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6A THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 2005
Pretty under pink
Jared Soares/KANSAN
Jared Sources/KANSAS Camille Clark, Kansas City, Kan., freshman, shields herself from the rain while walking yesterday afternoon to a class in Wescoe Hall. More rain is expected for tomorrow.
BTK
Technology that helped capture Rader may become widely used
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WICHITA — Technology that helped crack the BTK case could be put into wider use after impressing authorities involved in the intense manhunt for the serial killer.
U. S. Rep. Todd Tiahrt has asked the House Appropriations Committee for $3 million to fund a pilot project to work on cold cases using a computer system like the one that helped detectives whittle the list of possible BTK suspects down from millions to hundreds — and eventually to Dennis Rader, who is now serving a life sentence for 10 murders.
"It processes a whole lot of data," said Tiahrt, a Kansas Republican who met with a creator of the technology. "It was a tool
that they were able to use to supplement the detective work."
A McLean, Va.-based company, EagleForce Associates, developed the database for the Wichita Police Department, though it was an unlikely partnership.
EagleForce has a history of work on Defense Department antiterrorism ventures, but had never assisted with a criminal case. And homicide detectives in Wichita had turned to the FBI and other government agencies for help on cases, but never to a private firm.
Stanley Campbell, the chief executive of EagleForce, wasn't particularly interested when producers from "America's Most Wanted" suggested he offer his help. That changed when he saw evidence from the BTK killings, particularly the details
of 11-year-old Josephine Otero's murder.
"It was bone chilling," Campbell said. "When I saw that, I was in."
EagleForce put a half-dozen of its experts on the case, setting up a "virtual case file" that pools all the evidence from the 31-year history of the BTK murders in a single database. That system cross-correlates data to find links that might not easily appear to detectives. It rates information by the probability it is true — a known fact like an address is given a high value, while something from one of BTK's communiquis is given a low one. And it can analyze a suspect's language through communications, patterns exhibited at crimes and in letters and facts about known movements and affiliations.