Step into the shadowy world of Dennis Rader, the infamous BTK killer, as we reveal the eerie normalcy that veiled his sinister double life. A former ADT co-worker peers into Rader's meticulously disciplined existence, sharing unsettling observations that only in retrospect shimmer with a malevolent significance. From an obsessive protectiveness over a gym bag to aspirations of law enforcement, we peel back the façade of the every day to expose the quirks that belied a monster's true nature.
As the episode reaches its somber cadence, we traverse the tragic path of Rader's crimes, from the calculated ruse of a telephone repairman to the despair cast over the wrongfully accused Bill. The narrative serves as a stark reminder of the devastating ripple effect of violence, touching not just victims but entire communities and the souls dedicated to mending the fractures left in its wake. Join us, as we bring these haunting tales to light, honoring the lost and those who fought to unveil the darkness.
Step into the shadowy world of Dennis Rader, the infamous BTK killer, as we reveal the eerie normalcy that veiled his sinister double life. A former ADT co-worker peers into Rader's meticulously disciplined existence, sharing unsettling observations that only in retrospect shimmer with a malevolent significance. From an obsessive protectiveness over a gym bag to aspirations of law enforcement, we peel back the façade of the every day to expose the quirks that belied a monster's true nature.
As the episode reaches its somber cadence, we traverse the tragic path of Rader's crimes, from the calculated ruse of a telephone repairman to the despair cast over the wrongfully accused Bill. The narrative serves as a stark reminder of the devastating ripple effect of violence, touching not just victims but entire communities and the souls dedicated to mending the fractures left in its wake. Join us, as we bring these haunting tales to light, honoring the lost and those who fought to unveil the darkness.
Welcome to the murder book. I'm your host, chiara. I hope that you are keeping warm wherever you are. Here in my neck on the woods is 3 degrees but with the wind chills factor is 12 degrees below zero, and this is in degrees Fahrenheit. And we will continue with the exploring the BTK case. Inside the mind of a murderer, part 7. Let's begin.
Speaker 1:An alarm installer for the security company ADT became good friends with Dennis Rader when they first began working together in the 1970s. They share many stories and laughs, even baby sad each other's children. Then there were nights when installer and his wife would come home to find Rader cradling their child in his arms. To the installer, who didn't want his name used, you know, doing interviews that were done after the fact, he said that Rader seemed ordinary, approachable and polite. And after Rader became a supervisor he did not allow other workers to swear or tell off of color jokes in front of women, but he had quirks. The installer thought that Rader was sometimes stern and a little controlling. For example, rader would refuse to issue new rolls of black electrical tape unless the installer showed him the cardboard cylinders from used up rolls. That's in that scene, weird. Rader wore gray hash puppies and in winter he wore the kind of cap with flaps that Elmo Fudd wore in the old Bugs Bunny cartoons and he talked a lot about his church, his family. Rader was always sweet to his wife, paula, and talked proudly about his two children. Rader was a capable man and on one occasion a homeowner in the wealthy Rikage neighborhood who was in and out of his house a lot, as if an alarm could be installed in such a way that he wouldn't have to fiddle with it every time he came home. So Rader devised a clever relay mechanism and timer that eliminated the need to constantly reset the alarm.
Speaker 1:The installer rode with Rader in the ADT trucks. Rader always had a dark blue gem bag with him. He seemed unusually protective of it. The installer wasn't sure why. On the job Rader would sometimes disappear for a couple of hours at a time, saying he needed parts or equipment. Adt installer sometimes worked in Hutchinson, salina and Arkansas city. These are small city's miles from Wichita ADT. Let them stay overnight, but Rader always drove back to Wichita saying he needed to go to his WSU of Wichita State University classes. Rader carried a pager and sometimes had to work until the wee hours. Outside work, the installer and Rader liked beer, jokes, fishing, gardening and hunting. They went together on a quail hunt one time at Marion Reserve Roi and Rader asked one day whether the installer knew of a way to tie up tomato plants to make them more productive. The installer recommended pantyhose strong, pliable, easy to tie. Rader said later that pantyhose worked well.
