Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door (32 page)

At the newspaper, Editor Sherry Chisenhall, Tim Rogers, L. Kelly, and others passionately debated what to report. This was a major scoop, and Potter’s interview with the man’s son was an
Eagle
exclusive. But what if police had the wrong man? Was it worth possibly ruining an innocent man’s life�or risking a lawsuit? Reporters and editors called confidential sources close to the BTK investigation to gauge the situation.

In the end, the
Eagle
reported that something unusual had happened in south Wichita�an arrest involving a large number of police, including homicide detectives and the KBI. But Chisenhall played the story inside the paper, keeping the man’s name and address, and the term “BTK,” out of the story. She also temporarily held off running Potter’s separate story, his interview with the man’s son.

Chisenhall’s instincts were right. But after the story broke at about 1:15
AM
, December 2, on the
Eagle
’s website, local television stations scrambled to catch up and play the story big. They connected the dots by checking the jail’s booking log. By 5:00
AM
, they’d all gone live with reports from outside the man’s home. One television station broadcast the man’s name and called him a BTK suspect. So many gawkers gathered by 7:30
AM
that radio traffic reports advised commuters to avoid the area. His neighbors were quoted on camera as saying they couldn’t believe that BTK lived nearby. Reporters commented on how creepy it was seeing children’s toys in his yard. The scene was broadcast on national television.

That afternoon, Chief Williams denounced the news coverage: “It is a travesty when you look at the impact, and you look at what has happened to a neighborhood because of the fact that people assume that the Wichita Police Department was making an arrest in regards to BTK.” Officers had no choice but to arrest Valadez because of the old warrants, he said.

Valadez was released from jail about an hour after the chief’s announcement, but he was afraid to go home. Crowds watched as cops returned a vanload of items to the house.

After getting so little out of the task force for the past nine months, Potter felt it was a coup when he got Landwehr to say on the record a few days later that Valadez had been swabbed and eliminated as a BTK suspect.

About a month after that, Valadez told Potter his version of the arrest. He had felt feverish and stayed in bed that day. Around 7:30
PM
, he heard pounding on his door. Police forced it open. Valadez saw “a bunch of guys with guns.” They didn’t mention BTK, but they said they had a search warrant for his DNA. We’re going to take it from you one way or the other, one officer said. Two officers held him by his shoulders. A third took a mouth swab. For the next several hours, investigators hauled items out of the house: papers, typewriters, photographs.

“They thought they had their man,” Valadez said.

He said police trampled his family photographs and knocked holes in his walls. Later, he heard a woman on TV call him a murderer. He sued some of the news outlets over their coverage.

He knew that some facts about him matched some of the BTK background released the day before his arrest: he was the right age, he had served in the military, he lived near railroad tracks. Still, there was more to his life than that. He was a hard worker�he spent twenty-nine years at Coleman, much of that time as a manager. And he was a loving father of three, with three grandchildren. He was baffled about why the police suspected him.

Valadez later won a $1. 1 million judgment against Emmis Communications, which vowed to appeal. He died a month later.

The Valadez episode left the cops feeling prickly about reporters. Landwehr reminded detectives to keep their mouths shut.

Otis worried that there was a leak on the task force. He repeatedly asked Potter to tell how he knew to go to Valadez’s neighborhood. Otis even offered to trade information�“Give it to me, and I’ll give you something you want.” Potter declined. Otis appealed to Potter to be a “pal.” Potter said he couldn’t reveal his source.

As the anxiety about leaks approached paranoia, Otis himself came under suspicion. One day he saw KAKE reporter Jeanene Kiesling outside city hall. Otis thought she looked “particularly fetching” in her skirt that day, so he said hello in a moment of innocent fun. They made small talk for thirty seconds, then Otis joined a group of BTK detectives. They glared at him.

“What were you telling her?”

43

December 2004–January 2005

The First Breaks

Wichita mayor Carlos Mayans told Chief Williams one day that he had received many e-mails about the BTK case, some saying Landwehr should be replaced.

“What do you think about those e-mails?” Mayans asked.

The question upset the chief. “I’m not going to replace Lieutenant Landwehr,” he said. “Kenny’s the best. Who better knows the ins and outs of this case than Landwehr?”

Replacing him would send a bad message in the midst of the investigation, Williams said. He could not control public opinion, but he could control who ran the task force, and it was going to be Landwehr.

The mayor did not bring it up again. But reporters at the
Eagle
heard rumors that Landwehr was going to retire or be replaced. They asked their sources about it.

“I just want to kill some of these people who complain,” Johnson told Landwehr one day.

“You don’t want to kill anybody,” Landwehr said. Then he smiled, unable to resist a joke. “But if you do kill someone, don’t worry about it,” he said. “I know how to make
anything
look like a suicide.”

On December 8, Rader made another call from a pay phone to alert the media. He had not done such a thing since the day after he strangled Nancy Fox twenty-seven years earlier, but he was enjoying the publicity now. He would tell KAKE-TV where to find the latest BTK package.

“Hello, KAKE-TV,” a voice said.

“This is BTK,” he replied.

“Yeah, right!” the KAKE worker said.
Click.

Irritated, Rader looked up another number and dialed.

“Helzberg Jewelers.”

“This is BTK,” he said. “There is�”

Click.

He tried other numbers, but people kept hanging up on him. Back in the 1970s, pranksters had terrorized women by placing such phone calls; people were determined not to fall for that kind of sick joke now.

He got mad. He called a convenience store at 3216 East Harry.

“QuikTrip,” the worker said.

“Do not hang up; there is a bomb in your store. This is BTK.”

That got attention. Brandon Saner, the assistant manager, came to the phone. Rader told him to write down instructions.

