The 25-year-old white female Nancy Fox was living alone in a duplex at 843 South Pershing Street, Wichita, when she caught the attention of serial killer Dennis Rader, later unmasked as “BTK.” Rader studied the young white woman's routines, even tracing her name by checking her mailbox and confirming her workplace at Helzberg Jewelers downtown. After several weeks of surveillance, he selected Thursday, December 8 1977, for what he would later describe as a “perfect hit.”
That evening, the 25-year-old white secretary arrived home to find Rader inside; he had parked a few blocks away, cut the duplex's phone lines, and slipped through a back window. Rader confronted the white female victim, claiming he had “sexual problems” and needed to tie her up. She smoked a cigarette, asked to use the bathroom, and calmly said, “Let's get this over with.” When she returned undressed, Rader hand-cuffed and bound her, then used a belt to strangle her, later replacing the belt with pantyhose to tighten the ligature. After the killing he took personal items as trophies, masturbated at the scene, and quietly left the house.
Early the next morning the killer could not resist the urge for recognition. From a downtown pay phone he calmly told a police dispatcher, “You will find a homicide at 843 South Pershing. Nancy Fox,” and left the receiver dangling. Investigators traced the call, rushed to the address, and found the 25-year-old white woman dead on her bed, bound and posed, confirming a new link in what was becoming the BTK series. The recorded voice became a key exhibit, but with no match in departmental files, the case went cold for decades.
For years, detectives pursued sparse leads: semen recovered at the scene, the taped 911 call, and later taunting letters and poems from BTK, including “Oh! Death to Nancy” mailed to a local TV station in 1978. Yet no arrests followed until a resurgence of BTK communications in 2004–2005 provided digital clues. A floppy disk he mailed was traced to Christ Lutheran Church and to “Dennis” in its metadata; DNA from his daughter's medical file then matched crime-scene samples, finally placing the long-sought suspect in custody.
On February 25 2005, Dennis Lynn Rader was arrested and charged with ten counts of first-degree murder, including the slaying of 25-year-old white female Nancy Fox. He pleaded guilty on June 27 2005, giving a detailed courtroom confession of the Wichita crimes, and on August 18 2005 he received ten consecutive life sentences, ensuring that the murder of Nancy Fox and his nine other victims would never see him free again.
