Authorities in Oklahoma are searching for additional “trophies” that the serial killer known as “BTK” said he hid in various locations.
On Tuesday, the Osage County Sheriff’s Office (OCSO) held a press conference to announce the new initiative, following the formation of a new task force.
“We have locations provided to us by BTK where he says he has other trophies hidden. We are in the process of working to go try to recover those items,” Sheriff Eddie Virden said, according to CNN.
The search for BTK’s “trophies” stems from a 2008 letter that the serial killer, whose real name is Dennis Rader, wrote from prison explaining that he had buried various items under the floor of his backyard shed. Less than a month ago, Osage County investigators recovered some of those items in a hole on the property where Rader used to live with his family. Rader is known to have kept jewelry, clothing, and other items belonging to his victims.
On Monday, the OCSO announced that it was forming a new National BTK Task Force that would see experts and resources from law enforcement agencies in Oklahoma and Kansas, as well as federal agencies, working together to solve a 1976 cold case that may be linked to BTK.
In August, Rader was named the prime suspect in the 1976 disappearance of Cynthia Dawn Kinney, 16, in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, as well as the 1990 murder of Shawna Beth Garber, 22, in McDonald County, Missouri. Kinney’s body has never been found, but investigators are operating on the theory that Rader may have buried her in a barn near the Kansas-Oklahoma border. Months after she disappeared, police received an anonymous call from a man claiming her body could be found in an old barn.
The task force is working to solve Kinney’s disappearance.
“My father absolutely loves barns and silos,” Rader’s daughter, Kerri Rawson, told CNN.
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“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,” Rawson added. “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.”
Earlier this month, the OCSO released decades-old sketches from Rader, whose serial killer nickname stands for “Bind, Torture, Kill.” Rader is currently serving ten consecutive life sentences for the people he pleaded guilty to killing throughout the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. When he was arrested in 2005, hundreds of sketches showing women bound and gagged, with nooses around their necks, were collected, the Daily Mail reported.
One of the images, which is just now being released, shows three different women bound and gagged in what is believed to be a barn. The OCSO released the images as part of a new investigation, launched in January, into potential additional victims, the Independent reported.
Sheriff Virden and his team believe some of the colored sketches depict additional crimes Rader may have committed.