Roy Wenzl - Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door

Bind, Torture, Kill

The inside Story of
the Serial Killer Next Door

Roy Wenzl, Tim Potter, L. Kelly, and Hurst Laviana

Contents

We have reconstructed many conversations through the recollections of those involved, quotes in news coverage, and our own notes. To the best of our knowledge, remarks presented within quotation marks reflect what was said at the time.

In cases where dialogue could not be reconstructed but the essence was available, we did not use quotation marks; we used phrasing to indicate that these words are substantially similar to what was saidor in the case of BTK talking to his victims, the conversations as he recalled them.

Italicized phrases reflect participants recollections of their thoughts.

The Wichita Eagle has covered the BTK serial killer since he first struck in January 1974. From 2004 to 2006 alone, the Eagle published roughly eight hundred pieces about BTKs reemergence, the intensive investigation, the resolution, and how the case affected our community. The paper spent thousands of dollars on transcripts of court proceedings, then posted them online for everyone to read. The newspapers expansive and in-depth coverage earned us awards and accolades. Some might think that thered be little new to sayespecially considering the 24/7 attention BTK got from cable news shows.

But weve got the inside scoop. Its not only that we know more about the BTK story than anyone else, weve lived itin my case, grown up with it. We have drawn on the Eagle s thirty-two-year archiveincluding original reporters notes, internal memos, and photographs.

Over the course of three decades, BTK, the Wichita Eagle , and the Wichita police developed complicated relationships. It was through the Eagle that BTK sent his first message in 1974. It was to the Eagle a few years later that the Wichita police chief desperately turned for help in trapping the killer. It was in a macabre letter to the Eagle delivered to the police by reporter Hurst Lavianathat the killer announced his reemergence in 2004. And it was through the Eagle s classifieds that the head of the investigation tricked BTK into making a mistake that led to his capture in 2005.

And when BTKfamily man and church president Dennis Raderwas finally in his prison cell, it was to us, for this book, that Police Lt. Ken Landwehr and his key investigators told their side of the story in intimate detail.

Landwehr and the detectives were unhappy with the rampant errors in other books about this case; they knew we cared about this chapter of our communitys history just as much as they did, and they trusted us to get the facts right. Laviana has covered crime in Wichita for more than twenty years. Tim Potter has been nicknamed Columbo by the cops for his habit of calling back to double-check facts in his notes. Roy Wenzl has two brothers in law enforcement. My father was a Wichita homicide detective.

But this is not a just the facts, maam recitation of the case. The people who stopped BTK are real copsand real characters. Theyve lowered their shields to let us take you along with them on stakeouts and shoot-outs and into their homes and hearts. In the past, talking to us for newspaper stories, theyve been guarded. Landwehrs public face has always been stoic. He has never sought publicity, never played games, never answered questions about himself. He is witty in person, but not easy to know.

Starting work with him on this book, Wenzl told Landwehr that we wanted to portray him accurately, not as a plaster saint, all sweetness and success. I want to know your flaws. I want to ask your wife about your flaws.

Wenzl, who had covered cops for years, could not imagine any police supervisor saying yes to this. It required daring.

Landwehr shrugged, pulled out his cell phone, and dialed Cindy Landwehr.

Hey, he said. Do ya wanna talk to these guys?

Then Landwehr looked at Wenzl.

Once you get her started about that, she might not ever stop.

The portraits of Rader and Landwehr that we have been able to draw for this book are mirror imagesboth men are native sons of the heartland of America, products of churchgoing middle-class families, Boy Scouts who grew up to marry and have children of their own. Yet one became a sexual deviant who killed for his personal pleasure while the other became a cop who dedicated himself to protecting the lives of others. The choices they made destined Rader and Landwehr to become opponents in a deadly game of cat and mouse.

In writing this book, we had a choice to make as well. Others have focused on portraying the evil; we wanted to give equal time to the people who stopped it.

L. KELLY

Her name was Josie Otero. She was eleven years old and wore glasses and wrote poetry and drew pictures and worried about her looks. She had started wearing a bra and growing her hair out; it fell so thick around her head and throat that the man with the gun would soon have a hard time tying the cloth to keep the gag stuffed in her mouth.

As Josie woke up that morning, the man with the gun crept to her back door and saw something that made him sweat: a paw print in the snowy backyard. He had not expected a dog.

He whistled softly; no dog. Still, he pulled a Colt Woodsman. 22 from his waistband and slunk to the garage wall to think.

In the house, Josie had pulled on a blue T-shirt and walked from her room to the kitchen. It was a short walk; it was a small house. Her mom, Julie, was in the kitchen, wearing her blue housecoat. She had set the table, putting out cereal and milk for breakfast and tins of potted meat for school-lunch sandwiches. Joe, Josies dad, was eating canned pears.

At five feet four, Josie was already an inch taller than her mom and as tall as her dad. But she worried the worries of a child.

You dont love me as much as you love the rest of them, she had blurted one day to her brother Charlie. At fifteen he was the oldest of the five Otero kids.

Thats not true, he said. I love you as much as I love any of them.

She felt better; she loved them all, Mom and Dad and Charlie, and Joey, who was nine, and Danny, fourteen, and Carmen, thirteen. She loved the way Joey studied his brothers and tried to be tough like them. He was so cute; the girls at Adams Elementary School adored his brown eyes. This morning he had dressed to draw attention: a long-sleeved shirt pulled over a yellow T-shirt and white undershirt, and purplish trousers with white pockets and white stripes down the back.

It was Tuesday. They would play with the dog, help Mom pack lunches, then Dad would drive Josie and Joey to school as he had done already for Charlie, Danny, and Carmen. Mom had laid their coats on a chair.

Outside, the man hesitated.

In the pockets of his parka he carried rope, venetian blind cord, gags, white adhesive tape, a knife, and plastic bags.

The Oteros had lived in Camden, New Jersey, and then the Panama Canal Zone for seven years, and then their native Puerto Rico with relatives for a few months. They had bought their house in Wichita only ten weeks earlier and were still getting their bearings. Wichita was a big airplane manufacturing center, and this spelled opportunity for Joe. He had retired as a technical sergeant after twenty years in the U.S. Air Force and now worked on airplanes and taught flying at Cook Field, a few miles outside Wichita, the Air Capital of the World. Boeing, Cessna, Beech, and Learjet all had big factories there; the city that once sent sixteen-hundred B-29 Superfortress bombers to war now supplied airlines and movie stars with jets. Julie had taken a job at Coleman, the camping equipment factory, but was laid off a few weeks later in a downsizing.