Sedgwick County is located in the U.S. state of Kansas. Its county seat is Wichita, the most populous city in the state. As of the 2020 census, the population was 523,824, making it the second-most populous county in Kansas. The county was named for John Sedgwick, the highest ranking Union general killed during the American Civil War.
Dennis Lynn Rader, also known as BTK, is an American serial killer who murdered at least 10 people in Wichita and Park City, Kansas, between 1974 and 1991. Although he occasionally killed or attempted to kill men and children, Rader typically targeted women. His victims were often bound, sometimes with objects from their homes, and either suffocated with a plastic bag or manually strangled with a ligature. In addition, he stole keepsakes from his female victims, including underwear, driver's licenses, and personal items.
Robert Emmet Chambers Jr. is an American criminal. Dubbed the Preppy Killer and the Central Park Strangler, Chambers gained notoriety for the August 26, 1986, strangulation death of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin in New York City's Central Park, for which he was originally charged with second degree murder. Chambers changed his story several times during the course of the ensuing investigation, ultimately claiming that Levin's death was the accidental result of him pushing her off of him as she purportedly sexually assaulted him, an account that was characterized by media accounts as one of "rough sex". Chambers later pleaded guilty to manslaughter after a jury failed to reach a verdict after nine days of deliberation.
Francis Dolarhyde is a fictional character and the main antagonist of Thomas Harris' 1981 novel Red Dragon, as well as its film adaptations, Manhunter (1986), Red Dragon (2002) and the third season of Hannibal (2013-15)
KAKE is a television station in Wichita, Kansas, United States, affiliated with ABC and owned by Lockwood Broadcast Group. The station's studios are located on West Street in northwestern Wichita, and its transmitter is located in rural northwestern Sedgwick County.
KSAS-TV is a television station in Wichita, Kansas, United States, affiliated with Fox and MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which provides certain services to Hutchinson-licensed Dabl affiliate KMTW under a local marketing agreement (LMA) with Mercury Broadcasting Company. The two stations share studios on West Street in northwestern Wichita; KSAS-TV's transmitter is located in rural northwestern Sedgwick County.
The El Dorado Correctional Facility is a maximum security prison located east of the city of El Dorado in rural Prospect Township, Butler County, Kansas, United States.
Robert Beattie, an American, Wichita-based, lawyer, is the author of the non-fiction book Nightmare in Wichita.
Robert Roy Hazelwood was a former FBI profiler of sex crimes. He worked for much of his career for the FBI, retiring in the mid-1990s.
Alafair S. Burke is an American crime novelist, professor of law, and legal commentator. She is a New York Times bestselling author of twenty crime novels, including The Ex, The Wife, and The Better Sister, and two series—one featuring NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher, and the other, Portland, Oregon, prosecutor Samantha Kincaid. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Edward James Adams was a notorious American criminal and spree killer in the Midwest. He murdered seven people—including three policemen—over a period of around 14 months and wounded at least a dozen others. At age 34, Adams was surrounded and then killed by police in Wichita, Kansas.
The Hunt for the BTK Killer is a 2005 American biographical horror television film directed by Stephen T. Kay. First shown on CBS on October 9, 2005, it is based on the true story of Dennis Rader, the notorious "BTK Killer" who murdered 10 people from 1974 to 1991. Though the events take place in Wichita, Kansas, the film was made in Nova Scotia.
David Lohr is an American journalist who has written about and interviewed many of the world's most notorious criminals.
Michael Eldon Burgess is an American actor known for his sinister television portrayal of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer.
The Wichita Police Department (WPD) is the primary law enforcement agency serving Wichita, Kansas. Wichita Police Department’s jurisdiction overlaps with the Sedgwick County Sheriff's office.
A Good Marriage is a novella by American writer Stephen King, published in the collection Full Dark, No Stars (2010).
The history of Wichita details the history of Wichita, Kansas from its initial settlement in the 1860s to the present day.
Mindhunter is an American psychological crime thriller television series created by Joe Penhall, based on the 1995 true-crime book Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker. The series debuted in 2017 and ran for two seasons. Executive producers included Penhall, Charlize Theron, and David Fincher, the last of whom served as the series' most frequent director and de facto showrunner, overseeing many of the scriptwriting and production processes. The series stars Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany, and Anna Torv, and follows the founding of the Behavioral Science Unit in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the late 1970s and the beginning of criminal profiling.
On December 28, 2017, a fatal swatting incident occurred in Wichita, Kansas, United States. During an online dispute between Casey Viner and Shane Gaskill regarding the video game Call of Duty: WWII, Viner threatened to have Gaskill swatted. Gaskill responded by giving him a false address for his residence, one that was occupied by an uninvolved person, Andrew Finch. Viner then asked Tyler Barriss, an anonymous online swatter, to make the required fraudulent call to initiate the swatting. Wichita Police responded to the address, and as Finch was exiting his house, police officer Justin Rapp fatally shot him.
Francis Donald Nemechek is an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped, and murdered four women and a young boy in Kansas between 1974 and 1976. He admitted to committing the murders but claimed to be insane and thus should not be tried criminally. He was nevertheless tried and found guilty, receiving a sentence of life imprisonment with a chance of parole, although each of his applications have been declined.
