Latest / When Killers Get Caught with Brittany Ransom / The Woman Who Fought Back: Susan Kuhnhausen vs a Murder-for-Hire Plot

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The Woman Who Fought Back: Susan Kuhnhausen vs a Murder-for-Hire Plot · When Killers Get Caught with Brittany Ransom

0:03
The house is quiet when she gets home.
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It's late, past the kind of hour where anyone would be awake.
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The porch light cuts a dull glow across the entryway as she steps
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inside, keys still in her hand, the weight of a long shift
0:18
clinging to her bones. Everything looks normal, but
0:23
something isn't right. Maybe it's the silence, maybe
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it's the feeling you get before you can explain it.
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She moves further into the house.
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And then, movement. A man steps out of the darkness.
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He's holding a hammer. No warning, no hesitation.
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He comes straight at her. Well, he doesn't know.
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What he couldn't have planned for is the woman he just
0:49
attacked has spent years in emergency rooms watching people
0:53
fight to stay alive. And she's about to do the same
0:57
because this isn't a robbery. He didn't come to scare her, he
1:02
came to kill her. He just didn't know who she was.
1:06
And before this night is over, one of them will be dead.
1:11
I'm Brittany Ransom and This is When Killers Get Caught, a
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podcast where I examine the people, the psychology, and the
1:18
moments that lead to the most extreme acts of violence.
1:21
And what happens when silence finally breaks?
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This is a story about Susan Kunhausen, about survival and
1:30
the night a killer chose the wrong victim.
1:34
This week, I needed to talk about someone like Susan.
1:38
Over the course of the past few weeks in America, there have
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been a host of violent crimes against women.
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Husbands killing wives, fathers killing eight of their own
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children. And I just needed to tell the
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story about someone who made it out.
1:59
The first thing that Susan Knhausen noticed was the
2:02
movement. Not the man, not yet.
2:05
Just a shift in the darkness that didn't belong there.
2:08
Then the hammer came down. And it wasn't hesitation, there
2:12
was no warning. It was just immediate violence.
2:14
Fast, committed, already decided.
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The impact is close enough that there's no time to really
2:20
process it as pain first, only shock.
2:23
This sudden realization that her house, her space, and her return
2:26
from a normal shift at work had already turned into something
2:29
else entirely. This was a place now, where
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someone had come to finish a job.
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She stumbled backwards, but not away from him, not far enough.
2:38
He was already on her though, already closing the distance
2:40
like he knew exactly what he was doing.
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There was no shouting, no robbery demand, no searching the
2:45
house. Just pressure and pursuit.
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And that's when something in her mind clicks quietly, almost
2:52
clinically. This wasn't random.
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This isn't panic. This man is moving with intent,
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and her back hits something. The wall, a counter, a doorway.
3:02
She's not sure which. What matters is that she feels
3:05
the space behind her disappear. He's not trying to scare her
3:08
away. His aim is to erase her.
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Another strike comes, but this time she sees it just fast
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enough to move. Not away from him, though there
3:19
is enough space for that, but through it.
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Forward, close enough that the swing loses force, close enough
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that she can feel the air of the hammer past her face.
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Her, ER, training doesn't announce itself.
3:31
It's like a memory, like recognition.
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She knows what violence looks like when it's controlled, when
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it's purple full, when it's purposeful, when someone is
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trying to stop a body from responding.
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And this man is not improvising. He is continuing, which means
3:47
something else. He's not going to stop just
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because Susan asked him to, not because she resists or not,
3:53
because she survived that first hit.
3:55
There will be no negotiations here, only an outcome.
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Her hands come up not in panic, but structure, positioning,
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distance. She's not thinking from a place
4:05
of fear anymore. She's thinking about it,
4:08
anatomy, leverage, what holds and what gives on the human
4:12
body. She reads him the way she reads
4:14
her patients who are slipping away in the ER, their breathing
4:17
patterns, weight distribution, the way that aggression burns
4:21
oxygen faster than it can be replaced.
