Serial Killers 23/25 - Dennis Rader [The BTK Killer]

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for over thirty years ten bodies three initials which struck terror in the heartlands of America B stands for buying T stands for torture and K stands for kill by torture kill a serial killer so deadly even the police feared where he would strike next I was terrified that this guy was maybe going to come after my family we go inside police files piece together the forensic evidence and reveal the true story of the hunt for one of the world's most wanted Wichita Kansas built on the Prairie flats of the Midwest honest god-fearing middle America the biggest city in the state they call the buckle on the Bible Belt a community where people felt safe leaving their doors unlocked until a serial killer began to prowl the streets for over thirty years two generations of detectives hunted Wichitas serial killer leftenant land we're headed the BTK task force we knew sooner or later he will kill again if we fail in our attempt BTK first struck in 1974 what detectives found at the scene haunted former Chief of Police Richard lamb onion for decades this is the house where it all started this is where BTK made his first hit over 30 years ago most of our homicides were the domestic type The Smoking Gun bar fights things of that nature but this particular one was highly unusual took all of us PI by surprise the wood frame house was home to the Attero family who had only just moved into the area Joseph was an Air Force veteran and his wife Julie worked in the local factory it was very shocking for the officers and they came up they found the parents facedown in their own bedroom fully clothed obviously strangled bags over their head the strangled corpse of nine year old Joe jr. was in another bedroom but police were still to make another horrific discovery his 11 year old sister Josephine Josefin had been put through a different type of death than the others he took her downstairs and she was obviously alive he had put a rope around her neck and over some pipes and he would raise her up and as she was dying and he was masturbating at that time so she was the target the primary target I believe for this the other three are terror children had only escaped because they were at school when the killer attacked the killer had made certain there was no call for help disabling the phone line before entering the house that's what led the investigators to thinking that this couldn't be a random thing people just don't walk in off the street and murder a family you couldn't get your mind around that that didn't happen in Wichita Kansas but Wichita was different now BTK had arrived January 1974 the Wichita Police Department was searching for the brutal murderer of the atera family the victims a mother father and two of their children all four had been asphyxiated and strangled why would someone do this to her family no one would do this just to go in and do it there had to be a reason for it police thought there could be a sexual motive due to evidence left at the scene they were focusing on seminal fluid that was deposited near the body of Josephine Otero they were primarily interested in determining the blood group if possible blood typing suggested the killer was blood type of but that's the Communist time forty percent of people a typo before the use of DNA the test could only narrow down the suspect list so far for nine months police followed up every lead they had witnesses provided descriptions and identicals were drawn up then in October 1974 three men confessed to murdering Nia teros but one person knew they were lying those three dudes you have in custody are just talking to get publicity for the Otero murders they know nothing at all I did it by myself and with no one's helped only the letters author knew the horrific details Josephine hanging by the neck in the northwest part of the basement hands tied with bind cord feet was clothesline cord her glasses in the southwest bedroom only the killer would know none of this had been released publicly FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood has analyzed BT Ches behavior it is unusual for a serial killer to correspond to following a commission of a crime BTK certainly suffered from malignant narcissism that's when you begin to consider yourself superior to others that you're incapable of making mistakes and you have a desperate need for attention he had typed this letter took it to the city library and then he called one of the local newspaper reporters BTK craved attention and used his letter to taunt the police he dared them to catch him before he struck again when this monster enters my brain I will never know maybe you can stop him I can't he has already chosen his next victim the code words for me will be bind them torture them kill them be t:k they will be on the next victim he's a psychopath and a psychopath is very manipulative individual he's an individual who manages to compartmentalize in other words he can separate out what's taking place from his involvement then nothing for three years but BTK was preparing to strike again his next victim lived here on hydrolic Street she was mother alone with her children and she was ill that day 24 year-old Shirley Vianne was at home with her three children that day he had what he called a hit kit he brought his own materials rope and duct tape to bind the victim and a gun to force them into submission at 11:45 a.m. he was ready to strike he locked the children in the bathroom he murdered her by strangling her slowly sexual sadism feeds off of the response to the infliction of physical or emotional pain it's extremely important for BTK due to lists debt and response of terror and fear then something happened he didn't get the phone wire cut so the phone rang wood became a panic situation for him so he left the investigators came to me and said there's a possibility this is tied to the Otero murders something else puzzled the chief surely viens son saw the murderer at the door of a neighbor's home earlier in the same day we never did think that she was the primary target which turned out she wasn't very few people experience in a lifetime being able to say I was the target of a serial killer because most people that our targets of serial killers don't