Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door (28 page)

“You need to come home,” he told him.

“James,” Landwehr said. “You know how sometimes I need to work late to catch a bad guy. That’s what I’m doing now.”

The Landwehrs debated about whether to tell him a longer version of the truth. But how do you tell a little boy about BTK? And that his dad is hunting him?

Otis still wondered whether the person sending the messages was BTK or someone who had found BTK’s trophies. The items sent to the
Eagle
and KAKE were perfectly clean. The only fingerprints on the papers were from the people who handled them after the envelopes had been opened. There were no stray hairs, no dried beads of sweat.

If it’s him, how come the son of a bitch won’t just lick the damned envelope, so we can get his DNA and prove it?

Landwehr thought Otis had a point. Perhaps he could prompt BTK to do that.

He called a news conference and replied to BTK on May 10, six days after the KAKE message arrived. In consultation with the FBI’s Morton, Johnson had written a paragraph that subtly prodded BTK to prove it was him writing the messages: “We are proceeding on the possibility that this letter is from BTK,” Landwehr was to say. “We have turned it over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They will do a thorough analysis utilizing the latest technology and forensic science in order to determine the
authenticity
of the letter.”

Landwehr practiced reading the script out loud. The moment he said “authenticity,” he stumbled over it…and broke into laughter.
Apparently I can’t pronounce a five-syllable word,
he thought. He tried to read the word again, and stumbled again.

In front of the television cameras, talking to BTK on live television, he fumbled the pronunciation again and had to suppress his own laughter. Embarrassed, he teased Johnson later. “Don’t
ever
give me that word again.” He should have deleted the word, he thought. He had ignored his training in debate and drama: when you muff a word in rehearsal, you muff it in performance.

On June 9, Michael Hellman saw a clear plastic bag taped to the back of a stop sign at the southeast corner of First and Kansas streets as he walked to his job at Spangles, a local burger chain. From the bag, Hellman pulled out an envelope that had “BTK Field Gram” typed on it.

When Landwehr saw the three pieces of paper inside, he realized it was BTK’s longest communication yet. Its misspelled title was “Death on a Cold January Moring.” It was a detailed account of what happened inside the Otero house�including how Josie pleaded for her life.

Landwehr waited to pick up James from the school bus one day. The bus was late.

Landwehr had been skipping meals, not sleeping much.

He looked at his watch.

If he did not catch this guy, he might get transferred out of homicide, removed as commander of the task force. The chief had been supportive, but Landwehr knew Williams must be under tremendous pressure to make something happen. Privately, Landwehr had concluded that if he failed to catch BTK in a year, he’d be transferred.

James’s safety worried him more.

The bus arrived�a few minutes late. James trotted to his father.

Back at work, Landwehr suppressed a desire to order the swabbing of every school bus driver in Wichita.

BTK’s Otero story was written as a narrative, complete with a scene-setting opener�and the usual misspellings.

If a person happen to be out one of these cold morning in a certain part of Wichita, that is the northeast part on a particwalar morining in January he might have notice a man park his car in a store parking lot pause beifly then walk across the street and disappear among the house and commercial building. If they had follow him they would have notice his head bend low to the ground and wearing a heavy parker. If they would have looked closer they would notice his eye dart back and fourth across the street checking the house windows and door. As he near a house on the corner he quickly glance around and jumped the wooded fence surrounding the house.

What followed was a step-by-step description of what BTK said had happened more than thirty years before. It had such detail that Landwehr wondered whether BTK wrote it soon after it happened.

He knew the family left the house approximetly 8:45, and they would walk out the car and leave for school and in aoproximatly seven mintwe the lany, Judie, would return home.

He had earily in the week, saw them leave for school one day He thought to himself, say this may be it, A perfect set up; a house on the corner, a garage set off from the house, a fenced yard, a large space from near by neighbor house. especially the back dor. It was a few days lter that he stop across the street and follow the family car tooss see wher they when that moring. She took the kids to school each day, an return, a perfect setup.