4:23
The man in front of her is strong, but no man is limitless,
4:28
and he's already escalating. That tells her something else
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she knows too well. People like this run hot, but
4:34
not long. They commit hard and then burn
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out. The question is whether she can
4:40
survive the beginning part of the attack.
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Another impact lands, but this time less clean.
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A glancing blow, enough to force her down to one knee.
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Though that's when something changes.
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Not outside, but inside of Susan.
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The fear. It's still there, but it's
4:56
changing shape. It's stopped becoming panic, and
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she feels clarity, A narrowing, a focus.
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The world reduced to distance, pressure, timing.
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Survival doesn't feel loud, it feels precise, and she moves in
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again, not away from him. In close quarters.
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That hammer lose its effectiveness immediately.
5:19
Susan pushes even closer, close enough that the space becomes
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something she can control instead of something he can use.
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It's not strength that decides this moment, it is proximity,
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awkward angles and broken rhythm.
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He tries to reset, to lift the hammer again, but now he has to
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adjust, and that fraction of hesitation means everything.
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Susan's arms are already there, locked, not striking, not
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flailing, controlling. The struggle is not cinematic,
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It's tight and grinding and suffocating in its closeness.
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Bodies collapse into each other, onto the floor, each trying to
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become the one that decides what happens next.
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The hammer shifts in his grip. Dangerous still, but less clean,
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less certain. She feels his breathing now,
6:01
fast, overloaded. He's still trying, but his
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commitment is starting to cost him his control.
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And in that moment, something else from the ER surfaces.
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Not emotion or fear, but assessment.
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Everyone has a pain tolerance and people break in predictable
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ways. Not instantly, not evenly, but
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there is a threshold where the human body will stop Co
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operating with intention. Susan adjusts her grip on him.
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Not stronger, smarter. She angles him, takes away his
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balance, trying to overpower him.
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He stumbles half a step, then another.
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That's when she gets it. The opening, the chokehold,
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isn't beautiful like an action movie, and it's definitely not
6:47
clean. This isn't messy, desperate, and
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final in the way that people who have been in a real fight
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understand. Her arms lock in.
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Not a perfect technique, but it's enough.
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Enough to stop his forward motion, enough to cut off the
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rhythm he was relying on, enough to turn his aggression into
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something that has nowhere to go.
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He reacts like most people would in this situation.
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Thrashing, pulling, trying to use the hammer to hit her.
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But the space he had to swing that hammer, it's all gone now.
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There's no room. He can't generate any force.
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It's just resistance and pressure and the slow collapse
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of control, and Susan's voice is in his ear now, not shaking, not
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pleading, flat, controlled. You don't have to die here, she
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says. A pause, a shift, then quieter.
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Tell me who sent you and I will call you an ambulance.
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Something changes in him when she says that.
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Not surrender, not yet, but recognition that this is not
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going the way he planned. The struggle slows down, not
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because it's ending, but because her attacker is drained, because
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the body cannot sustain this level of output forever, because
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oxygen became a limit. Second stretch, and then stretch
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again, and then nothing really sharp, no final movement of
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resistance, just a release that happens all at once, like a
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switch being turned off instead of a door being closed.
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The silence arrives in pieces. 1st the absence of impact, then
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the absence of struggle, then the realization that the weight
8:31
in her arms is no longer fighting back.
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He decided to keep his silence in exchange for his life.
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Susan stays still for a moment longer than she needs to, not
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because she doubts what has happened, but because choking
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someone isn't like in the movies and if he wakes up, he'll come
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for her again. Only when she is certain that he
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is gone does she let go. The house is quiet again, but
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it's not the same quiet it was before.
9:00
And this time, nothing will ever be the same again.
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Susan survived. Her attacker did not.
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The moment the struggle ends, things don't return to normal.
9:16
It shifts into something colder and procedural.
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Somewhere in the silence that follows, Susan will make the
9:21
call 911, her voice steady in a way that doesn't really match
9:25
what just happened in her living room.
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She's not screaming or crying or rambling.
