Police issue tickets, warnings to gawkers outside Rader’s house

? In the Park City neighborhood where Dennis Rader lived before prosecutors charged him with the BTK serial killings last week, the curious keep coming.

And there is only so much police can do about it.

Officers on Sunday issued several warnings to people not to loiter near Rader’s house, Park City Police Chief Bill Ball said.

Rader, 59, remained in the Sedgwick County Jail, charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder.

Although people can freely walk on the public street in front of his home, they shouldn’t stand and loiter near his house, Ball said.

“We explained it to them,” Ball said of the sightseers. “They just hadn’t thought about it.”

Families, often with children, have been walking up in groups of seven or eight people at a time and taking pictures.

The visitors just need to respect the residents’ property, he said.

Ball said the attention spawned by Rader’s arrest has “just turned that whole area upside down.”

The modest neighborhood just north of Wichita sits within hearing distance of I-135 and adjoins a cluster of fast-food eateries and convenience stores.

Police have ticketed some motorists who ignored traffic barriers so they could drive slowly past Rader’s house and, in the same block, the former home of Marine Hedge. Police recently announced that Hedge was one of BTK’s victims.

Ball said he wasn’t sure how many tickets had been issued.

Some residents have erected No Trespassing or Private Property signs in their yards. Rader’s front yard bears one of the signs.

Although many of the visitors appear to be from the Wichita area, some have been from as far away as Canada, Ball said.