[music playing]
NARRATOR: 26-year-old Shirley Vian lies face down on her bed.
She has been bound and strangled.
The detectives went out.
And when they came back and reported,
they said that there's a real possibility
that the Shirley Vian case is connected to the Otero case.
NARRATOR: The Otero case refers to a nightmare from which
Wichita had never recovered.
In the winter of 1974, police walked into the worst
crime scene Wichita had ever seen,
its first quadruple homicide.
Joseph and Julie Otero were found strangled to death
in their split level home.
Their son, nine-year-old Joey, lay bound
and strangled in the next room.
In the basement, 11-year-old Josephine
was found hanging from a pipe.
Wichita police questioned three suspects in the Otero case.
Before they were ever charged, detectives
were called to the public library
and a letter found stuffed inside a book.
RICHARD LAMUNYON (VOICEOVER): This letter
is very clear to tell us you have the wrong people.
You need to stop looking at them.
You need to come back and focus your attention on me.
I am the important one.
NARRATOR: The letter provides details on the Otero murders
only the killer would know.
The author also wrote, "The code words for me will be bind them,
torture them, kill them.
They will be on the next victim."
Three years after Otero, detectives believe the man
known as BTK has returned.
Wichita mobilizes quickly.
BTK, however, moves even faster.
NARRATOR: A team of detectives dispatches to the home of Nancy
Fox and finds the 25-year-old bound and strangled
with her own pantyhose.
Semen is collected from her nightgown.
He wanted to brag about it.
He wanted to make sure that we, the police,
found it undisturbed, and he wanted us to see his work,
and wanted us to realize the type of, quote unquote,
"monster" we were dealing with.
NARRATOR: The monster is a serial killer
known to Wichita police as BTK.
In his need for publicity, detectives
see an opportunity to engage their killer in dialogue
and perhaps catch him.
The thought process was, we won't give him credit for it,
with the idea that this will prompt
a communications from him.
And it did.
NARRATOR: On February 10, 1978, KAKE-TV News
leads its broadcast with a letter
it has received from a killer who wants a little airtime.
BTK began today's letter with a question.
"How many do I have to kill before I
get a name in the paper or some national attention?"
NARRATOR: In his four-page letter to the news station,
he lists seven of his victims, six of whom are named.
Victim number five, however, is not.
We were confident that number five was Kathy.
NARRATOR: Kathy is 21-year-old Kathryn Bright.
Four years earlier, Bright was found in her home,
bound and stabbed 11 times.
The murder's MO is pure BTK.
We were probably the first people to use DNA
in the United States, I think.
And is able--
is able to send some of our samples back
and is able to get a DNA profile off of it.
NARRATOR: The BTK profile is one of the first
ever developed in a homicide investigation
in the United States.
Unfortunately, it is also of limited value to detectives.
There was no searchable database or anything
like that back then.
But it was an opportunity that we had,
that we could positively eliminate
someone with that profile.
NARRATOR: For more than four years,
Ken Landwehr helps develop hundreds of leads,
but never makes an arrest.
Most of Wichita believes they have seen the last of BTK.
Most of Wichita, however, is wrong.
Wichita police confirm BTK is back.
NARRATOR: March 24, 2004--
local news station KAKE leads its broadcast with a bombshell.
After more than 25 years in apparent slumber,
the monster known as BTK was awakened.
A letter sent to the "Wichita Eagle" last week
is believed to be from the serial killer.
It's a single sheet of paper, three photographs,
a driver's license.
And there were some markings on the letter.
NARRATOR: The three photos are of a woman's dead body.
The driver's license belongs to Vicki Wegerle,
killed in her home in 1986 and suspected
to be BTK's eighth victim.
We're out here at the southeast corner of the parking
lot at the Home Depot.
And you see a row of vehicles here.
In the next row over is where the employee
had parked his truck.
NARRATOR: Dana Gouge is a Wichita homicide Detective.
On January 25, 2005, he is notified
about a suspicious package.
The package was actually in the back end of his truck.
And that's-- that's where he found it.
NARRATOR: Scrawled on the outside of the package
is the phrase "BTK bomb."
Thinking it may be a joke, the employee
has opened the package.
There are no explosives.
Detectives accessed the store's surveillance videotapes.
So there were hours of video on that day
while he was working that had to be looked at in order
to try to find anything that could be someone making
a drop into his pickup truck.
NARRATOR: What detectives find is this--
a parking lot surveillance tape recorded at 2:37 PM
on a Thursday afternoon.
On it, a black SUV approaches the pickup truck
and appears to slow down.
What you're seeing on this particular screen
is a black Jeep that's entering the picture there,
which will travel across the top of the screen
and park next to that vehicle.
An individual, it appears, gets out
of the vehicle, the Jeep that parks next to the pickup truck.
Fools around outside of the vehicle,
and then gets back into the Jeep and leaves
the same way he came in.
