Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two of our series about the
murders of Jill and Julie Hanson. Robin, do you want to catch everyone
up on what we talked about in our previous episode. The crime took place
in Willow Creek, California, in nineteen eighty six, and the two victims
were a pair of twin sisters sixteen years old, Jill and Julie Hanson,
who were living with their parents, Hans and Betty Hanson, and also their
a half brother, Donnie, who was conceived in a previous marriage Betty's previous
relationship before she got married to Hans. He happened to be staying over that
at their mobile home. But then there was a major fire and the family
tried to do everything to put it out, and they called the fire department,
and then they would discover got a double check which one it was that
died first. I always forget Julie. She was discovered in a field across
the street, and it turned out she had a gunshot wound to the stomach,
and it became obvious that this was a deliberately planned crime with arson and
murder, and they would find Jill's body in the wreckage shortly thereafter, and
she also had a gunshot wound to her stomach. And even though Julie was
still survived and was taken to the hospital and held on for a few weeks,
she wound up passing away too when an air bubble accidentally entered her vane.
And suspicions started turning towards Donnie because it turned out that the he tried
to go back into the crime scene to retrieve the shotgun, and it turned
out that he had borrowed it from a friend, and that bunch of gasoline
that was used to start the fire have been charged to his credit card only
a few days before the crime took place. There seemed to be overwhelming evidence
against him, and when Donnie went on trial, his defense attorney tried to
paint a scenario that two other intruders broke into the house and happened to kill
the two girls before setting it on fire, and reasonable that was created because
there were other neighbors who claimed to see two unidentify men outside the trailer while
it was on fire, and of course the defense tried to say that they
were the real killers and that Donnie was completely innocent, and the jury seemed
to buy it. They didn't necessarily believe Donnie was innocent, but they still
thought there was reasonable doubt, so they wound up finding him not guilty.
During the trial, Hans and Betty were very supportive of Donnie, but as
time went on they came to believe that he was responsible for what happened,
so they wound up disowning him, and he moved away to a new state
and changed his name. But though Donnie was acquitted, he cannot be charged
with the crime again. There has always been suspicion that he did not do
this alone, and that at the very least he would have had some other
accomplices. So there's still a lot of unanswered questions about this case. Well,
no matter which way you look at it, even if Donnie Hanson is
guilty, this is still a pretty bizarre crime and there are a number of
unanswered questions. There weren't many people featured on Unsolved Mysteries whom you'll feel more
sympathy for than Hans and Betty Hanson, who moved to Oregon in the years
following the crime. In order to start over. The couple had to experience
an unimaginable tragedy, as they not only lost two daughters, but had to
come to terms with the fact that their own son was likely involved in the
crime. Even though Hans was technically Donnie's stepfather, he had raised him since
he was around two years old, and shared this heartbreaking line during his Unsolved
Mysteries interview. Quote, this has been a real tragedy for us because we've
lost three of our four children out of this. Two of them are dead,
and Donnie's dead to me because I do feel like he was one hundred
percent responsible for this, whether he pulled it off one hundred percent himself or
not. End quote. I would be interested to know when the Hansons ultimately
came to this realization, because Betty did say that she was initially happy when
Donnie was acquitted. We've seen a number of cases in which a murderer's family
sticks by them and refuses to believe that they're guilty in spite of overwhelming evidence.
But it seems like Hans and Betty reached the point where they realized that
there was no way Donnie could have been innocent in all this. Since Donnie
could not be charged with this crime again because of double jeopardy. I can
understand why his refusal to come clean would lead to estrangement from his family.
If he did have accomplices and someone else pulled the trigger, they could technically
still face justice for what they did, but Donnie refuses to name them or
acknowledge any involvement. Jules, you nailed it when you said, regardless of
what Donnie did or didn't do, your heart breaks for these parents who,
at the end of the day, they lost two children to murder as the
victims, but then come to this realization that they're, in the stepfather's eyes,
one hundred percent sure that Donnie's responsible, and so they technically lose this
third child and they're left picking up the pieces of saying how do you reconstruct
a family when so you know, half of us are missing. And what's
really difficult in these cases is oftentimes law enforcement can't share all the details with
the family as they're going through a trial. But when a trial ends and
a verdict's been rendered, there are detectives who sit down with families and are
able to be much more frank and open because they love and care about these
people they're working with. You really do take on a liking to in a
friendship to families like this that are just grieving and hurting and asking for help.