live to talk about it cherrylle Sarkozy and Judy scull were roommates back in the late seventies living just a few doors down from Shirley V Hahn but on the day of the murder the women were out I came home and the police said that a man had murdered the woman down the street from me that but previous him murdering her he had come to my house and knocked on my door so the police believed that I was the intended victim that day cherrylle had had a lucky escape but the roommates think BTK came back the following year and I can remember turning on the kitchen light as I'm entering the room and I looked up and I saw a man peeking in the back window and he turned and walked away and by then we had the phone and we had dog underneath the kitchen table for safety and tried to call the police and waited underneath the kitchen table until the Sun came up BTK targeted neighborhoods where he thought he might find women at home alone he would troll the area he would find somebody that looked right to him and that's how he would target his victims 25 year-old Nancy Fox lived alone getting home late from working two jobs part of his protection against making mistakes was getting to know his victims gathering intelligence where they live what kind of car they drive what time they come home on the 8th of December 1977 Nancy Fox returned home from her job at a jewelry store hi Nancy manual and ligature strangulation hanging these are very slow and agonizing ways to die sure time through here he did take the victims to the brink of death let them know that they were at the point of death and that he allowed them to come back entitlement I turn that method of allowing the victim to revive goes to his plane the role of God he has within his power life and death over another human being 8:18 the following morning police here The Killers voice for the first time goes to his narcissism that need for attention Here I am I'm calling you to let you know that I did it and you still can't catch up police rushed to the call box but when they got there the killer was gone it's part of his power it's part of his game that he's playing with the police two months later BTK made his next move a package arrived at this Wichita TV station it was a package that contained not only a letter but a poem and I have a portion of the poem here it was titled Oh death to Nancy what is this that icy cold icy hands taking hold of me for death has come you all can see hell has opened up its gate to trick me and then it's signed BTK he said quote how about some names for me I like the following some names like the BTK strangler the psycho and then he continues he says Wichita executioner the asphyxiate er the killer claimed to have committed seven murders the atera family surely Vianne Nancy Fox and one unnamed victim how many do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention I think it's this line that absolutely stopped everyone in their tracks Beetee case threat to kill again gave police a horrible dilemma give the killer the recognition he craved or risk provoking him into another kill there was a lot of debate in terms of what we should do should we give him credit should we not give him credit there's certainly a danger of recognizing the presence of a serial killer within the community and particularly giving him a name because now what you've done is you validated what he's doing it may in fact encourage him to commit more murders but with us right now is Chief of Police Richard lamb onion but police decided they had to warn the public a serial killer was stalking Wichita do you see any pattern to BTK his conduct we have an individual who apparently has the uncontrollable desire to kill at times ultimately I was the one had to make the decision frame of mind yes you're smarter than we are yes we recognize who you are and yes this is your name we were convinced that unless we were able to get him communicating we would have another murder scene what kind of leads do you have well very honestly we have no solid leads at all using TV the chief tried to snap BTK with a strange experiment subliminal imaging the subliminal image was one or two frames that was spliced in to videotape and in it it contained a couple of words and what the psychological impact of that we hoped was that that image would be burned into B TK's brain it sounds rather silly now but thirty years ago they there was some credence to that that's that here's what went out on at Neverland here it is slowed fifty times in the Nancy Fox sketch that he sent us was a pair of glasses that was lying upside down and so what the behavioral science people came up with was a picture with a pair of glasses upside down and it simply said call the chief knowing that he was watching this that person's gonna kill again he didn't work he never did communicate with me Robert BT a local attorney following the BTK story folk panic gripped the entire city women would call the police to come and check their residents night after night they would go in the house with their guns drawn and flashlights out searching through the house people were scared to death that this maniac was going to get them particularly young women like the triple locks on all my exterior doors I put interior locks on our bedroom doors and even still I just laid awake all night waiting for this man to come back we came to the conclusion that this was someone that lived in this community that was someone's neighbor we think he's one of us and that's why we can't find him he's right out here among us how could detectives uncover the killer in their community new forensic tests were used to examine clothing from the Nancy Fox crime scene the robe that was submitted from the Nancy Fox scene was processed once we've identified stains that are possibly semen we can use a microscope to look for sperm cells scientists could now classify people into two categories secrete 'iz or non sequiturs if you're examining a seminal fluid stain and you're unable to identify a blood group one conclusion that you could draw is that person is a non-secretor beauty case blood type was not detectable in his semen this made him a non-secretor this new information made the previous blood typing inconclusive to narrow down the suspects the lab carried out a further test on proteins present