1988 Interviews with Donny Hansen, His Attorney & the DA Who Tried Him

[Janel "Jaycee" Miller]

Hi everyone.

I alluded to these articles in a different thread about an arson and the subsequent murders of Jill and Julie Hansen. One of the articles is very long, so I thought a new thread might be more appropriate.

That long article, which is an interview with Donny Hansen, follows. I will post the articles with his attorney and the district attorney who tried him separately.

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Donny Hansen Speaks Out
Cleared Murder Suspect Shares His Side of the Story
Times-Standard (of Eureka, California), July 10, 1988
By Rhona Pialorsi, Times-Standard City News Editor

EUREKA – Three days after he was acquitted of murdering his 16-year-old twin sisters, Donny Hansen carried a bouquet of flowers to their graves.

Hansen stared down at the tombstones and touched them. He struggled with a tangle of raw emotions ranging from grief, hatred and rage to gratitude that he himself had been spared the gas chamber or a living death in prison.

For the first time since his arrest on Dec. 1, 1986, the 22-year-old Fortuna man was not “double murder suspect Donald Lee Hansen,” but the bereaved older brother of Jill and Julie Hansen, two pretty, churchgoing teenagers from the eastern Humboldt County town of Willow Creek.

It took an Oakland jury slightly over six hours June 16 to find Hansen innocent of a Nov. 15, 1986, shooting and arson that left Jill Hansen dead, Julie critically wounded and the family home gutted.

Julie survived one month at Arcata’s Mad River Hospital, only to die when an intravenous tube separated and an air bubble entered her heart.

Hansen was also accused of the attempted murders of Betty Hansen, his mother, and Hans Hansen, the stepfather would had raised him from the age of 3.

Prosecutors claimed the younger Hansen splashed gallons of gasoline around the trailer in an attempt to set a fatal Blaze.

When Hansen spoke with the “Times-Standard” just days after his release from an Alameda County Jail, he was still trying to cope with the sudden shock of freedom.

“One day, you're the worst thing that ever walked on the planet,” he said. “The next day they say, ‘OK, you can go.’ I was charged with two murders, with two attempted murders, with murdering two young girls. How much worse can it get?”

Although he is now a free man, Hansen and his remaining family have been forever scarred by what happened that November morning, and by the events that followed.

Many people, including the stepfather who raised him, still believe Hansen is a cold-blooded killer – an honor student turned bad who tried to murder his family so he could inherit enough cash to buy a flashy new Corvette.

His mother has fluctuated in her beliefs about whether her only son was capable of such a brutal crime.

Hansen blames law enforcement investigators, who immediately targeted him as the killer, for the way his parents feel.

“It was just incredible what they put my family through -- my mom, and Hans too,” he said.

“I went through a time when my mother hated me,” he said. “Here was the person I love most in the world and she hated me. So I told myself, ‘my mother doesn't love me, so I don't love my mother.’ I had to play head games.

“Jill and Julie are physically dead,” he said, “but the other four members of our family died in a way. I sometimes wonder if Jill and Julie aren't better off.

Contented family


Looking back on the Hansens’ life up until the fire. It's incomprehensible that a seemingly ordinary happy existence could have twisted into such a nightmare.

Betty and Hans married when Hansen was 3 and his sister, Becky, was 7. The twins were born when Hansen was 4. The family moved from Fortuna to Willow Creek in 1971.

“I was just a normal kid growing up in a small town,” Hansen said.

During his childhood Hansen had only a casual relationship with his natural father.

It was Hans he called dad although he refers to him now by name.
Hans owns a profitable logging supply company in Willow Creek. The family attended church regularly, was well-known or respected. When Jill contracted leukemia, a disease she fought for years, the community responded with an outpouring of love.

Hansen attended high school at Canyonville Bible Academy in Canyonville, Ore., “not because I was in trouble or anything,” he said, “but because my parents wanted me to.” In 1983 he graduated with honors, earning nearly straight A's.

After graduation Hansen enrolled at Humboldt State University for a year. He didn't do well and dropped out. At the time of the shootings and arson he was attending College of the Redwoods, drawing unemployment and living with his maternal grandmother in Fortuna.