Speaker 1:Rader had started working for ADT in November 1974 when Gene Wayne Scott was a branch manager. Rader was 29 then and Ways got ran in ADT security guard service and handled some installation and sales. Black installer Wayne Scott could remember Rader's ordinariness In his hiring interview. Rader did not suck up or try to oversell himself. He listened intently as Wayne Scott described the work. Wayne Scott thought at first that Rader was trying to get inside his head so he could say that while Wayne Scott wanted to hear. But when Rader answered Wayne Scott's questions he was a matter of fact about what he could do. Wayne Scott raised the idea of working as a security guard and Rader said no, he wanted to be a police officer someday In the worst way. But working as a security guard at night would not work out. He was taking night classes to finish his administration of justice degree at Uchita State.
Speaker 1:Adt installers drank at a bar called the Playpen on South Washington and they had a secret code. They would radio each other PP 30. That meant mean you a playpen at 430. Rader loved ride little codes. Sometimes the two friends drank more than was good for them and Rader sometimes drank a lot but never got falling down drunk. Sometimes the installer would get a call from Polar Rader late at night asking if he knew where Dennis might be.
Speaker 1:So now we're around the 1980s to 1982 time frame and Arlene Smith became Land Wars boss in 1980. And this is the cop that in the previous episode said that someday he would like to be basically in charge of homicide. And when Lamarion promoted Smith around that time from detective to patrol lieutenant and Arlene Smith said later that one where was the smartest officer he ever supervised? And he was a character too. Smith had a theory about that and one of his theory was that humor channel stress. So because police work is sometimes brutally stressful, cop humor is sometimes cruel or macabre.
Speaker 1:Smith often started his third shift work with Land War at a Dennis restaurant on West Kellogg and Land War call him Smithy. One night there was nobody else in Dennis but a couple with a squalor baby as the cops left and passed the noisy child, land War joked to Smith and said they don't do that after you hold their heads under water. For for a while Land War walked out with Smith behind him and outside Smith confronted Land War. He said what if that family would have hurt you? I'm your lieutenant. What I was supposed to say if they got mad? But Land War grinned and walked to his car.
Speaker 1:Smith concluded after a long career that cops, including kind ones, use humor like that to blow off steam, especially after they security at crime scenes. Land War had seen his share and Smith thought of cop humor as therapy and he would say later that he wanted his detectives lose. And he says I quote, quote. I want them cracking jokes. I want them going home at night sleeping soundly, should they ever have to walk through a crime scene. Why? Because when you don't get emotional, when you get a good night's sleep, that is when you do your best work. And Kenny Land War was that kind of cop. End quote.
Speaker 1:The problem with that conclusion about Land War was that it wasn't true. Other people who knew him said that Land War used jokes and pranks to hide a brittle sensitivity. Irene Langworth was one. She was sure that her son's supposedly cool detachment wasn't at, but she had noticed that when he was a child he seemingly heard when teenagers at family gatherings left little kids like him out of things. When he became a teen himself he included smaller kids and everything. His attachment to children, especially victimized or disabled kids, continued after he became a cop. He volunteered to help the Special Olympics, a charity he would serve throughout his career.
Speaker 1:One night when Landward was a patrol officer, irene saw him sit in uncharacteristically silence at the dinner table. He wasn't able to eat and it took him a while to get it out, but he finally told her why. Earlier in the day, as he sat in his patrol car, he had heard a distant scream. He drove two blocks and found the cause. An eight-year-old boy walking home with his five-year-old sister had looked away for a moment. As they crossed the street hand in hand, a trash truck had backed up, crushing the girl. Landward called the paramedics over his card radio and began to scream. The location Smith parked several blocks away. Hearing Landward's anguish, thought for a moment that Landward himself had backed over the child. Landward let the boy to his patrol car and did the only thing he could think of to help him. He lied to him. He said they will do all they can for her, he said, and later at his mother's house he sat in shock After nights on the job. Now he sometimes drank to forget. Now it's 1984. This is 10 years after the ateros were killed.
Speaker 1:City officials approached Chief Lamonian one day and began to ask about BTK. The more they talked, the more they surprised Lamonian. But no one had heard from BTK in five years. But people were still scared. Gene Denton, the city manager, and Al Kirk, a city commissioner, wanted something done. They asked what it would take to catch BTK and Lamonian said money and manpower that I cannot spare. And to the chief's amazement, kirk said they wanted to make it possible. The city did not give Lamonian more money but gave him temporary discretion to move around what he had in his budget. Denton told him he could have a computer. Personal computers were a new thing. Lamonian realized that a computer could save thousands of man hours by crunching numbers holding enormous amounts of data, giving cops the ability to quickly compare lists of suspects. When a stack developed about the cops getting one city official, ray Trail loaned them his. Lamonian planned the most sophisticated investigation in city history, employing not only the data crunching but new FBI theories about behavior science and the fledging science of genetics. The cops had BTK's DNA in the dry semen store in an envelope since the orterals died.
