to file a wrongful death suit on behalf of Joann Hansen’s estate.
    It seemed a unique legal situation. Their surviving children were suing on behalf of their mother, dead for almost five decades, against their father, also deceased.
    A King County judge had ruled in 1969 that Joann Cooper Hansen was legally dead—even though her body had never been found. By 1975, thirteen years had passed with not one sign of her. Nor had her remains surfaced by 2009, despite the determined hunt kept alive by Ty Hansen and Cindy Tyler.
    Sergeant John Urquhart, spokesman for the King County Sheriff’s Office, said that as far as his department was concerned, Joann’s case had remained open in 1975. “And it remains open today.”
    Urquhart said that Bob Hansen had, indeed, been a person of interest in Joann’s disappearance, but that sheriff’s detectives had never been able to find enough evidence to file murder charges against him.
    “At the time Joann Hansen disappeared,” Sergeant Urquhart added, “missing persons cases weren’t pursued as vigorously as they are today.”
    So many people had been afraid of Bob Hansen, and Ty and Cindy hoped that frightened witnesses might feel safe enough to come forward now that he was dead. Someone, somewhere, had to have information—no matter how slight it might be—that could be tied with what
was
known to finally weave a net that would incriminate Bob. He couldn’t be tried in regular court now, but he might be facing a higher judgment beyond life.
    If her children could bury Joann’s earthly remains in a cemetery with a headstone, it would mean the world to them.
    No amount of money could ever compensate Joann’s children for the loss of their mother when they were only toddlers, nor could it erase the pain and suffering she had endured in her brutal marriage and in her sad anticipation of her own death.
    Local papers in Seattle and in adjoining counties carried the story of the bizarre lawsuit. Forty-seven years later, the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
did cover the mystery of Joann Hansen’s disappearance. KOMO-TV, the ABC affiliate in Seattle, heard from the network headquarters in New York after they did a comprehensive overview of Ty and Nicole Hansen’s suit against their late father.
    “Would Ty Hansen be willing to be interviewed by Chris Hansen (no relation) regarding the lawsuit he had filed?”
    Of course Ty would! He had done his best to gain publicity that might reach someone who knew something about his mother. Her photographs and the history of the case were registered on the Doe Network, a successful clearinghouse for missing persons and unidentified bodies in America. Joann’s face—as she had looked in 1962—was also on posters and