Ever wondered what it’s like to step into the mind of a notorious serial killer? In this episode, we look at how Douglas and his team tackled the daunting challenge of hunting down a criminal as elusive as the BTK. Discover the chilling details of BTK’s disturbing correspondence with the police, the chilling reality of bindings and substitute sex in his crimes, and the unique profile that eventually led to his capture.
In this rollercoaster investigation, we further dissect BTK's character, considering his method of victim selection and fantasies. We also delve into his potential military background and the haunting possibility of photographic evidence of his monstrous acts. We'll take you behind the scenes of the law enforcement world to reveal how stress, polygraph tests, and a deep understanding of the criminal mind can crack even the most complex cases. By the end of this episode, you’ll find yourself gripped by the intricate world of criminal profiling and awestruck by law enforcement’s relentless pursuit of justice.
Ever wondered what it’s like to step into the mind of a notorious serial killer? In this episode, we look at how Douglas and his team tackled the daunting challenge of hunting down a criminal as elusive as the BTK. Discover the chilling details of BTK’s disturbing correspondence with the police, the chilling reality of bindings and substitute sex in his crimes, and the unique profile that eventually led to his capture.
In this rollercoaster investigation, we further dissect BTK's character, considering his method of victim selection and fantasies. We also delve into his potential military background and the haunting possibility of photographic evidence of his monstrous acts. We'll take you behind the scenes of the law enforcement world to reveal how stress, polygraph tests, and a deep understanding of the criminal mind can crack even the most complex cases. By the end of this episode, you’ll find yourself gripped by the intricate world of criminal profiling and awestruck by law enforcement’s relentless pursuit of justice.
Welcome to the murder book. I'm your host, kiera, and this is part four of the hunting of the BTK killer, from the point of view of former FBI profiler, john Douglas. Let's begin. So the police in Wichita at this point have thrown plenty of light in the direction of the suspect. They well not even a suspect the unsub but they have found nothing, because the BTK had remained hidden, revealing himself only to his victims and then vanishing. If the authorities have managed to get close to him, he would never let on.
Speaker 1:So years have passed and now we're not in the 70s anymore. Now we are in the 80s and it's 1984. So this is about 10 years since what he claimed were his first grisly series of murders. So now, at this point, john Douglas has been looking through hundreds of pages of crime reports, photos, other documents detailing his murders and he started trying to think about from the perspective of the BTK and basically his conclusion is perhaps the only way to catch this killer was to let him catch himself. And that pretty much is what he told the police, because in his opinion, the killer seemed to hold all the cards. He knew it. The police knew that, they were aware of that, so that means that they would probably have to wait for a long time before he let his guard down enough to make a mistake and he had done it before, because he had left traces of semen behind in the Otero's basement, in Nancy Fox's bedroom. He sent his potentially evidence-lating communique or letters to the police, but it had been five years since he had felt the need and taken the risk to type another letter. So now they just have to wait and see what would happen. And looking at what BTK did in terms of writing letters, he wrote a series of rants to the police and in these rants he was hinting that there was a dark, unstoppable force that dwelt within him. So the question is, was he directing his taunts at a specific officer whose identity only he knew? Or were the police merely some ambiguous, fussy concept inside his mind? He was just a collection of faceless, nameless men in blue. If this is all a game to him, if he's doing this to fulfill his ego, it's a challenge that he was throwing at the police.
Speaker 1:His victims are very different. He may have a preferential victim, but when it's time to go on the hunt, the person he hits is the first one to come into his sights. The significance for him is his ability to get away with the crime and flaunt his skills. The only torture that John Douglas saw with his skills was more psychological torture. So Roy Husserwood, who was a colleague of John Douglas and they worked together to start profiting he said that for him, whoever was the BTK in his mind he is torturing his victims and that's why he uses the backs, because he wants to see the terror in their eyes as he places it over their heads. And he said he's definitely a sexual bondage practitioner and he is a collector of bondage magazines and detective magazines and he has an interest in criminology or psychology. So he is probably pretty well known to adult book store operators in the area.
