The stakes rise when a confession letter, cunningly hidden in a library book, reveals the diabolical mind behind the Otero family's demise. Rader's thirst for recognition leads us to a critical juncture in the investigation, where law enforcement and media walk a tightrope, balancing a covert dialogue with the killer against the fear of igniting mass hysteria.
Venture deeper into the shadows with me as we recount the day Rader, draped in the guise of a detective, wove a web of deceit around his next victim, Shirley Ryan. The suspense is palpable as we explore the meticulous planning of this predator and the haunting escape of young Stephen - a reminder that in Rader's grim game, anyone could have been following. The terror that gripped the heart of Wichita is palpable as we reconstruct Rader's cold-blooded visit, an episode that would leave an indelible mark on the community.
But the horror doesn't end at the crime scene. The internal strife within the police department and the delicate balance of keeping a terrified public informed without sparking widespread panic paint a picture of a city under siege. The killer's indifference to the agony of families like Shirley Vian's is a chilling testament to the monster that walked among them. This is not just the story of a serial killer but a community forever changed by a man who could have been anyone's neighbor, colleague, or friend. Join me as we confront the dark reality of BTK.
The stakes rise when a confession letter, cunningly hidden in a library book, reveals the diabolical mind behind the Otero family's demise. Rader's thirst for recognition leads us to a critical juncture in the investigation, where law enforcement and media walk a tightrope, balancing a covert dialogue with the killer against the fear of igniting mass hysteria.
Venture deeper into the shadows with me as we recount the day Rader, draped in the guise of a detective, wove a web of deceit around his next victim, Shirley Ryan. The suspense is palpable as we explore the meticulous planning of this predator and the haunting escape of young Stephen - a reminder that in Rader's grim game, anyone could have been following. The terror that gripped the heart of Wichita is palpable as we reconstruct Rader's cold-blooded visit, an episode that would leave an indelible mark on the community.
But the horror doesn't end at the crime scene. The internal strife within the police department and the delicate balance of keeping a terrified public informed without sparking widespread panic paint a picture of a city under siege. The killer's indifference to the agony of families like Shirley Vian's is a chilling testament to the monster that walked among them. This is not just the story of a serial killer but a community forever changed by a man who could have been anyone's neighbor, colleague, or friend. Join me as we confront the dark reality of BTK.
Welcome to the Murder Book. I'm your host, kiara, and this is part 5 of the Dark Reality of BTK, part 5. Let's begin. We're going to go a little bit back to October 1974. And this is months after the Otero murders had happened. There were three men and they were in jail and they began to imply that they knew details about the crimes. So the detectives quickly realized that they were blowing smoke, that they were just making stuff up. But the story of these men in jail somehow got leaked into the EGLE newspaper, one of the newspapers in Kansas, in that area, in Wichita, and when the story appeared it seems that it upset the one man who knew the truth and he won a credit.
Speaker 1:So a few days after the story appeared, egle columnist Don Granger got a phone call and it was a voice that he describes as a harsh voice that said quote listen and listen. Good, I'm only going to say this once there is a letter about the Otero case in a book in the public library and he told Granger which book and then hung up by the accent the columnist could say, that is, he sounded Midwestern and he had this hard and aggressive tone. It was like he was giving him orders. And Granger knew why the call came to him because months earlier the EGLE had offered $5,000 to anyone providing useful information about the Otero case. And Granger volunteered to take the calls. But the caller did not ask for a reward or he wanted for them to go to a specific book in the library and locate a letter. So the EGLE made an arrangement with the cops that reflected what editors thought was best for the community at the time. It would set up a secret witness program to solicit and pass along any information that they received about the Otero's killer. And abiding by that agreement, granger called the cops right after he took the strange call. And years later some reporters and editors would sort of disagree about this because they said that Granger should have found the letter first and copy it for the newspaper. But in the 1970s the EGLE's management thought helping the cops catch the killer was more important that getting a scoop or challenging the investigative tactics. So, bernie Drowatzky, he found the letter right where the caller had told Granger it would be, and it was inside the book of applied engineering mechanics. So Drowatzky took the letter to Chief Hanson.
Speaker 1:The letter contained a lot of misspellings and some of the cops thought that the writer either had a disability he didn't know how to spell very well, or it could be that he was exaggerating because he was trying to disguise his writing voice. And the writer said I write this letter to you for the sake of the taxpayer, as well as your time. Those three dudes you have in custody are just talking to get publicity for the Otero murders. They know nothing at all. I did it by myself, with no one ship. There has been no talk either. Let's put it straight. And then the letter accurately described the positions of all the four Otero bodies and named the rope, the cord, the knots that bound them. And it was so. It was very specific and the letter contained details that only cops and the killer knew. The writer seemed to confirm converse suspicions that the killer had tortured the Oteros and he said that he strangled Julie Otero twice.
