Step inside the eerie world of a serial killer that haunted Wichita as we unravel the layers behind the notorious BTK's facade. In this riveting installment of Murder Book, we expose Dennis Rader's chilling double life, from his unsettling presence in the community to his uncanny ability to evade suspicion. As a neighbor and compliance officer, Rader's strict enforcement and peculiar behavior raised more than just eyebrows. But the intrigue doesn't stop there; we'll take you through the personal lives of detectives, from the heartache of loss to the triumphs of love and their relentless pursuit of justice amidst the specter of BTK's legacy.
Throughout the episode, we thread together the perspectives of detectives and journalists alike, each touched by the BTK enigma, showcasing their unwavering dedication to uncovering the truth.
Finally, we explore the significant procedural and philosophical shifts within the Crimes Against Persons Bureau that reshaped the investigation landscape.
Step inside the eerie world of a serial killer that haunted Wichita as we unravel the layers behind the notorious BTK's facade. In this riveting installment of Murder Book, we expose Dennis Rader's chilling double life, from his unsettling presence in the community to his uncanny ability to evade suspicion. As a neighbor and compliance officer, Rader's strict enforcement and peculiar behavior raised more than just eyebrows. But the intrigue doesn't stop there; we'll take you through the personal lives of detectives, from the heartache of loss to the triumphs of love and their relentless pursuit of justice amidst the specter of BTK's legacy.
Throughout the episode, we thread together the perspectives of detectives and journalists alike, each touched by the BTK enigma, showcasing their unwavering dedication to uncovering the truth.
Finally, we explore the significant procedural and philosophical shifts within the Crimes Against Persons Bureau that reshaped the investigation landscape.
Welcome to the Murder Book. I'm your host, cara, and this is part 9 of BTK. Let's begin Now. We are in the year 1992, and on March 12, 1992, dennis Rader helped Wichita detectives investigate a homicide. Six days earlier an avionics worker named Larry Bryan, 36 years old, shot and killed Ronald Eldridge, 42 years old. Eldridge was Bryan's supervisor at Collins Avionics near Wichita Midcontinent Airport and he had apparently planned to fire Bryan.
Speaker 1:Detectives investigating homicides like to do neighborhood canvass. That means that they asked questions in the area where suspect lives as well as around the site of the homicide. So on March 12, detective S L Wiswell and Charles Coral drove to Park City to talk to Bryan's neighbors. As a courtesy they visited the town's police chief, ace Van Wey. He suggested that Wiswell and Coral interviewed the city's compliance officer, dennis Rader, who lived at 6-2-0 independence, just a couple of doors from Bryan, and Wiswell wrote in his report what happens next. He wrote the following he says Myself and Detective Coral informed Dennis Rader that we were investigating a homicide in which Larry Bryan was the suspect and we were trying to find out any background information on Larry. Dennis Rader states that Larry moved in approximately 10-12 years ago at the address of 6-2-3-2 independence and he described Larry as a quiet person. Dennis states that one thing he remembers about Larry is that Larry never came out during the daytime and he kind of got the nickname of vampire around the neighborhood. Dennis also states that he remembers Larry Bryan driving what he described as a hot chevel, and they asked Dennis Rader to describe Larry Bryan and he stated that he was polite and quiet. He asked him if anyone lived with him and he stated that he did not believe so. However, he thought that a girl hung around his residence when he first moved in, but he had not seen anyone else around the residence. Dennis Rader also states that Bryan has a fascination with young kids in the neighborhood and he recalls an incident approximately a month ago where he saw Larry Bryan chasing the kids in the neighborhood around with what he described as a Jason mask. He asked Dennis Rader about the residence of Larry Bryan and he stated that Larry always keeps his shades down and again stating that he has never seen any females over at Larry's house.
Speaker 1:By May of that year, paul Dutson had run the homicide section for three years and was complete toast, as he put it. He was exhausted and when he was reassigned, his commanders told him that he could name his successor. So Dusset wanted Lannwer to replace him but worried about what the job, stress and being on call all day and night might do to his friend. He told Lannwer that I know you want the job more than anything, but you have to promise me that you won't let the pressures break you. Lannwer gave him a long look and said you know what I'm really about. Commanders gave the position to Lannwer. He had spent 14 years working towards this job and was hoping, against considerable odds, to stay in it for the rest of his career. He was just 37 years old. There would be steady work in you and wish it had. 28 homicides in 1991, 18 the year before that, 33 the year before that.
