| |
| This article keeps coming up like an evil
character in a bad horror movie. |
| It contains a lot of misinformation on the
communications from BTK, and |
| the information in it should not be taken as
true. Here is the article, with |
| notes explaining which info is false, and
what is wrong with it. |
| |
| |
| |
| SERIAL
KILLER COMMUNIQUÉS: HELPFUL OR HURTFUL |
| by |
| Tomas Guillen |
| Seattle University |
| |
| |
| "BTK"
OF WICHITA |
| |
| Case
History: On the afternoon of Jan. 15, 1974,
residents of the quiet town of Wichita, Kansas, began |
| hearing media
reports of the brutal murder of a local family. Killed
were Joseph and Julie Otero and two |
| of their children.
All four had been strangled. The 8-year-old son (correct age is 9)
was discovered with |
| a hood over his
head. (it was a bag, not a
hood) The 11-year-old daughter was nude (partially |
| dressed) and
hanging from a rope tied to a pipe in the basement. None
of the victims were sexually |
| assaulted, but
police found semen all over the house and on some of the
victims. Three months later, on |
| April 4, 1974, a
woman named Kathryn Bright was found stabbed to death in
her home. Police were |
| unaware a
sexually-motivated serial killer was operating in the
city or that the Otero and Bright murders |
| were related until
the killer sent a communiqué in October, 1974. The
writer claimed responsibility for |
| both incidents in a
letter. (there is no
mention of Kathryn Bright in the Oct. 22, 1974 letter,
in |
| fact, the killer specifically
says "If you ask for help, that you have killed four
people, they will |
| laugh or hit the panic button and
call the cops". The parts of the letter that have
been released |
| to the public can be found here in the communications section) For
three years the killer was silent, |
| killing no one and
communicating with no one. In 1977 the killer surfaced
again to strangle Shirley Vian |
| and Nancy Fox in
separate slayings in their homes. All the murders had
occurred within a 3 ½ mile radius. |
| The active search
for "BTK" ended in the early 1980s. In 1984
police reopened the case with a small |
| task force to use
new technology to try to crack the case. The task force
operated for several years |
| before closing the
case for a second time. The case remains unsolved. |
| |
| Communiqués:
In this case the killer?s communiqués included
letters, poems, and a telephone call. His |
| first communiqué in
October, 1974, consisted of a lengthy, single-spaced
typed letter. It was found in a |
| mechanical
engineering textbook at the Wichita Public Library. At
the top of the letter were the words: |
| "OTERO
CASE." The killer detailed how he killed each member
of the Otero family and in what position |
| he left them in the
house. He ended the Otero letter with: "Since
sex criminals do not change their |
| M.O. or by
nature cannot do so, I will not change mine. The code
words for me will be?bind |
| them,
torture them, kill them, B.T.K?" He
ended his second letter with: "P.S. How
about some |
| name for me,
its time: 7 down and many more to go. I like the
following. How about you? 'THE |
| B.T.K.
STRANGLER', 'WICHITA STRANGLER', 'POETIC STRANGLER'" (this was the |
| end of the second letter, but it
was actually the 4th communication, from Feb. 10, 1978).
The |
| second (in actuality, third, postmarked
1/31/78) communiqué came in the form of
a short poem about |
| victim Vian. The
poem, sent to the newspaper The Wichita Eagle-Beacon, was
patterned after a "Curley |
| Locks" nursery
rhyme. The third (second)
communiqué was a telephone call on Dec. 9, 1977. That
day |
| the killer used a
public phone booth to report the Nancy Fox slaying. When
police arrived at the phone |
| booth, the phone was
dangling from the receiver. (this
is an item that is in dispute. Some sources |
| say that the phone was not
dangling, some say it was) Later that
month the killer sent a poem about |
| Fox. (the Fox poem was included with
the Feb 10, 1978 letter, it was not sent in December.) |
| The poem was
accompanied with a letter claiming responsibility for a
total of seven murders. The poem |
| "Oh Death to
Nancy" was patterned after a poem called "Oh
Death" that was published in a textbook |
| used in a Wichita
State University American Folklore class. The letter
detailed how Vian and Fox were |
| brutally murdered.
The letter to the media was traced to Wichita State
University library copiers. On |
| February 10, 1978,
the killer sent another letter, this time to KAKE TV
Channel 10 in Wichita. Attached |
| to the letter was a
drawing of the Fox murder scene, so detailed it could
have virtually matched a lab |
| photo of the crime
scene. (this seems to be
the source for all mention of a drawing of the Fox |
| murder scene. I've seen it
referenced in other sources, but they all seem to lead
back to this |
| one. With all the other
discrepancies, I'm just not sure how much faith can be
put in this account) |
| The letter said, in
part: "I find the newspaper not writing
about the poem on Vian unamusing. A |
| little
paragraph would have enough. I know it not the news media
fault. The Police Chief he |
| keep things
quiet?" (BTK, 1978 ). The killer?s
final communiqué was found in the Wichita home of |
| a 63-year-old woman.
The April 8, 1979, note simply informed the woman he left
her house after getting |
| tired of waiting for
her in the closet. (this
information is completely off base. Number one, the |
| break-in occurred on April 28th,
so just how did this letter supposedly get in her home
on the |
| 8th? Number 2, there was no note
left. The lady received an envelope in the mail in June
of '79, |
| containing a poem, an article of
her clothing, and an article of her jewelry, which had
been taken |
| from her home during the
break-in.) |
| |
| Investigative Value:
On the surface BTK?s many communiqués appeared
extremely helpful to the |
| investigation. They
revealed the killer would kill again and provided leads
that normally proved fruitful in |
| a routine murder
investigation. Unfortunately, in the end, the
communiqués were of little value and |
| misdirected the
investigation, leading investigators to devote precious
hours and money to dead ends. |
| |
| The Otero letter had
been left in an engineering book at the Wichita Public
Library. Police obtained a list |
| of people who
checked out the textbook, but hit a dead end. Detectives
took the Fox letter to Xerox |
| headquarters in
Syracuse, New York. Technicians there determined that the
letter was a fifth-generation |
| copy of the
original, making it hard to trace to a specific
typewriter. The letter appeared to have been |
| copied at the
Wichita State University Library. Police obtained lists
of people who lived in the area |
| between 1974 and
1979, but could not develop any leads. The Vian poem was
patterned after a nursery |
| rhyme that had
appeared in a puzzle magazine called "Games."
Police obtained a list of subscribers to the |
| magazine but, again,
to no avail. [End Page 59] |
| |
| After one slaying,
police received a phone call from the killer. Police
provided a copy of the taped call to |
| broadcast stations.
About 110 callers contacted a special police phone
number, but the calls did not |
| provide the identity
of the killer. |
| |
| The communiqués
also hampered the investigation because many of them were
sent to the news media, |
| which added pressure
for police to solve the case. In the communiqués the
killer painted police as inept |
| since they could not
catch him. |
| |
| |
| |
| I realize some of this may seem
like nit-picking, but where there are this many details
stated |
| incorrectly, it's probably not a
good idea to put a whole lot of faith in the rest.
There's also the |
| fact that the article was not
about BTK , but about serial killer communiqués. In can
not be used |
| as a good resource in the BTK
case, simply because that is not the focus of the
article. The |
| goal was not information on the
case, but information on communiqués themselves. |
| |
