Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door (36 page)

“Look,” he said. “We’ve done arrests before. We know what we’re doing, so let’s not get so fancy; let’s do this like we’ve done them before.”

Landwehr was thinking the same thing�they should keep it simple. No tracking devices, no eye in the sky. But they still ended up with the most complicated arrest plan any of them had ever seen. By the time the chief finalized it, they had given 215 people specific assignments, including handcuffing Rader, taking him to the county jail, collecting samples of his DNA, taking his DNA to a lab, and picking up and interviewing his relatives.

Gouge wondered how they could get it all done. Typing out search warrants with Parker by his side, he stayed up until four o’clock one morning to get all the details right.

How can we do this and keep a lid on it?

Ideally they wanted to keep the arrest out of the news until they could search his property. But when Landwehr told Chief Williams he wanted to keep Rader’s arrest quiet for a couple of weeks, Williams laughed.

“You’re not going to get a couple of weeks,” Williams said.

“Well, can we get at least a couple of days?”

Williams smiled. “You’ll be lucky to get a couple of hours before this news gets out.”

On February 18, two days after police linked the disk to Rader, Lundin took a subpoena to K-State. Kerri Rader was living in Michigan, but medical records from her college years were still on file with the student health center; a Pap smear sample was at a Manhattan medical laboratory. Lundin immediately got a second subpoena, plus a court order allowing him to get the Pap smear slide from the lab. Four days later, Lundin obtained Kerri Rader’s tissue sample, which had been smeared on glass and encased in resin. Lundin drove forty-five miles east to the KBI lab in the state’s capital, Topeka. Before he left Manhattan, though, Lundin pointed out to every medical person he talked with that the judge had ordered all of them to stay quiet about this. They were not to call Kerri Rader or tell anyone about the search.

At 6:00
AM
Sunday, February 20, a Park City woman named Deana Harris suddenly needed an ambulance. She was suffering from diabetic complications, her husband was at work, and she had no phone. She sent her eleven-year-old daughter out the door. “Call 911,” she told her.

The girl ran across Independence Street. Dennis Rader answered his door and quickly showed her to his telephone. The Raders were cooking breakfast. He told her that they were getting ready for church.

The girl called 911, then ran back to her mother. The man called out to her, “I hope your mommy will be okay.”

On Thursday morning, February 24, Sindey Schueler, a KBI biology supervisor in Topeka, began to extract DNA from the Pap smear.

Lundin had told her only that the task force had “a good suspect” in the BTK case and that the smear might help. Schueler had worked for the KBI since 1991 and had tested thousands of DNA samples. This one, which was at least a couple of years old, posed a challenge. Schueler had difficulty removing the thin glass cover from the slide. It took hours to chip away microscopic pieces of the resin and the glass cover. When she finally got to the tissue, she processed the material and laid the DNA pattern out on paper: a straight line broken by peaks.

Then she compared the DNA profile of the Pap smear to the DNA profile from one of the BTK crime scenes.

That week Paula Rader noticed men she didn’t know sitting in cars parked down the street.

The men had long hair and sat for hours, watching passersby.

She thought they must be undercover cops. Maybe they had found a drug dealer up the street. She did not say anything to Dennis�it was nothing worth mentioning. Dennis had been busy lately, working late.

The Wichita detectives had occasionally worked seven days a week, sometimes skipping nights of sleep; but they had homes and families to go to if they wished. Ray Lundin and Larry Thomas, the two KBI agents on loan to Landwehr, had worked just as hard and had lived out of motels for the past ten months, away from home and family.

Lundin, back in Wichita on February 24, had just eaten some stuffed French toast at an IHOP and was taking a walk to burn off calories. On his cell phone, he saw that Schueler had just called him from the KBI lab. He called her back.

This is it,
he thought.
What’s it going to be?

When they finished talking, Lundin thanked her and dialed Landwehr’s cell phone.

Landwehr was at home helping James with his homework. He was still dressed in a suit and tie and was ready to drive back to the Epic Center. When his cell phone rang and he saw Lundin’s name come up on the screen, Landwehr went into his garage and shut the door. He’d been expecting this call for a few hours now.

“This is Landwehr,” he said.

Lundin, wanting to be as thorough as Schueler, began to repeat what she had said, step-by-step with all the technical jargon. Landwehr paced and listened. Finally, Lundin told him “two of the alleles didn’t come in.” Landwehr’s heart sank. He knew that the DNA test Schueler conducted had thirteen genetic markers�alleles�for men, twelve for women. They were looking for all twelve to match between BTK and Kerri Rader.

“So it’s not him,” Landwehr said. He was deeply disappointed.

Lundin paused, surprised.

“No, it’s
him
,” Lundin said. It wasn’t that those two alleles didn’t match, it was that the old tissue sample didn’t yield enough material to test in two areas. They were
ten for ten
on matching the parts they could test.

There was a brief silence; Landwehr took a breath.

“Sumbitch, we got him,” Landwehr said. “Get your ass back here. And Ray? I’m going to buy you a big steak dinner.”

He closed the cell phone, walked back in the house, and told Cindy he was going back to work.

Cindy watched his face. He smiled. Out of earshot of James, he pulled her aside.

“It’s over, baby,” he said.

He stayed in the house long enough to tuck his son into bed.

At her home, District Attorney Nola Foulston stared at a photograph on her computer screen and began to laugh. In the photo, Dennis Rader smiled and looked pleased with himself. A member of the task force had e-mailed it to her.

“You have no idea what’s in store for you,” Foulston told the photograph. Her son, fifteen-year-old Andrew Foulston, heard her start laughing loudly again. “What’s up, Mom?” he asked. “Are you on crack?”

“No,” she said. She couldn’t tell him what was going on. So she just smiled.

