Despite his initial panic, the killer had made his escape from the Bright house without attracting any undue attention. By the time he’d reached his car near the university, he was breathing almost normally. He’d driven back to his house, stripped off his bloody clothes and shoes, and cleaned up. He’d wadded the clothes up, then took them and the gun over to his parents’ house, a short distance away. There he’d gone down into the basement, the place of his most intense fantasies, and hid the incriminating items. “Dad had an old saw box with sawdust,” he said later. “I put my gun in there.” Then he’d rushed home to greet his wife, who was just coming home from her job. He took great pleasure in being able to seem like nothing had happened—it was his ability to “compartmentalize,” as he put it, one of the signal traits of psychopaths and spies, as John le Carré has so ably demonstrated in his fiction.
The killer was also at work on his own fiction: A few weeks after murdering Kathy Bright and attempting to murder her brother, he was back at his typewriter. This time the chapter was headed A DEATH IN APRIL. Once again “Rex” described his depredations in graphic detail—seven pages altogether, again splattered with misspellings, typos and ungrammatical language. Like his first chapter, he stashed it away in a place where no one could find it. He knew it wasn’t ready for publication quite yet; he had to prepare the world for his debut first.
After the murder of Kathy Bright, and the correct decision of the district attorney’s office not to prosecute the wrong man on the circumstantial evidence, the Otero and Bright murder cases settled into something of a holding pattern—the police holding the view that the Coleman worker was “the guy,” and the district attorney holding out for more evidence. The worst thing that could happen would be to charge the Coleman worker with the crimes, then see him acquitted for lack of evidence. If he actually was “the guy,” that would keep the authorities from ever charging him with the murders again, because of double jeopardy, or so the DA’s office reasoned, and tried to explain to the frustrated police.
By this point, the police department itself was split—while some of the professional investigators believed in the Coleman worker, others among the higher-ups in the department were increasingly convinced that the two cases were unrelated, and more important, that they were not the deeds of any local residents, but committed by some criminal of “foreign extraction,” who’d come to town, killed, and then left. After all, there was the story the “swarthy” killer had told Kevin Bright—that he was a wanted man, that he needed to get to New York. It seemed like that was just what it was—a desperate man looking for someone to rob. Of course, it didn’t really explain why such a desperate out-of-towner would have targeted Kathryn Bright, of all people, who hardly lived on the beaten track; and it certainly didn’t explain why he’d tried to strangle both Brights, rather than simply take their money and one of their cars and get out of town as fast as he could. Nor did it explain the “university” remark to Kevin.
And Hannon, for one, was still convinced that the solution to at least the Otero murders lay in learning whatever was hidden in Joe Otero’s past. He still believed that there had to be a foreign connection. Why else would four members of a family, living in Wichita for only nine weeks, have been tortured and killed? It made far more sense to assume that the deaths were connected somehow with Joe’s previous life in New York or Puerto Rico or, most likely, Panama. He had Charlie Otero’s story about the night the lights went out and Joe’s nervousness as evidence for this gut instinct.
Still, that didn’t keep the Wichita police from continuing to work leads to the third leg of their stool—the usual suspects, the area’s sex offenders. By the end of the summer, police had interviewed nearly 800 people in connection with the Otero murders, a great many of them because of records for sex offenses like peeping or flashing, as well as more violent crimes.
Then, in early October, the believers in the sex pervert theory of the Otero murder case had their hopes boosted by the arrest of a youth with a documented history of mental problems; an accusation had been made that he had molested a 5-year-old girl. According to Beattie—still a high schooler at the time—the story later circulated that the youth had been apprehended while trying to have intercourse with a duck in the front seat of a car. The duck’s outrage at this unnatural act attracted the attention of the patrolling police. Checking, the patrol officer soon learned of the other allegation about the 5-year-old, and the youth was brought in for questioning.
