![El Dorado [10] — Monster: BTK cover](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.omnycontent.com%2Fd%2Fprograms%2Fe73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1%2F55545f64-58aa-4f15-b7c2-b2440137c8fd%2Fimage.jpg%3Ft%3D1734540326%26size%3DLarge&w=1920&q=75)
Loading summary
Transcript201 lines
- [00:00]
Kyle Tequila
My name is Kyle Tequila, host of the shocking new true crime podcast Crook County. I got recruited into the mob when I was 17 years old. People are dying. Is he doing this every night? Kenny was a Chicago firefighter who lived a secret double life as a mafia hitman.
- [00:15]
Kenny
I had a wife and I had two children.
- [00:17]
Kyle Tequila
Nobody knew anything. He was a fricking crazy man. He was my father, and I had no idea about any of this. Until now. Crook county is available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your pod casts. In Mississippi, Yazoo clay keeps secrets.
- [00:39]
Kenny
7,000 bodies out there or more.
- [00:43]
Kyle Tequila
A forgotten asylum, cemetery.
- [00:45]
Larison Campbell
It was my family's mystery.
- [00:47]
Kyle Tequila
Shame, guilt, propriety. Something keeps it all buried deep until it's not. I'm Larison Campbell, and this is under Yazoo Clay. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. There's no playbook for this type of fraud. Many couples dream of adopting a child, but what if that dream became a nightmare? She kept telling us, forget about Serena's baby. Now Tara has a problem because there's no baby. And we all became investigators. From Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Cadence, this is Baby Broker, available now on the binge search for Baby Broker wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today, it was big news. I mean, white girl gets murdered, found in a cemetery. Big, big news.
- [01:39]
Larison Campbell
A long investigation stalls until someone changes their story.
- [01:44]
Kyle Tequila
I, like, saw a whole thing that happened. An arrest, trial, and conviction soon follow.
- [01:49]
Larison Campbell
He did not kill her. There's no way is the real killer.
- [01:52]
Kyle Tequila
Rightly behind bars or still walking free.
- [01:55]
Larison Campbell
Did you kill her?
- [01:57]
Kyle Tequila
Listen to the Real Kill, Season 3 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Monster BTK, a production of iHeart podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. Listener discretion is advised. Now, what's my night terror? Somebody in my room, on top of me in bed, trying to kill me. Why is that? I mean, I was scared. I was scared of the dark. I was scared to go to the bathroom. This carried over into college. Why is that so? I've talked to detectives, talked to trauma therapists. Nobody knows how to fix this night terrorist stuff, and nobody knows why. Is it the bad guy in the room trying to kill me? Do you feel like the bad guy is your dad? Yeah, My dad planned these things, premeditated these things. Was he practicing that murder in our house? Was he practicing corners and closets? You're wondering if that feeling you had was maybe him actually in your room, in the closet? Yeah. Some sort of suppressed memory where I was scared shitless from my dad. Who's to say he wasn't doing something in my bedroom? I just would rather know. Like for me, I need to know. Because once I know, then I can deal with it. You can divorce a spouse, you can't divorce a father. You can't just divorce your dad. Did a part of you feel like you wanted to make it better somehow? I wanted to help him. Like I'm mad at you in one second and I'm worried you're cold. And dealing with this blanket in this cold cell, like, I love you. I still love you. Do you still love him? Oh, yeah. I mean, I told him that in the letters early on. Like, I love you and I don't know what's wrong and I don't know why you did this. And I wrote him and I was like, I'm so sorry. Like I'm so sorry, something must have happened to you. You're just thinking something awful must have happened to you to turn you into this. And I'm so sorry, you know, that you're alone and. And that we're not with you.
- [04:23]
Kenny
Someone killed four members of a family.
- [04:26]
Kyle Tequila
Hedge vanished from her home suddenly last weekend. Her phone lines had been cut, her door left open.
- [04:32]
Kenny
You see the victims laying there with plastic bags over their heads, strangled. You could tell it was a planned scenario.
- [04:40]
Kyle Tequila
While police have said no more about the contents of the letter, it does contain some sort of threat and implies the killer may strike again.
- [04:47]
Kenny
He's going to play with these victim. He'd get him to the point of.
- [04:51]
Kyle Tequila
Death and then bring him back and then brings him back to the point of death.
- [04:57]
Susan Peters
For my heart podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. I'm Susan Peters and this is Monster BTK. On August 18, 2005, Judge Gregory Waller sentenced Dennis Lynn Raider to 10 consecut. The sentence, a minimum of one hundred and seventy five years without the chance for parole was the longest the judge could deliver. The next day, August 19, 2005, Raider was taken from the courthouse to the Eldorado Correctional Facility in Butler County, Kansas, just 30 miles from Wichita. Our news station covered the caravan from departure to arrival and we were on scene for the last sighting of Dennis Raider outside prison walls.
- [06:00]
Kyle Tequila
He is getting out of the car right now. He's in his orange jumpsuit. It looks as if his feet may be shackled. He's walking in the prison right now, knocked in the door and there he is. He's inside. That's it.
- [06:15]
Susan Peters
Closure is difficult for the families of Raider's victims. It may never come, but on that day in August, at the very least, we reveled in the peace of mind that came with the closing of his cell door.
