Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door (40 page)

It wasn’t enough just to kill the Oteros. He told the cops he also fantasized about enslaving them in the afterlife. In his writings he called that AFLV, short for Afterlife Concept of Victim.

Joseph Otero would be his bodyguard.

Julie Otero would bathe him and serve him in the bedroom.

Joey would be a servant and a sex toy.

Josie would be his “young maiden.” He would instruct her in sex, bondage, and sadomasochism.

Thomas, needing a break, asked Rader whether he was hungry. Yes, he wanted a light dinner�a salad. He gave Lundin precise instructions about what vegetables to include, what to leave out, and what salad dressing he wanted.

And bring coffee later, Rader directed.

The guy has gall,
Lundin thought. But Lundin filled his order. They wanted to keep him talking.

Snyder was next. He interviewed Rader about Kathryn and Kevin Bright.

To prepare for that hit, Rader told Snyder, he squeezed rubber balls to strengthen his hands. Detectives found such a ball with the motto “Life is good” on Rader’s bedside table, next to his church usher badge.

Snyder’s face must have shown his disgust.

“I’m sorry,” Rader said. “I know this is a human being. But I’m a monster.”

Relph interviewed Rader about Nancy Fox.

In the afterlife he fantasized about, she would be his main mistress.

To help clarify his account of her murder, Rader drew a diagram of her apartment that was detailed and accurate.

When he was a student at Riverview grade school, one of Rader’s favorite subjects had been art. As BTK, he enjoyed sketching out ideas for torture chambers. One was a sealed heat box partially filled with water. He would control the heat, causing the woman inside to sweat and urinate day after day. She would drown slowly in her own fluids.

Rader didn’t stop talking until nearly ten o’clock that night, and then only because the cops wanted to let him rest. He wanted to keep talking.
It was almost comical
, Relph thought.

Not as comical as what happened the next day, though.

48

February 26, 2005

“BTK Is Arrested”

Chief Williams, Landwehr, and most of the command staff had spent nearly all their lives in Wichita. They knew Wichita’s virtues�a great place to raise kids, a community where neighbors treated each other like family, home to some of the brightest aeronautical engineers and most sophisticated aircraft manufacturing centers on the planet. But these virtues had never done enough to erase the nagging insecurity the natives felt about their city. Newcomers were often baffled by the way people bad-mouthed their own city. Wichitans liked the ten-minute commutes to work, the lack of congestion, and the great sunsets, but many complained openly about how there was “nothing” to do, no beach, no mountains, and (supposedly) no achievements of which to be proud. The world loved
The Wizard of Oz,
but many locals winced at references to Dorothy and Toto; they thought the movie made Kansans look like hayseeds.

The cops knew this, as they prepared to announce that they had just halted the longest serial killer reign of fear in U.S. history. They also knew that the strategy and tactics devised by Landwehr and the FBI would serve as a model of sophisticated police work, something to be studied at Quantico and elsewhere for years to come. There was a lot here for the city to be proud of.

The announcement would be broadcast worldwide, and Wichita, represented by its police force, could stand tall on a world stage. Had the cops kept the arrest announcement brief and dignified, as originally planned, it would have saved the city the public criticism that followed.

But on the day of Rader’s arrest, Williams decided brevity was not possible. Williams prized generosity. He decided that he owed several people some gratitude, and he wanted them with him at the announcement. The KBI, a division of the state attorney general’s office, had loaned him personnel and resources for eleven months. The FBI had been involved in the investigation for decades. Congressman Todd Tiahrt had brought him $1 million in federal money just as department administrators were getting desperate about how they were going to pay for overtime, the DNA sweep, and other expenses.

There were other considerations: Landwehr wanted to follow protocol and have Sheriff Gary Steed announce the resolution of the Hedge and Davis murders because his office had handled those cases. District Attorney Nola Foulston needed to explain the pending charges and prosecution. The mayor wanted to acknowledge the end of the city’s long ordeal.

Williams decided to let them all talk.

But once the politicians got involved, the police department got into an ugly argument with some of them.

The cops intended to call the victims’ families that night and tell them that BTK had finally been arrested and that they were invited to the news conference the next morning. When Johnson told this to local politicians, some of them strenuously objected. They said the families should be told nothing, because they might spill the beans to the news media�and steal the spotlight.

When word of this spread among the cops, some of them were furious: their nerves were shot from eleven months of seventy-hour weeks and the daily stress of wondering whether BTK would leave a fresh body for them to find. Some of the task force members had bonded closely with the families, who had lived with their grief for decades. The detectives called the families, one by one, and told them what was coming in the morning.

