The settlement effectively ends all wrongful death litigation filed by families of the ten people Dennis Rader confessed to killing in the Wichita area between 1974 and 1991.

Rader is serving a life sentence in state prison.

Wichita attorney Mark Hutton represents relatives of three BTK victims. He said yesterday that Rader had signed off on a settlement that calls for each family in the lawsuit to collect $1.5 million.

It's unlikely that the relatives will receive anywhere near that amount.

Dennis Rader agreed to settle in lawsuit brought on by murder victims' family

A legal settlement between serial killer Dennis Rader and murder victims' families will give the survivors some comfort and a share of the royalties if his story is ever told in book or movie form.

The settlement ends all wrongful death litigation filed by families of the 10 people Rader confessed to killing in the Wichita area between 1974 and 1991.

Now 60 years old and serving a life sentence in state prison, Rader was known by the nickname he gave himself -- BTK, for bind, torture, kill.

Wichita attorney Mark Hutton, representing relatives of three BTK victims, said Thursday that Rader had signed off on a settlement that calls for each family in the lawsuit to collect $1.5 million from Rader: $250,000 actual damages and $1.25 million in punitive damages.

Hutton said that because Rader has no resources, it is unlikely that the relatives will receive anywhere near those amounts.

But should Rader's story ever be told in book or movie form, Hutton said, the agreement calls for 75 percent of the royalties to be funneled to the relatives.

A Topeka woman, Kristin Casarona, is writing a book on Rader's life. Once Casarona's expenses are paid she will give the families 75 percent of any profits she makes.

Rader signed the rights to his story over to Casarona for the purposes of her book.

Even if a book is written and sold, Hutton said, the relatives probably won't receive enough money to reimburse them for their expenses.

"Is anybody going to get rich off this? No," he said. "The whole purpose is to get to the family members some compensation for their expenses."

The settlement also entitles the survivors to all items seized during the investigation.

Earlier this month, Park City paid less than $60,000 (€46,303) for the suburban Wichita house where Rader and his family lived for 25 years before he pleaded guilty to killing 10 people between 1974 and 1991.

At least one person was trying to hawk what were described as pieces of the house on the Internet auction site e-Bay. The starting bid for boards, supposedly taken from the serial killer's home, was 99 cents.

"If there is any way to prosecute this person we will," Park City Mayor Dee Stuart said after learning about the online auctions from The Associated Press on Friday afternoon.

"One way or another it's a crime," she said. "If it was taken from the house it's theft. If it was not taken from the house it's fraud."

Rader, who is serving 10 consecutive life terms in prison, called himself BTK for his preferred method of killing, "bind, torture and kill."

The city plans to tear down the house soon but will not say when demolition will begin. "This is not meant to be a spectacle," Stuart was quoted as saying by The Wichita Eagle in its Friday edition. Some debris will be buried at an undisclosed landfill, with some burned at other sites

Stuart said that shortly after Rader's arrest in February 2005, people tried to use e-Bay to sell tickets Rader had written as animal control officer. E-bay eventually removed the auctions, she said.

Stuart said she would contact e-Bay to have them take down the latest auction. By early afternoon Friday, no one had placed a bid for the unusual souvenir from Rader's old house. The auction was scheduled to end Jan. 24.

The e-Bay seller, identified as "farm-boy-bbq," said in the description of the item: "I have some pieces of btk's house which is being torn down to make a public park, i had to go through a lot to get these, i will mail you a flat rate box stuffed full of these lath boards from his house!!"

The city wants to use the site to create a new entryway to Jardine Memorial Park, a small park with trees, swings, a half basketball court and a parking lot.

Good behavior has earned the BTK serial killer the privilege to watch television, listen to the radio, read and draw in his prison cell.

Prosecutors had sought restrictions on such activities, saying images of women and children and news accounts of his murders would allow Dennis Rader to relive his grisly, sex-fueled fantasies. But Rader earned the privileges through a system designed to encourage good behavior, said Bill Miskell, a Department of Corrections spokesman.

The eased restrictions aren't sitting well with some family members of Rader's 10 victims and prosecutors who helped put him behind bars.

"We're having a hard time understanding why somebody like this is allowed to earn privileges when all the evidence was presented as to how he can turn what most people would consider to be innocent into something that is evil," said Kevin O'Connor, a Sedgwick County deputy district attorney.

Georgia Mason, the mother of Nancy Fox, who was killed by Rader in 1977, also was displeased with Rader's new status.

"I just don't think he needs anything in that little cell," she said.

Miskell said he couldn't disclose what items Rader has obtained for his good behavior. The spokesman did say that sexually explicit materials would not be allowed.

Even with the new privileges, Rader remains in the prison's most restrictive environment. He is let out of his 8-foot-by-10-foot cell only one hour a day, five days a week, to shower and exercise.

Rader, who called himself BTK for his method to "bind, torture and kill," would have to serve a minimum of 175 years to be eligible for parole. Kansas had no death penalty at the time of the murders.

His chief public defender, Steve Osburn, said denying his client written and visual materials could push him further into a fantasy world.

"I don't know how he can possibly be a danger to anybody, no matter what he has," Osburn said.

The attorneys, Mark Hutton and James Thompson, said District Judge Timothy Lahey allowed them to view the contents of the boxes Tuesday at the Sedgwick County Jail. The lawyers discussed the items with The Wichita Eagle on Wednesday.

They told The Eagle the hair clippings were enclosed in an envelope labeled "D.R.'s locks." It was stowed in a box that also contained a razor, socks and other personal items.

Rader, who lived in the Wichita suburb of Park City, pleaded guilty in June to killing 10 people between 1974 and 1991. He was sentenced in August to 10 consecutive life prison terms.

The killer who terrorized the Wichita area for years became known as BTK, a nickname he gave himself in letters to police and the media. The initials stood for "Bind, Torture, Kill."