Speaker 1:The new job wasn't his only success. He was engaged to Cindy Hughes, the special education paraprofessional, with a word as sassy as his, and when people asked him about Cindy he could fall in love with a homicide investigator. Lannwer would shrug. She spent several years dealing with special aid kits so she felt qualified to deal with me. That was his answer. Cindy was happy to, but Lannwer's promotion prompted her to make an unusual visquest. He said I want to run my entire family through your criminal computer. And they asked he asked why do you want me to do that? And she said so that you're not surprised. My brother was on the county's most wanted list. I don't ever want you surprised at work by anything my family has done or will do later. And he said I won't do it. And she said what he said I won't do it. And she said but I want you to do it. He said no and she said again I want you to run them so that you can know what you might be getting into. And he smiled and he said come on, I will never do that to your family. And she said come on, kenny, I know that you have already done it and you're because you're not stupid. So I'm just telling you to do it so that you know it's all right with me. And he said but I haven't done it. She said you're lying and I said no, I'm telling you I will never do that to your family. But she didn't. She didn't believe him. She said oh liar. And he smiled.
Speaker 1:Five months after Landwell took over, homicide, officers in a parking lot near 21st and Amayden confronted a man who had tried to kill his wife and the man jumped toward the open door of his car to get a gun. The officers fired. Medical examiner later determined that he had shot himself just as the officers shot him. So it was part suicide, part officer involved shooting. Homicide.
Speaker 1:Detectives arrived along with a new boss. Langworth had decided that he should be mostly a hands off boss, but he should assign detectives to a case, then support them with advice and resources, unless they fell down on the job. He would stay out of their way. But he had also decided he would walk every scene himself, not only because he might prove helpful but because he was aware of his own shortcomings. He also supervised us who could look at photographs of a homicide scene and see the whole thing in their minds. But he couldn't do that. He's more of a 3D person and he said I have to see it in the full dimensions myself. The detectives liked him. He let them do their jobs. He did not have a big head. He didn't say I'm head of homicide or even refer to himself as a lieutenant. He told people he told them only that he was a police officer.
Speaker 1:And Langworth arrived at 21st and I'm either and began to pace inside the yellow police tape that blocked news reporters from getting near the evidence. Herzlaviana, from the ego, decided this was an opportunity. He has spent eight years covering crime and wanted to develop the new head of homicide as a source and earn his trust. Langworth was dressed as usual suit with crisp white shirt. These are habits that the police department teaches detectives about clothes and grooming. The homicide detective must shave clothes where suit, must not smile, crack a joke at the homicide scene. If the news cameras catch a detective smiling, tv stations might play the tape repeatedly and make her or her look uncaring.
Speaker 1:On this day, after an on-site briefing the television, people pack their gear and left. Langworth still paced the parking lot. He looked at the brick wall of a nearby building. There have been several bullets fired. Perhaps some bullets had hit the wall. Langworth stepped outside the tape barrier, walked to the building. Laviana stepped forward. He stopped a few feet from where Langworth peered at the wall. Laviana, who was usually a quiet man, decided to crack a joke. He pretended to pee around the corner of the building. He said to Langworth hey, have you checked this dead guy over here? Langworth laughed. An important friendship had begun. Now it's 1993.
Speaker 1:Lee Langworth, a retired beach craft tool and dime maker died at age 73 on January 24, 1993. Paul Dodson had never seen Kenny Landworth so undone. Lee had gotten his son interested in reading, had handed him stories about detective Sherlock Holmes. Together they had worked on cars and a driveway. Kenny was in good at repairs but he had help wrenches for his father so that he could learn from him and trade stories about news. On the day After Lee died, langworth went over to his mother's house and worked in the garden. Langworth hated gardening, but he was his mother's garden and he got rid of it regularly.
