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You've Heard Of The BTK Killer, But What About These 5 Other Disturbing Bondage Murderer Cases?
Dennis Rader became infamous for "Bind, Torture, Kill" murders. These other cases are similiarily terrifying.
The BTK killer's penchant for bondage is evident in the moniker he gave himself. The letters BTK stand for "Bind, Torture, and Kill" and accurately describe Dennis Rader's method for killing 10 people in Wichita, Kansas over three decades.
For Rader, his greatest pleasure was never derived from the kill itself, but came from the bondage and torture that he inflicted on his victims before their death.
"There are some serial killers for whom death is the ultimate experience, you know, they need that God-like sense of control over people," Katherine Ramsland, author of "Confession of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the 'BTK' Killer," told Oxygen.com. "For Rader, I think ... the God-likeness came from the binding and that they were under his control."
Rader isn't the first killer who used bondage during his murders to feed his thirst for power and control—it's been a central component of other murders as well.
Here are other killers who used bondage to dominate and abuse their victims:
1. Bob Berdella: In the 1980s, Bob Berdella was known to his Kansas City neighbors as a friendly business owner who was a member of the neighborhood watch group. But the reality, was much darker.
Berdella, who owned the curio shop, Bob's Bazaar Bizarre, is also believed to be responsible for killing at least six people after he bound and tortured them for days or even weeks in some cases, according to The Kansas City Star.
Berdella lured his young male victims, who were often prostitutes, to his home under the pretense that he'd help them get on their feet. But the men fell victim to cruel and unusual methods of torture, that included injecting caulk into victim's ears, blinding them with drain cleaner, or administering electric shocks to areas of the body.
His known first victim, Jerry Howell, 19, was killed in 1984 after the two men had become friends. Berdella, who is often referred to as the Kansas City Butcher, "drugged Howell, bound him to a bed, sodomized him and eventually asphyxiated him," the paper reported.
The years that followed would bring more victims, including the murder of Todd Stoops in 1986 who died from blood loss after weeks of torture and the death of Larry Pearson in 1987 whose head was buried in Berdella's back yard, according to The Star.
The killings finally stopped after Chris Bryson, 22, was able to escape after weeks of torture, using a match he had found to burn through the ropes that bound him. He jumped through a window wearing nothing but a dog collar and called police at a neighbor's house, The Star reported.
Berdella later pled guilty to Pearson's murder and offered a full confession in the death of Robert Sheldon, who he killed in 1985, to avoid the death penalty. He died in prison in 1992.
According to True Crime Magazine, Berdella took 334 Polaroid pictures and 34 snapshot prints of the men he tortured and killed.
Bob Berdella, pictured above in a 1988 Kansas City Police booking photo. (Courtesy Kansas City Police Dept./Kansas City Star/MCTvia Getty Images)
2. Harvey Glatman: Harvey Glatman was a freelance photographer with a love of ropes, which turned out to be a deadly combination for women who crossed his path.
Glatman, who has been referred to as the Glamour Girl Slayer, used photography and the prospect of a modeling job to lure women in the 1950s into a deadly trap. He often claimed to be a photographer for detective magazines who needed cover shots of women tied up, according to a Los Angeles Times blog.
His first known victim was Judy Ann Dull, a 19-year-old, who responded to a modeling call, according to History.com. Glatman, who had moved to Los Angeles after a prison stay for robbery in New York, raped Dull at his apartment and "then took photos of her, bound and gagged," before strangling her in the desert, the website reported.
Glatman's victim Judy Dull sitting bound in a chair in a snapshot taken by the killer. (Courtesy of Getty Images)
He would go on to kill two more women, Shirley Ann Bridgeford and Ruth Mercado, before he was caught trying to attack Lorraine Vigil. Vigil, who had also answered a modeling ad, panicked when she noticed Glatman driving in the wrong direction and began to struggle with him. Glatman tried to subdue Vigil and pulled out a gun, shooting her in the hip, before both fell out of the car, according to History.com.
Once he'd been arrested, police found a toolbox with "hundreds of photographs and transparencies/negatives of women in bondage situations," the LA Times blog reported. Glatman was executed after confessing to the three murders in 1959, but police in the Denver area, where Glatman once lived, believe he may have been responsible for a murder of a Jane Doe there as well.
Photo of Harvey Glatman. (Getty Images)
3. Frederick and Rosemary West: The home of Frederick and Rosemary West in Gloucestershire, England, was anything but idyllic. It was a house of horrors where the couple's appetite for sexual sadism led to the murder of 10 women, including some of the couple's children.
The pair met when Frederick West was 27 years old, and Rosemary West was just 15, according to coverage of Rosemary West's trial by the Independent. Rosemary West had been sexually abused by her father before leaving home and was soon introduced to the world of sexual sadism through Frederick West, DevonLive.com reported, often citing work from criminologist Jane Carter Woodrow who wrote the book "Rose West, The Making of a Monster."
