"debs asw" <DEBS...@webtv.net> wrote in message
news:569-434C...@storefull-3135.bay.webtv.net...
> ... but I was curious what BTK himself had put on the disk that he
> WANTED the police to see? debs
You might go to www.kansas.com. That's the Wichita "Eagle" web site with a
BTK archives section.
It's a bit frustrating, since some of the stories the list com up "Document
not found." (I assume those stories were removed from the archive because
they show the Wichita "Eagle" reportage to be off the mark. But that's just
my guess.)
The floppy involved was sent to KSAS-TV, and -- after an albeit brief
search -- I couldn't find exactly what Rader sent them *intending* for them
to read.
If he'd used a new floppy, he's still be free. By re-using a
previously-recorded disk, he hung himself.
Many years ago I lived in Wichita and had a friend who was on the police
force there. He said, "If smart people ever start committing crimes,
society is fucked." He said most solved crimes are due to the perp making a
stupid mistake.
The only reason Dennis Rader is in the pokey now is that he wasn't smart
enough to know that an "erased" floppy disk doesn't *really* erase data,
merely frees it up to be over-written.
Otherwise, he was a pretty crafty killer. He varied his MOs, didn't have a
"type" of victim (i.e., young, or blonde, or hooker, etc.), and paced
himself (didn't strike "every full moon" or somesuch).
I was struck by his apparent study of *other* serial killers. I'm not sure
he was driven by an inner psychological "need" to take trophies (for
example), rather that he did that because "that's what serial killers do."
The only reason he contacted the media was to get recognition.
The only reason he reemerged was there was a book being written about him.
If he'd kept quiet, chances are that none of his crimes would have been
interconnected and he'd still be out there stalking (and killing) victims.
Although the attention he would get probably, in some perverse way, will
give him a certain degree of notoriety he craves, I hope the FBI and a
legion of psychiatrists study this guy. I suspect his pathology is much
more common in our society than we want to think.
It was even simpler than that; he re-used a disk that he'd
previously used to prepare a church-related document. I'm
thinking it was a schedule of some kind.
Kris
LE was already onto him as a suspect; when he made the drop
in the Home Depot parking lot, his vehicle was clearly shown...
and LE was therefore given a major clue: a Park City official
town pickup truck was spotted on other security cams near
his other "drops".
> The only reason he reemerged was there was a book being written about him.
He re-emerged after the Wichita Eagle published their
"BTK 30th Anniversary" articles.....which may have
publicized the book. But I don't think he'd have known
about the book otherwise (IF it was already being written).
Kris
I'm pretty sure the book was already being written. I think it was the news
"hook" that prompted the newspaper story.
I'm pretty sure that victim #10 (and maybe #9) hadn't been attributed to BTK
at the time the 30th Anniversary story appeared.
Dennis Rader's pathology (aside from binding, and torturing, and killing
people, of course) was his need for recognition.
It was a perverse permutation of the old joke about pissing your pants in a
brown suit: if gives you a warm, comfortable feeling, and nobody notices.
A side note regarding Wichita is the case of "The Poet."
About the same time BTK was killing people, a woman was getting threatening
messages from someone who identified themselves as "The Poet." The
"targeted victim" called out the cops, sometimes (as I recall) had wounds
inflicted upon her...until the Wichita Police put a bunch of cops on
observation and discovered that the "victim" was doing all the threatening
activities to *herself!* She was suffering from
multiple-personality-disorder, traced to a childhood of sexual abuse, and
had tied up Wichita LE for thousands of hours.
There's another fascinating Wichita true-crime that occurred when I lived
there. Two teenaged girls were strangled/drowned in a hot tub, the hot tub
serviceman's truck was left at the scene, he was arrested in Florida driving
one of the girls' Volkswagen, brought back to trial and was *acquitted!*
The foreman of the jury self-published an account of the jury's decision.
He persuaded the jury that the defendant, Bill Butterworth, wasn't
responsible for the murders, but that he was possessed by the Devil! And,
so, *SATAN* was responsible!!
Wichita is Middle America -- by every measure.
Be afraid.
Be very afraid.