- [06:32]
Kyle Tequila
Unfortunately, through all of this and through the things that he has done, everyone was willing to listen because everyone wanted to hear from the man that committed these crimes. Now I think everyone is sick of.
- [06:43]
Susan Peters
What he has to say. The reason we know so much about Dennis Raider is because of his narcissism, his intense desire for publicity. And while us locals had had our fill, there were others who saw immense academic potential in studying Raider's mind.
- [07:03]
Larison Campbell
When this opportunity came up, I had just completed a book where I had looked back over the past six century of mental health experts who had taken extra time to really learn about an extreme offender from the offender's point of view. And I was in prime position then to do exactly the same thing. I had role models.
- [07:28]
Susan Peters
Throughout this season, we've heard the inside scoop on Raider from forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland. In 2010, she began a professional relationship with him, which culminated in the book Confession of a Serial Killer, the Untold Story of Dennis Raider, the BTK Serial Killer.
- [07:49]
Larison Campbell
I did not approach Raider. What happened is when he was arrested in 2005, someone else had approached him to write a book. She worked with him for five years corresponding, thinking she was going to do this. And I saw her on Facebook and said, whatever happened to your book? And she begged me to take it over. I had to go through a process of being vetted by the victim's families and the attorney. He had signed his life rights over to them through this other writer. That took some time, a couple years. And in the meantime, I got to know Raider by playing chess. We'd write some letters. He wanted me to solve some codes because he wanted to communicate with codes. So I began to just kind of follow his lead. He would write very long, like, 20 page letters, and embedded in these letters would be these codes and their meaning, and I had to try to figure it out. Also, he wanted to communicate that way to keep the guards from knowing what he was talking about. That's kind of the gatekeeper. If you're not going to do the code thing, we're not going any further. And then as all the legal stuff got into place, we began to talk on the phone. The very first time I spoke to him on the phone, an hour earlier, my father died. So it was very numbing. But at the same time, it was a good way into him because he remembered his father dying. I think it invited some warmth and compassion from him. As our first time we're talking on.
- [09:36]
Susan Peters
The phone, it feels jarring to hear Ramsland talk about building compassion between herself and Raider. But developing this relationship was integral to her ability to study him.
- [09:50]
Larison Campbell
The third way we got to know each other was watching TV shows, which began to serve as metaphors for his experience. He wanted me to watch Bates Motel and the Americans, and I wanted him to watch the Walking Dead. And so between those shows, we would talk about the characters in ways that demonstrated some of the things he was trying to tell me. Like with the Americans, it's Soviet spies embedded in American culture and raising a family and acting as if they're completely like everybody else, exactly as he was doing. And he even thought of himself as a spy or Bates Motel, which is about the making of a serial killer. So whenever something would happen in one of the shows, he would use that to talk about his experience.
- [10:44]
Susan Peters
Ramsland wrote about Raider before she began working on Confession. For instance, she mentioned him in her book Inside the Minds of Serial Killers. But her coverage never went into this much depth.
- [10:59]
Larison Campbell
Only when the opportunity came my way did I realize what a unique opportunity it was, because he was not like a typical serial killer. He was an outlier. I get a lot of questions from mostly high school students asking what motivates a serial killer? And it's hard for me. I just say it's not a criminal type. They each have their own motivational spectrum, and you have to look at the factors in their development to understand why they're doing what they're doing, because it's different from one to another. Even if you categorize them as sexually compelled serial killers, there's still a lot of differences among them. I think looking at the raw ingredients of any extreme offender's developmental trajectory helps us with trying to understand at what points in their life did something change? Did a trigger to violence become part of their perspective? What were some of the factors and elements involved? So Raider was an opportunity as an outlier to the thinking of the FBI, to find out, what's going on here. What do we need to know about this guy?
- [12:15]
Susan Peters
There were logistical challenges communicating with Raider in prison. As Ramsland said earlier, their letters and phone calls were monitored.
- [12:24]
Larison Campbell
I told him, we need to have a coherent set of codes if we're going to talk about some of these things. And so I created the codes that we were going to use. And I used a Cave metaphor, because he liked caves. And he had this whole thing about three being a magical number. So everything I did like three layers of soil, three types of plants, three types of gardening tools, things like that.
- [12:53]
Susan Peters
In the introduction to the book, she describes figuring out the code as one of the most complicated aspects of the project. What resulted is a symbolic Alphabet with letters A through W all representing different phrases.
- [13:10]
Larison Campbell
A bleeding heart was going to be the victims, so BH1, BH2, BH3. That was going to connote whoever he was talking about.
- [13:23]
Susan Peters
Of her work with Rader, Ramsland says that this type of research could be used to develop treatment programs for kids who might be at risk of becoming one of these offenders. And because of this potential, she emphasizes that its use is more that of a textbook than entertainment.
- [13:42]
Larison Campbell
Is that a true crime book? It's a book where Dennis Rader and I explore his life story together with clinical tools. I call it a guided autobiography because he's not just blathering on about himself without any structure. It's structured to benefit my field, criminology and law enforcement.
- [14:07]
Susan Peters
Raider's narcissism does make it difficult to discern his fiction from reality. But Ramsland's professional background and the relationship she built with him before starting the book allow her to call him out on his lies.
