Holy Ned…I just read the linked article in today’s NY Times.
It seems the serial murderer who terrorized Wichita, Kansas, back in the 1970s…and whom everyone hoped was dead or in jail…is still around.
Called “BTK” for his bind-torture-kill technique, he sent a letter on March 17 to the Wichita Eagle, which contained photocopied photos of a dead woman and a stolen driver’s license. The woman had been murdered in 1986, supposedly well after BTK’s prime years. But the corpse had been moved by EMTs before crime-scene photographs could be taken.
Anyone here from Kansas? Are you guys, like, freaking out?
I’m not from Kansas, but reading that article was definitely creepy. People coming home, checking all the closets before going to bed with the phone in hand, ready to dial 911; I can’t fathom living in such an atmosphere of fear like that.
Yeah, you had to check for a dial tone as soon as you came home, because the first thing he would do was cut the phone line.
A-men. This is the thing that bothers me the most…not only were the killings god-awful, but the guy liked to give little clues to the police and media. He actually phoned in to the cops after one of his murders (so they have a recording of his voice).
He waited inside the home of a 63-year-old woman, then decided to give up when she was late arriving back. So then he mailed her a letter telling her how close she’d come to being strangled, and enclosed a scarf he’d stolen from her house. She moved away pretty damn fast.
So he’s not only a serial killer of the ugliest sort, but he gets jollies out of scaring people to death.
Holy crap! I think that in addition to warnings of “not safe for work” on links, we need a “not advisable if you just got home by yourself and logged on to your computer without going into any other rooms in the house” type of warning :eek:
As for the bit about the letter to the lady that he “missed”, I agree. That’s about the creepiest thing I’ve read in a while
::shudder::
Whoopsie! Sorry, Zabali. I never opened that thread as, not being a Kansas man myself, I thought that “BTK” might have been some form of delicatessen that had upset you.
I didn’t think to post this in the Pit because my attitude is not “God damn this man!” but, rather, “this guy seriously spooks me out.”
I agree, Ukelele Ike. It is extremely odd and creepy this guy shows back up after a waaaay long hiatus. Yes, he could have been incarcerated for something totally unrelated, hence the dry spell, and released, but still…this is just scary and ominous.
Crime Library dot com has a very good read on their site about him. It wasn’t updated to include these new murders the other day, but I bet it will be in short order.
I wonder if it could be a good copy-cat, though? (Just thinking in print, here…)
See, I got it from the “Wichita Serial Killer” part.
Scary stuff indeed - I wonder what would make a serial killer lay low for so long. I believe the protocol is that they would continue to kill until they are caught.
I distinctly remember the scare the first time (grew up in Wichita at that time). EVERYONE talked about it, it was on the news and in the paper every day, and kids at school would talk about it endlessly. It never really scared me, although several of my older relatives (aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc) bought their first guns as a result of the scare.
There were lots of “false alarms” too, IIRC. A person dying of suicide and the papers initially reporting it as a “BTK killing???”
I will say that although it’s been in the news a little, I know of absolutely no one who is talking about it in Kansas City. Most everyone is not even aware of the news, let alone remembers. Things in Wichita may be a bit different.
There’s a rumor that the return address on the letter --“1684 Oldmanor” – signifies that the strangler really IS affiliated with the university…a theory that goes back to his heyday in the '70s.
16-8-4 numero-alphabetically stands for “Ph.D.”
“Oldmanor” may hint that he’s planning on resuming his spree, in his “old manner.”
Here’s a link to the local stories archive for Wichita’s NBC affiliate KSN. You’ll get a good idea as to how made the world seem suddenly topsy turvy in that area.
That would be very frightening. My first thought was “what if you just forgot to pay the bill?” or the telephone company was doing maintenence and messed something up. You’d be terrified…and for nothing.
No, it’s not funny, but sometimes, you only have two choices: laugh or cry.
This would freak me out if I lived in Wichita. There’s something terrible about knowing this psycho is “mixed with the crowd”.
This got me thinking how difficult it is to catch fairly intelligent wackos like this, people who kill more or less randomly. The police has his voice, his sperm, a description, he taunted them and yet they couldn’t catch him. When the criminal doesn’t know the victims and there is no motive that can pinpoint a suspect it gets that much harder. Very worrying. Unfortunately if the killer doesn’t screw up it can take a lifetime to catch him. I felt so bad reading about the victims… damn…
That crime library site has some spooky, evil stuff.
Re: OPs question, “Are you guys, like, freaking out?”
I’m not. Some folks are, but at least some of that can probably be blamed on the local media, which are intent on riding this one-trick pony of a story to death (the only thing new here is that BTK recently took credit for a murder 15 or 20 years ago, and apparently looks good for it). The Wichita Eagle is so hard-up already that today’s page one story was about some local guy who has been working on a book about BTK.
Zyada - was that second quote from the same site as the first? About the only thing right in it is the spelling of some English words. Yup, the name he used on the letter, Bill Thomas Killman, was fictitious and might have some hidden meaning (like the surname and the initials, duh?). The address was a vacant unit in a fourplex, not a vacant lot. Makes ya wonder how much else the original source has wrong.
Course, it’s easy for me to be nonchalant, since I’m not in BTK’s preferred demographic.
One thing has changed over the years - with cell phones become common, his old trick of cutting the phone lines is obsolete.
