Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Today

Al Qaeda Plot?; Do Terrorists Have Sleeper Cells in U.S.?; The History of the BTK Killer

Aired March 01, 2005 - 10:31   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: We are coming up on the half hour. I'm Rick Sanchez.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Daryn Kagan.

Here's a look at what's happening now in the news: Just moments ago, the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty for juvenile killers under 18 when they committed the crime is unconstitutional. The 5-4 decision tosses out the death sentence of a Missouri man. He was 17 when he murdered a woman in 1993. Writing for the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy found the punishment was unconstitutional and cruel.

The suspect in the BTK serial killings appears from jail before a judge in about an hour and a half from now. Dennis Rader is expected to hear the charges against him from a video hookup. The suspect been linked to 10 deaths since 1974 to 1991. All the killings occurred before Kansas reinstated the death penalty.

Pope John Paul II has started speaking again after a tracheotomy. A top cardinal said that the pontiff spoke to him in both German and Italian in a visit today. There's no word when the pope will be able to leave the Rome hospital. The next official update on his health is promised Thursday.

The latest snow storm is slowing travel in the Northeast today. Snowfall has stopped in much of the region, but many schools and businesses are closed. Hundreds of airline flights are delayed or canceled. Boston has received more than 78 inches of snow this season. That still is about 30 inches shy of the city's record.

And Americans aren't just living longer, they're more active as they age. That's according to the nation's annual mortality report. It shows Americans have an average life expectancy of more than 77 years. Women still living longer than men, but men are closing the gap.

SANCHEZ: And let's take you to our CNN Security Watch today. U.S. intelligence officials are saying that Osama bin Laden may be calling for a top lieutenant to take on a new mission, the mission, a plot to attack the United States.

CNN homeland security correspondent Jeanne Meserve has the details on this story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: The source of the intelligence, an intercepted communication believed to be from Osama bin Laden to Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, who has conducted scores of attacks inside Iraq. The communication urged Zarqawi to launch attacks outside Iraq, officials say. It did not mention the U.S. specifically, but that is the inference that analyst are making. Although it was not specific about the time, place or means of possible attack, officials characterized the information as credible. And it was enough for the Department of Homeland Security to issue a classified bulletin to its state and local partners last Friday.

ASA HUTCHINSON, HOMELAND SECURITY UNDERSECRETARY: Whenever we get this kind of intelligence, we regularly share that with our homeland security advisers in the 50 states with local law enforcement, so they have the same information that we have. But whenever it is nonspecific, that means it's difficult to mount an operational response.

MESERVE: DHS spokesman Brian Rourke (ph) says based on this new information, there are no plans to raise the nation's terror threat level. Officials say the intercept was made recently, overseas, but we do not know what kind of communication it was. And although officials believe the communication was between these two men, they note that lines of communication often become, as they say, polluted. That is, other people use them. One knowledgeable former official says an intercept could be noteworthy because Zarqawi is renowned for maintaining exceptionally good communications security. It's one reason he's not been apprehended.

Jeanne Meserve, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Another man accused of plotting with Al Qaeda is to appear in a Washington courtroom about four hours from now. American Ahmed Abu Ali is accused of discussing an al Qaeda plot to assassinate President Bush. He was returned from Saudi Arabia last week. Defense attorneys will ask that Ali be released on bail. They may also raise claims that he was tortured while in Saudi custody.

SANCHEZ: A federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to either file charges against dirty bomb suspect Jose Padilla -- that's the way he now pronouncing his name, by the way -- or let him go. Padilla has been held for two and a half years as an enemy combatant in a military jail. He's been accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive bomb. The government vows to appeal the judge's ruling.

KAGAN: From enemy combatants to the unseen enemy, there may be no more chilling terrorist threat than operatives who live among us. If there are sleeper cells in the U.S., what's being done to protect against that threat?

For answers, we turn to our justice correspondent to Kelli Arena from CNN's America Bureau.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) KELLI ARENA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Lackawanna, New York, one of America's old steel towns just south of Buffalo. Officials say it was here that they brought down a dangerous terror cell.