in the semen called PGM the perpetrator was a non-secretor that narrows it down to approximately 20% of the population and if on the other hand you also know that they are a PGM type 1 and that is expressed by 50% of the population you can combine these 2 points of information and further narrow it down to about 10% of the population but even with this information BTK could still be one of more than 15,000 men in Wichita alone what made it even harder for police was the BTK left long gaps between murders it had been three years since his last killings every time he makes a mistake you'll see a period where he will not take any action at all after he makes his phone call in the Fox case his voice is recorded he's afraid again that someone will be able to identify him following the murder of Nancy Fox BTK seemed to go underground again we know that he was out there selecting victims in preparation for future attacks as detectives struggled to picture the Phantom's stalking their City BTK was free to kill again in the 1970s a killer had brutally murdered seven people in the city of Wichita Kansas he was known as BTK bind torture killed police searched for a patent in BT Kay's killings or links between the victims they fell within a small radius but nothing else appeared to link them it'd be impossible to gauge who his next victim would be he's totally random that would be very difficult for any investigator to try to link those together because it just depends on what he feels like that day police looked again at the evidence in the hope of finding a connection with the killer the letters sent by BTK were always photocopied to help disguise the typewriter he had used but unknown to BTK early photo copiers used distinctive paper rolls and toner detectives traced the paper from BT Kay's communications to a machine in this building on the campus of the state university police hope this might pinpoint BTK but he was not the only one using this machine the problem is it has public access anybody could put a nickel in and anybody could make a copy there the photocopier could not reveal BT Kay's identity the best evidence we had was the voice tape we played it over and over again the voice on the recording that came into the dispatcher appeared to be a white male so we're looking at white males probably in their age of their 40s but then in the 1980s BTK disappeared again there were no more letters and the murders seemed to stop had he given up or was he stalking his next victim we were told all along serial killers can't stop you know we didn't believe that we believe he did stop we believe he was here police set up a special task force to keep up the hunt for BTK they had looked at every eccentric everybody with a sexual offender record everybody basically with a criminal record they looked at him excluded them then in 1995 after six years of silence another body was discovered 53 year old marine hedge was found in a ditch on the outskirts of Wichita she had been strangled but police could not be sure if this was BTK he had never moved a victim from their home before he knows that that's going to delay the investigation that is gonna be worked as a missing person that she drove away he didn't want to arouse any suspicions the murder didn't fit with the killer's normal pattern it was a discernable ritual not a discernable mo let's define mo mo are those acts necessary to the commission of the crime the thing that makes BTK discernable is his ritual the killer took the body of mrs. hedge into an empty church that night to take a series of sexually explicit photographs but he took her there as a challenge if you will he went to God's home God's house on earth and desecrated it as part of his belief of how powerful he is despite the bold risks the killer took the murder of marine hedge remained unsolved so they can take these greater risks with the confidence that they are so superior they're not going to be gone BTK meticulously planned his attacks he could wait years to find the right victim in between attacks jewelry stolen from previous victims became the focus of BT Kay's attention I think he had his trophies he could relive the crime there are ways for a person to satisfy himself and that's masturbatory fantasies so we know he used his trophies six years after the murder of marine hedge another body was found 62 year old Dolores Davis was enjoying her retirement in a house on the outskirts of town as mrs. Davis slept someone hold a concrete block through the glass door of her home sound like a bomb Prabhat and I think she jumped out of bed and you know you're trying to get your bearings figure out what went on and here's this animal standing there and then he went ahead and strangled her with her pantyhose police discovered the body under this bridge ten miles north of Wichita but they didn't know just how close the killer was BTK had set up a complex alibi to ensure he would not become a suspect there's about a mile and a half away from his house he had set up that he was on a scouting trip because it was close to his house though he thought it was too close to home then he thought that he might become a suspect he left no evidence there were no witnesses if you have a ten as the maximum best-organized that I would say with one being the least organized and I would say BTK is an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10 over 30 years after BTK had first struck 10 unsolved murders still haunted the city in his letter of 1978 the killer had claimed 7 attacks but BTK had remained silent on three more unsolved murders all leads had come to a dead end but in 2004 advances in DNA technology provided a breakthrough that would prove crucial the semen samples from murders BTK carried out in the 1970s were reanalyzed police now had a DNA profile of the killer we had the DNA profile of BTK however until we added a profile from a known individual that we can compare that to we couldn't identify that individual the only thing that we could exclude is that when we ran the profile through the DNA database this person was not a convicted offender that had his profile in the database then on the 30th anniversary of BT Kay's first attack came news of an upcoming book saying that BTK was history I thought this guy's probably dead but started as an academic