"Let me make it very clear that I'm not challenging law enforcement. It's very possible [it is he]. If that's a fact, we'll accept it and move on," Clark said. "All I am saying is I don't know the man they call BTK. I know Dennis Rader. . . . I could ask him to do anything at this church. He would light the candles, work the sound system, usher."
Paul Carlstedt, who worshiped with Rader for 30 years, said the arrest is "beyond comprehension for me. None of us will ever be the same again. I've thought back and asked myself, 'Is there something he did, some word, some deed that could shed light?' I can't find one thing.
Dennis L. Rader was a compliance officer in Park City, Kan.
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BTK Timeline
Jan. 15, 1974: Joseph Otero, 38, and his wife, Julie, 34, are strangled in their home along with two of their children, Josephine, 11, and Joseph II, 9.
April 4, 1974: Kathryn Bright, 21, is stabbed to death in her home. Police later conclude she was a BTK victim.
October 1974: The Wichita Eagle-Beacon gets a letter from someone taking responsibility for the Otero family killing and including crime scene details.
March 17, 1977: Shirley Vian, 24, is found tied up and strangled at her home.
Dec. 8, 1977: Nancy Fox, 25, is found tied up and strangled in her home. The killer's voice is captured on tape when he calls a dispatcher to report the crime.
Jan. 31, 1978: A poem referring to the Vian killing is sent to the Wichita Eagle-Beacon.
Feb. 10, 1978: A letter from BTK is sent to KAKE-TV claiming responsibility for the deaths of Vian, Fox and an unnamed victim. Police Chief Richard LaMunyon says a serial killer is at large and has threatened to strike again.
Aug. 15, 1979: Police get more than 100 tips in the first day of radio and TV broadcasts that repeat the voice of the BTK strangler from the 1977 recording.
April 28, 1979: BTK waits inside a home but leaves before the 63-year-old woman who lives there returns. He later sends her a letter letting her know he was there.
Sept. 16, 1986: Vicki Wegerle, 28, is strangled in her home.
March 19, 2004: A letter arrives at the Wichita Eagle containing a photocopy of Wegerle's driver's license and photos of her body. Police link it to BTK.
Feb. 26, 2005: After receiving several more letters, authorities announce the arrest of BTK. Police identify him as Dennis Rader, 59, a municipal worker in nearby Park City.
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". . . We prayed here for the capture of BTK. We didn't know he was among us."
Carlstedt said that he always viewed Rader as someone who could be counted on. "Here's the kind of guy he is: Last week, he couldn't make the Wednesday service because his mother was ill, so he and [his wife] Paula brought by the salad and the spaghetti sauce because he said he would."
Bob Smyser, who has known Rader for 35 years through the church, said that "every time I came up to the church to do stuff -- wash windows, fall cleaning, Dennis was there. I mean, how do you judge relations in your life after this? How do you deal with everybody?"
Neither Carlstedt nor Smyser socialized with Rader outside church. Both knew little about his personal life. Rader's brother, Jeff, did not return a reporter's telephone call seeking comment. At Rader's home, the shades were drawn, and no one answered a knock on the door.
Police investigators and psychologists had long concluded that the killer thrived on attention and the knowledge that he continued to elude law enforcement. If Rader is BTK, he became so cocky that he once killed a woman who lived on his street and on another occasion called 911 to report a slaying he had committed.
The killer's first known victims in January 1974 were members of the Otero family: a father, a mother and two of their children. Joseph Otero unexpectedly returned home after dropping another child at school and surprised the killer.
In later attacks, it is believed BTK waited for women in their homes, tied them up and strangled them. In April 1974, he killed again. This time the victim was a college student.
Three years later, when he strangled Nancy Fox, 25, in her Wichita home, he called 911 from a pay phone. "You will find a homicide at 843 South Pershing," he said.
Although the killer never sexually abused his victims, he masturbated near at least two of them, leaving semen that later helped authorities link him to the homicides, according to news reports.
Killer Seeks Attention
He first communicated through the media after the Otero killings; his writings contained poor grammar and spelling. "Its hard to control myself," he wrote. "You probably call me 'psychotic with sexual perversion hang-up.' When this monster enter my brain I will never know. . . . I can't stop it so the monster goes on."
BTK struck another time in 1977, and in 1985, 1986 and 1991. In one of his last communications, he sent a note to the Wichita Eagle-Beacon newspaper in early 1978; that note was not publicized.
Soon the angry killer sent this screed to a television station: "How many people do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention? How about some name for me, its time: 7 down and many more to go. I like the following . . . The B.T.K. STRANGLER, THE WICHITA HANGMAN . . . THE GAROTE PHANTOM, THE ASPHYXIATOR."
