21/08/2023
Dennis Lynn Rider, also known as BTK"bind, tortur, kill"/BTK Killer/BTK Strangler who was born on March 9, 1945 (78y/o) in Kansas, U.S. is an American serial killer who murdered ten people in Wichita and Park City, Kansas, between 1974 and 1991.
BEFORE GETTING INTO LEARNING ABOUT THE CASE LET'S LEARN ABOUT HIS PAST!
Dennis Rader was born on March 9, 1945, to Dorothea Mae Rader (née Cook) and William Elvin Rader, the eldest of four sons. Sources give his place of birth as either Columbus or Pittsburg, Kansas; he grew up in Wichita. Both parents worked long hours and paid little attention to their children at home; Rader later described feeling ignored by his mother in particular and resenting her for it.
From a young age, Rader harbored sadistic sexual fantasies about torturing "trapped and helpless" women.He also exhibited zoosadism by torturing, killing and hanging small animals.Rader acted out sexual fetishes for voyeurism, au******ic asphyxiation and cross-dressing; he often spied on female neighbors while dressed in women's clothing, including women's underwear that he had stolen, and masturbated with ropes or other bindings around his arms and neck.
Years later, during his "cooling off" periods between murders, Rader would take pictures of himself wearing women's clothes and a female mask while bound. He later admitted that he was pretending to be his victims as part of a sexual fantasy.However, Rader kept his sexual proclivities well-hidden, and he was widely regarded in his community as "normal, polite, and well mannered".
AND NOW TO THE CASE!
MURDERS
On January 15, 1974, four members of the Otero family were murdered in Wichita, Kansas.[34] The victims were Joseph Otero, age 38; Julie Otero, age 33; Joseph Otero Jr., age 9; and Josephine Otero, age 11. Their bodies were discovered by the family's three older children, Charlie, Danny, and Carmen, who had been at school at the time of the killings.After his 2005 arrest, Rader confessed to killing the Otero family.Rader wrote a letter that had been stashed inside an engineering book in the Wichita Public Library in October 1974, which described in detail the killing of the Otero family in January of that year.
Between the spring of 1974 and winter 1977, Rader killed three more women: Kathryn Bright (April 4, 1974), Shirley Vian Relford (March 17, 1977), and Nancy Fox (December 8, 1977).[37] Kevin Bright, the younger brother of Kathryn Bright, was also present during the home invasion which killed Kathryn.Kevin was strangled and shot before feigning death and escaping.Kevin Bright is thought to be the only surviving victim of the BTK attacks.In early 1978, Rader sent another letter to television station KAKE in Wichita, claiming responsibility for the murders of the Oteros, Bright, Vian Relford, and Fox.He suggested many possible names for himself, including the one that stuck: BTK. He demanded media attention in this second letter, and it was finally announced that Wichita did indeed have a serial killer at large. A poem was enclosed titled "Oh! Death to Nancy," a parody of the lyrics to the American folk song "O Death".In the letter, he claimed to be driven to kill by "factor X", which he characterized as a supernatural element that also motivated Jack the Ripper, the Son of Sam, and the Hillside Strangler murders.
He also intended to kill others, such as Anna Williams, who in 1979, aged 63, escaped death by returning home much later than expected. Rader explained during his confession that he became obsessed with Williams and was "absolutely livid" when she evaded him. He spent hours waiting at her home but became impatient and left when she did not return home from visiting friends.
Marine Hedge, aged 53, was found on May 5, 1985, at East 53rd Street North between North Webb Road and North Greenwich Road in Wichita. Rader killed her on April 27, and took her dead body to his church, Christ Lutheran Church, where he was the president of the church council. There, he photographed her body in various bo***ge positions. Rader had previously stored black plastic sheets and other materials at the church in preparation for the murder and then later dumped the body in a remote ditch. He had called his plan "Project Cookie".
In 1988, after the murders of three members of the Fager family in Wichita, a letter was received from someone claiming to be the BTK killer, in which the author of the letter denied being the perpetrator of the Fager murders. The author credited the killer with having done "admirable work." It was not proven until 2005 that this letter was, in fact, written by Rader. He is not considered by police to have committed this crime.