Speaker 1:A few weeks after his father's death, the police department sent Langworth to a full week of FBI training at Quantico, virginia. The subject was precarious victimology how law enforcement officers, including homicide detectives, often hurt themselves by empathizing in a healthy way with crime victims. What Langworth learned gave him much to think about and it was a lucky break that the training occurred just after his father's death. Langworth had been drowning his sorrows. What he heard at Quantico stopped him. Cops often feel so shaken by the suffering of victims and their families that they begin to pursue investigations as though the victim were a member of their own family. That was how Langworth had felt ever since he joined the police department he learned that if investigators are already prone to self-destructive behavior, avoidance, drinking, melancholy, depression, working cases gives them every excuse to hurt themselves. The suicide rate among cops is high.
Speaker 1:At Quantico, instructors describe the dangerous relationship between stress and drinking. Do not assume responsibility for actions you're not responsible for, they say. Not all cases can be solved, not all the guilty get convicted and not all victims receive justice. In addition to working with a therapist, find people you trust and care about. The instructor said talk things through. And after Langworth got home he applied what he had learned. He asked Cindy if he could talk honestly about his work and she agreed. He began to talk to her regularly to vent frustrations. She listened, empathized, teased and could solve him. Marrying her, langworth often said later, was the best thing that ever happened to him, because you can think you can cope with this stuff alone, but you can't.
Speaker 1:Langworth had spent much of his life partying. That began to taper off now. He wanted to head the homicide section for years to come and he could see how that his drinking was leading to no good. So he decided to grow up. Shortly after he moved to Park City in 1993, jan Elliott bought a younger dog and trained her to fetch. Jesse was friendly and wouldn't bother anybody, but during storms Jesse would climb Elliott's 10 foot chain length fence or sleep her leash. Rader, the Park City Compliance Officer, caught her three times and told Elliott to resolve the problem. Or else Rader seemed arrogant as he told Elliott he owed the city $250. And Elliott said I don't have that kind of money. So Rader said well then, I have your dog put down. And he did.
Speaker 1:Elliott got so mad that he moved out of Park City. But something puzzled him. He had heard similar stories about Rader from other people, but he also heard good things. Years before his mother, tellma Elliott, had lived across the street from someone she described as a wonderful girl, paula Dietz, who had married Rader. Elliott's mother liked Rader and she said he was the nicest person. On April 7 that year Rader's parents, william and Dorothea, marked their 50th wedding anniversary. The family planned the dinner and put a notice in the eagle.
Speaker 1:William Rader had served in the US Marine Corps during World War II. He had worked for 37 years for the local utility Kansas Gas and Electric before he retired in August 1985. Dorothea Rader had worked for 26 years as a bookkeeper at a grocery, leaker's Family Foods. She had retired in January 1986. She was a gentle person appreciated by her neighbors and others who knew her. The older Raders took their four boys to church and scout meetings and encouraged them to explore the great outdoors. She tried to do right by Dennis, paul, bill and Jeff Other. Jeff, as he admitted later, was a Hellraiser. Now that they were retired, bill and Dorothea were pleased that Dennis, their eldest, was so attentive. He worked close to home and he and Paula lived only a couple of miles away. They stopped by Freakle Leon and went to the same church. Dennis and Paula's daughter, carrie, had shown up on the school honor roll list for years and their son, brian, was becoming a Negro scout.
Speaker 1:Langworth, mavisindy Hughes. On April 24, 1993, paul Dodson served as best man the Langworth's honeymoon in Cancun, mexico. In the third floor apartment where Langworth lived for the 13 years before his marriage he had knocked so many golf balls outside his door that his sandwich had worn a white hole in the carpet. But Sandy was settling him down. She used to wear that. He felt attracted to her because he thought she needed rescuing, but she had rescued him.
Speaker 1:Late that year Park City got his first phone directory. Brian Rader put it together as his ego scout project to provide a service for his community. Scout leader George Martin, a longtime friend of Dennis Rader, liked to point out that there was no way to complete such a demanding project unless the boy got a lot of help from his father. Brian's phone book was so well received that the Wichita Ego did a cheery story about it on October 28. And it says, quote Park City residents will soon be flipping through their own directory to find local phone numbers, thanks to the Pride committee and an ego scout. End quote Brian had organized 10 other volunteers and compiled the book by hand, picking names and numbers out of public information sources and cross directories. The new directories spelled out the names, numbers and addresses of every business and person in town. And the article says, quote we have to use maps to tell who lives where and stuff like that, because two other cities have the 744 exchange. End quote. This is what Brian told the newspaper. The books were sold door to door for a dollar a piece to offset the cost of printing 2000 copies. Brian's father already knew the names and addresses of many people in town. Some women thought Dennis Rader seemed incredibly nosy. He was unusually interested in their calming and goings.
Speaker 1:Languards. First year as head of the homicide section was busy. 57 people were killed. That's a record because the first I was. After homicide are crucial. Languards and the detectives often worked without sleep for 48 hours straight During 1993 and in years to follow people in Wichita would become familiar with Languards face and flat television interview delivery.
Speaker 1:As the supervisor he was part of his job to give news briefings On camera. Languards looked a little stiff and talked in a monotone. La Viana interviewing him alone saw a much different personality Languards would brought in with humor and warmth. His life betrayed the grasp of a frequent smoker. One day La Viana misspelled the name of murder victim Kristi Hatfield In his story. It was a hard field. Languards show up at the police department's stadium news media briefing and gleefully announced to reporters that La Viana had apparently found a new homicide victim. He was a careless error that would be corrected in the next morning's paper. The lieutenant felt so comfortable with La Viana that in one after an important interview Langward began to talk in the relaxed norm BS tone that he used with friends. The subject was the record breaking number of homicides in 1993.
Speaker 1:Language show La Viana charged Payne, particularly attention to the 14 cases still unsolved and Langwood said he's done it down the list. Quote Magallanes we have a suspect. Anderson, we're clueless. Marvin Brown clueless. Menser, we have an idea. Cocaquan, clueless. Consolidess, clueless Adams that's another one of those where everybody was shooting at a party Hatfield, clueless. His use of clueless show Langwood's self-confidence. He didn't mean words. He said clueless because that's how he saw it. But after La Viana's story appeared, langwood took some heat from his detectives and others in city hall. Unlike many public officials in similar situations, however, he didn't get pissy and blame the reporter. He merely told La Viana. I wish I hadn't say it, but I did. In the meantime, in that same year, some of the Wichita cops had a strange encounter with the Park City compliance officer. It was the story that Tim Relf and his friends would retell many times.
Speaker 1:Relf became interested in joining the police force, in part because he got arrested in 1979 as a teenager he had been shooting a BB gun he had modified to make a long bang. Two officers Darrell Haynes and the future ghostbuster Paul Holmes drew through him face down, handcuffed him in part to frighten him away from a life of crime. That arrest and his own re-evaluation of his life led Relf to one day to enter the police academy. Like Landwell and Dana Gouge, relf was first in his academy class. Relf adevalved Roman Catholic with gregarious and meticulous nature, during the homicide unit in December 1991, a few months before Landwell took command. By 1991, relf had made many cop friends, including the officers who had once arrested him and John Spear along here on the cover cop Relf had met with both when both worked street patrol.
Speaker 1:In October 1993, spear needed to re-roof his house in Park City. He asked Relf and 20 other cops to help. It was a hot, nasty day and toward the end of the day some cops noticed a man in uniform standing outside Spear's house. He was taking Polaroid pictures. Spear said everybody stop. He climbed up off the roof. Relf watched Spear confront the man who was standing beside Park City truck and the man spoke to Spear in a cold, official manner about needing a work permit and Spear argued. Relf watched this with some amusement and Relf thought this guy must be pretty brazen. None of the men were in uniform but with their haircuts and the cop jargon that Spear talked and from the way they all stared, relf thought it should be obvious to the compliance officer that this was a flock of cops perched on the rooftop. But the Park City Compliance officer insisted that Spear needed a permit. He didn't leave until the cop agreed to get the proper paperwork. Spear's friend thought the guy was arrogant. But they teased Spear about getting lectured by a guy wearing a uniform and quoting regulations chapter and verse. Something about the guy's cold manner stuck out enough that the cops remembered it for a long time. We'll be right back Now. We're going to look at what happened between 1994 and 1997.
