(NewsNation) — Authorities in Oklahoma believe convicted serial killer Dennis Rader, known as BTK, could be responsible for more killings, a belief based partly on some of Rader’s writings when he was active.
Last week, the Osage County Sheriff’s Office named Rader as the “prime suspect” in two unsolved killings — one in Oklahoma and one in Missouri. Cynthia Kinney, a 16-year-old cheerleader in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, disappeared in 1976 after being last seen at a laundromat.
Sheriff Eddie Virden said he decided to investigate when he learned that Rader had included the phrase “bad laundry day” in his writings.
“We’ve continued to investigate looking for answers in our case and have come across documentations produced by him, notes, photographs, many other items, maps that he created, that led us to potentially other victims and (killings) we feel he was possibly involved in,” Virden said Wednesday on “CUOMO.”
As part of the investigation, Osage County authorities earlier this month searched a property near Wichita, Kansas, that formerly belonged to Rader. They discovered, among other items, pantyhose buried in the backyard.
“You can still see where they’re knotted, where they appear to have been around, probably, somebody’s wrist,” Virden previously told NewsNation after the dig. Police also found jewelry.
Virden also believes his investigation has also found possible links to the murder of 22-year-old Shawna Beth Garber, whose body was discovered in 1990. An autopsy revealed she had been raped, strangled and restrained with bindings about two months before her body was found in McDonald County, Missouri.
A McDonald County detective, Lorie Howard, previously told NewsNation she doesn’t believe the pantyhose could have belonged to Garber.
“She was bound with six different types of bindings … and I don’t believe there was ever a nylon pantyhose-type of binding used on her in any way,” Howard said.
As for Kinney’s case, friend Tjuana Boulanger said, “the more evidence I hear, the more I’m almost convinced” Rader is the killer.
Rader killed from 1974 to 1991, giving himself the nickname BTK — for “bind, torture and kill.”
A city code inspector in Kansas, he was arrested in February 2005 — a year after resuming communications with police and the media after going silent years earlier.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.