There is also volume information that is placed on the disk when it is
reformatted. Anyway, unless a floppy disk is reformatted in a
particular way, the old data will remain until it is overwritten.
It's a lot for your average killer to keep up with.
Carol L. Stimmel, CCE
http://www.citsf.com
He should have just chiselled it on stone. :) :)
Kind regards,
Nancy
--
Flame War is over ... if you want it
nru...@ncsa.uiuc.edu
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/nrudins/
> > The only reason Dennis Rader is in the pokey now is that he wasn't smart
> > enough to know that an "erased" floppy disk doesn't *really* erase data,
> > merely frees it up to be over-written.
>
> LE was already onto him as a suspect; when he made the drop
> in the Home Depot parking lot, his vehicle was clearly shown...
> and LE was therefore given a major clue: a Park City official
> town pickup truck was spotted on other security cams near
> his other "drops".
I thought they were unable to get a license number from that?
There were thousands of jeep cherokees (I think it was) in
Wichita, and the surveillance pics of Dennis himself were not
very revealing either. I seriously doubt that they had ID'd him
from that.
An MS-Word document would contain a serial number that
could be traced to the registered owner of the copy of Word
with which it was written (in this case, the church).
> Now if he'd only used a simple text file (.txt)
> on a generic brand of floppy...
Hell, a text file on a NEW floppy, instead of an erased one!
Plus, I think some file on the disk (possibly erased) included
his "login", which was Dennis. And he was the only Dennis
with access to the computer.
> >It was even simpler than that; he re-used a disk that he'd
> >previously used to prepare a church-related document. I'm
> >thinking it was a schedule of some kind.
> >
> >Kris
>
> Probably didn't know the difference between deleted data (block address
> flagged available) and overwritten data (obscured).
> Had he bothered to use a simple bulk tape eraser (RadioShack 44-233) he
> could have obliterated even the forensically useful free space bits of a
> previous file.
> I guess some BTK of the future will use much smaller digital flash media
> like a Secure Data chip or even an old leftover Compact Flash chip from
> their first digital camera. They can be totally overwritten, and unless
> some careless fool forgets to do this and maybe leaves an incriminating
> EXIF tag, or fingerprints, will be virtually untraceable.
Flash media is no different from floppies in this respect. In fact, they're
the same file system (FAT, or File Attribute Table). Deleting a picture
from a flash card doesn't eliminate it any more than deleting a file from
a floppy does.
I have a program, provided by the flash card manufacturer,
for recovering deleted files from a flash card. I'm sure the
police have it too.
It wasn't that it was a common truck. It was what it had
on it.
They saw enough of it, to ID it as a Park City city vehicle.
Remember, it had a logo on the doors. Color, logo color.....
you wouldn't need to see much detail when you saw the
same vehicle in several surveillance tapes.
Kris
He was living in the past, I'd say. He really gave no credence to computer
capability, never considered he couldn't do much without surveillance
cameras seeing him........
Not only did the Home Depot camera catch the car, but it
showed him in all of his glory.
Kris
Right.
> And the capacity of 32 bit FAT32 flash media are quite different
> than 12 bit FAT12 floppies, as different as two terabytes capacity is to
> sixteen megabytes.
Were we talking about capacity?
My guess is, he always knew that capture and prison
would be the final chapter in his story. He probably
accepts it as the inevitable eventuality.
That's one program that can drive me nuts when I watch it. They don't
get anything right, and there's a lot of people who think investigations
really work that way. Love the chisel tip signature database :)
Yeah, but he knows that people are talking about him.
If he could just get to see the CBS specials, the 48 Hours
episodes, read all the news clips, his life would be full,
not empty. That's presumably why LE wants to prevent
him from getting them.
Of course, if he knows that they're preventing him from
getting them, his imagination can paint his fame even
greater than it is.
> BTW: how much capacity does one need to incriminate themselves anyway?
My point exactly.
PattyC
Same here. I like L&O SVU, though....because the characters are
well-drawn.
We laughed at the "chisel tip signature database", as if you couldn't
sharpen
your chisel tip to disguise it ;)
Kris
...and getting blood from other people for DNA tests.
Kris
"Kris Baker" <kris....@prodigyyy.net> wrote in message
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