Identify Signature In Rader's Court Cases

case found Rader guilty on all 10 counts and sentenced him to 10 consecutive life sentences, the worst punishment available at the time; Kansas did not have the death penalty until 1994, and Rader did not commit any murders after that date (Welch, 2012). Offender signature and case linkage was something that stood out in the majority of Rader’s crimes. While profiling his case, there were many signatures that stood out to authorities. These signatures also helped to link the different murders together and link them to the same offender, which was eventually found to be Dennis Rader. According to Petherick (2014), identification versus individualization is an important factor with signatures. Identification is something that can help identify

“Signature can be defined as evidence of behavior at a crime scene not necessary to complete the crime that points to an underlying psychological need of the offender” (Petherick, 2014, p. 125). In the case of the BTK killer, he actually left a signature on the letters that he taunted the police with. Although this was not at the actual scene of the murders, as the definition of signature by Petherick points out, the letter writing and taunting was very much a part of his crime. He did this in order to make sure all of his crimes were connected and to make sure that he received the credit for the crimes, and he used the initials BTK and presented them in a sexual way (LaBrode, 2007). This points to the need for Dennis Rader to be in the spotlight. He craved the attention he got from the media and other the police, and loved the fact that he was able to evade capture for so long (Simons, 2005). This aspect of his crimes was something that was unique to him. No one else knew about his BTK signature, as that was never released to the media. Since he kept using the signature, police could confirm that the letters were actually coming from him and were not people just tricking the police. This signature helped to individualize his