Killer instinct

Journalists aim for the truth in books about BTK and Boston Strangler

John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News & Karen Algeo Krizman, Special to the News

Published April 28, 2006 at midnight

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A Death in Belmont

By Sebastian Junger (Norton, 266 pages, $23.95). Grade: A

At the heart of Sebastian Junger's new book is a snapshot that has seared itself into his family's history.

The picture shows Junger as a 1-year-old toddler sitting on his mother's lap. In the background are two workmen who had just finished building a studio onto the family's home in Belmont, a suburb of Boston. It is 1962. The city is gripped by fear over a serial killer who has strangled and raped women both old and young.

The workman directly behind Junger's mother is Albert DeSalvo, who is years away from being arrested and convicted as the Boston Strangler.

The thing you can't help noticing about him, directly at the center of the photo, is his enormous hand spreading across his stomach. It's an eerie and frightening image.

Ellen Junger's brush with DeSalvo forms the departure point for a riveting piece of journalism that combines bits of personal history with a genuine whodunit mystery. Around the time the photo was taken, an elderly woman named Bessie Goldberg, who lived a short distance away from the Jungers, was brutally murdered in her home. DeSalvo initially confessed to a string of murders, but not this one.

Instead, a vagabond black man named Roy Smith, who had been cleaning Goldberg's home, was charged and convicted of the crime.

Over time, it became an article of faith in the Junger household that authorities arrested the wrong man for the murder. In this short, compelling read, Junger sets out to test that belief.

It's a testament to Junger's skills as a reporter that he keeps an open mind on Smith's guilt or innocence. Smith may have been the victim of racism (he was the only black man in a white neighborhood that day); hysteria (police had no solid leads until his arrest) and fear (he was convicted a few days after John F. Kennedy's assassination).

But Junger keeps open the possibility that Smith might actually have committed the murder. Absent any DNA evidence, this may be one mystery that's impossible to solve.

But in trying to unravel the details in a careful and skeptical manner, Junger provides a fascinating glimpse into a horrifying series of deaths.

Readers of Junger's earlier book, A Perfect Storm, learned a lot about the fishing industry and meteorology. A Death in Belmont is crammed with interesting detail about the criminal justice system as it existed in the early 1960s.

We learn about how Smith spent time in Parchman Farm, a hell hole of a Mississippi prison where inmates were flogged to death if they couldn't keep up a grueling workload. It was as close to slavery as anything in the post-Civil War South, Junger explains.

We learn that while DeSalvo was in prison, he sold "chokers" for $10 each, and eventually made about $3,000.

And perhaps most chilling of all, we learn just how close Ellen Junger came to becoming another one of DeSalvo's victims.

DeSalvo was a sick and evil man who somehow avoided the death penalty, only to be stabbed to death in a prison hospital bed nearly 10 years after Smith was convicted in the Goldberg murder.

Junger goes overboard in explaining legal theories of homicide and the details of the Kennedy assassination. But by carefully examining the Belmont murder in the larger context of the Strangler murders, Junger makes a very powerful case for the strong possibility that Smith was an innocent man, wrongly convicted.

In the end, Junger allows readers to judge for themselves. One fact is not in dispute, however. A Death in Belmont is a compelling read and a brilliant piece of personal journalism.

John C. Ensslin

Unholy Messenger

By Stephen Singular (Scribner, 304 pages, $23).Grade: A

A simple floppy was Dennis Rader's downfall.

Searching for a serial killer who called himself "BTK" for "bind, torture, kill," Wichita police in 2005 were able to trace the murderer's message left on a disk. Soon after, the "model citizen" readily admitted his guilt and later was given 10 consecutive life sentences in prison - one life sentence for each of those he killed.

As Stephen Singular points out in Unholy Messenger: The Life and Crimes of the BTK Serial Killer, what makes this case particularly disturbing is that "Rader was a family man and a self-professed Christian who seemed so average on the surface." The father of two was a compliance officer and Boy Scout leader who recently had been named president of Christ Lutheran Church in Park City, Kansas.

His arrest shocked a nation that had become riveted to the case thanks to widespread press coverage. Little did the media know at the time, but they were a major player in what Rader himself dubbed "A BTK Production."

A former Denver Post reporter who also has written for The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone and other publications, Singular examines the man and his crimes in his new book.

Rader killed all of his victims between 1974 and 1986. Each "project" - as Rader referred to the murders - involved bondage and torture and was painstakingly planned out and documented afterward. When police finally arrested Rader, they discovered a massive cache of "memorabilia" from his years as BTK.

"Since he couldn't feel what his victims felt as they'd struggled for their lives in front of him, he didn't retain much emotional memory of the events," Singular writes. "The best way to know he'd done something important and powerful was to make a record of it that he could return to again and again as a reminder."

In a twisted bid for recognition, Rader also would send messages to the police, either in notes left around town or letters and phone calls to the media. When three men were wrongly arrested for Rader's first murders, he called the Wichita Eagle. "He stated, calmly and firmly, that the. . . killer had placed a letter in a mechanical-engineering textbook at the main downtown branch of the Wichita Public Library, very near the (Wichita Police Department)," Singular writes. "Then he hung up."

Police retrieved the letter, which "showed both an extraordinary attention to detail and a cold-blooded need to state the facts of the murders," Singular says.

The messages continued until 1986 when the missives and murders suddenly ended. Authorities speculated that BTK had left town, died or gone to prison. But in reality, he was hiding in plain sight, and even dared the police to catch him. "Rader enjoyed cruising past City Hall - buzzing the (Wichita Police Department) and the courthouse," Singular writes.

If not for his ego, Rader may have gotten away with his crimes. However, in January 2004, while reading a newspaper article that suggested BTK was dead, he knew he had to "bring (BTK) out of retirement for just one more fling with the media and the Wichita Police Department."

In March 2004, after Rader sent the Eagle photocopies of pictures he had taken at a BTK crime scene, police realized they were dealing with a serial killer who was lonely and wanted to talk. Attempting to create a "personal connection" with BTK, they made Lieutenant Ken Landwehr the "official face and voice of the investigation."

"Whenever the officer delivered a public comment about the case, he might seem to be addressing the media and local citizens, but he wasn't," Singular writes. "He was talking directly to the serial killer himself."

The ploy worked.

Rader grew "dependent on hearing from the lieutenant or seeing a reaction from law enforcement each time he'd made a move," Singular writes. As his trust in Landwehr grew, Rader made the mistake that would lead to his downfall.

He asked the lieutenant if police would be able to identify him if he sent a message on a floppy disk that had previous documents deleted from it. Rader didn't know that "once created and stored electronically, data was far harder to get rid of than most people realized," and the police weren't about to clue him in. Instead, they placed a classified ad in the Eagle telling him it would be OK.

Soon after, police received a message from BTK via floppy. Within hours, detectives trained in computer forensics uncovered a "deleted" file that contained the names "Dennis" and "Christ Lutheran Church." A quick Google search pointed the way back to Rader. And, days later, police arrested him after DNA from one of the crime scenes matched his.

Because Rader quickly pleaded guilty to all of the charges, there was no lengthy trial chockful of shocking revelations. Instead, Singular had to rely on interviews with police, Rader's pastor and fellow churchgoers to construct this chilling tale that is so expertly detailed.

Singular juxtaposes Rader's story with that of Rader's pastor, Michael Clark. Clark was Rader's only regular visitor after he was arrested. When his fellow Christians learned of his trips to the detention facility, he was roundly criticized for trying to help a "monster." However, as Clark saw it, "(he) and Dennis were both sinners and children of God, and the preacher's mission remained what it had always been: taking care of the soul of each worshipper at his church."

But how do you help a mass murderer who thought that "if he believed in Jesus Christ as his savior and devoted himself to that belief, this was enough to achieve salvation and a place in heaven after death?"

It's a moral ambiguity worth considering, in a book that offers plenty of grisly scenes in which right and wrong are all too clear. Just as the public was riveted to the BTK case as it unfolded on national TV, they will also be gripped by Singular's skillfully crafted story.

Karen Algeo Krizman

John C. Ensslin is a staff writer at the Rocky Mountain News. Karen Algeo Krizman is a freelance writer living in Littleton.

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