PETER AHEARN, BUFFALO FBI OFFICE: When you have a group of individuals that are in contact with known terrorists, that makes it very dangerous.

ARENA: Peter Ahearn runs the Buffalo office of the FBI, which oversaw the case. He says these young Americans were recruited by al Qaeda and convinced to travel to terror camps in Afghanistan for training.

There was no evidence the young men were involved in any plot to attack, but Ahearn argues that did not diminish the threat. And he's worried there may be more like them.

AHEARN: I'm always concerned, very concerned. We have a large Arab-American community. If the terrorists want to come here and capitalize on something like that, where they can blend into a community, the potential is there.

ARENA: On that point, everyone agrees, the potential is there. But are there currently sleeper agents in the United States? Officials say the short answer is no, at least, that they know of. FBI director Robert Mueller recently told Congress that finding one remains the FBI's top priority.

ROBERT MUELLER, FBI DIRECTOR: The very nature of a covert operative, trained not to raise suspicion and to appear benign, is what makes their detection so difficult.

ARENA: But Mueller did say agents have identified and are monitoring what he called extremists living in the United States.

MUELLER: The potential recruitment of radicalized American Muslim converts continues to be a concern and poses an increasingly challenging issue.

ARENA: Sources who work counterterrorism say the FBI has around 300 individuals, not just extremists, under some sort of surveillance in several cities, including New York, Baltimore, Falls Church, Virginia, Detroit, Phoenix, and Portland. Those sources say these people have either communicated with known terrorists, are thought to have trained in terror camps overseas, or whose names have surfaced in other terrorism investigations.

RICHARD FALKENRATH, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: Every possible lead available to the federal government has been pursued, and pursued pretty aggressively.

ARENA: Still, the government can only act on what it knows. Agents got a chilling reminder of that last summer, when extensive surveillance reports of U.S. financial buildings were discovered overseas. If the documents had not been found, officials would never have known operatives were here, meticulously preparing for a potential attack.

For CNN's America Bureau, Kelli Arena, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Stay tuned to CNN day and night for reliable news about your security.

SANCHEZ: We have some words for his mother's killer, and they're coming straight from the heart.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would never have been like this if my mother was still living.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Still to come, he let the BTK killer into his house when he was just a child. It changed his life forever.

KAGAN: Plus, a major toy retailer is shopping for new owners. How will it affect your wallet, business news straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

SANCHEZ: Now let's take a look at some of the other stories that are making news from coast to coast.

KAGAN: For the first time, we're seeing surveillance video from the shooting outside of Tyler, Texas. Watch this from this courthouse. Last Thursday a gunman shot and killed his ex-wife and a sheriff's officer before being killed himself. The video shows victims falling, people diving to the doors for safety, and bullets shattering glass.

SANCHEZ: A tractor-trailer inspection in Louisiana turned up more than cilantro and cucumbers. Oh no, authorities say they found another type of, well, vegetation.

KAGAN: Green.

SANCHEZ: Right. Forty pounds short of a ton of marijuana was hidden under the load of greens, value on the street, about $3 million. State troopers arrested the driver and his female passenger. The couple was traveling with their 5-year-old son.

KAGAN: Lovely.

All right, and he did it by balloon. Can he do it by plane? Steve Fossett trying to make the first solo nonstop airplane flight around the world. He left a Kansas airport yesterday, hopes to return Thursday morning, 23,000 miles later. In 2002, Fossett became the first person to circle the globe solo in a balloon. SANCHEZ: This is a story that really had a lot of people screaming today as they think about and watch the word, this is a man who was just a child when this crime happened, but he's had to live with the remorse of his actions, innocent actions, really, for his entire life.

Still to come, you're going to from the man who let the BTK killer into his home to get his mother.

KAGAN: Plus, letters from BTK over the years. What did he say? How did he say it? Clips from a killer's writings, when we return.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: We've been setting this one up for you this morning. Dennis Rader, accused of being the BTK killer, will make his very first court appearance from his cell. It's going to happen in about an hour. Police say that he bound, he tortured, he killed at least 10 victims over 30 years. Shirley Vian, the woman seen here, was bound and killed in 1977. Her son, Steve Relford, was 5 years old at the time.

