The Poet | 5. Breaking Point

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Here 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. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know. This episode deals with mentions

of self-harm and suicide.

Ockham's Razer. It's the problem solving principle that if you cut away all the complicated

“explanations for something, you'll be left with one simple answer. And that's usually the truth.”

Wichita's police chief Richard Vamanian had taken all 14 casebinders home for the long weekend, poured through the evidence, read the reports. He looked over every suspect, and one by one he ruled them out. Until there was only one possibility left. Maybe it was the anger he felt from the poet threatening his wife, or maybe it was because he had intentionally held himself at an arm's length from the case that he could see more clearly.

But there it was. The answer that had been evading his police force for three long years. He had arrived at the simplest solution, and he was pretty sure he was right. Now he comes back Monday morning, and he schedules a meeting for 16 officers. That's Jean Stone, the journalist and author who later wrote a book on Ruth's case. The 16 officers all gather in the basement of the courthouse. Lamanian walks his staff through

his evidence. Clu number one, the abduction. After Ruth's kidnapping, police went to investigate the area by the river where she escaped her captors. She said they'd taken her sweater and shoes and followed her when she ran. The police found her sweater and her shoes there, but only one set of footprints. Clu number two, the house. It seemed impossible that the police had spent that much time surveilling the house and got nothing. Ruth lived on a dead end, and yet nobody

ever saw anybody going near their house. Jean Stone again, and then eventually they put a recording

camera in the backyard, and when they did, the poet never appeared in a backyard again.

Only the finlies and the police knew about the camera's existence. Clu number three, the classifies. Ed had been putting classified ads in the paper to try to lure the poet out, and there are always responses to it, but when the families went on vacation, there were no responses. For Lamanian, the footprints, the camera, the classifies. It all adds up to one conclusion. And he sits down, he just says right out there. We know who the poet is.

The poet is a finley. It's Ed or Ruth, or it's both of them. From Sony Music Entertainment and New Metric Media, I'm Rachel Brown, and this is the poet. Episode five, Breaking Point. Lamanian's theory drops on his officers like a bomb. There are so many unanswered questions.

“Could this couple have been pulling the wool over everyone's eyes for three years?”

Even with officers stationed inside their house, their fury is palpable. I was really, really angry. All the time that I had spent, all the time that the other

on this case. Working over time, dissecting poems, even going undercover to try to find this monster.

“I felt like I was just manipulated. I thought that it was a game that was being played.”

Mike McKenna too was furious. So much manpower, so much time, so much energy of everybody. You work on these cases, you put your heart and soul into them, trying to help these people just to be hoodwinked. He'd been raising his concerns, but no one had listened to him. This was vindication, but it wasn't sweet. They wasted so much time.

People don't always think about, while all this police manpower is expended,

where their cases that did not get solved, because those detectives were busy. All this, while the Wichita PD had been trying to solve real homicides, real crimes, not to mention catch BTK. But for the man who was first in charge of this case, the idea that Ruth or Ed were just playing with the cops, inflicted a different kind of pain. Druatsky is crushed and thinking that Lamanian is crazy.

Lieutenant Bernie Druatsky and his wife were friends with the families. They had dinners together,

went to the same church. To him, there's just no way this kind normal couple had spent the last

“three years setting up a cat and mouse game with the cops. For what? Just to mess with him?”

But Gene Stone says, Druatsky sees a silver lining here. Lamanian is committing even more resources to this case, which means they're going to get to the bottom of it once and for all. Druatsky may all believe that this was a good thing, because they felt that this meant that the extra work meant that they would actually catch the poet and prove that Ruth wasn't the poet and they would actually catch the real person. Lamanian later tells KTV that he ordered Ruth and Ed

be put under round the clock surveillance. This time, without their knowledge.

And so, at the conclusion of the meeting, I announced that I would take over personal control of

“the case and that affected immediately there would be a 24 hour surveillance on Ruth and Ed.”

They've embarrassed his department, made them look like fools. He is done playing nice. Before they roll out, Lamanian swears them to secrecy, threatening. If one word of this leaks to the media, they're all fired. Surveillance begins. Officers are pulled in from vice and narcotics to cover shifts. There's a ground crew stationed in cars in the Findley's called a sack. There's an aerial surveillance team, a police helicopter's on standby,

ready to tail them from overhead. The Wichita police threw everything at the case, desperate to prove the Findley's were behind the poet. They sent up a command center, which was a van parked at the Eastgate shopping center, which is not very far from where Ruth lives and from then on, every time Ruth leaves the house, she's being monitored by at least one police car and one police helicopter. One morning, the Findley's get into their old's mobile and pull out of their driveway.

