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shy
Crypt Keeper
 
Australia
1969 Posts |
 Posted - 30 March 2004 : 07:58:52 AM
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Police still seek tips about BTK killer
Wichita police continue to collect tips from residents about the identity of the BTK serial killer.
The killer, who murdered seven people in the 1970s, resurfaced last week with a letter to The Wichita Eagle claiming responsibility for an eighth death in 1986.
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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
1969 Posts |
Posted - 30 March 2004 : 07:59:22 AM
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Nearly 1,000 BTK tips, e-mails keep police busy
Wichita police are continuing to sort through hundreds of telephone calls and e-mails with tips on a Wichita serial killer who resurfaced last week after a quarter century of silence.
In the latest briefing this morning, homicide squad commander Lt. Ken Landwehr said police have received 650 phone tips and 320 e-mails on a killer known only at BTK. The name stands for a description of the attacker's crimes -- bind, torture and kill -- in a series of slayings aimed mostly at women during the 1970s.
Over the weekend, police cut back the hours of the non-traceable phone line (263-0138) to 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. to concentrate on following leads. E-mail tip may also be sent to coldcase@wichita.gov.
Police last week confirmed that a letter which arrived at The Wichita Eagle newsroom March 19 was from the BTK strangler. The letter suggested the killer was taking responsibility for responsible for the Sept. 16, 1986, death of Vicki Wegerle, who was found in her home at 2404 W. 13th St. The crime was never solved.
The return address on the letter said it was from Bill Thomas Killman -- initials BTK.
The man known as BTK is credited with eight killings.
There has been no indication that BTK plans to strike again. Before the letter surfaced, police thought the killer was either dead or in prison. Police have since reopened old cases and are testing the evidence using current technology.
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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
1969 Posts |
Posted - 30 March 2004 : 08:00:23 AM
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Do you know BTK?
He's smart, and he probably fits right in. From the clues he's left, the killer tells us about who he is.
We prefer our killers stupid and sloppy, like the Carr brothers -- caught within hours.
BTK plays by other rules.
He's no bungling thug. BTK is quick-witted, organized, smart, free... and now he's back.
But who is this man thought to have killed eight people, terrorizing us 25 years ago and dropping back into our lives last week?
In the everyday life he's living (and he's probably living it among us), he might not only blend in, he might be easy to like. Your friend. Your neighbour. The lawyer guy. The firefighter across the street. The teacher. The Boeing guy with a union card and Wichita roots.
Some old hands like former police investigator Mike McKenna think he's a loner, but that doesn't mean he acts like a nut or talks to no one, or can't tell a good story from a bar stool.
He is "a yellow-bellied snake of a coward of a creature," as the old sheriff Vern Miller called him Thursday.
But he's free, in part because he arranges his everyday life as carefully as he lays his secret plans.
He probably looks like... us.
So let's look at him.
BTK has shown us traces of a personality, faint but discernible. We can see these traces in his acts and words.
For the victims, for the police and for ourselves, we need to study the faint portrait that BTK's notes and murders provide us. BTK wants to inspire fear; let him inspire us to effort.
This is BTK's faintly etched self-portrait, based not only on yellowing newspaper clips and police news conferences, but on the notes BTK sent, and the carefully tied knots he left wrapped around the ankles and wrists and throats of the souls he killed.
BTK knows he's smart. He flaunts it. He probably flaunts it in everyday life, too. In the density of detail he typed out about the Otero murder, the reader can see his ego
"Those... you have in custody are just talking to get publicity," BTK wrote to The Eagle in 1974. "I did it by myself and with no ones help. There has been no talk either. Let's put it straight..."
BTK is depraved.
"I always suspected that he took pictures, and that he possibly made tape recordings of his kills," said McKenna, a former Wichita police investigator who now is police chief in Baldwin City. "From what I hear now about this latest message, that it includes photographs, we know now that he did take pictures. I think he probably made recordings, too. He'd be able to play them back, relive the excitement of the kill."
His depravity went beyond pictures.
Keith Sanborn, now 81, served as the Sedgwick County district attorney in 1974, when BTK bound, gagged and strangled the four Oteros.
It was the first BTK killing, though no one knew it at the time. Within hours of the murders, Sanborn walked into the Otero house.
"I wish I could wipe the memory clean," he said Thursday. "It looked depraved. There was a disrespecting of the dead people. I don't think we wanted some of the details of that disclosed, to head off false confessions, but there were several things done.
"It was bad. It hurt everyone involved emotionally. I've never been able to shake the memory of it."
No arrest ever came of it, because the killer prepared for and performed his work with thought and care. The police drawings of the crime scene showed detailed, careful work. Cords. Ropes. Hoods.
In crime, and probably in real life, BTK displays a wry sense of humor, though like Hitler, he seems to prefer the taunting humor that belittles others' weaknesses, ignorances or wounds. He probably shows flashes of the same kind of humor in everyday life. Wry, critical of others, critical of authority.
He wrote poems about his victims.
He sent messages years ago, complaining that California's "Zodiac Killer" seemed to be getting more publicity than BTK, McKenna said.
In the note he sent the community after the Otero murders, BTK wrote a detailed description of the crime scene, noting that Mr. Otero's wristwatch was missing: "I needed one so I took it," he wrote. "Runs good."
In his Otero note, he tends to be short of sentence, but long-winded. Like people in everyday life who equate braininess with overwriting, he buries his readers in detail. The Otero note goes on and on.
But it also shows a careful observer: minute description beyond the desire or memory of most people. He might even have taken notes over the bodies. He painstakingly describes body positions, items and colors of clothing, types of ropes and gags and cords and hoods employed for each victim.
He made spelling errors, typing mistakes and worded sentences awkwardly , but might be faking those.
"It was almost like English wasn't his first language," said Ken Stephens, a former Eagle reporter who covered BTK for years. "But I suspect nearly every clue he's ever given involves misdirection."
