Man who killed stepmother to be paroled from prison

A man convicted along with his father of bludgeoning and suffocating his stepmother to death in De Borgia on Nov. 28, 1995, has been approved for parole from his 60-year prison sentence.

Scott Michael Abe, 50, was granted parole by the Montana Board of Pardons and Parole in December. He remained in Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge as of Friday, as the process to complete parole typically takes at least a month.

According to a report from the parole board, Abe will be subject to all standard conditions of probation and parole, plus he will not be able to have a medical marijuana card or be in possession of alcohol.

Abe was convicted of accountability to deliberate homicide after his stepmother, Nanette Hansen, 34, was found face-up, muddied in a horse corral when her husband Chris Hansen, 52, called 911. Hansen claimed his wife had been kicked by a horse.

Emergency crews found her unresponsive at the scene and she was pronounced dead upon arrival at Mineral Community Hospital. She was found to have injuries on her head, neck, upper front, chest, back, arms, legs and face.

Investigators found that Nanette’s injuries were not consistent with being kicked in the head by a horse, but that impressions found on her head were consistent with Abe’s boots. She also had injuries that medical examiners deemed matched some “saps,” or homemade bludgeoning tools, that were found among Abe’s possession. But the blows to the head had not killed Nanette, the examiner found. She had been smothered to death, with the medical examiner concluding she had been held down in the mud until she stopped breathing.

Evidence established that in the days leading up to the trial, Chris Hansen had taken his wife’s name off the deed to their property and he had established a separate bank account in his and his son Abe’s name. According to court documents filed with the Montana Supreme Court, a life insurance policy paid off the couple’s mortgage after Nanette was killed. Testimony also established that Nanette had long been abused by Hansen.

“In the past, Chris had raped Nanette at gunpoint, beat her, and, at one point, poured kerosene on her and threatened to light it,” then-Montana Supreme Court Justice Terry Trieweiler wrote in a 1998 opinion. “Nanette refused to leave Chris because she felt that, due to his disability, he needed her.”

Chris had multiple sclerosis, but testimony established that he was physically capable of the murder at the time it occurred.

Trieweiler’s summary of the case gave other elements that contributed to a jury’s guilty verdict.

“Abe told his closest friend, Jerry Parrick, on at least three occasions, that he had offered to kill Nanette for his father,” Trieweiler wrote. “Abe explained that he would wait until Nanette came home drunk and passed out on the couch, he would hit her with a board that had a horseshoe nailed to it, and then take her down to the barnyard and make it look like a horse accident.”

Abe twice tried to appeal his case unsuccessfully. His father, Chris Hansen, died in Deer Lodge at the Montana State Prison in February 2001, at the age of 57, five years into his 60-year prison sentence.

Reporter Megan Strickland can be reached at 758-4459 or mstrickland@dailyinterlake.com.