Bound, tortured, killed, and liked to take pictures in the underwear of the victim.
He wrote to the police exposing his crimes, deliberately leaving clues only to mock the incompetence of the police. He handled 10 cases and was not caught by the police for more than 30 years.
Among the thousands of violent crimes in the United States, there are often extremely talented killers, and even the most capable police officers are helpless against them. These hard-to-catch criminals often end up becoming famous because of their personal style and undeniable ingenuity.
The BTK killer in this high IQ criminal is a very representative serial killer.
His original name was Dennis. Red, BTK is the name he gave himself, which means the English abbreviation for binding, torturing, and killing.
Let's talk about the story of this BTK killer today.
People killed by BTK
One day in March 1974, in Wichita, Kansas, USA, Charlie M. Otero came home from school in the evening. As he walked to her dark house, he suddenly felt a panic. At this time, his family should not have rested, why is the house dark?
When the unfortunate teenager walked into the house, he found that his panic was not empty. Charlie. Otero's mother, father and two younger siblings, aged 11 and 9, all died in the house. Both the children and their father and mother were covered in plastic bags, apparently both of whom died of suffocation. Sister Josephine was also hung on the drain pipe.
It turned out that people would have to wait decades to learn the truth of this tragedy.
The killer of the Ott family is one of the most elusive serial killers in American history in the coming decades. No one experienced similar acts of terror at the time of the murder of the Otero family. A few months after the Otero family was killed, 21-year-old Casey Bright was assassinated in his home, but he was still alive at the time. Casey Bright was taken to the hospital for emergency treatment, but eventually died of an infection in the wound.
The circumstances of Kathyb's murder are very similar to the tragic situation of the Otero family, but also different. Investigators are not sure whether the two murders were linked. But while the investigation was in full swing, the killer suddenly disappeared, and the police did not find any useful clues.
For the next three years, the murderer seemed to have stopped his ferocity as if the human world had evaporated. It wasn't until three years later that the emergency department received a call that a group of children who had spent the night together were locked in the bathroom, and when the children were finally rescued, people found that their mother, Shirley, had been strangled to death.
Later that day, another woman, Nancy Fox, was found dead in her home, also from mechanical asphyxiation. The police at the scene also did not find any valuable clues.
victim
As soon as the case was exposed, the public was in an uproar, and the murderer undoubtedly created great panic in the local area. Everyone worries about their own safety and their children's safety, and in the end the killer becomes overwhelmed by the fears created by the killer and the media's rendering.
The killer boldly reached out to police and newspapers, sending three letters to tease the police. In the letter, the killer voluntarily reported the crime to the police, saying that Fox had been murdered by him and mocking the incompetence of the police again. These three letters caused panic among the local population. The killer gave himself many names in the letter, but the most famous one was BTK, which made him part of history. These letters represent binding, torturing, killing, and BTK is the method that murderers use to kill their victims.
The police were helpless against the killer, and in the blink of an eye, 8 years had passed. The killer, known as BTK, was gradually forgotten, and even those victims began to fade from people's memories, people began to speculate whether he had been secretly arrested and imprisoned, while some people preferred to believe that the murderer was dead.
However, reality still gave people a hard slap. Eight years later, in 1986, At the age of 53, Paxon was found strangled to death at home, and after Maria was killed, BTK committed two more murders. After that, the BTK killer seemed to disappear again.
After so many years, the police have not found accurate clues. However, the case took a turn for the worse in 2004, when a body was found in March 2004. The local television station received a parcel signed Killer Bill.
The story of BTK was plastered on a note on the cardboard box, which contained photographs of the people killed in 1986 and driver's licenses. In June of the same year, another package was found tied to a roadside traffic sign with a lawn from the murder site. The television received a third package containing a message from an 11-year-old boy killed in 1974 and a doll with his hands and feet tied.
In November 2004, the local police chief also received a letter from BTK. The killer said he was old, he was too troublesome to spell words in printed letters, and he wanted to ask the director if he wrote the letter on a floppy disk, would the police be able to track him down? The next day the director replied in the local newspaper, "Rest assured, the floppy disk is safe." Not long after, the STATION received a fourth package with a floppy disk and a postcard of thanks.
The contents of the floppy disk are still about the murder process, and the police have invited Microsoft staff to try to recover the modified and deleted content of the floppy disk. Eventually inside we finally saw the name of a church and subsequently found a modified signature by Dennis. Reed.
Dennis. Red is a 60-year-old city administrator who is retiring.
After a DNA comparison left at the scene, it was proved that the murderer was him. Dennis was not surprised at all, and seemed to be waiting for the day to come. He said that in 1974 he had written about the crime on a piece of paper, sandwiched between an engineering data book in the city library, and that it had not yet been discovered.
In 1978, after committing the crime, he also sent a letter to the television station, asking the station to believe that Wichita really had a powerful serial killer. He did all the cases alone, but no one on the TV station seemed to believe him at all. After his arrest, he smiled and said to the police, Now you finally believe me.
After interrogation, the police believe that Dennis has a serious perverted habit, and when he committed the crime, he wore a leather mask and tortured the victim to death, and he also liked to wear the victim's underwear to take pictures. And he had an irrepressible urge to let others know about his behavior, so he began writing to the media in 1974. At first he would be terrified of such reckless moves.
But 30 years later, his self-confidence and desire to expose have swelled up over time. There's the floppy farce, and of course a lot of high-IQ serial killers like to taunt the police by writing letters.
This Dennis. Red he had a normal family and two daughters. After being convicted and living with his wife for 44 years left him, Dennis's courtroom self-statement lasted 40 minutes, with witnesses saying the statement was more of an acceptance speech than a confession.
A man who looked too ordinary to be ordinary spoke plainly, unfocused, and wordy, but it took the police 30 years to catch him.
Perhaps it was precisely because of his ordinaryness that he had escaped so many years of investigation. Don't forget that demons have always existed among all sentient beings. Dennis was later sentenced to 10 life sentences, serving no less than 175 years. Sometimes justice really gets a long, but never absent.
Currently, Ryder is serving a sentence in Kansas.
Eventually, the incident was adapted into a movie, looking for the BTK killer story. From the perspective of a detective, it tells the story of tracking this case for 31 years.