Grilling this disturbed young man elicited some accurate information about the Otero killings. One thing led to another, and before the police knew it, they had a complete confession to the murders. But it was obvious that the suspect could hardly have committed the four crimes on his own—they were far too complicated for the young man’s mental abilities. Under prodding, he gave up the names of two others who he said had assisted in the Otero killings—a brother and a cousin. As it happened, the young man’s brother was in a psychiatric hospital after having attempted suicide. Detectives hustled over to the hospital, and sure enough, received a similar confession.
Police have long known that highly publicized crimes often stimulate the deranged to take the blame. Although police normally are overjoyed to get a confession, in such highly publicized situations, they do their best to treat the admissions with bored skepticism.
“Prove it,” they should say. “Prove that you were the one who did it, because otherwise, I won’t believe you.” In that way, the eager confessor is forced to provide details of the crime that only the perpetrator would know—details never published, but known to the police. “How did you get into the house? What did you do in the basement? What was on the kitchen table?” Under this sort of skepticism, the false confessor is soon exposed; the real danger is that the investigator, so eager to solve the case, may inadvertently or even intentionally provide the answers to the false confessor in an effort to clear the case.
In the case of the duck lover, his brother and his cousin, the tales of the three men soon began to conflict in their details. Still, there was enough smoke in their respective stories to convince the police to book them, at least in mental health facilities, until things could get sorted out. The news of the arrests in the Otero case made its way to me Eagle, and was published in the edition of October 17, 1974. A police spokesman said if the stories stood up, the police would ask the DA to charge the batty trio for the Otero murders.
Reading this, or possibly seeing it on television, galvanized the real killer. This he could not allow—he could not permit three mental defectives to get the credit for his murders. He had to set the record straight.
On October 22, he made a telephone call to the Eagle’s Secret Witness tip line.
“Listen and listen good,” he said, “because I’m not going to repeat it”
He told Don Granger, the Eagle columnist who managed the Secret Witness line, to go to the Wichita Public Library on Main Street, directly across from the police station. Granger should go to a section containing a particular engineering textbook to find an important message from the Oteros’ killer.
Granger called Chief Hannon.
Hannon sent Detective Bernie Drowatsky to the library to check the story out. Finding the correct book, Drowatsky removed a typewritten letter addressed to the newspaper’s Secret Witness Program.
Headed OTERO CASE, the letter began:
I write this letter to you for the sake of the tax payer [sic] as well as your time. Those three dude [sic] you have in custody are just talking to get publicity for the Otero murders. They know nothing at all. I did it by myself and with no ones [sic] help. There has been no talk either. Let’s put it straight . . .
And with that, the letter writer proceeded to describe exactly how each of the Oteros was murdered and where in the house they had died.
So specific was this information that some detectives believed that the person who wrote it had to have taken photographs of the scenes. It was simply too detailed. Some detectives pointed out that certain particulars about the master bedroom were a little off. But then, the crime scene had been slightly disarranged by the fruitless resuscitation efforts of Charlie, Carmen and Danny, so maybe the description represented how things were before the teenagers had discovered the appalling scene. Yet others argued that the writer had made mistakes in his description of some of the clothing worn by the victims—the colors or patterns were wrong in some cases, which suggested that the writer hadn’t actually been at the scene, only that it had been described to him, with slight inaccuracies.
The letter writer noted that Joe’s watch had been taken. That certainly had never been publicized. “I needed one, so I took it,” the letter writer said. “Runsgood.[sic]”
The letter had two concluding paragraphs:
I’m sorry this happen [sic] to society. They are the ones who suffer the most [sic]. It hard to control myself. You probably call me ‘psychotic with sexual perversion hang-up.’ When this monster enter [sic] my brain I will never know. But, it here to stay. How does one cure himself? If you ask for help, that you have killed four people they will laugh or hit the panic button and call the cops.
I can’t stop it so the monster goes on, and hurt [sic] me as well as society. Society can be thankful that there are ways for people like me to relieve myself at time by day dreams of some victims being torture [sic] and being mine. It [sic] a big complicated game my friend of the monster play [sic] putting victims number down, follow them, checking up on them, waiting in the dark, waiting, waiting . . . the pressure is great and sometimes he run [sic] the game to his liking. Maybe you can stop him. I can’t. He has already chosen his next victim or victims. I don’t know who they are yet. The next day after I read the paper, I will know, but it to [sic] late. Good luck hunting.
