Here is the statement. PDF.

They are still not conforming or denying. Just saying they haven't made an arrest in the BTK case. From another article I read they are testing his DNA, results should be back Friday.

http://www.wichita.gov/NR/rdonlyres/...homicide13.pdf

That doesn't say anything.

I heard on the radio coming home that he was released and that the DNA came back that it was not him. I think it might have been on 98.7 or 97.8 or something, it is one of Clint's stations and I was just flipping through. Perhaps it is just the media speeding things up a bit.

Well if it is true, if it isn't him. I feel very sorry for him. His name, his address, pictures of his home were splashed all over the country. If I was the DA I would drop all charges, paint his house, buy him a new car, and hope to god he doesn't sue.

Why? The police never said he was BTK. The arrest was (presumably) for legitimate reasons. Don't see where there is a problem for the officials.

Now the media people who hyped it up as BTK on the other hand...

Well, by God, somebody better get sued.

Nope they never did say that he was BTK. But the direction their investigation headed directly pointed to BTK. Someone had to make the leaks on this guy, my best guess would probaly be someone in the WPD.

You have to ask, why would they have sent the KBI, the BTK homicide detectives and CSI on a warrant for suspicion of criminal trespass all the way back from 1995? Take into account he was in the criminal court system in 2000. Why not arrest him and take care of the 1995 warrant then?

There is some liability on the WPD side IMO as well.

Well, I called my buddy who was the former Chief of Police in Wichita. (I've known him since 1965). I asked about them knowing who it was years ago and he said they thought they did but it fell through. He also said they have had several suspects since then and they have all fallen through. I asked if 30 year old semen was still good for DNA purposes and he said yes. He also said they found enough semen at the original murder scene for 10 men to have left. This guy is really sick. Oh, yeah, he said I have been eliminated as a suspect. :p

I saw early this morning that one of the reporters were at the police station and saw some official looking form with "Valdez = BTK" written on it and this is when the speculation clearly started.

Of course cops are stupid and make a lot of mistakes but this guys name isn't Valdez. It's Valadez.

BTK chat room lots of stuff in here. They are claiming That Mr V may be married into BTK family and is related.

They are laso claiming that Valadez spoke about conversations with that Wichita State Proffessor. Pretty interesting in here.

http://www.catchbtk.com/discuss.html

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/10327674.htm
Posted on Fri, Dec. 03, 2004
Police: Arrest not tied to BTK

Although a man's arrest was precipitated by a tip about BTK and pursued by BTK investigators, officials say it isn't related to the BTK case.

BY STAN FINGER AND TIM POTTER

The Wichita Eagle


Responding to intense local and national media attention, Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams said Thursday that the arrest of a 65-year-old man Wednesday night was not connected to the serial killer BTK.

News of the arrest, published in Thursday's Eagle -- and the speculation that followed -- attracted a steady stream of gawkers to the street next to the man's house.

"It is a travesty when you look at the impact, and you look at what has happened to a neighborhood because of the fact that people assume that the Wichita Police Department was making an arrest in regards to BTK," Williams said at a crowded news conference.

"We have not, and I repeat, we have not made an arrest in connection with BTK."

The killer, who dubbed himself BTK -- short for "bind, torture and kill" -- resurfaced in March after nearly 25 years of silence when he sent a letter to The Eagle. Police say he has killed at least eight Wichitans since 1974.

A tip to the BTK hotline led authorities to the man who lived in south Wichita, Williams told The Eagle on Thursday morning, and in the course of investigating his background they discovered outstanding warrants. When that happens, he said, authorities have no choice but to arrest the person.

The man, whom The Eagle has not identified, appeared in Wichita Municipal Court at 3 p.m. Thursday to face charges from two misdemeanor cases. One charged him with failing to appear for sentencing in a case in which he had pleaded no contest to eight housing code violations.

In the other, he was charged with trespassing in a 1995 domestic violence case. Municipal Judge Jennifer Jones reduced the man's bond from $17,500 to $6,125 and ordered him to return to court in January. The man was released from jail shortly before 5 p.m.

The man had been arrested after daylong surveillance by Wichita police, including members of the homicide squad. Police gave a sample of the man's DNA -- driven to Topeka on Wednesday night -- to the Kansas Bureay of Investigation for testing, KBI spokesman Kyle Smith said.

A KBI forensic scientist was brought in around 1 a.m. Thursday, Smith said.

"It was given a little bit higher priority than normal," he said.

There was a need to complete the test as soon as possible, Smith said, out of fairness to the man arrested because it was important to see whether he has a connection to the BTK case and because of all the media attention.

"It's a great way to eliminate suspects," he said of the testing.

