Dennis Rader (BTK) | Obsessive-Compulsive Killer | Mental Health & Personality

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel well this is dr. grande today's question asks why can analyze the mental health and personality characteristics that may be at work in the Dennis Rader case so Dennis Rader was a serial killer who was active from 1974 to 1991 in and around Wichita Kansas he murdered ten people on seven different dates he started killing when he was 28 years old and his last murder occurred when he was 45 years old he's also known as BTK or the BTK killer so just to remind her that the people I'm talking about in this video are real so I'm not diagnosing anybody only speculate about what could be happening in a situation like this so first I'll take a look at the timeline then the background of Dennis Rader the investigation and the trial and then I'll take a look at the mental health and personality characteristics so starting with the timeline this case starts in January of 1974 we see the Dennis Rader kills four members of the same family ranging in age from nine to 38 he used both a rope and a plastic bag to asphyxiate the victims in April of 1974 we see he murdered a 21 year old female this time with a knife this appears to be the only murder that did not involve asphyxiation March 1977 he murdered a 26 year old female using a rope December of that same year he murders a 25 year old female with a belt he reported this homicide to the police so they actually have his voice on the recording when he called in to emergency services over seven years later in April of 1985 using his hands he strangled a 53 year old female in September 1986 he uses a nylon stocking to strangle a 28 year old female and his last murder was in January of 1991 a 62 year old female was his victim he strangled her with pantyhose it's now moving to the investigation during some of the time when he was active as a killer he sent a number of communications to law enforcement and the media essential eat wanting them with puzzles cryptic messages and other types of communication these messages would contain false information mixed with some accurate information Dennis Rader chose a name for himself BTK which stood for bind torture and kill these communications were fairly frequent until 1979 when they abruptly stopped law enforcement would not hear from Rader again until 2004 at that time he sent a letter to the Wichita Eagle a newspaper and he said in that letter that he was responsible for that 1986 murder I talked about in that letter he sent crime-scene photographs and the driver's license of the victim up until this point the police did not think that Rader was responsible for that particular murder after this message in 2004 Rader starts planting bizarre symbolic objects and cryptic messages around the Wichita area law enforcement was trying many different tactics to identify the killer they had DNA from the crime scenes and they tried to match this to a variety of suspects they figured out that one of the letters that Rader had sent to the media was photocopied in the Wichita State University library Rader had sent a poem that was modeled off of a poem located in a Wichita State University textbook so they believed that the killer had attended that University another theory said that he was a police officer because sometimes he used police lingo in his messages before the 2004 message some investigators believe that the killer had died were gone to prison other investigators believe that he was still active but they thought that he must not be married and he probably only had superficial relationships with women so essentially they were using other well-known serial killers to form their profile of Rader in one of the messages that Rader sent to the police he asked if a floppy disk could be traced back to him the police responded in a newspaper ad saying that it was safe to use the floppy disk eventually this leads to his arrest as I'll explain but I find it interesting that Rader trusted that the police would give him accurate information about what could and what could not be traced in a criminal investigation especially considering the severity of crimes that he was talking about it wasn't like he parked his car on the street and he saw a police officer there and asked him hey is illegal depart there but even then it's important to remember that the police are on the side of making arrests right they're not on the side of the defense so this was a fairly significant mistake for Rader February 2005 Rader sent a 3x5 index card and a floppy disk to a Wichita television station the disc only contained one file and that file only contained one sense that sentence directed the police to read the Hindi card right so the floppy disk was completely unnecessary to accomplish his goal Rader did not realize the disc contained metadata information recovered from the disk identify the last person who used it the name was Dennis and it further identified computers that the disk had been used on these computers were registered to two places a library and a church the police uncovered that the name of the church's congregation president was Dennis Rader interestingly when the police first discovered this information they were sure it was false one of the sentences on the index card read any communications will have a number assigned from now on in case one is lost or not found Rader used the word in case ENC ASC instead of the words in case I N and then CAS see in case with an e was the name of software that the police used in forensic computer investigations now this appears to be just a coincidence but it makes sense that the police would be highly suspect about the accuracy of the information now back in January 2005 about a month earlier Rader left a cereal box in the bed of a pickup truck at a home depot in Wichita Kansas this was a clue that was meant to be recovered by the police surveillance footage revealed the person who left the cereal box was driving a black Jeep Cherokee when the police followed up on the name Dennis Rader they found he owned a black Jeep Cherokee the police obtained a warrant to collect DNA from Raiders daughter they actually got it from some lab work that she had done that was related to