In an interview with CNN's Paula Zahn last night, Relford spoke about the tragic experience of witnessing his mother's murder, of letting the man into the house. A warning to our viewers, to all of you now, much of what Relford says is very much graphic in nature. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE RELFORD, BTK VICTIM'S SON: I let the BTK in my house. He asked where my mother was, where my parents were. My mom's sick in bed. So immediately he starts pulling down the blinds, turns off the TV, reaches in his shoulder holster, and pulls out a pistol.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: In our next hour, we're going to bring you more startling details from that interview. We'll have more of that interview with Steve Relford.

KAGAN: The BTK killer is well known for taunting police with messages about his crimes. There were phone calls, packages and, of course, letters. Here now is CNN's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NISSEN (voice-over): From the first, the letters taunted police, described details from crime scenes that only the killer could know. The body of Julie Otero, one of four members of one family strangled in their home in early 1974, was "Laying on her back crosswise on the bed pointed in southwestern direction," wrote the presumed killer. All four were strangled with "window blind cord."

Eleven-year-old Josephine's glasses were in the southwest bedroom. Nine-year-old Joseph's radio was left blaring. The watch of the father, Joe Otero, was missing. "I needed one, so I took it," the author wrote. "Runs good."

The letter spelled out how the killer killed, but not why -- spelled it out with errors that made authorities think the writer was trying to fool them, trying to seem less educated than he really was.

"It hard to control myself," he wrote in that first letter. "You probably call me psychotic with sexual perversion hang-up. Where this monster enter my brain I will never know. But, it here to stay."

Profilers said the letter writer clearly wanted to be recognized, not only for his chilling crimes but for his intelligence, his poetry. When the "Wichita Eagle Beacon" didn't publish a poem he sent them about Shirley Vian, a 26-year-old mother of three murdered in March of '77, he wrote to a local TV station to complain.

"I find the newspaper not writing about the poem on Vian unamusing," he wrote. "How many do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention?"

In the same letter, he said it was time the media came up with a catchy name for him. "I like the following," he wrote. "How about you? The BTK Strangler, Wichita Strangler, Poetic Strangler, the Bondage Stranger or Psycho, the Wichita Hangman, the Wichita Executioner, the Garote Phathom, the Asphyxiator."

BTK's poems gave authorities some of their strongest early leaders. In a letter claiming responsibility for the December '77 murder of Nancy Fox, BTK enclosed a poem "Oh! Death to Nancy," patterned after a poem titled "Oh, Death" that had been published in a Wichita state university textbook.

"What is this that I can see?" read the author's version. "Cold icy hands taking hold of me for death has come you all can see."

Authorities started looking at class lists of students who had taken courses at the university that used that text. Suspect Dennis Rader was a student at Wichita State.

BTK wrote another poem to an intended victim, a woman who did not come home while the killer was lying in wait for her. The ending lines "Alone again I trod in pass memory of mirrors and ponder why number eight was not. Oh, Anna why didn't you appear?"

After years of silence, BTK resurfaced last March with another letter wrapped around photos of the body of Vicki Wegerle, a Wichita woman killed in 1986, and a copy of her driver's license.

The return address on the envelope ID'd the sender as Bill Thomas Killman, initials BTK. The contents were not made public, but authorities said it was typical of BTK's writing over the years, full of teases, challenges, boasts. "Good luck with your hunting," wrote BTK at the end of that first letter. "Yours, truly, guiltily."

Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE) (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Good to own a shovel today in the Northeast.

SANCHEZ: Yes, I guess so. Or some kind of bulldozer to move things out.

(WEATHER REPORT)

SANCHEZ: We do have so much more coming up on this day.

KAGAN: That we do. We're going to check in with our "New You" participants. Crunch time, week seven. How far have the fab five come and what's ahead?

SANCHEZ: Including the nail-biter?

KAGAN: Yes, filet mignon.

SANCHEZ: Also, Olympic star Sarah Hughes is going to be joining us live. We're going to talk to her about her student life at Yale and her recent skating tour. This will be the second hour of CNN LIVE TODAY. And it begins -- you know when?