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She reports it in the way that someone who is trained in
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emergencies reports anything else direct, clipped and
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controlled. There was an intruder.
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He is down. You need to send help.
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And then she waits. By the time the police arrive,
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they are not walking into uncertainty.
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They walk straight into a contradiction.
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The call that they received suggested a victim, a woman who
9:52
was in danger, a break in that had gone wrong.
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What they find inside the house refuses to fit neatly into that
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description. The front door is intact.
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There's no sign of forced entry that would explain chaos at a
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distance. Nothing suggests A burglary that
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spiraled out of control. Instead, the disorder is
10:08
concentrated, contained in just one small area of the home, as
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if the entire event unfolded in a tight, violent orbit and
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didn't go anywhere else. And in that space, they find
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him. The intruder is already dead.
10:22
A man later identified as Ed Haffy lies where the struggle
10:25
ended. His body positions not like
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someone who had been searching a house, but someone who had been
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fully engaged in a final physical confrontation nearby.
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The investigators document the hammer.
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It's no longer an active weapon, but it still carries the weight
10:40
of its intent. The presence anchors the entire
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scene. Nothing about this looks random
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to the initial police officers. And that is what immediately
10:50
shifts the investigation from burglary response to something
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far more complex. The officers are no longer
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asking what happened here in this house.
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They're asking why did this happen?
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The forensic work begins almost immediately.
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Evidence markers appear where the struggle concentrated blood
11:10
patterning suggests movement rather than a single point of
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impact. The positioning of objects in
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the room reflect contact force and compression, signs of a
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close quarters fight rather than distant attack.
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There are no signs that Susan was restrained in any
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conventional sense. She doesn't have any marks on
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her arms. No evidence of prolonged
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captivity. There's no stage scene meant to
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mimic a robbery gone wrong. Everything points to just rapid
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escalation and a rapid reversal, and this kind of reversal
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doesn't usually happen, well, unless the intended victim
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fought back. When Susan is separated from the
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scene for questioning, she's not treated as a suspect in the
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traditional sense, but she is still processed through the
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machinery of investigation. Statements are taken, timelines
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reconstructed, her injuries documented, and while Susan won,
12:00
she was very much injured. Reports stated she sustained
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significant blunt force trauma from the hammer in the beginning
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of attack. She had multiple face and hedge
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injuries, as well as soft issue as well as soft tissue trauma
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from the fight on the ground. Susan had just fought through
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the pain. What emerges is something
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investigators don't often see. The story actually holds up, not
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because it's simple. Every physical detail inside the
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home aligns, though there is a break in a violent
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confrontational A struggle that ended with the intruder dead and
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the homeowner still standing. But even as that part becomes
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clear, another question takes shape in the background of every
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single report, every interview, every note passed between
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detectives. We know this wasn't random, and
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we know it wasn't opportunistic. We know that someone chose this
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house, this woman, and this moment, and we know they failed.
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So as they process the scene and the evidence gets collected,
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there's just this question, repeatedly echoed beneath all
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the technical jargon and procedural steps.
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Who breaks into a house to kill a nurse and fails?
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Before the investigation can move forward, before the names
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and motives and paper trails begin to surface, detectives are
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trying to understand one thing clearly.
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Who is this woman at the center of all this?
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Her name is Susan Kahausen, and on paper, she definitely doesn't
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fit the profile of someone who ends a violent home invasion by
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surviving it, let alone winning it.
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There isn't a lot about Susan's early life.
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After this entire situation went down, she saw no reason to write
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a book or really continue her story.
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She just wanted people to know that you could fight back, that
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you could survive. And Susan wasn't a fighter by
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profession. She wasn't law enforcement,
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never military, no background in violence, no documented history
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that could suggest she had trained for this kind of a
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physical confrontation of that level.
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Susan is a nurse, an emergency room nurse to be exact.
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Which in a different way does change things.
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Because ER work doesn't teach violence, but you are exposed to
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it on a daily basis. And what it does teach people is
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what things look like under stress, what the bodies look
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like under stress, what panic looks like when it shifts into
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something physical, what happens when someone is running out of
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time and oxygen in control. The ER teaches patterns most
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people never have to recognize in real time, and it taught
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Susan something quieter than that.
