Posted on 02/26/2005 6:55:28 AM PST by gopwinsin04
Police have uncovered new evidence in the decades old BTK Wichita serial killer case and are questioning a person of interest, according to sources close to the investigation.
Authorities scheduled a news conferece for 11AM Eastern Saturday to make an announcement in the case, and relatives of the killers victims would be briefed beforehand.
Some police sources have said that a 59 year old man was arrested Friday and linked to the case by a DNA sample.
Surveillance activites gave police 'their first big piece' of recent evidence, leading authorities to a vehicle and the person of interest.
Investigators also searched a house in the Wichita suburb of Park City Friday, siezing computer equipment.
(Excerpt) Read more at mediainfo.com ...
Thanks Meg, it's a gold mine.
Thanks MEG33.
I've been thinking about my defense mechanism comments some more, and I think sublimation via animal cruelty would fit quite nicely. (I know you probably could care less about this, but I wanted to say it anyway. :-)
Booking photo released by the Sedgwick County, Kansas, Sheriff's Office showing BTK murders suspect Dennis Rader. Thirty-one years after his first suspected murders, Wichita police arrested a man who called himself BTK for "bind, torture, kill" and was believed responsible for 10 gruesome deaths, officials said on Saturday. The suspect, identified as Dennis Rader, 59, was apprehended without incident in Park City, said Lt. Kenneth Landwehr, the Wichita police homicide section commander who leads the investigation.
I did check your link. ;-) Thanks.
It took a second term of President Bush to catch this guy. Give W all the credit (seems only fair, if we blame him for global warming and no WMDs....)
Last night KAKE TV showed LE going through things in a shed at the back of Rader's house. One of the things shown was pantyhose stored in a zip lock bag. Couldn't tell what any of the other stuff was. Today's Wichita Eagle has six pages of stories about BTK. News reports this morning say Rader is cooperating. I certainly hope so.
Thanks for the links!
By LAURA BAUER and DAVID KLEPPER The Kansas City Star
WICHITA At times, Dennis Rader could be a nice guy.
As a compliance officer for Park City, Kan., residents say, he would sometimes let homeowners slide if their bushes were out of control or if they had vehicles up on blocks two violations of municipal code.
Yet residents say the Park City employee and leader at Christ Lutheran Church had another side a confusing and often frustrating side.
To some people he could be really mean, said Ashley Hudlin, 18, who lived less than a block away from Rader while growing up. He would measure your grass with a ruler, and if it was longer than an inch he would give you a ticket. I just always thought he was a pain in the butt.
On Saturday, Hudlin learned something else about her former neighbor that authorities allege he is BTK, the serial killer that taunted and tormented Wichita for more than three decades.
I can't believe he lived so close, said Hudlin, who moved from the area a year ago but returned Saturday with a camera to take photos of Rader's house.
As carloads of the curious swarmed Rader's neighborhood Saturday even posing for pictures in front of yellow crime tape neighbors found ways to deal with the reality that they lived for years near the man who police allege is the worst serial killer in Kansas history.
He is a man many knew.
Along with being a compliance officer, Rader had been a member of Christ Lutheran Church, with a congregation of about 200, for about 30 years. He had been elected president of the church board and had led several Cub Scout groups.
He was one of our leaders, the Rev. Mike Clark said.
Jason Day, 28, said that his brother, Roy, had been in Rader's Cub Scout pack but that their mother pulled him out because of Rader.
It was his demeanor, he said. He was so strange.
He was definitely two-sided, said Jim Reno, who has lived across the street from the Raders for 16 years and had several confrontations with him over what he considered Rader's harassment.
Rader moved into the neighborhood almost 30 years ago. He graduated from Wichita State University with a degree in administration of justice in 1979. Instead of becoming an officer, he went into code enforcement.
Rader was appointed by the Sedgwick County Commission to the Sedgwick County Animal Control Advisory Board in 1996.
Cindy Plant, a compliance officer in the Wichita suburb of Valley Center, helped train Rader for Sedgwick County Animal Control and had asked for him to be placed on the board.
Plant said Rader was very meticulous and neat. With him, everything was just perfect: his office, his truck, everything.
He carried a nice leather day planner with the pens lined up perfectly in it.
He lived with his wife, whose parents lived around the corner. Public records indicate he has two adult children.
From 1974 to 1989, Rader worked at ADT Security Services, holding several positions that allowed him into customers' homes, including installation manager.
He would've been in a prime position to get very intimate knowledge about them, said Mike Tavares, a former co-worker at ADT.
ADT officials could not be reached for comment.
Many residents praised his wife and her family, saying the problem was Rader. And many extended their sympathy.
Carol VanBloem, a teacher who has lived next to the Raders for years, walked up to the home of Rader's in-laws with what appeared to be a note or letter. She knocked. Rader's mother-in-law answered the door.
VanBloem hugged her a long while.
As she walked away from the home, she was quiet and sad.
I'm just in denial, she said. They have been delightful neighbors.
Bill Lindsay, 38, lived behind Rader and said that something about the man unnerved him. Lindsay said his wife, Tina, caught Rader in their adjoining backyards filming the back of their house.
