By Davina Willett
Court TV

The BTK Strangler

Before Jonathan and Reginald Carr brought publicity and notoriety to Wichita, Kansas, for their December 2000 killing spree, there was the BTK Strangler who killed four members of a family in Wichita in January 1974. Three months later, he killed a young woman in her home. The fifth slaying, however, was not linked to the others until the killer wrote letters to TV Stations, newspapers and the local police.

He signed the letters "BTK", which stood for Blind, Torture and Kill, his method, he explained, for killing his victims. He was silent for three years, killing and communicating with no one, but then in 1977, he strangled two more women in separate slayings.

The active search for the killer ended in the early 1980s, but the police reopened it in 1984 in the hope that new technology could help them solve the case. A task force worked on it for another couple of years before it was closed a second time. The case remains unsolved.