BTK Strangler: Dennis Rader

Dennis Lynn Rader, born March 9, 1945, had been penalized to serve ten consecutive life sentences with no chance of parole for more than 40 years having been guilty of murdering ten (10) people in Sedgwick County, Kansas between 1974 and 1991. Rader became known to be the BTK Strangler, which stands for Bind, Torture and Kill, an apt description for his modus operandi. Soon after the killings, letters were written to the police and to local news outlets, boasting of the crimes and knowledge of the details. He was then arrested in 2005 and subsequently convicted after the letters have resumed in year 2004.

Biography Rader was the eldest of the four sons of William Elvin and Dorothea Mae Rader. He grew up in Wichita, where he committed his murders, and graduated from Riverview School and later Wichita Heights High School. Rader also attended Kansas Wesleyan University and spent four years in the U. S. Air Force. Rader moved to Park City, a suburb seven miles north of Wichita. There he worked at the meat department of Leekers IGA supermarket where his mother also worked as the bookkeeper. On May 22, 1971, he married Paula Dietz.

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In 1973, he earned an associate’s degree in Electronics at Butler County Community, El Dorado. That same time, he enrolled at Wichita State University and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Administration of Justice in 1979. He led a Cub Scout troop and was active in his Lutheran Church. Rader has two grown children with Dietz. From 1972 to 1973, he worked for the Coleman Company as an assembler, as had two of his early victims. From November 1974, until being fired in July 1988, Rader worked ay a Wichita-based office of ADT Security Services.

It was believed that this is where he has learned how home security systems work, and how to defeat them, enabling him to break into the homes of his victims without being caught. In 1991, Rader was hired to be the supervisor of the Compliance Department at Park City. On March 2, 2005, the Park City council fired Rader for failure to report to work. By this time, he had been detained by the authorities for being charged of murder. On July 27, 2005, Sedgwick County District Judge Eric Yost waived the usual 60-day waiting period and granted an immediate divorce for Paula Rader, being in accord that her mental health was in danger.

Paula Rader said in her divorce petition that her mental and physical condition has been adversely affected by their marriage and that her husband had failed to perform material marital dues, possibly because of him being in custody. The 34-year marriage was ended, after Rader having not contested to the divorce. Bind, Torture and Kill Rader casually described his victims as his ‘projects’ and at one point likened his murders to euthanizing animals. He had referred to a ‘hit kit,’ a briefcase or bowling bag where he would put the items he would use during the murders.

This includes guns, tape, rope and handcuffs. He also had ‘hit clothes’ that he would wear for the crimes and dispose it thereafter. Naturally, the American serial killer developed a pattern for his murders. He would wander the city, find potential victims, stalk them until he knew the patter of their lives and strike at the best time to do so. If his victims were his co-workers, he would get acquainted with them making it easier for him to track him down. He would often stalk several victims at a time, so he could continue the hunt if one did not work out.

At the time of the murder, Rader would cut the phone lines, defeat the home security system and break into the house, and hide until his victim came home. He would often calm his victims by pretending to be a rapist. He said many of his victims were more cooperative after he said this, and even helped him. Instead, Rader would kill them. Apparently, Rader bound, tortured and killed his victims. He would strangle them until they lose consciousness, let them revive, and then strangle them again. “He would repeat the process over and over, forcing them to experience near-death, becoming sexually aroused at the sight of their struggles.

Finally, Rader would strangle them to death and masturbate to ejaculation into an article of their clothing, usually underwear” (Smith 2006). Apprehension and Conviction One thousand one hundred (1100) DNA samples were taken by the police testing hundreds of men trying to find the serial killer. Rader’s daughter had a DNA sample tested after law enforcement had linked her father’s name to the crimes. Rader had left a note to the police asking them to reply by a newspaper ad, if it was alright for him to give them more information about himself via floppy disk and not get caught.

The police had then replied, via the newspaper ad, that it was alright and that there was no way ok knowing who sent it, when in fact there was. On January 2005, Rader came to his pastor with a floppy disk saying he had the agenda of a church council meeting and needed to run off copies on a printer. He had inserted the disk into a computer thinking it was ordinary but unfortunately, that move may have cracked the BTK serial killer case to the police. On the last day of February 2005, Pastor Michael Clark welcomed four law enforcement officers with a search warrant and he was asked who had access to the computer.

An electronic imprint in a disk sent to a Wichita TV station by the BTK killer had been traced to the church. It appears that a computer disk becomes the key evidence to charging the then 59-year-old church council president with 10 murders that terrorized the city for over three decades. The authorities had him caught; they quickly got the BTK’s name and tracked him down. The police had been tightlipped about why they believe Rader is the BTK killer, but some details have emerged indeed pointing to him as the murderer.

Among them are the disk, DNA samples, surveillance and mocking letters. Rader, who was held in lieu of $10 million bail, was arrested on February 25, 2005 in Park City. One June 27, 2005, he pleaded guilty to his crimes and gave a graphic account of his crimes in court (Serial). Rader was suspected of eight murders committed in the 1970s and 80s but authorities have linked two additional victims to the serial killer. He was sentenced to serve 10 consecutive life sentences (one for each life he took), without parole for 175 years, on August 18, 2005.

The Victims Rader’s victims include: ? 1974: Four members of one family (Joseph Otero, his wife Julie Otero, and two of their five children: Joseph Otero II and Josephine Otero) and a separate victim, Kathryn Bright ? 1977: Shirley Vian and Nancy Fox ? 1985: Marine Hedge ? 1986: Vicki Wegerle ? 1991: Dolores Davis Rader said he did have other intended victims, notably Anna Williams, 63, who in 9179 escaped death by returning home much later than he expected. The Letters Rader was particularly known for sending taunting letters to police and newspapers.

There were several communications from BTK during 1974 to 1979. The first was a letter that had been stashed in an engineering book in the Wichita Public Library in October 1974 that described in detail the killing of the Otero family in January of that year. In early 1978 he sent another letter to television station KAKE in Wichita claiming responsibility for the murders of the Oteros, Shirley Vian, Nancy Fox and another unidentified victim assumed to be Kathryn Bright. He suggested a number of 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. In 1979 he sent two identical packages, one to an intended victim who was not at home when he broke into her house and the other to KAKE. These featured a poem, "Oh Anna Why Didn't You Appear," a drawing of what he had intended to do to his victim, as well as some small items he had pilfered from Williams' home. Apparently, Rader had waited for several hours inside the home of Anna Williams.

Not realizing that she had gone to her sister's house for the evening, he eventually got tired of the long wait and left. 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 he denied being the perpetrator of this crime. He did credit the killer with having done admirable work. It was not proven until 2005 that this letter was in fact written by the genuine BTK killer, Rader, although he is not considered by police to have committed this crime. Arrest

Sometime during February 2005, police obtained a warrant for the medical records of Rader’s daughter. A tissue sample seized at this time was tested for DNA and provided a familial match with semen at an earlier BTK crime scene. This, along with other evidence gathered prior to and during the surveillance, gave police probable cause for an arrest. Rader was stopped while driving near his home and taken into custody shortly after noon on February 25, 2005. Immediately after, law enforcement officials converged on Rader’s residence near the intersection of I-135 and 61st Street North.

Once in hand, Rader’s home and vehicle were searched, and evidence was collected. Rader talked to the police for several hours, although he confessed almost immediately. Twelve DVDs were filled recording his confessions. On February 26, 2005, the Wichita Police Department announced that they were holding Dennis Lynn Rader as the prime suspect in the BTK killings in a press conference. The Reason Behind the Killings After having taken into custody, Rader admits through local police department interview that he committed the crimes “to satisfy his sexual fantasies” (Douglas 2007).

Works Cited Beattie, R. Nightmare In Wichita: The Hunt for the BTK Strangler. New American Library, 2005. Brunker, M. Neighbors Paint Mixed Picture of BTK Suspect. MSNBC News Services & The Associated Press. 27 February 2005. Douglas, J. E. Inside the Mind of BTK: The true Story Behind Thirty Years of Hunting for the Wichita Serial Killer. Jossey Bass Wiley, 2007. Serial Killer Next Door – Confessions of the BTK Killer. CNN. 27 June 2005. Smith, C. The BTK Murders: Inside the "Bind Torture Kill" Case that Terrified America's Heartland. St. Martin's True Crime, 2006.

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