It was close to his fantasy of a victim all too himself, a person he could tie up, tortue, and maybe kill.

Cindy told Landwehr one night that they had to tell James something about what was going on. The boy was getting increasingly anxious about his father’s absences�and he was hearing things about his father. The Landwehrs sat down at the home computer with James. Cindy showed the boy how to call up his father’s name on a search. What came up was one news story after another about Lt. Ken Landwehr�and BTK.

James tried to understand.

“James,” Landwehr said, “you know how my job is to catch bad guys?”

“Yes.”

“I’m trying to catch a really bad guy this time. He calls himself BTK. He has hurt a lot of people. And we are going to catch him.

“That’s why I’m going on TV,” he said. “That’s why I have to be at work a lot.”

“What if he tries to hurt you?” James asked. “What if he comes to the house?”

“BTK has got to be an old man now,” Landwehr replied. “He hurt people starting thirty years ago, so he’s got to be in his sixties now, and slow, and old. We don’t think he can hurt anybody.”

What James said next surprised his father.

“But what if BTK has a son, and it’s the son who’s doing this now?”

It was what Otis and Gouge had suggested: that someone else was pretending to be BTK.

“You’re way ahead of me,” Landwehr said. “That’s a good idea. But we don’t think so. And we don’t think he’ll come here.”

Finally, about twenty minutes before nine the door unlocked, and the boy step oustide, in just a flash he order him back inside, confronting the family armed with pistol and knife he told them that this was a stick up and not to be alarmed.

The family was preparing to leave. the kids were packing their lunchs and had gather their coats by the table. The mother, Judie asked what was going on, and said they had no money of any thing of value. The boy was by his folks side looking scared and the girl, Josephine was beginnging to cry, all of them gather in the hall way he told them his orders. He was wanted, and needed the car, money and food…. Joe noitced, his gun hand shake and told the family to settled down and all would be okay.

The dog’s barking finally got to him, BTK wrote.

Rex wanted the pest out and told them he would shoot it or them if they try any funny tricks. expressing that the gun he held wax an automatic and held hollww points bullet that would kill. Joe, reassure him that if the dog was out of the way, things sould better. So, agreeing the man let oe put the dog out, bot being very c reful of Joe.

He said he bound the parents hand and foot. He said Julie (he called her “Judie”) complained that her hands were going numb, so he retied them.

He began to tie up the girl.

Her hair was to long and kept getting the way when he tries to gag her in the frist place, tears rolled down her face and Rex said he was sorry about piching her hair.

He gagged them, then slipped a plastic bag over Joe’s head. The others immediately began to scream. He could see tears on their faces.

He try to cover their mouth with his gloved hand but htey pleaded for him to release the boy ant Joe…Joe had moved to the other bed post and rumb a hole in his bag but he was not feeling good and had threw-up and breathing heavy. The boys eye where open now…. Josephine was crying and Judie still pledding for him to leave the house, they would not tell.

…he produce a ciol of rope and walk over to Judie and in her crying pleading voice “what are you doing…he slip he rope around her neck and strangle her slowly. Josephine cry out, “momy�I love you”.

It was all horror, and maybe it was all bullshit fiction…but the writer obviously enjoyed writing it.

Josephine kept asking him to be carefull bu Rex told her her Mother her Dad would be asleep also after he quit tighting the rope.

He then slip the garrote around the girl neck, she grasp her eye, bulge, then she passout. Judie was by now awake. Her eye opens, slowly moving her head. This time Rex makes a clove hicth and placed it over Judie neck, she cry, “God have mecry on you,” before he tighten the noose, her eyes really bluged because of the extreme pressure the tight clove-hicth makes. She grasp and struggle but, soon passout s blood appear eye and mouth and nose.

James Landwehr, one year younger than Joey Otero had been in 1974, tried to be calm after his father’s reassurances. But one day he spoke up.