Results of the DNA test had not been released Thursday night.

Wichita legal experts say that to obtain a search warrant, police would have to demonstrate to a judge that they had knowledge beyond mere suspicion that evidence of a crime probably would be found during the search.

About two dozen police officials and KBI agents entered the house around 3 p.m. on Thursday, putting on rubber gloves as they walked through the side door.

A crime scene investigation van pulled up to the house about 20 minutes later. The investigator used a drill to remove a padlocked latch on the front door.

Police detectives gathered boxes, tools and paint cans that they put back in the house.

People driving by took pictures, made phone calls and honked as others stood across the street, staring. Police officers stood in the intersection to control traffic at times.

Speculation about BTK's identity intensified earlier this week when Wichita police released several details they say BTK has claimed about his background.

Among them: that he was born in 1939 and that his father died in World War II; that his mother worked during the day near a railroad; and that he has a fascination with railroads and trains.

Police said he also claims to have served in the military -- a tidbit that made Richard Wagner drive down Thursday from Junction City when he heard an arrest had been made.

"I came down to see the house and view the scene," said Wagner, who spent 22 years in the military before retiring in January.

He hoped BTK wasn't really a veteran. "It's not a good representation for the military."

The man's neighbors said onlookers and media attention, as well as their own concerns, made Thursday an unusual day.

One woman who lives across the street said the news that no arrest was made in the BTK case made her feel better.

"I was shaking all day, but now I'm feeling calmed down," she said.

Another neighbor said she doesn't worry about BTK often, but the news that an arrest wasn't made disappointed her.

"I just wish they'd get it over with," she said. "But I know it's a hard case to solve."

Across the street, another neighbor spent the day watching television and listening to a police scanner attached to his belt. It seems like the day was full of speculation, he said.

All the commotion made him wonder what police will do if another similar suspect surfaces.

"If they do catch this guy, how are they going to handle that?" he asked.

I will admit, Wichita is a kooky city. We do things here that alot of times just don't make any sense. For instance, the WPD sometimes make the Keystone cops look outstanding.

My questions are...

1. Why were BTK investigators called in on a 1995 DV warrant? Was it just because it was a BTK tip? which leads me to my next question...

2. What do they mean by, "found out in the course of investigation he was unrelated?" Did they know this before going in his house or after?

3. If they knew after, aren't they kinda pushing the blame off on the media, who really, was acting on the WPD investigation of BTK? Hell, if the WPD didn't know till after they went in his house, how can they blame the media for reporting it, they, themselves didn't even know. And if the WPD knew before going in that he was unrelated, Why do a DNA test?

4. Which brings me to this point. Why wasn't this man just DNA tested like the hundreds that have already been without the break down the door type actions, like in this case? Or, Why wasn't this man just picked up on the DV warrant, brought down to lockup. Then questioned by BTK investigators and DNA tested?

If the WPD didn't want to make it a show, they would have made sure to quietly bring this guy in. Instead they bust in the door, bring the BTK investigators in, search and CSI removes several bags from the house. Someone from the WPD had to leak to the media. It happens all the time. The Wichita Eagle knew before the submital of articles deadline(I guess you would call it) for the day which, probaly is around 10 or 11pm. Why did this guy deserve so much attention from the WPD? What tip about him made him stand out from the several other thousand tips to deserve the attention that nobody else has endured?

I think the WPD knows they fouled up. They thought they had him. They leaked it to the media because they knew the media would jump all over it. They made THE big break in the case! City, says Yippee, rejoice thy citizens, we are KING! WPD given BIG pat on back, city loves WPD again.

Instead they 'found out during the course of investigation' it seems that they may have fell on their own ass, again.

Wichita Eagle out with it's damage control...



http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/10327679.htm
Why Eagle editors chose to play story as they did


I thought you might be interested in the decisions we faced in the early hours of the story that has riveted our city the past 24 hours.

Would you make the same decisions under the same circumstances?

The story began for us long before it began for other media or for the public.

About 9:30 Wednesday morning, Eagle reporter Tim Potter got a phone call with an urgent news tip: About 20 undercover police officers were about to kick in a door on a south Wichita home. That was quickly followed by another tip that police were using a nearby business to conduct surveillance of a house.

If the tips were true, that kind of manpower had to mean something newsworthy was happening.

Tim and other staffers were out the door, headed to the area the caller described. It took more than an hour, but eventually Tim found the scene that became so familiar on television Thursday. At this point, though, it was just police and us watching the house.

Our first rule in such circumstances is to never interfere with the police. Our staffers stayed one or two blocks away.

Meanwhile, reporters in the newsroom began a search of public databases to see whether we could understand why the police might be interested in the house and its occupants.