Speaker 1:The Eagle published Bill Hirschman's 20th anniversary story about the Otero family murders on January 15, 1994. Hirschman knew that he needed to write it, although many of the newspaper's readers had never heard of BTK. The trail had grown cold. Many readers didn't know about the killings and others had lost interest as their fear faded. Btk had not killed, as far as anyone knew for certain since strongly Nancy Foxx. In December 1977.
Speaker 1:Some cops thought BTK might be dead or in prison on unrelated crimes. So when Hirschman wrote his anniversary story, most of it was background information. Like a lot of crime reporters, he did what he did because cruelty upset him. To stop it. You write about it to make people care. The idea that BTK had become old news bothered Hirschman. He wanted the monster caught.
Speaker 1:Before Ken Stevens left the Eagle in 1985, hirschman had listened to him talk about BTK at a newsroom party. Stevens had related it as a ghost story and Hirschman had watched chattering friends grow silent, listening in the dark. He remembered that as he wrote his story. It says, quote failure to convict BTK is always mentioned as the one lasting regret of air-retiring police officer who worked the case ranging from LaMonyon to Sherrif Mike Hill, once head of the homicide Police, homicides Guam and Lamontian says, and he quotes him no, it's something that you don't ever get rid of. End quote. Surely after the story ran, hirschman left the Eagle and joined the newsroom of the South Florida Sun Sentinel and for Lauderdale, perhaps Hirsch will get to write the big BTK story someday. He thought. At Hirschman's going away, party newsroom staffers gave him a mock front page with a banner headline Hirschman leaves BTK case solved. Lauderdale thought that that was really funny. Like Stevens before him, hirschman had been identified in town gossip as a BTK suspect.
Speaker 1:Btk was not a no story to detective Tim Ralph. One night while working a two-month night shift rotation, ralph got bored. He looked at the gray four drawer cabinet sitting in the corner. People seldom open it. Ralph fetched a key, opened a drawer and began to read your terror files. It took Ralph back to when he had felt terrified as a child after the murders. He had been in seventh grade then and he had worried that something like that might happen to his family Now. In the investigations room he read all files for a long time.
Speaker 1:The next day Ralph went to lunch with Langworth and surprised him by saying he wanted to study the BTK files. And Langworth asked him and said what are you doing, ralph? He said what he said. What are you trying to take my job? He said no. He said no, you're trying to take my job. He said no. No, I just want to understand it. And Langworth stopped teasing and grew thoughtful and he said I have been thinking I need to have someone else study BTK in case I ever leave. Are you serious about wanting to learn? And he said yes. So Langworth began to coach him at lunch and in the days that followed Langworth talked so fast with such enthusiasm that he sometimes lost his train of thought. Ralph listened and thralled. As Ralph described it later, langworth gave a master clinic to hunt BTK and how to become a great detective.
Speaker 1:Not all of Langworth's detectives praised him at first. Some of them thought that the details of management bore Langworth and that he was a better investigator than administrator. Clint Snyder, who joined the homicide section in 1995 and admired him a lot, joked that Langworth's brain sometimes worked on a different frequency than his mouth. Detectives had to know the context to understand what Langworth was talking about. Snyder would say something about needing to get the deal, do the deal or something like that. But you know what he means.
Speaker 1:When Dana first joined the unit he had a little trouble with Langworth's attitude about supervision. In other units bosses had told Gouch what to do. So it puzzled Gouch at first how little Langworth talked to him. The work worried Gouch. He was hard. He wanted to make sure he never accused the wrong person of murder or accused the right person. But so the case was solved. But Langworth had barely talked to him unless Gouch asked him something. Gouch's initial impression was that Langworth wasn't much of a teacher. The impression slowly changed. At crime scenes Gouch began to study what Langworth looked at. Listen to questions Langworth asked. Try to think what Langworth was thinking. Gouch was a very good person. He was a very good person. Langworth's own assessment of his coaching was called and simple. He said the one thing I cannot teach anyone is IQ points. You either have the brains to work in this unit or you don't.
Speaker 1:The detectives all noticed Langworth's memory. Other people had to study a case. Langworth could glance at reports and recall the details with precision, but he was not sure what he was thinking. He was thinking about the details. He could glance at reports and recall the details with precision years later. One day Ralph got into a lively argument with Langworth over a point of Roman Catholic teaching. Is, at Wednesday, a holiday of obligation? Ralph, a student of Catholicism, said yes, langworth, a backsliding Catholic, said no, it's not. They investigated. And Langworth was right. And Ralph said well, it doesn't bother me that you know more about forensics than I do. It pisses me off that you know more about church teachings.
