Did A Wichita Detective Have BTK's Face Drawn While He Was Still Free?

Kevin Bright was nineteen years old when Dennis Rader shot him twice and left him for dead in his sister Kathryn's house in Wichita on April 4, 1974. Kevin survived. His sister did not. Before Kevin went into surgery, with one of Rader's bullets still inside his head, he gave Wichita detectives a description of the man who had attacked them.A police sketch artist drew the face. On April 23, 1974, that drawing ran on the front page of the Wichita Eagle. Nineteen days after the attack. Dennis Rader was free in Park City, Kansas. He would remain free for the next thirty-one years.In his own 2005 confession, Rader said the sketch was, in his words, uncomfortably close to him. He said no one ever came for him.In the second chapter of True Crime Today's five-part BTK investigation, host Tony Brueski walks through every piece of Dennis Rader that the Wichita Police Department had in evidence rooms during the years he was still operating. A sketch in 1974. A confession letter inside a library book in 1974. A voice tape in 1977. A poem in a sealed package in 1979. A neighbor of his killed in 1985 and one of his own residents killed in his own jurisdiction in 1991.The chase did not close because Wichita Police were incompetent. The chase did not close because Dennis Rader was a mastermind either. The chase did not close because the system, in a small city in the 1970s and 80s, did not yet know how to look at its own data. And the people paying the price for that gap, including a grieving husband suspected of his wife's murder for eighteen years, did not deserve to carry the cost.END LINKSJoin Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/ Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod X Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePodDISCLAIMERThis publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.HASHTAGS#BTK #DennisRader #KevinBright #BTKKiller #TrueCrimeToday #SerialKillers #Wichita #ColdCase #TrueCrime #WichitaPD