The ground surveillance team has eyes on them and follows them at a distance out of their sleepy neighborhood. Aerial surveillance joins in from overhead. They track them as they head towards the Eastgate shopping mall, but somehow, in just a few blocks, ground surveillance loses the old's mobile. Maybe Ruth went to work? The cops call her office. She's taken the day off. Suddenly, they're concerned. Did this middle-aged couple just shake off their police tail and make a break for

it? One of the detectives says they're getting away, they're getting away and this frantic cheese. And then they realized, oh no, they just went away for a day or so. They would not try to escape. They were just having a day for themselves. The Findley's were just traveling to Tapica on a regular work trip for Ed. Ruth had tagged along to keep him company. To the ground crew,

in the helicopter happens to mention, he'd never lost sight of the Findley's that morning.

“Not only that, but he saw their old's mobile pull-up to a mailbox by the Eastgate mall”

and drop off some letters. This is a revelation. When Mike Hill hears this, he immediately bolts. He calls the postal inspector who meets him at the mail drop. This could be it. They open the mailbox. Inside, they find five letters bunched together at the top. A personal letter and two bills from the Findley's and two other envelopes, one address to cake TV and one to Ruth Smok Finley, both in the poets familiar handwriting. This is the smoking gun

they've been waiting for. But because they didn't have eyes on the mailbox for a few hours,

they couldn't rule out the possibility that someone else had posted the two letters from the poet.

They needed iron-clad evidence. They had to keep going. Weeks in, the officers tailing the Findley's pick up on a new energy. The couple seems, on edge, maybe even suspicious. One officer notes the Findley's are often driving around town really slowly, as though they were on the lookout for someone following them. A few others say they see the Findley's clearly checking their surroundings for surveillance.

They even note a car visiting the Findley's late one night, and when they check the ownership,

“it belongs to an attorney. Are the Findley's on to them?”

Ruth seemed to have picked up on some kind of shift, because in the middle of the surveillance, she reaches out to Fred Mann. Ruth called me out of the blue and said, "What's going on? Do you know what's going on with the case?" And I was honest about it said, "No, I don't know." She said, "Are they still interested?" Because Mike, Mike Hill, he's been really distant to me, he was cold, and he doesn't seem to interested anymore. So I could honestly tell her, "No,

I think they're still interested." That was not a lie, and Mike, me telling her, "No, I didn't know what was going on." That was not a lie either, technically. During this time, Ruth's mental health was deteriorating. Her headaches and stomach aches were nonstop.

“And now, she was cut out of her own investigation even further, and not getting any answers from the police.”

Ruth is feeling distraught. So between the attention she doesn't want, the stabbing, the fact that there might be somebody out there getting her, she's extremely unhappy. And she has no recourse at all, and so she's terrified. She starts making a plan to put an end to her suffering once and for all.

First, she collects small bills in her purse.

Ed is with her all the time, so there isn't a moment in the day where she can run to the bank to make a larger withdrawal. Dollar by dollar, she is saving up. Her plan is to take a bus to Oklahoma City. There, she would find a bridge and end her life. Then, two weeks into the surveillance, Mike Hill gets a call.

An officer tells him that Ruth's boss at the phone company has found some evidence they need to see. Hill heads down to the office. Along with the carbon paper with the poet's handwriting, they also found a book of prose and poetry, and a snatch of red bandana tied in a knot. Hill collects the evidence and adds it to the growing pile.

That same afternoon, Hill has a meeting to update some of the surveillance team. As the wrapping up their chat, officers who had been keeping watch, run in and tell them that the finlies are on the move and they're right around the corner. Hill rushes out to his car and pulls out of the lot, and immediately sees the finlies' old mobiles stop to cross the street. For a moment, he panics. They're going to see him and know

something's up. But they're not looking at him. They're at a mailbox. Ed is driving. He stops at the shopping center with leans in and mail some letters. Couldn't be a more normal day, except for the fact that the moment they drive off the police swoop in.

