The Binge Crimes: Night Shift - The Poet | 2. Where’s Ruth?

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

Ruth is snatched off the street by two men in a beat up Chevy. That kidnapping rockets a somewhat lower priority stalking case right to the top of the pile. Want the full story? Binge every episode of The Poet ad-free now by subscribing to The Binge+. You’ll unlock over 60 true crime series instantly, get early access to drops on the first of every month, and hear exclusive bonus episodes. Search for the channel on Apple Podcasts or head to GetTheBinge.com. For behind-the-scenes details, join our free newsletter at Patreon.com/TheBinge. The Poet is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and New Metric Media. Follow @sonypodcasts and discover more at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices at podcastchoices.com/adchoices. The Binge — feed your true crime obsession. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Wherever you go, on water or land, you've still got to pay, where 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... the police. I can tell if anybody is watch me. Don't be a dumb bitch again and blow this. Despite the threat, Ruth called Lieutenant Bernie Drowatsky again. She read him the letter over the phone. Drowatsky asked her to bring it down to the station, so Ed hand delivered it. At that same time, Drowatsky 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. Gene tells him she hadn't seen her sister at all that day. 45 minutes later, Ruth's boss calls Jean again.

Have you heard from her, he asks? Jean 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 New metric 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 cold, windy, damp day, rainy had rained.

Reporter Fred Mann was a young journalist working at the Wichita Eagle Beacon at the time. She was kind of a little, she didn't know if she should leave, but she said, oh, she knew of a card store that was nearby. She didn't even take a coat, although she was advised by coworkers who say it's cold outside, you better put something on. These are Ruth's words, read for us by an actor.

The wind was blowing. I had my sweater on. I thought it would be too cool to walk. I think I'll go back. As she crosses the street to return to the office, Ruth gets this eerie feeling, like someone's following her. That's when an old green,

beat-up Chevy Bel-Air pulls up to the curb. One of the rear windows is missing, patched up with tape. One side of the car has been caved in. This car pulled up beside me. A guy hopped out. He kicked me in the shins with sharp shoes. He pushes Ruth into the back of the car.

Get in. The backseat of the car is missing. Ruth is thrown to the floor. You got my money. Ruth looks up and realizes, to her horror, it's the same man who had grabbed her in the alley months earlier, her stalker. There's another man in the car, in the driver's seat.

He's got fuzzy hair poking out from under a wool cap. There's no rearview mirror, so Ruth can't see his face. As he starts to drive, he takes swicks of wine from a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag. The entire car, inside and out, is a disaster. The dashboard seems to be kept together with tape. And there's trash everywhere. And it had lots of lack. big chains and just junk and had a board on top of it on the floor.

She notices rags, stones, empty gas cans, and other things that make Ruth wonder if they've come from a farm. She's frantic, but she tries to keep her cool and memorize what's around her in case those details could be useful, if she survives this thing. The man next to her, her stalker, talks incessantly. He was talking about being a spy for the government, buildings, and what all he had done, he babbled all the time. This talk about buildings struck Ruth. Could this be the construction worker who called her after finding that newspaper clip about her assault in Fort Scott? He continued to talk about, we're going to go party.

We're going to have a party, you and me. There was something alarming about their suggestion of a party. Ruth hears fragments of their conversation and picks up that the driver's name is Buddy. She doesn't hear what her kidnapper is called. She thinks about trying to escape, but the door handle on her side is broken, and she worries she'll hurt herself if she leaps from the car. She notices a red bandana lying on the floor. When the men aren't looking, she picks it up and tucks it away.

They cruise around town with Ruth for what feels like hours. She hopes someone will report the Chevy, which is noisy and falling apart, totally not fit for the road. At one moment, Ruth spots a police cruiser. She silently prays for the cop to pull them over, but he just keeps on driving. That is when he had me open my purse. And he said, what you got in there? And I had a check and a bond. He told buddy, hey, we put the jackpot.

He had her go through the purse. to show him what was in it. He said, you see, I'm not touching anything in the purse. He can't get any fingerprints out of me. He was re-proud of that. His whole attitude is, I'm better than you are. I know what I'm doing.

You know, I've got you. Ruth is careful to comply and shows him every item in her purse, except for one, her can of mace. The stalker spots Lieutenant Drowatsky's business card in her purse and freaks right out. He's angry that Ruth is still talking to the police.

He got very mad. He pulls up a hunk of something hard. Looked like a piece of concrete. He walked me with it. He hits Ruth in the head. The driver, buddy, gets upset at this and tells him to leave Ruth alone. It was getting dark, and he said we would go home.

