Lindsay Haugen is a killer from Montana who was convicted of the murder of Robert Mast
According to court documents Lindsay Haugen would strangle her boyfriend Robert Mast in the parking lot of a Walmart. Apparently after she choked him Haugen would keep her hands over his mouth and nose for twenty minutes ensuring he was dead
Lindsay Haugen would tell authorities that Robert Mast asked her to kill him and she agreed to do so out of love however prosecutors told a completely different story and the jury would convict Haugen of deliberate homicide and she would be sentenced to sixty years in prison
Lindsay Haugen Now
DOC ID# 3018877
NAME: Lindsay April Haugen
CURRENT STATUS: Secure
LAST STATUS CHANGE: Thursday, July 21, 2016
GENDER: Female
INFORMATION CURRENT AS OF: Sunday, December 24, 2023
Secure:
Montana Womens Prison
Lindsay Haugen Videos
Lindsay Haugen Case
uring her sentencing hearing Wednesday, Lindsay April Haugen said the prosecution’s recommended prison sentence of 65 years was “overwhelming” but that she deserved it.
Haugen acknowledged she knew it was wrong to strangle Robert Glenn Mast to death on Sept. 15 inside a car at the Heights Wal-Mart.
“I feel like I deserve whatever I get,” Haugen said. “Because I can’t bring Robbie back.”
Haugen pleaded guilty to the deliberate homicide of Mast, 25, in April. According to court documents, Haugen killed Mast by putting her arm around his neck to choke him before holding his mouth and nose shut for as long as 20 minutes. She and Mast had eaten pizza and drank wine in the parking lot that night before she said Mast asked her to kill him.
Yellowstone County District Judge Gregory Todd ordered Haugen to serve 60 years with the Montana State Women’s Prison.
Mast’s step-mother, Mindy Pendleton, testified during the hearing
Pendleton had raised Mast since he was a 2-year-old, she said. She described him as a “traveler” who had spent his life working seasonal jobs, going state-to-state and indulging in adventures. He was different from the rest of the family, made different choices, but a good man, Pendleton said.
“His life mattered. It mattered. It mattered to all of us,” Pendleton said. “He was loved, and he loved well.”
Mast had a girlfriend he planned to return to in Minnesota, Pendleton said. He did not love Haugen, but he trusted her, and that was what killed him, Pendleton said.
Mast was from Florida and would return to his family during the holidays, in part for the climate, Pendleton said.
“He was not a transient whose life didn’t have meaning,” Pendleton said. “It did. If this proceeding were held in Flordia, this courtroom would be filled with those who loved him.”
Haugen robbed Mast’s family of him, Pendleton said. She told the court she would never again hear her son say he loved her, just as his brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews would never again hear the stories that used to bring them joy, Pendleton said.
For that, Pendleton said she and her family wanted Haugen to spend the rest of her life in prison.
“We will represent Robbie and his life. We will fight to have you stay incarcerated,” Pendleton said, promising to attend every one of Haugen’s future parole hearings.
Mast had a documented history of suicidal idealization, but friends and family said he would seek help when he had bouts of depression. They did not believe he actually wanted to die.
Haugen said it was a request Mast had made of her more than once
When Haugen testified, she apologized to Pendleton. Haugen described Mast as the love of her life, after knowing him only 28 days. That was why she “chose to take his life,” she said.
At the end of her testimony at the hearing, she requested 25 to 30 years of her sentence to be suspended so she could try to be a productive member of society again after she had served a good portion of her sentence.
Just as Lindsay Haugen did not dispute strangling Mast, no one disputed Haugen’s documented past trauma.
Todd called her an “intelligent person with a horrendous background of abuse.”
Lindsay Haugen’s crime did not happen “in a vacuum,” Public Defender Gregory Paskell said.
Paskell argued Lindsay Haugen was predisposed to be submissive to Mast’s request for her to kill him, because of the abuse men had subjected her to.
Licensed clinical professional counselor Lisa Matovich-Brooke was brought in to testify about Haugen’s mental health. She said Haugen had grown up with an abusive father, was beaten by a group of “skin heads” when she was a young woman and had nearly died when her ex-fiance threw her against a bathtub and strangled her until she passed out. He raped her, broke her hand, broke her nose and, when she tried to leave, threw her keys onto a roof, Matovich-Brooke said.
Lindsay Haugen testified when she was with her fiance he wouldn’t let her walk into their home. She had to crawl over the threshold and was only allowed to speak to him on her knees.
When Lindsay Haugen, a sergeant with the National Guard at the time, reported the abuse to her commanding officer, her commander kept Haugen in the barracks for her protection. Even then, she tried to stay in contact with the man who had beat her, Matovich-Brooke said.
Lindsay Haugen served in the military for 10 years, volunteering to fight in Kuwait as a gunner on a Black Hawk helicopter. Haugen’s life was a jumble of counter-intuitive choices, Matovich-Brooke said.
Battered women will do anything to prove how much they love the men they are with, Matovich-Brooke said.
“She said it was like she was floating above the car and didn’t feel like she was really committing the crime,” Matovich-Brooke said about Haugen’s description of killing Mast.
Matovich-Brooke said the disassociation Haugen displayed in the attack is consistent with PTSD and battered woman syndrome. Haugen did what she did to prove how much she loved Mast, Matovich-Brooke said.
Todd said he did not see a connection between Haugen’s past abuse and what she did to Mast. He said “niceness” triggering violence did not make sense.
“Haugen strangles him and plugs his nose and mouth for 20 minutes,” Todd said. Mast fights the strangulation and foams at the mouth. She gets in and drives eight blocks away before attempting to get help, Todd said.
“Everything I have here points to Robbie Mast as not an abuser, not someone that would trigger a fatal reaction,” Todd said.
In Montana, deliberate homicide typically carries a sentence of up to 100 years in prison.
The Yellowstone County Attorney’s Chief of Criminal Operations Christopher Morris and Senior Deputy County Attorney Julie Patten said the 65-year sentence they recommended took into consideration all mitigating factors of Haugen’s life.
