Inside the Mind of BTK

238 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
“The Wichita Police Department recently received information
on the Vicki Wegerle homicide that occurred on September 16, 1986,
in the 2400 block of West 13th Street,” he told the crowd of print, TV,
and radio reporters packed into the room. “Mrs. Wegerle was discovered
in her home shortly before noon on that day by her husband. Her
murder remains unsolved.”
Even though word had begun circulating among the media about
the nature of this press conference, the edgy tension in the room was
palpable, Landwehr later told me.
“Investigations personnel now believe that this homicide could
possibly be linked to the unsolved homicides that occurred in Wichita
in the 1970s and were attributed to the BTK serial killer,” Landwehr
told reporters. “This is the most challenging case I have ever worked
on, and the individual would be very interesting to talk with. We are
working closely with the FBI, the KBI [Kansas Bureau of Investigation],
the Sedgwick County sheriff’s office, and the district attorney’s
office on this investigation. This case is a top priority with the Wichita
Police Department, and we will be working this as a strong, unsolved
case, and exploring all possible leads.”
Landwehr did everything I’d recommended back in 1984, when I
suggested that a close bond with the lead investigator on this case
could create the kind of situation in which BTK would not only feel
respected but also see himself as a consummate professional, playing
a game of hide-and-seek with a collegial opponent. In the end, he
might just let his guard down enough to give himself away or possibly
even give himself up.
A few days after the contents of that first communiqué were
released to the public, the seven phone lines in the BTK task force
offices started ringing. Nearly a thousand tips came flooding in. A
command post was soon established in the nearby offices of the FBI.
Before long, police were driving around town with sterile Q-Tips,
eventually taking DNA mouth swabs from nearly sixteen hundred
local men in their late forties and fifties, including a number of retired
police officers. Not surprisingly, this caused plenty of grumbling
among former cops.
When Landwehr told me this, I could feel the frustration he must
have been enduring at the time. Clearly the police had no leads and
were forced to resort to tossing out the widest high-tech net they could
find in order to catch their killer. The reason retired cops were targeted