Don’t Look Behind You

Underage students could drink in Kandy’s small apartment as well as smoke marijuana or experiment with other drugs if they wanted to.
    Barbara Snyder was very upset when she heard rumors that Kandy was “easy.” She tried not to believe that her best friend since third grade was promiscuous. But Kandy had no adult supervision or anyone to turn to with problems.
    And the whispers grew louder.
    Kandy gravitated to men who were five to seven years older than she was, and she didn’t mind if they were married. Amateur psychologists might say that she was looking for a father figure who would really look after her, but her life was far more complicated than that. Did she really believe that her absent mother had been hit by a train, or was that a lie she told herself so that she didn’t have to believe Joann had abandoned her?
    Bob Hansen was boorish and kinky when it came to sex; he apparently had no inkling of what was appropriate whether he was talking to peers, women, or even children.
    In the spring of 1976, when it came time for Kandy and Barbara’s big prom, Bob insisted on cooking dinner for several of the young couples before the dance. At that time, he lived in a new place he’d built, right across the street from the Green River. It was white stucco with high arches in the front, and much nicer than the house in DesMoines. There were flowers in the stucco planter boxes on his front patio—but they were all artificial.
    One selling point about Bob’s new place was a ringside seat to a drive-in movie just beyond the river. He didn’t have sound, but it was free, and the theater often showed pornographic films that didn’t need any dialogue.
    The prom dinner was an embarrassment and a disappointment for the girls, who were dressed in lovely gowns, with the matching corsages their dates had given them. This was supposed to be a time for teenagers, and Kandy Kay’s father didn’t fit in at all. It was almost as if he was usurping a special, memory-making evening that belonged to
them.
    Whether Bob Hansen knew beforehand that the drive-in was showing a pornographic movie—however soft- or hard-core it might be—or if it was a surprise for him, he quickly called the boys over to the window and pointed out what was on the screen.
    “It was kind of like when he took us to the circus,” Barbara remembers. “We were all humiliated, and it ruined our evening. The guys were glued to that window, we girls ate dinner alone, and we were really late for the prom. It seemed like Bob had planned it.”
    Kandy worked from the time she was old enough to get a job—first at Baskin-Robbins selling ice cream, and then at the Sears Outlet store. But she had had to grow up too fast, without anyone to guide her. In many ways, she seemed far older than she really was.
    Saltwater State Park on Puget Sound is about five miles south of Des Moines. A very handsome—and verymarried—ranger worked there, and Kandy had a huge crush on him. He was at least seven years older than she was—a long stretch when she was seventeen. It was easy for him to seduce her, and they began an intense affair.
    “He drove us wherever we wanted to go,” Barb Snyder says. “He seemed as though he wasn’t married, but both of us knew he was. Kandy wouldn’t listen to good sense when I tried to warn her. She was madly in love with him.”
    When they were seniors at Mount Rainier High School, Barb decided to run for Miss Des Moines of 1977, a precursor to the Miss Washington pageant. The first prize was a $700 scholarship, and Barb urged Kandy to enter, too. It was something they could enjoy together as best friends, and she thought it might help Kandy turn her life around. At first, Kandy wasn’t interested, but Barb kept plugging away and finally convinced her.
    But Barb’s plan backfired.
    “Once she decided to enter, she
really
wanted to win—even at the cost of our friendship,” Barb Kuehne Snyder remembers.
    Bob Hansen was all for it. It was one more opportunity to show off his family—especially his daughter. He paid for Kandy’s preparation for the pageant. He saw to it that she had the most expensive dress, the best pageant coach, the most talented beautician.
    Like all fledgling beauty queens, the Miss Des Moines hopefuls attended breakfasts, lunches, teas, charity events, parades, and anything else that local boosters could come up with. The contenders got little sleep, but it was all so heady and exciting that they