And so it's possible that when the trial ended that either the prosecutors or
the police were able to reveal more information or be more transparent and blunt with
the family than they were prior to. So when he was acquitted, Mom
was thinking, this is wonderful, right, he's we're safe and this is
not our son's fault, and so we can kind of heal our family having
two of our children. And then possibly as they learn more information from the
prosecutor and the police, that's when they come to the realization that, wow,
I didn't even the trial didn't say it that bluntly to me. Point
I never thought of that that maybe the Hansons just did not have all the
information before they went to trial. There could have been some details that were
withheld from them, and it was only afterwards, after Donnie was acquitted,
that they were able to sit down and explain the full story, all the
evidence of the details, and that's what caused hans and Betty to change their
mind. But who knows, it could have been Donnie himself who changed their
minds because maybe he just did not show any grief towards his sister or something,
or maybe he did something suspicious and that the more they thought about it,
the more they realized. Yeah, even though he was found not guilty,
he had to have been involved in this. By the time Donnie appeared
on Unsolved Mysteries, he had moved out of the area and changed his name,
so during his interview his face was shown in silhouette and his voice was
digitized. He also really seemed to like using the word ludacrous by saying things
like quote, the accusations that I know what went on that night are absolutely
ludicrous. Of course, when asked to account for the many discrepancies in his
original story, Donnie really didn't do a very good job explaining them and made
himself look even worse. I think if you were to take a poll among
Unsolved Mysteries fans about Donnie's guilt or innocence, virtually none of them would vote
that he's innocent. But the full extent of his involvement in this crime is
not so clear cut. As far as the rest of the Hanson family,
it sounds like Hans, Betty, Jill, and Julie were all considered to
be genuinely nice people within the community. During his Unsolved Mysteries interview, hans
said that even though the twins were popular in school, they also acted very
friendly and sympathetic towards underdogs and would befriend anyone. There's virtually no information out
there about the surviving Hanson daughter, Becky, but I would be really curious
to know about what the family dynamic was like with Donnie. If you look
up any online discussions about this case, you'll find comments from a few people
who claim to have known the Hansons personally and say nothing but nice things about
most of the family. But they don't speak all that glowingly about Donnie,
and you get the impression that he was pretty much the black sheep. I
don't know if he had a history of trouble before this crime took place,
but I'd love to know if there were any warning signs to suggest he was
the type of person who was capable of murdering his own family. Can you
all refresh me? Donnie's story did change while he was interviewed by police and
then interrogated by police. Originally, I recall him saying something that said that
he actually carried one of the girls to safety, and then it turns out
he definitely did not like he was playing both sides, saying, you know,
thinking maybe one of the scissors was going to survive and could tell on
him. Remind me what happened there. Well, that happened originally because when
the fire was going on and Hans was asking have you seen Julie and Donnie
said no, And it was only after they discovered Julie's body in the lot
across the street that he said, oh, yeah, I carried her out.
It's my I was the one who got her out of there. But
Unsaw Mysteries interview is when he changed the story about the shotgun because he originally,
as you recall, the police caught him trying to break into the family's
warehouse because he had stashed the gun there and thought he could go in to
get rid of it. And he originally said that he hid the shotgun because
he was worried that he would get blamed for the crime. But then he's
interviewed years later on Unsolved Mysteries and said, oh, actually I decided to
hide the gun because I was worried it'd get stolen, as if someone who's
in the middle of a house fire losing your family is going to care about
their precious shotgun being stolen, or that you'd care if you were going to
be blamed. I mean, the reality is is my priority is my family
in that moment, and that wouldn't be where my brain was at that time.
I mean, that might be while I'm sitting in an interrogation room,
I might go, oh, Lord of mercy, this is going to look
real bad on me. But in the moment, and like you said,
while his father screaming, where's you know? Have you seen her? Have
you seen her? And he's saying no, and then makes up this elaborate
hero story. It's wild to think that someone in the midst of this trauma
of watching the physical fire and the physical possessions burn, and then knowing your
sisters are harmed in this fire, right everyone thought it was just the fire,
to be thinking about any of those extra details makes zero sense. One
might even say it's ludicrous. Quite The most prominent theory about a potential motive
for is that he wanted to collect on a life insurance policy that his stepfather
had. But even if he had managed to kill everyone in the trailer that
night, he still would have had to split the insurance money with his surviving
sister, Becky, and if Donnie had accomplices, they presumably would have demanded
a cut of the money as well. We know that Jill and Julie were
shot, whereas Hans and Betty were not. But was this an intentional choice
or did Donnie just not get the opportunity to kill his mother and stepfather as
well. The fact of the matter is that Donnie lived in an entirely different
town and had stopped by to visit his family, So if he was a
completely innocent victim, it's quite a coincidence that they would happen to be attacked
on the one night when Donnie was staying there. Now, in a moment,
Robin is going to go over the scenario presented by Donnie's defense team at
his trial, which involved two random intruders breaking into the trailer and committing the
crime. I'm glad that Unsolved Mysteries presented a reenactment of this scenario because when