Speaker 1:And then he goes on in the letter says I'm sorry this happened to the society. They are the ones who suffer the most. It's hard to control myself. You probably call me psychotic with sexual perversion. Hang up. Were this monster into my brain I would never know. But it's here to stay and I'm reading it as a spell. So there's misspellings, by the way.
Speaker 1:And this is how does one cure himself. If you ask for help that you have killed four people, they will laugh or hit the panic button and call the cops. I can't stop it. So the monster goes on and hurt me as well as society. Society can be thankful that there are ways for people like me to relieve myself at time by daydreams of some victim being tortured and being mine. It's a big, complicated game, my friend of the monster play putting victims number down, follow them, checking up on them, waiting in the dark, waiting, waiting. The pressure is great and sometimes he run the game to his liking. Maybe you can stop him. I can't. He has already chosen his next victim of victims. I don't know who they are. The next day, after I read the paper, I would know, but it too late. Good luck hunting, yours truly. And then he tried to write guiltily, but it's misspell so. And then he has a PS that says since sex criminals do not change their own or by nature cannot do so, I will not change mine. The cold words for me will be bind them, torture them, kill them. Btk. You see he at it again. They will be on the next victim. So this was the letter.
Speaker 1:Some cops suggested BTK's everything ego could be turned against him and they call the editors at the ego and the ego a few days later began running a personal ad that says BTK help is available. The ad provided a phone number and for the sake of convenience, as that BTK call before 10 pm and the cops also talked to Granger. A few days later, on Halloween morning, the ego ran a column by Granger, buried back on page 8d, which became the first mention in the news of BTK, and in it Granger did not mention that he had received a call or that police had a letter. The newspaper knew more about this case than it led on but it kept the police department secret. A decision later. Reporters will criticize Granger merely as BTK to call him. Granger said the phone number in the ad was being monitored by officers ready to help BTK. There was an alternative. Granger noted the columnist was willing to talk with BTK himself and he helpfully provided his office and home phone numbers and BTK did not respond. Raider was busier than then ever. A few days after Granger's column ran, btk went to work for the security alarm company ADT and after the Otero and Bright murders ADT had done booming business installing alarms and homes, and the new job put BTK inside homes as an installer and Raider enjoyed the irony.
Speaker 1:So let's go now to between December 74 and March 77. Now there's another newspaper, the Wichita Sun. They had and a reporter named Cathy Henkel, and on December 11 1974, two months after the cops found BTK's message in the library, the Sun published a story which Henkel revealed that she had received a copy of the BTK letter from an anonymous source and she reported that BTK stood for buying torture and kill and that the murderer had threatened to strike again. And of course, when the people read this because remember, the ego have kept BTK's claim about the Otero secret because the cop said publicity might prompt him to kill again so people read this to scoop right. And so this story of course frightened people and this is what Hannah feared. But it also prompted them to take precautions. Henkel had written this story in part because she thought people had a right to know someone was talking them. She had consulted private sector psychologists before she published and although the cops had worried that revealing the secret might encourage BTK to kill again, the psychologists argued the opposite, because BTK probably craved publicity keeping the secret might prompt him to kill. So by the time the Sun wrote the story, police had already interviewed more than 1500 people about the Otero murders. Now the tip lines lit up. People suspected their neighbors, their co-workers and some turn in, their own fathers or sons. But none of the tips panned out the one year anniversary of the Otero's past and Floyd Hannon retired as police chief on May 31st 1976 and he regarded his failure to catch BTK as a stain on his career. So now we're going to go to March 17, 1977, st Patrick's Day.
Speaker 1:Dennis Rader would later recall that there was a parade downtown and his wife was at work and he was on spring break from Wichita State. He put on dress shoes, nice slacks, a tweed sports jacket and he thought he looked spiffy and he carried a briefcase with his tools tape, cord gun, plastic bags. He also carried a photograph. It was a tool too, because he would show it to make people think he was a detective searching for a lost boy. He had 12 picked out targets, then backed off because silver killer killing is like fishing. He would later confide that sometimes you're unlucky or you get tango up with chores, work and school, and that's how he compared it to His primary target that day, lived at 1207 South Greenwood.
Speaker 1:If that target didn't work out, he had a backup, just a block to the east, 1243 South Hydraulic. There was an alley behind that address which was good because it was a place to hide. And if those targets didn't work out he had another backup and yet another. So he had stalk mutable women. He switched surveillance from one to another for weeks. He took notes, he pondered escape routes His, not theirs and he knew that one of the three young women at the house on hydraulic was named Cheryl and in his opinion he thought that she was a loose woman.