Stephens, now with the Dallas Morning News, is a thorough reporter; he still has his BTK notes, though he left The Eagle 19 years ago. He dug them out Friday, and e-mailed some details. After the Otero murder, BTK wrote that long note, stuck it in a book at the Wichita library, and called Don Granger, an editorial board member at The Eagle, to tell him where to find it. Stephens interviewed Granger later.
The caller did not identify himself as BTK. He said "Listen and listen good, I'm only gonna say this once," Granger said. He then said there was a letter about the Otero case in a book in the public library. He identified the book, possibly by number. Granger then called the police and they went and got it. Granger never saw or touched the letter. Granger recalls the voice as being "hard and aggressive." No accent. Definitely Midwestern U.S. Seemed to be 25 to 35, also seemed to be someone "who seemed to be used to giving orders. Not someone who wanted to give orders. Someone who was used to giving orders."
BTK likes to stir things up.
He did so in 1978, when he sent notes revealing that the Otero murders and three others were linked. An Eagle reporter, Casey Scott, covered the news conference revealing, for the first time, that Wichita harbored a serial killer of at least seven people.
"The whole town was talking about it, every barber shop and beauty shop, gossiping about it for years," said Scott, now assistant athletic director at Kansas State. "People talked about it endlessly, speculating, wondering whether the cops had bungled the first investigation on the Oteros, wondering if they'd done a good job. It was the source of endless debate."
BTK seemed to like this, Scott said.
He stirred up Wichita again Thursday.
"I went to a gathering this morning, a board meeting of the Parallax Drug Treatment Center," Miller said Thursday. "Every woman there felt terrified; every man was furious, and wanted to hunt the yellow coward down."
Miller was Kansas attorney general when BTK first killed, then served as Sedgwick County district attorney from 1977 to 1981. He never worked directly on a BTK case, but remembers how the state talked about it.
"Now everyone feels frightened again," he said. "I talked to an old friend last night, and I'm sure he said what a lot of people think. He said, "Vern, tonight the gun lies beside the bed.' "
Stephens, from his notes, reminds us that several people saw BTK. From a police interview Stephens did on July 16, 1979, he heard that a female postal clerk actually talked to BTK when he came in at 4 a.m. on June 16 that year to mail one of his communiques, this one to KAKE-TV.
"A female postal clerk happened to open a door and a man was standing there. He said 'put this in the KAKE box' and handed the envelope to her. She didn't think much about it.
"Later, she described him as about 30 years old, about 5 feet nine inches tall, white. He was wearing a blue jean jacket, jeans and gloves (in June!) He was clean shaven, with hair cropped short above the ears. He had a gap between his front teeth."
BTK is disciplined.
For example, evidence he left behind shows that BTK's murders involved sexual overtones. In most serial killers, the sexual element compels the criminal to take risks, dispensing sometimes with careful planning. Not BTK.
"He is either quite smart with a great deal of self -control, or he's one of luckiest individuals on the face of the planet," said Bill Hirschman, an Eagle police and investigative reporter until 1994, who studied BTK for years.
It's not luck, Hirschman said.
"He has yet to make a bush league mistake. He plans. He stalks."
In the Otero note, BTK mentions "putting victim's number down, follow them, checking up on them, waiting in the dark, waiting, waiting..."
BTK waits intelligently, Hirschman said.
"He can go months or years without rising into the radar."
BTK has an ego.
"Arrogance, self-confidence, a superiority complex," said Stephens, when asked what he recalls about BTK's letters.
"You could tell he felt safe."
He obviously thinks he's more intelligent than the police, Hirschman said. "Why else would he rise out of his rabbit hole, send letters?
"He's looking for recognition. And there's careful planning in that, too. Some of the things he did, he did on the anniversaries of his killings. I suspect if we figured the whole thing out, we'd find a reason for every single thing he ever did."
"Experts" on BTK have said a number of things about him. Some seem to think he's smart and highly educated; some said he's not smart, not highly educated. These contradictions probably amuse BTK.
"Some people have speculated that he's a weirdo, and probably appears a weirdo in everyday life," Stephens said.
"But I'm not sure about that. He's good at this, and again, it could be misdirection."
Others, including McKenna, have speculated that he's a loner. But if so, that doesn't mean he always keeps to himself. Some loners interact easily with people when they choose.
Consider these words, from a Feb. 11, 1978, clipping from The Eagle. It concerns the death of BTK victim Shirley R. Vian.
Her children told police that they had been held captive in the bathroom while a man the children said they didn't know attacked their mother.
Vian's 6-year-old son was sent to a grocery store twice that morning on orders of his mother, who said she wasn't feeling well, police said.
On returning from his second trip about 11:45 a.m., the boy was stopped near his house by a stranger, who shows him a picture of a child and woman and asked him if he recognized them.
The boy told police that he had said no, but later the same man came to the door of Vian's home. He had a gun in one hand and a bowling bag or small suitcase in the other, the children told police.
"Don't hurt us," Mrs. Vian said to the man, according to what the children told police.
"I'm not going to," the man replied, then started to tie up Mrs. Vian's 8-year-old son.
He's capable of mistakes.
"He left several living witnesses," Stephens said. "Vian's children, for example. (Kathryn) Bright's brother, though BTK shot him in the head. And he made a phone call, which was recorded. He's come close to getting caught."
He made one mistake that looms larger in his imagination now, no doubt. He left his DNA at several crime scenes. In the 1970s, when he killed most of his victims, most people hadn't a clue what DNA was. Now there are entire television shows devoted to how police and forensic scientists use it to identify killers.
Even with his mistakes, he can ad-lib a crime in progress, think on his feet. When BTK broke into Kathryn Bright's home and hid in the closet on April 4, 1974, he probably didn't think she'd come home with her brother, and that the brother would fight heroically.