He and his officers whip out their cameras and take photos as Ruth deposits a bunch of letters

“into the mail slot. As soon as the finlies drive off, Mike Hill and his men pull up to the mailbox”

and park. As they wait for the postal inspector, they park their ghost car in front of the mailbox and lift the hood, pretending they're having engine trouble. They have to make sure no other letters come in and spoil their evidence. They need Ruth's letters to be at the top. While they wait, the finlies' car passes again, returning from the mall. The cops watch the finlies slow down and take a long, hard look at their car, park beside the post box.

Finally, the postal inspector arrives.

And that's really that moment, just at one moment. Crack the case. For good.

“Now they have the proof. And so at this point, they know.”

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and get ready to dive deep. The cops had a photo of Ruth mailing the letters, and they'd flown around the country tracking down the bills Ruth had mailed to Kansas and Iowa. They had their proof. But now, they had to see what Ed and Ruth would say when confronted with the evidence. Cops gave journalist Fred Mann unprecedented access to the end of the year's long saga. So they said, okay, here's the deal. We're going to bring Ed in and we're going to

Ruth in and we'll let you come in and we'll pipe the sound into an office and you can sit there and you can record the interviews. So wow, this was it. Ed was called down to the station to deliver the newest letter. Ed arrives expecting to simply drop off the letter and maybe check in on leads. But instead, he's escorted into a room where Captain Hill is already stationed and Hill starts asking him questions. Going back long before the poet case started up. Tell me about life as a child.

“I mean, that's how far back they went. What were you like as a kid? Where did you live?”

You know, where did you meet Ruth? And Ed was excited. Ed was happy. He said we're getting into

it now and his mind gets into all right. We're going someplace with this. Finally, Hill was engaging

with him. Ed had been kept out of the loop for months. But then Hill's tone changes. He starts walking Ed through the events of the poet case and asking different questions from the ones he'd ever asked before. Where were you when she was abducted? And the same for stabbing. Then they wait and get into these little ex-abandals around the house. Who found the jarpy yum of different ports? Who found them all as off cocktail? Where were you? Ed is bewildered. But stay stoic.

It started to turn a little bit. And they got to a point where Ed was not tracking what they were trying to get to. Then Mike Hill gets to the point. He tells Ed the poet could have put those things on their porch or Ed could have or Ruth could have. Ed shuts that down. He didn't have anything to do with this. And he's adamant. Neither did Ruth. Hill pulls out the surveillance photos and watches Ed intently as he slides them across the table toward him. They show him photos of

Ruth mailing the letters. And he is absolutely shocked. Ed is genuinely baffled, distraught.

But, here's the proof. And if they say Ruth is a poet, I have to believe them.

“For Hill, it seems like Ed is truly blindsided by this news. But he has a way of making sure”

that Ed is being honest. And it's time to use it. The polygraph. So then they ask him if he take a light detector test to prove his innocence. He's thinking, I'm really nervous. I don't know what's going on. And I've heard that light detector tests

aren't always right. What if it says I do know about Ruth? They don't have any things.

But if I say I won't take one, then they'll think I'm guilty. So he agrees to take the test. They head to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, where Ed is hooked up to the polygraph. And he passes it with flying colors. My so many flying colors, that they're absolutely convinced that Ed had nothing to do with it. It really was just Ruth. As they get ready to go, Ed says these should have been the best days of our lives.

The police take Ed home, along with a search warrant for the Finley's home in trash. We got a search warrant for the house and the fruits of the crime were found. Part of a red bandana chief notebook was some stamps from the same book of stamps that had been used on prior letters. But it was overwhelming that she indeed was doing this to herself. After searching the house, the police drive Ed back to the station. On the way,

they ask Ed if he wants a hamburger. Something in this sets him off. No one has offered care or concern all day as his life unraveled. But now they're asking if he wants a burger. As if he could eat while his wife is in this situation. Instead, Ed chained smokes a pack of cigarettes, one after another, and waits.

At this point, word had made its way around the department. The poet never existed.

Ruth had been behind it this whole time. And they'd all fallen for her lies for years. Ruth had totally duped them. Lieutenant Bernie Jawatski was devastated. Jawatski, he now realized, yes, it was true. And he had no idea what to do,

“what did think, how could this, how could this have happened, what is going on?”

Has the world turned upside down? This is not the way things are supposed to be. Jawatski wants to be the one to bring Ruth to the station. Maybe he wants to look her in the eyes and see what he missed. He goes to Southwestern Bell and waits for her in the lobby. When she comes down, she's surprised to see him instead of Ed. Jawatski asks her to accompany him to the station, saying they're going to take a look

at a fresh batch of mug shots together, like they'd done a million times before.

