Date apprehendedFebruary 25, 2005Imprisoned atDennis Lynn Rader (born March 9, 1945) is an American known as BTK or the BTK Strangler. He gave himself the name 'BTK' (for 'Bind, Torture, Kill'). Between 1974 and 1991, Rader killed ten people in the metro area.Rader sent taunting letters to police and newspapers describing the details of his crimes. After a decade-long hiatus, Rader resumed sending letters in 2004, leading to his 2005 arrest and subsequent guilty plea. He is serving ten consecutive life sentences at in Kansas. Contents.Life and career Dennis Rader was born on March 9, 1945.
Though born in, he grew up in. He has three brothers: Paul, Bill, and Jeff.He had a for women's underwear and stole underpants from his victims and wore them himself. Rader spent 1966–1970 in the. Upon discharge, he moved to, where he worked in the meat department of a Leekers supermarket where his mother was a. He married Paula Dietz on May 22, 1971, and they had two children.
Evil Dudes In HistoryJack The RipperHitlerRobespierreTed BundyRasputinVlad the ImpalerStalin, Part 1 of 2Stalin, Part 2 of 2Dennis “BTK” RaderIvan the Terrible, Part 1Josef Mengele, Part 1 of 2Josef Mengele, Part 2 of 2Caligula, Part 1 of 2Caligula, Part 2 of 2It’s time for Kevin, Toren, and Joe to return to their Evil Dudes In History. Some things Rader claims happened at the Otero home can be verified using crime-scene photos and evidence. What can’t be verified is the conversation BTK says took place with the Oteros.
He attended in, earning an in electronics in 1973. He then enrolled at, and graduated in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in administration of justice.Rader worked as an assembler for the, an outdoor supply company. He worked at the Wichita-based office of from 1974 to 1988, where he installed as part of his job, in many cases for homeowners concerned about the BTK killings.
Rader was a field operations supervisor for the Wichita area in 1989, before the. In May 1991, he became a dogcatcher and compliance officer in Park City. In this position, neighbors recalled him as being sometimes overzealous and extremely strict.
One neighbor complained he killed her dog for no reason.Rader was a member of Christ Lutheran Church and had been elected president of the church council. He was also a leader. On July 26, 2005, after Rader's arrest, his wife was granted an 'emergency divorce' (waiving the normal waiting period). Case history Murders On January 15, 1974, four members of the Otero family were murdered in Wichita, Kansas. The victims were father Joseph Otero, aged 38, mother Julie Otero, age 33, and two children: Joseph Otero Jr. Age 9, and Josephine Otero age 11.
Their bodies were discovered by the family's eldest child, Charlie Otero, who was in 10th grade at the time, as he returned home from school. 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 in October 1974, which described in detail the killing of the Otero family in January of that year.In early 1978, he sent another letter to television station in Wichita, claiming responsibility for the murders of the Oteros, Kathryn Bright, Shirley Vian and Nancy 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 '.' 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 had killed her on April 27, 1985, and he took her dead body to his church, the Christ Lutheran Church, where he was the president of the church council.
There, he photographed her body in various bondage 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. Additionally, two of the women Rader had in the 1980s and one he had stalked in the mid-1990s filed against him; one of them also moved away.His final victim, Dolores E. Davis, was found on February 1, 1991, at West 117th Street North and North Meridian Street in Park City.
![Photos Photos](http://disturbinghorror.com/sitebuilder/images/Dennis-Rader-Serial-Killer-Himself-6-285x226.jpg)
She had been killed by Rader on January 19, 1991. Cold case By 2004, the investigation of the BTK Killer was considered a. Then, Rader began a series of 11 communications to the local media that led directly to his arrest in February 2005. In March 2004, received a letter from someone using the return address 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, which had been stolen at the time of the crime. Before this, it had not been definitively established that Wegerle was killed by BTK.
Collected from under Wegerle's fingernails provided police with previously unknown evidence. They then began hundreds of men in an effort to find the serial killer. Altogether, over 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, 2004, a package was found taped to a stop sign at the corner of First and Kansas 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 crime writer.
Chapter One was titled 'A Serial Killer Is Born.' In July, a package was dropped into the return slot at the downtown public library containing more bizarre material, including the claim that he was responsible for the death of 19-year-old Jake Allen in, earlier that month. This claim was false, and the death was ruled a suicide. 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 box in Wichita. It had many cards with images of terror and bondage 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 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 leaving the box in the pickup. In February, more postcards were sent to KAKE, and another cereal box left at a rural location was found to contain another bound doll, apparently meant to symbolize the murder of 11-year-old Josephine Otero. In his letters to police, Rader asked if his writings, if put on a, 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 floppy disk to affiliate in Wichita. Also enclosed were a letter, a gold-colored necklace with a large medallion, and a photocopy of the cover of, a 1989 novel about a serial killer.Police found embedded in a 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. From the Home Depot incident, the police also knew BTK owned a black Jeep Cherokee. When investigators drove by Rader's house, they noticed a black Jeep Cherokee parked outside.The police had strong against Rader, but they needed more direct evidence to detain him.
