Inside the Mind of BTK

My Lifelong Hunt for BTK 53
tims were “low risk,” meaning that there was no single clue to indicate
why they were destined to die a violent death. None had engaged in any
personal or criminal activities that might explain the fate they met. They
were all just regular people, living and working in a community where
the overall crime rate was remarkably low. The fact that none of the victims
had probably ever laid eyes on their killer before he struck was
another reason why police were having such a rough time unearthing
any solid leads. Yet there were a few detectives in homicide who
believed that the same killer might be responsible for all five murders.
It wasn’t until October 8 that police received what they cautiously
believed might be the biggest break in the case. Gary Sebring, a local
resident with a lengthy history of deviant behavior that included an
arrest for having sex with a duck in Riverside Park, was picked up for
molesting a five-year-old girl behind a public library. While being
questioned about the incident at the police station, Sebring made an
off-the-cuff comment about the Otero homicides that proved to be
the equivalent of dropping a lit match into a gas tank.
“He said, ‘If I was doing the Oteros, this is how I would have done
it,’ ” recalls one officer who worked the case. “ ‘I would have been with
my brother, and we would have tied them all up and my buddy
Thomas Meyers would have been with us.’ ”
Anyone looking at their individual rap sheets could tell that Gary
Sebring and his brother, Ernest, had serious mental problems. So did
Meyers. If somebody was going to give false confessions to a quadruple
homicide, they were the perfect candidates. But the heat to crack
the Otero murders was getting intense, and because the three had a
history of sex offenses, the decision was quickly made to bring them
in for questioning. Although this was five years before I first got
involved with the case, if I’d been working on it, I would have told the
cops not to bother. From a profiling standpoint, the Oteros’ killer was
far too sophisticated and careful to have a history of bestiality and
attempted molestation of a juvenile on his rap sheet. It just didn’t fit.
Meyers couldn’t be found. But on October 9, Sebring’s older
brother was taken in and grilled. Instead of being booked in jail, the
Sebrings were taken to a local mental hospital for evaluation. On
October 18, Meyers was located after he tried committing suicide and
paramedics were called to the scene. Eventually he was placed under
observation in a psychiatric hospital.
Despite Gary’s rambling statement about his involvement in the
murders, police quickly realized they’d opened a Pandora’s box due to