The boxes also contained a letter from Paula Rader. She ended her 35-year marriage to Dennis Rader after his arrest. In the letter, she tells Dennis Rader that his voice will only upset their grown children and asks him not to call them.

Also in the boxes was a prescription for an antidepressant, letters from Rader supporters, an advertisement with a photo of a young girl circled and a photo of entertainer Jessica Simpson.

Hutton and Thompson said the boxes were addressed to the mother of Kristin Casarona, a Topeka woman writing a book about Rader. Hutton used a court order to impound the items before Rader could send them.

Kevin Phillips, an attorney for Casarona, said his client wants only those items in the boxes "directed to her for her writing," including correspondence between her and Rader.

"It's never been Kris' understanding that she would do anything so he (Rader) could secretly profit," Phillips said. "She's not going to sell his locks of hair, then send him the money."

Hutton and Thompson said they planned to seek custody of the items. They said the families want to ensure the items remain out of the hands of collectors of crime memorabilia.

A Kansas woman whose boss turned out to be the BTK serial killer has sued him for gender discrimination.

Mary Capps, seeking $75,000 in damages, claimed she had reported Dennis Rader for "abusive, intimidating language and physical gestures" toward her because of her sex, but nothing was done. She also said he damaged her career with an unfairly bad job evaluation report, the Wichita Eagle said.

Rader, 60, who worked with Capps in the Park City ordinance compliance office for more than six years, was indicted last summer on 10 murder counts and is serving 10 consecutive life sentences at the El Dorado Correctional Facility.

For 31 years, the BTK serial killer toyed with Wichita, Kan., sending macabre clues and puzzles to police and media about the 10 people he brutally murdered to fulfill his bizarre sexual fantasies.

Yet it was the deranged murderer's surprising naivete that ultimately led to his capture, said Sedgwick County, Kan., District Attorney Nola Foulston, the lead prosecutor of the BTK killer, Dennis Rader.

Foulston spoke today in Lexington at the Kentucky Commonwealth's Attorneys Association's winter conference.

The BTK killer -- his own nickname, standing for bind, torture, kill -- was long suspected of a pattern of murders from 1974 to the mid-1980s. Eight victims, mostly women, were tied and strangled. Only after Rader was arrested this February was he linked to two other slayings, including one in 1991.

On Aug. 18, Rader was sentenced to a 175-year prison term without the chance of parole.

After 20 years of silence, Radar began to terrorize Wichita anew last year by sending police and media a new series of messages. Some suspected he wanted to be captured to gain notoriety.

Among the clues he methodically sent to the press: a cereal box containing a doll dressed in clothing similar to that worn by a victim.

"We then got a piece of information that will go down in history as one of the Darwin awards," Foulston said. She was referring to the award that salutes "the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who remove themselves from it in really stupid ways."

Inside one cereal box, Rader left a note asking police if he could send police a disk without it being traced to his computer. He asked police to place a classified ad in the newspaper that said, "It'll be OK, Rex" and left a P.O. box number and code number.

Police received a computer disk shortly after the ad ran. Computer experts quickly traced the disk to Park City Public Library and Christ Lutheran Church, and a user named Dennis, Foulston said. The next computer tool police turned to was Google. The search turned up Dennis Rader, the church's congregation president. Investigators were flabbergasted.

The ruling by Judge Timothy Lahey came after a request by the victims' families, who feared Rader was about to mail out two boxes of items to a woman planning to write a book about him.

The relatives want to keep outsiders from making money off the murders and prevent any sale of crime-scene photos, said attorney Mark Hutton, who is representing three victims' families.

Under the ruling, the families plan to make a joint recommendation to the judge about what happens to the items in the two boxes and a third that Rader had in his jail cell while awaiting trial.

It also includes his other personal property, including items held at the district attorney's office and items seized from his home and the Park City offices where Rader worked as a compliance officer before his arrest.

The order does not apply to the family home, which Rader's wife, Paula Rader, sold at auction in July for $90,000, well over its assessed value of $56,700. Attorney James Thompson, who represents victims' families in three lawsuits, has called the more than $30,000 difference between the home's value and sale price "blood money."

Rader, who is representing himself in lawsuits filed by the families, appeared at times confused as he tried to follow court proceedings Friday on the telephone line from the El Dorado prison where he is serving 10 consecutive life terms.

Rader called himself BTK for "bind, torture and kill." He was sentenced Aug. 18 to 10 consecutive life terms for 10 murders committed from 1974 to 1991.

BTK serial killer Dennis Rader was ordered to serve 10 consecutive life terms Thursday during a tear-filled hearing in which relatives of his victims called him a monster and said he should be "thrown in a deep, dark hole and left to rot."
The sentence – a minimum of 175 years without a chance of parole – was the longest possible that Judge Gregory Waller could deliver. Kansas had no death penalty at the time the killings were committed.

The two-day hearing featured graphic testimony from detectives and sobbing relatives. It culminated with rambling testimony from Rader, who said he had been dishonest to his family and victims and at times wiped his eyes.

"Nancy's death is a like a deep wound that will never, ever heal," Beverly Plapp, sister of victim Nancy Fox, testified. "As far as I'm concerned, Dennis Rader does not deserve to live. I want him to suffer as much as he made his victims suffer."

"This man needs to be thrown in a deep, dark hole and left to rot," she said. "He should never, ever see the light of day."

Rader offered Biblical quotes, thanks to police and an apology to victims' relatives before he was sentenced.

"A dark side is there, but now I think light is beginning to shine," Rader said. "Hopefully someday God will accept me."

Rader, 60, a former church congregation president and Boy Scout leader, led a double life, calling himself BTK for "bind, torture and kill." He was arrested in February and pleaded guilty in June to 10 murders from 1974 to 1991.

