The Poet | 1. The Call
episode
The Binge Crimes: What Happened to the Harrisons?
38 min
5 speakers
4 chapters
transcribed 2 months ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
If you want a deeper look behind Cut, Color, Kill, now is the time. Join our free newsletter at patreon.com slash the binge and you will get exclusive story details you can't get anywhere else. Again, join me at patreon.com slash the binge.
Listen to every episode of The Poet ad-free right now when you subscribe to The Binge. You'll hear the entire series before anyone else, get exclusive bonus episodes, and unlock more than 60 other true crime podcasts. Just head to The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and tap subscribe, or visit getthebinge.com to listen wherever you are. The Binge, feed your true crime obsession. For the 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. He was 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. Just months earlier, he'd killed a mother in her home at night. At around 10.30 that evening, Ruth's phone rings.
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 Smock 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 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.
Hickory-jickory dog, your face mounted on my cloth.
Whose story would become a media sensation.
Who was Ruth Finley and why did her life change after 1977?
We consider him extremely dangerous. He's 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 dock.
From Sony Music Entertainment and Newmetric Media, this is The Poet. I'm Rachel Brown. Episode 1, The Call. 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.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:09
2
Who was Ruth Finley and why did her life change after 1977?
5:09–14:47
3
What was Ruth’s teenage assault and how did the 1946 newspaper coverage affect her?
14:47–20:25
4
How did the first threatening phone call and extortion demand unfold?
20:25–37:57