Speaker 1:Now, to some extent the detectives attitudes, even their humor, became a reflection of their boss. They needled each other and Langworth, sometimes cruelly. They dropped the F word and casual conversation, even Ralph, who could talk eloquently about his religion's beliefs. They had a plastic rat that they put on the desk of the detective, due to take the lead on the next homicide. They carry on a Dutson era practical joke tradition of sometimes calling a sleeping detective to say we have a triple homicide. Just to jolt them awake they bonded. The stress of this work would have been unbearable to most people, but whenever a detective would get upset, someone would wait in with a smart ass comment and lighten the mood. Over time they realized that Langworth used humor with calculation. It dawned on Ralph that after reading his reports Langworth would say funny things that sometimes stunk. Langworth embedded criticism in humor and after that Ralph began to listen closely when Langworth made him laugh. Not every funny thing Langworth say was intentionally funny.
Speaker 1:One day Joe Gouch and Styder and Langworth worked the murder of a Wichita prostitute. The killer had dumped the body in Harvey County near Newton. Gouch and Snyder went into the Newton police interview room to talk to the suspect. They could not take their handguns in, so they handed them to Langworth who paced outside Langworth, who had his own gun and a holster stuck theirs in his waistband. Gouch and Snyder interviewed the suspect, then separately interviewed his wife. The stories did not match. Gouch and Snyder went to Langworth and excitedly told him this. Langworth was delighted because they were solving the case. A Newton detective rounded a corner and saw Langworth with three guns jutting from his clothing, rubbing his cheeks rigorously, yelling, and thought that Langworth was a nutcase.
Speaker 1:The work wasn't for everyone. Snyder left in 1997, trading the horrors of homicide investigation for the grim task of already narcotics dealers. Kelly Odej struck the homicide section in 1997 after taking the test to qualify for detective on a whim. One day the strain of building a particularly tough case got to the new investigator and he walked into Langworth's office to vent. He worried that he might be picked apart in court. In frustration he kicked a sofa and Langworth said no, no, no, just follow your chain of evidence, let your case speak for itself, don't ever worry about anything else. And Odej's case held up.
Speaker 1:Langworth, ever since I have known him he said, has had this delieied confidence that we're going to win our cases. And he gets us that way because he knows how to build a case. And they usually won, but not every time. Ralph once saw a man he had investigated walk away with an acquittal and it horrified him. To his relief, langworth stood by him all the way.
Speaker 1:And Langworth told Ralph the day that they first talked about BTK. Here's where detectives get themselves lost. They get lost into some guy's story. A guy looks good as a suspect If you have maybe 12 criteria for being the right guy for the crime and this guy meets 10 of the 12, then he's looking good. And so the detective gets a throw chases. His story goes off on a tangent, a wild goose chase, because if the guy's DNA doesn't match the DNA from the crime is not him, and then you have to drop him like a rock. Ralph began to apply this advice while reading about BTK and working on the other cases. And Ralph asked him how do you not get lost on all these thousands of pages of evidence? And Langworth said don't try to get into all that peripheral evidence, just read the actual case files. Focus on the essentials. That advice worked with BTK and with every new homicide Ralph handled. He realized with some pride that Langworth had helped him become a better detective and if BTK ever resurfaced Ralph would be ready to help Langworth put him in a cage. We'll be right back Now. We're going to the time frame of 1996 to 1999.
Speaker 1:In the Langworth house in Wichita there is a photograph that Cindy sometimes shows to family and friends. It shows the back of a man's head and a baby reaching a tiny hand to the man's face. The face is turned away from the camera, but anyone familiar with the family would recognize the narrow-headed, thick, dark hair of the chief homicide investigator for the Wichita police. The boy was born in 1996. Kate Langworth had thrown himself into fatherhood with enthusiasm even before he became a father. Cindy had worked with special needs kids for years and had talked Langworth into becoming a foster parent with her. In the first three years of their marriage they served as temporary foster parents to 10 children. That's how they found the baby they wanted to adopt. They named him James. Cindy had worried. Most men want their own children, but she could not give Langworth any. He waved off the concern and said that doesn't bother me at all. He was now responsible for shaping a child's life. He soon saw that the boy was changing his life too. The party guy from hell now stay home changing diapers.