Get some beer and go home. And then I panicked, you know. I thought there was no way I was going home with him. I told him I had to go to the bathroom. Ruth knows if she goes to another location with these guys, it's over for her. You know, I don't know if this happens to everybody, but every summer I realize there are a ton of things that I had last year that probably should be upgraded. You keep making do with the same pair of sunglasses you've had for years, for example, even though they're scratched or slightly bent or still have sunscreen on them from last year. Anyway, it's never quite making it to the top.

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Ruth gets an idea. She tells her captors she's feeling sick. She warns the men that if she doesn't get to a bathroom quickly, that she will throw up all over the car. I tried to gag and irritated the driver. So they said, pull in here. And they pulled in by that kind of playground there on 21st Street, by the river. The stalker tells Ruth to go down by the river. He tells her he'll watch her as she goes to the bathroom.

He forces her to take off her shoes and sweater so that she doesn't try running off. By now, it's dark and cold and the ground is wet. The man walks Ruth, now barefoot, through the grass toward the bush. He wasn't paying attention. Had a hold of my arm. Ruth reaches into her purse. I got the mace and shot him in the face. And he coughed and I ran.

Ruth hides in the bushes and keeps quiet. I heard him calling one of them. I don't know which one. If I would come back, they would give me my sweater and my shoes. She could tell they were friends. could tell they were furious. Ruth stays hidden, not quite sure exactly where she is. After a while, the men give up and leave.

She's free. Ruth spots a liquor store across the street and runs to it. She burst through the door, still barefoot and shivering from the cold. Someone's after me, she tells the store owner. He asks if he should call the police. Ruth says yes and asks him to call Ed too. Meanwhile, at home, Ed had been panicking and in constant contact with Ruth's boss, her sister Jean, and the cops.

He was at his breaking point. Ruth had now been gone for more than four hours. When Ed's phone rings, he immediately assumes the liquor store owner is her kidnapper and demands to speak with Ruth. She comes on the line and tells Ed's. she's okay, but to please hurry down there. Wichita police detectives bring Ruth down to the police station. This kidnapping rocketed a somewhat lower priority stocking case right to the top of the pile.

Now they had proof. Someone was directly targeting Ruth's life. Ed and Ruth's sister Jean arrive at the police station. They find Ruth still clutching her mace. When Ed got there, he saw his wife was just a mess. You know, she was drenched. Her hair was all over her forehead. Her clothes were wet.

She was not crying. She was not hysterical. She had been telling the story as calmly as she could to the cops. She describes what she can remember about the men to the police. The man who grabbed her is in his 40s or 50s with black hair that was graying around the temples, and he wore wire-framed glasses. He's the same man who accosted. her a few months ago, but this time she got a better look at him. She says he's around

5'8 to 5 foot 10, and very skinny, around 145 pounds. He wore a flannel shirt and jeans. The driver was called Buddy. Ruth didn't get a good look at him, so she couldn't provide much of a physical description. The kidnappers got away with her payroll check, a savings bond, and some stationary from her purse. She got away with the red bandana from the car. She shows it to the cops, who examine it. Detectives head down to the spot where Ruth fled from her kidnappers in search of clues. At the river, they find Ruth's sweater in shoes, but that's it. Police jump into action to try to find more leads, going so far as to run a check on

every Chevy model that matched Ruth's description of the kidnapper's vehicle. The police thought the car was so beaten up and distinctive that surely somebody would have noticed it. So they cruise that whole area for days, looking for the car, talking to people who may have seen her during the abduction. But there are no witnesses. The trail goes cold. Ed and Ruth stay on high alert, fearful that Ruth could be taken again at any time.

Detective Arlen Smith of the Wichita police recalls how things changed for the couple. She lived in fear that she would be kidnapped again. She tried to watch for people following her when she went to and from work. She and her husband changed their habits about where they ate and when they went out, when they came home, and they'd come home and they'd check the house carefully. The headaches she had been getting ever since she received the first poet phone call became an everyday occurrence now. She begins to suffer from intense stomach cramps.

And there was little Ed felt he could do. to protect his wife. He felt helpless and frustrated. But Ruth had been able to describe the man in detail. Ed was an artist. He liked to paint. So he put his skills to use and came up with a sketch of the guy, with wire-rimmed glasses and graying hair. The police took his sketch and sent it in a special bulletin to all officers on the force, and even posted it around town. Lieutenant Drowatsky and his team remain vigilant. He sent him to the police. two police detectives to surveil Ruth at work, following her at a distance on the street during her lunch breaks.