But here's how BTK reacted, from a story published in the Eagle on Feb. 12, 1978:
According to a report given to police by Kevin Bright, the man told them he wouldn't hurt them, but needed money and their car for a trip to New York. He said he was wanted by police in California.
The man forced Bright to tie his sister to a chair, then took Bright to another room, where he was tied and gagged, police said.
The man left the room and rummaged through the house for several minutes, Bright told police. The man returned to the room where Bright was tied, and began strangling him with a rope. Bright told police he struggled and got his hands free. The man then shot Bright in the forehead.
The killer returned to the living room, where Miss Bright was tied, police said. Bright told police he heard his sister say 'What have you done to my brother?'
The man returned to the room where Bright was tied, and began strangling Bright a second time. Bright said he again struggled. The man shot him again, with the second bullet hitting him in the face just above the mouth. Bright said he feigned death, and remembered hearing his sister moaning from the next room.
Bright said he was able to escape through a side door and flag down a passing motorist.
Police found Miss Bright with three stab wounds to the abdomen....
The overriding trait Stephens remembers of BTK is arrogance tempered by extraordinary planning.
"He never revealed his writing; everything was typed and Xeroxed or written with letter block stamps or something like that. Every crime he did was carefully scouted out. He'd pick a victim, follow them, figure out when they'd be coming home, get in while they were out, and wait for them."
He likes mystery.
Among the mysteries: Where has he been since 1979? The sender of the latest message is definitely BTK, police say. The last known contact before that occurred in 1979.
"The common assumption would be that he's been in prison, or maybe living somewhere else, doing the same thing perhaps," Stephens said.
"I don't know about that. He could have been living in town the whole time."
McKenna thinks that's what BTK did... lived among us all these years.
"But whoever he is, whatever he's done, he's not made the right mistakes yet," McKenna said.
BTK will never give us good clues, Stephens said. But while we worry, BTK worries too, just a little bit.
"He does not want to get caught," Stephens said. "He does not want to get dragged into court, to have his identity revealed, to have his idiosyncrasies exposed, examined and ridiculed."
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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
1969 Posts |
Posted - 30 March 2004 : 08:01:31 AM
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Answering BTK: Let's manage our fears
As Wichita woke up last week to the news of BTK's re-emergence, a war over our peace of mind began. Jada Campbell, brushing her hair and listening closely to radio reports, kept nervously peeking out of her bathroom and down the hallway of her apartment, unsure whether she'd actually heard anything.
Fear had set in.
One of her friends had asked if she could spend the night because she was too afraid to go home to an empty house.
When Jada arrived at work, she and the other waitresses and lunch-hour customers at Heroes Sports Bar found themselves shaken by the news.
BTK, a killer linked to seven murders in the 1970s and one in 1986, may have won the first round.
Most terrorists do.
They puncture our calm and tap into our most fragile vulnerabilities. They use our imaginations to turn shadows and doubt into terrifying marionettes.
That's the battle many now face.
It has been roughly 30 years since a serial killer called BTK -- for Bind, Torture and Kill -- began stalking Wichita.
The killer has claimed responsibility for an eighth slaying in a letter The Eagle received March 19. The letter suggests that he was responsible for the Sept. 16, 1986, strangulation death of Vicki Wegerle, who was found dead in her west-side home.
The crime was never solved.
For those of you who didn't live here then, you may have trouble understanding how a letter about a nearly 18-year-old murder could leave your new neighbors so shaken.
The Wichita of the past couple of decades has had street gangs, drug trade and quadruple homicides. But those of us who've been around longer remember streets so safe that it wasn't always necessary to lock your door.
BTK became our dividing line between those eras.
Once again, people running businesses with night staffs have revisited security procedures or instituted them.
Mothers are calling daughters who don't live at home and asking them to please call and let Mom know they got home OK.
Husbands are bolting their families behind doors or hiding shotguns under beds.
"There's a lot of concern," said Irene Armstrong, past president of the Southwest Neighborhood Association. "But we all have to keep on living."
For people like 20-year-old Jada, who isn't old enough to remember the aftermath of the murders, the killer's re-emergence has them on edge.
And it doesn't seem to matter that all of this happened more than a quarter-century ago.
What's left has the texture of a terrorist attack, a feeling of being cruelly pushed and manipulated out of a comfortable orbit.
That's probably why he contacted The Eagle and sent horrific photos of the 1986 crime scene.
The killer wants us again to move directly to our telephones when we get home and press them to our ears, listening for a dial tone. He was known to clip phone wires and then hide inside his victims' homes.
He wants us clenching cell phones with 911 already dialed, thumb on the send button.
The killer wins when we tip-toe around at fear's heel. As difficult as it may be, we must not allow him the satisfaction.
We have to respond the way many Wichitans already have: by phoning in nearly 300 tips to the BTK hotline (263-0138) since Wednesday night and by trying to remain calm.
"I don't think the whole city should shut down in fear," said a young woman who works late downtown and who didn't want her name used. "We just need be a little more careful."
Whether or not instilling terrorist fear is the killer's intent, we still have to respond as if it were.
That means matching his resolve to frighten us with our own resolve to manage our fear.
And not let it control our lives.
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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
1969 Posts |
Posted - 30 March 2004 : 08:02:46 AM
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A second era's young women now fear BTK
Until three days ago, the letters "BTK" had no significance to any of the four young women who were chatting away during a break Friday at Friends University.
Now that the serial killer who used those initials during a 1970s murder spree has resurfaced -- sending a letter to The Wichita Eagle indicating responsibility for an unsolved 1986 murder -- each of the young women knows that BTK stands for "bind, torture and kill."
They don't mind admitting that, like many other young women in Wichita, the knowledge makes them anxious.
"I'm concerned. I'm scared," Mary Dix said. "I live at home with my parents, but when I'm walking alone at night, it's kind of scary."
Although the killer's victims ranged from a 38-year-old man to his 11-year-old daughter, half were women in their 20s.
