Dennis Rader: The BTK Killer

Just before we get into today's video, I want to give you a quick look at my new podcast, the casual criminologist. We cover a lot of crimes, criminals, bad things on this channel because apparently you guys love the darker things. Well, eat your black hearts because I now have a long form on a weekly hour-long podcast covering some of the darkest things I could find, from the UK doctor who was the worst serial

killer

in history so far where an American socialite murdered her best friend with her car supposedly and totally got away with it and much more but it's also more laid back with the occasional laugh because death isn't hilarious so let's jump into it today jack the ripper the zodiac these are names that still evoke fear and dread in the hearts of many people decades, even centuries after they were first mentioned, this is for a simple reason why they were never captured or identified.

These men were able to carry out gruesome massacres in fulfillment of their darkest desires and then get away with it for decades. There was another chilling name. On that list, btk, short for bondage torture, killed a murderous maniac who began terrorizing Wichita Kansas during the 1970s, evaded capture during the original investigation during the 1980s and early 1990s. He had become in such a ghost that he killed three more people without the police noticing. that it was he who did it after he went completely underground, stopping all communication and erasing all hope that he could ever be properly identified, almost all hope in the end, his hunger for attention made him come back one more mistake late and was identified and arrested.

It might have happened 30 years after his killing spree began, but btk finally had a real name. Dennis Rader Dennis Lynn Raider was born on March 9, 1945, one of four children of William and Dorothea Raider. He was born in Pittsburgh, Kansas, but raised in Wichita the same way. Where he would carry out his terror spree decades later, Raider attended Wichita Heights High School and then enrolled at Wichita State University in 1964. However, college was not for him, so he dropped out. and joined the United States Air Force when he was 21 years old. and spent the next four years as a mechanic when he returned to Kansas Raider wanted to complete his college education, but found it problematic as he switched between multiple institutions and finally earned a degree in administration of justice in 1979.

Meanwhile, he supported himself. itself. with various jobs in Park City Kansas, a suburb of Wichita, including assembler for a camping equipment company, grocery store clerk, and installation manager for a home security company called adt security services. The third one occurred while btk was active and it was indeed one. One of the main reasons why so many people were purchasing home security systems in the first place, none of them knew that the person they were letting into their homes to feel more secure was the same person they wanted to be around. protected in 1971, Dennis. Rader married a woman named Paula Dietz and they had two children together, Carrie and Brian.

On the outside, it looked a lot like the typical humdrum family life and it would be decades before people discovered that there was actually something much darker hiding beneath the surface. I later found out that after Btk was finally stopped, Dennis Raider didn't have the kind of traumatic childhood we often associate with serial

killer

s. He felt ignored by his parents because they worked long hours, but that was all, even so, sadistic impulses began to develop in Dennis from a young age, his sexual fantasies revolved around pain and bondage. He began cutting out female shapes from magazines, drawing gags and ropes around him and gluing them onto three-by-five index cards that he carried with him when he was a teenager.

By stealing women's underwear he began to become sexually aroused by seeing animals being tortured and killed. He began by seeing chickens sent to slaughter but then progressed to killing himself by hanging a cat and a dog. He liked to be spanked and whipped, but he even liked it. more to see that they did the same to women every time he got aroused by such an act, he called it sparking big and the point of climax was called big g, in fact, the radar had a whole vocabulary or codex, like him He preferred it, which he used in To refer to his crimes he borrowed many terms from true crime magazines of the 1950s and 1960s.

He called his victims projects while a murder was a success. He referred to the murderous person who lived inside him filled with violent sexual impulses as the minotaur. When it came time to change from his normal family man façade to that of the minotaur, he called it darkening and finally described the force that drove him to kill as some kind of mysterious element called the x factor. There are two probable reasons why it arose. With all these terms, according to psychologists, the first would be to help you distance yourself from the reality of what you were doing in your mind, you were not murdering a person, no, you were going dark to work on a project and it couldn't be.

It's his fault if he was driven to do it by some magical factor x the second reason was simply to feel more special. The assailant had the narcissistic personality that you would expect from a murderer like him and he exhibited himself in typical fashion by making a name for himself in the media, making fun of the police and trying to create some kind of mysterious and impenetrable character that would make him unique among murderers. The irony here is that by doing these things to feel special he was displaying the standard behavior of a manic anxious psychopath over time.