"No remorse, no compassion – he had no mercy," said Kevin Bright, the brother of victim Kathryn Bright, who himself was shot but managed to flee. "I think that's what he ought to receive."

Rader's voice choked as he made his half-hour address to the courtroom, saying he had been dishonest to his family and victims and selfish.

"I know the victim's families will never be able to forgive me. I hope somewhere deep down, eventually that will happen," he said.

He also admitted he tracked his victims "like a predator."

Nola Foulston, Sedgwick County District Attorney, asked the judge that Rader be refused anything in prison, such as markers or crayons, that could be used to draw or write about human or animal forms, or anything that might be used to further his sexual fantasies.

Prosecutors earlier flashed a photograph of Rader wearing a mask, tied to a chair and donning a woman's blond wig. They also showed other pictures the killer took in which he had bound himself and was wearing a dress he had taken from a victim's house – apparently reliving the ecstasy of the murder.

Investigators testified that Rader kept hundreds of pictures from magazines and circulars mounted on index cards, with details of the warped sexual fantasies he dreamed of carrying out.

Lt. Ken Landwehr, who coordinated the Wichita police department's investigation into BTK, said the index cards were some of the evidence of Rader's long history of terror that was found at the defendant's office, camper and small suburban home.

Landwehr said the cutouts ranged from a little girl posing in a swimsuit to actress Meg Ryan.

Rader's files also included copies of nearly all his messages to police and the media, documents Landwehr said the killer had planned to eventually scan and digitally store, Landwehr said.

Containers kept in a closet and elsewhere at his home also held what Rader called "hit kits" – bags with rubber gloves, rope, tape, handcuffs and bandanas.

Rader, sitting through his second day of a sentencing hearing, appeared angry and mumbled at one point during Landwehr's testimony, although Rader's words couldn't be heard.

Capt. Sam Houston of the Sedgwick County Sheriff's Office testified about Rader's last known killing – the strangulation of 63-year-old Dolores Davis in 1991. Rader, who handcuffed Davis and tied her with pantyhose, told police it took two or three minutes for her to die and that fueled his torturous fantasies for years.

"It was this moment that victim was tied and bound," Rader wrote in a journal, according to testimony Thursday morning by Houston. "He could live in that moment for years."

After Davis was dead, Rader tossed her body under a bridge where it decomposed and apparently was fed on by animals. The defendant returned later to take Polaroid photographs of her wearing a feminine mask Rader himself had worn for his own bondage fantasies.

The sentencing hearing was in many ways is a formality, with the only issue before the judge whether Rader would serve his life sentences consecutively or concurrently.

A judge waived the usual 60-day waiting period and granted an immediate divorce today to the wife of BTK serial killer Dennis Rader, agreeing that her mental health was in danger.

Rader didn't contest the filing or appear for the hearing. He signed over the couple's property and all his retirement benefits to Paula Rader, who had been married to him for 34 years.

In a courtroom confession last month, Dennis Rader said that sexual fantasies had driven him to kill 10 people in the Wichita area between 1974 and 1991. As BTK — his own moniker for "Bind, Torture, Kill" — he taunted media and police in communications that eventually led to his arrest. His sentencing is set for Aug. 17.

Paula Rader said in her divorce petition that her mental and physical condition has been adversely affected by the marriage.

She also said that she and her incarcerated husband are incompatible and that he had failed to perform material marital duties and obligations. The couple have two grown children.

The property settlement approved by the court includes the family home in Park City, the Wichita suburb where Dennis Rader, 60, worked as an ordinance compliance officer. It recently sold at auction for $90,000.

The man known to the world as the twisted soul who murdered 10 is still known to the Rev. Michael Clark as Dennis Rader - a member of Christ Lutheran who brought spaghetti sauce to a church supper during Lent even though he couldn't stay for worship.

Days after he dropped off his Crock-Pot, Rader was arrested, bringing comfort to the residents of Wichita, Kan., and anguish to a church family that will wrestle with spiritual issues long after the shock wears off. If it ever does.

No one - not even his pastor - can fathom the darkness that led Rader to do his evil. But this much Clark knows:

As long as Rader wants him as his pastor, Clark will be there for him despite the objections of angry e-mailers.

And whatever the BTK killer did isn't enough to shake Clark's faith.

Man fails. God doesn't.

"God," Clark said, "promises us that he'll be with us until the end, and he won't abandon us."

Clark and others at 400-member Christ Lutheran outside Wichita continue getting calls from reporters seeking revelations about Rader, especially after his bone-chilling recounting of the crimes in court unnerved us so.

Paul Carlstedt, a lay leader at the church who spent 30 years going to suppers and softball games with the Raders, wouldn't talk to The National Enquirer. But he'll talk all day long about his church and the faith lessons he clings to after seeing the other side of a man he thought he knew but now realizes he didn't.

"The Dennis Rader I knew," he said, "was a man of God. What is the force that causes evil? I have no idea."

Carlstedt, though, is trying to see beyond the evil.

He believes God's hand was in this when Rader, 60, became a lay leader at the church, giving him reason to use the office. A break in the case came when a computer diskette the BTK killer used was tied to Christ Lutheran.

And Carlstedt believes, like his pastor preaches, that God is the one to trust.

"You never really know anybody," said Carlstedt, "so you just have to put your faith in God that the people you know will do right."

Whom to turn to?

On an afternoon spent fielding calls from reporters who "just want the blood and guts," Clark said, he sounded relieved to get one from a writer wondering about how his church family will survive.

They'll survive by talking about it, whether in special gatherings or during quiet moments at a church supper. By making room for Rader's family at worship.

And by understanding that good, faithful, wounded people have a choice:

They can succumb to the shock. Or they can rise up and look even more intently to God for comfort and answers.

"God's the one we have to turn to," Clark said.

"He'll tell you he never, ever stopped looking," police detective Tim Relph said Friday as authorities described how the city's most notorious killer operated and how his own arrogance caught up with him.

It wasn't long after his Feb. 25 arrest that Dennis Rader told investigators "I'm BTK," police Lt. Ken Landwehr said. In fact, he said, Rader kept giving details of the killings until defense attorneys intervened.

When he pleaded guilty June 27, Rader gave a chilling, emotionless narrative of how he tortured, strangled, stabbed and shot his 10 victims from 1974 to 1991.

"He's proud of what he did," Landwehr said. "He can think he's a Christian all he wants ... He is nothing but a perverted serial killer."

Rader told the court that he had selected an 11th victim. And he has said he had numerous "projects," or women he planned to kill, Landwehr said.

Investigators don't know how close he was to killing again, but Landwehr said they have talked to the potential victims. All asked to remain anonymous.

Rader wasn't an obvious suspect _ a married father of two, a one-time church council leader and a Park City compliance officer who handled suburban code violations and stray dogs. But he had secret sexual fantasies, he told the court, and a "dark side" he couldn't control. He said a "demon" got inside him at a young age.

Rader sought out places where single women would be, Landwehr said. Once one caught his eye, he would become obsessed with stalking them.

Prosecutors say there's much more to the crimes, and at his Aug. 17 sentencing they plan to present more evidence about the killings and Rader's sexual motivations, details that could ensure the 60-year-old never leaves prison.

It was the series of taunting messages from the killer that eventually implicated Rader, authorities said.

Police got their biggest break when they received a diskette in a package BTK had provided in order to communicate with them. On it, they found the name "Dennis," and they were able to trace it to Christ Lutheran Church. A Google search showed Dennis Rader was president of the congregation.

When they searched Rader's office, they discovered in a locked file cabinet a stack of original BTK communications, copies of which had been sent to police and the media.

Rader told police that since resuming communications in 1994 he had called a local newspaper and television station and identified himself as BTK, but he said he was hung up on.

"He was always getting a little frustrated that people weren't taking him seriously," Landwehr said.

In his interview with that Wichita station last week, Rader said he reappeared after hearing an attorney was writing a book about the killings.

Rader also said he plans to apologize to his victims' families at his sentencing.

He chillingly recounted trolling Wichita neighborhoods stalking his prey. He told how he hanged an 11-year-old girl from a sewer pipe after killing her parents and brother. He described strangling a 62-year-old woman with pantyhose and dumping her body under a bridge.

Dennis Rader provided the grisly account Monday as he confessed to being the BTK serial killer and pleaded guilty to 10 murders, saying he shot, stabbed or strangled his victims to satisfy his sexual fantasies.

Rader, a 60-year-old former code inspector and church president with a wife and two children, almost certainly will go to prison for the rest of his life when he is sentenced in August.

In pleading guilty, an unfailingly courteous and emotionless Rader helpfully corrected the judge on some matters, clarified others and at one point launched into an almost scholarly discourse on serial killing.

"If you've read much about serial killers, they go through what they call different phases. In the trolling stage, basically, you're looking for a victim at that time," he said. "You can be trolling for months or years, but once you lock in on a certain person, you become a stalker."

Rader also described how he used a "hit kit" consisting of guns, rope, handcuffs and tape in a briefcase or a bowling bag. He talked of his first four victims almost as animals, saying he decided to "put them down."

The man who called himself BTK -- for his preferred method, "Bind, Torture, Kill" -- cannot get the death penalty because the killings occurred before Kansas adopted capital punishment. But each count carries a sentence of up to life in prison. The guilty pleas came on the day his trial was supposed to start. Sentencing is Aug. 17.

For the families of Rader's victims, the confession answered questions that had haunted them for decades.

The BTK killer taunted media and police with cryptic messages during a cat-and-mouse game that began after the first killing, in 1974. BTK resurfaced in 2004 after years of silence with a letter to The Wichita Eagle that included photos of a 1986 strangling victim and a photocopy of her missing driver's license.

That letter was followed by several other cryptic messages and packages. The break in the case came earlier this year after a computer diskette the killer had sent was traced to Rader's Lutheran church, where he once served as president.

He did not reach a plea bargain with prosecutors. Rader said he pleaded guilty because a trial would be "just a long process. So it's just a mathematical problem. It's guilty."

Rader spent almost his entire life in the Wichita area, where he earned a criminal justice degree. He has been married for 34 years and worked in suburban Park City as a code inspector, handling stray dogs and looking for violations such as overgrown grass.

He showed a similar attention to detail as a serial killer.

He said he let some women smoke to put them at ease before he killed them. He told of locking one victim's children in a bathroom with toys and blankets to make them comfortable. He said he was careful to make one man as comfortable as possible while tying him up, putting a pillow under his head and a coat under his body, because the man had cracked a rib in a car accident.

Steve Relford, the oldest son of victim Shirley Vian, was 5 when he and his siblings were locked in a bathroom as Rader killed their mother in 1977. Relford leaned forward and listened intently as Rader described the attack.

"I proceeded to tie the kids up, and they started crying and got real upset, so I said, 'Oh, this is not going to work.' So we moved them to the bathroom. She helped me," he said. "And then I proceeded to tie her up. She got sick and threw up. I got her a glass of water, comforted her a little bit and then I went ahead and tied her up and put a bag over her head and strangled her."

 Like Dennis Rader, most serial predators crave control. Many were abused, but what pushes them, and not others, to murder is a mystery.

 Monday's confession by BTK killer Dennis L. Rader was a rare public look into the eerie world of serial killers, one that is full of tantalizing patterns but governed by a violence that scientists and profilers do not understand.

Most serial killers are publicity hounds. But details of their crimes usually come out in the relative privacy of a jailhouse interview rather than in open court. The terms Rader used to describe his killings — "trolling" for victims, "stalking" his prey — startled former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt.

"He's quoting serial killer tradecraft," Van Zandt said. "These are the words I would use standing up in front of a class of FBI agents or law enforcement officers talking about serial killers."

Rader's words weren't the only thing crime experts found familiar. His personal history and tightly controlled demeanor dovetail with those of most other serial killers.

"These are guys with an excessive need for power, dominance and control," said Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University. And they don't seem to be able to satisfy it, he said, in any socially acceptable way.

Even though decades of field and academic study have mapped commonalities among serial killers — they are mostly men, abused as children, obsessed with power and status — experts said they were far from determining what creates them.

"There are lots of children who are abused and abandoned," Levin said. "They feel an exceptional amount of powerlessness, and they grow up and compensate by being CEOs and businessmen."

Others, he said, turn into the BTK killer.

Serial killers tend to exist on society's margins, feeling neglected and passed over. Rader, a city ordinance officer, had been unable to become a cop; Ted Bundy, who killed dozens of women, flunked out of two law schools. Cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer was stuck in a menial job in a chocolate factory.

Dennis Nilsen, convicted in the 1980s of murdering 15 homosexual men, was a civil servant in London who would often tie his dead victims in chairs and lecture them about civil service regulation.

The publicity gained through their crimes offsets that perceived neglect.

The killings "are the fundamental achievements in their entire lives, the high points," said Elliott Leyton, an emeritus professor of anthropology at Memorial University of Newfoundland and author of "Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer." The killings, he said, are typically recounted "the same way a craftsman would talk about a fine piece of furniture he made."

Serial killers' need to control their victims was chillingly illustrated by Rader. He always brought a gun to his crime scenes, but used it only if a victim was about to escape. He preferred to kill up close, by strangulation.

"They enjoy the physical contact, they love squeezing the last breath," said Levin, who has written several books on serial killers. "They love hearing their victims scream … killing is almost incidental. Power is the motive."

As, frequently, is sex. For many serial killers, sexual urges have become linked to violence, and the sense of power provided by murder is coupled with an erotic release. Rader said that he killed to satisfy "sexual fantasies," which he did not detail in court Monday.

The killers often are victims of childhood trauma that blended control, sex and violence.

Gary Ridgway, the Green River killer who murdered 48 women before he was caught in 2001, wet the bed as a child. His mother, sometimes in a revealing nightgown, would drag him into a bathtub, strip and clean him.

Ridgway was confused by the mix of anger, humiliation, lack of control and love for his mother, tinged with eroticism, said Tomas Guillen, a professor at Seattle University who has studied the Green River killer's recorded confessions. "I'm angry at Mom, I want to kill her, but I love her," is how Guillen summarized Ridgway's thoughts.

Many serial killers target victims who are not part of their world — in Ridgway's case, prostitutes.

What sets Ridgway and Rader apart from most, however, is that they both had lengthy marriages, owned homes and attended church. Most such criminals are loners and drifters who have a hard time maintaining relationships.

Many serial killers also are aware of their peers. "We've arrested these guys over the years, and they've got all the articles on Ted Bundy all over the house," Van Zandt said. "It's the same reason why generals read books about other generals — how did they make their decisions? What would they do in this situation?"

Sometimes the killers get competitive. In the 1980s, Dave Reichert, now a congressman, was a detective investigating the Green River killings when he received a letter from Bundy, who was in a Florida prison awaiting execution.

Bundy told the detective that he could give him insight into the mind of a serial killer.

Reichert and a colleague visited him for two days and found him congenial. But his motive for offering help was clear: Another killer was making a bigger name for himself. "Bundy was out of the limelight," Reichert recalled. "He wanted a way to get attention."

In his correspondence with law enforcement and the media before his capture, Rader would frequently mention other serial killers and demand their level of notoriety. One spelling and typo-ridden letter to a Wichita television station in 1978 summed up his yearning for celebrity, along with the inability to explain what drove him to kill.

"You don't understand these things because your not under the influence of factor x," he wrote. "The same thing that made Son of Sam, Jack The Ripper, Havery Glatman, Boston Strangler, Dr. H.H. Holmes Panty Hose Strangler of Florida, Hillside Strangler, Ted of The West Coast and many more infamous character kill…. There is no help, no cure, except death or being caught and put away."

"I look forward to a trial of this case because it is important after 30 years for people to know and for people to understand and appreciate, not only the work of law enforcement, but to be able to say, 'It's over, it's over,'" District Attorney Nola Foulston said after suspect Dennis Rader's arraignment Tuesday.

Rader, 60, stood mute during the brief hearing, leaving it to District Court Judge Gregory Waller to enter a not guilty plea for him. Defense attorney Steve Osburn said Rader will not enter any other plea.

Waller set trial for June 27 - a date likely to be postponed.

Rader, a former city compliance officer from suburban Park City, was arrested Feb. 25 and charged in 10 deaths linked to the serial killer known as BTK, which stands for "Bind, Torture, Kill." The killings began in the 1970s and made headlines again last year when the killer started sending cryptic messages and packages to media and police.

Authorities have declined to say what led them to Rader.

Prosecutors cannot seek the death penalty because all the crimes were committed before 1994, when Kansas passed its capital punishment law.

But in a dramatic moment at the arraignment, Foulston stood across the table from Rader and looked him in the eye as she handed him a court document seeking a harsher sentence for the most recent of the 10 killings.

Foulston told Rader she would seek a so-called hard-40 sentence for the death of Dolores Davis, 62, who was abducted from her Park City home Jan. 19, 1991, and found strangled two weeks later. The sentence means Rader, if convicted, would have to serve at least 40 years without a chance of parole.

As Rader was being taken out of the courtroom, one of victims' family members yelled out to him: "Don't worry, you won't last that long."

In the other nine killings, Rader would have a chance of parole after 15 years even if sentenced to life in prison under law on the books at the time of those crimes.

Attorney Robert Beattie, who has written a book about the BTK killings, said such courtroom dramatics are typical for Foulston.

Warren Eisenbise, a Wichita defense attorney who has tried 31 murder cases since 1958 and is friends with Foulston, said he "found it amusing."

"I don't think it did anything to affect the integrity of the case at all," Eisenbise said. "She does that."

Foulston told reporters she wanted the case to go to a jury trial to determine Rader's guilt or innocence.

"Without that we still will wonder and live with the question for the rest of our lives in this community - and there isn't a book, there isn't anything that can make sense of this case - without a jury making a determination," she said.

Rader's defense team is considering seeking a change of venue but had not made a final decision, defense attorney Steve Osburn said, adding attorneys do not anticipate making Rader's competency a part of the defense.

Osburn said Rader, despite his lack of cooperation in the courtroom, "cooperates with us. We are able to work with him and he is able to help with his defense."

Prosecutors have listed 247 potential witnesses, and the public defender's office has said a trial is likely more than a year away. Rader last month waived his right to a preliminary hearing, meaning prosecutors will not have to reveal details of their case until trial.

Rader, 60, who is accused of being the BTK serial killer, has been in custody since he was arrested Feb. 25. He is charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder for slayings that occurred from 1974 to 1991.

The Rev. Michael Clark, who visits Rader in the Sedgwick County jail a couple of times a week, said the letter had been posted for about a month before he took it down Friday.

"I posted it on the bulletin board where we have all the greetings, all the letters, all the expressions of concern for members of the congregation," Clark said. "I mentioned in a worship service that I had copies posted on the bulletin board.

"It's a very generic, very laid-back letter expressing his appreciation," the pastor said.

BTK - a self-coined nickname that stands for "Bind, Torture, Kill" - stoked fears throughout the 1970s in Wichita, a manufacturing center with 350,000 residents, about 180 miles southwest of Kansas City, Mo.

Rader, a former city codes enforcement supervisor in Park City, has been a member of the church for 30 years, where he has served as an usher and president of the church council.

Clark said his congregation's feelings for Rader since his arrest have been mixed, though he said the ordeal has brought some families who had been inactive back to the church.

Earlier this week, Rader waived his right to a preliminary hearing, which means prosecutors will not have to publicly reveal any of their case against him until trial. He is expected to enter a plea at his arraignment, set for May 3.

Dennis Rader spoke briefly, answering "yes sir" when Judge Greg Waller asked about his decision to waive a detailed presentation of the charges against him.

Rader, 60, will enter a plea at his arraignment in Sedgwick County District Court on May 3.

The former Boy Scout leader and city compliance officer is charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder for killings between 1974 and 1991.

The first victims of BTK -- which stands for "bind, torture, kill" -- were a husband and wife and their two children. The last was a 62-year-old grandmother.

Rader was arrested in February after a 31-year manhunt. In the 1970s and 1980s the BTK killer terrorized Wichita and taunted police with clues in letters and postcards. BTK resurfaced last year, offering more clues in various correspondence, and investigators have said it appears he wanted to be caught.

Rader will not face the death penalty because Kansas did not adopt the death penalty until 1994, after the last known BTK crime was committed.

The man accused of being the BTK serial killer is expected to appear in court Tuesday to face 10 counts of first-degree murder. Dennis Rader is the man, police say, killed several women over a span of several years in and around Wichita, Kansas. The killings stumped police, but so did the letters the BTK killer would send to the media and police that taunted them about the crimes.

Military records place the Wichita-area man accused of being the BTK serial killer in Mobile in early 1967.

Wichita law enforcement officials recently provided information to Mobile police that the Bind, Torture, Kill suspect, Dennis Rader, had been in the Mobile area during the late 1960s.

The military records given to the Mobile Register by The Wichita Eagle newspaper show that the 59-year-old Rader was stationed at Mobile's Brookley Air Force Base near downtown Mobile in February 1967.

Rader would have been in his early 20s while stationed at Brookley, which was closed as a military base in 1969. The former air base is now called Brookley Industrial Complex and contains Mobile Downtown Airport.

Officer Eric Gallichant, a Mobile police spokesman, said Tuesday that detectives have not had time to search for any of the old homicide case files dating back to the 1960s, so no connection has been made between Rader and slayings here.

Rader's military record records show he was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas -- about 665 miles from Mobile -- where he began training in mid-August 1966. On the last day of September, he was ordered to report at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, for maintenance training.

He remained at Sheppard, located about 730 miles from Mobile, until Feb. 4, 1967, when he was transferred to Brookley to undergo training as an outside wire and antenna installation and maintenance specialist.

After almost a year in Mobile, Rader was ordered to Okinawa where he spent about six months as a member of an antenna construction team. He was then shipped to Japan where he served at Tachikawa Air Base until his tour of duty in the Air Force ended in August 1970.

Rader has lived almost ever since in the Wichita, Kan. , area where he was an active church member and family man, described as a stern civil servant known for actively enforcing city codes pertaining to matters such as pets on the loose and overgrown grass.

On Feb. 25, he was arrested and later charged with killing 10 people in Wichita from 1974 to 1991. Authorities are now tracing his movements to try to determine whether he has been involved in other homicides in other areas.

During BTK's homicide spree, the killer taunted police with letters and even poems, many sent to area media, in which he bragged about the killings.

In a 1974 letter to the Wichita Eagle, he suggested that he be called the BTK strangler, with BTK standing for "bind them, torture them, kill them."

Last year, the Wichita paper published a story on the 30th anniversary of BTK's first known act, when he killed a family of four, including an 11-year-old girl and a 9-year-old boy.

The story prompted BTK to resume his contacts with the media. Evidence gleaned from those latest contacts led law enforcement officials to the conclusion that Rader was BTK, according to news reports.

Since the serial killer first struck Wichita in 1974, a lot of people have shared theories about him: where he worked, his behaviors, his hobbies.

Now, after 31 years, a suspect has been arrested. Dennis Rader, charged with 10 BTK killings, has been in jail for two weeks.

Do the pre-arrest theories about BTK match up to the man charged with the crimes?

In some ways, yes. Police and others thought he might blend into the community. Rader, a Boy Scout leader and president of his church council, was a college-educated, working family man in Park City, Kan.

In other ways, no. Police said BTK had a lifetime fascination with trains. Rader's younger brother Jeff said he was the train lover in the family, not Dennis.

The idea that BTK was a part of the community was daring back in the late '70s, said Richard LaMunyon, who was police chief from 1976 to 1989. It went against the general profile, the kind you see in made-for-TV movies: the serial killer as a loner, a man with no romantic prospects and an unsteady work history.

However, it wasn't exactly strange to suggest that BTK hung around Wichita State University, said Brian Withrow, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the university.

"They kept saying he was connected to WSU," he said. "Name five people in Wichita who ain't."

Withrow said he couldn't think of a case in which a profile directly led to the apprehension of a person.

"It may in fact direct your investigation in an inefficient way," he said.

Although profiles draw on experts, some of them scientists, it's a "very subjective" kind of science, he said.

In September, Dennis McKenzie, a clairvoyant from Cambridge, England, came to Wichita to see what "feelings" he could pick up at the crime scenes.

McKenzie said at the time that he thought BTK would be a maintenance man or plumber, someone who worked for himself.

And he would be ordinary.

"It could be your next-door neighbor, and you'd have no way of knowing it," McKenzie said.

That possibility - that BTK could be someone's neighbor - was why police released a detailed list of potential BTK traits late last year, Withrow said.

The November list - including BTK's possible age and passion for railroads - was culled from the serial killer's communications, police said.

Police had no choice but to release the description and assume it was accurate, Withrow said.

"If they had decided to not release it, they would run the risk of when they did catch the guy, he would say, `Look, I told you who I was. But you didn't release the information.'"

A Minneapolis, Minn., profiler said police should have released more information about BTK and the killings.

The sooner police release details about a homicide, the more likely they are to get useful tips from the public, said Pat Brown, who has assisted police elsewhere by creating criminal profiles.

That's why, in August 2004, she did something she almost never does: publish an unsolicited profile of a killer on her Web site.

The profile of BTK was a "dangerous" thing to do, Brown said, because she didn't have access to police information about the killings. Instead she used her own research, including a visit to Wichita.

But that doesn't mean it wasn't helpful, she said.

"It's supposed to be a theory," she said. "It's a theory intended to get you to think and follow up on ideas."

She received numerous tips about possible suspects. Dennis Rader was not one of them.

In contrast, police have had years to consider the mystery of BTK, LaMunyon said.

"It's always kind of amusing to listen to individuals, especially people who aren't directly related to this investigation, make their forecast as to what kind of individual this is," he said.

"They don't have all the facts."

Someday we'll know more about BTK's background and what led him to kill, LaMunyon said. Any profiles developed during the investigation played only a small part in the case.

"You have to apply all of that knowledge - evidence, the victims - then you come up with a picture.

"You can't use just any one single part of this thing."

Even as Wichita voiced relief at the prospect that one of the most notorious serial killers in recent history might finally be behind bars, those who knew Mr. Rader, the man the police have accused of being the city's B.T.K. killer, said they were beginning to experience new waves of bewilderment, confusion, betrayal and fear.

At Christ Lutheran, where Mr. Rader, his wife, his mother and his in-laws have been members for 30 years and where Mr. Rader began his elected term as president of the church council in January, the Rev. Michael G. Clark, the pastor, said he was having difficulty grasping the possibility that the man the police arrested on Friday was the same one he knew so well.

Some members of the congregation wept during services Sunday, and crisis counselors arrived at the church by the afternoon. Mr. Rader's wife, Paula, was in seclusion, the pastor said, in "a state of disbelief."

"We've known him for 30 years, and there's nothing that would have suggested anything like this," said Paul Carlstedt, one of the church's 400 members, as he huddled in the chill with his wife outside Christ Lutheran. "We just don't know what to think, don't know what can happen or go on with people."

During those same 30 years, as Mr. Rader, 59, was attending Christ Lutheran, raising two children, and working for a security system company, as an address-checker for the Census Bureau and eventually as a code compliance officer in his suburban hometown of Park City, the police say he was also secretly tormenting Wichita. They say he is responsible for strangulations, taunting and explicit letters, poems and packages to the police and news media.

B.T.K., as the killer dubbed himself in one of his rambling writings years ago, stood for bind, torture, kill.

On Sunday, the authorities here said that Mr. Rader, who had not been appointed a lawyer, had been booked into the Sedgwick County Jail, where he was being held on a $10 million probable cause bond on suspicion of 10 first-degree murders, dating from 1974 to 1991.

Prosecutors here are likely to file formal charges against him this week, Georgia Cole, a spokeswoman for the Sedgwick County district attorney's office, said on Sunday.

Still, the authorities here say they have by no means ended their investigation. On Saturday, when they announced Mr. Rader's arrest, it was the first time they publicly linked two new killings to B.T.K. And investigators will continue to examine other unsolved killings in the area over the last 31 years to determine if they can be linked to B.T.K.

Richard LaMunyon, the former police chief who led the department during the peak of the B.T.K. search years ago, said that investigators had long thought that six to eight additional killings might also be B.T.K. cases.

While the arrest, residents here said, may have answered some of their biggest questions about the killer they had been wondering and worrying about for more than a generation, it also set off a new set of questions, small and large.

In a weekend news conference, law enforcement officials revealed almost nothing about why they focused on Mr. Rader and what evidence they might have against him. In the information void, rumors and questions filled Wichita's airwaves and Internet chat rooms on Sunday: How had the police found him now, after so many years of looking? Why was Park City's public library suddenly shut down on Friday during Mr. Rader's arrest? Who had supplied the DNA sample that, according to comments by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, allowed the authorities to link Mr. Rader to the crime scenes?

Janet Johnson, a Wichita police spokeswoman, did dismiss one claim that had been reported on national television. Mr. Rader's daughter, who is in her 20's, did not turn her father in to the police, Ms. Johnson said.

In Park City, the small suburb just north of Wichita where Mr. Rader lived with his family for most of the past 30 years, the questions were more personal. On Sunday, half a dozen police cars and a maze of yellow police tape lines still filled the neighborhood near the Raders' house.

Donna Lowry, a neighbor, leaned against her porch wall, reflecting on all the times she had talked to Mr. Rader in his role as a city worker checking homes and yards for possible code violations - a job, all here say, Mr. Rader carried out with no tolerance for even the most minor violations.

In his uniform, with his badge and his marked city vehicle and his cap with earflaps, Mr. Rader often pulled up to her house, Ms. Lowry said, to complain about the way her boat was parked in the front driveway or her German shepherd running loose.

Upon further reflection, she wondered, Had he looked at her strangely? Why hadn't she always locked her front door? Would her 15-year-old son get over the stress he kept talking about this weekend when he learned that the man who helped him when he was bitten by a dog was accused of being B.T.K.?

Inside Christ Lutheran Church on Sunday morning, Mr. Clark, the pastor, asked his followers to bolster one another in a "time of craziness," and not to lose their faith.

"It is important that we show compassion and love towards our brother, Dennis Rader. If what is claimed to be true, we should be about the business of asking for God's help in healing of heart and soul," he told them during his sermon.

"The truth from God," Mr. Clark added, "will free us from the anger, the pain, the bitterness, the hardened heart, the release from being lost and confused."

Mr. Clark learned of Mr. Rader's arrest, he said, when four police officers appeared at the church's front doors on Friday. They had a search warrant. Mr. Clark would not reveal what the officers said they were looking for or whether it related to Mr. Rader's role as church council president, but he said that they told him they considered Mr. Rader a suspect in the B.T.K. serial murders.

Mr. Clark is still trying to digest what they were telling him about the man who had sometimes run the sound system in the building, had served as an usher and who was in church just a week ago Sunday.

Joseph Otero, 38, found strangled in his home on Jan. 15, 1974. Police said he had been bound, but not gagged, while three other family members were killed.

Julie Otero, 34, found strangled in her home on Jan. 15, 1974. The wife of Joseph, Julie Otero was struck, gagged and bound before being killed.

Josephine Otero, 11, found strangled in her home on Jan. 15, 1974. Police said her lifeless, partially clothed body was found hung by the neck from a rope tied to a sewer pipe in the basement.

Joseph Otero II, 9, found strangled in his home on Jan. 15, 1974. He was found bound with three hoods over his head.

Kathryn Bright, 21, found strangled in her home on April 4, 1974. She had been bound with cord and strangled, and her partially dressed body had been stabbed several times.

Shirley Vian, 24, found strangled in her home on March 18, 1977. She was found partially dressed on her bed with a plastic bag over her head, and cord wrapped around her neck, hands and feet.

Nancy Fox, 25, found strangled in her home on Dec. 9, 1977. Her telephone cord was cut, and her partially dressed body was found was strangled with nylon stockings.

Marine Hedge, 53, abducted from her home on April 27, 1985, and found along a dirt road eight days later. The autopsy showed that she had been strangled, and although her hands weren't tied, a knotted pair of pantyhose was found nearby.

Vicki Wegerle, 28, found strangled in her home on Sept. 16, 1986. Her husband found her body in their bed, but she had not been sexually abused.

Delores Davis, 62, was abducted from her home on Jan. 19, 1991, and found 13 days later under a bridge on an unpaved road in northern Sedgwick County. The autopsy showed that she had been strangled, and that her hands, feet and knees were bound with pantyhose.

"The bottom line: BTK is arrested," Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams said Saturday, setting off applause from a crowd that included family members of some of the victims.

The suspect was identified as Dennis L. Rader, a 59-year-old city worker in nearby Park City, who was arrested Friday. Police did not say how they identified Rader as a suspect or whether he has said anything since his arrest.

BTK a self-coined nickname that stands for "Bind, Torture, Kill" stoked fears throughout the 1970s in Wichita, a manufacturing center with 350,000 residents, about 180 miles southwest of Kansas City, Mo.

Then the killer resurfaced about a year ago after 25 years of silence. He had been linked to eight slayings between 1974 and 1986, but police said Saturday they had identified two more, from 1985 and 1991.

Rader, a Cub Scout leader who was active at his Lutheran church, lived with his wife, neighbors said. Public records indicate they have two grown children. Messages left for family members were not returned on Saturday, and no one answered the door at the home of his in-laws.

A few neighbors recalled receiving small favors from Rader, but most interviewed Saturday said the municipal codes enforcement supervisor was an unpleasant man who often went looking for reasons to cite his neighbors for violations of city codes.

"A part of me was scared when I heard, because I talked to him. It's a little creepy," said Chris Yoder, 23, who once lived nearby.

Rader has yet to be charged, but a jubilant collection of law enforcers and community leaders told the crowd in City Council chambers they were confident the long-running case could now be closed.

"Victims whose voices were brutally silenced by the evil of one man will now have their voices heard again," Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline said.

Rader was