Post by LadyBlue on Mar 11, 2005 21:45:42 GMT -5
"She was at home alone getting ready to go to lady's meeting at the church, and she didn't ever arrive at that meeting," says Hattie Smith's daughter. "She was bound (with panty hose); arms and legs, and had multiple bruises. Then she was definitely strangled and drowned."
For her daughter those wounds still haven't healed. Her mother was murdered June 10th of 1987 and to this date the case hasn't been solved.
"When you're wondering who took your loved one away from you, you don't find anything impossible," she says.
The impossible being BTK was the killer; a suspect police told her they ruled out.
"They (Wichita Eagle) got a letter in the mail that referenced Vickie Wegerle," said Lt. Kenneth Landwehr of the Wichita Police Department at a news conference on March 25th.
But BTK wasn't the suspect in Vickie Wegerle's death either until the arrival of the letter.
"I have a friend that might have been a victim of one of those attacks," says Dan Rupp, a former Chief Investigator for the Wichita Public Defender's Office.
He says confidentiality and ethics procedures kept them from looking for connections to BTK.
"We were always discouraged from even investigating any information about one of our clients being a serial killer," says Rupp. "Perhaps they label them something else for political reasons."
The letter sent to the Eagle was the first clue that the 1986 killing of Vicki Wegerle might have been at the hands of BTK, an acronym the killer used for "bind, torture and kill."
For her daughter those wounds still haven't healed. Her mother was murdered June 10th of 1987 and to this date the case hasn't been solved.
"When you're wondering who took your loved one away from you, you don't find anything impossible," she says.
The impossible being BTK was the killer; a suspect police told her they ruled out.
"They (Wichita Eagle) got a letter in the mail that referenced Vickie Wegerle," said Lt. Kenneth Landwehr of the Wichita Police Department at a news conference on March 25th.
But BTK wasn't the suspect in Vickie Wegerle's death either until the arrival of the letter.
"I have a friend that might have been a victim of one of those attacks," says Dan Rupp, a former Chief Investigator for the Wichita Public Defender's Office.
He says confidentiality and ethics procedures kept them from looking for connections to BTK.
"We were always discouraged from even investigating any information about one of our clients being a serial killer," says Rupp. "Perhaps they label them something else for political reasons."
The letter sent to the Eagle was the first clue that the 1986 killing of Vicki Wegerle might have been at the hands of BTK, an acronym the killer used for "bind, torture and kill."