you watch it unfold on screen, it gives you a pretty good idea of
how absurd the whole thing really is, and Remember, it doesn't sound like
the defense ever presented a potential motive for why these two intruders would decide to
perform a home invasion on the Hansens, a well liked family who did not
seem to have any known enemies. I'm excited to hear these theories. Also,
remember if this was someone who wasn't random. I know we're about to
talk about a random intruder, but if this was someone plotting to kill the
girls or kill the family, when they would see that there's an extra vehicle
there, wouldn't that also deter them from being at the scene because you already
know that there's a mom, dad, and these two girls. If you're
planning this, and then you drive up and you see an extra car,
that could mean an extra adult, an extra male, someone that's going to
confront you. I feel like if it was a planned attack, Donnie's presence
would have actually deterred people from being there because they would have been familiar with
whose cars would be in the driveway and what activity would be going on at
the house. And then here's Donnie arriving. Now there's gonna be a theory
thrown out by the defense that says These are random perpetrators that just so happened
to have this plan that kills the girls. I'm ready to hear it,
and I think it too will be quite ludicrous. Yeah, there's gonna be
a lot of sarcasm when we describe these scenarios. So the story goes that
the perpetrators showed up at the hands and trailer at three am without bringing any
weapons of their own, but by pure luck, Donnie just happened to have
a shotgun, some shells, and two full cans of gasoline inside his car,
which he had borrowed or purchased during the preceding days. Man, don't
you just love it when you plan a home invasion and the victims are courteous
enough to leave the items to use outside their residence. These men then break
inside and start pouring gasoline all over the trailer while Donnie is sleeping right there
on the couch and somehow manage not to wake him up. When Julie suddenly
walks out into the hallway, one of the intruders uses Donnie's shotgun to fire
a shot into abdomen before starting a fire and fleeing the trailer. When you
watch the scene in the reenactment, you'll see that when the shot is fired,
the gunman is standing literally only inches away from Donnie while he's waking up
on the couch. Yet he somehow does not notice Donnie and just decides to
completely ignore him and not shoot him too. The most ridiculous part of the
scenario is that Donnie supposedly tended to his wounded sister and move Julie's body onto
the porch before helping his parents with the fire, which would explain why Julie
wound up crawling to the vacant lat across the road. But the problem is
that at no point before he was arrested or put on trou for murder did
Donnie tell his parents or anybody else that he witnesses Julie gets shot by this
mysterious intruder, which seems like a pretty important detail to share if both if
your sisters have been murdered and your family's home burned down. Yeah, this
doesn't work because Donnie even was seen by his parents screaming get out, get
out, and the girls weren't present. She one of them believed they might
have seen somebody else, another person there. I don't believe Donnie's sleeping through
this either a shotgun blast and you slept through that. I just I don't
see that being possible whatsoever. And you brought up the point about how if
these intruders saw an extra car parked outside the house, they might be discouraged
from going in there, thinking that there were more people to possibly have to
overcome. And let's just say theoretically that these were intruders who were specifically targeting
Jill and Julie, that maybe they wanted to break in and sexually assault them
in their bedroom or something. Yet they're going through the front door and they're
not discouraged at all by seeing an extra person there sleeping on the couch,
Like they would have to pass by Donnie before they even made it to the
bedrooms. So that's just another hole. And like why they would decide to
do this and then just leave Donnie alone, even though he's the first person
they would see when they went inside. And if they were there to annihilate
the entire family for whatever reason, it wasn't sexually motivated. You'd think that
they would murder the men first. They would get Hans and they would get
Donnie, and then they would deal with the women. After because they would
be easier to manage. You wouldn't just go straight for the most vulnerable ones
there, the two sixteen year old girls. No, you'd surely shoot Donnie
on the couch if you walked by him. And they said, like,
well, maybe they didn't see him. That's pretty hard to miss a grown
man sitting on a couch. But I'll also tell you that, you know,
you got to think about the situation here. If these people even were
just random passerbys that didn't come prepared whatsoever and hit this treasure trove in Donnie's
car, They're coming up to the scene and they're going, is this a
good place to attack? Yes or no? And you have two teenage girls
that could be driving, so they could either share a car or each have
their own car, so that could be one to two cars. You got
Mom and Dad who likely have their own cars, so now you're at two,
three, four cars, and then Donnie's there, so you could have
up to five cars parked in that front yard or driveway. And to me,
if I'm looking to see who could I case, who could I go
attack? Who could I I would look for a single car right so that
I don't think that there's gonna be five adults that can charge me when I
walk through this door. It makes no sense. Remember, during the chaos,
while they were attempting to put out the fire, Hans said he asked
Donnie if he had seen the twins, and Donnie replied no. It was
only after Julie was discovered in the lot when Donnie changed his story and said
that he'd gotten her out of the trailer. Yet he didn't mention anything about
witnessing her get shot, and no one else even realized Julie had a gunshot
wound until after she was rushed to the hospital and token into surgery. This
would tie into the problematic story Donnie shared after he was caught breaking into the
warehouse to retrieve the shotgun, as he told police he'd taken it from the
car and hit it there because he feared he'd get blamed for the crime.
