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- [00:00]
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- [01:02]
Yvette Lee
I think he's one of the most egotistical, non remorseful individuals I've researched and spoken with.
- [01:10]
James Buddy Day
When a serial killer is caught, they do one of two things. Some disappear. You never hear from them again. But with others, they don't stop talking. Dennis Raider is the second type.
- [01:26]
Yvette Lee
Correspondence, letters, videos. Our letters are just very intricate and detailed.
- [01:33]
James Buddy Day
The man known as BTK committed at least 10 murders between 1974 and 1991. Crimes that terrorized Wichita until he was arrested in 2005.
- [01:46]
Yvette Lee
He wanted to become the most prolific serial killer.
- [01:51]
James Buddy Day
But this is not another BTK retelling. We're going to look at this case differently. Through primary documents, through correspondence, through the people who still speak to him in real time.
- [02:05]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
Last time I talked to him was about just over like 10 days ago.
- [02:10]
James Buddy Day
This isn't a recap about how BTK was hunted. It's the story of Dennis Rader trying to pull everyone into a world where he is the ultimate villain.
- [02:21]
Dennis Rader (BTK Killer)
If you read much about serial killers, they go through what they call the different phases.
- [02:26]
James Buddy Day
When you listen closely, he's not describing serial killers. He's describing himself. And that changes everything.
- [02:34]
Yvette Lee
Even in his interviews, his interrogation and confession, you know, he was talking as if I am the master psychologist. I know everything there is about serial killers.
- [02:47]
James Buddy Day
What if BTK isn't real? least not in the way we've been told. I'm James Buddy Day. This is unmarked. The man who calls himself BTK is complicated. On the surface, he seems to define what we mean when we use the term serial killer. A name, a pattern, a presence that lingers Long after the crimes. But when you start to dig, when you go back to the original material, the interviews, the letters, the court records, Something else begins to take shape.
- [03:30]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
I think he's an outlier to many of the formulas that came out of the 1990s.
- [03:36]
James Buddy Day
That's Dr. Katherine Ramsland, forensic psychologist, professor, and the author of more than 1500 articles and 70 books, including how to catch a killer, the Psychology of death investigations, and the mind of a murderer. Her work on Raider is extensive. Interviews, transcripts, correspondence. For years, she's worked directly with Dennis Rader on his autobiography.
- [04:03]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
I've known him for about 16 years, but we spent a lot of time on the phone. He wrote long letters as well. He liked to write detailed things, create maps and drawings and all of that. So I have hundreds of pages of stuff from him, But I couldn't begin to estimate how many hours.
- [04:21]
James Buddy Day
Catherine is one of the people you'll be hearing from today as we separate myth from fact. And what stands out in her work isn't just the access, it's how much Rader wants to be seen.
- [04:35]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He named himself to make sure they didn't give him a stupid name. He wanted a name that would feel powerful and terrify the people in Wichita.
- [04:47]
James Buddy Day
That detail matters more than it seems because most killers are named after the fact. By police, by media, by circumstance. But Raider, he is the author of the BTK identity. So before we go any further, let me catch you up. At the time of his arrest, Dennis raider was a 59 year old church president and boy scout leader, A man embedded in his community. At trial, he pled guilty to 10 murders committed between 1974 and 1991 in Kansas.
- [05:26]
Yvette Lee
We've been corresponding for about 10 years now.
- [05:29]
James Buddy Day
That's Yvette Lee, a researcher in the field of serial crime for over 20 years. She first met Rader in 2015.
- [05:40]
Yvette Lee
I have learned quite a bit from him. He's opened up about a lot of things.
