Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore - SERIAL KILLER: BTK

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

For three decades, the BTK Killer terrorized Wichita, Kansas—binding, torturing, and killing victims, all while hiding in plain sight. Morgan and Kaelyn break down the chilling clues, from cryptic puzzles and taunting messages, to the infamous floppy disk and groundbreaking DNA evidence. How did BTK evade capture for so many years, and how did investigators finally crack the case of one of America’s most notorious serial killers? Clues is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t Miss out on all things Clues! YouTube: @CluesPod | @crimehousestudios Instagram: @cluespodcast | @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia Clues is hosted by Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore  Instagram: @morgsyabsher | @itskaelynmoore TikTok: @twohottakes | @heartstartspounding To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Dr. Hrini-Bot, host of Hidden History. Every Monday, I go where history gets uncomfortable. Vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, and events that science still can't fully explain. Listen to and follow Hidden History, available now wherever you get your podcasts. But after that, this killer goes quiet for over two years. But also, now the public knows that this guy exists. And that is how this killer becomes known as BTK. Hi, friends.

to clues, where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases. I'm Keelham Moore, and I'm going to be the one digging into the timelines, the backstories, and the court files related to these cases. And I'm your internet sleuth, Morgan Absher. I'm the one who's diving into the Reddit forums, the documentaries, anything else I can find online, and pulling out the details that add up or really don't. At Crime House, we value your support. So please share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review, and follow clues to help others discover the show. And for bonus episodes, early access, and ad-free listening, join our Crime House Plus community on Apple

podcasts. Okay, today we are going to be talking about a serial killer, one who hid in plain sight for 30 years, starting in 1974. He committed a series of sexually motivated murders based on his elaborate bondage and torture fantasies, hence why he nicknamed himself BTK, which stood for bind them, torture them, kill them. BtK wanted to be feared. He wanted to be feared. He wanted recognition for his crimes, and he succeeded. Over the years, BTK wrote a series of letters to the police and the media, and in doing so, he gave the authorities everything they needed to eventually track him down. More on this case and the clues that defined it right after this quick break.

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I-I-N-C-E dot com slash clues for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash clues. Okay. I knew nothing about BTK up until 18 hours ago, and I wish I could go back in time. Yeah, scrub all the images out of your brain. This is a heavy one. This is going to be a big one today, you guys. Yeah, as someone who has consumed a lot of true crime, this one always sticks with

me. Every time I revisit parts of this case, it really is a very, very heavy one. It is insane. And I'm very curious what you all think about it by the time we get to the end. But I'm interesting because I've always enjoyed listening to like other true crime podcasts and shows and YouTube channels. But like when I hear a case, it kind of like falls out of my brain after. So if anyone had talked about this around me, I knew nothing until yesterday. I kind of take my grad school and like college approach at crash study. The night before. Read everything you can about it. I feel like I spent 16 hours just going through all the media. And I'm like just so ready to get into this because my brain is about to burst. And you never watched Mind Hunter. That's going to be my recommendation for you and anyone listening who hasn't watched Mind Hunter. But the big thing about Mind Hunter was they spent two seasons teasing all of these little scenes that like the episodes would start with little scenes from BTK's life. You would see him like in his house getting ready to go somewhere. You'd see him like talking to his wife. You'd see him like talking to his wife. practicing knots at night.

And it never ultimately, like, ended up being anything because they canceled the show before they could get to a season about him. But this whole case was happening at the time that the FBI was really starting to figure out what serial killers were and developing the language about them and studying profiles on them. And so that really plays into this case a lot. Yeah. We're going to talk about that a lot today. Let's, let's dive in. So for anyone who's watching this episode on YouTube, you are going to see some photos and images that will help. paint a picture of this case. But if you're listening, you can find those same photos on our social

media that's at Clues Podcast on Instagram. And I will say there might actually be more on Instagram for this case, because a little stricter on the YouTube side of things for sure. So make sure you're checking both places for these images. And I do just want to issue a warning before we begin. We've mentioned this episode is going to be a big one. It is very heavy. This episode includes discussion about sexual assault, the death of minors, and other very graphic details that could be disturbing for some listeners. So please proceed forward and listen and watch with care. So our story today begins in the early 1970s in Wichita, Kansas. At the time, it's the largest city in the state. It's got a population of about 277,000 people at the time. And even though

Wichita has a lot of big manufacturers and factories, it has this culture of entrepreneurship, it is still this really quiet, peaceful place to live. And people feel really safe here. It's one of those times two in the 70s where people would look at the coasts, they'd look at New York and they'd look at L.A. and be like, oh, I mean, they do that today too. It's so unsafe there. Thank God we live in the Midwest where everything is safe and I don't have to lock my door at night. Nothing bad happens in the Midwest. No, never, clearly. So back in the day in the early 1970s, the local police department had only six homicide detectives. They just didn't really need many more than that. and they weren't very experienced in actually dealing with murders in general, much less a serial killer.

But all of that changed after January 15th, 1974. A 15-year-old boy named Charlie Otero is walking home from school in the snow. It's been kind of dumping snow the whole day, and so it's like slippery, there's snow everywhere. And he has two of his four siblings with him, Danny and Carmen. The Oteros had moved to Wichita just six months prior, and they were really described. by their neighbors as being this picture-perfect American dream family. They had hardworking parents. There was always love in their home. And when Charlie arrives back home in East Wichita, he walks up to the house and he notices that their garage door is open and that snow is kind of blowing into the

garage. He's just this typical teenager. His first thought is actually that his mom, Giulio Taro, had maybe made a mistake. And he thinks to himself that he's going to like enjoy kind of like ribbing her about this later on. So he goes into the backyard. He's going to get into the house. And that's when his heart kind of drops. He notices that in the backyard, there's his family dog, lucky, outside in the snow. And it's way too cold for a dog to be just running around outside. And he starts getting this feeling that maybe something is actually not right. It's not like his parents to leave the dog out. And his fears are basically confirmed when Charlie and his siblings get inside. Once I open the sliding glass door, he sees his mom's purse on the stove and all of the contents are dumped out.

Julie, his mother, is very strict. She's very tidy. She would never just like dump her purse out on the counter like that. And that's when one of his siblings call out to him from down the hall, screaming that their parents are, quote, playing a bad trick on us. And Charlie runs to his parents' bedroom. And what he sees, I mean, no child should ever be subjected. to. He sees that his mom and dad, 34-year-old Julie, and 38-year-old Joseph, are both on the bed,

dead. But it's the way in which their bodies are arranged that make this scene just extra horrifying. So both of them are bound at the wrists and ankles. Julie had a cord wrapped around her neck and Joseph had a belt wrapped around his. Joseph is at the foot of the bed. And this is a really sad piece that we found in the research. It seemed like he had been struggling a lot because half of his tongue had been bitten off. Julie is on the bed. She's face down. Her legs are hanging off the side.

And after a moment of complete shock, Charlie turns to his brothers and tells them that they have to call 911. But when one of the brothers goes to grab the phone, there's no dial tone. It seems like the line has been cut. So he and his siblings thinking quickly, they race to their neighbor's house for help.

And when the police arrive, they're able to get a better sense of the house. They're kind of walking through the whole home. and they see that it is a lot more horrific than what just the boys saw. Charlie's youngest brother, 9-year-old Joey, is actually dead on the floor of his bedroom, lying at the foot of his bed. He is also bound at the wrists and ankles.

It seems like he had been strangled to death as well, just like his parents, except he has a hood over his head. And it just keeps getting worse from there. The police go downstairs to the basement, and that's where they find Charlie's 11-year-old. year old sister Josephine. She is hanging from a pipe in the basement. And though none of the victims were sexually assaulted, the police do notice that there is semen on Josephine's leg and kind of around her body. And unfortunately, you know, it's 1974. DNA testing is not an option just yet. But investigators

do know enough that they should preserve the semen because maybe there's going to be a reason that they can use it later. Which is impressive foresight. Yeah. And there's even more about the same that kind of baffles investigators. There's like a lot of weird quirks about the scene despite the way that the bodies were found in. One of the cops actually sees that the thermostat in the home has been turned up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. So that's 38 degrees Celsius. Very hot. It's like as hot as the thermostat will go. So that must have been done by the killer if they start thinking. And on top of that, the family's car is missing. And so is Joseph the dad's watch and a radio from nine-year-old Joey's room. But this,

quadruple murder, you know, it's so violent and it's so specific and it also has this sexual element to it that the police, when they see the scene, they're not immediately thinking robbery, even though there are some things missing. Like the car is missing. Maybe that's a robbery. His mom's purse was dumped out. But like nothing else is really missing. If they just took a radio from the kid's room, the police are like, this is very strange. It's probably not just a robbery gone wrong. They actually feel like there's some sort of personal element to this. And actually, they go so far as to sitting Charlie down and saying that they believe that this whole thing was orchestrated by his father. Come on.

And in my mind, when you first read that, you're like, dad is tied up on the bed dead with a belt around his neck. What do you mean that this whole thing was orchestrated by him? How could he have done this to the whole family and then done this to himself? But you have to remember that at the time, the homicide detectives did not have any experience with crimes like this. So they're kind of throwing ideas at the wall and they happen to just basically share that information with the children, which is completely inappropriate. So bad. And actually at the time, people believed that the police may have jumped to this conclusion because of the parents' race. So both of Charlie's parents were born in Puerto Rico.

