BTK killer's obsession with knots started when he was young and he found 'experience of being tied up erotic'
BTK killer Dennis Rader was responsible for murdering 10 people around Wichita in Kansas during the years 1974 and 1991. The killer had also been likened to the Zodiac killer for communicating with the press and the police but not getting caught. In the letter he sent to TV station KAKE, he suggested possible serial killer names for himself and the one that really stood out was BTK which stands for "Bind, Torture, Kill".
While Rader's choice of victims did not follow a particular pattern, there was one specific piece of evidence that seemed to link the various crime scenes together. He would use very intricate knots to bind and control his victims. Oxygen's documentary 'Mark of a Killer' which airs on Saturdays at 7/6c looks at Rader's obsession with these knots and bondage and looked at where it had stemmed from.
According to Ray Lundin, who works with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, "Those square knots just screamed out to the investigators, 'I know I’m just a little knot, but look at me. I’ve got something important to tell you about this killer.' This is the signature mark of BTK."
Obsession with knots and bondage
Rader's obsession with knots and bondage started at an early age when he would play Cowboys and Indians with his friends. Forensic psychologist Dr Katherine Ramsland said Rader found the experience of being tied up and "the experience of being utterly helpless erotic," according to an Oxygen report. There was another incident that was a very formative moment in Rader's life. At the age of eight, he saw his grandmother prepare a chicken for Sunday dinner. She went to the coop, tied the chicken's legs with a leather shoestring, and decapitated it with an ax, splashing blood everywhere.
Larry Thomas from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation revealed that Rader had said, "My brothers and my cousins would all run away screaming, and when I watched that, it’d give me an erection." Rader also recalled that it was the moment he knew that he was different from the rest. Rader, who was a married father of two and a respected church leader, began to lead a "secret life" where he practiced and mastered tying the knots. Dr Ramsland said this brought "to his image as a killer a sense of intelligence, superiority and control."
Confession
While Rader was being interrogated, he told investigators where they would find evidence from his killing spree and on searching his office and home, authorities found newspaper clippings, mementos, trophies and photographs.
Some of the polaroids had been of Rader's victims themselves while a few others were of himself posing in various forms of bondage while wearing clothes and items of his victims. Larry Thomas shared, "He was practicing bondage in his photographs with the same knots and the marks that we were finding at our crime scenes."
Getting caught
Rader taunted the police for months after beginning to communicate with them in 2004. In the same year, he wrote a letter to The Wichita Eagle and claimed that he had killed a woman in 1986 and shared pictures of the crime scene and a copy of her driver's license, according to GoodHouseKeeping report. He continued to taunt authorities sending pictures from crime scenes and bizarre letters. In 2005, he asked the cops if they could trace a floppy disk back to him should he send them one. They responded via an ad in the newspaper saying they could not, with Rader believing them.
He then sent the cops a floppy disk and inside the metadata of the disk, authorities found two keywords "Christ Lutheran Church" and the name "Dennis". An internet search led them to Rader and a search warrant allowed them to compare DNA from his daughter to the DNA on file. It was his daughter Kerri Rawson's DNA which helped in leading to his arrest, she revealed while speaking to ABC's 20/20. She also shared that she, her mother and older brother had no clue he was a serial killer.
She said, "Mom and I both said if we had an inkling that my father had harmed anyone, let alone murdered anyone, let alone 10, we would have gone screaming out the door to the police station."
Sentencing
He was sentenced to 10 consecutive life sentences for his crimes.