Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door (6 page)

Eagle
columnist Don Granger received the first phone call from BTK.

7

December 1974–March 1977

A Scoop

The
Eagle
had kept BTK’s claim about the Oteros secret because the cops said publicity might prompt him to kill again. But there was another newspaper in town then, the weekly
Wichita Sun,
and it employed a reporter named Cathy Henkel who thought otherwise. On December 11, 1974, two months after the cops found BTK’s message in the library, the
Sun
published a story in which Henkel revealed that she had received a copy of the BTK letter from an anonymous source. She reported that BTK stood for “bind, torture, and kill,” and that the murderer had threatened to strike again.

The story frightened people, as Hannon feared, but it also prompted them to take precautions. Henkel had written the story in part because she thought people had a right to know someone was stalking them. She had consulted private-sector psychologists before she published. Although the cops had worried that
revealing
the secret might encourage BTK to kill again, the psychologists argued the opposite: because BTK probably craved publicity,
keeping
the secret might prompt him to kill.

By the time the
Sun
broke the story, police had already interviewed more than fifteen hundred people about the Otero murders. Now the tip lines lit up. People suspected their neighbors and coworkers. Some turned in their own fathers or sons. None of the tips panned out.

The one-year anniversary of the Otero killings passed.

Floyd Hannon retired as police chief on May 31, 1976. He regarded his failure to catch BTK as a stain on his career.

The city manager, Gene Denton, replaced Hannon with Richard LaMunyon, the captain of the vice unit. LaMunyon looked even younger than his thirty-six years. The choice startled longtime commanders. They had advanced by seniority before; there were a lot of older men at the top.

In contrast, LaMunyon’s nickname became “The Boy Chief.” Denton regarded his youth as an asset: he wanted a chief who thought differently.

LaMunyon, at his first staff meeting, took his place at the head of the table and broke the ice with a joke: “Well, boys, what do we do now?” In the following months he quickly set a new tone and began to replace older men with younger men. Soon, people still in their twenties became field patrol supervisors or detectives.

LaMunyon made a big deal about officer education. He had a master’s degree in administration, but he was no mere pencil pusher. In 1966, ten years earlier, LaMunyon and two other officers survived a fight that nearly took their lives. Their attacker had knocked one officer senseless and tossed LaMunyon over the hood of a patrol car. LaMunyon’s service revolver fell to the ground. The attacker snatched it up and stuck it in the throat of a third officer.

LaMunyon grabbed the man’s gun hand. The gun fired, blowing off the middle, ring, and pinkie fingers of LaMunyon’s right hand. LaMunyon drew his nightstick with his left hand and beat the attacker senseless. Doctors reattached Lamunyon’s fingers, but they remained stiff for life.

One of the first things the new chief did was study the BTK files. The case had to be a top priority, he decided.

He never got the sight of Josie Otero out of his head.

March 1977 arrived with the birds and buds of spring. There had been no letters from BTK since the message in October 1974, when he threatened to kill again. But he had not killed.

Rader was installing home alarms for ADT and attending WSU. He was intensely busy at home. His wife had given birth to a son about nine months after he wrote the letter about killing the Oteros. They named him Brian.

Rader had married in 1971, two years and eight months before he killed the Oteros, and while he was taking classes at Butler Community College twenty-five miles away in El Dorado. His bride, Paula Dietz, worked then as a secretary for the American Legion. For the ceremony at Christ Lutheran Church, two of his three younger brothers stood up with him.

He appeared to adore Paula; people noticed that his voice and posture grew softer when he spoke of her.

Years later, in a self-regarding tone, Rader would complain that family got in the way: I had a wife, I had to work, you know, I can’t go out. When you live at home with a wife, you can’t go out and prowl around till three or four in the morning without your wife being suspicious.

He had never stopped trolling and stalking, though.

8

March 17, 1977

Toys for the Kids

It was Saint Patrick’s Day. Rader would later recall there was a parade downtown. His wife was at work; he was on spring break from Wichita State.

He put on dress shoes, nice slacks, and a tweed sports jacket. He thought he looked spiffy, like James Bond. He carried a briefcase with his tools�tape, cord, gun, plastic bags. He also carried a photograph. It was a tool too�he would show it to make people think he was a detective searching for a lost boy.

He had trolled, picked out targets, then backed off. Serial killing was like fishing, he would later confide: sometimes you’re unlucky. Or you get tangled up with chores, work, school.

His primary target this day lived at 1207 South Greenwood. If that target didn’t work out, he had a backup just a block to the east at 1243 South Hydraulic. There was an alley behind that address, a place to hide. And if those targets didn’t work out, he had another backup, and yet another. He had stalked multiple women, switching surveillance from one to another for weeks, taking notes, pondering escape routes. His, not theirs.