Hansen often drove to Willow Creek to be with his family. He frequently spent the night there, sleeping on the couch.

Nov. 15, 1986, started out as a normal visit.

“I got over there at about 10 p.m.,” he said. “I was late getting there because I had mowed my Grandma Johnnie’s lawn. My sister Becky had made a four-layer dessert for my birthday the week before, so I took it over to Willow Creek so the rest of the family could eat it.”

When Hansen got there, Jill and her boyfriend were watching television; Julie was in her bedroom on the phone.

“Mom and Hans were in the bedroom getting ready to go to Santa Rosa the next week – they were packing. We watched Joan Rivers, then everybody went to bed.”

Jill asked to sleep in Julie's room that night because Julie had a television. Hansen lay on the couch and watched MTV, eventually falling asleep.

The inferno

It was shorty after 3 a.m. when the chaos erupted.

“I woke up in hell,” Hansen said, “and it never ended.”

He remembers waking to a loud noise, vaguely recalls a shadowy figure in the house, remembers becoming aware of the smoke and flames. He saw Julie fall down in the hallway in front of him.

“I didn't realize she had been shot,” he said. “I just scooped her up from behind and carried her out. I think I even dropped her on the deck. I didn't know she was hurt.”

“I was screaming and yelling,” he said.

A neighbor of the Hansens testified that he woke to yelling. He watched out his window as Julie staggered down the deck steps and made her way across the street, whimpering softly.

Clutching the six-inch shotgun wound in her lower abdomen. Julie fell in a mud puddle and lay there until neighbors and later medical technicians found her.
During their son's trial, Betty and Hans told a story of horror about the next minutes and hours of that morning.

Hans, frantic, grabbed a fire extinguisher from the broom closet and shot it off. He wondered why the flames sprang back as soon as the foam knocked them down. On his way out the door, he saw a gas can lying on the floor.

Betty used the phone in Hans’ shop to call the Willow Creek Volunteer Fire Department and firefighters soon arrived on the scene. Donny and Hans had been frantically shooting off fire extinguishers in a futile effort to battle the roaring flames engulfing their home.

Hans was clad only in his undershorts; his stepson in a pair of Levis no shirt, a pair of socks.

“It was just incredible,” Hansen said. “I can't tell you. I felt so helpless; I just wanted to go back inside that trailer.”

Jill was still in the blazing mobile home.

In the first chaotic moments, no one in the family saw Julie lying across the street. Eventually, she was taken by ambulance to Mad River Hospital in Arcata.
In the ambulance, she told the doctor that Hansen helped her out of the trailer. But when she died a month later, Julie believed her brother was a murderer.

Julie underwent extensive surgery later that morning to repair virtually every organ in her lower abdomen. She had been shot at such close range that the surgeon found the “wad” of the shell inside her.

As the surgeon worked, Hans and Betty and a growing crowd of friends waited at the hospital. They had left Donny in Willow Creek at the smoldering trailer. He was to wait for word on Jill.

By then, sheriff's investigators had joined firemen at the scene, which was obviously an arson. They soon discovered Jill's charred body in the kitchen of the razed mobile home.

An autopsy later revealed Jill had been shot twice with a shotgun. One shell tore off her lower right arm; the other ripped through her right thigh. But the shotgun wounds didn't kill her – she died from smoke asphyxiation.

Fond recollections

Hansen said his Jill was “perfect.”

“Jill, she was the one who had leukemia,” he said. “It really tears me up, the memory of Jill. She went through hell with loss of hair, spinal taps. It doesn't seem fair that she had to die that way. If you had to pick someone who went through so much and never became negative, she was the most perfect person I ever knew.”

“I don't mean to say that I love Jill more than Julie,” he said. “Julie was special in her own way. The way Julie hated me before she died. That's the kind of stuff that I can push me that can push me to the limit.”

In the two weeks between the fire and his arrest, Hansen visited Julie several times before deputies barred him from her hospital room.

