Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door by Roy Wenzl, Tim Potter, L. Kelly, Hurst Laviana

on how to handle relationship with police, though no disagreement that it is better to cooperate than to look for good quick scoop. Fear of provoking another murder or in blowing cops chances for catching BTK is expressed. Merritt decides that as long as we aren’t getting deceived or feel we’re being unfairly used, we will go along with police. Police worried about how to play cards, which cards to play and when to play them. They rely heavily on psychiatrists’ advice, LaMunyon confides. Chief worries that if BTK kills again, some persons will blame him and news media for publicizing and encouraging BTK. Much feelings of helplessness on part of cops, newspaper people. New situation for cops and us…. Newspaper makes special arrangements for checking incoming mail and taking phone calls. The usual black humor in the office, quite prevalent in most cases, is notably skimpy on this case. Few jokes about the situation, perhaps because in this case newspaper plays a role. Merritt expresses worry about trying to outguess a deranged mind. Not happy about tailoring news judgment to try to appease a murderer, but not willing to challenge the guy to kill again. Even smallest details are questioned, agonized over to try to figure whether they will provoke killer or blow cops strategy…. ‘This is one case in which there isn’t any value to having the competitive thing.’ Merritt on no point in trying to scoop everybody else. Reporters and editors torn. Desire for scoop and letting readers know everything is tugged at by desire to try to avoid provoking another murder. No one sure whether he or she is making right decision…Brutality and bizarreness of case frightening everyone, even those who have dealt with weird stories.”
    One benefit of covering cops, Stephens pointed out to friends, was that he saw life and death in the raw. It taught lessons: life can be short, so savor it. But it also made him feel safer than other people felt. He knew that BTK couldn’t kill everybody, and that there was no reason to be afraid all the time. The chances of dying in a car wreck are much higher than of being murdered, yet most drive without fear.
    Covering cops also taught him the value of gallows humor. Like most cops and many reporters, Stephens joked about danger, though some of his single women friends felt especially jittery.
    One night Stephens went to a movie with Janet Vitt, a copy editor. They went to a theater in the Mall, where Nancy Fox had worked the night she died. After the movie, Stephens and Vitt went to Vitt’s apartment to have a beer. She lived in east Wichita, near Wesley Medical Center and not far from where the Oteros and Brights were attacked. When she opened her door, she reached in, picked up her phone, and checked for a dial tone. It was her nightly ritual, she told him. If she heard no dial tone, she would race downstairs to flee BTK. Stephens thought this was funny.
    When they went inside, she began to search her rooms.
    “Janet, come on,” Stephens said. “If he’s here, it’s already too late. We’d never get out of here alive.”
    Just then they heard someone open the building’s outside door.
    They heard footsteps on the stairs: Clump. Clump. Clump.
    Stephens stepped out to the stairway to face down whoever it was. He saw a big man coming up to Vitt’s door. He carried the biggest pipe wrench Stephens had ever seen.
    The man looked startled when he saw the burly Stephens. “Plumber!” he called out, lifting the wrench.
    Stephens and Vitt laughed afterward, but Stephens decided he would never make fun of BTK fears again. He had been scared on the stairs. Over the next few months he got so obsessed about BTK that people in the newsroom began to joke that maybe he was the killer.
    He told the other crime reporters that from now on, whenever they covered any homicide, they should ask: Was the phone line cut? Was the victim strangled? Was the victim tied up?
    They added notes to the file month by