Childhood, Adolescence, Adulthood pre-1974.

Dennis Rader was born in a quiet corner of Kansas, close to where Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri all meet, on March 9, 1945. He was the first of four sons born to William and Dorothea Rader. He was baptized at Zion Lutheran Church in Pittsburg, Kansas. His father was a member of the US Marine Corps, who later worked for the electric utility KG&E starting in 1948. The family moved to the largest city in Kansas, Wichita, when Dennis was a young boy. The Raders settled into a modest but pleasant home on N. Seneca Street, which remained continually as a Rader household until sold in 2005.

As a child, Dennis Rader appeared outwardly normal and unremarkable. He joined the Boy Scouts as a youth and participated in church youth group activities. He attended Riverview Elementary School, where he was an average to mediocre student with withdrawn tendencies. By his own admission, he says he developed fantasies about bondage, control and torture from an early age, while still in grade school. As he grew older he dreamed of tying girls up and having his way with them. The Mouseketeer Annette Funicello was one of his favorite targets for imaginary bondage. He admits to having killed cats and dogs such as by hanging them as a youth. He learned he had to keep his developing inner world of bondage, torture and death a secret from everyone, and he did a good job of doing so.

Those who knew him personally describe a quiet and polite young man who preferred to keep to himself. Dennis Rader was not a joiner or known to be very socially active in high school. The young Dennis showed no interest in the music of the times. One friend described him as utterly lacking a sense of humor, but tending to be studious and focused. He was described as a person who chose his words before speaking, and who would give you his full attention as he spoke.

Dennis Rader graduated from Wichita Heights High School, class of 1963. In his adolescence he had employment working in a grocery store. It wasn't until 1965 that he entered Kansas Wesleyan College in Salina, too far away from Wichita to live at home. He was a mediocre student with poor grades. In the summer of 1966 at age 21 Rader joined the US Air Force, apparently to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War.

Rader was first sent to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas for basic training. He spent time at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas while doing technical training there. In early 1967 Rader was stationed at Brookley Air Force Base in Mobile, Alabama and appears to have been there until January, 1968, when he was sent to Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa in the west Pacific. (Keep in mind that Air Force personnel typically travel quite a bit regardless of where they are based.)

Rader remained stationed in Okinawa for six months. In July 1968 he was moved to mainland Japan, stationed at the large Tachikawa Air Base located near Tokyo. He appears to have been based there until the end of his service in 1970. By his own description, he also spent time in Korea, Greece and Turkey while serving in the Air Force.

Rader's four years on active duty in the Air Force appear to have been unremarkble. He attained the rank of sargeant and worked in the installation of antenna equipment, among other tasks. One former buddy from those times was totally shocked when he found out Rader was BTK in 2005. Dennis was just one of the guys, he said, just sort of blended in. From his later admissions, Rader says he did troll for victims during those years but didn't attack anyone. He did use prostitutes while in Asia, but says he was disappointed they wouldn't participate in any bondage activities with him. Rader received the Air Force Good Conduct Medal, the Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon and the National Defense Service Medal, was discharged from active duty in the summer of 1970 and returned to his home town of Wichita, Kansas. He would serve two more years in the reserves.

Less than a year after his return to Wichita, on May 22, 1971 Dennis Rader and Paula Dietz were married. Paula was also from the same area and had attended the same high school. She was also a fellow Lutheran. Dennis was 26, Paula was 23 when they got married. They settled in Park City, not far from the Rader home in north Wichita. Dennis was working in the meat department of an IGA supermarket, Paula was a bookkeeper. In 1972 Rader went to work at the Coleman Co., a manufacturer of camping supplies and Wichita's largest employer at the time. He worked 13 months there until July 1973. Rader then found employment with Cessna, manufacturer of small aircraft. He was also attending Butler County Community College in El Dorado, and earned an Associate's (2 year) degree in Electronics in 1973.

In the fall of 1973 Rader began his studies at Wichita State University. It would take him six more years of night school to earn his degree. He was a poor student, even by his own description, a chronic C minus or D level. He couldn't spell and may have had a learning disability reflected in his unusually bad written grammar. In late 1973 he was let go by Cessna. He found himself in a low frame of mind, unemployed, unhappy, with time on his hands. He slipped deeper into the fantasy world he had known since childhood and wanted to know: what would it feel like to strangle somebody to death?

Next chapter: 1974

The 1980s

If Dennis Rader had enjoyed all the publicity BTK was getting in the late 1970s, he must have grown increasingly wary of being caught. Ahead in the game, he knew when to fold it. Nothing more was heard from the killer publicly until 2004, except for one letter that was not officially acknowledged to have come from BTK in 1988. Rader continued his trolling while becoming more active in his church and also became a Cub Scout leader when his son was old enough. In fact, son Brian would eventually attain the status of Eagle Scout, undoubtedly with ample encouragement and guidance from his father. Rader never utilized his degree in Administation of Justice from WSU, but was known to have envied becoming a police officer and was also reportedly involved at times in reserve officer programs as a volunteer.