But once again, it was not until after Julie was taken into surgery that
anyone even found out a crime had occurred. For all, anyone knew,
the fire could have just been an accident, Yet Donnie's making it his top
priority to hide a shotgun in order to avoid being blamed for shooting no one
was even aware had taken place. During his Unsolved Mysteries interview, Donnie changed
his story and said that he hit the shotgun because he was worried it might
get stolen. But I just don't see how a normal person would even be
thinking of something like that if they were going through the traumatic ordeal of witnessing
their famili's home burned to the ground. If the defense scenario was and these
intruders took the shotgun from Donnie's car, it was awfully nice of them to
put it back there so that Donnie could grab the murder weapon and hide it
in order to avoid being blamed for the shooting. For an innocent person,
Donnie sure did a lot to preemptively cover his tracks for a crime that he
did not even commit. Who well, that explanation with a shotgun really does
put you in a place where you go that defense is impossible, because,
like you said, no one even knew the girls were shot, and therefore,
what would bring your attention to the fact that you had a shotgun in
your car. Did he ever say, I found the shotgun in my car
and I went and I hit it, or you know, so it wouldn't
get stolen, because if he found it at the scene and he goes,
that's my gun. Oh no, they're gonna think I did this, I
gotta go hide it. If that was his explanation at one point, then
he did know they were shot before anybody at the hospital did. And so
Donnie he really did dig himself in a deep, deep ditch. I have
no idea how the defense team convinced a jury that Donnie was not guilty.
I get there's reasonable doubt because more people could have been involved, but that
simply accomplices that haven't been caught. Donnie has to be the root of it.
And so the fact that the defense did a good enough job to cause
that reasonable doubt that Donnie actually was not involved pretty powerful defense attorneys. Yeah,
we talked about this in the last episode, but I guess maybe one
of the reasons is that they did not actually charge him with conspiracy to commit
murder. They charged him with murder itself. So the jury's thinking to themselves,
well, I think Donnie might be involved, but they never actually proven
that he was the guy who pulled the trigger and murdered his sister. And
if that's the case, we just have to acquit because even though this defense's
scenario is completely implausible, it still doesn't mean that Donnie was the actual trigger
man, and that's what he was charged with. They were saying, if
you can't prove he pulled the trigger himself, then we can't convict. That's
what I'm guessing. Yeah, because the jury said, we don't believe he's
innocent, but we still don't think that the prosecution had proven its case beyond
a reasonable doubt. When you break down the defense's alternate scenario from beginning to
end, it does seem pretty astonishing that a jury could hear this and vote
not guilty. Of course, one of the worst breaks for the prosecution's case
was when Julie died in the hospital before she could testify about what she saw
at trial. Given the circumstances of how she passed away, it's tempting to
believe that someone might have tampered with Julie's intravenous feeding tube to allow the air
bubble to enter our heart, But I genuinely believe that this was nothing more
than an unfortunate freak accident. Donnie had already been arrested by the time Julie's
death took place, and if anyone else was involved in this crime, I
highly doubt they would have been sophisticated enough to sneak into a hospital to disconnect
Julie's IV tube without being seen. That type of covert operation to eliminate a
witness is the type of thing you see in movies, but I don't see
it happening in a small town in Humboldt County, California. The circumstances of
Julie's death were extensively analyzed when Hans and Betty filed the civil lawsuit against the
hospital and took them to trial years later, but there's nothing to suggest it
was intentional sabotage. No, I'd have to agree with what Hans and Betty
fought for that it was neglect or an error on the hospital part, that
something simply wasn't checked, it wasn't inserted correctly, that it wasn't cleaned correctly,
and therefore this freak accident led to Julie's death. Now, the reality
is is that Donnie and or this mysterious intruder or intruders are responsible for her
death because had she not been there and the hospital due to the fire and
the shotgun blast. She'd be alive today. And it's pitiful that Julie wasn't
one a to survive this, but that she also wasn't able to gain the
strength to provide a statement to police, or to provide any kind of written
note or anything saying this is what happened, because it's very possible if Julie
had regained consciousness and been able to communicate that she would have said last thing
I saw was Donnie coming into my room with a shotgun or running towards me
with a shotgun. Yeah, it is true because Donnie was initially only charged
with Jill's murder because Julie was still alive at the time. But they still
had the mindset though, when Julie died that even though this was an accident
with an air bubble, we're still going to charge Donnie with this murder as
well, because he was directly responsible for her winding up in the hospital to
begin with. I'm surprised that their parents didn't get a payout from the hospital
that was rather substantial, because doctors and have to pay a huge amount of
malpractice insurance, and hospitals are usually pretty well equipped to just do these payouts
when these mistakes happen. So it's really unfortunate in such a tragic situation where
they'd already lost Jill and Julie was hanging on by a thread, and by
a mistake that happened, they ended up losing their other daughter. And of
course she wouldn't have been there had it not been likely for Donnie. But
still, it's just unfortunate that they didn't get a payout there because who knows
if she would have made it. Yeah, it is very sad because the
civil trial did not actually take place until a couple years after the murder trials,
So not only did they not get to see justice for their murdered daughters,
but they didn't even get any financial gain from the hospital's negligence. But
ask yourselves, this, would Donnie's trial have turned out differently if Julie had
lived to testify against him. As your recall, Julie said that she remembered
seeing Donnie's face in the flash of a shotgun blast. But even if her
memory was genuine, I'm not sure if this conclusively proves that he pulled the
trigger. If the unsolved mysteries the re enactment of the shooting is accurate.
