The Poet | 2. Where’s Ruth?
episode
The Binge Crimes: What Happened to the Harrisons?
33 min
5 speakers
6 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?
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the bench.
Wherever you go, on water or land, you've still got to pay for I tell about your brand. You talk to people I despise, like police lieutenant and telly spies.
Ruth Finley's tormentor wasn't letting up. A week after the first letter arrived, a second arrived in her mailbox. He had promised Ruth he'd send her his poetry, and here he was delivering. Before long, these poems would lead to him being nicknamed the poet.
The latest letter, here read for us by an actor, said, Ruth, how would you like to put about $100 in a tablet under the seat in your husband's P.U. ?
Ruth read that to mean her husband Ed's Ford pickup truck. The letter was full of these strange abbreviations. The writing was scribbled and erratic. What was clear was that he still wanted his payout.
Don't tell no one. You can get that much without your husband to know it. I can find that lieutenant name on your car. Don't tell him neither.
He somehow knew that Ruth had gone to the police.
I can tell if anybody has watched me. Don't be a dumb bitch again and blow this.
Despite the threat, Ruth called Lieutenant Bernie Drowatzky again. She read him the letter over the phone. Drowatzky asked her to bring it down to the station, so Ed hand-delivered it. At that same time, Drowatzky and his team were trying to decipher letters and poems from BTK. They were struck by the similarities, but they were also getting 30 tips a week. So they let Ruth's letter sit there, collecting dust. Ruth didn't obey the poet's orders. She didn't put $100 in the pickup truck like he requested, and she took her letter to the cops, which he specifically warned her not to do. Clearly, Ruth was no wallflower. She wasn't going to do what this man wanted. She was going to put up a fight. But Ruth's disobedience only angered the poet further.
And just one week later, he got his revenge. Just two days before Thanksgiving, Ruth's sister, Jean, gets a call from Ruth's boss. He asks if she had eaten lunch with Ruth. Jean tells him she hadn't seen her sister at all that day. 45 minutes later, Ruth's boss calls Gene again. Have you heard from her, he asks. Gene again says no. Ruth's boss immediately hangs up and calls Ed to tell him. Ruth hasn't come back from lunch.
Ed always knew where Ruth was, every second of the day and night. They were that close.
Ed had been keeping close tabs on Ruth, trying to do everything in his power to keep her stalker, whoever he was, from harming her. The poems upset him. They were vile and demeaning towards the woman he loved. Ruth put on a brave face, but he could feel the toll it was taking on her. It was all too much.
This was the first time in years that he did not know where his wife was. It had been two hours. He assumed the worst.
Ed calls the police to report her missing. Under regular circumstances, the police wouldn't act on a missing person's report that early. But Ed insists something is very wrong.
He put everything together and thought, this guy got her. He thought she was dead.
From Sony Music Entertainment and Newmetric Media, this is The Poet. I'm Rachel Brown. Episode 2. Where's Ruth?
Ruth is at work at the phone company Southwestern Bell on the morning of November 21st, 1978, the day of her disappearance. One of her colleagues was having a birthday celebration in the office, and Ruth had forgotten to get her a birthday card.
It was kind of a cold, windy, damp day. Rainy, it rained.
Reporter Fred Mann was a young journalist working at the Wichita Eagle Beacon at the time.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–6:35
2
What threat did Ruth receive in the early stalking letters and how did police initially respond?
6:35–7:56
3
How did Ruth describe the second threatening letter and its strange abbreviations?
7:56–12:17
4
Why did Ruth bring the letters to Lieutenant Drowatzky and what happened to that tip?
12:17–17:04
5
What led coworkers and family to realize Ruth was missing on November 21, 1978?
17:04–27:18
6
How was Ruth abducted from the street and what details did she memorize about the Chevy and her captors?
27:18–33:45