Introducing “The Poet” from The Binge

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We're Sruti and Hannah from Red Handed. Today, we're sharing an episode of a new true crime series called The Poet. It's from The Binge, and you can listen to every episode right now at the link in the episode description. It wouldn't be from The Binge if you couldn't. Hosted by journalist Rachel Brown, The Poet is a six-part investigation that drops you into Wichita, Kansas in 1977, where a woman named Ruth Finley is receiving threatening, obsessive poems from an unknown stalker. At the exact same time, police are trying to track down the notorious serial killer known as BTK. Is Ruth Stalker the same person? Who knows? You will have to listen to find out. In this episode, you'll hear the beginning of Ruth's story, how the poems started, how they escalated, and how a small-town case became tangled up with one of the most notorious killers in American history. Now, here's the episode. First time in a long time, Ruth Finley was home alone. Killer locked the three children in the bathroom while he viciously attacked their mother inside their home. Ruth and Ed, her husband of 27 years, were rarely apart. By the summer of 1977, they were empty nesters. Their two sons had grown up and moved away from Wichita, Kansas. But earlier that day, Ed had suffered what they thought was a heart attack. Ruth rushed to the hospital. And now, doctors were keeping him overnight for observation. So Ruth was on her own. In his letter, the killer says a monster inside his mind drives him to kill. He signs off with the moniker BTK. The people of Wichita were on edge. BTK, a serial killer whose alias stood for Bind, Torture, Kill, was actively hunting people in their city. Months earlier, he'd killed a mother in her home at night. At around 10.30 that evening, Ruth's phone rings. Hello? In an interview Ruth later gave to Cake TV, she said the conversation was fine at first. The man started out friendly, like, was I Ruth's mom from Fort Scott? Ruth hadn't gone by her maiden name, Smock, since the 1940s, when she did, in fact, live in Fort Scott, Kansas. Then he started asking me about this incident. The man on the phone asks, You still have your brand? Ruth had been assaulted by a stranger in her apartment when she was 16 years old. Attacked, incapacitated, and branded with a hot iron. Look, I know all about that night. The man who did it had never been caught. The guy on the phone tells her he works for a construction company tearing down buildings. In his work, he'd found a newspaper clipping from 1946 about the attack. The newspaper had published Ruth's high school photo under the word branded. The coverage had humiliated her, making her private trauma, the talk of her hometown. I know where you work. If you don't do what I want, I might just leave that article where everyone can see it. She had told very few people in her life in Wichita about the attack. The gist of it was, he was going to want some money from me, or he was going to tell this again. He was going to bring it up again. He demands payment. He demands payment to keep the story quiet. She has three weeks. He says he'll call back then and expect her to pay up. The caller's words didn't rhyme, but they soon would. This one call would set off a years-long manhunt, one of the most expensive in Wichita history, for a mysterious character who would spread fear throughout this Midwestern city. The poet was always two steps in front of us, and we just didn't know why. It's a story about a seemingly normal middle-aged woman. Why is this person threatening her? Why is this happening to her? Targeted by a monster. Hey, great dickery dog, your face mattered. My cloth. Whose story would become a media sensation. We consider him extremely dangerous. He was virtually a pathological person. Writs, verse, block printing, and a piece of a red bandana. There was a lot of terrifying things that were happening to her. And we knew he was a very violent person. Hickory dickory dog. From Sony Music Entertainment and New Metric Media, you're listening to The Poet, ad-free on the binge, where you get all episodes, all at once. This is episode one, The Call. I'm an investigative reporter. I cover cases dealing with cults, serial killers, all things true crime. And the story of Ruth Finley and her tormentor caught my attention because of how strange and extreme it got. It's the 1970s. At the dawn of the serial killer era, when criminal profiling has just been invented. A middle-aged woman from middle America has a stalker. A stalker who writes her poetry. But then the story twists and turns and gets caught up in a media tornado that goes well beyond Kansas. Even ending up on the Oprah Winfrey show. But Ruth's peaceful life was disrupted when an unknown man, Ruth Finley, a lone man, vowed to kill her. I'd been trying to untangle this whole thing from my home in Toronto. But I knew I had to go see where it all happened to really understand it, even though nearly 50 years had passed since that first threatening phone call. Andy, is your phone on? Yes. So I hopped on a plane to Wichita. I knew I would never get to talk to Ruth Finley. She passed away years before. Oh, sure. I'll turn it on. Thank you. Power off. Perfect. But I needed to talk to the people closest to Ruth to understand. Who was she? And was there anything about her that could have helped them anticipate the wild events to come? Ruth Finley. I always thought it was kind of like my mom. In 1977, Ruth was in her late 40s. A mother. A wife. A secretary at the telephone company. Not somebody you'd expect to have enemies. Or big secrets. She is