PAWHUSKA, Okla. — The Osage County Sheriff sat down with Dennis Rader, the man known at the BTK (bind, torture, kill) Killer to search for new leads on a cold case, the sheriff tells FOX23.
Sheriff Eddie Virden said he and his colleagues went up to the Kansas prison where BTK is serving out his multiple life sentences last month to look for new clues in a 1976 missing persons case.
“We never close the door on a case just because it goes cold,” Virden said. “And we didn’t want to rule him out, and we’re still not ruling him out.”
Virden told FOX23 he and his investigators spent three to three and a half hours with Rader, and they have also asked for access to Wichita Police’s files on the BTK killings in which ten women were brutally murdered between 1974 and 1991 in the Wichita area.
“Wichita is only a two-hour drive from where our girl disappeared,” Virden said. “And the time frame also lines up.”
However, Virden said it was Rader who mentioned the name of 16-year-old Cynthia “Cindy” Dawn Kinney first, and it was not to them but to a reporter with the news organization TMZ.
“We never specifically asked him about Cindy Kinney,” Virden said. “He’s the one who specifically named her, and that was when he reached out to contact a reporter in New York about doing a story about us interviewing him in prison last month,” Virden said.
He believes BTK could be using journalists to once again get information out about the case similar to when he would reach out to Wichita-area TV stations while he was still on the run for the killings he is now convicted of up there.
“We know this is how he likes to reveal information,” Virden said. “We can’t help but think he’s possibly up to his old way of doing things again of revealing information to law enforcement through reporters.”
Virden said though he went to question BTK about the 1976 disappearance of Kinney from a Pawhuska laundromat on a morning in June 1976, he did not specifically mention her, and he was surprised to learn just how much time BTK spent in Oklahoma.
“At one time, he was even working for the Census going door-to-door right here in Oklahoma in the 90s,” he said. “Who knows who he came in contact with all these times down here that we’re just now finding out about.”
Virden said BTK also had ties to the Boy Scouts and a security company installing alarms in Oklahoma before, around, and after the time Kinney disappeared.
“He had reasons to be down here,” Virden said.
Virden said a bank was under construction across the street from where Kinney worked, and the bank was installing ADT alarms, the company Rader worked for.
“He said he recalled being in Osage County and in Oklahoma before many times, even with family,” Virden said about the long conversation that lead to the killer going into detail about his childhood all the way up to where he is in prison now,” Virden said.
However, before specifically saying Rader is linked to Kinney’s disappearance, Virden and his investigators have asked to review all Wichita Police’s BTK files to see if Rader’s whereabouts are already accounted for elsewhere.
“He told us he was laying low in 1976, and he wasn’t doing any killings up there at that time,” Virden said about Rader. “A victim had met up with a sketch artist, and the drawing was so good, it spooked him, but that doesn’t mean while he wasn’t doing anything in Kansas, he could have easily driven down here and done something especially if he had work down here.”
He wondered if Rader was hesitant about revealing connections to Kinney’s disappearance because the death penalty was not legal in Kansas at the time of the BTK killings, but it was in Oklahoma at the time Kinney disappeared.
“Had they known about who the BTK Killer was when she disappeared, I would bet they would’ve at least looked into a connection back then, but they didn’t know,” Virden said.
Virden told FOX23 News after speaking with Rader, he had not formed an opinion solidly one way or the other about if Rader had a hand in Kinney’s disappearance.
Kinney’s body has never been found. The Osage County Sheriff’s Office is reiterating that anyone with information on Kinney’s disappearance should come forward, but now they are also asking if anyone knows about Rader’s activities in Oklahoma, especially in Osage County near the time of Kinney’s disappearance, they also need to come forward.
“We don’t want to stir up false hope in the friends and family, but this is something that needs to be explored,” Virden said.
This is a developing story. Tune in for FOX23 News at 5 and 6:30 p.m. for full coverage.
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