BTK Killer Gets Maximum Sentence

Sentencing Comes After Tearful Testimony And Statement By Rader

(CBS/AP) 
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.

Rader looked away briefly as crime scene photos were shown. He otherwise appeared calm throughout the hearing, sipping water or occasionally taking notes on a legal pad.

Gruesome details of the killings were projected on a courtroom screen throughout Wednesday's testimony, including how in 1974, Rader suffocated 9-year-old Joey Otero in front of his mother, Moriarty reports.


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.

Some of those who were given five minutes to speak to Rader and the court, such as Carmen Otero, expressed pure anger, Moriarty reports for CBSNews.com. Others, such as Kevin Bright, gave testimony almost too intense to listen to.

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

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.