Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door (30 page)

B.T.K.

Landwehr referred to BTK’s message in May 2004, which included “PJ’S” as one of the chapter titles, and noted that English professor P. J. Wyatt had used “O Death” in a class at Wichita State University in the 1970s.

“We are looking for the public’s help on identifying anyone who had used this obscure folk song and had contact with Dr. P. J. Wyatt,” who died in 1991, Landwehr said. “The FBI profilers have confirmed our belief that there is a definite connection in the reference to PJ in the letter we received last May and the folklore song ‘O Death.’”

This was a deliberate stretch. Investigators had consulted Wyatt in 1978 as an expert. After she recognized BTK’s poem as a rewrite of the song, they got copies of her class lists. But BTK had not claimed he had taken Wyatt’s class or that he knew Wyatt.

It was a fat piece of bait for a wild-goose chase, and reporters chased it enthusiastically. At the
Eagle
, crime reporter Stan Finger, courts reporter Ron Sylvester, and others from across the newsroom worked overtime to learn all they could about the very private professor. They talked to friends of Wyatt in Michigan, former employees of her parents’ defunct radio supply business, and countless university sources. The result was two day’s worth of stories dominating the front page, with photos, information boxes, even a sidebar story on the history of the song, which was not “obscure.” It had been recorded since at least the 1920s and had been featured in the George Clooney movie
O Brother, Where Art Thou?

The task force’s true intentions were noted in Johnson’s internal memo: “By doing this release we are inviting a response from him either(1) because he never thought we’d make the connection or (2) to tell us how stupid and wrong we are. In terms of media this will take the heat off the Argonia thing by giving them something else to pursue. It also shows the public that we have other leads and things we are doing besides just the swabbing.”

Johnson underestimated the depth of the
Eagle
’s reporting bench and its willingness to pull people from across the newroom to help with BTK coverage. Tim Potter kept writing about the Argonia story, while religion writer Abe Levy and higher education reporter Katherine Leal Unmuth both had major roles in the Wyatt stories.

The investigators also hoped the Wyatt story would make BTK anxious, Johnson noted: “He is so careful and deliberate that he will not commit a homicide while he is feeling anxiety. This will set him back on his heels.”

The
Eagle
worked to broaden its coverage beyond Landwehr’s news conferences. (Ultimately, the paper would publish nearly eight hundred pieces about the case.) Laviana talked to men whom the task force had swabbed. Potter interviewed former FBI profilers Robert Ressler and Gregg McCrary to paint a picture of how serial killers thought and operated. And Potter flew to New Mexico. There, at the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility, Potter found Charlie Otero, with a goatee and a shaved head, serving a three-year sentence for aggravated battery in a domestic violence case. Charlie had been a straight-A student and on his way to becoming an Eagle Scout when BTK wiped out most of his family. Since then he’d drifted emotionally, taken drugs.

He still hated BTK.

“I want him to go down.”

The BTK discussion board became one of the most popular spots on the
Eagle
’s website. Back in April, the cops had obtained a subpoena, looking for the identity of some of the people who posted comments on the board. None of the “Suspicious Six” were BTK. Months later, Johnson still monitored the site, hoping BTK might join in. It upset her when the messages criticized the cops. She told Landwehr that some of the self-styled BTK experts were idiots. Many discussed their far-flung theories obsessively.

Landwehr avoided looking at the discussion board unless Johnson brought a comment to his attention. The first time that happened, he read other comments out of curiosity.

“Some of these people make a case that I’m a dumb son of a bitch,” he told friends wryly. “After reading what some of them said, I concluded that they are right: I really am a dumb son of a bitch.”

BTK did not respond to the news coverage about Wyatt and the poem, so the cops invented another excuse to communicate and keep him off-kilter. On August 26, six days after the “O Death” news conference, Landwehr stepped before the cameras to talk about the 1979 burglary at Anna Williams’s house and “Oh, Anna Why Didn’t You Appear.”

“We want to talk to anyone who may have seen the original poem, or has any other knowledge of the poem,” Landwehr said.

BTK did not reply.