Speaker 1:Because for Husserwood he thought that whoever the guy was was definitely into psychological torture and that indicates a higher level of sophistication and a higher level of intelligence than the average Joe on the street. The more physical the torture, the more primal and reactive the person inflicting it is. Not much intelligence thought goes into physical torture and so according to their research they start putting together a profile Hayse Wood and Douglas and there was another FBI profile last name Walker and based on their research they thought that most of these guys have an IQ range between 105 and 145. The average falls between 115 and 120. And average for the normal population is 100. So what this is showing them is that most of these guys are able to move around to in a society fairly easily. They usually catch the ones that are dumb in their words, that mind quickly, and that the smarter ones will take longer, and so so the lucky ones. So one thing that Douglas said, and I'm going to quote him, says I think it's fairly clear that this guy is able to spend a bit of time at his crime scenes. This is something that appears important to him. He seems to want to have some kind of dialogue with his victims. It is in a blitzed type scenario.
Speaker 1:As we learn from the bright murder. He attempted to diffuse the situation and make everyone feel that if they had just cooperate with him he would leave. They had no way of knowing that this was part of his MO. So he's capable of maintaining that type of control relationship In a group. In a group kill, he is smart enough to go after strength. First he uses the stronger victim to tie up the others and then he gets rid of the strong figure and, as he said in one of his letters, he saves the best for last End quote. So of course you have to wonder if the reason that he took 11 year old Josie Otero to the basement was that she had begun to maybe. She was hysterical. She was getting loud after seeing her family killed. So he was taking a chance by forcing her down there in the basement, that he may have been losing control of her at that moment and was concerned about the neighbors hearing her. So it was a chance he was willing to take and the way he tied her up with all those bindings felt like he was attempting to make his crime scene appear more complex than it really was.
Speaker 1:His social and sexual life probably reflect was reflected in his killings. So, for example, the fact that they didn't see any signs of penetration. There was no clear sign of funnelling. That means that he's probably a person who has an inadequate, immature sexual history. Her brow was probably cut in order to expose the breast for borderistic kicks rather than touching. So there is just so much emphasis on substitute sex with this guy.
Speaker 1:So they thought that this person has to be a lone wolf type of personality. And but he's not alone because he's shunned by others is because he chooses to be a lot, so that means that his social life and his sexual life will reflect that. So he wants to be alone. He can function in social settings, but only on the surface. He may have women friends he can talk to, but he would feel very inadequate with a peer group female and there was probably the potential that whoever that the killer is would be a sexual sadist. He was sexually inadequate but he would have relationship with women because to a sexual sadist the act of sex is an important. What it's important are the facts and activities leading up to the sexual act. That's why they haven't seen any penetration of the victims, because he's the type who is heavily into masturbation, having all the sex performed on him, ejaculating onto his victims, tying them up blind, folding them or choking them.
Speaker 1:And women who have had sex with this guy would describe him as aloof, uninvolved, the type that is more interested in her servicing him than the other way around. So the profilers believed also that the killer have to manage to rack up a bit of sexual experience in his lifetime. But they sense that his partners were probably the type whom he could easy manipulate and control. The woman he has been with are either many years younger, very naive or much older and dependent him as their meal ticket. Therefore, even if she suspected something about him, she would put up with his imperfections because she needs him in order to survive. Bondage is very important to him and there is a good chance that he may have tried to get a prostitute to allow him to bind her up, but most would be afraid the police might get a lead by checking with prostitutes to see if anyone has come into contact with a guy who's heavily into bondage.
Speaker 1:And one thing that Profilo Heisler would thought was well, he definitely will like older women because he can manipulate them in exchange for their affection. So he also thought that he would have the ability to interact with others on a peripheral level. He's got what what they call a service personality. People will know him, but they really they don't really know him. The idea of him being a lone wolf would be a good description because, for example, in terms of employment, he would find himself doing well in his job but doesn't like to stay in any one position for very long because he doesn't like anyone being over him. And they also thought the profilers thought that he would love to drive and would probably have a fairly decent automobile. In fact, people would associate him with driving In his car. Because of that, his car probably will be what is called. He will own a non-descript type of vehicle, like a sedan that will smack a floor enforcement. He might have even purchased it at an auction from law enforcement. He's image conscious, so there will be antennas on the car, maybe a scanner, a CB.