Increasingly bolder in living out his little dreams when he was with the Air Force, he drew his fantasies on pieces of paper that he burned when he left the base. He claimed that he visited prostitutes, but most of them were too intimidated by him and refused to let him. To carry out his ideas of slavery, he sometimes broke into houses and stole women's underwear that he added to his collection. This was a habit he continued throughout his bender. The assailant took many of the victims' memories from him and, for quick access, placed them in various locations around.

Wichita which he called hideouts, of course, as the years passed, drawings and voyeurism became insufficient to satisfy raider's urges. It was only a matter of time until he finally progressed towards what he really wanted. Murder raider carried out his first attack on January 15, 1974 and started in a big way, targeting the entire family, husband and wife, Joseph and Julie Otero, along with two of their children, Joseph Junior, nine years old, and Josephine, eleven. He also did it in the morning, while the children were getting ready. for school and family he also had a dog that could have alerted the neighbors;

In other words, it was a high-risk crime, so the assailant was very lucky not to be caught from the beginning, according to the murderer himself, he sneaked inside the ottaros. detached garage and waited for his chance, shortly after 8:30 a.m., Joseph Jr. left the house to go to school, that's when an assailant armed with a knife and a .22 caliber gun forced him back inside and He confronted the entire family in order to keep them safe. He left them alone. He told the attackers that this was a robbery and that they would not be harmed if they did what he said.

The family obeyed. First, the father took the dog outside and then they let themselves be taken to the house. bedroom and tie them in At that moment it was too late for them, they were completely at the mercy of the assailant, who did not exist. He had been fantasizing about this moment for decades. He killed the atteros by strangling and suffocating them using a piece of rope or plastic bags. He sometimes allowed them to do it. catch his breath and regain consciousness before dying only so he can strangle them again. None of the victims were sexually assaulted, although the killer's semen was found at the scene and later proved instrumental in getting rid of the convicted and, if you will, making the crimes just.

A little more horrifying was that the bodies were found by one of the other Otero children, fifteen-year-old Charlie Attero, at the scene, which caused Wichita police to be stunned, not only were the murders more frightening things they had never seen before, but they occurred in broad daylight in a quiet neighborhood plus the killer clearly planned everything in advance as he was careful to bring tape, hoods, wire cutters, cables and probably a gun, everything he needed to subdue the entire family, there were no signs of forced entry or struggle. and there is no evidence of a robbery other than joseph terra's watch which disappeared after it was over the killer even left it in the coffee shop car the circumstances surrounding the crimes did not immediately indicate that he was a serial killer so the Police investigated the possibility that the atteros could have been marked for execution by a criminal organization, however, when investigating their background they could not find anything to suggest a possible motive for such a thing, in addition there were still traces of semen on the floor, which definitely did not indicate a professional coup, in the end, when speaking to the press, Wichita Police Chief Floyd Hanlon said that the crimes were carried out by a murderer with a fetish, only three months later, the murderer returned to attack, this time targeting 21-year-old Catherine Bright, on April 4, 1974, an assailant broke into Bright's home when she was not there and waited for her return when the young woman returned accompanied by her younger brother Kevin, they were greeted by a man with a gun.

Again the robber played the role of a thief and assured his victims that as long as they gave him the money and car keys, he would not harm them at gunpoint. Kevin tied his sister to a chair and then went to the bedroom with the intruder, where he was also tied and gagged; However, one time, the assailant put a knotted stocking around his neck and began to strangle him, that's when Kevin realized the real truth. The danger he was in and started to defend himself the fight was brief because the assailant pulled a gun from his waistband and shot Kevin Bright, he left the room for a moment then came back and shot him again, he didn't bother check if his victim was dead probably because his mind was on his true goal catherine bright in fact kevin was still breathing in a daze he managed to get out of the house and ran into two passers by who took him to the hospital and called the police when the authorities arrived They found Catherine Bright with multiple wounds but still alive.

She had been stabbed three times in the abdomen and also had ligature marks around her throat from having been strangled. They rushed her to the hospital but she died a few hours later when she was found. police did not associate the murder of catherine bright with the death of the family assailant atero did not wear a mask when he attacked the brother and sister, so they were able to obtain a description of the murderer of kevin bright, but this led nowhere afterwards The murders stopped for a few years immediately. The Bat Raider murders were a way to get attention when his crimes were no longer making headlines.

I would rekindle public interest in them by writing to the media or the police. His first attempt at communication occurred. In October 1974, nine months after he killed the Atterros assailant, he contacted the Wichita Eagle anonymously and told them to look inside a certain book at the local public library, where they found a letter whose author claimed credit for the Otero murders and at the same time dismissed the other police officers. The suspects were nothing more than people who wanted publicity for their actions. The letter contained details about the murders that had not been made public, so the authenticity was beyond doubt, but the police asked the newspaper not to publish it to avoid further false confessions.

The Eagle complied, but the Wichita Sun competition also obtained a copy and published parts of the letter in December. Here are some pertinent quotes that illustrate the killer's mentality. I am writing this letter for the taxpayer's sake and for his time. Those three guys. You have detainees, you only talk to publicize the murders in Otero. You didn't know anything. I did it alone and without help from anyone. I regret that this has happened to society. They are the ones who suffer the most. It is difficult to control myself. When this monster enters my brain. I will never know, but it is here to stay.

How can one heal oneself if you ask for help? That you have killed four people. They will laugh or press the panic button and call the police. I can't stop it. the monster continues and hunts me too a society society can be grateful that there are ways for people like me to relieve myself at some point daydreaming about some victimsbeing tortured and being mine maybe you can stop him, I can't, he has already chosen his next victim or victims, I still don't know who they are the next day after reading the newspaper, I will know, but it's too late, good good luck hunting yours, truly guilty, there was also the postscript that stood out for mentioning for the first time. the nickname by which this murderer would be remembered p.s. since sex offenders don't change their way of life or by nature can't do it, I won't change mine, the key word for me will be tie them up, torture them, kill them, p-t-k, you see, he acted again, they will.

Be on the next victim, so now the serial killer had a name, by the way, now you may have noticed that the letter was riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. I certainly read it, but the errors were apparently made at random. Btk seemed to have trouble with simple, mundane words. but he had no problem spelling psychotic or perversion. Investigators realized early on that this was probably an attempt by the criminal to appear less educated than he really was, and based on the content of the letter, they also believed that he at some point studied criminal psychology.

Interestingly, although btk clearly wanted to get credit for the crimes he committed, there was no mention of catherine bright in the letter, another reason why the police did not link the murder until later, btk remained silent after 1974. It seemed the five murders .In addition, the letter was enough to satiate his attention for a while, at least he did not attack again until 1977. On March 17 he attacked Shirley Vyan, 26, in her home. She was there with her three children, so she cooperated after he promised to leave them alone this time, he actually kept his promise, but he locked the children in the closet but it didn't hurt them much, in an interview decades later, The assailant admitted that he intended to kill them as well, but had to leave the scene before doing so.

Then Shirley Van, on the other hand, felt the full force of his anger. Police found her in her bed with her hands and feet tied. She had been suffocated with a plastic bag over her head and strangled with a rope tied around her neck. This time the police suspected that this was btk's work from the beginning the crime scene was very similar to the atteros it happened in broad daylight it had clearly been premeditated the method of murder was the same the telephone lines were cut and the The culprit even used the same signature knot for the cord, an important detail that was kept out of the newspapers.

Btk was murdered again the same year. Nancy Fox, 25, was found in our house strangled with her own nylons on December 8, this time, although Btk did something different, he called on her behalf. murder to the police, we are not quite sure why, but this crime took place at night and the murderer had to break a window to get into the house as it differed from the other crime scenes. It's possible that Radar simply wanted to make sure he got the credit so his obsession with recognition became quite evident the following year when btk resumed his letter-writing campaign to the media.

It began with a document sent to a local television station in January 1978. His message was now clear, concise and erroneous. -free, how many do I have to kill before my name appears in the newspaper or receives national attention? The following month he sent another letter, this time to the Wichita Eagle Beacon. It contained a poem titled Oh Death to Nancy. He also made the first mention. of the mysterious x-factor that drove him to kill, but most importantly he claimed to have murdered seven people, not six, taking credit for Catherine Bright's death, although he did not name her, but remained inactive for the next eight years Except for an extremely close call to a woman named Anna Williams, who probably had to consider herself the luckiest person in Wichita, unbeknownst to her, Btk had selected her as his next target.

On April 28, 1979, he broke into her home. and waited for Williams to arrive, however she was held back and arrived home much later than Btk anticipated, frustrated and tired of waiting, he left before she returned but made sure to inform her what had happened. The assailant took one of her scarves and then sent it back along with a note that said, "Be glad you did it." Here because I was the case btk went silent during the first half of the 1980s. For some reason, the assailant not only moderated his murderous impulses but also stopped writing letters in 1979.

