Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door (17 page)

In time Landwehr felt like a weight had lifted off him. He had not realized how much it hurt him emotionally to work homicides until he took up the more detached work of the lab. Becoming a homicide detective was what he had worked for his entire career, and it was unsettling to realize how harmful it was, how much the suffering of victims’ families upset him, depressed him, tempted him to drink.

As much as it hurt, though, he missed it.

About a year after LaMunyon retired, Patrol Officer Kelly Otis answered one of those calls that cops dread�a domestic violence call in the wee hours.

At 3:11 AM on December 9, 1989, Otis and two other officers walked up to 1828 North Porter. Inside was a drunken golf course greenskeeper named Thomas H. Hathaway, age twenty-eight. His girlfriend said he had beaten her. When Otis asked her whether her boyfriend had a gun, she said no, but something about her tone made Otis’s Spidey-sense tingle. When Otis approached the front door, he stepped off to the side before he called out.

What answered him was a shotgun blast through the open doorway. The man inside ran out, bare chested in the freezing cold. He whirled on Otis.

Otis dropped to one knee, drew his pistol, and yelled, “Drop the goddamned gun!” Fear warped Otis’s senses: Both he and the gunman seemed to move in slow motion. The man raised the shotgun to his shoulder and aimed at Otis’s face. The muzzle looked big enough to crawl into. Otis fired and felt a new fear�his gun barely made a sound. Otis, terrified, thought his gun had misfired, but the gunman dropped to the ground like a heavy sack of potatoes.

Otis was puzzled for a moment: on the shooting range, his 9 mm always boom-boomed like a cannon, but this time the only sound was a faint
pop-pop
. But Hathaway was bleeding from bullet wounds in his torso.

Otis was so scared that he had barely heard the sound of his own gun.

In a fire station a few blocks away, the paramedic who had fallen in love with Otis the year before now heard his voice on the police scanner. “We have an officer-involved shooting,” he said. Netta Sauer jumped in her ambulance. She knew that the address Otis gave was not in an area covered by her crew, but she raced there anyway, terrified that he had been shot.

Moments later, someone on the radio said that Otis had not been wounded.

She drove back to the fire station.

Otis tried to unload the remaining bullets in his pistol, but his hands shook so badly that he could not do it. Another officer bent over Hathaway and counted the bullet holes. The five wounds turned out to be from two shots. There were three entry wounds and two exit wounds, one bullet having passed through Hathaway’s torso and arm. Otis had fired twice just as he’d been taught on the practice range: Shoot a target twice, then aim to fire again if necessary. It’s called “the double tap.” Otis felt grateful for his training; when you are scared, training takes over.

Hathaway survived. Otis went back to work a few weeks later. Not long after that, Otis and other officers nearly emptied their gun magazines while shooting at a drug dealer who opened fire on them. Otis got the shakes over that one too.

At a South High School class reunion five years later, Netta Sauer Otis ran into Cindy Hughes, a former classmate. Cindy was with Kenny Landwehr, who looked bored. Landwehr brightened when he realized that Netta’s husband was a cop. He stuck out a hand to Kelly Otis.

“Good,” Landwehr said, teasing Cindy. “Somebody I can talk to, instead of all these South High losers.”

25

January 18, 1991

Dolores Davis

Dolores “Dee” Davis liked to carry wet wipes to scrub the faces of grandchildren and other surfaces that harbored germs. She hid matches on top of her refrigerator so that wayward children visiting her home would not find them and be tempted to burn down the house. On hot days, with kids in the car, she rolled the windows down only a fraction of an inch. An open window might cause children to be sucked out by the passing wind.

“Grandma!” the kids would yell. “Can you roll it down some more?”

“No,” she’d say. Then she’d hum a tune.

She lived alone at the edge of Park City. Her vistas included open countryside. She was raised a farm girl, near Stella, Nebraska, so she did not dread the night or solitude.

Dolores Davis lived by herself in an isolated rural area, not far from Rader.

Dee worked more than twenty-five years as a secretary for Lario Oil amp; Gas Company. She also sold Mary Kay cosmetics; she liked that the company didn’t test its products on animals. At home she had dozens of magazines and newsletters from animal rights groups such as the Doris Day Animal League and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Her family last got together with her at Christmas in 1990. Dee hosted, and she wanted everything perfect. The day everyone arrived�her son Jeff and his family from Florida, daughter Laurel and her family from Colorado�Dee made four trips to Leeker’s grocery before she got everything she needed.

She fussed so much about getting dinner right that they did not eat until 9:00
PM
. Afterward they watched
All Dogs Go to Heaven.
Some of the family cried. It was a good time.

Jeff and his mother had a tenuous relationship early on. His parents divorced in 1961 after twelve years of marriage. Jeff lived with his father. His sister lived with Dee. Jeff spent most weekends with Dee, but things were strained. Later, they grew closer, phoned every weekend, and talked for hours.

Dee had been retired from the gas company for just a few months on the winter night she heard a rustling outside her window and saw one of her cats batting at the glass. Her other cats appeared to be spooked too.

Dee called Jeff. Someone might have been out there, she said.

