Woman in BTK Killer's Sketches May Have Been IDed

Authorities are poring over hundreds of sketches found in Dennis Rader's belongings
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 5, 2023 3:00 AM CDT
Woman in BTK Killer's Sketches May Have Been IDed
Convicted BTK killer Dennis Rader listens during a court proceeding, Oct. 12, 2005, in El Dorado, Kan.   (Travis Heying/The Wichita Eagle via AP, Pool, File)

Hundreds of sketches were found among the belongings of the so-called "BTK Killer," Dennis Rader, and the Osage County Sheriff's Office in Oklahoma says authorities may have identified one of the women depicted in a sketch. Rader pleaded guilty to 10 murders that took place in Kansas from the 1970s to the 1990s, but the potential new victim was an Oklahoma woman, and authorities believe the sketches may show victims in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri, CNN reports. Rader's daughter, Kerri Rawson, who shared the sketches online asking for help identifying the women shown in them, says she knows of at least nine murder cases that have been reopened with her father as a suspect, KAKE reports.

The women in the sketches released by CNN and Rawson are depicted as being tied up in barns (Rader named himself the "BTK Killer" for "bind, torture, kill"), and investigators hope people who see them might recognize the women and/or the barns shown. Rader, now 78, was always obsessed with barns, his daughter recalls. "My father absolutely loves barns and silos. Every time we drove around going camping, fishing, to college, he'd absolutely say this one—like he said, I want to retire here," Rawson says. "And then after he was arrested, we found out later that he had massive fantasies about those specific locations. So now we're driving around trying to find those by my memory and noting them because we need to go see, is there anybody missing or buried there." (More BTK Killer stories.)

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