The BTK Strangler
Bind. Torture. Kill. If you have ever heard of the BTK Killer, and didn’t quite understand how he got the name, he gave it to himself, and it stands for Bind. Torture. Kill.
On January 15, 1974, the Otero family home, in Wichita, Kansas was targeted by the BTK Killer as part of their sexual fantasy, with slight premeditation and intent, as they entered the home at around 7-7:30 in the evening. Killing Mr. Joseph Otero, his wife Julie, and their two children Josephine and Joseph II.
BTK was particularly known for sending taunting letters to police and newspapers. There were several communications from BTK from 1974 to 1979. The first was a letter that had been stashed in an engineering book in the Wichita Public Library in October 1974 that described in detail the killing of the Otero family in January of that year. At this point, BTK was identified as a male, due to his language and description.
On April 4, 1974, Kathryn Bright entered her home with her brother Kevin Bright, who BTK was not expecting. BTK ordered Kevin to tie his sister’s hands and feet, and then Kevin was brought into another room, but got into an altercation BTK. Kevin was shot twice, but survived. BTK then went into the other room and tried to strangle Kathryn, but she also put up a fight, causing him to stab her multiple times in the abdomen, and even after medical attention, Kathryn unfortunately died.
In 1978, after his other murders of Shirley Vian and Nancy Fox, he sent another letter to television station KAKE in Wichita, claiming responsibility for the murders of the Oteros, Shirley Vian, Nancy Fox and another unidentified victim assumed to be Kathryn Bright (not identified because her brother survived and could have identified him). He suggested a number of possible names for himself, including the one that stuck: BTK. He demanded media attention in this second letter, and it was finally announced that Wichita did indeed have a serial killer at large. A poem was enclosed entitled “Oh! Death to Nancy,” a botched version of the lyrics of the American folk song “Oh Death.” These are examples of his letters and specific sentences from his letters to police.
BTK then went on to kill (at least) three more women, until the BTK Strangler’s case went cold, and no more letters were sent. Wichita, Kan., police Lt. Ken Landwehr, head of the multiagency task force, singles out the efforts of two agents from the FBI Academy’s Behavioral Analysis Unit who helped devise an overall strategy for dealing with BTK. The agents were able to create a personality profile of the killer. “We stuck to the plan we set up, and it eventually worked because [BTK] got caught up in his own game and ended up giving himself away,” Landwehr says. BTK sent 19 messages in all, 10 of them in the 11 months before his arrest. Most serial killers do not communicate with the authorities, and when they do it is hardly ever to the extent that BTK did.
The FBI’s BAU was able to demise that this man was white, definitely not a young man, but not old enough to not be able to commit these gruesome murders, had an extreme narcissistic personality disorder, believing that he would never get caught, had a sexual compulsion to kill, and craved attention. It was his own need for attention that got him caught.
In the weeks before his arrest, BTK had asked police whether he could communicate with them via a floppy disk without being traced to a particular computer. Police responded by taking out an ad in the classified section of the local newspaper, as BTK had instructed, saying “Rex, it will be OK” to communicate via floppy disk. A few weeks later, such a disk from BTK was sent to a local television station. The disk was quickly traced to Dennis Lynn Rader through a computer at his church. DNA testing soon confirmed that Rader was BTK.
Dennis Rader, a father, husband, Lutheran Deacon, Boy Scout leader, was sentenced to 10 consecutive life sentences for each of the people’s lives he took away, being eligible for parole after 175 years of imprisonment, as he was too prideful to let anyone else have the credit for his murders.
I encourage you, reader, that if you’re as interested in these types of cases as I am, to look deeper into the BTK Strangler’s letters, murders, and ultimately his arrest, as every bit of it is interesting, breath-taking, and all too painful, all at the same time. Though as interesting as it is, it is important to remember that this man is sick, dangerous, took precious lives away, and did all of this while being married and raising children.
It is important to remember the victims and their families while researching about these serial killers. The victims of the BTK Strangler are (as far as we know): Joseph Otero, 38, his wife Julie, 34, and two of their children: Joseph II, 9, and Josephine, 11 / Kathryn Bright, 21 / Shirley Vian, 24 / Nancy Fox, 25 / Marine Hedge, 53 / Vicki Wegerle, 28 / Dolores E. Davis, 62.