Speaker 1:He had watched her drink and party at the blackout, which was a college bar. He had followed her home, spied on her and her roommates for weeks and he called it project blackout. Cherry Gilmore lived with a roommate named Judy Clark and the third woman radar sorry radar had noticed was Judy's 16 year old sister, karen, who frequently stayed at the house. Two doors down at 1311 South hydraulic, there was another woman with three kids. Raider had not targeted her, she just lived in the neighborhood and her name was Shirley Ryan and she and her kids all had the flu.
Speaker 1:When the kids got hungry. At lunchtime she called the Dylan's grocery store block away to tell them she was sending one of her little boys for food. Stephen, who was the only six years old, bought food and walked back home where his mother told him it was the wrong kind. He walked back to the Dylan's and got the soup she wanted. Just before he got back home, a tall man with a briefcase stopped him and asked him a question. The primary target at 1207 South Greenwood had not worked out.
Speaker 1:No one answered Raider's knock. So he stood for a moment holding his briefcase and he thought about breaking in, as he had done it at the Bride House, but he decided he did not want to risk musing his good clothes. So he decided to go to project blackout's house. So he walked to South Hydraulic and when he reached the front of blackout's house he saw a little boy walking toward him carrying a suit can, and he thought well, this is time to play detective. So he pulled out the photo of his own wife and son and he said have you seen these people? And the boy looked at the photograph and he said no, are you sure? And the little boy again say yes, I'm sure. And the boy walked away. So Raider watched him for a moment and then walked to blackout's door. He glanced down the street again and saw the boy looking at him.
Speaker 1:Raider knocked on blackout's door. When he got no answer he walked to the boys house. Stephen's brother and sister were playing when Stephen came home but was eight, stephen four. Stephen crawled into bed with his mother and moments later he heard a knock and sprinted for the door, and so did, but they liked to race. Stephen beat, but this time, and opened the door, but only a crack. He peered out and he was the briefcase man. Stephen's mother put on her house coat and went to the door. The man towered over the children as he peered through the crack and when he saw the mother he pushed the door open. He said I'm a detective. He showed Shirley a fake business card. He took a step inside and then another and then he pushed the door shut and pulled out the gun. Shirley said please don't hurt us.
Speaker 1:Raider said disarming things to Shirley, similar to what he had said to the otteros and the brides. But then he embellished his story. He had a sex fantasy problem. He would tie her up, have sex, take some pictures. It would not be a pleasant thing, he said. But everyone should be okay and you would be okay. So he saw that she wore a blue house coat over a pink nightgown and looked sick. She had lit a cigarette. He looked at her with distaste Because she, she was a mess. So the kids are sick. He said we have been sick for days. So she tried to talk him into leaving. As he pulled down the shades and he spoke harshly, he said this is gonna happen.
Speaker 1:And then suddenly the phone rang and someone was calling to check on her and Shirley said because she was sick, because she had kept the kids home from school. And Stephen asked should we answer it? And Dennis Raider said no and they let it ring and it made him nervous that the caller might decide to stop by so he would have to move fast. So he told her that he was going to tie up the children and she begged and said please don't do that. And he said I got to. So he opened his briefcase. He had his Hit kid, which that he called it, and he took a rope. He started to tie up the older boy who started to scream and Frustrated he told her to help shut the kids in the bathroom, which had two doors.
Speaker 1:He tied the west door shut from the inside, looping cord around the knob and tying it under the sink. And there was some toys in the living room. So he dumped them into the bathroom for the kids, tossed them the blankets, the pillows, and he told them to stay in there. And the kids? Of course they look frightened. But he was talking quietly to keep everybody calm and he took their mother into her bedroom, shut day's bathroom door, shaft her bed against it to block it. When he got done with the mother he might Hang the little girl if there was time. This is him, you know, thinking. But he was upset about the phone ringing. Someone was always interrupting. So he wrapped electrical tape around her forearms and calves.
Speaker 1:There was, there was a sequence to what he did. So he taped people first because that got him under control quickly, then he could take his time, binding them with knotted cord. And Raider tied her wrist with cord and an island stuck in. Then he tied her ankles with cord in Her. In the bathroom the children were screaming, pounding on the door and say leave my mother alone, leave my mother alone, get out of here. That's Steven yelling, and Raider shouted back I don't think you want to blow your head off With the shades drawn. It was dark in the bedroom.