He really acted really funny, said Lindsay, a truck driver. I'd be on the road and my wife would tell me, Dennis has been out again, taking his pictures.' 
And yet Lindsay, as well as other neighbors interviewed, said they never thought that Rader could be something much darker.
I didn't start thinking about (BTK) until I started seeing increased law enforcement in the neighborhood in the past few weeks, Lindsay said.
On Saturday, authorities alleged for the first time that BTK had killed a woman who lived in Rader's neighborhood, just three doors down.
Marine Hedge, 53, was killed in 1985, and though neighbors always suspected that she was a victim of BTK, authorities had stopped short of saying she was.
Patty Loveday, whose mother, Bonnie Kirk, was a friend of Hedge's, suspected all along that BTK had killed Hedge.
My mother took to her grave that BTK killed Marine, said Loveday, as she stood in the carport of her father's home, across the street from where Hedge lived. My mother just knew it.
Among neighbors who spoke Saturday about the arrest of Dennis Rader was Patty Loveday. Her mother's friend Marine Hedge was killed in 1985 a slaying that was not officially linked to BTK until Saturday.
On Saturday, Loveday found herself looking many times at the house where Hedge had lived. She never turned her head to the right to look toward Rader's house.
I don't want to look that way, she said. Neighbor Kathy Hutchinson described Rader as a real cock-of-the-walk type of person. Rader had given Hutchinson's husband, Larry, a $50 ticket 10 years ago for working on his roof without a permit. About six years ago, Hutchinson said, Rader came to their home again after her husband had killed an opossum with an air rifle and told him he would arrest him if he ever shot another one.
He always walked around like he owned the streets of Park City.
But others said Rader was doing what his job required.
Ray Reiss, a friend of Rader's since high school and a landlord in Park City, said he received letters from Rader because of weed violations and other matters.
It was not a hostile thing. He was doing his job. He was telling me to tell the renters to clean their act up, he said. He's just a very low-key, nice person just a regular person.
Reiss' wife, Jane, has been close friends with Rader's wife, Paula, since they were in grade school.
After I was married, I went into his office in Park City to introduce him to Jane, Reiss said. He touched her. He shook hands. And I have to think, What if?' It makes you shake. He deserves his day in court, but wow, this is just shocking. It's trite to say that he's such a nice guy. Well he is nice.
Dee Stuart, a candidate for mayor in Park City, said Rader had come to her home Monday to tell her that two of her campaign signs that had been placed improperly.I walked to the end of the block with them, and he drove along beside me and we chit-chatted, and I put up my signs again, she said.
Stuart, a former Park City Council member, said she has known Rader for several years.
He always treated me with respect, was never abrasive with me, which I think he was sometimes with other people, Stuart said. I know he was a compliance officer and as far as I know we didn't have a lot of dogs running loose in Park City.
The Wichita Eagle and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This was touched on during Rita Cosby's Fox special last night. Kansas's high court outlawed the death penalty two years ago, so the BTK killer, if convicted, would no doubt stay in jail for life.
As if we really wanted this.
I wonder what it would be like to be a wife and wake up to the fact that your husband killed 10 people, including children?..How do you cope with that?..
I am certain the town and church are in shock as well as feeling great relief.
Why can't monsters wear a sign instead of the mask of normalcy?
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=535897
snip
"Authorities generally declined to answer questions in detail after announcing the arrest, but Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius told The Associated Press that DNA evidence was the key to cracking the case.
Wichita television station KAKE, citing unnamed sources, reported that DNA from Rader's daughter, Kerri, was instrumental in his capture. On Sunday, KAKE anchor Larry Hatteberg told CNN that the source said Rader was already under surveillance when his daughter's DNA was obtained."
They had the video camera capture , they had a disc he had sent that they recovered old information that was recorded over, I hear..They obtained her DNA to confirm relationship, then they pounced.
Thank you very much for the update and the ping.
This thread had gotten buried on my page and I was intending to look it up.
I hope he is cooperating, too. The details are so chilling, I can just imagine the relief in that area that he has been caught. If his family is just realizing it I can't even begin to imagine their horror.
I shall now catch up on the thread. Thanks again.
Interesting.
I am surprised Larry admitted that. The local stations haven't really talked at all about the daughter connection.
Link to the killers church. Very interesting...
http://christ-lutheran.org/
Today they (Fox News) have had Wichita jounalists on that have stated that they did not know and/or have not heard anything regarding the daughter supplying DNA.
The truth will be known only during the trial. Everything else that is reveal prior to the trial via the media is speculation.
From Wichita , Kans. : .... Mr. and Mrs. Dennis L. Rader, Brian and Kerri, ....I hesitate to post all the other names here in public since they have nothing to do with this. They are most likely Mrs. Rader's family, as they are the only "Rader" name on the entire page.
I read somewhere earlier today that his in-laws lived around the block or somewhere near them. Is that what y'all have read also?
Rita Cosby just came on and said, "My sources told me that..." I was so annoyed that I didn't catch what she said. It was something about the daughter and how the police contacted HER, not the other way around.
Why doesn't tell that woman we don't give a rat's hiney about her #!%^ sources!!! ARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!
LOL! Calm down my dear! No need to blow a gasket!
How the heck are ya? LONG time no see! ;>)
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