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Through her work, Susan saw how people break.
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She had spent years in that environment, watching strangers
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arrive at the worst moments in their lives, learning how
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quickly situations can escalate, how fast control can disappear,
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and how fragile the line is between stable and gone.
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So when she walked into her home that night, she may not have
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been expecting violence, but she was able to recognize it right
15:14
away. And that distinction probably
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saved her life, because nothing about Susan suggests she should
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have been able to withstand what happened next.
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Nothing about her could predict the outcome the investigators
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are now trying to reconstruct from blood patterns and broken
15:31
motion and interrupted force. Susan was not bigger than her
15:34
attacker. She was not stronger on any
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conventional sense, had no training in combat.
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But she understood something he didn't account for.
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Violence is not just strength. It is endurance.
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It is decision making under distress.
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It is who can continue functioning after the moment
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should have ended them. And Susan does not stop
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functioning. And that's the part that doesn't
15:58
fit neatly into the story of a victim, because victims often
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don't get a final say in how their story ends.
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But Susan did. She didn't just survive, she
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ended it. And the space between survival
16:13
and control is what the investigators have to make sense
16:17
of as they begin to understand exactly what happened in that
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house. And what about the man now
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zipped inside a body bag on the floor of a Portland home?
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Before police can understand why he was there, they kind of need
16:31
to look into who he is. And his name was Ed Haffy.
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On the surface, he did not look like someone you would associate
16:37
with an organized murder for hire.
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But his history told a much different story than an
16:41
appearance ever could. Ed was not new to violence.
16:45
Records and reporting describe a man with a criminal back story
16:48
that included a multitude of serious offenses, including fire
16:52
involvement in violent and conspiratorial activity.
16:56
He wasn't unfamiliar with the system, and he wasn't naive
16:58
about the consequences. This was not someone who
17:01
stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time.
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And that changed things for the police, too, because they had
17:07
always suspected that Ed's participation was not random,
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because there had been no evidence of the burglary, no
17:13
indication of an opportunistic target.
17:15
Instead, what began to emerge is a pattern that investigators
17:18
would describe as deliberate, planned, selected, and executed.
17:24
This was a job. At the center of that
17:28
investigation is something that stands out even in a case
17:31
already defined by violence, a handwritten list in Ed's pocket.
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Reporters called it a death list.
17:40
There were names, targets, instructions that did not belong
17:44
in the context of theft or impulse.
17:47
The existence of that list reframed everything about Hafi's
17:50
presence in the house. It wasn't about taking anything.
17:54
This was about removing someone. And Susan Kunhausen's name was
17:59
on that list. So now investigators need to
18:03
reconstruct his final moments. They were sure that this was a
18:07
contract killing. They just need to figure out who
18:10
wanted Susan dead and why. At first, the scene raised more
18:15
questions than answers. The investigators working the
18:18
home of Susan, we're not just documenting a violent encounter.
18:21
They were trying to reverse engineer it.
18:23
And in that sense, every detail becomes a threat, and every
18:27
thread has to lead somewhere, right?
18:30
And at the center of this, they keep coming back to the same
18:33
question. Why her?
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Why Susan? So they start with the basics.
18:37
Money. Was this a robbery that
18:39
escalated? Nothing had been touched in the
18:41
home. Nothing had even been opened.
18:44
Searching for valuables, No ransacking.
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So that thread ended quickly. Then the connections.
18:51
What people know her routine? Who knows that she comes home
18:54
after very long shifts and would be tired?
18:56
Who knows the layout of her life well enough to put someone like
19:00
Ed Hathi inside of it? So the investigation shifts from
19:04
the house to outside the house. Detectives start mapping
19:08
relationships and they start with the immediate circle.
19:12
Friends, Co workers, acquaintances and family.
19:17
And that's where the pattern shifts.
