Clark Williams and I walk the woods through Kenosha’s Petrifying Springs Park on a bright Monday, the April sun splitting the slender trees. Parents stroll their babies, joggers prattle past, and a lithe doe keeps her distance, all unaware Clark and I search the leaves for signs of human remains.
The welcoming rays of morning were nowhere to be found on September 27, 1983 when Eric Hansen’s torso was deposited on the forest’s floor, where it sat until it was discovered by a hiker a week later. Born in Wisconsin, Hansen was killed at age 18; the circumstances of his murder remain a mystery.
Criminologist Clark Williams, fresh from his work helping to find Wisconsin native Billy Newton’s killer in the long-cold case from 1990 (documented in “My Brother’s Killer,” which recently played at the Milwaukee Film Festival) was in Milwaukee to search for links to Hansen’s death this April. He invited me to join him for two days of his investigation, and gave me some back story on Hansen.
Hansen’s early life was beset with difficulty. Despite occasional fishing trips with his father, his youth accelerated briskly to the local watering hole. Hansen, like many LGBTQ+ youth of his generation, was mislabeled, misdiagnosed and left to flounder alone with his identity…