NARRATOR: Police blow up images of the Jeep
but are unable to ID a tag number.
Still, they believe this might very
well be a car owned by BTK.
It is perhaps their best lead in almost three decades of trying.
As some members of the task force work the vehicle angle,
others investigate the contents of the so-called BTK bomb
package.
Inside of it, it had a doll and some jewelry.
And it also had a note inquiring whether or not
he could communicate with the police by floppy disk,
without us being able to trace it.
In fact, he wrote, "Be honest," and asked
us to reply through the newspaper to his question.
And of course, we responded by running an ad in the paper,
which he asked us to do, basically telling him
we can't trace a floppy disk.
Which we knew, of course, was inaccurate.
NARRATOR: On February 16, 2005, a local news
station receives yet another package from the BTK killer.
Inside it, the item police had been hoping
for-- a computer disk Detective Randy
Stone is a computer expert.
He slips the disk into his computer
and opens the only file.
Stone determines the note was created using
Microsoft's Office software.
Knowing that Office has what's called metadata embedded in it,
and that was what we were just looking at in the formatting--
NARRATOR: The software is registered to a specific user.
In a matter of seconds, Detective Stone
pulls up that name, as well as information on the author
of the note itself.
We could tell that it was somehow affiliated
with Christ Lutheran Church and the Park
City Community Public Library.
And then the next thing we looked at was statistics,
and it shows here that it was last saved by Dennis.
So somehow, a Dennis who was affiliated
with the church or the library was somehow
involved with this document.
NARRATOR: Stone jumps on the internet,
searching for a Christ Lutheran Church in Wichita.
And when we do that, we come up
with their web page that has a link to their people
affiliated with the church.
You click on that link, and you go to here.
And the only Dennis we found on there was--
the president of the congregation counsel
was Dennis Rader.
NARRATOR: In a matter of minutes,
a single man at a computer has IDed a suspect
and even provided his possible location.
You know, I'm sitting there.
I'm looking at the computer.
I know there's people standing behind me.
But then I come up with a name and look up Dennis.
And I look behind me, and there's
nobody there anymore, because everybody just disappeared.
You know, once we had this information, we were gone.
NARRATOR: Wichita detectives hit the street, zeroing in
on Dennis Rader's home address.
The last known address was at 6220 Independence,
which is a-- which is in a city just north of Wichita
here called Park City.
NARRATOR: Detectives Tim Relph and Clint
Snyder race over to Park City.
Even before they stop the car, the pair
get confirmation that Dennis Rader might actually
be the killer known as BTK.
As we pull up to about here, we glance up
and we can see the Grand Cherokee,
the black Jeep Grand Cherokee, parked up in the driveway.
NARRATOR: The Cherokee matches the vehicle
seen in the parking lot of the Home Depot and linked to BTK.
That was one of those pivotal moments
that you just can't describe, hardly.
It's one of those moments in any investigation where
you feel like, OK, this is it.
We've got you.
When you look at his lifestyle, I mean,
he really didn't fit the profile of a serial killer.
I mean, he blended in.
The president of his church congregation, Boy Scout leader,
lived in the suburbs outside of Wichita.
I mean, he blended in.
We had-- down here at this intersection to the left,
we had all of our unmarked vehicles
with the arrest team in place.
NARRATOR: On February 25, 2005, the BTK
task force waits for Dennis Rader to come home for lunch.
And as he came down off of 61st Street
and started down this street, the unmarked car
with the lights and the grille came up behind him,
and put on their lights, and stopped him right in this area
here.
And that's when Ray Lundin from the KBI and Dana Gouge
came up and made the arrest.
NARRATOR: 30 minutes after arresting Rader,
Lieutenant Ken Landwehr and FBI agent Bob Morton
sit down with their suspect.
On the table before them, the computer disk
traced back to Rader.
He knew that DNA was--
he had studied enough that he knew that was going to be it.
NARRATOR: Landwehr and Morton want to talk about murder.
Rader, however, wants to talk about the newspaper
ad that was his downfall--
"Rex, it will be OK," a message planted by police for BTK
and leading the killer to believe law enforcement
could not trace his computer disk.
I lied to you because I was trying to catch you.
And he was incredulous to the fact that I wanted this to end.
I'm BTK.
Basically, that was it. Who are you?
Say it.
I'm BTK.
And after that, the floodgates just opened.
NARRATOR: Over the next 30 hours,
Dennis Rader provides details on the BTK victims police
knew about.
Then he tells them about two more,
victims BTK never took credit for because they
were neighbors.
Dennis Rader describes 10 separate acts of murder
and pleads guilty to each.
Judge Gregory Waller sentences Dennis
Rader to the maximum allowed--
10 consecutive life sentences and what is
known in Kansas as a hard 40--
a sentence of 40 years with no possibility of parole.