The Green River Killer
Beginning in 1982, women who lived a high risk lifestyle, including prostitutes and underage runaways, began disappearing from Seattle, Washington outside of truck stops and dive bars along Highway 99. These bodies would later be found (at first) along the Green River in wooded areas, showing major signs of strangulation and rape, but in heavily littered and contaminated areas. When the bodies started appearing, the King County Sheriff’s Office started up the Green River Task Force, hoping to discover the person responsible.
After many, many bodies began showing up, members of this Task Force began speaking to psychologists and criminologists in order to get any kind of insight into the motives behind these killings, as typically, that can help lead to the person doing the killing. These killings became very similar to the notorious murders of Ted Bundy… But why does that matter?
In 1984, police were running out of ideas trying to find this killer and put an end to these brutal actions being done to these young women, so they went right to a person who might know exactly what is going on in this killer’s mind: Ted Bundy. Bundy had been imprisoned for the past six years for murder, rape, burglary, and necrophilia and was, at the time, awaiting his electrocution, which would come three years later. While this first hand knowledge that Bundy had was horribly disgusting, it was incredibly valuable to this police force in order to try and find the killer. He became an important asset in solving this case. During one interview session, Bundy suggested that the killer was most likely revisiting his dump sites to engage in sexual intercourse with the bodies. He advised the investigators that in case they find a fresh grave, stake it out and wait for the killer to return.
Because of Ted Bundy’s suggestions, police examined the, thought to be, contaminated bodies for semen samples, and sure enough, found DNA matching a man named Gary Ridgway, which gave police enough evidence to file an arrest warrant, that unfortunately would not be until 2001, 20 years after these crimes were committed. On November 30, 2001, Ridgway at 52 years old, was at the Kenworth Truck factory, where he worked as a spray painter, when police arrived to arrest him.
For a brief look into Ridgway’s history, at age 18, while in high school, Ridgway joined the Navy. After graduation, he married his high school girlfriend, Claudia Barrows, and was sent to Vietnam, where he served onboard a supply ship and saw combat. During his time in the military, Ridgway began spending a lot of time with prostitutes and contracted Gonorrhea for the second time. This angered him, but he continued to have unprotected sex with prostitutes. Meanwhile, his wife Claudia, alone and 19-years-old, began dating again, and the marriage quickly ended within a year.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Ridgway is believed to have murdered at least 71 women (according to Ridgway, in an interview with Sheriff Reichert 2001) near Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. His court statements later reported that he had killed so many, he lost count. A majority of the murders occurred between 1982 to 1984. By the time his trial was over on December 18, 2003, Gary Ridgway had confessed to more confirmed murders than any other serial killer in America, claiming that murdering young women was his “career,” making him the worst serial killer in American history. Ridgway was sentenced to 49 life sentences to be served consecutively. An additional ten years was added to each sentence for tampering with evidence, adding 480 years to his 48 life sentences.
Thanks to profiling, and even learning from previous serial killers, Gary Ridgway was able to be found and arrested, bringing justice to the families and the victims, whose lives were so abruptly and unfairly ended. The listed victims of the Green River killings include Wendy Lee Coffield (16) / Gisele Ann Lovvorn (19) / Debra Lynn Bonner (23) / Marcia Fay Chapman (31) / Opal Charmaine Mills (16) / Terry Rene Milligan (16) / Mary Bridget Meehan (18) / Debra Lorraine Estes (15) / Linda Jane Rule (16) / Denise Darcel Bush (23) / Shawnda Leea Summers (16) / Shirley Marie Sherrill (18) / Colleen Renee Brockman (15) / Alma Ann Smith (18) / Delores LaVerne Williams (17) / Gail Lynn Mathews (23) / Andrea M. Childers (19) / Sandra Kay Gabbert (17) / Kimi-Kai Pitsor (16) / Marie M. Malvar (18) / Carol Ann Christensen (21) / Martina Theresa Authorlee (18) / Cheryl Lee Wims (18) / Yvonne Shelly Antosh (19) / Carrie A. Rois (15) / Constance Elizabeth Naon (19) / Kelly Marie Ware (22) / Tina Marie Thompson (21) / April Dawn Buttram (16) / Debbie May Abernathy (26) / Tracy Ann Winston (19) / Maureen Sue Feeney (19) / Mary Sue Bello (25) / Pammy Avent (15) / Delise Louise Plager (22) / Kimberly L. Nelson (21) / Lisa Yates (19) / Mary Exzetta West (16) / Cindy Anne Smith (17) / Patricia Michelle Barczak (19) / Roberta Joseph Hayes (21) / Marta Reeves (36) / Patricia Yellowrobe (38) / Rebecca Marrero (20) / Unidentified White Female (12-17) / Unidentified White Female (17-19) / Unidentified Black Female (18-27) / Unidentified White Female (14-18)
The Woodford Slasher
On August 22, 1982, 11-year-old Richard Stetson disappeared while jogging near his home, in Portland, Maine. A motorist found his body the next morning, lying beside a rural highway, and while he was initially believed to be the victim of a hit-and-run, autopsy results showed that Stetson was strangled, then stabbed several times in the chest. Bite marks on the body were inflicted by a set of human teeth.
