Crime Weekly - S3 Ep362: BTK | How a Floppy Disk Led to Dennis Rader’s Demise (Part 5)

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

In 1974, Wichita, Kansas was shaken by a series of brutal attacks inside family homes. Men, women, and children were bound, tortured, and killed by a predator who called himself BTK. For 17 years, he terrorized the community, claiming at least 10 victims and taunting police with disturbing letters that detailed his crimes. Then in 1991, the killings abruptly stopped, leaving law enforcement and the public to wonder if the killer had vanished forever. For more than a decade, there was silence. Then in 2004, BTK resurfaced with new messages, reigniting fear in Wichita. But that renewed need for attention would ultimately be his downfall, and by the following year, detectives had identified the killer as Dennis Rader, a father of two, a Scout leader, and a trusted member of his church council. Rader was the last person anyone suspected of being a sexual sadist serial killer, but once investigators began putting all the puzzle pieces together, it became clear that Rader’s family-man persona was just a mask covering the monster beneath. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. https://www.HelloFresh.com/CrimeWeekly10FM - Get 10 FREE meals and FREE breakfast for LIFE! 2. https://www.Incogni.com/CrimeWeekly - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY for 60% off! 3. https://www.HelixSleep.com/CrimeWeekly - Get 27% off sitewide NOW! 4. https://www.EatIQBAR.com - Text WEEKLY to 64000 for 20% off ALL IQBAR products and FREE shipping! 5. https://www.Rula.com/CrimeWeekly - Make your mental health your top priority today with Rula! Let them know we sent you!

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Lavasar. We are back after our Thanksgiving break. Hopefully everybody had a great holiday. Ours was busy. Yes, I feel like I was saying, on Crime Weekly news, I gained about eight pounds, but it's fine. We ate a lot of food. wearing my sweatshirt now, so I'm good to go. I feel like I'm still looking okay. We're not going to put on anything too tight fitting here. Same.

I have an oversized t-shirt on sweatpants. That's what I live in. That's it. So we are on part five, which is our final part of the Dennis Raider BTK series. Yep. How kind of get you to where we are so far? So by the early 1990s, Dennis Raider was living a life that looked great from the outside. He was a father raising two teenagers, a trusted men.

member of his church, a scout leader, and a compliance officer for the city. But behind that facade, he was still BTK, still fantasizing, still prowling, and still keeping trophies in his hidey holes scattered across the city. In 1991, Raider murdered his last known victim, 62-year-old Dolores Davis, and once again returned home to play the role of husband and father while police searched for answers. But after Dolores' murder, something shifted. For more than a decade, Raider managed to push the black hat into the background, or so he says, relying on his family, his work, and also his elaborate bondage rituals to keep his fantasies alive and at bay, still he never stopped watching. So by the early 2000s, DNA was transforming cold case investigations

and departments across the country were identifying long, unknown killers. And when Raiders saw that the Green River killer had finally been caught, he realized his own time might be running out. So he decided to wrap up all things BTK and go into retirement. But then in January of 2004, 30 years after Raider killed the Otero family, remember, he's been doing this for three decades, which is an insane amount of time. So after 30 years, after he killed the Otero family, a newspaper article referred to BTK as a forgotten killer. I don't know if they did this intentionally. I think they probably didn't do it intentionally, but this was an insult that Dennis Rader could not tolerate. So he made a decision he would remind the world that BTK was still out there.

And that decision would set in motion a chain of events that finally would bring BTK out of the shadows. So his own ego. Eubris got him. Real quickly before we get into the new information for tonight, I just want to say that I had mentioned last episode that I was going to reach out to Kerry Rosson, Dennis Rader's daughter. I did reach out to her. I didn't get a response. Perfectly okay. She just did the Netflix documentary not too long ago.

She's probably overwhelmed with all of that. Yeah, she's got her own stuff going on, family and stuff. She's amazing. She's doing a lot of good work, especially considering everything she's been through and how she's utilizing that to help others. So I just sent a message, no response. As far as I'm concerned, that's the end of it. No ill will whatsoever.

We're going to cover the episode. And there's no reason to have Kerry here down the road. If she hears about this series and she wants to come on and talk about it. She has an open invitation. Absolutely. We love Carrie. Absolutely. So after the 30-year retrospective on the BTK murders ran in the Wichita Eagle, Dennis Rader became determined to remind the world of his depravity. And what better way in his mind than by using the trophies and evidence he'd been hoarding in his Heidi holes for decades. So Rader later told Dr. Catherine Ramsland, who remember she wrote confessions of a serial killer

based on their conversations, he told her, quote, I thought it was an opportunity to have some fun, like a chess game, cat and mouse with the police. At the same time, I would reduce my mother load. I could send the evidence items in packages, end quote. It's funny because he's like, I got to get rid of this evidence anyways. You know, I don't want it. You know, I don't want it to run me. Might as well just give it to the police.

Like I said, I've said it all the series, not the brightest bulb. He's like to kill two birds with one stone here. Not the sharpest tool in the shed, that's for sure. When I read that, I was like, what? It's almost like just so ludicrous that it's like a parody. He's like a parody of a serial killer. Just send it away. I got to get rid of this evidence.

I'll send it to the, you know, the paper and the police. And then everything will end up in an evidence room and being dusted for forensics, which as you know, Dennis Raider has gained all this traction in the crime space. And you're like, let me just send this stuff that's been in my possession for you. years, sometimes decades, to the police so they can start dusting it for fingerprints, looking for DNA. Oh, my goodness. I just don't get it.

So as he sorted through items he was willing to send, Raider also considered which victim he wanted to highlight. His goal was to stir up the pot, so to speak. So he decided that sending evidence from a murder police didn't associate with BTK was the perfect move. Once again, why? Why is that the perfect move? Hey, you didn't get me the first time. Let me give you a little bit more.

He's like, yeah, these are crimes you don't attribute to me. I think it's a great move now to let you know that now you can go to those crimes and go back to those evidence boxes and look for DNA. So just absolutely unhinged. Now, the victim he chose was Vicki Weigarly. So this is a case detectives still believed had been committed by her husband, Bill. This was the absolute wrong case for Dennis Rader to choose. So Raider wanted them to know, the police and everyone, you're wrong, it's not Bill. So he assembled an envelope addressed to the Wichita Eagle.

Inside was a single sheet of paper with a BTK symbol in the corner, a photocopy of Vicky's driver's license, and three Polaroids he had taken of her body. Now, to make the images more difficult to trace, he made a copy of a copy of a copy. And this is something he'd repeat in every communication. wearing gloves, he addressed the envelope using a fake name, Bill Thomas Kilman, a name chosen specifically because the initial spelled BTK. He listed the return address as 1684 South Old Manor, and this address was a vacant lot, but the street, it did hold significance for Dennis Rader. His first major break-in before the Otero murders had taken place on Old Manor.

He then sealed the envelope with a wet towel to avoid leaving DNA. Then he drove his own car to a post office drop box. He mailed it on March 17th, the 27th anniversary of Shirley V.N. Relford's murder. Now, two days later on March 19th, the Wichita Eagle received the envelope. A reporter immediately recognized the sender's initials and turned it over to the police. And detectives were stunned. Not only were they stunned that they're hearing from BTK again, but they saw the included photos. and they knew that they could have only come from the killer.

No photographs have been taken of Vicky inside her home. And she was still alive when first responders arrived. So that's a big reason why no photos were taken because in some cases. There's still life-saving measures going on. Preservation of evidence was secondary. Preservation of life was priority. So even the police know, we didn't take pictures of Vicki inside her home. So this could only be the killer.

So detectives believed BTK was claiming responsibility for Vicky's murder. and was likely telling the truth, but they needed to be certain. So what did they do? Well, remember, they found fingernails. They found stuff under Vicki's fingernails. So they sent the fingernail scrapings from Vicki's autopsy in for DNA testing. While they waited, the Wichita Eagle ran a story announcing that BTK had claimed another victim. National media outlets picked it up, and for Dennis Rader, this was everything he wanted.

He told Dr. Ramsland later, quote, this was my fantasy. the cat and mouse game gave me an adrenaline rush or high. Being a center of attention was just a good feeling, end quote. Weird. Yeah, it's exactly what we were talking about, right? It wasn't just about the murders anymore. It was about getting away with it. He was playing this game with law enforcement.

I'm sure I didn't read this anywhere, but I'm sure he looked up to other serial killers like Zodiac, where not to be complimentary of these people, but they were intelligent enough where they were able to do everything they did. communicate with law enforcement and still not get caught and that became part of the fantasy part of the allure for btk one more little side note i'm not going to say who this is from because i don't think i'm supposed to but it's someone that we both know and they had a relative that was in prison and this relative would deliver food to certain prisoners and btk was one of them and all this person said was

when they would deliver the food to BTK he was very quiet he wouldn't say anything but he had pictures of birds all over his prison self birds and flowers I believe so just he said he was a very weird guy yeah that that person that person told me that story as well yeah oh you already know okay so you already know who I'm talking about yeah I thank you for letting me tell our audience isn't it isn't that crazy why like so you can pretend you're outside yeah so you know who I'm talking about And I'm sure this person wouldn't mind saying they're, I don't know. I'm just going to keep it, keep it. This person told me not to say their name.

Oh, interesting. Okay, good. So I'm glad I didn't. Because I checked. I was like, can I put this in the script? Of course I did. I was like, can I put this in the script? Okay, okay, okay.

Cool. I don't say my name. Got it. So, yes. And I also think, like, he's saying, oh, being the center of attention was a great feeling. He didn't want Dennis Raider to be the center of attention. He wanted his other personality, BTK, to be the center of attention, right? So he's thinking, like, I don't want anybody to catch me, Dennis Raider,

but I want them all to know how terrifying and horrifying and just dangerous BTK is. You're, like, fractured at this point. You're fractured into two different people. Can we be honest for a second? I mean, these serial killers, obviously the murders are horrific, but it's the cat and mouse game that gets them into the movies. Yeah, so why don't you go, like, rob the Louvre then? It just, to me, it's like the reason that they make these documentaries and these movies about it is the,

just the balls to go out there and actually tease police and create this cat and mouse game where they're like, I'm going to give you the information and you're still not going to catch me. That's why there's certain serial killers that have a lot more attention on them than others. So killing these people wasn't enough for a raider to get what he wanted. And it's unfortunate that our society is that way. But I almost think the more salacious and quote unquote sexy part of these stories is the interaction between the good guy and bad guy. That's really what it's about.

Oh, yeah, that's what's ripped from the movies, ripped from the detective books, right? Yeah, that's it. Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty. Like, yeah, it's a tale as old as time. Mm-hmm. Superman and whoever, Lex Luthor. Yeah, Batman the Joker.

Shout out James Gun. Right? Well, we've talked about this. I love James Gunn. Stephanie loves James Gun too. He's my best friend now. I do, but I prefer the Man of Steel, Superman. I do love Henry Cavill, but, you know, I, David's great too.

Henry Cavill is a god on earth. But yeah, so anyways, Raider, he's now reveling in his renewed attention. He's so happy. And then the results from Vicki Wagerly's fingernail scrapings came back. And the results show DNA from BTK, not Vicki's husband, right? So it's not Vicki's husband, Bill, that this DNA is matching to. it's an unknown person who they now know to be BTK. So now you idiots, you have given them your DNA, whether you intended to or not.

So finally, Vicky's husband was officially cleared after nearly two decades. I hope he got like a sincere apology. And while detectives kept working to identify BTK, Dennis Rader continued preparing more packages, always wearing gloves, and sealing envelopes with a wet towel to avoid leaving DNA. And here's my thing. He's got all these trophies, right? And he's sending them off now. And now he's wearing gloves and he's using wet paper towel to, you know, smart.

But every time you took them out of your hidey hole before, did you wear gloves? Right. Did you? Every time you used these pictures for your own personal pleasure, did you wear gloves? I don't think so. I don't think so. I'd be curious. I'm sure he slipped up a few times.

Based on his past, like I said, wasn't the best. at this. Yeah. So he's wearing gloves. He's sealing the envelopes with a wet towel to avoid leaving DNA. He later told Dr. Ramsland that he loved creating mysteries for others to solve, which brings us back to how much he admired the Zodiac killer and wanted to be just like him. So Raiders next mystery was a full page word puzzle divided into three sections. He's really trying hard to be Zodiac right now. So the three sections were M-O-I-D and RU-S-E-R-U-S-E-R-S. each section included terms BTK associated with his crimes. In the MO section, he put words like Cruz, follow, and prowl, you know, MO, like

motive operandas. In the ID section, telephone company, officer, school. In the ruse section, handyman, serviceman, insurance, realtor, wrong address. So he's just telling them his whole game plan here. Detectives would have to solve the word clues to learn more about BTK. And for this package, Rader also created a sheet with photocopies of a special officer badge that he'd bought at a pawn shop, along with two identification cards he'd found. Another page was titled The BTK Story and listed 13 chapter headings. A serial killer is born.

Dawn. Fetish. Fantasy World. The search begins. BTK's haunts. PJs. Which PJs do not stand for pajamas in this case. They stand for projects.

M.O. ID, ruse, hits, treasured memories, final curtain call, dusk, and finally, will there be any more? So, yeah, probably should have written like detective novels or something if he was this into making mysteries for people to solve. But Raider placed these pages in an envelope marked Thomas B. Kingman, 408 Clayton Street, Wichita. Again, obviously fake name and a random address, but the initials still spelled out B.T.K. So he mailed the envelope to KAKE TV, and on May 4th it was delivered and once again immediately turned over to the police. Detectives began working through the puzzle trying to piece together what BTK was revealing to them, or at least what he was trying to reveal to them. Because keep in mind, these little clues, these breadcrumbs he's like dropping that he thinks is going to come across and build a clear and concise picture that the police cannot work with.

this is not what's going to get him caught. No. It probably didn't make much sense to them. They're like, we have to solve these word problems. And then we're getting these weird results like handyman. And it's like, yeah, I mean, maybe we know that you like to stalk people. We know that you probably like to watch them. You've kind of given us this indication before.

We know that you know where they live. We know that you probably posed as somebody you weren't in order to get into these houses. Like, what exactly are you telling us? We want to know your named. Is there going to be a puzzle that? tells us your name. So they're trying to figure it out, wasting their time. At this point, though, Dennis Rader was fully immersed in playing games with law enforcement and the media. For his next contact, he assembled another package inside a brown envelope

labeled BTK Fieldgram, which Rader describes as, quote, like a telegram. It's short, yet it has important news. End quote. Inside the envelope were three pieces of paper. One page repeated the chapter list from the BTK story, except now the M-O-I-D-Ruse chapter had been blacked out. So he'd continue sending the same chapter list in future packages, crossing out sections as he, quote-unquote, completed them. Well, he hasn't been caught yet. So he's got to keep going, right? I keep using any analogy, like, how close can I get to the sun before I get burned? Yeah. There's only one way to find out. And that's to get burned. You know, I don't get people that feel that way, by the way. I mean, listen, there's

so many people like that, like in a healthy way where they're just like adrenaline junkies, they have to keep pushing the envelope and they never know how far they can go until they go too far. And that's the unfortunate part of it when you take these risks. Now with BTK, he's trying to fulfill something inside of him where initially that rush was fulfilled by the murders themselves. Now it's got to be more than that. He wants to have a legacy with this. He wants people to remember what he did. And the only way to do that is by increasing his footprint by putting himself out there, which is a risk. And he knows it. And yet, he can't help himself. Yeah, I don't, I don't get it. I don't like it to me that causes anxiety, not like excitement.

And maybe for some people, anxiety and excitement are closely related in a way. Like they're both, you know, like stimulating feelings, I suppose. But like what I don't want to ever feel is anxiety. So if I do anything wrong ever, I'm always just like, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, God. Please, that I didn't call. I promise I will never do this again. Like, I'll never do this bad thing again. And then I don't because the anxiety that I feel, it almost feels like, yeah, it almost kind of feels like I wish I'd get caught. So I don't, I don't have to keep feeling this anxiety that I'm going to get caught. And I just don't like that feeling at all. So the fact that he's just pushing and pushing and pushing the limits and

going to the boundary, getting too close to the sun with his little wax feathers. Yeah, that is not something that I would enjoy. Let's take a quick break. We're right back. All right, before we dive back in, let's talk about something that is saving me this fall and has saved me for years. You may have heard us talk about HelloFresh. They're the number one meal kit in America making home cooking easier and faster with chef-crafted recipes and fresh ingredients delivered straight to your door. But this fall, they're serving up even more to love. This isn't the Hello Fresh you remember. Yeah, you were telling me before we started recording that basically the menu exploded.

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an active subscription. Free meals applied as a discount on your first box. New subscribers only varies by planned. That's hellofresh.com slash crime weekly 10 FM. That's all one word to get 10 free meals plus a free breakfast for life. Okay, we're back. So Dennis Raider is now calling his communications with law enforcement and the media fieldgrams. And he actually borrowed this term from his, his background in the Air Force and, you know, his obsession with order, hierarchy, procedure. Because in his mind, remember, he's viewing himself as a kind of like commander, carrying out operations or the projects like he called them. The fieldgram was his way of submitting a mission report or an intelligence update. So he's sending what he calls

fieldgrams and this field gram we already talked about had three sheets of paper. We already talked about the first sheet of paper, which was just the chapter list from the BTK story. The other two pages were titled C1, Death on a Cold January morning with C1 standing for Chapter 1. The document dated February 3rd, 1974, and signed in type, not handwriting BTK, described the Otero murders in graphic detail. One page also included a drawing of a nude girl, bound, gagged, and hanging from a rope. Next to it was a caption that read, quote,

the sexual thrill is my bill, end quote, along with a BTK symbol. Now, Rader put the pages in the brown envelope, then sealed that envelope inside a clear plastic bag. On June 12th, he duct taped the bag to a stop sign pole at the southeast corner of First in Kansas. The very next day, June 13th, a man found the package taped to the stop sign and notified police. As detectives processed the materials, Raider was already working on his next package.

It was supposed to include more information on the BTK story. However, just after July 4th, he read about the death of 19-year-old Jake Allen, and he decided he wanted to write about Jake instead of himself. So this is very odd. Jake, he was a young man. He'd been found dead run over by a train 35 miles south of Wichita. So evidence that the scene told investigators that prior to being hit by the train, Jake had been bound with bailing wire on the tracks.

And investigators believed he had either been mixed up in something dangerous and was murdered or he had taken his own life in this very odd manner. Either way, Rader was intrigued by the train element. And he decided to, once again, stir the pot. by falsely claiming responsibility for Jake's death. So he created a five-page document about Jake. The first page read BTK Flashgram. The next two pages were a story titled Jakey,

describing how BTK supposedly met Jake and killed him. On the second page of that story, Raider added a BTK symbol and wrote CCBTK files along with a threat that he had already selected another victim. He ended the story with a promise of more information to come, writing, quote, now back to chapter two, may not make the July deadline be patient, end quote. So yeah, there's really no rhyme or reason to anything this dude does because he's like, all right, I've got a plan.

I'm going to go through every chapter of the BTK story. And then he hears about this poor 19 year old kid who got hit by a train and died. And he's like, hold on, wait a second. Let me pause my other plan and go to this plan where I'm going to pretend I had something to do with this kid's death, even though I didn't. Ha ha. what that's the only thing in this story it's very childish isn't it it is but that is the only thing in this in this whole chain of events over this five-part series where you and i have talked about

the possibility that there are more victims that btk hasn't been connected to and the only thing that gives me a little bit of hope that there aren't any others is because he had to come out and take claim to murders that one weren't connected to him that he did carry out and then two deaths that he had nothing to do with. If there were other victims, I think those would have been part of his stories. But the fact that he had to go and talk about Jake and take claim for what happened to him leads me to believe that maybe there are only the victims we know of. Because if there were others, I would like to think that he would have exposed those as well because he was taking claim for murders that he clearly had gotten away with and yet felt the need to tie himself to

them. Yeah, maybe you're right. I hope so. I mean, it would give some answers to some other cases, but the fact that he went to this extreme in both these instances when nobody thought he was involved with him, one he definitely wasn't involved with, makes me think that he had ran out of he had ran out of ammo. He didn't have any other stories to actually talk about, so he had to make things up. But he did. He still had other victims that were genuinely his that he hadn't revealed to the police. So you think there's a possibility that if there were, other victims that he was tied to that we don't know about the reason he didn't want to use those stories is because it could actually lead to his identity. At least that would have been

his rationale at the time. So he felt like making up stories and building the legacy that way was more safe because he could build his legacy in his own mind and yet not give them anything that could actually connect him to those crimes. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. I mean, I just don't, I don't see why because he suggested, right? He's the one that has suggested like there's more. There's more victims. He said there's things you'll never know. He said some projects are closed. Others remain open. He said, I had several things on the drawing board that never got finished. He could mean victims that he was potentially stalking that he didn't get to, but that could be what we're talking about here. But we do know he has other project files that have

never been actually tied to any real person. I know Kerry thinks he's tied to more. I know Carrie believes that there are more victims out there. Pause the episode real quick for everybody watching because I don't think we've posed this question to you guys. But what is the general consensus of everybody who's listening and watching this? Are you of the belief that the victims we know of are the ones that BTK is responsible for? Or do you think there are more victims? And if you do think there are more victims, how many are we talking? What do you think? Just a ballpark. Obviously, you don't know. But how many more victims do you think are out there that are tied to BTK? I'm curious to get the overall consensus of the community.

that watches this to say, nah, we think we got them all or no, there's definitely more. I mean, so there's two, for me, there's two different things here. He could have just suggested and alluded to the fact that there was more murders to, like, build up his ego

and make his, once again, his legacy, like he's this big, scary, you don't even know, you don't even know, half the stuff I've done kind of thing. But I also feel like he loves that cat and mouse game so much that if it was true

and he did have these, you know, multiple other victims out there, wouldn't he be calling the police there randomly every month to like give them codes and play games with them and you know don't you think that he would be doing that if there was genuinely other but even if there wasn't genuinely other victims out there he could just he could still do that to police yeah i mean listen i think he was a dumbass but i will say this there is a strategic element of this that does make sense and and that would be from the rationale of okay listen i want to build my legacy i want there to be

dozens of names connected to my my pseudonym is that what we would call it BTK, right? And here's how I do that. I'm going to tie myself to deaths that I had nothing to do with, which is going to obviously build my legacy, build the allure around me. And yet, if law enforcement decides to investigate these cases as if they're connected to me, one, they're not going to find anything. And two, they're basically spending resources on crimes that I'm not involved with and the crimes that I'm actually connected to they're not looking into. So I'm sending him off on these wild goose chases and they're going to put all these resources into it

and it's going to come up with nothing because the funny part is I had nothing to do with them. So if that's his rationale, strategically it does make sense. Because they as investigators, if he's saying he's involved with those crimes, at this point you have to treat them as such

and unbeknownst to them they're looking into something that is going to be fruitless. Well, I mean, I'm just looking. His last kill before his long break was 1985, then his final known kill is 1991. That's quite a bit of years to pass in, you know, in between and then to just kill one more time after that, like to reinvigorate yourself, to do it one more time and then never again. It just feels, you know, it doesn't feel for once again, for somebody who says that the black hat takes over and he can't

control himself and this isn't that, it just doesn't really add up. No, it doesn't. And also I want to ad usually is a there's something that happens in the serial killers lives that caused them to stop it could be because the fear of apprehension but it also could be because they have children and just anybody who's going down that row Brian was born in 1973 and carry was born in 1978 so clearly the children's births weren't enough to stop him because as you just mentioned he kept going until 1985 so they were they were well within his life at that point and yet he didn't give a shit. Joseph DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer, I think he had like periods where like cool down periods. They call them where they, where he didn't, you know, kill. But I think that he kind of stopped, right? He stopped in 1986 because he was afraid of getting caught. That's what he says. And then he just didn't do it again. It wasn't like he stopped in 1986. And then in like 1999, he was like, I'm going to do it one more time. Right. And then stop again forever. Yeah, I don't know. It's a little weird. But if you asked me, if you ask me, like, you have to say whether or not you think he has other victims other than the ones we know about, I would say, yes.

Maybe not a lot. Maybe not a lot. But yeah, there's definitely other people out there that we don't know about. I agree with you. I think there's probably at least a few more that maybe in those crimes he did some things that he knows if he points them in that direction. It's going to link back to him, especially now. And so for those reasons, he's never claimed them. But again, to try to get into the mind of BTK is very difficult because nothing he does make sense. So we've got him taking the credit for the death of Jake Allen, 19 year old Jake Allen. He creates this five-page document about Jake. He's, you know, telling this story about how he meets him and kills him. And then for the last two pages, Dennis Rader included photocopies of four pictures of a mail-in bondage. Now, Rader had actually created the pictures himself using cutouts for magazines.

He did not use his own bondage pictures. Thank God. That would have really been dumb. So when the document was finished, Rader sealed it in a plastic bag and dropped it into the book return box at the downtown library. So his methods here of getting information to the police and media are also changing a little bit like that years and years back he had put a letter into a book at the library and then he'd sent like a tip in so that somebody could find it now he's put he's taping stuff to telephone poles

he's putting it in the book return box I think it's just because he's bored it's like this guy definitely needs novelty man because he can't just send it to the wichita eagle anymore he can't just send it to the police department to make sure that they're getting it he has to kind of i just I guess hope that somebody will find it and turn it in and not just throw it out and be like, oh, what is this stupid thing and throw it out? You're really hoping now that somebody's finding it who will know who you are and get it to the right people. So on July 17th, a library employee emptied the bin, saw the letters BTK on the papers inside, and of course called the police. So after going through the new package, detectives began investigating BTK for Jake's murder,

but ultimately they determined that he was lying. In the end, the detectives concluded Jake had taken his own life and there was no evidence linking BTK to the case. Now, Dennis Rader later told Dr. Ramsland, he didn't care about whether they believed him or not. The whole point had just been the reaction, the reaction, yeah. It makes perfect sense. We talked about it a few times.

He's building up his persona. He's adding bodies to his count that he had nothing to do with. And it's all about just, again, building the legacy. building the name around BTK and making sure that people are talking about him, not only in local outlets, but national outlets. Now, I do kind of want to look into this Jake Allen case a little bit because how do you tie yourself to railroad tracks with bailing wire? So the detectives had come to the conclusion that this was suicide. He did it to himself. How do you tie yourself to railroad tracks?

I don't know how much I trust the Wichita Police Department right now because they were thinking, you know, Bill was responsible for his wife's murder the whole time and they needed BTK to set them straight on that. So did they just say it was self-inflicted so they kind of like close the book on it? Because how do you do that? I don't know. Well, I mean, you yourself said that he didn't take claim to it. So I think without knowing all the specifics, there's probably something to it here that we don't know. Maybe the way he was tied. maybe it was just his legs that were tied where Jake had tied his legs to the track and then

kind of laid back and, you know, so he couldn't untie himself before the train went over him. That's the only thing I can think of. I don't know. I'm morbid, but. I kind of feel like maybe they were just like, oh, we'll just say he did it to himself. Listen, we have enough trouble chasing one killer. We don't need another killer here. Like you said, poor Bill, he was walking around in the court of public opinion.

He was a murderer. So you never know. Listen, we're going to take a break. We'll be right back. We'll keep it going. You know, one of the things we talk about all the time on this show is how every move we make leaves a trail. Whether it's a text, a post, a location, pang, nothing ever really disappears. And that's not just true for the people we cover.

It's true for all of us. Yeah, I don't think people realize how much of their info is actually just floating around out there. And after researching so many sensitive cases, it honestly hit us how exposed we really are online. Our addresses, phone numbers, even family connections. all just sitting on random websites, ready to be found by anyone with a browser. And that is unsettling, to say the least. And that's actually what made us start using Incogni, who is sponsoring today's episode. Incogni reaches out to the companies that collect and sell your data, those shady data brokers

you've never even heard of, and tells them to delete your information. And the best part is they do all the work for you. So you get permission once and they handle the rest. It really is set it and forget it. Yeah, this was the part that surprised me. the dashboard showing which companies have removed my info, because there were names on that list that I didn't even recognize. I feel like all the names on the list.

I didn't even recognize the same. And their custom removal feature, that's a total game changer. So if you see your info on a specific site, like a people search site, you can flag it, and then Incogni will go after it directly. And let's be honest, a while back after we covered a very sensitive case, someone found one of our old addresses online. it came straight from one of those public search sites, and that was the moment I realized just how important it is to protect your information proactively, not after something goes wrong, not after someone already has that information. And with Incogni, that information isn't hidden, is deleted or raised. Yeah, that's the way it should be. Your personal data shouldn't just be out there like it's public property. That belongs to you. Exactly. So if you want to protect your privacy and take your information off the market, here's how. Go to incogny.com slash crime weekly and use code Crime Weekly for,

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And thank you so much to Incogne for sponsoring today's episode. Okay. We're back. So for the next few months, Dennis Raider stayed quiet, focusing on his family and church life. And before the summer ended, his congregation at Christ Lutheran even elected him as vice president. I bet these people at the church, after it came out, they were like, what are we doing? What are we doing? We don't have any discernment, man. How about all the people that have been elected to positions like this that haven't been identified? That's what I'm saying. Trust me. I hope these people at the church never trusted another person ever again after this, because that's how I would feel. So by the fall, though, Dennis Rader was prowling again. He stalked a woman for weeks and planned to attack her on October 22nd.

So he is planning more murders now, right? He arrived at her home that day with a hit kit, but other people were there, so he bailed on the plan. Later that day, he dropped off another package, this time at a UPS drop box. Now, the package was a plastic bag with an envelope labeled BTK Fieldgrams, inside. In the envelope was an eight-page document, including Chapter 2 of the BTK story titled Dawn, detailing BTK's childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. And surprisingly, I mean, this isn't hard to believe knowing what we know about Dennis Raider, but many of the details were true, like about his weird relationship with his mother and grandmother, his Air Force

service, his obsession with breaking into houses and stealing things. He's giving the profilers more information about his personality, his childhood, who he is. It's weird. But other details obviously were intentionally false, like a fictional sister and a fake birth year of 1939. So pages 5 and 6 outlined what Rader called the Uno Dos Trays theory, a set of triangulated words and phrases. One line read, quote, the BTK world works in threes and is based on the eternal triangle, end quote. He included examples like, quote, man, woman, sex, or psycho, serial killer, BTK, and BTK, victim, police. Page seven listed the 13 chapters of the BTK story, and the final page was a montage of

photocopied photographs of children with hand-drawn gags and ropes. I don't even know what he's doing here at this point. Based on the eternal, the BTK world works in three is based on the eternal triangle. He's so smart and deep. So after Raider dropped this package off, a UPS employee discovered it while emptying the drop box and once again immediately notified police. As detectives reviewed that material, Raider was already preparing his next delivery. This time he escalated further. He took a Barbie doll, tied its hands behind its back to mimic what he had done to Nancy Fox and attached Nancy's original driver's license to the doll's ankle, the original driver's license, not a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy, which he had been.

doing up until then her original driver's license. Yeah. And if you're on YouTube right now, we have the photo up where you can actually see the Barbie. You can see the ID. You can see the other items that we're surrounding it. And if you're on audio, definitely pause. Go to this timestamp. Check it out because pretty unnerving when you think about what it represents. The picture itself isn't crazy. But when you think about the position of the Barbie, the Barbie has its hands tied behind its back. Its legs are tied together. And the ID is tied to the Barbie's legs. There's even something trying to zoom in here. What would you say that is, Stephanie? Like a tape or like, what is that between her legs, the Barbie's legs? It looks like kind of like a lingerie thing that he would

tie her up with. Yeah, like tape or there's something between the Barbie's legs. I don't even know. It kind of looks like her clothes that were ripped off. Yeah, maybe clothes that were ripped off or is he trying to make it look like it's blood? I don't know. I don't know what the rationale. No, I think it's like the bondage thing that he like, you know, it's probably, it looks kind of like a satin thing. Maybe it looks like underwear or something she was wearing that he ripped. Either way, it's disturbing. Yep, definitely.

You can go look at that photo. You can see that this was through the district attorney the 18th Judicial District of Kansas at Wichita who shared this photo and sad. Sad when you think about it, what it represents. So he sends this doll. He also labeled an index card, doll gram,

and wrote out a two-page document detailing Nancy's murder. He sealed the items in a clear plastic bag then placed that bag inside a white trash bag. Then on December 8th, Raider took the trash bag to the 9th and Minnesota area. He found a tree near the intersection. He wrapped the package around it. Then he went to a self-service gas station with a pay phone and called his favorite quick trip. He told the clerk he had placed a bomb in 9th in Minnesota. The clerk immediately called the police. Officers searched the intersection for an explosive device. They found nothing and they left.

So they didn't notice Raiders package, which, and I mean, these cops are like, once again, I'm losing faith in them because somebody calls in a bomb threat and you go to the area where the bomb threat's called in and you just completely missed a garbage bag and wrapped around a tree at that exact intersection. How? How did you miss that? It just doesn't make any sense. So they left. They didn't notice it. But five days later, just a random citizen found it by accident. They brought it home and opened it. And then it was a young boy.

His mother recognized Nancy Fox's name on the materials and realized it might be connected to BTK, so they contacted the police. Now, at this point, BTK was getting extensive media coverage, and Rader loved every second of it. He decided to ramp things up again, this time, with cereal box packages. And obviously, I don't think I need to clarify, but Dennis Rader chose cereal boxes as a play on the words, serial killer. He is so smart. He's good. He's good. He's like, he's laughing as he does. He's like a cereal box.

Get it? He's like, it's crazy. They're going to get a kick out of this. I wish I could tell somebody how smart and funny I am. Yeah. What a weirdo. So in early January 2005, he started with a special K box and he picked special K K because why?

Why? Because K stood for the kill. Another one. Just in buying torture and kill. He is like it. It's good. And the box is up on the screen again. for YouTube people if you're watching.

If you're not in audio, again, go check it out. But you can see here. I'm trying to zoom in, but. You know, if he hadn't been a serial killer, he could have made, you know, made comics for the paper. He's just so funny. What is that on the box there? I see he's got BTK written on the box.

And then he has, what, P-R-E? So he wrote above, he wrote bomb above special. Yeah, I see that. And then he wrote BTK-P-R-E on the side. of the box so that's above the that's like above the k guys good man tell you what i don't i don't btk pre the box is all banged up if you're not watching the boxes in like really rough condition i don't know if that was through shipment or whatever which could's had better days which could easily happen if we sell a lot of coffee and some of the box pictures that you guys send us we did not

send them to you like that but uh you know they sometimes through transit they can get pretty banged up so that might be why that box is in that poor of condition Why does it say BTK pre? Pre pen? What does that even mean? Right next to BTK pre pen? There's a free pen inside. Weird.

So inside, he placed a blue-beated necklace he'd stolen from a victim and a two-page document titled, boom. So the first page of the document described BTK's lair, the dungeon-like murder silo he fantasized about which we covered in part one. Remember, he used to drive all out in the wilderness and he's like, I really wish I had a man cave that I could. bring my victims to that had a TV and a dungeon and all the, you know, great things that a man wants in life. So the second page listed his projects. It included PJ, Little Mex, the Otero murders, which he described as, quote, my first big hit, a good start as serial killer, end quote. So he says it's his first big hit, once again, kind of suggesting that because there was multiple victims at the Otero House, maybe suggesting that he's done something before, but not coming right

out and saying it. Which I would believe with a lot of these serial killers you see that there's an escalation to get to this point. It starts with small animals and then it escalates to larger animals and then it can be one person, then multiple people. So it wouldn't be surprising to me if we learned that there was a lot more to BTK story than we even know. Well, it also referenced Project Foxtail, Nancy Foxx, which he called, quote,

my best hit, end quote, and Rader also created a document titled Communication. Now, in it, he asked the police to be honest about whether he should send them a floppy disc without it being traced back to a computer. He instructed them to answer his question through a newspaper advertisement, and he said that once he saw their response, he would mail a test disc. Now, this is very early in computer time, right? So now, now, now, Not only is he an idiot, but also he just doesn't know enough about computers to know this is a very, very bad idea. He's putting on, it's essentially like with each of these letters, he's almost putting on like a presentation. Actually, hey, maybe that's what pre-presentation, BTK presentation, but he just abbreviated it.

But he's putting on like a presentation for each murder where he's like, hey, I'm going to spell it out for you, but in different ways. some on a cereal box, some in a, through a Barbie. Now he's escalating to a digital presentation. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What's funny, though, what's very funny is Rader later told Dr. Ramsland that the reason he wanted to switch to a floppy disk was because photocopying pages and dropping off elaborate packages was becoming stressful.

It's a lot of work, Stephanie. Yeah, it is. A serial killer isn't easy. Yeah, you've got to walk up. D daunting. Yeah, you might get seen tying a garbage bag. bag to a tree. It's very stressful. He said, discs would be easier. Now, he was like, I think that there's a possibility these disks can't be traced. I'm pretty sure. But I really wanted to ask

the police to be positive because Dennis Rader trusted the police to tell him the truth about whether or not the floppy disk could be trapped. Yes. Please send it to us in a digital form. And if you'd like to touch that floppy disk before sending it to us. That would be greatly appreciated. And please use your personal computer. That would be awesome. Thank you. BTC, there's absolutely no way we can track a floppy disk at all. We're just, you know, we're dumb. That's why you've gotten away with us for so long. And the best way to get away with it is just use your personal computer and you're good to go. Add your resume if you feel like it. That'd be amazing. And if you want to use a floppy disk that you write over, that'd be awesome as well. Yeah, make sure you write like BTK Chapter 6 on there.

Maybe you have pictures of your family or something and then think you deleted that and write over it with this note. And we won't be able to recover that either. That'd be awesome. Yeah. You should put all the bondage pictures you've taken of yourself on that floppy disk and then erase them because we can't retrieve them once you erase them. You got us. It's your perfect cat mouse game. He said I asked the police to be sure.

I mean, listen, rocket scientist over here. He's good. I mean, at this, I guess there wasn't Google at this point. If there was, he wouldn't have had to have gone on the word of the police who were trying to capture him. So on January 8th, Dennis Rader finished the special K package. On impulse, he drove to a Home Depot and he placed the cereal box in the bed of a parked truck. And then he left. And then he watched the news and he read the papers waiting for acknowledgement.

But days passed and nothing was reported. So worried the box hadn't been found, which is the reason why you shouldn't just drop it off randomly. he created another package. This time he used a post-toasty's box. He chose it because of the tea for torture. So he circled the tea on the box, then wrote a B above it and a K under it. Below the K, he wrote Box Graham.

Inside, he placed jewelry and a doll representing Josephine Otero. A rope wrapped around the doll's neck was attached to a PVC pipe. He also created a two-page document describing the Otero murder, yet again. And, oh, I mean, the Josephine Ochero murder has been the hardest for me to kind of cope with here, understandably. And the fact that he's using this for his stupid cat and mouse games, that he's using her and kind of like making fun of her murder and putting it in like a stupid, like,

serial killer, cereal box. Ha, ha, ha. It's really pissing me off. It's really pissing me off. So once the box was ready, Dennis Rader left it on the side of the road between 69th and 77th north on Seneca Street. Then he prepared a postcard to send to K-A-K-E-TV, alerting them to both packages. So the post-toasty's box that he made as like a backup and then the unfound special K box as well. He explained where the post-toasty's package had been left and wrote, quote,

let me know somehow if you or Wichita PD received this end quote he also asked whether quote you or PD received number seven at home depot drop site 1805 end quote and for the return address he used the Otero home and the name S kill it man he's like running out of ideas here so he's he's like hey can you guys let me know if you're getting my packages because he's he's not that bright even the cereal boxes and I don't know the exact specifics of how he was caught, but to me, there would even be something with the cereal boxes. So like with our coffee, we have to have codes on the bottom where we can tell what lot that that coffee was roasted in. And these are big companies. So I would think even then there would be some type of

serial number on the box where if there was like a contamination or something, they would be able to track where that box was made and what store it had been shipped to, like what shipment it was in where they could narrow down the list of stores that this. particular cereal box came from where if they started to have multiple cereal boxes and there was a pattern with where the boxes had been sold, they could start to develop a radius of where the serial killer might live. But I mean, it's still not going to narrow it down too much, but it may give you something. Assuming he went to the same store or a store close to him. Even if he went to a different store, that would be better because now you'd have like a Venn

diagram, right, where you'd start to get multiple stores. Yeah, especially if there was surveillance cameras. And I think, you know, what is this? What year is this? Two thousand. Four, five. Yeah, there was probably surveillance videos at that point, right? Yeah, I mean, you would think that there would be something with the zero boxes where if he purchased them, there'd be something creative that they could do. And maybe they did. And it just wasn't the main reason he was caught, but it's something when you're grasping at straws. You got everything. Everything's a piece of evidence. Everything on that box, not just what you can't see, like trace evidence, but the actual box itself. That has to be something that you turn into a positive as well, if you can.

So they do do something with the cereal boxes, but spoiler alert, it's the freaking floppy disc. Yeah, I remember hearing about the floppy disk and that ultimately be, I was trying not to get too ahead of it, but I want, okay, I won't spoil it. I'm going to shut up and let you keep going. So KAKE received the postcard on January 25th. They immediately sent a news crew to search for the post toasty's box. So at this point, the media is not even contacting the police first. They're like, this is our scoop. Oh, yeah. We're getting this postoces box, which is so annoying because you know they're not handling it.

No, like a police issue, contamination, all that. You do. Yeah. So they did locate it and then they notified the police. So after gathering that package for evidence, detectives then went to the Home Depot to search for the special K box. They didn't find anything. So they reviewed surveillance footage from January 8th because this dude said,

I put it at the Home Depot drop site, 1,805. So told them exactly when he was there. So they look at the surveillance footage. The footage showed a dark colored SUV, possibly a Jeep Cherokee, pull up alongside a truck, an unidentified figure got out, placed something in the truck bed, and left. So now we got for the first time ever, BTK on film. Now, the footage wasn't clear enough to identify the vehicle or the truck owner. It's still 2005.

It's like fairly new. So police posted a notice in the employee break room, and they asked if anyone had found a suspicious package. So an employee named Edgar came forward, and he said, yeah, he'd found a cereal box with writing in his truck bed about two weeks earlier, but he thought it was a prank, so he threw it away. But luckily, Edgar still had the trash at home because he'd been out of town, and he hadn't taken it to the curb. So he turned the box over to the detectives. And remember, this is the box, the special K box, was where Dennis Raider was like, hey, is it okay? if I send you guys a floppy disk and then I won't get caught, let me know, a circle yes or no, and put it in my locker.

So the box is with the detectives now. They read the contents. And then the detectives placed an ad in the newspaper telling BTK, floppy disks cannot be traced. Obviously, this was a lie. They were hoping Rader would fall for it. And he did. He did.

Dennis Rader saw the ad and he sent a postcard to K-A-K-E thanking Wichita police for their quick response and thanking the news team for their effort, he said he had received the newspaper tip and he promised a test run soon. This is so embarrassing for somebody like Dennis Rader because you know he wants to be seen and perceived as so competent and mysterious and smart and intelligent. But like the only reason you didn't get caught was because there was no such thing as forensics back then. The only reason you didn't get caught is because there weren't cell phones tracing everybody's move and ring doorbell cameras at every house.

The only reason you got caught is, to be honest, the Wichita Police aren't the best. Well, I mean, and near the end of this, he stopped in 1985, so you're right. And I know some people might be like, well, this is 2005. No, this is when this is occurring. But the actual crimes themselves, to your point, last one, 1985. And I don't think there's, I don't know the exact date. Don't hold me to it. But the first case that I can think of where DNA became a topic of discussion,

was 1997, I believe, with OJ, where Dr. Henry Lee started to talk about it. I'm sure it was before that as well, but that's the first one, the first prominent one that I can think of. So many years after BTK's alleged last killing. Yeah, and I mean, so his last killing was 1991, because remember he stopped from 1985 to 1991. Now, the only thing I'll push back on, and I'm sure some of you guys will as well, is even before DNA became what it is today, investigators were still supposed. of the preserving evidence as if DNA would be a thing. Like they were supposed to be swabbing what they had. But what happened was in a lot of cases, especially the ones that I worked, they were swabbing and taking in evidence, but they weren't preserving it correctly. So even

though they had something of value at the time, because they stored it in a way that wasn't conducive to the DNA staying on that item, by the time you get to it much later, when you analyze it, there's nothing there. Or it's so degradated, you can't do anything with it. And there are a few specific cases that I'm thinking of right now, one of them being Michelle Norris. That's why I was just going to say, even now, there's cases where they have DNA and they still can't, they can't do anything with it. They're still not, it's not a, it's not a, oh, we have DNA. That's it.

We're going to catch the person. Yeah. What about the college student, too? I keep forgetting her name, but we covered her early on. Remember they thought it was her roommate at some point. And then there was DNA and they used the DNA to make like a, a picture of what. what they think the person would look like? Faith Hedgepath.

Faith Hedgepath. Yeah, there's DNA in that case. Yes. And they still can't figure out who it is. I'm looking up right now that looks like the first case where DNA evidence was used to clear a suspect and later convict a criminal was actually in 1987 when it was, there was a rape and murder case of Dawn Ashworth in the UK. And so that's the first documented case that I can find. I'm sure there may be others, but that's what that's what's popping up here on a Google search. yeah but still not a perfect system no no and it's all about the the

nobody was trained really and it's all about the how that evidence is obtained and then yet how it's preserved that's even more important yes so but here now we have btk on surveillance why he didn't think there was i don't know i don't know what this guy's doing but we have him for the very first time we can see a figure that we know is the person leaving these and it can only be btk because he's got information about the victims that nobody else has and maybe dennis raider was like, I don't care if they catch me sending these because I can just still say it wasn't me and they don't have proof that I committed these murders. But that was really flawed logic if that's what he was going by because he was not being careful here, not being careful at all.

So we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Now there were officially in December, I am fully in my stay inside and get cozy era. And honestly, my helix mattress is one of the main reasons I look forward to bedtime. I've had mine for a while now over five years. It's still the best sleep upgrade I've ever made. Yeah, I feel like every time we talk, you talk about your bed like at your sanctuary. Because it is. It really is my sanctuary. When I ordered mine, I took the Heelix sleep quiz, which matches you to the perfect mattress based on your sleep style and preference. So I got the midnight looks. It solved everything I was dealing with, the night sweats, the tossing around,

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you know, this is all true. But none of this narrowed the field in any meaningful way, so police continue trying to piece things together. Meanwhile, Dennis Rader began preparing what he called his test run for the floppy disk. He used the computer at Christ Lutheran Church, where he was now serving as president of the congregation. He saved a file on the disc that read, quote, this is a test, see three by five card for details on communication with me in the newspaper. End quote. He then prepared three index cards. One contained directions for future communication. Another was a photocopied image from the 1989 crime novel, Rules of prey. The third was titled Communication 11 and listed several of BTK's previous contacts with

police. At this point, this dude's bored. He needs a hobby. He's got nothing going on. Why are you preparing all these three by five cards? Right. It's like three index cards. One's directions for future communication. That's all you needed. Now you got a photocopy of some random crime novel and then you want to list your previous communication with the plate. You're bored. You're bored. So Raider then placed the floppy disk, the index cards, in a gold chain with a locket inside a padded envelope. Now, he believed the locket had belonged to Nancy Fox, though he wasn't sure, as he told Dr. Ramsland, he hadn't properly cataloged his items. So he addressed the envelope to PJ Fox, 316 Northwest Street, Wichita, and mailed it to KSAS TV, choosing a new outlet now to stir the pot, as he called it. Which I'm sure K-A-K-E-TV is pissed off because they've followed Dennis Rader, I mean, B-TK's instructions to a T.

They were responsible for, you know, figuring out where that special K-box was and recovering the other cereal box. And now he's not sending them this very important floppy disk communication. They're probably feeling a little betrayed. I know. He's like, he has no loyalty. No loyalty. So after sending the disc, Dennis Rader started planning his next cereal box package. because he's doing this thing to death, man.

He just thinks it's so clever. Now, this time he used a raisin brand box to complete a trio of cereal boxes representing all three initials in BTK. He planned to include a doll reenacting Shirley Vienne Relford's murder and he intended to rig the box so it would appear to contain a bomb,

but he never got the chance to deliver it. On February 16th, the padded envelope with the floppy disk arrived at KSAS and was immediately turned over to the police. Detective Robert Stone, the department's computer expert, performed a forensic examination. And when he opened the files' properties, he found two key pieces of metadata, the name Dennis and Christ Lutheran Church. He then ran a Google search for Christ Lutheran Church, located the website for the congregation, and saw that Dennis

Raider was listed as the president. So I guess they did have Google in 2005. So why the hell did Dennis Raider? I guess maybe he didn't want the Google search to it, but that's a random question you could just ask just in case. I mean, we definitely had something, but I guess I'm showing my age here, but I was, I graduated high school in 2002 and I don't remember Googling things like people do now. I'm going to look it up. Yes, Google was very much around in 2005 and actually already one of the most dominant players

on the internet by then. It was founded in September 1998, public law. launch, 1999, by 2005 was the leading search engine worldwide. So why didn't he Google it? Why didn't he Google? Can a floppy disk be tracked by police? Because that's a lot easier to explain a weird Google search than to actually send the floppy disks to the police on their word that they can't track it

and get caught that way. It makes no damn sense. So now they see Dennis Rader is the president of Christ Lutheran Church, where this floppy disk was made. So detectives went to the church and they spoke with the pastor who confirmed Dennis used the church computer. So detectives began a deep dive into Dennis Rader and quickly learned that he matched the BTK profile almost perfectly. He lived locally. He owned a black Jeep Grand Cherokee.

He had military experience. He worked in code enforcement, meaning he understood law enforcement protocols. And he had attended Wichita State University. He seemed like a prime suspect, but detectives needed a DNA sample to be sure. So they obtained Carey's pap smear swabs through a subpoena and used DNA from those samples to compare to the DNA found in the Otero, Nancy Fox, and Vicki Weigarley cases. So they used his daughter's pap smear results or pap smear swabs. Is that legal? They got a search warrant for it.

Now, if they can articulate why, it's a tough one. I mean, she is living in the home with him, but more importantly, she would have the same genetic makeup of him. It's almost, I guess the question becomes, how is that any different than somebody's DNA being obtained on a familial website, like a genealogical website, where they're getting DNA that was submitted there and using it. Now, I will say. Because they put it there. That person put it there. Yeah, it is a lot different because. Carrie was doing that with a medical, with a doctor for her own health.

She wasn't submitting her DNA online. Yeah. So, yeah, that's a slippery slope. So it says your medical records are protected by HIPAA. Okay. But HIPA does not prevent law enforcement access if they have the proper legal authority. So they have a search warrant issued by a judge based on probable cause that the records contain evidence of a crime. Yeah.

I have to tell you, I didn't know that part about this case, that the DNA was obtained from Kerry's Pappsmaer. I did not know that. Wow. Yeah. Wow. That seems very intrusive. I mean, it's a good thing. We want him caught.

It is. I mean, listen, I think what happened here is when you're drawing up a search warrant and might be mansplaining here a little bit, but you have to basically paint a picture as if you're talking to a five-year-old. So what I would imagine, everything that you just laid out to us, all the things that, all the boxes that were checked, how they obtained the floppy disk, how they found out Dennis's name, how they went to the church. And then all these things started matching up to Cherokee, the military background, the understanding of code enforcement, Wichita Chaw State University Connection. They said, hey, listen, this guy is probably our guy. We're going to paint this picture for you. We believe, based on DNA we have from these cases, if we find a family member's DNA of this guy, we can probably solve this case and stop this guy from ever killing again. And a judge in that particular case said, you know what?

approved. Now, you could have brought that to 10 judges, and nine of them might have said no. Can you do that if you bring a warrant to one judge and they say no? Can you just bring it to another judge until you get one that says yes? You cannot, but I will tell you a little inside baseball that not a lot of people know. One thing that I would do, and I don't even know if I've ever told you this, but one thing that I would do as a narcotics detective is there were like four or five judges that were in the offices in the morning. And this is how detailed I got with it. I would look for specific judges who I knew I had done a lot of search warrants with, who trusted me, who, because they always get what's called the return of service.

So basically what happens with that is when a judge signs off on a search warrant, you have to bring in a return of service so they see the results of said search warrant, what was seized from that search warrant. So they can see your history of, I signed off on the search warrant, they got drugs. So I started to build relationships with certain judges. and things that I would find is you always wanted to get a judge before they went on the bench in the morning and got aggravated, or you wanted to get them after lunch, where it's near the end of the day, they've put some food in their bellies, they're not as disgruntled, and I would look at the schedules of certain judges because I knew the judges that I had worked with before and that I had a trust factor with and that were more likely to sign off on it, opposed to asking for more details. So if I had to guess without knowing anything about this case, these detectives made sure they got a more lenient judge who was more likely to sign off on this. That is fair game.

Yeah, I mean, did you? But, man, even sitting here right now, I know we, you know, we want to get the bad guy. But the way they got it here, that would be a question I'd love to ask Carrie about. I thought I just saw something yesterday because I have like Google alerts and stuff. I thought I just saw something that there's new legislation being suggested that these judges shouldn't have judicial immunity anymore when they like let violent offenders out. And then that violent offender goes on to like murder somebody else. Remember we've talked about this before how that would be there needs to be some sort of like, you know, I'm on the line. If I let this dangerous person out and they offend again, I think it was just I live in Rochester.

But in Buffalo, there was a guy who had murdered someone, a woman. And he was given 20 years in prison, and they let him out after 20 years, I think even less than. I think he got like time off for good behavior. And then immediately he like carjacked somebody and murdered them again, immediately. And I feel like this is another thing where judges should not be a lot. First of all, you murdered somebody. You carjacked and murdered somebody. Why are you only getting 20 years, you know?

Some culpability. Well, to kind of bring this back to what we're talking about right now with this with this DNA stuff, I actually did an interview with Bob Mata from Defense Diaries, and he went the other end of the spectrum because he's a defense attorney, he was essentially saying that even in today's times, when law enforcement wants to use like permitted websites, like DNA databases, there should be a search warrant that needs to be signed off on to even do that. Like, you can't just go on there and do a blanket search. Yeah, you used to be able to. Well, you technically still can now. I think they did it in a Golden State Killer case and they got some shit for it. Well, they went, they did it under false pretenses, right?

Yeah, they did it like pretending they weren't the police. And so there are still sites that you can just go on there and upload DNA and see if anybody matches it. But what he was arguing is in the future, this isn't the case right now. A detective shouldn't just be able to upload DNA to see if there's a match. They should have someone in mind that they're trying to see if it matches that person. There's more specificity there. Now, I told him on his recording. Yeah, but then you could just say, oh, I have this guy in mind.

And then you happen to get the other guy and you're like, well, I didn't have him in mind, but obviously, spoiler alert and Bob knows this. I don't necessarily agree with him. And I love the way it is right now because it allows us more tools to find the bad guy. But to kind of bring it back to this, if you were to take this exact scenario in 2025, I don't know if it would fly. So it's still kind of would. And that's why there's so many gray areas and it's so different. And it's not like equally or evenly enforced, but I do know that they, so at that time, Carrie was going to, she was attending college at the University of Wichita. And so the investigators were like, okay, we know Dennis Raider has a daughter who attends a Canvas University and we assume she has medical records on file.

So the police obtained the warrant and the subpoena and the court order to access her records at the student health center. And Carrie herself later said, I would have, yeah, I would have, yeah, I would have given them voluntarily but it would have chipped denis off i would have given them the these samples or whatever they need my blood my DNA voluntarily but um i i still feel like this is a little bit of like you know you can't disagree yeah she doesn't like that it happened disagree she had no idea that was happening and she said um she would willingly give it she described it as an intrusion into her medical privacy and a violation and i agree i kind of feel weird about it i don't disagree with her either because I do think there's a difference between something like this and something like

Brian Kohlberger, where they got his DNA through his father, through abandoned property and trash. And we've seen that where people wait outside the houses, wait for them to throw out a pop can or something. Yes, very different. And wouldn't, if Dennis Raider was in the military, wouldn't they have a sample of his blood on file? Why can't you just go get that? I don't know. I don't know. I will say, although I'm in agreement with you as far as, and also carry, just to add a little of it too. The only thing I will say, kudos to detectives to, again, thinking outside the box. Don't love the approach, even as an investigator myself. But these are the types of processes where you're like, wow, they got the guy because of this. And it was something that probably hadn't been

done before, if had been, not often. Yeah, it's one of those like, oh, it's a means to an ad. Yeah. That's how they're justifying it for sure. But wow, did not know that. Yeah. So obviously, results from Carrie's pap smear showed that the DNA from the murders, the Otero murders, Nancy Fox, Vicki Wagerly cases, that was, quote, consistent with the profile of a common unknown male individual, end quote, and that Carrie could not be excluded from being the biological child of that male. So at this point, obviously, detectives are confident Dennis Raider was their guy. Surveillance was set up while warrants were prepared for his home, work, office and church. Detectives tracked his routine and developed a plan to arrest him during

his lunch break on February 25th. At 12.15 p.m. that day, officers initiated a traffic stop. A team moved in immediately and Raider was taken into custody without resistance. He later told Dr. Ramsland, quote, it was too late for me to react. I was trapped. End quote. He would later claim that if he'd had time, he would have shot his way out and escaped. Of course. Okay. You probably would have asked the police though like if if i shoot you am i going to get in trouble for that i need your assurances that it won't make things worse for me and the police would be like no that's that's fine no if you do anything like that you're going to be fine he's like all right because you just sent them a floppy disc that's what you should have been feeling when you got arrested the stupidity

of you asking the police for permission to send them a floppy disc and asking for their assurances that they couldn't track it just insane so there's a lot going on here we are going to take our last break and then we'll be right back This episode is brought to you by IQ Bar, our exclusive snack and hydration sponsor. IQ Bar is the Better for You, plant protein-based snack made with brain-boasting nutrients to refuel, nourish, and satisfy hunger without the sugar crash. Yeah, for me, I always have their bars and their hydration sticks right in my bag with me, and I believe you're the same way.

