A former church leader today dramatically confessed to carrying out the BTK serial killings which terrorised Kansas for nearly 20 years.

Dennis Rader, 60, the one-time president of the church council at Christ Lutheran Church and Boy Scout, admitted to 10 counts of premeditated murder in the Wichita area between 1974 and 1991.

The unexpected guilty plea came on the day that father of two's trial was due to begin for the torture killings.

"I had never strangled anyone before, so I really didn’t know how much pressure you had to put on a person or how long it would take," he told the court in describing his first killings in 1974, a couple and two children. "The whole family just panicked on me so I worked pretty quick."

Prosecutors had said before the hearing that no plea deal had been made.

Dressed in a beige coat and dark tie, Rader told District Judge Gregory Waller that he understood the charges against him and that he was waiving his right to a jury trial.

"The defense worked with me real well," Rader said. "We went over it. I feel like I’m pretty happy with them." Asked by Judge Waller if he was pleading because he was guilty, Rader answered, "Yes, sir."

Calling himself 'BTK' for bind, torture, kill, the murderer taunted media and police with cryptic messages that became increasingly frequent in the months before Rader’s arrest four months ago. Most of the victims were strangled, while others were stabbed or shot.

He will not face the death penalty because all the crimes with which he is charged were committed before the state adopted the death penalty.

The BTK murders began in 1974 when Joseph Otero, 38, his wife, Julie, 34, and their two children, aged 11 and nine, were found strangled in their home. The killer terrified Wichita, a manufacturing centre with 350,000 residents, for two decades.

BTK’s next three known victims were young women also found throttled at home: Kathryn Bright, 21, in April 1974; Shirley Vian, 24, in March 1977; and Nancy Fox, 25, in December 1977.

Along with his grisly crimes, the killer sent rambling letters to the media, including one in which he named himself BTK for "Bind them, Torture them, Kill them." In another he complained, "How many do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention?"

The letters had stopped for some years, but resumed around the 30th anniversary of BTK’s first killings after years of silence, with a letter to The Wichita Eagle newspaper that included photos of the 1986 strangulation of Vicki Wegerle and a photocopy of her missing driver’s license. Her case had not been linked to BTK until then.

That letter was followed by several other cryptic messages and packages. The break in the case came after a computer diskette the killer had sent was traced to Rader’s church in Park City.

Rader also is charged with the killings of Marine Hedge, 53, who was abducted from her home on April 27, 1985, and found dead along a dirt road eight days later, and Dolores Davis, 62, who was abducted from her home on January 19, 1991. Those deaths were also not linked to BTK until Rader’s arrest.

Police cast such a wide net for suspects that even some reporters covering the case were swabbed for DNA to rule them out as suspects.

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