The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (11 page)

approached girls on campus, asking for dates. Police begun to prey on local women, stalking them until he staked out the scene of one such rendezvous in Corvallis found a chance to knock them down or choke them on May 25, questioning Jerry Brudos closely before they unconscious, fleeing with their shoes. Still virginal in let him go. Picked up on a concealed weapons charge five 1961, he met his future wife and quickly made her preg-days later, Brudos broke down and confessed to the
27

“BTK Strangler”

murders in detail, directing authorities to evidence that not recognized—the theft of Joseph Otero’s wristwatch.

would cinch their case. On June 27, 1969, Brudos pled

“I needed one so I took it,” the killer explained. “Runs guilty on three counts of first-degree murder and was sen-good.” Signing himself the “BTK Strangler,” the killer tenced to a term of life imprisonment. His popularity with provided his own translation in a postscript. He wrote: fellow inmates is recorded in a string of prison “acci-

“The code words for me will be . . . Bind them, Torture dents,” including one that left him with a fractured neck them, Kill them.”

in 1971.

Police released their young suspects while requesting that the letter be suppressed against the possibility of further false confessions in the case. No one came for-

“BTK Strangler”

ward. No new evidence materialized. Twenty-nine Residents of Wichita, Kansas, were ill prepared to cope months elapsed before the killer showed his hand again.

with monsters in the early days of 1974. Their lives On March 17, 1977, 26-year-old Shirley Vian was were by and large conservative, well-ordered, purpose-murdered in her home, stripped, bound and strangled ful. They had no previous experience to help prepare on her bed, left with a plastic bag over her head and the them for the coming terror, and it took them absolutely familiar cord wrapped tight around her neck. Vian’s by surprise.

three children, locked in a closet by the armed intruder On January 15, four members of the Otero family who had invaded their home, managed to free them-were found dead in their comfortable suburban home, selves and called police. Again, the crime was clearly hog-tied and strangled with cords cut from old Venetian premeditated: the killer had stopped one of Vian’s sons blinds. Joseph Otero, 38 years old, lay face down on the on the street that morning, displaying photographs of floor at the foot of his bed, wrists and ankles bound an unidentified woman and child, asking directions to with samples of the same cord that was wrapped around their home.

his neck. Close by, wife Julie lay on the bed she had once On December 9, 1977, 25-year-old Nancy Jo Fox

shared with her husband, bound and strangled in similar was found murdered in the bedroom of her Wichita fashion. Joseph II, age nine, was found in his bedroom, apartment, left with a nylon stocking tied around her mirroring his father’s placement at the foot of the bed, neck. Unlike previous victims, she was fully clothed. An with a plastic bag over his head. Downstairs, 11-year-anonymous caller directed police to the crime scene, old Josephine Otero hung by her neck from a pipe in the and officers traced the call to a downtown phone basement, clad only in a sweatshirt and socks. None of booth, where witnesses vaguely recalled “someone”—

the victims had been sexually assaulted, though police perhaps a blond six-footer—using the booth moments found semen at the crime scene.

earlier.

Aside from the killer’s ritualistic MODUS OPERANDI, The killer mailed a poem to the
Wichita Eagle
on police knew the crime had been planned in advance.

January 31, 1978, but it was routed to the advertising Phone lines were cut outside the house, and the killer department by mistake and lay undiscovered for days.

had brought ample cord from some other source for Disgruntled by the absence of publicity, the slayer binding and strangling his victims. Several neighbors shifted targets, firing off a letter to a local television sta-filed reports of a “suspicious-looking” stranger in the tion on February 10. “How many do I have to kill,” he area, but published sketches of the unknown subject led asked, “before I get my name in the paper or some police nowhere. A local teenager confessed to the mur-national attention?”

ders, naming two accomplices, but none had any In his latest note, the BTK Strangler claimed seven knowledge of the crimes beyond stark details published victims, naming Vian and Fox as the latest. That left in the press. Still, their arrests served a purpose, one still unaccounted for, as he closed with a taunting prompting the killer to clamor for credit.

punch line: “You guess the motive and the victims.”

In October 1974, Wichita’s bogeyman penned the Unable to prove their correspondent’s latest claim, first of several letters to the media, placed in a book at authorities still took him at his word, announcing theo-the public library. A phone call directed an editor of the retical acceptance of the body count. The killer’s last
Wichita Eagle
to the hidden letter, filled with numerous letter in 1978 was addressed to an elderly Wichita misspellings, which advised police: “Those three woman who eluded him by staying out late on the night dude[s] you have in custody are just talking to get pub-he had chosen to kill her. “Why didn’t you appear?” he licity for the Otero murders. They know nothing at all.

asked.

I did it by myself and no one[’]s help.” The slayer Alternately blaming his crimes on “a demon” and a proved his point by describing the murder scene in mysterious internal “Factor X,” the strangler compared detail, down to the color of each victim’s clothing. He his work to that of London’s “JACK THE RIPPER,” New added a clincher, informing detectives of a fact they had York City’s “Son of Sam,” and the “Hillside Strangler”

28

“BTK Strangler”

in Los Angeles. “When this monster enter[ed] my Rader had confessed six murders, doubly amazed brain,” he wrote, “I will never know. But, it [is] here to when he was charged with 10 slayings on March 1.

stay. Maybe you can stop him. I can’t. It seems senseless While only seven homicides were previously linked to but we cannot help it. There is no help, no cure except the BTK series, detectives now listed three more vic-death or being caught and put away.” Psychiatrists who tims, including:

analyzed the letters felt the killer saw himself as part of some nebulous “grand scheme,” but they were unable

•
Kathryn Bright,
age 21, bound and stabbed to to pinpoint his motive or predict his next move.