It is impossible to understand the story of Dennis Rader unless one has some knowledge of what a psychopath is. A psychopath is a person who is incapable of empathy for other beings. They are self-centered to the extreme that no one else matters unless someone serves a purpose or potential purpose for the psychopath. This is a person who has no problems with hurting others, no guilt, shame or remorse. It is a person who is deceptive, lies freely and skillfully without shame or regret. Dennis Rader from his youth learned how to live in two worlds, the conventional, social realm everyone lives in and his own private world of torture and death. He was extremely skillful in separating these two worlds, what is known as compartmentalizing. He could go out and commit the most atrocious murder, and come home like nothing had happened. It was like changing clothes or switching to a different channel.

By 1985 as far as anyone knows, it had been a number of years since the last kill. Rader was a busy family man, a person with no criminal record, someone apparently religious and helpful at church. Despite all this he took great lengths to pull off his next murder. He was now 40 years old, his son was 9 and his daughter 6. Marine Hedge, 53, was a widowed neighbor who lived on the same street in Park City as the Raders. She was a petite, friendly woman, mother of four grown children, who had lost her husband Thomas in the past year. In the 1970s the Raders had purchased their small home on Independence Street. During their walks Dennis and Paula would sometimes wave to Marine, who enjoyed gardening around the home as did Dennis.

On the weekend of April 27, 1985, Rader was attending a Boy Scout camp-out just outside of Wichita. He left camp in the evening, with the pretext of having a headache and needing to get to town to buy something for it. He parked his car by a bowling alley in the city and bought himself a beer. He swished the liquid in his mouth and spit it out, and also deliberately got some beer on his clothing so he would have a smell like he had been drinking. Calling a cab, he pretended to be drunk and instructed the driver to take him to a park in Park City so he could walk it off before arriving home. The park adjoined the backyard of the Hedge property. Rader was disappointed to see Marine's car in the carport, and assumed she was home. He cut the phone line and quietly pried open a rear door using a screwdriver. It turned out that no one was home as he had hoped, and after a while a car pulled up and Rader hid in a bedroom closet. Marine Hedge and a male friend entered the home. The man left for the night around 1 a.m. Rader waited while Marine went to bed and fell asleep.

Rader crept out of the closet. He flicked on the bathroom light and then pounced on Marine in the bed, manually choking the 100 pound woman to death. However, his fantasy-driven outing was far from over. He dragged the body with the bedding to her car and put her in the trunk. Rader drove directly to his church, where he was a person so trusted that he had the keys to the building. He dragged the body underneath some trees and entered the building down to the basement, where he taped black plastic over the basement windows so no one could see inside. He then dragged the body down into the basement and photographed it in various poses. It was getting late and Rader hurriedly returned the body to the car trunk and took off. He found a dumping place in a ditch along a dirt road several miles outside of Park City, and semi-concealed the body under some trimmings. He left knotted pantyhose by the body, which apparently had been used for some purpose during the night. At one point Rader had dropped the car key onto the dashboard and the key slid down and wedged under the windshield. He used a rock to smash a corner of the windshield to retrieve the key.

By now it was getting light and Rader hurriedly made his way back to where he had left his car in Wichita. He parked Marine's car there after wiping it down for fingerprints, and returned to the Scout camp he had deserted earlier. He was never connected to this crime until some 20 years later. He still had those photographs in his collection.

In September, 1986 Rader had his eye on Vicki Wegerle, a 28 year old mother of two. He would walk by her house, hearing strains of piano music as Vickie played. On September 16 he took some time out for a "PJ" or project, as he called his murder prospects. Sometime after 10 a.m. he showed up at Vickie's door, dressed up like a telephone repairman complete with hardhat. He somehow managed to get Vicki to allow him inside the home to check the phone line. He fiddled with her phone with an improvised testing gadget and then informed her she was going to be tied up. Presumably using a gun, he forced her into a bedroom and attempted to tie her up, but she gave him a fierce battle scratching him in the process. Rader prevailed in the physical fight and secured her with ropes, then proceeded to strangle her to death using pantyhose as a ligature. He photographed the dying body in a few poses and hastily left in the Wegerle car. Vicki had warned him that her husband would be arriving home shortly. Rader later stated that had the husband come home, he would have been killed also.

Bill Wegerle indeed came home soon afterward and even saw his own car going in the opposite direction away from the house. He couldn't identify the driver, but it didn't appear to be Vicki. His 2 year old son Brandon was still in the living room, unattended. Bill couldn't find Vicki at first, who was on the bedroom floor behind the bed, but finally did after a while. She was rushed to a hospital with paramedics desperately trying to revive her, but was pronounced dead a short time later.

BTK meanwhile had driven around the city for a while disposing of evidence, then returned to the area near the house and parked the Wegerle's car a couple blocks from their home. He exited the area on foot and returned to his own car nearby. Changing clothes, he escaped all detection for this crime and was never suspected of it.

Bill Wegerle's life soon took a turn for the drastic. Not only had he lost his wife and mother of his two children, he was faced with a hostile and skeptical police and public who never seemed satisfied that he was innocent of this crime. This dark cloud of suspicion hung over him for the next 18 years. Nobody had heard from BTK in eight years and the police discounted this as a BTK crime. No charges were ever filed against Bill, but the anguish of those years was keen. (Photo and a story about the Wegerle family from CBSnews.com and the program 48 Hours Mystery).

At the very end of 1987 another notorious family murder occurred in Wichita, this time three members of the Phillip Fager family: the father, Phillip, and two teenage daughters. A contractor who worked for the Fagers was arrested in Florida after leaving the murder scene in the Fager car and using a credit card stolen from them. Bill Butterworth was eventually acquitted by a jury due to a lack of physical evidence, but the police remain satisfied that he was the murderer. A letter was received by Mrs. Fager in early 1988 from BTK, who stated he did not do this crime but admired the work of the man who did. This was never confirmed as a genuine BTK communication until police found a copy of the original letter in Rader's stash 17 years later. He also had his own illustration of what he thought had happened that day to one of the girls, but it was not accurate to the real crime scene.

In 1988 Rader succeeded in getting himself fired from ADT Security. The official reason stated by the company was that he was not getting his work quota done. The varying reports from co-workers describe a man who could be difficult to work with but was customer-oriented. One description of him from that time paints a picture of a man who wanted to be a police officer but had been forced to settle for what Rader saw as the inferior position of being an alarm installer. In any case, he was out of a steady job. There is a record of Rader working for the US Census Bureau for several months in 1989 as a field operations supervisor. Apparently he was promoted to a state supervisory position after that in connection with the 1990 census. It afforded him ample opportunity to travel within Kansas, which Rader says he used to add more potential projects in various locations around the state.

Next: 1990-2003

1974

In January, 1974 Dennis Rader was in between jobs and restless. His wife worked at the VA Hospital in Wichita and didn't like driving in snow and ice, so Dennis would sometimes drive her to and from work. He enjoyed trolling, which consisted of driving or walking around certain neighborhoods or school campuses where there would be women to observe. He would focus in on a good prospect and enter into his fantasy realm of bondage, torture and death, imagining what he would do to her. Bind them, torture them, kill them.

There was a new Hispanic family that had moved into a corner house at Edgemoor and Murdock, and one day while dropping Paula off he spied Julie Otero, age 34, and her daughter Josephine, age 11. He had a thing for Hispanic women, admired their beauty and dark hair.

Rader devised a plan. He gathered together his hit kit, consisting of a gun, cords, knives, various tools for breaking and entering. He observed the Otero house for a time, getting an idea of when people left or returned, what their daily schedule was like. On the morning of January 15, he could wait no longer. After 8 a.m. he came around the house, snuck into the yard and cut the phone line. Hesitating at the back door, unsure if he could go through with it, he barged in. Things were not as he had expected. The man of the house, Joe Otero, 38, was still home, as were Julie, Josephine and Joey, the 9 year old son. Their rather vicious dog was in the house also. Rader seized control of the situation, ordering Joey to put the dog in the back yard at gunpoint. He somehow was able to control all four people using the gun. He told them he was a wanted criminal and needed money, food and a car to escape. At first Joe was dumbfounded and asked him if this was some kind of a joke set up by his brother-in-law. Rader ordered everyone to lie down in the living room, then changed his mind and sent them all into a bedroom. Using his vagrant ruse, he was able to disalarm the Oteros enough to get them all tied up.

However everything changed when Rader put a bag over Joe's head. Joe fought hard, tearing holes in the bag. Rader had to devise a cord ligature to subdue him and kill him. He attempted to manually strangle Julie, but it took considerably longer and much more effort to strangle someone than it did in the movies. Julie passed out, but revived after a time. The second strangulation attempt worked. She had begged Rader not to kill the children, and told him, "God have mercy on your soul".

Nine year old Joey was the next one to die. Rader herded him into his bedroom and did him in through strangulation and suffocation. He apparently rolled off the bed and died facedown on the bedroom floor. Rader says he brought a chair into the bedroom and sat there to watch the boy die.


Eleven year old Josie was the final one. After a failed attempt at strangulation she revived. Rader forced her to walk down to the basement. He put a noose around her neck and informed her she would be going to heaven to join the others. He had asked her for a camera, but she said they didn't have one. Josie was hanged from a sewer pipe in the basement, left partially disrobed. Rader then masturbated over her bare legs, leaving some semen on the pipe behind her.

Afterwards Rader tidied up a bit, collected his things and left after a time. He took Joe's watch and a small radio. He got into their Oldsmobile station wagon and drove to a nearby supermarket, Dillon's, and parked the car. He stealthily tossed the car keys onto the roof of Dillon's and exited the area on foot. After that he claims he walked to his own car, but realized his knife was missing. He claims to have driven back to the Otero house, parked his car in their garage, and then retrieved the knife from the yard.

Rader had no idea that the Oteros had three other older children, all of whom had left for school before his arrival. Charlie, 15, Daniel, 14 and Carmen, 13 were the ones who found their parents dead when they arrived home from school that afternoon.

In April, 1974 Rader was stalking a woman named Kathryn Bright, 21. He had seen her one day entering the home she rented in Wichita. On April 4 he broke into the home via the back porch door. He hid in a bedroom. Around 2 pm Kathryn arrived home, accompanied by her brother Kevin who was 19 years old. Kevin didn't live there, but had gone with his sister that day to the bank. Rader startled them by emerging from the bedroom pointing a gun at them. He recited the same story he had told the Oteros, he was a wanted criminal from California on his way to New York, and needed a car and money. Rader forced the two of them in a bedroom, where Kathryn was tied up by Kevin forced at gunpoint and/or by Rader himself. He attempted to tie Kevin up in another room, but he hadn't brought his best hit kit materials that day and had to improvise from materials found in the home. Kevin worked his way loose and got into a vicious fight for his life with Rader, nearly succeeding in taking the gun from him.

Rader grabbed back the gun and got off a shot that hit Kevin in the face. Still fighting, Kevin made one more attempt to overpower Rader but got shot a second time in the head. Stunned and bleeding, Kevin appeared to be dead or dying and Rader went back to work on Kathryn. She gave him a powerful fight also, but in order to end the scene quickly Rader switched from attempted strangulation to stabbing, getting her with deep cuts to the abdomen and other areas. Meanwhile Kevin had revived and ran out of the house for help. This necessitated Rader having to make a hasty exit, and he did, running from the scene on foot. He ran the many blocks to where his car was parked and drove off. He was all cleaned up by the time his wife got off work, and no one suspected him. Kathryn died in the hospital a few hours later despite urgent attempts to save her with surgery and blood transfusions. Kevin was left in critical condition with his head wounds but survived. He still bears the damage done to him that day. (Photo and a story about Kevin Bright from CNN.com).

In October, 1974 an editor of the Wichita Eagle newspaper received a phone call directing him to a letter hidden in an engineering book at the Wichita Public Library. He notified police instead, who found the letter at the library. It was a gruesome description of the unsolved Otero murders by someone with a good knowledge of the crime scene. It was written in poor English with numerous misspellings. The writer was concerned that the police had recently arrested the wrong men for the Otero murders, and proudly proclaimed, " I did it myself with noone's help". He said, "the code words for me will be... Bind them, toture them, kill them, B.T.K..."

Next: 1975-1979

1975-1979

In November, 1974 Dennis Rader finally found a steady job with ADT Security, a company specializing in the installation of alarm systems. He would stay with ADT for the next 14 years. He rose to the position of installation supervisor, which gave him some flexibility in terms of where he could be during the day.

In 1975 the Raders' first child was born, Brian. Dennis had a full schedule between ADT and night school at WSU. Even though he is not known to have committed a crime during 1975 and 1976, by his own description the trolling for more victims never did cease then or until his arrest 30 years later.

On March 17, 1977 Rader decided it was time for a murder one way or another. He had been trolling a particular neighborhood fairly heavily and had some women in mind there. He had met a woman named Cheryl in a bar and found her quite interesting. Cheryl was renting a house with another woman and often had parties there in those days. Rader found out where she lived and decided it would be "a go", meaning a definite hit. Fortunately for Cheryl and her friends, no one was home when Rader came around that day. Rader states he had also cased another home in the neighborhood, but that no one was there either.

Rader went trolling on foot down Hydraulic Street and encountered a five year old boy, Steve Relford. He pulled out a photo of his own wife and son and asked Steve if he knew who they were. Steve said he didn't and proceeded on home to complete the errand to the store his mother had sent him on. Rader soon knocked on the door, and Steve answered. He was posing as an official person, perhaps a detective, and gained entry into the home. There were three children in the home including Steve and an 8 year old brother and a 4 year old sister. Rader abruptly turned off the television and lowered the blinds. (Photo and a story about Steve Relford from CNN.com).
The mother emerged in a bathrobe, demanding to know what was going on. At gunpoint, Rader ordered all the children into the bathroom, where he blockaded the children in. He made his intentions clear to the mother, Shirley Vian, 24, that he was going to bind her up and have his way with her. However, it wasn't rape he was after as he led Shirley to believe. Rader claims he got her a glass of water after she threw up and allowed her to have a smoke to calm down. Shirley was ill that day and her common law husband Richard Vian wouldn't be home till later.

Rader tied her up as promised but then strangled her to death with a cord around her neck. He left semen on panties found next to the body. He was gone before the children could break out of the bathroom and summon help. Rader later stated that a ringing telephone unnerved him and caused him to leave before he could kill the children.

In December, 1977 Rader became fixated on Nancy Fox, 25, stalking her from her residence and workplace. On the evening of December 8 he broke into her modest duplex via a rear bedroom window after first cutting the phone line. He awaited her arrival from her evening job at a jewerly store. Nancy was the sole occupant of the duplex at that time and lived alone. The initial confrontation took place in the kitchen, presumably at gunpoint. Rader stated that he had a sexual issue and needed to tie her up to rape her. Other than making barbed comments, Nancy didn't fight back. She was ordered into the bedroom after being allowed to partly disrobe in the bathroom. Rader tied her to the bed and undressed himself. At that point he announced who he really was, making it clear he was the same person who had killed the Oteros, and proceeded to strangle her to death with a ligature. He left semen deposited on a nightgown found next to the body.

The following morning after reporting to work at ADT and leaving the office in a company van, Rader stopped at a phone booth just a couple blocks down the street. He dialed a police dispatcher and said, "Yes, you will find a home-acide at 843 South Pershing. Nancy Fox...That is correct", and left the receiver dangling. Police rushed to the residence and found the lifeless body still lying on the bed. A tape recording of that call was eventually played repeatedly over and over in the Wichita media, but no one including Rader's co-workers or family was able to recognize the voice.

In early 1978 Rader attempted to send a postcard with a sarcastic poem, "Shirley Locks", to the Wichita Eagle but no one recognized the significance of it until days later. It was followed by a letter that was taken quite seriously. In it the killer took full responsibility for the Otero, Shirley Vian and Nancy Fox murders plus an unnamed seventh victim later assumed to be Kathryn Bright. The writer suggested a number of names for himself, including B.T.K. It was written in the same style as the 1974 letter, and mentioned a mysterious "factor x" that the writer said was the reason for his need to kill people. See Letters from BTK for the full text of this letter. Also included was a bizarre poem, "Oh death to Nancy", mimicking an old folk song and poem called "Oh Death".

This letter forced the Wichita Police Department to make a decision. It was decided that it would be publicly announced that Wichita had an unknown serial killer on the loose, and citizens were urged to be extra careful about locking doors and looking out for each other. A whole generation of women grew up in Wichita that routinely checked their phones for a dial tone whenever re-entering their homes, to make sure the phone line had not been cut by an intruder.

In June, 1978 Paula gave birth to the Rader's second and final child, Kerri. She had been pregnant through all the events during and following Nancy Fox's murder.

In April, 1979 Rader broke into the home of Anna Williams, a 63 year old widow who had recently lost her husband. He waited fruitlessly for Anna to come home, but she didn't until later that evening. Rader pilfered a few small items and left, disappointed. In June of that year, just days before Rader's graduation ceremony at WSU, Anna received a package in the mail with a poem entitled "Oh Anna why didn't you appear", a drawing of what Rader had intended to do her and a few of the things he had stolen. The next day a similar package arrived at the studios of KAKE-TV in Wichita. Anna was terrified and quickly moved far away from Wichita. (See The Letters of Dennis Rader for the text of the poems.)

Next: The 1980s

1990-2003

Dennis Rader was into another PJ in January 1991. Now 45 years old, he was wary of PJs involving younger women or where a male was present. He saw older women as more vulnerable. Encounters with younger ladies had been difficult when they fought back. Males were just obstacles in the way of his intended conquests.

Rader focused his attentions on an older woman who lived alone, 62 year old Dolores Davis. She only lived about a mile and a half from where he did, but there is no indication he was personally acquainted with her. Dolores had moved to the Park City area after years an an executive secretary in Wichita and was renting a house in an area without close neighbors. This undoubtedly piqued Rader's interest. He noticed her at her home one day and might have done some snooping or investigating to confirm her status as a single woman living alone.

This would be another well-planned project. Using the pretext of being away for the weekend on a Scout camping outing in Harvey County, just to the north of Sedgwick County where Rader resided, he again invented an excuse to slip away from camp in the evening. It was a very cold night, below freezing. He drove back to his parents' home in north Wichita (apparently they may have been away that weekend) and changed out of his Scout uniform into his hit clothes. Rader then drove to the Baptist Church in Park City and parked his car, and set out on foot for the Davis residence. When he got there Dolores was still awake and reading in bed. He waited out in the cold for her to turn off the light and go to sleep. Using a cement block taken from a shed in the backyard, he rammed through the sliding glass door at the rear of the house. Dolores came out of the bedroom thinking someone had driven into her house, but there was Rader. He launched into the familiar line of being a vagrant in need of food, money and a car and told her he had to tie her up. Rader succeeded in tying her up in the bedroom. It's not known how long Rader lingered there, but Dolores helped to ruin his party by telling him she was expecting someone to arrive any minute. He ended her life by ligature strangulation. (Rader made a sketch of her final moments at a time soon after this murder).

Rader dragged the body outside and put it in the trunk of her car. He only drove a short distance to a lake area near I-135 by Park City and left the body and other evidence there under some trees. He then drove the car back to the Davis house and wiped it down for fingerprints, tossing the keys onto the roof. Rader then set out on foot, walking in a roundabout fashion back to the Baptist Church. Driving his own car, he returned to where he left the body and put it in his car. He meandered around to the north, and settled on a remote spot underneath a bridge in northern Sedgwick County as the dumping spot. After leaving her there, he went somewhere to change back into his Scout uniform and returned to camp. The following night he left camp again to come back to the dumping spot to pose and photograph the body. Rader says he had an encounter with a police officer at a place where he had to change clothes, but was let go after a few questions. (Soon after the murder, Rader took a photo of himself buried in a grave he says he had dug for Dolores Davis, wearing a mask and using a Polaroid camera activated with a mechansim triggered via a cord.)

Only four months after this episode Rader was hired by Park City as compliance and animal control officer. He became a combination dogcatcher and local code enforcer. He was now part of the local law establishment. He gained a varying reputation ranging from efficient and friendly to overzealous and petty,writing citations if a lawn exceeded six inches in grass height. There were complaints against him, and several people were said to have moved away from Park City due to his mistreatment. No complaint ever resulted in disciplinary action, as local officials would usually side with Rader when dealing with citizens. There is only one record of a case going to court, where a woman contested a $25 fine levied against her by Rader over dog control. Rader showed up in court with a satchel a half- inch thick full of official documents and won the case.

One woman had a very disturbing story about Rader. There was no problem until after she got divorced and a new male friend came to live with her. Rader kept issuing citation after citation for among other things, items as trivial as having the wrong color garden hose. He didn't like the "inoperable vehicle" in the driveway the male friend was working on, and made it clear to the woman that if the man left the problems would cease. Rader started looking in her windows and one day was found examining a door that had been mysteriously broken. But it all culminated when Rader impounded her daughter's dog and had it put to sleep before anyone could reclaim it. The lady immediately moved out of Park City.

In a gender discrimination lawsuit filed in federal court, Rader's co-worker Mary Capps, who worked under Rader from 1998 until his arrest, alleged he was a terrible boss, cold, demanding and degrading. She described one incident of being trapped in her office and chased around the room, terrified. Capps stated that she complained weekly to Rader's supervisor about his ongoing behavior but was dismissed or simply referred back to Rader himself. Three formal complaints to the city of Park City were, by city procedures, channeled to her supervisor, Dennis Rader, who naturally did nothing about them. There were media reports after the arrest stating that Capps may have been drugged repeatedly with animal tranquilizers while working with Rader, although this was not mentioned in this lawsuit. A federal judge has dismissed the lawsuit, saying it was not filed within required time limits.

During the 1990s Rader served on two local boards in Park City. In 1996 his father William Rader died of natural causes. His mother Dorothea eventually began staying in a nursing home or at home with son Jeff. Rader's daughter Kerri attended Kansas State University, whose football team he was a huge fan of. In 2003 Kerri married a man from Michigan and went there to live. Son Brian joined the Navy and left the area for the East Coast. Rader was elected to the church council and assumed the position of vice president starting on January 1, 2004. According to church procedure, the vice president becomes council president after one year. The Raders remained quite active in their Lutheran church, with Dennis a trusted leader, helper and usher. Despite all this, with the kids gone Rader found himself increasingly bored.

The on-line Crime Library had published an article about the unsolved BTK case. It was thought BTK was dead, jailed or institutionalized perhaps. The subject had faded even in Wichita, and a whole generation of Wichitans were growing up without much knowledge of the case. Rader had thought about publicly reemerging later on in life. But then all of sudden BTK became a topic of interest again.

