A serial killer and former church leader has clinically described to a Kansas court 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, chillingly 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 and masturbated by her body, 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 the bespectacled, balding Rader.
He stood before the judge in Sedgwick County District Court wearing a white suit coat and tie, 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 worshiper.
He will be sentenced on August 17th. He will not be executed because Kansas did not re-instate the death penalty at the time crimes were committed between 1974 and 1991.
However, he faces multiple sentences that likely to keep him in jail for the rest of his life after spreading a wave of terror through the Wichita area.
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, ages 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". The family dog was "really a problem" and he had the family put it outside. He resolved 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.
He took the girl to the basement, hung her, and engaged in "a sexual fantasy." He often took personal items from his victims - some of which turned up years later in packages BTK 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 chose all of his victims to satisfy his sexual appetite, he said.
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.
"She was extremely nervous. I think she even smoked a cigarette," 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 said, adding that he then comforted her and "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.
After the hearing, his lawyers said he had previously confessed to all 10 crimes and prosecutors had a solid case.
Rader had held a number of jobs in the Wichita area over the years, ranging from home security to an animal control officer. He held a college degree in justice administration.
After years of silence BTK resurfaced last year offering more clues in various correspondence, and some investigators have said it appeared he wanted to be caught.