Inside the cereal box, Rader had left plans for future killings, along with an additional note which simply asked the police if it would be possible to communicate via floppy disks without being traced. "Be honest," he implored them, and of course, they assured him it would be safe.
Following his particular instructions, the police took out an ad in the Miscellaneous Section of the Wichita Eagle, reading: "Rex, it will be OK." Rader believed them. Just two weeks later, Wichita's KSAS-TV received a package containing a floppy disk with one single file on it. Rader was cocky, claiming the first floppy disk was only a "test," but it turned out he wasn't all that tech-savvy. Authorities were now one step ahead of the killer. Detectives were able to run relatively simple tests to determine that the file had last been saved by a user named "Dennis," and it had been printed using one of the printers at the nearby Christ Lutheran Church.
In short order, the metadata had led authorities straight to Christ Lutheran Church and to Dennis Rader, the congregation's president, per The Atlantic. A DNA test confirmed Dennis Rader was the man they had been looking for. "The floppy did me in," Rader would later lament, via Cybercrime. He ultimately confessed to all ten murders and is currently serving out a 175-year sentence at El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas.
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