The coach Donnie was sleeping on would have been in Julie's line of sight from
the hallway, so if another person was standing near Donnie when they fired the
shot, it's possible that Julie still could have seen Donnie's face in the flash,
even if he was not holding the gun. The details are pretty vague,
but it sounds like the police did not do a particularly thorough job collecting
fingerprints from the shotgun or the empty shells, And since Donnie was not implicated
as a potential suspect until days later, I'm sure that they never checked his
hands for gunshot residue right after the crime took place. Even if Donnie's prints
were on the shotgun or the shells, that would hardly implicate him, since
he borrowed or bought these items. But if they had found fingerprints belonging to
anyone else, then that points to another shooter being involved, though it doesn't
necessarily clear Donnie. So I totally forgot that Julie had said she saw Donnie's
face, So to just back up from what I was saying a minute ago,
I almost think that it's possible that was that said at trial? Was
that allowed to be said at trial because she was deceased at that point and
he couldn't cross examine her. Is that was she allowed to testify? No,
she only gave like a statement in the hospital, but they could not
allow her statement to be used at trial because the defense would not be able
to cross examiners since she passed away. I wonder how much the parents knew
about the brief statement that she was able to give prior to the trial then,
because at the end, if the police said, look, it wasn't
a missible in trial, or the prosecutor sat down and said, listen,
I need you to be very weary of you know, I want to be
very honest with you and transparent. Here's the things we could not present at
trial. And they heard that their baby girl, in her last moments to
communicate on this earth, said that her brother had she had seen him as
the shotgun blast goes off. As a mother, I would believe my baby
girl's voice, whether the police could prove it or not, and that could
be a game changer on the way I defended my son. Yeah, that's
a good point, because that wasn't used as evidence. As trials, so
it is possible that Hans and Betty just were unaware of this story about seeing
Donnie's face in the flash until after the trial took place, and that could
have played a role in changing their minds. The biggest piece of evidence which
God Donnie acquitted was the eyewitness accounts from the neighbors who saw two men standing
outside the Handsome residence while it was on fire. The sound of a car
screeching down the street was also apparently heard, which suggests that someone fled the
scene. It doesn't sound like the witnesses provided a detailed enough description of the
two men for a composite sketch, so I initially wondered if they might have
actually seen Hans and Donnie while they were trying to put out the fire.
But Hans is a pretty distinct looking bald guy, so I think he would
have been recognized if one of the men was him. It's also been that
two men showed up at the scene a few hours later who appeared to have
ashes on their clothing, suggesting that they may have already been there when the
trailer was on fire. I've never seen this information corroborate it, but following
Donnie's trial. Someone wrote in a letter to the Eureka Times Standard newspaper in
which they pointed out the pieces of evidence which leaned away from Donnie, and
they mentioned that one of these two men with ashes on their clothing was the
step son of a local deputy. It almost sounded like the writer was trying
to imply that the authorities pinned the crime on Donnie in order to protect someone
who had a connection to law enforcement. Well, considering all the evidence against
Donnie, I certainly don't agree with that assessment, particularly since he might never
have appeared on law enforcement's radar as a suspect if he hadn't returned to the
warehouse to retrieve the shotgun. But I certainly don't rule out the possibility that
these two unidentified men could have been Donnie's accomplices. Well, think about this.