Speaker 1:At midday he made the woman like face down on her bed, her head at the foot of it. He tied her feet to the middle head railings and ran along cord to her throat and she. She threw up on the floor and and he walked into the kitchen and fetch her a glass of water to comfort her, or so he said later. So he gave the woman a sip of water. Then he took a plastic bag out of his head kit and pulled it over her head. He took the cord that was tied to the bed and wrapped the far end of it around her throat four or five times, along with her pink nighdy, and he pulled. He had rigged the cord so that it tightened as she struggled. The kids screamed louder and hammered their hands on the wooden door as their mother died. He stood up disappointed. He wanted to do more. He wanted to suffocate the boys, hang the girl, but the phone call worried him. Before he walked out he stole two pairs of the woman's underpants, but the eight-year-old picked up something hard and shadowed the bottom pane of the bathroom window. The children were still screaming and Stephen now worried that Bud would get in trouble for breaking the window. But after Bud crawled out, stephen followed, dropped into the ground. They ran to the front door, then into the mother's bedroom they found the man gone. The mother tied up a bag over her head and she was not moving.
Speaker 1:At 1 pm a police dispatcher radio-accripted message to officer Raymond Fletcher. He says call me back on a telephone. Dispatchers asked for a telephone call when they wanted to have a private conversation, not broadcast on police scanner. When Fletcher called, the dispatcher gave him an address and said there was a report of a homicide On self-hydraulic. James Burnett waved Fletcher down and said that two neighbor children have come screaming to his house. His wife Sharon had run to the boys' home and in the living room she saw a little girl sitting on the floor sobbing in the bedroom. Sharon Burnett found her mother dead.
Speaker 1:So James Burnett led Fletcher to Shirley Vines' house and ambulance was on the way and Fletcher, a former emergency medical technician, searched for a pulse as soon as he saw her, just as he had when he was one of the first two officers to walk into Catherine Bright's house. He felt a twitch under her fingertips his fingertips, not a pulse, something faint. Fletcher jacked off the cord and niddy but took care to leave the knots intact. He began CPR. He was pushing on the woman's chest. Firefighters were coming in and he told them to preserve the knots because there were evidence. It was so dark with the blinds drawn that they could barely see. They carried the woman to the living room and restarted CPR. But it was too late and Fletcher searched the house looking for semen stains. He did not find any and he called this patch and he said it looks like the same thing as the Otero case.
Speaker 1:So a lot of cops who show up at Shirley Ryan's house thought the same thing. Bob Cocking, the sergeant assigned to secure the crime scene, said it out loud to detectives. When they arrived they whirred around and told him he did not know what he was talking about. Cocking, feeling insulted, walk away. But it wasn't just detectives arguing with officers, they argued with each other. Supervisors told them to stop guessing. Work the evidence. If BTK had killed Shirley Ryan, it meant he was a serial killer and the brass didn't want to leap to that conclusion or set off a panic. Some of the cops were already leaking information that would get into the next day's newspaper. The supervisors then stepped outside and said the evidence of a link wasn't clear. The EGOS new police reporter, ken Stevens, didn't buy that and wrote a story that noted similarities to both crimes, the Otero and the Vian crimes.
Speaker 1:Bill Cornwell, who was the head of the homicide detectives. He had visited the Vian scene just to make sure it wasn't the Otero killer again and he privately noted a number of differences between the cases. For example, there was no semen. There was no cut phone line at Shirley's house. The Otero children died. Shirley's children survived but his god told him it might be the same guy. Cornwell and LeMonyon also briefly considered whether this case might be linked not only to the Oteros but to the unsolved murder of Kathie Mbright. First detectives still thought someone else killed Bright. So they fletcher at first responder at Bright and Vian crime scenes.
Speaker 1:Shirley's children tried to help the cops, steven the 6 year old. He broke down, he cried, he told them everything he had seen. He had gone for a shoot, talked to a man with briefcase about a photograph, then let the man in and he blamed himself for that. He had let in the man who killed his mother and he said the man was dressed real nice. He described a man who was in his 30s or 40s, had dark hair and a pouch. But as the boy talked, an uniform officer walked up and the boy pointed. The bad guy looked like the man the boy said. The detectives looked at the officer, who was tall in his 20s with a trim athletic body, but he didn't have the pouch. The detectives glanced at each other and closed their notebooks. He said the boy's description was useless.
Speaker 1:By this time investigators, including Cornwell, had redacted a theory they had cloned to for a long time, that the Oteros died in a drug related revenge killing. Bernie Duraski, who was one of Cornwell's better detectives, had been proposing another idea. Some of his bosses didn't think much of it, but Duraski was saying that maybe they were dealing with a sex pervert who chose his victims at random. And if the guy who killed the Oteros had now killed Shirley Vian, that meant he was a serial killer. And the other cops were like no, no, no. The FBI said serial killers are incredibly rare and Lamonian was not a detective, but Instinct told him it was the same guy. It seemed obvious, but saying this publicly might cause a panic. If the evidence was there, he would stand before the notepads and TV cameras and say it. It would be embarrassing to admit he could not protect people, but if that was the truth then he needed to warn people.
