A 31-year manhunt for a serial killer who taunted police with letters about his crimes ended when authorities said they finally caught up with the man who called himself BTK and linked him to at least 10 murders.

"The bottom line: BTK is arrested," Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams said on Saturday, setting off applause from a crowd that included family members of some of the victims.

The suspect was identified as Dennis L. Rader, a 59-year-old city worker in nearby Park City, who was arrested on Friday. Police did not say how they identified Rader as a suspect or whether he has said anything since his arrest.

BTK - a self-coined nickname that stands for "Bind, Torture, Kill" - stoked fears throughout the 1970s in Wichita, a manufacturing centre with 350,000 residents, about 290 kilometres southwest of Kansas City, Missouri.

The killer re-surfaced about a year ago after 25 years of silence. He had been linked to eight slayings between 1974 and 1986, but police said on Saturday they had identified two more, from 1985 and 1991.

Rader, a Cub Scout leader who was active at his Lutheran church, lived with his wife, neighbours said. Public records indicate they have two grown children. Messages left for family members were not returned on Saturday, and no one answered the door at the home of his in-laws.

A few neighbours recalled receiving small favours from Rader, but most interviewed on Saturday said the municipal codes enforcement supervisor was an unpleasant man who often went looking for reasons to cite his neighbours for violations of city codes.

"A part of me was scared when I heard, because I talked to him. It is a little creepy," said Chris Yoder, 23, who once lived nearby.

Rader has yet to be charged, but a jubilant collection of law enforcers and community leaders told the crowd in City Council chambers they were confident the long-running case could now be closed.

Rader was being held at an undisclosed location, and it was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer. In Kansas, suspects generally appear before a judge for a status hearing within 48 hours of their arrest.

Prosecutor Nola Foulston said the death penalty would not apply to any crime committed before 1994, when the death penalty was introduced in Kansas.

The BTK slayings began in 1974 with the strangulations of Joseph Otero, 38, his wife, Julie, 34, and their two children. The six victims that followed were all women, and most were strangled.

Along with his grisly crimes, the killer terrorized Wichita by sending 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?"

But he stopped communicating in 1979 and remained silent for more than two decades before re-establishing contact last March with a letter to a newspaper about an unsolved 1986 killing.

Since then, the killer sent at least eight letters to the media or police, including three packages containing jewelry that police believed may have been taken from BTK's victims. One letter contained the driver's license of victim Nancy Fox.

The new letters sent chills through Wichita but also re-kindled hope that modern forensic science could find some clue that would finally lead police to the killer.

In the end, DNA evidence was the key to cracking the case, said Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius.

"The way they made the link was some DNA evidence."

Source: China Daily