News

BTK Resurfaces After 25 Years With a Letter Tying Him to the 1986 Murder of Vicki Wegerle

The letter to The Wichita Eagle held a copy of Wegerle's driver's license and three photos of her taken after her death. Police had never linked her killing to BTK.

Published

Illustration of a sealed evidence bag holding an envelope on a forensic lab table beside gloves and a magnifying lamp. Not an actual scene from the case.

The killer who called himself BTK had been silent for 25 years. In March 2004, a letter to The Wichita Eagle broke that silence and appeared to tie him to a 1986 killing police had never connected to him.

The letter arrived at the Eagle on March 19. It held a single sheet of paper with a photocopy of Vicki Wegerle's driver's license and three photographs of her taken after she was killed. Wegerle, 28, had been killed in her Wichita home in September 1986. Her relatives said the license was the only thing they knew of that was missing from her home, and police said they had no crime-scene photographs of her, because emergency medical workers had removed her body before officers arrived. The return address named the sender as Bill Thomas Killman, initials BTK.

At first the letter drew little interest. Hurst Laviana, the Eagle's police reporter, recognized Wegerle's name and gave copies to police, but Capt. Darrell Haynes told him it was probably nothing and did not pass it to homicide detectives until Laviana reminded him three days later. Word of the letter leaked on the night of Wednesday, March 24, and police confirmed on Thursday that they had linked it to BTK, without saying why. "The photographs appear to be authentic," said Lt. Ken Landwehr, who had worked the case for 20 years. "I'm 100 percent sure it's BTK." The letter was sent for fingerprint and DNA testing.

BTK, an acronym the killer used for "bind, torture and kill," had claimed responsibility for seven killings in Wichita between 1974 and 1979, four of them members of one family, and had taunted police and the press with letters until 1979. By Friday, police had received 365 tips. "I don't know why he does all of this, but I hope this will be his fatal mistake by resurfacing this way," said Dale Fox, whose daughter Nancy was killed in December 1977.

The letters kept coming, and one of them, on a floppy disk, led police to Dennis Rader, who was arrested near his home in Park City on February 25, 2005. In June 2005 he pleaded guilty to 10 murders committed between 1974 and 1991, Wegerle's among them.

Sources

Related News

In the Archive