Julie had a lighter complexion and Joseph was darker skinned. So people thought that maybe that had something to do with their conclusion. And of course, like we talked about. But the murder-suicide theory really does not fit this crime scene. Joseph could not have tied himself up in that way. So the police do eventually decide to move on from that theory after traumatizing the children by telling them what they thought. And this is when they actually start interviewing the neighbors because they want to see if anyone else had entered the home and if anyone saw that person. So when they tell the neighbors, most of them are just shocked and devastated by the news.

This is not a community that locks their doors. they would never expect anything like this to happen. But they don't really have any helpful details to give the police. They just didn't see anything. But there is one neighbor who does describe seeing a man with kind of a dark or swarthy complexion driving away from the Otero's home in their car. It's not really a tip that leads the police in a certain direction, but it's really all they get out first.

Otherwise, it just seems like a ghost committed this crime. And back at the crime scene, the responding officers are pretty shaky about the whole thing. You know, I did read that one of them actually retired immediately afterwards because this was the worst thing he had ever seen in his life. I have a note here that like really these cops had never seen a case like this before. And so they just feel totally out of their element. And unfortunately, because of that, we see this in other cases too, but they start making mistakes. And this is kind of like a light botched on the board. Yeah. Because it's botched in the sense.

that they just didn't know that they were making mistakes. So one of the cops actually does this thing where they remove an ice tray from the freezer. And they just kind of put it out in the kitchen. And then the crime scene photographer shows up and starts taking photos, but the ice tray is still out. But then later when they're looking at these photos, they see that the ice in the tray hasn't really melted that much. Whoever's looking at these photos starts thinking that like the ice didn't have time to melt. So that must have meant that the crimes had been committed a lot sooner, thinking that like

the killer had taken the ice out of the tray, not that the cops had. They start getting the timeline all wrong on this crime. A little mixed up. And later, they actually just straight up lose some of these crime scene photos. And they also lose some of the autopsy photos. It does seem like they are trying to take this case seriously overall. It's just a lot of rookie mistakes that start being made pretty much right away. So the department immediately assigns 75 personnel to the Otero murders, including 10 teams of detectives.

Although, again, only six of them are actually trained in homicide. And police actually do find the Otero's car. It's abandoned at a local grocery store. But again, unfortunately, there's no evidence in the vehicle that might lead to a suspect. At least no evidence that they could check in the 70s that would lead to a suspect. So they investigate the Otero's background, trying to see if they had any enemies. Even Joseph's former boxing career in Puerto Rico is examined, but none of that pans out into anything. So the chief of detectives, William Cornwell, tells his team,

quote, talk to every possible person, every paperboy in the neighborhood, every milkman, anybody. He's hoping that whoever committed this crime is going to want to talk about it. And if detectives approached enough people, they actually might get a confession from one of them. Again, this doesn't really pan out into anything. So the police are working this case still just any way they can, but they're not really getting much. And as weeks go by without an arrest, the police start having this worry of their own. They start to worry that the killer was acting on a fetish based on how the bodies were arranged and the fact that there was this sexual element to it with the semen being found near one of the

victims. So they realize that the longer it takes to catch him, the more likely he's going to do this again. And devastatingly, they are right about that. Because less than three months after the Oteros were murdered, on April 4th, 1974, a 21-year-old assembled. plant worker named Catherine Bright returns to her Wichita home after a long day. Catherine, in like a really morbid turn of events, she actually works at the same factory Julie Otero did for a company called Coleman. It's an outdoor camping gear manufacturer, which was a very big employer in Wichita at the time. And when she arrives home that day, she's accompanied by her 19-year-old brother named Kevin. And right when they enter the home, they see that there's a man there in the house.

and he's wearing a stocking cap he has gloves on and he's holding a gun and he starts talking to them immediately. He starts telling them that he's on the run from authorities in California and he needs their car to outrun the law. And then he just attacks them. He tries to strangle Kevin with a rope or a cord, but Kevin is like a pretty strong guy, even though he's only 19. He's strong enough to fight this guy off. And the assailant then raises his gun and he shoots Kevin. in the head. And somehow, Kevin does survive this, but he's pretty injured and he actually has enough wherewithal to think, okay, if I move, he's going to know I'm alive. So let me just play dead and maybe he'll

move on. He does exactly that. He plays dead. And then the man goes after Catherine and he stabs her 11 times. Kevin, upon seeing that, gets up and runs out of the house and he's able to escape and he calls for help. But by the time the police arrived to the home, the killer, is not there, and Catherine has died. Before he left, though, he bound Catherine's wrists and ankles with nylon stockings. And doctors do their best to save Catherine, but unfortunately she does not make it through emergency surgery. Meanwhile, Kevin is taken to the hospital where he survives, and police are able to later interview him. And that's when he's able to give a very good description of the guy he saw. And he says that the attacker was about 25 years old.

He was white, five foot 11, probably, and weighed about 180 pounds. And also he had a mustache. And at the time, no one realizes that this death is actually related to the Otero murders, even though Catherine was found tied up just like they were and also was a co-worker of Julie's. But because she was stabbed rather than strangled like the Oteros were, they don't really put those pieces together. Which is somewhat surprising given like, hey, this is kind of new territory for you guys. You don't get a lot of murders. Stocking tied up, kind of the same. I'm surprised that they weren't kind of connected. I know, but you have to think at the time profiling was just starting to be a thing. So they weren't really looking at their crimes as being related even though they had so many similarities.

It's infuriating to us today to hear, but they just didn't put pieces together the same way back then. Especially because they worked together. But a few months after Catherine's death, police actually get a surprise confession in the Otero case. And Catherine isn't mentioned at all in this confession, but they do get a lead. It was a reportedly mentally ill young man in the area told the police that he killed the Oteros with the help of his two friends. And the Wichita Police immediately go and they arrest all three of these guys. And of course, this is a huge story because it's the biggest unsolved murder in Wichita history. And police finally have three suspects in custody.

This confession does end up being a lie, though. And we find this out because the real killer cannot stand that someone else is taking credit for his crimes. So police have these three suspects in custody. People are breathing a small sigh of relief. But that is quickly about to change. On October 22nd, 1974, a reporter named Don Graham, Ranger for the Wichita Eagle gets a phone call. The paper has this program called Secret Witness, and this is like the craziest program I've heard about. It's essentially where people can call this

hotline and just anonymously pass along information about all these crimes. It's like what they had for the Citizen app before Citizen kind of went south. Yeah, well, yeah. But I imagine it's the same thing though, just a lot of people calling and being like, there's a sketchy looking kid outside of my house. Yeah, exactly. And so Don's anonymous caller is very cagey, like not really giving a lot away, but he does say that there's this message about the Otero family murders hidden in a specific book called Applied Engineering Mechanics, and they can find it at the local library. So Don tells the police, and they go searching in the library for this book, which brings us to our first clue, the library letter. Inside the book, they find a note full of

typographical errors and misspellings, so many that some investigators suspect the killer is actually a college grad, but writing really poorly on purpose to just throw them off. It's like the Zodiac killer too. Like what is with them not being able to spell at all? No, can't spell at all. And like you kind of have to see the full text of the note with all of its creative spellings and grammar. Like it's really a sight to behold. But it does start with this quote. quote, I write this letter to you for the sake of the taxpayer as well as your time. Those three dude 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 help. There has been no talk either. Let's put this straight. So to prove he's the culprit, the author then goes on to give graphic details that were not reported to the public. at the time about this crime. And investigators know, without a doubt based on these details, that whoever wrote this letter had to have been there or have committed the crime. This letter goes on with him promising to kill again, referring to the thing that causes him to kill as a, quote, monster inside of himself, and writing, quote, maybe you can stop him. I can't.

He has already chosen his next victim. There's so many other quotes. we could pull from this letter. And I think we'll post like a full version of it on our Instagram. So like if you guys want to read it, you can to kind of see some of the typos. Like I, I said dude because that's how he typed it. I know it's supposed to be dudes, but like he was really spelling simple things like wrong. It's really interesting. But it's really interesting. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's really interesting in like a very morbid way. Yeah. So there's this quote here. quote, I'm sorry this happened to society. Good luck with your hunting. Yours truly guilty. The killer then closes his letter with this post script giving himself a name. Quote, P.S. Since sex criminals do not change their ammo or by nature cannot do so, I will not change mine. The code words for me will be bind them, torture them, kill them. B.T.K. You see, be at it again.

They will be on the next victim. And that is how this killer becomes known as BTK. Hey, before we jump back into the show, let's take a quick break. But not just any break. This is a refreshing break with Snapple. We all know about Snapple's iconic, real facts, so let's take a minute to go over some of my favorites. Snapple Real Fact, 964,

it is illegal in the United Kingdom to handle salmon. in suspicious circumstances. Snapple Real Fact 1013. It is illegal to sing off-key in North Carolina. Snapple Real Fact 2033. Americans consume 150 million hot dogs on July 4th. Snapple Real Fact 705. Every ton of recycled paper saves about 17 trees.