“I’m calling to tell you of a BTK package at Ninth and Minnesota on the northeast corner,” Rader said, then hung up.

Saner called the cops.

Rader walked away from the pay phone steaming about the hang-ups. Some of the people who had hung up on him had sounded young.

This younger generation,
he thought.
They don’t understand what’s important.

The location Rader had given was near Murdock Park, next to Interstate 135. When Landwehr got there, he noticed an empty
Wichita Eagle
newspaper rack�a likely place to leave the package, he thought. He dug in his pocket for fifty cents. In the bottom of the rack Landwehr found paper and a piece of rope�trash. He began to walk Murdock Park with patrol officers. They looked into trash cans, peered behind bushes. It was getting dark; neighbors could see flashlights dancing like fireflies in winter.

They couldn’t find the package.

Three days later,
America’s Most Wanted
(
AMW
), a television show that combines crime reporting with theatrics, broadcast a BTK segment that had been filmed in Wichita. The show’s producers tried to cozy up to the task force. Producers would call the police spokeswoman and say, “We’re not media; we’re law enforcement.” Johnson would say, “No, you’re media!” Undeterred,
AMW
host John Walsh announced on the show that “I’m here to catch BTK.” The producers pushed the cops for inside information and gave viewers the false impression that they got it. When Walsh said on the air that he’d been asked to help with the BTK case, Chief Williams was furious; it wasn’t true. Walsh’s confrontational
We’re-coming-after-you!
style irritated the chief because it ran counter to Landwehr’s strategy of trying to establish a dialogue with BTK.

AMW
aired incorrect information in its broadcast and its live online chat room, where members of the so-called America’s Most Wanted BTK Task Force collected viewers’ questions and tips. During the online discussion, an
AMW
employee identified as “BTK_Task_Force3” wrote that BTK wore camouflage and hid his face during the 1974 attack on Kathryn and Kevin Bright. Not true.

Not all reviews from the cops were unflattering. “I have nothing but good things to say about Walsh,” Relph said later. “He’s a sincere man.” Relph, Gouge, Otis, and Snyder befriended him and hoped that the show’s nationwide reach would turn up something useful. Relph and Otis flew to Washington, DC, to help when the show asked viewers for tips on the case. Otis could not help liking Walsh, whose career pursuing criminals had started when his young son had been kidnapped and murdered. “Something like that never leaves you, no matter what happens after,” Otis said later.

Rader first began to give up some of his trophies when he left a package in Murdock Park containing, among other items, Nancy Fox’s driver’s license and a doll bound up like one of his victims.

In the case of BTK, the show generated lots of attention but no good leads.

Late on December 13, a man named William Ronald Ervin saw a package near a tree as he walked through Murdock Park. He took it to his mother’s house. The small white trash bag contained a clear plastic zip bag. Inside was a doll with its hands tied behind its back, several sheets of paper held against the doll with rubber bands, and the driver’s license of Nancy Fox, who had been dead for twenty-seven years. Ervin’s mother recognized the name. She glanced at the television and saw a news tip phone number for KAKE-TV on the screen.

After a cameraman arrived at the house and shot video of the package lying on the carpet, KAKE called the cops. On Landwehr’s orders, an officer walked in, picked up the package, and walked out. KAKE didn’t get the shot.

Landwehr was intrigued by how pristine Nancy’s driver’s license looked; BTK had taken care of it. He had punched a small hole at one edge so that he could tie it with white string to the doll’s ankles.

Landwehr and Chief Williams were even more intrigued that BTK had sent them the license. Serial killers never give up trophies, but BTK had. Was he getting rid of incriminating souvenirs? Was he dying and using his trophies to have some fun at the last? Maybe he thought the cops were getting close, Williams suggested�maybe he was unloading evidence.

BTK had drawn pubic hair on the half-naked doll and wrapped panty hose around its neck.

A two-page letter, titled “CHAPTER 9, HITS: PJ FOX TAIL-12-8-1977” showed that BTK was proud of what he had done�and that he wanted to give the cops a lot of information.

I spotted Nancy one day while cruising the area…. Found out her name by checking her mail box and tracked her to work…. Up close I visited the store where she worked, asking for some jewelry on display and bought some cheap jewelry (By the way the jewelry I stole from Nancy I gave to another girl friend). Natural I didn’t tell my girl friend where it came from.

BTK was beginning to write in a confiding, conversational tone.

On that date I parked a few blocks away and walked to her apartment. Cut the phone line and broke in, waiting. She came home, enters and was confronted in the kitchen, she was startled and started to get the phone. I told her I had knife and display the magnum in my shoulder hoister. We talked about sex and the harm if she didn’t cooperate. She lit a smoke while we chatted and finally she said lets get this over with, so I can call the police.

He let her go to the bathroom, made her disrobe, then handcuffed her.

I pulled down her panties, quickly slip my belt over her head and on to the neck and pulled tight but not the final strangle hold. Her hands found my scrotum and she try to dig into my balls but I pulled tighter this increase my sexual thrill. I release the strangle hold and let her come back after she passed out, I spoke softly into her left ear. I was wanted for the Oteros and others murders and she was next. She begun to really struggle then and I did the final hold, this my torture mental and re-strangle (SBT).

KAKE news director Glen Horn, a thirty-eight-year-old veteran of intense local media competition in South Florida, had reminded his staff to always cooperate with police. But he also thought KAKE and all Wichita news media had been too accommodating to the cops. Horn said he never would have agreed to sit on the “BTK resurfaces” story for two days, as the
Eagle
had done in March. He was tired of how the cops refused to answer questions, even when the BTK messages came to KAKE. He did not think that was fair to viewers, who were also taxpayers and potential BTK victims. He didn’t think it was too much to expect to get a few questions answered and video of the cops doing something, such as opening a BTK package.