Officials responsible for security on Wichita's college campuses and at some apartment complexes say that they're aware of the anxiety many women in that age group are feeling but that they can only advise caution and warn against overreaction.
"A lot of people are talking...but we haven't had any direct calls regarding BTK from any of the students," said Rich Oliverson of Newman University. "Naturally, we'll continue to do our patrols like we do normally, with a few more patrols."
Wichita State University is on spring break, but Lt. Bruce Johnson of the campus police said they had "heard a lot of talk about it."
There haven't been any calls to the campus police about it, Johnson said, and nothing in BTK's past suggests he would target a college campus.
"The only people who seem to be concerned live off campus," Johnson said. He said he told them the same thing that Wichita police have advised: Just take normal precautions.
"But I'm sure that some locksmiths are getting extra business," Johnson said.
Dix and her friends, Brianna Baty and Laura Brotherton, said BTK's reappearance has caused them to make a few changes in their routines. Dix is planning to buy some Mace, while Baty said she is "checking the closets, and behind every door, and behind the shower curtain."
Each of the women knows that the chance of being a victim is remote, but as Brotherton said, "you still have to be aware."
The teenage college students said they hadn't heard of BTK until the recent media coverage following his letter to The Eagle, even though all had grown up in the city. By now, even newcomers to the town are familiar with the serial killer.
"Right now, we're not doing anything different," said Angela Champion, who works in the office at Riverpark Plaza Apartments. "As far as what the residents are saying, we did have one woman come in (and) ask for extra locks.
"Other than that, we're not doing too much differently. But here in the office we're talking about it. We're all single females."
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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
1969 Posts |
Posted - 30 March 2004 : 08:03:55 AM
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Police turn quiet on BTK
As national media flock to the story, authorities are tight-lipped except to ask for the public's help.
Confronted by a growing onslaught of local and national media attention, Wichita police officers closed ranks Friday and remained quiet as they continued their search for a serial killer who is thought to have killed eight people from 1974 to 1986.
In a terse statement at a City Hall news conference Friday morning, Lt. Ken Landwehr said police -- aided by the FBI and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation -- were continuing to ask for the public's help in the BTK case. He said detectives were prioritizing leads from 365 telephone and e-mail messages received since Wednesday night.
And that is all he said. He also refused to take questions on the case and said the next public statement will be Monday at 10 a.m.
But the lack of information has done nothing to quell the interest among the public and the media.
Since The Eagle reported Thursday that police think a letter sent to The Eagle came from BTK and linked him to a previously unsolved 1986 crime, the case has quickly become an international story.
Police will not say why they are convinced the letter came from BTK. The Eagle has agreed not to publish several of the details in the letter that have led police to this conclusion.
The letter, which arrived in The Eagle newsroom on March 19, contained a single sheet of paper with a photocopy of the driver's license of Vicki Wegerle, who was found strangled in her home in 1986. The page also contained copies of three pictures of her body.
The return address said the letter was from "Bill Thomas Killman" -- a person who police say does not exist.
Evidence of the media interest was easy to see Friday morning at City Hall.
While Landwehr was giving his news briefing inside the building, dozens of out-of-town reporters and producers were outside preparing stories about the case.
Fox News, MSNBC, CNN and CBS News are among the news outlets that have either sent news crews to Wichita or have run segments on the re-emergence of the serial killer.
With the Police Department not talking, many out-of-town reporters were turning to retired officers who worked on the BTK case years ago.
A CNN news crew visited the newsroom at The Eagle on Friday, and a "Dateline NBC" crew is expected to be in town next week. Newspapers in Miami, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago and New York all carried the BTK story Friday.
A quick search on the Internet for the case shows how wide its coverage has gone. A quote from Landwehr that appeared in The Eagle on Thursday appeared Friday in newspapers in Indiana, Alberta, Australia and Singapore.
The quote said simply, "I'm 100 percent sure it's BTK."
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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
1969 Posts |
Posted - 30 March 2004 : 08:04:34 AM
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OPINION LINE
God have mercy on the soul of Wichita if we don't finally catch this BTK freak.
I wonder if the BTK strangler is really back, or if this is just a hoax to justify the concealed-carry law.
If state legislators are so ashamed of what they get from lobbyists that they want to keep it secret, they shouldn't accept anything. Lobbying is bribery, anyway, and should be banned.
Regarding the rising rates of middle-aged suicides: When you teach students that they only evolved from monkeys and are no more special than an insect, these individuals begin to feel worthless and are more prone to do such a thing.
The gas stations in Texas and Oklahoma have very different gas prices, even when located just across the street from one another. Is there some type of collusion going on in Kansas?
With the gasoline and other fuel shortages we're having right now, I think it's totally wrong for the Legislature to have passed the bill allowing 75 mph on the freeways.
Regarding "Air ball: Graduation rates shameful" (March 20 editorial): This problem starts at the high school level when kids are athletes first and students second. Allowing athletes with failing grades to participate sends the wrong message.
How many NCAA players earn degrees by taking basket weaving, as opposed to a good college education that will get them good jobs?
College athletics have always been and always will be about money. Colleges don't recruit 7-foot centers and 260-pound linebackers because they make good grades.
I'm so glad to see Europe is willing to do what the United States is not -- make Microsoft fess up to its monopoly. It wants to rule the world, and Europe is saying no.
Regarding "Soccer groups should pay fair share" (March 9 opinion pages): The community does benefit from children playing soccer on city fields, in that the fields are there for the community to use. Soccer is the best thing that ever happened to Wichita.
For all those people who believe the city spends $700,000 a year on soccer fields, I have some swampland in downtown Wichita to sell you.
A great big "thank you" to Steve Painter and The Eagle for the hard, diligent work letting us know what is happening in Topeka.
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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
1969 Posts |
Posted - 30 March 2004 : 08:05:06 AM
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OPINION LINE EXTRA
Now that the BTK killer is in town, it may be a good time to carry a concealed weapon. Legal or not, we must protect ourselves and our families.