this woman who went to work every day because she wanted to make something of herself. She's this woman who raised a family. She was an everyday woman. An average woman. Most people I spoke with told me Ruth and her husband, Ed, were "normal." Even for Wichita, very normal, just your average couple. you know middle-aged couple she was just a sweet lady she made cakes and pies and she fed everyone in the homicide section very well hi ruth hi give us a big wave this is from a home video of ruth celebrating new year's with her friends well actually the story is about ruth oh that's the voice of her best friend emma dillinger who told me ruth was a ton of fun a good friend a funny friend hilarious at times because she was smart and quick quick-witted at the new year's party you can see ruth sitting on a couch next to her husband ed joking around say ruth and ed earlier this evening we're here to give resolutions yeah yeah let's hear him again i want to have a real good time ruth and ed had met in fort scott kansas in the late 1940s fell in love married then moved a few hours away to wichita and had two sons in two years he was honest forthright smart what was he like for ruth oh they were a good match ed worked as an accountant ruth had taken some time off when raising their boys then returned to work as a secretary at the southwestern bell telephone company life was simple until it wasn't ruth was at work at the telephone company checking the office mail as usual when she saw her own name on an envelope there was no address no room number just ruth finley in crude blocky handwriting the letter must have been hand delivered inside is a yellowed clipping from the fort scott tribune newspaper about her assault just as the man on the phone had threatened her with she hadn't seen this article since she was 16. at the time of ruth's assault in 1946 there were many articles published about her attack the fort scott tribune at the time wrote branded by a hot flat iron ruth smock 16 year old fort scott high school girl was resting today following an attack upon her early last night by a man whom fort scott police called a sex maniac in high school ruth had moved to a neighboring town for a better education where she lived alone in an apartment and worked a part-time job at the phone company in fort scott she had been on her dinner break when she was attacked she had come home and a man had followed her in close behind he grabbed her and she fought back here's fred mann a journal in fort scott police officer at fort scott police officer at fort scott police officer at fort scott police who covered ruth's story extensively in the 1970s she remembers that he put a bottle of chloroform under her nose and held it against her she was screaming fighting crying he was wrestling with her and she remembered passing out she woke up on the kitchen floor seeing the man above her heating a hot iron on the stovetop he at one point grabbed the iron off of the stove and brought it down came up under her skirt and pressed this hot flat iron against one of her thighs and she screamed and then passed out again her memory comes in flashes as she's in and out of consciousness she remembered that he had had a knife out and he was slashing her legs with his knife just bang bang bang he was chewing tobacco and some of it was starting to run out of his mouth and then he stuffed a handkerchief into her mouth and she was gagging on that eventually she woke up again and the man was gone she had a deep wound on her inner thigh from the hot iron after being treated by a doctor ruth's parents reported the incident to the police who interviewed her they were doubtful it really hurt her embarrassed her and at one point one of the cops as she was sitting in a chair telling him this another cop who was sitting opposite her reached out with one of his legs and he had boots on and he reached under her ankle and lifted up her leg to look under her skirt to look at the brand try to confirm the brand and that humiliated her not only was the police interrogation mortifying the newspapers took her story and ran wild with it the newspaper didn't hold back i mean this was splashed all over the headlines for several days it ran story after story high school girl attacked at 16 her name and home address were published in the paper alongside her high school photo it's hard to imagine a paper today publishing a teenager's name and photo not to mention her address ruth was a minor and the victim of a crime this is like the 1940s era version of doxing ruth's family's response was to pretend the assault hadn't happened her mother took her back home and put her up in her bedroom with the door closed for a week her mother was sort of the opinion that the less said the better ruth will be okay because we were trained to trust our problems to god that's how her family approached it but outside her home the attack was whispered about all through the community and when she went back to school there were a lot of kids who talked about it with her and she kind of got in a little trouble in school because of that there was a time fred said when a different girl named ruth had been caught drinking with some boys and the school officials assumed it was our ruth it wasn't fair but the branding attack had cost her her reputation ruth had this aura about her having been attacked and doubted that she was somehow not a good person not a good girl she was humiliated and traumatized she said that for weeks after she'd throw up when she entered her apartment ruth was in so many ways unsupported her parents her school her community they doubted her and questioned her character not her