19:19
Because while the attack itself looks like just chaos in motion,
19:25
what little they can reconstruct does suggest familiarity,
19:29
access, timing, and confidence that their target would be
19:32
exactly where she was supposed to be and when she was supposed
19:36
to be there. And that kind of certainty can't
19:39
come from a stranger. This is about proximity and as
19:44
the investigators dig deeper, they begin to trace financial
19:46
and personal strain in Susan's life, friction points that
19:50
explain motive if this were domestic in nature.
19:55
The conversations that they have on file get re examined.
19:59
Relationships are now reviewed under a different light and then
20:03
the divorce proceedings come out and are included in the
20:07
timeline. They double check insurance
20:09
policies, paperwork that seemed routine.
20:13
Becomes a potential motive structure, and without anybody
20:16
saying it out loud at first, the focus shifts.
20:20
Because now it's not who would do this.
20:24
It becomes who will benefit from Susan's death, who would gain
20:29
control financially or personally if she didn't
20:33
survive, And then even more settling, who had enough access
20:37
to Susan to make it look like it was something else.
20:41
The early assumption that it was a random act of violence that
20:45
disappears immediately. But still, no one wants to say
20:49
it directly yet. It's not in the initial reports,
20:52
not in the early interviews, not in the room where the detectives
20:55
are still sorting possibility from evidence.
20:58
But the shape of the answer is beginning to form, and it points
21:01
closer than anyone really wants it to.
21:06
By the time the. Detectives follow the financial
21:08
and relational threads far enough to make sense of them.
21:12
The chase, the case changes completely.
21:17
It's not about an unknown intruder.
21:19
It's not about a random act of violence.
21:21
This is something very, very personal, because the man at the
21:27
center of this entire situation is Mike Kuhnhausen, and the
21:33
conclusion the investigators arrive at is as direct as it is
21:37
difficult to absorb. The man who wanted Susan
21:40
Kuhnhausen dead was her husband. It's not a sudden.
21:48
Revelation, but a tightening circle of evidence building from
21:53
the start. Their marriage was already under
21:56
strain. Reports describe a relationship
21:58
collapse marked by separation in the breakdown of once had.
22:03
Reports describe a. Relationship and collapse marked
22:06
by separation and the breakdown of what had once been shared
22:09
stability. Divorce was not really a
22:12
possibility. Susan had already put it in
22:14
motion. And where a marriage ends,
22:16
financial questions begin. Property, assets, insurance.
22:21
The practical architecture of separation that turns emotional
22:24
rupture into legal and economic consequences, and the
22:28
investigators start mapping those consequences against the
22:30
timing. What remains If Susan were gone?
22:35
Who gets to control what was left?
22:38
And that line of inquiry brings into focus the elements that
22:41
transform suspicion into theory. Life insurance policies, shared
22:46
property, and the slow unraveling of a relationship
22:51
where separation doesn't always mean detachment.
22:55
But the money alone? Doesn't fully explain what the
22:58
investigators uncover. There's something else embedded
23:01
in this pattern. Control, witness accounts and
23:06
contextual evidence begin to paint a picture of a
23:08
relationship where separation may not have meant US acceptance
23:13
and where divorce did not equal distance.
23:16
The idea of losing access financially, emotionally and
23:20
structurally may have carried a weight far greater than the law
23:26
allowed to resolve cleanly. And when that control was
23:29
threatened, the motive became something else entirely.
23:32
Not logical, just a reaction. By the time the.
23:39
Detectives fully connect the timeline between Haffy and Mike.
23:42
The story stops feeling like a chain of isolated incidents, and
23:45
it's a single, direct outcome. One man was hired, one target
23:50
was selected. One life was intended to be
23:53
ended quietly enough that no one would question it.
23:56
But instead of silence, the plan left behind something else, a
23:59
survivor and a truth that could not stay buried.
24:05
When the focus shifted to Mike Kunhausen, the investigation
24:08
stopped being speculative and it became about documenting as much
24:13
as they could about his life and his behavior, because the truth
24:17
left the trail here. Not emotional and not
24:19
psychological, but the financial was massive.
