BTK Killer’s former property searched for clues in unsolved case

Posted at 3:37 PM, August 23, 2023 and last updated 12:00 PM, August 31, 2023

PARK CITY, Kan. (Court TV) – Investigators from Osage County in Oklahoma searched the former Park City, Kansas property of BTK Killer Dennis Rader in search of possible connections to unsolved cases. Namely, they were looking for possible connections to the 1976 disappearance of Cynthia Kinney.

Rader, now 78, is currently serving 10 consecutive life sentences for a 10-victim killing spree that spanned the 1970s through the 1990s. He was arrested in 2005 and entered a guilty plea 10 months after his capture.

Panty Hose Ligature found on BTK's property.

A panty hose ligature discovered in Oklahoma. Investigators are looking into whether the BTK serial killer Rader was responsible for other homicides, with their search leading them to dig on his former Kansas property. (Osage County Sheriff)

Two of the murders Rader admitted to committing took place in the Park City vicinity. Rader’s former property is now an empty field that the city owns. The serial killer dubbed himself BTK, which stands for “bind, torture and kill.”

Back in April, Oklahoma investigators found a panty hose ligature which was tied in a knot — potentially the kind of knot that could be used to bind a person’s hands or feet.

Rader’s daughter, Kerri Rawson, spoke to Court TV about the news of the Kinney investigation.

“So the latest right now is that there is a 1976 cold case with Cynthia McKinney out of Osage County, Oklahoma,” Rawson told Court TV’s Matt Johnson. “She was a missing person. She went missing from a laundromat…and no one knows what happened to her. And so starting in, around January of this year, my dad was contacting other outlets and letting them know that he was being questioned on Cynthia McKinney.”

Rawson went on to say Rader began contacting news outlets again last spring to tell them that he was being investigated for a possible connection to the 1990 murder of Shawna Garber in Missouri.

Rawson, for the record, doesn’t feel Garber’s killing fits her dad’s M.O.

“My father’s a huge narcissist,” she continued. “He’s a sexual, sadistic psychopath and a pathological liar. And so he absolutely loves the attention. But if you will go back and look, in these cases, he’s actually saying he didn’t do these. And for somebody like my dad and honestly…[Rex Heuermann’s] case, I don’t see either of them ever claiming anything they didn’t do.”

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Rawson, now 44, was 26 years old when her father was arrested. She has since spoken out publicly about the double life he had unbeknownst to her: She knew him as the churchgoing Boy Scout leader who walked her down the aisle and was astonished when she learned he’d done things like call the police to brag about his brutal killings before the law eventually caught up with him.