So grab a snapple, take a second, and enjoy the moment. Because let's be honest, this might be their most refreshing part of your day. Snapple. Make your break more interesting. All right, now let's get back to clues. One of this week's partners is Peloton. There's a specific kind of joy and freedom that comes from a truly great workout. That feeling where everything just clicks.

Peloton is helping you unlock that feeling with the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ. It's cross-training reimagined. Peloton IQ actually personalizes your journey by planning your workouts, tracking your progress, and even correcting your form in real time to help you unlock new versions of yourself. So let yourself run, lift, fail, try, and go. Explore the new Peloton cross-training tread plus at one peloton.com. Yeah, he really named himself. I guess the Zodiac did too. Yeah. But then Golden State never had a moniker for himself. That was something that had to be developed.

It is interesting to name yourself. It comes off as a little desperate. A little desperate. A little desperate. For attention. A little narcissistic. I mean, if you're writing a letter basically to say, no, it was me, like you do want the attention. Yeah, I mean, this whole letter was bonkers, you guys. A couple other quotes are like, society can be thankful that there are ways for people like me to relieve myself at time by daydreams of some victims being tortured and being mine. It is a big complicated game, my friend, of the monster, play putting victims number down, follow them, checking up on them, waiting in the dark, waiting, waiting. The pressure is great, and sometimes he run the game to his liking.

I mean, it's bonkers. It's scary. The idea of like a monster inside of him that's committing these crimes. It's not him. It's like this thing that lives inside of him. Yeah. And like the last one I'll read. But it is here to stay. Like in regards to talking about the monster. How does one cure himself? If you ask for help that you have killed four people, they will laugh or hit the panic button and call the cops. Yeah. I call the cops too. So after nine long months, detectives finally have their first actual lead in the Otero murders. But they want to be. really careful about what they do with this lead. Because if you publicize such a weird and strange, bizarre, crazy letter, that could encourage more people to falsely confess. Obviously, this person wants attention. Plenty of people out there want attention. So detectives decide that they're going to keep this letter a secret, and they're

going to use it to develop this brand new thing that they're doing with serial killers, a personality profile on this killer who's calling himself BTK. About 30 doctors and behavioral scientists weigh in and they all agree this guy must be a seriously mentally ill person with a bondage fetish probably unable to have lasting human relationships or fit in with his community. He might even travel from city to city to kill. Really painting this picture of like a total loner who is just coming from the city maybe to commit these crimes. The letter does stay secret for a couple months. But in December, there's another reporter who finds this letter, Kathy Hinkle. And she gets it from a source, and she doesn't identify this source. She wants to keep them

anonymous. But she realizes that the Wichita police aren't telling the public that there is a sexually motivated serial killer on the loose. And she is a woman from Wichita herself. And so she's horrified. She really believes that, like, the community at large, especially women, need to know that this guy is out there. So she decides to go ahead and publish part of the letter just to warn the community. She does leave out specific details from the letter, ones that refer to the Otero murders, but she keeps the killer's threat in and she keeps his nickname that he chose for himself, this BTK nickname, which I'm also going to mark that as a light botched because as a woman, I appreciate that she was looking out for us. But as someone who doesn't want this guy to get any more credit than he has,

I don't like that she did that. So I'm just going to do half of a botch. Okay. I'll give it that. Because this is really the thing that, like, sets it on fire. Like, now he's gotten all the attention that he wants. He wants his little freaky letter is now published in the paper, and that's exactly what this guy wanted.

But also, now the public knows that this guy exists. And they are terrified. And above everything, that is what he wanted. Yeah. He wanted mass hysteria, which, you know, I kind of toil with this myself. Like I understand the police wanting to keep this a secret, especially details. So you don't have the copycats or create this mass hysteria. While at the same time, like, the women in this community should know.

Like, you know what it reminds me of? It's tough. It reminds me of after the Idaho four murders happened and the police came forward and said that there was no larger threat to the community. And everyone was like, what the hell are you talking about? What do you mean? Four kids just got murdered by what seems to be a stranger. This is a community of college kids. And yeah.

Yeah, the police were like, no. Don't worry about it. Don't worry. Crazy. Very scary. And so for whatever reason, maybe because he got what he wanted for a little while, maybe he goes to jail. The police really don't know.

But after that, this killer goes quiet for over two years. But then on March 17, 1977, there's this 26-year-old Wichita mother named Shirley Vianne, and she's at home. She's sick in bed. So she sends her sons, this five-year-old, named Steve Relford. and her eight-year-old named Junior Relford to the store to get her some soup. Shirley's daughter, four-year-old Stephanie, stays home with her while the two boys go. And while the boys are walking to the grocery store, and this is all coming from Steve.

Steve's gone on record later in life to recount this story, and it still affects him so deeply. But Steve said that while he's walking to this grocery store, he notices that there's a strange man up the street. And this man ends up stopping Steve and his brother, and he pulls out a picture. of a woman and a child, and he asks Steve, hey, do you know these two? Steve, like, looks at the picture. It's just like this woman and her daughter that he does not recognize,

so he says, no, I don't know who those people are. And then the guy just puts the picture away and walks away from the kids. Then the boys get home, and not long after that, there's a knock on the door, and they open it, and it's the same guy,

and he's carrying a briefcase. This stranger asks Steve if his parents are home, and Steve is honest. I mean, he's five years old. He says, my dad's not home, but my mom's here. And she's back in bed and she's too sick to get up. And before Steve can even think to close the door on this guy, this man just pushes his way inside past the children. He goes over to the TV and he turns it off and then he pulls out a gun. He makes all of the children in the house go into the bathroom and he ties Jr's hands with a cord that he has with him in the briefcase. And then he uses another length of cord to, to tie the bathroom door closed. And then he rushes into the bedroom where he grabs Shirley and he forces her onto the bed. He strips her naked. He binds her arms and ankles with this black electrical tape that he has on him.

And even as she's being attacked, and this was so hard to read about. But she is like thinking of her children. That's the only thing she can think about. She screams for them all in the bathroom to say that they need to stay put. and the man will leave them alone. And she has no idea how this is going to go down, but she's just trying to make her kids feel better in this moment. And then after she says that, the man chokes her with another length of cord and with his hands, and he places a plastic bag over her head. He also ties Shirley's hands and ankles together and then to the bed with more white cord that he has.

And eventually, Steve breaks out of the bathroom because he can kind of hear what's going on and it's just heartbreaking to read about. And he runs with his siblings to a neighbor's house for help. But by that point, Shirley is dead and the man is gone. He just completely evaporates. Paramedics do arrive and they attempt CPR. It doesn't work. And it seems that this same killer has killed again. And an autopsy confirms that Shirley's cause of death was from strangulation and asphyxiation. But apparently, you know, this story still goes to the paper. They're reporting on it. It's like, honestly, one of the things that's like selling papers now is because everyone is so, scared. And the killer BTK is not really satisfied with the amount of publicity that this is getting. He thinks that he deserves to be in the papers even more or like on the news, whatever.

Because the next time he does something, he wants to go out of his way to make sure that it is all of the headlines. Which brings us to our second clue, a 911 call. About nine months later on December 9th, 1977, someone calls 911 from a pay phone outside of a Wichita grocery. store. The caller weighs no time getting to the point, saying, quote, yes, you will find a homicide at 843 South Pershing, Nancy Fox. When the dispatcher repeats the address, the mail caller says, that is correct, and then drops the receiver and walks away without hanging up. The moment the dispatcher reports this call, they're pretty sure was the killer. Since he labeled the crime as a homicide, he knew the victim's name. And sure enough, when officers go to investigate, they find

25-year-old Nancy Fox dead in her home. She had been strangled to death with her hands and feet bound. Seamen is found next to her body, and it seems like the killer got in by cutting out a window screen and tearing out the screws that kept the window latched from the inside. And the scene is looking very similar to other BTK victims so far. Police consider asking radio and TV stations to broadcast this 911 call in hopes someone could hear it and maybe recognize the voice and identify the killer.

Yeah, right. But they end up deciding that the quality is just too poor. And we're going to play that clip for you guys just so you can hear it. I would love to hear your judgment if it is too poor or if it would have gone out there. Like, if you knew this voice, you would have recognized it. Like, I'm curious what you guys think. Yes, thank you. You will find a homicide.

It's been a man to be a pop. I'm sorry, sir, I can't understand you. You have to hear you. What is your address? It's going to 8.40. That's correct. Okay, you heard the clip. Okay, so regardless of what you think, police chose not to air it, which means that the killer is getting upset that he's not receiving any notoriety.

You know, he made this big gesture calling, giving, you know, his voice. And yet, not enough. Not enough. Which in that regard, kind of glad they didn't play it. Same. Same, just to not give him even more fame, which is what he wanted. Another ego boost, but this only makes him bolder. At this point, the killer is getting pissed.

He's not getting any attention, which brings us to clue number three, a series of poems and letters. On January 31st, 1978, a poem is mailed to the Wichita Eagle. It begins, quote, Shirley Locks, Shirley Locks, will it thou be mine? This seems to be a take from a children's poem called Curly Locks, and it's referencing his victim Shirley Vianne. Since the poem arrives in early February, the mailroom clerk actually assumes it's just like a Valentine's Day classified ad that hadn't been paid for. So they sent it to the classifieds department and the poem isn't published. Like, why would they publish a poem that's not paid for? It's kind of funny in hindsight.