- [05:45]
James Buddy Day
When you dig into Rader's writings, his words, his prolific correspondence with researchers, what you see isn't just a killer. You see a man constructing one. There's a concept in developmental psychology. It's called identity versus role confusion. It's a stage where a person forms a sense of who they are. And when that process breaks down, people don't build an identity, they adopt one. Raider wants us to use the name btk. He wants the story to harden around the version of himself he created. So this is an examination of why Rader invented btk. Was it fame, control, power and More importantly, why do we keep helping him do it with Dennis Rader, a high functioning narcissist who spent his entire life trying to establish himself as a monster. You have to go all the way back to the beginning because these stories don't start with violence. They start with vulnerability. A quick break before we continue. I don't just talk about true crime here. I'm constantly reading, watching and listening to everything I can get my hands on. And that led me to Stephanie and Olivia from from the True Crime podcast. They cover everything in true Crime, from missing people and cold cases to the latest breaking news. They recently covered the intriguing case of Hannah Kobayashi, who vanished in Los Angeles and then reappeared in Mexico. That episode is fantastic. Olivia and Stephanie have created an online community of over half a million crime enthusiasts who demanded a podcast. Olivia is based in Sydney and Stephanie is in New York, which means they can offer unique perspectives on each case. The ladies pride themselves on having well researched episodes with just the right amount of chat. New episodes are every Thursday and are available on your favorite podcast app right now. Be sure to search for and subscribe to the True Crime Society podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and you can follow them on Instagram and Facebook. I do. For the latest daily crime news. All right now back to it. 1945. Kansas is a place of routines. Imagine early mornings shift work, farms on the outskirts, modest homes lining quiet streets. The war is ending. Families are settling back into something resembling normal life. Six months before the end of World War II. Dennis is born to William and Dorothea Raider, the first of four sons. For the first five years of his life, Dennis lives with his entire family on his grandparents farm. It's one house, multiple generations and limited space. An environment where his struggling individuality is seen in grade school performance. This again is Dr. Ramsley.
- [09:17]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He does have trouble reading. There's a certain amount of processing errors and back in the 1950s, nobody really understood that. They just thought a kid like that was slow and probably not bound for success. So I think that the kids in the 1950s felt those things in a way different than today where there are programs for assisting these kinds of disorders.
- [09:47]
James Buddy Day
Studies on childhood psychopathy show impairments in reading and processing language, particularly when it comes to emotional meaning. They can read the words, but not always. What's behind them.
- [10:01]
Yvette Lee
He was very shy, detrimentally shy as a young kid.
- [10:06]
James Buddy Day
Shy, withdrawn, isolated. These are adjectives we hear often in these cases. It's a shorthand for something much more complex. You have to imagine A child who doesn't attach in the way that others do.
- [10:23]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He was the oldest of four brothers and always felt like he had to be the best at things.
- [10:29]
James Buddy Day
His father is a marine who later works at a utility company. But by all accounts, he's stern, authoritative, a disciplinarian, very much in line with the parenting styles of the time. But for a child who already feels disconnected, that kind of environment doesn't create stability, it creates pressure.
- [10:53]
Yvette Lee
He doesn't talk about his father and refused to talk about his father. In fact, he, he got angry about it because he, he said, I don't want to talk about that. So there is something there.
- [11:03]
James Buddy Day
There's been speculation over the years of physical abuse or early trauma. And Raider, he has consistently denied this. But remember, Dennis Rader is an unreliable narrator who never stops crafting the mythology of btk. So instead of speculating, let's look at the record.
- [11:24]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He was a voyeur, so he would look in windows, especially he would look in windows of teachers who he didn't like and envision, you know, harming them in some way. So he began to develop some of those fantasies in his teenage years.
- [11:40]
James Buddy Day
This is the shift. Standing outside in the dark, watching people through paneglass windows, observing lies he isn't a part of. This is where the seeds of fantasy are planted.
- [11:53]
Yvette Lee
I think there was some physical trauma that he experienced in his young adult life that kind of led him to the bondage. Detective magazines.
- [12:05]
James Buddy Day
True Detective was a true crime magazine founded back in 1924. It specialized in real life homicide reports, crime scene photography, and detailed accounts of. Of notorious cases. By the 1940s, it's widely popular. It sells millions of copies. It circulates through homes across America.
- [12:29]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
True detective magazines were absolutely salacious. You'd be surprised. A number of serial killers from the 70s and 80s all said true detective magazines were their reading material.
- [12:42]
James Buddy Day
But as the publication evolves, the covers, they become more provocative. I'm talking about illustrations of women bound and distressed. And like many men at the time, Raider's father keeps these magazines hidden, tucked away in discreet places that Dennis finds.
- [13:03]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He was reading the true detective magazines that his father would try to keep in secret places. Those images became the things that he. That excited him, that he wanted to replicate this moment.
- [13:18]
James Buddy Day
It matters because what Rader is encountering here isn't just violence. It's a template, a way to understand something he doesn't yet have language for.
- [13:29]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He already was thinking along those lines before the term, the phrase serial killer was really being used.
- [13:37]
James Buddy Day
He later recalls Pouring through those textured pages, under the covers, flashlight in hand, studying them. And what he sees isn't horror. It's significance.
