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The People Who Speak to BTK _ He_s Still Controlling the Story · Luke's English Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: I think he's one of the most egotistical, non remorseful
0:06
Speaker 1: individuals I've researched and spoken with.
0:10
Speaker 2: When a serial killer is caught, they do one of
0:13
Speaker 2: two things. Some disappear and never hear from them again,
0:18
Speaker 2: but with others, they don't stop talking. Dennis Rader is
0:23
Speaker 2: the second type.
0:25
Speaker 1: Correspondence letters videos our letters are just very intricate and detailed.
0:32
Speaker 2: The man known as BTK committed at least ten murders
0:36
Speaker 2: between nineteen seventy four and nineteen ninety one, crimes that
0:41
Speaker 2: terrorized Wichita until he was arrested in two thousand and five.
0:46
Speaker 1: He wanted to become the most prolific serial killer.
0:51
Speaker 2: But this is not another BTK retelling. We're gonna look
0:55
Speaker 2: at this case differently, through primary documents, through correspondence, through
1:01
Speaker 2: the people who still speak to him in real time.
1:05
Speaker 3: Last time I talked to him was about it just
1:07
Speaker 3: over like ten days ago.
1:09
Speaker 2: This isn't a recap about how BTK was hunted. It's
1:14
Speaker 2: the story of Dennis Rader trying to pull everyone into
1:18
Speaker 2: a world where he is the ultimate villain.
1:21
Speaker 4: If you read much about serial killers, they go through
1:23
Speaker 4: what they call the Zither.
1:24
Speaker 2: Phases when you listen closely, He's not describing serial killers.
1:29
Speaker 2: He's describing himself, and that changes everything.
1:34
Speaker 1: Even in his interviews, his interrogation and confession, you know,
1:38
Speaker 1: he was talking as if I am the master psychologist,
1:42
Speaker 1: I know everything there is about serial killers.
1:46
Speaker 2: What if BTK isn't real, at least not in the
1:50
Speaker 2: way we've been told. I'm James Buddy Day, this is unmarked.
2:02
Speaker 2: The man who calls himself BTK is complicated. On the surface.
2:07
Speaker 2: He seems to define what we mean when we use
2:11
Speaker 2: the term serial killer, a name, a pattern, a presence
2:16
Speaker 2: that lingers long after the crimes. But when you start
2:20
Speaker 2: to dig, when you go back to the original material,
2:23
Speaker 2: the interviews, the letters, the court records, something else begins
2:28
Speaker 2: to take shape.
2:30
Speaker 3: I think he's an outlier to many of the formulas
2:33
Speaker 3: that came out of the nineteen nineties.
2:36
Speaker 2: That's doctor Catherine Ramsland, forensic psychologist, professor and the author
2:40
Speaker 2: of more than fifteen hundred articles and seventy books, including
2:46
Speaker 2: How to Catch a Killer, The Psychology of Death, Investigations,
2:50
Speaker 2: and the Mind of a Murderer. Her work on Rader
2:53
Speaker 2: is extensive, interviews, transcripts, correspondence. For years, She's worked d
3:00
Speaker 2: directly with Dennis Rader on his autobiography.
3:03
Speaker 3: I've known him for about sixteen years, but we spent
3:06
Speaker 3: a lot of time on the phone. He wrote long
3:08
Speaker 3: letters as well. He liked to write detailed things, create
3:12
Speaker 3: maps and drawings.
3:13
Speaker 5: And all of that.
3:14
Speaker 3: So I've hundreds of pages of stuff from him, but
3:18
Speaker 3: I couldn't begin to estimate how many hours.
3:21
Speaker 2: Catherine is one of the people you'll be hearing from
3:23
Speaker 2: today as we separate myth from fact. And what stands
3:28
Speaker 2: out in her work isn't just the access, it's how
3:32
Speaker 2: much Raider wants to be seen.
3:34
Speaker 5: He named himself to make sure they didn't give him
3:39
Speaker 5: a stupid name.
3:39
Speaker 3: He wanted a name that would feel powerful and terrify
3:45
Speaker 3: the people in Wichita.
3:47
Speaker 2: That detail matters more than it seems, because most killers
3:51
Speaker 2: are named after the fact, by police, by media, by circumstance.
3:57
Speaker 2: But Raider, he is the author of the b identity.
4:03
Speaker 2: So before we go any further, let me catch you up.
4:07
Speaker 2: At the time of his arrest, Dennis Rader was a
4:10
Speaker 2: fifty nine year old church president and Boy Scout leader,
4:14
Speaker 2: a man embedded in his community. At trial, he pled
4:18
Speaker 2: guilty to ten murders committed between nineteen seventy four and
4:22
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one in Kansas.
4:25
Speaker 1: We've been corresponding for about ten years now.
4:29
Speaker 2: That's Vettelee, a researcher in the field of serial crime
4:33
Speaker 2: for over twenty years. She first met Rader in two
4:37
Speaker 2: thousand and fifteen.
4:39
Speaker 1: I have learned quite a bit from him. He's opened
4:42
Speaker 1: up about a lot of things.
4:45
Speaker 2: When you dig into Raider's writings, his words, his prolific
4:49
Speaker 2: correspondence with researchers, what you see isn't just a killer.
4:54
Speaker 2: You see a man constructing one. There's a concept in
4:59
Speaker 2: developmental s psychology. It's called identity versus role confusion. It's
5:04
Speaker 2: a stage where a person forms a sense of who
5:07
Speaker 2: they are, and when that process breaks down, people don't
5:12
Speaker 2: build an identity, they adopt one. Raider wants us to
5:17
Speaker 2: use the name BTK. He wants the story to harden
5:22
Speaker 2: around the version of himself he created. So this is
5:27
Speaker 2: an examination of why Rader invented BTK. Was it fame, control, power?
5:35
Speaker 2: And more importantly, why do we keep helping him do it?
5:39
Speaker 2: With Dennis Rader a high functioning narcissist who spent his
5:43
Speaker 2: entire life trying to establish himself as a monster. You
5:48
Speaker 2: have to go all the way back to the beginning,
5:51
Speaker 2: because these stories don't start with violence, they start with vulnerability.
6:04
Speaker 2: Nineteen forty five, Kansas is a place of routines. Imagine
6:09
Speaker 2: early mornings, shift work, farms on the outskirts, modest homes
6:14
Speaker 2: lining quiet streets. The war is ending, families are settling
6:19
Speaker 2: back into something resembling normal life. Six months before the
6:24
Speaker 2: end of World War Two, Dennis is born to William
6:27
Speaker 2: and Dorothea Raider, the first of four sons. For the
6:32
Speaker 2: first five years of his life, Dennis lives with his
6:35
Speaker 2: entire family on his grandparents' farm. It's one house, multiple
6:40
Speaker 2: generations and limited space, an environment where his struggling individuality
6:47
Speaker 2: is seen in grade school performance. This again is doctor Ramsley.
6:52
Speaker 5: He does have trouble reading.
6:56
Speaker 3: There's a certain amount of processing errors, and back in
7:01
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties, you know, nobody really understood that. They
7:04
Speaker 3: just thought the kid like that was slow and probably
7:08
Speaker 3: not bound for a success. So I think that kids
7:12
Speaker 3: in the nineteen fifties, you know, felt those things in
7:15
Speaker 3: a way different than today, where there are programs for
7:19
Speaker 3: assisting these kinds of disorders.
7:22
Speaker 2: Studies on childhood psychopathy show impairments in reading and processing language,
7:28
Speaker 2: particularly when it comes to emotional meaning. They can read
7:32
Speaker 2: the words, but not always what's behind them.
7:35
Speaker 1: He was very shy, detrimentally shy as a young.
7:40
Speaker 2: Kid, shy, withdrawn, isolated. These are adjectives we hear often.
7:46
Speaker 2: In these cases. It's a shorthand for something much more complex.
7:52
Speaker 2: You have to imagine a child who doesn't attach in
7:56
Speaker 2: the way that others do.
7:57
Speaker 3: He was the oldest of four brothers and always felt
8:01
Speaker 3: like he had to be the best at things.
8:04
Speaker 2: His father is a marine who later works at a
8:07
Speaker 2: utility company, but by all accounts he's stern, authoritative, a disciplinarian,
8:14
Speaker 2: very much in line with the parenting styles of the time.
8:18
Speaker 2: But for a child who already feels disconnected, that kind
8:23
Speaker 2: of environment doesn't create stability, It creates pressure.
8:28
Speaker 1: He doesn't talk about his father and refused to talk
8:30
Speaker 1: about his father. In fact, he got angry about it
8:33
Speaker 1: because he said, I don't want to talk about that.
8:36
Speaker 1: So there is something there.
8:37
Speaker 2: There's been speculation over the years of physical abuse or
8:41
Speaker 2: early trauma and raider. He has consistently denied this, But remember,
8:47
Speaker 2: Dennis Rader is an unreliable narrator who never stops crafting
8:52
Speaker 2: the mythology of BTK. So instead of speculating, let's look
8:57
Speaker 2: at the record.
8:59
Speaker 3: He was a boy, so he would look in windows, especially,
9:02
Speaker 3: he would look in windows of teachers who he didn't
9:05
Speaker 3: like and envision, you know, harming them in some way.
9:10
Speaker 3: So he began to develop some of those fantasies in
9:13
Speaker 3: his teenage years.
9:15
Speaker 2: This is the shift standing outside in the dark, watching
9:19
Speaker 2: people through pane glass windows, observing lies he isn't a
9:23
Speaker 2: part of. This is where the seeds of fantasy are planted.
9:28
Speaker 1: I think there was some physical trauma that he experienced
9:32
Speaker 1: in his young adult life that kind of led him
9:35
Speaker 1: to the bondage. Detective magazines.
9:40
Speaker 2: True Detective was a true crime magazine founded back in
9:44
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty four. It specialized in real life homicide reports,
9:48
Speaker 2: crime scene photography, and detailed accounts of notorious cases. But
9:54
Speaker 2: in the nineteen forties it's widely popular. It sells millions
9:58
Speaker 2: of copies. It circulates through homes across America.
10:03
Speaker 3: True Detective magazines were absolutely salacious.
10:07
Speaker 5: You'd be surprised.
10:08
Speaker 3: A number of serial killers from the seventies and eighties
10:12
Speaker 3: all said True detective magazines were there reading material.
10:17
Speaker 2: But as the publication evolves the covers they become more provocative.
10:23
Speaker 2: I'm talking about illustrations of women bound and distressed, And
10:28
Speaker 2: like many men at the time, Raider's father keeps these
10:31
Speaker 2: magazines hidden tucked away in discreete places that Dennis finds he.
10:38
Speaker 3: Was reading the true detective magazines that his father would
10:42
Speaker 3: try to keep in secret places. Those images became the
10:47
Speaker 3: things that excited him that he wanted to replicate this moment.
10:53
Speaker 2: It matters because what Raider is encountering here isn't just violence.
10:58
Speaker 2: It's a template way to understand something he doesn't yet
11:02
Speaker 2: have a language for.
11:04
Speaker 3: He already was thinking along those lines before the term
11:09
Speaker 3: the phrase serial killer was really being used.
11:12
Speaker 2: He later recalls pouring through those textured pages under the covers,
11:17
Speaker 2: flashlight in hand, studying them, and what he sees isn't horror.
11:23
Speaker 2: Its significance.
11:24
Speaker 3: He heard about HH Holmes, I think someone whose family
11:29
Speaker 3: had lived in Chicago or something. But there was also
11:32
Speaker 3: a true detective magazine about him, and Raid read that
11:36
Speaker 3: and I think that was late nineteen fifties.
11:39
Speaker 2: These aren't just stories to him, they're reference points.
11:43
Speaker 3: Harby Gladman was a serial killer in the nineteen fifties
11:45
Speaker 3: who would persuade young women to who wanted to be
11:49
Speaker 3: models to allow him to tie them up. And that
11:52
Speaker 3: was something Dennis Raider read. That was a magazine he
11:55
Speaker 3: read when he was fourteen.
11:58
Speaker 2: For Dennis Raider, bt K is a lifelong project. It's
12:02
Speaker 2: something he's been building towards since adolescence, something he believes
12:07
Speaker 2: others should appreciate. Shaped by the magazines he reads, the
12:12
Speaker 2: movies he watches, the images that stay with him. One
12:17
Speaker 2: of those films is the nineteen fifty three movie House
12:20
Speaker 2: of Wax starring Vincent Price.
12:23
Speaker 3: House of Wax is one where you know a brunette
12:27
Speaker 3: woman his mother was brunette, was about to be encased
12:31
Speaker 3: in wax.
12:32
Speaker 5: And the way they present that movie.
12:36
Speaker 3: She's struggling and she's naked, and that sealed itself in
12:39
Speaker 3: his imagination.
12:41
Speaker 2: As Raider reaches sexual maturity, he begins to recreate what
12:46
Speaker 2: he's seeing. And it's not just for arousal. For Raider,
12:50
Speaker 2: the fantasy isn't complete until he's placed himself at the
12:55
Speaker 2: center of it.
12:56
Speaker 3: He would tie ropes around himself and get pleasure from that.
13:00
Speaker 2: As this internal world becomes more elaborate, his external life
13:06
Speaker 2: continues around him. Dennis Rader graduates from Wichita Heights High
13:12
Speaker 2: School class of sixty three. He works at a supermarket
13:16
Speaker 2: and attends college.
13:18
Speaker 5: He almost didn't graduate high school.
13:21
Speaker 3: That was certainly an issue for him.
13:25
Speaker 2: In the summer of nineteen sixty six, at twenty one
13:28
Speaker 2: years old, Raider follows in his father's footsteps and joins
13:33
Speaker 2: the US Air Force, reportedly to avoid being drafted into Vietnam,
13:38
Speaker 2: and this period is incredibly significant according to military records.
13:44
Speaker 2: Over the next four years, Raider is stationed in Texas, Greece,
13:49
Speaker 2: South Korea, and Japan, and by his own admission, this
13:54
Speaker 2: is where he begins seeking out sex workers, pushing the
13:58
Speaker 2: boundaries of bondage and sadism. The question is how far
14:04
Speaker 2: are these boundaries being pushed now. There's no confirmed evidence
14:10
Speaker 2: that Dennis Raider commits a homicide prior to nineteen seventy four,
14:15
Speaker 2: but one telling admission comes years later. In his conversations
14:20
Speaker 2: with doctor Ramsland, he describes developing what he calls a
14:24
Speaker 2: hit kit. At this time, it's a nondescript bag, rope, tape, knives,
14:31
Speaker 2: mask tools to commit a homicide. And for the remainder
14:36
Speaker 2: of his life up until his arrest, Dennis Raider keeps
14:40
Speaker 2: versions of these hit kits hidden in places like his
14:43
Speaker 2: car and home.
14:46
Speaker 3: I think it'd be carrying a hit kit in your
14:49
Speaker 3: overseas where there's very little accountability and you want to experiment.
14:54
Speaker 3: I think there's every possibility that there's somebody there.
14:58
Speaker 2: Doctor Ramsland is not alone in that thinking. But this
15:02
Speaker 2: is nineteen seventy two. It's still two years before the
15:05
Speaker 2: first murder Raider is known to have committed. At this time,
15:11
Speaker 2: he returns from military service, meets a woman named Pouladif's
15:15
Speaker 2: at church, and in less than a year they marry.
15:19
Speaker 2: From this point forward, Raider begins living two distinct lives.
15:25
Speaker 3: He calls it cubing, and I think that's a very
15:27
Speaker 3: good term. Cubing being that he has. If you think
15:31
Speaker 3: of a cube with multiple sides, he can be many
15:34
Speaker 3: different things that he calls them life frames, and he
15:37
Speaker 3: can just pull pivot to one or another, depending on
15:41
Speaker 3: what the context is and what's demanded by the situation.
15:44
Speaker 2: Now, cubing isn't just something Raider does. It's all part
15:49
Speaker 2: of his BTK fantasy. Because the version of a serial
15:54
Speaker 2: killer he's trying to become isn't just violent, it's hidden.
15:59
Speaker 2: It requires a secret identity. The men he studies, Harvey Glatman,
16:04
Speaker 2: HH Holmes, they moved through the world unnoticed, so Raider
16:10
Speaker 2: he does the same. He becomes a church goer, a husband,
16:15
Speaker 2: He's known in the community. He takes night classes at
16:19
Speaker 2: Wichita State University and studies criminal justice, and in nineteen
16:25
Speaker 2: seventy two, something shifts in the culture that gives his
16:29
Speaker 2: fantasy a name. The FBI formalizes what they call the
16:34
Speaker 2: Behavioral Analysis Unit. The idea is simple and at the
16:39
Speaker 2: time deeply flawed. They profess that they can draw inferences
16:44
Speaker 2: about suspects underlying personality traits by studying a crime itself.
16:50
Speaker 2: They begin to talk about things like signatures and creating
16:54
Speaker 2: what they call profiling.
16:57
Speaker 3: They were cowboys, essentially. They were putting this together other
17:00
Speaker 3: it was new. They didn't have databases, they didn't have
17:04
Speaker 3: good scientific protocols anything like that. In fact, profially is
17:08
Speaker 3: not a science by any means.
17:10
Speaker 5: It's not a science. It's a way to make.
17:14
Speaker 3: An experienced, informed, speculative guests based on the data we have.
17:24
Speaker 3: But they didn't have any databases. Until nineteen eighty five.
17:28
Speaker 2: They invent the term serial killer. And when you go
17:31
Speaker 2: back through the record through newspaper archives, court reporting, you
17:36
Speaker 2: actually see something very interesting the term serial killer. It
17:40
Speaker 2: doesn't enter widespread public use until the early nineteen eighties,
17:46
Speaker 2: around nineteen eighty one with the arrest of Wayne Williams
17:49
Speaker 2: in Atlanta, tied to more than twenty unsolved homicides. But
17:55
Speaker 2: the idea, the framework of a serial killer, that's what
17:59
Speaker 2: resonates with Dennis Raider. This is Dennis Raider at his
18:05
Speaker 2: sentencing hearing speaking to Judge Gregory Waller. Throughout this episode,
18:10
Speaker 2: you'll hear excerpts of this audio to examine Raider's mindset.
18:15
Speaker 4: If you read much about serial killers, they go through
18:17
Speaker 4: with the call the different phases. That's one of the
18:20
Speaker 4: phases they go through as a trolling stage. Basically, you're
18:24
Speaker 4: looking for a victim at that time, and that you
18:26
Speaker 4: could be trolling for months or years. But once you
18:30
Speaker 4: lock in on a certain person that you become a
18:31
Speaker 4: stalking and that might be several of them, but you
18:33
Speaker 4: really owe me in on that person.
18:36
Speaker 2: Raider isn't describing serial killers, He's describing his version of one.
18:41
Speaker 1: Even in his interviews, his interrogation and confession. You know,
18:46
Speaker 1: he was talking as if I am the master psychologist.
18:50
Speaker 1: I know everything there is about serial killers.
18:54
Speaker 3: It gave them something to aspire to be. He liked
18:56
Speaker 3: the fact that they were famous. They were in newspapers
18:59
Speaker 3: and magazines. It was really during the seventies as Ted Bundy,
19:04
Speaker 3: you know, got some headlines and some of the others
19:09
Speaker 3: I think, you know, Zodiac, some of the early ones.
19:14
Speaker 2: That word matters aspire. But by the mid nineteen seventies,
19:19
Speaker 2: Rader isn't just fantasizing. He's constructing BTK. Investigators will later
19:26
Speaker 2: find Raider's copious notes in spiral notebooks, hundreds of pages,
19:32
Speaker 2: handwritten and obsessive.
19:34
Speaker 5: We call that hypergraphia.
19:36
Speaker 3: He used to love writing everything what you know, what
19:39
Speaker 3: time did he get up, what did he eat? What
19:42
Speaker 3: time did they bring it, you know, every little minutia,
19:46
Speaker 3: because he believed somebody would be interested in it.
19:50
Speaker 2: That's not journaling, its documentation for an audience he believes
19:55
Speaker 2: will exist. It's at this point Raider begins to find
20:00
Speaker 2: reasons to be alone. He tells his wife he's going
20:05
Speaker 2: away for work. He stays in hotels.
20:07
Speaker 1: He had all these hotel visits right, and in some
20:10
Speaker 1: of these hotel visits, he was able to release that pressure,
20:15
Speaker 1: that addiction, that obsession.
20:20
Speaker 2: At night, in those rooms, Raider takes polaroids of himself,
20:26
Speaker 2: ropes tied around his neck, arms, legs, gags forced into
20:31
Speaker 2: his own mouth. Sometimes he wears dresses, wigs, plastic masks,
20:37
Speaker 2: a private rehearsal for something he's building towards.
20:41
Speaker 3: He began to think of himself in those ways and
20:45
Speaker 3: to identify with you know, this is where it takes
20:48
Speaker 3: to be famous these kinds of violent acts.
20:52
Speaker 2: At this point, Raider is no longer just fantasizing. He's preparing,
20:58
Speaker 2: and before long he acts. In January of nineteen seventy four,
21:10
Speaker 2: the real world intervenes. Raider is laid off from work.
21:15
Speaker 2: At this point, He's unemployed, depressed, bored. He isn't being seen,
21:20
Speaker 2: he's not being recognized, and for someone driven by insatiable narcissism,
21:27
Speaker 2: that gap becomes intolerable.
21:29
Speaker 3: He broke into someone's house and committed to burglary at
21:33
Speaker 3: the time, and then he began He saw Julie o'tero
21:37
Speaker 3: and her daughter, so he began following them and started
21:41
Speaker 3: thinking about, you know, doing this now.
21:44
Speaker 2: Later Dennis Rader will reframe this moment. He described seeing
21:49
Speaker 2: a neighbor, Julia Otero thirty four and her daughter Josephine eleven,
21:54
Speaker 2: selecting them and beginning what he calls a quote project.
22:00
Speaker 2: It's a term he creates based on what he believes
22:03
Speaker 2: a serial killer should sound like and.
22:06
Speaker 6: Call these projects. Were these sexual fantasies.
22:10
Speaker 4: Also, the Kentschel hits Now in my world, that's what
22:14
Speaker 4: I called him, all right, So they're calling projects hits.
22:17
Speaker 3: It's a way to distance himself and kind of own
22:20
Speaker 3: them as as pawns in his game. Essentially, he dehumanizes
22:26
Speaker 3: his victims and they don't matter to him at their projects,
22:31
Speaker 3: and once they're projects, they are things that he can
22:37
Speaker 3: make plans around without really thinking about their humanity.
22:41
Speaker 2: On January fifteenth, nineteen seventy four, he puts those plans
22:45
Speaker 2: into motion. He waits outside the Otero house, a white
22:50
Speaker 2: bungalow on a large corner lot, and when Julie and
22:54
Speaker 2: Josephine come outside, Raider forces his way in at gunpoint.
23:00
Speaker 4: I did some thinking on what I was going to
23:04
Speaker 4: do to either missus o'tero or Josephine, and basically broke
23:10
Speaker 4: into the house, or didn't break into the house, but
23:12
Speaker 4: when they came out of the house, I came in
23:14
Speaker 4: in confront of the family, and then we went from there.
23:16
Speaker 2: What happens next is nothing like Raider has imagined. Inside
23:21
Speaker 2: the house. It's not just Julie and Josephine, but Joseph
23:25
Speaker 2: O'tero thirty eight and their son, Joey. The situation is
23:31
Speaker 2: immediately outside of Dennis Raider's.
23:33
Speaker 3: Control, the Otero's. He didn't know what he was doing
23:37
Speaker 3: with them. He had never strangled anyone. He didn't realize
23:41
Speaker 3: how long it took, how heart it was. He did
23:45
Speaker 3: this in the middle of the day. People could have
23:47
Speaker 3: seen his car, They could have seen him go into
23:50
Speaker 3: the house and come out of the house.
23:52
Speaker 2: In fact, people do see him. According to the Wichita Eagle,
23:57
Speaker 2: four witnesses reports seeing a man, likely Raider, near the
24:01
Speaker 2: Otaro house at the time, but those accounts they're dismissed
24:05
Speaker 2: by investigators.
24:07
Speaker 3: He was lucky, really, and some of his crimes that
24:12
Speaker 3: he didn't get caught.
24:13
Speaker 2: This is the reality. It's not control or precision. Instead
24:19
Speaker 2: panic improvisation, a fantasy collapsing in real time. According to
24:25
Speaker 2: police records, Joseph and Julia O'taro are found in the bedroom,
24:30
Speaker 2: bound and showing signs of strangulation. Joey is found upstairs.
24:36
Speaker 2: Josephine is found in the basement.
24:39
Speaker 4: I've realized that, you know, I was already I didn't
24:43
Speaker 4: have a mask onry thing. They already could id me
24:46
Speaker 4: and made a decision to go ahead.
24:51
Speaker 2: That's how Raider explains it. But it doesn't hold up
24:55
Speaker 2: because when you look at the scene, when you look
24:58
Speaker 2: at the sequence of events, what you see isn't a
25:01
Speaker 2: calculated decision. It's an escalating loss of control followed by
25:07
Speaker 2: a desperate attempt to regain it. His victims become an
25:11
Speaker 2: obstacle to the fantasy he came to fulfill. Raider isn't
25:16
Speaker 2: executing a plan, He's chasing one, and that matters because
25:20
Speaker 2: it cuts through the mythology that he's built. What did
25:24
Speaker 2: you do?
25:24
Speaker 4: Then? Look you of the house, kind of cleaned it up,
25:28
Speaker 4: picked every things up. I think I took mister Otaro's watch.
25:33
Speaker 4: I guess I took a radio. I'd forgot about that,
25:36
Speaker 4: but apparently I.
25:37
Speaker 6: Took a radio. Why do you take these things?
25:39
Speaker 4: I don't ill oh, I.
25:41
Speaker 2: Had no idea Afterwards, Raider steals the family's Oldsmobile station
25:47
Speaker 2: wagon and abandons it at a nearby Dylan's supermarket, where
25:51
Speaker 2: it's found quickly. Police are on the scene. Within the hour,
25:56
Speaker 2: the media descends on the Otero residence. The crime is chaotic, sloppy,
26:02
Speaker 2: and almost immediately Raider starts refining the version of himself
26:07
Speaker 2: he's trying to become.
26:09
Speaker 3: He read a lot of serial killer novels and stuff,
26:12
Speaker 3: so that, yeah, it would definitely be part of the
26:15
Speaker 3: sense of identity.
26:16
Speaker 5: Sure, but he had a lot more projects than murders.
26:20
Speaker 5: He had.
26:21
Speaker 3: He gave me a list of fifty five projects, and
26:24
Speaker 3: that wasn't even all of them.
26:26
Speaker 2: Fifty five projects. That number tells you something. These are
26:31
Speaker 2: not actual plans, they're labels. Seeing a stranger in a
26:35
Speaker 2: grocery store and calling her a project that doesn't mean
26:39
Speaker 2: anything in the real world, but to Raider it does.
26:43
Speaker 2: It makes him feel like the thing he's trying to become.
26:47
Speaker 2: Case in point less than three months after the Otero murders,
26:51
Speaker 2: his next project. It isn't calculated. It's incidental.
26:56
Speaker 4: Just driving by one day and I saw her go
26:57
Speaker 4: in the house with somebody else, and I thought that
27:00
Speaker 4: that's a possibility.
27:01
Speaker 2: That's not tartting, that's opportunism. Raider isn't what he professes
27:06
Speaker 2: to be. Instead, on April fourth, nineteen seventy four, Rader
27:10
Speaker 2: breaks into the home of Katherine Bright, a twenty one
27:15
Speaker 2: year old college student, and for the second time, nothing
27:19
Speaker 2: goes as planned. Her brother Kevin is home, a struggle ensues.
27:24
Speaker 2: Raider flees, but not before stabbing Katherine and shooting Kevin twice.
27:30
Speaker 2: At one point, believing Kevin is dead, Raider hears movement.
27:34
Speaker 4: Oh, I'll tell you what I thought. I thought the
27:36
Speaker 4: police were coming at that time. I heard the door open.
27:37
Speaker 4: I thought that's it, and I stepped out there and
27:41
Speaker 4: he I can see him running down the street. So
27:43
Speaker 4: I quickly cleaned up everything that it could and let.
27:46
Speaker 2: Again panic not control. And it's Catherine herself who calls police.
27:53
Speaker 2: According to records, when officers arrive, she's alive, still holding
27:58
Speaker 2: the phone. Responding off us, her notes multiple stab wounds
28:02
Speaker 2: visible in her abdomen before she loses consciousness. She later
28:07
Speaker 2: dies at hospital. Though both Catherine and her brother Kevin
28:11
Speaker 2: are able to give an eyewitness statement to police.
28:15
Speaker 3: It was really Kevin Bright who got a very good
28:18
Speaker 3: look at him, because he got shot by him twice
28:21
Speaker 3: and they struggled over the gun, and he saw him
28:25
Speaker 3: and gave a description, but the subsequent drawing based on
28:31
Speaker 3: Kevin's description seemed pretty generic.
28:35
Speaker 2: The sketch leads nowhere. The investigation stalls, and that frustrates
28:40
Speaker 2: Raider because at this point something becomes clear. He's not
28:45
Speaker 2: achieving the image he has of himself. He's not a H. Holmes.
28:50
Speaker 2: He's not some calculated, untouchable figure. He's fumbling, panicked. His
28:56
Speaker 2: victims resist, the police don't see him, and for someone
29:00
Speaker 2: driven by narcissism, that's a problem, so he changes his strategy.
29:13
Speaker 2: In October of nineteen seventy four, Raider contacts the Wichita Eagle,
29:18
Speaker 2: directing them to a letter hidden in a book at
29:21
Speaker 2: the public library.
29:23
Speaker 3: The first letter came about nine months after his first murder,
29:27
Speaker 3: the Utero family, and that was mostly because police had
29:31
Speaker 3: picked up three men that they thought were good suspects,
29:36
Speaker 3: and he didn't like that they're wasting text money on
29:41
Speaker 3: this investigation, so he wanted to make sure they understood
29:44
Speaker 3: that those men were not the guys.
29:46
Speaker 2: That's how Raider explains it, but again it doesn't hold
29:50
Speaker 2: up because this isn't about correcting the investigation, it's about
29:55
Speaker 2: inserting himself into it. Because in that letter recovered by police,
30:01
Speaker 2: his real motivation becomes crystal clear. He promises more murders,
30:06
Speaker 2: and more importantly, he names himself. I'm going to read
30:11
Speaker 2: you from the letter itself, it says quote. The code
30:14
Speaker 2: words for me will be bind them, torture them, kill
30:19
Speaker 2: them btk.
30:22
Speaker 7: Raider often talks about these sexual fantasies of bondage and
30:26
Speaker 7: sadism driving him. But what I think his real fantasy
30:30
Speaker 7: is is that he wants to be the construct of
30:34
Speaker 7: what he thinks is a serial killer. This kind of
30:38
Speaker 7: identity is what gives him that sense of power.
30:42
Speaker 1: I think he's one of the most egotistical, non remorseful individuals.
30:48
Speaker 1: I've researched and spoken with his level of narcissism and egotism,
30:56
Speaker 1: and he wanted to become I'm the most prolific serial killer.
31:03
Speaker 2: Creating his own moniker is critical because it's control, control
31:09
Speaker 2: over how he's seen, control over how he's remembered.
31:13
Speaker 3: He had four or five that he suggested I didn't
31:18
Speaker 3: think were very scary, like the poet Strangler was one
31:21
Speaker 3: of them.
31:23
Speaker 5: But the BTK one is what stuck.
31:26
Speaker 3: But he wanted to take control of what they would
31:30
Speaker 3: call him.
31:31
Speaker 2: Raider isn't known to have committed another confirmed murder for
31:35
Speaker 2: nearly three years, but investigators have long questioned that. As
31:40
Speaker 2: recently as twenty twenty three, Oklahoma authorities search property linked
31:45
Speaker 2: to Raider in connection to unsolved cases, including the disappearance
31:50
Speaker 2: of Cynthia don Kinney in nineteen seventy six. Now, Raider
31:57
Speaker 2: has denied involvement, but his move and his writings, they
32:01
Speaker 2: do raise questions. What we do know is this, on
32:06
Speaker 2: March seventeenth, nineteen seventy seven, he kills again.
32:10
Speaker 4: Actually on that one, she was completely random. There was
32:15
Speaker 4: actually some on the cross from Dylan's was potential target.
32:20
Speaker 4: It was called Project Green. I think I had project
32:22
Speaker 4: numbers and signed to it.
32:24
Speaker 2: Random Again, it doesn't hold up. Shirley Ryan thirty four.
32:30
Speaker 2: She lives within a mile of Raider's home. She's part
32:33
Speaker 2: of his environment, his routine, his access. He encounters her
32:39
Speaker 2: five year old son, follows him home.
32:41
Speaker 5: Nineteen seventy seven.
32:42
Speaker 3: He saw Shirley Byan's son outside and followed him to
32:48
Speaker 3: her house.
32:49
Speaker 2: Inside the house, Raider restrains the children in a bathroom,
32:54
Speaker 2: but they escape and find a neighbor and call police.
32:58
Speaker 2: Shirley Ryan is found thereafter bound evidence of ligature cause
33:04
Speaker 2: of death strangulation.
33:06
Speaker 6: You say you cleaned everything, well, I mean put my stuff.
33:08
Speaker 4: I had a briefcase whatever I had laid around the robes,
33:12
Speaker 4: tape cord, so I threw that in there. You know,
33:15
Speaker 4: whatever you know that I had that I brought in
33:17
Speaker 4: the house.
33:19
Speaker 2: On December eighth, nineteen seventy seven, Raider takes another step.
33:24
Speaker 2: He breaks into a duplex, cuts the phone lines and waits.
33:28
Speaker 4: Nobody answers the door. So I went around to the
33:30
Speaker 4: back of the house, cut the phone lines. I could
33:32
Speaker 4: tell that there wasn't anybody in the north apartment, broke
33:37
Speaker 4: in and waited for her to come home.
33:40
Speaker 2: His intended victim is twenty five year old Nancy Fox.
33:44
Speaker 4: Nancy Fox was another one of the projects. When I
33:49
Speaker 4: was trolling the area, I noticed her going the house
33:53
Speaker 4: one night sometimes and anyway put her down a potential victim.
34:00
Speaker 2: But this time it's different. There's more planning, control structure,
34:07
Speaker 2: but more than that, there's presentation because by this point
34:12
Speaker 2: the act itself isn't enough to Raider the narrative matters.
34:19
Speaker 4: You will find it a.
34:22
Speaker 1: Three stop in their fall. I'm sorry, sure, I think.
34:28
Speaker 7: A cat or.
34:33
Speaker 2: What you're hearing is historic audio of Raider calling the
34:36
Speaker 2: police to report the murder himself. Because what Raider is
34:41
Speaker 2: actually chasing isn't just the crime, it's the reaction. And
34:45
Speaker 2: when he doesn't get it, he fills in the gaps himself.
34:50
Speaker 2: He calls radio stations, sends letters, he complains about the
34:53
Speaker 2: lack of media attention, and by early nineteen seventy eight
34:58
Speaker 2: he begins sending postcards and poems to the Wichita Eagle.
35:03
Speaker 7: You're thinking he's addicted to murder.
35:05
Speaker 1: Oh, he was absolutely addicted to murder, to lust, to
35:08
Speaker 1: all the fetishes that he had.
35:11
Speaker 2: But even that framing it misses something, because what Raider
35:15
Speaker 2: is addicted to is the identity of BTK and the
35:19
Speaker 2: validation that comes with it. He becomes so fixated on
35:23
Speaker 2: his correspondence his duality begins to slip. At one point,
35:28
Speaker 2: a draft of one of his poems signed by BTK
35:32
Speaker 2: is found by his wife.
35:33
Speaker 3: She saw him writing once and said that he had
35:37
Speaker 3: misspelled words similar to the way the BTK killer did
35:42
Speaker 3: in the messages he sent to the media, and Rader
35:45
Speaker 3: quickly explained it away. Also, he was in criminal justice classes,
35:50
Speaker 3: so some of the things he said, well, these are projects.
35:52
Speaker 5: We're working on.
35:54
Speaker 3: We're imagining the BTK killer. And there's no reason not
35:59
Speaker 3: to accept that explanation.
36:01
Speaker 1: If there was anything that Dennis Raider was scared of,
36:05
Speaker 1: it was his wife exposing them. And she was kind
36:09
Speaker 1: of the one that kind of kept him in this box.
36:13
Speaker 1: And he talks about boxes right a lot, and that's
36:17
Speaker 1: how he compartmentalizes his life in these boxes.
36:21
Speaker 2: Investigators will later find components of his hit kits hidden
36:25
Speaker 2: throughout the home.
36:26
Speaker 3: He made false bottoms and closets and drawers, and he
36:31
Speaker 3: built a treehouse for the kids where he put a
36:34
Speaker 3: false floor in.
36:36
Speaker 5: He dug holes in the crawl space and under.
36:39
Speaker 3: The shed to hide things so it wasn't out in
36:43
Speaker 3: plain sight.
36:45
Speaker 2: One year after his last documented homicide, on April twenty eighth,
36:50
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine, he attempts another attack, but it fails
36:55
Speaker 2: when the intended victim notices signs of a break in
36:59
Speaker 2: and flees before she even encounters Rader. It's a crack
37:04
Speaker 2: in the BTK identity, So Raider does what he always does.
37:09
Speaker 2: He reframes it, he sends taunting letters, and then years pass.
37:16
Speaker 3: He talks about the fact that he got busy and
37:19
Speaker 3: wasn't He might stalk somebody, he might fantasize, but he
37:25
Speaker 3: didn't have time to be an elaborate stalker and plant.
37:32
Speaker 2: It's nearly eight years between murders now, is that truly
37:37
Speaker 2: the case? Well, there's no question Riader is committing break
37:41
Speaker 2: ins and attempting to find victims during this time, but
37:45
Speaker 2: the details are thin, and Raider himself has denied committing
37:50
Speaker 2: additional murders during this period. What we know is that
37:54
Speaker 2: on April twenty seventh, nineteen eighty five, Raider commits one
37:58
Speaker 2: of his most brazen crimes, that of a neighbor named
38:02
Speaker 2: Marine Hedge. She lives five doors down from his own house.
38:07
Speaker 4: Since she lived down the street from me, I could
38:09
Speaker 4: watch the coming and going quite easily. Casually we walked
38:13
Speaker 4: by and wave. She She liked to work in her
38:16
Speaker 4: yard as well as I like to work. Just a
38:17
Speaker 4: neighbor league type thing. It wasn't anything personal, I mean,
38:20
Speaker 4: just a neighbor.
38:22
Speaker 2: Reader's evolution continues. This is an orchestrated plan. The movement
38:28
Speaker 2: is deliberate.
38:29
Speaker 4: Park macarr over at Woodlawn and twenty first Street at
38:37
Speaker 4: Bowling Alley. There at time before that, I dressed until
38:42
Speaker 4: I had some other clothes on, changed clothes. I went
38:44
Speaker 4: to Bowling Alley, went in there the preceense of bowling,
38:49
Speaker 4: called a taxi, had a taxi take me out to
38:51
Speaker 4: Park City. I had my kit with me as a
38:54
Speaker 4: bowling bag.
38:55
Speaker 2: Changing clothes, moving vehicles using cover. He's thinkingly the version
39:00
Speaker 2: of himself that he's built.
39:03
Speaker 4: Very carefully snuck into the house kind of like a
39:05
Speaker 4: cat burglar, and after checking the house, she wasn't there,
39:09
Speaker 4: so about that time the doors rattled, so it went
39:15
Speaker 4: back to one of the bedrooms and hidden back there
39:17
Speaker 4: in one of the bedrooms. She came in with a
39:19
Speaker 4: male visitor. They were there for maybe an hour or so,
39:24
Speaker 4: but he left. I waited till a wee hours of morning.
39:28
Speaker 2: After Raider murders Marine Hedge, he does something that reveals
39:32
Speaker 2: the true driving force behind all of this. He moves
39:36
Speaker 2: the body, transports it to his church, the place tied
39:40
Speaker 2: to his own real life, and he stages it.
39:44
Speaker 3: He was aware that the FBI were trying to make
39:47
Speaker 3: predictions about him, so he wanted to break a pattern,
39:50
Speaker 3: and also he wanted to get photographs of a body,
39:56
Speaker 3: a woman's body in all these os and pantiesaid he
40:01
Speaker 3: had stolen from other women, and then he dumped her
40:04
Speaker 3: outside because that would break the pattern.
40:07
Speaker 2: He's not just committing crimes in Raider's mind, he's interacting
40:11
Speaker 2: with the investigation, adapting to it, performing for it. This
40:16
Speaker 2: is the fully realized version of BTK. By nineteen eighty six,
40:22
Speaker 2: he's embedding himself even deeper into his own fantasy. He
40:27
Speaker 2: targets a mother named Vicky Weggerly.
40:30
Speaker 3: He would learn about the victims. He'd follow them, he'd
40:33
Speaker 3: find out their routines.
40:35
Speaker 5: He'd look for the.
40:36
Speaker 3: You know, and there weren't cell phones and things ordinarily there,
40:41
Speaker 3: so he'd cut phone wires to make sure they couldn't
40:44
Speaker 3: call out.
40:46
Speaker 2: Shortly before noon on September sixteenth, nineteen eighty six, Vicky
40:51
Speaker 2: Weggerly's husband comes home for lunch and sees Rader driving
40:56
Speaker 2: away in their family car. Inside, he finds his wife's
41:01
Speaker 2: body and immediately calls police. Their young child is also
41:06
Speaker 2: in the home, but unharmed. Police dismiss his witness account
41:11
Speaker 2: and spend two decades investigating Wagerly's husband for the murder,
41:16
Speaker 2: and like all of these cases, the assumptions have real
41:20
Speaker 2: world costs, and surprisingly, Raider doesn't move to correct the mistake,
41:26
Speaker 2: but not out of any obligation. It's because his home
41:29
Speaker 2: life reaches a difficult patch. By nineteen ninety one, Raider
41:35
Speaker 2: is unemployed the result of layoffs, and his wife is
41:38
Speaker 2: hospitalized due to ongoing health concerns. He finds himself being
41:44
Speaker 2: a full time caregiver for his children, something he struggles with.
41:48
Speaker 2: Money is tight. He's frustrated and depressed. On January nineteenth,
41:59
Speaker 2: he les his next victim, sixty two year old Dolores Davis.
42:04
Speaker 3: Now with his last one, Dlorus Davis. He had decided
42:10
Speaker 3: he would take her to a barn, because that had
42:12
Speaker 3: long been a fantasy. He wanted to use an abandon barn. However,
42:18
Speaker 3: he lost his way that night because it was snowing
42:21
Speaker 3: and foggy, so he ended up just dumping the body
42:25
Speaker 3: rather than taking it to a barn.
42:27
Speaker 2: This isn't impulsive, it's deliberate. He prepares in stages, changes clothes,
42:34
Speaker 2: moves locations, carries his kit.
42:37
Speaker 4: On that particular day, I had some commitments. I left those,
42:42
Speaker 4: went to one place, changed my clothes, went to another place.
42:47
Speaker 4: Park mccarr finally made arrangements on my hip kit, my clothes,
42:52
Speaker 4: and then walked to that residence.
42:54
Speaker 2: It's commonly reported that after this murder, BTK stopped, but
42:59
Speaker 2: that is the anthology.
43:00
Speaker 5: He didn't stop. He just didn't succeed. He said.
43:06
Speaker 3: It's like a fisherman who goes out every day. Sometimes
43:10
Speaker 3: he gets something, sometimes he doesn't, he said.
43:13
Speaker 5: But he didn't stop.
43:15
Speaker 3: He kept looking, he kept stalking. He kept a track
43:22
Speaker 3: of certain projects, and in two thousand and four he
43:25
Speaker 3: had his eye in another one that was going to
43:28
Speaker 3: be very elaborate.
43:29
Speaker 2: He's still watching, still building, still waiting, and in two
43:34
Speaker 2: thousand and four he re emerges, at least publicly. And
43:38
Speaker 2: this is where everything starts to unravel.
43:42
Speaker 3: He had bested the FBI, he had bested the various
43:46
Speaker 3: tests for us over a period of thirty years. That
43:49
Speaker 3: was pretty impressive. And now, yes, he's feeling pretty good
43:53
Speaker 3: about himself.
43:54
Speaker 2: At this point, Greater believes he's won. He believes the
43:58
Speaker 2: BTK story is his. So he starts writing again, sending letters, packages, puzzles,
44:06
Speaker 2: even outlining a book he calls the BTK story.
44:10
Speaker 3: He thought he had a fan club in the readers
44:13
Speaker 3: of the newspapers and the viewers of the Witchdal TV stations.
44:17
Speaker 3: He thought he had a fan club, and he was
44:20
Speaker 3: enjoying the fact that they had not caught him.
44:23
Speaker 2: That's the final piece Raider's psychology coming into its fullest expression,
44:29
Speaker 2: not fear, not control an audience.
44:33
Speaker 3: He had asked a police guy who was part of
44:37
Speaker 3: a digital training unit if you could trace an email.
44:44
Speaker 5: That was anonymous or and the guy said no.
44:49
Speaker 3: And the guy was wrong, so he gave Raider the
44:52
Speaker 3: wrong information, and so that gave Ray to the idea
44:56
Speaker 3: that he could use a floppy.
45:01
Speaker 2: Raider sends the disc and within hours the police have
45:04
Speaker 2: everything that thirty years, thousands of man hours, task forces
45:09
Speaker 2: and FBI profiles could not achieve. On February twenty fifth,
45:15
Speaker 2: two thousand and five, Dennis Raider is arrested coming home
45:19
Speaker 2: for lunch. The man who built BTK is undone by
45:23
Speaker 2: his need to be seen. Dennis Raider is sentenced on
45:32
Speaker 2: August eighteenth, two thousand and five, in Wichita. He receives
45:36
Speaker 2: ten consecutive life sentences, one for each murder he's known
45:41
Speaker 2: to have committed.
45:42
Speaker 6: Based upon your statements to the court, I will find
45:44
Speaker 6: there are factual basis for each of these plays of guilty.
45:48
Speaker 6: I will accept these plays are guilty and adjudge you
45:51
Speaker 6: Dennis L. Raider guilty of murder and the first degree.
45:55
Speaker 2: The sentence one hundred and seventy five years without the
45:59
Speaker 2: possibility of parole is the maximum allowed under Kansas law
46:03
Speaker 2: at the time. There's no death penalty, no spectacle, no
46:09
Speaker 2: final performance. And that matters because from the very beginning
46:14
Speaker 2: Reader wanted something very specific BTK. He wanted this story
46:19
Speaker 2: to harden around it, to outlive him, to define him.
46:24
Speaker 2: The letters, the calls, the fear, the mythology. We are
46:29
Speaker 2: the ones repeating it. But when you strip that away,
46:33
Speaker 2: when you go back to the record, the timelines, the
46:35
Speaker 2: reality of what actually happened, what you see isn't a mastermind.
46:41
Speaker 2: It's a man constructing.
46:42
Speaker 3: One last time I talked to him was about it
46:46
Speaker 3: just over like ten days ago. I mean, I know
46:48
Speaker 3: that he's in the infirmary's and they've moved in there
46:51
Speaker 3: because they can't take him to the shower or to
46:56
Speaker 3: know anything without a wheelchair, because he has a scoiosis
47:02
Speaker 3: spine and he's lost his teeth, he's bawling. You know,
47:07
Speaker 3: he's got a lot of issues, and I know that
47:10
Speaker 3: he's on the decline health wise.
47:13
Speaker 2: If you've made it this far, that's the image I
47:16
Speaker 2: want to leave you with, Not BTK Dennis Rader, frail, aging,
47:22
Speaker 2: sitting in a prison cell, still holding onto an identity
47:26
Speaker 2: that never really existed. Before we wrap a few show notes,
47:34
Speaker 2: I had a great conversation with a Vetley for this episode.
47:38
Speaker 2: Her research is fascinating and while we don't always see
47:40
Speaker 2: eye to eye, I'm going to post the full conversation
47:44
Speaker 2: inside Unmarked case Files, our research portal where you can
47:48
Speaker 2: judge the evidence for yourself. Next up my books if
47:53
Speaker 2: you want to explore the Charles Manson case through my
47:55
Speaker 2: research and interviews with the Manson family and Charles Manson him.
48:00
Speaker 2: Charles Manson The Last Words is available on Kindle, Amazon
48:05
Speaker 2: and Kindle Unlimited. Also, I just released my first novel.
48:09
Speaker 2: It's called a Plague of Steel. It's a grim, dark
48:12
Speaker 2: fantasy war story about what war leaves behind. It's available
48:17
Speaker 2: now on Kindle, Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. And if you
48:20
Speaker 2: do dive in, please leave a review, which is the
48:24
Speaker 2: lifeblood for independent authors. Like myself. This episode of Unmarked
48:29
Speaker 2: was produced by John Adou. Our editor is Dave Alderson,
48:33
Speaker 2: and our additional producer is Jesse Demery. Until next week,
48:38
Speaker 2: this is Unmarked