What Ruth doesn't know is that he's leading her right to her interrogation. I first met Koneta when I started reaching out to women in prison. For years, I thought I knew why she'd killed a man. But the more I dug in, the more I realized that nothing was quite so simple. What she buried is coming August 1st to the binge, search for what she buried wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribers to the binge can listen to all episodes, all at once, add free.

Jawatski has Ruth and his car. They're going down to the station one final time. After three tough years, after cultivating close relationships with their victim, after finding out they'd been duped. Finally, the Wichita PD had the poet. She was on her way, and they were going to get their answers.

“What the mondian told me, the key to the case, was that he refused to meet Ruth.”

The comparator to some Greek mythological creature, that if you looked at her, you believed her. He said that if he had met her, he might not have been able to solve the case, and that the detectives like Jawatski, who we admired. He wasn't saying that they were bad detectives by any means, but that Ruth, again, you have Trump, this is a woman who was baking cookies for these

and having tea and making them cake, they developed what was in any other situation would have been

“close friendships. Mike Hill was the one officer who had followed in lumanian's footsteps.”

Mike Hill is decided that he's going to be running this interrogation, because he's the one who

feels he is the most distant from Ruth. He never fell under her spell as lumanian felt the others had.

Police officers we interviewed told us they hadn't fallen under Ruth's spell, and had harbored suspicions of Ruth or Ed. Some had even raised these questions with leaders only to be shut down, but there were those who had gotten close to the families, not Mike Hill. Ruth didn't like me to begin with, because I've been sound office. She'd make cookies and cake and stuff, because we had detectives picked out inside their house, protecting her from

the poet, and I had nothing. He had to be the one to interview Ruth. Now, armed with the casefile filled with inconsistencies and his photographic proof. Hill is ready to take Ruth down. Fred Mann is listening in from another room at the police station.

“Now the mystery was, when she was finally confronted with evidence, would she deny it?”

Would she collapse? Would she give up right away? Would she fight it? Just like he had with Ed's interrogation, Mike Hill starts at the beginning. They started from ground zero. Ruth, early childhood, the attacking force got to kidnapping and stabbing. I say question her about these poet events. Hill's sort of gradually turned the questioning, talked to the question a little bit more to, you could have done this right?

Sort of a thing, but you could have done that, right? Hill drills down on some of the moments that have been running through his mind since Lamanian's meeting. The Christmas Eve of 1979. Hill says only he and the Finley's new and officer was supposed to arrive at 11 that night. The Finley's phone line gets cut at 10 p.m. Once the hidden camera was installed facing the

phone lines, they were never tampered with again. Only the Finley's and the cops knew about that.

There were details of the investigation they'd mentioned to the Finley's. Details that would later end up in poet letters. Then there was more of Grascheth. Who found you're an unfortunate? Did you put that out there? You got kind of a little edge. No, Mike, she was involved. Human feces. Did you put that out there? No.

And finally he said, Ruth, she said, did you write any of those poet letters? She said, no. Did you mail any of those letters? No. Then Hill goes in for the kill. He actually says to her, what if I called you a liar? And she's really taken back, but then after she's been saying, I didn't do this. I don't know about this. This doesn't make you any sense.

He pushes his evidence across the table. He shows her the photos of her mailing all of these homes. He shows her the evidence that they've collected. She has no idea what to do. She's trying to figure out, and my the poet, but I don't know what's going on. I don't understand. There once was a female who got destitute. Her mind and brain wished she could me repute. And Ruth later said, once he looked at that photo, it was like blocks

tumbling over his head. Everything tumbles out of her head. Of my flagrant ways to bruise. One more meeting, and this will conclude. And she just put her head down on the table, inner arms, and it just started sobbing. But it was a quiet sobbing. It was not loud. It could say, you know, the tears could kind of run over risk. Hill watches her. Are those crocodile tears?

“Hill asks her. Do you want to tell me about it? Do you deny it?”

Ruth says simply, no. Then Hill gets into the specifics. He asks if Ed was involved.

She tells him, absolutely not. He asks if she really got the first phone call from a man

trying to blackmail her. She says no. He asks her where she got the fourth Scott newspaper clipping

Now, when you are walking down the street in this guy bumps into you, that never happened.

Yes, it did. It did. She insisted. Hill asks, who the man in the sketch was. The one she described the police psychologist Dr. Shrog. She tells him it looks like the guy who stopped her on the street. The kidnapping, he asks, how did you get up there? She tells him. She took the bus.