- [14:23]
Larison Campbell
I had the complete transcript of the police interrogation. I had five years of correspondence from the other writer. I had the whole DA's file. So, yes, I know he's going to play me if he can, but I have the objective background. He's obviously going to be able to talk more about what was really going on at the crime scenes in ways that no investigator will ever be able to do. But at the same time, he's narcissistic. He does want publicity. He does want to be known in a certain way. And I have to keep that in mind as well. But that's okay, because that's data for me. I didn't care if he told the truth or he lied. All of that's data. There are more layers than just what a killer says. So it's not really about asking that person a whole bunch of questions. To get into who they are, you have to watch their behavior and the inconsistencies and the oddities. For example, on a scene in the Americans, there was a really brutal scene where they put a burning car tire over this guy to get him to say something. And Rhetta was furious, just furious that that was on tv. Like, okay, you're a serial killer. You've Done terrible things to people. And this is a fictional scenario. Why are you so angry? When we started playing chess, he told me not to cheat. Really? In your whole scheme of morality, that's what matters to you, that I'm not cheating at a chess game? To me, that's all very interesting behavior, because what is he showing me about what matters to him?
- [16:13]
Susan Peters
On certain issues, Raider was more defensive than others.
- [16:18]
Larison Campbell
If it was something in which he had no real investment in how he wanted to present himself, then he'd sort of laugh it off. Yeah, you caught me. Or something like that. One time he was talking about how much he loved his son. I said, well, you know, you used your son's car during your cat and mouse game. He was away in the Navy. And I said, what did you think your son would feel like when you were arrested and they found out his car was the one on the surveillance video? His first response was, well, I was never going to get caught. I never even thought of that. Then he got upset with me because I was questioning the narrative that he loved his son. I was basically saying, that's not a very loving thing to do to your son. What you did to satisfy yourself is not a loving thing to do to the family you say you love. And he got angry. And his response was to write a very long letter justifying everything. I would tell you the members of his family don't feel that loved because he destroyed them. Destroyed them. But he doesn't see it that way. He thinks they should just get over it and reconnect with him. That's how he views it. But that's, again, that notion of a very shallow, emotional processing of the world. He thinks that what he's done does not have that much enormity and shouldn't and that they're his family and they need to forgive him and get back in a relationship with him. That is how he thinks.
- [18:03]
Susan Peters
It's hard to imagine a world where anyone could forgive Raider. I think for the average person, it's common to wonder whether these types of violent offenders experience remorse. And when I think back to his court appearances, I know that Raider doesn't.
- [18:21]
Larison Campbell
These days, when Raider looks back, he regrets. It's not the same as remorse. He regrets hurting his family. He regrets that he's in prison, that he missed out, you know, on a lot of life. He sometimes thinks about religion, but I think for the most part, he does not believe that there is an afterlife, that he will have to face some kind of judgment. The killer part is essentially how he identifies that he embraces that.
- [19:00]
Susan Peters
It takes one guy out there to say, who's that? Kyle, who thinks he can just get.
- [19:06]
Kenny
On a microphone on a podcast and start publicizing this.
- [19:10]
Kyle Tequila
From iHeart podcasts and Tenderfoot TV comes.
- [19:13]
Larison Campbell
A new true crime podcast, Crook County.
- [19:17]
Kenny
I got recruited into the mob when.
- [19:19]
Kyle Tequila
I was 17 years old. Meet Kenny, an enforcer for the legendary Chicago outfit. And that was my mission, to snuff.
- [19:26]
Kenny
The life out of this guy.
- [19:28]
Kyle Tequila
He lived a secret double life as a firefighter paramedic for the Chicago Fire Department.
- [19:33]
Kenny
I had a wife and I had two children.
- [19:34]
Kyle Tequila
Nobody knew anything. People are dying. Is he doing this every night? Torn between two worlds.
- [19:40]
Kenny
I'm covering up murders that these cops are doing.
- [19:43]
Kyle Tequila
He was a freaking crazy man. We don't know who he is, really. He is my father and I had no idea about any of this until now.
- [19:54]
Larison Campbell
Welcome to Crook County.
- [19:56]
Kyle Tequila
Series premiere February 11th. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a type of soil in Mississippi called Yazoo clay. It's thick, burnt orange, and it's got a reputation.
- [20:12]
Susan Peters
It's terrible, terrible dirt.
- [20:14]
Kyle Tequila
Yazoo clay eats everything, so things that get buried there tend to stay buried until they're not. In 2012, construction crews at Mississippi's biggest hospital made a shocking discovery.
- [20:28]
Kenny
7,000 bodies out there or more, all.
- [20:31]
Kyle Tequila
Former patients of the old state asylum. And nobody knew they were there.
- [20:36]
Larison Campbell
It was my family's mystery.
- [20:38]
Kyle Tequila
But in this corner of the south.
- [20:40]
Susan Peters
It'S not just the soil that keep secrets. Nobody talks about it. Nobody has any information.
- [20:46]
Kyle Tequila
When you peel back the layers of Mississippi's Yazoo clay, nothing's ever as simple as you think.
- [20:52]
Larison Campbell
The story is much more complicated and nuanced than that.
- [20:57]
Kyle Tequila
I'm Larison Campbell. Listen to under yazukle on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. There's no playbook for this type of fraud. Many couples dream of adopting a child, but what if that dream became a nightmare? She kept telling us, forget about Sabrina's baby. Now Tara has a problem because there's no baby. And we all became investigators. From Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Cadence, this is Baby Broker, available now on the binge search for baby broker wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today, I'm Nancy Grace.