Let's say you're a law enforcement agent and use his inspect your son was
an accomplice in this murder. I don't think you'd actively be pursuing Donnie either,
because usually accomplices are tied directly to the person who hires them or conspires
with them to carry out the crime. So when you do a small circle
of who Donnie knows and who Donnie could have hired. If it really is
a local law enforcement kid, who I'd be looking at some crazy serial killer
stranger theory and trying to prove something like that. Not Donnie hiring two kids,
one of which might be mine, to commit this crime. Yeah,
exactly. I kind of wish we had more information about this angle, but
it would actually not surprise me in the least if perhaps Donnie himself could have
written this anonymous letter to the newspaper just to say that, hey, there's
plenty of evidence leaning towards Donnie, and then just tried to point the crime
in another angle just to make himself look more innocent. We also have the
account from Betty who said that she saw Donnie running out of the trailer and
yelling get out of here right after the fire started. If Donnie had been
yelling at intruders he saw on the property, he never told anyone during the
early stages of the investigation, which is why I think it's reasonable to assume
that Donnie was yelling at someone who assisted him with the crime and wanted them
to leave before his family saw them. So if Donnie committed the crime,
alongside others, you have to ask what exactly was their plan. I mean,
whenever a murder plot doesn't make much sense, I usually just chalk it
up to the fact that criminals are often stupid. But it's really hard to
figure out what the perpetrators were attempting here. Since all the items used during
the commission of this crime, including the shotgun, the shells, and the
cans of gasoline, could all be traced back to Donnie, this definitely suggests
that he planned the whole thing, So why would he need accomplices in the
first place. Donnie lived in Fortuna, which is around seventy miles away from
Willow Creek, so it seems to me that if there were others involved,
Donnie's most logical course of action would have been to orchestrate a murder for hire
plot and have these accomplices attack his family on a night when he was at
home in Fortuna and had an airtight alibi. Why do this on the one
night when Donnie just happens to be staying with his family. If Hans,
Betty, Jill, and Julie were all murdered and Donnie was the sole survivor,
he would automatically become the focus of the investigation and arouse suspicion. Part
of me wonders if Donnie was not planning to have his accomplices do this until
after he returned home to Fortuna, but they jumped the gun and screwed up
broke into his family's trailer on the wrong night when he happened to be there.
Given how nonsensical this whole plan seemed to be, that probably would have
been power for the course. Well, another silly thing is if you're Donnie
and you're hiring somebody to help you with the commission of the crime. You're
right, you don't show up right that you hire someone, so you're not
at this scene of the crime. That's the smart thing to do. Well,
not the smart thing to do everyone listening, That is not smart.
However, if you're saying Donnie hired these people, he would not be there,
and you also would not be the one purchasing all of the items needed
because it directly goes back to you and it's easy to prove. So you
would have those accomplices both by different items needed for the commission of the crime
or steal items needed for the commission of the crime so that nothing could be
linked back to you. And yet Donnie did everything for them. Why would
you hire them and share your money or share whatever you gain from this.
You did all the hard work yourself in the beginning. And just the fact
that he bought, like the kansa gasoline on his own credit card, Like,
how long does he think it's going to take investigators to notice this?
So it just seems like he did not think this whole thing through. And
I actually do think there might be some credence onto this theory where Donnie told
his family to a I'm saying that I'm going to be stopping by to see
my parents, and the night after I leave, I want you to go
there or burn down the trailer and kill them. But then they just came
one night early while he was still there, and that could have been one
of the reasons he was yelling get out of here, saying you're not supposed
to be here. You screwed this whole thing up. So, like we
said, even though it seems obvious Donnie was guilty, just trying to figure
out the logic of this plan is just makes your head explode. It's bad
enough that Donnie purchased items which could be traced back to him, But I
think it's particularly stupid that he would borrow the shotgun from a friend of his.
Even if Donnie had been able to get rid of the murder weapon,
this person is bound to be asking Donnie for their gun back at some point
and might become suspicious after learning that Donnie's sisters just happened to be killed with
a shotgun only three days after he borrowed it. I have read some gossip
online, though I've never seen this information substantiated, that Donnie had issues with
drugs during this time period, and the entire crime might have been orchestrated because
he owed a drug debt to someone. If the whole thing was drug related,
that might explain the desperation and lack of logic associated with many of Donnie's
actions. This just does not come across as a well thought out murder plot,
and the vast majority of the time, anyone who makes these types of
stupid mistakes would wind up in prison, So it seems like Donnie just got
incredibly lucky. If those neighbors had not reported seeing the two men near their
trailer, there might have been less reasonable doubt in the jury's minds. Oh
for sure. I think that's the only reason that the defense attorneys were able
to take this idea of accomplices and magnify that as a whole defense strategy.
So could there have been two people walking by, Yes? Absolutely. Could
there have been someone who jumped in their car and drove off because they see
this house like a blaze with a fire, yes. Does that mean that
they were Donnie's accomplices. No, but it did give the jury that doubt,
and it did get the defense attorneys a tool to say, look,
I'm not the one saying it. The neighbor said they saw somebody. So
now you can't be so sure that it was Donnie and it worked. Yeah,
it's true. We can't be one hundred percent certain that those were accomplices.
It could have just been some passers by who saw this fire and decided
to stop, but they just didn't want to get involved, so they drove
off before the police arrived, and then just never came forward. It's possible
that the main reason Donnie had accomplices is that he wanted his family dead but
just lacked the stomach to kill them himself, which is why he enlisted the
help of others. Perhaps the original plan was to burn down the trailer with
Hans, Betty, Jill, and Julie inside, and hoped that they would
all get killed in the fire. Even though Donnie brought along a shotgun as
a backup plan, he may have hoped that it wouldn't have to be used.
