Media, curious swarm neighborhood

? It was a scene not often found in Kansas.

A television photographer taking a picture of a newspaper photographer taking a picture of an amateur photographer taking a picture of the home of a serial killing suspect who has drawn international attention to a quiet bedroom community just north of Wichita.

Throughout the day Sunday, a steady line of sightseers cruised along 61st Street North at the west end of Park City, hoping to get a glimpse of the house at 6220 Independence. It is the home of the man who now stands accused of being BTK.

The owner, Dennis Rader, 59, is expected to be charged this week with 10 counts of first-degree murder in the killings of 10 people from 1974 through 1991. He was arrested Friday near Park City.

Most of those who live in the neighborhood said they have grown used to the steady stream of rubberneckers and journalists.

“I have a card in my back pocket from a Los Angeles Times lady who came up here,” said Patty Loveday of Ozark, Mo., who was visiting her father at the home she grew up in.

“I’ve seen tags from California,” said Derrick Southern, who was visiting a cousin who lives in the neighborhood.

“And they’re calling left and right,” said the cousin, Jason Day. “Even the National Enquirer came by. It’s crazy.

“And Japan. The Japanese International Press. They interviewed me this morning.”

Tonya Voorhees said she felt like a hostage in her home, which she left just once this weekend to pick up cigarettes. She said she sold many of them for $1 apiece to sightseers who had gathered outside her home.

She said Rader used to constantly harass her about two large Labrador retrievers she owned. She eventually gave the dogs away.

“He told me he was watching me,” she said. “Now I know it’s true.”

The outsiders who stopped by to see the house were thwarted by yellow crime scene tape that kept them several hundred feet away.

Among those at the scene was Nan Hanna. She remembers the day in 1974 when, as a 10-year-old, she made her father drive past the home at 803 N. Edgemoor where BTK killed his first four victims.

She said it wasn’t hard to explain what would prompt her to show up outside Rader’s house with a camera: “Just morbid curiosity.”