15. Dennis Rader aka 'The BTK Killer'

15. Dennis Rader aka 'The BTK Killer'

Dennis Rader is an American serial killer who murdered ten people in Sedgwick County, Kansas between 1974 and 1991. He is also known as the BTK Killer or the BTK Strangler. "BTK" stands for "Bind, Torture, Kill", which was his infamous signature. He sent letters describing the details of the murders to police and local news outlets before his arrest. After a decade-long hiatus, Rader resumed sending letters in 2004, leading to his 2005 arrest and subsequent guilty plea. He is currently serving ten consecutive life sentences at El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas.

All of Rader's known crimes occurred in Kansas. He killed ten people in total and collected items from each murder scene. He also intended to kill others, notably Anna Williams, who in 1979 aged 63, escaped death by returning home much later than he expected. Rader explained during his confession that he became obsessed with Williams and was "absolutely livid" when she evaded him. He spent hours waiting at her home but became impatient and left when she did not return home from visiting friends. Two of the women Rader had stalked in the 1980s and one he had stalked in the mid-1990s filed restraining orders against him; one of them also moved away. Rader admitted in his interrogation that he had been planning to kill again. He had set a date, October 2004, and was stalking his intended victim.

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Did You Know...

I

Most of your favorite celebrities either studied acting in college or went straight from high school into a life of the arts. But, hey, not all of them. Some celebrities actually have advanced college degrees.

II

Turns out Mayim Bialik is just as much of a genius as the one she plays on The Big Bang Theory. She earned her Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of California, Los Angeles, focusing on obsessive compulsive disorder among people with Prader-Willi syndrome, a rare condition in which the hypothalamus malfunctions.

III

Little known fact: Natalie Portman skipped the premiere of Star Wars: Phantom Menace because she was studying for her high school exams. She had two papers published in scientific journals while she was still in high school, and graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in Psychology.

IV

Before he was looking for answers on X-Files, David Duchovny was just trying to find the answers for English finals at Princeton University90. David graduated from Princeton in 1982 with a B.A in English. He continued to feed his love of literature by receiving a master’s degree in English Literature at Yale University. David was an excellent writer and poet. His work consistently received praise by his fellow classmates and teachers at Yale. His writing was even nominated for a college prize by the Academy of American Poets.

V

Sigourney Weaver graduated from Stanford University in 1971 with a bachelor’s in Literature. It was while studying at Stanford that Sigourney realized her true passion in life was to become an actress. Shortly after graduation, she attended Yale for their well-known drama program. She would go on to receive a master’s in Acting from Yale University and become friends with fellow famous actress Meryl Streep.

VI

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