Like, he keeps trying to do all of this stuff and they just keep ignoring him, which is what they're. should have done the whole time, right? Like, we would be having a very different conversation if that was ultimately the one thing that happened. And this, of course, as you guys could maybe guess, sets him off. So on February 10th, 1978, the local TV station, cake, cake with a K though, K-A-K, receives a four-page letter from BTK complaining about the lack of publicity for his crimes. He writes in this letter, quote, how many people do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention?

He goes on to then taunt the police saying, quote, Do the cops think that all those death threats are not related? Golly, gee, yes. That's him. That's him, yeah. The ammo is different in each, but look, a pattern is developing. He even adds another poem in this, one about Nancy Fox's murder, titled, quote, oh, death to Nancy.

And then just to make absolutely sure that the recipients understand that the real killer did indeed write all of this, he includes a detailed sketch of Nancy's murder, including a number of accurate details that weren't released to the public. And he throws in a list of his victims so far, which ends up numbering seven. the four Otero family members, Shirley Vian, Nancy Fox, and a mysterious number five, who he doesn't name in the letter. Plus, there's a mention of going after number eight soon. Police won't know who that fifth victim is for a while, but as all of us know, that was Catherine Bright's mention on the list. And so with all these letters and poems, air quotes there, the killer is getting his wish. the police are kind of forced to give him this attention that he is so desperately craving.

And on February 11th, they hold a press conference to officially confirm the killer's existence. Calling him, quote, the BTK Strangler, a nickname that was suggested in the four-page letter. Yeah, they christen him that name. They give it to him. They gave it to him. They're really like giving it to everything he wants, which is really frustrating. I know. Disappointing. But I was really curious on this. And so I just have like a little sidebar for us here about like why many serial killers claim this notoriety. I mean, we, we saw this with the Zodiac killer and like leaving all these messages and cryptograms and whatever. Like I was just curious. What is it? And this article goes on to actually analyze our killer today, BTK. And they conclude that his actual goals. in writing to authorities were narcissistic and self-gratifying. He wanted to create terror, gain notoriety,

and also, like, demonstrate this intellectual superiority. It goes on to say, quote, in addition to his desire to instill public panic and gain attention, he was driven by a need to show off his ability to outsmart his pursuers. Yeah, and we see that a lot in these cases, like the, I'm so intelligent, you'll never find me. I'm so smart. I can write you these letters. You'll never trace them. It's like the one we just did on Kim Ball. Like how smart did that guy think he was?

It's insane. And talked about it openly about being just so intelligent and having hyperintelligence and charismatic. No. Really not any of those things. No. So despite his threat to go after victim number eight soon, he ends up waiting a little over a year before striking again. And this kind of fits the pattern of last time where once the police give into his demands, he kind of goes quiet for a little while.

Maybe it is because he's getting what he wants. We don't exactly know. But this time when he decides to go after another victim, things play out a little bit differently. So on April 28, 1979, 63-year-old Anna Williams comes home from an evening of square dancing, and she finds that her house has been burglarized. Things like jewelry, cash, clothing have been taken. And when she goes to call 911, she picks up the phone. There's no sound.

The phone line has been totally cut. So she rushes to her neighbor's house and she calls the police from their phone. And detectives that are assigned to the BTK Strangler case are immediately notified. But there's not really any way to confirm or deny whether or not this person was the killer they're looking for. And if it was, why wasn't he actually there when she got home? Isn't that his whole thing is that he wants to kill people? So why would he have fled before she got home? So a couple of months later on June 15th, they do actually get a.

confirmation. When Anna Williams receives this manila envelope in the mail, which becomes our clue number four, the envelope contains a scarf and a piece of jewelry that was taken from her home in this apparent burglary, but it also includes a drawing of a nude, bound woman. The sketch depicts a naked woman hung by the neck from a doorway, her feet off the ground. On the left side are the words, quote, she enter unaware, beware, beware, for he will get your underwear. And I don't think we could display this image anywhere for you guys. Like, it is one of these scariest drawings I've ever seen. We've looked at a lot of his drawings.

His drawings are insane. It's funny because when I came in this morning, one of the first things you said to me was like, he's a bad drawer. I'm just like, I just don't even know what to think of these drawings. And they are very detailed. Very detail. There's a lot of specific details in them. but he is not that great of a sketch artist.

No. This envelope also contains another poem, a 19-line poem, titled, quote, Oh, Anna, why didn't you appear? And it kind of bemoans Anna, and like because she stayed out late, it really foiled his plans.

And to emphasize that he did indeed plan to murder Anna, the poem includes the line, quote, Alone again I trod, in past memory of mirrors, and ponder why you number eight was not. Which like, as Anna, I would be so scared. I can't even imagine.

And like, just to make it crystal clear, this person is indeed who he says he is. It is BTK. He signs the letters with a strange symbol. And it combines the letters B, T, and K with doodles of like, naked breasts. Like, it's hard to make out, but you can, like,

kind of see what he was going for there. And investigators realize that these weird drawings from the killer can actually help them rule out any false confessions they are going forward. Because if someone is claiming to be BTK,

and they don't know the symbol, it's going to prove they're fake. So the police decide to keep the symbol top secret. Again, don't publish this stuff. Mm-hmm. So after failing to kill Anna Williams, the killer goes seemingly quiet once again, but the investigation doesn't

stop. And with a sample of his voice that they have, they have his poems, they have his detailed letters, they really feel like there's got to be some way to catch him. They just have so much material from this guy. Yeah. So in 1984, and this, by the way, is 10 years after the first murder, a secret special unit within the Wichita Police Department is formed. And it's just going to focus on this BTK strangler, all of those cases. And they actually call themselves the Ghostbusters after the movie, which came out at the time. One of the tasks that they have is they're going to collect, catalog, and analyze all possible evidence about BTK in hopes that they can maybe use some new technology that's being developed to catch him. Because 1984, this is also the year

that DNA testing is invented. It's not widely available. It's much different than the DNA testing we have today. It's a little bit jankier at the time, but it is being developed. And in those early days of DNA testing, we looked into this, you needed a lot of biological material for each test. And every time you run the test, that material gets destroyed. Yep. So you would have to have, like, an entire body's worth of material to test if you really wanted to, like, do a bunch of tests on this. And you want to be sure when you do test it because you don't want to waste it. That's the thing too is like there's not a huge database. It's not like you can run a test on the DNA, upload the sequence to the internet, and like anyone else you test, you can like test it against that. You would have to run this test

every time you were doing it against another person. To confirm a suspect. Yeah. Yeah. So they have this semen and they're like, we really still can't do much with it because if we say we find 10 people and we have to run the test 10 times, we're not going to have enough biological material for that. So they decide that they're just going to save the semen that they've collected and they're going to wait and hope that the technology gets better over time. Or they're going to save it for when they have like one specific person they feel very confident about. Which like I wish, I don't know if that's a Sherlock, but like I want to give them a thumbs up for that. Yeah, you can put it on the Sherlock area. We'll give them a little Sherlock tab, which thank you again to whoever recommended that on our YouTube channel.

Like, I mean, being in 1984 when it's so new, like to think, oh, we better not waste it, which again, feels common sense. But like, as has been proven in other cases, common sense ain't common, y'all. Exactly. So, it's a great point. I'll give him one. And, you know, even with the Ghostbusters being this task force that is assigned to BTK and all the effort that they're putting into it, they're not able to stop him before 53-year-old Marine Hedge vanishes on April 27th, 19. We know that she was last seen with her boyfriend. She was playing bingo and she was having a dinner date with him.

But Marine doesn't turn up for work the next day and then is reported missing. Police go to Marines home. They notice that her phone line has been cut. And they get a bad feeling. But other than that, there's not much about it that seems like BTK was there. There's no body there for one thing. And up until this point, he had always. left victims where he found them. It was always he entered the home, he killed the victim,

and they remained in the home. On May 2nd, Marines' car is found abandoned. That doesn't really give investigators much to go off of. Whoever drove it last, wiped it down, and got rid of all fingerprints. But then three days later, Marines' nude body is discovered, dumped in a ditch in Park City, Kansas, about eight miles from Wichita. She's been there long enough that her body is pretty decomposed. They are able to still determine a cause of death, though, despite the decomposition. And they find that her cause of death was strangulation. And not only that, but next to her body, there's this knotted panty hose. But still, even with all of that information, the Ghostbusters still don't think that Marine was killed by the same killer because it doesn't really match his MO.

The body was moved. And they think that that's enough to be like, it's not this guy. But phone line was cut and we have the panty hose. The knots alone, like are you, I would be curious if at the time in Wichita if there were any other crimes where the people had their hands tied together, like really has got to be so specific to this one guy. I feel like this kind of completes that little half-half-y we had here. Yeah, yes. Like, come on, guys.