attackers soon after ruth moved out of that apartment she found a new place in fort scott in a rooming house there she met ed the man who would become her husband ed was her lifeline during that time which created the foundation for their close long-lasting relationship but now in 1977 as she sees this familiar newspaper headline fall out of an envelope onto her work desk the shame comes rushing back ruth quickly shoves the clipping in her desk drawer and throws it out before anyone can see it there was no note with the clipping but the message was clear if you don't pay up i'll tell everyone about your branding this was an escalation a call to her home was one thing but now he was coming for her at work she hadn't mentioned the call to ed before while he was recovering at the hospital but now that he was better she decides to tell him everything she turned to ed and said if a man calls i want you to talk to him and he said what do you mean and she told him the story about this phone call this guy talking about her brands wanting money to keep quiet about them kind of sort of an aura of threat about him ed is concerned but at this point they think they can handle it they decide they won't pay this man any money maybe if they ignore him he'll go away man they didn't go to the police it was sort of well let's see what happens but what happens next makes the situation a lot harder to ignore in the months after receiving the ominous envelope at work ruth received six more calls always hanging up the moment she heard his voice as she's leaving work one friday to meet ed for a ride home a man walking down the street bumps her shoulder as she's leaving work one friday to meet ed for a ride home a man walking down the street bumps her shoulder and this guy started talking to her and this guy started talking to her and this guy started talking to her and the first thing he said to her was and the first thing he said to her was and the first thing he said to her was you've done a good job at work this week you've done a good job at work this week you've done a good job at work this week you can take the weekend off the crosswalk light changes and the man the crosswalk light changes and the man the crosswalk light changes and the man falls into step with ruth as she crosses falls into step with ruth as she crosses falls into step with ruth as she crosses the street the street the street i know you get the weekend off i know you get the weekend off i know you get the weekend off anyways he's a tall guy in his 40s with wire he's a tall guy in his 40s with wire he's a tall guy in his 40s with wire framed glasses and dark hair that's framed glasses and dark hair that's framed glasses and dark hair that's graying at the temples graying at the temples graying at the temples he tells ruth he knows she works at the he tells ruth he knows she works at the he tells ruth he knows she works at the telephone company telephone company telephone company he walks closely alongside her babbling he walks closely alongside her babbling he walks closely alongside her babbling in her ear about cameras winning money in her ear about cameras winning money in her ear about cameras winning money in las vegas on and on in las vegas on and on in las vegas on and on he seems unwell unhinged even he seems unwell unhinged even She finally got to the store where she usually met Ed, and he stopped at At that point, she turned to him and he looked at her and he said, I'm going to see you again. I'm going to see you again. Some people's fantasies are other people's nightmares. And he turned and walked away. Soon after, Ed picks Ruth up. As soon as she gets into the car, she tells Ed about this weird interaction. Here's journalist Fred Mannigan. She came across as very stoic, very quiet, very, here's something weird that happened to me just now, you know. She was not hysterical. She wasn't crying. None of that. Ruth is stoic. She holds her cards close to her chest. But I'd be unnerved if someone approached me on the street this way. And there was something familiar to Ruth about this guy. His voice. Is this the same guy who called the house? She asks Ed, who says he doesn't think so. He thinks this is just some weirdo looking for a last-minute date for the weekend. But Ruth isn't so sure. And what does it mean if the caller has now found her on the street? Is he following her? Then, more calls come to the house. And they don't stop. If Ruth answered, she'd hear the man's voice and would immediately hang up. If Ed answered, he'd only hear a dial tone. Once, a call came in on a Saturday as Ruth and Ed were having lunch. He heard dead air, but this time, stayed on the phone, yelling and yelling for a response. After nearly an hour, a voice suddenly responded. A man on the other end said he was walking by a public phone downtown by the post office and heard Ed shouting down the line. Someone had left the phone hanging off the hook. The calls went on like this. Intermittently. For nearly a year. All that time, Ruth and Ed didn't go to the cops. Probably hoping this guy would give up and go away. But in the summer of 1978, Ruth Stalker shows his face again. She had run an errand to Macy's on her lunch break. On her way back to work, she passes an alley and a hand reaches out and grabs her wrist. With horror, she realizes it's the same man who had accosted her on the street a year earlier. Ruth! Ruth wrenches her arm free, breaking her watch band in the process. Get back here, you stupid bitch! She bolts into Macy's and rushes up the escalator. And now she was, there was panic now in her. And she waited up there. Until enough time had passed where she felt the