KAGAN: Right now.

SANCHEZ: Right.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired March 1, 2005 - 10:31   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: We are coming up on the half hour. I'm Rick Sanchez.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Daryn Kagan.

Here's a look at what's happening now in the news: Just moments ago, the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty for juvenile killers under 18 when they committed the crime is unconstitutional. The 5-4 decision tosses out the death sentence of a Missouri man. He was 17 when he murdered a woman in 1993. Writing for the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy found the punishment was unconstitutional and cruel.

The suspect in the BTK serial killings appears from jail before a judge in about an hour and a half from now. Dennis Rader is expected to hear the charges against him from a video hookup. The suspect been linked to 10 deaths since 1974 to 1991. All the killings occurred before Kansas reinstated the death penalty.

Pope John Paul II has started speaking again after a tracheotomy. A top cardinal said that the pontiff spoke to him in both German and Italian in a visit today. There's no word when the pope will be able to leave the Rome hospital. The next official update on his health is promised Thursday.

The latest snow storm is slowing travel in the Northeast today. Snowfall has stopped in much of the region, but many schools and businesses are closed. Hundreds of airline flights are delayed or canceled. Boston has received more than 78 inches of snow this season. That still is about 30 inches shy of the city's record.

And Americans aren't just living longer, they're more active as they age. That's according to the nation's annual mortality report. It shows Americans have an average life expectancy of more than 77 years. Women still living longer than men, but men are closing the gap.

SANCHEZ: And let's take you to our CNN Security Watch today. U.S. intelligence officials are saying that Osama bin Laden may be calling for a top lieutenant to take on a new mission, the mission, a plot to attack the United States.

CNN homeland security correspondent Jeanne Meserve has the details on this story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: The source of the intelligence, an intercepted communication believed to be from Osama bin Laden to Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, who has conducted scores of attacks inside Iraq. The communication urged Zarqawi to launch attacks outside Iraq, officials say. It did not mention the U.S. specifically, but that is the inference that analyst are making. Although it was not specific about the time, place or means of possible attack, officials characterized the information as credible. And it was enough for the Department of Homeland Security to issue a classified bulletin to its state and local partners last Friday.

ASA HUTCHINSON, HOMELAND SECURITY UNDERSECRETARY: Whenever we get this kind of intelligence, we regularly share that with our homeland security advisers in the 50 states with local law enforcement, so they have the same information that we have. But whenever it is nonspecific, that means it's difficult to mount an operational response.

MESERVE: DHS spokesman Brian Rourke (ph) says based on this new information, there are no plans to raise the nation's terror threat level. Officials say the intercept was made recently, overseas, but we do not know what kind of communication it was. And although officials believe the communication was between these two men, they note that lines of communication often become, as they say, polluted. That is, other people use them. One knowledgeable former official says an intercept could be noteworthy because Zarqawi is renowned for maintaining exceptionally good communications security. It's one reason he's not been apprehended.

Jeanne Meserve, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Another man accused of plotting with Al Qaeda is to appear in a Washington courtroom about four hours from now. American Ahmed Abu Ali is accused of discussing an al Qaeda plot to assassinate President Bush. He was returned from Saudi Arabia last week. Defense attorneys will ask that Ali be released on bail. They may also raise claims that he was tortured while in Saudi custody.

SANCHEZ: A federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to either file charges against dirty bomb suspect Jose Padilla -- that's the way he now pronouncing his name, by the way -- or let him go. Padilla has been held for two and a half years as an enemy combatant in a military jail. He's been accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive bomb. The government vows to appeal the judge's ruling.

KAGAN: From enemy combatants to the unseen enemy, there may be no more chilling terrorist threat than operatives who live among us. If there are sleeper cells in the U.S., what's being done to protect against that threat?

For answers, we turn to our justice correspondent to Kelli Arena from CNN's America Bureau.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) KELLI ARENA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Lackawanna, New York, one of America's old steel towns just south of Buffalo. Officials say it was here that they brought down a dangerous terror cell.

PETER AHEARN, BUFFALO FBI OFFICE: When you have a group of individuals that are in contact with known terrorists, that makes it very dangerous.

