Free Bind, Torture, Kill by Roy Wenzl Page A

but BTK had pointed out the obvious.
    Golly-gee, yes the M.O. is different in each, but look a pattern is developing The victims are tie up-most have been women-phone cut-bring some bondage mater sadist tendenices-no stuggle, outside the death spot-no wintness except the Vain’s Kids. They were very lucky; phone call save them.
    LaMunyon studied the BTK letter for a long time, trying to discern who the police were hunting.
    BTK seemed meticulous. The drawing of Nancy Fox on the bed was fairly accurate. LaMunyon wondered if BTK took Polaroids and drew from them. He wondered why BTK decided not to name the fifth of his seven victims. He was probably creating puzzles for the police, playing games. LaMunyon guessed the unknown victim was Kathryn Bright, though there were two or three other contenders.
    It was clear from this note and the 1974 letter that BTK craved attention and wanted fame, like serial killers of the past.
    You don’t understand these things because your not under the influence of factor x). The same thing that made, Son of Sam, Jack The Ripper, Havery Glatman, Boston Strangler, Dr. H.H. Holmes Panty Hose Strangler OF Florida, Hillside Strangler, Ted of The West Coast and many more infamous character kill. Which seem s senseless, but we cannot help it. There is no help, no cure, except death or being caught and put away…
    How about some name for me, it’s time: 7 down and many moreto go. I Like the following. How about you?
    “THE B.T.K. STRANGLER”, WICHITA STRANGLER”, “POETIC STRANGLER”, “THE BON DAGE STRANGLER”….
     
    LaMunyon held a news conference at city hall after he left KAKE. His commanders had worried aloud: “If we tell people, how do we do it? Stand at a podium and say, ‘There’s this guy out there who says he’s going to kill again and we can’t stop him’?”
    “Yeah,” LaMunyon replied. “That’s pretty much what we say.”
    His announcement was the shocker LaMunyon knew it would be. The next day’s headline in the Eagle read: C ITY ’ S ‘BTK S TRANGLER ’ C LAIMS H E’S K ILLED 7. If reporter Casey Scott’s opening paragraph sounded a little sensational, it was also true:
    A killer claiming responsibility for seven Wichita murders�at least six of them strangulations�still is in the area and has threatened to strike again, Police Chief Richard LaMunyon warned in a terse, bombshell announcement Friday.
    “I know it is difficult to ask people to remain calm, but we are asking exactly this,” LaMunyon said. “When a person of this type is at large in our community it requires special precautions and special awareness by everyone.”
     
    It was the most disturbing news people in Wichita had ever heard. Someone was hunting women and children in their city and strangling them. Parents all over Wichita had to decide whether to tell their children.
    Nola Tedesco, a twenty-six-year-old rookie prosecutor in the Sedgwick County district attorney’s office, one day found herself examining a copy of the drawing BTK had made of Nancy Fox. Tedesco prosecuted sex crimes, so she’d become accustomed to looking at material like this, but the drawing and the idea that someone in town was stalking young women creeped her out. At night, some of her friends in the office�Richard Ballinger, Steve Osborn, and others�would walk her to her car. When she got home, she would check her phone.
    Laura Kelly, now a senior known as “L.” at East High School, was asked by her best friend to come over and spend the night. They slept in shifts, like two soldiers on patrol in a combat zone. The friend was too terrified to sleep alone. She had figured out that the roofline of her home would make it easy for BTK to enter her second-floor bedroom window. No amount of reasoning would calm her.
    Pranksters heightened the fear by calling women and saying: “This is BTK. You’re next.” Kelly’s mother, Barbara, was home alone when she got such a call. What if it wasn’t a hoax? She