The BTK Story

Courtroom footage is available for this story for license and/or purchase from the IN SESSION archives – click here.

By Marilyn Bardsley, Rachael Bell and David Lohr

Different Worlds Collide

The town of Wichita was by now in a blind panic. Hundreds of people coming home for the evening would regularly check to see if their telephone lines had been cut (a BTK trademark). Working women hurried home and locked their doors. BTK was quickly becoming a ghost story told to newcomers at parties and bars.

Nancy Fox

On Dec. 8, 1977, BTK placed a call to the emergency hotline "Go to this address," he told an emergency dispatcher, "You will find a homicide - Nancy Fox." Investigators were able to quickly trace the call to a downtown phone booth, where witnesses indistinctly recalled a blond man, approximately six feet tall, using the phone booth moments earlier. Unfortunately, the quality of the recording was too poor for investigators to perform any type of voice analysis.

Following the caller's instructions, officers rushed to 843 S. Pershing. Upon arrival, investigators immediately noticed that a window had been broken, allowing entry to the home. Upon entering the apartment house, officers discovered 25-year-old Nancy Jo Fox dead in her bedroom, a nylon stocking twisted around her neck. Unlike previous victims, she was fully clothed. Fox's driver's license (like Joseph Otero's watch) was missing from the scene. Again, investigators theorized that the killer took the license as a memento of the crime. The murder had occurred at night, semen was found at the scene, but an autopsy later revealed that Fox had not been sexually assaulted.