Speaker 1:In that same year Bill Hirschman, working at the San Centeno in Florida, heard that a fellow reporter was leaving for the Wichita Eagle and Hirschman met him for coffee. Roy Werns, a Kansas native, was anxious to move home At the Eagle. Werns would join the newspaper's crying team. Hirschman's all grew. Hirschman was delighted. He had spent 15 years at the Eagle and become almost weepy, talking about Wichita and Kansas and people he missed. He said you will work with her, laviana. He said he's a resourceful investigative reporter. Wichita is a much safer place to raise children, more narrow-bodied and relaxed, much friendlier than South Florida. But there's some crime, he said, and of course there's BTK, the big one, that never got solved. Some people think he's dead or in prison. But he and LaViana thought BTK may have just quit killing and maybe BTK would never be solved, he said. And Walsh looked puzzled and he said Bill, what is a BTK? So a year later at the Eagle, laviana told Werns the whole story. The newsroom was empty, it was dark outside and LaViana told it as a ghost story how the killer took his time strangling people, performing perversions. There is no file in the drawer here, laviana said it has a copy of the first BTK message. He waved a hand at the newsroom, which contained more than 100 desks. He said if he ever does surface again, you're going to see this entire room full of people head out the door with no books in their hands, because that is what he will do to cover the story. It will be that big like the beginning of World War II.
Speaker 1:Paul Dutton, now a captain, took command of the Crimes Against Persons Bureau in 1996, which meant he became Langworth's supervisor. One of the first things he did was to issue a directive that other lieutenants in the Bureau had to serve on a rotation, at stage intervals, to supervise homicide investigations. Langworth wouldn't longer be on call for all homicides 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Langworth hated it, but Dutton ignored his opposition. Every detective in the homicide unit had a habit of self-delusion, dutton thought they told themselves they could keep going on a case after 48 hours without sleep. They all have to have that kind of work ethic to do their jobs. But Dutton remembered how the unreleaved stress of investigating every homicide had nearly ruined his health when he did it. When Langworth continued to gripe about it, dutton brushed him off. He said come on, kenny, look at how tired you look. From now on, unless there was a huge case, langworth would have to take a break once in a while.
Speaker 1:So on the night of June 17, 1996, a one-story wooden home in the 1700 block of South Washington burned. Firefighters found a woman dead and her toddler daughter in critical condition. The ego sent LaViana to the house the next day. He was surprised to see Langworth and his detectives there. Was this a homicide?
Speaker 1:Not long after the television reporters had finished their noon live shots, a big man in his 20s approached Laviana and said he was looking for the injured girl's father. Laviana told him he was probably at the hospital with his daughter and then offered to drop the man there on his way back to the newsroom. During the ride, laviana tried to ask the man about the family. The man's answers seemed odd and evasive. When they got to the hospital, laviana handed him a business card and asked him to call. And Laviana asked him what's your name? And he said Mike Marsh. The little girl died six days after the fire. Meanwhile LADWIRD's detective had arrested Marsh. It became Wichita's first death penalty case in decades. Not long after Marsh's arrest, langworth gave reporters a briefing about another homicide. Someone asked what the detectives were doing to catch the killer. We're going to see who hers drives to the hospital and arrest him.
Speaker 1:According to Langworth, one day Laviana heard a truck back up into the driveway of his home. Laviana found Langworth outside and Laviana was bewildered. The two men never socialized and now the homicide chief had come to his home with a peculiar look on his face and Langworth asked bluntly where do you want it? He said what do I want what? Langworth waved a hand at what lay in the bed of the truck. It was a mouldery, eight foot tall playhouse. It looked like a piece of junk and now, with the help of Laviana's wife, langworth unloaded the playhouse, heaved it over the chain link fence and dragged it to the middle of Laviana's backyard. Langworth avoided him at looking at him, but he was smiling. Laviana's wife said Cindy Langworth had told her that she had a playhouse she wanted to give away. Laviana's wife thought that their three daughters would like it. Laviana just rolled his eyes. His daughters never entered the playhouse. They said it had cobwebs.