Speaker 1:So then, another thing that they start thinking about this the possible killer was that he would have been openly critical of the investigation. Not openly so, but more in terms of his saying, for example and this is quoting Hayse would say those damn cops, they don't know what they're doing, type of thing. Quote he holds the police in disdain because they have been unable to solve the case In spite of the tremendous amount of clues he believes he left them, clues that they should have been able to pick up on. And he tells himself that if he were a cop working the case, that he would have picked up on these clues, and there's a good chance that he already he might be already been interviewed by the police and found to be helpful. You know, cooperative, he may even have, you know, have even phone in with additional information, perhaps telling detectives about something he, oops, just remembered. So Douglas kept thinking that early on he might have been even married to someone who would have allowed him to get away with some of the stuff that he enjoys, like bondage and sexual sexual exploration. But now, at his age, he was wondering if he was still married and or he was already divorced, and Hayse would thought well, they are married.
Speaker 1:Sexual sadists will act out the fantasies under spouses. They can't control it. They have to be in control. When they're dating, they're often very charming, manipulative, very attentive. When having sex they may act out superficially, asking things like can I hold your arms, do you mind if I tie you down? But once they get married they get into it heavily.
Speaker 1:And one option might be to take the list of suspects and find out who is divorced, then interview the ex-wives to find out about their exes sexual sadistic activities during their marriage. And one thing about ex-wives is that they could provide a wealth of information for investigations with the right touch. And they also thought that they you might also ask these, the exes, if they were ever the recipients of souvenirs or other items taken from the victims, and One thing that Douglas said was, well, ask them if, when they were together, did the suspect ever give them gifts of used jewelry or other items missing from crime scenes, and ask them if he ever spoke about BTK or the kills. Did he ever take them to where the murders had occurred or to the cemeteries where the victims were buried? And if so, did he act strange when he got there? They even thought that they might relieve and release information to the media that serial killers often become obsessed with coverage of their crimes and intensely follow them. The information might prompt a spouse or former spouse to come forward as ex-wife. They could tell the police if their ex-husband had more than a normal interest in the media coverage of the killings. They could also detail their interest in pornography, detective magazines and bondage restraints like blindfolds, gags, hoods. We would expect someone like this to be an outdoorsman, a gun and knife collector. He might own a large dog like a doberman and have us through the mercenary soldier of fortune type of mentality.
Speaker 1:So they decided to shift gears and focus more on how the suspect, this guy, went about killing. So they thought, well, is that important for them if killed before in another community. What's important to them is those first one or two kills in Wichita. That's why Otero and Bright are important, because in that first kill he selects an area where he feels a great deal of comfort. He knows deep down where he can get away with the climb there. To do what he has to do, he needs a great amount of time and to do what he must feel safe. So they think that there's a strong possibility that he knew his first victims, at least casually, or have observed them. Although now, 10 years later, they believe that he is no doubt changing his MO. We'll be right back. So now the profilers Douglas and Hessewood start thinking that what it might take for him to feel comfortable about a certain area is to drive through this area a sufficient number of times With the breaking and entering type of mentality. They select an area where they always feel in control and they think that it's significant that he ventured into Otero's basement on his first kill.
Speaker 1:The reason that he was so successful with the Oteros is that he had played out his bondage fantasies before, most likely with prostitutes. He's got a very rigid, methodical personality, so it's possible that the Oteros were his first non-consent in victims, but he had already played those victims out in his mind over and over again. So when he walked into that house he knew exactly what he was going to do. He planned on his victims being passive, the mere threat of a weapon he believed may have been enough to overcome victim resistance. If the Oteros were his first killed look at Bright and determine if that was out of character from his other cases he may have felt so successful on his first murder that he was surprised when confronted with resistance on his second one.
