For most crimes, the longer they go unsolved the less likely they are to ever be solved,
and serial killer cases are no exception. Not solving a case before the serial killer
goes inactive means that you have less fresh evidence and less and less situations for
the killer to incriminate themselves, or slip up in some sort of way that makes them easier
to catch. However, there are always a few exceptions to the rule and in today’s video
we’ll be going over one of those exceptions. Our subject for today is Dennis Rader, also
known as the BTK killer, who is one of the most brutal and deplorable serial killers
in American History. Despite going inactive with minimal clues to lead the police back
to him, Dennis Rader was so egotistical and starved for attention that he managed to get
himself caught 13 years after he stopped killing, and today we’ll be looking into how it all
unfolded.
Dennis Rader was born on March 9th, 1945 in Wichita, Kansas to William and Dorothea Rader.
His home life was relatively normal, however as one of four sons and his parents constantly
working, there was little attention paid to Dennis, and he later said he felt neglected.
He emphasized that he especially felt like he was being ignored by his mother, which
very well may have been a leading factor to his later sadistic feelings. From a young
age Dennis soon began to experience intense sadistic sexual fantasies that revolved around
torturing women, especially those bound and helpless. He would cut women out of magazines
and draw bondage and ropes on them before he eventually began spying on unwitting females
while dressed up as a woman himself with clothes he had stolen from neighbors. Tragically the
way he expressed these desires eventually evolved, as it often does with modern serial
killers, and Dennis began taking his emotions out on others in the form of animal abuse.
Dennis later expressed that he derived sexual pleasure and excitement from watching chickens
getting slaughtered and by hanging cats and dogs.
After graduating highschool Dennis attended Kansas Wesleyan University, but soon dropped
out in his first year and joined the U.S Air Force where he served from 1966-1970. After
his discharge he moved back home to Wichita, and met and married Paula Dietz on the 22nd
of May. Dennis eventually went back to school, this time to Butler County Community College,
and earned his Electronics Associates Degree in 1973, which he put to use by working for
ADT Security Services, where he installed security alarms into customer homes. Ironically,
most of the people buying alarms while Dennis worked with ADT were buying them to protect
themselves from the BTK Killer without knowing he was right there in their homes. Dennis’s
reign of terror, torutre, and bloodshed, began on january 15th, 1974, with the attack on
the Otero Family.
The attack was incredibly amatuer and risky, taking place in the early morning while the
younger kids were getting ready for school and both parents, Joseph and Julia Otero,
were still home. Dennis waited in their garage until the youngest boy, Joseph Junior, came
out of the house, then he attacked the boy and forced him back into the house with a
knife and pistol while threatening the rest of the family. Dennis promised the family
that he was here to rob them and that no harm would come to them if they just did what he
said, tragically this was all a lie. They allowed him to tie them all up in the bedrooms
where he would eventually strangle or suffocate all of them using either rope or a plastic
bag. Dennis was disturbed and sadistic that sometimes he would even let his victim catch
their breath right before the point of dying just so he could get the enjoyment of strangling
them again and again. Despite his sadistic fantasies being of a sexual nature, none of
the victims were sexually assaulted, however the killer’s semen was found at the scene
of the crime, which would provide the police with crucial DNA evidence that would be later
used to put Dennis behind bars. Tragically, the bodies of the Otero’s were found by
another one of the Otero children, namely 15 year old Charlie Otero. When the police
arrived at the scene they were shocked by the brutality of the crimes, as well as the
confidence and audacity of the killer who committed this heinous crime in a busy neighborhood
during broad daylight.
Dennis wouldn’t wait long to strike again, this time going after Kathryn and Kevin Bright
on April 4th of this same year. Dennis broke into 21 year old Kathryn’s home and waited
for her to get home, and she soon returned to this house with her brother only or both
of them to be threatened with a gun. Dennis once again told them that he only planned
on robbing him, and that as long as they followed his orders no harm would come to them. The
Bright siblings were tied up and put in different rooms. Dennis started strangling Kevin, and
shot him three times after Kevin had tried to fight back. Assuming his victim was dead,
Dennis left the room to go deal with Kathryn, however Kevin was still alive, and despite
struggling just to survive, he managed to get out of the house and get the police to
rescue his sister. By the time the police arrived, Dennis was gone, but Kathryn was
still alive despite her three stab wounds, although she would tragically succumb to her
wounds. With relatively minor similarities between the Otero and Bright murders, the
police didn’t initially suspect that the two were related, but that was soon about
to change.
In October of 1974, Dennis sent an anonymous message to the Wichita Eagle, informing them
that there was a book at the public library they might be interested in. When they checked
the book they found a letter from someone claiming to be the man who killed the Oteros.