educational exercise but there was a point when I realized that this might actually flush out the killer if he is still out there we may hear from him it was a challenge to beat ek I'm still here you know I'm still omnipresent if you will I'm everywhere March 19th 2004 a letter arrived here claiming credit for a brutal unsolved murder in 1986 the victim 28 year old vicki wegerle the signature was all too familiar there is no doubt that it was a genuine communication we were going to work the case that it was BTK and then we're gonna catch him this time the strategy was to keep him talking because the problem we'd had before was that we'd get a letter from him and then we would not hear from him for another three or four years so we wanted the frequency of the communications to increase police could not risk BTK going underground again it was critical that we set up a bond between lieutenant Landwehr and this killer at this point the FBI told us that it was very possible that the killer could become obsessed with that person and possibly target them or their family this was the worst time of my life I was you know I was terrified that this guy was maybe going to come after my family or somebody or kill someone else in this community and it was gonna be on my watch we were very very careful to never say anything that might challenge him anything that he might perceive as belittling we did not want to set this man off we did not want to upset him in any way this is one of the most challenging cases that I've ever been involved with and I find that the individual that was doing this would be very interesting to talk to I'm not talking to the press I'm not talking to the public I'm talking to BTK and I want BTK to understand that he finally got the notoriety that he had always craved the residents of Wichita felt the fear of over 30 years ago gripped the city again the hunt was on for BTK BTK responded to left handed land where's appeals in a series of notes and packages often inside cereal boxes marked BTK he sent a bound and hung doll a chilling reference to young Josefina taro but even more sinister BTK revealed his plans to kill again I've spotted a female that I think lives alone just got to work out the details I'm much older now and I have to condition myself carefully got to do it this year or next time is running out for me he makes a threat that he has found someone and we made sure that the public knew this is serious don't trust anybody I could see the fear in their eyes and when the most important people in an investigation are that scared it's a scary feeling for everyone for 10 months police play a game of cat and mouse with BTK until the killers urged to communicate leads to a critical mistake he leaves a package in an open flatbed truck outside a wichita hardware store in a parking lot covered by security cameras detectives prepared to analyze more than 2,000 hours of footage in a race against time a vehicle comes into the lot it appropiate there's kind of a loop and it pulls next to the truck he pulls something out from his vehicle and places it behind the cab of the truck and then gets back in his vehicle and pulls away the pictures wouldn't identify BTK but could they pinpoint his vehicle forensic experts analyzed the image by measuring the size volume and ground clearance as well as the paintwork shade of the vehicle detectives made a crucial discovery BTK drove a black Jeep Cherokee in the message left at the hardware store the killer asks if a computer floppy disk can be traced back to the computer which authored it if police promised it couldn't he'd send future messages that way he felt himself in such a powerful position and the police were so dependent upon him for information that they couldn't possibly lie to him but police weren't playing by be TK's rules they set a trap using a newspaper advert he wants us to answer in code he says Rex it will be okay the chances of him falling for that you know we didn't think we didn't think that was a possibility I don't think anyone could ever believe that we're that lucky BTK had made a fatal error the disk he sent was rushed to the forensics team could such a simple trap of finally snared BTK Microsoft embeds in many of his documents something called metadata and that metadata is information about the file you can access that by going to file properties and as you can see here the software that was registered to Christ lutheran church this church is just north of what you don't but how could it possibly be linked to a serial killer in addition to that we can see that the document was last saved by a person named Dennis after 31 years a name what happened next was so quick so simple it's hard to believe we came up with a website for Christ Lutheran Church in Wichita and on that home page there's a link to people who were related to the church so Dan click on that link that brings up the page it has prison the congregation was Dennis Rader detectives rushed to Dennis Rader's house they still had to check out one vital detail as we came down the street here we saw that there was a black Jeep Cherokee in the driveway and it was just a huge rush of energy because the thing about the Cherokee was it was the one piece evidence that he didn't know we had even with the Jeep the evidence was circumstantial leftenant land where ordered detectives to hold off as lieutenant I bring him all back I say no I wanted to be sure and I wanted to get some DNA please need it to link Dennis Rader's DNA with that of the killer by secretly accessing medical records they obtained the DNA profile of Rada's daughter they wanted to establish if BTK was in fact the father of this individual it's fair to say that you could exclude over 99% of the population with these paternity tests DNA from the crime scenes and Raiders daughter proved BTK and Dennis Rader were the same man armed with this data police were poised to strike shortly after 12:00 noon on February 25th 2005 Dennis Rader headed home for lunch afraid are you're under arrest it was kind of fun to be honest with you every police officer since 1974 has wished for the day that I got right there it was great great feeling of early great thing my vision I can't remember a better feeling in my life the bottom line DTK is arrest the pall of fear hanging over wichita had lifted BTK was captured but just how much would he reveal a bt k's trial chilling details of 30 years of killing would shock the nation the serial killer who stalk twitchett Arkansas for over 30 years had been unmasked as Dennis Rader but what would he reveal to the police did iterator you're under arrest this is the actual footage of Raiders 30 our interrogation at first he stonewalled then three hours in leftenant land where played his ace the DNA I know that 80k is a long division we're children I know that no doubt stem field tests were done to say say say what you just the strategy of winning Raiders Trust had been a spectacular success here he honestly believes that you know he's the Fox where the house I mean I'm serious he thinks that we're gonna come after him and that's part of the chase and he's gonna escape and then we're gonna come after him again and now that we've caught him we're all good buddies on 27th of June 2005 Dennis Rader began the most chilling courtroom confession ever heard as he coldly revealed secrets he kept for over 30 years degree encounter class building how he killed the Attero family in 1974 first of all mr. Otero was strangled or a bag fit over his head and strangled then I thought he was going down and I went over and strangled mrs. Otero I thought she was down that I strangled sooner and then when I went back Josephine it woke back up what did you do then I took her to the basement and eventually a honker our hunger the basement yes sir did you do anything else at that time yes I had some sexual fantasies but that was after she was home one of the problems that the public has in dealing with serial offenders is they can't quite get over the fact that almost invariably they look like us and we don't want our perverse to look like us this mask of normality was Beatty Kay's disguise he was a family man with a wife and two kids but this dad was a little different by the time he had two children he tortured seven people to death this was the one part of his life that signified the amount of power that he had he craved power leety Kay's wife Paula sang in the church choir he helped run the Boy Scouts he chosen the ideal job for a murderer touring Wichita installing locks and security alarms in people's houses he's chameleon like he can project different things to different people when they talk about how his wife had to have known and I thought well you know I work with this guy eight hours a day I was around him maybe as much as his family no you are you never if I ever had to walk down a dark alley I would have said I want Dennis he's the guy I want to be with but there was another side to Dennis Rader if you read much about serial killers they go through what they call the trolling stage you're late 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 that you become stalking and that might be several of them but you really pull me in on that person he called the killing of Nancy Fox his most satisfying crime I confronted her told her there I was a I had a problem sexual problems that I would have to tire up and have sex with her a bit of light bondage she was a little upset I took the belt and then strangled her with a belt at that time in raiders shocking confession he admitted to ten killings since his first attack way back in 1974 the police had been sure of seven murders but a further three victims were added to be TK's final death toll one mystery remained why had there been such long gaps between the murders basically he was raising his children and once his children were born it limited the time that he could be away from home and he did not want his wife to become suspicious when he was unable to kill reyda satisfied his urges by practicing on himself ties himself up and takes photographs that's what's important is the bondage and imagery he had a fantasy that all the victims that died was serving in the afterlife those who knew Rader couldn't believe what they were hearing when he went on to talk about the details and how he you know smother put bags over those kid's head and I don't know it's just uh it's very bizarre Raider escaped execution only because his murders were committed before Kansas voted to restore the death penalty I hate him the greatest satisfaction I had my life is the thought of him burning in hell when you think about what that cockroach did to so many lives can you ever exact enough punishment enough pain to make up for that his sentence was the toughest the judge could impose consecutive life sentences totalling 175 years there will be people who will study Dennis Rader I am sure and try to figure out what makes him tick I don't really care what makes Dennis Rader tick the only thing that I'm concerned about is the Dennis Rader will no longer hurt anyone else and I will sleep very nicely just knowing that he's where he belongs you

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Channel: The Specialist

Views: 1,151,487

Rating: 4.523066 out of 5

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Id: UlWqj4n7AGg

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Length: 45min 51sec (2751 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 26 2013

Reddit Comments

I wish there was a longer documentary about this dude. I read a file on Smokinggun.com with his confession and it was a chilling read... Wish those parts were included in a documentary.

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/ColinZealSE 📅︎︎ Jun 25 2014 🗫︎ replies

Pretty good documentary. I've read a few books and articles on BTK, and wished for a decent visual on a few things. I was interested in particular in the "subliminal message" they tried to send him, his signature, and some footage of the news conferences where Landwehr spoke to BTK.

This documentary had all of that. Some of the re-enactments were, at least to me, a bit offputting. Bear with it, though, because even the re-enactments are fairly consistent with other sources I've read.

Truly terrifying to me. Especially the Oteros. Imagine having a psycho like Rader burst in on your morning routine with a gun, and murder you and your family. The two older Otero children were at school, and came home later to discover the massacre.

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/-OMGZOMBIES- 📅︎︎ Jun 24 2014 🗫︎ replies