- [13:50]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He heard about HH Holmes. I think someone in his family had lived in Chicago or something. But there was also a True detective magazine about him. And Raider read that, and I think that was late 1950s.
- [14:05]
James Buddy Day
These aren't just stories to him. They're reference points.
- [14:08]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
Harvey Glatman was a serial killer in the 1950s who would persuade young women to. Who wanted to be models to allow him to tie them up. And that was something Dennis Raider read. That was a magazine he read when he was 14.
- [14:23]
James Buddy Day
For Dennis Rader, BTK is a lifelong project. It's something he's been building towards since adolescence, something he believes others should appreciate, shaped by the magazines he reads, the movies he watches, the images that stay with him. One of those Films is the 1953 movie House of Wax, starring Vincent Price.
- [14:48]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
House of Wax is one where, you know, a brunette woman, his mother was brunette, was about to be encased in wax. And the way they present that movie, she's struggling and she's naked. And that sealed itself in his imagination.
- [15:07]
James Buddy Day
As Rader reaches sexual maturity, he begins to recreate what he's seeing. And it's not just for arousal. For Rader, the fantasy isn't complete until he's placed himself at the center of it.
- [15:21]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He would tie ropes around himself and get pleasure from that.
- [15:26]
James Buddy Day
As this internal world becomes more elaborate, his external life continues around him. Dennis Rader graduates from Wichita Heights High school, class of 63. He works at a supermarket and attends college.
- [15:43]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He almost didn't graduate high school. That was certainly an issue for him.
- [15:51]
James Buddy Day
In the summer of 1966, at 21 years old, Raider follows in his father's footsteps and joins the US Air Force, reportedly to avoid being drafted into Vietnam. And this period is incredibly significant. According to military records, over the next four years, Raider is stationed in Texas, Greece, South Korea, and Japan. And by his own admission, this is where he begins seeking out sex workers, pushing the boundaries of bondage and sadism. The question is, how far are these boundaries being pushed? Now? There's no confirmed evidence that Dennis Raider commits a homicide prior to 1974. But one telling admission comes years later. In his conversations with Dr. Ramsland, he describes developing what he calls a hit kit. At this time, it's a nondescript bag. Rope, tape, knives, mask, tools. To commit a homicide. And for the remainder of his life, up until his arrest, Dennis Rader keeps versions of these hit kits hidden in Places like his car and home.
- [17:11]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
I think if you're carrying a hit kit and you're overseas, where there's very little accountability and you want to experiment, I think there's every possibility that there's somebody there.
- [17:23]
James Buddy Day
Dr. Ramslin is not alone in that thinking. But this is 1972. It's still two years before the first. First murder Raider is known to have committed. At this time, he returns from military service, meets a woman named Paula Dietz at church, and in less than a year, they marry. From this point forward, Rader begins living two distinct lives.
- [17:50]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He calls it cubing, and I think that's a very good term, cubing being that he has. If you think of a cube with multiple sides, he can be many different things. He calls them life frames, and he can just pivot to one or another, depending on what the context is and what's demanded by the situation.
- [18:10]
James Buddy Day
Now, cubing isn't just something Raider does. It's all part of his BTK fantasy. Because the version of a serial killer he's trying to become isn't just violent. It's hidden. It requires a secret identity. The men he studies, Harvey Glatman, H.H. holmes, they move through the world unnoticed. So Raider, he does the same. He becomes a churchgoer, a husband he's known in the community. He takes night classes at Wichita State University and studies criminal justice. And in 1972, something shifts in the culture that gives his fantasy a name. The FBI formalizes what they call the Behavioral Analysis Unit. The idea is simple and, at the time, deeply flawed. They profess that they can draw inferences about suspects, underlying personality traits. By studying a crime. They begin to talk about things like signatures and creating what they call profiling.
- [19:22]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
They were cowboys, essentially. They were putting this together. It was new. They didn't have databases. They didn't have good scientific protocols, anything like. In fact, profiling is not a science by any means. It's not a science. It's a way to make an end, experienced, informed, speculative guess based on the data we have. But they didn't have any databases until 1985.
- [19:54]
James Buddy Day
They invent the term serial killer. And when you go back through the record, through newspaper archives, court reporting, you actually see something very interesting. The term serial killer doesn't enter widespread public use until the early 1980s, around 1981, with the arrest of Wayne Williams in Atlanta, tied to more than 20 unsolved homicides. But the idea, the framework of a serial killer, that's what resonates with Dennis Raider. This is Dennis Raider at His sentencing hearing, speaking to judge Gregory Waller. Throughout this episode, you'll hear excerpts of this audio to examine Raider's mindset.