Detectives decide that it was more likely that someone else murdered Marine and tried to use some of BTK's trademarks to throw off the point. police. Maybe this was like some sort of copycat murder. And sadly, this is not going to be the last time that this task force misses a victim. On September 16th, 1986, Bill Wagerly makes this quick trip home from work during his lunch break. He wants to visit his 28-year-old wife Vicki and their two-year-old son Brandon. And as Bill's driving to his house, there's actually a 1978 gold Monte Carlo that speeds by him heading in the opposite direction. And he doesn't really recognize it at the time. But that's actually his family's other car. It's a very common car,

so he doesn't recognize it as being his family's car, but someone is driving away from him in his family's car. And when he gets home, he notices that the car is missing, and he also finds that his house is very eerily quiet. And there is his young son, Brandon, sitting by himself on the floor, and Vicki is nowhere to be seen. So Bill goes around the house, he's looking for his wife, and that's when he finds her unconscious in the bedroom. She's wedged between the wall and the bed, and her hands and feet have been bound. There's a nylon stocking and leather lace wrapped around her neck. Bill has a pocket knife on him and he immediately cuts them away.

And at 1145 a.m., he calls 911 and he begs them to come help. And unfortunately, they are just too late to save Vicky. An autopsy, again, finds that her cause of death was strangulation and asphyxiation. Bill immediately comes under suspicion. Once again, they just look at the husband first. So he voluntarily takes a polygraph test and he fails it, which we know that they are not very reliable. Yeah. But still at the time, the cops were using it like it was true.

So then he hires a polygrapher of his own and does a second test. And he fails that also. So that just really does not help his case. But other than the two failed polygraphers, There's not much real evidence against him. So the cops aren't able to make an arrest. And that doesn't really help his reputation, though, of kind of being looked at as a wife killer from that point forward. His community kind of turns against him. And even though Vicky was tied up and strangled, police don't think it was BTK because as far as they know at this point, which, you know, in hindsight, we know better. But they actually don't think that he's been active since 1979. And that was seven years ago, for from this crime taking place. So in their mind, they're like, he could be in jail, he could be dead. We've moved on from the BTK era like this is done.

These crimes are not being committed by that person. And, you know, maybe part of it too is that they just don't want BTK to be back because Wichita is finally starting to feel normal again. And also, it's such a bad look for the police department to have not found this person by this point. Yeah, especially after they established the Ghostbusters. I know, which proved to. be really useless up until this point. Yeah, I mean, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck, it's probably him. And like, I feel like for me, like until you have him

in cuffs behind bars, always think he's out there. Like, always maybe have that mindset. But. And they absolutely don't because the next year, 1987, they disband the Ghostbusters Task Force, though many of the members continue to work on the case just in their own spare time. because they're like pretty invested now. By the 90s, it seems at least to the people of Wichita and the police at the time, that BTK is either no longer actively killing or has at least moved out of Wichita. And I mentioned too, like maybe he went to jail or something, but they really just don't think that this guy is around anymore.

Yeah, he gone. They all just kind of do a collective exhale. Like, this is over. And that's where things are at on January 19, 19, 1991, when a retiree named Dolores Davis, vanishes. She just goes missing. That day, a friend goes over to her house. He's supposed to help her fix her car. And instead, he finds a cinder block had been thrown through Dolores's window. Her phone jack had been pulled out of the wall. And there were a bunch of items missing from her bedroom, including jewelry and bed sheets. And Dolores is not in the house. She's nowhere to be found.

So the friend runs and he calls 911. And when police arrive, they canvass the area. And they find Dolores' missing bed linens stuffed into a culvert nearby, but there's no sign of Dolores herself. And less than two weeks later on February 1st, a 15-year-old boy is out walking his dog, and he stumbles upon Dolores' frozen partially nude body under a bridge. Her knees are bound together, and panty hose has been knotted all around her body, and an autopsy finds that the panty hose were tied to her after she was already dead and her cause of death was ligature strangulation. Police initially when they see the scene, they actually do think, okay, maybe this is BTK, maybe we've gotten this wrong, but they're still working under the belief that none of his

victims ever are found outside of the homes. Like they still believe really deep down that all of his victims are found in the place that they're killed. And that's where things stand for another 13 years. Like literally 13 years after this happens, police are still officially looking for BTK, but the task force is gone. And they still think that his last murder was in 1979. So he is no longer their top priority at all. Which all of this just seems really interesting about this case specifically is like how public this was. Like to throw a cinder block through someone's window, that creates so much noise. To stuff bed sheets in a culvert. clearly. And to dump a body in the middle of a public space under a bridge.

Yeah, clearly killers getting a little bit more emboldened. So in January of 2004, again, years later, the Wichita Eagle writes an article looking back at these killings, all of these BTK killings, mostly because it's the 30th anniversary of the Otero's still unsolved murder. And wherever he is, BTK reads it, and he decides to come out of retirement to respond. You couldn't have just said nothing. Which brings us to clue number five, BTK's mysterious packages. A couple of months later, on March 19th, the Wichita Eagle receives an envelope from a, quote, Brian Thomas Kilman, postmarked on March 17th, the same date Shirley Vianne was killed.

It contains a document with a photocopy of Vicki Wagerly's driver's life. license and photocopies of three polaroids he took of her body. But if you guys remember, Vicky was actually moved from the crime scene when her husband came home and found her. So there were no official crime scene photos of her body. They didn't exist. So only the killer would have these photos. No other possible explanation. Which means that indeed, BTK is alive and he wants more attention for his crimes. On May 4th, Cake TV Notifies Law Enforcement that they've received an odd package from a Thomas B. King. And this package contains a handmade fake ID in the name of this local retired telephone line repairman,

a list of 13 chapter titles for a BTK biography, and a strange word puzzle. This puzzle is a word search with exactly 340 letters and numbers. it's kind of calling back to a 340 character cryptogram that was created by the Zodiac Killer. A little bit of a copycat move from our killer here. And detectives decide that this puzzle has three sections, Ruse, M.O. and ID. It doesn't really yield any useful hints, at least not right away. But a couple of the words they do get from this puzzle is like spot victim, follow, cruise, prowl, fantasies. So it's, it's very creepy and clearly he's trying to communicate something.

Then a little over a month later on June 13th, 2004, a letter is found taped to a stop sign. It describes graphic details of the Otero murders, some of which are kind of embellished, but others are real and again were kept from the public. On July 17th and October 22nd, packages from BTK are found that end up being just more red herrings, mostly letters that were filled with lies, fake stories, and him taking credit for murders that they know he didn't commit. But then on December 13th, a taped-up garbage bag appears in a park. It contains a Barbie doll that is bound and hooded.

It's clear to investigators that this is meant to represent Nancy Fox. The bag also contains Nancy's missing driver's license, and two pages typed about her murder. And this package is really kind of crazy to me because it was actually found just by a local resident in the park. He opened it up, saw that it was like this plastic that was held together by all these rubber bands. And for some reason, he thought to take it home and investigate this himself, quote,

I didn't know what it was because it was wrapped in rubber bands. So I just held on to it. And I brought it to the house, and I sat it on the table, and I took scissors and clipped around the trash bag. I wonder if he, like, what he thought it was. He must have thought it was a bag of money? Drugs or money or something. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. He probably thought it was, like, something better.

Weird behavior for me. So Cake TV notifies the police who retrieve the package, and then they send it to the FBI for analysis and authentication. All of this weird message, package, whatever game he's playing, continues on. So in late January of 2005, Cake TV gets a postcard from BTK. This postcard had directions on it, and it essentially led them out to a rural road in Sedgwick County, where they discovered a cereal box tied to a stop sign. And in the serial box, there ended up being another Barbie doll, this time one that was meant to look like Josephine Otero and what the killer did to her. But there was also another mention on this postcard.

So there were actually two locations that was mentioning. And it had mentioned dropping off a package at a local Home Depot. So, of course, police go to Home Depot. They look into it. They start asking all the store employees like, hey, have you guys seen? seen anything weird, like anything to write home about. And no one really says anything initially. But a couple of days later, police actually get in contact with a 911 dispatcher who says, hey, I have someone calling. They work at the Home Depot and did have something strange happen.

So this person tells police that like, oh, yeah, I found a cereal box in the back of my truck, but I threw it away. And police are like, you threw it away? it was a cereal box Hmm Looks familiar Sounds familiar Serial box Like serial killer

Oh that's why he was doing it I didn't even connect the dots on that I don't know why Apparently Yeah He's trying to Because he's so smart I mean we have to remember

He's so smart So smart Trying to send a message But yeah Why would you think Anything of the cereal box That's in your truck Other than like

Oh this is garbage Someone dumped here by accident Someone littered in my car So he rode away Trucked it But they were able to find it Right So turns out

person had either forgotten to bring out their trash or didn't or whatever. Like, it ended up not getting thrown away. So investigators are able to go and retrieve this other serial box and they get it. And inside the serial box, there's a bunch of other strange documents. One described BTK's layer, which he, I think he kind of like referred to it as his cave. And it It sounded like it was kind of a fantasy and not an actual description of a place that he lived. Another listed chapters for this autobiography. Again, he's insisting that someone needs to write this about him. Or he's going to write it himself, I guess.

But the third is this really interesting one. It's a misspelling of the word communication, titled commocation. It's a note to police asking if he can communicate by using a floppy disk. And he wants to be sure that, like, if I can communicate. communicate with a floppy disk with you, I can't be traced, right? Because floppy disks are kind of new at this point. I mean, they were kind of like this iconic gold standard of like file storage. Like USB flash drives, I don't know if were existed in 2004 yet. No, I don't think so. I remember using floppy disk. I remember having to bring them to school because they had like my like projects on them. Yeah. Apparently,

according to Google, USB flash drives were around starting commercial. in the 2000s. But like, as we know, technology sometimes takes a while. So like the floppy disk was still like kind of a gold standard. But you have to imagine too, like this guy was described as being 25 years old, 30 years prior. Yeah, he's in his 50s now. He's in his 50s. He's probably using floppy disks. Yeah. So he asked police like, I'm going to do a test. I'll send you a floppy disk. But like if I'm going to be doing this, I want to make sure it can't be traced. So if. What does he think the cops are going to say? He's so. smart. He thinks he can believe the cops. I don't know. So he essentially tells police like, if this is true and I can't be traced, I need you to run a specific ad in a section of the newspaper saying, quote, Rex, it will be okay. And police are like, of course we're going to lie to him. Of course we can't trace a floppy disk. This unknowable piece of technology. We could never find you. Flappy disk, who, never heard of her. Yeah. So, of course, they follow his instructions to answer his question. They want to convince him. It's going to be okay. It's going to be untraceable. And so they

run the Rex. It will be okay ad. And then all they can do is wait. Wait for this floppy disc. This episode is brought to you by Instacart. I have a four month old at home, which means I don't leave the house unless I absolutely have to. Going to the grocery store is a really big deal for me these days, which is why I love Instacart so much. I hate grocery shopping. I always forget things. I get overwhelmed. I have decision paralysis or I shop hungry and then I get way too much, which is why I love to use Instacart. Keep me out of the store. I'm going to sit at home reading my book instead. And Summer is all about saying yes to last minute plans, a friend's backyard barbecue, impromptu picnic, or just deciding to cook instead of ordering in. With Instacart, you don't

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It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. A couple of weeks later on February 16th, my 12th birthday. Your 12th birthday? Yeah. He pulled this on my birthday. Wow. Yeah.

A package containing index cards and a floppy disk arrives at a local TV station. A gift for you? How many odd years later? Oh, yeah. It's like 30 something years after. No, no, no. But like a gift for you because now we're here talking about this case. Oh, a gift for me 20 years later.

Oh, my God. I'm getting so old. How was 2005 20 years ago? Yeah, I know. We're not going to go there. Yeah. And we get this floppy disk at our local TV station, which is clue number seven, y'all. They handed off to Randy Stone, an officer with expertise in cybersecurity.

And a whole group of officers are gathered. Like, Randy's plugging this floppy disk in. And they're probably like, oh, my God, we can't believe he actually sent this. Like, everyone's, like, everyone's themselves. They're, like, who is it? Come on, he can't be this stupid. Like, who is it? And Randy says there's, like, about 20.

of these officers standing around them, like everyone's holding their breath. And the message that BTK wanted to share contains one simple file saying, quote, this is a test. See three by five card for details on communication with me in the newspaper. It takes Randy less than 10 minutes using this forensic software called In Case to reveal what BTK didn't want officers to see. You see hidden on the metadata on the floppy disk, it shows that it had been used by someone called Dennis. Dennis. Dennis. Who inserted it into computers at the Park City, Kansas Library, and someone had also used it to download and then delete a meeting schedule for Christ Lutheran Church in Park City.

Randy opens up his internet browser, pulls up Christ Lutheran Church's website, and listed prominently on the page, is the name of the congregation's president, Dennis Raider. There we go. By the time Randy can, like, turn around to see everyone's faces around him, right? Those 20 officers that were excitedly waiting. In Randy's words, he says, it was like in the cartoons where everybody disappears in a cloud of dust. Like, they were all gone.

They're immediately racing out trying to figure out who is Dennis Raider. In my head, I was envisioning that scene in Ratatoui, where they turn on the lights and all the rats run out. Yeah, yeah. They're ready to go after all this time. Ready to go. And so after 31 years, our killer, self-proclaimed BTK, finally has an actual name and a face. So now the police know who the killer is, who this BTK character is, but the district attorney says they need more proof to take Dennis Raider into custody.

If you listen to these detectives, like they said they like immediately got this, got in their car, and they were racing to like go to. the address and like find him but like lieutenant was like hey no no no turn around come back now yeah you can't just do that not ready yet and so they start looking into him like more seriously he's not a known criminal in fact he's the opposite because remember we have this profile on him of being a total loner a loner who did not fit into his community did not have close relationships to people and probably traveled in from the city and they were so wrong every like description of who this person could be was wrong. Turns out he is a 60-year-old Air Force veteran, a husband, a father, church congregation president,

Boy Scout troop leader, even a Park City compliance officer. Like, this guy had an office at City Hall. And he was responsible for writing tickets for minor offenses, like letting a dog roam off leash. From what I read about him, he loved writing tickets for those minor offenses. Like it absolutely like tore him up inside when people would do like little annoyances in his community. And so he just like really got off on writing. Of course he did. It's a position of power.

I mean, you look at all these positions. They're all positions of power. That's true. For like vulnerable people too, like Boy Scouts. Church. There's no DNA sample for Dennis on file since of course he's never been in trouble. And interestingly enough, they find out he used to be an installer for a home security. system company. So he knew exactly how to get inside homes discreetly, how to tell if an alarm might go off when he broke in.

Like how... Which window would be unlocked when he came back? And it's like, of course, at this time, like everyone's installing these home security systems. Everyone's scared. Lo and behold. And he's the one coming to your house because you're scared that BTK will come in and it's Dennis that shows up to install it. Yeah. And as we know, especially thanks to our little mark on the Sherlock. column here, police have been carefully saving all of this DNA from these crime scenes for the past 31 years. But of course, like, it's useless without something to compare it to. And if they ask Dennis, for a sample, before they have enough to make an arrest, he might disappear before they get these results back. So they don't want to risk it. So they start looking at Dennis's family. And they find out that he has a daughter, Carrie, who recently visited a local hospital for her routine

Papsmere. You heard that right. Papsmere, you guys. And this brings us to our eighth and final clue. They end up getting a court order forcing that hospital to turn over a sample of Carrie's DNA. And when they compare it to DNA found at these crime scenes, it is indeed a familial match. Which means Dennis Rader really is BTK. I read this interview that Carrie. gave after the fact, like years and years later, I think she did it with People magazine, but she was like, I would have given them my DNA. They didn't have to take my pap smear and use that as DNA. Because it also just feels like a huge invasion of privacy knowing that like the cops are going to the hospital and getting your pap smear to use as evidence. She's like, I would have to spit in a jar for them. But like, they didn't have to do it that way. I just, I don't know. And it's like, because Carrie's a woman and it's like a lot of these victims were women. And it's like, you. you're going to use her pap smear? Like, it just feels ultra-violating for me. Yeah, especially, like, we cover cases where they'll, like, go through someone's trash.

Get, like, a pizza crust. Go through the trash. Go through the trash. The past smear is an intense way to get DNA. But at the end of the day, we got him. We got him. We got him. On February 25, 2005, the FBI comes to Park City, Kansas to help the local police take 59-year-old

Dennis Raider into custody. Dennis hears on the radio that morning that the FBI was spotted in town. and he, at least according to him, decides to not run. He has the opportunity to flee and he says that he didn't take it. Because at this point, despite the lie that they told him, he thinks he's on good terms with the cops. He thinks they have this rapport and they're chummy. And he just wants to see how all of this plays out.

But he still gets kind of a sinking feeling when several police cars start following him as he's out driving. and then one of them turns on their lights and sirens and pulls him over. Dennis stops his car peacefully. He doesn't resist. After about an hour of questioning when he's pulled into the station, one of the FBI agents asks Dennis in a roundabout way about the DNA evidence saying, quote, would you be surprised to know that the father of your daughter is BTK?

He literally phrases it like a riddle. I don't know why he does that. I know. I'm like, that's confusing for me. I know. It's like an SAT question. And so Dennis is silent for a moment, maybe because he doesn't understand what he's being asked. And the agent prods him again saying, quote, tell us who you are.

And he responds, I'm BTK. You got me. So who is Dennis Raider? We have a little bit of more information on just exactly who this guy was. So Dennis Raider was born on March 9th, 1945 in Pittsburgh, Kansas. Raider was the eldest of four sons to a woman named Dorothea May. She was a bookkeeper. And William Elvin Raider, he was a Kansas gas service worker. The family settled later on in Wichita. He literally was part of this community. He did not travel in from the city. He knew all these people, their names, their faces.

He belonged to that community. His childhood was, at least by outward appearances, pretty ordinary. It seems, I mean, when you look into his backstory, all of the articles talk supposedly about just how normal it seemed for him growing up. He was described as quiet, well-behaved studious. He had parents who both worked long. hours. And Raider would later go on to say that because his parents worked so much, he actually felt pretty neglected. You had read some stuff about his mom as well, right? Yeah, just that, you know,

she worked at a grocery store, which I find interesting. Like, he continuously, like, dropped cars off at grocery stores and made phone calls to 911 from these grocery stores. I actually think I read somewhere. It was the same chain, but, like, unclear on that. So don't, don't quote me, you guys. But yeah, he said he felt very unattended. He didn't get enough attention from his parents is what he goes on to say. Oh, yeah. Okay. Interesting that that's his trauma. From a young age, it's believe that Dennis developed sadistic sexual fantasies, particularly ones involving dominance and bondage, often centered on scenarios with, quote, trapped and helpless women. And this is, like, upsetting and we'll talk a little bit about animal abuse here just for anyone who doesn't want to

listen to that. But Dennis did begin exhibiting signs of zoo sadistic behavior because he would hang torture and kill small animals in his youth, which is very associated with serial killers. Yeah. The ability to torture and kill small animals. Yeah, we hear it a lot. And one of the things I read about when I was researching this case was he would kill cats because they sounded like women when they suffered. So really, really. That's horrendous. Horrible.

This whole case is horrendous. He's just absolutely insane. And some of just the other behavior he was exhibiting at the time was described as deviant sexual behavior. And it included voyeurism, autoerotic asphyxiation. He would cross-dress while spying on female neighbors, sometimes in the clothing that he had stolen from the women, particularly underwear. And he would also masturbate while he used ropes and bindings. If you watch Mind Hunter, that's one thing that they actually touch on in his scenes, is like he would wear the mask, like that very specific mask that he had. If you like look at

pictures of Dennis, you can see the Polaroids he took of himself in this mask. And like that was just something that he enjoyed. So yeah, one thing that you said you read to Morgan was about he like would later go on to say that he didn't really use pornographic material. He would kind of make it himself? No, and this is really, really wild. So he wasn't interested in porn. Claims never used it. Instead, he would make what he called slick ads. So he would take these photos from like a JCPenney catalog of just like women advertising clothes. And he would cut them out, draw gags and bindings on them. Then he would attach them to a three by five note card and carry them around with him. He would give them names, come up with fantasies about them, and of course use them eventually.

And another thing about Dennis is he called his penis sparky. That is one thing that came up a bunch while we were looking into this. Sparky. And when he was excited and had an erection, usually due to the idea of these images of women in bondage or hanging in a barn, just really, really terrible images. Then he would call it Sparky Big Time or SBK. Oh, so he would like nickname it SBK, but then would say it was Sparky Big Time.

I mean, he wasn't great at spelling. We know that. Yeah. This is according to the source investigation discovery. Okay. So seems pretty, interesting. Seems pretty checked. Yeah, another thing I found too was that he reported being sexually aroused

by scenes of animal slaughter as well as self-punitism. like spanking and stuff. And he also just loved true crime. Was a big true crime fan. Which you mentioned to me one of the big reasons he turned up the thermostat at the Otero family's house. Okay. So he apparently loved reading about serial killers. I mean, some of the stuff he was doing was very Zodiac-esque-esque. It was because he was reading all about those people. He really believed that he could learn how to do it from just reading stories about them. Yeah, even the Golden State killer. the knots and the binding, like he was seemingly taking a lot of notes. And he also would read these, like, really, like, simple, like, made for kids investigative stories,

like comics and stuff. And so they always had, like, detectives and then that would solve crimes. So, like, one of the things he did was he turned the thermostat up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit because he had read in one of those little books that a killer turned up the thermostat because it would speed up the decomposition of the bodies. Like the heat would do something to the bodies and make them speed up. And of course, that's not really how it works. Like, yes, heat does affect decomposition,

but it's not going to affect it in like the eight hours before the cops find the bodies. But he really thought like the cops were going to show up and it would just be skeletons because he was such a genius and he turned the temperature all the way up. And so as he got older, he did get married. He went on to have children. He went on to really be like a pillar of his community. everyone knew who he was, everyone that went to that church, all the kids that have Boy Scouts in the area, really knew who he was. But he had this completely separate secondary life that he lived.

And so one of the ways that he would specifically seek out victims was trolling in neighborhoods. He would frequently prowl residential areas of Wichita, and he would just observe women in their daily routines, either when they were at home, sometimes like them entering cars or just doing like stuff around their neighborhood. and he would assign Target's code names. So one would be Project Foxhunt. And he would call one like Project Piano, Project Cookie, Project Dog Side, Project Lights Out. And he would spend days or weeks watching his victims before striking. And so that's actually what he did to the Oteros.

It said that Rader initially spotted the mother, Julie Otero, walking her children to school and then kind of just hyper-fixated on her and started following them over the next several. weeks. Part of this, it's believed, is because he did like Latino women and Julie was Latina. She was light-skinned and that just really was something that he hyper-fixated on. But it seemed like it was specifically her youngest daughter, Josephine, who was found in the basement, that he really wanted. So this is coming from a Psychology Today article that was written and it specifically talks about the Otero case. So it seems here like Josephine was really the girl that he was after out of the

whole family. He put together this so-called hit kit that he had. It had guns, knives, hoods, cords, tapes, plastic bags. It's like that briefcase I mentioned in one of the murders. It was all of the tools he would need to break and enter. And on the morning of January 5th, around 8.20 in the morning, that's when he went to the Otero house. He entered through the backyard and he cut the phone line. When he entered the house, things started not going to plan pretty much right away. He thought that it was just going to be the two females that were home, Julie and her daughter, but Joe Otero, the 38-year-old husband, was also there. And so was Joey, the couple's nine-year-old son. And the other kids were not home at the time. Those were the ones that were going to come back to the house.

Still, that really didn't throw him off too bad because he was able to use his gun to get the family to kind of do whatever he wanted. And he came up with another lie. He said that he was a criminal on the run. he needed money, he needed a car to escape. And the family unfortunately believed him, and they kind of listened to what he had to say and followed his rules. It does seem like Dennis killed the three members of the family that weren't Josephine first, and then took Josephine down to the basement, and that's when he hanged her. I have a quote here from him.

They asked him why he did this, and his response was, quote, I thought it would be interesting to watch her die. He's a very cold, detached person. So now that we know just a little bit more about it, him. Let's go back to the pretrial and the sentencing. So after Dennis is taken in, there's not much of a legal process because Dennis decides to just say he's guilty because he would rather brag about his crimes than try to get out of prison. Like he is so ready to talk about this. He just wants everyone to know what he did. I mean, when he was arrested, you guys, it didn't

take him long to start talking. And when he did start talking, investigators describe it as like, he kept talking and talking. And a lot of it is on YouTube. Like you can see... You can watch everything. I think they said it was like 30 hours of him gloating about all of these crimes he committed. Very cold, detached, unemotional. He was just so excited that finally he could share all of this with the world.

And I think that's a big part about why he went from like the initial like conversation with the judge to not really saying anything. So the judge had to declare not. guilty for him to then the next time he came before a judge. It was like, nope, I'm guilty and I want to talk about it. I want to talk about it. At the hearing on June 27, 2005, Dennis pleaded guilty to 10 counts of first degree murder. He proceeded to tell the judge, the court, everyone, all of the details of his crime. He also goes on to share how he chose his victims. And he says, quote, if you've read much about serial killers, they go through what they call different phases. In the trolling stage, Basically, you're looking for a victim at that time. You can be trolling for months or years, but once you lock in a certain person, you become a stalker. That might be several of them, but you really hone in on one person. They basically become, that's the victim, or at least that's what you want it to be. After this guilty plea, Dennis's sentencing hearing is scheduled for August 18, 2005, and since all of his crimes were committed before Kansas had the death penalty, he isn't eligible. Instead, the judge

agrees with prosecutors that 60-year-old Dennis deserves the maximum sentence of 175 years without parole, which he'll spend the entire time in a maximum security prison. Yeah, in 175 years just does not feel like enough. He's still alive. Still alive. I believe he's in solitary confinement, three showers a week on a lot of meds.

Yeah, I had heard that he is, for the most part, out of it. Yeah. Because of some of the meds he's on. It is just insane. Like, I cannot wrap my mind around someone like him. Like, I watched his, essentially, like, his hearing where he describes what he did to each victim. And the way he describes people and, I mean, he kept saying, like, I put them down. I put him down. Like, yeah, like animals. And it's interesting because he was an animal control officer. And, like, what's really, really wild as like one of those early crosswords, he even like listed all his jobs that he had.

It was like it was right there. He was like giving police like, here I am. But they didn't solve it in time. But they didn't solve it in time. But when you listen to how he just describes these, these crimes he committed, it is just insane. It's something where again, like I didn't know about this until 20 hours ago and I'm like, nope. Yeah, the way that he's able to describe everything and just such like. There's no humanity there. There's no empathy. There's nothing there. So like 175 years doesn't feel like enough. And what's kind of crazy too is like we mentioned this at the throughout, but they were starting to develop these profiles on serial killers.

And really like even today it doesn't sound like Dennis matches a lot of those profiles. Being so involved in his community, working with children, working with animals. It just, it was like the last person on anyone's mind. The last. And thankfully, he got cocky. He sent this floppy disk in and did himself in with this. It was his ego at the end of the day. His ego got him. And like, I think something that I really want to touch on is like, there's so much with this case. You guys, like, my brain is bursting with the facts. One, the cyber cop that broke the floppy disk had actually been emailing BTK months prior to this. BTK asked his advice months earlier about how to stay anonymous while sending emails. He had no idea because this was, again, he was working at the Park City administration building. Like they had this weird connection. So he was like, how do I stay anonymous with sending emails?