By September, Chief Williams had noticed that Landwehr had lost weight, perhaps as much as twenty pounds. And he seemed to be moving more slowly. Cindy saw also that when he slept, it was only for a couple of hours.

But he had now somehow completed the bachelor’s degree in history that he had walked away from in 1978. He had been ten college credits short.

He was also overseeing the building of a new house in west Wichita. The house would include a room for his mother. Cindy had suggested it. Irene was eighty-five years old, still living on her own. But someday she would need help. “Why send her to a nursing home?” Cindy said. “I love your mother. Let’s take her in.” Landwehr had been touched. Cindy had the room designed with a wide door in case Irene ever needed a wheelchair.

One day at the construction site, Cindy saw her husband looking at the workers with an odd expression. She suddenly realized he was wondering whether one of them might be BTK, setting them up for an attack.

Otis rode with him to the site one day.

“Hey, Landwehr,” Otis teased. “BTK is probably laying your floor in there right now.”

Landwehr did not laugh.

September progressed with no sign that BTK intended to communicate again. Gouge and the rest of them worried that he was about to kill or go further underground. They wondered whether they might end up like the older cops from the 1970s�haunted by failure.

Every time Chief Williams’s phone rang, he expected to hear that his officers had found bodies in a house with a cut phone line. The television coverage wore on him. Most of it was speculation, and some stations coupled BTK images with creepy music. That just fed BTK’s ego, he thought.

Netta Otis saw her exhausted husband fall asleep in chairs. They fretted over how little time he spent with their children.

On the morning of September 14, the
Eagle
’s fashion writer and social columnist, Bonnie Bing, was standing in the middle of busy Rock Road in northeast Wichita, breathing car exhaust and hawking newspapers as part of a promotion to raise money for United Way.

Bing was a celebrity in Wichita, as well known for her charitable work as her newspaper work. She served on advisory boards, roasted and toasted prominent friends, and emceed dozens of fund-raisers every year. On this morning, she was bellowing enthusiastically at motorists as they rolled past on their way to work. “Come on, buy a paper!”

A strange man walked up and spoke to her.

He looked intense. He wanted her to tell a former
Eagle
opinion page editor, Randy Brown, to meet him under the railroad trestle on Douglas Avenue just half a block west of the
Eagle
building. He had a story to pass along.

“Randy doesn’t work at the
Eagle
anymore,” Bing said. “He hasn’t worked there for years.”

“You can call him,” the man replied. “You can do anything you want.” He walked away.

A few days later he called Bing and renewed his request. Then he said, “Bonnie, leaks have caused consequences. I’ll get back to you.”

Bing called Brown, who now taught at Wichita State. He laughed it off. Journalists get cloak-and-dagger requests from kooks like that one once in a while.

A few days later, Bing got a call from a friend, a real estate agent named Cindy Carnahan, who sounded nervous. Carnahan insisted that Bing drop whatever she was doing and come to her house immediately.

A few minutes later Bing found five big men in Carnahan’s home. One face looked familiar, and Bing caught her breath. It was Ken Landwehr, the homicide lieutenant who was investigating BTK.

He introduced the others: Dana Gouge, Kelly Otis, Clint Snyder, and Tim Relph. Bing listened in shock as the men talked. A letter had arrived at Carnahan’s house. “It has both our names in it,” Carnahan told Bing.

The letter said, “I will contact the sociable Bonnie Bing.”

And it warned that “leaks have consequences.”

“That’s what the guy said to me that day,” Bing said.

“What guy?” Landwehr asked.

She realized, as her stomach began to turn, that these men thought she and Carnahan were the recipients of a BTK communiqué.

As Landwehr asked questions, Bing saw that he seemed stressed and tired but masked it with little jokes. He had a warm and engaging manner, as did the other men. They spoke compassionately, trying to calm her.

Landwehr gave her his work number, his cell number, and his home number. “Call anytime if you need to,” he said.

Bing had walked out of Carnahan’s house feeling unsteady. She went all over town every week reporting stories, speaking to groups, doing TV and radio interviews, volunteering for dozens of charities. She couldn’t stop doing that.

