CRIMINAL COLD CASES-FUGITIVES FINALLY BROUGHT TO JUSTICE-16-DENNIS LYNN RADER

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DENNIS LYNN RADER:
BIND, TORTURE, KILL
BTK, WHICH STANDS FOR 'BIND, TORTURE AND KILL', WAS THE NAME BY WHICH DENNIS RADER, ONE OF AMERICA'S MOST NOTORIOUS SERIAL KILLERS, USED TO REFER TO HIMSELF. HIS CAREER OF CRIME SPANNED A PERIOD OF THIRTY YEARS, UNTIL THE CASE WAS FINALLY CRACKED OPEN.
At the beginning of his killing spree, Rader wrote letters to newspapers and to the police bragging about the murders, often describing macabre details of the crimes. Then the letters stopped, and after a long period of silence, resumed again. In this way, Rader taunted the authorities for years, terrorizing the public in the process. Today, many believe that, had forensic evidence and other clues been followed up more systematically, Rader could have been brought to justice many years earlier, and several of his victims spared their horrifying deaths.

Dennis Lynn Rader was born on 9 March 1945, the son of William and Dorothea Rader. The eldest of four brothers, he grew up in Wichita, Kansas, where he attended high school and college. As a young man, he joined the air force, and travelled abroad, returning home in 1970. A year later he married, and the couple went on to have two children. During this time, he worked in a series of jobs, including a company that sold alarm systems for offices. He also studied at university, gaining a degree. He attended church regularly, becoming a church leader, and also became a Cub Scouts leader.

Convicted serial killer Dennis Rader walks into the El Dorado Correctional Facility, Kansas. He admitted killing ten people in a thirty-year span, and was sentenced to ten consecutive life terms

A mask found by Delores Davis' body in 1991. After Davis was dead, Rader tossed her under a bridge where the body decomposed

Hanging in the basement
His first known murder took place on 15 January 1974, when he broke into the home of the Otero family. The Otero parents' bodies, bound and gagged, were found by the couple's eldest son, Charlie, when he returned from school. When police searched the house, the bodies of his brother and sister were found: nine-year-old Joseph junior in a bedroom, his face covered by a hood, and eleven-year-old Josephine, partially undressed, hanging from a pipe in the basement. There were traces of semen at the scene of the crimes.

Nine months later, the local newspapers began to receive mystery calls. The killer directed reporters to a letter hidden in a book in the public library, in which he explained that he killed to satisfy a sexual perversion, referring to 'a monster' within him that he could not stop, and calling himself 'BTK': bind, torture, kill. The letter was badly written and spelt, but it was thought that that was just a ruse; many believed that the killer was actually quite well educated and intelligent.

Meanwhile, the murders continued. On 4 April 1974, Kathryn Bright and her brother Kevin were attacked in broad daylight by an intruder who was lying in wait at their home. Kevin was shot but managed to escape; his sister was stabbed in the abdomen and later died in hospital. Police did not, at the time, connect this killing with the BTK murders, even though there was evidence to show that the killer had tried to strangle Kathryn Bright.

Attention-seeking killer
The next killing did not come until three years later, when on 17 March 1977, Shirley Vian was found dead in her home, her neck bound with the same type of cord as the other BTK victims. As in the other incidents, the phone line was cut. Her three children thankfully escaped unharmed, although the killer locked them in the closet.

By this time, as the murders began to follow a pattern, the citizens of Wichita were beginning to panic. And sure enough, on 8 December 1977, there was another murder. This time, the killer alerted police to the scene of the crime, telling them the address where the murder had taken place. When police reached the scene, they found that, once again, the victim was a young woman, and once again she had been strangled, this time with a nylon stocking. However, this victim, Nancy Jo Fox, remained fully clothed.

Forensic evidence collected
For a while, the police heard no more news of BTK. Then more letters from him began to come in to the local papers. It seemed that the murderer was upset at the lack of attention he had received. He wanted the notoriety of Jack the Ripper or the Son of Sam, and he did not seem to be getting it.

Despite all his efforts to attract publicity, police were still unable to track down BTK. During the 1980s, a task force known informally as 'The Ghostbusters' was set up to sift through the evidence. Investigators found that all the killings had taken place within a three and a half mile radius and began to search the records of all white males within the area. The BTK letters were analysed, and the photocopying machine used to copy them was tracked down to the public library. The content of the letters was also studied, and leads followed up. DNA and semen samples were also taken for laboratory analysis. None of this led to the killer's arrest, however.

On 31 October 1987, another murder took place that many believed to be the work of BTK. The body of Shannon Olson, aged fifteen, was found partially naked in a wasteland area. She had been stabbed to death. Exactly two months later, Mary Fager returned to her home to find her husband Phillip shot dead and daughters Kelli and Sherri strangled in the basement. Soon afterwards, Mary received a letter from a person claiming to be BTK. Despite this evidence, the police arrested a builder who was doing some work on the house and charged him with the murders. The builder was later acquitted.

White-collared killer: it must have taken a cool head and some intelligence to have remained undetected – whilst committing such appalling crimes – for so long

The 'hit kit'
Once again, the BTK case grew cold, and it was not until 2004 that another letter arrived, claiming responsibility for a murder committed in 1986. The letter contained the missing driving licence of a woman named Vicki Wegerle, who had been murdered at her home.

The following year the police finally made their arrest. They took Dennis Rader into custody, and he immediately confessed to the crimes, giving a detailed account of all of them. Two more crimes were added to the list, the killing of Marine Hedge in 1985, and Delores Davis in 1991. In court, Rader continued to paint a lurid picture of the murders, describing the 'hit kit' he took with him on his grisly missions: guns, ropes, handcuffs, and tape.

A trail of clues
To this day, no one knows what drove Rader to commit his hideous crimes, but what is clear is that over a period of three decades, he purposely left a trail of clues to taunt the police, clues that in retrospect could have led to his arrest many years earlier. For example, DNA analysis of Rader's semen matches that of the BTK semen left at the scene of several of the murders. Also, despite his college education, Rader was a poor writer and speller, and his mistakes matched up exactly with those of the BTK letters. It also transpired that there were links between Rader and some of the victims: Joseph Otero had worked in the Air Force at the same time as Rader was there; Julie Otero and Kathryn Bright had worked for the same company as Rader. In addition, the payphones that BTK had used to report his crimes were, in some cases, very near his places of work; and the photocopiers he used could be traced to places where he had studied, including the university. Finally, there was the obvious clue that almost all his victims lived near his home; Marine Hedge even lived on the same street.

Even the guilty deserve a fair trial: Rader's hand is shaken by his attorney after a hearing in El Dorado Correctional Facility. The judge recommended that he should receive treatment as a sexual offender whilst he serves the rest of his life in prison

Eventually, of course, the net closed in, and Rader was arrested. But had forensic and other evidence been collected more systematically and the results analysed with more care, it seems that BTK could have been caught many years earlier, and the lives of several innocent victims spared.