Inside the Mind of BTK

My Lifelong Hunt for BTK 59
In the end, however, these inaccuracies actually did more to prove
that whoever penned the letter actually was the Oteros’ killer. After all,
he would not have known that the crime scene had been disturbed.
He would have expected it to look exactly the way it did when he fled
the house. Another factual error was the writer’s claim that he’d used
five turns of his rope to create Josephine’s noose. In reality, he’d only
used three. Detectives wrote off this mistake as a case of inattention
due to the excitement he must have been experiencing prior to killing
his eleven-year-old victim. Another perplexing aspect of the letter was
the writer’s reference to Josephine’s glasses being left in the bedroom.
Why would the killer have gone to the trouble of placing them there?
Was it simply some weird way to taunt police? The answer turned out
to be much more mundane, although decades would pass before
investigators learned the real reason.
Over the next couple of weeks, nearly two dozen psychologists and
psychiatrists were shown the contents of the letter and asked to compile
a personality profile of the individual they believed might have
written it. The doctors were divided over whether or not it should be
released to the public, something police were hesitant to do out of fear
that they’d be inundated by an avalanche of false leads they knew they
didn’t have the manpower to investigate.
We now know that there was an issue far more important than
whether or not the department needed additional personnel to chase
down leads. My belief is that police might have been more effective in their
efforts if they’d been more forthcoming with the release of information
to the public. Because when provided with useful behavioral characteristics
of an UNSUB, the community can begin acting as a powerful tool for
investigators, serving as their eyes, ears, and a type of collective data bank.
Surely somebody, somewhere, may have seen something around the
time of the murders, some odd bit of behavior in a friend, coworker,
or relative. But until people are given some clue as to what they’re supposed
to have seen, they can’t help connect the dots for police.
The specialists were unanimous in their assessment: the writer was
“a very sick man ...who had a fetish for bondage. His reaction, sexually,
is to be bound, to bind other people,” Chief Hannon eventually
told reporters.
At the request of police, Granger placed a classified ad in the
newspaper, which ran from October 24 to October 27, urging the killer
to contact him. It read: