Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - BTK: BIND, TORTURE, KILL perv church deacon turns serial killer

Episode Date: August 10, 2020

BTK is the moniker given to a man who killed 10 people in the Witchita, Kansas, area over a nearly 20-year span. Dennis Rader was a dog catcher, a deacon in his church, and by all appearances, a loving family man. This family man, however, liked to bind, torture, and kill.Joining Nancy Grace today: Dr. Katherine Ramsland - Professor of Forensic Psychology at DeSales University, Author of "Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader The BTK Killer" Darryl Cohen - Former Assistant District Attorney; Fulton County, Georgia -Defense Attorney Cloyd Steiger - 36 years with Seattle Police Department, 22-year Homicide Detective, Author of "Seattle's Forgotten Serial Killer-Gary Gene Grant"  Dr. Kendall Crowns - Deputy Medical Examiner Travis County, Texas (Austin) Nicole Partin - Crime Online Investigative Reporter Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. BTK. Bind. Torture. Kill. That's quite a moniker, a nickname. BTK, bind, torture, kill. How did one of the world's most prolific serial killers manage to elude police for so long? And how did this guy, a cruel and sadistic serial killer, lead a double life with a wife, a family, a position in the church, the works, even a government job. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I'm Nancy Grace.

This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. With me, an all-star panel to break it down and put it back together again. First of all, Dr. Catherine Ramsland, Professor of Forensic Psychology at DeSalle University and author of Serial Killer, The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, BTK Killer. Daryl Cohen, renowned attorney, former prosecutor, now defense attorney in the Atlanta jurisdiction. Cloyd Steiger, 36 years Seattle PD, 22 years on homicide and author of Seattle's Forgotten Serial Killer, Gary Jane Grant at cloydsteiger.com, Dr. Kendall Crowns, Deputy Medical Examiner, Travis County, Texas, that's Austin, and Nicole Parton, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. But first, take a

listen to Tim Pigeot-Smith. It was very shocking for the officers when they came up. They found the parents face down in their own bedroom, fully clothed, obviously strangled, bags over their head. The strangled corpse of nine-year-old Joe Jr. was in another bedroom. But police were still to make another horrific discovery, his 11-year-old sister, Josephine. Josephine had been put through a different type of death than the others.

Downstairs, and she was obviously alive, put a rope around her neck and over some pipes. She was the target, the primary target, I believe, for this. The other three Otero children had only escaped because they were at school when the killer attacked. Wow, you're listening to crimes that shook the world, and BTK is certainly one of them. What's amazing to me is how he eluded police for so long. And when you're

looking at this particular crime, the one we just started with, you find that one child, an 11-year-old little girl, police believe was the actual target. And the rest of the family were seemingly collateral damage. So many questions. Why did BTK treat 11-year-old Josephine differently? Why was her mode of death, modus operandi, different from the rest of the family? How did one person manage to overpower an entire family, including the dad, subdue them and murder them in order to take his time with the 11-year-old little girl. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I don't believe we will ever know the extent of BTK's murders. You know, I want to start with Dr. Catherine Ramsland, Professor of Forensic

Psychology, DeSalle University, Pennsylvania. Dr. Ramsland, thank you for being with us. I find it very interesting that he used a completely different modus operandi, MO, when it comes to 11-year-old Josephine, the little girl. Obviously, that's why police thought she was the target. But why would he switch MOs, Dr. Ramsland? He actually was not the only target. He had a mother-daughter fantasy, and he had targeted Julie and Josephine together. But he was taken by surprise by Joseph being home. He didn't expect that to happen. And so his entire plan was upset as soon as he walked in the door.

He had to get rid of Joseph and Joseph Jr. first and then have the mother, Julie, and Josephine. It didn't go the way he expected it to because he was going to abduct both of them, take them in a car, and take them out to a barn. None of that worked out. I believe Josephine was, actually, I think he thought he had killed Josephine earlier when she revived. He then decided to take her to the basement. And then it became his whole plan switched. It became more of a fantasy of having this young girl, maybe being the first man to touch her in a sexual way.

And that was really what drove him at that point. When you say BTK, I'm fascinated with what you're saying. Because in all this time I have studied BTK, I never knew he had mother-daughter fantasies as it relates to his serial killing. What was his mother-daughter fantasy? Actually, it was for blondes. That was the first thing. But the idea that he would have these women to himself or a mother and a daughter to himself

was really just this sense of having control over them. But also, I mean, he really never went after another young female again. He never went after a child again. So it really wasn't about pedophilia. It was really more the combination of a mother and daughter. It's just a fantasy that he had. Well, that's certainly something for me to think about. You know, to Daryl Cohen, former prosecutor, felony prosecutor, at what was then one of the murder capitals of the world, along with me, in Fulton County, Georgia, inner city Atlanta. Daryl, you know, you have prosecuted and defended a lot of murders.

I have prosecuted a lot of murders, including a serial killer, including spree killings, mass killings. But, Daryl, the pleasure that BTK seemingly takes in murdering, of planning it, and, of course, Dr. Ramsland's the expert on this, but it seems to me, Daryl, he gets so much pleasure out of actually planning the murders. Nancy, even now I'm infuriated by this disgusting piece of humanity. Do you just want to take him out and just shoot him? I want to, no. Do you just want to go kill him? No, I want to torture him. I want to do the I want to, no. Do you just want to go kill him? No, I want to torture him. I want to do the same thing to him.

Okay, whoa, whoa, whoa. And I know I'm a lawyer. We've got three votes here in the studio, and everybody's voting just shoot him. I did not vote that because I believe in Lady Justice. But Ely, Jackie, and Brett all say shoot him. Nancy, I'd like to make sure that he gets a little taste. That's what I would like to have done is give gets a little taste. That's what I would like to have done is give him a little taste of what he did. Oh, a mother. You know, Dr. Ramsland, I appreciate

all of your education and all of your hard work. You're a psychology professor, but you know what? You just totally messed with my head right there. A mother-daughter murder fantasy. See, I thought I knew everything about BTK. I now know how little I know. Okay, let me move forward. Take a listen to Crimes That Shook the World narrator, Tim Pigeot. BTK targeted neighborhoods where he thought he might find women at home alone. He would troll the area. He would find somebody that looked right to him.

And that's how he would target his victims. 25-year-old Nancy Fox lived alone, getting home late from working two jobs. Part of his protection against making mistakes was getting to know his victims, gathering intelligence. Where they live, what kind of car they drive, what time they come home. Manual and ligature strangulation, hanging, these are very slow and agonizing ways to die. He did take the victims to the brink of death, let them know that they were at the point of death, and that he had allowed them to come back. That method of allowing the victim to revive

goes to his playing the role of God. He has within his power life and death over another human being. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, we are talking about BTK, as he is called, buying, torturing, kill. That's certainly not the way you want to go down in history. Your nickname in the high school annual is BTK, buy and torture kill. And we are hearing right there how one of his modus operandi is to bring the victim to the brink of death, revive the victim. And I guess to Dr. Catherine Ramsland, sexually abusing the victim at the same time, because I know there apparently was semen on some of the victims.

Yeah, he did not actually have that MO with every victim. I think there was only one that he actually whispered to her that he was the BTK killer. Most of them died fairly quickly. Or in the case of the Ateros, he didn't really realize how long it was going to take to strangle someone with not his intent to bring them back. So that's kind of a misunderstanding of what was happening. And I'm talking about it from what he has told me, not from any kind of behavioral analysis or speculation.

These are the things he has said, and you'd have to evaluate whether you believe him or not, but several victims died quickly, more quickly than he expected them to. And he wasn't really, he did not actually torture victims in the way we think of some of the victims who've been held for hours and tormented and burned and cut up. And that wasn't something he was doing. He was more of a psychological torturer. But it didn't last very long, in part because he was married with kids, had a job.

He had social obligations, as you would say. And he had only a limited time period. He didn't stop people. He stopped many people, many more than the victims that he actually had. And he did break into homes. He did watch for opportunities, but he wasn't as good as he claims he was in terms of knowing his victims. He did not know the Oteros had a guard dog or had a dog at all. He had no idea about that. There were a number of mistakes he made and he was very lucky not to have been caught. Okay, now you're scaring me even more if I wasn't already scared by your mother

daughter murder fantasy. And now you said the word which really nuts me up. DeCloyde Steiger, 36 years Seattle PD, 22 years homicide and author. You know what? I can beat a criminal forensically. I can trip them up in their own words. I can analyze clues left behind. I can compare fingerprints. I can do all that on my own, but you know what I can't beat? Luck. Luck. L-U-C-K. When you've got a lucky criminal, much less a lucky killer, no, that's something you can't beat. If this guy is lucky and he manages to elude a witness or he gets out of the home just in time to make it to his church deacon's meeting or to clock in at work. That is dumb luck. And that's hard to beat, Cloyd Steiger.

That is hard to beat, Nancy. I hate a lucky killer. I hate a lucky killer. The thing about BTK is this would never happen in today's era because just his methods alone, by necessity, leave a tremendous amount of forensic evidence. And he would have been caught long ago in this era. But back then, those tools weren't available to detectives. You know, that leads me to another question. I'm glad you said that because to Dr. Kendall Crowns, the deputy medical examiner joining us out of Travis County, Texas. That's Austin.

I wonder, Dr. Crowns, if they, authorities, have compared his DNA to other unsolved murders and or rapes. How would that work? How would that work? What, would we just go to CODIS, the DNA data bank, and put it in? I mean, certainly they would have done that, don't you think, Dr. Crowns? Yeah, I do think they, I think they actually have tried to compare him to some other unsolved mysteries in the surrounding areas, including Oklahoma and North Texas, and so far haven't found any matches with him.

Okay, Dr. Catherine Ramsland, you've made me leave my tea. Now I'm hitting the hard stuff, the coffee, thanks to you and your mother-daughter murder fantasy. Guys, we're talking about BTK, buying, torture, kill. And you just heard Dr. Ramsland, and what an all-star panel we've got. Ramsland, Cohen, Steiger, Crown, Nicole Parton. Nicole Parton, we just heard Dr. Ramsland mention his other life. He is, and you know what? I should have been suspicious day one. He's a dog catcher. Who wants to catch dogs?

I mean, you've seen 101 Dalmatians. You've seen every Disney movie there is about dog catchers. Beethoven, for example. Who are these people that want to catch dogs and then put them in the pound ultimately to euthanize them? He's a dog catcher with a family. What more do we know? Nicole Parton about Dennis Rader, also known as Bind, Torture, Kill, one of the most prolific serial killers to ever walk the face of this earth. Go ahead, Nicole. What do we know about this guy?

We know that if he was your next-door neighbor, you would think he was a normal, kind family man. He was the president of the Deacons Association at his church. Oh, Lord. He was known as a tremendous leader with the Boy Scouts. Oh, dear Lord in heaven. Both of my children are sc scouts i wish you hadn't told me that go ahead he would actually leave scout meetings one of the killings happened during a scout meeting he left performed the murder went back to the meeting as though nothing happened okay whoa whoa wait i'm gonna circle back to you right there daryl cohen did you hear what n Parton just said? Can you imagine his, oh, so pleased with himself leaving the scout meeting

and some, the scout meetings go from like 730 to nine or 915 on a weeknight, I might add. Leaving the scout meeting and he's one of the leaders, Daryl. I don't know if it was this way then, but now you have to have multiple leaders. You can't just have one leader there with all the new rules set in place. Thank heaven. My husband is a leader, well, a volunteer, and I'm a volunteer. So I'm with Lucy in her scout meeting. John David has his dad, and sometimes we switch it up. But can you imagine, Daryl, his thrill of leaving the scout meeting, committing a murder, and then getting back to the scout meeting before it was over? Nancy, I cannot get in this man's head.

I would have been delighted to prosecute him. But getting into his head, the elation that he apparently showed from I'm a great scout leader to I am going to be a diabolical, carefully planning murderer and torturer after binding. And then I'm going back to the scout meeting. Can't you just see him? Very often they're held in school classrooms or in church rec centers. I can just see him right now getting out of his vehicle and walking across the parking lot and going back into the scout meeting where all the little boys are in there and looking down at his hands

and wondering if he got all the blood off. Jackie, you have a really interesting sound cut to play for me. Take a listen to this, guys. Six years after the murder of Maureen Hedge, another body was found. 62-year-old Dolores Davis was enjoying her retirement in a house on the outskirts of town. As Mrs. Davis slept, someone hurled a concrete block through the glass door of her home. Sound like a bomb, probably. And I think she jumped out of bed,

and, you know, you're trying to get your bearings, figure out what went on, and here's this animal standing there and then he went ahead and strangled her with her pantyhose police discovered the body under this bridge 10 miles north of wichita but they didn't know just how close the killer was btk had set up a complex alibi to ensure he would not become a suspect. It was about a mile and a half away from his house. It set up that he was on a scouting trip because it was close to his house,

so he thought it was too close to home that he thought that he might become a suspect. Wow. Even used a scout outing. in. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. BTK, bind, torture, and kill. How did he do it? That's what we're talking about right now. How did he become unapprehended, one of the most prolific serial killers ever? You know, back to Dr. Catherine Ramselon, professor of forensic psychology, DeSales University in Pennsylvania, and author of Serial Killer, the Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer. I also did not know, as much as I have studied this case,

how he differed, how he varied his MOs. Did I just understand correctly that he dumped a body under a bridge? There were two women that he actually took out of the house, in part because he had heard about the FBI profilers coming in and he wanted to change it. Oh, man, you know, Ramsland, you are really something because you just said you wanted to just do something different. That's the way Jackie sometimes will change up her outfit or her hair. I just wanted to do something different. But you know what? You're right. In his mind, dumping the bodies under the bridge was just, oh, I'll do something different this time just to, you know,

screw up the FBI profiler's head. Well, he actually wasn't going to put her under a bridge. It was a foggy, rainy, like snowy night. He was looking for an abandoned barn because that was part of his fantasy. He wanted to take her there and he couldn't find it. So he finally just put her under the he couldn't find it. So he finally just put her under the bridge in the culvert. So that wasn't the plan. Again, many of his plans did not work out the way he expected them to. The other one, Maureen Hedge, he took out of her house

and took her to his church where he had taped up plastic around the windows and he wanted to take pictures of her body in other women's underwear that he had stolen. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So he, is she dead or alive when he takes her to the church? She was dead. Okay, dead. So he wants to undress her dead body. Yes. And then put another lady's stolen underwear on the dead body.

Yes. You know what? Sometimes I think I've seen it all, and then I meet somebody. No offense, Dr. Ramsland. Like Dr. Catherine Ramsland, and I learn I am at the tip of the iceberg. Okay, go ahead, Dr. Ramsland, because I really want to hear this. So he takes the dead body to the church. To the church.

Plastics up the windows. He has a Polaroid camera. He poses the body in the underwear that he prefers because he has stolen it from other women, and he has a whole collection of this stuff. And he poses it and takes these pictures. When he's done, he takes her body and dumps it into a ditch that's actually pretty close to the corpse of a dog that he himself didn't see.

And then with Dolores Davis, he actually wanted to take her to a barn because his ultimate fantasy was to work on a body inside a barn. He had a whole fantasy, a very complex fantasy. You know, that's about the fourth time you've mentioned, Dr. Ramsland, a fantasy, a BTK, body torture, kill, dog catcher, Dennis Rader, barn. What's with him and the barn? Well, it isn't a barn per se.

He was influenced by H.H. Holmes and the murder castle in Chicago, but there are no hotels like that in Wichita. So he fantasized his torture stuff inside a barn, in one of the abandoned barns in the country. Nicole Parton, joining me, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. Nicole, I'm sorry I haven't already gotten to you but listening to katherine ramsland informs me and scares me at the same time um and she nicole knows a lot about this because she has actually spoken to btk so nico Parton, give me a rundown, a fingernail sketch of what we suspect BTK did,

how many victims, but I also want to hear about him. Let's start with him. What do we know about him? We know he was a family man. His daughter speaks of Christmas time with her father, trimming the Christmas tree, bike rides in the afternoon. She talks about him being an all-around great guy, that she never would have imagined this. His coworkers say he was a normal guy, come to work, never missed a day, never missed a Sunday morning church service. He was an ordinary man, not what we think of a serial killer. And we also know that he would often walk by one of the ladies that he killed,

his last victim, Dolores Davis, lived not too far from him. And in the afternoons, he would take his daughter for a stroll, and they would wave at Dolores on her front porch and say hi and speak to the neighbor in a friendly manner. And everyone spoke of him as a super nice guy. I'm just trying to absorb what you just said, Nicole Parton, and I'm sure you're correct. But it flies in the face of almost all our preconceived notions regarding serial killers. And the reason I say serial killers is because there's so much planning and a forethought to it. It's not like a murder that occurs at a bar.

You get mad, you pull your gun, bam. A serial killer plans the next killing. They're like a predator. They're like a wolf roaming around your community, your neighborhood. And they're sneaking around trying to find your pet in the backyard or a rabbit or whatever they can find. They are the predator and the victims are the prey. To Cloyd Steiger, author of Seattle's Forgotten Serial Killer, Gary Jean Grant.

Cloyd, you don't normally think of a serial killer such as Ted Bundy or Wayne Gacy or Angel Ramirez as having a normal domestic family life the way Nicole Parton is describing it. Why, Cloyd? Well, you know, you don't necessarily hear that, but if you talk to the people that knew those killers, they would say he just was a normal guy, pretty much, you know, life of the party kind of guy. You never can tell. Life of the party? Yeah, that's what they would say. Who ever said a serial killer was the life of the party?

People that don't know, they knew him outside that serial killer thing. Wait, I've actually got one. Gacy. Exactly. Because isn't it correct to Dr. Catherine Ramsland, Gacy was the life of the party. He played a clown at children's birthday parties. But other than Gacy, I don't really remember serial killers ever having been described as gregarious or the life of the party. I think Ted Bundy was pretty charismatic. People like to not the life of the party so much, but he...

That's true. The two of you are right. Bundy was very charismatic. Somehow when I look at Raider, I don't see charisma. I mean, I don't see what you guys are talking about. But, okay, I accept it. You're right. Guys, I want you to take another listen to Tim B. Joe Smith in Crimes That Shook the World. This is your cut five. Police hear the killer's voice for the first time. You will find a homicide at 843 South Pershing, Nancy Fox. Goes to his narcissism, that need for attention. Here I am. I'm calling you to let you know that

I did it and you still can't catch me. Police rushed to the call box, but when they got there, the killer was gone. It's part of his power, it's part of his game that he's playing with the police. Two months later, BTK made his next move. A package arrived at this Wichita TV station. It was a package that contained not only a letter, but a poem. And I have a portion of the poem here. It was titled, Oh, Death to Nancy. What is this that I see?

Cold, icy hands taking hold of me. For death has come, you all can see. Hell has opened up its gate to trick me. And then it's signed BTK. Okay, my train of thought was that he is taunting. Part of the pleasure he takes in murders is taunting the victim's family. He did that. He taunted police and newspapers, luring them along the garden path, taunting them in the sense that he could outsmart them. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

We are talking about Dennis Rader. Bind, torture, kill is his nickname. Joining me, Dr. Kendall Crowns is a renowned medical examiner, the deputy medical examiner in Travis County, Texas. That is Austin. Dr. Crowns, before I get to your unique connection to BTK, let me ask you, other than what BTK has told Dr. Ramsland, how would we be able to look at a body and determine that the victim had been nearly murdered, for instance, asphyxiated, and then brought back, allowed to breathe, be tortured for a while, then nearly murdered, then brought back, and then finally killed. Can you tell that by looking at the body?

Or do we have to take his word for it? Because I'd certainly take that with a box of salt. So with people that are near strangulations, they'll often get petechial hemorrhages, which are these little pinpoint hemorrhages all over the face and eyes. And those are often caused by incomplete compression of the vessels of the neck. But you also see that in typical strangulations where the person is held and then they are completely killed with no torture aspect to it.

So it's not 100% to know when you see particular hemorrhages that there was an element of them coming back and then being strangled again so it really does come down to just taking his word for it which is unfortunate i saw it also in the cordial lane killer who kidnapped who was just riding by i think on the interstate saw two little children at an above-ground pool in their backyard. This is in the middle of a very, very rural, very dense forest. Happened to get a glimpse of these children from the interstate, circled back, abducted Dylan and Shasta Groney, the way I recall the case,

and would do that over and over and over with the little boy, Dylan. And we knew that because the sister, Shasta, divulged it. But I see what you're saying, Dr. Kendall-Crowns, because once you ultimately asphyxiate the victim and you get the particular hemorrhages, you can't tell were they there during torture or were they the result of the actual strangulation. You know, Dr. Kendall Crowns is from the same hometown as BTK by Torture Killed. In fact, BTK was a student of Dr. Crowns' father who taught criminal justice at Wichita State. And I believe your father had a theory that BTK was one of the students. Did he not? And then he turned out to be correct. Yeah, that's correct, Nancy. My dad always felt the way that it was methodical,

how it seemed planned out, and then his taunting. He always thought it was someone that was possibly involved with the law enforcement field or had a background in criminal justice. And because BTK had left evidence at the libraries and at Wichita State, my dad theorized that he could be a criminal justice student. And, of course, he was proved right years later. You know, not only did he leave evidence he sent letters to the wichita eagle claiming credit for the murder of 28 year old vicky wizerly in 1986 the investigators knew the letter was legitimate he also would leave

pat he left a package in a truck at a Wichita hardware store. And even though there were security cameras, you couldn't really identify the person that did it. He sent messages in cereal boxes marked B-T-K. He sent a box with a bound and hung doll in a reference to one of his victims. But we actually have sound of BTK. And I want you to hear BTK. This is your cut 18, Jackie, from Oxygen Snap. This is BTK killer Dennis Rader in his own words.

They talked to me about giving the car and whatever money. I guess they didn't have very much money. And there I realized that I didn't have a mask on or anything. They already could ID me and made a decision to go ahead and put him down, I guess, for strangling. I had never strangled anyone before, so I really didn't know how much pressure you had to put on a person or how long it would take. I strangled Mrs. Otero, and she went out, or passed out. I thought she was dead.

She passed out. And I strangled Josephine. She passed out, or I thought she was dead. She passed out. And I strangled Josephine. She passed out, or I thought she was dead. And then I went over and put a bag on Junior's head. You are hearing BTK in court, and he is so calm and so analytical the way he is describing why he committed the murders. But I really don't think there was any alternative. Once you go into a home the way he did, the ending had to be, for him anyway, a murder. Let's hear Cut 20, please. Dennis Rader, BTK, in his own words.

Josephine had woke back up, and I took her to the basement and eventually hung her. I had some sexual fantasies, but that was after she was hung. Went through the house, kind of cleaned it up. It's called the right-hand rule. You go from room to room. Picked everything up. I think I took Mr. Otero's watch. I guess I took a radio. I forgot about that, but apparently I took a radio. You are hearing BTK in his own words.

To Dr. Catherine Ramsland, who has literally written the book Serial Killer, The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK killer. Catherine, I'm having a hard time reconciling that he had a wife and a family and a job and a position within the community with his double life as a serial killer. What exactly was the sex fantasy that he wanted to live out with all of his victims? Well, first of all, he describes himself as a good man who did some bad things. So he fakes predominantly. He's a pretty good guy.

His fantasy life came from when he was a teenager. And actually, taking the radio from the Otero house was a nod to the clutter murders, which became In Cold Blood, Truma Capote's book, because when he was 15, he heard the news over the radio, and the fact that they were bound with rope was sexually exciting to him. For him, it's all about binding.

And even hanging one of his victims from a pipe was what he would do to him. For him, it's all about binding. And even hanging one of his victims from a pipe was what he would do to himself. He would hang himself in autoerotic activities. So all of this kind of flowed into what he was also thinking about for victims. It was all about bondage and, you know, taking oxygen away and feeling dominant over them. So as part of his own sex gratification, he would hang himself, and therefore he transposed that onto his murder victims, asphyxiating them? Pretty much, yeah. I mean, even when the police found all his stash of photos and drawings and whatnot,

they found all these Polaroids. He actually probably originated the selfie. He had a remote controlled Polaroid camera where he would take pictures of himself burying himself, wrapping himself in plastic, hanging himself upside down, right side up in all different positions because bondage was what really aroused him. How did his wife not know what was going on down in the basement, Dr. Ramsland? Because he didn't do it in the basement. He went out to abandoned properties. He went under bridges in Wichita. He found all kinds of places for doing it. He went into his parents' home and did it in their basement. But his wife, he claims

she caught him twice wearing her slip and doing autoerotic activity. She says she did not. I'm a little more concerned about hanging himself and wrapping himself in plastic under a bridge than wearing a lady's slip. That's what he would do.

There are pictures of him wrapped completely in plastic, buried in a sand pit. What I don't understand is why this guy could not get the death penalty. But that is the government's decision in that jurisdiction. The father of two, Dennis Rader, serving 175 years in prison at El Dorado Correctional Facility, Prospect Township, Kansas for the murders and still garnering fame and sycophants and groupies. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.