US: A serial killer and former church leader clinically described in a Kansas courtroom yesterday how he murdered 10 people, calling his victims "projects" he lined up in advance to satiate sexual fantasies.
Dennis Rader, who pleaded guilty to 10 counts of murder and waived his right to a jury trial, recounted how he gave one woman a glass of water after she threw up, then strangled her with a rope as her children, locked in a nearby bathroom, screamed.
In another case he hung an 11-year-old girl in the basement of her home, after killing her parents and a 9-year-old brother upstairs.
In answers to questions from the judge, the details of an 18-year killing spree by the man who called himself "bind, torture and kill" in taunting notes to police spilled out of Rader.
He stood before the judge in Sedgwick County District Court flanked by male and female defence lawyers, who bowed their heads as he coldly described the gruesome details.
Rader, now 60, was a one-time boy scout leader and before his arrest earlier this year was lay president of the congregation at Wichita's Christ Lutheran Church, where he was a regular Sunday worshipper.
He will be sentenced on August 17th.
He will not be executed because Kansas did not reinstate the death penalty until after the crimes, which occurred between 1974 and 1991, spreading a wave of terror through the Wichita area. He faces multiple sentences that would likely keep him in jail for the rest of his life.
In cold, detached fashion he described the phases of serial killing - from "trolling" to find victims and then "stalking".
"I had project numbers," he said. "If one didn't work, I'd move on to another." He carried a "hit kit", a briefcase with rope and other items, he said, and dressed in "hit clothes" for the occasions.
Rader talked at length about his first four victims, Joseph and Julie Otero, aged 38 and 34, and their two children, Josephine (11), and Joseph (9), in January of 1974.
"I came through the back door. I cut the phone lines," he said, telling them he was hungry and that he wanted a car. The family dog was "really a problem" and he had them put it outside.
But he realised they had identified him, he said, and decided to strangle all four. He told how they struggled, at times reviving after he thought they were dead from strangulation by rope or a plastic bag placed on the head.Then he cleaned up the room.
Rader often took personal items from his victims - some of which turned up years later in packages he sent to the news media. "It was hit and miss," he said of the thefts. "If there was confusion, then I didn't. I got out of there." He told the court that serial killers have set phases, first trolling for victims and "next comes the stalking phase" at which time "they pretty much become the victim". He said he chose all of his victims to satisfy his sexual appetite.
But his sixth victim, Shirley Vian (24), was "completely random". At home alone with three young children, she had been ill and was in a robe, he said.
He told her he wanted to tie her up and have sex with her, adding: "I told her I had done this before."
"She got sick, threw up," he continued, adding that he then comforted her. "I got her a glass or water ... I put a bag over her head and strangled her."
Before that he herded her children into the bathroom with blankets and toys and tied the door shut. They were screaming as she died, he said.
Police arrested Rader in February after a 31-year manhunt.-(Reuters)