“She was never afraid of me, never acted negatively,” he said. “But she hated me when she died – Becky (his older sister) told me.”

“It's the toughest thing I have to live with,” he said. “People say Julie is in heaven now and knows the truth, but I'm not a religious person, so that doesn't help me much.”

Julie made several statements to investigators, but when she died, they were ruled inadmissible as trial evidence. Hansen believes investigators influenced her during their questioning, leading her to believe she was the man who pulled the trigger.

By the time of Jill's funeral five days after the fire, Hansen had been questioned several times by sheriff's detectives. He knew he was a suspect. But he attended the funeral, and his name is listed in Jill's obituary as a survivor. When

Julie died Dec. 19, 1986, Hansen was behind bars and charged with murder. The district attorney, after conferring with members of Hansen’s family, asked for the death penalty.

A likely suspect?

Hansen acknowledges there was reason to initially suspect him.

In essence, the district attorney proved that Hansen bought 12-gauge shotgun shells the night before the murder. Two days before the shooting he bought five gallons of gasoline in a can. That same day he obtained the gun used to shoot Jill and Julie.

After the fire, Hansen hid the shotgun in Hans’ shops. He lied to investigators about doing that.

Through trial testimony, two possible motives were introduced.

Betty testified that the relationship between her and Hansen had deteriorated after he graduated from high school. His family was displeased, for example, because he had sold a car that Betty and Hans bought him and purchased an older Corvette that gave him nothing but trouble.

Hansen shook his head when recalling his mother's testimony that their relationship had soured.

“I thought Mom and I got along good,” he said. “I guess people see things differently.”

Later in the trial, Betty Hansen took the stand to say she did not believe her son was capable of murder.

A Eureka auto mechanic testified that Hansen told him he had put a deposit down a new Corvette and that he was going to be coming into some money – in the “six-figure” range.

But the investigators could find no auto dealership where Hansen had placed a deposit on a Corvette and he had told none of his friends about planning to come in for money.

As for the shotgun, he says he didn't plan to have it in the back of his Ford Torino that night.

Hansen and his friend Jack Wright often went target shooting. On the Wednesday before the fire, they had gone shooting out at Samoa beach. Hansen normally used his grandfather's gun for target practice, but it was not working properly and Wright offered that day to get his own stepfather's gun. Hansen said he offered to return the gun after target practice, an offer Wright confirmed when he testified.

“That gun was forgotten in my car,” Hansen said. ”I offered to take it back to Jack's house.”

As for the purchase of the shotgun shells, “I bought them because they were in the store,” he said. “I also bought a David Lee Roth tape – what did that mean? I bought a pack of Trident gum – What did that mean?”

Although the killer or killers had easy access to the cans of gas around Hans’ shop, the gun had to be removed from Hansen's car, not an easy feat if it were locked.

“I'm not so sure that it was locked,” he said. “I always locked my Corvette but I never locked the Torino – it was a piece of junk.”

After the fire, he said, he saw the gun was in a different position than it had been the night before.

“I kind of had an idea that Julie had been shot; I just panicked,” he said. He took the gun and hid it in a corner in Hans’ shop. Detectives found it the next day. He later lied about hiding the gun.

Later the same day that he and Wright went shooting, Hansen bought gas in a can at a Willow Creek gas station. He says he filled the can rather than his car because the “fill spout” on his car was bent.

And he notes that while at the gas station he introduced to the man he introduced himself to the man ahead of him as “Donny Hansen, Hans Hansen's boy.” If he was planning a murder it wouldn’t have been wise to needlessly call attention to himself, he said.

Hansen said he's amazed by the suggestion he committed the crimes for money.

“How do I profit from the inheritance by killing Jill and Julie?” he said. “If I was going to kill someone, I’d have killed mom and Hans."

According to Hans’ and Betty's will, if they died, Donny would only receive $500 a month or $5,000 a year, while the other children would have received their money in lump sums.

Although Hansen would have been handed a substantial chunk of insurance money If the twins and his parents died, Hans testified that the children believed the insurance benefits would have been dispersed according to the stipulation of the will.

“There was never a motive,” Hansen said. “it wasn't money. It wasn't that I hated Jill and Julie, it wasn't that I was crazy.”

“I've never hit anyone. I've never assaulted anyone,” he said. “I never hit Jill and Julie. Then to say I shot them with a shotgun from 10 feet away – that's a pretty big jump to me.”

“I couldn't understand how anyone could think I did this,” he said. “I love my mom more than anything else in this world. So it's not only about Jill and Julie, but how could anyone think I hate my mom that much?”

Anger lingers
He is bitter towards investigators for the way he was treated, but more so for the way they dealt with his family.

“The thing I find hard to believe is how they turned my family against me,” Donny said.

“When I was arrested, my mother was there, and she said to (the arresting detective), ‘I feel sorry for Donny, I don't know if he did this.’ (The detective) said ‘Anytime you feel sorry for Donny, I have some pictures of your daughter to show you.’

“The only pictures he had were of Jill all burned up in the trailer,” Donny said. “What kind of man would show a mother pictures of her burned-up daughter?”

He tries to understand why his family believed who was the perpetrator.

“My family had never dealt with the police before,” he said. And above all else, they wanted an answer for Jill and Julie's deaths, even if the answer was ‘your son did it.’”

After the trial, Betty Hansen said law enforcement officials told her repeatedly that she had to accept that her son was the killer.

During hearings that led to a change of venue in the case, Hansen heard Hans and Hans’ father, Charlie Hansen, testify that they believe he killed Jill and Julie.
And, after the verdict came in, Hans was quoted in a Willow Creek newspaper as saying it is “kinda hard to digest the hard fact that someone I believe is responsible for killing my two daughters is now running loose.”

“I don't care about Charlie,” Hansen said, “but it tore me up about Hans. He was always a good friend and I'll never understand why he gave up on me so easy. I'll never understand.”

Hansen said he's also learned some hard lessons about police interrogation.

“I never used to understand how they'd get innocent people to confess, but now I do,” he said. “They'll hammer you they'll hammer on you so long you’ll say anything.”

He questions why investigators failed the follow up leads that pointed away from his involvement.

For example, two Willow Creek teenagers were seen in the vicinity of the Hansen trailer shortly after the fire. One of them, Tim Williams, reportedly had the ashes on his coat.

William's uncle, a sheriff's deputy, talked to his nephew after a neighbor reported seeing the ashes on the coat, but never mentioned that discussion in his police report.

In addition, Williams testified that he and his friend were at a nearby sawmill that night, playing a game in which they hid from the mill workers.

The sawmill owner testified that the mill was closed at night.

“I don't want to point the finger at anyone, because I was accused without proof,” Hansen said. But he feels investigators should consider the teenagers’ activities “avenues to be explored.”

At the trial, neighbors said that within a few minutes of hearing two shotgun blasts they heard a car squeal away from the area.

“(Investigators) didn't want to check that out,” Hansen said.

And Department of Justice investigators found Hansen's palm print on the gun, but the print was in a white residue, indicating he had carried it after he used the fire extinguisher. That would fit with his hiding of the gun, to which he admits.

The state investigator testified that a Humboldt County sheriff's detective told him not to check the gun and the live shell inside for other possible prints. That examination could have cleared him, Hansen said.

The tough months

Hansen spent 18 months in jail, most of it in Humboldt County. He was transferred to an Alameda County jail after the trial was moved to Oakland on a change of venue.

While behind bars, he lost 40 pounds and gained an ulcer.

“Jail was hell,” he said. “I never had a good day in jail.”

“I didn't see how I could ever be convicted,” he said, “but if I had been I would have taken the death penalty. It would have been better than spending my life in prison.”

“Every day, I thought about the gas chamber,” he said. “I tried not to but how could I not? I guess that's why I have hard feelings for Terry Farmer. The man who tried to kill me.”

“I'm not a religious person,” he said, “but there were times I go to bed at night and pray, ‘God don't let me wake up in the morning.’ I wouldn't have killed myself though, because I'm not a quitter, and I wanted people to know the truth. I wanted my family to know the truth.”

