Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door Read Online Free PDF Page A

William Williams and Edward Bell. He told them the man who had shot him was still at his sister’s house. “He’s in there now, doing a number on my sister,” Bright said. “Please help me.”
    They called police, then drove Bright to Wesley Medical Center. It was 2:05 PM . Dispatchers radioed “residence robbery in progress.” Officer Dennis Landon went to the back door. No one answered his knock. Officer Raymond Fletcher went in the front, his .357 drawn. They found a woman bleeding on the living room floor, a phone in her hand. She had crawled out of the bedroom. Her skin felt clammy. Her breathing was shallow, her face gray.
    “Hang on,” Fletcher told her. “We’ve got help on the way.”
    Landon turned her over.
    “What happened?” he asked.
    She pulled up her blouse. Landon saw knife wounds, at least three.
    “Do you know who did this?”
    She shook her head no.
    “What is your name?”
    “Kathryn Bright.” Her voice was weak.
    “How old are you?”
    “Twenty-one.”
    They pressed cloth from the kitchen against her wounds and elevated her legs to get what blood she had to her head. Landon saw nylon stockings tied to her wrists. There was a blue scarf and a cord tied around her throat. Her right hand clutched a white rag, and her ankles were bound with a nylon stocking.
    “I can’t breathe,” she told Landon. “Please untie my ankles.” Landon pulled a pocket knife and cut the nylon. She was covered in blood: face, hair, hands, stomach. She was bleeding from her left nostril and her face was badly bruised. She was losing consciousness.
    They told her an ambulance was on the way, and that she would be all right. But then her face began to turn blue.
    She grabbed Fletcher’s arm.
    “I can’t breathe,” she said.
    “Help me.”
     
    BTK’s strangling cord was still tied around Kevin’s throat when he arrived at Wesley. Kathryn arrived in an ambulance minutes later. Officer Ronald Davenport watched as the medical people turned her over to look at her back. More stab wounds.
    “Help me,” she said.
    She was too weak to say more. Davenport and other officers asked Kevin what had happened. He tried to talk, but choked up blood. The bullet that hit his upper jaw had knocked out two teeth; officers later found them in his sister’s house. He had powder burns on his face. The other bullet had grazed his forehead. Doctors sent him to intensive care.
    Kathryn died four hours later.
     
    Kevin told police later that he lived in Valley Center but had stayed at his sister’s house the night before because it had snowed, and he had not wanted to drive home.
    For a small guy, Kevin had put up a big fight. Kevin was nineteen, stood only five feet six, and weighed only 115 pounds, the same as Josie Otero. He’d taken two shots to the head, yet had fought gallantly. Kevin said the killer was much bigger: five feet eleven, about 180 pounds, maybe twenty-eight years old, light complexion, a mustache, dark hair. He wore a black and yellow stocking cap�the colors of Wichita State University�gloves, a windbreaker, and an army coat with fur around the hood. There had been a silver wristwatch on his left arm, an expansion band on the watch.
    “And he sweated a lot,” Kevin told them.
    The cops worked hard on the case but got nowhere. And with Kevin giving conflicting answers at times, they weren’t sure his description of the attacker was all that solid.
    It occurred to some of them that Kathryn Bright’s murder was related to the Oteros’. Kathy and Kevin had worked at Coleman�as had Julie Otero.
    But other cops said no. They still believed there was a Latin American drug connection with the Oteros. And there were differences�the Oteros had been strangled and suffocated; the Brights had been strangled, shot, and stabbed.
     
    Rader ran several blocks to his car in his bloodstained shoes. He drove to his parents’ house; they lived near him. In their shed, in an old wooden box filled with sawdust,