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Rader Pleads Guilty To 10 BTK Murders
Chris Crum
Staff Writer
2005-06-27
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Sixty-year-old Dennis Rader pleaded guilty today to the murders of 10 people in the what have been known as the BTK killings. BTK stands for "Bind, Torture, and Kill", which is what Rader called himself.
The BTK murders happened around the Wichita, Kansas area over a span of about 20 years. Much like the Zodiac killer of the San Francisco area, Rader sent messages to the police and media using cryptic messages.
Rader strangled most of his ten victims. The ones that he didn't strangle, he stabbed or shot. Rader, a father of two himself, started his reign of terror by killing a man, his wife, and their two children.
"I had never strangled anyone before, so I really didn't know how much pressure you had to put on a person or how long it would take," said Rader as he described his first murders in court. "The whole family just panicked on me so I worked pretty quick." Jenny Booth of Times Online reports,
Rader also is charged with the killings of Marine Hedge, 53, who was abducted from her home on April 27, 1985, and found dead along a dirt road eight days later, and Dolores Davis, 62, who was abducted from her home on January 19, 1991. Those deaths were also not linked to BTK until Rader's arrest.
Police cast such a wide net for suspects that even some reporters covering the case were swabbed for DNA to rule them out as suspects.
Rader will not be sentenced to death for his crimes because he killed all of his victims during a time when the state of Kansas did not use the death penalty in its penal system.
View All Articles by Chris Crum
About the Author:
Chris Crum is a staff writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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