Inside the Mind of BTK

The Capture and Arrest of BTK 245
into the air as he could, then sit back and watch as the cops ran off in
a million different directions, chasing wild geese. But Landwehr was
desperate. He’d finally hooked his big fish, and this, he felt, was all part
of the process of reeling him in.
Landwehr and I split the tab for breakfast, gulped down another
cup of coffee, and headed back to my hotel room. Along the way, he
continued to walk me through the next twist the case took.
It happened on January 25 with the arrival of a postcard at the
studios of KAKE-TV. The sender’s name was listed as S. Killet, and his
return address was the same as the Otero family home.
On the back of the postcard beneath the words COMMUNICA-
TION #8, he explained where he’d tied a Post Toasties cereal box to a
street sign on North Seneca Street. It was found to contain some jewelry
from one of his victims along with a doll fashioned to resemble Josie
Otero. Around its neck was tied a tiny noose attached to a bit of pipe.
The presence of this package in north Sedgwick County,
Landwehr explained to me, began fueling rumors that two unsolved
homicides in the area might be the work of the killer. In April 1985,
the body of fifty-three-year-old Park City resident Marine Hedge was
discovered near a rural dirt road several miles away from her home.
Near her body, a knotted pair of panty hose was found. A coroner
determined that she’d been strangled. Her 1967 Chevrolet Monte
Carlo was later discovered in the parking lot of a local shopping center
several miles away.
The area’s next unsolved homicide occurred in January 1991 when
Delores “Dee” Davis, sixty-two, disappeared from her Park City home.
Like Hedge, Davis had been strangled and abducted from her residence
and her phone line cut. Two weeks passed before her body was
discovered on a dirt road. Her hands, feet, and knees were still bound
in panty hose.
Just as Landwehr had always believed that Vicki Wegerle’s murder
could be the work of BTK, he had long suspected that the killer was
responsible for the killings of Hedge and Davis. Yet because both cases
apparently took place outside Wichita city limits, the homicides were
handled by detectives working for the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s
Department. According to Landwehr, county investigators originally
considered that BTK might be the killer of the two Park City residents,
but they eventually discounted the possibility. One of the reasons was
that the bodies had been discovered so far from their homes, which
didn’t appear to fit BTK’s known MO.