While he was in jail, Hansen was sustained by the family and friends who supported him. He grew close to his natural father. In fact, he plans to change his last name back to Stewart, his father's name.

“My real dad was one of the few people who stood behind me,” Hansen said. “Without His love and support…maybe that's what kept me going.”

He listed the family and friends he wanted to thank: the Cyphers family, Grant Anderson, his aunts, Mary and Georgeanne.

“There was the investigator, Rich Muha, (Deputy Public Defender) Alan Chalfee and most of all (attorney) Bill Bragg,” Donny said. “He saved my life just the same as somebody saved me from a heart attack. If somebody asked me, would you get Bailey or Belli, I'd say ‘no, I'd get Bill Bragg.’”

The verdict

The night before the verdict came in, Hansen “stayed up all night thinking about it,” then was asleep the next day when someone woke him to say the jury was already back with its decision.

“I looked at each one of them as they came in and none of them would look me in the eye,” he said. “I leaned back in my chair and thought, ‘my God, I’m through.’ Then when the first one said ‘not guilty,’I can't tell you how good that made me feel.”

The whole experience made him a little more cynical, “but it also softened me,” he said.

“If there was anything positive, it was that I learned a lot about life and what's important and what isn't. The most important thing in the world is having a family and friends that love you. Without the family and friends that did support me, I wouldn't have made it.”

As for the future, he has hope.

I think I'll be happy one day,” he said. “I'm not happy now. It's not that I'm manic depressive; there are some things I'm happy about. If I could see justice done, that would make me happy – not only that the real killers were caught, but about what happened in this case. What happened to my family that was a crime – a real crime.”

Hansen hopes that someday he and Hans can be friends.

“I know it will never be the way it was,” he said. “But I hope the day will come when we can talk about Jill and Julie and remember the good things and not be sad.”

He said he'll probably never return to the hometown where he grew up, and where many of his former friends and neighbors believe he is a murderer turned loose.

“I don't think I'll ever go back to Willow Creek,” he said. “Not because I fear anybody – what can they do? Shoot me? Big deal. It's because when I go back I expect to see things the way they were when I was growing up, and they aren't.”

One day while he was in jail, Hansen went to Willow Creek with Bragg and some deputies.

“The trailer was gone, the grass was all grown up around the doorsteps because nobody cared, the swimming pool was all green with moss because there were no kids there to swim there anymore.”

“It had to be one of the worst days of my life.”

He also intends to stay out of Humboldt County, and will probably live in the Bay Area.

“I think I just need to go away,” he said. “I could live here if I wanted to; I don't care what people think. But I've got friends down there. I've got I'll get a job, go back to school, maybe write a book.”

Although he hasn't decided yet on a career. He's considering becoming an attorney – “someone who could influence people's lives like Bill Bragg influenced mine.”

In the meantime, Hansen believes law enforcement officials have a duty to further investigate his sister's murders.

“I was found innocent,” he said.

[Janel "Jaycee" Miller]

Me again.

Below are two more articles. The first is with Donny Hansen's attorney and the second is with the district attorney who tried him.

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Hansen’s Lawyer Knows His Client Couldn’t Have Done It
Times-Standard (of Eureka, California), July 10, 1988

EUREKA – Donald Hansen says he was acquitted of his sisters’ murders only because prosecutors did not produce enough evidence, but because jurors realized it was logistically impossible for him to be the killer.

“My attorney proved I didn't do it,” Hansen said.

Defense attorney Bill Bragg said people “think I pulled something out of a hat” in getting Hansen exonerated. “But any competent defense attorney would have won this case could have won this case on the facts.”

First, Bragg said it was undisputed that Hansen was out of the mobile home within 30 seconds of his parents’ awakening. Therefore, for Hansen to have shot the twins, he needed to fire three shots inside the trailer while Betty and Hans slept.

Three facts show, Bragg said, that two of the shots were fired after Hansen and his parents fled the burning home.

• Jill's body was found in the kitchen with melted plastic and broken glass under it. The pathologist testified that Jill would have fallen immediately after being shot and could not have been moved.