YOURS, TRULY GUILTILY [sic]
P.S. 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, toture [sic] them, kill them, B.T.K., you see he [sic] at it again. They will be on the next victim.
From the moment Drowatsky brought this letter back across the street to the police station, there was ferocious controversy about it. Hannon, still clinging to his international intrigue angle, was convinced the communication was a hoax. So, too, was Deputy Chief Jack Bruce. Bruce, in fact, was convinced it had to be the work of two known pranksters serving with “the lab boys.” He confronted them, telling them everyone enjoyed a good joke, but this was going too far. The pranksters indignantly denied concocting the letter.
Still others, particularly some in the department’s homicide squad, took the letter quite seriously. The level of detail about how the victims had died, and where in the house, meant that it had to be someone who’d been there or who had seen pictures of it, and if it wasn’t one of the “lab boys,” who else could it be but the real killer? Some also noted something interesting: despite the possible links to the Bright murder, the killer didn’t claim that one, which seemed to indicate that it was not connected. After all, if the killer was going to confess to the Otero murders, why wouldn’t he also admit the Bright murder, if he’d committed that one as well? In a perverse way, this actually added to the letter’s authenticity, in some minds. Wouldn’t it make him look even more frightening—get him even more publicity?
That, it seemed clear to most, had to be the killer’s purpose in leaving the letter for Eagle columnist Granger—to get publicity for himself and his crimes, and especially, to make sure that the three half-wits in custody didn’t get it instead. That was why he’d sent the newspaper man to get the letter, rather than calling the police themselves.
Now another debate blew up about that very issue—publicity. Some thought the letter should be published, or otherwise released to the public, but the higher-ups among the police were adamant that it remain secret. If the letter was legitimate, it represented the first possible lead to the killer. And the killer seemed to be indicating that he was struggling against the impulse to commit more murders, referring to the killings as the work of a “monster,” something outside himself which had invaded him. Maybe, just maybe, if contact could be made, the person who wrote the letter could be identified, and if he were in fact the killer, maybe he could be stopped before he killed anyone else.
What would happen if the letter were released to the public? No one knew. It might scare the killer back into hiding, if it really was from the killer. It might excite him so much he’d go right out and kill again, and as soon as possible. It would certainly crank up the crackpots, at least some of whom would use the facts in the letter to claim they were the killer; and it might even stimulate some crafty soul who wanted to kill, to kill in such a way as to make the police think it was BTK.
No, to the police, the downside of publicizing the letter was much greater than the slim upside that someone might recognize the writer’s language, style or choice of words. This wasn’t some sort of English composition class, for Pete’s sake, the police told themselves. This was serious. This was murder.
The Eagle was willing to be compliant with the apprehensions of the police brain trust—if the top cops said to keep it quiet, the newspaper would play ball. Still, some effort had to be made to induce the letter writer to resume the contact. But a soft approach was in order.
Two days after the letter appeared, a personal ad appeared in the newspaper. It ran for four days:
BTK
HELP IS AVAILABLE.
CALL [a telephone number maintained by the
police] BEFORE 10 P.M.
For four days, police waited by the telephone. No one called.
Finally, at the end of October, the police upped the ante slightly. They authorized Don Granger to try to contact the letter writer through his column. On Halloween of 1974, Granger told his readers that the Wichita police had been trying to make contact with “a man who has important information on the Otero murder case—a man who needs help badly.”
Granger did not disclose that a detailed letter about the Otero murders had been placed in a book at the public library, or that the letter writer had essentially said he would kill again. But he published his home telephone number in the column, in an effort to convince the letter writer that he could communicate again with safety. “There really is a B.T.K.,” Granger wrote, implying that the initials represented the killer’s given names. But no one called, that is, no one who really knew anything about either the murders or the letter writer. Police staked out the library, thinking that maybe someone resembling the description of the man of “foreign extraction” might appear there to plant another communication, but this surveillance was unfruitful.
Then there was another murder.