Speaker 1:This guy had been fantasizing about statistic acts since he was a young child. He had fun at the Oteros and the reason he didn't shoot anyone is that he likes to have hands on kills or hand on kills where he can choke them, suffocate them, strangle them. He used a weapon just to control the Otero family, not to kill them. If they want to see what happened to the Otero household, just basically look at the victims at the Bright residence. That's what happened at the Oteros. He would have said the same things, using the same gun, reassuring the victims. That's his method of control reassurance and gun.
Speaker 1:Mr Otero wasn't going to resist because he probably was afraid of what would happen to his children if he had. Or maybe he used a different route. He went in, grabbed a young child, held a gun on them. That would cause Mr Otero to comply, not to resist. The daughter was the main attraction. Her brother was the main distraction. Everyone else at the scene except for the girl were secondary victims.
Speaker 1:The long rope is his fantasy. It's his imagery. He talked about this in his letters. He mentions that he's a writer, but he can also draw his fantasies. So there's doodling in his letters. Part of his trophies is in the form of images that he takes from his scenes. It's what helps him relieve his skills. So there was a thought that he probably had photographed his scenes as well.
Speaker 1:So one of the profilers, ahesa, would say that since we know he rifles through his drawers and purses of the victims but doesn't seem to be taking money or property, I think that's indicative of not needing money. So he must have an income to sustain him. So if you think about it, going through the drawers is a sophisticated, extended means abhorritorism. So if they said the profiler said that if they would look to the person as a juvenile, he probably had a history that included bourgeois In his late teens, he might have hung Ostrango feminine animals like cats or cows. He would have done this somewhere close to his home so that he could watch how the people around him reacted. The police might go back and check if they ever had any reports of that sort of thing and, for example, they also thought in order for him to do these things.
Speaker 1:In terms of who might it be? They picture a person being in the lower middle class. He's not going to have much cash because of that. They don't think that he have the income to pay a mortgage, so they expect that he would be living in a rental property. He could be a lawyer sorry, not a lawyer a lower paying white collar job instead of a blue collar. So he is probably what is semi-professional or quasi-professional Not poor, not that poor, but not quite middle class either. However, this was the point of view of Profilo Walker. Profilo Hasse would disagree and he said I don't think so. I think that he is middle class, that he is intelligent, that he's articulate, but that he's also an underachiever. So he selects victims he feels superior to, so he would expect him to be killing victims in a class just below him. This is a gunpowder, no doubt that we saw some forensic experiment going right in in where they were doing.
Speaker 1:All this thinking trigger a little bit of their memories and they said I think that there is a possibility that this man could be connected with the military, possibly the Air Force, and they thought that because in Wichita there is an Air Force base very near by Wichita, maybe he works security there. If it's still in Wichita, that could be the reason. Maybe he was recently discharged and stuck around for a while. Perhaps he was taking college courses and criminology at Wichita State University in 1974, using the GI Bill to foot the bill. There is a professor out there who might have known him when he was a student. He probably talked to him, even borrowed books from him to write a term paper, and they could think that this person could be working on one that dealt with famous people who have killed.
Speaker 1:This is a guy who really wants to be a law enforcement, but maybe he can make the grade because of some physical handicap, like a speech impediment, maybe bad eyes, but his application should be on file with the local police, the reserve police, perhaps even as an emergency room ambulance driver. So then they start looking at the relationship to his victims, and Housa would say well, he's angry at women, but not angry at the people he killed. He's unemotional and detached from them. They are nothing but props. He feels emotionally and intellectually above them. So the other thing that they start looking is that he probably listed to avoid the Vietnam draft out of high school. This guy is basically a coward. He won't be the type to project a macho image, and definitely not the Marine Corps type. So he continued to see him using the two other kids as a shield. He threatened to harm the children if the parents didn't cooperate.