Two women Rader stalked in the 1980s and one whom he stalked in the mid-1990s filed restraining orders against him. One of them also changed her address to avoid him.
His final victim, Dolores E. Davis, was found on February 1, 1991, at West 117th Street North and North Meridian Street in Park City. Rader had killed her on January 19.
COLD CASE
By 2004, the investigation of the BTK Killer was considered a cold case. Then, Rader initiated a series of 11 communications to the local media. This activity led directly to his arrest in February 2005.
In March 2004, The Wichita Eagle received a letter from someone using the name Bill Thomas Killman. The author of the letter claimed that he had murdered Vicki Wegerle on September 16, 1986, and enclosed photographs of the crime scene and a photocopy of her driver's license, which had been stolen at the time of the crime.Before this, it had not been definitively established that Wegerle was killed by BTK.DNA collected from under Wegerle's fingernails provided police with previously unknown evidence. They then began DNA testing hundreds of men in an effort to find the serial killer.Altogether, more than 1,300 DNA samples were taken and later destroyed by court order.
In May 2004, television station KAKE in Wichita received a letter with chapter headings for the "BTK Story", fake IDs, and a word puzzle.On June 9, a package was found taped to a stop sign at the corner of First and Kansas roads in Wichita. It had graphic descriptions of the Otero murders and a sketch labeled "The Sexual Thrill Is My Bill."Also enclosed was a chapter list for a proposed book titled The BTK Story, which mimicked a story written in 1999 by Court TV crime writer David Lohr. Chapter One was titled "A Serial Killer Is Born." In July, a package dropped into the return slot at a public library contained more bizarre material, including the claim that he was responsible for the death of 19-year-old Jake Allen in Argonia, Kansas, earlier that month. This claim was false, and the death was ruled a su***de.
After his capture, Rader admitted in his interrogation that he had been planning to kill again and he had set a date, October 2004, and was stalking his intended victim.In October 2004, a manila envelope was dropped into a UPS box in Wichita. It had many cards with images of terror and bo***ge of children pasted on them, a poem threatening the life of lead investigator Lt. Ken Landwehr, and a false autobiography with many details about Rader's life. These details were later released to the public.In December 2004, Wichita police received another package from the BTK killer.This time, the package was found in Wichita's Murdock Park. It had the driver's license of Nancy Fox, which was noted as stolen from the crime scene, as well as a doll that was symbolically bound at the hands and feet, and had a plastic bag tied over its head.
In January 2005, Rader attempted to leave a cereal box in the bed of a pickup truck at a Home Depot in Wichita, but the box was discarded by the truck's owner.It was later retrieved from the trash after Rader asked what had become of it in a later message. Surveillance tape of the parking lot from that date revealed a distant figure driving a black Jeep Cherokee leaving the box in the pickup. In February 2005, more postcards were sent to KAKE, and another cereal box left at a rural location was found to contain another bound doll.
In his letters to police, Rader asked if his writings, if put on a floppy disk, could be traced or not. The police answered his question in a newspaper ad posted in The Wichita Eagle, saying it would be safe to use the disk. On February 16, 2005, Rader sent a purple 1.44-Megabyte Memorex floppy disk to Fox affiliate KSAS-TV in Wichita.Also enclosed were a letter, a gold-colored necklace with a large medallion, and a photocopy of the cover of Rules of Prey, a 1989 novel by John Sandford about a serial killer.
Police found metadata embedded in a deleted Microsoft Word document that was, unknown to Rader, still stored on the floppy disk.The metadata contained the words "Christ Lutheran Church", and the document was marked as last modified by "Dennis".An Internet search determined that a "Dennis Rader" was president of the church council.When investigators drove by Rader's house, a black Jeep Cherokee—the type of vehicle seen in the Home Depot surveillance footage—was parked outside.This was strong circumstantial evidence against Rader, but they needed more direct evidence to detain him.
Police obtained a warrant to test a pap smear taken from Rader's daughter at the Kansas State University medical clinic. DNA tests showed a "familial match" between the pap smear and the sample from Wegerle's fingernails; this indicated that the killer was closely related to Rader's daughter, and combined with the other evidence was enough for police to arrest Rader.