Speaker 1:Lamonian handpicked task force members after talking to commanders and he asked them tell me who your best people are. A few days later, landward's supervisor told him to go to Lamonian's office for a new assignment. Landward felt a flicker of insecurity, wondering what he might have done wrong. When he got to the chief's office, landward saw several men he knew Captain Gabby Fulton, lieutenant Stoard, officers Paul Dodson, ed Nas, mark Richardson and Jerry Harper. They would be one more. He learned Paul Holmes, an officer who had been wounded, along with his partner Norman Williams, in a shootout at the Institute of Logopedics near 21st and Grove in 1980.
Speaker 1:Chief Lamonian said he was forming a secret task force and he said you guys are it. There were a lot of groups. Holmes, who had killed a man, was short-skinned, self-spoken. He took through notes and tiny block letters. He was good at organizing. The chief had monitored Holmes' recovery after the confide and learned that Holmes and Harper had worked the BTK case for eight years under own time, studying files and interviewing people. Stoard knew more than most people about computers. Dodson, willing and thoughtful, quickly became one of Landward's best friends. He felt drawn to Landward, in part because they were both ambitious, self-doubting perfectionists and they loved macabre humor.
Speaker 1:Lamonian had monitored Landward's recovery from his arm injury and knew he had helped make Special Olympics the department's official charity. He had heard that Landward parted hard but also that he was resourceful. Except for Holmes and Fulton, none of these guys had hunted BTK, but Lamonian liked that. He thought it was time for fresh eyes. Tell no one what we're doing, not your wives, not even my deputy chiefs, and this is an order that came from Lamonian. Access to the room was granted only to Lamonian and Task Force members. One day, when a deputy chief tried to walk in, holmes shut the door in his face. The deputy chief yelled let me in there now. And Holmes said nope, you're not going in.
Speaker 1:By late 1984, the Egos Crime Team had a new member. Hearst Laviana had come to the paper two years before with a degree in mathematics. He was quite analytical and prone to solitude. He knew nothing about BTK. In one night he went out to cover homicide. It would turn out to be a routine murder. As Laviana left, stevens called out and said make sure you ask the cops if the phone line was cut. Laviana asked why and some of the BTK evidence was now 10 years old and to store it the city had sent it underground. Two roads and old salt mines dug under Hodgeson, kansas, which was 50 miles to the northwest. The city stored old records there. The first day Holmes went there he thought, wow, I get to go into an old salt mine. By the next day he already dreaded going to the cold, dark caves.
Speaker 1:The BTK files and evidence boxes had become scattered. Holmes began to pull them together, index everything case files, toys from the Vayan House, thousands of pages of BTK reports held in red or green-thring ring binders. There were at least five boxes of detective notes and Stuart Wood later said that they read and read and read and for the first month they didn't do anything but read reports. They talked to FBI profilers. The Wichita cops in the task force were beginning to think they should communicate with BTK if he ever resurfaced, and the FBI's behavior science guys whom they consulted and one of them, western Douglas of course were reaching that conclusion as well. Years before older detectives probing BTK had created a huge index card file containing names of suspects they had eliminated.
Speaker 1:The new task force studied these cards, wondering whether these men should be reexamined. It would mean hundreds of man hours and they decided yes. They set up their own index list from state, county and city records. They compiled a list of men who lived in the county and were 21 to 35 years old in 1974, tens of thousands of names. They have a separate list of men from Wichita State University, a list of people who work at Colement, another list of personnel from nearby McConnell Air Force Base, another from the local electric company, the compiled list of animal abusers who win the people's sex, perverts, prison inmates and others. They wanted to find men who appear on more than one list. A good idea, but unreliable. They didn't know it then. But the men they were seeking was there on the Wichita State University list. He didn't have a criminal record, he had never been stationed at McConnell and though he had worked at Colement, like countless other blue collar Wichita, it was before Julio Tevro and the Brites did. Investigators were looking for a co-worker.