The glass and plastic apparently fell because of the fire in the kitchen (there were no shotgun pellets in the ceiling.) But Hans testified that when he ran out of the residence, there was no fire on the kitchen ceiling.

“The conclusion is that Jill was not shot in the kitchen until after her father exited,” Bragg said, “which was well after (Hansen) left the residence.

• When Hans left the trailer and was near the bedroom where the girls had been sleeping, he heard one of them yell ‘daddy.’ At that time, Julie was lying gravely wounded across the street and in no condition to call out.

That leaves Jill.

Since this call came from the bedroom area, and Jill was shot in the kitchen, it appears she had not been shot at the time her call was heard.

“Obviously Jill was still alive inside the trailer when the father exited,” Bragg said.

• Neighbors were awakened by a loud noise, then a few minutes later heard two shots and then the fire siren. The first firemen to reach the station set off the manual siren.

“Given the short period of time between the shots and the fire siren when compared to the response time of the firemen, the shots had to have occurred at or after the time the firemen received the initial phone call,” Bragg said. “That call was made by Mrs. Hansen and occurred after the defendant was out of the residence.”

Bragg also listed other “secondary” factors pointing into Hansen’s innocence.

• A doctor who wrote in the ambulance of Julie testified that she told him her brother helped her out of the mobile home.

• The lock to the trailer was found in a “picked” position.

• The prosecution maintains that three shots were fired before Donny left the house, but he was outside within 30 seconds of his parents awakening.

Betty and Hans were sleeping within 15 feet of where the shotgun was discharged.

“It was hard to explain why the parents did not wake up to three shotgun blasts,” Bragg said.

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District Attorney Convinced Hansen Murdered His Sisters
Times-Standard (of Eureka California) July 10, 1988

EUREKA – District Attorney Terry farmer says he will go to his grave believing that Donald Hansen is guilty of murder.

The district attorney said it was more than circumstantial evidence – such as the facts that Hansen bought gasoline and shotgun shells and obtained the weapon – that persuaded him the young Fortuna man killed his younger sisters.

Others factored entered into the decision to charge the case, take it to trial and ask for the death penalty, he said.

In the two weeks between the shootings and arson and his arrest, Hansen made eight tape recorded statements to investigators. Listening to Hansen's response to that questioning “was what convinced me and my heart, mind and soul that he was guilty,” Farmer said.

“It's not so much what he said,” Farmer said, “but how he said it.”

“His house was burned down, one of his sisters was dead, the other shot. You think he would either be angry, wanting to go out and get the person who did this, or that he would be too grief-stricken to talk. Instead, he calmly relates his activities on the day before the murder.”

“Virtually everyone who listened to these tapes said ‘this guy did it,’” Farmer said.

In addition, Hansen failed two polygraph (lie detector) tests. Farmer acknowledges there's a variety of opinion on the validity of polygraphs, and that they are not admissible as court evidence.

However, he said the two men who administered the test were “conservative examiners” who would give the person tested the benefit of the doubt. Yet they concluded Hansen was lying about his involvement in the shootings and arson.

Also not admissible as evidence were the statements Julie Hansen made to investigators before she died. Although there has been disagreement as to whether those statements incriminated Hansen, one of the statements Julie made was that she saw her brother's face in the flash of shotgun.

“What that meant, the jury would have had to decide, “Farmer said. “But (the defense) sure argued strenuously to keep it out of court.”

Some of the logistics in the case didn't add up, such as the puzzle over how Betty and Hans Hansen could have slipped through three shotgun blasts. Farmer said it is possible others could have been involved.

“There are questions that will never be answered,” he said, “Only three people know what happened in that trailer – the victims, and they’re dead, and Donald Hansen.”

“If he had been an auto theft case (with the same amount of incriminating evidence) he would have been convicted,” Farmer said. “But we were asking for the death penalty, so the stakes were very high.”

“If Hansen didn't pull the trigger,” Farmer said, “then at least he's lying about it -- he knows something (sic) he's not telling us.”