Speaker 1:When he was in the service, he had been seen as a non-descript underachiever. His performance rating would be average. His officers would say that he completes a task when it's given to him, but he could have done a better job because he probably was a little lazy and somewhat rebellious and those who came in contact with him in the military or college might say that they remember him but they didn't really know much about him, that he was going to be frustrated because he's not in the position that he thinks he should be in. That could have caused problems with his superiors and it would have affected his promotions At top when this guy got out of the Air Force he would have had an E4 rating. His attitude might have led him to getting the boot from the service. He's done a team player. He's definitely got that long-wolf mentality.
Speaker 1:Now they're saying okay, so now we're seeing him as a person. He wants instant gratification. He has short-lived interests. He will pursue a holiday but then lose interest Like a small child. He needs constant gratification. So his downfall will be ego. And if he's incarcerated he will tell his cellmates about the case. He won't say he did it, but he will talk about it in the third page, bragging about the person who did it, how they were beating the inept cops. We'll be right back. So now these profilers are thinking now and they're adding more to the profile.
Speaker 1:And they thought that this guy is into autoerotic asphyxiation. They found evidence of that in the Otero basement when he hung Josephine. Police need to be on the lookout for any accidental cases when someone died while doing this and if they search the scene they might find materials at the location that would have him identify him as BTK. This would include writings, photos, sketches. It would be in an area that was easily accessible to him, like a food locker, a drawer. He would never destroy these things, even if he felt the police were moving in. What he would do is hide it. And then Profilo Heise would add in well, his spouse, his wife, might have stumbled onto the material, she might have stumbled onto one of his trophies, but he would have explained it away.
Speaker 1:And they said well, marriage is not going to stop this guy. He needs to be taken all the time. He has to always be in complete and absolute control. But why has he stopped? If he has stopped? If he at left town is still killing? He probably has modified his MO. He won't use the BTK handle or correspondence anymore, but his skills would still include sort of element or bondage.
Speaker 1:So they also thought that the NYPD got some guy about six months ago. He strung a bunch of prostitutes then bound them up in rope, so for them it was worth following up with that case, just in case. But they thought, well, maybe this guy is there, unless it was from some accident, or he was killed while community sorry, community, it could be when he was trying to commit a burglary. He might be in jail in connection with a burglary, one where he was picked up with a weapon on him. Burglars are often a major first step when a perp is planning an indoor rape or homicide. So they said well, this guy will not stop killing. He's either still killing or is struck somewhere where he can kill. They thought that he was emulating other crimes that he has read about in detective magazines. So they cut phone lines because he read about that, saying that's something or somewhere. He's adding bits and pieces of other crimes into his crimes.
Speaker 1:So when they listen to his voice on the tape, should they recall Nancy Fox, or they have he? He would just give enough information to get his point across. He, the phrases he used will remind him of conversations that you have heard when dispatchers speak among themselves. So it sounded more like he was talking on the radio. So one thing that they say well, if you are going to sit down with this person, make sure that you keep things moving. You, you stay alert, don't let your own mind to drift.
Speaker 1:Now for a second, because one thing that you have to do is to break this person down during the first interview that you will get with with him. The first time you bring him in, you need to disrupt his life, make him lose sleep, make sure he notices you in his neighborhood so he will begin to see you even when you're not there. When he starts to look this heavy, when you realize that he's starting to turn to drinks of drugs, cope with the pressure. When you can tell that he's starting to lose sleep, then junk him in. Don't give time to prepare. Bring him in when he's now ready.
Speaker 1:So a nighttime interview would be preferred, the hours of eight or nine, in a confined area. Make sure the place where you hold the interview is that guy with mounts of information in order to project your extreme level of thoroughness. The base place would be in the task-forward offices. Let him see a bunch of flow charts in the background in a file drawer with his name on it. Have some of the evidence present and items that could link him to the crime. Something significant that he would react to should be there. But don't show him any quines in photos because of what he has written in the communicates about being controlled by your forces, but no doubt layered strategy for insanity defense, and this will show him that if you, if you, look at the photos and his defense attorney will say that he's unstable. He only offered up what he saw in the pictures. So don't you need to try to avoid, to trick him, to try to play games, because he is enough out of police buff to know what's going on. So at the same time as your interview, you need to be performing a simultaneous search of his residence. If he gets tipped off in advance that this is what you're going to do, he won't destroy his stash but he will move. He will move it and the drill drill into his head that you are not giving him or going sorry, you're not going to stop going until you solve this case because you know it is solvable.
