Don’t Look Behind You

to come forward; the majority of wives didn’t work and were dependent on their husbands financially.
    Certainly, there are legions of abused women today but at least there are safe places and support groups where they can run if they have the courage to leave.
    Joann Hansen had few options.
    She was an immaculate housekeeper and a good cook who kept within the budget Bob allowed for groceries. But their house on the road to Saltwater State Park in Des Moines wasn’t homey. The wood floors were dark; Bob liked the brown furniture, his trophies of dead animals mounted on the walls, and his cabinets filled with guns.
    Both Bob and Joann lived behind masks, trying to keep their secrets from prying eyes. He wanted his friends and other people to view him as a good family man. Like his own parents’ scrapbook, where he and his brother Ken smiled for the camera, the younger Hansens’ album is full of photos of them and their children. Bob and Joann’s “wedding” photo depicts a willowy bride with an orchid corsage feeding cake to her handsome groom. There are the birth announcements, the babies’ nursery identification cards, baby pictures, family reunions, snapshots of Bob and the kids on one outing or another, all looking joyful.
    They could easily have been chosen for the cover of the
Saturday Evening Post.
    No one who hadn’t seen her cuts and bruises could have guessed that the beautiful Joann, who still made an entrance when she and Bob had their infrequent dates, was so afraid behind her carefully constructed facade.
    Bob was very successful in real estate investments and in construction. He worked hard and he was shrewd when it came to buying property. Although he wouldn’t allow Joann to buy anything without his permission, his familyalways had food and shelter. As obsessed as he was with hunting and fishing, their large freezer in the basement was well stocked with elk, venison, and all kinds of fish. Bob smoked much of the salmon he caught, and he made ground venison quite palatable by mixing it with beef fat.
    Again and again, Joann tried to convince herself that somehow he would soften if she just tried harder or found the right combination that pleased him.
    Sadly, the scenario she envisioned was hopeless.
    One evening in the early part of 1962, Joann prepared some trout that Bob had caught. She, Bob, and their children were sitting at their trestle table with benches on either side. Joann, as always, sat closest to the kitchen so she could jump up and get whatever Bob wanted. She was afraid she might be pregnant again, but that was no guarantee that she was safe from physical abuse.
    As they ate in silence, Bob noticed that she had peeled the skin off her portion of fish and pushed it to the side of her plate.
    “Eat the skin,” he ordered her.
    “But I don’t like the skin,” she protested.
    “Eat it!”
    “I can’t,” she said. “It will make me sick.”
    Suddenly he swung one muscular arm and knocked her off the bench.
    This was just one of many times when Joann had done something, all unaware, that tapped into Bob’s boiling rage. Sobbing, she ran to the kitchen while Nick, Kandy Kay, and Ty sat, stunned and confused, at the table.
    Bob left the table and returned with a two-shot Derringer pistol. “See this,” he instructed his three small children. “This is what we’re going to use to kill Mommy with.”
    The children would not remember this, but Joann heard it, and she knew he meant it. She told Pat Martin she was very afraid Bob might kill her.

Chapter Six
ESCAPE
    It was too much.
    When Bob Hansen left for the construction site the next morning—July 25—Joann gathered up her children and fled to Patricia Martin’s house. Pat hid Joann’s blue Chevrolet so Bob wouldn’t know where she and the children were, and Joann got a restraining order that forbade his coming close to her. She believed that if he did, she could call the police and they would protect her.
    She was adamant that she wanted a divorce, even though she was fearful of Bob’s reaction. She and the children drove back to Pat’s house.
    Joann didn’t know any attorneys or where to start. She knew a Realtor in Auburn who shared his office with an attorney named Luther Martin (no relation to Patricia Martin). As fate would have it, Martin was out of town for some time. But she saw another lawyer’s shingle right across the street. Determined, she asked the Realtor to take her over and introduce her to