“The guy is real cool under pressure,” he said. “You have to conclude either that he's telling the truth, or he's the calmest, coolest liar you've ever met.”

Perhaps, Farmer said, Hansen has told his story so many times that he believes it himself.

[TheCars1986]

Thank you for posting these articles. Really gives a clearer picture as to why he was acquitted. But it still doesn't sway me that he wasn't involved in this somehow. He may not have been the one to shoot Jill or Julie, but I think he knows who did and why.

[XCalibur]

Originally Posted by TheCars1986

Thank you for posting these articles. Really gives a clearer picture as to why he was acquitted. But it still doesn't sway me that he wasn't involved in this somehow. He may not have been the one to shoot Jill or Julie, but I think he knows who did and why.

does seem like that when you combine this with the witnesses who saw the two men at the trailer there seems to be pretty good reason to believe there was someone else in the Hansen home that night besides the Hansens, and that someone was probably the perp of this crime. So it does make the not guilty verdict for Donnie somewhat understandable.

However I agree the other facts of the case still point to Donnie being somehow involved. His hiding the shotgun before anyone else knew one was involved and his nonsensical explanation, his claim he saw no one despite apparently having to be in the room when Julie was shot, and his purchase and procurement of all the things used in the crime. Its nearly impossible to get past all those things.

But assuming Donnie knows who did this and was involved in the planning of it, his continued determination over the years to protect them is somewhat perplexing. Even if he was somehow involved, seems like at some point to try and clear his name even falsely he would have turned on them just to get people off his back and finger someone else. Either the perps who came to the trailer that night have something majorly damning on Donnie, he is afraid of them for his own life, or he is really close to them and just doesn't want them to go to jail. I don't know which but I figure it has to be one of the three or some combination. I mean its not like they can finger him for the murder he can't be tried again because of double jeopardy anyway, and most people think he was involved so he has little to lose there. Seems most likely to me he is afraid of someone still to this day.

Although I do think Donnie was somehow involved, I question if the plan all along was wiping them all out for insurance. Donnie sounds to me like someone who was naive and might have been bamboozled into something underhanded that got out of hand rather than a diabolical evil mastermind, but then again I may be totally wrong.

Unfortunately we may never know the full truth about this. Would be nice if someone close to Donnie like a school friend would come on the board and shed some light on what he may have been into around the time of the murders and who else may have been involved.

[Janel "Jaycee" Miller]

Originally Posted by TheCars1986

Thank you for posting these articles. Really gives a clearer picture as to why he was acquitted. But it still doesn't sway me that he wasn't involved in this somehow. He may not have been the one to shoot Jill or Julie, but I think he knows who did and why.

Hi -- I found myself thinking the same thing as I typed these articles out, in that the defense (for better or worse) did its job in providing reasonable doubt.

I did find it odd that, according to Donny, he thought his making sure he introduced himself to the one person as Hans Hansen's son would make him seen less involved. As I typed it out, I found myself thinking the opposite -- he was trying to establish an alibi (kind of like how Stephen Geri got a receipt for the donuts the day his wife was murdered).

[TheCars1986]

I can't believe UM left out the little tidbit about the two teenagers who were seen near the trailer (mentioned on UM) and one of them had ashes on his coat. Also the part about his uncle failing to mention any of that in the police report. I just have a hard time coming up with any scenario where Donny is not involved. And I also have a hard time rectifying his exact motive if he was involved. If he wanted everyone dead, why did he take Julie outside? Why did he try and put out the fire with Hans? Why didn't he shoot his mother and Hans? The motive was presented as financial, but he still had a sister that he would have split everything with.

[WishfulDreamer]

Originally Posted by TheCars1986

I can't believe UM left out the little tidbit about the two teenagers who were seen near the trailer (mentioned on UM) and one of them had ashes on his coat. Also the part about his uncle failing to mention any of that in the police report. I just have a hard time coming up with any scenario where Donny is not involved. And I also have a hard time rectifying his exact motive if he was involved. If he wanted everyone dead, why did he take Julie outside? Why did he try and put out the fire with Hans? Why didn't he shoot his mother and Hans? The motive was presented as financial, but he still had a sister that he would have split everything with.