At the command center, detectives cheered, smacked hands in high fives, hugged each other. But Relph suddenly wanted to be alone. Landwehr had an office, off to the side, and it was empty. Relph walked in and shut the door.

He had become convinced, over sixteen years of working murders, that God was always present and always kind.

People had suffered so much, but BTK was finished now. Relph got down on his knees. Tears began to stream down his face, and his lower lip began to tremble.

“I give thanks…” he began.

Rader’s official portrait as Park City’s compliance supervisor.

45

February 24, 2005

The Stalker Is Stalked

The cops worked deep into the night of February 24. Gouge typed nine search warrants and had O’Connor and Parker double-check them. They needed a judge to sign the warrants, but prosecutors thought news reporters might stake out Sedgwick County’s criminal court judges, watching for who might be going in and out. Parker called Judge Gregory Waller and asked him to walk up the street to the task force headquarters in the Epic Center.

Janet Johnson planned how to announce the arrest to the world. She was surprised that there had been no leaks so far. Morton, the FBI profiler, was told by phone to get to Wichita from Quantico as fast as he could fly. Chief Williams had decided the best way to get BTK to confess after his arrest was to assign Landwehr and Morton to be the first interrogators.

Dan Harty and other gang officers had been swabbing people for the task force since July. It was repetitive work, and Harty was tired of it. He was startled at what Landwehr now told him: “I need you to wear a uniform tomorrow; you and Scott Moon are gonna be on the arrest team.”

Landwehr said he wanted a pair of uniformed officers to start the arrest by pulling Rader over, making it look to Rader like a routine traffic stop. Landwehr wanted Harty and Moon because they’d both arrested hundreds of gangbangers, many of them armed and violent, sometimes chasing them down on foot. Landwehr was confident that his detectives could handle Rader, but he wanted Harty and Moon there, too.

A meeting at the Epic Center was hurriedly arranged to finalize plans. Landwehr, Capt. John Speer, and Deputy Chief Robert Lee found the doors locked; they waited until someone could let them in. Speer would remember the next few minutes for the rest of his life. They stood in the quiet of the parking garage, looking out on the lights of the city. Only they and a handful of other cops knew the news that the city had waited to hear for thirty-one years: BTK was going to be put in a cage. Landwehr was smiling. He and the others had never shown much affection, except with rough cop humor, but many men had hugged each other tonight. Landwehr pulled out his cigarettes and lit one.

“You know, Kenny,” Lee said. “If it really is him, I’d smoke a cigarette with you.” Lee had not smoked in years.

Landwehr flicked a cigarette half out of his pack and held it out to Lee. Landwehr handed another to Speer, who had quit smoking fifteen years before. Neither of the nonsmokers had a match, so Landwehr held his lighter for his two friends. Then they stood there, smoking in the silent garage.

At the meeting, the BTK detectives suddenly found themselves passed over and pissed off. The chief wanted the SWAT team, not the BTK task force, to make the arrest.

It made sense; this would be the biggest arrest the department had ever made. There was a chance that if the arrest did not come off perfectly, BTK might burn his evidence, blow up his house, kill himself, or try to take a few cops with him. The SWAT team was well-trained.

Otis fumed. There was little use in arguing. Police departments are much like military units�orders are orders.

But Otis was Otis.

“Chief, I really want to be in on that arrest.”

Williams looked at him.

“Look,” Otis said, “the only difference between me and the SWAT team is that a SWAT guy has a machine gun, and I don’t. But you know what? I don’t
need
a machine gun. We all worked this case, and we really want to do this arrest.”

O’Connor thought:
Otis has got balls.

Other detectives spoke up too. And then Landwehr. “I think these guys want to handle it, chief,” he said. “And I think they ought to handle it too.”

Williams nodded. “Well, no one knows BTK better than these guys.”

He ordered the task force to make the arrest. Otis sat back, relieved.Had the chief not relented, Otis would have strapped on his bulletproof vest and taken part in the arrest, anyway, hoping that body armor and a helmet would hide his identity from commanders.

Afterward, Landwehr made two calls to people he trusted. One was to Paul Holmes, the retired Ghostbuster who had served as an unofficial member of the task force. Holmes had worked hundreds of unpaid hours for the task force since BTK resurfaced. Landwehr now offered him a golden gift: Holmes could be present for the arrest.

Holmes declined.

“
What?
Oh, come on, you’re gonna miss it?” Landwehr said.

Holmes had to say no. He appreciated the honor, but he was going to visit his daughter.

Landwehr also called his mother. Early on, Landwehr had asked for patrol cars to cruise past Irene’s house every hour. The street officers had done their job so well that they once caught Landwehr in a moment of forgetfulness. One day he got a call from dispatchers, telling him that a white car had pulled into his mother’s drive.

“Oh, shoot, that’s my mother’s new car,” Landwehr told them. “Sorry, I forgot to tell you.” He was glad officers were on top of the job.

“I can’t tell you much,” Landwehr told Irene now. “But I wanted to tell you, we’re gonna get this guy tomorrow. It’s over.”

He slept well that night for the first time in eleven months.

The commanders had assigned four teams of undercover cops to Rader’s surveillance. They did not watch him twenty-four hours a day…they left at night. And they hung back when they watched, trying not to spook him.

Rader was a creature of habit. He left for work at the same minute every day and drove home for lunch at 12:15
PM
, arriving at 12:18. Like clockwork.

The commanders planned accordingly. Harty and Moon would pull behind Rader as he went home. For the traffic stop, Chief Williams loaned them his car, which was unmarked and had police lights embedded in the grill. This was convenient, because it did not look like a Wichita patrol car. The cops did not want to make Park City people suspicious.