Inside the Mind of BTK: The True Story Behind the Thirty-Year Hunt for the Notorious Wichita Serial Killer (18 page)
Authors: John Douglas,Johnny Dodd
BOOK: Inside the Mind of BTK: The True Story Behind the Thirty-Year Hunt for the Notorious Wichita Serial Killer
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Would it work? Could my idea help nab a killer as elusive as BTK? It seemed worth a try.
A few afternoons later I was seated in a first floor conference room in the FBI’s forensic science building, not far from my office. With me at that massive rectangular oak table were two other agents, along with the two detectives from Wichita who had traveled to Quantico looking for answers. Behind us were a handful of rubber-neckers, camped out in the back of the room to catch a glimpse of what was about to unfold during the next few hours.
We were going to toss out ideas about what sort of person might be responsible for those seven unsolved murders in Kansas, how police might track him down, and ways they could get him to crack once they had a possible suspect.
To my left sat Roy Hazelwood, a rail thin, chain-smoking forty-seven-year-old FBI instructor, widely regarded as one of finest minds in the study of interpersonal violence. A truly brilliant researcher and homicide investigator, Hazelwood was a former Army major who was first introduced to detective work while serving in the military police. Beside him sat Ron Walker, a clean-cut thirty-five-year-old former FBI field agent from Colorado, brought into my unit shortly after my collapse from viral encephalitis. A veteran Air Force pilot, Walker was whip smart, highly organized, and in the midst of learning the ropes of profiling from me. He was proving to be an exceptionally quick study.
In many ways, our goal here felt similar to what musicians do when they get together and jam. Only instead of sound, we were bouncing our thoughts off one another, working with ideas based on clues BTK had left us at his murders and in his letters. Sometimes we chased a thread spooled out by someone else. At other moments, one of us would dart off in a fresh, new direction, watching to see if anyone followed. Much of what we would offer up would be insightful, some of it not so. We didn’t always agree with what the others said, yet we were smart enough to know that this was part of the process, part of the journey.
The objective of our session was to keep moving forward until we ran out of juice, until we were tapped out. It was up to the two detectives from Wichita to take notes, jotting down whatever elements they found helpful. Whether anything we came up with at this table would ever get implemented was up to the task force. Our unit’s caseload was far too crowded to allow the luxury of monitoring how our ideas were used in a particular investigation.
I decided to kick off the discussion by spending a few minutes rehashing the case for those present, hoping to refresh everyone’s memories.
“Here’s where I’m at with this guy,” I said, pulling off my suit jacket and draping it over my chair. “Back when he started in 1974, he was in his mid- to late twenties. It’s now ten years later, so that would put him in his mid- to late thirties.”
“How’d you come up with that figure?” Walker asked.
“I started with the age of twenty-five because that’s what our research is finding to be the median age when most of these guys start killing,” I said. “Then I tacked on a few more years because of the level of criminal sophistication evident in the Otero murders and his apparent knowledge of police and criminology.”
Walker nodded.
I turned toward the two detectives seated at the far end of the table. “If you haven’t already, you guys should check and see if Nancy Fox’s driver’s license had her picture on it,” I said. “If it did, it seems logical to assume that he took it as a type of trophy to help him relive her kill later. If not, perhaps he removed it in order to have enough facts on hand so he’d have something to read to the police dispatcher.”
I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts. Since nobody opened his mouth, I continued. “If this is all a game to him, he’s doing it to fulfill his ego,” I said. “It’s a challenge thrown at police. His victims are all so different. He may have a preferential victim, but when it’s time to go on the hunt, the person he hits is the first one to come into his sights. The significance for him is his ability to get away with the crime and flaunt his skills. The only torture I’m seeing with his kills is psychological torture.”
Hazelwood, a serious caffeine addict, polished off what was left of his coffee and then said, “But in his mind, he is torturing his victims. That’s why he uses the bags. He wants to see the terror in their eyes as he places it over their heads.”
Hazelwood stopped talking, but Walker and I knew better than to speak—he was just getting started. “He’s definitely a sexual bondage practitioner and a collector of bondage magazines and detective magazines. He’s also got an interest in criminology or psychology. He’s probably pretty well known to adult book store operators in the area.”
“Yeah,” said Walker. “This guy is definitely into psychological torture. That indicates a higher level of sophistication and a higher level of intelligence than the average Joe on the street. The more physical the torture, the more primal and reactive the person inflicting it is. Not much intelligent thought goes into physical torture.”
All of our heads nodded in unison.
“What we’re finding from our research is that most of these guys have an IQ range between 105 and 145,” I said. “The average falls between 115 and 120. Average for the normal population is 100. What this is showing us is that most of these guys are able to move around in society fairly easily. We catch the dumb ones quickly. The smarter ones take longer. . . . And so do the lucky ones.
“I think it’s pretty clear that this guy is able to spend a bit of time at his crime scenes. This is something that appears important to him. He seems to want to have some kind of dialogue with his victims. It isn’t a blitz-type scenario. As we learned from the Bright murder, he attempted to diffuse the situation and make everyone feel that if they’d just cooperate with him, he’d leave. They had no way of knowing that this was part of his MO. So he’s capable of maintaining that type of control relationship. In a group kill, he’s smart enough to go after strength first. He uses the stronger victim to tie up the others. Then he gets rid of that strong figure and, as he said in one of his letters, he saves the best for last.”
As I spoke, I rubbed the tip of my index finger over the raised monogram on one of my gold cufflinks. “I’ve often wondered if the reason he took eleven-year-old Josie Otero to the basement was that she’d begun to get hysterical and loud after seeing her family killed,” I said. “He was taking a chance by forcing her down there, but he may have been losing control of her at that moment and was concerned about the neighbors hearing her. It was a chance he was willing to take. And the way he tied her up with all those bindings felt like he was attempting to make his crime scene appear more complex than it really was. It was his way of turning it into an Ellery Queen mystery, forcing detectives to waste their time and scratch their heads, asking, ‘Why would he do this?’”
Walker seemed to think he knew one of the reasons why. “The fact that we didn’t see any signs of penetration, or any clear sign of fondling, says we’re looking at a guy who has an inadequate, immature sexual history,” he said. “Her bra was probably cut in order to expose the breasts for voyeuristic kicks rather than touching. There’s just so much emphasis on substitute sex with this guy. I think we should be looking at a lone-wolf type of personality. But he’s not alone because he’s shunned by others—it’s because he chooses to be alone. His social and sexual life will reflect this. He wants to be alone. He can function in social settings, but only on the surface. He may have women friends he can talk to, but he’d feel very inadequate with a peer group female.”
Hazelwood sensed something else. “This guy is a sexual sadist,” he said. “He’s sexually inadequate, but he will have relationships with women. To a sexual sadist, the act of sex isn’t important. What is important are the acts and activities leading up to the sexual act. That’s why we haven’t seen any penetration of his victims. He’s the type who is heavily into masturbation, having oral sex performed on him, ejaculating onto his partners, tying them up, blindfolding them, or choking them. Women who have had sex with this guy would describe him as aloof, uninvolved, the type who is more interested in her servicing him than the other way around.”
I listened to what Hazelwood was saying and decided to follow his lead. Unlike Walker, I believed our killer had managed to rack up a bit of sexual experience in his troubled lifetime. But I sensed his partners were probably the type whom he could easily manipulate and control.
“The women he’s been with are either many years younger, very naïve, or much older and depend on him as their meal ticket,” I said. “Therefore, even if she suspected something about him, she’d put up with his imperfections because she needs him in order to survive. Bondage is very important to him and I’d think there’s a good chance he may have tried to get a prostitute to allow him to bind her up. But most would be afraid. The police might get a lead by checking with prostitutes to see if anyone has come into contact with a guy who’s heavily into bondage.” Hazelwood drummed his fingers on the side of his empty coffee cup. “He definitely will like older women because he can manipulate them in exchange for their affection,” he said. “I also think he’ll have the ability to interact with others on a peripheral level. He’s got what I’d call a ‘service personality.’ People will know him, but they don’t really know him. The idea of him being a lone wolf is a good description. In terms of employment, I think we’ll find he does well in his job, but doesn’t like to stay in any one position for very long. He doesn’t like anyone being over him. I also think he’d love to drive and would probably have a fairly decent automobile. In fact, people would associate him with driving.”
“His car will probably be a nondescript type of vehicle,” I said. “Perhaps a sedan that will smack of law enforcement. He might have even purchased it at an auction from law enforcement. He’s image conscious, so there would antennas on the car, along with a scanner and a CB.”
As I spoke, Walker stared out the massive glass windows at the far end of the room. He appeared transfixed by the trees and freshly-trimmed grass that stretched off into the distance. “I think he’s apt to be an underachiever—that’s what his supervisors will say,” Walker blurted out. “They’ll tell you he’s a smart guy who has the ability to do better than he’s doing. But he refuses to work up to his potential on the job. The reason is that he probably feels he’s better, more intelligent than his supervisors. Why should he bust his ass when he’s smarter than his boss? He’s egotistical with an exaggerated sense of self-importance.”
I sat there listening to Walker, thinking about how fascinated BTK was with the world of law enforcement, telling myself that if he ever did become a police officer, he would have been one of those heavy-handed cops who carried a service revolver, along with another handgun in an ankle holster. Then, just to play it safe, he’d also stash a couple of knives in his various pockets. He’d be the type of cop who would have racked up a file cabinet full of complaints from those he came in contact with while performing his duties.
“I think our UNSUB would have been openly critical of the investigation,” Hazelwood said. “Not openly so, but more in terms of his saying, ‘Those damn cops, they don’t know what they’re doing.’ He holds the police in disdain because they’ve been unable to solve the case, in spite of the tremendous amount of clues he believes he left them, clues they should have been able to pick up on. He tells himself that if he were a cop working the case, he would have picked up on these clues. I’d say there’s a good chance he’s already been interviewed by police and found to be cooperative. He may have even phoned in with additional information, perhaps telling detectives about something he ‘just remembered.’”
“I keep thinking that early on he might have been married to someone who would have allowed him to get away with some of the stuff he enjoys—bondage and sexual exploration,” I said. “But now at his age, I’m wondering if maybe he’s divorced.”
Hazelwood shook his head. “When they’re married, sexual sadists will act out their fantasies on their spouses,” he said. “They can’t control it. They have to be in control. When they’re dating, they’re often very charming, manipulative, and very attentive. When having sex, they may act out superficially, asking things like, ‘Can I hold your arms? Do you mind if I tie you down?’ But after they get married, they get into it heavily. One option might be to take the list of suspects and find out who is divorced. Then interview the ex-wives to find out about their ex’s sexual sadistic activities during their marriage.”
Ex-wives, I’d learned long ago, could provide a wealth of information for investigators with the right touch. “You might also ask these exes if they were ever the recipients of souvenirs or other items taken from victims,” I said. “Ask them if, when they were together, did the suspect ever give them gifts of used jewelry or other items missing from our crime scenes. Ask them if he ever spoke about BTK or his kills? Did he ever take them to where the murders had occurred or to the cemeteries where his victims were buried? And, if so, did he act strange when he got there? You might even release information to the media that serial killers often become obsessed with coverage of their crimes and intensely follow them. This information might prompt a spouse or former spouse to come forward.”
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