BTK? I've changed my mind about gun control. Bring 'em on.
Now I suppose if we can't find BTK again, that will be blamed on President Bush, too.
No one seems happier to have BTK return than KAKE, Channel 10. It's lost touch with the reality of the horrific deaths of the innocent victims in its glee in bragging about the station's involvement in feeding the terror both now and during the '70s.
I think it's funny how kids join the military in peacetime, get their government checks, then pound their chests when they leave, saying how they defended their country and did their job. Then when they're actually in a war and having to defend their country and do their job, they want out.
We need to find the money to support the fight against racial profiling. Racial profiling taints everything else we try to do. How can we teach our children to learn when they have to cope with racial profiling? State Sen. Donald Betts, D-Wichita, is absolutely right. His bill has to have our support.
We should be entitled to know the compensation of state employees. That should not be a closed record. We all need to pay attention to what's going on in Topeka, and get out and vote for the people who don't try to do underhanded things.
To the reader who questioned why USD 259 children are bused: Many kids do walk to school. Busing gives minority kids half a chance they may not have in their poorer neighborhoods. USD 259 gives parents the choice of sending kids to other schools across town.
Individuals who take jabs at revenue-producing and character-building athletics programs in school are clueless about the very small percentage of the overall budget they consume.
Shooting at someone with the intent to wound when you believe that person is trying to kill you is tantamount to committing suicide.
Regarding a comment questioning the sanity of people who wear shorts in mid-March: Just because it's 70 degrees outside, and I want to stay cool, it doesn't mean I have a screw loose.
Is the complainer that miserable -- that they want everybody else to be miserable, too?
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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
1969 Posts |
Posted - 30 March 2004 : 08:05:51 AM
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Keeping watch
The BTK case reinforces what some Wichitans have thought for a while: It's a good idea to know your neighbours.
Bill Davis helped create a Citizens on Patrol program about two years ago to prevent someone like the BTK serial killer from taking his neighborhood by surprise.
Since the news broke Thursday that police think BTK is still in Wichita, others may now have the same idea as Davis.
"We all believe in helping out our neighborhoods," said Davis, president of the South Central Progressive Neighborhood Association, which has been in existence for 15 years. "We look out for one another."
The re-emergence of BTK is a somber reminder, community members said Friday, that participating in neighborhood initiatives and working with community police officers remains an effective way of fighting crime. Communication, above all, is the key to safe neighborhoods, they said.
Every month, Davis prints 2,000 copies of his newsletter and calls neighbors reminding them of meetings so apathy won't take over the association's progress, he said.
Wichita Independent Neighborhoods can assist groups interested in starting, reviving or maintaining these associations, said Bill Fox, a WIN founder and former president of the North Riverside Neighborhood Association.
WIN indirectly helps reduce crime even though its primary purpose is to help residents address environmental, zoning and trash concerns, he said.
"If a neighborhood cleans itself up," Fox said, "(it) also becomes less open to crime."
Setting up an association means defining neighborhood boundaries, rallying neighbors to participate, creating a meeting time and date, identifying issues within the area that need to be addressed and working with community police officers.
While associations cover an expansive area, neighborhood watches tackle crime block by block, said Officer Heather Frazier, the Wichita Police Department's neighborhood watch coordinator.
Frazier said the success of neighborhood watches depends on the willingness of neighbors to be observant.
"There's nothing like having good, watchful neighbors," she said.
Jerry E. Miller, a member of the Mead Neighborhood Association, said that his neighbors in south Wichita watch his home and that he returns the favor.
"You're not going to see much if you don't occasionally look out," Miller said.
BTK apparently stalked or scouted his victims, Miller said.
"Think about it: Somebody had to see him at least once before he did anything," he said.
Miller said people should turn on lights, talk with neighbors, and keep windows and doorways free of debris, as well as report suspicious activities such as loitering.
The whole purpose of having neighborhoods involved is to alert police to suspicious activities, said Lt. Max Tenbrook, captain at Patrol South.
When people are involved in "legitimate activity" such as recreation, living and working, "that sends a message to people doing illegitimate activities that they're going to stand out," Tenbrook said.
June Bailey said gaining a sense of empowerment and ownership of your neighborhood means getting to know those who live around you.
"There is a need for the community to know what's happening around them," said Bailey, former president of the Orchard Breeze Neighborhood Association in west Wichita. "We need to get back to the Beaver Cleaver days. I think people truly miss that."
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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
1969 Posts |
Posted - 31 March 2004 : 12:27:18 AM
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THE VICTIMS
Eight victims have been connected to BTK. They are:
Julie and Joseph Otero were found strangled, along with two of their children, in the family home on Jan. 15, 1974.
Joseph Otero Jr., 38, a retired Air Force mechanic; his wife, Julie Otero, 34, a Coleman Co. employee; and two of their children, Josephine, 11, and Joseph II, 9. They were found murdered in their home at 803 N. Edgemoor on Jan. 15, 1974. Three other family members -- Charles, 15; Danny, 15, and Carmen, 13 -- were not at the home during the murders. Joseph Otero was a native of Puerto Rico. He had been a mechanic and flight instructor at Cook Air Field in Rose Hill. The family had moved to Wichita the fall before the murders.
Kathryn Bright was stabbed to death April 4, 1974
Kathryn Bright, 21, was found stabbed to death in her home at 3217 E. 13th St. on April 4, 1974. Her brother, Kevin, was shot by the intruder during the slaying but survived. She was a member of the Valley Center Class of 1971, went to the University of Kansas for a semester, then returned to Wichita, where she got a job at Coleman. She had lived at the house on 13th Street for less than a year.
Shirley Vian was found bound and strangled March 17, 1977
Shirley Vian, 24, was found dead in her home at 1311 S. Hydraulic on March 17, 1977. Vian had three children who were in the home at the time of the murder.
