September 22, 2005
Contact: Jeff Schrade (202)224-9093

(Washington, DC) At a hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs today, Senator Larry Craig announced that he will introduce legislation to close a loophole that allows convicted murderers to be buried in the national cemeteries created for veterans and those killed in action.

The Idaho Republican serves as Chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, and said he is taking this action to protect the sacred nature of those grounds by preventing people such as Dennis Rader, the infamous BTK serial killer, from being buried along with real military heroes.

Rader, an honorably discharged veteran of the Air Force, was sentenced in August to a minimum of 175 years in prison for the horrific murders of ten people in Kansas. He called himself the BTK killer ? the initials stand for "Bind, Torture, Kill." Despite his confession and conviction, because Rader is eligible for parole, he is also eligible to buried in our nation's national cemeteries.

In 1997 Congress passed a law to prohibit those convicted of capital crimes from being interred in our nation's military cemeteries, but the law allowed continued eligibility to those who could be paroled.

It is that loophole that Craig says needs to be closed.

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