On this day, Aug. 18, in 2005, Dennis Rader — better known as the BTK Killer — was sentenced to 175 years in prison before the possibility of parole.
Between 1974 and 1991 Rader murdered 10 people in Sedgwick County near Wichita, Kan. The serial killer acquired the nickname BTK for his modus operandi: It stands for “bind, torture and kill.”
He was known for sending boastful letters to police and media during his murderous reign. He stopped communicating in the early 1990s.
But in 2004, Rader started sending letters to police, taking credit for a murder that authorities had not previously linked to the BTK killer. Police continued to exchange letters with Rader and he eventually sent them a floppy disk that held information linking the sender to a Lutheran Church where Rader was a deacon.
DNA evidence found beneath to fingernails of the victim Rader took credit for in 2004 helped close the investigative gap and he was arrested in February 2005. He pleaded guilty to the murders that June.
