The a to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (7 page)

In March 2004 the killer sent another package to the media that included photocopies of a woman’s driver’s license and of some photos of the woman’s dead body (see
Xerox
). Her name was Vicki Wegerle, and she was murdered in 1986. Until this latest message, the police had no idea that Wegerle was another BTK victim.

Mug shot of Dennis Rader, aka “BTK”

Other messages followed, and eventually one of them provided the police
with the lead they needed to crack the case. It contained a computer disk that was electronically traced back to a computer in Wichita’s Christ Lutheran Church. Before long, the police narrowed their search to Rader, the church’s balding, fifty-nine-year-old deacon. In all, prosecutors charged Rader with ten murders, the latest committed in 1991, five years after the Wegerle killing.

On June 27, 2005—exactly four months after his arrest—Rader, dressed in a beige sports coat and blue tie, stood in a Wichita courtroom and pled guilty to all ten murders. Speaking in a flat, dispassionate voice—as if he were “reading out of a phonebook,” according to one observer—he offered graphic details of his enormities, explaining how he had trolled for victims, then stalked them, killed them, and—in several cases—masturbated over their bodies.

When the judge asked him about his motivation, the onetime Boy Scout leader and church president calmly replied that he was simply acting out his sexual fantasies.

Ted Bundy

He was a genuine Jekyll and Hyde—a clean-cut Joe College type, so attractive and charming that young women, meeting him for the first time, would climb into his car without hesitation. Once there, however, they found themselves face-to-face with a monster: an implacable lust murderer who tortured and killed with maniacal glee.

Ted Bundy’s bestial alter ego first came roaring to the surface during his student days at the University of Washington. In 1974, he killed seven women in as many months and inflicted permanent brain damage on another, using a metal rod to fracture her skull, then ramming it into her vagina. From Seattle, he moved to Salt Lake City, enrolling in the University of Utah school of law. Before long, he had established himself as an up-and-coming young Republican with bright political prospects. At the same time, however, the creature that lurked beneath this brilliant facade continued to lust after blood. Young women began disappearing from the Salt Lake area—including a police chief’s teenage daughter, whose nude and mutilated remains were eventually found in a canyon.

Bundy also made occasional forays into Colorado, where at least five
other young women vanished and died. In 1976, he was finally arrested but managed to escape twice, once by climbing through a courthouse window, the second time by sawing a hole in the ceiling of his cell.

Ted Bundy; from
Bloody Visions
trading cards

(© & ™ 1995 M. H. Price and Shel-Tone Publications. All rights reserved.)

In January 1978 he turned up in Tallahassee, Florida. By now, the monster inside him—his evil Mr. Hyde—was taking control. No longer did Bundy bother to coax young women into his car. Instead, he simply slipped into their rooms at night and pounced with demoniacal fury. In one case, he nearly chewed off the nipple of a victim, then bit her buttocks so savagely that he left teeth marks in her flesh. Those marks were his undoing. After Florida police arrested him in February—for driving a stolen vehicle—they were able to match photographs of the bite marks with impressions of Bundy’s teeth.

At his trial, the erstwhile law student acted as his own attorney. He failed to impress either the judge or the jury—though he
was
able to delay his execution for ten years following his conviction. In a desperate effort to fend off death, he also began cooperating with authorities. Interviewed by agents of the
FBI
’s Behavioral Science Unit, he offered invaluable insights into the psychology of serial killers. He also confessed to twenty-eight murders (though he is suspected of more, perhaps as many as one hundred).

Ultimately, the legal process caught up with him. He was electrocuted in February 1989. Outside the prison walls, hundreds of people toasted his death with champagne.

“We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.”

T
ED
B
UNDY

C
ALENDARS

Murder Can Be Fun Datebook

(Courtesy of John Marr)

As everyone knows, there’s a “theme” calendar available for enthusiasts of every stripe, from cat fanciers to Tolkien fanatics to connoisseurs of fine art. To satisfy the demand of hardcore horror fans (or “gorehounds” as they
fondly refer to themselves), crime enthusiast John Marr—publisher of the popular “zine”
Murder Can Be Fun
—offered a handsome yearly datebook, the perfect gift for those discriminating people who like to keep track of such important anniversaries as the date of David
Berkowitz
’s second “Son of Sam” killing (October 23) and Gary Gilmore’s execution (December 4). A tour de force of research, Marr’s macabre desk calendar managed to come up with a different depressing event for every single day of the year.

Film Threat
magazine’s 1990 “Mass Murderer” calendar; art by Glenn L. Barr
(Courtesy of Chris Gore, © 1989 Film Threat, Inc.)