BTK in custody: They got the bogeyman

It’s somewhat surreal to be sitting here in New Orleans and following all the BTK Strangler coverage on the news ever since a Park City, Kan. resident was arrested as the suspect.

Having grown up in Wichita, the BTK Strangler was my vision of “the bogeyman” for as long as I can remember. So many instinctive childhood fears are tied into the BTK, and the case struck home at many levels — from the fact that his 1986 victim, Vicki Wegerle, went to my childhood church, or the fact that I was interning in the KAKE TV newsroom (where the killer sent most of his letters) when he killed his last victim in 1991, to the fact that several people I know (including my father, my high school history teacher, and our family lawyer) were among the 4000 men swabbed for DNA by Wichita police in the last year.

Even as recently as last summer, when I was visiting my family in Kansas, I would feel a slight twinge of fear when, say, I couldn’t reach my mom on the phone, or when I’d forget to lock the front door when I went out. It’s weird how intuitively something like that can haunt you. It’s nice to know the suspect has finally been captured.

BTK stands for “Bind, Torture, Kill”, and the strangler purportedly killed 10 people between 1974 and 1991. Online articles about the case are all over the place, but I’ve included the next of the New York Times‘ coverage below.


Arrest Is Made in Series of Killings in Kansas
By MONICA DAVEY

Published: February 27, 2005

WICHITA, Kan., Feb. 26 – People here had often wondered and worried about whether B.T.K., the elusive serial killer who taunted this city on and off for more than three decades, might be living right here, just beside them, all along.

On Saturday, as the authorities announced an arrest in one of the most notorious, puzzling string of crimes in recent history, they confirmed exactly what people in the Wichita area had feared: The man the police had arrested was a longtime neighbor, a leader at one of their churches, a father with a wife and two children, who had once, neighbors said, led a scouting troop for boys.

He was the suburban municipal employee who checked in to see that their dog was on a leash, their garbage can was tucked away, their grass was trimmed just so.

Inside a City Hall chamber packed with the families of victims, scores of police officers, some retired and gray now, and a long line of political leaders from the state, the police announced that they had arrested Dennis L. Rader, 59, of suburban Park City, as the suspect in the case of B.T.K., the name the killer long ago selected for himself for his preferred method: bind, torture, kill.

“The bottom line: B.T.K. is arrested,” Chief Norman Williams of the Wichita police said, setting off one of what would become multiple rounds of applause during the announcement that some officials in the room said they had waited their entire careers to hear.

The police said they pulled over Mr. Rader in his vehicle about a block from his home, 10 minutes north of downtown Wichita, just after noon on Friday. He was taken into custody without fuss, the police said, and was being held at an “undisclosed location” on Saturday. He is suspected, said Lt. Ken Landwehr, who worked the B.T.K. mystery for years, in 10 killings – two more than had been publicly attributed to B.T.K. before Saturday.

Mr. Rader has not been charged, but officials said the district attorney’s office here would be asked to consider filing charges next week. Neither Mr. Rader nor members of his extended family, many of whom live here, too, could be reached for comment on the case.

The news of an arrest came after a frightened city’s 31-year search that included DNA tests on thousands of residents, millions of dollars and work hours expended by police investigators, and a peculiar and public cat-and-mouse game between a killer and an otherwise fairly quiet Kansas community of about 350,000.

For years, B.T.K. sent chilling, taunting letters to anyone, it seemed, who might listen – the police, the local newspaper, television stations – often leaving what appeared to be tantalizing clues about his crimes.

“We knew that our officers were doing their job and that one day this nightmare would end,” Mayor Carlos Mayans of Wichita said.

For the families of the dead, the news marked an end of sorts, but also a difficult reminder of their unalterable losses and of how long they had waited. Ruth Fox, the stepmother of Nancy Fox, who was bound and strangled with a nylon stocking in 1977, said she had been stricken by Mr. Rader’s image. “When I saw his picture this morning,” she said, pausing for a long moment, “I just wanted to choke him.”

“There’s a sense of closure,” she added, “to a degree.”

Around Wichita, residents watched the developments with excitement and relief, exchanging detailed gossip about clues in B.T.K. chat rooms on the Internet and calling in to AM-radio talk shows with memories of going to school with Mr. Rader and working with him. Workers at the Wichita airport stood silently around television sets as the news conference played live.

“I think probably starting tonight, there will be some people who sleep soundly for the first time in 30 years,” said Robert Beattie of Wichita, who is finishing a book on the case. “I may be one of those people.”

Between 1974 and 1979, B.T.K. was suspected in seven killings – the first of his apparently random victims were a 38-year-old retired Air Force mechanic, his wife and two of their children, who were slain in their home – as he taunted police officials and the local news media with letters that provided graphic details of the slayings, chilling poems and even, at one point, a phone call.

Each of B.T.K.’s killings fit a pattern. The killer was diligent, efficient, audacious. He cut telephone lines. He slipped into homes unnoticed. He left his victims bound and killed them slowly.

