New Lifetime movie features ‘The Poet,’ who terrified Wichita during the same time as BTK
A new movie on Lifetime focuses on Ruth Finley, the Wichita woman who was the victim and perpetrator of a crime hoax more than 50 years ago.
The TV movie, “The Killer Inside: The Ruth Finley Story,” stars Teri Hatcher as Finley and premieres at 7 p.m. Central on Saturday, June 29.
The movie shows Hatcher and Tahmoh Penikett, who plays Finley’s husband, Ed, living a “tranquil life in Wichita, Kansas which is suddenly turned upside down when Ed suffers a heart attack,” according to a synopsis on A+E Networks website.
The purported harassment by the Poet started in 1978, taking place during the same time Dennis Rader terrorized Wichita as the BTK serial killer. Finley eventually admitted the hoax to investigators — including stabbing herself with an ice pick in the parking lot of Towne East Square.
No criminal charges were filed against her after the Sedgwick County district attorney said a psychiatric examination showed her actions as the Poet were not malicious.
Finley died in 2019 at age 89. She had worked at Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., according to an Eagle obituary, enjoyed knitting and donated hats and scarves to U.S. troops in Afghanistan and volunteered to translate textbooks into braille after learning to code, according to an obituary.
Here’s a trailer for the movie:
