BTK suspect charged with 10 murder counts

DenverPost.com

Prosecutors today charged BTK serial killer suspect Dennis Rader with 10 counts of first-degree murder.

Rader's arrest has prompted nearby law enforcement agencies to revisit any cold cases that bear similarities to the string of slayings.

Investigators in Hutchinson, Harvey and Reno counties are wondering if the suspect also could be responsible for any unsolved deaths in their jurisdictions.

Reno County Sheriff Randy Henderson said Monday that he decided to ask for help after seeing news coverage of the arrest of Rader, the man police have said is responsible for 10 killings in the Wichita area between 1974 and 1991.

Investigators in Hutchinson, about 50 miles northwest of Wichita, also asked the Kansas Bureau of Investigation to test DNA samples from a 1977 unsolved killing to see if it matches samples connected to the BTK suspect.

Rader, 59, appeared today for an initial hearing in Sedgwick County District Court. He was formally charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder.

New details of the investigation emerged from Michigan. The Wichita Eagle and The Daily Oakland Press of Pontiac, Mich., reported today that FBI agents visited the Farmington, Mich., home of Rader's 26-year-old daughter, Kerri, on Friday to get a DNA sample.

The timing indicates she was not visited until after her father had been arrested that same day in Kansas, the Eagle said, suggesting her DNA helped confirm his identity but was not the original break in the case as some initial reports had suggested.

Charles Nebus, public safety director and police chief in Farmington, Mich., said today that the FBI told him Friday they were conducting an interview in the city in connection with the BTK case.

He said the family that was interviewed has since contacted police repeatedly complaining of being bothered by reporters. He would not confirm that the person interviewed was Rader's daughter, though public records indicated the daughter had lived in Farmington.

The BTK killer, whose nickname stands for "Bind, Torture, Kill," had been suspected of eight deaths, but law enforcement announced Saturday that they had linked two additional victims to the serial killer.

One of the newly attributed deaths was that of Delores Davis, who was abducted from her home near Park City and whose body was found 13 days later near a river in northern Sedgwick County.

Henderson said that was similar to the 1977 death of Gail Sorensen, who was also kidnapped and her body was found two days later near the Arkansas River near Hutchinson.

"We're looking at one," Henderson told The Associated Press.

"We've got five cold cases. But the other four didn't have the same details, the same modus operandi." Harvey County Sheriff Byron Motter said today he is reopening a cold case from 2001 in which a 46-year-old Wichita woman was strangled and her body dumped in a creek. "With this information that BTK has been caught, we are opening up cases to see if we have anything," Motter said.

Rader, 59, a Cub Scout leader, was arrested Friday. Authorities have declined to say what led them to concentrate on Rader, a married father of two and an active member of a Lutheran church.

Rader's younger brother, Jeff Rader, told The Wichita Eagle in today's editions that no one in the family believes his brother is the BTK serial killer.

"I don't think my brother is BTK," he said. "But if he is - if that's the truth - then let the truth be the truth. And may God have mercy on his soul." Speaking on the front porch of his mother's Park City home, Jeff Rader, 50, said the family never saw any sign that his brother could be a killer.

"My mother still can't believe it," he said. "She's still very much in denial. And so am I. But maybe, with me, acceptance is starting to creep in."

Investigators remained tightlipped Monday about the investigation, going so far as to warn that public speculation could complicate their investigation. Police Chief Norman Williams vowed that Rader will "not be tried in the media, but rather in a court of law."

In addition to the 10 deaths attributed to BTK, a source close to the investigation said on condition of anonymity that authorities were looking into whether the serial killer was responsible for the deaths of two Wichita State University students as well as a woman who lived down the street from another known victim of BTK.