- [20:40]
Dennis Rader (BTK Killer)
If you read much about serial killers, they go through what they call the different phases. That's one of the phases they go through is a. As a trolling stage. You're basically. You're looking for a victim at that time and that you could be trolling for months or years, but once you lock in on a certain person, then you become a stalking. And that might be several of them, but you really. Oh, man. On that person.
- [21:01]
James Buddy Day
Raider isn't describing serial killers. He's describing his version of one.
- [21:07]
Yvette Lee
Even in his interviews, his interrogation and confession, you know, he was talking as if I am the master psychologist. I know everything there is about serial killers.
- [21:19]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
It gave him something to aspire to be. He liked the fact that they were famous. They were in newspapers and magazines. It was really during the 70s as Ted Bundy, you know, got some headlines, and some of the others, I think, you know, zodiac, some of the early
- [21:38]
James Buddy Day
ones, that word matters. Aspire. But by the mid-1970s, Raider isn't just fantasizing. He's constructing BTK. Investigators will later find Rader's copiousness. Notes in spiral notebooks, hundreds of pages, handwritten and obsessive.
- [21:59]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
We call that hypergraphia. He used to love writing everything. What time did he get up? What did he eat? What time did he bring it? Every little minutia because he believed somebody would be interested in it.
- [22:15]
James Buddy Day
That's not journaling. It's documentation for an audience he believes will exist. It's at this point Rader begins to find reasons to be alone. He tells his wife he's going away for work. He stays in hotels.
- [22:33]
Yvette Lee
He had all these hotel visits, right? And some of these hotel visits, he was able to release that pressure that he. That. That addiction, that obsession.
- [22:46]
James Buddy Day
At night, in those rooms, Raider takes polaroids of himself. Ropes tied around his neck, arms, legs, gags forced into his own mouth. Sometimes he wears dresses, wigs, plastic masks. A private rehearsal for something he's building towards.
- [23:06]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He began to think of himself in those ways and to identify with, you know, this is what it takes to be famous, these kinds of violent acts.
- [23:17]
James Buddy Day
At this point, Rader is no longer just fantasizing. He's preparing. And before long, he acts. In January of 1974, the real world intervenes. Rader is laid off from work. At this point, he's unemployed, depressed, bored. He isn't being seen. He's not being recognized. And for someone driven by insatiable narcissism, that gap becomes intolerable.
- [23:54]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He broke into someone's house and committed a burglary at the time. And then he saw Julie Otero and her. Her daughter. So he began following them and started thinking about, you know, doing this now.
- [24:10]
James Buddy Day
Later, Dennis Rader will reframe this moment. He describes seeing a Neighbor, Julio Taro, 34, and her daughter Josephine, 11, selecting them and beginning what he calls a quote project. It's a term he creates based on what he believes a serial killer should sound like.
- [24:31]
Court Official
You call these projects with these sexual
- [24:34]
Dennis Rader (BTK Killer)
fantasies, also potential hits. In my world, that's what I called them. All right, so they were called projects, hits.
- [24:42]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
It's a way to distance himself and kind of own them as pawns in his game. Essentially, he dehumanizes his victims, and they don't matter to him if they're projects. And once they're projects, they are things that he can make plans around without really thinking about their humanity.
- [25:06]
James Buddy Day
On January 15, 1974, he puts those plans into motion. He waits outside the Otero house, a white bungalow on a large corner lot. And when Julie and Josephine come outside, Rader forces his way in at gunpoint.
- [25:25]
Dennis Rader (BTK Killer)
I had did some thinking on what I was going to do to either Mrs. Otero or Josephine and basically broke into the house or didn't break into the house. But when they came out of the house, I came in and confronted the family, and then we went from there.
- [25:41]
James Buddy Day
What happens next is nothing like Raider has imagined. Inside the house, it's not just Julie and Josephine, But Joseph Otero, 38, and their son Joey. The situation is immediately outside of Dennis Raider's control.
- [25:59]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
The Oteros, he didn't know what he was doing with them. He had never strangled anyone. He didn't realize how long it took, how hard it was. He did this in the middle of the day. People could have seen his car. They could have seen him go into the house, come out of the house.
- [26:18]
James Buddy Day
In fact, people do see him. According to the Wichita Eagle, four witnesses report seeing a man, likely Raider, near the Otero house at the time. But those accounts, they're dismissed by investigators.