While in many serial killer pairings, the dominant partner is typically the man, experts don't believe this wasn't the case with the Wests "with Fred actually following Rose's lead," DevonLive.com reported.
Soon after the couple met, they had a daughter Heather in 1970, but when Frederick West was sent to prison for dishonesty Rosemary West was left at home with the young baby and Frederick West's daughters Charmaine and Anne Marie. The home was an abusive environment with Rosemary West often stripping the girls naked and tying them beds where they were instructed not to make a sound, DevonLive.com reported.
Frederick West, pictured above, is suspected of being an accompliance to 10 murders committed by his second wife. He was also suspected of killing his first wife and a woman he had an affair with. (Getty Images)
Police believe Rosemary West killed Charmaine, whose skull and bones were later found buried in the yard of a former residence, while Frederick was in jail. The couple would have seven more children, according to the Independent.
In addition to sexually abusing their own children, the couple abused others as well, once picking up 17-year old Caroline Owens who had been hitchhiking and offering her a job as a nanny. Rosemary West would soon bound and sexually assault Owens. She was later set free and told police, the Independent said. Although the Wests pleaded guilty to charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and incident assault, they'd only pay a fine and would go on murder and sexually abuse multiple girls they abducted, often dismembering the bodies.
The couple's last known victim was their daughter Heather who was killed at the age of 16 in 1987, the Daily Mail reported.
Rosemary West was found guilty of 10 murders in 1995 and is serving a life sentence for her crimes. Her husband, who is also suspected of killing his first wife Rena and mistress Anna Mc Fall, killed himself in his jail cell before his trial.
Rosemary West, pictured above, leaves the Gloucester Magistrates Court in early 1995. (Photo by Barry Batchelor - PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)
4. Maury Travis: When police searched the home of Maury Travis they found a video tape labeled "Your Wedding Day," but there were no blushing brides on this tape — instead it allegedly contained footage of Travis binding women, torturing them and raping them before ultimately killing them in a secret torture chamber in his basement, according to ABC News.
In the videos, he can be seen degrading woman and exerting his power and control over his victims, often covering their eyes with duct tape. In one excerpt from the video tape, he had one victim tell him "You are the master. It pleases me to serve you," and in another he mocked a woman for her abilities as a mother telling her "You ain't raising s---, b----. You over here on your back smoking crack," ABC News reported.
Travis, who hanged himself in his jail cell in 2002 before ever facing a trial, is suspected of killing at least 11 women, many of whom were prostitutes, in the St. Louis area but that number could be as high as 20, the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported in 2002.
"He claims he killed 17 women. We're missing five of them," Police Chief Joe Mokwa told ABC News.
The image captured on video was a stark contrast to the way Travis was described by friends and acquaintances who said the 36-year old waiter was quiet and polite.
"I don't believe he could kill a fly," one neighbor who lived by Travis when he was young told the Post-Dispatch.
Travis was arrested after he allegedly sent a letter to the St. Louis Post Dispatch that included a computer drawn map that led to the body of one of his victims. Police were able to trace the map back to Travis.
5. John Edward Robinson Sr.: John Edward Robinson earned the name the "First Internet Serial Killer" after he used the internet in its early days to convince women to come to Kansas with "offers of employment and sadomasochistic sex," according to Vanity Fair. In online chat rooms, he used the name "Slavemaster," Ranker reported, later convincing women to be his sex slaves.
He was a con-man who often made extravagant promises to earn the trust of the women he targeted and easily slipped in and out of a double life where he was both a successful business man, devoted father of four and a founding elder at his church, and a sadistic killer.
Robinson is suspected of being involved in the disappearance of three women in the 1980s, including Lisa Stasi, a single mom, whose baby was given to his brother to illegally adopt after she disappeared, according to the Chicago Tribune. The family had no idea the adoption was illegal.
John Edward Robinson Sr.'s house, pictured below, in Linn County, Kansas in 2000 (Photo by Anne Marie Hunter/Getty Images)
He'd later lure Sheila Faith and her teenage daughter, Debbie Faith, to the Kansas City area after promising to provide tuition money for the young girl to attend private school, but both women were later killed with a pipe, The Kansas City Star reported.
Suzette Trouten, 27, and Izabela Lewicka, 21, moved to Kansas to become his sex slaves, The Kansas City Star reported. Lewicka disappeared in 1999 and her body was later found in a barrel at Robinson's property.
Trouten's family became suspicious after they hadn't heard from their loved one and reported her missing, triggering an investigation that would ultimately lead to Robinson's arrest. Her body was also found in a barrel at the Linn county property.
Robinson was convicted of killing Trouten, Lewicka and Stasi in 2002 and later admitted to the murders of five other women, The Star reported.
To learn more about Rader's brutal crimes and eventual capture, watch Oxygen's “Snapped: Notorious BTK Killer" on September 2 at 6/5c.