- [21:38]
Susan Peters
This is Crime Stories. Breaking news tonight, the return of tot mom. It feels like a dirt sandwich in my mouth. TikTok stardom ahead as Casey Anthony haters beg.
- [21:53]
Kyle Tequila
Please go away, guys. Please don't miss this.
- [21:57]
Larison Campbell
Please join us.
- [21:59]
Kyle Tequila
Listen to crime Stories with Nancy grace on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [22:11]
Susan Peters
There is a thread that ties everyone together who is still to this day interested in Dennis Raider. It is the desire to understand why he did it and if we could stop something like this from happening again. For Larry Hatteberg, his BTK days didn't end when we covered the caravan to El Dorado.
- [22:36]
Kenny
I wrote to him in 2005, and I did get three or four letters back from him. When I got the first letter from Dennis Rader, the postman stopped out front, came up to my door, rang the doorbell, and he's holding the letter by the edges like it's a horrible thing. And he said, I just want to tell you I'm delivering this to you, and I hate every moment of this. That is an appropriate response to receiving a letter from Dennis Rader.
- [23:05]
Susan Peters
In one of the letters, Raider had an eerie request for Larry.
- [23:11]
Kenny
He said, look, Larry, I love your show. We used to watch Hatterberg's People all the time when I wasn't incarcerated in here. He said, I want to be on Hatterberg's People. Hatterberg's People was the series that I did of great people in the community. So I wrote him back and I said, dennis, the fact that you've killed 10 people tends to negate any of the good that you've done in the community. And he didn't write me back after that.
- [23:42]
Susan Peters
But in the last few years, they've restarted their correspondence. Larry's received letters from Raider as recently as the end of 2024.
- [23:52]
Kenny
The reason I stay kind of involved in it and the reason I will occasionally write to BTK is that we still to this day do not know what caused BTK to become a murderer. And there are a million teachers out there with kids in their classroom, and they know something is wrong with a child, but they don't know what to do. They don't know how to do it. So the question becomes, how do we identify these children who are going to grow up to become a btk? Until we have those answers, the BTK story will never be dead, even if he dies tomorrow. And that's why I stay involved in it.
- [24:37]
Susan Peters
On the other side of things, there are those who've decided it is better not to indulge their curiosity when it comes to Dennis Raider. Here's Bob Smizer, a member of Raider's former church, Christ Lutheran.
- [24:50]
Kenny
I really wanted to go see Dennis in Prison. Not because of anything I could ask him or anything because he'd lie to you, but to see who he is. Strip that facade. A Dennis Raider facade. I think in prison, you would have finally got to see him as he really is. And that interested me, ultimately decided against it for a variety of reasons.
- [25:19]
Susan Peters
Do you think you, if you went to prison, could you talk to him as Bobby, an old friend?
- [25:26]
Kenny
I don't know that we'd talk as old friends, but we would talk about his mom and dad, those kind of things. Those conversations would be fairly simple, they'd be fairly easy, and they'd be natural. If there's anything left of the Dennis Raider facade or is he just BTK 100% of the time?
- [25:49]
Susan Peters
Bob poses a good question. Is there anything left of the Dennis Rader facade? This is something Kerry Rawson's been trying to figure out for the last two decades. It took her years to sort through her complicated emotions after her father's arrest.
- [26:10]
Kyle Tequila
For, like, the first nine and a half years, I was totally shut down. I was hiding who I was. I'm like this mega church outside Detroit, Michigan, where we moved in 2003. I'm leading Bible study. I'm in this MOPS group with young mothers, toddlers, and I'm not telling people who I am. My picture had never been out there in connection with my dad. I didn't have social media at the time. I had gone through the worst day of my life, the worst thing I could imagine. I'm a trauma survivor, an abuse survivor, and I'm not telling anybody about this. The most I would say, well, this bad thing happened to me. It's really hard to sit in Bible study on a Tuesday morning, and the woman next to you is saying, like, her worst day of her life is her dishwasher broke and her kitchen flooded. And I'm literally having to leave the room and cry in the bathroom because how do you even drop dad into that? Like, even with trusted friends of mine, I would try, and they would tell me, stop talking. You're giving me nightmares. I was so shut down those first nine and a half years because I was scared. I was scared of this man in the arrest photo. I was scared of what he had done. I was even scared of other family members or some wacko coming after me.
- [27:25]
Susan Peters
She learned to compartmentalize, to separate the father she'd known from the killer she'd been introduced to.
- [27:36]
Kyle Tequila
With my father, I have to put dad in BTK. When I interviewed with Dr. Phil, he was helpful. He did a Timeline. And he put photos of my normal life above the timeline. And then underneath, he put crime scene photos and photos of my dad after the arrest. Thanks, BTK thinks. And he said, stay above the line as much as you can because that's safe and sane. When I was talking about unleashing all the BTK stuff, I didn't do it in a healthy way. I just pulled it all out. And so when I went back into therapy, she goes, okay, now for the first time, we gotta go put it in order. So we took the Wichita Eagle book by Winslow and three other journalists, and I took it into trauma therapy for months. My paperback was like dog eared, covered, marked up in pen. I had to go line by line through that thing in therapy, and I couldn't even do it in order. I couldn't handle the 70s. And so I started with Hedge and I worked up through the 91, and then I went back to the 70s. And so when I was done with therapy, dad was strictly BTK to write. I had to go back and then separate that and go back and find dad and then find me.
