After 25 years, serial killer resurfaces with claim of victim #8
WICHITA, Kan. -- The killer came back. Or maybe he was here all along.
A serial strangler who tormented his victims and taunted an entire town with his murderous boasts before disappearing for 25 years has resurfaced in recent months with proof that he had killed again -- in 1986. The self-named ''B.T.K. Strangler" -- for bind, torture, kill -- is playing his cat-and-mouse game anew, all but daring someone to find him.
First came a letter in March to the Wichita Eagle newspaper with photocopied Polaroids of the corpse of Vicki Wegerle, a young mother killed in 1986 in a case that had gone unsolved. She is now considered his eighth murder victim. Then came a letter to a television station, one to the police and one discovered in July at the Wichita Public Library.
Police raced to restart their investigation. They dusted off file boxes, studied cryptic new clues, and requested DNA samples from hundreds of Wichita residents. They have circulated the killer's poems -- ''Drop of fear fresh Spring rain would roll down from your nakedness" -- in the hope that someone will recognize the demented author.
The latest phase has generated more than 4,000 tips. Police, inundated with requests for safety advice, are conducting public training sessions while warning residents to use deadbolt locks and never open doors to uninvited strangers.
B.T.K. had been silent for so long, in fact, that most everyone figured him for dead.
Not anymore.
''There's going to be more. B.T.K.'s not going to let it drop," Wichita psychologist Howard Brodsky said. ''He loves the attention. He definitely likes to taunt."
There has never been a credible description, although traumatized survivors in the 1970s estimated his age from the mid-twenties to perhaps 30. He is best known for his gruesome crimes and his notes. His inner demons figure prominently.
''I can't stop it so the monster goes on and hurts me as well as society," he wrote after the killings began. ''It's a big complicated game my friend the monster play, putting victims number down, follow them, checking up on them, waiting in the dark, waiting, waiting."
It was a wintry morning, Jan. 15, 1974, when B.T.K. first attacked. In a working-class neighborhood in east Wichita, he cut the telephone line after Joseph Otero, 38, drove off to school with his three oldest children. Julie Otero and the couple's two youngest, Josephine, 11, and Joseph II, 9, were in the house.
The killer appears to have fought with Julie Otero, who had some training in martial arts. He bound her feet and strangled her and did the same to Joseph II. When the elder Joseph arrived home unexpectedly, B.T.K. tied him and choked him to death.
The killer spent the longest time in the basement, police believe, hanging Josephine from a pipe and masturbating. B.T.K. did not sexually assault his victims, but in the Otero house and others, police discovered semen, the source of DNA detectives are trying to match.
It was not long before police had what they called a confession from a young Wichita man, who named two friends as accomplices. That inspired the true killer to indignation. He placed a letter in an engineering book at the library and called the Wichita Eagle with instructions where to find it.
''I did it by myself and no ones help," he said in the October 1974 letter. He reported details that only the killer could know. For good measure, he included a symbol of authenticity that would mark later missives, including the one mailed to the Eagle this year.
The hunt was back on.
By then, B.T.K. had killed his next victim, Kathryn Bright, 21. He was waiting for her when she arrived home. Either then or later, her brother also entered the apartment. The attacker tied up Kevin Bright in a separate room, tried to strangle him, shot him in the head and left him for dead. After B.T.K. left the room, Bright staggered from the apartment, badly wounded and foggy about the details. In a panic, retired police chief Richard LaMunyon said, B.T.K. stabbed Kathryn Bright to death.
For three years, he was not heard from.
On March 17, 1977, B.T.K. herded Shirley Vian's three young children into a bathroom of their house. As he killed her, the children escaped through a window. They described a white man about the age of their 26-year-old mother.
The same year, the killer struck again, strangling Nancy Fox, 25, and calling 911 from a pay phone.
Four attacks, seven bodies, but no good leads.
On Jan. 31, 1978, B.T.K. sent a short poem to the Eagle. It began, ''Shirleylocks, shirleylocks." It was the killer, referring to Shirley Vian.
The police didn't broadcast the note, and the killer became frustrated. He contacted KAKE television.
''How many people do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention? How about some name for me, its time: 7 down and many more to go," he wrote.
Number eight got away. On April 28, 1979, the killer waited for Anna Williams, 63, but she was at a square dance and stopped to visit her daughter, not returning home at her usual time. B.T.K. left in a huff. He sent a 19-line poem to Williams and KAKE, along with proof that he had been inside her home. He titled his ode, ''Oh, Anna, Why Didn't You Appear."
When B.T.K. was in his prime, Wichita had only six homicide detectives. Retired detective Arlyn Smith recalled feeling daunted. He and his partner confirmed he used a public photocopier at Wichita State University and at the library. They researched the serial killers B.T.K. had named in homage and gathered lists of WSU students.
''Why does he want all this attention now? It's like he's saying, 'Look at me, I'm still here,' " said Marilyn Wardlow, who lives a few miles outside Wichita and well remembers the 1970s, when women reflexively checked their phones to see if the wires had been snipped.
One theory is B.T.K. was reacting to retrospectives of the Otero killing that appeared this year.
''This guy liked -- and likes -- publicity," former chief LaMunyon said. ''I don't think he wants to die without people knowing who he is."