Nancy Fox was found bound and strangled Dec. 8, 1977
Nancy Fox, 25, was found dead in her home at 843 S. Pershing on Dec. 9, 1977. Fox was a graduate of South High School. She was a full-time secretary at a construction company and worked part time at a jewelry store at the Wichita Mall. She had lived in her duplex on Pershing for more than a year. She had worked at the jewelry store the night she died.
Vicki Wegerle was strangled to death Sept. 16, 1986
Vicki Wegerle, 28, a homemaker whose numerous activities in the community included baby-sitting at St. Andrew's Lutheran Church, was found strangled in her home at 2404 W. 13th St. Wegerle was a homemaker who had two children. Her 2-year-old son was home at the time but was not harmed.
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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
1969 Posts |
Posted - 31 March 2004 : 11:29:14 PM
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Police detectives deluged with BTK tips
Wichita police said today that detectives are following leads from more than 290 telephone tips and 75 e-mail tips from citizens trying to track down the BTK strangler.
Lt. Ken Landwehr said police are still asking for the public's help in the case but that the telephone hotline hours are being reduced because of the volume of calls. People can call the hotline at 263-0138 between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.
The latest BTK investigation was launched after the killer sent a letter to The Wichita Eagle that claimed responsibility for the 1986 murder of Vicki Wegerle, who was strangled in her home at 2404 W. 13th.
Police confirmed this week that the letter was sent by the same person who claimed to be BTK in a series of letters mailed during the 1970s.
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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
1969 Posts |
Posted - 02 April 2004 : 07:54:43 AM
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Families reminded of loss BTK caused
After all these years, they had come to believe that the monster was dead -- or at least locked away in prison somewhere.
But news that BTK was alive sent relatives of his victims reeling Thursday, awakening the horrific memories of those dark days decades ago.
"When a life was taken so drastically like that and so brutal, it's really hard to deal with," said Ruth Fox, whose stepdaughter, Nancy Fox, was killed more than 25 years ago.
"It's just almost unbearable."
The killer called police to report Nancy Fox's murder from a pay phone at Central and St. Francis. She was found bound and strangled in the bedroom of her duplex at 843 S. Pershing on Dec. 9, 1977.
BTK's reappearance has dredged up all the old pain, said Dale Fox, Nancy's father. But it also provides an opportunity for something relatives of his victims have never had: closure.
"I hope he has made a real bad mistake on his part, and that he'll get caught this time," Dale Fox said. "He's a clever guy, a smart guy. To evade everyone all this time, he has to be."
Nancy, 25, was a secretary for a construction company and worked part time at a jewelry store. She made friends easily and enjoyed living in her duplex, where she had been for more than a year. Living alone didn't bother her, Dale Fox said.
"She never was worried about it," he said.
Fox was at work at Cessna Aircraft Co. when he was called down to the office. Police took him to St. Joseph Medical Center to identify his daughter's body. Police said evidence indicated the killer had broken into Nancy's duplex and was waiting for her when she got home.
Nancy is buried in Harper, next to her grandparents.
"We get down there every chance we get," Dale Fox said.
Her photo has a prominent place in the living room of the family home near Haysville.
"We go to church all the time," Dale Fox said. "Through prayers and the grace of God, we made it through it."
But the past couple of days have been awfully hard, especially for Nancy's only sister and her youngest brother. He's a truck driver now, and Dale Fox fears that he learned of BTK's reappearance by way of the radio somewhere out on the road.
That's the way he found out in 1977, Dale Fox said.
A sophomore in high school at the time, he had skipped class that day and was riding around town when he heard about his sister's death on the radio.
Time is supposed to heal wounds, Charles Bright knows.
"It doesn't heal this one," he said flatly.
A week from Sunday will mark the 30th anniversary of his daughter Kathryn's death. She had just returned to her home at 3217 E. 13th St. with her brother, Kevin, to find BTK waiting for them.
According to police reports, Kevin Bright said the killer made him tie his sister to a chair, then forced him into another part of the house, where he tried to strangle him and finally shot him twice in the head.
Kevin fled out the front door and flagged down a passing motorist who took him to the hospital for gunshot wounds to the temple and the side of his mouth. Kathryn, 21, was stabbed to death.
Kevin described his attacker as a stocky white male, 5-foot-10, with dark brown or black hair and a black moustache.
Charles Bright said he was shocked to learn BTK was still around, but that has turned into a sense of anticipation.
"That's what I want: Catch him, so we can all be at ease," he said.
Kevin doesn't talk about that night. It's not easy for his father to, either.
"I guess what gets me the most is, she had her whole life ahead of her," Charles Bright said. "Folks are not supposed to have to bury their daughters and sons."
About the only thing that can help the healing process now, Ruth Fox said, is justice.
"If they could just catch him, that would be our prayer," she said. "To get him and make sure that justice is served him in the most cruel way."
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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
1969 Posts |
Posted - 05 April 2004 : 07:51:04 AM
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Police hope DNA puts them on BTK's trail
Investigators quickly receive 32 leads by telephone, e-mail
Armed with a number of new tools to analyze old evidence, Wichita police Thursday began the detailed task of reopening an active investigation of the BTK killer, who they now think was responsible for an unsolved 1986 slaying.
In addition to phone tips, new interviews with family members of the victims and reanalysis of old reports, police will have the aid of newer crimefighting tools -- such as a national DNA databank -- to help them try to catch the city's most notorious serial killer.
Police think BTK sent a letter to The Wichita Eagle last week claiming responsibility for the 1986 murder of Vicki Wegerle.
The killer had previously been linked to seven killings between 1974 and 1977.
At a packed City Hall news conference Thursday morning, police Lt. Ken Landwehr said evidence from the Wegerle case is being fed through national fingerprint and DNA databases in an effort to solve the city's biggest open murder case.
