A Father’s Nightmare:

The Mike Hansen Story

Projected Release: TBA

On a May 2004 morning, Mike Hansen, a single father of three young daughters, awoke inside the Alexandria, Minnesota home of a friend where he’d been staying with his two youngest. He’d fallen asleep with them on a bed in the basement. He immediately realized that his baby, four-and-a-half-month old Avryonna, wasn’t breathing.

“I started screaming and ran up the stairs with her in my arms and was yelling ‘call the ambulance.’ I laid her on the couch and tried to give her CPR,” Hansen remembers.

Paramedics were ultimately unable to revive her.

An autopsy was performed and the medical examiner, a forensic pathologist, determined that Avry died from a significant skull fracture that he believed was caused by an intentional blow to her head while she was in her father’s care.

Hansen was charged with second degree murder.

At trial, the medical examiner testified that the skull fracture itself caused the baby’s death even though he didn’t find meaningful swelling, bleeding, or brain injury during the autopsy. He dismissed the idea that the fracture could have been caused by Avry’s fall from a shopping cart in a Walmart parking lot several days before her death, when she was in the care of her mother.

Then came the testimony of a jailhouse informant who claimed that Hansen made incriminating statements while they were locked up together—claims Hansen vehemently denied.

Hansen, pictured here with his three daughters in early 2004.

Hansen, seen here being interrogating by police after the death of his daughter.

The inmate said Hansen opened up to him about drinking and smoking marijuana in the hours before his daughter died. The inmate said Hansen complained about the girl crying and made statements that suggested he killed his daughter.

Hansen remembered the inmate often asking about his case and urging him to write down details about it. But he insists he never discussed the case with the man.

The informant avoided prison by pleading guilty to a greatly reduced charge and having another charge against him dismissed after agreeing to testify for the prosecution.

Hansen’s mugshots as seen from the time he entered prison in 2006 in connection with his daughter’s death, through 2010.

Hansen’s defense lawyers told jurors that Avry’s head injury was not the cause of her death, but they couldn’t provide a convincing alternative reason, saying simply that they did not know.

Hansen was convicted of murdering Avry. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

“I just kept thinking someone’s going to fix this,” Hansen would say, years later. “Someone’s got to fix this. This isn’t the way my life is going to go. This isn’t the way my life is going to end.”

The Innocence Project of Minnesota (now called The Great North Innocence Project) re-opened the case and presented testimony from a team of different medical experts at a post-conviction hearing.

The Innocence Project had asked several doctors to review the autopsy report, including two medical examiners, an emergency medicine physician, a forensic pathologist, and an expert in child abuse.

The experts concluded that Avry’s skull fracture was more likely the result of the fall from the shopping cart three days before her death, and that it had already begun healing before her death.

In addition, the experts testified that a skull fracture alone does not cause death but instead must be accompanied by underlying bleeding or brain injury—neither of which they said were present.

Lindsey Thomas, one of the medical examiners who participated in the review, said the original medical examiner went beyond the facts of the case to “invent” a story that Hansen woke up in the middle of the night and slammed the baby’s head against the wall.

The experts determined Avry instead died from accidental suffocation, or “positional asphyxis,” caused by her sleeping position the night she was with Hansen in his bed.

As a result, a judge vacated Hansen’s conviction. He agreed that there was evidence that the medical examiner may have given false or incorrect testimony at trial.

Forensic pathologist Lindsey Thomas explains to The Reporters Inc. why she believes the medical examiner who testified during Hansen’s trial was mistaken in his conclusions.

Hansen, then 34, was released from prison and granted a new trial. He’d been incarcerated six years at that point.

Two weeks later, the Douglas County, Minnesota attorney decided to formally drop the charges against Hansen.

“For people out there who think this can’t happen to them,” Hansen later said, “it can. I’m an everyday blue-collar guy who takes care of his family, loves his kids, goes home to his family every day after work. And it happened to me. It’s happened to many people.”

Since Hansen’s release, the pathologist who concluded Hansen had killed his daughter has been investigated for providing untruthful, false or misleading testimony in dozens of other cases. This doctor has denied all of the allegations.

Hansen greets family and friends as he leaves prison in 2011.

Further, Minnesota became the eighth state in the nation to pass new safeguards aimed at curbing cases in which inmates offer unreliable testimony in exchange for leniency. Prosecutors are now required to disclose past behavior of jail informants and any information that can help better assess their credibility before they can take the stand.

In 2014, Hansen became eligible for compensation under another new Minnesota state law that allows payment for the time an exonerated resident spent wrongly behind bars, as well as an array of other damages like physical and psychological injury. Minnesota became the 30th state to adopt this type of legislation, and the state is also among the most generous.

While some states offer set amounts regardless of how much time was served, Minnesota law offers no less than $50,000 per year of imprisonment, and there’s no cap on payment for emotional distress and injuries. The final determination is made by a panel of judges and attorneys, who forward the amount of damages to state lawmakers for approval.

Hansen, his wife Shaylee, and their toddler son in 2017.

As a result, the state awarded Hansen $917,000 in compensation.

Today, Hansen is a successful tattoo artist, who owns his own shop in Northfield, Minnesota. He’s re-married and is now the father of two more children, two boys. Still, spending six years in prison on a wrongful conviction for killing his baby daughter has left emotional scars that have required years of therapy, Hansen says.

“I wanted to save my life but there was this bigger part of me that needed to save my daughter’s name,” he explains. “[What police and prosecutors said happened to Avry is] not what happened to her. I don’t want people to believe that and I don’t want her to be remembered that way. She was only here a short amount of time.”

Watch the trailer for the Mike Hansen documentary here.

Hansen, seen here during an interview with The Reporters Inc., is now a successful tattoo artist, and owns his own shop. Still, he battles Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and has sought therapy for years.

To provide information, or learn more about this project, email The Reporters Inc. at info@thereporters.org or call us at 612-333-3180.