Right here M F!!!
/sarcasm
Posted on 02/26/2005 5:16:30 PM PST by AntiGuv
WICHITA, Kan. - A 31-year manhunt for a serial killer who taunted police with letters about his crimes ended Saturday when authorities said they finally caught up with the man who called himself BTK and linked him to at least 10 murders.
The suspect was identified as Dennis L. Rader, a 59-year-old city worker in nearby Park City, who was arrested Friday. Police did not say how they identified Rader as a suspect or whether he has said anything since his arrest.
"The bottom line: BTK is arrested," Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams said Saturday, setting off applause from a crowd that included family members of some of the victims.
BTK — a self-coined nickname that stands for "Bind, Torture, Kill" — stoked fears throughout the 1970s in Wichita, a manufacturing center with 350,000 residents, about 180 miles southwest of Kansas City, Mo.
Then the killer resurfaced about a year ago after 25 years of silence. He had been linked to eight slayings between 1974 and 1986, but police said Saturday they had identified two more, from 1985 and 1991.
Rader, a Cub Scout leader who was active at his Lutheran church, lived with his wife, neighbors said. Public records indicate they have two grown children. Messages left for family members were not returned on Saturday, and no one answered the door at the home of his in-laws.
A few neighbors recalled receiving small favors from Rader, but most interviewed Saturday said the municipal codes enforcement supervisor was an unpleasant man who often went looking for reasons to cite his neighbors for violations of city codes.
"A part of me was scared when I heard, because I talked to him. It's a little creepy," said Chris Yoder, 23, who once lived nearby.
Rader has yet to be charged, but a jubilant collection of law enforcers and community leaders told the crowd in City Council chambers they were confident the long-running case could now be closed.
"Victims whose voices were brutally silenced by the evil of one man will now have their voices heard again," Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline said.
Rader was being held at an undisclosed location, and it was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer. In Kansas, suspects generally appear before a judge for a status hearing within 48 hours of their arrest.
Prosecutor Nola Foulston said the death penalty would not apply to any crime committed before 1994, when the death penalty was introduced in Kansas.
The BTK slayings began in 1974 with the strangulations of Joseph Otero, 38, his wife, Julie, 34, and their two children. The six victims that followed were all women, and most were strangled.
Along with his grisly crimes, the killer terrorized Wichita by sending rambling letters to the media, including one in which he named himself BTK for "Bind them, Torture them, Kill them." In another he complained, "How many do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention?"
But he stopped communicating in 1979 and remained silent for more than two decades before re-establishing contact last March with a letter to The Wichita Eagle about an unsolved 1986 killing.
The letter included a copy of the victim's driver's license and photos of her slain body. The return address on the letter said it was from Bill Thomas Killman — initials BTK.
Since then, the killer had sent at least eight letters to the media or police, including three packages containing jewelry that police believed may have been taken from BTK's victims. One letter contained the driver's license of victim Nancy Fox.
The new letters sent chills through Wichita but also rekindled hope that modern forensic science could find some clue that would finally lead police to the killer.
Thousands of tips poured in, and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation gathered thousands of DNA swabs in connection with the BTK investigation. In the end, DNA evidence was the key to cracking the case, said Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.
"The way they made the link was some DNA evidence, that they had some DNA connection to the guy who they arrested," Sebelius said in an interview with The Associated Press. She did not elaborate.
The two newly identified cases were similar to the early ones with one exception, Sedgwick County Sheriff Gary Stead said: The bodies had been removed from the crime scenes. One of the victims lived on the same street as Rader.
"We as investigators keep an open mind. But only now are we able to bring them together as BTK cases," he said.
On Friday, investigators searched Rader's house and seized computer equipment.
Authorities, who generally declined to answer questions in detail after announcing the arrest, had little to say about why BTK resurfaced after years without contact.
"It is possible something in his life has changed. I think he felt the need to get his story out," said Richard LaMunyon, Wichita's police chief from 1963 to 1989.
Even as I was writing that last post, I was hoping you wouldn't point out my glaring logical flaw (ie. body count vs. number of serials).
Well...you did.
How's this for an Internet first: I concede your point.
/beer makes me friendly.
I honestly don;t know why I felt the need to argue otherwise. I'm going to write an angry letter to Anheuser-Busch.
Ahhh, he was a Lutheran. That explains it.
Thank you, and it was a good idea on your part because I was about to charge you with finding comparable rates to the UK in China (you'd need 540 killers) and India (you'd need 443 killers) and non-UK Europe (you need 279 killers).
I found the killer's email address, i'd send him a message telling him that he's going to rot in hell, but something tells me he's not checking his email any more.
Oh my gosh, I just saw your map. Three of the victims and the intented victim surround my house. I hadn't realized. I've only been here eight years, but we've been so worried this past year about our niece. She just turned twenty and got her first car and it's so hard to keep them home at that age. She did have a good, healthy fear of this guy though.
The question has long fascinated me as well but I haven't seen a very good explanation. A couple of suggestions I've come across have to do with (1) urbanization and (2) a sort of cultural glorification - but these seem very inadequate to me.
My explanation might not even be in the ballpark, but that's the best I've come up with so far.
Enlightened societies with a strong middle class and an interest in disseminating the news (like W. Europe and the USA) tend to shine a spotlight on their aberrent citizens. Monsters that can hide in the Andes or the Urals for years.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
There could be many reasons that such a lists don't exist or are hard to come by, beginning with the common sense observation that records are not as complete in second and third world countries and that a great many more deaths go uninvestigated or are incompetently investigated in such places.
/sarcasm
Non-UK Europe is not a third world country. We need 279 serial killers over the past few decades to match the UK's rate. They didn't have a problem identifying them in the 17th century. What happened since then?
PS. Japan is hardly a third world nation either. Where is their list of 50?
Let me be very clear about one thing: I am not saying that there are not people in these other nations that would not be serial killers if they were in Anglo societies. I am saying that for whatever reason they seem to be less likely in those societies to become serial killers of the type that we are familiar with. They may even very well be killers, but of a different type (say, like those paramilitary murderers in Sudan, or Islamist terrorists). In other societies, (like urban Eastern Asia and Western Europe) it simply appears undeniable that the rates are much lower for whatever reason.
There are probably a number of factors that also vary depending on which culture/region you're looking at, but it's very difficult to argue that the serial killer phenomenon that we're familiar with seems to be a peculiarly Anglo-centric one. That does not mean that there aren't exceptions, which are often so notable for precisely that reason.
Maybe it's the beer (and it probably is), but is that a triple negative? I honestly have no idea what you're saying here.
/Wormwood. Just trying to keep up.
You should send him the email. A number of prisons do allow inmates to access the internet to some very limited extent. His inbox might already be full by now, though.. ;^)
Umm.. Yes, I think it is.. What I'm basically trying to express is that there very well may be just as many people in these other nations that are of the same "type" as those who end up being serial killers in the US and the UK, but that for whatever reason they seem for the most part to not act out their impulses in the same pattern.
Ah. That makes more sense.
Well his first known crime was 30 years ago.
Yes. I was contemplating his lifetime of pure evil.
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