Inside the Mind of BTK

My Lifelong Hunt for BTK 77
ing for suitable bindings and gags. They also theorized that he’d
turned up the thermostat in order to compensate for the cold air that
had entered the dwelling through the window he’d shattered.
Semen was found at the scene in a blue nightgown, left at the head
of the bed. Crime scene technicians were able to retrieve enough of a
sample to send it quickly to the state crime lab in Topeka and have it
analyzed. This was a decade before the advent of DNA testing, and the
only thing police could hope to glean from the sperm sample was the
blood type of the person it came from.
What they learned did little to help investigators focus their efforts,
for the sperm had come from someone classified as a PGM-1 nonsecretor.
In layman’s terms, this meant that the UNSUB had just hit the
genetic jackpot. Because if you were going to leave sperm behind at a
crime scene, you could only hope to be a PGM-1 non-secretor, as this
made trying to pinpoint your blood type physically impossible.
The search for other types of evidence also proved less than fruitful.
In an effort to determine if the killer left behind any fingerprints
on Fox’s body, investigators employed what was, at the time, considered
to be a newfangled forensic technique.
A week before the murder, the department’s fingerprint technician
had just attended a seminar on “fuming,” which involved erecting
a makeshift plastic tent over the bed and pouring a chemical
known as cyanoacrylate (commonly referred to as super-glue) into a
ceramic bowl, then heating it at a low temperature. Over the next two
hours, the chemicals vaporized inside the tent and adhered to any of
the oils left behind by fingerprints, which were visible when viewed
under a black light. When the process was finished, a portion of several
fingerprints and part of a palm print were detected on Fox’s body, but
they weren’t sufficient in helping police locate any suspects.
By late that afternoon, Fox’s body was wheeled out on a gurney
and driven to St. Francis Hospital, four miles way. An autopsy determined
that she died from strangulation. Yet the coroner found that
despite partially undressing his victim and binding her, the killer had
not raped or penetrated her.
As a battery of tests were being run on Fox’s body, detectives were
busy interviewing her friends, family, and coworkers, enabling them
to reconstruct her final hours.
They learned that shortly after 9:00 P.M., Nancy Fox left her job
at Helzberg’s Jewelry Store at the Wichita Mall, where she worked as
an assistant manager. On her way home, she grabbed a burger at a