So wait, was it Dennis emailing or was it BTK emailing? It was Dennis. Oh. And so Randy Stone, the cyber cop was like giving this advice not having any idea. Having no idea that it was him. And so it was a, they had a really interesting interaction. And Randy talks about this in quite a few different documentaries. But Randy eventually goes up to him and says this, quote,

it's nice to put a face to go with the name I found on the floppy disc. And Dennis goes, oh, that was you? You're the one? Stone replies, I was the one. And Dennis goes, quote, well, if I ever escape from here, I'll have to track you down and fill you. your mouth with floppy discs. Stone said he's not scared. No, I mean, well, today he's 80 years old. He was like 60 at the time. He was caught. Like, I would not be nervous about him escaping from prison. He's been in solitary confinement nearly the entire time. He's not allowed in general pop.

And two, there's a lot on Reddit. Like, we could go down the rabbit hole for like three more hours on all of these weird coincidences. Like one sub I found, someone was writing in to be like, the day BTK got arrested will always sit with me. Maybe it's because he terrorized my hometown or maybe because he was the animal control officer I took to court in 1998. No way. He was a really bad animal control officer.

He was accused of killing like multiple dogs. Oh my God. Like really, really bad animal control officer. Like probably the worst position someone like this could have gotten in a community. Like insane. There's another person that wrote into Reddit that he was actually in a neighboring

Boy Scout troop and so they would all go on trips together. And so he went on these Boy Scout trips with Dennis and his Raiders, Raiders is what he called his troop. And he left one of these Boy Scout trips to go commit one of the crimes. Yes. He literally snuck off in the middle of the night during this Boy Scout trip and went and killed her. Yeah. I had read too that the first crime he committed was also the day he got laid off from his job. That was the very first one. a way to control this anger. He also, it's so interesting, like listening to him talk to the police. I was watching this documentary last night that was ultimately not very good and I don't really recommend it. It's on Hulu. I think it's called like BTK Confession of a serial killer. So this woman who's like a profiler and she calls him all the time. Like they talk from prison constantly. So you hear his voice a lot and you hear him talk and it's so strange because he sounds like this very normal midwifil. Western guy. Just like, the way he talks for her, too, when he's not talking about the crimes, he's talking about like the weather and like what he had for lunch that day. So strange.

Talking about his daughter. It just does not seem like he's capable of being that guy. But he talks a lot about like the monster in him and he really sees himself as a victim in this story. Because he too was compelled to do these things. The cops lied to him. Like that made him a victim. Like, it's just the whole way he views the world, obviously, is bad and wrong. But the way he views himself is just so strange. You know, I think it's insane that he thought the police wouldn't lie to him. And he does call them out on it during his interrogation. He's like, why would you lie to me?

I thought we had a good thing going. Wait, okay, so going back to what you're saying, this is also a trigger warning. In 2005, when all the articles were dropping because he had finally gotten caught, a lot of stuff was coming out about him being animal control. So the Guardian article that dropped about him being caught just says dog catcher admits serial killings. Like that is the title that they chose. Not Boy Scout leader, not church leader. Not church president.

Can you believe a dog catcher did this? There's this article from ABC News that just the title is neighbor colon. I watched BTK suspect shoot a dog. Yeah. And it goes the arrest of a suspect in the BTK serial murders around Wichita, Kansas has sent waves of release through the community. Now, people who knew Raider, 59, are talking about two different sides of this man. Some are calling him a friendly neighbor who helps the elderly, while others are painting a picture of a bully who sometimes took his job as city ordinance enforcement officer and dog catcher way too far. So he talks about this woman, Donna, who was a neighbor and had known him and his family since she was a child, told Good Morning America that she was surprised about his arrest, but said that she had seen this dark side of Raider as well.

She said that she once watched as Raider shot a neighbor's dog in front of the owners in front of Donna and in front of her kids, which is so telling. Yeah, I mean, the Reddit, it was full of like issues with him as an animal control person and talking about multiple instances where he would go after people's pets or this one. I'm very curious if the O.P. on that post ever went and, like, commented further about why they took him to court. but like to take an animal control officer to court like seems like a big deal. But this is something again like I really want to talk about with this is like we've very clearly established like he wanted to be known as BTK. He wants to be famous. He wants the notoriety. And on the comments of his confession, someone says this.

It's from this YouTube account, Contributron. and they say, this guy named himself BTK, we shouldn't be calling him that. He would like it. Let's call him the floppy disc failure. What is that? FDF. Yeah. I like that.

I like it. Yeah. It's just an interesting thing. It's like when we talk about these cases, it's like, obviously this is what he's known for. Like, it's hard to, like, we can't establish floppy disk killer. It's going to take a community effort from all of us being like, But he wanted to be known as PTK over time. Yeah, we're just telling the story and this is what they referred to him as the whole time.

Yeah. But for this one, he's Dennis the floppy disk failure. Couldn't even get a floppy disk to work right. And I was doing that at like, like, how old were we like 11 and we were bringing floppy disk to school? Yeah. Just wild. If you guys have any other like crazy subs that you've been on and seen posts about him and you have like these weird tidbits that like we, keep bringing up. Like, put them in the comments. I'd love to see what you guys found if you've done a deep

dive on these cases as well. But where does that leave us now? Like, what loose ends do we have with this one? So police aren't really sure if they know about all of Dennis's victims. He says they do. And it seems like he loves to talk about them. So I figured he would have told them everything. You would think. Yeah. But there's one thing that makes investigators think, like, he is actually responsible for. for the death of a 16-year-old girl from Oklahoma named Cynthia Kinney. Her name actually appears in that crossword word search puzzle that he sent them, along with the street she was abducted on. So I literally just got full body chills from that,

but it's like, how does he have her name and the street she was abducted on in that crossword that he made if he's not connected? Like, that's way too big of a coincidence, right? I just saw, okay, so I actually this morning was reading an article on CNN titled, BTK's journal links the serial killer to a 16 year old who went missing decades ago. So apparently this is something he also wrote about in his journal as well. He said that he would abduct people or like check out laundromats, quote in his diary. He wrote laundromats were a good place to watch victims in dream. And he said, quote, the brunette was the target.

And so they believe that he was referring to her that day. So, I mean, maybe. Yeah, there's a lot out there. There's, you know, mentions of his daughter in his journal as well. And, like, she has even now come out. She's very seemingly open. She wrote a book about it. She wrote a book. She's done a lot of interviews. And she's kind of talked about how, like, she does believe her dad assaulted her and potentially, like, strangled her because she's had neck problems ever since she was little. Oh, maybe she doesn't remember is what she's saying? Yeah. Got it. But it was a journal entry. And his daughter has also gone on to say that she does think there may be more victims out there, either in Kansas or elsewhere. The only other real open question is, is like, how did he get away with this double life, this insane double life for so long? Yeah, did his wife ever have any idea what was going on? Yeah. And I always am like, you have to know, but then you'll hear from people who are like, I had no idea.

There was no way for me to know. Yeah. It's wild. In interviews, he's blamed everything from the cartoons he watched as a kid to giving him like this bondage fetish to demonic possession to his quote, factor X theory of some unknown trait that makes serial killers compelled to kill. Yeah, because they still don't really know what it is about. There wasn't some like horrible disastrous moment in his childhood that really points to, oh, this is the moment that the serial killer was born. Yeah, but maybe all of this is just, again, his need to be special and feed his ego. I know during these court proceedings, he was appointed a public defender and the public defender wanted to see if, like, an insanity plea could be a possibility for him.

And so he did go through a psychiatric evaluation and was found to have narcissistic personality disorder, obsessive, compulsive disorder, and antisocial personality disorder. I mean, checks out. So who knows what it is. But that is kind of where we're at with loose ends. If you know about any other murders that might be linked to Dennis Rader, you can call a tip line to the Wichita Police at 816-474 tips. But now let's move on to our missing person of the week. So this week, we want to highlight a missing man in Lake County, Minnesota.

His name is Gene Adam Doherty. Gene is a 40-year-old man who had been reported missing in Lake County. He was last seen on Tuesday, July 1st when he left his mother's home near Silver Bay, Minnesota. It's a couple, it's about an hour north of Duluth. He left without any additional clothing or his dog, which really concerned family and friends. The Lake County Sheriff says there is concern about Jean's mental health. As of Friday, July 11th, they have located his vehicle within the vicinity of grade and Bruehl Lake Road. If you have any information on Jean or his whereabouts, they ask you to contact the Lake County Sheriff's Office at 218-834-8385.

This is right in my hometown backyard. So hopefully we have a lot of Minnesota listeners out there and maybe we can help find Jean. Absolutely. And that's all we have for this episode of Clues. I know this was a really interesting and sad one for us to cover. And I'm so curious to hear your thoughts on this one. We really value your thoughts, theories, feedback. it's all the stuff that makes this community so special.

Absolutely. So again, be sure to comment. I know I prompted you guys a lot throughout this episode, but whatever you want to say, I'm ready to dive in the comments with you. You can also comment if we missed any baches. Yes. We have like two and a half. Two and a half.

One Sherlock moment, but I feel like there could have been more this episode. There could have been more. I mean, he was really playing cat and mouse for a while. So let us know what you think on our marks. And if we needed more and what are they? But as always, at Crime House, we really value your support. share those thoughts on social media, and remember to rate, review, and follow clues to help others discover our show. Thanks, guys. Bye. Bye.

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