BTK admits guilt

safety

Dennis Rader, aka BTK, (Bind, Torture, Kill) waived his right to trial and entered guilty pleas on all 10 counts of murder in Wichita, Kansas. For those who don’t know he has terrorized the citizens of Wichita for over 30 years. He will not get the death penalty as he committed he crimes before Ks reinstated that punishment.

mushroomHR

I have been following this case and am amazed that this guy got away with what he did for such a long time. It's also scary to think he blended into society so well. You never know who the person next door is, do you?

deniseE

I have 2 thoughts on this...first, part of me is grateful that he's pleading guilty, accepting responsibility, and not wasting a ton of taxpayer time and money on a trial...HOWEVER...it also concerns me, because I'm sure that if a fully trial were to occur more crimes might be uncovered and this is what he is trying to avoid.

either way, he'll spend the rest of his life in jail and away from society.

how very sad for his family and his chuch --to whom, I'm sure, this turn of events was an unearthly shock.

LivindonSouth

Churches are all about 'unearthly' things. The ones I really sympathize with are the thousands of relatives who wondered for years and years what in the world became of their loved one.

deniseE

agreed, Don. Although many of the families might want their day in court, perhaps it's best to not need to endure the trial.

ritaanz

In today's paper, they described him as a serial killer, obsessed with power and status. Abused as a child, unable to become a cop, he felt powerless and neglected. Therefore they need an excessive need for power, dominance and control.

I cannot imagine what life was like for his wife and family, then and now. There have been conflicting stories as to how they caught him. Any news on that?

Leslie

According to the AP:

After years of silence, the killer resurfaced last year with a letter to The Wichita Eagle that included photos of the 1986 strangulation of Vicki Wegerle and a photocopy of her missing driver’s license. Her case had not been linked to BTK until then.

The messages became increasingly frequent in the months before Rader’s arrest on Feb. 25.

That letter was followed by several other cryptic messages and packages. The break in the case came after a computer diskette the killer had sent was traced to Rader’s church.

HRLASS

In addition to everything others have said, in the news report on TV last night they aired a clip of him verbally describing his thoughts the first time he went out to strangle someone, and told in the commentary that he actually went on and graphically described everything he did during the various murders. Visually he looked calm and composed. I can't imagine what it was like listening to all of that and I have a hard time understanding someone who could do that, as well as describe it in such detail and so matter-of-factly. What could his family and church members be thinking while they listened - and the families of his victims? Beyond comprehension.

Pricehcs

If anyone caught the live feed of this guy describing to the judge the events of several of his murders, how would you describe his style. It was eerie seeing him recite such vivid, graphic detail, as well as doing it in such a polished and calm manner. I was stunned.

I hope that some of the inmates don't take too kindly to his crimes and grandfather the death penalty back to the date of his actions themselves.

#1 thing a consultant shouldn't say: "I could tell you the answer right now, but we're committed to a three month project..." #-o

lorrie

Sick as he is, I think he wanted to get caught. Whether it was out of arrogance and a desire for publicity, or because he has a hint of a conscience and could not live with himself and what he had done.

Obviously there is nothing he can say that will make the victims' families feel better, but there must be some relief at not putting everyone through a trial, and now any possible shadows of doubt have been eliminated.

I do feel sorry for Rader's family. I have not heard many specifics about them but I can't help but wonder if his wife had ever suspected anything at all, or if she was totally blindsided by this?

HRinFL

He does not have a conscious. He wanted to get caught because he had to get caught. That is the only way that he could gain the notoriety that he craved from the beginning. In his earlier letters he sent to the local TV station, he was mad because the printed and on-air media were not giving him any coverage. In the letter, he asked if he needed to kill again to get some press coverage. He wanted to get noticed. That is part of the sickness - a way to exert control over others by watching them live in fear. "I made people lock their doors." "People are scared to go out at night because of me."

Rader sees himself as equals to Bundy, The Son of Sam, the Hillside Stranglers. These are the people he admired. To have the aspiration to achieve, in his mind, the stature of these sick demented people, was his objective. To not get the "credit" he deserved drove him crazy. Now he gets the attention he wanted. We are saddened by the attrocities he committed. He is finally happy for people to know that it was him. God have mercy on him!

I saw last night that as a condition of entering his plea of guilty, he had to give specific details of the crimes. The unnerving part was watching him do so matter-of-factly. I don't believe he was as calm as he appeared to be. I believe that he enjoyed giving the details, with several of the victim's family members there. Another way for him to exert control over the families. My heart goes out to these families and I will continue to pray that find some closure to this ordeal.

LivindonSouth

There's a guy in the Baton Rouge, Louisiana area, recently convicted about four or five times of murdering a long string of young college aged girls primarily. He's gotten death sentences several times and I think they have decided not to continue trying him again and again and putting families through that. Derek Todd Lee is his name. He is another of these same wacko types. There is a lady in our community who is the mother of the dead girl about whom his first guilty verdict trial was held. She is very vocal, well spoken, an accomplished writer and a philanthropist and community leader. The daughter was 23, in graduate school and was apparently another of God's angels. There have been many months of press and tv coverage about details through these trials. I think if I were a relative I would much rather he had plead guilty or somebody had killed him before I had to listen to every single element of what he did to torture, rape and kill my loved one. I know if I had been one of the arresting officers surely there would have been a struggle for my gun.

Superlative_KC

What I've heard about his family is that he was a strict disciplinarian and controller who wife was "submissive". She claims she didn't suspect a thing and that becomes almost believable in a scenario where she wasn't allowed to think for herself.

In the end, though, it was his daughter who suspected strongly enough to suggest to the police; that's how they got onto his church . . .

ritaanz

I thought I had read somewhere that his daughter was somehow involved in his arrest.

safety

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 06-28-05 AT 02:10PM (CST)[/font][br][br]She provided the inital DNA sample.
I know it's CNN but here is the link.

[url]http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/26/btk.investigation/[/url]

Information came from KAKE televisionstation.

HRinFL

I thought that information turned out to be false. I remember reading that she had called and "turned him in" and agreed to provide a DNA sample with them taking cheeck cells with a Q-tip. But I thought later it was reported that she agreed to provide the sample after he was arrested and did so believing that it would prove his innocence.

He was traced to the church from a diskette he sent with the picture and copy of the license from his last victim. There were deleted files on the disk that were restored and found to be from the church. When they looked into it, they discovered that Rader had been at the church using the computer and it snowballed from there. What I find repulsive is that after killing Davis, he loaded her in the car, took her to the church (he said it was the old church) and took pictures of her in different stages of bondage. To defile the church in that manner is unfathomable to me.

AnneLa

I'm always amazed at what wack jobs are walking around on this earth! Enough said.

HRinNH

...what about the defilement to the woman first, huh? The church can be restored ("cleansed" if you will), the human life he squeezed out of her at every pose can't.

LivindonSouth

Michael Moore will memorialize it all for us in a Hollywood movie.

HRinFL

I agree to do that to the woman was another way to victimize her after she had been killed. It is hard for me to understand how someone could have that amount of disrespect for anyone. I have never understood how someone could treat someone inhumanly just because of their gender, skin color, religion, etc.