Drowatsky and the Finleys were working together closely, keeping each other in the loop on developments and theories. Drowatsky and his wife even starts socializing with the Finleys, going to the same church. Drowatsky, an old-school kind of cop, usually kept his distance from the people involved in his investigations. But Ed and Ruth were so kind and generous that he was. He and his wife fell into an easy friendship with them, even having dinner with them some evenings. But there was still one theory Lieutenant Drowatsky wasn't telling the Finleys that her stalker

could be BTK. A new poet letter detailed killing of Fox. Was this a reference to BTK's murder of Nancy Joe Fox? Was BTK trying to tell them this was him? But BTK had never kidnapped anyone before. He always waited until his victims were safe at home and attacked them there. If this person going after Ruth really was BTK, he was changing his pattern and carrying out his violence in public.

Then, just a few weeks after Ruth's kidnapping, Lieutenant Drowatsky himself receives a letter from the poet. Though the Wichita PD and local newspapers and TV stations had received numerous letters from BTK over the last few years, this was the first time Drowatsky had received a letter like this addressed to him personally, taunting him. Bernie B., Bernie B. You can't catch me. That was the tone. The letter is long and rambling and accuses Drowatsky of, quote, protecting a whore from death.

Drowatsky was known to have a bit of a temper, and this gets under his skin. He's going to solve this thing. So he goes back to the beginning. In the first call Ruth had received, the man told her he found the newspaper clipping about her attack while demolishing buildings. If this was a construction worker who had become obsessed with Ruth, he might still be working in Fort Scott. Maybe the secret to cracking the case lay in Ruth's past.

There are a lot of true crime podcasts out there, and I have 30 seconds to convince you why you should check out crime lines. Crime Lines is one of those shows that just lays it all out there, the backstory, the legal context, and details of cases you haven't heard before. If you hear about a true crime case and want to know what happened and why, you're my kind of listener. You can check out crime lines wherever you get your podcasts. That's Crime Lines, one word, and get ready to dive deep. Lieutenant Drowatsky sent the relatively new officer Mike McKenna to Fort Scott, only a few hours from Wichita. McKenna took the Finley's along to search for clues from Ruth's past that could lead them to her tormentor,

and perhaps BTK himself. Their first stop is the house where Ruth was living in 1946. It's where she was attacked and branded on her inner thigh with a hot iron. Her attacker was never caught. We got there. We went to where the address was, where the house was supposed to be. The house had been torn down, demolished sometime in the 70s. So there was no house to look at.

Detective McKenna and the other officers connect with the local police in Fort Scott. We asked the police department to look at the report on Ruth Finlay, or smock as her name was at that time. And we asked for the file or the case jacket. They hope that a fresh look at the file might reveal something about the man who was targeting Ruth. But those hopes are quickly dashed. The police department in Fort Scott, Kansas, told us that they had destroyed the case files of any cases that had happened before 1953 or 54.

So that was a dead end. Well, yeah. The only details that remained were those found in sensationalist media coverage in the Parsons' son and the Wichita Eagle under headlines like, Sadist Mutilates High School Girl, and Chloriform Fiend brands Fort Scott Girl with Flatiron. The police cast a wide net, looking for anyone who knew Ruth at the time who might have known something about the attention. attack. We looked for classmates that could tell us and we just kept coming up with zeros. Nobody remembered it. They ask around to different local construction companies to see if Ruth's description of the man who kidnapped her fits anyone working in demolition in Fort Scott. People

who may have employed this guy and couldn't really couldn't find anybody. Ed, Ruth, and the cops come back to Wichita empty-handed. Another dead end. But Mike McKenna isn't ready to let up just yet. After a bit of digging in property records, he learns that Ruth's Fort Scott landlord at the time was actually living in a nursing home in Wichita. He goes to visit her on his own,

without Ruth in Ed. I couldn't believe it. So I drove over there and I went in to see this woman. her name was Flora Hale, and she was 96 years old. And I spoke to Flora in her room and introduced myself, very nice lady. McKenna tells her he wants to ask her about something that happened in one of her rooming houses in Fort Scott, when a woman named Ruth Smock lived there.

And I said, do you remember one afternoon, and I repeated the story that a guy came into the apartment, rented her unconscious, and branded her with an iron on her thighs. And this lady looked at me, and she said, nothing like that ever happened at my apartments. And I said, you're sure? She said, yes, I'm quite sure. I would have known that if something like that would have happened.

