Serial killer 'worked out' to ease his task

Dennis Rader

WICHITA - Kansas serial killer Dennis Rader worked out to build up his strength because he found killing people physically hard, law enforcement agents told his sentencing hearing.

The 60-year-old Rader, who called himself BTK, for "bind, torture and kill", showed little emotion on the first day of the three-day hearing.

But relatives of those he killed sobbed and hung their heads as they listened to how Rader stalked and slowly killed his victims, largely for sexual gratification, in a 17-year spree. The testimony included photos of many of the bodies.

The agents said that shortly after his arrest last February, Rader confessed to 10 murders, telling them that in one killing he used toys to try to distract three small children as he bound and strangled their mother.

In another he pulled a chair next to a bed so he could relax while a 9-year-old boy suffocated in the plastic bag Rader wrapped round his head. And in yet another, he took his victim to a church at night, where he photographed her in various sexually explicit ways.

Rader had told law enforcement agents that he found killing people was harder work than he had expected so, as he continued killing, he worked out to improve his strength.

Throughout the testimony, the bespectacled, balding Rader was largely expressionless. Victims' relatives were expected to testify.

Rader could be sentenced to up to 175 years in jail. He will not be executed because Kansas did not reinstate the death penalty until after his crimes, which occurred between 1974 and 1991, spreading terror through the Wichita area.

- REUTERS