Speaker 1:So in the days that followed Shirley's murder, lamonian and the detectives review every similarity and difference. The Otero killer had boldly walked in on them. This killer had walked in on Shirley and her children. The Otero killer had tied hands behind backs. So had this guy? The Otero killer had tied Joe Otero's ankles to the foot of his bed. This killer had tied Shirley's feet to a headrail. At both scenes a killer had pulled plastic back over someone's head. So the cops had not turned up a single useful fingerprint in either house.
Speaker 1:Some detectives argued there was not enough evidence to link the murders. So what about the differences? And Lamonian said well, I think the differences look small. The detectives pointed out something else. The experts said serial killers could not stop once they started. The FBI had only recently begun to study serial killers and death, but it was saying that no serial killer had taken three years off. It was probably not the same guy In the end, based on the advice of some of the detectives and his own desire to be more sure.
Speaker 1:Before risking public panic, lamonian decided to not make an announcement. He thought publicity might inspire BTK to kill again. He made the decision with one grim thought, he said the strangler would probably make it necessary to change his mind. And Stephen Redford, the Charlie Ryan's youngest son, would grow up better drinking, drugging, paying artists to cover his body with skull tattoos. He would remember the screaming. Btk remembered the screaming too, but it did not bother him. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1:So by 1977, the fall of 1977, the people from which it had no longer felt safe, even from their neighbors. They were becoming more accustomed to violent crime. The older generation blamed the sex, drugs, rock and roll culture of the 60s. The younger generation countered that Wichita was still so backwater conservative that the 60s would not arrive until after the 70s ended. In a few months after Shirley Ryan was killed, kenny Landwell saw violent crime firsthand. Kenny was 22 years old, still studying history at Wichita State University. 5 years out of high school he had not yet obtained a college degree. His mother, irene, later said that Kenny was such a curious kid that he took more college courses that he needed, while putting off taking the science prerequisites that would get him the diploma.
Speaker 1:He worked at a clothing store at 21st and Broadway in North Wichita. That so bib overrows two farmers, cassocks to priests and hipstaff to their black customers. Shoes with stack heels, lung for coats, walking suits with white lapels and bell-bottom trousers. Landward liked owner Henman Brutell who handed out cigars to employees. Landward soon switched to cigarettes because they were easier to smoke on a break.
Speaker 1:Going out for lunch one day, landward stepped aside to let two men enter the store. Something about their expressions caught his attention. They looked nervous and Landward turned a corner and saw a caddy-lack and a third man behind it leaning against a wall. So the man looked nervous too and Landward thought well, there's a getaway car, there's shoplifters, we're being set up. So he turned around, walked back into the store, found himself staring down the barrel of a handgun. The man had put nylon stockings over their faces, but they were the same too. He had met at the door and they were not shoplifters.
Speaker 1:One of them forced him to the cash register and say get down on the floor. So Landward of course obeyed. The robbers hog-tied him under the register with electrical cord. They tied up two other clerks. One robber reached under the register and found Brutell's.45 caliber semi-automatic pistol. He stood over Landward and worked the pistol slide chuching. He jacked a cartridge into the chamber. Landward thought he was going to be executed, but they did not shoot him. They searched for money. As customers came in, the man bound them with neckties. The robbery lasted only minutes, but to Landward it seemed to last for ages.
Speaker 1:After the left, a badly shaken Landward told police that one of the robbers had called the other one Butch. From that name and Landward's description the detectives concluded that he was Butch Lee Jordan, a small-time thug. The police went to Jordan's house, but when they did not find him there they failed to search elsewhere. That was a mistake, because Jordan robbed a liquor store a few days later and shot police officer Hayden Henderson in the arm. When Landward heard about that, he made him angry and supported Angry at Jordan for shooting the cop, disappointed with the cops for failing to pursue Jordan more vigorously. The disappointment led Landward to make one of the crucial decisions of his life.
Speaker 1:Landward's family had to scrimp and save His older brother. David had been a high achiever, the salutatorian of his class at Bishop Carroll High School. Kenny had been a high achiever too, winning medals and debate, earning good grades, going out for basketball and drama. His mother said later that even as a kid, two things stood out about Kenny. He was one of the smartest kids that she knew, but he was an incorrigible smart alec. She hoped his brains would lead to a career that would bring him security. Landward reconsidered the FBI after the butel's robbery. The FBI recruited people who studied accounting and assigned agents to chase white collar criminals. Landward also had been hooked high, held a gunpoint by thugs who had walked in off the street. He wanted to bring justice to people like himself.