Shirley Vian.

He knew that one of the three young women at the house on Hydraulic was named Cheryl. She was a loose woman, in his opinion; he had watched her drink and party at the Blackout, a college bar. He had followed her home, spied on her and her roommates for weeks. Project Blackout, he called her.

Cheryl Gilmour lived with a roommate, Judy Clark. The third “woman” Rader had noticed was Judy’s sixteen-year-old sister, Karin, who frequently stayed at the house.

Two doors down, at 1311 South Hydraulic, there was another woman, with three kids. Rader had not targeted her. She just lived in the neighborhood. Her name was Shirley Vian, and she and her kids all had the flu. When the kids got hungry at lunchtime, she called the Dillons grocery store a block away to tell them that she was sending one of her little boys for food.

Steven, age six, bought soup and walked back home, where his mother told him it was the wrong kind.

He walked back to the Dillons and got the soup she wanted. Just before he got back home, a tall man with a briefcase stopped him and asked him a question.

Shirley Vian’s son Steven Relford

The primary target at 1207 South Greenwood had not worked out; no one answered Rader’s knock. He stood for a moment, holding his briefcase. He thought about breaking in, as he had done at the Bright house, but decided he did not want to risk mussing his good clothes. He decided to go to Project Blackout’s house. He walked to South Hydraulic. When he reached the front of Blackout’s house, he saw a little boy walking toward him carrying a soup can.

Time to play detective. He pulled out the photo of his own wife and son.

Have you seen these people? he asked.

The boy looked at the photograph. No, he said.

Are you sure?

Yes.

The boy walked away.

Rader watched him for a moment, and then walked to Blackout’s door. He glanced down the street again and saw the boy looking at him.

Rader knocked on Blackout’s door. When he got no answer, he walked to the boy’s house.

Steven’s brother and sister were playing when Steven came home; Bud was eight, Stephanie four. Steven crawled into bed with his mother. Moments later, he heard a knock and sprinted for the door. So did Bud; they liked to race. Steven beat Bud this time and opened the door, but only a crack. He peered out. It was the briefcase man.

Steven’s mother put on her housecoat and went to the door. The man towered over the children as he peered through the crack. When he saw their mother, he pushed the door open.

I’m a detective, he said.

He showed Shirley a fake business card. He took a step inside, then another. Then he pushed the door shut and pulled out the gun.

Don’t hurt us, Shirley said.

Rader said disarming things to Shirley, similar to what he had said to the Oteros and Brights. But then he embellished his story: he had a sex fantasy problem. He would tie her up, have sex, take some pictures. It would not be a pleasant thing, he said, but everyone would be okay.

He saw that she wore a blue housecoat over a pink nightgown and looked sick. She had lit a cigarette. He looked at her with distaste: she was a mess. The kids are sick, she said; we’ve been sick for days. She tried to talk him into leaving as he pulled down the shades. He spoke harshly. It’s going to happen, he said.

The phone rang.

Someone was calling to check on her, Shirley said, because she was sick, because she had kept the kids home from school.

Should we answer it? Steven asked.

No, Rader said.

They let it ring. It made him nervous; the caller might decide to stop by. He would have to move fast now. He told her he was going to tie up the children.

Don’t do that, she said.

I’ve got to, he said. He opened his briefcase�his hit kit, he called it. He took out rope and started to tie up the older boy, who started to scream.

Frustrated, he told her to help shut the kids in the bathroom, which had two doors. He tied the west door shut from the inside, looping cord around the knob and tying it under the sink. There were toys on the living room floor: an airplane, a fire truck, a little car. He dumped them into the bathroom for the kids and tossed in blankets and pillows. Comforting them, he said later. You guys stay in here, he told the kids. They looked frightened, but he was talking quietly to keep everyone calm.

Rader threw blankets and toys into the bathroom where he’d locked Shirley Vian’s children to keep them quiet while he killed their mother.

He took their mother into her bedroom, shut the east bathroom door, and shoved her bed against it to block it. When he got done with the mother, he might hang the little girl, if there was time, but he was upset about the phone ringing. Someone was always interrupting.

He stripped off the woman’s clothes.

Oh, I am so sick, she said.

He wrapped electrical tape around her forearms and calves. There was a sequence to what he did: he taped people first, because that got them under control quickly. Then he could take his time binding them with knotted cord.

Rader tied her wrists with cord and a nylon stocking, then tied her ankles with cord. In the bathroom, the children were screaming, pounding on the door. “Leave my mother alone, leave my mother alone, get out of here!” Steven yelled. “I’m gonna break out of here!”