Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door
jewelry kit�everything neat. When she came out of the bathroom, she was still wearing her pink sweater, her bra, and purple panties. She saw he was holding handcuffs.
    What’s that about? she demanded.
    This is part of my deal, he explained. It is what makes it happen for me.
    Why are you wearing gloves?
    I’m wanted in other states and don’t want to leave prints.
    This is ridiculous! she said. This is bullshit!
    She kept talking, but he barely listened. He pulled her hands behind her, fastened the cuffs on her wrists, and made her lie facedown on the bed. He got on top of her. He was half-undressed himself by then, hoping this would convey the lie that he intended to rape her. He pulled down her panties.
    Has your boyfriend ever had sex with you in the butt?
    He said it to deceive; he did not really want anal sex.
    She did not answer; she was gagged now.
    He took off his leather belt and looped it around her ankles; he found that he had an erection already. He suddenly pulled the belt off her ankles, slipped it around her throat�and yanked it tight, pressing down with one hand where the belt went through the buckle, and pulling the belt with his other hand. Nancy thrashed under him, found his scrotum with her handcuffed hands, and dug her fingers into him. It hurt, but he liked it.
    As usual, it took time for his victim to pass out; when Nancy finally did, he loosened the belt to let her have some air.
    In years to come, he would say that this was his perfect hit. There was no man or dog or child to interrupt, nobody tried to kill him, little children did not scream and threaten to come out of the bathroom to fight him.
    When she regained consciousness, he bent down to her ear.
    I’m wanted, he told her. I killed the four people in that family, the Oteros. And I killed Shirley Vian. I’m BTK. And you’re next.
    She fought frantically underneath him as he yanked the belt tight again. This time he held it until she died.
    He picked up a nightgown and masturbated into it.

12
    December 9, 1977
    “You Will Find a Homicide”
    The next morning Rader was still so elated about what he’d done that he wanted to tell someone. On a coffee break, he drove the ADT van to Organ’s Market downtown and stepped to a pay phone outside the door. At 8:18 AM, a Sedgwick County emergency dispatcher took the call.
    “You will find a homicide at 843 South Pershing. Nancy Fox.”
    “I’m sorry, sir,” the dispatcher answered. “I can’t understand you. What is the address?”
    Another dispatcher, listening in, spoke up: “I believe 843 South Pershing.”
    “That is correct,” the man said.
    Dispatchers tried to ask the man more, but he had dropped the receiver. The dispatchers listened to silence, trying to make sense of what they had just heard. Forty-seven seconds later, someone else picked up the phone. The dispatchers were still on the line.
    Who are you? The dispatchers asked.
    The man said he was a Wichita firefighter, off duty. He just wanted to use the phone.
    Who was using the telephone just before you? the dispatchers asked.
    A man who left the phone dangling, he told them.
     
    Officer John Di Pietra reached 843 South Pershing minutes later, at 8:22 AM. No one answered his knock and the door was locked. At the back, he saw a cut phone line waggling in the breeze. The storm window had been removed, the interior window broken. He could not see through the drapes.
    “Is anyone home?”
    Di Pietra pushed back the drapes and saw a half-clothed woman lying motionless, facedown on a bed, her ankles tied with a piece of yellow cloth. She was wearing a pink sweater.
    After they kicked in the front door, Di Pietra and Det. Louis Brown stepped into what Di Pietra later said was the tidiest home he had ever seen. But then he noticed disarray: there was a half-smoked cigarette in an ashtray beside a chair. A purse had been emptied onto the kitchen table. The phone receiver lay on the floor. Jewelry boxes had been dumped out on

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