Inside the Mind of BTK

68 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
was enough evidence to connect Vian’s homicide to the Otero murders.
The reason? The phone line hadn’t been cut, the killer didn’t
appear to have masturbated at the scene, the victimology was different,
and none of Shirley’s children were harmed. That the paramedics
had disturbed the crime scene, removing Vian’s various bindings,
meant that police had nothing to visually link the two killings. They
had to rely on the memories of Vian’s kids and the emergency medical
technicians to reconstruct the scene.
Still, according to Drowatzky, there were a few detectives on the
force who whispered about possible parallels between the homicides.
That they even toyed with a connection between the two murders
spoke volumes about just how deeply the Oteros’ killer had wormed
his way into the consciousness of the Wichita police force. But their
suspicions never amounted to anything other than a collective gut
hunch, certainly nothing anyone could prove—at least not until the
killer penned his next letter, claiming responsibility for the killing.
Over the next few weeks, nearly fifty people were interviewed by
police. Because of the puzzling randomness of the murder, however,
the hunt for a viable suspect quickly turned cold, and the case was put
on the back burner.
Yet despite the lack of anything resembling a lead, investigators
had a strong hunch that the photograph the killer displayed to Vian’s
son Steve was a snapshot of Cheryl Gilmore and her son. Gilmore was
the neighbor on whose front door Steve saw the killer knock earlier
that morning while walking home from the store.
Detectives believed that Gilmore might have been the killer’s
intended target. She lived alone with her son and regularly came home
for lunch from her job at a nearby optometrist’s office. The only reason
she wasn’t home when the UNSUB knocked on her door was that
she had to take her son to a medical appointment.
Gilmore learned about the murders after returning home from
work that afternoon. Her street was swarming with police and TV
crews. The thought that she narrowly missed meeting the grisly fate
suffered by Shirley spooked her horribly. But because she couldn’t
afford to move away from the area, she remained living in her house.
Each night for the next year, she lay in bed with an unloaded shotgun,
telling herself she’d use it as a club should the killer ever return.
I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if fiveyear-old
Steve hadn’t bumped into that stranger roaming his neighborhood
on that morning. The killer was obviously pumped up to