Letters from BTK - Page 4

After this followed a 25 year silence during which there were no confirmed communications from BTK. He broke that silence in March 2004 when the first of eleven communications were issued, the final one of which led directly to his arrest.

If BTK had not been an ego-maniac he may never have been arrested. He had to let the world know that these crimes were exclusively his, saving police a lot of guesswork in linking these different crimes together. He would go on to be charged with three more murders in 1985, 1986 and 1991. He furnished his own crime scene photos of 1986 victim Vicki Wegerle in his 2004 series of communications, leaving no doubt that this was another BTK victim. Evidence was seized, probably from his own files, proving the other two murders after he was arrested.

The only reason we refer to Dennis Rader as BTK or the BTK Strangler is because he himself created the name and character back in 1974.

"The code words for me will be, Bind them, Torture them, Kill them..." he wrote prophetically back then. By 2004 he couldn't contain his silence any longer. Apart from proving the Wegerle murder and that he was the same killer from the 1970s, BTK mostly furnished fake clues while transfixing Wichita and an increasingly larger audience in this latter series of letters and packages. He became obsessed with his own case, hearing and seeing BTK reports in the media, until finally he got so careless that the police were able to identify him beyond all doubt. This self-created madman who posed as a normal member of society for so many years will be spending his remaining years inside a maximum security prison, writing more letters.

For the latest on the BTK Strangler visit my website, The BTK Site.

Article Author: Frank Waldron

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