Mike McKenna records her saying this, then heads right to Drowatsky's office and plays it back to him. He listened to Flora. When it was over, he said, she doesn't know what she's talking about. She's senile. I said, Bernie, this woman has as much sense as you or me. Maybe more. But she knew that nothing like that had ever happened.

She was insisting on it. No, no, he said, he just wasted your time. I said, okay. So McKenna, a loyal officer, continues on with the investigation. But he starts to wonder, what actually happened in Fort Scott? After Fort Scott, the letters keep coming. There once was a slut I met on the street who thought, to all men, she need not be sweet. And just like BTK's letters, these are misogynistic and perverse.

Ed Hand delivers each one to the cops down at the station. Reporter Fred Mann again. They were hand-printed. Sometimes he would start off a letter with lined notebook paper and neatly printed, hand-printed letters, and then they would devolve into sort of childhood print. And he always misspelled the same word, the word no, as an, I know you. He would spell N.O.

The writing style alternates between nearly incoherent ramblings and sophisticated vocabulary, words like objurgate and damify. I'll disparage all horrors, invective words scatter, adducting that hominem warning and my peace shatter. Ruth, ever the secretary, types out the letters and gregers, gives them to the cops. She would even add in definitions of the fancier words, and her guesses at what some of the abbreviations could mean. She'd sometimes include a handwritten note to the officers. Hi, sluth, I don't know if you want this or not. Since I put out the

effort, you're getting it anyway. Young Detective McKenna was a puzzler, a problem solver. He was determined to unearth any clues he could find in the letters. I would X-Rox them and take him home and read him at night, trying to find a clue in the letter that might fit together with some other letter that we have and figure out who this guy is. In June of 1979, as Ruth's letters kept coming, another woman in Wichita received a letter. The same letter arrived at Cake TV.

Both were signed BTK. The letter included a poem called Oh, Anna, why didn't you appear? The letter goes, Alone again I trod in past memory of mirrors and ponder why you number eight was not. Oh, A, why didn't you appear? The recipient, Anna,

Williams learns from this poem that she only just escaped being BTK's eighth victim. He broke into her home, then got impatient and left before she returned. The Wichita PD are now hard at work, stretching their poetry analysis skills on two cases, and coming up short. They start to wonder if they should look to the relatively new world of criminal profiling for some help, if they really want to understand. who this guy is and what he's capable of. Then one poem arrives in the Finley's mailbox that ups the ante.

You know when you're fucked up mind, you are going to die. You don't know when, but you do know why. Correspondence from the assailant kept raising the bar, going from simply I want money to I'm going to kill you. The police dig in, spending more time and resources surveilling Ruth. And then in July, more than a year into this ordeal, the letters to Ruth seemed to slow down. There would be periods of nothing happening. Everybody would think maybe it's over.

A month would go by, nothing would happen, and everybody was sort of okay again. Some of the cops said, he's done playing his game, he's gone. Did it work? Has their presence scared him away? If I knew the police were involved, I'd have got the hell out of there. Maybe Ruth's nightmare is finally over. But just as they thought they were out of the woods, the police get an alarming call. Ruth has been rushed to the hospital.

She has been stabbed. Next time on The Poet. guy comes up to her and stabs her. She's got three stab wounds in her back and her side. She told, I think I've been stabbed. And he said, just wait there. We'll get an ambulance to you. And of course, I said some nasty words and said, he got her. He finally got her. Oh my God, he got her. Don't want to wait for the next episode? You don't have to. Unlock all episodes of the poet early and ad-free right now. by subscribing to The Binge. And it doesn't stop at The Poet.

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Head to getthebinge.com to subscribe directly. The Poet is a production of Sony Music Entertainment, new metric media, and muse entertainment. The show is hosted by me, Rachel Brown. The series is written and produced by Pippa Johnstone and Rachel Brown. From New metric media, our executive producer is Chris Kelly.

From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. For Muse Entertainment, our executive producer is Courtney Dobbins. Sound design and original music by Mark Angley. Nathan Howe is our story editor and associate producer. consultant, Jean Stone. Fact-checking by Maya El-Hawari and Alexis Green. Our lawyers are Daniel Henry, Garland Anthony, and Austin Wong. Voice acting from Cassandra Cissan, Morgan Murray, and Anthony McMahon.

Special thanks to Andres Laura, Patrick McConnell, Sammy Allison, Allison Haney, Emily Rassick, and the rest of the team at Sony Music Entertainment.