- [26:32]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He was lucky, really, in some of his crimes that he didn't get caught.
- [26:39]
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- [27:09]
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- [27:39]
James Buddy Day
This is the reality. It's not control or precision. Instead, panic, improvisation. A fantasy collapsing in real time. According to police records, Joseph and Julio Taro are found in the bedroom, bound and showing signs of strangulation. Joey is found upstairs. Josephine is found in the basement.
- [28:04]
Dennis Rader (BTK Killer)
I realized that, you know, I was already. I didn't have a mask on or anything. They already could ID me and made a decision to go ahead.
- [28:17]
James Buddy Day
That's how Raider explains it. But it doesn't hold up. Because when you look at the scene, when you look at the sequence of events, what you see isn't a calculated decision. It's an escalating loss of control followed by a desperate attempt to regain it. His victims become an obstacle to the fantasy he came to fulfill. Raider isn't executing a plan, he's chasing one. And that matters because it cuts through the mythology that he's built.
- [28:49]
Court Official
What did you do then?
- [28:51]
Dennis Rader (BTK Killer)
Went through the house, kind of cleaned it up, picked everything up. I think I took Mr. Otero's watch. I guess I took a radio. I forgot about that, but apparently I took a radio.
- [29:03]
Court Official
Why didn't you take these steps?
- [29:05]
Dennis Rader (BTK Killer)
I don't know. I have no idea.
- [29:08]
James Buddy Day
Afterwards, Raider steals the family's Oldsmobile station wagon and abandons it at a nearby Dylan's supermarket, where it's found quickly. Police are on the scene. Within the hour, the media descends on the Otero residence. The crime is chaotic, sloppy. And almost immediately, Raider starts refining the version of himself he's trying to become.
- [29:34]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He read a lot of serial killer novels and stuff, so, yeah, it would definitely be part of the sense of identity. Sure, but he had a lot more projects than murders. He gave me a list of 55 projects, and that wasn't even all of them.
- [29:51]
James Buddy Day
55 projects. That number tells you something. These are not actual plans, they're labels. Seeing a stranger in a grocery store and calling her a project that doesn't mean anything in the real world. But to Rader, it does. It makes him feel like the thing he's trying to become. Case in point, less than three months after the Otero murders, his next project, it isn't calculated, it's incidental.
- [30:21]
Dennis Rader (BTK Killer)
Just driving by one day and I saw her go in the house with somebody else and I thought that's a possibility.
- [30:26]
James Buddy Day
That's not targeting, that's opportunism. Rader isn't what he professes to be. Instead, on April 4, 1974, Rader breaks into the home of Katherine Bright, a 21 year old college student. And for the second time, nothing goes as planned. Her brother Kevin is home. A struggle ensues. Rader flees, but not before stabbing Catherine and shooting Kevin twice. At one point, believing Kevin is dead, Rader hears movement.
- [31:00]
Dennis Rader (BTK Killer)
Oh, I'll tell you what I thought. I thought the police were coming at that time. I heard the door open, I thought, that's it. And I stepped out there and he. I could see him running down the street. So I quickly cleaned up everything that I could and left again.
- [31:12]
James Buddy Day
Panic, not control. And it's Catherine herself who calls police. According to records, when officers arrive, she's alive, still holding the phone. A responding officer notes multiple stab wounds visible in her abdomen before she loses consciousness. She later dies at hospital. Though both Catherine and her brother Kevin are able to give an eyewitness statement to police.
- [31:40]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
It was really Kevin Bright who got a very good look at him because he got shot by him twice and they struggled over the gun and he saw him and gave a description. But the subsequent drawing based on Kevin's description seemed pretty generic.
- [32:00]
James Buddy Day
The sketch leads nowhere. The investigation stalls. And that frustrates Rader because at this point, something becomes clear. He's not achieving the image he has of himself. He's not HH Holmes. He's not some calculated, untouchable figure. He's fumbling, panicked. His victims resist. The police don't see him. And for someone driven by narcissism, that's a problem. So he changes his strategy. In October of 1974, Raider contacts the Wichita Eagle, directing them to a letter hidden in a book at the public library.
- [32:48]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
The first letter came about nine months after the his first murder, the Otero family. And that was mostly because police had picked up three men that they thought were good suspects and he didn't like that they're wasting tax money on, on this investigation. So he wanted to make sure they understood that those men were not the guys.
- [33:12]
James Buddy Day
That's how Raider explains it. But again, it doesn't hold up because this isn't about correcting the investigation, it's about inserting himself into it. Because in that letter recovered by police, his real motivation becomes crystal clear. He promises more murders and more importantly, he names himself. I'm going to read you from the letter itself. It says, quote, the code words for me will be bind them, torture them, kill them. Btk Raider often talks about these sexual fantasies of bondage and sadism driving him. But what I think his real fantasy is is that he wants to be the construct of what he thinks is a serial killer. This kind of identity is what gives him that sense of power.
- [34:08]
Yvette Lee
I think he's one of the most egotistical, non remorseful individuals I've researched and spoken with. His level of narcissism and, and egotism. And he wanted to become the most prolific serial killer.
- [34:29]
James Buddy Day
Creating his own moniker is critical because it's control. Control over how he's seen, control over how he's remembered.
- [34:39]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He had four or five that he suggested that I didn't think were very scary. Like the Poet Strangler was one of them. But the BTK one is what stuck. But he wanted to take control of what they would call him.
- [34:56]
James Buddy Day
Raider isn't known to have committed another confirmed murder for nearly three years. But investigators have long questioned that. As recently as 2023, Oklahoma authorities search property linked to Raider in connection to unsolved cases, including the disappearance of Cynthia don Kinney in 1976. Now, Raider has denied involvement, but his movements and his writings, they do raise questions. What we do know is this. On March 17, 1977, he kills again.
- [35:36]
Dennis Rader (BTK Killer)
Actually on that one she was completely random. There was actually someone across from Dylan's was a potential target. It was called Project Green. I think I had project numbers assigned to it.
- [35:49]
James Buddy Day
Random again, it doesn't hold up. Shirley Vian, 34. She lives within a mile of Raider's home. She's part of his environment, his routine, his access. He encounters her five year old son, follows him home.
- [36:07]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
1977, he saw Shirley Vienne's son outside and followed him to her house.
- [36:14]
James Buddy Day
Inside the house, Rader restrains the children in a bathroom. But they escape and find a neighbor and call police. Shirley Vian is found shortly thereafter. Bound evidence of ligature. Cause of death? Strangulation.
- [36:31]
Court Official
You say you cleaned everything?
- [36:32]
Dennis Rader (BTK Killer)
Well, I mean put my stuff. I had a briefcase, whatever I had laying around. The ropes, tape, cords, I threw that in there. My, you know, whatever, you know, that I had, that I brought in the house.
- [36:44]
James Buddy Day
On December 8, 1977, Raider takes another step. He breaks into a duplex, cuts the phone lines and waits.
- [36:53]
Dennis Rader (BTK Killer)
Nobody answers the doors. So I went around the back of the house, cut the phone lines. I could tell that there wasn't anybody in the north apartment. Broke in and waited for her to come home.
- [37:05]
James Buddy Day
His intended victim is 25 year old Nancy Fox.
- [37:10]
Dennis Rader (BTK Killer)
Nancy Fox was another one of the projects. When I was trolling the area, I noticed her go in the house one night sometimes and anyway, put her down as a potential victim.
- [37:25]
James Buddy Day
But this time it's different. There's more planning, control structure, but more than that, there's presentation. Because by this point, the act itself isn't enough to Raider, the narrative matters.
- [37:44]
Safeway/Albertsons Advertiser
Yes, you will find a homicide at
- [37:47]
James Buddy Day
840 State 3 South Virgin.
- [37:51]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
I'm sorry, sir, I can understand.
- [37:53]
James Buddy Day
What is your address? What you're hearing is historic audio of Raider calling the police to report the murder himself. Because what Raider is actually chasing isn't just the crime, it's the reaction. And when he doesn't get it, he fills in the gaps and himself. He calls radio stations, sends letters. He complains about the lack of media attention. And by early 1978, he begins sending postcards and poems to the Witchita Eagle. You're thinking he's addicted to murder.
- [38:30]
Yvette Lee
Oh, he was absolutely addicted to murder, to lust, to all the fetishes that he had.
- [38:36]
James Buddy Day
But even that framing it misses something. Because what Raider is addicted to is the identity of BTK and the validation that comes with it. He becomes so fixated on his correspondence, his duality begins to slip. At one point, a draft of one of his poems signed by BTK is found by his wife.
- [38:59]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
She saw him writing once and said that he had misspelled words similar to the way the BTK killer did in the messages he sent to the media. And Raider quickly explained it away. Also, he was in criminal justice classes. So some of the things he said, these are projects we're working on. We're imagining the BTK killer. And there's no reason not to accept that explanation.