adventure downstairs. Finally, she calls Ed to come get her. And he races over. And at this point, Ed wanted to go to the police. That was too much for Ed. And Ruth said, no, no. She didn't want to deal with the police because of what had happened to her in Fort Scott. So Ed goes to the police station and files a report, but alone. He tells them about the unsettling encounters on the street and the phone calls. The officer he speaks to doesn't seem to take his concern very seriously. He just tells him to be cautious. Ed was actually kind of offended. This officer was so shallow and simple-minded. And so Ed left. The Wichita police do not seem to think that Ruth getting harassed, stalked even, warrants their attention. After all, at this point, they've got bigger fish to fry. BTK was still out there. And obviously they had their own other crimes to deal with. So they dismissed it and sort of left Ruth and Ed to kind of try to figure it out for themselves. No one from the police calls the Finleys to update them or follow up on this report. On a weekend that week, the police called the Finleys. On that fall, Ruth is at home, baking pies for the church bake sale. Her English bulldog, Sherman, rolls over, his signal that the mailman has come. She collects the mail from the front porch. And as she sorts it, she notices one strange envelope tied with string and tape. It has her name in block letters. The writing's familiar. That same crude, almost childlike handwriting she'd seen on the envelope that contained the clipping about her assault. She tears the envelope open. The letter inside is handwritten as well, covered in ramblings on both sides. Fuck you. Fuck the police. Fuck the telephone company. He says, I write poems. I'm a really good poet. I'm going to send you some poems. I'm going to get to you. I'm going to see you. And then there were some more threats, sort of vague, weird things. It wasn't a poem, but it was. obviously, really a disturbed letter. The letter goes on to demand, again, that Ruth pay him, but gives no specifics. This time, he threatens to hurt her if she doesn't comply. When Ed returns home, Ruth shows him the letter. They agree that it's time to go back to the police. This time, when Ed and Ruth show up to make their report, they bring the letter with them. And this time, they're escorted immediately to the major crimes division. This is a very different reception than the brush-off Ed had gotten the first time he'd reported Ruth's harassment. That was because the police knew something Ruth and Ed didn't. This long, rambling, threatening message had all the hallmarks of another case they were deeply investigating. The police believe the person behind this letter might be the BTK killer. Do you see any pattern to BTK's conduct? We have an individual who apparently has the uncontrollable desire to kill at times. The local media covered it obsessively, like this segment from Cake TV where they interviewed the police. And how could they not cover something so horrifying? This man liked to talk. And how could they not tie up and torture people before taking their lives? What kind of leads do you have? Well, very honestly, we have no solid leads at all. It was late in 1978 by the time Ruth brought her letter to the police. By then, the BTK killer had been terrorizing Wichita for nearly five years. He would bind, torture, and kill his victims. Usually women, often in their homes. The young officers of the Wichita Police Department were struggling under mounting public pressure. They had no leads. And BTK had claimed responsibility for seven victims. I always enjoyed law enforcement. Detective Mike McKenna was a rookie in the Wichita Police Department in the 70s. He loved the job. There were times when I was in the police department, and I was in the police department, and I was in the police department. And I was in the police department. And at times I thought to myself, I can't believe they're paying me to do this. If I was physically capable and young enough, I would still be doing it today. And in fact, Detective McKenna's two sons are now both officers in the Wichita PD. But back in 1974, he was in his first year on the job. And that was the year the BTK horror began. It started with the infamous murders of the Otero family. When their son got home from school, Charles Otero, and found his parents along with his brother and sister, that had all been murdered. BTK had broken into a family home, strangling the parents, Joseph and Julie, and two of their children. This crime terrified Wichita. A family murdered in their home, and the crime was sexually motivated and sadistic. And just three years later, the family was murdered. And just three months later, he struck again. Then after that, Catherine Bright was killed, and her brother, Kevin, was wounded. BTK stabbed Catherine to death. Her brother was shot in the head, but survived. At first, the Otero and Bright crimes weren't connected. It just felt like random, violent crime was on the rise in Wichita. The police were surprised. The police were scrambling, with little to go on beyond vague descriptions of a dark-haired man. Following a promising lead, they took suspects into custody, triggering BTK to take credit for the Otero murders, and write his first letter to the media. He wasn't going to let someone else get credit for his kills. Since sex criminals do not change their MO, or by nature cannot, Do so, I will not change mine. B.T.K.'s writing was full of grammatical and spelling errors, long and rambling. In that same letter, he gave himself his moniker, writing: "The code words for me will be: bind them, torture them, kill