- [28:48]
Susan Peters
Once Carrie had found herself again, she realized her story might be able to help others. So she took a chance at sharing it.
- [28:58]
Kyle Tequila
I started talking to the media in 14. I mean, it's rare to get somebody like me, a family member of these guys to talk. It sets off your ptsd, you know, there's shame in it too, because we've been beat up in the media. We've been beat up by people commenting in social media. Some of us go into hiding, change our names. I thought the answer was to hide, but hiding meant tearing more in sight. It's like when you bandage a wound too tight, it's festering and rotting underneath because you're not letting it get air or light. When I started speaking up, I realized not only was it healing me to talk about it, I was getting an inbox full of people saying I was reaching them because I was talking about something in forgiveness. Or they were a soldier that had come home with PTSD and they had identified with me in my night terrors or my fears, my anger. Or family members of criminals that were going back and forth between. They still love this person, but they were angry at them. And how did they deal with the media? Something I was sharing, something I was saying people were identifying with, and it was helping them.
- [30:10]
Susan Peters
While Carrie was working through her trauma in therapy, she kept her distance from her father. Their communication ebbed and flowed, and there were several years where she had no contact with him.
- [30:24]
Kyle Tequila
We stayed in touch with letters off and on. I had forgiven him in 2012. I had wrote him that night after five years of no communication. And we had been talking back and forth in letters more. He read the Wichita Eagle article in 15 called Forgiveness is untidy. And he said when he read that article in the Eagle, he realized at that moment more of the impact what he had done to our family. And he did feel it, and he said it caused him to shed a tear. But in that same letter or in the next letter to me, he's back being a narcissist, trying to control whatever he has left.
- [31:02]
Susan Peters
And the only thing he has left in this world is his physical body.
- [31:08]
Kyle Tequila
He's very scared of his own death. Ironically enough, we told him after he died, we would have him be cremated and we would scatter his ashes out in the flood hills because we can't have a gravestone for him, and we wouldn't want one anyway. We'd just get defaced. And we've had to tell him over and over and over and over again in letters. So now here he is in 15, telling me in this letter, he knows he's had this massive impact on my family. And in the same letter, he's saying, well, you guys aren't really communicating enough and you're not sending me money. And there's this woman in Arkansas. She's in my fan club. I think maybe I'll just sign my papers over and she can have my body and give me a gravestone. Because that's all he has left, right, is his dead body. So he's literally holding it over my family.
- [31:59]
Susan Peters
Rader isn't the first serial killer to have a fan club. Black market memorabilia has been popular for killers like Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, and Jeffrey Dahmer. Here's Katherine Ramsland.
- [32:14]
Larison Campbell
Even when he was doing the cat and mouse with police and he would see this stuff being covered by the local TV station or the newspaper, he imagined that he had a fan club that he had to please. And I think he still feels that way today. I mean, he's slowing down. He's tired. We talk about that. He wants to cut back on all the correspondence. And yet if he gets new correspondents who feed into this need that he has, he keeps them.
- [32:45]
Susan Peters
No one person, of course, can reverse the horrific damage done by Raider. A genuine apology from the killer would even fail to do so. But unfortunately, that doesn't stop us from wishing it could all be undone.
- [33:02]
Kyle Tequila
I want my dad back. I want the Seven families to have their families back. I don't want the generational impacts, the community impacts, the thousands of people he's impacted, the detectives lives he's running. If you could wipe all of that out and just have the 10 living people back and have life, that would be ideal. But you can't do that, right? There's no time machine, there's no time loop, marble, whatever. This is reality. I can't change anything. I can't help who I am. But I can do something good with what I've got. And this is what I have. So I do.
- [33:50]
Susan Peters
Takes one guy out there to say, who's that? Kyle, who thinks he can just get.
- [33:55]
Kenny
On a microphone on a podcast and start publicizing this.
- [33:59]
Kyle Tequila
From iHeart podcasts and Tenderfoot TV comes a new true crime podcast, Crook County.
- [34:06]
Kenny
I got recruited into the mob when.
- [34:08]
Kyle Tequila
I was 17, 13 years old. Meet Kenny, an enforcer for the legendary Chicago outfit. And that was my mission, to snuff.
- [34:16]
Kenny
The life out of this guy.
- [34:18]
Kyle Tequila
He lived a secret double life as a firefighter paramedic for the Chicago Fire Department.
- [34:22]
Kenny
I had a wife and I had two children.
- [34:24]
Susan Peters
Nobody knew anything.
- [34:25]
Kyle Tequila
People are dying. Is he doing this every night? Torn between two worlds?
- [34:29]
Kenny
I'm covering up murders that these cops are doing.
- [34:32]
Kyle Tequila
He was a freaking crazy man. We don't know who he is really. He is. My father and I had no idea about any of this. Until now. Welcome to Crook County. Series premiere February 11th.
- [34:48]
Larison Campbell
Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app.
- [34:50]
Kyle Tequila
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a type of soil in Mississippi called Yazoo clay. It's thick, burnt orange, and it's got a reputation.
- [35:02]
Susan Peters
It's terrible, terrible dirt.
- [35:03]
Kyle Tequila
Yazoo clay eats everything, so things that get buried there tend to stay buried until they're not. In 2012, construction crews at Mississippi's biggest hospital made a shocking discovery.
- [35:17]
Kenny
7,000 bodies out there or more, all.
- [35:21]
Kyle Tequila
Former patients of the old state asylum, and nobody knew they were there.
- [35:26]
Larison Campbell
It was my family's mystery.
- [35:28]
Kyle Tequila
But in this corner of the south.
- [35:30]
Susan Peters
It'S not just the soil that keep secrets. Nobody talks about it. Nobody has any information.
- [35:36]
Kyle Tequila
When you peel back the layers of Mississippi's Yazoo clay, nothing's ever as simple as you think.
- [35:41]
Larison Campbell
The story is much more complicated and nuanced than that.
- [35:47]
Kyle Tequila
I'm Larison Campbell. Listen to under yazukle on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. There's no playbook for this type of fraud. Many couples dream of adopting a child. But what if that dream became a nightmare? She kept telling us, forget about Sabrina's baby. Now Tara has a problem because there's no baby. And we all became investigators. From Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Cadence, this is Baby Broker, available now on the binge search for Baby Broker. Wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today, I'm Nancy Grace.
- [36:27]
Susan Peters
This is Crime Stories.
- [36:29]
Kyle Tequila
Breaking news tonight, the return of Tot Mom.
- [36:33]
Susan Peters
It feels like a dirt sandwich in my mouth. TikTok stardom ahead as Casey Anthony haters beg.
- [36:42]
Kyle Tequila
Please go away, guys. Please don't miss this. Please join us listen to Crime Stories with Nancy grace on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
- [37:00]
Susan Peters
January 15, 2024, marked 50 years since the tragic Otero murders.
- [37:09]
Kenny
Can't believe it's been that long. Yet it feels like yesterday.
- [37:14]
Susan Peters
Charlie Otero, the eldest Otero sibling, the.
- [37:19]
Kenny
Pain is still there. The intensity of the anguish and the grief is still there. But I've learned to push it aside when it gets overwhelming and embrace the good. Knowing that I am where I'm at today is because of the full turnaround of all of this. I got my life back when he got caught.
- [37:42]
Susan Peters
Over the last few years, Charlie's turned his pain into a platform, giving speeches at prisons throughout the country.
- [37:52]
Kenny
I'm doing well, and I only hope to do more good work in the future. And I'm going to use this 50th anniversary as a catalyst, if I can, to do the work that I started doing. And it makes me feel better. It makes me feel good to take all the stupid stuff I've done in my life, spin it into a lesson for the guys to learn from my mistakes. I've always believed it's cheaper to learn from other people's mistakes. And if talking to other people about what I've experienced helps them deal with whatever trauma or victimization they've had in their lives, then I'll continue. I don't live for the poor Charlie thing. I live to honor my promise to the Lord giving my life. So, you know, I'm not a great Christian, but I try to be a good one. And if I can keep one criminal from getting out and hurting another family, then I'll continue to go to jails and prisons and reach out to the guys are getting out.
- [38:56]
Susan Peters
And he tries not to dwell on the trauma of his past.
- [39:02]
Kenny
I live with the memories of my family in a good place. I don't like to think of them the day they died anymore. I like to think of what we had before. Going to the beach, being together, going to church, all those good things. And for me, the past is good for two things and two things only. And that's fond memories and lessons learned.
- [39:26]
Susan Peters
Jeff Davis, son of Dolores Davis, echoed a similar sentiment. When we're calling his own mother.
- [39:34]
Kenny
I know I'll see her again. So that in itself brings a lot of hope. I'm not getting any younger, and there'll come a time where I won't be here, but where I will be, will be with her. We had a lot of good little average, everyday kind of times that we spent before she killed her. We just talked and laughed and shared stories and made fun of silly stuff. She used to say I get comfort from that too, knowing that I know what the future holds and I know what the past was. And those are all positive. And that helps. After 32 years, even the worst wounds.
- [40:28]
Kyle Tequila
Start to scar over.
- [40:31]
Susan Peters
As for his thoughts on Raiders, I.
- [40:34]
Kenny
Like to say I've forgiven him. And all that good stuff that I'm supposed to do, I haven't. That's something that I think about.
- [40:42]
Kyle Tequila
I just haven't got there.
- [40:44]
Kenny
The way I justify this. I don't think about him at all. He's a little insect that skitters around in his 8 by 12 cell still thinking.
- [40:55]
Kyle Tequila
Everybody thinks he's cool.
- [40:56]
Kenny
He thinks all the guards like him. That's just how delusional it is. She's just not worth my time thinking about.
- [41:06]
Susan Peters
In the years I've known Steve Relford, son of Shirley Vian, I've watched him have a rougher go at it. Have you been able to forgive yourself?
- [41:16]
Kyle Tequila
Forgive myself?
- [41:18]
Kenny
No.
- [41:19]
Kyle Tequila
To deal with myself.
- [41:20]
Susan Peters
Yeah.
- [41:22]
Kenny
I don't think I'll ever forgive myself.
- [41:25]
Kyle Tequila
I try.
- [41:27]
Kenny
I get drunk. I get fucked up, try to forgive myself. It don't work. Nothing works. It's all right. That ain't working.
- [41:43]
Susan Peters
You know, you were six years old. You had no idea. There's no reason to feel any amount of guilt or anything.
- [41:52]
Kenny
Yeah, that's what people say, but.
- [41:56]
Kyle Tequila
I.
- [41:57]
Kenny
Can'T help how I feel.
- [42:00]
Susan Peters
Did BTK ruin your life forever?
- [42:05]
Kenny
Yeah, he he me for life.
- [42:13]
Susan Peters
In 2017, Steve himself was serving time in El Dorado, the very prison that holds his mother's killer. How'd that feel? What did that do?
- [42:27]
Kenny
To know that I was in the same prison as him and couldn't get to him. I think I laid in my bed and cried every night like I do sometimes now. But I'm a strong willed mother.
- [42:42]
Susan Peters
You are. You're still around and you're still surviving and you're still trying. You're still trying.
- [42:49]
Kenny
Steve When I can't succeed, I'll go.
- [42:52]
Kyle Tequila
Back and try again.
- [42:56]
Susan Peters
It is nearly impossible to find silver linings in the wake of these tragedies. But I take a little comfort knowing that through all of this, Charlie and Steve were able to develop a brotherly relationship.
- [43:12]
Kenny
I met Steve at the Montel Williams show. We're giggling to each other. He gave me a two dollar bill and I gave him an 1890 something silver dollar for friendship because I went one way, he went the other. He's like my little brother now. I worry for him and I pray for him and I'm happy when he's happy. I care about him because I know what he went through. He didn't have the, the opportunities I had. He was a lot younger when stuff happened to him. I was blessed to have been raised with a solid childhood. Steve didn't have that. It's right here. Been my backbone since I've been here. Susan Peters Charlie, he's number two. We have a bond that ain't nobody can break.
- [43:53]
Susan Peters
You share something in common, you and Charlie. What is that?
- [43:58]
Kenny
We both have lost. He lost more than I did, but still lost.
- [44:04]
Kyle Tequila
And We Connect.
- [44:12]
Susan Peters
In 2023. It had been a long time since Dennis Raider's name made the news. But seemingly out of nowhere, a cold case in Oklahoma got new legs. Just confirmed within the last two hours.
- [44:27]
Kyle Tequila
A sheriff's office out of Oklahoma in Park City today searching the former property of BTK serial killer Dennis Rader.
- [44:35]
Susan Peters
In a breaking news alert none of us were expecting, BTK was back again.
- [44:43]
Kenny
Our case close to home is in Pawhuska, Oklahoma which is Osage County. We had a young female cheerleader, 16 years of age that came up missing from a laundromat in downtown Pawhuska in 1976. Her name was Cynthia Dawn Kinney. I'm the undersheriff of Osage County, Gary Upton. In December, late December of 2022, Sheriff Verdon couldn't sleep one particular night and he woke up at 3:30 in the morning and decided if I can't sleep, I'm going to watch some tv. And so he tuned into Netflix and he watched a episode episode of Catching Killers and it was the episode titled Bind, Torture, Kill btk. After having watched it, the wheels in his head started to turn and he started to think about the distance between Pawhuska and Wichita and Park City and determined that two hours away was close enough that this might be A guy that he should at least look at.
- [45:52]
Susan Peters
Sheriff Verdon took a trip to visit Raider at El Dorado.
- [45:56]
Kenny
He spent three hours talking to Dennis Raider in late January, but did not reveal the reason for his visit. At the tail end of that interview, Dennis Raider, unsolicited, seemed to offer up a tidbit of information. Raider said, you know, I have a fantasy that I wish I could have lived out. And he asked Sheriff Verdon if he wanted to hear it. And he goes, I've always wanted to kidnap a female from a laundromat. I'd sit outside the laundromat, and I'd wait and watch until she was in there alone. And then I would go in and I would grab her and just take her. After that, Sheriff Verdon went to Wichita police, got copies of evidence and journals. And we used that intervening time to meticulously pore over those journals, page by page, taking notes, connecting dots, seeing how something from one page related to another page in a spiderweb kind of fashion.
- [47:03]
Susan Peters
What they found in those journals was bicycle.
- [47:07]
Kenny
We see a lot that points him towards Pawhuska. The particular journal entry that we saw in 1976 called Bad Wash Day. And that particular journal entry indicated that he was going to try to do a breaking and entering someplace on 17th Street. Pawhuska has a 17th Street. He indicated in that same journal entry that that was unsuccessful due to too much noise, and he moved on down to a laundromat. He has a notation called C9, the letter C, and the numeral 9 that indicates a chapter in his unpublished manuscript. And chapter nine was dedicated to all his successful kills. And those were his personal notes. That was nothing that was meant for the eyes of the police or the media. So it wasn't a brag or a taunt.
- [48:07]
Susan Peters
From there, they got in contact with Carrie Rawson.
- [48:12]
Kenny
To get her on board was a little bit of a uphill climb. We started revealing little tidbits of information here and there to her, and she started communicating with the media about her skepticism in regards to us. After a visit where we flew her here, we gave her a peek inside of Pandora's box, and we showed her the information that we had. We showed her journal entries that related to what we believe it was then, I think that she became a real believer in the idea that her father had killed more than 10 people.
- [48:52]
Susan Peters
The sheriff's department then went digging in Raider's backyard for evidence. This was the impetus for. For the new surge in media attention.
- [49:02]
Kyle Tequila
You can look behind me and you can see the sidewalk here that has.
- [49:06]
Susan Peters
Been dug up and neighbors tell me.
- [49:08]
Kyle Tequila
That law enforcement have been sifting through.
- [49:10]
Susan Peters
There like they were going through gold.
- [49:14]
Kenny
This latest news surge is something that we as a sheriff's office didn't want. It was somewhere in Park City in this second visit to his property that we were outed. Since the cat was out of the bag, we've decided we just have to take our shot.
- [49:31]
Susan Peters
The Osage County Sheriff's department had already made a trip out to Raider's property. The house and Raider's tool shed though were razed back in 2006 to deter tourists and media attention. Investigators went to the lot to look for personal effects and potentially a driver's license.
- [49:52]
Kenny
When we went there in April, we discovered that the city owned the property. It was still flat and and devoid of any construction with the exception of a sidewalk that had been poured from the street all the way through the property around behind the houses to a playground. It was a brand new sidewalk that was poured in 2020. So in April we did not have permission to tear up the sidewalk. But Park City police stood by while we dug on the edges of it. And it was then that we discovered the pantyhose. It was tied in a knot that would be suitable for a bondage of either wrists or ankles.
- [50:37]
Susan Peters
They had to get under the sidewalk.
- [50:41]
Kenny
So fast forward to when we have gotten permission to remove the concrete sidewalk. We once again, we had Park City on hand. They removed the concrete and we discovered the hidey hole. It was lined with shingles and the inside of the hole had a lot of gravel. We cleared all that out, discovered personal items that look like trophies that would belong to a female. And we also found bondage material, chain clips and a small length of chain. It looked like what Dennis has talked about in his writings before.
- [51:21]
Susan Peters
Not everyone has been on board with this new series of events. Not only was Carrie skeptical, but so was the Wichita police Department.
- [51:29]
Kenny
At first everyone kind of starts out wondering what our motives are. Obviously you know, even kbi, even osbi. Our next hurdle is our approach to the FBI and obviously the ultimate goal is closure for the victims families.
- [51:48]
Susan Peters
BTK still has not been confirmed as the killer of Osage County Cynthia Dawn Kenny. In 2024, Raider was absolved of the 1990 killing of a Missouri woman named Shawna Garver. This case had been reopened in response to the Oklahoma investigation. The last updates police had on Kenny's case were in September of 2023. To me, this case in Oklahoma confirms something I believed for years that Dennis Raider is one of the most evil killers in American history. I've called Wichita home for over 30 years and in my time here we've been through so many phases of the BTK story and every single time we think we've made it to the end of BTK's reign of terror, it all comes spiraling back. Over the course of this podcast, I've spoken with multiple people whose lives were upended by Dennis Raider, but none of them are victims. All of them are survivors. Their example strengthens my resolve to keep telling their stories. Their stories not of lives ended by btk, but stories of redemption and hope. Things Dennis Raider will never have. It is my hope that we can continue to build a compassionate community in spite of of a seemingly never ending saga of Darkness.
- [53:37]
Kyle Tequila
Monster BTK is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart podcasts. The show is written by Gnomes Griffin, Trevor Young and Jesse Funk. Our host is Susan Peterson. Executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay, alongside supervising producer Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on behalf of iHeart podcasts include Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, alongside producers Gnomes Griffin and Jesse Funk and supervising producer Rima Ilkayali. Marketing support by David Wasserman and Alison Wright at iHeart Podcasts and Caroline Orejema at Tenderfoot TV. Additional research by Claudia Dafrico original artwork by Kevin Mr. Soul Harp original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Special thanks to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA and the Nord Group. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks for listening. My name is Kyle Tequila, host of the shocking new true crime podcast Crook County. I got recruited into the mob when I was 17 years old. People are dying. Is he doing this every night? Kenny was a Chicago firefighter who lived a secret double life. Is a mafia hitman.
- [55:09]
Kenny
I had a wife and I had two children.
- [55:10]
Susan Peters
Nobody knew anything.
- [55:11]
Kyle Tequila
He was a freaking crazy man. He was my father and I had no idea about any of this. Until now. Crook county is available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. In Mississippi, Yazoo clay keeps secrets.
- [55:32]
Kenny
7,000 bodies out there or more.
- [55:36]
Kyle Tequila
A forgotten asylum cemetery.
- [55:38]
Larison Campbell
It was my family's mystery.
- [55:40]
Kyle Tequila
Shame, guilt, propriety. Something keeps it all buried deep until it's not. I'm Larison Campbell and this is under Yazoo Clay. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. There's no playbook for this type of fraud. Many couples dream of adopting a child but what if that dream became a nightmare? She kept telling us forget about Sabrina's baby. Now Tara has a problem because there's no baby. And we all became investigators from Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Cadence. This is Baby Broker available now on the binge search for Baby Broker wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today it was big news. I mean white girl gets murdered, found in a cemetery. Big, big news.
- [56:32]
Larison Campbell
A long investigation stall until someone changes their story.
- [56:37]
Kyle Tequila
I like saw a whole thing that happened. An arrest, trial and conviction soon follow. He did not kill her.
- [56:43]
Larison Campbell
There's no way is the real killer.
- [56:45]
Kyle Tequila
Rightly behind bars or still walking free.
- [56:48]
Larison Campbell
Did you kill her?
- [56:50]
Kyle Tequila
Listen to the real Killer Season 3 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.