Speaker 1:Thousands of people appeared on at least two of the lists, which made them good suspects. Until blood samples cleared them. The cops ran their own names too. In Poe Holmes, a police shootout hero, appeared on four lists. His blood sample cleared him. Btk had posted that there was another victim so far not identified, the fifth of his seven murders. After weeks of debate the task force decided that victim was Catherine Bright. They added all the Bright files and evidence back to the BTK evidence, including one of the bullets that struck Kevin Bright in the head. Because BTK had shot Kevin with a code-same automatic.22 pistol, thought to be a target's man or woodsman model. The cops compiled a massive list of people who had bought such guns. They set up computer programs to compare lists. At one point they narrowed their suspect list from tens of thousands to 30 men in Wichita and another 185 living elsewhere. Holmes told the task force they should get blood and saliva samples from everyone of them and Lamonian asked how are you going to convince these men to give you a blood sample? And Holmes said I'm going to walk right up to them and ask To find these men.
Speaker 1:Detectives traveled to nearly every state, driving circuits and two-person teams to Tosa, dallas, houston and so on. They pricked fingers to collect blood and touch paper to tongues to collect saliva. In Hudson's Sennwan night Holmes met with a suspect and his wife. And Holmes said your name turned out on a BTK suspect list and I want to eliminate you from it. I need your blood and saliva sample. And the woman told her husband don't give these guys a single thing. And Holmes said then I will have to interview your employers and your neighbors and do a complete background check on you. The woman said again don't give these people anything. And the man suddenly said excuse me for just a moment, officer. And he turned to his wife and told him to be quiet. And then he turned to Holmes take whatever blood you want.
Speaker 1:The cops tracked down former wives of suspects and they would say well, sorry to ask this, but does your ex-husband bond with during sex? Does he like to penetrate from behind, does he like? And they start asking a series of questions related to their sex lives. And they asked because BTK have accentuated the botox of the women in his drawings. The cops have thought people would argue or refuse the request for samples and information, but nearly everyone cooperated. This story concluded that most people are low-abiding citizens who want to help police do their jobs. Every one of these suspects was eliminated. The chemistry of their bodily fluids did not match that of BTK and they surprised the task force. So they started new lists.
Speaker 1:In October 1984, fbi criminal profilers, including Rory Harvick Wood, provided the cops the first veto impressions of BTK and he said what thought that BTK practice bondage in everyday life, that he was a sexual say this a control freak, that he could interact with others only on a superficial level. And he said quote you know him but you really don't know him. Quote the profiler felt that although BTK would do well at work, he wouldn't like anyone telling him what to do. He would love to drive. People would associate him with driving, he said would also thought BTK collected bonded materials, read crime books and detective magazines. In that context the cops interest they consider detective magazines to be instruction manuals showing how to get away with murder.
Speaker 1:After Hassewood. Hassewood told them that Holmes when he entered someone's home he looked around for detective magazines and they were working sometimes seven days a week. And Langworth later said it was terrible because you will be up for one week and down for three, because you don't have anybody that looks good and you don't know where they went and there are times that you don't even want to come to work and after work they thought a traditional cup stress remedy. They needed to get drunk because the guys were working 12, 14 hours a day on their own. And one day, not longer after the task force started, holmes overheard an officer ask and said what are those guys doing in that closed room? And someone said they're chasing ghosts. Someone taped a poster to their office store and it advertised a Bill Murray movie about ghosts chasing to those scientists in New York, the movie Ghostbusters, and it's a catchy name. But of course the Ghostbusters caught no one. In 1985, stevens took a job at the Dallas Morning News and he made a copy of the BTK file and took it with him. He had long ago showed the original file to LaMiana and he said you need to study this in case he comes back if the BTK ever sends a message to the ego again. You know you have this file, so LaViana should take it to the cops, but only after making a copy. Right after Steven's left BTK kill again. So now it's April 1985.
Speaker 1:Marine Hedge stood not much more than 5 feet tall and weighed about 100 pounds. She was 53 years old. She was a grandmother. She had a southern accent, accent that slipped off her tongue. She liked jewelry, dressing with care, stocking her closet with shoes to match every outfit. She made small look stylish. She liked cooking from scratch, taught younger in laws how to fry hush puppies and catfish, the way she learned when she grew up as little marine wildness in Arkansas. Her husband, a beach craft worker, had died in 1984, leaving her feeling lonely in her house. They lived in 6254 independence and this was located in the Wichita suburb of Park City. She dealt with loss by giving to others, to friends a son, three daughters, grandchildren. She enjoys seeing customers.