Speaker 1:Captain Al Stewart had never forgiven himself for feigning to catch BTK and when he returned in 1985, he took copies of some of the old files with him to study. He had been through a lot on the job. When he was a young officer, a sniper's bullet had knocked his police cap off his head. When he was a ghostbuster, he had driven himself to tears and drink with frustration. He spent his last years dying of emphysema. He warned his son Roger one day that he did not intend to suffer much longer. He was down to 10% lung capacity and it took him half an hour to walk across the hall from his bedroom to the bathroom. On May 31, 1998, stewart lying in bed put a 25-caliber pistol to his head. He was only 61. On the nightstand beside his body his family found one of his BTK files lying open. He had studied it until the end of his life.
Speaker 1:The phone call came to Patrick Waters' law office around 11 am on August 3, 1998, someone who lived near the lawyer's modern park city was on the phone. There was a guy in Barbara Wolters' backyard, the neighbor said, shooting at a dog with what looked like a tranquilizer rifle. When Wolters got to his mother's house he found Park City Compliance officer Dennis Rader inside her friend's yard. Patrick Wolters asked him to get off the property. Rader would not leave. The Park City Police Chief happened to drive up then and he tried to come both men. When Wolters noticed the dog was gone, a neighbor told him that Rader had opened the gate.
Speaker 1:Three days later Rader delivered a citation to Barbara Wolters saying she had allowed the dog's shadow to run loose. She had received several tickets from Rader. He seemed obsessed, driving by slowly several times a day. She decided to fight the latest ticket. She was sure Rader intended to catch her dog and kill it. One of Patrick Wolters' fellow attorneys, danny Salville, agreed to represent Barbara Wolters and Park City Municipal Court. By the time of the hearing, rader had supplied the judge with a half-inch thick stack of papers supporting his case. He had audio tapes, video tapes of the dog. He had annotated cross-reference notes. The judge continued the case twice because Rader kept saying he needed time to prepare All this over what would be a $25 ticket. The judge found Barbara Wolters guilty. She appealed, then settled before the case reached Sedwick County District Attorney. She got to keep shadow but pay a fine. She was glad to save the dog. Shadow had one characteristic Barbara Wolters now share of he despised Rader.
Speaker 1:On February 26, 1999, a man named Patrick Schoenhofer went out to buy Tylenol and was shot to death by a robber lurking near his apartment. Schoenhofer was only 23. But once from Wichita knocked on his widow's door. Two days later, every god-showing hofer led him in and talked calmly about Patrick for a few minutes. But then a little boy came out of a nearby room. His name was Evan Alexander Schoenhofer. He was two years old. He crawled up into his mother's lap with a questioning look, daddy. He said. Erica Schoenhofer hugged him and she said Daddy's not here. She had turned her face away from her child as she hugged him, hiding her tears.
Speaker 1:Earlier that day one saw her talk to the cop assigned to the case, a detective with a crew cut named Kelly Otis, and Otis was helpful and fun to talk with. He was also worried. He said do not quote me. I will talk enough to help you figure it out yourself, but keep me out of the story. And well, so agreed. As he left to see the Schoenhofer's, otis looked hard at him and said treat us people right when you talk to them. He did not trace it as a request.
Speaker 1:That same week one saw learned that a Wichita lawyer named Robert Beatty had recently spent 45 minutes interviewing Charles Manson. Manson's hippie clan had murdered a movie star and several other people in California in 1969. For decades afterward Manson was the most notorious murderer in national history. Beatty gave one-shot transcript of the Manson interview, in spite of the killer's fame, and Beatty said any read of the transcript will see what a dull person Manson was. The media had made Manson the personification of evil, but in conversation he was boring. Beatty had interviewed Manson to put together a mock trial for his college students At Newman University in Wichita. Beatty taught sophomores about juries. Citizens should know about jury duty before they perform it. He said he wanted to do similar interviews involving other cases the Oklahoma City bombing, maybe BTK. When he had mentioned BTK to his sophomores, beatty said that most of them gave him a blank look. He was ancient history, though they have grown up in Wichita. Thank you for listening to the Murderbook. Have a great week.