Rader had looked through her window blinds for several nights. Her house at 6226 North Hillside lay about a mile from his house, so close that he scouted her by riding his bike from home. He was getting lazier. Killing another neighbor was a risk�but why not? Nine dead so far, and the cops still clueless.

He had used a Scout outing as cover for the murder of Marine Hedge. He would do it this time too. He had lifelong friends in the Scouts. George Martin, a Scout leader, thought the world of him. George could work up tears talking about what Scouting did for boys. It was good cover to have such a friend, and Rader enjoyed helping him.

He knew that Martin and other Scout leaders would have thought less of him if they had seen him masturbating�naked and handcuffed�in the truck on that one Cubby outing, though. When he could not get the cuffs off he became frightened. Having to call for help would have been embarrassing. Much to his relief, he became so sweaty from fear that he was able to slip out of the cuffs.

What would Martin have thought about that?

By the time Dee’s cat got spooked by that prowler in early January, Kelly Otis had become one of Wichita’s most decorated patrol officers. He had survived two shoot-outs and taken part in drug busts and car chases. One night on patrol, Otis saw a man moving around strangely in a parked car. Otis pulled over�and stopped a rape. The department later named him Officer of the Year for 1991.

Only ten years earlier, Otis’s chief interests were beer and billiards. He had dropped out of college. Now friends suggested he take the tests that would qualify him to be a detective.

Otis just snorted. He loved street patrol.

Rader had seen Dee while he drove around. He locked in, as he called it. He liked to use cop jargon.
Lock in
meant to concentrate on something.
Shut down
meant stop.
Put her down
meant kill. He had noticed the dog kennel north of Dee’s house on Hillside, so he called her “Project Dogside.”

He would kill her during the Boy Scout Trappers’ Rendezvous. Every year dads and boys camped out by a lake north of Wichita in January, sometimes freezing half to death as they threw tomahawks and cooked over fires. They camped at Harvey County West Park. This put them in the middle of nowhere, with access only by country roads�but Rader had noticed that the roads east led to the small city of Newton, and Newton was on Interstate 135, which led south to Park City, where both he and Dee lived. The drive would only take half an hour.

That Friday, Rader made sure he was the first dad at the lake and got to work setting up the camp. He left before the other dads showed up with their boys. The camp was halfway ready; his cover story would be that he left to get supplies. He headed south�to his parents’ home. It was empty�they had gone south for the winter. He slipped in, dressed in dark clothing, and packed his hit kit.

He drove a few blocks to the Baptist church in Park City. When he killed Marine Hedge he had done the taxicab ruse thing, but that had taken too long, so he was simplifying tonight. He had a key to the church because it was where the Scout troop met. He went in, checked his gear, then went back out�and walked to Dee’s home, through wheat fields, through a cemetery. It was close to freezing. His feet hurt by the time he reached her house.

He saw through the blinds that she was alone, reading in bed. He waited, shivering; the low that night would reach thirty-two degrees. Dee turned out the lights.

He tried to figure out how to get in�and simplified some more. A little after 10:30
PM
, he picked up a cinder block from outside Dee’s shed and threw it through her sliding glass door.

As he remembered it, the glass shattered and Dee came running, wearing nightclothes and a robe.

What happened to my house? she asked. Did your car hit my house? Then she saw him and backed away. He had pulled panty hose over his face.

I’m wanted by the police, he said. I need your car and money.

Rader broke Dolores Davis’s glass patio door with a cinder block. She woke up, thinking a car had hit her house.

She argued, like all the others, so he tried to disarm her with the usual lies: I’m going to tie you up and leave you, he told her. I need to get in and warm up (that was not a lie), then I’m going to take your car and some food.

You can’t be in my house! she told him.

Ma’am, he said, you’re going to cooperate. I’ve got a club, I’ve got a gun, I’ve got a knife.

She said someone was coming to see her later�a man.

God,
he thought.
There’s always somebody coming.

Now he had to hurry, which irritated him. He took her to her bedroom, handcuffed her, tied her feet with her own panty hose�the usual routine. Then he found her car keys, rattled around in the kitchen, opened cereal boxes, made noise to pretend he intended only to rob.

He came back, took the handcuffs off, and began to tie her hands with panty hose.

You say you’ve got somebody coming? he asked.

Yeah, she said. Somebody is coming.

They’ll find you, he said reassuringly. They’ll find you and then you call the police. I’m�I’m out of here.

It was another lie to calm her. But then she saw his face and recoiled in fear. He had pulled off the panty hose mask, exposing his face.

Don’t kill me, she said.

He picked up another pair of panty hose.

I’ve got kids, Dee said. Don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me.

26

January 19, 1991

Out in the Country

Just after noon on Saturday, a friend of Dee Davis’s named Thomas Ray came to work on her car, as he’d promised when he had taken her to dinner the night before. He noticed the porch light on and the curtains drawn. Her 1985 Chevy Cavalier was outside; she always put it in the garage.

Ray got no answer when he knocked. He pulled up the garage door and saw that the door into the house was open. In the house, the phone line to the wall jack had been cut, and a cinder block lay on the living room floor surrounded by glass. Her bedding was missing.