Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door by Roy Wenzl, Tim Potter, L. Kelly, Hurst Laviana Page A
Tags: Fiction, General, Social Science, Biography & Autobiography, True Crime, Biography, Serial Murderers, Murder, Criminology, Criminals & Outlaws, Case studies, Serial Murders, Serial Killers, Kansas, Serial Murder Investigation, Serial Murders - Kansas - Wichita, Serial Murder Investigation - Kansas - Wichita, Wichita, Rader; Dennis, Serial Murderers - Kansas - Wichita
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old. To store it, the city had sent it underground, to vaults in old salt mines dug under Hutchinson, Kansas, fifty miles to the northwest. The city stored old records there. The first day Holmes went there, he thought, “Wow, I get to go into an old salt mine.” By the next day he already dreaded going into the cold, dark caves.
The BTK files and evidence boxes had become scattered. Holmes began to pull them together and index everything: case files, toys from the Vian house, thousands of pages of BTK reports held in red or green three-ring binders. There were at least five boxes of detective notes.
“We read and read and read,” Stewart would say later. “For the first month, we didn’t do anything but read reports.”
Eagle reporter Hurst Laviana (left) formed an important friendship with Landwehr, based on their mutually quirky sense of humor.
They talked to FBI profilers. The Wichita cops in the task force were beginning to think they should communicate with BTK if he ever resurfaced, and the FBI’s behavioral science guys, whom they consulted, were reaching that conclusion too.
Years before, older detectives probing BTK had created a huge index-card file containing names of suspects they had eliminated. The new task force studied these cards, wondering whether these men should be reexamined. It would mean hundreds of man-hours. They decided yes.
They set up their own indexed lists. From state, county, and city records, they compiled a list of men who lived in the county and were twenty-one to thirty-five years old in 1974. Tens of thousands of names.
They had a separate list of men from WSU, a list of people who worked at Coleman, another list of personnel from nearby McConnell Air Force Base, another from the local electric company. They compiled lists of animal abusers, window peepers, sex perverts, prison inmates, and others.
They wanted to find men who appeared on more than one list. A good idea, but unreliable. They didn’t know it then, but the man they were seeking was there, on the WSU list. But he didn’t have a criminal record. He’d never been stationed at McConnell. And though he’d worked at Coleman like countless other blue-collar Wichitans, it was before Julie Otero and the Brights did; investigators were looking for a coworker. Thousands of people appeared on at least two of the lists, which made them good suspects until blood samples cleared them. The cops ran their own names too�and Paul Holmes, a police shoot-out hero, appeared on four lists. His blood sample cleared him.
BTK had boasted that there was another victim, so far not identified�the fifth of his seven murders. After weeks of debate, the task force decided that victim was Kathryn Bright. They added all the Bright files and evidence bags to the BTK evidence, including one of the bullets that struck Kevin Bright in the head.
Because BTK had shot Kevin with a Colt semiautomatic .22 pistol thought to be a Targetsman or Woodsman model, the cops compiled a massive list of people who had bought such guns.
They set up computer programs to compare lists.
At one point they narrowed their suspect list from tens of thousands to 30 men in Wichita and another 185 living elsewhere. Holmes told the task force they should get blood and saliva samples from every one of them.
“How the hell are you going to convince these men to give you a blood sample?” LaMunyon asked.
“I’m going to walk right up to them and ask,” Holmes said.
To find these men, detectives traveled to nearly every state, driving circuits in two-person teams, to Tulsa, Dallas, Houston, and so on. They pricked fingers to collect blood and touched paper to tongues to collect saliva. In Hutchinson one night, Holmes met with a suspect and his wife. “Your name turned up on a BTK suspect list, and I want to eliminate you from it,” Holmes said. “I need your blood and saliva sample.”
“Don’t give these guys a damned thing,” the woman told her
The BTK files and evidence boxes had become scattered. Holmes began to pull them together and index everything: case files, toys from the Vian house, thousands of pages of BTK reports held in red or green three-ring binders. There were at least five boxes of detective notes.
“We read and read and read,” Stewart would say later. “For the first month, we didn’t do anything but read reports.”
Eagle reporter Hurst Laviana (left) formed an important friendship with Landwehr, based on their mutually quirky sense of humor.
They talked to FBI profilers. The Wichita cops in the task force were beginning to think they should communicate with BTK if he ever resurfaced, and the FBI’s behavioral science guys, whom they consulted, were reaching that conclusion too.
Years before, older detectives probing BTK had created a huge index-card file containing names of suspects they had eliminated. The new task force studied these cards, wondering whether these men should be reexamined. It would mean hundreds of man-hours. They decided yes.
They set up their own indexed lists. From state, county, and city records, they compiled a list of men who lived in the county and were twenty-one to thirty-five years old in 1974. Tens of thousands of names.
They had a separate list of men from WSU, a list of people who worked at Coleman, another list of personnel from nearby McConnell Air Force Base, another from the local electric company. They compiled lists of animal abusers, window peepers, sex perverts, prison inmates, and others.
They wanted to find men who appeared on more than one list. A good idea, but unreliable. They didn’t know it then, but the man they were seeking was there, on the WSU list. But he didn’t have a criminal record. He’d never been stationed at McConnell. And though he’d worked at Coleman like countless other blue-collar Wichitans, it was before Julie Otero and the Brights did; investigators were looking for a coworker. Thousands of people appeared on at least two of the lists, which made them good suspects until blood samples cleared them. The cops ran their own names too�and Paul Holmes, a police shoot-out hero, appeared on four lists. His blood sample cleared him.
BTK had boasted that there was another victim, so far not identified�the fifth of his seven murders. After weeks of debate, the task force decided that victim was Kathryn Bright. They added all the Bright files and evidence bags to the BTK evidence, including one of the bullets that struck Kevin Bright in the head.
Because BTK had shot Kevin with a Colt semiautomatic .22 pistol thought to be a Targetsman or Woodsman model, the cops compiled a massive list of people who had bought such guns.
They set up computer programs to compare lists.
At one point they narrowed their suspect list from tens of thousands to 30 men in Wichita and another 185 living elsewhere. Holmes told the task force they should get blood and saliva samples from every one of them.
“How the hell are you going to convince these men to give you a blood sample?” LaMunyon asked.
“I’m going to walk right up to them and ask,” Holmes said.
To find these men, detectives traveled to nearly every state, driving circuits in two-person teams, to Tulsa, Dallas, Houston, and so on. They pricked fingers to collect blood and touched paper to tongues to collect saliva. In Hutchinson one night, Holmes met with a suspect and his wife. “Your name turned up on a BTK suspect list, and I want to eliminate you from it,” Holmes said. “I need your blood and saliva sample.”
“Don’t give these guys a damned thing,” the woman told her
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