An Oklahoma county sheriff announced on Monday that he had formed a national task force to look into whether Dennis Rader, the BTK serial killer, was involved in a 1976 missing persons case as well as other cases uncovered in their investigation.
Osage County Sheriff Eddie Virden said that “initial findings strongly indicate potential links” between Rader and Cynthia Dawn Kinney and others. He said he had enlisted the aid of numerous investigators — including CrimeOnline’s Nancy Grace — as well as the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Oklahoma and the Kansas Department of Corrections, where Rader is serving 10 life sentences.
Not included on Virden’s list is Mike Fisher, the district attorney for Osage and Pawnee Counties, who said earlier Monday — before Virden’s press release — that there isn’t even enough evidence to consider Rader a suspect in the 16-year-old Kinney’s disappearance, Tulsa World reported. He announced that the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation had agreed to look over the results of Virden’s investigation.
“I have asked the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to look into the sheriff’s allegations that Dennis Rader is the prime suspect in Cynthia Dawn Kinney’s disappearance in 1976,” said Fisher.
Fisher allowed that Rader should be considered a “person of interest” in the case.
“The sheriff does have some information that he has gathered that would lead a reasonable person to ask further questions, but nothing that’s been gathered so far is something that could be used in a court of law as actual evidence,” Fisher said.
Virden said that he had met with Oklahoma state investigators but heard nothing from them afterward.
“The OCSO remains committed to cooperating fully with the OSBI and other law enforcement agencies in pursuit of justice for Cynthia Kinney,” he said.
Last month, Virden named Rader the “prime suspect” in Kinney’s disappearance after leading a search on the former site of the killer’s home in Park City, Kansas, and finding “items of interest,” as CrimeOnline previously reported. Virden said Rader was also the prime suspect in the murder of 22-year-old Beth Garber, who was found dead in 1990 but not identified until 2021.
Rader was arrested in 2005, years after he eluded and taunted investigators and the media. His trail of digital evidence is what eventually helped police capture him. He then nicknamed himself “BTK.” which stands for “bind, torture, kill.”
Rader is now serving 10 consecutive life sentences for the deaths of 10 people between 1974 to 1991 in and around Wichita.
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[Featured image: Dennis Rader in 2013/Kansas Department of Corrections]