Speaker 1:She had served for a dozen years at the coffee shop at Wesley Medical Center second shift and there was bingo and her friends at Park City Baptist Church Raider, timed hedges comings and goings, looked for men, even visited the coffee shop at Wesley where he learned she started work at 2 pm and got off about midnight. He realized it might be a dumb move to murder someone who lived six doors down. But he had grown lazy in the years since he had stopped Nancy Fox and he has studied serial killers and wanted to flout the wisdom of the FBI profilers. Probably loners, they said, probably not family men. Serial killers can't stop killing. None of them had applied to him now he would prove them wrong again. He would kill in his own neighborhood, kill on his own block, kill a tiny lady whom he knew well enough to wave to as he and his wife drove past on the way to church. The profilers were right about one thing serial killers feel compulsions.
Speaker 1:In the 11 years since he had killed the auteros, raider has stuck hundreds of women in Wichita and in small towns over Kansas while traveling for ADT and his, he would in 1989 for the US Census Bureau as the field operations supervisor for the Wichita area. By 1985 he had grown tires trolling, scouting back or alleys, planning escape routes. He selected his neighbor in part because she was convenient. He had never gone, tired of the excitement these projects gave him, though, so he was still willing to invest effort in making the fantasy real. For his this murder project cookie he planned an elaborate alibi. He would use a cop scout outing with his son as cover at camp Tawakoni, perhaps 20 miles from home. They set up tents. He had rain, the ground was soggy, his son loved those cubby things, or cubby things. Years later his son would tell people that his dad had always been his best friend in camp.
Speaker 1:After dark that night Raider told the other scout dad that he had a headache and he said that he was going to bed early and he slipped away living his son with the other boys and their fathers. He drove west five miles a cell toward home on a country road near and over east of Wichita. He stepped on package bowling back head kid. He took off the scout uniform, pulled on dark clothing. Then he drove to northeast Wichita near the shops of Britain Center. He parked at a bowling alley, went in, pretended to get drunk. He splashed beyond his face and clothing and caught a cab. He put his kid back on the seat beside him. The boys and I have been partying. He told the driver I need a ride home.
Speaker 1:When they reached Park City he told the driver to let him out on West Parkview, one block east of independence. He said I need to walk, I need to wear this off. He slurred his speech to fold the driver. If this ride ever turned up in an investigation, the cabbie would remember only that he was a drunken bowler in dark clothes and not the scout dad who slept in the tent at Tehuaconi, 20 miles to the east. If asked, the scout dads would say that he stay in the tent all night with a headache. He paid the driver and walked in his own neighborhood. He could have found his way here in his sleep.
Speaker 1:He walked through a park, then through his in-laws' backyard and then to the house of Maureen Hedge. Seeing her card bothered him because he thought well, it looks like she must be home already and he had wanted to hide inside and surprise her. When she arrived. He hoped she would be alone and he snipped the phone line with wire cutters and he took his time breaking in, trying to be quiet. He slowly worked the door open with a long-handled screwdriver. When he crept in he found she was not there. But minutes later he heard a car door slam, then voices, hers and a man's BTK hitting the closet, fuming at his deadlock. He waited for an hour as the man and Maureen talked. The man left and she went to bed. She walked when Raider climbed into bed with her.
Speaker 1:The Park City Police Chief Aiswana Wei, an animal control officer named Rod Rem, found her. Nine days later. Her little body had been hidden on the brush in a wet ditch on 53rd Street northeast of Wichita. Her body was decomposing. Animals had gone to her. Her stolen Monte Carlo had been found at Brittany's Center in Wichita, her purse missing. All identification was found miles away. She had been strangled. A loop of knotted pantyhose was found near the body.
Speaker 1:When the Wichita cops heard about this they wondered about BTK, whose last known murder had been in December 1977. But as far as the cops knew, btk had never killed anyone outside Wichita, had never attacked anyone older than 38, had never taken a body outdoors and he seemed to fixate on addresses with the number 3. Maureen lived at 6254, independence in Park City. The Cod Phone Line caught their interest but this case didn't fit what they knew about BTK. After Maureen's body was discovered, readers neighbors in Park City chattered and feared. He wondered what they would have thought, had they known the full story, what he had done with Maureen after he killed her.
