In the summer of 1963, Darla Henrichsen was working as a maid at a Minnesota resort owned by Robert Hansen's family, according to "Butcher, Baker." She was on summer break from the University of Iowa, and Robert was there helping his parents after a three-year stint in reform school for arson. He'd burned down a school bus barn in his hometown of Pocahontas, Iowa, per The Des Moines Register. He was also newly single after his first wife — to whom he'd been married only a few months — divorced him because of his arson conviction.
Darla and Robert, who were both originally from Pocahontas, married not long after the summer they met. They began a nomadic life in which Robert, a baker by trade, got and lost several jobs around the Midwest due to his penchant for theft, according to "Murder at Forty Below: True Crime Stories from Alaska." Even so, after initially dropping out of college when they first wed, Leland Hale said on his blog that Darla earned her master's degree in education during this period. In 1967, they moved to Alaska. Darla Hansen began teaching in both public and private schools, was a devoted member of her Lutheran church, had two children, and also tutored children with learning disabilities, per "Butcher, Baker."
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