Late in April, a source telephoned Beattie with some odd news. The DNA tests that had just been conducted on all the major suspects in the investigation from the preceding three decades had all come back negative—every single one of them.
“They don’t know what to think,” the source told Beattie, meaning Landwehr and the detectives. All those years, the experts kept insisting that the detectives had the right guy, somewhere in their files, they just needed to prove it. Now they had the killer’s DNA, which meant they could prove it, only none of the major suspects matched. Could they have been that far off, all along? It hardly seemed possible.
The detectives went back to their lists. If it wasn’t someone they’d already investigated, it had to be someone they hadn’t. They checked old Coleman records for the names of male employees between 20 and 50 years old at the time that Kathy Bright and Julie Otero were working there; they checked former Wichita State students who’d been in the folklore class of Professor Wyatt; they checked post office workers from the 1970s. They began checking the DNA of the retired cops.
Some were insulted, but most were glad, they told Beattie. If it helped solve the case, it would be worth it.
Then, on May 5—the nineteenth anniversary of the day that Marine Hedge’s body was discovered—the killer sent another message.
The envelope came in the mail to KAKE-TV. Opened just before noon, it contained three pages. By that evening, the story was on the air. Jeanene Kiesling, a KAKE reporter, told the audience that the station had given it to the police.
“Here’s what police say we can release,” she said. “The first page [read], ‘The BTK Story.’ It was typed, and included titles for a list of chapters. The second page had the title ‘Chapter 8,’ and was a puzzle filled with letters in vertical rows. Some spelled out words, some numbers were intertwined. The third page has what appears to be two ID badges. The first is of a Southwestern Bell employee. The other is for a Wichita Public Schools special officer.”
Even before this broadcast, one of the station’s other reporters, Chris Frank, had called Beattie for his reaction, and offered to show him the letter. Beattie was doing an interview with retired Wichita Patrol Officer Lowell Hollingshead, who, with John DiPietra, had discovered Nancy Fox’s body more than twenty-seven years earlier. Beattie asked Frank to describe the letter. As described by Frank, the letter did not have the BTK logo. Beattie told Frank he didn’t think the letter was legitimate, but didn’t tell him why.
That afternoon, Beattie watched as the station aired reporter Kiesling’s piece, illustrated by footage of the KAKE news director turning the package over to Detective Otis.
Later that day, “I heard through the grapevine,” Beattie recalled, “that the police were leaning toward a conclusion that the letter was genuine.” That night, Beattie began receiving faxed copies of the letter, because KAKE had begun faxing its copy to others, who in turn faxed it to Beattie. After first looking at the letter, Beattie thought it might be another hoax, not unlike that perpetrated by the “poet,” Ruth Finley, in the early 1980s. Beattie thought the first page, “The BTK Story,” was the work of someone who had studied the case—perhaps had even attended one of his talks on the subject. He noted that all the other communications from BTK had the logo, as well as graphic details of the murders. This one had neither.
Looking at the first page of the communication, Beattie was struck by one thing that did seem consistent with a mailing from the killer, however. “The BTK Story” might easily be taken for an outline of a book, or even chapter titles. Like other mailings, it was all in capitals. It read:
THE BTK STORY
1. A SERIAL KILLER IS BORN
2. DAWN
3. FETISH
4. FANTASY WORLD
5. THE SEARCH BEGINS
6. BTK’S HAUNTS
7. PJ’S
8. MO-ID-RUSE
9. HITS
10. TREASURED MEMORIES
11. FINAL CURTAIN CALL
12. DUSK
13. WILL THERE MORE?
Was this the killer’s attempt to take back the publicity from Beattie—to indicate that he, and he alone, knew the real truth—that Beattie’s book would be a pale imitation of his? And what, if anything, was the significance of thirteen chapters? Beattie had a vague notion that 13 meant something to the killer.
He inspected the second page, the puzzle. This could be the letter-writer’s “8. MO-ID-RUSE,” a simple grid pattern of letters and numbers, it appeared to have headings for MO, ID, and RUSE. Some of the rows were not well-aligned—more evidence that the killer, if indeed it was he who had sent this letter—was not a skilled typist. The grid held some words that seemed to be spelled out. At a glance, Beattie could make out “realtors,” “insurance,” “id ruse,” “fantasies,” “telephone co.,” “a serviceman,” “victim,” “details,” “for sale,” “vend,” “vise” and possibly, “JPL,” maybe an abbreviation for “Jet Propulsion Laboratory.” And these were just in plain view in the vertical rows.
The third page was a photocopy of an open wallet, one containing two identification badges, one for the telephone company, the other for a school district security employee, each in different names.
Beattie noted the return address on the envelope was Thomas B. King. Instead of BTK, this was TBK. As in the March letter to the Eagle, the address was fictitious. Then Beattie realized that people with similar names lived on the streets where the fictitious addresses were. If the letter was genuine, Beattie thought, the killer was trying to lead them astray. He realized that the fictitious addresses weren’t selected by the street name, as had been thought, but by the similar names of the residents who happened to live on that street. All the letter-writer had to do was open the telephone book and find individuals with names that spelled out B, T and K, not necessarily in that order.
By the following Friday evening, Beattie was no longer convinced that the letter wasn’t genuine, even if it didn’t have the logo. He convinced KAKE news director Glen Horn to let him take the puzzle to the monthly chapter meeting of Mensa. Beattie invited one of the retired detectives, Arlyn Smith, to join them. For about an hour the Mensans pored over the puzzle, with KAKE taping them. Many members thought the puzzle should be published or broadcast to give the public a chance to solve it. Some, including Beattie, eventually concluded that the puzzle actually had the killer’s name and address embedded in it.
On Monday, May 10, 2004, Ken Landwehr held a news conference. He did not release the puzzle or the identification badges. He did say that his detectives were interested in hearing from the public about anyone posing as a telephone company employee or a school district worker who had attempted to gain entry to anyone’s home in the years 1974 to 1986. He said the new letter had been given to the FBI for further analysis.
By this time, the detectives had done their own puzzle solving. They saw that it appeared to be divided into thirds, vertically. The top third began MO, apparently for m.o. The middle third began ID, apparently for identification; and the bottom third began RUSE, for ruse. They picked out the names used on the identification badges, and realized that numbers in the puzzle coincided with numbers on the ID badges. The far right-hand column, read all the way down, had the heading “PJ,” which some thought might refer to Professor Wyatt. The letters under that column were harder to make sense out of.
Throughout the rest of May, Beattie continued to give interviews, including one to Los Angeles Times reporter Stephanie Simon. She asked if he thought the latest letter was on the level.
If it wasn’t, Beattie told her, he was sure the real killer would write to “set the record straight,” as he had with the October 1974 letter, when he had first revealed himself.
“He wants to have his story told,” Beattie told Simon. “One way or another, the press will hear from BTK again.”
Beattie was absolutely right. Again.