Throughout the day, we kept two staffers in the area in cars. Police on the scene knew we were there. Twice they approached staffers and asked what they were doing there. At no time did those officers ask our staffers to leave, and no police department officials called the newspaper to object to our presence.

About 7:30 that night, reporter Hurst Laviana called the newsroom to report that police had entered the home and removed a man in handcuffs. Eagle staffer Travis Heying photographed the arrest.

Within about an hour, we knew the man had been booked into the county jail on outstanding warrants alleging criminal trespass and housing code violations.

A short time later, we learned that Kansas Bureau of Investigation agents were inside the man's house, intending to stay through the night.

We knew The Eagle alone among media had a lot of information. We knew the name of the man, his age, his family background, how long he had owned the house, and more.

We knew the unusual number of officers -- though apparently fewer than the 20 we were told -- meant this was not a routine case.

And we knew that a few things about the man matched the BTK self-profile police had released the day before.

We had several highly experienced editors on hand through the day and night to steer coverage: Timothy Rogers, assistant managing editor for local news; L. Kelly, leader of the Crime & Safety Team; Marcia Werts, senior editor; and me. Collectively, more than 80 years of newspaper experience.

As deadline drew closer, we had to ask ourselves some very tough questions:

Did we really have a story? What was it? From 8 till 11:30 p.m., newsroom editors met several times to discuss what we knew and what we should publish.

If anything at all.

We knew that the daylong surveillance operation -- which included homicide detectives -- and the KBI presence were highly unusual for the minor crimes alleged and would normally not trigger the search of a home.

In such circumstances, most journalists have official sources and other sources who typically won't be quoted in the paper but will tell us whether we're on the right track with our reporting.

Nothing we learned from those sources late Wednesday convinced us with certainty that a major arrest had been made. Yet, the circumstances were so unusual, we were convinced that what we had witnessed was newsworthy. And we knew that our news competitors at the three local television stations would probably hear about the story soon, if they hadn't already.

Eventually, we decided that we could not ignore what our staff had witnessed firsthand. Major law enforcement resources were committed to an operation we watched, and, simply put, that's news. We should report what we saw.

Consulting with our lawyer, Lyndon Vix, we determined that legally we could publish the name of the person arrested and his address. Many news organizations would do so.

But what if the trespass and housing code violations were the sum of the police operation? Was it fair to publicly identify the man arrested?

For us in the newsroom and publisher Lou Heldman at home, the answer was no. We made that decision knowing that competing news organizations might decide otherwise and report information we had but did not offer. There's an inescapable finality to news reporting: Once you print it, broadcast it or put it on the Internet, you can't take it back.

If the news story grew bigger, we could publish the information later. But if it turned out to be no more than what we already knew, a person's life would be changed forever. There would be no going back. The opinion in the newsroom was clear: We would not name the person or say where he lived. We would identify the area only as "south Wichita."

Should we run Heying's photograph? It showed three officers escorting a man with hands cuffed behind him. It captured the news of the arrest, but did not show the man's face or profile. After discussion with senior editors, I believed I would not have been able to identify that person from the photo even if he had been one of our employees. We would run the photo.

Finally, we had to determine "story play" -- which page, and where on the page, should the story be published?

We had a front-page story on the BTK investigation. Should this story run near that one?

We did not believe our reporting connected this arrest to that case and did not want to tie the stories together.

On Thursday's front page, the update on the BTK investigation ran at the top of Page 1. The coverage of Wednesday's stakeout and arrest was at the bottom of the Local & State page in Section B, with no link made between the two except those that readers made for themselves.

The story was posted on our Web site, Kansas.com, by 1:30 a.m. and was not linked to BTK coverage there.

These are just the most critical of the news decisions that shaped this coverage. Every fact you read in that story was weighed by two to five editors before a decision was made to publish it.

On Thursday, Police Chief Norman Williams took the media to task for what he characterized as irresponsible reporting that damaged one of the community's neighborhoods. In today's information-overloaded society, "media" is an awfully broad brush to paint with.

Every newsroom has to make its own decisions based on its particular values and priorities. In ours, those 15 hours of decisions added up to fair treatment for a person thrust into the news, measured coverage that did not overstate, and appropriate placement of the story among the day's news events.

I'd be very interested to know what decisions you would have made under the same circumstances. Please e-mail me or write a letter to me at the paper. And thanks for reading The Eagle.

--Sherry Chisenhall is editor of The Eagle. She is responsible for all news content of paper and will be writing occasionally about the processes and people of The Eagle.

We will never find out, but it sure would interesting to know who phoned in those tips. I'm betting somebody from the WPD.