death in her home on April 14, 1974. Her brother In fact, there would be none for 26 years, until the Kevin, shot and left for dead in the same incident,
Wichita Eagle
received another BTK letter on March was a coworker of Rader’s at a local camping-gear 19, 2004. The envelope contained a one-page letter in factory.

familiar style, together with a photocopy of murder vic-

•
Marine Hedge,
age 53, kidnapped from her subur-tim Vicki Wegerle’s driver’s license and three snapshots ban Park City home on April 27, 1985, later

of her corpse, each with the clothing arranged in found strangled with a pair of pantyhose and dis-slightly different positions. Police informed the media carded on a rural road. At the time of her murder, that no official photos had been taken of Wegerle’s Hedge lived on the same street as Rader.

body in situ, when she was found on September 16,

•
Delores Davis,
age 62, snatched from her home 1986, thus proving that her killer was the cameraman.

outside Park City on January 19, 1991. When

Predictably, the letter’s return address—from a fictitious found beneath a bridge on February 1, she had

B
ill
T
homas
K
illman—led detectives to a long-vacant been bound and strangled with pantyhose.

apartment house in Wichita.

Another BTK letter arrived in early May 2004, this Police remain tight-lipped about their means of target-one posted to Wichita television station KAKE, Channel ing Rader after three decades. Some reports mention a 10. It was delivered to police, who passed it on to the FBI computer disk enclosed with one of the BTK letters in laboratory for handwriting analysis. G-men confirmed March 2004, which police allegedly traced back to the killer’s authorship of that communication on June Rader’s church. All accounts include mention of DNA 28, after a third letter arrived at Wichita police head-samples obtained from Rader’s 26-year-old daughter, but quarters. Authorities were mum on the contents of the details surrounding that evidence were hopelessly con-last two notes, but Lieutenant Ken Landwehr told fused at press time for this volume. Some stories claim reporters, “I’m 100 percent sure it’s BTK. We do believe Rader’s daughter was suspicious of him and approached that BTK is in Wichita. We truly feel that he is trying to police; others say she volunteered DNA in an effort to communicate with us. We are specifically interested in clear her father’s name; yet a third version states that talking to anyone who was approached at their residence DNA samples were subpoenaed by FBI agents over the between 1974 and 1986 by a man presenting himself as daughter’s objections. In any case, the physical evidence an employee of a school or a utility company. Obviously and Rader’s supposed confessions were enough to see we are not interested in legitimate encounters. We want him held in lieu of $10 million bond, pending trial. Iron-to know about situations where a man attempted to get ically, detectives noted that during the height of the BTK

into your house under suspicious circumstances.”

panic, from 1974 to 1988, Rader worked for a local Thousands of fruitless tips followed announcement security firm, installing home-intrusion alarms through-of the latest BTK correspondence, and all were tracked out Wichita. On June 27, 2005, after several refusals by by police to frustrating dead ends. Meanwhile, detec-local prosecutors, Rader was finally permitted to plead tives staked their hopes on modern DNA technology guilty on 10 murder counts. In a chilling, deadpan open-

(unavailable during the killer’s crime spree in 1977–86) court confession, he described the slayings in detail, and on the content of his cryptic letters. “I don’t think explaining that he murdered his victims to satisfy sexual they’re just ramblings,” said retired captain Bernie fantasies. At the Otero massacre, because he wore no Drowatzky. “I’ve always thought there was a key in mask, Rader declared, “I made a decision to go ahead there. I just never was able to find it.”

and put ’em down.” He kept Polaroid snapshots of his Eleven months after the final rash of letters, on

“projects” as TROPHIES, and planned “potential hits”

February 25, 2005, Wichita police announced the with care. “If one didn’t work out,” he explained, “I just arrest of a BTK suspect. Dennis L. Rader was a 59-moved on to another one.” At the end of Rader’s recita-year-old city employee, married father of two, a pop-tion, prosecutors recommended a sentence of 175 years ular Cub Scout leader and longtime deacon at Christ to life, thus making sure that Rader would die before Lutheran Church. Friends and relatives were stunned attaining eligibility for parole. On August 19, 2005, he on February 27, when authorities announced that was sentenced to 10 life terms.

29

BUNDY, Carol

beater, who also enjoyed kicking dogs and swinging cats through the air by their tails.

Whatever the truth, it is clear that
something
troubled Ted in those days. Early one morning, when he was barely three, Ted’s 15-year-old aunt awoke to find him lifting her blankets, slipping butcher knives into the bed beside her. “He just stood there and grinned,” she recalled. “I shooed him out of the room and took the implements back down to the kitchen and told my mother about it. I remember thinking at the time that I was the only one who thought it was strange. Nobody did anything.”

In 1950, Louise and Ted moved to Tacoma, Wash-

ington, where she met and married John Bundy in May 1951. Despite good grades in school, Ted’s file was filled with notes from his teachers alluding to his explosive and unpredictable temper. By the time he finished high school, Ted was a compulsive masturbator and a night-prowling voyeur, twice arrested by juvenile authorities on suspicion of burglary and auto theft. In 1970, he seemed to shift gears, winning a commendation from the Seattle Police Department for chasing down a purse-snatcher. A year later, Ted was enrolled at the University of Washington, working part-time on a suicide hot line. Behind the new civic-minded facade, however, Ted’s morbid fantasies were building toward a Theodore Bundy being led back to prison in handcuffs lethal flash point.

(Wide World API)

Linda Healy was the first fatality. On January 31, 1974, she vanished from her basement lodgings in Seattle, leaving bloody sheets behind, a bloodstained night-gown hanging in her closet. Several blocks away, young
BUNDY, Carol

See
CLARK, DOUGLAS