Speaker 1:For young Wichita in 1977, the mall in southeast Wichita was the place to be. The mall was like an old town marketplace where people gathered to buy, to sell gossip. It was air conditioned in the summer, swimming and swimming. In December. There was a young woman and she took a part time job at the Hellsberg Jewelers in the mall. She was 25 years old, wichita, native, very friendly, and she had a king wit. She was blunt spoken. Her name was Nancy Fox. She worked as secretary for the law company and she had taken the job to earn extra money to buy Christmas presents for her relatives. Nancy already had presents for her two year old nephew and she also put a ring on the way for her older sister, beverly Plab. Sisters were 11 months apart and after growing up competing with each other and sharing a bedroom, they were becoming friends and they had also three younger brothers.
Speaker 1:Nancy had played flute and junior high she sang in the choir of Parkview Baptist Church on the city south side. She drove a powder blue Opel and pay attention to her clothing, her makeup, her nails, her hair. She wore her blonde hair frosted and she liked to wear scarves around her neck. She was a bit of a neat freak. She and her girlfriend socialized at a few Wichita nightclubs, seen 70s at. Pawnee and Seneca was a favorite hangout on Fridays and Saturday nights and Nancy dated the door manager there. On Sundays she would drive her car over to her mother's house, walk into the room smelling of fried chicken and that was Nancy's favorite food. Nancy did not mind living alone and she even told her mother hey, nothing is going to happen to me. But here we have.
Speaker 1:On December 8, 1977, radar had been cruising Nancy Fox's neighborhood and he saw that it was a lower middle class, cheap places to live which attracted normally single women living alone. And once he figured that out he trolled the neighborhood frequently and he first saw Nancy one day when she walked into her duplex apartment, which was painted a cheerful pink. He saw that she was small and pretty, that she appeared to spend time on her hair and clothes. He appreciated neatness. He followed her to her job at the architectural company and to her night job at Halsberg and to her home. At Halsberg he bought an expensive jewelry, looked her over her clothes, followed her home again and then got her name by looking at the envelopes in her mailbox. While she was at work she lived in Southeast Wichita, 843 South Persian, which is not far from the mall. She had no man that he could see, no dog. When he checked the north end of the duplex he learned that he was vacant. There was no one next door to hear her scream. He spied on her while he spied on other women trolling for women, and had become nearly a full-time job for him, in addition to his real-world full-time job which was working for the security company. He after blended the jobs he trolled for women. He then stuck them while driving the ADT van. He was a busy guy. Besides being an ADT crew chief, he was still going to Wichita State University or WSU classes at night and he also had a wife and small child at home. But still he picked a date 8.
Speaker 1:Radier had told his wife that he would be at the university's library that night, which was true, because he did have term papers, due research to complete. He knew exactly when Nancy would leave Helsbergs, so he had gone to the library an hour or two before to work on a term paper. Just before 9 pm he left the library, changed into dark clothing and drove his wife's red 1966 Chevelle to Nancy's neighborhood. He parked a few blocks door. He knocked. If she answered his life would be that he had come to the wrong apartment. But there was no answer. See, knocked the next door, found that side of the duplex still vacant. He hurried to the back. He had not left the library as soon as he wanted, he was running late. He cut Nancy's phone line, then broke a window. He waited crouching nearby and he worried that when cars roll through the curves on nearby Lincoln Street the headlights would shine on the duplex and expose him. So he walked for lights and then crawled through the windows.
Speaker 1:Nancy Fox was this neat, orderly person. She was very tidy, she was Polish and even her place to live was like that. It was a tiny place, only like six or seven hundred square feet. He found her Christmas tree lights on photographs of smiling people. It stood nearly in a range on shelves outside the bedroom and he liked everything he saw. That vile woman had been so sloppy so he pulled a glass out of Nancy's kitchen cupboard, drank some water, wiped down the glass, put it back.
Speaker 1:He listened to make sure the phone was dead. He still had the phrase in his hand, with the front door open and Nancy had just come in with her coat on, carrying her purse. And she stepped to grab the telephone and she said get out of my house, I'm going to call the police. And Raider said that won't do you any good. I cut the line. He moved toward her and shoved her his gun. And she asked what are you in my house for? And he said and she also asked you know what are you going to do? What's going on here? And he said I'm a bad guy. I want sex. I have to tie you up to take pictures. And she said again get out of here. He said no. She said again you need to get out of here right now. And he said no, this is going to happen. And she told him you're sick. He said yes, I'm sick, but this is the way it's going to be.
Speaker 1:So she took off her coat she was wearing a white parka, folded it onto the couch and then she was now wearing a pink sweater and she said I need a cigarette and she lit what? Watching him, he dumped her purse onto the kitchen table, took some trophies. He found her driver's license. He talked to this on her, telling the same story with variations that he had told your terrace and the brides and Shirley Brian. He had a sexual problem, but he wasn't really a bad guy, she will be all right.
