BTK serial killer cooperating on book to "help" his victims' families

WICHITA, Kan. - The BTK serial killer said in a letter from prison that he is cooperating with a book about the 10 people he killed in the Wichita area to help the victims' families monetarily.

"I can never replace their [loved] ones, my deeds too 'dark' to understand, the book or movies, etc. is the only way to help them," wrote Dennis Rader, whose self-coined moniker was BTK, which stood for "bind, torture, kill."

In a four-page, handwritten letter labeled "From the Desk of: Dennis L. Rader," the former Park City code compliance officer explained that he is barred from profiting from his crimes by a court settlement, The Wichita Eagle reported. He signed over his media rights to the families of his victims he killed from 1974 to 1991 after he was sent to the state prison in El Dorado in 2005.

Rader said the "the long work on a book is close to a deal." A percentage of any profits will go to the families, said James Thompson, a Wichita lawyer and one of the attorneys representing most of the BTK victim families.

Katherine Ramsland, the author corresponding with Rader on the project, envisions an academic book that will help investigators and criminologists understand killers like Rader.

"I'm trying to make this a serious effort that will have some benefit for people who study this kind of crime," said Ramsland, a forensic psychology professor at DeSales University in Pennsylvania who has written 54 mostly academic nonfiction books.

Rader wrote that he turned down many media attempts to talk with him in the past nine years because he was attempting to stay true to the court agreement with the victims' families.

"I mean to burn no bridges," Rader wrote, "and hope some day to open up. People like me, need to be understood, so the criminal professional field, can better under stand, the criminal mind. That would be my way helping debt to society."