Did BTK Walk Home From Killing His Own Neighbor?

In April of 1985, Marine Hedge was killed in her own bedroom in Park City, Kansas. She was sixty-three years old. She lived alone. Her body was found a week later in a ditch outside town.

Marine Hedge lived on Independence Street. Dennis Rader lived on Independence Street. They were neighbors. On the night Rader killed her, he walked from her front door to his own back door. He went home. He went to bed.

Park City Police investigated Marine Hedge's death. They did not connect her case to BTK. BTK was understood as a Wichita killer. Marine Hedge died in Park City. Different agency. Different file. The man who had killed her would not be officially connected to her death by anybody in law enforcement until he confessed to it himself, twenty years later, in 2005.

For BTK case followers, this second chapter of Tony Brueski's five-part investigation walks through every confirmed Wichita-era piece of evidence law enforcement had on Dennis Rader and could not assemble. The Bright sketch. The Otero confession letter. The Fox 911 call. The Williams sealed package. The Hedge neighbor case in Park City. The Wegerle case that was filed as a domestic and put a grieving husband under suspicion for eighteen years.

The episode walks slowly through what Wichita Police had, when they had it, what the legal and jurisdictional constraints of the era looked like, and the specific moments where pieces of Dennis Rader sat in different filing cabinets that no investigator at the time was authorized or able to bring together.

This is the second uncomfortable truth of the series. The chase didn't close because the cops finally caught him. The chase closed when Dennis Rader, eleven months before his arrest, accidentally handed them the last piece.

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DISCLAIMER

This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.


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