The Osage County Sheriff’s Office has released new sketches that were drawn by the BTK killer. The sketches show three bound and gagged women in different barns. The investigators believe the barns could be in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri.
If you’re not familiar with BTK – real name Dennis Lynn Rader. He gave himself the name BTK which is an abbreviation he gave himself, for “bind, torture, kill”. He is an American serial killer who murdered ten people in Wichita and Park City, Kansas, between 1974 and 1991. Although BTK occasionally killed or attempted to kill men and children, he typically targeted women. His victims were often bound, sometimes with objects from their homes, and either suffocated with a plastic bag or manually strangled with a ligature.
Dennis wasn’t arrested until 2005. When he was taken into custody, an officer asked, “Mr. Rader, do you know why you’re going downtown?” He replied, “Oh, I have suspicions why.”
He was convicted and is currently serving ten consecutive life sentences.
After his arrest, police recovered hundreds of sketches and drawings. Police continue to work his case. Last month, he was named the prime suspect in the 1976 disappearance of 16-year-old Cynthia Dawn Kinney in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, and in the 1990 murder of 22-year-old Shawna Beth Garber in McDonald County, Missouri.
After police released the new sketches this week, they spoke:
“We’re hoping that releasing these, someone might recognize one of these barns or the unique features in them, or the closeness of the silo to the barn or possibly might have even found items that they didn’t know why were there that could be very important in this case,” Sheriff Virden told CNN.
“Even if the barn’s not there anymore. We would still like that information.”
One drawing shows a young female who is gagged and is sitting with her arms and legs bound, but it’s the black piping running through the barn walls that the sheriff points out.
“The reason you would have that is if you were moving livestock through there, that those bars would keep the livestock from hitting probably the tin or the wood on the outside of the barn so that if an animal hit it, you know, they wouldn’t go through and dent up the tin or knock the wood off the outside,” he told CNN.
Osage County, Oklahoma investigators believe this sketch could be linked to a missing woman last seen in southeast Kansas in 1991. Her name has not been made public in connection with Rader at this time.
“We know from things Dennis said on this exact photograph that it was a drawing he created from an actual barn,” Sheriff Virden told CNN.
A second drawing shows a female in a red top. She is also bound and gagged. The sheriff points out the barn with wood slats.
“That would be a barn that had wood slats. You know, possibly a rounded post but in that area of the barn what would have possibly a wooden floor, you know and a lot of times in tack rooms inside of barns or in feed rooms or storage,” he said.
“They wouldn’t leave a dirt floor because they didn’t have livestock in that area.”
The third sketch shows a female lying down in what appears to be a barn loft. She is tied to a staircase post that investigators are looking closely at.
“The support post appears to have a bracket and then a bolt that bolts through that to hold everything together,” Virden said.
BTK’s daughter Kerri Rawson spoke to CNN recently.
“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. And he would tease my mom about it,” she said.
“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.
SOURCE LIST –
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/02/us/btk-drawings-serial-killer-investigation/index.html