Next: BTK is Back

BTK is Back

A Wichita lawyer named Robert Beattie was concerned that the BTK case was being all but forgotten. He set out to write a book about the investigation that tried so hard to capture this elusive killer, who he still reasoned to be a potential threat to the public even though the last known murder had occurred in 1977. BTK was attributed with seven murders and the attempt on Anna Williams in 1979. Beattie was responsible for renewed interest in the BTK case as early as 2003, and the message board Crime and Justice began discussing the case again on the Internet. January 2004 was the 30th anniversary of the Otero murders, and the Wichita Eagle ran an article about the crime and the BTK killer. In conjuction with that came the announcement of the publication of Robert Beattie's new book. These events more than captured Dennis Rader's attention. He became alarmed that someone else would be telling what was his own story, and suddenly his plans for an eventual reemergence were greatly accelerated.

Rader fumed over what to do for the next couple months but then took action. On March 17 he mailed an envelope to the Wichita Eagle from a Bill Thomas Killman. It contained three photocopied pictures of his own photos of the dying Vicki Wegerle taken in 1986, as well as a photocopy of her missing driver's license. He signed it with the BTK symbol he had used in his previous letters in the 1970s. The letter was forwarded to the FBI who confirmed its authenticity as a BTK communication. An old cold case was solved, but the uproar had only just begun.

As soon as the story hit the media, BTK was suddenly back in the spotlight like never before, this time with the added dimension of the Internet. Discussion boards, chatrooms and websites sprouted up dedicated to the unsolved mystery of the BTK case. It consumed the media in Wichita and beyond. Some of the same fear and paranoia that had existed in the 1970s soon became evident.

The dust hadn't begun to settle when Rader sent a second letter, this time on May 5, 2004 to the studios of KAKE-TV, the Wichita ABC affililiate. This was a lengthy word puzzle consisting of columns of letters and a few numbers mixed in. The FBI verified that this also came from BTK, as he characteristically used his unique signature, but couldn't make any particular sense out of the puzzle.

On June 9, 2004 Rader left a package taped to a stop sign at the corner of First and Kansas, in the middle of the city. This contained a disturbing collection of documents, including a letter detailing the grisly murders of the Otero family and a sketch of a nude and bound female hanging by a rope. Eleven year old Josephine Otero had been hanged by a rope in the basement of their home in 1974. The sketch was labeled, "The Sexual Thrill is My Bill." Also enclosed was a chapter list entitled "The BTK Story" that mimicked the chapter list of David Lohr's original article on BTK at the on-line Crime Library. Chapter One was entitled, "A Serial Killer is Born."

On July 17, 2004 a package marked "BTK" was found in a book return at the Wichita Public Library downtown. It contained a worrisome message: "I have spotted a female that I think lives alone and/or is a spotted latchkey kid. Just got to work out the details. I'm much older (not feeble) now and have to conditions myself carefully. Also my thinking process is not as sharp as it uses to be ... I think fall or winter would be just about right for the HIT. Got to do it this year or next! ... time is running out for me." This same package contained an intriguing claim that he, BTK, had engineered the recent death of a 19 year old man from Argonia, Kansas, named Jake Allen. Jake Allen had committed suicide by lying on railroad tracks 12 days earlier. BTK claimed to have lured the young man to his death via a series of computer chats. (This claim was later disproven as a hoax, as there was no evidence that Allen had ever had any such Internet chat with anyone, and his death is still seen as a suicide).

Despite huge pressure from the public, the police refused to release many details of the packages from June on, as it was feared that hearing these things could provoke BTK into a killing frenzy.

The fifth drop didn't occur until October 22, 2004 when a UPS worker found a strange manila envelope while picking up the contents of the UPS box at the Omni Center by Second and Kansas in Wichita. This consisted of a very disturbing assortment of cards that had images pasted on them. There was a collage of pictures of children with bindings drawn across their bodies and faces. This envelope also contained what BTK claimed to be his autobiography, listing a number of details about his life such as being born in 1939, his father dying in the war, mother dated a railroad detective and so on. BTK claimed to be fascinated with railroads and usually lived near railroad tracks. Almost all of it was false information, an attempt to mislead police into researching false clues. The police did release the autobiography to the public a few weeks later, which undoubtedly would have greatly pleased if not excited Dennis Rader.

What the Wichita Police Dept. was actually doing was following the FBI's advice: keep the killer communicating. Using lead detective Lt. Ken Landwehr as the sole media spokesperson, the strategy was to establish a sort of familiarity between the criminal and the media person, so that BTK would begin to feel as though Landwehr was talking to him directly in a personal sort of way. The idea was to not offend him nor to over-excite him into killing some more. Just keep communicating until he makes a mistake. It was a plan that led directly to the solving of the case.

On December 1, 2004 officers of the Wichita Police Dept. stormed the house of Roger Valadez, who lived in a house in Wichita with peeling paint within sight of railroad tracks. He was held on a minor outstanding warrant, but apparently was suspected of being the BTK killer. A DNA test quickly exonerated him however. Ultimately police would take some 1,300 DNA swabs of men searching for a match to BTK's semen left at crime scenes.