“He asks if she cut the phone lines. She nods. How did she do it with her whole family in the house?”

She doesn't remember. How could she not remember? How did the knife wrapped in the red bandana get into her lobby's phone booth? Did she just go down and wrap it up and put it there? She nods. For some of the events, she seems foggy on the details.

Her answers are unsatisfyingly short. The urine on the front porch, how did that happen?

It was poured in a bottle. That is your own urine. Is that right? Yes. The back porch, the Molotov cocktail, how did you do that? I took it out of the car with a hose. You siphoned it out of the car. Okay. You put the eggs on the back door. When did you do that? Where was Ed at? In the shower. Human shit on the front porch. Is that yours? That's mine. How did the one letter get an Oklahoma City postmark on it?

She says she mailed it down there. Just sent it to the post office and asked them to mail it.

“Then, Hill asks the big question. How could you stab yourself?”

She's silent. Hill and Ruth sit there for a long moment. I mean, she's admitted she's done it, but she doesn't really remember. She's no recollection of the stabbing incident whatsoever. He asks, where did you get that knife at? Home. Did you mean to hurt yourself as bad as you did?

I don't know. This is not the reaction he expected from a scammer. Ruth looks lost, confused. And she just sitting there going, "I'm a bad person. I'm a crazy person. I'm a bad person." Ruth is crumbling in front of his eyes. Hill softens his approach. He has his confession. Now, he needs to figure out what is going on here.

My heel finally could put his hands out to her and say, "Grabber, by the

albums of Ruth, it's okay. We're not mad. We just want to know why to do this." She doesn't respond. He asks, "Are you glad it's over?" Yes. "How do you feel Ruth? I wish I was dead." Something much bigger is going on here than Hill expected. He expected denial, anger, push back, but Ruth is despondent. Suddenly, this doesn't feel like a criminal caught in the act.

Ruth looks like a woman on the brink. And Hill starts being much nicer and says, "You're not crazy. You're ill. There's something wrong here. You're not a bad person." Hill asks, "Are you wanting to get caught?" She nods. What was going on? Could Ruth not stop the poet? Was this some sort of compulsion?

The room in there where we listening was sort of fraught with his, "What's going to happen?" One, Ruth is going to go to jail, or two, they were going to take her and get her locked up, and a mental war about a hospital. There was no other alternative. She was not going home. He signs her involuntarily into a nearby mental health hospital. Whatever was going on with Ruth was a mystery for someone else to solve.

Hill and his team just needed to take this evidence back and decide what they were going to do with Ruth. And if this was, a criminal matter. So they have "ed" in the waiting room next door, and the money in is watching him for any signs, anything that might show guilt or anything, and the money tells me later that it is absolutely expressionless.

“The only thing that the money in things you can see on its face is depression.”

Ruth falters before exiting the interview room. She says to Hill,

"Yeah, you can. You got to." He is the nicest person I have ever known.

“So then they let Ruth out of the interview, and she brushes into Ed's arms, and he says,”

"Bug it through this. I love you." Ruth and Ed go to the hospital together. Where Ruth is put on suicide watch. There, a new kind of detective takes on Ruth's case.

Next time on the finale of the poet.

It is detective work in this sense, finding out something that the patient doesn't even know and help them know it. Psychologist Andrew Pickens question isn't who done it. It's why. Why would this woman in this perfectly normal life have such extraordinary terror within her that it would cause such a thing to develop?

“He sees the terror, but all he can be thinking about is what is causing this?”

Ruth's mystery was far from over. What could cause a person's mind to fracture and torture itself? And this story was about to reach far beyond Wichita, making it all the way to the Oprah Winfrey Show. And by the end of this hour, perhaps all of us will better understand why he literally stalked herself and hear why the root of her problem is more common than you may think.

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Search for the binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe. Not on Apple, 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 John Stone and Rachel Brown.

From New Metric Media, our executive producer is Chris Kelly. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Katherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. From 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 Eljohari and Alexis Green.

Our lawyers are Daniel Henry, Garland Anthony, and Austin Wong. Voice acting from Cassandra Season, Morgan Murray, and Anthony McMahon. Special thanks to Andre's Lara, Patrick McConnell, Sammy Allison, Allison Haney, Emily Rassick, and the rest of the team at Sony Music Entertainment.