Speaker 1:He had dragged her nude body out to the car wrapped in bed covers. She was such a tiny thing but he could barely lift her. After he stuffed her into the trunk he drove her to his own church, christ Lutheran, where he had spent many a Sunday pretending to be a Christian. He taped a black plastic over the windows to block the light he'd now turned on. He had stashed the plastic at the church before he left for the Cub Scout camp. In the church he played God, control her, strap high heels to her cold feet, post her bound the body in lewd positions and took photographs. He could save her later. Then he took her to the country and dumped her.
Speaker 1:By that time Knight was creeping toward Don and he had to hurry back to the Cub Scouts. He dropped her in Monte Carlo Brittany Center with regret. He was a hot car and drove his own vehicle back to the camp out. He got up that morning with all the other dads and lads when he heard a rumor about his neighbors that maybe Marine Hedges' boyfriend had killed her. He spoke up. He said no, he couldn't have been him. We'll be right back Now we are on September 1986.
Speaker 1:Officer Slangor's work on the Ghostbuster Task Force led to his promotion to Detective in 1986. And on September 16 of that year he lay asleep until afternoon because he had been working late. And had he awakened and walked out on his balcony he might have seen the very man he was looking for getting out of a gold 1978 Monte Carlo. Rader had been attracted to Langworth's neighborhood three weeks before when he saw a young woman getting into that car. It reminded him of Marine Hedges. After he began stalking the young Wichita resident he saw that she had a husband but spent a lot of time alone at home. Sometimes as he listened outside, btk had heard a piano and Rader thought that she played beautifully. During the first years that Langworth lived in his little bachelor pad in the Indian Hills apartments, the maintenance man was a guy named Bill Weigler and Langworth thought Bill was a nice person quite of manner. In other people who knew Bill said he did not show a lot of emotion.
Speaker 1:Bill's wife, bicky, usually stayed home during the day taking care of their two-year-old son. His name was Brandon and they lived at 2404 West 13th Street. She spent a lot of time with Brandon and with Stephanie, their nine-year-old, and she also babysat the newborn son and the two-year-old daughter of Wendy Jones, a friend, and Bicky liked babies. She volunteered as a babysitter at St Andrew's Lutheran, which she attended, and at Asbury United Methodist, which was in her neighborhood. Wendy thought Bicky had a calm motherly instinct. She never raised her voice, even when babies tested her patience. Sometimes when Wendy came to Vicky's home to pick up her kids, wendy would pull up a chair and they would talk, watching their daughters play. Rader liked what she saw, what he saw a young blonde woman alone during the work day. He liked listening to her music so much that he ended up calling her the piano project in his notes.
Speaker 1:After Bill left the job maintaining at the Indian Hills Apartments, he became a house painter. On September 16th Bill told Vicky that he was working at a place not far away and that he would be home early for lunch and he would need to stop painting to let the first coat dry. He liked to spend time with Vicky and Brandon, who was now tumbling over the house. It was a pleasant house to come home to wife, children, music. Sometimes she would play piano while Brandon took a nap.
Speaker 1:Rader had modified a business card to look like a phone company identification card. He had a yellow hard hat provided by AVT. He had cut out a segment of the cover of a southwestern bell repair manual and pasted it on the hard head hat, hoping to pass himself off as a telephone repairman. The briefcase he would carry looked official but contained a head kit supplies, rope, cord, knife, gun. He would put in something new this time Leather bootlaces tied into what he called a strangling rig. He called it leathering up. He thought the leather, thin and strong, might make the strangling go quicker. He had tied knots into the laces to give himself a better grip.
Speaker 1:He parked the security company van in the Indian Hills Shopping Center parking lot, put on the hard hat, walked across the street toward the blonde man's house, but first he went to the home of her elderly neighbors. They let him in. People tended to check their phone line. He wanted the blonde woman, if she saw him, to see what looked like a telephone repairman working in the neighborhood. He entered many houses this way. So when he left the older couple's house he walked to the blonde woman's door. He heard the piano. When he knocked, the music stopped At the door.
Speaker 1:She looked warily at him and he told her that he needed to check her telephone line. And he saw a little boy in the living room. She asked whether it was necessary to come in. Didn't he need to go to the backyard to check the phone line? The dog was out there, but she could bring him in. And he said no, he needed to check inside the house. As he recalled later, she did not like this, but she let him in. She showed him to the dining room phone.