“Dad,” he said, “other kids have been talking.”

James told him that some kids’ parents were wondering whether BTK might want to kill Landwehr, miss Landwehr’s house, and go to the neighbors by mistake.

BTK had saved the killing of the girl for last.

Returning to the basement he found Josephine awake and looking at the ceiling, he then tie her feet together and then around her knees and lower abouiamal. Secure tightly, he pulled up her sweater and cut her bra into. her small oreal expose so probably the first man to lay eye on them except her father. With that done he again checked the area for mistakes, nothing out of place. he return to the girl, she ask him if he was going to do the same things as he had done to the rest, “no,” he told her, the rest where asleep. He pick her up and took her tied body to the sewer pipe. There laying on her back, he ask if her Dad had a camera, she asked, no. then gag her…, “Please,” she said. “Don’t worry baby,” he said, “you be in heaven tonite with the rest”.

James Landwehr could not sleep in his bed anymore. He would crawl into his parents’ bed and snuggle beside Cindy, with the lights on.

One day James saw his father on television delivering another message to BTK.

Cindy watched James cover his ears with his hands.

39

July 2004

Sidetracked

On the morning of Saturday, July 17, an employee at the downtown Wichita library named James Stenholm found a plastic bag in the book drop. The bag contained papers with the letters “BTK.” Librarians called police.

Landwehr was not happy about what officers did when they arrived. They shut the library down.

“Come on, guys,” Landwehr said. “What were you thinking?” Closing the main library drew attention. That meant reporters and other nuisances; the cops might as well have turned on the tornado sirens.

Landwehr saw about fifty homeless men, blinking like a flock of owls. They hung out in the air-conditioned library, and now, standing in the sun, they looked as irritated as Landwehr.

“Jesus, guys, it was just a bag,” Landwehr told the uniforms. “I could have walked in here like all I was doing was picking up a book.”

Landwehr took the package and studied it with his team.

They were surprised by what BTK had to say at the bottom of the two-page letter:

I have spotted a female that I think lives alone and/or is a spotted latch key kid. Just got to work out the details. I’m much older (not feeble) now and have to conditions myself carefully. Also my thinking process is not as sharp as it uses to be. Details-Details-Details!!! I think fall or winter would be just about right for the HIT. Got to do it this year or next! Number X, as time is running out for me.

But it’s what he had written at the top that sent detectives immediately to the telephones. BTK had titled the letter “Jakey,” and implied that he had already killed again.

I had to stop work on Chapter 2 of, “THE BTK STORY.” due to the death of Jake Allen.

I was so excited about this incident that I had to tell the story.

Twelve days earlier, the Argonia High School homecoming king and class valedictorian had been run over by a freight train about four miles from his family’s farm and about thirty-five miles from Wichita. Allen had been a star athlete. His body had been wrapped in baling wire and tied to the tracks, though Sumner County sheriff’s investigators tried to keep that fact a secret.

BTK wrote that they had met when Allen had knee surgery, and had gotten better acquainted through computer chats. He said he lured Allen to the tracks by posing as a private detective investigating BTK.

Jakey would be the bait. We would capture him and turn him over to the police.

BTK made taunting references to bondage, sadomasochism, and baling wire. He described the sexual thrills he got not only from being with Allen at the tracks but “while I peck this out.” His library package included grainy copies of photos showing someone in bondage out in the woods, a hood on his face, and white tube socks on his feet. He claimed he and “Jakey” had been out playing “games.”

Landwehr called Chief Williams to tell him about BTK’s threat to kill and his hints that he had killed Allen.

Williams began to look for ways to reinforce the task force.

Otis called the Sumner County Sheriff’s Office. Its lead investigator, Jeff Hawkins, and others drove to Wichita that day and studied the letter.

Hawkins was dubious. Forensic tests weren’t complete, but the Sumner County team strongly suspected Allen’s death was a suicide.