Inside the Mind of BTK

116 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
Whenever his wife heard this, she’d reply, “Did you get a good
look at his face this time?”
But, of course, Landwehr never had. His opponent managed to
stay just a few steps ahead of him, his face perpetually shrouded in
shadow. Cindy would groan whenever her husband told her this.
“I don’t get it,” she’d say. “You play golf with BTK, yet you never
manage to get a good look at his face.”
“No,” Landwehr would smile. “But I beat him again. I always beat
him in the end.”
Sitting there on the edge of a bed in my downtown Wichita hotel
room, I studied the lines etched into Ken Landwehr’s face, particularly
those around his eyes. He looked miles past tired.
I’d spoken to the men and women who had worked for Landwehr
on the case. From them I’d learned that the past eighteen months had
been a crazed, high-stakes roller coaster ride for Landwehr. He had
everything to lose if BTK slipped away again. For most of those
months, Landwehr seemed to subsist on Mountain Dew and Vantage
cigarettes.
After twenty-five years of silence, BTK had resurfaced on March
27, 2004, with a cryptic taunting letter sent to a local TV station.
It was a terrible shock to the people and especially to the police force
of Wichita, as most of the community had thought BTK had left town,
been arrested for another crime and was rotting in jail, retired as a serial
killer, or died, and that they would never hear from him again.
Five days before BTK emerged from the shadows to raise this
furor, Landwehr was being pressured to take a lateral transfer out of
homicide, where he served as chief. When it comes to murder investigations,
he’s a walking encyclopedia. Top brass wanted him to take
a new post as an instructor for recruits. But Landwehr loved working
homicide and had held the top spot for twelve years—which ranked
as some kind of police department record. So he had resisted this promotion
every time it came up, and did so again on this occasion. On
March 22, Landwehr persuaded the Wichita Police Department’s top
brass to let him continue on as the homicide chief.
As he sat on the edge of a bed in my hotel room, he chuckled over
what would have happened if he’d left the post, as he was expected to
do, only to have the long-silent killer resurface five days later with that
taunting letter.
“At least seventy percent of the department would have said that I
wrote that letter in order to keep my job,” Landwehr laughed.