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That's weekly to 64,000 message and data rates may apply. See terms for details. So we talk about some heavy topics on this show, trauma, tough life moments, the kind of things that stick with you long after you close the case file. And something I've learned both personally and through people close to me is just how important it is to have real mental health support. But actually finding that support, that's usually the hard part. It can take weeks, sometimes.

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They help you schedule appointments, stay on track, and make sure the care you're getting is high quality. Every provider is vetted carefully, and they monitor progress to help you reach your therapy goals. And if you need additional mental health support, Ruler also offers help with medication management through experienced professional. That's really important. And if you've been thinking about therapy or have you been putting it off because it felt overwhelming or too expensive, this is a really great place to start. Thousands of people have already trusted Rula to support them. So you can head on over to Rula.com slash crime weekly to get started today. After you sign up, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them that we sent you. Once again, go to Rula, R-U-L-A dot com slash crime weekly and take the first step towards better mental health today. You deserve quality care from someone who cares. All right. So Dennis Raider, he's arrested. You know, he couldn't shoot his way out of it.

This is the same guy who got beat up by Marine, but okay, he's going to take on the entire police department. This is the same guy is probably wearing lingerie under his clothes. If Marine had an equal shot with him, he would have lost that battle too. But, yeah, he's going to take on law enforcement. Good luck with that, buddy. He's going to shoot his way out of there. Dude watches too many movies. So they bring in the police station.

Dennis Raider, he knows he's caught, but he still tried to play games. He spent about three hours lying to detectives, but that ended when investigators revealed they had his DNA and his name from the floppy disc. At that point, Raider admitted he was BTK, and he went on to detail what he'd done. But then, after hours of confession, he tried again to backpedal claiming he was only a BTK fan. So detectives reminded him, we have this. your DNA. Did you forget? You're a BTK fan. What do you like the robin to his Batman? You're at the murders with him. What do you talk? We have your DNA. And that DNA ties you directly to the

murders. And then so then he went back to admitting the truth. He was like, I forgot. I forgot about that. Got me. Yep. My bad. It was me. Not to try. I'm BTK. So over the course of two days, Raider spent roughly 30 hours confessing to murdering 10 people. Joseph. Julie, Joey, and Josephine Otero, Kathy Bright, Shirley V. Ann Relford, Nancy Fox, Marine Hedge, Vigley, and Dolores Davis. So during the confession, Raider made sure to tell FBI agents, quote, normally, I'm a pretty nice guy. I'm sorry, but I am. I've raised kids. I had a wife and, and you know, president of the church, Ben and Scouts. It goes on and on and on. But yeah, I have a mean streak in me, so, and it occasionally flares up, takes control, end quote. He's like,

I'm a good guy. Yeah, deep down. I know it doesn't look like that, but like, I'm sorry. I am. He describes it as someone who has a temper. Yeah, he's like, you know, I got a little, I got a mean bone in me, of course, like anybody else. I'm stalking my victims and then finding the ways to kill them and get away with it.

But yeah, I'm just a normal guy at heart. I did my duties as a man. I took care of my wife. I took care of my kids. I went to work every day. Jeez, like, is that, am I perfect? No. So Rader later told.

Dr. Ramsland that at this point, he was worried about how his arrest would affect Paula and the children, who were now full-grown adults. Didn't think about them during the killing, so. No, no, I really don't think he was thinking about them even at this point, by the way. But he made an agreement with the detectives. He would draw maps to help them locate some of his hidey holes if they promised not to tear apart his home. So he didn't know that once Paula learned the truth, she never returned home.

Okay, she was like, I'm done with this dude. Like I always knew there was something weird about him. And now I walked in on him a few times, tying himself up and wearing lingerie. And this is all I need to hear. I'm done. Not going back to that house. Not going back to this man. She filed for an emergency divorce.

She never visited him in jail. And she never saw him again. The house was even torn down. So Carrie, his daughter, she later told ABC that neither she, her mother, nor her brother had any idea who her father truly was. they'd been living what they believed was an ordinary life she said quote if we had had had an inkling that my father had harmed anyone let alone murdered anyone let alone 10 we would have gone screaming out that door to the police station we were living our normal life we looked like a normal american family because we were a normal family and then everything upended on us

end quote and i believe this obviously when paula found out do i believe that there was red flags for Paula? Yes, of course. Do I believe that in a marriage you often overlook red flags when you've already been with somebody for a long time? You have kids together. You want a home together. You've built a life together. And you try to convince yourself like, oh, no, it's not as bad as it seems. But the fact that as soon as she found out he'd been arrested, she was like, I'm done. She didn't try to defend him. She didn't go to visit him to get his side of the story. To me, that says she kind of knew something was up, but also she wasn't going to support it. She wasn't one of those stand by your man type women who are like, no, it couldn't possibly be my dear sweet.

Dennis, how could he have done that? They believed it, right? His family were like, we didn't know, but they also weren't like he couldn't possibly do this, right? So there's probably a little bit of something in them that was like, this dude's not completely normal. What do you think? No, I'm with you. This was just like the final nail in the coffin. She knew something was up for me with all of these cases not just BTK i think about long island serial killer as well like how does this person carry on with their life and there's no sign to you that you're significant others engaging in something that's not that's not normal whether it's infidelity or something more extreme you're with this person day and night 24-7 you know they're coming and goings and you probably

pick up on certain things that indicate they're up to something that they shouldn't be what that is maybe you don't know, but you know there's something off. And so... Yeah, just a little intuition that's like, I'm unsettled by this person. And maybe there's conversations or things that have happened between you to that you know something's wrong. So, yeah, maybe it was exactly the way it sounded where she knew something was going on, couldn't really pinpoint what it was.

And then once this came out, she was like, make sense. Totally makes sense. Everything you guys were saying, it tracks. Yeah, I'm not going to tell you got the wrong guy because there's something about this person. he was doing, but I knew he was up to something and the way you're laying it out. And now, knowing dates and times and comparing them to what I know, it definitely makes a lot of sense. Yeah, at the worst, she could have told herself like, oh, he's probably having an affair

or he's seeing somebody else or, you know, I've walked in on him in weird positions, sexual positions before. Maybe he's got like a kink and he's hiring somebody to help him with this. But never would I think that his family was like, yeah, he's out there murdering people. But they knew there was something off about him. Back to Raiders confession, according to him, after he finished talking for 30 hours, he was booked into jail and charged with 10 counts of murder. Now because Kansas reinstated the death penalty in 1994, three years after his alleged final murder, he could not face capital punishment. Instead, if convicted, he'd get life in prison. So as Raiders sat behind bars, detectives executed their search warrants. Inside a locked metal filing cabinet at

Raiders office, they found what he had called his mother load. There were seven three ring binders and 25 hanging files filled with writings, drawings, three by five index cards, books, floppy discs, and envelopes documenting every detail of the murders. Which, yeah, why wouldn't you keep that at your office at work? What? Why wouldn't you, why would you 25 hanging files filled with writings and floppy discs and envelopes documenting the details of the murders? Now beneath the desk drawer, they discovered a large manila envelope containing dozens of drawings of women bound to torture devices, along with photos of Dennis Raider himself posed in bondage. So the amount of material was staggering. It essentially mapped out the

entire case for prosecutors. Raiders' defense attorneys knew this. They considered an insanity plea, but competency evaluations concluded Dennis Rader was not insane. Instead, evaluators suggested he might have. Stupid, but not insane. Yeah. Not mentally ill. Stupid, evil, but not insane. So evaluators suggested that Dennis Rader might have hypergraphia, an intense compulsion to write or draw, possibly tied to developmental or learning issues. This is funny. Like, No, he's a murderer who wanted to remember his kills. So he wrote them down. They're like, yeah, he's a murderer, but he also might just have this compulsion to write things down and draw them. Yeah, so he can remember them. So he was also assessed as having narcissistic personality disorder and obsessive compulsive personality disorder. Dr. Ramseland wrote, quote, during the evaluation, Raider demonstrated a lack of empathy for his victims as well as a sense of grandiosity. He showed a strong need for admiration. attention and was preoccupied with fantasies of power. He thought only people with a high status could understand him because he considered himself unique. He showed a strong sense of entitlement

in his comments, especially to special attention and treatment. His life history showed exploitation of others for his advantage to gratify his own needs. He was preoccupied with maintaining routine and structure, which gave him a sense of control. He demonstrated an attunement to patterns and was preoccupied with lists, rules, and order, end quote. Now, Dr. Ramsland noted that although Dennis Rader had ever been formally diagnosed with psychopathy using standardized instruments, someone on the evaluation team had written a cryptic note on the back of his competency report, hinting that psychopathy was a possibility. So I wonder who on the evaluation team wrote a cryptic note on the back of Dennis Rader's

competency report being like, this dude could be a psychopathy. Yeah. Like, first of all, I mean, killing 10 people and then writing letters to the police. I don't think we need to do an evaluation. Yeah, honestly. In cases like this, it's like, do we even need an actual formal diagnosis of psychopathy when he's killed 10 people and took pictures of himself in bondage and then sent a floppy disc to the police when they told him it couldn't be tracked? Do we need to know anymore? Yeah, do we need to like confirm that? Or can we pretty much all assume. this is probably the case i mean listen i always say it with these even just one murder right if there's if there if it's not like a one of those cases where it's a little ify as to if the murder or the i should say homicide was justified cases like this to me where it's clearly a premeditated murder that this person carried out for no specific reason i have always said

that i don't know what the the diagnosis would be for that person but clearly there's something wrong where they feel like this is the way to conduct yourself. Like they feel like in order to get what they want, they can just take it. Or if they're so angry at a person or they dislike a person so much, they can take their life. So for me, if your rationale ever lead you down that road, then there's something wrong with you. Yeah, but these are strangers he's going after.

Well, that makes it even worse. I dislike this person. I have a motive. I don't know this person. And I'm going to just kill them in cold blood and enjoy. I think you're a psychopath. Isn't every serial killer? Technically a psychopath?