They obtained a warrant to test the DNA of a Rader's daughter had taken at the medical clinic when she was a student there. The DNA of the pap smear was processed by the at their lab in Topeka, and demonstrated a familial match to the sample taken from Wegerle's fingernails. This indicated that the killer was closely related to Rader's daughter, and was the evidence the police needed to make an arrest. Arrest Rader was arrested while driving near his home in Park City shortly after noon on February 25, 2005. An officer asked, 'Mr.
Rader, do you know why you're going downtown?' Rader replied, 'Oh, I have suspicions why.' , the, the, and agents searched Rader's home and vehicle, seizing evidence including computer equipment, a pair of black pantyhose retrieved from a shed, and a cylindrical container.
The church he attended, his office at City Hall, and the main branch of the Park City library were also searched. At a the next morning, Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams announced, 'the bottom line: BTK is arrested.' Legal proceedings On February 28, 2005, Rader was charged with 10 counts of first degree murder.
Soon after his arrest, the cited an anonymous source alleging Rader had confessed to other murders in addition to those with which he had been connected;the Sedgwick County district attorney denied this but refused to say whether Rader made any confessions or if investigators were looking into Rader's possible involvement in more unsolved killings. On March 5, news sources claimed to have verified by multiple sources that Rader had confessed to the 10 murders he was charged with, but no other ones.On March 1, Rader's bail was set at US$10 million, and a was appointed to represent him.
On May 3, the judge entered not-guilty pleas on Rader's behalf, as Rader did not speak at his arraignment; however, on June 27, the scheduled trial date, Rader changed his plea to guilty. He described the murders in detail, and made no apologies.At Rader's August 18 sentencing, victims' families made statements, after which Rader apologized in a rambling thirty-minute monologue that the prosecutor likened to an acceptance speech. His statement has been described as an example of an often-observed phenomenon among: their inability to understand the emotional content of language.
He was sentenced to 10 consecutive, with a minimum of 175 years. Kansas had no death penalty at the time of the murders. On August 19, he was moved to the.Rader talked about innocuous topics such as the weather during the 40-minute drive to El Dorado, but began to cry when the victims' families' statements from the court proceedings came on the radio. He is now in for his protection (with one hour of exercise per day, and showers three times per week). This will likely continue indefinitely. Beginning in 2006, he was allowed access to television and radio, to read magazines, and other privileges for good behavior. Further investigations Following Rader's arrest, police in Wichita, Park City and several surrounding cities looked into unsolved cases with the cooperation of the state police and the FBI.
They particularly focused on cases after 1994, when the death penalty was reinstated in Kansas. Police in surrounding states such as Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas also investigated cold cases that fit Rader's pattern to some extent. The, and local jurisdictions at Rader's former duty stations checked into unsolved cases during Rader's time in the service.After exhaustive investigations, none of these agencies discovered any further murders attributable to Rader, confirming early suspicions that Rader would have taken credit for any additional murders that he had committed. The ten known murders are now believed to be the only murders for which Rader is actually responsible, although Wichita police are fairly certain that Rader stalked and researched a number of other potential victims.
This includes one person who was saved when Rader called off his planned attack upon his arrival near the target's home due to the presence of construction and road crews nearby. Rader stated in his police interview that 'there are a lot of lucky people,' meaning that he had thought about and developed various levels of murder plans for other victims. Evaluation by Robert Mendoza Massachusetts psychologist Robert Mendoza was hired by Rader's court-appointed public defenders to conduct a psychological evaluation for Rader, and determine if an insanity-based defense might be viable.
He conducted an interview after Rader pleaded guilty on June 27. NBC claimed Rader knew the interview might be on TV, but this was false according to the Sedgwick County Sheriff's Office. Rader mentioned the interview during his sentencing statement. On October 25, 2005, the Kansas attorney general filed a petition to sue Mendoza and Tali Waters, co-owners of Cambridge Forensic Consultants, LLC, for breach of contract, claiming that they intended to benefit financially from the use of information obtained through involvement in Rader's defense. On May 10, 2007, Mendoza the case for US$30,000 with no admission of wrongdoing.