The Devil's Dozen (27 page)

What made it worse was that Rader was a thinking man. He watched and waited, and made notes to improve upon his work and avoid mistakes. He was what the FBI would one day label “organized.” Noting how much more difficult it had been to strangle a person than he’d realized, he started working out so he would be in top shape for dealing with victims who struggled. He wanted to kill more efficiently. In addition, he would find employment that allowed him to enter into people’s homes legitimately so he could scope out the layout and calculate the best moment for attack. This was not going to be an easy man to catch. BTK would prove to be a slick and calculating killer who baited police and kept them guessing. An arrest in this case would boil down to a combination of wits and opportunity.

A few months went by before Rader planned and enacted another “project” in April 1974. He had been out looking for women, following some and only dreaming about others. He often peeped into windows and finally settled on a small home on East Thirteenth Street. A twenty-one-year-old college girl, Kathryn Bright, lived there by herself, and she did not have a dog. That was a plus. However, she did have a brother, and after Rader broke in, he found himself unprepared for dealing with a strong young man determined to fight. He shot Kevin Bright twice in the head and left him to die. He then bound Kathryn and stabbed her eleven times, using what he’d read in detective magazines to disable her, but she still fought harder than he’d expected.

Despite his terrible wounds, Kevin managed to get up and flee, alerting neighbors, and Rader quickly left. The police arrived, but they were unable to save Kathryn. She died at the hospital. Kevin described their attacker as being nearly six feet tall, around 180 pounds, in his late twenties, with dark hair and a mustache. While there was some discussion among detectives about the two deadly home invasions that year being related, they ultimately dismissed it. The MO had been too different.

While many men were questioned, no one was identified as the killer. Rader could hardly believe he’d escaped arrest. The entire episode had scared him and he was not sure he would risk it again. Twice he had made mistakes and, despite all his planning, had badly miscalculated. If he kept this up, he would be caught, and that was the last thing he wanted. Rader burned his clothing and wrote a detailed report in his BTK journal. When no one came for him, he began to feel bolder, even invincible. But one thing got his goat, and this personality flaw would ultimately betray him: someone else was taking credit for the Otero murders. He called a reporter at the
Wichita Eagle
and instructed him to go to the public library and look inside
Applied Engineering Mechanics.
There would be a letter detailing the Otero murders that would prove that the person currently bragging about it was not the killer.

The reporter called the police and they learned from the disjointed note, which described the exact positions of the Otero family members, that the offender, who named himself BTK, had studied the habits of other sexual criminals. He said he had a “monster” in his brain that compelled him to kill: “The pressure is great and somt-times he run the game to his liking.” The letter writer indicated that this monster had “already chosen his next victim.” It was a terrifying threat.

The unsolved murders inspired many Wichita residents to purchase security alarms and Dennis Rader got a job installing them. He watched for his next opportunity, certain that this time he would not make the same mistakes he had made in the Bright home. He also became a father and took classes at Wichita State University.

In 1977, more than three years after the Otero incident, Shirley Vian was murdered. She was not Rader’s first choice, but his intended victim had not been home, so he had walked down the street to another place. He entered Shirley’s home despite the presence of three children, all of whom could have identified him, and he locked them in a bathroom. He told Shirley she just needed to submit to what he wanted sexually and she would be all right. But then he bound her, put a plastic bag over her head, and strangled her. The children screamed at him the entire time, and after he left, they escaped to notify neighbors. However, they proved to be useless as witnesses.

Then Nancy Fox, a single woman living alone, drew BTK’s notice. He watched her for a while and was pleased to see that she had no dog and did not entertain men. This house, he decided, would be a safe hit and he designated December 8 as the day on which she would die. Rader arrived to an empty house, cut the phone line, and greeted Nancy when she came in. He handcuffed her and told her he was BTK and she was going to die. When she expired from asphyxiation, he relieved himself in her clothing and walked away with her driver’s license and other items. The next day, he called the police to report the homicide and send them to her address. He wanted to see this in the newspaper, because he felt elated. It was his way of “sharing” the feeling with others.

He then sent a poem to the press referring to Shirley Vian, but they failed to publish anything about it. Only in retrospect did they even understand what it was.

Suggestions for how best to handle this case were contradictory. Some investigators believed that downplaying it would prevent another murder, while others were sure the killer sought attention, and when he didn’t get it, he would be angry enough to kill again. At this time, the profiling unit at the FBI was in its infancy and a couple of agents got involved. They agreed that coverage was the offender’s goal, but wanted to see what he would do if he did not get what he wanted.

He soon sent another poorly written letter to a local television station, KAKE-TV, angry that he was being ignored and explaining that he was among the “elite” serial killers. He included a list of other such offenders he considered his equals—H. H. Holmes, Jack the Ripper, “Ted of the West Coast”—and described how serial killers were motivated by “Factor X.” There was no cure for their illness and they could not stop. He whined that he had not gotten the amount of media attention that others had, and warned that he was already stalking victim number eight. “How many do I have to Kill,” he asked, “before I get my name in the paper or some national attention? Do the cop think that all those deaths are not related?” He was not amused, he said, that the paper was failing to provide details. He included a drawing of the Nancy Fox crime scene.

He claimed seven victims, naming the Oteros, Vian, and Fox, but not the fifth victim. There were several possible candidates, but detectives decided it was probably Kathryn Bright, despite the initial decision to exclude her from the circle.

Soon BTK got what he wanted. The story was publicized: Wichita had a local serial killer who had murdered seven people and threatened to kill more. The police wanted residents to lock their doors. This guy was a stalker; he was careful, crafty, and he passed as ordinary. He watched and entered homes. No one knew where he would strike next and the police did not know how to stop him.

