A woman depicted in a drawing of the BTK serial killer may have been identified, the sheriff says
One of the women depicted in drawings by the Self Proclaimed One BTK serial killer Dennis RaderHe may have been identified, according to an Oklahoma sheriff.
Osage County Sheriff Eddie Virden declined to provide further details about the possible identification of the woman, who was depicted in a drawing dressed in green and tied up in a barn.
He said his team is flipping through “very, very good tips” from the public about possible additional victims after CNN exclusively reported Rader’s detailed color drawings of barns of female victims, first seized by law enforcement after his arrest in 2005.
“It’s going to be a busy week,” Virden added, saying the tips so far had “provided more information”.
With the help of experts, Virden’s team believes some rare color images among hundreds of sketches found in Rader’s belongings could reveal other crimes he committed not only in Oklahoma, but also in Kansas and Missouri.
“Obviously we still have to do a lot of follow-up and do a lot of interviews,” Virden said. “As far as the stables go, we’ve had a lot of things sent to us to look at.”
Rader pleaded guilty to the ten murders committed between the 1970s and 1990s in Wichita, Kansas and is serving ten consecutive life sentences in a state prison for them.
In a letter found long before his capture, he suggested calling him “BTK,” short for “bind, torture, kill.”
In recent interrogations at the prison, Rader told Virden and other local authorities that he had not committed any more murders. Rader’s public defender told CNN he has no comment at this time.
Investigators hope that by releasing Rader’s drawings, “someone will recognize one of these barns, or the unique features within it, or the proximity of the silo to the barn, or may even have found items they didn’t know why they were there.” very important in this case,” Virden told CNN.
According to the sheriff, law enforcement recently intercepted communications from Rader in prison that revealed some items may still be hidden in old barns.
Rader’s daughter Kerri Rawson said on CNN This Morning that authorities believe they have identified the “young woman in the green shirt” in her father’s drawings but could not provide any further details, citing the open and active case.
Rawson volunteered with investigators, walking around old sites and recalling childhood memories that might be significant, she said. And she confronted her father for the first time in 18 years, visiting him in prison twice in the past few months.
Rawson also told CNN that she agrees with her father, who she recently compared herself to Rex Heuermanwho was charged with the murders of three women found on Long Island in New York.
“There are similarities. They were both the same age… They were both arrested at 59 years old. They both had a wife. They both had two children,” Rawson said.
“We are still waiting to learn more about Heuermann. Now we learn a lot more about dad. It’s just an ongoing process to see where we’re going to end up on both counts,” she said. “Unfortunately, for both cases and for both the families and the victims’ families, it will be a long-term event.”
A possible connection with the missing persons case
In January, the sheriff’s office launched an investigation. In doing so, they examined Rader’s writings, sketches, and other evidence obtained from the Wichita Police Department and found that they believe there are possible links to several unsolved cases in the area.
Authorities said they believe the killer may have been buried 16-year-old Cynthia Dawn Kinney — last seen at an Oklahoma laundromat in 1976 — in a barn near the Kansas-Oklahoma border.
Months after Cynthia’s disappearance, the Osage County Sheriff’s Office documented an anonymous call from a man claiming the teen’s body could be found in an old barn on the Oklahoma-Kansas border, Virden told CNN.
Although investigators recently managed to locate the deputy who answered the call, the barn remains a mystery.
Rader is known for his games of cat-and-mouse, passing leads into his murders to law enforcement in the years leading up to his arrest.
Virden’s team believes that a barn next to a silo was probably a favorite spot for Rader.
According to Rawson, Rader drew often. He honed his skills in a college drawing class, she told CNN.
“My dad designed our house, he drew up plans for the gardens,” Rawson said. “And my dad always had to be outside and in the air, and winters were tough for him. So we had to find things for him to do because if he got in there and he was too cooped up, he would get angry.”
And he loved barns and silos.
“My father loves barns and silos. Every time we went camping, fishing, or to college, he would definitely say, “I want to retire here.” And he would tease my mom about it,” Rawson said. “And after he was arrested, we found out later that he had huge fantasies about those specific places. So now we drive around and try to find them from my memory and write them down because we need to see if anyone is missing or buried there.”
A fascination with barns
Rader’s disturbing sketches show three women tied up in barns that investigators believe are barns.
One drawing shows what appears to be a young woman, gagged and bound at the arms and legs. Officers point to the black plumbing running through the barn walls.
“The reason for this would be that if you were moving cattle there, these grates would keep the cattle from probably bumping into the can or the wood on the outside of the stall, so if an animal bumped into it they would “Don’t go through and dent the can or knock the wood off the outside,” Virden, the sheriff, told CNN.
Osage County investigators believe the sketch may be linked to a missing woman last seen in southeastern Kansas in 1991.
“We know from what Dennis said in that very photo that it was a drawing he made in an actual barn,” Virden said.
Another color drawing shows a female victim bound and gagged in a red top.
“That would be a barn with wooden slats. You know, maybe a rounded post, but there might be a wooden floor in that area of the stall, you know, and often in tack rooms inside barns or in feed rooms or storage rooms. They would not leave clay soil because there were no livestock in the area.”
A third drawing, done in black ink by Rader, shows an angle looking down at a woman lying in a barn floor, her neck tied to a stair post. The stair construction attracted the attention of law enforcement agencies.
“The support post appears to have a bracket and then a screw that threads through that to hold everything together,” Virden said.
Newly discovered evidence
Last month, Virden’s team has been revealed What Rader described as a “stash” contained new evidence previously undetected by law enforcement at the property that was once his family’s home. Binding materials were also among the items recovered.
City officials demolished the home in Park City, Kansas, in the years following his arrest, but the reinforced hole remained intact nearly 2 feet deep in the ground, according to Virden.
Rader himself led investigators back to the scene of the crime: Virden’s team uncovered a letter he wrote from prison in 2008, describing items he had hidden under the floor of a shed behind his house.
Now, Osage County investigators are hoping state and federal agencies will step in to help process the evidence, which may still contain DNA, to link the serial killer to the unsolved cases or rule him out as a suspect.
They also hope to test “trophies” recovered in 2005 that match descriptions of items last seen on victims in the unsolved cases.
A spokesman for the FBI’s Kansas City field office said they were not aware that the FBI was actively involved in the current BTK investigation.
According to Melissa Underwood, the agency’s communications director, the Kansas Bureau of Investigations has met with Osage County officials but has not assisted with any real estate searches.
Rader, 78, is being held at the El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas.
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