Speaker 1:So, after the profilers did all this big presentation to the Kansas police, pierce Brooke he's a veteran LIPD homicide detective and he was pretty famous because he played a role in a famous true crime book called the onion field and it was written by Joseph Womburg, who is, I believe he's the next cop and this pick. This book was a bestseller and they even did a movie about the onion field, if I'm not mistaken, probably James Woods was in this movie, and so this Pierce Brooks. For many years he used to pour over out of town newspapers and by doing that he would look for violent crimes that might be similar to cases that he was investigating in LA. After coming to the FBI he become developing a computer program known as Vycap. The idea was the for the police around the nation to enter data from open cases into a centralized computer, allowing cops to better track violent crimes where the same unsub might be responsible.
Speaker 1:So when Brooks heard John Douglas talking about interrogation techniques, he said well, be ready to go with the polygraph at the right moment, but you need to be careful because if you do it the wrong way and you might just get an inconclusive, unless the questions are designed in a way that will be more distressing to him. For instance, the killing may not upset him, but the face that he was soiled by the victims blood could cause a retaliation or, sorry, a reaction. And he may respond to the bright case because he's grew up. In the Otero case he might respond more to the boy because he feels bad about him and don't speak, don't expect him to break down. So Douglas forced himself not to interrupt Detective Brooks when he's saying all this and he went on.
Speaker 1:He said well, the way I saw it, whenever you resort to using a polygraph you're basically tipping your hand to the suspect, informing him what you don't have, that you don't have anything on him. So your only hope is to rely on this primitive bug-riders type of device to determine if it's telling the truth. So if the guy passes his polygraph, he is going to sit back and smack. He's going to to feel that he's being you. But he said I like the idea of telling him that you are executing a search warrant of his home while he's at the station talking to you. That would cause him a lot of stress, which is what you need to do during your questioning Create stress that give him the benefit of the doubt. Watch how he responds to the stressors, figure out why he reacts that way, then go after him.
Speaker 1:So another suggestion was you need to use two interviewers, one peeling off the other. You have to come off professional, thorough, no key. Show him you mean business, that you're not going to stop until he caves in. He will be more vulnerable to that and play up at the notion the task force being created Just for him, just to catch him, and he will like that. He's being taken seriously for that, if they're taking, if he's taking it seriously that he has this selects super cops trying to catch him and he would like it that he's not just considered some small smash case like a small case.
Speaker 1:So and then he said well, I wouldn't be surprised if, in the job he's in today, that he is wearing some sort of uniform. When you bring him in for questioning, make sure he's not wearing his uniform, because he will feel shielded by it. He feels protected by it. Don't insult him by canceling the interview if he arrives wearing it, but plan things so that it's unlikely that he will arrive in his work clothes. If he still walks into headquarters wearing it, that might tell you something. Don't insult his intelligence directly by saying something like that was stupid thing to do or that's going to do, is or that's going to just make him react defensively or get hostile. Because the bottom line is that he thinks he's pretty smart.
Speaker 1:But you don't want to attack him indirectly by pointing out mistakes at the crime that led to him. This will be easy to do in the third person. He might rationalize the mistake away more much easily in the third person. So this guy isn't mental, but he's crazy like a fox. If he ever got into trouble he will try and con someone into thinking he's crazy. So after every single profiler and detective books said what they needed to say. John Douglas said look, this thing is solvable, just feel free to call us on the phone if we can be further assistance. So at this point, all that the police and which it needed to do was to wait, because somewhere out there that was what BTK was doing. Btk was waiting, and not only waiting, he was watching and he was plotting. Thank you for listening to the murder book. Next week we'll begin talking about how, little by little, little things that BTK did led to capture and arrest of this savior killer. Have a great week.