something medical the analysis confirmed that she was related to whoever left the DNA at the crime scenes so with all these pieces kind of coming together they knew that Dennis Rader was the murderer after the police arrested him they would learn that they missed obvious clues that could have led to his arrest much earlier so Rader had in fact graduated from Wichita State University and he had a degree in criminal justice specifically administration of justice so he's seen alignment here with both theories the connection to the University and the theory about him being involved in law enforcement Rader had also worked with two of the victims and lived down the street from one of them one of the puzzles that he sent to the police contained a message that they should have investigated there was letters d ra d ER d Rader and the number 6 2 to 0 was in that message that was the number of his house so now moving on to his conviction initially a plea of not guilty was entered because Rader didn't say anything at the hearing Raiders defense team really didn't do much of anything actually they could have easily had the child postponed but they didn't they didn't make an attempt to suppress any evidence and they did not request a change of venue so I don't know what they were thinking but they really weren't making any efforts to defend him now Rader changed the plea that was entered to guilty before the trial started August 2005 the judge sentence Rader to ten consecutive life terms with no chance of parole until 175 years right so it seems pretty likely he's going to die in prison now Rader wasn't eligible for the death penalty because his last murder occurred in 1991 and the death penalty law in Kansas changed in 1994 and that allowed the death penalty the police have been trying to connect Rader two more murders but even if they were to make a connection now considering all the time it would take to have a trial and then the appeals after that it seems very unlikely that Rader could be executed by the state of Kansas now in terms of Dennis Rader's background we know a little bit about his background but not nearly as much as we know about many other serial killers Raider was born in March of 1945 in Pittsburg Kansas and he was raised in Wichita Kansas he was the oldest of four sons he and his brothers were often left alone unsupervised like many serial killers when he was young he tortured and killed small animals he had a particular interest in spying on female neighbors he would often steal women's undergarments and other women's clothing at some point he was also dropped on his head it's not clear what age he was when that happened he had a lot of resentment toward his mother this is also extremely common for serial killers after his arrest radar revealed that he believed that he was possessed by a demon when he was young and that demon drove him to fulfill fantasies now even with all these problems most reports say that Rader appeared normal as a child he graduated high school when he was 18 enlisted in the Air Force when he was 21 and he was married at 26 later having two children now moving to his mental health and personality characteristics so Rader became obsessed with fantasies of sex this is fairly common among serial killers he was particularly sadistic even when compared to a number of other serial killers he kept items from the murder scene the victims property and a substantial amount of evidence was recovered after his arrest he used these items to recreate the feeling he had during the criminal acts Rader even claimed that he should get credit for this behavior so because he was being satisfied between the killings with those items he was able to prolong the amount of time between the killings so he didn't kill as often as he would have now between murders Rader appeared to be a pillar of the community he was married had two children had steady employment and he served in the Air Force when he was younger as I mentioned he was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder narcissistic personality disorder and obsessive-compulsive personality now this diagnosis came from a clinician who worked for the defense this clinician was later sued for supplying a video that he made of Rader to the media that case was settled in the clinician paid $30,000 so it's really hard to trust this diagnosis considering the behavior of that clinician let's take a look at the potential alignment between raters behavior and the symptoms of these disorders now antisocial personality disorder here seems fairly clear right if we look at these seven symptom criteria we see his behavior seems to align with five of the seven symptoms repeated unlawful behaviors consistent deceitfulness aggressiveness and irritability having reckless disregard for safety and a lack of remorse the other two are a little less clear we see impulsivity and consistent irresponsibility he certainly had that at times but it's not really clear if those behaviors were part of a long-standing pattern now moving to narcissistic personality disorder there are several reasons why many people think that this alliance with raters behavior rater was able to manipulate his way into several of the homes of his victims so he was a city employee and I used that he had that position of authority in his church he was that as well and he even used his position as a boy scout leader so again manipulation after his seventh murder he asked the police how long it would take before he would get his name in the paper he believed that he was an atypical serial killer he said anyone could be his next victim he had to have a preference in terms of age or gender so no one was safe so he's trying to make other people afraid he believed that he should not be responsible for his behaviors he said he was a predator and he said if a shark or a snake could not be held accountable for killing why should he be held accountable and of course we see a pattern here where there's no remorse if we take these items we can look at the definition for narcissistic personality disorder and see if any of the symptoms align we see potential alignment with six of the nine symptom criteria a grandiose sense of self-importance believing oneself to be special or unique requiring excessive