Speaker 1:He opened his briefcase, made a small talk, pulling out a gadget that he cobbled together to look like a telephone tester. He fiddled with it and chatted and there appeared to be no man about and he said well, it looks like it works. And he put the fake tester into the briefcase and put out his gun and he told her let's go to the bedroom. She began to cry and she said what about my kid? And he shrugged. He said I don't know about your kid and she. Then she said my husband is going to be home pretty soon and he told her I hope he's not going to be home too soon.
Speaker 1:Rayther thought she was probably lying, but he had watched the house enough to know she did have a husband thing he would need to hurry now. And that upset him. He made her lie down on her waterbed as she cried and tried to argue. He tied her wrist and ankles with the leather shoe glasses. Vicky began to pray out loud. Suddenly she jumped her legs, broke her bones and began to fight. And then everything became noise and fear. The dog outside heard them fighting through an open window began to bark. Btk hit Vicky in the face again and again, then grabbed at her throat. She fought Nick and him on the neck with a fingernail. They fell off the bed on the side farthest from the door. He tried to use his strangling rig but he could not get a grip on it. After he got it around her throat he saw a pair of pantyhose nearby. They worked. That worked once he looped it around her neck, but he was disappointed. He had wanted to spend time with her but there was no time to masturbate. He got his polaroid camera, arranged her to his liking, pulled her top up to partially exposed Her brazen, took a photo and twice more he talked on her clothing, squeezed the shutter, he packed his things, got into her Monte Carlo and drove away. She died in the space between the bed and television cabinet and anyone looking through the doorway would not be able to see her.
Speaker 1:Bill Wiggley went home early for lunch as planned. At 13th and West Street. Monte Carlo passed him going the other way. Bill thought it was his wife's car until he saw a towman at the wheel. So when he got home the Monte Carlo was gone and so was Vicky, and that upset him because their son was alone. Bill could not imagine why Vicky would drive off and leave a two-year-old. Maybe she had made a flying trip to the store. Bill held Brandon and waited, made a sandwich, ate it and walked around. Time passed and he grew more puzzled. He needed to go back to work. He walked through the house again. 40 minutes passed before he found her. Moments later a 911 dispatcher heard Angwitch in his voice. He said I think someone had killed my wife. He said the dispatcher heard him on Vicky, vicky, oh god, no, no.
Speaker 1:Raider had driven the Monte Carlo west, then north about a mile to 21st Street In a trash bin outside a bronze ice cream store. He dropped the briefcase In a trash can outside a muffler shop. He dropped the hard hat after peeling off the southwestern bell label. Besides the label he kept the Polaroids. He drove back to the woman's street, parked the Monte Carlo next to a meat market and walked to his van which was parked across from her house. He heard sirens.
Speaker 1:Two firefighters, ronald Evans and Lieutenant Mark Haynes, found Bill rarely punching the wall of his porch. He said if I could have been here five minutes earlier I could have done something. He told them they found his wife in the bedroom. There was a pocket knife beside her head. Bill told them later that he had used it to cut the leather shoelaces and the nylon stocking encircling her throat. There was no room to work, so they carried her into the dining room.
Speaker 1:An ambulance arrived, a 20-year-old paramedic, neda Sauer. So Bill went to the front yard talking to a cop and holding a little boy, and the child looked calm. In the dining room Neda found the firefighters started CPR, even though Bikki looked dead. Her face was modelled and the Cosmos Avias found a ligature mark around her throat. Her hands were tied behind her back. The leather had dug deep into her skin. There were also laces around her ankles. Neda glanced around, so toy-scattered, the killer had done it in front of the boy. He thought had it he cry? Had the killer hurt him? Neda and the other paramedics worked on Bikki for ten minutes, then put her in the ambulance. A television crew filmed them. As Neda drove Bikki away she saw the husband still standing at the yard holding his son talking to police. At Riverside's hospital's emergency room doctors pronounced Bikki dead. Neda heard someone say that the cops thought the husband might have done it.
Speaker 1:Detectives proven the death of a wife at home. Usually suspect the husband first. It's a standard procedure Quickly rule him out as a suspect or establish guilt. So detectives asked Bill Point a question what time did you say you saw the Monte Carlo? How long did you sit in your house before you realized your wife was in the bedroom? 45 minutes. Why so long? He did not show a lot of emotion. His friends knew this was because he was reserved. But to the cops, in these circumstances, bill came off as cold-hearted.