Danny Joe Eberle, age 13, was delivering newspapers in Bellevue, Nebraska, when he vanished on the morning of September 18, 1983. His bicycle and papers were found inside a gate, at the fourth house on his route, but Eberle remained missing until September 21, when searchers pulled his body from some roadside weeds. Partially stripped, he had been stabbed repeatedly, then dumped where he was found. Detectives noticed bite marks on the body, and his ankles had been bound before he died.
On December 2, 12-year-old Christopher Walden disappeared while walking to school in Papillion, Nebraska, three miles from the scene of the Eberle murder. Stabbed repeatedly, his corpse was found by pheasant hunters two days later, hidden in a grove of trees outside of town.
Six weeks later, on January 11, 1984, a suspicious young man was seen loitering around a Bellevue preschool. Challenged by an adult attendant, he shoved her, threatened her with death, then ran to a nearby car and sped away. The attendant memorized his license number, and the rented vehicle was traced to 20-year-old John Joubert, who was an Air Force Radar Technician stationed at Offut. An unusual kind of rope, containing about 100 different fibers, was found among his belongings. It matched the rope that had been used to bind Danny’s hands and feet. The rope had been manufactured in Korea, and was rarely used in the United States. When detectives mentioned the rope to him, Joubert quickly confessed.
FBI psychological profiler Robert Ressler provided an analysis of the Woodford Slasher— white, young, and sexually ambivalent. John Joubert not only fit the profile directly, but the FBI suggested that the killer might be a male homosexual, but when he came out, was not accepted and possibly made to feel bad for his sexual orientation. When Joubert came out as homosexual in 1975, since he was born in 1963, he was just 12 years old and he was made fun of and harassed at school, which he later reported was after he began wondering what killing someone would feel like (1971). After he came out, he began to get violent towards his classmates, especially young girls, which police believe is because they would typically tease him the most, and he got sexual gratification from these actions. Since he was sexually attracted to boys, this led his main victim profile to be young boys, as he could over power them.
Another part of the profile included an uneasy, rough childhood, which would be found in Joubert’s past. Joubert’s parents had divorced when he was six years old, and he went to live with his mother in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was not allowed to visit his father and grew to hate his controlling mother.
After initially pleading not guilty, he changed his plea to guilty. There were several psychiatric evaluations performed on Joubert. One characterised him as having obsessive-compulsive disorder and sadistic tendencies, and suffering from schizoid personality disorder. He was found to be have not been psychotic at the time of the crimes, however. A panel of three judges sentenced him to death for both counts. Joubert was also sentenced to life imprisonment in Maine in 1990 for the murder of Ricky Stetson, after Joubert’s teeth were found to match the bite mark.
While being held in jail, John Joubert told interviewers and psychologists that he still fantasized about the killings, and knew that if he was let go, he would resume where he left off. He was aroused from killing the young boys, and would often masturbate over the bodies when he was finished killing them. He was executed on July 17, 1996 by the electric chair, shortly after turning just 33 years old.
Through his profile and convicted killings, the victims of John Joubert include: Richard Stetson, 11 / Danny Jo Eberle, 13, and Christopher Walden, 12, including a few more that were not able to be completely solved before Joubert was executed.