admiration having a sense of entitlement being manipulative and lack of empathy now the other three symptom criteria are not as clear so we have fantasies of success and power he clearly had fantasies but they're really not the kind in created by this criterion this criterion has to do with somebody who believes someday they'll be very successful and they'll have perfect beauty so quite a bit different than what we see with Reiter we have see another symptom is often being envious this one's not too clear and the last one is an arrogant attitude and this one's not too clear either so we see alignment with six and nine symptoms one can make a good argument for narcissistic personality pathology now looking at both the psychopathy and narcissism components we see someone here who leans more toward factor-1 psychopathy so grandiosity lying manipulation lack of empathy a failure to accept responsibility and not as much toward factor to psychopathy again not particularly impulsive irresponsible we don't see a parasitic lifestyle and we don't see a lack of long-term goals now this brings me to the last theory around what's going on which is obsessive-compulsive personality disorder why might some people believe that he has this disorder well we see that Rader worked as a city compliance officer so somebody who had a high-level attention to regulations and details this provides some insight into his personality his job was to enforce city codes and regulations like dog leash laws and public nuisance violations he had received several complaints while working in this job for bullying and being over zealous one woman was so upset by his threatening and aggressive behavior that she not only complained to the police but moved out of the area OCPD is characterized by perfectionism rigidity negative affectivity interpersonal aggression as well as the need to control other people so in just quickly looking at it it looks like there is some alignment now if we look at the symptoms we see there are eight symptom criteria and four are required for diagnosis now with this disorder it's actually quite difficult to align this to raters behavior because we don't have a lot of information around the kind of topics these symptom criteria cover so there are two that seem to align somewhat a preoccupation with details order rules lists organization schedules and rigidity and stubbornness so those two there may be alignment but with the other six again it's just a lack of information we see perfectionism that interferes with task completion it's not clear excessively devoted to work and productivity over conscientious can't throw out worthless items reluctant to delegate tasks and a miserly spending style so again with all those it's really just not clear so we're left with just two of eight so some characteristics of OCPD but not enough to make a good argument for that type of pathology now looking at his personality overall I'll conceptualize this with the five factor model I remember the five factors to the acronym openness to experience conscientiousness extraversion agreeableness and neuroticism so here I would say mid-range openness we see a high level fantasy but a low level of intellectual curiosity so there's some high and low facet scores but overall again I would say toward the middle we see mid to high level conscientiousness I would probably think that he was just high in conscientiousness but lately we see some research that indicates that OCPD is not as connected to conscientiousness as we once believed so typically if somebody had OCPD or even if they have a few characteristics of it the presumption would be that they were high in conscientiousness but again that's not clear here so I would say mid to high conscientiousness we see mid-range extraversion mid-range agreeableness and low neuroticism so this deviates from the typical serial-killer profile in many ways most serial killers would be low in conscientiousness low and extraversion and low in agreeableness so those are the mental health and personality characteristics so I'll end here just a few other thoughts that I have about Dennis Rader I find it interesting that he had no trauma history at least not one that we're aware of many serial killers do have some type of trauma history we see some interesting parallels with Richard Ramirez and David Berkowitz the Night Stalker and the Son of Sam these two individuals and Rader all believed that demons were pushing them toward criminality we see that Dennis Rader was angry when he was not successful so if there was a person that he wanted to kill and something disrupted his plan and he couldn't do it he would get quite upset this reminds me of Gary Ridgway we see unusual spacing with the murders committed by Dennis Rader there was a lot of time between murders this is quite unusual usually when serial killers start killing they keep doing it relatively often until such time as they're caught they don't usually stop for years and years at time and of course that's what we see here with Dennis Rader there's been some speculation about why Dennis Rader started committing crimes what led to those first murders well other than the antisocial and narcissistic characteristics we know the first murders occurred after Rader was fired so he had a lot of time to dwell on the fantasies and kind of build them up in his mind right so I think all these factors might have come together and once he started that first murder then this allows him to push on through other murders much more easily and this is something we do see with serial killers they tend to become more comfortable with killing and with their style as time goes on now I know whenever I talk about topics like serial killers there will be a variety of opinions please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always I hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 430,388

Keywords: Dennis Rader, BTK, BTK killer, BTK strangler, narcissism, grandiose narcissism, vulnerable narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, factor 1 psychopathy, factor 2 psychopathy, sociopathy, hypersensitivity to criticism, mental health, counseling

Id: jsSWMY5c3SY

Length: 19min 13sec (1153 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 26 2020