Speaker 1:The detectives were trying to move fast. The first few hours in a homicide investigation are crucial and detectives increased the chances of catching the killer if they pressed hard from the first hour, stay up most of the first night following leads, questioning witnesses. The more hours go by, the more the trial codes. They took Bill downtown. They grilled him Were you having an affair? Was she having an affair? What did you argue about? They were not satisfied with Bill's account of what streets he had driven to go home where he had seen his wife's Monte Carlo as it passed him going the other way, and he sat in the house for 45 minutes before he found her. What gives? The detectives suggested a lie detector test. Bill said yes and he was innocent.
Speaker 1:After all, the doctor who performed the autopsy saw that the killer had strangled Vicky so hard that there was internal bleeding in her throat. She had been beaten. There were scrapes on her right ear, cheek and jawline. He found a gouch on her left hand and a knuckle that had swollen just before she died. That told him she had fought. He found a bit of skin under one fingernail. She had nicked her attacker. The doctor looked for evidence of sexual assault and there was none. He took a swab from her vagina and preserved it in case there was no fluid in the sample. A lie detector record hard rate and blood pressure perspiration.
Speaker 1:The theory is that a guilty person registers physical signs when lying. Most cops use lie detectors only as a supplemental tool. Most courts consider them unreliable. In years to come. Wichita detectives would conclude that a lie detector test should never be given to a spouse or close family member immediately after a murder. If a husband has just lost his wife, his emotion might falsely register as guilt. But that conclusion was in the future.
Speaker 1:On the day of Vicky's death, detectives gave Bill two polygraph tests and he failed both. The cops really got tough after that. The voices rose. They were questioning Bill on the sixth floor of city hall and had led Bill's family sit close by. Bill's relatives overheard some of the questions and they got mad. Bill told the interrogators that he had to go to the restroom. He stepped out where his family could see him. One of them yelled stop answering questions and get a lawyer. Bill two detectives. He was done with them and under the law he was his right. They let him go.
Speaker 1:Police never charged Bill with his wife's murder but there were detectives who said privately for the next two decades that Bill probably killed her. That rumor spread through town. School kids on playgrounds sometimes told the weryly kids that their dad had killed their mom. Bill never publicly complained but he refused to talk to the cops further. That crippled investigation. An innocent husband is the investigators best source because he holds the key to countless leads. He knows the names of his wife's family and friends, the stores where she shopped, the kids she hired to mow the lawn. Bill had loved his wife. He and Vicky had made love the night before she died. But Bill's cooperation disappeared after he walked out those after Vicky died.
Speaker 1:Ghostbusters investigator Paul Holmes called Langworth and said a car belonging to a homicide victim had been found within walking distance of his apartment. Langworth stepped out on his balcony saw a gold Monte Carlo parked across the street. Three days after Vicky died, langworth and Holmes were sent to the Weryly House and that put them in an awkward position. They studied the scene, the bindings, the reports. The road was limited to a quick look. But that look convinced them Bill was innocent. Langworth and Holmes share what they had seen with Paul Dutson, another Ghostbuster. He reached the same conclusion this was probably not Bill, it might even be BTK. That ran counter to what the detectives work in the Weryly case thought. Hans' brother, john Dutson, was the captain supervising the homicide section.
Speaker 1:Langworth and Holmes decided not to press their conclusions on the other detectives. Langworth did not want to contradict the assigned detectives based on his quick look at incomplete evidence. But Bill's true son had told police Mom heard mommy. No child in Langworth's opinion would say men heard mommy if he had seen his father Do it. Langworth also thought it unlikely that Bill would strangle Vicky in front of Brandon. Bill would know that Brandon could speak a few words and might tell what he saw.
Speaker 1:The most convincing evidence of Bill's innocence, langworth thought, was that the killer had stolen Vicky's driver's license, leaving behind her wallet, money and credit cards. That's not a husband killing a wife. Langworth thought it's a sex-pervert stealing a trophy. Langworth felt sorry for Bill feel bad that his wife was murdered and that some cop thought he had killed her. But Langworth also thought Bill should have stayed in the interview room even after the cops badgered him. He said if it was my own wife murder, those cops would have to throw me out of the room to make me quit talking to them. I wouldn't have never shut up. I would have just kept throwing ideas at them until they figure out who did it. But that is not how it worked out. We will continue this story of the BTK next week. Thank you for listening to the Mother Book. Have a great week and stay warm.