Rader liked to send cryptic notes, puzzles, and leads that proved to be false. No one was quite sure which of the things BTK said were truthful and which were lies. He continued to communicate until 1979, offering a sexually graphic signature by which to authenticate his communications, but there were no new murders that anyone could link to him. Detectives who noticed that most of the communications had been photocopied tracked down all the area copying machines to try to identify the signature of the one the killer used. The Xerox Corporation assisted, helping to pinpoint a library and a machine at WSU.

At one point, a panel of psychiatrists evaluated the communications and decided that BTK viewed himself rather grandiosely as part of a larger scheme. With his references to “the monster,” he was possibly setting up an insanity defense, should he ever need it. A child psychologist thought he had an emotional problem or a learning disability.

The residents of Wichita felt terrorized, wondering who might become this man’s next victim. Profilers suggested planting a subliminal message into a news program, as well as placing a classified ad to “BTK,” but neither strategy hooked a response or goaded him to act out and make the hoped-for mistake. Rader was looking to his personal responsibilities, having become a father again. Now he had a son and a daughter.

Investigators had spent a lot of time and devoted a lot of resources to catching the BTK killer, but failed in their mission. Each and every officer directly involved was disappointed. As they marked the tenth anniversary of the Otero murders, they could only wonder if BTK had been arrested for something else, left the area, or died. The received wisdom on serial killers, especially given the way BTK had described himself, was that they did not just stop. In 1984, a new task force started going systematically through all the files to see if there was something they had missed.

People were asked for blood samples and suspects were summarily eliminated, one by one. The FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood offered a detailed portrait, albeit full of information that already seemed apparent: the killer was sadistic, controlling, and superficial. He read detective magazines and pornography, enjoyed S&M practices with a partner, and liked to drive around. Nothing Hazelwood said moved authorities closer to an identification.

Rader had indeed stopped for a while. It was almost ten years from the last murder to the next, but in 1985, he attacked an elderly women, Marine Hedge, who lived on his own street. This time he dumped the body in a ditch in a wooded area, where it lay for nine days before it was found. No one on the task force could anticipate that Rader was trying to outsmart the FBI, with its stereotypical profiles. He had purposely stopped for a while, killed outside his victim type, and left a victim outside. He offered no communication and simply enjoyed in private the excitement of the hunt. In fact, he flouted his religion by taking the body to his church and abusing it there.

Soon thereafter, in 1986, he targeted Vicki Wegerle, who was married. Pretending to be a telephone repairman, he persuaded her to let him in. Once he dropped the disguise, she fought valiantly, but she was no match for him. He strangled her, took photographs for his collection, stole her driver’s license, and left. He sent no communications and was not publicly linked to the crime, so Wegerle’s husband became the chief suspect. He was never charged, but the police continued to believe he was a wife killer. Vicki’s murder went unsolved.

With the development of DNA analysis for crime investigation in the United States in 1987, investigators had a viable way to match semen samples with a suspect, if they ever developed one. It was much more precise than the blood tests they’d been using. However, the task force was disbanded and only one detective, Ken Landwehr, remained on the case.

But Rader stopped again, for five years. He was nearing fifty, but was still interested in trolling around to look for “projects.” He found Dolores Davis, who lived alone in Park City. Again, this was close to home, but so far neither the cops nor his wife suspected him of anything. It seemed to him he could do whatever he liked, without consequence. He broke into Dolores’s home, strangled her, took photos, and dumped her beneath a bridge. All the while he was assisting with a Boy Scout outing involving his son. Soon he became a compliance officer, helping to enforce Park City’s ordinances, and lived by the letter of the law. He also became president of the congregation at his church. Some people liked him, others did not.

Nearly two decades passed before BTK was heard from again. In March 2004, a reporter for the
Wichita Eagle
decided to write a thirty-year retrospective of the Otero slaughter and other murders associated with BTK. The story mentioned that few people were even aware of the old BTK cases and said that a local author was writing a book about the unsolved murders. Rader did not like being forgotten or having his story in someone else’s hands, and he went through his private files.

The newsroom received a letter on March 19 from “Bill Thomas Killman” that contained three photographs of a woman who was clearly dead. She had been posed in a variety of ways and a photocopy of her driver’s license was included: it was Vicki Wegerle. Now her husband was finally off the hook. Clearly, BTK had killed her and taken trophies that he’d kept all these years.

The police had run a DNA test the year before on skin under Vicki’s fingernails, and they used it to compare to thousands of suspects via an offender database, as well as to people who volunteered samples, but they’d failed to link it to anyone. A geographical profile indicated that BTK probably lived or worked not far from the crime scenes, which were only four miles apart, and that he had some association with Wichita State University. The Kansas Bureau of Identification’s cold-case unit got busy on the old file—more than three dozen boxes of papers and items. Despite this renewed flurry of activity, it amounted to nothing.

In May 2004, a package was found that contained a partial manuscript with thirteen chapters entitled
The BTK Story
(which actually plagiarized an online site). Later, another package surfaced that detailed the Otero slaughter, and another that took credit for a murder that was more likely a suicide. The cops tried to bait this person, but he didn’t respond until he was good and ready, which was late in October.

Dennis Rader was now fifty-nine. He went looking for another victim, but was thwarted in his effort. In December, he called KAKE-TV but could not get through, so he left another package in a park. It contained the driver’s license of one of the 1977 victims, Nancy Fox, along with a doll, bound with string. BTK had reported this murder to police dispatchers. He also used the right signature, which had never been publicized. Although they could not necessarily trust his “autobiography,” the task force believed they knew his age and some of his interests. They thought he was familiar in some capacity with law enforcement and soon had a blurred photo of someone they believed was him driving a dark vehicle and dropping off a package at Home Depot. They began to consider that BTK was linked to the two murders in Park City. Yet despite more than 5,600 tips, they still could not identify him.