One thing that always pointed extra toward his guilt for me is that he didn't mention Julie being hurt OR the "mysterious gunman" to Hans or Betty as he ran back and forth with them to get fire extinguishers. Had he been innocent, he would have said "We have to be careful, there's someone with a gun shooting and Julie is hurt." I think he pulled this off with accomplices, but I'm also left with the same questions as you.

As for the monetary motive, the only reason I can think of the twins being targeted is that they had a sizable college fund (mentioned at the end of the segment that later became reward money). But you would think he would have attempted to take out the whole family for the money, not just his sisters. It is pretty puzzling. Maybe he did intend for the whole family to be wiped out (minus his sister who wasn't there), but once Hans and Betty got out, he realized the plan was foiled and started trying to look as innocent as possible. That still leaves holes in the theory, though.

[TheCars1986]

There's a lengthy comment on UM's writeup of the case, and it is from someone claiming to be a local to Willow Creek back in the 80s. The gist of the comment is that the people of Willow Creek were an isolated community made up of blue collar workers, and that it was easier for the jury to believe that an outsider committed the murders as opposed to one of their own.

[Killarney Rose]

I’ve always been on the fence with this one. After reading these articles, I continue to be so. In my rewatching the series currently, there have been several episodes where the family, as well as authorities were convinced a certain family member was guilty of murder. Later it was proven to be a random killing by a stranger. But in this instance it surely is hard to come up with the motive for a stranger to kill them.

[XCalibur]

Originally Posted by Killarney Rose

I’ve always been on the fence with this one. After reading these articles, I continue to be so. In my rewatching the series currently, there have been several episodes where the family, as well as authorities were convinced a certain family member was guilty of murder. Later it was proven to be a random killing by a stranger. But in this instance it surely is hard to come up with the motive for a stranger to kill them.

I don't think lack of possible motives for anyone else is the biggest obstacle to anyone trying to argue for Donnie's innocence. Without any other known suspects to consider that's sheer speculation. Its clearly his mega suspicious actions before, during, and after the fire and his nonsensical explanations for it all.

However the brutal fact is, there are also things that don't make sense about that night for him to have been guilty of attempting a family wipe out in a horrible fire. Thing is, I believe Betty Hansen when she said she heard Donnie yell at someone to get out. And he did not know Betty heard him so what she was seeing was the genuine Donnie. But the more I've thought about that, the less it makes sense. It seems Donnie detractors argued that he did this because he said to his accomplices everyone was waking up and the jig was up. But why? Why yell at his accomplices to get out? why not just let them stay and finish the job? I mean assuming two other men came to the trailer, three armed men still could finish the job even if everyone did wake up. Then Donnie apparently pulls Julie out, helps them fight the fire........

I honestly believe this is what raised reasonable doubt in the jury's mind, and when you think about it makes sense. Its merely the fact that for people, Donnie's other actions before and after the fire seem to point to guilt and override that. Like purchasing the shotgun, the gasoline, hiding the shotgun, none of that makes sense either.

To sum it up and what makes the case frustrating, is that some of Donnie's actions that night point to guilt, others point to innocence.

To me, given the facts we know the most likely scenario is that Donnie was indeed behind what happened that night, but had a last minute attack of conscience and decided he couldn't go through with it and tried to stop it but it was to late. As far fetched as that seems its what makes the most sense given the facts. But his partners had enough stake in it that they pushed the issue and didn't take kindly to him changing his mind, so things got out of hand. Maybe he offered to pay them out of the reward money and they didn't take kindly to him backing out. Then Julie woke up, one of them panicked and shot her, and that's when everything got out of hand.

I'm not saying that's what happened, just that the pieces add up best in that scenario. Yes, if Donnie was evil enough to even consider something like that, a last minute attack of conscience would seem unlikely, but its been known to happen.

Just my best guess. I may be wrong.

[Killarney Rose]

It makes as much sense as anything else.

[Dude111]

Which nothing really does!