Technology likely to play key role in BTK case.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Byline: Tim Potter and Ron Sylvester

WICHITA, Kan. _ Sunday, the day after Robert Ressler heard Wichita officials announce in a nationally televised news conference that they had arrested Dennis Rader in connection with 10 BTK killings, he was still struck by one thing.

To Ressler, a pioneering former FBI profiler of serial killers, the fact that law enforcement officials voiced extreme confidence in their case even though they didn't give specifics was a key point. It told him they could have a DNA match or a confession. Something hard to beat.

Wichita Mayor Carlos Mayans might have answered part of the question Saturday when he told The Eagle that law enforcement officers had informed him that Rader's DNA matched evidence from one or more BTK crime scenes.

DNA evidence was recovered from at least three of the BTK crime scenes years before reliable DNA technology emerged.

Richard LaMunyon, the Wichita police chief during the years when most of the BTK killings occurred, said possible DNA evidence was collected …