"It appeared he was leaving a trail, almost playing a game with detectives: See if you're smart enough to find me," said retired Wichita Police Capt. Bernie Drowatzky.
Authorities responded with an all-out push: They took DNA samples from at least 4,000 men, brought in the FBI, investigated thousands of leads called into a hotline.
On Saturday, they said their patience had paid off.
"This is the first time we've been able to see a light at the end of this very, very, very long tunnel," said Wichita Police Lt. Ken Landwehr, who has been on the case since the Otero killings.
Authorities expect to hand their evidence to Sedgwick County Dist. Atty. Nola Foulston within the next few days.
If convicted, Rader would not face the death penalty because all the killings linked to him took place before Kansas introduced capital punishment in 1994.
Officials said they expected him to be charged with the eight homicides previously attributed to BTK. They said they had also linked him to two additional murders: the strangulations of Marine N. Hedge, 53, in April 1985 and of Delores E. Davis, 62, in February 1991. Hedge lived a few doors down from Rader.
Until recently, investigators had not connected the Davis and Hedge murders to BTK, in large part because both victims' bodies were found some distance from their homes. BTK's other known victims were all killed in their homes.
Rader's arrest has raised the hope that detectives might be able to pin other unsolved murders on BTK.
At the very least, investigators who have studied the case for decades said they hoped they would come to understand a bit more about the serial killer who so baffled and frightened them.
They all have questions they'd like to ask: How did he pick his victims? Why did he claim credit for some murders and not for others? Why did he start communicating with police again after 25 years of silence?
One question that they do not need to ask is how he eluded capture for so long.
"We always said he was invisible because he was most likely so ordinary," said Smith, the retired detective. "As it turned out, he was exactly ordinary. He went to work. He went to church. He went to Boy Scouts. He did family things. Just an ordinary guy."
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Bind, torture, kill: a serial killer who taunted police
Dennis Rader is suspected of killing seven women, one man and two children from 1974 to 1991:
