Susan Kuhnhausen came home from her shift as an emergency room nurse in Portland, Oregon, on September 6, 2006, expecting an ordinary night.
The house was dark. The curtains she remembered opening that morning were closed. Moments after she stepped inside, a man stepped out of the shadows and swung a claw hammer at her head.
Kuhnhausen, 51 years old at the time, did not run. Nearly three decades in the ER had trained her for chaos, and her hospital’s nurses drilled regularly in self defense. She crowded her attacker instead of backing away, knowing his swings would carry less force at close range.
The fight lasted around 15 minutes and tore through her home. She took blows to the head and face, was bitten during the struggle, and eventually wrestled the hammer away. She got the intruder into a choke hold and yelled into his face, “Tell me who sent you here and I’ll call you an ambulance.” He said nothing back.
She held on until he stopped moving, then fled to a neighbor’s house and called 911.
Police first assumed it was a burglary gone wrong. That changed when they searched the dead man’s backpack. Inside was a day planner with a note reading “Call Mike,” along with a phone number belonging to Kuhnhausen’s husband, Michael.
Investigators pieced together the rest. Michael Kuhnhausen was facing a divorce he did not want and stood to inherit the couple’s paid off home if his wife died. He had offered a former coworker, Edward Dalton Haffey, fifty thousand dollars to kill her and stage it as a break in.
Haffey did not survive the attempt. Michael Kuhnhausen pleaded guilty to solicitation of aggravated murder and was sentenced to prison
A 51-Year-Old ER Nurse Fought Off a Hitman Sent to Kill Her
