Carlton Smith - The BTK Murders: Inside the “Bind Torture Kill” Case that Terrified America’s Heartland

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The book you are about to read is the latest bestseller from the St. Martins True Crime Library, the imprint The New York Times calls the leader in true crime! Each month, we offer you a fascinating account of the latest, most sensational crime that has captured the national attention. St. Martins is the publisher of bestselling true crime author and crime journalist Kieran Crowley, who explores the dark, deadly links between a prominent Manhattan surgeon and the disappearance of his wife fifteen years earlier in THE SURGEONS WIFE. Suzy Spencers BREAKING POINT guides readers through the tortuous twists and turns in the case of Andrea Yates, the Houston mother who drowned her five young children in the familys bathtub. In Edgar Award-nominated DARK DREAMS, legendary FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood and bestselling crime author Stephen G. Michaud shine light on the inner workings of Americas most violent and depraved murderers. In the book you now hold, THE BTK MURDERS, acclaimed author Carlton Smith tells the shocking truth behind the notorious BTK murders in Wichita, and the remarkable sequence of events that led to the killers capture.

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For more than thirty years, the city of Wichita, Kansas, lived in the shadow of a nightmare. An unknown serial killer stalked the entire community, periodically surfacing to terrifyBTK, he called himself, for Bind, Torture, Kill. Then came the arrest and guilty plea of 59-year-old Dennis Raderchurch and Cub Scout leader, local civil servant, father of two. I am BTK, Rader told police.

Now, veteran journalist and serial murder expert Carlton Smith, author of The Search for the Green River Killer, takes a look at the horrific BTK case, and provides answers to five critical questions:

Who was the real Dennis Rader, and why did he do it?

How was he able to get away with it for so long?

What kept the police from solving the case far sooner?

Why didnt Raders family and friends realize something was wrong?

What role did the news media play in the crimes, and in their solution?

From the tricks he used to enter his victims homes to the puzzles he sent to the newspaper, and the many chances missed to catch him, this is the story of a man one victims family member called a black hole inside the shell of a human beingand the worst American monster since Ted Bundy.

Dont miss these other True Crime titles from

CARLTON SMITH...

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Reckless

Death of a Doctor

Shadows of Evil

Hunting Evil

Bitter Medicine

Murder at Yosemite

Death in Texas

Dying for Daddy

Death of a Little Princess

Seeds of Evil

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Available from St. Martins True Crime Library

Inside the Bind, Torture, Kill Case
That Terrified Americas Heartland

CARLTON SMITH

THE BTK MURDERS

Copyright 2006 by Carlton Smith.

Cover photo courtesy AP/Wide World Photos.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

ISBN: 0-312-93905-1
EAN: 9780312-93905-2

Printed in the United States of America

St. Martins Paperbacks edition / March 2006

St. Martins Paperbacks are published by St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

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Contents

It was on one of those days that unfolds in every newsroom all across the country. Hurst Laviana, a long-time, experienced police reporter for The Wichita Eagle, was trying to think of a story, something that would engage his editors attention, and hopefully, the newspapers readers.

It wasnt that Wichita, Kansas, didnt have news. A city of 350,000 always had something to write about, and Wichita, once a giant of the plains, then shrunken, now revitalizing around its edges, was certainly no exception. With that many people, and another 150,000 or so in its metropolitan area, somebody was bound to be doing something bad to somebody, somewhere, and that was the nature of Lavianas beast: to tell the good, the bad, and the uglybut usually just the last two.

On this day in the second week of January 2004, Laviana opened his email, and noticed a query from his onetime reporting partner, Bill Hirschman, who had previously moved on to another newsroom in Florida. Laviana had spent some intense times with Hirschman, and now Hirschman wanted to know: was the Eagle going to write and publish a thirtieth anniversary story on the horrible murder case that he and Laviana had worked so hard on, for so long?

Theres nothing so hoary and so detested by newspaper reporters as the anniversary story, usually a grabbag of factoids left over from something that was never really resolved, almost always couched in terms of jogging the readers memory: Mr. So-and-so still remembers the day, twenty years ago, when... In the absence of anything harder in the way of news, the anniversary story was nothing more than a space fillerhandled right, it could be a nice reader, but the chances were, before four or five paragraphs had elapsed, the readers eyes had flipped on to some other subject, or worse, hed have put down the newspaper altogether.

Laviana had no trouble knowing exactly which murder case Hirschman was referring to. For any newspaper reporter, murder cases come and go, a regular staple; and in a place like Wichita, there were probably twenty or thirty a year to choose from. But Laviana knew there were none like the one Hirschman meant: the so-called BTK murder case.

Which, in early 2004, in Wichita, Kansas, was really ancient history.

Somehow, over the last two decades, people had forgotten about BTKthe horrific initials claimed as a signature by an unknown killer who had once bound, tortured and killed his victims: B for the binding, T for the torture, K for the killing.