- [39:27]
Yvette Lee
If there was anything that Dennis Raider was scared of, it was his wife exposing him. And she was kind of the one that kind of kept him in this box. And he talks about boxes, right? A lot. And that's how he compartmentalizes his life. In these boxes.
- [39:46]
James Buddy Day
Investigators will later find components of his hit kits hidden throughout the home.
- [39:52]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He made false bottoms and closets and drawers and had a. He built a tree house for the kids where he put a false floor in. He dug holes in the crawl space and under the shed to hide things so it wasn't out in plain sight.
- [40:11]
James Buddy Day
One year after his last documented homicide, on April 28, 1979, he attempts another attack. But it fails when the intended victim notices signs of a break in and. And flees before she even encounters Raider. It's a crack in the BTK identity. So Rader does what he always does. He reframes it. He sends taunting letters. And then years pass.
- [40:41]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He talks about the fact that he got busy and wasn't. He might have. He might stalk somebody, he might fantasize. But he didn't have time to be an elaborate stalker and plan.
- [40:57]
James Buddy Day
It's nearly eight years between murders now. Is that truly the case? Well, there's no question Rader is committing break ins and attempting to find victims during this time. But the details are thin. And Rader himself has denied committing additional murders during this period. What we know is that on April 27, 1985, Raider commits one of his most brazen crimes. That of a neighbor named Maureen Hedge. She lives five doors down from his own house.
- [41:32]
Dennis Rader (BTK Killer)
Since she lived down the street from me, I could watch the coming going quite easily. Casually, we'd walk by and wave. She liked to work in her yard as well as I like to work. It's just a neighborly type thing. It wasn't anything personal. I mean, just a neighbor.
- [41:48]
James Buddy Day
Raider's evolution continues. This is an orchestrated plan. The movement is deliberate.
- [41:55]
Dennis Rader (BTK Killer)
Parked my car over at Woodlawn and 21st street at Bowling alley there at times before that I dressed until I had some other clothes on. Changed clothes. I went to bowling alley. Went in there, the pre sense of bowling. Called a taxi. Had a taxi take me out to Park City. Had my kit with me as a bowling bag.
- [42:21]
James Buddy Day
Changing clothes, moving vehicles, using cover. He's thinking like the version of himself that he's built.
- [42:28]
Dennis Rader (BTK Killer)
I very carefully snuck into the house, kind of like a cat burglar. And after checking the house, she wasn't there. So about that time, the doors rattled. So went back to one of the bedrooms and hid back there. In one of the bedrooms, she came in with a male visitor. They were there for maybe an hour or so. He left. I waited till wee hours of morning.
- [42:54]
James Buddy Day
After Raider murders Maureen Hedge, he does something that reveals the true driving force behind all of this. He moves the body, transports it to his church. The place tied to his own real life. And he stages it.
- [43:09]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He was aware that the FBI were trying to make predictions about him, so he wanted to break a pattern. And also he wanted to get photographs of a body, a woman's body in all these bras and panties that he had stolen from other women. And then he dumped her outside because that would break the pattern.
- [43:32]
James Buddy Day
He's not just committing crimes in Raider's mind, he's interacting with the investigation, adapting to it, performing for it. This is the fully realized version of BTK. By 1986, he's embedding himself even deeper into his own fantasy. He targets a mother named Vicki Waggerly.
- [43:55]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He would learn about the victims, he'd follow them, he'd find out their routines, he'd look for the, you know, and there were, there weren't cell phones and things ordinarily there. So he'd cut phone wires to make sure they couldn't call out.
- [44:11]
James Buddy Day
Shortly before noon on September 16, 1986, Vicki Waggerly's husband comes home for lunch and sees Rader driving away in their family car. Inside, he finds his wife's body and immediately calls police. Their young child is also in the home, but unharmed. Police dismiss his witness account and spend two decades investigating Wagerly's husband for the murder. And like all of these cases, the assumptions have real world costs. And surprisingly, Rader doesn't move to correct the mistake, but not out of any obligation. It's because his home life reaches a difficult patch. By 1991, Rader is unemployed, the result of layoffs, and his wife is hospitalized due to ongoing health concerns. He finds himself being a full time caregiver for his children, something he struggles to with. Money is tight, he's frustrated and depressed. On January 19th, he selects his next victim, 62 year old Dolores Davis.
- [45:30]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
Now with his last one, Dolores Davis, he had decided he would take her to a barn because that had long been a fantasy. He wanted to use an abandoned barn. However, he lost his way that night because it was snowing and foggy. So he ended up just dumping the body rather than taking it to a barn.
- [45:53]
James Buddy Day
This isn't impulsive, it's deliberate. He prepares in stages, changes clothes, moves locations, carries his kit.
- [46:03]
Dennis Rader (BTK Killer)
That particular day, I had some commitments. I left those, went to one place, changed my clothes, went to another place, parked my car, finally made arrangements on my hip, kit my clothes, and then walked to that residence.
- [46:19]
James Buddy Day
It's commonly reported that after this murder, BTK stopped, but that is the mythology.
- [46:26]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He says he didn't stop, he just didn't succeed. He said it's like a fisherman who goes out every day. Sometimes he gets something, sometimes he doesn't, he said. But he didn't stop. He kept looking, he kept stalking. He kept track of certain projects. And in 2004, he had his eye on another one that was going to be very elaborate.
- [46:54]
James Buddy Day
He still watches, still building, still waiting. And in 2004, he re emerges, at least publicly. And this is where everything starts to unravel.
- [47:07]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He had bested the FBI. He had bested the various task force over a period of 30 years. That was pretty impressive. And now, yes, he's feeling pretty good about himself.
- [47:19]
James Buddy Day
At this point, Rader believed he's won. He believes the BTK story is his. So he starts writing again, sending letters, packages, puzzles, even outlining a book he calls the BTK story.
- [47:36]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He thought he had a fan club in his the readers of the newspapers and the viewers of the Wichita TV stations. He thought he had a fan club and he was enjoying the fact that they had not come.
- [47:49]
James Buddy Day
That's the final piece. Raider's psychology coming in to its fullest expression. Not fear, not control an audience.
- [47:58]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
He had asked a police guy who was part of a digital training unit if you could trace an email that was anonymous or. And the guy said no. And the guy was wrong. They gave Raider the wrong information. And so that gave Rader the idea that he could use a floppy disk.
- [48:26]
James Buddy Day
Raider sends the disc and within hours, the police have everything that 30 years, thousands of man hours, task forces and FBI profiles could not achieve. On February 25, 2005, Dennis Rader is arrested coming home for lunch. The man who built BTK is undone by his need to be seen. Dennis Rader is sentenced on August 18, 2005 in Wichita. He receives 10 consecutive life sentences, one for each murder he's known to have committed.
- [49:07]
Court Official
Based upon your statements to the court, I will find there are factual bases for each of these pleas of guilty. I will accept these pleas of guilty and adjudge you. Dennis L. Raider, guilty of murder in the first degree.
- [49:21]
James Buddy Day
The sentence, 175 years without the possibility of parole is the maximum allowed under Kansas law at the time. There's no death penalty, no spectacle, no final performance. And that matters because from the very beginning, Raider wanted something very specific. Btk. He wanted the story to harden around it, to outlive him, to define him. The letters, the calls, the fear, the mythology, we are the ones repeating it. But when you strip that away, when you go back to the record, the timelines, the reality of what actually happened, what you see isn't a mastermind, it's a man constructing one.
- [50:09]
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
Last time I talked to him was about just over like 10 days ago. I mean, I know that he's in the infirmary and they've moved in there because they can't take him to the shower or to, you know, anything without a wheelchair because he has scoliosis of the spine and he's lost his teeth, he's balding. You know, he's got a lot of issues and I I know that he's on the decline health wise.
- [50:39]
James Buddy Day
If you've made it this far, that's the image I want to leave you with. Not BTK Dennis Rader Frail, aging, sitting in a prison cell, still holding onto an identity that never really existed. Before we wrap a few show notes, I had a great conversation with Yvette Lee for this episode. Her research is fascinating, and while we don't always see eye to eye, I'm going to post the full conversation inside Unmarked Case Files, our research portal where you can judge the evidence for yourself. Next up, my books. If you want to explore the Charles Manson case through my research and interviews with the Manson family and Charles Manson himself, Charles Manson the Last Words is available on Kindle, Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. Also, I just released my first novel. It's called A Plague of Steel. It's a grim, dark fantasy war war story about what war leaves behind. It's available now on Kindle, Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. And if you do dive in, please leave a review which is the lifeblood for independent authors like myself. This episode of Unmarked was produced by John Nadeau. Our editor is Dave Alderson and our additional producer is Jesse Demaray. Until next week, this is un Unmarked
- [52:07]
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