ARENA: Peter Ahearn runs the Buffalo office of the FBI, which oversaw the case. He says these young Americans were recruited by al Qaeda and convinced to travel to terror camps in Afghanistan for training.

There was no evidence the young men were involved in any plot to attack, but Ahearn argues that did not diminish the threat. And he's worried there may be more like them.

AHEARN: I'm always concerned, very concerned. We have a large Arab-American community. If the terrorists want to come here and capitalize on something like that, where they can blend into a community, the potential is there.

ARENA: On that point, everyone agrees, the potential is there. But are there currently sleeper agents in the United States? Officials say the short answer is no, at least, that they know of. FBI director Robert Mueller recently told Congress that finding one remains the FBI's top priority.

ROBERT MUELLER, FBI DIRECTOR: The very nature of a covert operative, trained not to raise suspicion and to appear benign, is what makes their detection so difficult.

ARENA: But Mueller did say agents have identified and are monitoring what he called extremists living in the United States.

MUELLER: The potential recruitment of radicalized American Muslim converts continues to be a concern and poses an increasingly challenging issue.

ARENA: Sources who work counterterrorism say the FBI has around 300 individuals, not just extremists, under some sort of surveillance in several cities, including New York, Baltimore, Falls Church, Virginia, Detroit, Phoenix, and Portland. Those sources say these people have either communicated with known terrorists, are thought to have trained in terror camps overseas, or whose names have surfaced in other terrorism investigations.

RICHARD FALKENRATH, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: Every possible lead available to the federal government has been pursued, and pursued pretty aggressively.

ARENA: Still, the government can only act on what it knows. Agents got a chilling reminder of that last summer, when extensive surveillance reports of U.S. financial buildings were discovered overseas. If the documents had not been found, officials would never have known operatives were here, meticulously preparing for a potential attack.

For CNN's America Bureau, Kelli Arena, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Stay tuned to CNN day and night for reliable news about your security.

SANCHEZ: We have some words for his mother's killer, and they're coming straight from the heart.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would never have been like this if my mother was still living.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Still to come, he let the BTK killer into his house when he was just a child. It changed his life forever.

KAGAN: Plus, a major toy retailer is shopping for new owners. How will it affect your wallet, business news straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

SANCHEZ: Now let's take a look at some of the other stories that are making news from coast to coast.

KAGAN: For the first time, we're seeing surveillance video from the shooting outside of Tyler, Texas. Watch this from this courthouse. Last Thursday a gunman shot and killed his ex-wife and a sheriff's officer before being killed himself. The video shows victims falling, people diving to the doors for safety, and bullets shattering glass.

SANCHEZ: A tractor-trailer inspection in Louisiana turned up more than cilantro and cucumbers. Oh no, authorities say they found another type of, well, vegetation.

KAGAN: Green.

SANCHEZ: Right. Forty pounds short of a ton of marijuana was hidden under the load of greens, value on the street, about $3 million. State troopers arrested the driver and his female passenger. The couple was traveling with their 5-year-old son.

KAGAN: Lovely.

All right, and he did it by balloon. Can he do it by plane? Steve Fossett trying to make the first solo nonstop airplane flight around the world. He left a Kansas airport yesterday, hopes to return Thursday morning, 23,000 miles later. In 2002, Fossett became the first person to circle the globe solo in a balloon. SANCHEZ: This is a story that really had a lot of people screaming today as they think about and watch the word, this is a man who was just a child when this crime happened, but he's had to live with the remorse of his actions, innocent actions, really, for his entire life.

Still to come, you're going to from the man who let the BTK killer into his home to get his mother.

KAGAN: Plus, letters from BTK over the years. What did he say? How did he say it? Clips from a killer's writings, when we return.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: We've been setting this one up for you this morning. Dennis Rader, accused of being the BTK killer, will make his very first court appearance from his cell. It's going to happen in about an hour. Police say that he bound, he tortured, he killed at least 10 victims over 30 years. Shirley Vian, the woman seen here, was bound and killed in 1977. Her son, Steve Relford, was 5 years old at the time.