Speaker 1:So now she faced him squarely. No, so he would remember. He said let's get this over with so I can tell the police. And he agreed. And then she said I need to go to the bathroom. So he looked in the bathroom make sure there wasn't a sharp object that she could turn into a weapon. And he said okay, make sure you come out with most of your clothes off. So he blocked, opened the bathroom door with a piece of cloth and then sat on her bed to wait. He looked around in admiration, closed Julie, the jewelry kid.
Speaker 1:Everything was neat when she came out of the bathroom she was still wearing her pink sweater, her bra, her purple underwear and she saw he was holding handcuffs. And she demanded what's that about? And he said well, this is part of my deal, it is what makes it happen for me. And she asked him so why are you wearing gloves? And he said I'm wanted in other states and don't want to leave prints. This is ridiculous. And she said this is bullshit. So she kept talking, but he barely listened.
Speaker 1:He pulled her hands behind her, fastened the cuffs on her wrist, made her lie face down on the bed. He got on top of her. He was half undressed himself by then, hoping this would convey the lie that he intended to rape her. He pulled down her underwear and he asked has your boyfriend ever had sex with you in the butt? And he said it to DC because he was not going to do or have sex with her. He didn't want that. But she did not answer. She just gapped, you know panicking.
Speaker 1:And so he took off his leather belt. He looped it around her ankles. He found that he had an erection already. So he suddenly pulled the belt off her ankles, slipped it around her throat, jank it tight, pressing down with one hand where the belt went through the buckle and pulling the belt with his other hand. Nancy thrashed under him, found his grotum with her handcuff hands and duckered his fingers into him. And it hurt, but he liked it. As usual, it took time for his victim to pass out. When Nancy finally did, he loosened the belt to let hers have some air. In years to come he would say this was his perfect hit. There was no man or dog or child to interrupt. Nobody tried to kill him. Little children did not scream and threatened to come out of the bathroom to fight him. When she regained consciousness, he bent down to her ear and he said I'm wanted. I killed the four people in that family, the Oteros. I killed Sheila Vayan, I'm BTK and you are next. She fought frantically underneath him as he janked the belt tight again and this time he held it until she died. He picked up a nightgown and massurated into it.
Speaker 1:The next morning Rader was still so elated about what he had done that he wanted to tell someone. On a coffee break he drove the ADT van to Oregon's Market downtown and stepped to a painful outside the door. At 8.18 am a Segue County emergency dispatcher took the call and he said you will find a homicide at 8.43 self-pershing. Her name Nancy Fox. And the dispatcher said I'm sorry, sir, I can't understand you. What is the address In? Another dispatcher listening in spoke up. He said I believe 8.43 self-pershing. The man said that's correct. Dispatchers tried to ask the man more but he had dropped the receiver. The dispatchers listened to silence, trying to make sense of what they had just heard. 47 seconds later someone else picked up the phone. The dispatcher was still on the line and the dispatcher asked who are you? The man said he was a Wichita firefighter of duty. He just wanted to use the phone. And the dispatcher asked who was using the telephone just before you and he said a man who left the phone dangling. He told them Officer John De Petra reached 8.43 self-pershing.
Speaker 1:Minutes later, at around 8.22 AM. No one answered his knock and the door was locked. At the back he saw a cut phone line waggling in the breeze. The storm window had been removed, the interior window broken. He could not see through the drapes. Is anyone home? So De Petra pushed back the drapes and saw a half-clothed woman lying motionless face down on her bed, her ankles tied with a piece of yellow cloth. She was wearing a pink sweater.
Speaker 1:And after they kicked in the front door, de Petra and Detective Lewis Brown stepped into what De Petra later said was the tithiest home he had ever seen. But then he noticed this array. There was a half-smoked cigarette in the astray. There was the half-smoked cigarette in the astray, beside a chair. There was a purse that was empty. On the kitchen table, the phone receiver laid on the floor. Jewelry boxes had been dumped out on the bedroom dresser. The officers saw a blue nightgown lying on the bed beside the woman's head and there were stains on it.
Speaker 1:It was a dumb move making the phone call and Raider knew it Because for weeks afterward he thought he would be arrested. They had his voice on tape. Now they knew which paint phone he had used. Someone might remember seeing him drop the phone and get into the ADT van, but he had felt so happy. Of all his murders he liked this one most, the only one that ever went according to script. After Nancy died he took off the cuffs, tied her wrist with nylon stockings, took his belt off her throat and tied another stocking in his place. He stole Nancy's driver's license some lingerie, nice silky stuff. He liked to play with women's clothing and when he took Nancy's pearl necklace he thought he might give it to his wife.
