btk: two more victims?
Some in Wichita are speculating that the serial killer known to America as “BTK” (for “bind,” “torture,” and “kill”) may have had more victims than the eight we’ve known about for some time.
This twisted individual has been leaving presents out for Wichita citizens to find:
The supervisor leading the BTK serial killer investigation today will give a brief statement about what the Police Department has called a “suspicious package” left at a remote spot north of Wichita.
The statement from Lt. Ken Landwehr, scheduled for about 10 a.m. at City Hall, will come two days after police picked up a cereal box inscribed “BTK.”
Its location — on a dirt stretch of Seneca between 69th and 77th streets north — was noted on a postcard that appears to be from BTK. The card from “S Killett” bore the return address of the Otero family — BTK’s first four victims, killed in 1974.
On Tuesday and again Wednesday, police declined to comment on whether the card, the box and the box’s contents are connected to the killer.
Assuming the package is not a hoax, what does it mean that it was placed in an out-of-the-way area outside Wichita? Until now, all of the killer’s known homicides — eight victims from 1974 to 1986 — have occurred in Wichita.
All of his known packages or letters have been left at or mailed to Wichita locations.
If the cereal box is from the serial killer, he could have chosen a new location “to keep people off balance, just to do something a little different,” said Gregg McCrary, a former FBI profiler based in Virginia.
A subtext of the killer’s message, McCrary said, could be that “he’s not limited by the city boundaries. Part of it is instilling fear in the community… keeping the community on edge, because it’s all about power.”
The location of the package also could be a matter of convenience, said Robert Beattie, the Wichitan who is writing a book about the case. He noted that the killer appears to have developed a habit of leaving packages not far from I-135. It’s easy access, Beattie said.
“Get off (the interstate), drop your package, get back on the interstate, and you’re gone.”
It’s not clear how long the cereal-box package was left leaning against the road-curves sign on North Seneca.
But Jennifer Gonzales, a 31-year-old who drives that route twice a day for her nursing job, said she noticed the box — which was festooned with crepe paper streamers and weighted down with a brick — last Thursday afternoon.
“I thought it was kind of strange that there was the box with a brick on it,” she said. “I thought it was kids or something.”
Then on Saturday, Gonzales said, she saw another Post Toasties box in a conspicuous spot along North Seneca. She recalled it being faded and wrapped with yellow ribbon-like material. Like the box found Tuesday, it also was sitting at the base of a sign — a “No Dumping” sign just south of 101st Street North, she said.
The location of these boxes are giving some Wichita residents the heebie-jeebies, and some are recalling a couple of unsolved murders in the neighborhood.
The cases both involved women who were abducted from their homes and strangled, but their bodies were dumped in rural areas far from their homes. In all the known BTK crimes, the victims were tied up, murdered and left in their own homes.
The first Park City homicide occurred on April 27, 1985, when Marine Hedge, 53, was abducted from her home at 6254 Independence in Park City. Her body was found eight days later along a dirt road near 143rd Street East and 37th Street North. Although her hands weren’t tied, a knotted pair of pantyhose was found nearby.
An autopsy showed that Hedge was strangled. As was the case in many known BTK cases, the phone line at Hedge’s home was cut. Her 1967 Chevrolet Monte Carlo was later found in the Brittany Center parking lot at 21st and Woodlawn. In at least two of BTK’s known cases, he drove a victim’s car away from the crime scene.
The second Park City homicide occurred on Jan. 19, 1991, when Delores “Dee” Davis, 62, was abducted from her home a half-mile east of town. She was found 13 days later under a bridge in northern Sedgwick County on an unpaved stretch of 117th Street North near Meridian.
An autopsy report said that Davis was strangled, and that her feet, hands and knees were bound with pantyhose. The killer cut her outside phone line, then threw a brick through a glass door at the rear of her home to get inside.
David Thompson, now the executive officer for the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Department, worked as a detective on the Hedge case in 1985. Although he doesn’t recall specifics of the crime, he said he’s sure that the possibility of a BTK connection was discussed.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that in early stages of the investigation that there would have been some comparisons,” he said. “It’s just something you would do. It’s just good police work.”
But Thompson said the differences in the Hedge case — especially the fact that her body was found far from her home — led detectives down paths that were not related to BTK.
No arrests were made in either of the Park City homicides.
Wichita police are no doubt running themselves in circles trying to find this animal. I hope they are successful, and soon; I fear that the increased activity of BTK and the heat generated by his apparent contacts recently are both preludes to another strike by the killer.
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