And Landwehr had asked her to keep her mouth shut about her involvement in the newspaper’s biggest story. “I need you to not tell anyone at the
Eagle
about this,” he said. This was a homicide investigation. They could not afford to jeopardize it with a leak. Bonnie had agreed but said she had to tell her husband. If she was at risk, he needed to know. Dick Honeyman, a civil defense attorney, asked Landwehr to talk with him. He was worried about his wife. But when Landwehr said the cops would keep close track of her, Honeyman snorted.

“Good luck with that,” he said.

Landwehr smiled, but he was almost certain that BTK had picked out a new target.

Within two weeks Bing was told to go to the FBI’s Wichita headquarters in the Epic Center. Landwehr wanted Bing to help produce a drawing of the man who had approached her on Rock Road. Landwehr had called the FBI in Quantico, Virginia. “Send me the best sketch artist you’ve got,” he said.

Bing kept her secret. She was sure that she was betraying her profession and her boss,
Eagle
editor Sherry Chisenhall. Twice she walked into Chisenhall’s office to tell her what was going on, then stood mute as Chisenhall waited for her to speak. Each time Bing made up an excuse about why she was there and walked out, weighed down with guilt.

Laviana was getting overwhelmed by requests to sit for interviews but was happy to meet with British clairvoyant Dennis McKenzie and the documentary crew that brought him to Wichita; it was a story. Laviana shadowed them as they visited BTK crime sites, including Anna Williams’s former home and the Otero house. McKenzie said he thought BTK was a maintenance man. Or a plumber.

“When is your next big event where the public will know you’ll be there?” Landwehr had asked Bing at Carnahan’s house.

An auction, Bing said. She would be the emcee for the Boo & Brew Bash, a Halloween costume ball to benefit Dress for Success Wichita.

“You mean, where everybody wears masks?” Landwehr asked.

Landwehr smiled and dropped his head in disgust. “Great!” he said. He glanced at Relph, who smiled tightly. “This is just great.”

A day or so before the ball, Landwehr called Bing and asked her to meet him outside Century II Convention Hall to plan how the cops would protect her and search for BTK in the crowd. When Bing arrived, she was startled at how tired Landwehr looked. He looked like he could go facedown on the pavement. Landwehr did not tell her this, but he was exhausted. All of them were at their wit’s end, almost blind from lack of sleep, wondering if BTK was planning a murder instead of planning another letter.

When the day of the ball arrived, Landwehr sent two detectives…dressed as detectives. “If Bonnie waves to you in the crowd at the auction,” he had teased them, “don’t wave back and accidentally buy something.”

The detectives showed up at the ball, acting as though they did not know Bing. This was standard undercover procedure, which Landwehr and all his detectives followed scrupulously, even on their days off. If Landwehr was in a grocery store, and an undercover cop happened to walk by, Landwehr would never acknowledge him even if he was a friend.
Never tip off the bad guys that you know each other.

At the ball, men wearing masks shook Bing’s hand, and Bing wondered with each handshake:
Is this him?

But how would anyone know?

A month after Bing first met Landwehr, her home security alarm began blaring at 4:00 AM. It indicated that the phone line had been cut.

“This is not good,” Honeyman said. He grabbed a seven-iron and marched downstairs to face the intruder. “Stay here,” he told Bing. “No,” she said. She had already dialed 911 on a cell phone but had not hit the send button yet. As she followed him, someone began pounding on their front door.

“This is the police,” a voice called out. The pounding continued.

Honeyman looked outside and saw a young Wichita police officer at the door. He said he had come to investigate the alarm. Bing told him that she believed she had been the subject of a BTK letter. The officer looked startled and said, “Excuse me, I need to call Lieutenant Landwehr.”

Minutes later, more officers arrived. They searched the three-story home thoroughly. The phone line to the house was intact, and there was no evidence of an intruder. It turned out that an underground phone line had gone faulty, setting off the alarm. Bing watched through a window as telephone repairmen ripped up her street to fix the line. If you ever want really fast phone service, she decided, just call Ken Landwehr.