🕰️ For four years, a stalker who called himself The Poet terrorized Wichita, Kansas — rhyming threats, a stabbing in a mall parking lot, a wreath set on fire on the front door — all during the height of the BTK murders. The city spent $370,000 and ran down more than 300 suspects. Then one weekend, the Chief of Police read the whole file and saw what no one else could.

This is the story of Ruth Finley 💛 — a soft-spoken phone-company secretary, a devoted husband, and a secret buried so deep that even Ruth didn't know she was keeping it. It's one of the strangest, saddest, and most human true-crime cases ever to come out of Kansas — and it happened just up the road from my front door in Derby.

🔎 What you'll hear:

• The 1946 Fort Scott attack at the root of it all
• How BTK-era fear made an entire city believe
• The Poet's siege — the red bandana, the threats, the cruelty and the patience
• Chief Richard LaMunyon and the clue that cracked it
• The confession — and the doubt that never fully went away
• The buried childhood trauma that explains everything
• 📍 A personal Derby aside: the "Glen Hills" case I still remember

📍 A Wichita / Sedgwick County true crime story, told Kansas-honest: documented facts and personal opinion kept clearly separate, no padding, no guessing.

✉️ The Time Killer Files: Send me the false-stalker case from your own town — the phantom attacker everyone feared who turned out never to exist. You might hear it on a future episode.

⚠️ Content note: This episode discusses childhood sexual abuse and suicidal thoughts. U.S. support: call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline); RAINN 1-800-656-4673.

📚 Sources: Corey Mead, The Pursued (2025); Gene Stone, Little Girl Fly Away (1991); Wichita Eagle archives; Wichita PD case history.

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