Then, suddenly, nearly 25 years ago, the killer dropped out of sight. Some people speculated that he had moved away, gone to jail, died.

But just as abruptly, last March, 30 years after the killing had begun, he resurfaced. This time, he wrote a letter to The Wichita Eagle claiming responsibility for an eighth killing, in 1986. That year, Vicki Wegerle, 28, was found strangled at her home. Inside B.T.K.’s letter was a copy of Ms. Wegerle’s driver’s license and three grainy photographs of her body.

From there, an avalanche of clues – a seeming treasure hunt for the police – has spilled forth from B.T.K. in the past 11 months: detailed letters, jewelry, packages, a cereal box, some in recent weeks.

His letters and poems were often rambling and filled with grammatical and spelling errors. But law enforcement officials gleaned enough information to build a profile of the killer, and late last year they released a string of details to the public, hoping it might help identify him.

But some of the clues the authorities say B.T.K. most recently told them about himself – his birth date in 1939, a father who died in World War II – do not fit Mr. Rader.

The authorities said little on Saturday about what had led them to Mr. Rader. The Sedgwick County district attorney, Nola Foulston, said that she and other officials would not give any details on statements that investigators might have taken, evidence gathered or forensic tests until charges were filed.

But Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, attending the winter meeting of the National Governors Association in Washington, told The Associated Press that state highway patrol officials familiar with the case had told her that investigators had definitely linked Mr. Rader to the slayings.

“The way they made the link was some DNA evidence, that they had some DNA connection to the guy who they arrested,” Ms. Sebelius said.

And Richard LaMunyon, the former police chief here who led the force during the peak of the B.T.K. search years ago, said he believed that “advances in technology” – both DNA evidence and computer records – had finally helped investigators solve the case.

Looking back, Mr. LaMunyon said he believed that Mr. Rader might have been in a broad field of people investigators considered as possible suspects sometime in the past. At one point, based on similarities between the particular wording of one of B.T.K.’s poems and a poem in a college textbook, the authorities announced that they were considering students who had taken an American folklore class at Wichita State University. Mr. Rader graduated from Wichita State in 1979 with a degree in the administration of justice.

Mr. Rader, who has worked for more than a decade as a municipal compliance officer in Park City, also lived only a few doors down the street from where another murder victim had lived – one that had never been publicly described as a B.T.K. case until Saturday.

In that case, Marine Hedge, 53, was abducted from her home in 1985. Her strangled body was found eight days later along a dirt road. A 10th case, also connected publicly to B.T.K. for the first time on Saturday, also involved a victim who lived not far from the Rader home. That death, in 1991, would be B.T.K.’s most recent killing.

In Park City, Mr. Rader was known for wandering the subdivision roads in his city truck, wearing his official tan city uniform, and stopping in whenever he saw potential violations of the city’s rules. Mr. Rader knew every lawn, every house in the community of about 6,000. Sometimes, neighbors said, he would march right into their backyards and snap photographs to show leaky roofs or overflowing trash. He was persnickety about code violations, even pushy, people said, but he certainly never struck them as dangerous or even particularly interesting.

“You always wondered if it was someone you knew, someone in your own backyard, but this is ridiculous,” Zach Day, 30, said of B.T.K. “How could this be?”

Mr. Day’s mother, Linda, thought back on all the times she said she had talked back to Mr. Rader, arguing with his demands that she move her trash can. “He could have come in anyone’s door anytime he liked,” she said. “In fact, he did. You wouldn’t have thought a thing of it. There was nothing to be scared of. And that’s what’s so scary.”

Mr. Rader’s wife, who worked at a nearby convenience store, is popular here. Their two children – now in their late 20’s – grew up here.

At Christ Lutheran Church in Wichita, Mr. Rader was president of the church council and a member for about 30 years. On Saturday, members of the congregation were reeling and its leaders met in private.

“Everyone must be glad” about news of an arrest in the B.T.K. case, the pastor’s wife, Jan Clark, said sadly, “so that healing can begin for the families of the victims.”

She added, “What I want the public to do is pray for this family and for the congregation members who thought they knew this man.”

Glen Sharp contributed reporting from Wichita for this article.

Posted by | Comments (1)  | February 27, 2005
Category: Rolf's News and Updates


One Response to “BTK in custody: They got the bogeyman”

  1. Rolf Says:

    My childhood friend Erin O’Donnell, who now lives in Las Vegas, communicated familiar sentiments in a post to the Wichita Eagle online today:

    “The BTK case went public when I was in second grade at McLean Elementary, and even at that age I was terrified. I remember going with my older sister to baby-sit for some family friends, and all of us losing our minds when we discovered the phone was dead. Turned out one of the extensions downstairs was off the hook. …All of this childhood terror seemed a bit silly the older I got. But it would still flood back when I least expected it. I developed a deep-seated phobia about being alone in a house overnight, and compulsively checked in closets and under beds…. As I watched Dennis Rader’s face flash across CNN this morning, tears welled up in my eyes. I was surprised at the incredible sense of relief I felt. The bogeyman really is just a man after all, and now he can’t hurt me or anyone else.”