Within hours of Rader’s arrest, although the police still had made no announcement,
Eagle
reporters had learned his name and occupation, that he would be charged as BTK, that the cops were pulling a truckload of evidence out of his home, that they had searched Park City city hall, the Park City library, and his church. By interviewing neighbors, searching public records, and going online, staffers began to piece together a portrait of Rader and his family and collect photographs of him. Rader looked like a different man in every photo�he was a human chameleon. That afternoon, Editor Sherry Chisenhall was surprised to receive an e-mail that claimed to include a driver’s license photo, along with a note about what “the monster” looked like. Following the chain of e-mail forwarding addresses, she saw that the original sender worked for the city of Wichita. Wanting to verify that it was really Rader�the guy in this photo resembled “Monty Python” actor John Cleese with a beard; the Rader photo on Park City’s website looked more like a smiling Jason Alexander from
Seinfeld
�she contacted Landwehr. To confirm that the photo was Rader, he said, he would need to see it and the e-mail thread. A limited number of people would have access to something like that. Chisenhall forwarded it to him. It was, indeed, Landwehr told her, the suspect’s driver’s license photo. The original sender was a detective in the Property Crimes Bureau.

Landwehr was not pleased about the leak. He told Chisenhall that as of that moment, the guy was a
former
detective�but in the end, the guy just got a talking to and apologized.

With the Valadez arrest in mind, Chisenhall again opted for caution: the
Eagle
’s Saturday, February 26, front page reported that an arrest had been made in Park City and that a BTK news conference was planned for that morning. It did not publish Rader’s name, photo, or specific details of his life.

The city council auditorium filled quickly. At what should have been a joyous announcement, some of the exhausted detectives showed up in a dark and dangerous mood.

What they saw was a comedy.

Local, national, and international reporters staked out good views. CNN and MSNBC carried the news conference live. When Wichita mayor Carlos Mayans stepped forward just after 10:00
AM
, he faced a crowd at city hall, and the expectation of his constituents that this would be Wichita’s finest hour.

Mayans spoke for about two minutes, most of his comments platitudes: “It has been a very long journey…It certainly has been a challenge…he national spotlight has been shining upon us…Today I stand a proud mayor of the city of Wichita….”

He was followed by Chief Williams, who briefly introduced his many fellow speakers. Then Williams spoke six words that set off a standing ovation: “The bottom line: BTK is arrested!”

But Williams didn’t say what everyone was waiting to hear: the name of the suspect.

He yielded the podium to District Attorney Nola Foulston. So much for brevity. Foulston, a Democrat in a mostly Republican county, had been reelected, often by wide margins, in every election since 1988. Her detractors had long admitted she was a skilled courtroom lawyer, but they also said her skill was matched by her ego and her love of publicity. To a televison audience, a minute can seem like an eternity, which is why most TV “interviews” are sound bites of only eight to ten seconds. Foulston spoke now for a stunning nine minutes and forty-four seconds. She thanked all the politicians standing behind her, although Mayans and Williams had already done so. Then she began to talk not about BTK but about her office.

“In the last year since the reemergence of the individual, of the John Doe serial killer, I have appointed and have maintained a confident and extraordinarily qualified prosecution staff to work with law enforcement twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”

Chief Norman Williams announces the arrest of BTK. Behind him are (l. to r.) prosecutor Kevin O’Connor, Landwehr, Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, District Attorney Nola Foulston, and Mayor Carlos Mayans.

She introduced Parker, reminding the audience of her work on the Carr case, and O’Connor, saying he was chosen for his “fighting Irish.” She went on a good deal longer. She confirmed what Laviana had written months earlier: BTK would not face execution�he had committed all his murders during years when Kansas had no death penalty. And she noted that information restrictions would continue; court motions would be filed under seal. By the time she finished, more than half an hour had gone by since the news conference started, and the local and national audience was no closer to hearing who BTK was and why he did it.

Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline then got up and thanked the mayor and praised the law enforcement agencies represented. He promised the audience it would soon “come face-to-face with evil,” but he leavened his speech with more platitudes: “The perseverance and dedication to truth and justice has made Kansas proud. On this day, the voice of justice is heard in Wichita.”

Otis, sitting with the Wegerles, glanced at their faces and wondered if they were as bored and disappointed as he was. So far they had heard a lot of self-congratulation, mostly from people who had barely taken part in the BTK hunt.

Larry Welch, director of the KBI, mercifully spoke for less than a minute; then Kevin Stafford from the FBI spoke another ninety seconds.

DA Nola Foulston speaks at the BTK press conference while Ken Landwehr waits his turn.

Tiahrt stood up (for two minutes) and introduced yet another dimension to the proceedings: “The faith community in Wichita got together and not only prayed that that which was hidden would be revealed, but they also prayed for the families of the victims, and I know many of them are here.”

Sheriff Gary Steed then came forward with real news: BTK’s arrest solved the Hedge and Davis homicides, bringing BTK’s murder total to ten.

And then finally, thirty-nine minutes after the news conference had opened, Landwehr was allowed to approach the microphone.

CNN had cut away nearly twenty minutes before, with a bemused CNN anchor in Atlanta telling her field correspondent in Wichita to “please get back to us if and when they have something to announce there.” CNN put the news conference back on national television when Landwehr spoke.

He tried not to show it, but it pissed him off that the victims’ families had been mostly ignored, and that a lot of people not on the task force had been thanked by name, some of them multiple times.