them. B.T.K. It will be on the next victim." But then, the killing stopped. From 1974 to 1977, B.T.K. went quiet. Wichita waited to see if the terror was over. In 1977, B.T.K. returned. First, 24-year-old Shirley Vian was strangled in her home, and nine months later, 25-year-old Nancy Jo Fox suffered the same fate. Again. Killed in her own home. "What was it like being in the newsroom when all this is unfolding in town?" "Well, it was, I hate to use the word exciting, but there was a real buzz on about all this. Every time there was a B.T.K. incident of some sort, a letter or a phone call or a report of a new murder, you know, everybody was abuzz, of course." In 1977, Fred Mann was a young reporter. He's in his late 70s now, but still has that sharp, inquisitive nature. You can just picture him as a young reporter in a bustling newsroom while everyone is scrambling to cover this serial killer. This was when the idea of serial killers was still pretty new. The FBI's behavioral science unit, the B.S.U., and the idea of criminal profiling was just getting mainstream. And the profile for B.T.K. was alarming. "What do you mean, B.T.K.?" It was alarming. Psychologists thought he could be anyone. Just a regular, functioning member of their community. B.T.K. wrote another letter taking responsibility for his two newest victims and claiming he'd now killed seven people. In this letter, he wrote his first poem. It was about his victim, Shirley Vian, and began, "Shirley Locks, Shirley Locks, wilt thou be mine?" And warned that "A Poem for Fox," his newest victim, was next. Now, Wichita knew for sure that they were under the watch of a serial killer, with a taste for bad poetry. "And people were very scared." Detective Mike McKenna again. "People were locking their doors and buying guns." B.T.K. was known to stalk his victims. And wait for them. And wait for them inside their homes. He would often cut his victims' phone lines before an attack. People were warned that the moment they returned home, they should pick up the phone. If the line was dead, they were told to run. Cops were at the ready. The community was quite guarded. And on evenings or whatever, when it was windy, or there was a storm coming through, or the trash cans rattled, or the dogs barked, they would call us constantly to come check their homes. We rode overtime, putting extra police power on the streets. People were very quick about calling. Somebody was outside their house. They thought it was B.T.K. But in the Wichita Police Department's Major Crimes Unit, one officer was about to find a new lead. Ruth Finley's letter. That officer was Lieutenant Bernie Drowatzky. And Drowatzky was, he was a real cop's cop. Fred Mann knew him. This was a no-nonsense, a real tough guy. He looked the part. You know, he had a slick back hair, he had a kind of a scarred face, he looked tough, and he had had a pretty good history as a cop, as a guy who was pretty relentless. Fred says Drowatzky was known as a bit of a hothead. He didn't like bad guys getting away. And now, Ruth and Ed Finley were in the Major Crimes Division in front of this tough cop. They showed him their strange, threatening letter, and told him about the other suspicious behavior over the last year. So they told him about these incidents downtown, about the phone call, they had Drowatzky read the letter. And they waited. And they waited for him to react, but he didn't show anything, didn't show any signs of anything. Just read it calmly. And then he said, "What's this about the brands?" And then Ruth looked at Ed, and Ed said, "Yeah, better tell him." And so then Ruth told him all about the branding incident in Fort Scott. Ruth told him in her typical stoic way. Drowatzky listened, sizing Ruth and Ed up. He thought that they were two average people from Wichita, Kansas, you know. What disturbed him was the letter. Drowatzky knew the BTK case very well. He was part of the investigative team. And he knew the kinds of letters BTK had been sending. Not just letters, but poems. So when he read this guy threatening this woman with obscenities, the fact that he was a poet. He began to think. Did we really have two different people? Or was this the same guy? We're not big enough to have two different people with this kind of obsession. He didn't tell them that, though. He didn't bring up BTK to them. But when they left, he went back and we read the letter. And then he started to take them very seriously. And the letters to Ruth wouldn't stop. They were vile. The whore bore her guilt. They were vile. They were vile. They were vile. They were vile. They were vile. They were vile. They were vile. Drowatzky. Drowatzky. Drowatzky. He was blood and tied with twine. Soon, this poet was no longer stopping at letters. He was ready to take action. Next time on The Poet, Ruth is missing. We've had kidnappings, but nothing that resembled this. And Ed comes to face his worst fear. He put everything together and thought, "This guy got her." He thought she was dead. To be continued. From here to there, it's a bridge to the people and places that matter most. It's how you show up for your family, your community, and everyone else that depends on you. That's why for 125 years, Firestone has been building tires with one thing in mind. To deliver products that are as reliable as you are. Firestone. Always dependable. Since 1900. You know that moment when everything lines up? When life gives you the green light and you just. go. That's the 2026 Toyota Camry. No hesitation, no friction, just a car that's right there with you. Ready, responsive, in control the whole way through. 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