Rader's sixth drop was found on December 14, 2004. A man walking through Murdock Park that night noticed a package wrapped in white plastic leaning against a tree. Out of curiosity he took it home with him and opened it. It contained a "PJ" doll. The doll's head had a plastic bag tied over it. Its hands were tied behind its back and its feet were bound together. Tied to the feet was a real driver's license belonging to BTK murder victim Nancy Fox whom he had killed in December 1977. The family notified KAKE-TV, who arrived and photographed the contents and notified police. KAKE agreed not to broadcast what was found in the package, for fear of arousing the killer.

On January 1, 2005 Dennis Rader officially became the new president of the church council at Christ Lutheran Church in Wichita.

Eight days into the new year Rader left a Special K cereal box marked "BTK" and "bomb" in the bed of a pickup truck parked at the Home Depot on North Woodlawn. The truck belonged to an employee of Home Depot. He thought it was trash at first and put it in a trash can at home. Luckily he forgot to put that trash can out for collection. On January 25th when police arrived at the Home Depot looking for clues in the BTK case having been tipped off by a postcard from BTK, the man realized the significance of the box and was still able to retrieve it. By reviewing surveillance tape of the parking lot for January 8 the police had their first glimpse of BTK, but the image was too far away and blurry for identification. But by measuring the wheelbase of the black vehicle he was driving it was determined the vehicle was a Jeep Cherokee. Despite having installed alarm systems for a living, Rader was apparently unaware that surveillance cameras had become a commonplace item.

The box itself contained information about some of his "PJs" or projects, intended victims that he had watched or stalked. It also contained more misleading information of how he lived in a 3 story home in Wichita with an elevator that had a bomb in the basement rigged to explode if the house were invaded. Rader also asked a peculiar question to the detectives: if he put his writings on a computer disk, would it be traceable? He requested a response to be posted in the Wichita Eagle classified ads in the Miscellaneous category using his code name, Rex.

The eighth drop was another cereal box from the "cereal" killer, this one a Post Toasties. It was discovered on January 25, 2005 as the result of a tip from drop #9, which was a postcard sent to KAKE-TV with a return address of "S. Killet" plus the address of the Otero house. Drop #9 stated the location of the Post Toasties box and mentioned the drop at Home Depot back on January 8, which triggered the investigation there that ultimately located the Special K box.

The Post Toasties box was found leaning against a road sign on a desolate unpaved section of North Seneca to the north of the Wichita city limits. KAKE videotaped the box without touching it and notified police. It had a brick on top of it and appeared weathered. It was later revealed to have contained another doll, this one with a rope tied around its neck and tied to a plumbing fixture, simulating the hanging of Josephine Otero.

The tenth drop was another postcard that arrived on February 3, again sent to KAKE. Return address was Happ Kakemann, a 1950s character from KAKE's past. Rader wrote: Thank you for your quick response on #7 and 8. Thank to the news team for their efforts. Sorry about Susan's and Jeff's colds. Business issues: Tell WPD that I receive Newspaper Tip for a go. Test run soon. Thanks. PS: May want to use KTV-PC-etc code # and Letters from me for my Verification code to you. He was referring to the newspaper ad in the Wichita Eagle placed there by detectives to answer his question about the safety of sending in a computer disk. The responding ad had assured him in agreed-upon code: Rex it will be OK.

Drop #11 arrived at the studios of KSAS-TV on February 16, the Fox affiliate in Wichita. It contained a letter, a piece of jewelry and a purple diskette referred to as "Test Floppy for WPD review." Detectives wasted little time analyzing the diskette and found software on it from Christ Lutheran Church in Wichita and the name Dennis. Rader had apparently thought he had erased the original contents of the diskette and that it would be "safe" to use it for his purposes. A quick Internet search brought up a website for the church mentioning its current president, Dennis Rader. A group of detectives quietly drove by Rader's house in Park City and noted a black Jeep Cherokee parked in the driveway. Rader was placed under surveillance while a subpoena was secretly obtained for a DNA sample of his daughter from medical records. The familial DNA was a match to DNA found from semen at BTK crime scenes and the case was solved. (Contrary to early media reports, Kerri Rader never suspected her father was BTK nor did she turn him in. She was asked to submit a DNA sample directly at her home in Michigan within an hour after the arrest, but never knew until later that her DNA had been used to solve the BTK case.)

After leaving the office to eat lunch at home as was his custom, on February 25, 2005 Rader was driving home when he noticed he was totally surrounded by police, a huge number of them. He surrendered quietly and was led to a waiting police car, handcuffed.

"Hello, Mr. Landwehr," he said once inside the car.

"Hello, Mr. Rader," Lt. Ken Landwehr responded.

Next: County Jail