CHRIS HANSEN’S LIFE.
Chris Hansen is a YouTube personality and television journalist from the United States. He is best known for his work on Dateline NBC, especially the former segment To Catch a Rapist, which focused on using a sting operation to catch alleged Internet sex predators.
Hansen also hosts the Investigation Discovery show Killer Instinct, which follows murder investigations. He is about 1.87m tall.
HANSEN’S CAREER.
Chris Hansen got his first job at WILX (Channel 10), an NBC-affiliated television station, halfway through his senior year at Michigan State University, where he worked full-time after graduation. He observed the riot at the Michigan State prison as a young reporter and was the only reporter allowed to interview inmates for a story that aired on CNN and NBC.
Hansen remained in Lansing for about a year before moving to Tampa, Florida, to work for WFLA-TV, an NBC affiliate, for a couple of years beginning in spring 1982. He also worked for local radio stations and newspapers in Michigan throughout his early career and was a reporter for WXYZ-TV (Channel 7), the ABC station in Detroit.
Hansen began working as an investigative reporter and anchor for WDIV-TV, the NBC affiliate in Detroit, Michigan, in 1988. He started his long career with NBC News in May 1993 as a reporter for the network’s short-lived news magazine ‘Now with Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric.
Beginning in 1997, he served as a reporter on various instalments of NBC’s ‘Dateline,’ where he found himself “standing in the centre of” the Oklahoma City bombing scene. He went on to cover the Columbine High School shooting, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Unabomber, and the TWA Flight 800 crash, among other investigative journalism assignments.
9/11 Attacks
Hansen oversaw the network’s coverage of the 9/11 attacks, revealed weapons dealers with ties to Osama Bin Laden, and raised concerns about airport security that prompted the federal government to revise its policies. He also covered the Jakarta incident, Saddam Hussein’s arrest, the hijacking of Air France Flight 8969, child labour and worker exploitation in the Indian silk production pipeline, and counterfeit currency.
During a phone call with a friend, Chris Hansen, who had already used hidden camera setups in some of his series, got the idea to combine them with chat room decoys from online watchdog group ‘Perverted-Justice.’ In November 2004, he starred in the first episode of a new ‘Dateline’ series named ‘To Catch a Rapist,’ which included sting operations luring alleged sexual predators and handing them over to law enforcement.
In the years that followed, he continued to appear on ‘Dateline,’ but his screen time decreased dramatically as the show’s attention changed from breaking news to murder mysteries and true crime. In 2011, Hansen was the subject of a sting operation by the ‘National Inquirer,’ which disclosed his affair with 30-year-old TV news reporter Kristyn Caddell, leading to his dismissal from NBC in 2013.
EDUCATION.
Hansen was born on September 13, 1959, in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in West Bloomfield Township and Birmingham, Michigan. He went to Bloomfield Hills’ Brother Rice High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in telecommunication from Michigan State University’s College of Communication Arts and Sciences.
PRIVATE LIFE.
Hansen is married and has two sons with his wife Mary Joan. Mary Joan filed for divorce in June 2018 after nearly 30 years of marriage with claims that their relationship was irretrievable.
They had two boys at the time the marriage ended.
HANSEN’S NET WORTH.
Chris Hansen has a net worth of $2.5 million as a result of his work in the media, especially on the Dateline NBC special To Catch A Predator.