If a trailer fire was the exact cause of death, it wouldn't have
looked implausible that Donnie was the only member of the family to survive, since
he was sleeping on the couch next to the sliding glass door and would have
been able to escape quicker than everyone else. Of course, Donnie would still
have to get rid of the gas cans, and I'm sure the authorities would
find evidence that arson took place. But like we've reiterated many times, it
doesn't look like Donnie was a criminal mastermind. But it seems like before this
plan was completed, Julie heard something and woke up. Once she went into
the hallway, she may have seen something which led to her being shot.
We may never know for certain if it was Donnie himself who fired the shot
or one of his accomplices, but I'm sure this probably through the original plan
for a complete loop, since the noise wile Hans and Betty up and they
were able to escape the burning trailer. What's still not clear to me is
when exactly Jill would have been shot. The theory presented by the defense at
trial is that one of the intruders remained inside the trailer while Hans, Betty,
and Donnie ran to the warehouse to grab the fire extinguished, and the
intruder used that opportunity to shoot Jill. But that doesn't make sense because unless
this assailant had a personal grudge against the twins, why would they hang around
just to murder Jill and not make an attempt to kill the rest of the
family. It doesn't make any sense. You're right, it makes no sense.
And you know this sound of a shotgun blast. Yes, you have
a fire roaring, and you have the sounds there. I'm assuming pops and
bursts and things like that would be happening, but a shotgun blast is pretty
distinct, and it would be very hard for me to fathom that no one
would hear it. If it's if it's phased like this, that like they
shoot this one one child, start this fire, have the family run out
the house, and they're running back towards the house with fire extinguishers and they
shoot again. They're in the fires going Why would someone sit and hang out
in a fire that's taking the whole house down. I just don't think that
that would be a very plause solution to sit and wait for the other family
members to leave while the homes burning down, just so you can shoot Jill.
I've seen differing accounts from differing sources about where exactly Jill's body was found,
as one source said that it was in the kitchen area, while another
said she was found in a fetal position inside her bedroom closet, and that,
in addition to her gunshot wound, smoke inhalation was one of her causes
of death. If true, this would mean that after she was shot,
Jill crawled into the closet to hide from the fire before she perished, which
is a truly horrifying thought. Even though it's possible that Donnie always intended to
kill everyone, the fact that he was seeing yelling get out of here before
any attempt was made to shoot Hans and Betty makes me wonder if perhaps the
main motive for his plan was to kill his half sisters possibly because of some
deep seated hatred he had towards them. I really have no idea what Donnie
has been up to these past three decades, and since he changed his name,
it's not like you can just search for information about him on Google.
If Donnie was the sole perpetrator of this crime, then there really isn't anything
else that can be done due to double jeopardy. But the evidence does suggest
that multiple individuals were involved, so theoretically there are others who could be brought
to tryal for these murders. But given the amount of time that has passed,
unless Donnie decides to fess up and share the complete truth, we may
never know the exact details of what happened. However, if you happen to
have any information about the murders of Jill and Julie Hanson which points to someone
else besides Donnie Hanson being involved, please contact the appropriate authorities. Jules Ashley
any final thoughts on the case. This is one of those cases that,
when we sit back and we look at it, you have two young girls
who had the entire world at their feet. Everyone described them as kind and
loving and ambitious and driven, and they had a family that was intact right
there in their home. They're supposed to be safe and their brother comes to
visit, and that's a night that should be full of fun and family memories
and things like that, and they lose their life. There's no explanation,
there's no way of knowing why this happened. But I think it's pretty clear
that it's Donnie Hanson. And beyond the misjustice, right, the injustice that
occurs in this case because he's found not guilty, you have these two parents,
Like the father said, I lost three children that night, not two,
because I'm one hundred percent convinced that Donnie killed my daughters. Their daughters
were fighting to save their own lives. Remember Julie crawls out. It looks
like Jill crawled to try to be safe from the fire. And they're literally
fighting for their lives that their brother stole from them. And then the parents
have to live with them as well. Not only can we, you know,
step away and say we lost our two babies in a tragic house fire.
Now it's a murder that was committed by our son. And so the
grief and realization of what occurred that night for the parents is something I just
don't even know how you'd begin to process. My prayers go out to that
family, and I pray that Becky's having a life that is purposeful and filled
with love and joy and happiness. It was robbed from her as well and
her parents. But man, I would love to find out and be able
to say, there's concrete evidence that Donnie did it. He confessed to somebody.
It's public knowledge. Even though he can't be tried in court. It
would just feel good to know confirmation there were no accomplices. This was Donnie.
Here's his real name now, and you know, complicate his life a
little bit. I don't know if that's evil, but I feel like there
should be consequences. You don't just get to get away taking everyone's life.