Landwehr said details about the letter make him certain it was sent by the person who sent previous BTK letters. The Eagle has agreed not to publish several of the details in the letter that have led police to this conclusion.
Landwehr said the letter was mailed locally but declined to say which post office it was sent from.
The case has drawn the attention of national news organizations. The CBS News home page listed it among its top stories of the day, the network aired a segment on its evening newscast. The case also has drawn attention from CNN, MSNBC, "Good Morning America" and "Inside Edition."
The letter, which arrived in The Eagle newsroom last Friday, contained a single sheet of paper with a photocopy of Wegerle's driver's license and three pictures that apparently were taken of her body. Each picture shows her in a slightly different pose and with her clothing arranged in a slightly different manner.
The return address said the letter was from "Bill Thomas Killman" -- a person who apparently does not exist.
Landwehr stressed that the letter did not indicate plans to kill again.
"We're encouraging citizens to practice normal safety steps -- keep their doors locked, keep their lights on," he said.
Landwehr said the FBI, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and the Sedgwick County Sheriff's Department were assisting with the investigation.
As of Thursday morning, Landwehr said, 32 leads had been left through telephone and e-mail tip lines being monitored by police.
"Those will be prioritized, and we'll be going over those," he said. "As in any cold case, we'll be reinterviewing certain key witnesses, possibly family members, for any new information."
He said detectives are also going through lists of prison inmates who have recently been released to make sure that BTK's 25-year silence wasn't caused by his incarceration.
Landwehr said all DNA samples in the Wegerle case are being sent to
the FBI's Combined DNA Indexing System, which is known in law enforcement circles as CODIS. As of November, CODIS contained more than 1.5 million offender profiles, most of which were taken from inmates entering prison.
Landwehr said he could not speculate about the timing of the letter.
"I have no idea why (he) would wait so long," Landwehr said. "I wouldn't ever want to comment on any other cases around the nation, but it is without a doubt the most unusual case we've ever had in Wichita."
Several former officers who have worked on the case said Thursday they were shocked that BTK had resurfaced.
"One theory is that he was incarcerated or institutionalized," former Police Chief Richard LaMunyon said. "Very honestly, I don't think you can eliminate any possibilities. I think you also have to look at the possibility that he's been here all the time.
"Maybe something's changed in his life. Maybe he got married. Maybe we got close to him. Maybe he's on medications. I don't think you can arbitrarily throw out any possibility."
LaMunyon, who was police chief during the Wegerle homicide investigation, said BTK was a suspect in that case.
"Absolutely it was looked at," he said. "It was never confirmed that it was. It was never determined that it wasn't."
He said any DNA evidence gathered during the investigation would have been preserved using the most modern technology.
He also said he doesn't think BTK poses as much of a threat to the city as some other violent criminals who are walking around. He said an FBI profile in the mid-1970s indicated that BTK was probably in his 30s.
"If you just do the math, you're looking at somebody in his 60s," he said.
Retired Deputy Chief Kerry Crisp said he finds it hard to believe that BTK has been living in Wichita all along.
"He was active for so long and was inactive for so long, you had to figure there was some kind of intervention," he said.
Bernie Drowatzky, who retired from the Police Department in 1986, said he, too, suspects that BTK spent some time in custody. He also said he sees the letter as a break that may solve the case.
"I think there's something somewhere we missed that's going to take (police) to him," Drowatzky said.
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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
1969 Posts |
Posted - 06 April 2004 : 11:37:57 PM
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BTK TIMELINE
Jan. 15, 1974
Joseph and Julie Otero are strangled in their home at 803 N. Edgemoor along with two of their children, Josephine, 11, and Joseph II, 9. The family car is found later at the Dillons store at Central and Oliver.
April 4, 1974
Kathryn Bright, 21, is found stabbed to death in her home at 3217 E. 13th St. Police later conclude she was a BTK victim.
October 1974
The Wichita Eagle-Beacon receives a letter from a person claiming to have killed the Oteros. The letter included details of the crime scene that only the killer could have known.
March 17, 1977
Shirley Vian, 24, is found tied up and strangled in her house at 1311 S. Hydraulic.
Dec. 8, 1977
Nancy Fox, 25, is found tied up and strangled in her home at843 S. Pershing. BTK's voice is captured on tape when he callsa dispatcher to report the homicide.
Jan. 31, 1978
A poem written with a child's printing set on an index card arrives at The Wichita Eagle-Beacon. The poem, which is patterned after a "Curley Locks" nursery rhyme, refers to the Vian homicide.
Feb. 10, 1978
A letter from BTK arrives at KAKE claiming responsibility for the deaths of Vian and Fox, as well as another unnamed victim. At a hastily arranged news conference, Police Chief Richard LaMunyon announces that a serial killer is at large and has threatened to strike again.
April 28, 1979
The killer waits inside a home in the 600 block of South Pinecrest, but leaves before the 63-year-old woman homeowner returns. He later sends the woman a letter letting her know he was there. Police think the killer was targeting the woman's daughter.
Aug. 15, 1979
Wichitans listen to repeated radio and television broadcasts of the voice of the BTK strangler from the 1977 phone call. Police receive 110 tips during the first day the broadcasts air.
Mid-1980s
A new BTK investigation is opened by a group known as "The Ghostbusters," who spend three years employing new techniques including DNA testing, computer database searches and psychological profiles.
Sept. 16, 1986
Vicki Wegerle, 28, is strangled in her home at 2404 W. 13th St. The family car is found two blocks away in the 1300 block of North Edwards.
January 1988
The wife of murder victim Phillip Fager receives a letter from a man claiming to be BTK. The letter talked about the killing of Fager and his two daughters, but BTK experts disagree whether it actually was from BTK.
March 19, 2004
A letter arrives at The Wichita Eagle containing a photocopy of Wegerle's driver's license and three pictures that apparently were taken by the killer. Relatives say the license was the only thing missing from Wegerle's home.
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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
1969 Posts |
Posted - 08 April 2004 : 7:54:13 PM
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KAKE-TV received a letter from BTK on Feb. 10, 1978. The date was incorrect in a map that appeared in Thursday's paper
KAKE-TV received a letter from BTK on Feb. 10, 1978. The date was incorrect in a map that appeared in Thursday's paper.
C.E. "Bud" Cooper, president of J & H Trucking Inc., co-owns the business with John Blickenstaff, who is vice president. A story in Wednesday's paper did not identify Cooper as one of the owners.
We thought we had put this behind us. But after more than two decades of silence, the BTK strangler has returned like a recurrent nightmare.
It's unclear what he wants -- more publicity for his crimes?
He might get more than he bargained for. He might get justice.
Wichitans who remember how these serial murders traumatized the community back in the 1970s will shudder that this killer may still be living among us. The apparent randomness of the crimes, the premeditated cruelty of them, and the taunting games with police made the seven BTK killings the city's most notorious -- and most frustrating, because they were never solved.
Now BTK appears to be back, claiming an eighth victim, in 1986.
The community needs to take a deep breath and put this threat in perspective.
Wichita police have said that a letter sent to The Wichita Eagle that appears to be from BTK contains no new threats. Lt. Ken Landwehr urged Wichitans to "practice normal safety steps -- keep their doors locked, keep their lights on."
No doubt Wichitans will take that advice. We'll be more alert. There will be plenty of worry, speculation and armchair profiling.
Though unsettling, BTK's re-emergence after all these years is also an opportunity for justice.
Police had pretty much given the killer up for dead. Few thought he was still living here.
With this letter, the cold case suddenly got much warmer, with fresh evidence and new leads.
Mr. Landwehr said Thursday that more than 30 tips had come into the BTK hot line (316-263-0138) since Wednesday night.
Somebody knows this person. Anyone with a shred of suspicion should come forward and talk to police.
Moreover, forensic technology exists today that didn't exist in the 1970s. It will be brought to bear on this case. The huge gap of time that has passed without any sign of BTK is itself a lead that could point in several directions -- perhaps to time spent in prison or a different city.
BTK apparently likes cat-and-mouse games -- and that could eventually be his undoing. He's going to get caught. Sooner or later. And justice will be served.
That would bring some sense of closure, after all these years, to families of his victims.
That's the hope and the expectation. For the moment, Wichitans are understandably rattled.
Let's keep our heads, and let law enforcement do its work.
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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
1969 Posts |
Posted - 12 April 2004 : 11:25:24 PM
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Letter's address a vacant unit
Residents of the apartment complex BTK used as a return address are on heightened alert.
One of the mysteries surrounding BTK's latest communication is the return address on his letter: 1684 S. Old Manor -- or "Oldmanor," as he typed it.
But for the families who live at Parkwood Village apartments, which includes the vacant unit at 1684, BTK's use of that address is not only mysterious; it is frighteningly close to home.
"I'm just dumbfounded on why he used that address. It's got everybody around her shooken up," said Abby Tietsort, an apartment manager.
The neighborhood is one of two that have become the focus of recent developments in the BTK case.
Those developments also have drawn attention to the 2400 block of West 13th Street, where Vicki Wegerle was found strangled in her home on Sept. 16, 1986. Her killing had been unsolved.
Police said they think a letter sent to The Wichita Eagle bearing pictures of Wegerle is from the BTK killer and that he is in Wichita.
Police told The Eagle on Wednesday that they think BTK killed Wegerle.
At Parkwood Village, residents can only wonder: Did the serial killer randomly pick the address? Did he once live there or know someone who lived there? Did something symbolic happen there?
And perhaps the most disturbing question: Does he now live near the unit?
A woman had lived in the apartment for some time before it became vacant, Tietsort said. Police searched the unit and storage areas around it, she said.
In light of the news about BTK and the address, she sent a letter to residents Thursday telling them the unit is vacant and urging them to be alert and to contact police immediately if they see anything suspicious. For the past year, the management has used off-duty police officers to patrol on foot.
The small unit at 1684 S. Old Manor sits in a yellow-brick fourplex built years ago. Markings in nearby sidewalks indicate the walkways were built in 1950. One resident thought at least some of the units date to World War II.
The unit sits back from Old Manor, behind a large grassy area. A mailbox at the unit sits askew, hanging partly by gray duct tape. Someone has carefully wrapped and hung twisted pieces of wire from a porch railing.
Across the city, residents of the quiet Indian Hills neighbourhood where Wegerle lived were intrigued by the new twist in the case but seemed not to be worried.
"This neighbourhood is calm and quiet," said Consuelo Trevino, who lives a few doors away from the home where Wegerle was killed. "There's nothing going on."
Trevino said she moved into her home in 1987, the year after Wegerle's death, and recalled that the murder was still "the talk of the neighborhood" even then. She remembered that neighbors found it odd that nothing had happened to Wegerle's 2-year-old child, who was home at the time of the killing.
After so many years, however, the news that the murder was the work of a serial killer had little effect.
"I don't worry about it, myself," Trevino said. "It's no big deal. I'm not afraid."
Other Indian Hills residents said they had moved to the neighbourhood after the Wegerle murder, and in most cases were unaware that a killing had ever happened in the area. None said they had discussed the case with their neighbours, and none expressed personal concerns about the case.
At the apartments near Old Manor on Thursday, most of the neighbours contacted did not want to give their names -- largely because they don't want the killer to know them.
One young man motioned to his teenage sister, who sat reading articles about the killer resurfacing.
The man said the development -- and especially the return address on the BTK letter -- has prompted his family to be extra careful. The family has decided that male relatives will never leave any of the women alone.
One resident, 18-year-old Christy Fisher, when informed of the return address, seemed stunned by the news. "He could have actually been there," she said, motioning toward the unit.
"It just gives me a head rush.
"Hopefully somebody finds him."
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BTK Killer [p]