In an interview with CNN's Paula Zahn last night, Relford spoke about the tragic experience of witnessing his mother's murder, of letting the man into the house. A warning to our viewers, to all of you now, much of what Relford says is very much graphic in nature. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE RELFORD, BTK VICTIM'S SON: I let the BTK in my house. He asked where my mother was, where my parents were. My mom's sick in bed. So immediately he starts pulling down the blinds, turns off the TV, reaches in his shoulder holster, and pulls out a pistol.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: In our next hour, we're going to bring you more startling details from that interview. We'll have more of that interview with Steve Relford.

KAGAN: The BTK killer is well known for taunting police with messages about his crimes. There were phone calls, packages and, of course, letters. Here now is CNN's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NISSEN (voice-over): From the first, the letters taunted police, described details from crime scenes that only the killer could know. The body of Julie Otero, one of four members of one family strangled in their home in early 1974, was "Laying on her back crosswise on the bed pointed in southwestern direction," wrote the presumed killer. All four were strangled with "window blind cord."

Eleven-year-old Josephine's glasses were in the southwest bedroom. Nine-year-old Joseph's radio was left blaring. The watch of the father, Joe Otero, was missing. "I needed one, so I took it," the author wrote. "Runs good."

The letter spelled out how the killer killed, but not why -- spelled it out with errors that made authorities think the writer was trying to fool them, trying to seem less educated than he really was.

"It hard to control myself," he wrote in that first letter. "You probably call me psychotic with sexual perversion hang-up. Where this monster enter my brain I will never know. But, it here to stay."

Profilers said the letter writer clearly wanted to be recognized, not only for his chilling crimes but for his intelligence, his poetry. When the "Wichita Eagle Beacon" didn't publish a poem he sent them about Shirley Vian, a 26-year-old mother of three murdered in March of '77, he wrote to a local TV station to complain.

"I find the newspaper not writing about the poem on Vian unamusing," he wrote. "How many do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention?"

In the same letter, he said it was time the media came up with a catchy name for him. "I like the following," he wrote. "How about you? The BTK Strangler, Wichita Strangler, Poetic Strangler, the Bondage Stranger or Psycho, the Wichita Hangman, the Wichita Executioner, the Garote Phathom, the Asphyxiator."

BTK's poems gave authorities some of their strongest early leaders. In a letter claiming responsibility for the December '77 murder of Nancy Fox, BTK enclosed a poem "Oh! Death to Nancy," patterned after a poem titled "Oh, Death" that had been published in a Wichita state university textbook.

"What is this that I can see?" read the author's version. "Cold icy hands taking hold of me for death has come you all can see."

Authorities started looking at class lists of students who had taken courses at the university that used that text. Suspect Dennis Rader was a student at Wichita State.

BTK wrote another poem to an intended victim, a woman who did not come home while the killer was lying in wait for her. The ending lines "Alone again I trod in pass memory of mirrors and ponder why number eight was not. Oh, Anna why didn't you appear?"

After years of silence, BTK resurfaced last March with another letter wrapped around photos of the body of Vicki Wegerle, a Wichita woman killed in 1986, and a copy of her driver's license.

The return address on the envelope ID'd the sender as Bill Thomas Killman, initials BTK. The contents were not made public, but authorities said it was typical of BTK's writing over the years, full of teases, challenges, boasts. "Good luck with your hunting," wrote BTK at the end of that first letter. "Yours, truly, guiltily."

Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE) (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Good to own a shovel today in the Northeast.

SANCHEZ: Yes, I guess so. Or some kind of bulldozer to move things out.

(WEATHER REPORT)

SANCHEZ: We do have so much more coming up on this day.

KAGAN: That we do. We're going to check in with our "New You" participants. Crunch time, week seven. How far have the fab five come and what's ahead?

SANCHEZ: Including the nail-biter?

KAGAN: Yes, filet mignon.

SANCHEZ: Also, Olympic star Sarah Hughes is going to be joining us live. We're going to talk to her about her student life at Yale and her recent skating tour. This will be the second hour of CNN LIVE TODAY. And it begins -- you know when?

KAGAN: Right now.

SANCHEZ: Right.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com