He changed his parents' life that day as well in Becky's life too, so
he stole five lives that night when he decided to shoot his sisters. It's
disgusting. I really hope that he gets his karma come upance, because I
truly believe that he deserves it. He is somebody who it's very clear from
the evidence that he was the person who was responsible. It looks like he
may have had outside accomplices in what could be described as like the worst laid
plans ever. And it's a miracle that he isn't behind bars for what he
did. To think of the trauma that poor Julie had to endure crawling out
of that house after a shotgun blast to the stomach, how I can't even
imagine what that did to our body, just blew it apart. And to
know that her sister, her other half, her literal twin, is in
there fending for her life, and you've got a wonder like connection twins have.
Did she know when her twin sister was gone and that it was just
her left and wondering if her parents are alive? It must have been so
horrific. And then for Hans and Betty at the scene, going okay,
well, Donnie's saying that he rescued Julie, but he can't even talk about
what type of burns she had or if she was suffering from any burns.
He had no information to give, and so I'm sure upfront they had some
trepidations about trusting him. But like Robin had said, during the initial stages,
his mom had said that she was happy that he was acquitted but later
on, Hans had said that he believed that Donnie was one hundred percent responsible.
So this family was decimated by the actions of one person, and Robin
you had mentioned that it could have been a drug debt. That makes a
lot of sense to me, because these seem like the actions of a very
desperate person. But even if he was successful and the entire family had died
in the house fire and there had been no shotgun blasts to the stomachs of
his sisters, You're still going to have to split the money with your other
sister. Are you going to go and try and kill her as well,
or are you just going to hope that you're going to get the money in
some kind of expedient fashion, which settling estates and getting life insurance money can
take a very long time, Ashley. I'm sure you're a lot more well
versed in dealing with something like that, But it can take a long time,
can it not? Oh? Absolutely absolutely it can. And it's I
mean, this whole case, it's so complicated. It's a compounding complication that
makes it impossible to think of how you would move forward from this. Yeah,
my heart just goes out to the family. I think it's pretty clear
from the evidence that we have a good idea of what happened here, and
it just really irks me that Donnie has never faced justice for what I believe
he did. Yeah, I said right at the outset that I would classify
this as one of the least mysterious mysteries we've covered, because it seems pretty
obvious who's responsible. But the only big unanswered question here is not only if
the others involved, but motive. Because we talked about how no one had
a bad word to say about Hans, Betty, Jill, or Julie.
They just seemed like a very nice, well rounded family, So it just
seems so odd that they would have this one black sheep who just seemed cold
enough to be capable of murdering them all. And that's why I would really
love to know more about Donnie's backstory, like what happened while he was growing
up to make him turn like this. Is he just born bad or something
like that, or did he just become desperate because he had accumulated a drug
dead or something. Those are the things we probably will never know unless Donnie
or anyone else was involved decides to make a confession but I still remember watching
this on Unsolved Mysteries when it originally aired, and I was thinking to myself,
why is this an unsolved mystery? We know who did it, and
was pretty shocked when they reveal that Donnie actually got acquitted at trial and that
he was brazen enough to appear on TV even though he concealed his identity to
say that the accusations that he was guilty are absolutely ludicrous, even though it
just seemed pretty obvious that he was very lucky to get away with murder.
And at the time, I wondered, well, I'm glad that they're featuring
this on the show, but is there really anything that can be done because
Donnie can't be tried again because of double Jeopardy. But I do think there
is a decent chance that there were others involved, and that perhaps someone else
actually pulled the trigger which murdered those two girls, that even if Donnie was
complicit, he was not the one who actually killed them. And it's probably
a minuscule chance, but there is always a chance that if other people were
responsible, they can still be charged with this crime and we can learn the
full truth. Even though Donnie will never go to prison. But yeah,
just an incredibly sad story. There aren't too many victims I feel more terrible
for than Haunt and Betty Hanson, and I hope they've had a stable life
after since enduring this automagical tragedy. And I hope Donnie has lived a miserable
life these past three decades, even though he has managed to start a new
life under a new identity. But yeah, he definitely did get away with
murder. And this is one of the most shocking acquittals I've ever seen in
a criminal case. Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
about the Trail Went Cold Patreon? Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been
around for three years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like early
ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers and sign thank you cards
to anyone who signs up with us on Patreon if you join our five dollars
tier Tier two. We also offer monthly bonus episodes in which I talk about
cases which are not featured on the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're
exclusive to Patreon, and if you join our highest tier tier free, the
ten dollar tier. One of the features we offer is a audio commentary track
over classic episodes of Unsawved Mysteries, where you can download an audio file and
then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play
it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just provide trivia
and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
first episode that I did a commentary track over was the episode featuring this case.
So if you want to download a commentary track in which I make more
smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join Tier three.
So I want to let you know a little bit about the Jules and Ashy
Patreons. So there's early ad free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've
got our Path Went Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so
they're not very mini, but they're just too short to turn into a series,
and we're really enjoying doing those. So we hope you'll check out those
patreons. We'll link them in the show notes. So I want to thank
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can email us at the Pathwentchili at gmail dot com. You can reach us
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up because cold trails and chili pass call for warm clothing. Music by Paul
Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy