Dennis Rader

Biography and escalation

Dennis Lynn Rader was born on March 9th 1945, to Dorothea Mae and William Evin Rader in Pittsburg, Kansas. According to several reports, including his own confessions, as a child he tortured animals. He also harbored a sexual fetish for women's underwear and would later steal underpants from his victims and wear them himself.

 

 He spent four years (1966–1970) in the United States Air Force, then upon discharge, he moved to Park City, a suburb located seven miles north of Wichita. He worked for a time in the meat department of Leekers IGA supermarket in Park City alongside his mother, a bookkeeper for the store. At some point in the 1970s, Rader married and he and his wife Paula had two children, a boy and girl. Rader let what some believed to be a perfectly normal life, but they would learn the horrid truth when he was revealed to be the "BTK Killer." 

^Victims

^{On January 15th, 1974, 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. What he saw when he entered his home will never be forgotten.}

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.

 

 

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.

 

 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."

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.

 

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.

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.

 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."

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.

Investigation and profile

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

 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.

 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.

 

Crime scene photos

         

                      

Arrest and two new victims

 

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.

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.

Dennis Rader still resides in  El Dorado Correctional Facility, a Kansas state prison. He is confined to the cell 23 hours a day with the exception of voluntary solo one-hour exercise yard time and access to the shower three times a week.

Beginning April 23, 2006, having reached "Incentive Level Two," Rader has been allowed to purchase and watch television, purchase and listen to the radio, receive and read magazines, and have other privileges for good behavior. The victims' families disagreed with this decision.