Serial killer The BTK Strangler - Dennis Rader (1 Viewer)

b2ux · Dec 14, 2012

Sentencing Hearing Held For BTK Killer Dennis Rader
WICHITA, KS: Confessed serial killer Dennis Rader, known as BTK, listens to testimony in the sentening phase of his trial in Sedgwick County Court August 17, 2005 in Wichita, Kansas. Rader, of Park City, Kansas, has pleaded guilty to 10 counts of murder for killings which spanned three decades
August 17, 2005 - Pool/Getty Images

Sentencing Hearing Held For BTK Killer Dennis Rader
WICHITA, KS: Confessed serial killer Dennis Rader, known as BTK, listens to testimony in the sentening phase of his trial in Sedgwick County Court August 17, 2005 in Wichita, Kansas.
August 17, 2005 - Pool/Getty Images

Sentencing Hearing Held For BTK Killer Dennis Rader
WICHITA, KS: Lt. Ken Landwehr holds up a pair of handcuffs, which were used in one of the crimes, during Dennis L. Rader's sentencing hearing August 18, 2005 in Wichita, Kansas.
August 18, 2005 - Pool/Getty Images

Sentencing Hearing Held For BTK Killer Dennis Rader
WICHITA, KS: Wichita Police Det. Sam Houston shows a mask, which was used in one of the crimes, during Dennis L. Rader's sentencing hearing August 18, 2005 in Wichita, Kansas.
August 18, 2005 - Pool/Getty Images

Sentencing Hearing Held For BTK Killer Dennis Rader
WICHITA, KS: Dennis Rader looks away while pictures of him dressed in women's undergarments are shown at his sentencing hearing August 18, 2005 in Wichita, Kansas.
August 18, 2005 - Pool/Getty Images

Sentencing Hearing Held For BTK Killer Dennis Rader
WICHITA, KS: Dennis Rader listens to testimony at his sentencing hearing August 18, 2005 in Wichita, Kansas. Rader of Park City, Kansas pleaded guilty to the 10 killings dating back to 1974.
August 18, 2005 - Pool/Getty Images

Sentencing Hearing Held For BTK Killer Dennis Rader
WICHITA, KS: Brandon Wegerle (L) embraces his sister Stephanie Clyne as their father Bill Wegerle makes a victim statement in the sentencing phase of Dennis Rader's murder trial in Sedgwick County Courthouse August 18, 2005 in Wichita, Kansas. Vicki Wegerly was one of 10 people killed by Dennis Rader, known as the the BTK Killings.
August 18, 2005 - Pool/Getty Images

Sentencing Hearing Held For BTK Killer Dennis Rader
WICHITA, KS: Serial killer Dennis Rader is overcome with emotion as families of the 10 people he murdered gave statements in the sentencing phase of his murder trial in Sedgwick County Courthouse.
August 18, 2005 - Pool/Getty Images

Sentencing Hearing Held For BTK Killer Dennis Rader
WICHITA, KS: Serial killer Dennis Rader puts his glasses back on after wiping away tears during family testimony in the sentencing phase of his trial in Sedgwick County Courthouse.
August 18, 2005 - Pool/Getty Images

Sentencing Hearing Held For BTK Killer Dennis Rader
WICHITA, KS: Serial killer Dennis Rader stands before Sedgwick County District Court Judge Greg Waller as sentencing is read August 18, 2005 in Wichita, Kansas. Rader received 9 life terms and a 'hard 40' for the ten murders he committed over nearly 30 years.
August 18, 2005 - Pool/Getty Images

Sentencing Hearing Held For BTK Killer Dennis Rader
WICHITA, KS: Carmen Montoya, whose parents, brother and sister were killed in the first of what will became known as the BTK killings, makes a victim statement during the sentencing phase of Dennis Rader's trial at the Sedgwick County Courthouse on August 18, 2005 in Wichita, Kansas.
August 18, 2005 - Pool/Getty Images

Sentencing Hearing Held For BTK Killer Dennis Rader
WICHITA, KS: Steve Relford, who was at home when his mother, Shirley Vian was killed by BTK, wipes away a tear as he attempts to make a victim statement during the sentencing phase of Dennis Rader's trial at the Sedgwick County Courthouse on August 18, 2005 in Wichita, Kansas.
August 18, 2005 - Pool/Getty Images

Sentencing Hearing Held For BTK Killer Dennis Rader
WICHITA, KS: Rick Vian, the common law husband of the BTK victim Shirley Vian, points at Dennis Rader as he makes a statement during the sentencing phase of Dennis Rader's trial at the Sedgwick County Courthouse on August 18, 2005 in Wichita, Kansas.
August 18, 2005 - Pool/Getty Images

BTK Killer Dennis Rader Begins His Life Sentence In Prison
EL DORADO, KS: Dennis L. Rader (R), the man admitting to be the BTK serial killer, is escorted into the El Dorado Correctional Facility on August 19, 2005 in El Dorado, Kansas.
August 19, 2005 - Pool/Getty Images

BTK Killer Dennis Rader Begins His Life Sentence In Prison
EL DORADO, KS: Dennis L. Rader (L), the man admitting to be the BTK serial killer, is escorted into the El Dorado Correctional Facility on August 19, 2005 in El Dorado, Kansas.
August 19, 2005 - Pool/Getty Images

BTK Killer Dennis Rader Begins His Life Sentence In Prison
EL DORADO, KS: Dennis L. Rader (L), the man admitting to be the BTK serial killer, is escorted into the El Dorado Correctional Facility on August 19, 2005 in El Dorado, Kansas.
August 19, 2005 - Larry W. Smith/Getty Images

BTK Killer Dennis Rader Begins His Life Sentence In Prison
EL DORADO, KS: Dennis L. Rader (L), the man admitting to be the BTK serial killer, is escorted into the El Dorado Correctional Facility on August 19, 2005 in El Dorado, Kansas.
August 19, 2005 - Pool/Getty Images

b2ux · Dec 14, 2012

Bondage Photos

After the BTK killer Dennis Rader was arrested on February 25, 2005, police uncovered his stashes of writings, photos, artwork and other assorted items he had kept over the years related to his crimes. He had a bondage fetish and enjoyed wearing the undergarments of his slain female victims. He enjoyed tying himself up in all sorts of ways. Using various mechanisms he was able to photograph himself with a Polaroid camera. During his years as a Boy Scout troop leader, he nearly got caught once when he couldn't escape his own bonds after tying himself up inside a camper during a scout outing. He eventually worked himself loose.

b2ux · Dec 14, 2012

Artwork

After the BTK killer Dennis Rader was arrested on February 25, 2005, police uncovered his stashes of writings, photos, artwork and other assorted items he had kept over the years related to his crimes. He had a bondage fetish and enjoyed wearing the undergarments of his slain female victims.

His obsession for bondage expressed itself in his artwork. He used tracing paper to reproduce female images from photographs, and then would add ropes and other bindings. Rader was obsessed with cutting out magazine and newspaper ads of women models and sketching binding materials over the images.

b2ux · Dec 14, 2012

Dennis Rader - BTK killer - A biography
Childhood, Adolescence, Adulthood pre-1974

Dennis Rader was born in a quiet corner of Kansas, close to where Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri all meet, on March 9, 1945. He was the first of four sons born to William and Dorothea Rader. He was baptized at Zion Lutheran Church in Pittsburg, Kansas. His father was a member of the US Marine Corps, who later worked for the electric utility KG&E starting in 1948. The family moved to the largest city in Kansas, Wichita, when Dennis was a young boy. The Raders settled into a modest but pleasant home at 4815 N. Seneca, which remained continually as a Rader household until sold in 2005.

Not much is known about Rader's childhood. Is said to have joined the Boy Scouts as a youth. He attended Riverview Elementary School. By his own admission, he says he developed fantasies about bondage, control and torture from an early age, while still in grade school. As he became pubic he dreamed of tying girls up and having his way with them. The Mouseketeer Annette Funicello was one of his favorite targets for imaginary bondage. He admits to having killed cats and dogs such as by hanging them as a youth.

Those who knew him personally describe a quiet and polite young man who preferred to keep to himself. Dennis Rader was not a joiner or known to be very socially active in high school. The young Dennis showed no interest in the music of the times. One friend described him as utterly lacking a sense of humor, but tending to be studious and focused. He was described as a person who chose his words before speaking, and who would give you his full attention as he spoke.

Dennis Rader graduated from Wichita Heights High School, class of 1963. In his latter adolescence he appears to have had employment, such as working in a grocery store. It wasn't until the fall of 1965 that he entered Kansas Wesleyan College in Salina, too far away from Wichita to live at home. He only did two semesters there. In the summer of 1966 at age 21 Rader joined the US Air Force.

Rader was first sent to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas for basic training. He spent time at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas while doing technical training there. In early 1967 Rader was stationed at Brookley Air Force Base in Mobile, Alabama and appears to have been there until January, 1968, when he was sent to Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa in the west Pacific. (Keep in mind that Air Force personnel typically travel quite a bit regardless of where they are based.)

Rader remained stationed in tropical Okinawa for six months. In July 1968 he was moved to mainland Japan, stationed at the large Tachikawa Air Base located near Tokyo. He appears to have been based there until the end of his service in 1970. By his own description, he also spent time in Korea, Greece and Turkey while serving in the Air Force.

Rader's four years on active duty in the Air Force appear to have been unremarkble. He attained the rank of sargeant and worked in the installation of antenna equipment, among other tasks. One former buddy from those times was totally shocked when he found out Rader was BTK in 2005.
Dennis was just one of the guys, he said, just sort of blended in. Rader received the Air Force Good Conduct Medal, the Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon and the National Defense Service Medal, was discharged from active duty in the summer of 1970 and returned to his home town of Wichita, Kansas. He would serve two more years in the reserves.

Less than a year after his return to Wichita, on May 22, 1971 Dennis Rader and Paula Dietz were married. Paula was also from the same area and had attended the same high school. She was also a fellow Lutheran. Dennis was 26, Paula was 23 when they got married. They settled in Park City, not far from the Rader home in north Wichita. Dennis was working in the meat department of an IGA supermarket, Paula was a bookkeeper.
In 1972 Rader went to work at the Coleman Co., a manufacturer of camping supplies and Wichita's largest employer at the time. He lasted 13 months there until July 1973. He was also attending Butler County Community College in El Dorado, and earned an Associate's (2 year) degree in Electronics in 1973.
In the fall of 1973 Rader began his studies at Wichita State University. It would take him six more years of night school to earn his degree. He was a poor student, even by his own description, a chronic C minus or D level. He couldn't spell and may have had a learning disability reflected in his unusually bad written grammar.
In late 1973 or early 1974 he appears to have had a brief stint working for Cessna, the aircraft manufacturer, but says he was fired from that job. He found himself in a low frame of mind, unemployed, unhappy, with time on his hands. He slipped deeper into the fantasy world he had known since childhood and wanted to know: what would it feel like to strangle somebody to death?

1974
In January, 1974 Dennis Rader was in between jobs and restless. His wife worked at the VA Hospital in Wichita and didn't like driving in snow and ice, so Dennis would sometimes drive her to and from work.
He enjoyed "trolling", which consisted of driving or walking around certain neighborhoods or school campuses where there would be women to observe. He would focus in on a good prospect and enter into his fantasy realm of bondage, torture and death, imagining what he would do to her. Bind them, torture them, kill them.

There was a new Hispanic family that had moved into a corner house at Edgemoor and Murdock, and one day while dropping Paula off he spied Julie Otero, age 34, and her daughter Josephine, age 11. He had a thing for Hispanic women, admired their beauty and dark hair.

Rader devised a plan. He gathered together his hit kit, consisting of a gun, cords, knives, various tools for breaking and entering. He observed the Otero house for a time, getting an idea of when people left or returned, what their daily schedule was like.
On the morning of January 15, he could wait no longer. After 8 a.m. he came around the house, snuck into the yard and cut the phone line. Hesitating at the back door, unsure if he could go through with it, he barged in. Things were not as he had expected.
The man of the house, Joe Otero, 38, was still home, as were Julie, Josephine and Joey, the 9 year old son. Their rather vicious dog was in the house also. Rader seized control of the situation, ordering Joey to put the dog in the back yard at gunpoint. He somehow was able to control all four people using the gun. He told them he was a wanted criminal and needed money, food and a car to escape.
At first Joe was dumbfounded and asked him if this was some kind of a joke set up by his brother-in-law. Rader ordered everyone to lie down in the living room, then changed his mind and sent them all into a bedroom. Using his vagrant ruse, he was able to disalarm the Oteros enough to get them all tied up.

However everything changed when Rader put a bag over Joe's head. Joe fought hard, tearing holes in the bag. Rader had to devise a cord ligature to subdue him and kill him.
He attempted to manually strangle Julie, but it took considerably longer and much more effort to strangle someone than it did in the movies. Julie passed out, but revived after a time. The second strangulation attempt worked. She had begged Rader not to kill the children, and told him, "God have mercy on your soul".

Nine year old Joey was the next one to die. Rader herded him into his bedroom and did him in through strangulation and suffocation. He apparently rolled off the bed and died facedown on the bedroom floor. Rader says he brought a chair into the bedroom and sat there to watch the boy die.

Eleven year old Josie was the final one. After a failed attempt at strangulation she revived. Rader forced her to walk down to the basement. He put a noose around her neck and informed her she would be going to heaven to join the others.
He had asked her for a camera, but she said they didn't have one. Josie was hanged from a sewer pipe in the basement, left partially disrobed. Rader then masturbated over her bare legs, leaving some semen on the pipe behind her.

Afterwards Rader tidied up a bit, collected his things and left after a time. He took Joe's watch and a small radio. He got into their Oldsmobile station wagon, backed out onto Murdock Street and nearly had a collision with an oncoming vehicle. Rader drove to a nearby supermarket, Dillon's, and parked the car.
A lady saw him exiting the car shaking like a leaf. He stealthily tossed the car keys onto the roof of Dillon's and exited the area on foot. After that he claims he walked to his own car, but realized his knife was missing. He claims to have driven back to the Otero house, parked his car in their garage, and then retrieved the knife from the yard.

Rader had no idea that the Oteros had three other older children, all of whom had left for school before his arrival. Charlie, 15, Daniel, 14 and Carmen, 13 were the ones who found their parents dead when they arrived home from school that afternoon. (Photo and a story of the surviving Oteros from KSN.com).

In April, 1974 Rader was stalking a woman named Kathryn Bright, 21. He had seen her one day entering the home she rented in Wichita. On April 4 he broke into the home via the back porch door. He hid in a bedroom.
Around 2 pm Kathryn arrived home, accompanied by her brother Kevin who was 19 years old. Kevin didn't live there, but had gone with his sister that day to the bank. Rader startled them by emerging from the bedroom pointing a gun at them.
He recited the same story he had told the Oteros, he was a wanted criminal from California on his way to New York, and needed a car and money. Rader forced the two of them in a bedroom, where Kathryn was tied up by Kevin forced at gunpoint and/or by Rader himself.
He attempted to tie Kevin up in another room, but he hadn't brought his best hit kit materials that day and had to improvise from materials found in the home. Kevin worked his way loose and got into a vicious fight for his life with Rader, nearly succeeding in taking the gun from him.

Rader grabbed back the gun and got off a shot that hit Kevin in the face. Still fighting, Kevin made one more attempt to overpower Rader but got shot a second time in the head. Stunned and bleeding, Kevin appeared to be dead or dying and Rader went back to work on Kathryn.
She gave him a powerful fight also, but in order to end the scene quickly Rader switched from attempted strangulation to stabbing, getting her with deep cuts to the abdomen and other areas.
Meanwhile Kevin had revived and ran out of the house screaming for help. This necessitated Rader having to make a hasty exit, and he did, running from the scene on foot. He ran the many blocks to where his car was parked and drove off. He was all cleaned up by the time his wife got off work, and no one suspected him.
Kathryn died in the hospital a few hours later despite urgent attempts to save her with surgery and blood transfusions. Kevin was left in critical condition with his head wounds but survived. He still bears the damage done to him that day. (Photo and a story about Kevin Bright from CNN.com).
In October, 1974 an editor of the Wichita Eagle newspaper received a phone call directing him to a letter hidden in an engineering book at the Wichita Public Library. He notified police instead, who found the letter at the library. It was a gruesome description of the unsolved Otero murders by someone with a good knowledge of the crime scene.
It was written in poor English with numerous misspellings. The writer was concerned that the police had recently arrested the wrong men for the Otero murders, and proudly proclaimed, " I did it myself with noone's help". He said, "the code words for me will be... Bind them, toture them, kill them, B.T.K..."

b2ux · Dec 14, 2012

Dennis Rader - BTK killer - A biography
1975-1979
In November, 1974 Dennis Rader finally found a steady job with ADT Security, a company specializing in the installation of alarm systems. He would stay with ADT for the next 14 years. He rose to the position of installation supervisor, which gave him some flexibility in terms of where he could be during the day.

In 1975 the Raders' first child was born, Brian. Dennis had a full schedule between ADT and night school at WSU. Even though he is not known to have committed any known crime during 1975 and 1976, by his own description the trolling for more victims never did cease then or until his arrest 30 years later.

On March 17, 1977 Rader decided it was time for a murder one way or another. He had been trolling a particular neighborhood fairly heavily and had some women in mind there. He had met a woman named Cheryl in a bar and found her quite interesting. Cheryl was renting a house with another woman and often had parties there in those days.
Rader found out where she lived and decided it would be "a go", meaning a definite hit. Fortunately for Cheryl and her friends, no one was home when Rader came around that day. Rader states he had also cased another home in the neighborhood, but that no one was there either.

Rader went trolling on foot down Hydraulic Street and encountered a five year old boy, Steve Relford. He pulled out a photo of his own wife and son and asked Steve if he knew who they were. Steve said he didn't and proceeded on home to complete the errand to the store his mother had sent him on. Rader soon knocked on the door, and Steve answered.
He was posing as an official person, perhaps a detective, and gained entry into the home. There were three children in the home including Steve and an 8 year old brother and a 4 year old sister. Rader abruptly turned off the television and lowered the blinds. (Photo and a story about Steve Relford from CNN.com).

The mother emerged in a bathrobe, demanding to know what was going on. At gunpoint, Rader ordered all the children into the bathroom, where he blockaded the children in. He made his intentions clear to the mother, Shirley Vian, 24, that he was going to bind her up and have his way with her.
However, it wasn't rape he was after as he led Shirley to believe. Rader claims he got her a glass of water after she threw up and allowed her to have a smoke to calm down. Shirley was ill that day and her common law husband Richard Vian wouldn't be home till later.

Rader tied her up as promised but then strangled her to death with a cord around her neck. He left semen on panties found next to the body. He was gone before the children could break out of the bathroom and summon help. Rader later stated that a ringing telephone unnerved him and caused him to leave before he could kill the children.

In December, 1977 Rader became fixated on Nancy Fox, 25, stalking her from her residence and workplace. On the evening of December 8 he broke into her modest duplex via a rear bedroom window after first cutting the phone line.
He awaited her arrival from her evening job at a jewerly store. Nancy was the sole occupant of the duplex at that time and lived alone. The initial confrontation took place in the kitchen, presumably at gunpoint. Rader stated that he had a sexual issue and needed to tie her up to rape her. Other than making barbed comments, Nancy didn't fight back.
She was ordered into the bedroom after being allowed to partly disrobe in the bathroom. Rader tied her to the bed and undressed himself. At that point he announced who he really was, making it clear he was the same person who had killed the Oteros, and proceeded to strangle her to death with a ligature. He left semen deposited on a nightgown found next to the body.

The following morning after reporting to work at ADT and leaving the office in a company van, Rader stopped at a phone booth just a couple blocks down the street. He dialed a police dispatcher and said, "Yes, you will find a home-acide at 843 South Pershing. Nancy Fox...That is correct", and left the receiver dangling.
Police rushed to the residence and found the lifeless body still lying on the bed, the head badly swollen. A tape recording of that call was eventually played repeatedly over and over in the Wichita media, but no one including Rader's co-workers or family was able to recognize the voice.
In early 1978 Rader attempted to send a postcard with a sarcastic poem, "Shirley Locks", to the Wichita Eagle but no one recognized the significance of it until days later. It was followed by a letter that was taken quite seriously. In it the killer took full responsibility for the Otero, Shirley Vian and Nancy Fox murders plus an unnamed seventh victim later assumed to be Kathryn Bright.
The writer suggested a number of names for himself, including B.T.K. It was written in the same style as the 1974 letter, and mentioned a mysterious "factor x" that the writer said was the reason for his need to kill people. Also included was a bizarre poem, "Oh death to Nancy", mimicking an old folk song and poem called "Oh Death".
This letter forced the Wichita Police Department to make a decision. It was decided that it would be publicly announced that Wichita had an unknown serial killer on the loose, and citizens were urged to be extra careful about locking doors and looking out for each other. A whole generation of women grew up in Wichita that routinely checked their phones for a dial tone whenever re-entering their homes, to make sure the phone line had not been cut by an intruder.

In June, 1978 Paula gave birth to the Rader's second and final child, Kerri. She had been pregnant through all the events during and following Nancy Fox's murder.
In April, 1979 Rader broke into the home of Anna Williams, a 63 year old widow who had recently lost her husband. He waited fruitlessly for Anna to come home, but she didn't until later that evening. Rader pilfered a few small items and left, disappointed.
In June of that year, just days before Rader's graduation ceremony at WSU, Anna received a package in the mail with a poem entitled "Oh Anna why didn't you appear", a drawing of what Rader had intended to do her and a few of the things he had stolen. The next day a similar package arrived at the studios of KAKE-TV in Wichita. Anna was terrified and quickly moved far away from Wichita.

The 1980s
If Dennis Rader had enjoyed all the publicity BTK was getting in the late 1970s, he must have grown increasingly wary of being caught. Ahead in the game, he knew when to fold it. Nothing more was heard from the killer publicly until 2004, except for one letter that was not officially acknowledged to have come from BTK in 1988.
Rader continued his trolling while becoming more active in his church and also became a Cub Scout leader when his son was old enough. In fact, son Brian would eventually attain the status of Eagle Scout, undoubtedly with ample encouragement and guidance from his father.
Rader never utilized his degree in Administation of Justice from WSU, but was known to have envied becoming a police officer and was also reportedly involved at times in reserve officer programs as a volunteer.

It is impossible to understand the story of Dennis Rader unless one has some knowledge of what a psychopath is. A psychopath is a person who is incapable of empathy for other beings. They are self-centered to the extreme that no one else matters unless someone serves a purpose or potential purpose for the psychopath.
This is a person who has no problems with hurting others, no guilt, shame or remorse. It is a person who is deceptive, lies freely and skillfully without shame or regret. Dennis Rader from his youth learned how to live in two worlds, the conventional, social realm everyone lives in and his own private world of torture and death.
He was extremely skillful in separating these two worlds, what is known as compartmentalizing. He could go out and commit the most atrocious murder, and come home like nothing had happened. It was like changing clothes or switching to a different channel.

By 1985 as far as anyone knows, it had been a number of years since the last kill. Rader was a busy family man, a person with no criminal record, someone apparently religious and helpful at church. Despite all this he took great lengths to pull off his next murder. He was now 40 years old, his son was 9 and his daughter 6.

Marine Hedge, 53, was a widowed neighbor who lived on the same street in Park City as the Raders. She was a petite, friendly woman, mother of four grown children, who had lost her husband Thomas in the past year.
In the 1970s the Raders had purchased a small home on Independence Street. During their walks Dennis and Paula would sometimes wave to Marine, who enjoyed gardening around the home as did Dennis.

On the weekend of April 27, 1985, Rader was attending a Boy Scout camp-out just outside of Wichita. He left camp in the evening, with the pretext of having a headache and needing to get to town to buy something for it.
He parked his car by a bowling alley in the city and bought himself a beer. He swished the liquid in his mouth and spit it out, and also deliberately got some beer on his clothing so he would have a smell like he had been drinking.
Calling a cab, he pretended to be drunk and instructed the driver to take him to a park in Park City so he could walk it off before arriving home. The park adjoined the backyard of the Hedge property. Rader was disappointed to see Marine's car in the carport, and assumed she was home.
He cut the phone line and quietly pried open a rear door using a screwdriver. It turned out that no one was home as he had hoped, and soon a car pulled up and Rader hid in a bedroom closet. Marine Hedge and a friend, Gerald Porter, entered the home. Gerald left for the night around 1 a.m. Rader waited while Marine went to bed and fell asleep.

Rader crept out of the closet. He flicked on the bathroom light and then pounced on Marine in the bed, manually choking the 100 pound woman to death. However, his fantasy-driven outing was far from over. He dragged the body with the bedding to her car and put her in the trunk.
Rader drove directly to his church, where he was a person so trusted that he had the keys to the building. He dragged the body underneath some trees and entered the building down to the basement, where he taped black plastic over the basement windows so no one could see inside.
He then dragged the body down into the basement and photographed it in various poses. It was getting late and Rader hurriedly returned the body to the car trunk and took off. He found a dumping place in a ditch along a dirt road several miles outside of Park City, and semi-concealed the body under some trimmings.
He left knotted pantyhose by the body, which apparently had been used for some purpose during the night. At one point Rader had dropped the car key onto the dashboard and the key slid down and wedged under the windshield. He used a rock to smash a corner of the windshield to retrieve the key.

By now it was getting light and Rader hurriedly made his way back to where he had left his car in Wichita. He parked Marine's car there after wiping it down for fingerprints, and returned to the Scout camp he had deserted earlier. He was never connected to this crime until some 20 years later. He still had those photographs in his collection.

In September, 1986 Rader had his eye on Vicki Wegerle, a 28 year old mother of two. He would walk by her house, hearing strains of piano music as Vickie played. On September 16 he took some time out for a "PJ" or project, as he called his murder prospects.
Sometime after 10 a.m. he showed up at Vickie's door, dressed up like a telephone repairman complete with hardhat. He somehow managed to get Vicki to allow him inside the home to check the phone line. He fiddled with her phone with an improvised testing gadget and then informed her she was going to be tied up.
Presumably using a gun, he forced her into a bedroom and attempted to tie her up, but she gave him a fierce battle scratching him in the process. Rader prevailed in the physical fight and secured her with ropes, then proceeded to strangle her to death using pantyhose as a ligature.
He photographed the dying body in a few poses and hastily left in the Wegerle car. Vicki had warned him that her husband would be arriving home shortly. Rader later stated that had the husband come home, he would have been killed also.

Bill Wegerle indeed came home soon afterward and even saw his own car going in the opposite direction away from the house. He couldn't identify the driver, but it didn't appear to be Vicki.
His 2 year old son Brandon was still in the living room, unattended. Bill couldn't find Vicki at first, who was on the bedroom floor behind the bed, but finally did after a while. She was rushed to a hospital with paramedics desperately trying to revive her, but was pronounced dead a short time later.

BTK meanwhile had driven around the city for a while disposing of evidence, then returned to the area near the house and parked the Wegerle's car a couple blocks from their home. He exited the area on foot and returned to his own car nearby. Changing clothes, he escaped all detection for this crime and was never suspected of it.
Bill Wegerle's life soon took a turn for the drastic. Not only had he lost his wife and mother of his two children, he was faced with a hostile and skeptical police and public who never seemed satisfied that he was innocent of this crime. This dark cloud of suspicion hung over him for the next 18 years.
Nobody had heard from BTK in eight years and the police discounted this as a BTK crime. No charges were ever filed against Bill, but the anguish of those years was keen. (Photo and a story about the Wegerle family from CBSnews.com and the program 48 Hours Mystery).

At the very end of 1987 another notorious family murder occurred in Wichita, this time three members of the Phillip Fager family: the father, Phillip, and two teenage daughters.
A contractor who worked for the Fagers was arrested in Florida after leaving the murder scene in the Fager car and using a credit card stolen from them. Bill Butterworth was eventually acquitted by a jury due to a lack of physical evidence, but the police remain satisfied that he was the murderer.
A letter was received by Mrs. Fager in early 1988 from BTK, who stated he did not do this crime but admired the work of the man who did. This was never confirmed as a genuine BTK communication until police found a copy of the original letter in Rader's stash 17 years later.

He also had his own illustration of what he thought had happened that day to one of the girls, but it was not accurate to the real crime scene.
In 1988 Rader succeeded in getting himself fired from ADT Security. The official reason stated by the company was that he was not getting his work quota done. The varying reports from co-workers describe a man who could be difficult to work with but was customer-oriented.
One description of him from that time paints a picture of a man who wanted to be a police officer but had been forced to settle for what Rader saw as the inferior position of being an alarm installer. In any case, he was out of a steady job.
There is a record of Rader working for the US Census Bureau for several months only in 1989 as a field operations supervisor. Otherwise he may have been unemployed or finding temporary work until landing a new position in 1991.

b2ux · Dec 14, 2012

Dennis Rader - BTK killer - A biography
1990-2003
It's not known what work Dennis Rader had, if any, into early 1991, but he was into another PJ in January 1991. Now 45 years old, he was wary of PJs involving younger women or where a male was present. He saw older women as more vulnerable.
Encounters with younger ladies had been difficult when they fought back. Males were just obstacles in the way of his intended conquests.

Rader focused his attentions on an older woman who lived alone, 62 year old Dolores Davis. She only lived about a mile and a half from where he did, but there is no indication he was personally acquainted with her.
Dolores had moved to the Park City area after years an an executive secretary in Wichita and was renting a house in an area without close neighbors. This undoubtedly piqued Rader's interest. He noticed her at her home one day and might have done some snooping or investigating to confirm her status as a single woman living alone.
This would be another well-planned project. Using the pretext of being away for the weekend on a Scout camping outing in Harvey County, just to the north of Sedgwick County where Rader resided, he again invented an excuse to slip away from camp in the evening. It was a very cold night, below freezing.
He drove back to his parents' home in north Wichita (apparently they may have been away that weekend) and changed out of his Scout uniform into his hit clothes. Rader then drove to the Baptist Church in Park City and parked his car, and set out on foot for the Davis residence.
When he got there Dolores was still awake and reading in bed. He waited out in the cold for her to turn off the light and go to sleep. Using a cement block taken from a shed in the backyard, he rammed the sliding glass door at the rear of the house.
Dolores came out of the bedroom thinking someone had driven into her house, but there was Rader. He launched into the familiar line of being a vagrant in need of food, money and a car and told her he had to tie her up.
There are indications from the crime scene that a struggle did take place, but Rader succeeded in tying her up in the bedroom. It's not known how long Rader lingered there, but Dolores helped to ruin his party by telling him she was expecting someone to arrive any minute. He ended her life by ligature strangulation. (Rader made a sketch of her final moments at a time soon after this murder).

Rader dragged the body outside and put it in the trunk of her car. He only drove a short distance to a lake area near I-135 by Park City and left the body and other evidence there under some trees.
He then drove the car back to the Davis house and wiped it down for fingerprints, tossing the keys onto the roof. Rader then set out on foot, walking in a roundabout fashion back to the Baptist Church. Driving his own car, he returned to where he left the body and put it in his car.
He meandered around to the north, and settled on a remote spot underneath a bridge in northern Sedgwick County as the dumping spot. After leaving her there, he went somewhere to change back into his Scout uniform and returned to camp.

The following night he left camp again to come back to the dumping spot to pose and photograph the body. Rader says he had an encounter with a police officer at a place where he had to change clothes, but was let go after a few questions. (Soon after the murder, Rader took a photo of himself buried in a grave he says he had dug for Dolores Davis, wearing a mask and using a Polaroid camera activated with a mechansim triggered via a cord.)

Only four months after this episode Rader was hired by Park City as compliance and animal control officer. He became a combination dogcatcher and local code enforcer. He was now part of the local law establishment. He gained a varying reputation ranging from efficient and friendly to overzealous and petty,writing citations if a lawn exceeded six inches in grass height.
There were complaints against him, and several people were said to have moved away from Park City due to his mistreatment. No complaint ever resulted in disciplinary action, as local officials would usually side with Rader when dealing with citizens.
There is only one record of a case going to court, where a woman contested a $25 fine levied against her by Rader over dog control. Rader showed up in court with a satchel a half- inch thick full of official documents and won the case.

One woman had a very disturbing story about Rader. There was no problem until after she got divorced and a new male friend came to live with her. Rader kept issuing citation after citation for among other things, items as trivial as having the wrong color garden hose.
He didn't like the "inoperable vehicle" in the driveway the male friend was working on, and made it clear to the woman that if "he" left the problems would cease. Rader started looking in her windows and one day was found examining a door that had been mysteriously broken.
But it all culminated when Rader impounded her daughter's dog and had it put to sleep before anyone could reclaim it. The lady immediately moved out of Park City.

In a gender discrimination lawsuit filed in federal court, Rader's co-worker Mary Capps, who worked under Rader from 1998 until his arrest, alleged he was a terrible boss, cold, demanding and degrading.
She described one incident of being trapped in her office and chased around the room, terrified. Capps stated that she complained weekly to Rader's supervisor about his ongoing behavior but was dismissed or simply referred back to Rader himself.
Three formal complaints to the city of Park City were, by city procedures, channeled to her supervisor, Dennis Rader, who naturally did nothing about them. There were media reports after the arrest stating that Capps may have been drugged repeatedly with animal tranquilizers while working with Rader, although this was not mentioned in this lawsuit.
A federal judge has dismissed the lawsuit, saying it was not filed within required time limits. (In 2001, Rader gave a brief interview to Wichita station KSN-TV over an animal control incident, as related in this story from KSN.com.)

During the 1990s Rader served on two local boards in Park City. In 1996 his father William Rader died of natural causes. His mother Dorothea eventually began staying in a nursing home or at home with son Jeff.
Rader's daughter Kerri attended Kansas State University, whose football team he was a huge fan of. In 2003 Kerri married a man from Michigan and went there to live. Son Brian joined the Navy and left the area for the East Coast.
Rader was elected to the church council and assumed the position of vice president starting on January 1, 2004. According to church procedure, the vice president becomes council president after one year. The Raders remained quite active in their Lutheran church, with Dennis a trusted leader, helper and usher. Despite all this, with the kids gone Rader found himself increasingly bored.

The on-line Crime Library had published an article about the unsolved BTK case. It was thought BTK was dead, jailed or institutionalized perhaps. The subject had faded even in Wichita, and a whole generation of Wichitans were growing up without much knowledge of the case. Rader had thought about publicly reemerging later on in life. But then all of sudden BTK became a topic of interest again.

BTK is Back
A Wichita lawyer named Robert Beattie was concerned that the BTK case was being all but forgotten. He set out to write a book about the investigation that tried so hard to capture this elusive killer, who he still reasoned to be a potential threat to the public even though the last known murder had occurred in 1977.
BTK was attributed with seven murders and the attempt on Anna Williams in 1979. Beattie was responsible for renewed interest in the BTK case as early as 2003, and the message board Crime and Justice began discussing the case again on the Internet. January 2004 was the 30th anniversary of the Otero murders, and the Wichita Eagle ran an article about the crime and the BTK killer.
In conjuction with that came the announcement of the publication of Robert Beattie's new book. These events more than captured Dennis Rader's attention. He became alarmed that someone else would be telling what was his own story, and suddenly his plans for an eventual reemergence were greatly accelerated.

Rader fumed over what to do for the next couple months but then took action. On March 17 he mailed an envelope to the Wichita Eagle from a Bill Thomas Killman. It contained three photocopied pictures of his own photos of the dying Vicki Wegerle taken in 1986, as well as a photocopy of her missing driver's license.
He signed it with the BTK symbol he had used in his previous letters in the 1970s. The letter was forwarded to the FBI who confirmed its authenticity as a BTK communication. An old cold case was solved, but the uproar had only just begun.

The dust hadn't begun to settle when Rader sent a second letter, this time on May 5, 2004 to the studios of KAKE-TV, the Wichita ABC affililiate. This was a lengthy word puzzle consisting of columns of letters and a few numbers mixed in. The FBI verified that this also came from BTK, as he characteristically used his unique signature, but couldn't make any particular sense out of the puzzle.
On June 9, 2004 Rader left a package taped to a stop sign at the corner of First and Kansas, in the middle of the city. This contained a disturbing collection of documents, including a letter detailing the grisly murders of the Otero family and a sketch of a nude and bound female hanging by a rope.
Eleven year old Josephine Otero had been hanged by a rope in the basement of their home in 1974. The sketch was labeled, "The Sexual Thrill is My Bill." Also enclosed was a chapter list entitled "The BTK Story" that mimicked the chapter list of David Lohr's original article on BTK at the on-line Crime Library. Chapter One was entitled, "A Serial Killer is Born."
On July 17, 2004 a package marked "BTK" was found in a book return at the Wichita Public Library downtown. It contained a worrisome message: "I have spotted a female that I think lives alone and/or is a spotted latchkey kid. Just got to work out the details. I'm much older (not feeble) now and have to conditions myself carefully. Also my thinking process is not as sharp as it uses to be ... I think fall or winter would be just about right for the HIT. Got to do it this year or next! ... time is running out for me."
This same package contained an intriguing claim that he, BTK, had engineered the recent death of a 19 year old man from Argonia, Kansas, named Jake Allen. Jake Allen had committed suicide by lying on railroad tracks 12 days earlier. BTK claimed to have lured the young man to his death via a series of computer chats. (This claim was later disproven as a hoax, as there was no evidence that Allen had ever had any such Internet chat with anyone, and his death is still seen as a suicide).
Despite huge pressure from the public, the police refused to release many details of the packages from June on, as it was feared that hearing these things could provoke BTK into a killing frenzy.

The fifth drop didn't occur until October 22, 2004 when a UPS worker found a strange manila envelope while picking up the contents of the UPS box at the Omni Center by Second and Kansas. This consisted of a very disturbing assortment of cards that had images pasted on them, including one of a bound woman with a look of sheer terror on her face.
One card contained a poem called "Death to Landwehr," a reference to Lt. Ken Landwehr who was head of the BTK investigation. There was a collage of pictures of children with bindings drawn across their bodies and faces.
This envelope also contained what BTK claimed to be his autobiography, listing a number of details about his life such as being born in 1939, his father dying in the war, mother dated a railroad detective and so on.
BTK claimed to be fascinated with railroads and usually lived near railroad tracks. Almost all of it was actually false, an attempt to mislead police into researching false clues. The police did release the autobiography to the public a few weeks later, which undoubtedly would have greatly pleased if not excited Dennis Rader.
What the Wichita Police Dept. was actually doing was following the FBI's advice: keep the killer communicating. Don't offend him publicly. Don't over-excite him into killing some more. Just keep communicating until he makes a mistake.
On December 1, 2004 officers of the Wichita Police Dept. stormed the house of Roger Valadez, who lived in a house in Wichita with peeling paint within sight of railroad tracks. He was held on a minor outstanding warrant, but apparently was suspected of being the BTK killer. A DNA test quickly exonerated him however. Ultimately police would take some 1,300 DNA swabs of men searching for a match to BTK's semen left at crime scenes.

Rader's sixth drop was found on December 14, 2004. A man walking through Murdock Park that night noticed a package wrapped in white plastic leaning against a tree. Out of curiosity he took it home with him and opened it. It contained a "PJ" doll. The doll's head had a plastic bag tied over it. Its hands were tied behind its back and its feet were bound together.
Tied to the feet was a real driver's license belonging to BTK murder victim Nancy Fox whom he had killed in December 1977. The man immediately notified KAKE-TV, who arrived and photographed the contents and notified police. KAKE agreed not to broadcast what was found in the package, for fear of arousing the killer.
On January 1, 2005 Dennis Rader officially became the new president of the church council at Christ Lutheran Church in Wichita, as per his election to the vice presidency the previous year.

Eight days into the new year Rader left a Special K cereal box marked "BTK" and "bomb" in the bed of a pickup truck parked at the Home Depot on North Woodlawn. The truck belonged to an employee of Home Depot. He thought it was trash at first and put it in a trash can at home. Luckily his wife had thrown a discarded pillow on top of the box, unwittingly preserving it.
Days later when the man realized the significance of the box he was still able to retrieve it. By reviewing surveillance tape of the parking lot for January 8 the police had their first glimpse of BTK, but the image was too far away and blurry for identification. But by measuring the wheelbase of the black vehicle he was driving it was determined the vehicle was a Jeep Cherokee. Despite having installed alarm systems for a living, Rader was apparently unaware that surveillance cameras had become a commonplace item.

The box itself contained information about some of his "PJs" or projects, intended victims that he had watched or stalked. It also contained more misleading information of how he lived in a 3 story home in Wichita with an elevator that had a bomb in the basement rigged to explode if the house were invaded.
Rader also asked a peculiar question to the detectives: if he put his writings on a computer disk, would it be traceable? He requested a response to be posted in the Wichita Eagle classified ads in the Miscellaneous category using his code name, Rex.

The eighth drop was another cereal box from the "cereal" killer, this one a Post Toasties. It was discovered on January 25, 2005 as the result of a tip from drop #9, which was a postcard sent to KAKE from an S. Killet using as return address the address of the Otero house. Drop #9 had mentioned the Post Toasties box and the drop at Home Depot on January 8 (which triggered the investigation there that ultimately located the Special K box).
The Post Toasties box was found leaning against a road sign on a desolate unpaved section of North Seneca to the north of the Wichita city limits. KAKE videotaped the box without touching it and notified police. It had a brick on top of it and appeared weathered.

It was later revealed to have contained another doll, this one with a rope tied around its neck and tied to a plumbing fixture, simulating the hanging of Josephine Otero.

The tenth drop was another postcard that arrived on February 3, again sent to KAKE. Return address was Happ Kakemann, a 1950s character from KAKE's past. Rader wrote: Thank you for your quick response on #7 and 8. Thank to the news team for their efforts. Sorry about Susan's and Jeff's colds. Business issues: Tell WPD that I receive Newspaper Tip for a go. Test run soon. Thanks. PS: May want to use KTV-PC-etc code # and Letters from me for my Verification code to you. He was referring to the newspaper ad in the Wichita Eagle placed there by detectives to answer his question about the safety of sending in a computer disk. The responding ad had assured him in agreed-upon code: Rex it will be OK.

Drop #11 arrived at the studios of KSAS-TV on February 16, the Fox affiliate in Wichita. It contained a letter, a piece of jewelry and a purple diskette referred to as "Test Floppy for WPD review." Detectives wasted little time analyzing the diskette and found software on it from Christ Lutheran Church in Wichita and the name Dennis. Rader had apparently thought he had erased the original contents of the diskette and that it would be "safe" to use it for his purposes.

A quick Internet search brought up a website for the church mentioning its current president, Dennis Rader. A group of detectives quietly drove by Rader's house in Park City and noted a black Jeep Cherokee parked in the driveway. Rader was placed under surveillance while a subpoena was secretly obtained for a DNA sample of his daughter from medical records.
The familial DNA was a match to DNA found from semen at BTK crime scenes and the case was solved. (Contrary to early media reports, Kerri Rader never suspected her father was BTK nor did she turn him in. She was asked to submit a DNA sample directly at her home in Michigan within an hour after the arrest, but never knew until later that her DNA had been used to solve the BTK case.)
After leaving the office to eat lunch at home as was his custom, on February 25, 2005 Rader was driving home when he noticed he was totally surrounded by police, a huge number of them. He surrendered quietly and was led to a waiting police car, handcuffed.
"Hello, Mr. Landwehr," he said once inside the car.
"Hello, Mr. Rader," Lt. Ken Landwehr responded.

b2ux · Dec 14, 2012

Dennis Rader - BTK killer - A biography
County Jail
Dennis Rader was taken to an interrogation room after his arrest on February 25, 2005. At first he wouldn't talk much about the crimes, playing dumb or avoiding the subject. When he was confronted about the traced computer disk and the DNA match, he started to talk.
In fact, he wouldn't stop talking. In a stunning 30 hour confession, he rambled on endlessly about his crimes, as though proudly reciting his achievements. Never-before-known details of all his crimes, his methods, his mind all came to light. Many excerpts of what he said in that interview can be read in the 92 page pdf document State's Summary of the Evidence.
On the 26th of February, Rader's first mugshot was taken. He looks unkempt, which was out of chararcter for Rader, but had been up all night confessing. When it was all over, though, he was taken to his cell and left there alone. There he began to realize that the cops were not on his side after all. His interrogators had been feeding his ego all along, pretending to be impressed by Rader to get him to keep talking. He bought the whole package.

Rader was astonished during the interview when he found out the detectives had lied to him about it being safe to send in a computer disk. He lamented how he thought they had such a good rapport. Lt. Landwehr had to calmly explain that they were trying to catch a serial killer.
Rader had always had a strong need to feel accepted by police on a personal level. He thrived on the camaraderie displayed by the detectives, but after it was all over his elation turned to despair. The next interviews were with lawyers, and they caused him to stop the confessing.

On March 1, the public got their first live look at the newly incarcerated BTK suspect as he appeared briefly via video link to be informed by Judge Greg Waller of the charges against him. Word of his confessions had sporadically leaked out into the media, and police chief Norman Williams took unusually strong action to plug the leaks, denying everything that was going around in the media and threatening to imprison police personnel who were talking openly about the case.
In America you are presumed innocent unless you declare your guilt in a court of law. Rader had ceased confessing and became tight-lipped about what he might have done. But the District Attorney's office did state that Dennis Rader was being charged with 10 counts of first degree murder, adding the names Marine Hedge and Dolores Davis to the known list of BTK victims.
Rader's house and office had been raided, and plenty of incriminating evidence had been found to back up the 10 counts. It came to light later that the "mother lode" was located in Rader's filing cabinet in his office in city hall in Park City. Original copies of BTK letters, victim driver's licenses, photos, newspaper clippings, artwork and more were all found locked in his office.

Meanwhile a barrage of information about Dennis Rader was tossed about by the news media. Not one person who had ever known him had ever suspected he was or even could be BTK. No one had turned him in during the intense 11 month investigation that followed BTK's initial reemergence in March 2004. There were people like Mary Capps who thought he was a jerk, but he just didn't come across to anyone as a vicious serial killer. Rader's wife and children were described as being in a deep state of shock. A procession of neighbors and friends all testified to the media that they never would have guessed Rader was capable of the crimes he was being charged with. The congregation of Christ Lutheran Church, led by pastor Michael Clark, was left stunned, confused and bewildered.

In March 2005 the long-awaited book by Robert Beattie was released, "Nightmare in Wichita - the Hunt for the BTK Strangler". BTK's reemergence and subsequent arrest delayed the release till this time. Beattie is credited as being a major player in the process that culminated in Dennis Rader's arrest.

Rader's first court appearence occurred on April 19, 2005. He waived his right to a preliminary hearing and postponed entering a plea, a move that disappointed many who wanted to hear the state's case against him. Judge Waller continued the hearing until May 3, at which time Rader remained mute in front of a crowded and tense courtroom while Waller entered a plea of not guilty.
During the hearing he was, however, confronted by District Attorney Nola Foulston who notified him that he was being charged under the Kansas "hard 40" law for the 1991 murder of Dolores Davis, the only murder to occur after that sentencing law went into effect in 1990. That law required a minimum prison sentence of 40 years for any murder considered particularly cruel or heinous. The other nine murders occurred in years in Kansas where the minimum sentence was 15 years. The death penalty did not resume in Kansas until 1994.

Rader was initially kept alone and separate in the Sedgwick County Jail, only seen by his three court-appointed lawyers, his pastor and whoever else he permitted to visit him. His wife and chidren refused to visit. There were some letters exchanged. However, Rader soon developed a number of penpals scattered in various locations. He wrote poetry, including an incriminating poem called Black Friday which appeared to describe his arrest while acknowledging his dark side.
In a surprise move, county jail officials decided to allow Rader live in a pod where he could mingle with other hardened criminals during the daytime. He was an instant hit with his podmates, who called him "Radar" or "The Suspect". He would chat about sports, religion, crime or anything else and play cards. He soon earned the title "the Podfather".

Dennis Rader's trial on the 10 counts of first degree murder was set for June 27, 2005. As the date approached with no news of a postponement, speculation erupted about what Rader was up to. It became apparent that he would use that appearence to formally plead guilty, and he did so.
The event turned into a dramatic courtroom confession, as Judge Waller began to quiz Rader over some of the details of the crimes. Before millions of viewers watching live coverage on Kansas local stations, on Court TV nationally and worldwide on the Internet, Rader calmly revealed some of the grisly details of his murders from his own perspective, talking about strangulations, hit kits, ruses, projects, etc. as if they were all an everyday thing.

There was considerable fallout following the confession. One by one, each of the victims' families filed lawsuits against Rader seeking damages. There was little hope of recovering any monetary damages from him, but the idea was to prevent Rader from profiting from his crimes in any way, such as by selling book or TV rights to his story.
On July 26, 2005 his wife Paula filed for an emergency divorce citing physical and mental distress, and was immediately granted the divorce. Rader had agreed to give up ownership rights on the small house he shared with his wife as well as all other belongings the couple owned. She could benefit from two pension funds Dennis had established.
Soon after the divorce was granted, the family home at 6220 Independence Street in Park City went up for auction. Appraised at $57,000, a benevolent bidder offered $90,000. However the house sale fell through over legal issues. Some of the victims' families objected to the inflated selling price, calling it "blood money" due to the notoriety of BTK. They demanded in court that the excess, about $30,000, belonged to them and not to Paula. The bidder refused unless the full price went to Paula and later backed out of the deal.
Up to this point prosecutors still had not had the opportunity to formally present their case against Dennis Rader. Rader's own admissions in court were graphic, but diluted with claims of having attempted to comfort victims before their deaths, instead of the outright acts of torture that they were.
At the sentencing hearing on August 17 and 18, 2005, prosecutors finally had their turn to present some of the accumulated evidence against Rader in open court. As there was the possibility of leniency since the sentence had to be determined by the judge, the presentation was designed to show why Rader should be sentenced to the maximum permitted by law, which amounted to a minimum of 175 years to life in prison. Rader was now 60 years old and it was desired that he never be eligible to walk the streets of freedom again.

Judge Greg Waller listened patiently to two full days of testimony. Individual detectives representing the cases of the Oteros, Kathryn Bright, Shirley Vian, Nancy Fox, Marine Hedge, Vicki Wegerle and Dolores Davis all gave statements illustrated with grim crime scene and autopsy photos in front of a packed courtroom and another large international television audience.

After testimony was completed, individual members of the victims' families were permitted to air their grievances to Rader in court. Moving statements were given from Carmen Montoya (Otero) and Charlie Otero, Kevin Bright, Steve Relford and Richard Vian, Fred Fox the brother of Nancy Fox and her sister Beverley Plapp, Rod Hook the son-in-law of Marine Hedge, Bill Wegerle and daughter Stephanie, and from Jeff Davis the son of Dolores Davis and Davis' daughter Laurel Keating.

After this Rader was permitted to give his own statement. He rambled on for over 20 minutes, delivering a semi-apology to everyone and going on mostly about himself. It took on the air of someone giving a speech to a church group, thanking all the people who had helped him recently.

At the end of the proceeding on August 18 Judge Waller sentenced Dennis Rader to the maximum sentence permitted by law, a minimum of 175 years to life in prison. He will not be elgible for parole until 2180. Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston requested special conditions for Rader's sentence, stating that he should be denied access to materials that could feed his fantasies.

The Big House
On the morning of August 19, 2005 Rader was taken to his new home, the El Dorado Correctional Facility in El Dorado, Kansas. Two boxes he wanted sent to the mother of friend Kristin Casarona were seized by authorities before they could be sent. They appeared to contain a lot of his writings in jail. He was processed, shaved and photographed. All entering inmates undergo an intial period of evaluation and testing, to determine how and where they will be housed in the jail.

On October 12, 2005 a hearing was held at the prison regarding Rader's privileges in jail. District Attorney Nola Foulston again made the plea to Judge Greg Waller to deny drawing materials and access to media and interviews, stating Rader has the ability to turn normal things like newspaper and magazine underwear advertisements into fantasies of bondage and torture. Investigators had found a huge number of what Rader called "slick ads" that had been altered by him into pictures of bondage stashed away in his office and home.

Rader's public defender Steve Osburn argued that basic first amendment rights were being denied.The outcome of the hearing was that Judge Waller agreed with all prosecutor recommendations. Waller also ruled that Rader must register as a sexual offender and must pay restitution to victims. Prison officials have indicated that Rader has been classified as a specially managed inmate, but that not all of the restrictions may be enforceable. He will be permitted to earn privileges such as access to television, radio, newspapers and news magazines.

Another odd fact that came to light as a result of the evidence seized from Rader's "mother lode" was his obsession with self-bondage. Detectives found a number of photos Rader had taken of himself all tied up in various ways. He was also fond of dressing up in items stolen from his female victims. Using a Polaroid camera and a tripping mechanism, he took many photos of himself in these ways.

Some notable television programs were produced in 2005 on the subject of Dennis Rader. In August shortly before the sentencing Dateline NBC aired a two hour special, 31 Years of the BTK Killer, featuring interviews with Rader in prison by Robert Mendoza, a forensic psychologist who had been hired by the defense to evaluate him. It also reviews the crimes and some of the impact they had. At this writing Mendoza is being sued by the state of Kansas for unauthorized usage of the filmed interview. CBS 48 Hours Mystery aired an excellent program called BTK: Out of the Shadows, featuring the Wegerle family and also reviewing the history of the BTK case. CBS aired a television movie called The Hunt for the BTK Killer. The A&E network produced two excellent programs on the BTK case, including a special edition of Cold Case Files.
In 2006 a low-budget film was released to video, BTK Killer. Possibly one of the worst films ever made, we specifically advise against seeing this film. It is a disgusting affront to everyone involved in the BTK case, particularly the victims and their families. Almost nothing at all in this film is true, everything is factually distorted in a most disgusting way involving insects and slaughterhouses and more. It is crude and fictitious, and horribly made as well.

On October 20, 2006 a jury awared $1.1 million to former BTK suspect Roger Valadez, who had been arrested on December 1, 2004 but quickly exonerated by a DNA test. He had sued the then-owners of local Wichita station KSNW channel 3 for defamation and humiliation by broadcasting his name and address after his arrest. However, Roger Valadez died suddenly of a heart attack on November 27, 2006 well before the possibility of collecting any money.

In January 2007 the city of Park City bought the small home in Park City where Dennis and Paula Rader had lived since the 1970s and raised their two children. It had been sitting empty since soon after the arrest. The selling price was reportedly, according to the Wichita Eagle, just under $60,000. The city tore the house down to improve access to a nearby small park in March 2007.
The latest information available is that there are three more books about Dennis Rader being written. The editors of the Wichita Eagle are to publish a book written by three reporters who covered the case. Well-known true crime author and former FBI prolifer John Douglas is writing a book he calls the definitive work on the case, scheduled for publication in August 2007. Kristin Casarona is a woman from Topeka, Kansas who befriended Rader while he was in the Sedgwick County jail and still keeps in contact.
She says she is writing a book based on their many meetings in jail. Was originally described as a book from the Christian perspective, is now described as Rader's biography. Casarona says the book should be completed by autumn 2007, and that 75% of any profits from the book will be given to the families of the BTK victims. She strongly denies any romantic interest in Rader and says their friendship is based on mutual religious interests.
In March 2007 some of the legal issues surrounding lawsuits in the BTK case were settled. Rader agreed to pay the victims' families $10 million and forfeit any media rights to his story. The families will also have any belongings that were seized as evidence during the investigation returned to them, and will also have rights to any other evidence seized from Dennis Rader. The families are likely to receive no money at all from this settlement, as Rader is effectively indigent. But it will permanently prevent him from profiting from his notoriety as a serial killer.

News about Dennis Rader since his assignment to the maximum security El Dorado Correctional Facility has been scant. He appears to have settled into the routine of the prison, but is likely kept well away from the general population for his own safety. His family, relatives and ex-wife have all intentionally stayed away from any media exposure and have never granted interviews.

b2ux · Dec 14, 2012

BTK - Birth of a Serial Killer
Wichita is the largest city in Kansas and recognized as one of the major mid-sized cities in the nation. Founded in 1868, the city enshrined the name of Wichita Indians, who had made that area their home.
The people of Wichita take great pride in their community, a fact which has earned the city the national distinction of "All American City" not once, but three times. Home to Boeing, Cessna, Learjet and Ratheon, the city has also been nicknamed the "Air Capital of the World."
In this booming city with one of the best economies in the nation, something terrible was born. It's hard to say just when it happened and how long it took to reach maturity. No doubt it began as a fantasy, an angry internal cauldron of hate and frustration. Slowly, the fantasy became an obsession that demanded fulfilment. The planning and execution of this seminal event took over his conscious thought. Just once, he told himself, and then he would be free of this overwhelming need. It wouldn't be necessary to ever risk doing it again.
But he was deluding himself. The trophies, the photos, and the memories were poor substitutes for the electrifying thrill and release of the act itself. The power he felt when he held a life in his hands was unparalleled. There just had to be some way to continue what he was doing without getting caught. Stopping was not exactly an option he had to consider.
Of course there was a way. For someone with his intellect, there was always a way. Cops are stupid, he knew that. No match for him. No Harvard graduates there on the Wichita police force. If he was careful, there was no reason for him not to indulge himself as many times as he wished. Truth be told, that element of danger added to his excitement and kept him on his guard.
Dawn

On January 15, 1974, a chilly winter day, 15-year-old Charlie Otero began his afternoon walk home from school. Charlie, his parents, and four siblings had recently moved into a quiet peaceful suburban neighborhood in a small frame house located at 803 North Edgemoor Street.
Charlie, happy that another school day had come to an end, walked gingerly up the side walk towards his home. As he opened the front door and walked into the living room, nothing immediately seemed out of the ordinary. "Hello, is anyone home?" he called out into the quiet house. There was no response. Not even a bark from his dog. Such quiet was unusual. With some trepidation, Charlie walked toward his parents' bedroom. A strange feeling of dread welled up inside him.
Charlie's father, Joseph, 38, was lying face down on the floor at the foot of his bed; his wrists and ankles had been bound. His mother, Julie, 34, lay on the bed bound in similar fashion, only she had been gagged. For a few seconds, Charlie could not move, he didn't know what to do. Moments later his senses came back to him and he rushed out in desperation to get help for his parents, not realizing that he had experienced only a portion of the horror that the house had in store.
A neighbor who came over to the house to help realized that when he tried to call the police, the phone lines had been severed.
As the police searched the house, they were shocked to find nine-year-old Joseph II in his bedroom face down on the floor at the foot of his bed. His wrists and ankles were also bound, the only difference being that over his head was a hood -- and according to one reporter, he had three hoods covering his head.
The worst was yet to come. Downstairs in the basement, Charlie's eleven-year-old sister, Josephine, was discovered hanging by her neck from a pipe; she was partially nude, dressed only in a sweatshirt and socks, and she had been gagged.
Investigators were stunned at this daytime execution-style multiple murder in such a quiet neighborhood.
From the very beginning of this case, police have been very cautious about revealing the details of the murders. What they did say was that all four of the victims had been strangled with lengths of cord cut from a Venetian blind. There were no cords like that in he house, so the killer had brought the cords, hoods, tape, wire cutters and possibly a gun with him.
According to Capt. Paul Dotson of the Wichita Police Department, semen was found throughout the house, and it appeared as though the killer had masturbated on some of the victims, although none had been sexually assaulted. Joseph Otero's watch was missing from the scene and has never been recovered. Aside from Julie Otero's purse being dumped and the missing watch, there was no real evidence of forced entry, robbery, or a struggle.
The coroner determined that all four murders occurred well before noon and very likely around 8 or nine in the morning. Police theorized that while Joseph Otero was driving the older three children to school that the murderer gained entry into the house where Julie and her two younger children were by themselves. Once the killer subdued and bound the three of them, he waited for Joseph to come home to take the younger two children to school and caught him by surprise. Someone had put the Oteros' notoriously unfriendly large dog out in back of the house.
The killer hung around for about an hour an a half, then took the Otero family car and left it parked near Dillons grocery not far away. Otero's neighbors noticed a man, possibly with a dark complexion, leaving Otero's home in their car.
Police initially wondered just who these Oteros were and what they had done to warrant this brutal execution. Several things they learned suggested motives, but nothing conclusive.
Joseph Otero had been born in Puerto Rico and, after moving to the States, began a career in the military. Just before his death, he had retired from the Air Force where he was a flight instructor and mechanic. He was physically very fit and was an excellent boxer. His colleagues liked him and no one could voice a motive for his slaying.
The same type of report came back on Julie. She had recently been caught in a downsizing at Coleman Company, but she would have been rehired when business picked up again. She, too, was a friendly person and a very good mother. Like her husband, she was very accomplished in the art of self-defense. She had extensive training in judo.
The Otero children were very good in school and were liked by the people who knew them. They, too, took up the family sport of judo and were well beyond the average when it came to self defense.
So, what to make of this case? This brilliantly planned and orchestrated crime which required surveillance, perfect timing, and the ability to subdue a group of people who were normally more than capable to defending themselves. It had the hallmarks of a military operation, but then there were these nagging details that the police didn't want to discuss. Police Chief Floyd Hannon told the Wichita Eagle in January of 1974 that "the way in which family members were slain indicates a fetish on the part of the assailant."
Dennis Rader and His Fetish

In October of 1974, just nine months after the Otero family murders, the Wichita Eagle's Don Granger received an anonymous call, presumably from the Otero killer himself. The caller directed him to a mechanical engineering textbook in the Wichita Public Library. Inside the book, Granger found a letter claiming credit for the killings of the Joseph Otero family, and promising more victims. The authenticity of the letter was not in doubt since it contained details that only the police and killer knew.
The letter was addressed to the "Secret Witness Program" under which people with information about a crime could pass on that information to police through the newspaper and remain anonymous. Investigators immediately requested that the letter be withheld from the public in an attempt to prevent a string of false confessions. The Wichita Eagle complied with the police request.
However, Cathy Henkel, a reporter for a 2-month-old rival newspaper called the Wichita Sun, received a copy of the letter and printed part of it in an article she wrote on Dec 11, 1974, some 11 months after the crime had been committed.
The killer wrote that the three individuals being questioned for the Otero murders were not involved. The following excerpts with their many misspellings and grammatical errors were printed in the Sun :
"I write this letter to you for the sake of the tax payer as well as your time. Those three dude you have in custody are just talking to get publicity for the Otero murders. They know nothing at all. I did it by myself and with no ones help. There has been no talk either. Let's put this straight...." The killer provides details of the crimes and crime scene that were not published in the paper.
"I'm sorry this happen to society. They are the ones who suffer the most. It hard to control myself. You probably call me 'psychotic with sexual perversion hang-up.' When this monster enter my brain I will never know. But, it here to stay. How does one cure himself? If you ask for help, that you have killed four people they will laugh or hit the panic button and call the cops.
"I can't stop it so the monster goes on, and hurt me as well as society. Society can be thankful that there are ways for people like me to relieve myself at time by day dreams of some victims being torture and being mine. It a big complicated game my friend of the monster play putting victims number down, follow them, checking up on them, waiting in the dark, waiting, waiting.... the pressure is great and sometimes he run the game to his liking. Maybe you can stop him. I can't. He has already chosen his next victim or victims. I don't know who they are yet. The next day after I read the paper, I will know, but it to late. Good luck hunting.
"YOURS, TRULY GUILTILY"
Although the letter was unsigned, it contained this postscript:
"P.S. Since sex criminals do not change their M.O. or by nature cannot do so, I will not change mine. The code word for me will be....Bind them, toture them, kill them, B.T.K., you see he at it again. They will be on the next victim."
B.T.K., despite a few feeble attempts to appear to have a weak grip on the English language, is quite well educated and is a reasonably good speller when he is not trying to deceive his audience. He has no trouble with words like "psychotic," "complicated," and "perversion." He has also done quite a bit of reading about the criminal psychology of that era. The famous letters from California 's Zodiac Killer and the Jack the Ripper letters were well known from newspapers and books. Interestingly, the Zodiac began his murder series on October 30, 1966 and wrote his first letter to the police almost one month later on November 29, 1966. Even more interesting is the fact that the Zodiac, after three years of silence, sent the first of a series of four letters to the San Francisco Chronicle on January 29, 1974. Chances are that B.T.K. had read about this in the newspaper and decided to open the lines of communication with the media and police.
The Wichita Eagle reported that on April 4, 1974, just three months after the Otero murders, Kathryn Bright, 20, and her brother Kevin, 19, went to her home at 3217 E. 13th Street at approximately 1 p.m. There was an intruder hiding in the house, waiting for her to return.
The intruder told them he needed money and a car to escape from the California police. At gun point, Kevin was forced to tie his sister to a chair and was then taken to another room where he to was tied up and gagged. A few minutes later, the man tried to stangle Kevin with a rope, but Kevin resisted and was shot twice in the head. He heard sounds of distress from his sister in the next room. Kevin managed to escape and get help for his sister, but she died five hours after being taken to the hospital with three stab wounds in her abdomen.
Police also noted that the Kathryn was partially undressed and that there was obvious ligature activity around her neck. Kevin assisted the police in sketching a likeness of the intruder, but he was not identified. Police did not associate B.T.K. with this crime at that point in time.
Three years later on March 17, 1977, Wichita police were dispatched to 1311 South Hydraulic Street . Upon arrival, police entered the home and discovered 26-year-old Shirley Vian dead. She lay on her bed partially undressed, hands and feet bound, a plastic bag draped over her head. Upon removing the bag investigators noted the BTK's signature cord wrapped tightly around her neck. The armed intruder had locked Shirley's three children in the closet. The children eventually managed to free themselves and call police.
Again, investigators believed that the crime was premeditated. The incident occurred during the daytime and there was no sign of forced entry. The killer had stopped one of the victim's sons on the street that morning, and showed him photographs of a woman and child, purportedly seeking directions to their home.
Different Worlds Collide

The town of Wichita was by now in a blind panic. Hundreds of people coming home for the evening would regularly check to see if their telephone lines had been cut (a BTK trademark). Working women hurried home and locked their doors. BTK was quickly becoming a ghost story told to newcomers at parties and bars.
On Dec. 8, 1977, BTK placed a call to the emergency hotline "Go to this address," he told an emergency dispatcher, "You will find a homicide - Nancy Fox." Investigators were able to quickly trace the call to a downtown phone booth, where witnesses indistinctly recalled a blond man, approximately six feet tall, using the phone booth moments earlier. Unfortunately, the quality of the recording was too poor for investigators to perform any type of voice analysis.
Following the caller's instructions, officers rushed to 843 S. Pershing. Upon arrival, investigators immediately noticed that a window had been broken, allowing entry to the home. Upon entering the apartment house, officers discovered 25-year-old Nancy Jo Fox dead in her bedroom, a nylon stocking twisted around her neck. Unlike previous victims, she was fully clothed. Fox's driver's license (like Joseph Otero's watch) was missing from the scene. Again, investigators theorized that the killer took the license as a memento of the crime. The murder had occurred at night, semen was found at the scene, but an autopsy later revealed that Fox had not been sexually assaulted.
Dennis Rader's Vanishing Act

As abruptly as they started, the killings appeared to have ended in 1977. It seemed as though BTK had vanished. Or had he?
Eula West, a receptionist at the Sedgwick County Courthouse, recalls, "I was taking all precautions, and everybody I heard talking about it did too." Many people refused to go outside at night for weeks. Some people bought firearms.
On January 31, 1978, BTK mailed a letter to the Wichita Eagle-Beacon . Within the letter was a short poem about Shirley Vian, who was murdered in March 1977. However, it was accidentally routed to the advertising department by mistake and it went overlooked for days.
"It seemed as though every day we were waiting to see what would happen next," said Rose Stanley, who began work at a Wichita TV station just before the killings began. "He would choke the person almost to the point of death. Then he would let them come back. Then he would strangle them to death."
Distraught at the lack of publicity, BTK wrote another letter on February 10, 1978 to a local television station. "How many do I have to kill," he wrote, "before I get my name in the paper or some national attention?" In this latest letter, the strangler claimed to have murdered seven victims, naming Nancy Jo Fox as the latest. Number seven remained nameless, adding, "You guess the motive and the victims." According to The Wichita Eagle newspaper, even though investigators were unable to document the killer's claim, they took his word - announced acceptance of the body count - and assumed that the seventh unnamed victim was Kathryn Bright. In addition to these claims, the killer blamed his crimes on "a demon" and a mysterious "factor X", he compared his work with that of Jack the Ripper, the Hillside Stranglers, and Son of Sam.
He claimed that he was sorry for the murders and that a monster had entered his brain. He also warned that he had chosen his next victim.
Until March of 2004, the last confirmed BTK incident took place on April 28, 1979, when he waited inside a house in the 600 block of South Pinecrest for the 63-year-old owner to come home. When she did not show up, BTK became angry and sent the woman a note along with one of her scarves. "Be glad you weren't here," he wrote, "because I was."
''I think people were really scared, especially if you were a woman living alone, which I was at the time," said Kathy Page-Hauptman, director of performing arts at the Wichita Center for the Arts.
The BTK investigation was dormant through most of the early 1980s with no new leads or tips.
Ghost Busters

In 1983 two teams of detectives were assigned to reinvestigate the murders. They set out on a cross-country trip, collecting saliva and blood samples from over 200 people that had been flagged by their computer as prime suspects in the case. The samples collected were all voluntary, only five of the men refused. The blood tests ultimately eliminated all but 12 of the names on the list (including the five who refused the tests).
In July of 1984, investigators, set up a task force, nicknamed "The Ghostbusters" and hired a computer consultant to work with them in an attempt to try and discover the identity of BTK. After assembling their massive collection of DNA evidence, seven years after the last murder, investigators finished entering their data into an IBM computer, and a list of suspects began to spew out.
"The Ghostbusters" task force discovered some of the most promising evidence during their investigation. One of the most startling clues was the revelation of one similarity, all of the murders occurred within 3 1/2 miles of one another. This led investigators to believe that the BTK strangler only felt comfortable killing in areas that were familiar to him.
During the fall of 1984, one of the task force investigators took the February 10, 1978 BTK letter to Xerox headquarters in Syracuse , New York . There a lab technician concluded that the letter was a fifth-generation copy of the original, which would make it virtually impossible to trace. In addition, the technician went on to state that the machine used to generate the copy was located at the Wichita State University library.
During the investigation into the letters, the contents of the poems were also regarded as clues. It was soon discovered that the Vian poem was patterned after a "Curly Locks" nursery rhyme that had only just appeared in Games , a puzzle magazine. After making this startling discovery, investigators obtained a list of all the subscribers to the magazine in question.
The Fox poem, titled "Oh Death to Nancy," had been patterned after a poem entitled Oh Death which had been published in a Wichita State University textbook. The book had previously been used in an American folklore class; hence, investigators obtained a copy of the class roster.
Law enforcement officials have not yet released BTK's letters to the public. When asked to typify them, Capt. Paul Dotson stated, "Here I am. Pay attention."
Using all of the available evidence obtained, investigators soon began to assemble lists of every white male that lived within a quarter-mile of the Oteros' house in or around January 1974. Investigators also made similar lists for the Vian, Fox and Bright homes. In addition, task force investigators compiled lists of men living within 1 1/4 miles of each of the victim's homes; they also assembled lists of white male students who attended Wichita state University between 1974 and 1979. The smallest list contained the names of eight people who had checked out the mechanical engineering textbook from the library where the Otero letter was found.
Detectives decided that the most significant of all were the address lists. ''The main crux of our search always was geographical," said Lt. Kenneth Landwehr of the Wichita Police Department. "According to the behavioral scientists, the individual lived close to where he was striking."
Once the lists were completed, investigators used their computer to try to come up with a more precise list of suspects. The computer gave them 225 possible suspects, most of whom no longer resided in Wichita . One by one, the detectives set out to eliminate each of the 225 possible suspects.
One of the key pieces of evidence that the killer left behind was his semen. Lab technicians were able to determine that it was a type of semen found in fewer than 6 percent of all males. Police will not comment as to the type, citing their rules of evidence.
The Next Step

Although the two-year investigation ended without an arrest, the knowledge gained and some of the samples collected formed the of the basis for the work of the squad.
''We tried a hundred thousand theories," now retired Lt. Al Stewart said. "We checked house numbers, the victims' length of residency, the phases of the moon, we read books, looking for arcane connections to mythology, witchcraft and demonology."
On Oct. 31, 1987, the body of 15-year-old Shannon Olson was found dumped in a pond in an industrial area, partially disrobed and stabbed numerous times. Her hands and feet were bound. The murder sparked off an outbreak of letters to the police and media suggesting the BTK Strangler committed the crime.
On Dec. 31, 1987, Mary Fager, the married mother of two daughters, returned to her Wichita home after spending 2 1/2 days out of town. Upon entering her house, she discovered her husband, Phillip Fager, dead; he had been shot twice in the back. Her two daughters, 16-year-old Kelli and 10-year-old Sherri, were both found strangled in the hot tub situated in the basement of the home. Sherri's hands and feet were bound with black electrical tape, which later washed loose. Kelli Fager was nude.
Soon after the Fager murders, someone wrote a letter to Mary Fager, claiming to be the BTK Strangler. The letter declared that while he had not committed the murders he was a fan of whoever had. FBI experts said they cannot irrefutably say that the letter came from BTK, but one source involved in the investigation who saw the letter himself, states that there is no doubt in his mind that it was authentic. "It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck," the source stated.
According to Lt. Landwehr, a local contractor stated to police that he went to the Fager house, where he was doing construction work, and discovered the father's body. He went on to claim that he had heard some noise in the house and fled in the family's car. The contractor was arrested in Florida four days later. According to Landwehr, the man claimed he had a total blank of the events that had occurred.
The contractor was arrested and subsequently charged with the Fager murders. However, a jury acquitted him of all charges.
Lt. Landwehr said they have closed the Fager case because they are confident that the contractor was the killer.
Cold Case Squad

In 1991, the Wichita Police Department assembled a cold case squad when police received a new lead in the BTK murders. Although the lead fizzled, Capt. Paul Dotson will not disclose the nature of the tip .
"I believe he is still probably in this community," Mike McKenna, a former Wichita police detective, said.
In 1997, Robert Ressler, a former FBI veteran who first applied the term "serial killer", helped outline a profile of BTK. Ressler said the man was probably a graduate student or a professor in the criminal justice field at WSU in Kansas , was most likely in his mid-to-late-20s at the time of the killings and was an avid reader of books and newspaper stories concerning serial murders. Additionally, because his pattern of killings has not been seen in Wichita since the '70s, he has "left the area, died or is in a mental institution or prison," Ressler said.
"I've learned that if man gets the opportunity, he will do devious things," Ressler said. "He has a dark side, whether it's poisoning his neighbor's roses or killing his neighbor."
In February of 1998, Police Chief Richard LaMunyon said in an interview that a "typewritten, rambling communiqu ?which purports to be from BTK" received by police abou t a week after the Fager murders has no connection to the Dec. 30 murders of Phillip Fager, and his daughters. LaMunyon said a continuing investigation has not yet confirmed whether the serial killer sent the letter. LaMunyon went on to say that the department does sporadically receive bogus letters from people claiming to be the BTK strangler.
As 1988 came to a close, a former BTK task force detective, Al Thimmesch, retired. Al says he regrets never solving the murders. ''One of the things that bugged me was BTK," he said. "It was one that I worked on for a long time."
Investigators call BTK fastidious, calculating and meticulous; with a strong possibility that he may be heard from again. "This type of personality doesn't stop voluntarily," said Wichita Police Capt. Paul Dotson. "This type of person continues to kill."
Sedgwick County Sheriff Mike Hill, who worked on the 1978 probe, said, "It's sad to say the only way that we'll ever find out who this individual is will be we'll have to have a victim." Nevertheless, Stewart hopes that some day a beat cop will stumble onto the BTK still savoring his press clippings or souvenirs.
FBI Profiler John Douglas in the book Obsession has a chapter on the BTK strangler. It is the chapter called "Motivation X". Within the book, Douglas states that there were no defensive wounds found on any of the victims, assuming that the killer used a gun to control them. He further stated that the killer's letters to the police had so much detail that he is convinced that the perpetrator had taken his own crime scene photos in order to have a keepsake of the crime to fantasize about later.
Douglas states that the killer used police lingo in his letters - Douglas thinks he may actually be a cop, or may impersonate a cop - he probably reads detective magazines and may have even bought a police badge. He would attempt to insert himself in the investigation. He would be tempted to brag or leave hints about what he had done.
Douglas states that the killer was in all probability a loner, inadequate, in his 20s or 30s, might possibly have an arrest record for break-ins or voyeurism, but probably no actual rapes.
Douglas further states that the perpetrator may have stopped killing because he is in jail for something else, or a mental hospital, may have died, or maybe he injected himself so closely into the investigation, he got scared. It is even a possibility that the memories and photographs are enough for him to contain his obsession.
Profile of the Serial Killer

On August 4, 2000, David Lohr contacted Dr. Deborah Schurman-Kauflin, President of the Violent Crimes Institute, and asked her to draw up a profile of the killer based on the information at hand. The profile read as follows:
"From the information provided to me which is limited (no crimes scene photos, police report, etc), I have constructed the most likely type of person to have committed the murders in the 1970s. I do not believe the murders from the 80s were connected."
1. Single, white male 28-30
2. Resided near Oteros or spent time in the area to form fantasy about Josephine (this was his main target). Lived in a house, not apartment.
3. Over 6'1, tall and trim. Neat in appearance with short hair. Clothes darker by choice.
4. Considered quiet and conservative by those who would know him. Modest. I believe people would mistake him as kind because of his quiet demeanor. But he suffers from extreme pathology -- psychopath.
There are no voices or demons. This man knew exactly what he was doing.
He was and, if alive, still would be an extremely sad individual. Sad for himself and his pain. Completely self-absorbed.
Because I did not have access to the letters, his job status is questionable to me. I do feel that his job was very secondary to him. Money was not important either. His compulsion to kill was and ALWAYS would be number 1. He would not be satisfied with fantasy. He would be forced to act. Therefore, I find it hard to believe that he did not kill between 1974 and 1977. If there were no murders in Kansas at that time, he was someplace else.
He was very immature -- the games, magazines, choice of child target. The fact that he did not sexually assault lends credence to this. He masturbated on the victims but did not rape.
At the same time, he is very patient in his crimes, stalking and killing without detection. This makes him a paradox, which in and of itself would be disturbing even to him.
I do feel like he is very comfortable with books and would have many of them in his home. Not just a few, many, many books. True crime as well as books, which feed his fantasies. I feel as if they would be found all over his house. He was smart, highly intelligent.
This is not someone who is heavily into drugs/alcohol. They do not cause his crimes. He may drink at times, but that would not be an excuse for the murders.
5. He had a car, which would have been dark in color as well. However, this is a person who would enjoy walking around neighborhoods looking at people and victims.
6. Due to his immaturity, he would be comfortable with people much younger than him. He would not have many friends, only acquaintances who really do not know him. All of his relationships would be superficial. He would not be married, and any history with women would be short-lived and meaningless.
This is not a person who would stop killing on his own. There are 3 reasons to stop:
1. Death
2. Prison
3. Too disabled or sick to kill
Period. This is a compulsive psychopath who enjoyed killing and wouldn't give it up.
I generally give more detailed analyses but due to limited information, this is what I can provide."
Dr. Deborah Schurman-Kauflin
Violent Crimes Institute President
Aftermath of the BTK Murders

Although Wichita police invested 100,000 hours in at least a half-dozen investigations from 1974 until 1991, BTK was not caught. The FBI called the case one of its top unsolved mysteries.
The search for the "BTK Strangler" had been scaled down to one detective. The remaining detective on the BTK case, Lt. Kenneth Landwehr, stated that the case files were not just sitting around collecting dust: "I've been told by the chief that this investigation will stay open until we have no more (reasonable) leads to follow", adding: "that can almost be to infinity."
The investigation has involved thousands of suspects and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in man-hours, travel expenses and telephone bills.
Over twenty-five years later, the Otero house has changed hands a half-dozen times. Charlie Otero and two siblings have since moved to Albuquerque but have not been heard from since the Ghostbusters investigation.
Suddenly in 2004, after so many years, BTK investigation was re-launched after the killer sent a letter to The Wichita Eagle that claimed responsibility for the 1986 murder of Vicki Wegerle, who was strangled in her home at 2404 W. 13th. BTK provided some very convincing evidence of the letter's authenticity by including crime scene photos and Wegerle's driver's license. She was the mother of two children, one of whom was home at the time of the murder.
BTK Killer Returns

After nearly 30 years of silence, BTK once again terrorized the city of Wichita . The killer resurfaced on March 19, 2004, when he sent a letter to The Wichita Eagle newsroom.
According to reports in the Eagle, the letter suggested the killer was taking responsibility for the September 16, 1986, unsolved death of Vicki Wegerle, who was found in her home at 2404 W. 13th Street. Included with the letter were a photocopy of Wegerle's driver's license and three photos of her body.
Investigators are not yet releasing the contents of the letter, however it has been reported in the media that the return address on the letter was from "Bill Thomas Killman" (BTK) -- 1684 South Oldmanor. Investigators have since determined the name to be fictitious and the address a vacant lot. Why he chose them is unknown, but many speculate there is a hiding meaning behind it.
On March 24, 2004, Lt. Ken Landwehr, who has been investigating the BTK case for over 20 years, confirmed that the letter was from BTK. The single fingerprint removed from the letter, he stated, would most likely come back to an employee from the newspaper and not from the killer.
Landwehr told Wichita news station Kake-10 that investigators were following leads from more than 290 telephone tips and requested that anyone with information should call the BTK hotline. It's not traceable, so tipsters can remain anonymous.
On March 25, 2004, Gregg McCrary, a former FBI profiler, told The Wichita Eagle he felt BTK was bragging about his crimes and he craves the media attention: "'Look at what I've done.' He can't resist doing that," said McCrary. "Frightening the public is like playing God. It's a heady, intoxicating experience, so they're not afraid to make contact with you (the media) or police -- that's all a part of the game for a guy like this. He's outwitted law enforcement and everybody else all these years."
Psychologist Dr. Harold Brodsky spoke with KAKE-TV on March 28, 2004, and said giving BTK attention is a good thing. "Are we falling into his hands by showing him this attention? The reality is, if we don't show him this attention, he's going to do something diabolical," said Brodsky. Regardless of where he has been and why he has suddenly come back, one thing is certain -- he has once again brought panic to the city of Wichita . Investigators have surmised that the killer is living in the area. No one feels safe and practically everyone is taking steps to protect themselves. Sales of security systems, locks, guns, personal alarms, pepper spray and other security devices have sky rocketed. The case has drawn the attention of national news organizations and CNN, MSNBC and Good Morning America are covering it from all angles.
In the mean time everyone seems to have the same questions: Will he make contact again? Or more importantly: Will he kill again? Unfortunately, no one has an answer to either question and only time will tell if BTK strikes again.
Another Letter From Dennis Rader

On May 5, 2004, another letter suspected to be from BTK was sent to Kansas television station KAKE-TV. The letter was three pages. On the first page was typed "The BTK Story," under which was a list of chapters taken from Court TV's Crime Library story on the killer, Ron Sylvester reported in The Wichita Eagle . Intriguingly, some of the chapter titles were changed from those listed in Crime Library original story. For example, Chapter 7 originally titled "BTK- The Next Step" was changed to "PJ's," Chapter 4 titled "BTK- Different Worlds Collide" was altered to read "Fantasy World" and the chapter titled "BTK Cold Case Squad" was changed to "Will There (Be) More?"
The second page of the letter was titled "Chapter 8" and contained word puzzles with letters in vertical rows, Jeanene Kiesling reported in a May KAKE-TV article. On the last page were photocopies of business ID's belonging to two men, one a former Southwestern Bell worker and the other a former employee of the Wichita public school district, the Associated Press reported in June. According to the article, the phone company employee was later contacted but he could not understand why a photocopy of his ID was in the letter. Upon further investigation, the school district employee listed on the card did not exist and the logo of the school used on the card had been discontinued. Interestingly, the three-page letter was different from the March letter sent to The Wichita Eagle in that the return address on the envelope bore the name Thomas B. King (TBK) instead of Bill Thomas Killman (BTK), Sylvester reported.
It didn't take long for the FBI to authenticate the letter as a genuine BTK communication, believed to have been his third in a three-month period. The first known communication in 2004 was the March 19 th letter sent to The Wichita Eagle . The second known communication allegedly by BTK was an anonymous letter sent to Wichita 's KSN-TV in April 2004, which purportedly contained a photo of an unidentified baby.
There was no doubt that the killer was back to his old habit of taunting police. However, it is likely that he was also providing them with vital clues to his identity and details regarding his past murders. It was suggested that the killer may have used the IDs represented in the letter to gain access to the victims' homes. Moreover, police alleged that the chapter titled "PJ's" could be a clue linking the killer to a faculty member at Wichita State University .
Many wondered why the killer chose this point in time to resurface. Some believed that the killer reemerged because he missed the media attention, which he seemed to crave. There is also a chance that his most recent communications were a warning that he might strike again in the near future. BTK's new letters have re-ignited the investigation into the killer, as well as the community's fears of more brutal murders. Many wonder whether the BTK killer can be captured before he gets a chance to kill again.
More Clues Revealed in the BTK Case

On June 17, 2004 another letter was found in a mechanical engineering book in the drop box of the Wichita Public Library. The letter was immediately handed over to police, who later revealed that it was yet another genuine BTK communication. This time the letter detailed some of the events surrounding the 1974 Otero murders, among other things.
The entire letter's contents have not yet been revealed by authorities. However, it is believed that there might have been more clues present in the letter, which linked the killer to Wichita State University . Initially, it was unclear why the hunt for BTK continuously led the police to the school campus. Yet, in August 2004 investigators finally revealed the significance of the university in their investigation.
Professor P.J. Wyatt, who taught an English literature class at the university between 1964 and 1986, was of interest to police because of a folksong she analyzed titled "Oh Death." The song was of great significance to the BTK killer and inspired a poem he wrote called "Oh! Death to Nancy " which was found in a 1978 letter. It was alleged that the altered poem referenced BTK's murder of Nancy Fox in December 1977. Investigators looked for hidden meanings in the poem that might help them apprehend the killer but it turned out to be of little use. Unfortunately, the professor could not assist investigators in the case because she passed away in 1991 of cancer.
More interesting than "Oh! Death to Nancy" is the poem that BTK wrote to Anna, an intended victim, who did not come home in time to be murdered by BTK. He waited in her home for her to return, but then became impatient and left. This poem, part of which is printed below, commemorates this event.
T' was perfect plan of deviant pleasure so bold on that Spring nite
My inner felling hot with propension of the new awakening season

Warn, wet with inner fear and rapture, my pleasure of entanglement,
like new vines at night
The poem is in many ways remarkable because of the levels of meaning that BTK suggests in the words he uses. Reminiscent of James Joyce's epic, Finnegan's Wake , BTK uses words that suggest several meanings. Starting with the very first line in the poem, the T with the superscript 1 is used in scientific research to designate the beginning phase of a study. Subsequent phases would be T2, T3, etc. On another more ordinary level, the superscript 1 could be interpreted as an apostrophe to create "T'was" except that "T'was perfect plan" is missing a word, like "a" or "the." It appears as though whatever BTK had in store for Anna was something "bold" and new.
"Felling," for example, suggests the purposeful killing of a living tree, as well as the taking of Anna's life. It also describes his feelings of excitement as he anticipates his meeting with her. Like Joyce, he creates words by juxtaposing parts of other words. "Propension" is not some mistake on BTK's part, it is his creation of a new word to represent the anticipation of this new encounter. "Propension" may be a combination of other words like "propensity" or "property" or "possessions."
What's the point of these intellectual gymnastics? No doubt, BTK sees himself as an artist and gets pleasure in creating these poems and lyrics with multiple levels of meaning. There is almost certainly another motivation as well. BTK likes to demonstrate his considerable intelligence. He believes that he is a superior intellect and enjoys pointing out to authorities that he is still at large. In other words, he is smarter than all of them local experts, FBI profilers, amateur sleuths, psychics. Thus far, it appears that he is right.
The search for BTK has not only caught the attention of those in the United States but also that of millions around the world. The BTK case has even led to the production of a British documentary film concerning the murders and the ongoing investigation, Theresa Freed reported in a September 2004 KAKE-TV article. Freed reported that the "British film crew not only wants to tell the BTK story but (also) offer police new insight into the case."
The new insight came in the form of a British psychic named Dennis McKenzie who traveled with the crew to Wichita . Freed said that McKenzie has successfully assisted in several high profile investigations, including the Soham murders. He was also able to contribute to the BTK investigation by producing an image of the killer with the help of a sketch artist, as well as other potentially valuable information concerning the murder cases, Freed stated. It is hoped that the new leads will result in the eventual apprehension of the BTK killer. Until that time, Wichita residents are left in a perpetual state of fear, wondering if there will be a new victim in the near future.
Name Games

On October 22, 2004, a suspicious letter was left at a UPS drop box outside the OmniCenter building at 250 N. Kansas Street in Wichita , Kansas . Police suspected that the letter was written by BTK and have sent it to the FBI for verification three days after its discovery. Interestingly, the letter was discovered on the 30 th anniversary of BTK's first communication with the authorities. Chances are that the timing was no coincidence. The contents of the letter and the identity of the person who alerted police of its whereabouts still remain unclear.
Homicide Detective Kelly Otis of the Wichita Police, who is working on the BTK case, interviewed people who were in the immediate area of the office building and who worked there at the time the letter was allegedly placed at the scene. It was hoped that someone might have witnessed the person who left the letter in the UPS box. One person who was interviewed by Otis claimed to have seen a suspicious individual dropping a letter off at the UPS box on the same day the letter in question was purportedly left at the drop box.
On October 26, 2004, Beth Jett of KAKE-TV news quoted an unidentified man saying, "you could see the nervousness in his eyes...I was right around the corner (from the UPS drop box) and he looked back at me and that's when he took off." The man believed that the suspicious person he saw might have been the BTK killer. BTK is thought to be around 50-60 years old with graying hair and of medium stature.
In the meantime, the authorities continue pouring over clues left by the BTK killer. It is clear that the killer has gone to great effort to misguide and confuse the authorities by providing them with false information likely mixed with subtle truths. It is almost certain that he is highly educated or at least well read, judging by his use of statistical jargon and James Joyce-like style of writing. Moreover, his use of the name Thomas King in one of his letters is very possibly yet another clue to his choice of literature. There is a Canadian author of articles, stories and poems mostly about Native American life who bears the same name.
Both Thomas King and James Joyce are two of many famous authors whose works have been studied by literature students at Kansas State University . Could BTK have studied these authors at some point at the university? There seems to be many links between BTK and the school, especially with the now-deceased lecturer Professor P.J. Wyatt. With the mounting evidence, there is a good chance that BTK was once a student at the university or may have even worked there. However, it may also be another ploy used by the killer to mislead investigators.
If the names BTK used in his letters were in fact clues to his identity, many wonder what would be the significance of the name Bill Thomas Killman. Some believe the name is a puzzle in itself and if arranged properly might spell out a hidden message or meaning. However, the name could also be another sophisticated tool used to taunt police.
Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann (with one "l" and two "n"s) devised a tool, known as the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, which is used to help people handle conflict. The instrument is sometimes used by police departments to help officers deal with people who are aggressive or scared, which they often encounter in their line of work. When the killer used the name Bill Thomas Killman in his previous letters, could he have been indirectly referring to this conflict instrument and using it as a tool to mock the police? It is a question that may never be answered. Unfortunately, until the BTK killer is caught we can only speculate about his identity or motivation for his horrific crimes.
On Nov. 30, 2004, Wichita Police did a press release offering a great deal of background information supplied by BTK about his life. This is, indeed unique in the history of serial killers. Occasionally, the concept that serial killers "want to be caught" finds its way into the news. This is pure fiction. Serial killers are pyschopaths. They are entirely self-focused. They will not intentionally put themselves in harm's way. Psychopaths are notorious liars and BTK is no exception.
So, now that BTK has supplied a number of supposedly true facts about himself, what are we to make of it? Are we now to believe this serial killer? Are we now to chase down and investigate his claims?
We would be foolish to do so. If BTK wanted to reveal his identity, he would walk into any police station and do so. But he does not because he is a psychopath who is enjoys taunting and playing with the police and engaging the huge public following that he has amassed. Now that he has "revealed" this biographical sketch, he can be assured that countless BTK amateur sleuths, as well as FBI and Wichita police, will be completely absorbed in it. What could be more gratifying to a dedicated narcissist?
It's possible that some of the information that BTK has volunteered about himself may be true, but you can be assured that nothing factual that he has volunteered will trip him up. He's just too smart for that. Keep in mind that he is very smart, potentially smarter than his pursuers. It's more likely that everything that BTK has volunteered about his biography is false or misleading. He's playing with us, his public. We shall see. The fact that BTK is pushing for attention based on details of his life, rather than recent murders, suggests that he is not in a position to operate freely without the threat of discovery.
Police Power

Throughout the fall of 2004, police continued their intense search for BTK, this time looking to their own ranks. BTK is believed to have what some might consider "inside knowledge" of police activity or law enforcement training. For practical reasons, many serial killers are focused on the investigation into their crimes. Some, like the notorious South Carolina serial killer, Pee Wee Gaskins, and Dr. Frank Sweeney, Cleveland 's Kingsbury Run murderer, have even cultivated police sources by hanging around taverns where cops visit and luring them into conversations about the investigation.
Serial killers are also attracted to law enforcement because it represents power, the ingredient that the serial killer lacks in his everyday life. Kenneth Bianchi, one of the Hillside Stranglers, took courses in police science and posed as a psychologist so that he could pal around with investigators working on his case. It was more than just a practical activity to avoid becoming a suspect himself, it was the vicarious thrill of outsmarting the police and exerting power over them.
Dr. Frank Sweeney did the same type of thing while decapitating 13 or more victims in the 1930s. The famed Eliot Ness was head of law enforcement in Cleveland at that time. When Eliot Ness focused his attentions on Sweeney, Sweeney reciprocated by sending Ness taunting post cards and even a papier mach ?orso. Sweeney got tremendous pleasure from outsmarting the very smart Eliot Ness.
This is what is happening here with BTK. Instead of exerting power over his victims as he tortured and killed them a couple of decades ago, he is now exerting power over the police. His games, his letters, his packages are putting enormous pressure on them to produce an arrest. Not only that, BTK has found a way to hold power over thousands of fascinated amateur sleuths who flock to the chat rooms and message boards to theorize and analyze BTK's every word. With the Laci Peterson circus finally coming to a close, BTK is making a bid to be the next televised obsession. He has become a celebrity.
Was BTK ever a Wichita cop? It's not likely, although he may have experience in the military police. Just to be on the safe side in case BTK turns out to be another Gerard Schafer, Wichita police called on retired police officers in mid-November to volunteer to have the inside of their mouths swabbed for DNA samples so they could be eliminated as potential suspects. However, investigators ran into unexpected difficulty when at least one police officer refused to participate in the ongoing investigation.
According to Roy Wenzl's November 21 , 2004 article in the Wichita Eagle , retired Det. Frank Cummins was skeptical of the DNA tests because of long-term privacy concerns. Wenzl reported that "because of the nature of DNA, because it can show genetic family relationships, it would be like handing the police department a permanent set of fingerprints, without permission from every person genetically related to him." Moreover, Cummins believed that the tests were a waste of money and he distrusted how the police would utilize the samples. Consequently, he decided not to voluntarily provide DNA samples. He would not be the last person to refuse police testing.
Too Many Clues

In November, 2004, police publicly revealed for the first time information that BTK revealed about himself in a letter. The personal information was released in the hopes that someone might recognize the killer's description and come forward with even more information about his identity or whereabouts. It is likely that these "revelations" are simply disinformation provided by BTK to throw the police off his trail. Jeanene Kiesling of KAKE-TV gave out these new details on November 30, 2004:

BTK claims he was born in 1939, which would make him 64 or 65 years old.
His father died in World War II. His mother and grandparents raised him.
He has a fascination with railroads and between 1950 to 1955, his mother dated a detective with the railroad.
In the early 1950s he built and operated a ham radio. He also has knowledge of photography and can develop and print pictures.
He also likes to hunt, fish and camp.
In 1960, BTK claims he went to tech school and then joined the military for active duty and was discharged in 1966 at which time he says he moved back in with his mother.
He worked repairing copiers and business equipment.
He admits to soliciting prostitutes.

BTK is now playing to an ever increasingly devoted audience and needs to keep their interest alive. So one can expect to see many more communications from him as he discards incriminating evidence.
In the meantime, there are also old theories re-emerging that BTK might have served in the U.S. Air Force. BTK's first victim, Joseph Otero, was known to have served in the Air Force and at the time of his death worked at Rose Hill Airport . Some believe that BTK may also stand for "Born to Kill" the name and initials of several Air Force squadrons.
In mid-December, 2004, an unidentified man found a suspicious white plastic bag wrapped in rubber bands in Murdock Park. The man took the bag home and looked inside it, when to his surprise he noticed items that may have belonged to some of BTK's victims.
Investigators examined the bag's contents and found a driver's license belonging to Nancy Fox and a letter, along with other objects. The letter was similar to one found earlier in May 2004, which displayed a list of chapters taken from this Crime Library story. However, some of the chapter titles were listed differently.
In the most recent letter chapter 13 was changed from "Will There More?" to "Will There Be More?" The chapter originally had a different title. Yet, after the May letter, the title was changed to "Will there (Be) More." In BTK's latest communication it is clear that he made a concerted effort to correct his grammatical errors. It also appears that he is an avid true crime reader.
Furthermore, in the letter found in the bag, chapters one, two and eight were left blank unlike those in the May letter. In an interview with Larry Hatteberg of KAKE TV, he theorized that the empty chapters might have been directly linked to Nancy Fox's murder date in 1977. He stated that "the chapters BTK left out, if put together in a specific sequence, would mark the date Nancy Fox was killed," 12-8 or December 8 th . If this were the case, it would be a vital clue that might provide insight into BTK and the way in which he communicates.
The plastic bag was eventually handed over to the FBI. Information concerning the remainder of the bag's contents has since been withheld from the public in an effort to maintain the continuity of the ongoing investigation.
BTK Suspect Arrested

Monday, Feb 28 12 p.m. update
Law enforcement in Wichita are 99.9% sure that the suspect they have in custody, 59-year-old Dennis Rader, is the BTK killer, but while the tone of the February 26 news conference morning was confident, very few details of the investigation were divulged.
The 46 minutes of news conference self congratulations on "catching" BTK seems a bit misplaced considering that after 30 years of so-called investigation, police were not even able to tie three victims (Wegerle, Hedge and Davis) to BTK. Let's also not forget that had it not been for his daughter, Kerri Rader, cooperating with the police before the arrest, there probably would have been no arrest. It's hard to understand how so much investigative effort on the part of Wichita police and the FBI failed to respond to the obvious clues in Rader's past that tied in with the profile that had been developed for BTK:

He went to Wichita State University, where one BTK letter was photocopied and a Professor P.J. Wyatt had exposed in her classes the poem "Oh, Death" from which BTK created one of his poems.
He was in the Air Force. It was long speculated that BTK got the letters from "Born To Kill," a USAF squadron term. He may have met BTK victim Joseph Otero, also in the Air Force at that time.
He worked at Coleman's, where two other victims worked
He is an odd guy with a need to exert power and control as evidenced by the code compliance position he held with the Park City government. Several of his neighbors have gone on the record calling him a bureaucratic "bully." This type of behavior is consistent with a sadistic serial killer and should have been a red flag to investigators.
He lived nearby some victims, even on the same street as one of them.

It will be interesting to know if Rader was on any of the lists of suspects that police had collected over the past 30 years and, if so, why did they not collect any DNA from him?
It would be very surprising if some other cold cases don't turn out to be BTK victims as well. To name a few that have been listed by Wichita residents on Internet bulletin boards

"Nov. 12, 1974: Sherry Baker, a Wichita State University student stabbed in her apartment. Hands tied behind back (with a coiled telephone cord) No sign of forced entry.
June 29, 1985: Linda Shawn Casey, a Wichita State University student found dead on the bedroom floor of her home bound, beaten, sexually assaulted, tabbed repeatedly. No sign of forced entry. At the time, BTK was mentioned as a possibility but discounted due to the length of time since his last known victim.
Nov, 12, 1999: Tina Frederick, lived a few blocks from BTK victim Shirley Vian. Found shot to death in her apartment - lying on a bedroom floor."

Also, it's likely that there are even other BTK victims. Serial killers can't stop, they just become more imaginative about hiding their crimes.
District Attorney Nola Foulston said there is no statute of limitations on murder. However, the dealth penalty was not approved in Kansas until 1994. No death penalty applies to murder cases committed before 1994. In other words, the BTK case may not a capital case, unless they can tie him to new murders that occurred in 1994 or later.
Prosecutors will not be discussing the case publically after any charges are filed, Foulston said, to ensure that information released does not harm the trial.
Two new victims have been uncovered in the investigation, bringing the number of BTK victims from eight to ten.
The two victims most recently attributed to Rader have been identified as Marine Hedge, 53, and Delores "Dee" Davis, 62. The Wichita Eagle reported that Hedge was abducted from her home on Independence Street in Park City on April 27, 1985. She had been strangled by a pair of pantyhose and found eight days later on a rural dirt road near 143 rd East and 37 th North Street . The article stated that the case bore marked similarities to several other BTK murders in that, "the phone line at Hedge's home was cut" and her car had been driven from the crime scene to another location. Roxana Hegeman of The Associated Press claimed that Rader actually lived on the same street as Hedge.
Delores Davis was abducted from her home on January 19, 1991 and found 13 days later under a bridge on 117 th Street North near Meridian , Kansas . Her hands and feet had been bound with the pantyhose that were used to strangle her. According to the Wichita Eagle , her murderer cut the phone line at her home and "then threw a brick through a glass door at the rear of her home to get inside." After disposing of Davis ' body, the killer drove her car to another location and abandoned it. Davis ' murder remained unsolved for more than a decade.
In 2004, there was a great deal of excitement when police arrested a man that the media believed was connected to the BTK case. At around 7:30 in the evening on December 1, 2004 after a day of heavy surveillance, police arrested a 64-year-old man at his south Wichita residence. It was initially reported that the arrest was made in connection with the BTK case and was prompted by a tip off from an unidentified caller into the BTK information hotline. However, investigators later denied that the man arrested was in any way linked to the murder investigation.
After 31-years, the identity of Wichita , Kansas ' most notorious serial killer, known as BTK, was made public after the suspect's arrest on February 26, 2005. Dennis L. Rader, 59, of Park City , Kansas was taken into custody after having been stopped at a traffic light near his home on East Kechi Road shortly after noon that day. Even though formal charges have not yet been filed, the authorities said, "they would ask prosecutors to file 10 counts of first degree murder against Rader, including two murders in Park City that had not previously been attributed to the BTK killer," it was reported in a February 26 th MSNBC article.
The question now on everyone's lips is, "Who is Dennis L. Rader?" Relatively little is know about him, especially since prosecutors are reluctant to divulge too much information, which could harm the up-coming trial. What is certain is that Rader spent most of his life in Park City .
Rader was born in 1945 and grew up in Wichita along with three brothers, all of whom graduated from Heights High School in Wichita .
Rader was in the Air Force in Viertnam from 1965 to 1969. Joseph Otero, BTK's victim, was also in the Air Force at the same time.
Rader worked in the meat department for a Park City grocery store and then as an assembler at the Coleman camping gear firm between 1971 and 1973, where he met two of his earlier victims, Mike Brunker reported in a MSNBC article.
He worked at ADT Security Services from 1974 through 1989. In 1989, he also worked for the U.S. Census bureau going door-to-door collecting information. While working in both positions, Rader had access to many area residents' homes. It is believed that he might have initially encountered some of his victims while on the job.
At some point in the 1970s, Rader married and he and his wife Paula had two children, a boy and girl. At around the same time, he attended Wichita State University and in 1979 graduated with a degree in Administration of Justice. According to Fox News, Rader "never became an officer but instead went "into code enforcement, or what one critic called "a glorified dog catcher."
In his spare time, Rader lead a Cub Scouts group and was active in his church. No one imagined he was capable of doing any harm to anybody. Many referred to him as a kind of guy who wasn't very noticeable, one who never really stood out from others. In fact, it was his ability to "blend in" that allowed him to go undetected for so many years.
Tuesday, March 1 12:05 PM
Ron Sylvester of The Wichita Eagle and Frank Witsil of the Detroit Free Press reported today that 'A Michigan law enforcement official said Monday that federal agents went to the home of Dennis Rader's daughter to take a DNA sample shortly after his arrest Friday.'
Who is Dennis Rader?

Monday, Feb 28 1:20 p.m. update
Ron Sylvester reported in a February 28, 2005 AP article that investigators believed Dennis Rader was responsible for 13 murders, although the authorities vehemently deny this. The article further suggested that at least one of the additional murders is believed to have occurred after 1994, when the death penalty was re-instated in the state of Kansas . If police can prove that a previously unknown victim of BTK was murdered after 1994, prosecutors can make a good case for seeking the death penalty in this case, something for which many of the victim's families are hoping.
Associated Press reported Sunday that a source close to the investigation that police believed that BTK may have been responsible for the deaths of two Wichita State University students and a woman who lived down the street from another BTK victim. After Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams threatened legal action against anyone who spread erroneous information, AP modified its report to say that investigators are "looking into" whether BTK was responsible for another three killings.
Sedwick County D.A. Nola Foulston insisted that the information in the modified A.P report is false. However, if the three cases below are not being investigated by police, perhaps they should be. After all, the public has learned of three new BTK victims in the past year: Vicki Wegerle, Marine Hedge, and Dolores Davis.
Three cases have been posted on Internet bulletin boards which seem to fit the description of the victims in the Associated Press article.

"Nov. 12, 1974: Sherry Baker, a Wichita State University student
stabbed in her apartment. Hands tied behind back (with a coiled telephone cord)
No sign of forced entry.
June 29, 1985: Linda Shawn Casey, a Wichita State University student
found dead on the bedroom floor of her home bound, beaten, sexually assaulted, tabbed repeatedly. No sign of forced entry. At the time, BTK was mentioned as a possibility but discounted due to the length of time since his last known victim.
Nov, 12, 1999: Tina Frederick, lived a few blocks from BTK victim Shirley Vian.
Found shot to death in her apartment - lying on a bedroom floor."

It has also been revealed that at the time Rader worked for the security company ADT between 1974 and 1989, he "held positions that allowed him access to customers' homes, including a role as an installation manager," the Associated Press reported on February 27 th . A majority of the murders attributed to BTK have occurred during the period that Rader was employed by the company. Thus, it is possible that he used his position to seek out potential victims.
The Wichita Eagle wrote that "Rader worked at ADT Security Services. Nobody who worked with Rader during his 15 years with the company could stand him, according to several former co-workers."
Dennis Rader is a very polarizing figure: they either hated him or like him. As the Wichita Eagle reported, some people saw him as "arrogant, by-the-numbers, rude and confrontational. Others said he is efficient, nice, friendly and a regular guy."
Rader's bail has been set at a whopping $10 million, which will be set or changed during his next court hearing scheduled in the upcoming days. At that time, the 10 first-degree murder charges against him will be formally filed. Since there has been no indication, as of yet, that Rader has hired or asked for a lawyer, there is a chance that the court will have to appoint him one. Regardless, the lawyer will need time to review the case, which will likely prolong the hearing date, the Associated Press reported.
PICTURE2 Fox News reported that the suspect's daughter Kerri Rader, 26, provided the DNA samples that allegedly linked Rader to eight murders attributed to BTK between 1974 and 1986. The Wichita Eagle reported on Feb. 28 that Wichita Mayor Carlos Mayans confirmed that Kerri Rader's DNA was linked to the BTK victims.
Initially broadcast reports indicated that not only did Kerri Rader provide DNA samples to investigators, she had actually gone to the police to voice suspicions about her father being BTK. This allegation is denied by the Rader family and police. This ordeal has had a devastating effect on the Rader family, which is reportedly out of state in seclusion.
According to the Wichita Eagle, BTK's most recent communication was sent to the Fox News Wichita affiliate in mid February. Inside the package was a necklace, computer disk, and a copy of the cover of the 1989 John Sandford novel entitled "Rules of Prey." The story is about a serial killer called "the maddog."
Sources:
Associated Press (February 27, 2005). BTK killings suspect led cub scouts.
Fox News, February 27, 2005
Sylvester, Ron (February 28, 2005). Report: BTK suspect confesses to killings. The Wichita Eagle.
Exercising Power and Control

Tuesday, Mar. 03 7:50 a.m. update
In most cases, serial killers are primarily motivated by the need for power and control. Rader was no different and often flaunted his self-perceived supremacy in his work and in everyday activities. At the time of Rader's arrest, he was employed by Park City as a compliance supervisor, which involved "animal control, inoperable vehicles, general code compliance and nuisances." However, if there was anyone a nuisance, Rader's neighbors claimed it was he.
Fox News said that Rader was often referred to as a "bureaucratic bully" who would go "out of his way to find reasons to give people citations." It was further reported that he would go around filming his neighbors in the hopes of catching them committing some minor transgression. He even measured the grass of one woman he disliked, in order to catch her in violation of a city ordinance.
According to Fred Mann and Les Anderson's article in the Wichita Eagle , two Park City residents, Sarah Gordon and her sister Hearther Herrera, had a "run-in" with Rader at their garage sale in the summer of 2004 because they didn't have a license for it. Rader reportedly told the women, "You don't want to mess with me. I'm nobody to mess with." He wasn't kidding.
ABC News reported that Donna Barry, a neighbor of Rader's who has known him and his family since she was a child, had seen a darker side of Rader.
"Barry said she and her children were out on their front lawn one day, and a neighbor from across the street was outside with his dog. In his capacity as a dog catcher and ordinance officer, Barry said Rader approached the dog and allegedly tried to mace it.
"But, according to Barry, the 'wind blew the mace back in his face.' She says Rader groped for his tranquilizer gun, but couldn't get to it. That's when he allegedly pulled out a gun and shot the dog."
Other than the dog incident, "He was generally a really nice gentleman," she said. "I've known him since I was probably four or five years old. You know, he was the kind of neighbor that you could go down the road and he would stay up and talk to you and open the door for you and hold a conversation."
The Wichita Eagle reported that "several Park City residents and former co-workers described Rader as egotistical and arrogant -- a by-the-book person who pays attention to detail. The descriptions in many ways matched those offered by criminal profilers who have studied BTK. Charlie Otero, whose parents and sister were BTK's first known victims, believes that if Rader is BTK, he should get the death penalty.
Rader Court Hearing

On March 1, 2005, BTK suspect, Dennis L. Rader, appeared on a closed-circuit television in Sedgwick County 's District Court to hear the 10 first-degree murder charges filed against him in the murders attributed to the BTK Strangler. Public Defender Steve Osburn, Public Defender Jama Mitchell and Assistant Public Defender Sarah McKinno were the court-appointed lawyers that Judge Greg Waller assigned to represent Dennis Rader during the hearing, the Wichita Eagle reported. The prosecution team will consist of attorneys Kevin O'Connor, Kim Parker and Aaron Smith. Even though the preliminary hearing has been set for mid-March, the Rader defense team will likely need more time to prepare for the case. Thus, the hearing might be pushed up to a later date.
Wichita 's KAKE-TV reported that Dennis Rader confessed to some but not all of the crimes, yet the report has not yet been substantiated. In the days following Dennis Rader's arrest, there was a great deal of controversy concerning whether Rader's daughter played a role in his capture. Previously it was widely reported that Kerri Rader, 26, turned her father in and supplied the authorities with DNA samples in mid-February, which allegedly led to her father's arrest. However, according to Sylvester and Witsel's more recent article in the Wichita Eagle, Farmington, Michigan Police Chief Charles Nebus revealed that Kerri Rader actually supplied FBI agents with her DNA after her father had already been arrested, which makes it less likely that she played a direct role, if any, in her father's capture.
Interestingly, David Twiddy reported that Nebus "told The Associated Press that he didn't tell the newspapers a DNA test was being conducted." Even more intriguing is on a March 2 nd Fox News interviewed KAKE-TV anchor Larry Hatteberg who said that a credible source told him that Kerri Rader's DNA was collected when her father was under surveillance and that the results of the test were instrumental in Rader's arrest. To date, the facts remain unclear whether the DNA was obtained prior to or after Dennis Rader was taken into custody.
The police claimed that it wasn't Kerri Rader that led to his arrest but a computer disk that he mailed in a package along with other items to the Wichita television station KSAS. CNN reported that the computer disk was scrutinized by investigators and traced to the Lutheran church, where Dennis Rader presided over the assembly. Police technicians were able to "electronically peel back" information that was thought to have been erased, leading to the discovery of Dennis Rader's name, it was further reported.
To date, the authorities continue to search for evidence that could be used in the case against Rader. Dennis Rader's house has since been searched and several items confiscated, including his computer. Sylvester and Witsel said that metal detectors and shovels are also being used to search areas near Rader's house in the hopes of finding even more evidence. Hatteberg said during the Fox News interview that Wichita 's sheriff has actually found new evidence that might be linked to the Dennis Rader BTK case but it is unclear what exactly has been discovered.
New Clues in Dennis Rader Case

On March 1, 2005, Wichita television station KAKE-TV released information, previously withheld by the police request, concerning the white trash bag BTK left in Murdock Park in December 2004. According to KAKE-TV, the bag's contents contained, a Barbie brand doll known as "PJ," which had a bag over its head, its hands tied behind its back and the feet bound by panty hose. The manner in which the doll was bound was similar to the way BTK tied up his victims before murdering them.
The name of the doll he chose was significant because its initials were that of Wichita State University English literature professor P.J. Wyatt, whom he referred to in earlier communications. At the time the bag was found it was revealed that Nancy Fox's driver license was in it, as well as a list of "BTK" chapters based on the Crime Library story on the BTK killings. Dana Strongin reported in the Wichita Eagle that "the police asked KAKE-TV to keep the doll secret" for fear that it might incite BTK to commit more murders.
KAKE-TV also revealed a puzzle BTK sent in a May 2004 communication that contained some 40 words and strings of numbers. According to the television station, some of the words hidden in the puzzle included, prowl, fantasies, spot victims, steam builds, go for it, Wichita spelled backwards, help, handyman and lost pet. What is most interesting is that BTK may have left important clues to his identity. KAKE-TV said that Rader's house number "6220" and his name "D Rader" appeared in the puzzle.
BTK Messages Revealed

In 2005, there were several other BTK communications discovered. On January 25, 2005 a tip off to KAKE-TV led to the detection of "a suspicious package" on "a dirt road that runs between 69 th and 77 th Street North ," the television station revealed in an article on the BTK serial killer case. The package, which was sent by BTK, contained a Post Toasties cereal box with several items of jewelry were eventually turned over to the FBI. The FBI later confirmed that the package was indeed from the Wichita serial killer known as BTK.
Earlier in January and again in February a postcard was sent by BTK to the television station. Jeanene Kiesling reported in her KAKE-TV article that the two BTK postcards were similar in layout and directed the reader to the Post Toasties cereal box that was found on January 25 th . BTK then sent KAKE-TV another post card, which thanked them for their quick response and also asked them to relate some information to the Wichita Police Department, the report further stated.
Then several weeks later in February, Fox News' KSAS-TV affliate received a padded manila envelope sent by BTK, which contained a necklace, a letter and another unidentified item inside, Fox 4 News reported. It is believed that the necklace belonged to one of BTK's victims but it is not clear which one. The package, which was BTK's seventh communication, was handed over to the police for analysis.
That same week, Kiesling reported for the first time the entire list of chapters BTK sent to KAKE-TV in May 2004. The chapter list, loosely based on Crime Library's BTK story, was not made public earlier because the police did not want it to hamper the ongoing investigation. According to the article the chapters of BTK's revised Crime Library story were titled as follows:
Chapter 1: A Serial Killer is Born
Chapter 2: Dawn
Chapter 3: Fetish
Chapter 4: Fantasy World
Chapter 5: The Search Begins
Chapter 6: BTK's Haunts
Chapter 7: PJs
Chapter 8: MO-ID-RUSE
Chapter 9: Hits
Chapter 10: Treasured Memories
Chapter 11: Final Curtain Call
Chapter 12: Dusk
Chapter 13: Will There Be More
BTK's choice of MO-ID-RUSE probably relates to his use of fake IDs, such as the telephone company employee ID he sent in previous communications, as his MO modus operandi. In previous messages BTK used the terminology MO. In all probability, BTK used the fake IDs to obtain entrance to his victims' homes.
Interestingly, in Dennis Rader's capacity as a compliance officer for Park City and an installer for a security alarm company, Rader, if he is BTK, may have used his business cards in those two roles to gain admission to victims' homes.
Kerri Rader's DNA

Seldom in recent history has a story been so convoluted and controversial.
At first, media sources reported that Kerri Rader, Dennis Rader's 26-year-old daughter, had grave suspicions about her father and had gone to the police with them.
Then, other sources said that Kerri Rader was approached by federal agents in Michigan , where Kerri Rader lives, to provide a DNA sample after Dennis Rader's arrest. Later, other sources said that she provided the DNA sample before the arrest of her father.
Now comes an entirely new twist from Tim Potter of the Wichita Eagle: he reports that Kansas tissue samples of Kerri Rader were subpoenaed for her DNA without her knowledge.
Allegedly, according to Rev. Michael Clark, the pastor of Dennis Rader's church, Kerri Rader "gave the DNA for the purpose of clearing her dad." Clark understood Kerri Rader to be very upset that she was somehow caught in the middle of all of this controversy.
It's increasingly difficult to know what story, if any, is true.
Typically, D.A. Nora Foulston has declined to comment on this report. Foulston, who had promised to be forthcoming with information, has not fulfilled her obligation.
Digital Footprints

For as long as computers have been around, so has the science of computer forensics. It is a science that has been used for various purposes, especially compiling electronic evidence for use in criminal investigations. The BTK case is no different. Investigators in the case have claimed that the use of computer forensics is one of the methods used to bring BTK suspect Dennis Rader to justice.
Many believe that when they erase a document from their computer or floppy disk the evidence is lost forever. This is usually not the case. In fact, David Stenhouse, a computer investigator at Seattle 's University of Washington said that, "a savvy investigator with the right tools can fairly easily reconstruct information that the user thought had been deleted," Dion Lefler of the Wichita Eagle reported.
According to an article by Joan Feldman and Roger Kohn of Computer Forensics Inc., computer-based evidence that has been recently deleted (residual data) can be recovered up until the time it is "overwritten with data from a newly saved file or until it is 'wiped' by specialized programs." In the case of the diskette and church computer allegedly used by Rader, this was not the case. Investigators were able to recover, at least partially, the digital footprints left behind when he purportedly wrote a message to Wichita Fox News affiliate station KSAS on February 16, 2005. When they recovered the data and contacted the church whose name was on the disk, Rader's name is purported to have popped up, leading to his arrest as key suspect in the BTK case. It is believed that their case was further strengthened by DNA evidence obtained either prior to or after Rader's arrest.
The precise evidence compiled against Rader, which eventually lead to his arrest is vague and the various theories surrounding it unsubstantiated. It is likely to remain that way for some time, at least until the case goes to trial. Lefler stated in another Wichita Eagle article that District Judge Greg Waller who is presiding over the BTK case has "issued a pair of orders" sealing the files that explain why Rader was arrested. The reason why the judge has issued the orders has been publicly withheld but the report stated that one reason is to prevent such disclosure from damaging the ongoing case against Rader.
The order to keep Rader's files closed has left many, especially the media, in an uproar. At present, information concerning the case has been wrought with inaccuracies and false reports. The Wichita Eagle, who has requested more information into Rader's arrest in an open letter to the judge, believes that the release of data might "quell much of the rumor and speculation that is currently running rampant."
BTK's Signature

Undoubtedly, BTK didn't want anyone to take the credit for the murders he committed. He was actually proud of his horrific actions. No where was it more evident then when he arrogantly signed his initials to many of the communications that were sent to Wichita media outlets.
According to Tim Potter's Kansas City Star article, only a select few working on the investigation ever knew that BTK signed his name in a "sexually suggestive configuration" in which he "stacked the 'B,' 'T' and 'K' from top to bottom with the 'B' shaped to look like a woman's breasts." The signature was deliberately kept from the public so that investigators could weed out possible copycat letters from authentic BTK communications, the report further suggested. Even though a large majority of the letters bore the BTK symbol, some of the communications did not.
Potter stated that the communications were evaluated by asking three specific questions and if most of the criteria were met then chances were high that the letter was from the murderer:

Do the contents reveal knowledge only the killer would possess?
Do the messages show a continuity, where each communication builds on past ones?
Do they repeatedly use certain words or symbols, including a logo or signature (such as the BTK signature)?

Investigators realized that the more communication they could establish with BTK, the more likely it would be that he would slip up and provide them with valuable information concerning his identity. Sometimes, investigators actually initiated contact by placing an advertisement in the newspaper.
In 1974, the police put an ad in the Wichita Eagle that read "B.T.K. Help is available," Stan Finger and Tim Potter reported 29 years later in the same paper. There was no known response to the police statement but in 1986 there was a suspicious ad that read, "Relief from Factor X is available at: P.O. Box 48265 ," the report stated. Interestingly, in a 1978 communication sent from BTK to KAKE-News, he wrote that he was driven by "Factor X" to commit the murders. Thus, it is highly likely that BTK used the ads as another means of communicating to the public.
Those Who Remain

It was the day they waited for ever since their loved ones were brutally torn from them years earlier by the hands of a ruthless serial killer. The arrest of BTK suspect Dennis Rader finally allowed the victims' families to put a face on their source of anger and pain but has done little to alleviate the loss that they all feel on a daily basis. The victims' families have experienced a mixture of anguish and joy, although most have cautiously suspended their relief and continue to hold out for justice, which still has yet to be served.
For Deloris Davis' son, Jeff, relief and justice are emotions he won't ascribe to Rader's capture. He was quoted by Eyewitnesses News in Memphis , Tennessee saying, "I don't use the word relief because it's notI don't use the word justice because it's neither until he (Rader) rots in hell." His chief emotion is anger, quickly followed by a thirst for revenge. He was further quoted saying, "I'm going to enjoy every step of the road that he takes before they crucify him." Many of the victims' family members share Jeff's feelings of outrage and hostility.
Most of the victims' surviving children have had difficulty moving past the trauma that abruptly altered their lives forever despite Rader's capture. Steve Relford, the son of Shirley Vian, suggested that he's only somewhat relieved by the arrest of his mother's alleged murderer because he still has yet to be brought to justice, CNN reported. According to the article on March 17, 1977, Steve, then 5 years old unknowingly let the killer into the family home. He watched in horror from the bathroom where he and his two siblings were held prisoner as his mother was tied up and strangled to death. "Nearly 28 years later he is still haunted by what happened" but since Rader's arrest Steve has been able to finally visit the home where his mother was murdered for the first time. It's at least one step forward in a lengthy healing process.
Charlie Otero and his sister, Carmen, were overjoyed at Rader's arrest more than 30 years after their brother, sister and parents' vicious murder. Wichita television station KSNW quoted Carmen saying, "Thirty years is a long time. I'm pretty relieved-a lot of mixed emotions." Charlie said Rader's capture was "a bittersweet victory" for the family that has been long overdue, it was reported.
Even though some the emotional scars are just beginning to heal, the physical scars still remain with Kevin Bright. In 1974, he and his sister Kathryn came home to find BTK waiting for them. A man who resembled Rader bound Kathryn, 21, with cord, stabbed then strangled her to death and then shot Kevin, then 19, twice. Miraculously, Kevin survived but he continues to suffer from nerve damage, CNN reported.
Moreover, he feels anguish and is not relieved by Rader's arrest because he's never claimed responsibility for her murder. The Kansas City Star quoted Kevin as saying, "I don't have closure. I won't unless he's (Rader) admitted to the police, unless he said he killed my sister." Yet then again, even if he did admit to hers or other murders it will never bring them back.
Piecing Together the Puzzle

The moment he found his parents murdered in their bed on January 15, 1974, Charlie Otero, then 15, had a sneaking suspicion that his father crossed paths with the murderer at some earlier point in time. In fact, he "suspected the killings had something to do with his father's military past," Tim Potter reported in an August 2004 Wichita Eagle article. Charlie's father, Joseph Otero, served 21 years in the Air Force (between 1952 and 1973) before retiring and finding work at Wichita 's Rose Hill Airport as an airplane technician and flight instructor.
There is no telling if Joseph Otero and his killer ever served together. Yet, what is certain is that BTK suspect Dennis Rader also served in the Air Force. The two men's' careers actually overlapped during a four-year period, lasting between 1966 and 1970. However, there is no evidence that they were ever stationed at the same base together or even crossed paths, Potter suggested in a March 2005 Wichita Eagle article. According to the report, Otero spent most of his time stationed in Panama and Puerto Rico, whereas Rader was based in San Antonio , Texas , Mobile , Alabama and Okinawa , Japan .
Even though there is little evidence to support his theory, Charlie Otero continues to believe that the BTK killer and his father shared a military past because of a series of events that occurred days prior to the murders. A December 2004 Associated Press article quoted him saying that at "one time the power went out" and his father made the family hide in the closet. Moreover, Joseph tried to give him his ring in case something happened to him. The report further suggested that Charlie overheard a telephone conversation that led him to believe that his father's murder was directly connected to his military career.
Based on Charlie's account, it was clear that immediately prior to the murders, Joseph was terrified that something dreadful might happen and likely by someone he knew. To date, investigators are continuing to look for evidence that might link Rader to Otero during the overlapping period of time they served in the Air Force. At several police stations near where Rader was stationed, investigators are searching for murders that might resemble other BTK crimes. Investigators hope to obtain more insight into whether BTK's victims were chosen at random or deliberately targeted. Furthermore, they hope to determine whether BTK might have committed earlier murders in other locations prior to 1974.
Nightmare in Wichita (Book Review)

Attorney Robert Beattie's book Nightmare in Wichita: The Hunt for the BTK Strangler has strengths and weaknesses.
Its greatest strength is a very detailed accounting of the individual known BTK murders that began with the Otero family in 1974. From interviews with police, victim family members and associates, and journalists, Beattie has gleaned quite a bit of detail that never got into the newspapers.
For example, he learned of some twelve BTK suspects that the police had at one time under surveillance: among them were a couple of former police officers, a journalist who allegedly practiced bondage, an emotionally disturbed Vietnam veteran, and a former fireman who was said to have bound and tortured a prostitute. All of the twelve, who remain unnamed in his book, were cleared, mostly by DNA.
The book starts out strong with a very comprehensive examination of the Otero family murders, dispelling some of the myths that have floated around various Internet bulletin boards, such as there was semen all over the Otero house. Beattie clarifies that semen was only found at the scene of Josie Otero's murder, on her leg and on pipes behind her hanging body.
Despite the grim subject matter, Beattie inserts some humor when Wichita officials travel to Puerto Rico to investigate the Otero case and are stopped by customs officials because of the horrific crime scene photos in their possession.
The further one gets into the chronology of the case, the less appealing the book becomes. Beattie fills up many, many pages with his meetings with various individuals that clearly interested Beattie, but are likely to bore readers. His excitement about suddenly being interviewed as an expert after BTK resurfaced in March, 2004, is given much more coverage than the reader really needs. One gets the feeling that he's using filler to get to whatever number of pages he promised.
The most serious weakness in Beattie's book is the rush to publish and cash in while the case is so much in the forefront of public consciousness. The result is that the most interesting aspect of the case in recent times - the character, culpability and motivations of suspect Dennis Rader - are barely addressed. Rader's personality and his interactions with the community have been addressed more thoroughly on cable news than the few pages of information that Beattie has stuck on to the end of his book. As a reader, I wished that Beattie had published a bit later after more is learned about the man police have called the BTK Strangler.
This problem is not entirely Beattie's but rather the problem created for book authors by Internet sites that can publish, update and distribute the news around the world in the speed of light.
Not Guilty

When BTK suspect, Dennis Rader, waived a preliminary hearing on April 19, 2005, in essence he was conceding that prosecutors have sufficient evidence to proceed with a full trial.
On May 3 Dennis Rader, dressed in a dark suit, pleaded not guilty to the charge of murdering ten people in the BTK serial killings.
Associated Press reported that Rader chose to stand mute during the brief arraignment and asked District Court Judge Gregory Waller to enter the plea for him. Waller entered the not guilty plea and set a trial date for June 27, although most expect the trial date to eventually be pushed back.
Although DA Nola Foulston indicted she would like to see the trial begin in the fall of 2005, the trial may not begin until 2006 because of the preparation time needed by the prosecution and defense.
Beefed-up security measures had been taken for Dennis Rader's May 3 arraignment and Rader had been offered a bullet-proof vest. Once again media organizations from all over the country converged on Wichita for this event. Victims family members, such as Charlie Otero, came to hear the proceedings.
The Wichita Eagle reported that Foulston "will seek the Hard 40 penalty against Rader on one of the 10 counts against him. That means if convicted of that murder charge, Rader would serve at least 40 years before being eligible for parole. Rader is 60." One the victims, Dolores Davis, was killed in 1991 when the Hard 40 was still in effect in Kansas .
The astonishing amount of controversial secrecy by Wichita law enforcement through the decades in which the BTK case spanned was briefly continued in the courts with the sealing of key documents. On April 29, 2005, Sedgwick County District Court Judge Gregory Waller responded to papers filed by six media organizations petitioning the court to unseal documents in the BTK case.
In Kansas , the decision to seal those documents was supposed to have been made after a hearing. No hearing was held. DA Nola Foulston and Rader's legal team had requested that the documents be sealed so that pretrial publicity did not compromise any future trial. Judge Waller released all but the probable cause affidavit April 29.
One of the documents that was unsealed was the prosecution's list of 247 names of individuals who may be called to testify if Rader goes to trial. The list included investigators, people who knew Rader, relatives of the victims, and even journalists. Consistent with the quality of the law enforcement establishment that we have seen thus far in the 30-year-old case, the list of witnesses included at least five people who, according to the Wichita Eagle, are dead.
Dennis Rader Uncovered

Many Park City residents have complained that Dennis Rader used his position as a city compliance officer to try and assert authority and control over them. Some complained that he went so far as to harass them.
A former Park City resident and mother of two, Misty King, was one such person who lived in fear of Rader's strange behavior.
According to a KAKE-TV article by Susan Peters, Rader began stalking King after she divorced from her husband and when another male friend took up residence with her. Rader became increasingly irritated. He came to her house on a continuous basis and bombarded her with numerous citations for not complying with trivial Park City code regulations, such as keeping her grass under a certain height, putting a tarp on the car, stacking a woodpile in her backyard and having an inoperable vehicle in her driveway, the report stated.
Peters quoted King who said that when she asked Rader what she did that was so wrong, he purportedly responded "Get rid of the boyfriend and everything will go back to the way it was."
Matters got worse when he allegedly started peeping into her windows on occasion and banging on her door wanting to speak with her. King also suggested in the article that Rader could have even attempted to gain entry to her house. Yet the pinnacle was when Rader confiscated the family dog and put him to sleep, which prompted her to flee Park City with her family.
Rader's boss told Peters "'I don't know why I was never notified of the situation...I would have taken it very seriously.'"
King did notify the police when she caught Rader peeping, but the police dismissed her complaint. She told Peters "'I'm angry because they allowed it to happen. They believed 'if you work for the city, you can do no wrong.'"
Creating an Insanity Plea?

During the first week of May 2005, KAKE TV made public a letter containing two poems which were allegedly written by Dennis Rader while in prison. The documents were handed over by a fellow inmate who claimed that he asked Rader to write them for him so that he could give them to his girlfriend. One of the poems entitled "Tis' Spring Out There" was signed "Rader" and the second poem, titled "Black Friday" was signed "The Suspect."
The documents bore marked similarities with previous BTK communications, in that they were written in the same style and contained "many of his handwriting quirks," KAKE TV reported. Rader's defense attorney Warner Eisenbise said in another KAKE TV article that "if the poems are from Rader this could be a calculated move to set up an insanity defense" because he tried to portray two different personalities by signing the documents differently. To date, the defense has not filed any motion relating to an insanity defense but that could, of course, change.
Tis' Spring Out There
oh, to walk among the new season,
to heard a robin voice,
to see a dandelion bright,
to watch a butterfly flight,
to smell a simple flower bud,
oh spring these are the many reasons.
Black Friday
Just a quick glance and I knew all was lost.
I saw in real life...now a on going mind view, the black and white, were now my new boss.
I saw my life as I know quickly fade away.
I saw my love ones, in mind and thoughts that I would never be able to touch, hold, communicate closely with and kiss with care will now be at bay.
I saw the Black Side of me, was now caught and others would not suffer from my lots,
But then it dawn on me, it was not as I thought.
Yes the other in me will cause no suffering.
The living remained, the Mother, Brother, Sisters, Children, Close Friends and wife will suffer.
Ands the real me of blood, flesh and mind will suffer.
The documents will likely be revealed at trial, along with other evidence compiled over the last 31 years. According to Ron Sylvester of The Wichita Eagle, the state has recently shared with the defense at least 45 discs containing vital information about Rader and the murders he is alleged to have committed. They are hoping that his attorneys will also hand over any evidence they might have, such as "copies of expert reports and mental exams" so that they can use it to further their case, Sylvester reported. It is not known when the trial will commence but it is expected to take place sometime between the fall of 2005 and mid-year 2006.
Surprise Confession Otero Murders

On Monday, June 27, to everyone's surprise, Dennis Rader confessed in court to the murder of ten people. It had been expected that he would plead guilty once his lawyers had ruled out defense on the basis of insanity.
Rader's chillingly graphic testimony was prompted by particularly pointed questions by Judge Waller, beginning with the murders of the four Oteros. Rader said he went to their home early in the morning, between 7 and 7:30. He claims that he did not know them, but that he had selected Mrs. Otero and her daughter Josephine to be participants in his sexual fantasy. He had planned the timing expecting that only Mrs. Otero and the two youngest children would be in the house. He never expected Mr. Otero to be there and it caused him to panic and "lose control."
That morning, he cut the phone lines and waited at the back door. He claimed he was having second thoughts about aborting the whole plan when Joseph Otero Jr. opened the back door to let the dog out, but then he went on to say that he went in the back door, pulled a pistol on the family. The dog didn't take kindly to him and so he insisted that the dog be put out side.
Rader told them that he was wanted by the police and needed food and a car. Otero offered him a car.
At this point in his confession, Dennis Rader made a very unusual statement: "There I realized that, you know, I didn't have a mask on or anything, that they could ID me, so I made a decision to go ahead and put 'em down, I guess, or strangle them." What he is suggesting is that his intent was to engage in some type of sexual assault and then leave with the victims alive. It is incredible that someone as intelligent as Dennis Rader is and the amount of preparation he made for this attack that he didn't realize in advance that they could identify him, forcing him to casually decide to "put 'em down." The word choice, "put 'em down," is used for euthanizing animals and that's all they were to a man like Dennis Rader.
First he put a plastic bag over Joseph Otero's head and tightened it with cords - which he brought along with him for this purpose, but Otero did not die right away.
By that time, the whole family, had panicked.
Then came another telling statement: "Rader: After that I did Mrs. Otero... I had never strangled anyone before, so I really didn't know how much pressure you have to put on a person or how long it would take..." Again, Rader gives himself away in his choice of words - ".did Mrs. Otero" - as though it was a routine exercise.
Joseph Otero began to put up a fight and tore a hole in the plastic bag, so Rader put another couple bags and some clothing over his head and tightened the cords. After that, Rader said he "worked pretty quick." "Well, I mean I strangled Mrs. Otero... she went out, passed out and I thought she was dead. I strangled Josephine and she passed out... I thought she was dead and then I went over and put a bag on Jr.' s head and then if I remember right, Mrs. Otero came back... she came back, and I went back and strangled her again, it finally killed her at that time."
When Judge Waller asked for clarification in the sequence of events, Rader replied: "First of all, Mr. Otero was strangled... a bag put over his head and strangled him. Then, I thought he was going down. Then I went over and strangled Mrs. Otero, and I thought she was down. Then I strangled Josephine and she was down and then I went over to Jr. and put the bag on his head. After that, Mrs. Otero woke back up and you know, she was pretty upset with what's going on and at that point in time, I strangled her... the death strangle at that time." But before Rader strangled Mrs. Otero again, she pleaded with him to save her son.
Rader went on to say ".so I actually had taken the bag off. I was really upset at that point in time. So basically, Mr. Otero was down, Mrs. Otero was down, then I went ahead and took Junior, I put another bag over his head and took him into the other bedroom. Put a bag over his head, put a cloth over his head, a T-shirt and bag so he couldn't tear a hole in it. He subsequently died from that. I went back up, Josephine had woke back up "He then took Josephine to the basement and "hung her." He told the judge that after she was hung, he had some sexual fantasies - he masturbated on her body.
The judge asked Rader what he did next and Rader made another telling statement: "I went through the house, kinda cleaned it up: It's called the right-hand rule, you go from room to room clean things up. I think I took Mr. Otero's watch. I guess I took a radio. I had forgot about that but apparently took a radio." Very efficient, procedural and premeditated. Perhaps Rader practiced the right-hand rule in the Air Force. Finally, after he had cleaned up, Rader took the Otero's car and parked it at Dillons and walked back to his car.
Confession: Kathryn Bright

After the Oteros, came the April 4, 1974, murder of Kathryn Bright. When the judge asked how Rader selected her, he explained to the court that he had a number of "projects, different people I followed, watched. Kathryn Bright was one of the next targetsWell, I was just driving by one day and saw her go into the house with somebody else and I thought that was a possibility - there was many places in the area, College Hill, they are all over Wichita - but anyway, it was just basically a selection process, work toward it, if it didn't work, I just move on to something else. But in my kind of person - stalking and trolling - you go through the trolling stage and then stalking stage. She was in the stalking stage when this happened."
He broke into the house and waited for her to come home, not expecting her to have a man with her. He pulled a handgun on them and used the same excuse he used on the Oteros -he was a wanted man, needed a car. He recalled that he had Kevin Bright, Kathryn's brother, tie her up and then Rader tied up Kevin's feet to the bedpost.
Then, Rader described what would be almost a comedy of errors had the situation not been fatal. Rader moved Kathryn to another bedroom and then went back to strangle Kevin but Kevin had loosened some of his bonds and started to struggle with Rader. Rader shot him and assumed he was dead. He then went back to strangle Kathryn, but she had not been tied up well and struggled with Rader too. Just as he thought he had Kathryn subdued, he heard Kevin in the other bedroom. When Rader tried to restrangle Kevin, the struggle started again. Kevin tried to get one of the two handguns Rader had with him and almost succeeded, but Rader took the other handgun and shot Kevin again. Believing that Kevin was finally "down for good that time," he went back to "finish the job on Kathryn. She continued to struggle so Rader stabbed her several times underneath the ribs.
At the same time, he heard Kevin escaping: "all of a sudden the front door of the house was open and he was gone, and oh, I tell you what I thought: I thought the police were coming at that time, that was it. I stepped out there; I could see him running down the street, so I quickly cleaned up everything that I could and left."
Rader's troubles didn't end there: "I already had the keys to the cars. I thought I had the right keys to the right car. I ran out to their car. I think it was a pickup out there, I tried it... it didn't work. At that point in time he was gone, running down the street and I thought, 'Well, I am in trouble,' so I tried it, it didn't work, so I just took off, ran, went east, and worked back towards the WSU campus where my car was parked."
Judge Waller made a point of asking Rader if he had brought a mask to Kathryn Bright's home. Rader said he did not. With this question, the judge highlights Rader's premeditated intent to kill Kathryn Bright.
Confession: Shirley Vian Relford

Dennis Rader claimed that the selection of Shirley Vian Relford on March 17, 1977 "was completely random. There was actually someone across from Dillons that was a potential target. It was called project Green, I thinkThat particular day I drove over to Dillons and parked in the parking lot and watched this particular residence and then got out of the car and walked over to it. I knocked and no one answered it."
Rader says he was "all keyed up" and so he walked around the neighborhood until he met a young boy, Shirley Relford's son, and asked him to identify some photos. Then Rader went to another address, knocked on the door, but nobody answered, so he went to the house where the boy went.
Judge Waller asked if Rader's so-called projects were sexual fantasies also.
Rader answered: "Potential hits. In my world, that is what I call them. Project - hitsI had a lot of them, so if one didn't work out, I just moved to another one.
When Relford or one of her children answered the door, Rader said he was a private detective. He showed the photograph that I had just showed the boy. Then with his pistol, he forced his way in the door.
He told Relford that he had a problem with sexual fantasies and was going to tie her up and maybe her kids too. She was extremely nervous. Rader then described what he did to her and the children: "I explained that I had done this before and at that point in time, I think she was sick. She had her night robe on. If I can remember right, she had been sick and I think she came out of the bedroom when I went in the house. So we went to back to her bedroom and I proceeded to tie the kids up. They started crying and got real upset. So I knew this was not going to work. So we moved them to the bathroom -she helped me - and I tied the doors shut. We put some toys and blankets, odds and ends, in there for the kids, make them as comfortable as we could. We tied one of the bathroom doors shut so they couldn't open it, and she went back and helped me shove the bed against the other bathroom door. I proceed to tie her up. She got sick, threw up. I got her a glass of water, comforted her a little bit and then went ahead and tied her up and put a bag over her head and strangled her. I had tied her legs to the bedpost and worked my way up and what I had left over [rope] and I think I looped it over her neck.
Rader said the children were making a lot of noise and then the phone rang. The children had mentioned that a neighbor was going to look in on them, so Rader put his tape, cords and other items back in his briefcase, which he called his "hit kit," and went back to his car in the Dillons parking lot.
Confession: Nancy Fox

When Rader got to the murder of Nancy Fox on December 8, 1977, he admitted that she had been one of his "projects." He explained to the judge that serial killers go through phases: first trolling, where they are looking for victims, and then stalking when they "lock in on a certain person."
Rader then described his serial killer methodology: "First, she was spotted. I did a little homework. I dropped by once to check her mailbox, to see what her name was. Found out where she worked, stopped by there once, Helzbergs. Sized her up. The more I knew about a person, the more I felt comfortable. So I did that a couple of times. Then, I just selected a night, which was this particular night, to try it and it worked out."
Rader knew what time she normally came home from work, so after he ascertained that no one was in her apartment, he cut the phone lines and broke in the back of her home. He waited for her in the kitchen.
Rader said that when she came home, " I confronted her, told her I had a problem, sexual problem, that I would have to tie her up and have sex with her. She was a little upset and we talked awhile and she smoked a cigarette. While we smoked a cigarette, I went through her purse identifying some stuff, and she finally said, well let's get this over with so I can call the police. So I said OK. She said, can I go to the bathroom. I said yes. She went to the bathroom. And I told her when she came out, make sure she was undressed. When she came out I handcuffed her, had her lay on the bed and I tied her feet. I was also undressed to a certain degree and then I got on top of her and I reached over, took either her feet were tied or not tied but I think I had a belt. Anyway, I took the belt and strangled her at that time.
Rader: After I strangled her with the belt, I took the belt off and retied that with panty hose, real tight, removed the handcuffs and tied those with pantyhose. I can't remember the colors right now. I think I may have retied her feet. They were probably already tied, her feet were. And then at that time, I masturbated.
Afterwards, Rader took some personal items of hers, cleaned up any evidence he might have left and went to his car that he had parked several blocks away.
Confession: Marine Hedge

Marine Hedge lived down the street from Dennis Rader and once he selected her as a potential victim, it was easy for him to keep tabs on her. They knew each other in a very casual way. She worked in her yard a great deal and he would say "hello" when he walked by.
On the night of her murder, he quietly broke into her house and waited for her to return. When she came home, she had a man with her who stayed about an hour. Rader says: "I waited until the wee hours of the morning and then proceeded to sneak into her bedroom and flip the lights on real quick like, I think the bathroom lights. I didn't want to flip her lights on. She screamed. I jumped on the bed and strangled her manually.
"After that, since I was still in the sexual fantasy, I went ahead and stripped her. I am not sure if I tied her up at that point in time, but she was nude. I put her on a blanket, went through her purse, and personal items in the house. I figured out how I was going to get her out of there. Eventually, I moved her to the trunk of the car-the trunk of her car-and took the car over to Christ Lutheran Church, this was the older church, and took some pictures of herin different forms of bondage and that is what probably got me in trouble is the bondage thing. But anyway then I moved her back out to her car."
He thought about where he was going to dump her body and found a ditch around 53 rd between Webb and Greenwich where he hid her body with some trees and brush over it.
Confession: Vicki Wegerle

Vicki Wegerle was another of Dennis Rader's "projects." He planned to tell her he was a telephone repair man as a ruse to get into the house, so he changed into what he called his "hit clothes":
"Basically things I would need to get rid of later. Not the same kind of clothes I had on. I don't know what better word to use, crime clothes, I just call them hit clothes. I walked from my car as a telephone repairman. As I walked there, I donned a telephone helmet, I had a briefcase - I went to one other address just to kind of size up the house. I had walked by it a couple of times, but I wanted to size it up more. As I approached it, I could hear a piano sound and I went to this other door and knocked on it and told them that we were recently working on telephone repairs in the area. Went to hers, knocked on the door, asked her if I could come check her telephone lines inside.
"I went over and found out where the telephone was and simulated that I was checking the telephone. I had a make-believe instrument. And after she was looking away, I drew a pistol on her."
Rader told her to go back to the bedroom where he was going to tie her up. He used some fabric in her bedroom to tie her hands, but they came loose and she tried to fight him off. He grabbed one of her stockings and strangled her with it until she stopped moving. When he thought she was dead, he rearranged her clothes and took several photos of her.
Again, Rader had to make a hasty retreat:
"There was a lot of commotion. She had mentioned something about her husband coming home, so I got out of there pretty quick. The dogs were raising a lot of Cain in the back, the doors and windows were all open in the house, and a lot of noise when we were fighting. So I left pretty quick after that, put everything in the briefcase, and I had already gone through her purse and got the keys to the car and used it."
Vicki Wegerle was fatally injured from the strangling but was not yet dead when Rader left her home.
Confession: Dolores Davis

Dennis Rader chose a very noisy way to get into the house of Dolores Davis. He threw a concrete block through her plate glass window to get in:
"She came out of the bedroom and thought a car had hit her house. I told her that I was, uh, I used the ruse of that I was wanted, on the run. That I needed food, car, warmth and I asked her, I handcuffed her, I told her I would like to get some food, the keys to her car, talked with her a little bit, calmed her down a little bit, and eventually I checked... I think she was still handcuffed. I went back and checked out where the car was, simulated getting some food, odds and ends in the house like I was leaving, went back, removed her handcuffs, then tied her up, and then eventually strangled her."
Like in most of the other murders, he took some personal items from her bedroom. He put her in a blanket and dragged her to the trunk of her car and hoisted her into the trunk and moved her to one place and then took his "hit" equipment to another place. This time, Rader's own commitments rushed him and he left one of his guns in her house, so he took her car back to her house, collected his gun, and walked back to his car. He then picked up Davis ' body and dumped it under a bridge.
At the end of his confession, Judge Waller asked him: So, all of these incidents, these 10 counts occurred because you wanted to satisfy sexual fantasies. Is that correct?
Rader answered yes.
The Psychopathic Mind of Dennis Rader

When Dennis Rader made his unexpected confession in court, he unintentionally revealed to the world his true psychopathic nature. While the nature and delivery of his testimony would not surprise most medical and law enforcement professionals, the rest of the world was shocked.
Psychopaths do not feel emotions the way normal people do. Consequently, when their guard is down, they may say or do things that reveal their lack of concern for others and their absence of conscience. This was the case when Rader described his victims as "projects" and calmly explained how he selected a victim, gave the "project" a code name and then researched and stalked her until he found the right opportunity to attack.
Rader is a very accomplished psychopath: his ability to carry on two very different lives attests to it. "I was pretty cold. I shot from the hip very quickly," he told Larry Hatteberg of KAKE-TV. "Very compartmentalized. I can wear many hats; I can switch gears very rapidly. I can become emotionally involved. Be cold at it." This sounds a bit like a resume.
Some psychopaths, because they are narcissists and self-centered, become very successful in business, government and academia. A much smaller group - for lack of intelligence and/or self-control - become criminals. Of those criminal psychopaths, some become serial killers.
When professor of criminal justice at Seattle University Jacqueline Helfgott was asked how one could tell if a psychopath lived next door, Fox News reported Helfgott's response: "You wouldn't. You would have to know every segment of their life and be able to tie it all together.
Dr. Jack Levin, an expert on serial killers, told WebMD: The most essential characteristic is an excessive need for power and control, and we see this in most sexually-oriented serial killers....For a person with a conscience, Rader's crimes seem hideous, but from his point of view, these are his greatest accomplishments and he is anxious to share all the wonderful things he has done."
Dr. Michael Welner, creator of the depravity scale, a tool for jurors and judges that helps develop appropriate sentencing for criminals, considers Dennis Rader to be the "worst of the worst."
"In cases like BTK, based on what he said, it's clear that he intended to emotionally traumatize victims and cause gross suffering. It was clear in the way he communicated with the media that he intended to terrorize the community and clear that he got a thrill."
Dennis Rader Speaks

One must be very cautious in interpreting whatever Dennis Rader says after his frightening confession. It's always worthwhile to keep Dr. Michael Welner's words in mind when he describes psychopaths: "If they exhibit emotion, it's an effort to create an impression."
With that in mind, let's examine what Dennis Rader told KAKE-TV's Larry Hatteberg about his thoughts to express "remorse" for his crimes:
"Well, at the sentencing, it's going to be very remorseful, apologetic to them [victims' families]. I will be working on that. That's one of the things that I am working on is a speech prepared for that. I think sentencing will be a pretty emotional day, probably have to have a box of Kleenex that day."
Hopefully, Rader himself has now put to bed forever this fanciful notion that Rader wanted to get caught. Psychopaths do risky things because they believe they are superior to the police and much too smart to get caught. "No, I was not trying to be caught," Rader told Larry Hatteberg. "I just played cat and mouse too long with the police and they finally figured it out."
Dennis Rader had other "projects"(victims) selected. The police claim to know who these individuals were, but are not releasing their names.
Rader told Larry Hatteberg, "I know it is a dark side that controls me. I personally think, and I know it's not very Christian, that it's demons within me, at some point when I was young that controlled me."
That's comforting to know: the devil made him do it. Whew! For awhile, we thought Dennis Rader was responsible, but no, it's not his fault that he's a serial killer. It's demons. Well, at least he's not blaming his mother. With a little therapy and an exorcism or two, perhaps Kansas prison psychologists will give him a clean bill of health. Even if you don't believe the demon defense, there is somebody on a state parole board and someone in a state prison psychology department that does. There a many innocents who died because of this belief.
Legal Matters: Dennis Rader Update

The 34-year-long marriage between Dennis Rader and Paula Dietz came to an abrupt end on July 26, 2005 several months after she learned that her husband was the BTK serial killer. Sedgwick County District Judge Eric Yost decided not to enforce the standard 60-day waiting period and instead granted Paula a speedy emergency divorce within a day. Not surprisingly, Paula cited in the divorce papers that she suffered emotional stress after learning about the true character of her husband, Ron Sylvester reported in The Wichita Eagle. Based on the judge's quick response, he was likely sympathetic to her nightmarish situation and her desire to escape the marriage as soon as possible.
In a another surprising event, Rader has waived his right to legal representation and has decided to defend himself in "a series of wrongful death lawsuits filed against him by several relatives of his 10 murder victims," Hurst Laviana said in a Wichita Eagle article. Mark Hutton, the victims' attorney suggested that Rader was either getting legal advice or "going to law school at night" because the legal paperwork he filed was so professionally done. Interestingly, Rader's desire to represent himself in court is highly reminiscent of narcissistic serial killer Ted Bundy who also defended himself during the 1979 Chi Omega sorority sisters murder trial.
However, Bundy was unsuccessful in his endeavor, which resulted in his subsequent execution. Many wonder just how successful Rader will be and if his grandstanding will do more harm then good. We can only wait and see.
All text that appears in this section was provided by www.crimelibrary.com (the very best source for serial killer information on the internet). Serialkillercalendar.com thanks the crime library for their tireless efforts in recording our dark past commends them on the amazing job they have done thus far).

b2ux · Dec 14, 2012

The murders

The Otero family

Dennis Rader describes the Otero family murders
WICHITA, Kansas -- Judge Gregory Waller: In regards to count one, please tell me in your own words what you did on the 15th day of January in 1974 here in Sedgwick County, Kansas that makes you believe you are guilty of murder in the first-degree.
Dennis Rader: On January 15th 1974, I maliciously intentionally in premeditation killed Joseph Otero. On Count two..
Judge: Alright Mr Rader, I need to find out more information. On that particular day, the 15th day of January 1974, can you tell me where you went to kill Mr. Joseph Otero?
Rader: mmm.. I think it's 1834 Edgemoor.
Judge: Alright, can you tell me approximately what time of day you went there?
Rader: Somewhere between 7:00 and 7:30.
Judge: At this particular location, did you know these people?
Rader: No, that's was part of my uh, I guess my, what you'd call fantasy. These people were selected.
Judge: Alright, so you were engaged in some kind of fantasy during this period of time?
Rader: yes sir.
Judge: Alright, when you use the term 'fantasy', is this something you were doing for your personal pleasure?
Rader: It was a sexual fantasy sir.
Judge: So you went to this residence? And what occurred there?
Rader: Well uh, I had did some thinking about what I was going to do to either Mrs. Otero or Josephine. And I basically broke into the house, or I didn't break into the house but when they came out of the house I came in and confronted the family and we went from there.
Judge: Had you planned this before hand?
Rader: To some degree yes. After I got into the house I lost control of it but in the back of my mind I had some idea of what I was going to do. I basically panicked that first day, so.
Judge: Before hand, did you know who was there in the house?
Rader: I thought Mrs. Otero and the two kids, the two younger kids from the house. I didn't realize Mr. Otero was going to be there.
Judge: Alright, how did you get into the house?
Rader: I came through the back door. Cut the phone lines. Waited at the back door. Had reservations about even going or just walking away but pretty soon the door opened and I was in.
Judge: Alright so the door opened? Was it opened for you?
Rader: I think one of the kids. I think Junior.. the younger, Joseph opened the door. He probably let the dog out. The dog was in the house at that time.
Judge: Alright, when you went into the house, what happened?
Rader: Well I confronted the family. I pulled a pistol. I confronted Mr. Otero and asked him to, that I was there, that basically I was wanted. I wanted to get the car -- I was hungry, food, I was wanted -- and asked them to lie down in the living room. At that time I realized that wouldn't be a really good idea so I finally.. The dog was a real problem so I asked Mr. Otero to get the dog out so he had one of the kids put it out. And then I took them back into the bedroom.
Judge: You took who back to the bedroom?
Rader: The family. The bedroom. The four members.
Judge: Alright, what happened then?
Rader: I tied them up.
Judge: While still holding them at gunpoint?
Rader: Well, in between tying, I guess.
Judge: Alright, after you tied them up, what did you do?
Rader: Well, they started complaining about being tied. I re-loosened their bonds a couple of times. I tried to make Mr. Otero as comfortable as I could. Apparently he had a cracked ribbed from a car accident so I had him put a pillow down for his head. I think he had put a parka or a coat underneath him. Um, they talked to me about giving me the car or money -- I don't think they had very much money. And there, I realized that, you know I didn't have a mask on or anything, they'd already ID'd me. And I made the decision to go ahead to put 'em down, I guess. Strangle them.
Judge: Alright, what did you do to Joseph Otero?
Rader: Joseph Otero?
Judge: Joseph Otero Senior, Mr. Otero, the father.
Rader: I put a plastic bag over his head and then some cords and tightened it.
Judge: This was in the bedroom?
Rader: Yes sir.
Judge: Did he in fact suffocate and die as a result of this?
Rader: Not right away. No sir, he didn't.
Judge: What happened?
Rader: Well, after that, I did Mrs. Otero. I had never strangled anyone before so I really didn't know how much pressure you had to put on a person or how long it would take. But…
Judge: Was she also tied up there?
Rader: Yes, uh-huh. Both their hands and their feet were tied up.
Judge: Where were the children?
Rader: Well, Josephine was on the bed and junior was on the floor at this time.
Judge: So, we're talking about first of all about Joseph Otero. So you put the bag over his head and tied it. And he did not die right away. Can you tell me what happened in regards to Joseph Otero.
Rader: He moved over real quick like and, I think, tore a hole in the bag and I could tell he was having some problems there. But at that time the whole family just went, uh, they went panicked on me so I worked pretty quick.
Judge: You worked pretty quick. What did you do?
Rader: Well, I mean I strangled Mrs. Otero and she went out, or passed out. I thought she was dead. She passed out. Then I strangled Josephine. She passed out, or I thought she was dead. And then I went over and put a bag on Junior's head. And then, if I remember right, Mrs. Otero came back. She came back and...
Judge: Let me ask you about Joseph Otero Senior. You indicated he had torn a hole in the bag. What did you do with him then?
Rader: I put another bag over it. Either that or, I recollect, I put a cloth or a t-shirt over it, over his head, then another bag.
Judge: Did he subsequently die?
Rader: Well, yes. I mean I was, I didn't just stay there and watch him, I was moving around the room, but...
Judge: Alright, so you indicated you had strangled Mrs. Otero after you had did this. Is that correct?
Rader: Yeah I went back and strangled her again. And then that finally killed her at that time.
Judge: So this is in regards to Count Two. You had, first of all, put the bag over Joseph Otero's head and he tore a hole in the bag. Then you went ahead, did you strangle Mrs. Otero then?
Rader: Okay, first of all Mr. Otero was strangled, or a bag put over his head and strangled. Then I thought he was going down. Then I went over and strangled Mrs. Otero and I thought she was down. Then I strangled Josephine. I thought she was down. And then I went over to Junior and put the bag on his head. After that, Mrs. Otero woke back up and, you know, she was pretty upset with what's going on so I came back and, at that point in time, strangled her with a death strangle at that time.
Judge: With your hands?
Rader: No, with a cord. With a rope. And then, I think at that point in time, I redid Mr. Otero. I put the bag over his head, went over and took Junior... Oh, before that she asked me to save her son so I actually had taken the bag off, and then I was really upset at that point in time, so basically, when Mr. Otero was down, Mrs. Otero was down I went ahead and took Junior, put another bag over his head and took him to the other bedroom at that time.
Judge: What did you do then?
Rader: Put a bag over his head. I put a cloth over his head -- a t-shirt and a bag so he couldn't tear a hole in it -- and he subsequently died from that. Then when I went back, Josephine had woke back up.
Judge: What did you do then?
Rader: I took her to the basement and eventually hung her.
Judge: You hung her in the basement?
Rader: Yes sir.
Judge: Did you do anything else at that time?
Rader: Yes, I had some sexual fantasies. That was after she was hung.
Judge: Alright. What did you do then?
Rader: I went through the house, kind of cleaned it up. It's called the "right hand rule", you go from room to room and pick everything up. I think I took Mr Otero's watch. And I guess I took a radio. I had forgotten about that, but apparently I took a radio.
Judge: Why did you take those things?
Rader: I don't know. I have no idea. Just a...
Judge: What happened then?
Rader: I got the keys to the car. In fact I had the keys, I think, earlier before that because I wanted to make sure that I had a way of getting out of the house. I cleaned the house a little bit, made sure everything was cleaned up and left through the front door. I went over to their car and then drove over to Dillon's and left the car there. And eventually I walked back to my car.
Judge: Alright. Sir, from what you had just said, I take it that the facts you just told me, applied to all of counts 1, 2, 3, 4. Is that correct?
Rader: Yes sir.
Judge: Now, Mr. Rader...
(inaudible -- defense team corrects address)

b2ux · Dec 14, 2012

b2ux · Dec 14, 2012

Kathryn Bright

Dennis Rader describes Kathryn Bright's murder

WICHITA, Kansas -- Judge Gregory Waller: Alright Mr. Rader we will now turn to count five. In that count, it is claimed that on or about the 4th day of April, 1974, in Sedgwick County Kansas, that you unlawfully killed Kathryn Bright, maliciously, willfully, deliberately and with premeditation by strangulation and stabbing, inflicting injuries in which she did die on April 4th, 1974. Can you tell me what occurred on that day?

Dennis Rader: (sighs) Well, the uh, I don't know how to exactly say that -- I had many, what I called them, projects. They were different people in the town that I followed, watched. Kathryn Bright was one of the next targets I guess that I would indicate.

Judge: How did you select her?

Rader: Just driving by one day and I saw her going into the house with somebody else and I thought 'that's a possibility'. There were many places in the area, College Hill, they're all over Wichita but anyway, it's just a selection process. I worked towards it. If it didn't work I just moved on to something else. But in my kind of person, stalking and trolling, you go through the trolling stage and then a stalking stage. She was in the stalking stage when this happened.

Judge: Alright sir, so you identified Kathryn Bright as a potential victim?

Rader: Yes, sir.

Judge: What did you do then here in Sedgwick County?

Rader: On this particular day?

Judge: Yes.

Rader: I broke into the house and waited for her to come home.

Judge: How did you break into the house?

Rader: Through the back door -- east side.

Judge: Alright, so you waited for her to come home? Where did you wait?

Rader: In the house there. Probably close to the bedroom. I was trying to figure out where I'd be if they came through.

Judge: Alright. What happened then?

Rader: She and Kevin Bright came in. I wasn't expecting him to be there. I come to find out, I guess, they were related. At the time I approached them and told them I was wanted in California and needed a car -- basically the same thing I told the Otero's -- kind of eased them to make them feel better. And proceeded to... I think I had him tie her up first and then I tied him up or vice versa. I don't remember right now.

Judge: Let me ask you. You indicated that you had some items to tie these people with. Did you bring these items both to the Oteros' and to this location?

Rader: The Otero's I did. I'm not really sure on the Bright's. There was some -- when I, in working with the police -- there was some controversy on that. Probably more likely I did. If I had brought my stuff, used my stuff, Kevin would probably be dead today. I'm not bragging on that, it's just a matter of fact. It's the bonds that I tie can't be broken so. It may be the same way with Katherine. It just got out of hand.

Judge: Alright now, you indicated that you believed that you had Kevin tie Katherine up. Tell me what happened.

Rader: Okay. Well, I really can't remember, judge, whether I had her time him up or she tied him up but anyway I moved her to another bedroom and he was already secure there by the bed. I tied his feet to the bed posts so he couldn't run. I kind of tied her to the other bedroom and then I came back to strangle him and at that time we had a fight.

Judge: Were you armed with a hand gun at that time also?

Rader: Yes, I had a hand gun.

Judge: What happened at that time?

Rader: Actually, I had two handguns. Well, when I started to strangle him, he broke his bonds and he jumped up. So I pulled my gun and shot him. I hit him in the head. He fell over. I could see the blood. As far as I was concerned I thought he was down and was out. And then I started to strangle Kathryn. Then we started fighting because the bonds weren't very good and so back and forth we fought.

Judge: You and Kathryn?

Rader: Yeah we fought. And I got the best of her and I thought she was going down and then I could hear some movement in the other room. So I went back and Kevin... No, no... I thought she was going down and I went back to the other bedroom where Kevin was at and I tried to re-strangle him at that time and he jumped up and we fought and then he about, at that time, about shot me because he got the other pistol that was in my shoulder here. I had my magnum in my shoulder.

Judge: In your shoulder holster?

Rader: Yes I had my magnum in the shoulder holster. The other one was a .22. We fought at that point in time and I thought it was going to go off. I jammed the gun, stuck my finger in there and jammed it. And I think he thought that was the only gun I had because once I either bit his finger or hit him or something and got away, then I used the .22 and shot him one more time. And I thought he was down for good at that time.

Judge: Alright, so you shot him a second time.

Rader: Yes sir.

Judge: What happened then?

Rader: I went back to finish the job on Kathryn and she was fighting and that point in time I had been fighting her I just, and then I heard some... I don't know whether I was, basically, losing control. The strangulation wasn't working on her and I used a knife on her.

Judge: You say you used a knife on her? What did you do with the knife?

Rader: Yes, I stabbed her. I think I stabbed her either two or three times either here or here (pointing to sides).

Judge: You are pointing to your lower back.

Rader: Yea, underneath the ribs.

Judge: And your lower abdomen. So after you stabbed her, what happened?

Rader: Actually, I think that at point in time it was a total mess because I didn't have control on it. She was bleeding. She went down. I think I just went back to check on Kevin or at that basically same time I heard him escape. It could be one of the two. All of a sudden the front door of the house was opened and he was gone. Oh, I'll tell you what I thought. I thought the police were coming at that time. I heard the door open and I thought, you know, 'that's it'. Then I stepped out there and I could see him running down the streets so I quickly cleaned up everything that I could and left.

Judge: Alright now, Mr. Rader. You indicated that, at the Otero's, you had a mask on. Did you have a mask on here?

Rader: No, no I didn't.

Judge: Alright, so what happened then?

Rader: I tried... I already had the keys to the cars and I thought I had the right keys to the right car. I ran out to their car.. I think it was a pick-up out there. I tried it but it didn't work. At that point in time, he was gone, he was down the street. I thought, 'yeah, I'm in trouble', so I tried it. It didn't work so I just took off and ran. I went east and then went back towards the WSU campus where my car was parked.

Judge: Alright, so you had parked your car at the Wichita State University campus?

Rader: Yes, on the campus, uh-uh.

Judge: How far away was the Bright's residence?

Rader: I parked at, what was it 13th? Let see, they were on 13th. What is it, 17th? Yea. I was just about one block south of 17th where the car was. There's a park there. I parked at the park and then I walked to 13th, to the Bright's residence. So I basically ran back.

Judge: Alright so, you were able to get to your car and get away?

Rader: Yes sir.

b2ux · Dec 14, 2012

Shirley Vian

Dennis Rader describes Shirley Vian's murder
WICHITA, Kansas -- Judge Gregory Waller: Let's turn to count number six. In that count, they claim, on March 17th, 1977, in Sedgwick County, Kansas, that you unlawfully killed Shirley Vian, maliciously, willfully, deliberately and with premeditation, by strangulation inflicting injuries from which she did die on March 17th, 1977. Can you tell me what you did on that day?
Dennis Rader: Yes. Before Vian was a... Actually, on that one, she was completely random. There was actually someone across from Dillon's that was the potential target. It was called 'Project Green', I think. I had project numbers assigned to it. On that particular day I, uh, drove to Dillon's, parked in the parking lot, watch this particular residence then got out of the car and walked over to it. It's probably in the police report, the address -- I don't remember the address now. I knocked, nobody answered it so, I was all keyed up so I just started going through the neighborhood. I had been through the neighborhood before. I kind of knew, a little, the layout of the neighborhood. I had been through the back alleys, knew where certain people lived. While I was walking down Hydraulic, I met a young boy. I asked him if he could ID some pictures, kind of as a ruse, I guess, trying to feel it out. I saw where he went. I went to another address and knocked on the door. Nobody opened the door so I just, noticed where he went and went to that house and went from there.
Judge: You call these 'projects.' Were these sexual fantasies also?
Rader: Potential hits. In my world, that's what I called them. They're called projects, yes.
Judge: And why did you have these potential hits? Was this to gratify some sexual interest or...
Rader: Yes sir. I had a lot of them so it's just, if one didn't work out I just moved to another one.
Judge: Alright. So as I am to understand it, on the 17th of March, 1977, you saw this little boy go into a residence and you tried another residence but no one was there.
Rader: Sir?
Judge: You tried another residence but no one was there so you went to the residence with the little boy?
Rader: Right, and I watched where he went.
Judge: What happened then?
Rader: After I tried the residence where no one had came to the door I went to this house where he had went in, knocked on the door and told them I was a private detective, showed them a picture that I had just shown the boy and asked them if they could ID the picture. And at that time, I had the gun here and I just kind of forced myself in. I just walked in, just opened the door and walked in and pulled a pistol.
Judge: What gun? What pistol?
Rader: A .357 Magnum.
Judge: So you only had one gun this time?
Rader: Yes sir.
Judge: What happened then?
Rader: I told Mrs., uh, Ms. Vian that I had a problem with sexual fantasies. That I was going to tie her up and that I might have to tie the kids up. And if she would cooperate with us, cooperate with me at that time. We went back. She was extremely nervous. I think she even smoked a cigarette. We went back to one of the back areas of the porch, explained to her that I had done this before and I think, at that point in time, I think that she was sick because she had her night robe on. I think, if I remember right, she had been sick. I think she came out of the bedroom when I went into the house. So anyway, we went back to her bedroom and I proceeded to tie the kids up and they started crying and got real upset so I said, 'Ah, this isn't going to work.' So we moved them to the bathroom. She helped me. Then I tied the door shut. We put some toys and blankets and odds and ends in there for the kids to make them as comfortable as we could. Tied one of the bathroom doors shut so they couldn't open it then we shoved, she went back and helped me shove the bed against the other bathroom door. Then I proceeded to tie her up. She got sick, threw up. I got her a glass of water, comforted her a little, then I went ahead and tied her up and put a bag over her head and strangled her.
Judge: Alright. Was this a plastic bag also?
Rader: Yes sir, I think it was but I could be wrong on that. It was something. I'm sure it was a plastic bag, yeah.
Judge: You say you put a bag over her head and strangled her. What did you strangle her with?
Rader: Uh, I actually, I think, on that I had tied her legs to the bedpost and worked up with the rope, all the way up and then what I had left over, I looped over her neck.
Judge: Alright, then you used this rope to strangle her.
Rader: Yes, uh-huh. I think it was the same one I used to tie her with.
Judge: What happened then?
Rader: Well, the kids were really banging on the door, hollering and screaming. Then the telephone rang. They had talked about earlier that the neighbor was going to check on them so I cleaned everything up real quick like and got out of there, left and went back to my car.
Judge: When you say you cleaned everything...
Rader: Well, I mean, put my stuff.. I had a briefcase. Whatever I had laying around -- ropes, tape, cords -- I threw that in there. You know, whatever, you know, that I had that I brought in the house.
Judge: Had you brought that to the Bright residence also?
Rader: There was some.. I think there was some basic stuff but I don't remember bringing total stuff like I did since some of the others.
Judge: Was this a kit that you had prepared?
Rader: Yeah, I called it my 'hit kit'.
Judge: Alright sir, you left the Vian residence and, had you parked your vehicle near there?
Rader: It was still in the same parking lot there at Dillon's there at Hydraulic and Harry? Lincoln. Lincoln. Lincoln and Hydraulic.

b2ux · Dec 14, 2012

Nancy Fox

Dennis Rader describes Nancy Fox's murder
WICHITA, Kansas -- Judge Gregory Waller: Alright, in count seven, it is claimed that on the 8th day of December 1977, Sedgwick County, Kansas, that you unlawfully killed a human being, that being Nancy Fox, maliciously, willfully, deliberately and with premeditation by strangulation, inflicting injuries in which the said, Nancy Fox, died on December 8th 1977. Can you tell me what you did on that day here in Sedgwick County?
Dennis Rader: Nancy Fox was another one of the projects. When I was trolling the area, I noticed her go in the house one night. Sometimes I would.. uh, anyway I put her down as a potential victim.
Judge: Let me ask you one thing Mr. Rader. You've used that term when you were patrolling the area. What do you mean?
Rader: It's called stalking or trolling.
Judge: So you were not working in any form or fashion?
Rader: Well, (he starts to wipe his forehead), I don't know. If you've read much about serial killers, they go through what you call, different phases. That's one of the phases they go through as a trolling stage. Basically, you're looking for a victim at that time. You can be trolling for months or years but once you lock in on a certain person, you become stalking. And that might be several of them, but you really home in on that person. They basically become the.. it's, that's the victim.
(attorneys talk about.. patrolling or trolling)
Rader: No. No, I wasn't working sir. No, this was, this was off, off, off my hours.
Judge: Alright, so you basically identified Nancy Fox as one of your projects. What happened then?
Rader: At first, she was spotted and then I did a little homework. I dropped by once to check the mailbox to see what her name was. I found out where she worked. I stopped by there once -- Helzberg. I kind of sized her up. The more I knew about a person, the more I felt comfortable with it. So I did that a couple of times. And then I just selected a night, which was this particular night, to try it and it worked out.
Judge: Alright, can you tell me what you did on that night of December 8, 1977.
Rader: About two or three blocks away, I parked my car and walked to that residence. Knocked at the door first to make sure, see if anybody was in there because I knew she arrived home at a particular time from where she worked. Nobody answered the door so I went around to the back of the house, cut the phone lines. I could tell that there wasn't anybody in the north apartment. I broke in and waited for her to come home in the kitchen.
Judge: Alright, did she come home?
Rader: Yes she did.
Judge: What happened?
Rader: I confronted her. I told her that I was a -- that I had a problem, a sexual problems -- that I had to tie her up and have sex with her. She was a little upset. We talked for awhile and she smoked a cigarette. While we smoked a cigarette, I went through her purse identifying some stuff and she finally said, 'well, let's get this over with so I can go call the police' and I said 'okay' and she said, 'can I go to the bathroom?' And I said 'yes.' She went to the bathroom and came.. and I told her that when she came out to make sure that she was undressed. When she came out I handcuffed her and uh..
Judge: You handcuffed her? You had a pair of handcuffs?
Rader: Yes sir, uh-huh.
Judge: What happened then?
Rader: Well anyway, I handcuffed her, had her lay on the bed. I tied her feet. I was also undressed to a certain degree. And then I got on top of her and reached over, took, either her feet were tied or not tied. But anyway I took.. I think I had a belt. I took the belt and I strangled her with the belt at that time.
Judge: Alright, after you had strangled her, what happened?
Rader: Okay, after I strangled her, I took the belt off and retied that with pantyhose real tight, removed the handcuffs and tied those with pantyhose -- I can't remember the colors right now. I think I maybe retied her feet if they hadn't already -- they were probably already tied, her feet were. And at that time I masturbated sir.
Judge: Had you had sexual relations with her?
Rader: No, no, no. I told her I was but I did not.
Judge: So you masturbated, then what did you do?
Rader: Uh, dressed, then went through the house and I took some of her personal items and kind of cleaned the house up, went through, check everything and then left.
(attorneys talk about the address)
Judge: For purposes of this it's in Sedgwick County. Do you remember the address Mr. Rader?
Council: Do you remember the address for Miss Fox?
Rader: Oh Fox? 913 or 9-0-3? No I sure don't. I know it was on Pershing -- South Pershing that's all. It was 9-something sir but I don't know the other digits.
Judge: That's alright. The address, as I said is really not important as long as you remember it happened here in Wichita, Sedgwick County, Kansas.
Rader: Yes, Sir.

b2ux · Dec 14, 2012

Marine Hedge

Dennis Rader describes Marine Hedge's murder
WICHITA, Kansas -- Judge: Alright sir, lets turn to count eight. In count eight, it is clear that on or about the 27th of April 1985 to the 28th day of April 1985. In Sedgwick County, Kansas. It is claimed that you unlawfully killed a human being, Marine Hedge, maliciously, willfully, deliberately and with premeditation by strangulation, inflicting injuries in which Marie Hedge did die on April 27th 1985. Can you tell me what occurred on that day?
Dennis Rader: Well actually, kind of like the others, she was chosen. I went through the different phases -- uh, stalking phase -- and since she lived down the street from me I could watch [her] coming and going quite easily. On that particular day, I had another commitment. Came back from that commitment, parked my car over at Woodlawn and 21st Street, bowling alley at that time. Before that, I dressed into -- I had some other clothes on -- I changed clothes, went to the bowling alley. I went in there under the precepts of bowling, called a taxi. Had a taxi take me out to Park City. Had my kit with me. It was a bowling bag.
Judge: Alright, that was Park City in Sedgwick County, Kansas?
Rader: Yes, Sir.
Judge: Alright, you had the taxi take you to Park City. What happened then?
Rader: There I asked, uh, I pretended I was a little drunk -- I just took some beer and washed it around in my mouth. The guy could probably smell alcohol on me. I asked, I told him to let me off to get some fresh air. I walked where the taxi left me off to her house.
Judge: Where does she live?
Rader: Uh 62 huh 42? 54? (talks with attorney's) 6254 North Independence.
Judge: Alright, when you walked over there, what happened next?
Rader: Well, as before I was going to have, uh, sexual fantasies so I brought my hit kit. Umm, and low and behold her car was there. I thought, 'geez, she's not supposed to be home.' So I very carefully snuck into the house, kind of like a cat burglar. And after checking the house, she wasn't there. So about that time, the doors rattled. So I went back to one of the bedrooms and hid back there in one of the bedrooms. She came in with a male visitor. They were there for maybe an hour or so. He left and I waited until wee hours of the morning. I then proceeded to sneak into her bedroom and flipped the lights on real quick like -- I think the bathroom lights, I didn't want to flip her lights on -- and she screamed and I jumped on the bed and strangled her manually.
Judge: Alright, now were you wearing any kind of disguise or mask at this time?
Rader: No, no.
Judge: You indicated this woman lived down the street from you. Did she know you?
Rader: Uh, casually. We walked by and waved. She liked to work in her yard as well as I like to work... it was just a neighborly thing, it wasn't anything personal. It was just a neighbor.
Judge: Alright, so she was in her bed when you turned on the lights in the bathroom..
Rader: Yeah, in the bathroom, yeah, so I could get some light in there.
Judge: So what did you do then?
Rader: I manually strangled her when she started to scream. But,
Judge: So you used your hands?
Rader: Yes, sir.
Judge: And you strangled her. Did she die?
Rader: Yes.
Judge: Alright, what did you do then?
Rader: After that, since I was in the sexual fantasy, I went ahead and stripped her. I probably went ahead and, I'm not sure if I tied her up at that time, but anyway she was nude. I put her on a blanket, went through her purse, some personal items in the house. Figured out how I was going to get her out of there. Eventually, moved her to the trunk of the car. (Heavy sign) Took the car over to Christ Lutheran Church, this is where the older church, and took some pictures of her.
Judge: Alright, you took some photographs of her. What kind of camera did you use?
Rader: A Polaroid.
Judge: Did you keep those photographs?
Rader: Yes, the police probably have them.
Judge: Alright what happened then?
Rader: That was it. She was already dead so I took pictures of her in different forms of bondage and that's probably what got me in trouble was the bondage thing. So anyway, that's probably the main thing. But anyway, after that I moved her back out to the car then we went east on 53rd.
Judge: What occurred then?
Rader: Sir?
Judge: What happened then?
Rader: Oh, trying to find a place to hide her -- hide the body.
Judge: Did you find a place?
Rader: Yes! Yes I did.
Judge: Where?
Rader: Uhhm, I couldn't tell you without looking at a map but it was on 53rd between Greenwich, maybe. (Asks attorney 'what's that one between Greenwich and Rock? Webb. Webb) I think, between Webb and Greenwich, I found a ditch, a low place on the north side of the road, and hid her there.
Judge: Alright, you say you hid her there.
Rader: Well, there was some trees and brush and I laid that over the top of the body.
Judge: Alright, so you removed the body from the car put her in the ditch and then moved some brush over the body.
Rader: Yes.
Judge: Alright.

b2ux · Dec 14, 2012

Vicki Wegerle

Dennis Rader describes Vicki Wegerle's murder
WICHITA, Kansas -- Judge Gregory Waller: Sir in Count 9 it is claimed, on or about the 16th of September 1986, in Sedgwick County, Kansas, that you unlawfully killed a human being, Vicki Wegerle, maliciously, willfully, deliberately and with premeditation by strangulation, inflicting injuries from which said Vicki Wegerle did die on September 16th 1986. Can you tell me what you did here in Sedgwick County on that day that makes you believe you are guilty?
Dennis Rader: Yes. Again, Vicki Wegerle was a potential victim. I went through those different phases, locked in on her as I would call it and decided that I would try that date. I used a ruse as a telephone repairman to get in her house. drove there in my own personal car around lunch time having lunch hour or approximately that time. It was earlier in the morning then. And uh put my.. I actually went somewhere else and changed uh, changed my clothes into what I call my 'hit clothes.' And um...
Judge: Hit Clothes?
Rader: Hit Clothes. Basically different, you know, things I need to get rid of later. Not the same kind of clothes I had on. I don't know a better word to use it -- crime clothes or hit clothes -- I just call them hit clothes. Uhh, anyway I walked from my car as a telephone repairman. As I walked there I donned my telephone helmet. I had a briefcase. Went to one other address just to kind of size up the house. I'd walked by it a couple of times but I wanted to check it a little bit more. As I approached it I could hear a piano sound. I went to this other door, knocked on it and told them that we were recently working on telephone repairs in the area. And then went to her and knocked on the door and asked if I could check her telephone lines inside.
Judge: Did she allow you in?
Rader: Yes she did.
Judge: What happened then?
Rader: Uhh, went over and found out where the telephone was, simulated that I was checking the telephone. I had a make believe instrument and after she was looking away I drew a pistol at her asked her if she would go back to the bedroom with me.
Judge: Is this the same .357 Magnum you'd used earlier?
Rader: No, this was a different one.
Judge: A different pistol?
Rader: *Nods*
Judge: Alright, you asked her to go back to the bedroom with you after drawing the pistol on her?
Rader: Yes, Sir.
Judge: What happened then?
Rader: I told her, when we went back to the bedroom, I told her I was going to have to tie her up. She was very upset. And I think we, I, used some material that was in, and that's another thing, I'm not sure but I that I used the material that they had in their bedroom, and after I tied her hands she broke that and we started fighting. And we fought quite a bit, back and forth.
Judge: She was physically fighting you?
Rader: Oh yeah, yes sir.
Judge: What happened then?
Rader: I finally got the hand on her and got a nylon sock and started strangling her.
Judge: So you wrapped the stocking around her neck?
Rader: *Nods* Yes.
Judge: So what happened then?
Rader: I finally gained on her and put her down and I thought she was dead but apparently she wasn't. But, uh, after she was down and not moving any more I rearranged her clothes a little bit and took some quick photos -- I think three of them if I remember. And then after that there was a lot of commotion. She had mentioned something about her husband coming home so I got out of there pretty quick. The dogs were raising a lot of cain in the back. The doors and windows were all open in the house. There was a lot of noise when we were fighting so I left pretty quickly after that. Put everything the briefcase and had her, I already gone through her purse and got the keys to the car, and used her car for my get away car.
Judge: Alright, you indicated that you thought that she was dead. Did you assume later that she was not dead.
Rader: Yes. I guess the paramedics arrived and they tried to attempt to relieve her, revive her, and that failed. I don't know if she died there or on the way to the hospital or at the hospital. I don't recollect.
Judge: But you later found out that she did die as a result of your strangulation.
Rader: Yes.

b2ux · Dec 14, 2012

Dolores Davis

Dennis Rader describes Dolores Davis' murder
WICHITA, Kansas -- Judge Gregory Waller: Sir lets turn to Count 10. In that count it is claimed that on or about the 18th day of January 1991, to the 19th day of January 1991, in the county of Sedgwick, state of Kansas, that you did unlawfully kill a human being, that being Dolores E Davis, maliciously, willfully, deliberately and with premeditation by strangulation, inflicting injuries from which the said Dolores E Davis did die on January 19 1991. Mr. Rader, please tell me what you did here in Sedgwick County, Kansas on that day to believe you are guilty.
Dennis Rader: On that particular day I had some commitments. I left those, went to one place changed my clothes, went to another place, parked my car, finally made arrangements on my hit kit, changed my clothes and then walked to that residence. After spending some time at that residence -- it was very cold that night -- I had reservations about going in but I had cased the place before and I really couldn't figure out how to get in and she was in the house so I finally just selected a concrete block and threw it through the plate glass window on the east and came on in.
Judge: Now where is this residence located?
Rader: It's on Hillside but I couldn't give the address. It's probably 61, probably 62 something. All I know is 62 something.
Judge: North or south?
Rader: North. North Hillside.
Judge: Alright, you used a concrete block to break the window.
Rader: *nods* Uh-huh, plate glass window, patio door.
Judge: What happened next?
Rader: Noise. I just went in. She came out of the bedroom and thought that a car had hit her house and I told her, I used the ruse of being wanted; I was on the run. I needed food, car, warmth, warm up. I asked her, I handcuffed her and kind of talked to her -- told her that I would like to get some food, get her keys to her car. Kind of rest assured, talked with her a little bit, calmed her down a little bit. Then eventually I checked -- I think she was still handcuffed -- I went back and checked out where the car was, simulated getting some food, odds and ends in the house, kind of like I was leaving. Then I went back and removed her handcuffs and tied her up and then, eventually, strangled her.
Judge: You say, eventually strangled her?
Rader: Well, after I tied her up I went through some things in the room there and then, and then strangled her.
Judge: You said you went through. Were you looking for something?
Rader: Well, some personal items, yes. I took some personal items from there.
Judge: Did you take some personal items in every one of these incidences?
Rader: Uhh, I did on the Hedge. I don't remember anything at Vicki's place. The Otero's, I got the watch and the radio. I don't think I did any at Bright's. Vian's? No, I don't think so. Fox? Yes, I took some things from Fox. It was hit and miss. Probably if it was a controlled situation where I had more time, I took something. But if it was, uh, confusion or other things I didn't because I was trying to get out of there.
Judge: Alright, so in regards to the Davis matter, you run around the room, took a few personal things. What did you do then?
Rader: Uh, strangled her.
Judge: What did you strangle her with?
Rader: Pantyhose.
Judge: What happened then?
Rader: Kind of like Mrs. Hedge, I had already figured out my, I had a plan of leaving and I put her in a blanket and drug her to the car, put her in the trunk of the car.
Judge: So you were able to strangle her to death with these pantyhose?
Rader: Yes sir.
Judge: Alright, you put her in your car..
Rader: In her car, her car. The trunk of her car.
Judge: Alright, then what happened.
Rader: I really had a commitment that I needed to go to so I moved her to one spot, took her out of her car -- this gets complicated -- then the stuff I had – clothes, gun, whatever – I took that to another spot in her car, dumped that off (closes eyes like trying to remember). Okay, then took her car back to her house, umm, left that. Let me think. Okay, in the interim I realized I had lost one of my guns -- I dropped it somewhere -- so I was distraught trying to figure out where my gun was. So I went back into the house and realized I had dropped it when I went in, when I had broke the plate-glass window, it dropped and fell on the floor right there and I found it right there so that solved that problem. Anyway, I went back out, threw the keys, checked the car real quick like, threw the keys up on top of the roof of her house, walked from her car back to my car. Took my car, drove it back and I either dropped more stuff off or picked her up and put 'em in my car and then I drove up northeast of Sedgwick County and dropped her off underneath a bridge.
Judge: So all of these instances, these 10 counts, occurred because you wanted to fulfill a sexual fantasy. Is that correct?
Rader: Yes, uh-huh.

hellyeah · Apr 16, 2013

B.T.K's work

goregrish-fan101 · Aug 13, 2013

Hellwig said:
View attachment 77163
...
View attachment 77164

View attachment 77166 View attachment 77165

LOL!

Aguchi71 · Oct 2, 2013

Nice and weird new take on the BTK considering the pics, although it does make me wonder why some of the victims faces were blurred out?

datdutchguy · Oct 2, 2013

wow nice posts b2ux i know the text tho got 2 books on the BTK killer, but never seen the actual victims in pictures theyre pretty rare? awesome share anyway thank you.

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