On the investigative side, the Police formed a task force that put together a list of hundreds of suspects and slowly narrowed them down until there was no one left. After approximately two years without success, the task force disbanded without new leads, more and more investigators were moved to other assignments, while btk was quickly becoming a cold case, many began to believe. that btk had disappeared from wichita one way or another, even his profile said that as a compulsive psychopath he would never stop killing voluntarily and that he was likely dead disabled or in prison, none of that was true, as it turned out while the police was looking for him, the assailant was still there, wisely, serving his community as a cub scout leader, compliance officer and even as a council member of the lutheran church of christ, interestingly, the only piece of communication he had with the police during the 1980s. he was actually denying his involvement in the triple murder of the fager family in 1987, although he expressed admiration for the real murderer at least, this showed the authorities that btk was neither dead nor in prison, since It turned out that the assailant was not so inactive.

As the authorities thought he was, he killed three more women, but the murders were different enough from his usual time, the police never linked them to btk first he was 53 years old, Marine Hedge in 1985, one of the assailant's neighbors, this It was his most daring crime, he thought because he knew it was too risky to target anyone in his immediate area. This is probably why he never claimed credit for the murder until he was caught after strangling her. The radar took him to her church, where he posed her in bondage positions and then took photographs of her. dumped his body in a ditch along a remote dirt road, it was the first time btk made an effort to not have his crime discovered and it occurred eight years after the last murder, so it was not surprising that the police of Wichita did not immediately assume the crime was related to his infamous serial killer, his next target, however, was much more in line with the assailant's usual approach.

On September 16, 1986, twenty-eight-year-old Vicky Wergerel was found in her home strangled with a pair of nylon stockings, why she was not considered a possible victim of Btk, we don't know, probably because this was before the feigaletta of 1987, so the authorities still assumed that Btk had missing. Then came another long period of rest for the killer radar to claim its tenth and final victim in January 1991. When he killed 62-year-old Dolores Davis with a sea hedge, he tried to conceal his crime by taking her body and throwing it under a bridge, although she was eventually discovered tied up and strangled.

Dolores Davis was also not considered a btk victim after her last murder. Raider went into a very long period of inactivity and the world did not hear from btk again for 14 years throughout the 1990s. The killer remained silent and the Btk case went cold. Her identity probably could have remained a mystery forever if Raider's craving for attention hadn't disappeared. He doesn't suddenly come back with a vengeance, most believe he was angry about an article published 30 years after the Otero murders that said Kansas students no longer remembered the name btk. In March 2004 he sent a new letter to the Wichita Eagle, this time claiming credit for the murder of Vikki Urgeral in 1986.

As evidence he included a copy of her driver's license and several photographs of her body that she had kept over all these decades, There was no doubt in the investigator's mind that the letter was genuine and the case went forward. hot once again fortunately for them there was no shortage of communication from the killer this time clearly the assailant felt he had been quiet long enough so he sent 11 messages in a year the police's main concern was that this renewed zeal could mean that btk was Preparing to kill again Raider provided many clues about his life in the messages he sent.

He claimed to have been born in 1939. He said that his father died in World War II and that he also served in the army. He said he used to do it. repair photocopiers and that he once operated a ham radio, most of the claims were false, but his goal was to talk to the authorities by showing them that even with his help they still couldn't catch btk, eventually the killer became too arrogant and committed a big mistake that led to his capture in a letter, he asked the police if a floppy disk could be traced, they said no, because of course it was, who in their right mind would have expected them to tell the truth in this situation, for any reason?

Why, the assailant trusted them so much? With the following statement he included a floppy disk in the drive. Police were able to recover a deleted Word file that still had metadata directing them to Christ Lutheran Church and pointed the finger at Dennis Rader after 30 long years investigators knew the name. from btk but they needed stronger evidence, fortunately for them the killer had left his DNA at several of the crime scenes, they obtained a subpoena for Kerry Rawson Raider's daughter's medical records and compared a routine pap smear to the DNA of the murderer. a family coincidence, kerry's father was btk,

dennis

rader

was finally arrested on february 25, 2005. according to the lead investigator, ken landwear raider was shocked that the police lied to him about the drive, especially landwear, whom the killer called by name and thought the two had a detailed report together, he later said in an interview that the floppy disk killed me after he overcame his feelings of betrayal, the investigation and subsequent trial went relatively smoothly.

The assailant confessed to all 10 murders and received 10 consecutive life sentences and will spend the rest of his days in a maximum security prison, so I'm not going to ask if he enjoyed that video, but I hope he found it interesting. If he did, hit the approve button below. Don't forget to check out my crime podcast. linked below and thanks for watching