The letter mentioned several pieces of information about the case that the police had not made
public, so the authorities knew they had the real deal on their hands. The letter was interesting
to say the least, and featured a noticeable amount of spelling mistakes, and when the
letter was published in the local newspapers, the spelling mistakes were so noticeable in
fact that Paula, Dennis’s wife, even joked to him that he wrote just as poorly as this
killer. After two more murders during 1977, Dennis wrote another taunting letter, this
time to the Wichita KAKE TV Station. It was in this letter that Dennis’s disturbed and
psychotic nature really reared is ugly head. He began using his “codex” of terms to
refer to his crimes, with the word “minotaur”, for example, referring to his violent sexual
side, and the term “factor x” referring to Dennis’s urge to kill. This letter was
also where Dennis coined his infamous nickname. In the postscript of the note he wrote: “P.s.
Since sex criminals do not change their M.O or by nature cannot do so, I will not change
mine. The code word for me will be...Bind them, torture them, kill them, B.T.K., you
see he at it again. They will be on the next victim.”
After this letter, Dennis would end up taking an eight year break from the murders, however
there was one notable exception to this that deserves to be mentioned. Dennis ended up
with an obsession with a woman named Anna Williams. He broke into her home on April
28th, 1979, and patiently waited for her to come home. For whatever reason, Anna got held
up and ended up coming home much later than anticipated, causing Dennis to get frustrated
and tired of waiting. While he did leave her home before she got there he wanted to make
sure she still knew he had been there, and stole one of her scarves. At a later date
he then mailed it back to her, along with a terrifying message which read “Be glad
you weren’t here...because I was.”
While Dennis was taking a break from the murders and taunting the police, the authorities organized
a BTK Taskforce with the intent to catch him. However they soon found themselves with no
new suspects or new leads, and after two short years the task force disbanded. Most believed
that he had either died, moved, or been arrested for unrelated reasons, but underneath everyone's
noses, as the police were looking for BTK, Dennis was participating as an active member
of the community, including working closely with the cub scouts and the church. In 1985,
Dennis resumed his crime spree with the murder of Marine Hedge, who was actually one of his
neighbors. After strangling her he brought the body to his church where he bound her
and took photos before dumping the body. This was the first time Dennis put effort into
hiding the body, and it is incredibly likely that this was due to his proximity to the
woman, probably fearing that the police would be able to easily connect Hedge to him. The
murders continued on September 16th, 1986, when Dennis strangled Vicki Wegerle in her
own home with a pair of stockings. This death was much more in line with his M.O, however
the police still didn’t make the connection that she was murdered by BTK. Dennis would
once again take a break from killing before returning to kill Dolores Davis in January
of 1991 who would be his final victim.
Following Dolores’s death, Dennis began a cold period that would last 14 years, and
not long after the name BTK would fade from the public’s name. Many believe that the
anger Dennis must have felt from reading is probably what drove him to come out of hiding.
In March of 2004 he sent another letter again to the Wichita Eagle, where he took credit
for Vicki Wegerle who had been killed in 1986. In order to prove to the police that he wasn’t
lying about this, he included not only her driver’s license but some photos of her
had taken all those years ago and hung on to. Dennis liked to take souvenirs from each
of his victim’s homes or bodies which he used to relive the murders during his period
of inactivity. The BTK Case once again became,and Investigators once again resumed their hunt
for this elusive killer. Dennis evidently felt no fear from the police, as he sent a
whopping 11 messages only over the course of just one year, which the police certainly
didn’t mind as it gave Dennis ample opportunities to mess up and get caught, which is exactly
what happened. In one of his many letters to the police Dennis asked them if a floppy
disk could be traced back to him. Obviously, the police lied to him and said it wouldn’t
in the hopes that he would believe them and send one. On February 16th of the same year
Dennis sent the police a 1.44-Megabyte Memorex Floppy DIsk, and the police got to work tracing
it back to him. The metadata of a deleted word document that was still
on the floppy disk unbeknownst to Dennis, and soon the police were able to narrow it
down to a name: Dennis Rader. With all of this circumstantial evidence police were able
to obtain a warrant to test a pap smear from Rader’s daughter. They tested the pap smear
versus some DNA found under one of the victim's nails. This evidence is what doomed Dennis,
and on February 28th, 2005, Dennis was promptly arrested at his home. He would be charged
with 10 counts of first degree murder, and on August 18th of the same year, he was sentenced
to 10 consecutive lfe sentences! As of writing this Dennis is still alice and serving his
time in the EL Dorado Correctional facility, ending the story of the BTK Killer, at least
for now.
If you liked the video then consider giving it a thumbs up and subscribing so that you
never miss one of our videos. Comment your thoughts on the case down below and leave
some suggestions for our next video. We’ll see you guys in the next one!