Speaker 1:Nancy's mother, georgia Mason, supervised a cafeteria at St Joseph's Hospital not far from Nancy's apartment About 10.30 on AM on December 9th. She was getting ready to open the cafeteria when she got a co-pharma security officer. At the security office she saw two Wichita police detectives, two security officers, her ex-husband Nancy's father, dale Fox, and a chaplain and he said we have some bad news. Someone said Georgia thought something had happened to Kevin, her youngest, who was 16. He had been skipping school and someone said it isn't Kevin. So they say it's Nancy. Georgia, or five feet tall of her, beat her fist on the chest of a security officer and collapsed on the couch.
Speaker 1:The detectives showed Chief Lamanian the crime scene photos and the videotape they took inside the duplex Strangulation from line CUB or CUT semen on the nightgown. Lamanian was sure this was BTK. He saw that Nancy's eyeglasses had been placed neatly on the dresser beside her bed. Lamanian had to decide again whether to announce BTK publicly. He leaned toward doing it. They were not protecting anyone by keeping BTK a secret.
Speaker 1:Some detectives remain unconvinced that this was BTK. So what if the phone line was cut? Some burglars do that. So what if the guy left semen? Other killers had done the same. They listened to the tape of the call to dispatchers. The caller's diction was the cattle and slow. When he said you will find a homicide at 843 South Perching, he pronounced homicide. So in the way he pronounced it, although he didn't know how to set it right, so he did it on purpose If he was a foreigner. So the detectives have talked to the firefighter who picked up the dangling phone receiver. He told them he did not get a good look at the previous caller. He thought the guy was about six feet tall, that he wore a kind of great industrial suit, that he drove a man with a painted sign on it and he thought the guy had long hair.
Speaker 1:Nancy's mother went to St Francis to identify her daughter's body. A staff member pulled down a sheet. Nancy's face looked as though the ordeal had aged her. The staff member asked if this was the body of Nancy Jo Fox and Georgia said yes. Georgia helped arrange the funeral. Nancy had been baptized at Parkview Baptist and had sung in the choir. Now the church filled with mourners. There was a line of cars snaked down the road to Harper's Town Cemetery. Beverly Platt took a leaf from her nursing job to collect her sister's belongings from the duplex. Georgia couldn't bear to go there.
Speaker 1:Lamonian turned again to the FBI. Should he tell the public about BTK? Lamonian thought so, but some detectives warned that this might encourage him to kill again. Should they try to communicate with BTK? The commanders were divided. The FBI guys could not decide. Behavioral science was new. They said they had not collected or interpreted enough theta. They took no position. Chief Lamonian hesitated because it seemed as though people would die whatever he decided. He decided again to wait. But he didn't have to wait long.
Speaker 1:Nancy's youngest brother seemed to take her death the hardest. Nancy had liked to take Kevin out for hamburgers and she had let him drive her car. He never went back to school. It would be 27 years before he could talk about her death. Georgia's doctor did not let her go back to work for 3 months. When she did, hospital coworkers came to her one by one. She had spent her life holding in feelings. But when they hugged her she would start crying. Her doctor had told her to go ahead and cry In. After Nancy died, georgia would look out the window on Sundays, wishing Nancy would drive up in her opel. It would be a long time since Georgia could fry chicken again At the family Christmas gathering. One of the presents opened was a taco truck for little Thomas. Nancy had hidden it under the bed where she died.
Speaker 1:No one came to arrest Rader to his surprise, so he got cocky again. Rader wrote out a poem about Shirley Shirley Vian on an index card one night. But as he was scribbling his wife came home and he quietly stuck the card in the folds of his chair. Then he forgot to retrieve the card and hide it. His wife found it a few days later and she asked him what is this? He said, well, I wrote that. But at WSU we are working on some things, writing things about the BTK murders in my criminology class, and Paula bought the live. Later he reworked the poem and printed it on an index card with a child's rubber stamping set. On January 31, 1978, he dropped it in the mail.
Speaker 1:The index card arrived to the Wichita Eagle a day later and it says Shirley locks, shirley locks, will thou be mine? Thou shalt not scream, nor yet fee the line, but lay on cushion and think on me and death and how it's going to be. And they sign BTK. And then he wrote poem for Fox. Next, no one held in the Eagle's mail that they gave it more than a glance. It looked like a message for Special Valentine's Day section in the classifies. The holiday was two weeks away. The card never made it to the newsroom. It was forwarded to the Eagle's classified advertising department. There was no money with the card, so the classified people put it in a dead letter file. Days passed, the Eagle published nothing. The poems. Our third group irritated. What in? He thought. What do I have to do? I'll show them a picture. Thank you for listening to the Murder Book. Have a great week.