Read Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door for Free Online

Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday…
    There really is a “B.T.K.” Police can’t say how they know, but they’re convinced B.T.K. has information about the murder of Joseph Otero, his wife and two of his children…
    Granger said the phone number in the ad was being monitored “by officers ready to help B.T.K.”
    There was an alternative, Granger noted. The columnist was willing to talk with BTK himself, and he helpfully provided his office and home phone numbers.
    This may expose me to a certain amount of crank, prank calls, but the nuisance is worth the trouble if we can only provide help for a troubled man.
    BTK did not respond. Rader was busier than ever. A few days after Granger’s column ran, BTK went to work for the security alarm company ADT.
    After the Otero and Bright murders, ADT had done booming business installing alarms in homes. The new job put BTK inside homes as an installer.
    Rader enjoyed the irony.

    Eagle columnist Don Granger received the first phone call from BTK.

7
    December 1974–March 1977
    A Scoop
    The Eagle had kept BTK’s claim about the Oteros secret because the cops said publicity might prompt him to kill again. But there was another newspaper in town then, the weekly Wichita Sun, and it employed a reporter named Cathy Henkel who thought otherwise. On December 11, 1974, two months after the cops found BTK’s message in the library, the Sun published a story in which Henkel revealed that she had received a copy of the BTK letter from an anonymous source. She reported that BTK stood for “bind, torture, and kill,” and that the murderer had threatened to strike again.
    The story frightened people, as Hannon feared, but it also prompted them to take precautions. Henkel had written the story in part because she thought people had a right to know someone was stalking them. She had consulted private-sector psychologists before she published. Although the cops had worried that revealing the secret might encourage BTK to kill again, the psychologists argued the opposite: because BTK probably craved publicity, keeping the secret might prompt him to kill.
     
    By the time the Sun broke the story, police had already interviewed more than fifteen hundred people about the Otero murders. Now the tip lines lit up. People suspected their neighbors and coworkers. Some turned in their own fathers or sons. None of the tips panned out.
    The one-year anniversary of the Otero killings passed.
     
    Floyd Hannon retired as police chief on May 31, 1976. He regarded his failure to catch BTK as a stain on his career.
    The city manager, Gene Denton, replaced Hannon with Richard LaMunyon, the captain of the vice unit. LaMunyon looked even younger than his thirty-six years. The choice startled longtime commanders. They had advanced by seniority before; there were a lot of older men at the top.
    In contrast, LaMunyon’s nickname became “The Boy Chief.” Denton regarded his youth as an asset: he wanted a chief who thought differently.
    LaMunyon, at his first staff meeting, took his place at the head of the table and broke the ice with a joke: “Well, boys, what do we do now?” In the following months he quickly set a new tone and began to replace older men with younger men. Soon, people still in their twenties became field patrol supervisors or detectives.
    LaMunyon made a big deal about officer education. He had a master’s degree in administration, but he was no mere pencil pusher. In 1966, ten years earlier, LaMunyon and two other officers survived a fight that nearly took their lives. Their attacker had knocked one officer senseless and tossed LaMunyon over the hood of a patrol car. LaMunyon’s service revolver fell to the ground. The attacker snatched it up and stuck it in the throat of a third officer.
    LaMunyon grabbed the man’s gun hand. The gun fired, blowing off the middle, ring, and pinkie fingers of LaMunyon’s right hand. LaMunyon drew his nightstick with his left hand and beat the