24:22
The first hard link came through money, specifically a payment
24:25
reported of $5000, a figure that in isolation probably seems
24:30
ambiguous. But in context, the $5000
24:35
payment between Ed Haffy and Mike Kuhnhausen looks like a
24:40
murder for hire payment. And see, Hathi wasn't just
24:44
drifting towards Susan's home, he knew exactly where she lived.
24:48
The relationship between these two men became a focal point of
24:51
the case. Investigators.
24:55
Began reconstructing how that connection formed their all of
24:58
their communication opportunity, prior association, every piece
25:03
adding more weight to the theory that this wasn't spontaneous.
25:06
But the paper trail doesn't announce itself too loudly.
25:09
It builds gradually. They find fragments, little
25:13
financial records here, behavioral inconsistencies,
25:16
timelines that at first looked coincidental but really weren't.
25:20
Every new document they find tightens the frame around what
25:23
happened there. And then the physical evidence
25:26
starts to match. There are statements from
25:29
witnesses, involved parties compared against forensic
25:33
findings from the scene, the timeline of when Susan would
25:36
come home, the intrusion, the short, violent duration of the
25:40
struggle, the lack of theft, the specificity of the encounter.
25:46
Investigators conduct the dots and the case moves from
25:49
suspicion to action. Interviews intensify.
25:54
They begin to subpoena records. Financial activity is examined
25:58
in closer detail, going back years.
26:02
The structure of the plot, once theoretical, is now very real.
26:09
And then they cross. The threshold, the arrest that
26:12
follows is not very dramatic. No one is surprised.
26:16
I mean, we all say it all the time.
26:18
It's usually the husband. But the police?
26:24
Have a lot of evidence. Financial, relational, forensic
26:30
testimonial. By the time they actually arrest
26:34
him, they already have the outline of the case in place.
26:46
The state's. Position when it comes to Mike
26:48
Kunhausen is straightforward. He orchestrated a murder for
26:52
hire plot that sent Ed Haffey into the home of Susan
26:55
Kunhausen, and rather than resolve this through a plea,
27:00
Mike Kunhausen chooses to go to trial.
27:04
He thinks he can beat it. Inside the courtroom, the
27:08
narrative that has been carefully reconstructed by the
27:10
investigators gets laid out in full.
27:13
Financial motive, $5000 payment. The connection to Hafi, the
27:17
chain of the events that led directly to the net of that
27:19
attack. Every piece presented not as
27:22
theory, but that this was the sequence and it's been supported
27:25
by records, testimony and forensic alignment.
27:29
Now the defense, they attempt to challenge intent and
27:32
interpretation, but the structure of the case has
27:34
already been established. The jury is not being asked to
27:37
imagine what might have happened that night.
27:40
They know what happened. They are allowed to see the
27:44
evidence that shows what actually occurred.
27:50
Unsurprisingly, the verdict is guilty with conviction.
27:55
Mike Cunhausen is sentenced to prison where he later dies.
27:58
While incarcerated, we never get AY from his next of kin, but his
28:03
death closes the legal chapter of the case.
28:05
It just doesn't define how this story gets remembered.
28:09
The public reaction is shaped less by the courtroom outcome
28:12
and more by the nature of the original event itself.
28:15
A murder for hire plot that ended not with the victim's
28:17
death, but with the hired attacker killed in the act, A
28:23
reversal so rare it resists categorization.
28:27
The case spread through true crime circles, news
28:30
retrospectives, discussions about survival, intent, and the
28:33
unpredictability of violence. But even as attention shifts to
28:36
legal resolution and aftermath, the focus repeatedly returns to
28:40
a single point that refuses to paid into the background.
28:44
There is a person. At the center of this case, and
28:47
she lived through it. Beneath the trial, beneath the
28:51
conviction, beneath even the notoriety of the case itself, is
28:55
the center of gravity, and it never moves.
28:59
It remains with Susan, not as a defendant, not as a witness, not
29:03
as an abstract symbol in a courtroom narrative.
29:06
This is a woman who walked into her home, encountered a planned
29:09
attack, and survived. The legal system closed the case
29:13
on intended accountability, but the story that stays with most
29:17
people is so much simpler. She didn't endure what was meant
29:21
for her. She stopped it after the trial,
29:26
after the headlines, after the case settled into the category
29:28
of something people would later reference as unbelievable, Susan
29:32
Cunhausen was left with something the courtroom could
29:34
not actually address. What happens after you survive
29:37
something that was meant to erase you?
29:40
She was never framed. As a symbol in her own life.
29:43
Before the case, she was just a working emergency room nurse,
29:47
someone trained to step into other people's worst moments and
29:50
keep them functioning. After the case, that part of her
29:54
identity didn't disappear, but it also didn't fully define what
29:58
came next. What changed was how the world
30:00
looked at Susan. To the public, she became a rare
30:03
outcome in violent crime, Not just a victim who lived, but a
30:07
victim who actively stopped the threat.
30:09
That distinction is what made this case stick most true crime
30:13
stories. And in loss, uncertainty, maybe
30:17
partial resolution. Sometimes we never even learn
30:20
what happened. This case.
30:24
Inverted that expectation completely.
30:27
She. Survived and he did not.
30:31
And the person who was behind the plan was held accountable.
30:35
That's why this case. Continues to surface in true
30:37
crime discussions years later. It disrupts the usual narrative
30:41
structure. It doesn't allow the audience to
30:44
settle. In particular, it doesn't allow
30:46
the audience to settle into predictability.
30:48
Violence enters, but it doesn't get the final word.
30:52
And in the aftermath, Susan's response was to not become a
30:55
public figure in the traditional sense.
30:57
She didn't want to build her identity around this event.
31:00
Reporting over time has described her as continuing her
31:03
life with a focus on recovery, privacy, and perspective rather
31:07
than constant visibility. She never turned this into a
31:10
platform, she did not remain the center of attention
31:13
indefinitely, and she didn't appear to treat what happened as
31:16
something to be continuously relived.
31:19
What she did reflect on, in the ways that Susan has chosen to
31:22
speak about this, is the idea of survival itself, not as
31:27
something heroic or cinematic, but as something that is
31:30
instinctive and immediate to all of us.
31:32
A sequence of decisions made under pressure.
31:35
Not this large narrative you have control over in the moment.
31:39
We don't know if Susan remained in medicine after her attack.
31:44
Things have been reported differently in many ways over
31:47
the years, but what has remained consistent is that Susan did not
31:52
want her identity to be reduced to a single night in her life.
31:56
She was a nurse before this happened, and she was a person
31:59
after it ended. It started in silence.
32:09
A house, a long shift, a woman walking through her front door
32:12
like any other night. And then violence stepped out of
32:16
the darkness. And what was meant to be the end
32:19
of Susan Cunhausen's life did not happen.
32:24
Because in the space between intention and outcome, Susan
32:28
broke the plan. Ed Haffy was sent with
32:32
instructions. Mike Cunhausen believed the
32:34
outcome was already decided. But violence is never as
32:38
controlled as the people who plan it think it is.
32:43
And the truth, always. Leaves a trail, financial
32:46
records, connections, a moment of hesitation, and a decision
32:51
that doesn't quite hold up under light.
32:53
And when investigators followed that trail all the way back to
32:56
the source, what they found wasn't chaos.
32:59
It was intent. And when intent met reality
33:03
inside that house, it didn't go the way it was supposed to.
33:08
Because they planned. For absolutely everything except
33:12
understanding the kind of woman that Susan really is.
33:17
Or maybe it's. Something simpler than that.
33:21
Haffy thought she'd be. Easy to kill and that's why he
33:23
lost. I'm Brittany Ransom and this is
33:28
when killers get caught. I want to leave you with one
33:31
final statement from Susan Knhausen.
33:34
She would later be. Quoted as saying you don't rise
33:37
to the occasion, you fall back on what you already know.
33:45
And what? Susan knew.
33:47
She knew how to. Survive.