Like, if they're not, then who the hell is? Because it's very much like, hey, the profile is superficial charm, grandiosity, check, lack of empathy, lack of remorse, check, check, check, check. Check, check. Emotional shallowness, check, check, check, check. Like, what are we talking about here? You definitely are. Yeah, and I agree with you.

So it's not even a diagnosis of whether they're a psychopath. It's more of, oh, are they a psychopath or are they a sociopath? Was there some empathy there? Did they have some conscience when they conducted these acts? If the answer is no, psychopath. If the answer is yes, sociopath. But at the baseline, we know, yes, something is off here. There's a chemical imbalance.

That's for sure. No type of analysis needed to figure that out. I don't think there is. I don't think there is a chemical imbalance. I genuinely don't. Like, he's found legally sane, cognitively normal. Okay? you know the difference between right and wrong.

And that's usually going to be your basis for getting a legal insanity defense. Like they didn't know what they were doing at the time is wrong. Right. The second that they can prove you knew it was wrong, you're not legally able to create a mental health defense. It's just he was driven by power and fantasies, not mental instability. That's a classic psychopathic profile. Like you want to put power over other people. You want to make yourself feel better and bigger.

by you know dominating and hurting others there's no like chemical imbalance there okay just take a pill so i might be going in the weeds here but and i'm not a doctor i'm not a psychologist but to me everything that is developed by with our personalities is due to our chemical makeup there's something in us that causes us to be the person we are some of it is environmental as you're growing up but i feel like genetically there's something in all of us that programs us to be certain people whether that's our personality traits, how we conduct ourselves, how we carry ourselves in certain situations. So what I'm saying is with someone who may have this urge to do what you're saying, take control, have power. There's a gradient of that, right? Like there's people, there's entrepreneurs

who want to have power and control and all these things over others and they find ways to do it that are legal and reasonable. Where with this type of person, their choice of action is to tie someone up or murder them. And so for them to think, that's the correct course of action. I'm saying chemically, they are different than any of us, or most of us, I should say. It might not be chemically, but... You follow what I'm trying to say. Maybe I'm not smart enough to explain it.

It might be physically. Like, I just did a case about a 12-year-old girl who was a killer, and, you know, they said that... Yeah, there's something predetermined in her. There's a genetic makeup there that mapping in her brain that's not wired correctly. So, yeah, so in the brain, it's like those areas of your brain. like the amygdala, the hippocampus, the ACC, the ACC, which has guilt and conflict monitoring, those are smaller and have reduced activation in people who are considered to be psychopaths. So, yeah.

The only preface I'll say, because I've seen other cases of this as well, there are some people where it might be, and I'm not using the correct terms, but like a genetic mapping from the time you're born, I also think, as I kind of mentioned quickly, the experiences you have in life, the environments you're in, post-traumatic stress and all these things can rewire your brain as well to cause you to become someone that maybe you weren't originally. So it's not always predetermined when you're born. I'm not saying that. I don't want to open a can of worms. I'm just saying that if you ever go down a path where you believe the only action or the only reaction to a situation is to take someone else's life, something inside of you is not the way it should be. What that is,

smarter people will have to figure that out but at minimum we know that there's something wrong and when you kill multiple people then we really know you're not someone we want out in society and there's something going on where your brain needs to be studied when you kill multiple people and talk about how you like it

you get gratification out absolutely so again we all this is in my field of expertise but just a basic dummy terms you're murdering people I know that you're not like the rest of us there's something different in there we got to figure out what it is so we can find that in others and maybe start to develop a pattern of how we see this, identify it, and maybe change that before something bad happens. When this man dies, Dennis Rader, I hope that his immediate family, aka Carrie, his son, even maybe his wife, who's not his wife anymore, but that they're able to be like scan his brain.

Yeah, donate his body to science. Donate that brain to science so we can figure out what makes people like this tick and what's missing. This might be a dumb question, but would he have say or? for that? He might. Yeah. I think that they've actually approached him and asked him about it before and he's declined. There you go.

But when he's dead, does it matter? Right? I'm sorry. He didn't care about his victims. What happened to them after they were dead? He goes in there. He signs a will and they're like, sure, buddy, no problem. Yep, right here, we're going to bury you or we're going to cremate you.

And then as soon as he's dead, they're like, shh, that didn't happen. Yeah, we'll cremate you after we take your brain out. Right? But, like, you took pictures of your victims. They didn't give their consent. Yeah. Okay? You brought them all over the place, put them in a church. They didn't give their consent.

I'm with you. I don't care about, I don't care about this dude's wishes. He signed a, he signed a will. I didn't see it. No will here. I don't even know if you can do, like, aren't you a ward of the state when you're in prison? I don't know, man. That's a great question.

Can you even say what happens to you at that point? It's a great question. He shouldn't be able to. No. Let me look at up real quick. What his brain can give us in knowledge and education is a whole million, trillion, cajillion times more important than what the hell that guy wants. Okay, so I'm looking it up here, and this again is just really surface level, but a criminal

can deny their body being donated. They have a right to bodily autonomy, and it is widely accepted as a human right in the United States, which protects competent adults' right to refuse medical procedures, including organ and body donation even after death. So on the surface, he has the right to refuse. But then we get to the Stephanie Harlow area of, you know, well, did the victims in his case have the right to refuse? Okay. So if Dennis Rader dies while still incarcerated, which is likely because he's in his 70s and he's serving 10 consecutive life sentences, the state autopsy would be done by the Kansas Department

of Corrections or the county medical examiner. So they would examine for cause of death, right? Tissue retention, including brain, only if authorized by the coroner or through written consent. So I feel like there's enough gray area here. Oh, yeah. They could be a very detailed autopsy conducted, including a scan of the brain. Yeah, I feel like there's enough gray area here where they definitely could and who the hell would be mad. You know what? Tush. Who would be mad? Tusha. Like who's on Dennis Rader's side where they're going to be like, that man said absolutely not. And I'm suing you. Who? No one. No one. I'm looking the other way.

I'm not going to say a word. I'm not going to say a word. I want to know. Got to determine cause of death, Stephanie. He has the right to have that done, just like everybody else. Could have had a stroke. You have to look at the brain. So as Raider sat in jail preparing for trial because this guy can't even just be like, yeah, it was me. And then just like put it like put everyone out of their misery. He's got to go to trial.

So his daughter, Carrie, wrote letters to him, though she did never visit. She begged her father not to put the family through a trial. And Raider told Dr. Ramsland, he wanted the spectacle of a courtroom and the attention that would come with it. but in the end he chose to plead guilty for his family or so he claimed once again i don't care if he's like i don't want you guys to go through my house and find all my stuff it's going to upset my children no he never cared about them he likes the spectacle so on june 27th 2005 raider stood before a judge and pleaded guilty to all counts he was then asked to describe each murder in detail and he loved this right he did so in a flat monotone voice walking through every step of his

projects as if he were reciting routine tasks instead of describing the brutal killings of 10 people. We're going to play some of those clips for you now. This first clip is about the Otero family. I had just some thinking on what I was going to do to either Mrs. O'Tarroll or Josephine and basically broke into the house or didn't break into the house. But when they came out of the house, I came in and confronted the family and then we went from there. This second clip is about about Kathy Bright. Captain Bright was one of the next targets, I guess, as I would indicate. How did you select her?

Just driving by one day and I saw her go in the house with somebody else and I thought that's a possibility. There was many, many places in the area, College Hill, they're all over Wichita. Anyway, it just was basically a selection process, worked toward it. If it didn't work, I'd just move on to something else. in my kind of person, stalking and strolling, you go through the trolling stage and then a stocking stage. She was in the stocking stage when this happened. All right, sir, so you identified Catherine Bride as a potential victim.

Yes, sir. What did you do here in Central County then? Pardon? What did you do then here in Central County? On this particular day, I broke into the house and waited for her to come home. This third clip is about Shirley Vianne Ralford. Vianne was actually on that one, she was completely random. That particular day, I drove to Dillon's parking lot, watched this particular residence,

and then got out of the car and walked over to met a young boy, and asked him if he's ID some pictures, kind of was a russ, I guess, a roose, did you call it, and kind of feel it out. And I saw where he went, and I went to another address and knocked in the door. Nobody opened the door. So I just noticed where he went and went to that house, and we went from there. This next clip is about Nancy Fox. Nancy Fox was another one of the projects.

When I was trolling the area, I noticed her going in the house one night. Sometimes I would, anyway, I put her down as a potential victim. And then I did a little homework. I dropped by once to check the mailbox to see what her name was. Found out where she worked. I won't stop by there once at Hillsburg. Kind of sized her up. The more I knew about a person, the more I felt comfortable with it.

So I did that a couple of times. And then I just selected a night, which was just thick for a night, to try it. And it worked out. This next clip is about Marine Hedge. It is claimed that you unlawfully killed a human being, Marine Hedge, maliciously, woefully, deliberately, and with premeditation by strangulation, inflicting injuries from which Marine Hedge did die on April 27, 1985. Can you tell me what occurred on that day? Well, actually, kind of like the others, she was chosen. I went through the different phases, stocking phase, and since she lived down the street,

street from me, I could watch coming and going quite easily. On that particular day, I brought my hit kit, and lo and behold, her car was there. I thought, gee, she's not supposed to be home. So I very carefully snuck into the house, kind of like a cat burglar, and after checking the house, she wasn't there. So about that time, the doors rattled. So went back to one of the bedrooms and hid it back there in one of the bedrooms. She came in with a male visitor.

They were there for maybe an hour or so. He left. I waited till we hours in morning. And then proceeded to sneak into her bedroom and flip the lights on what it looked like. I think the bathroom lights. I just didn't want to flip her lights on. And she screamed and I jumped on the bed and strangled her manually. And this last clip here is about Dolores Davis, his alleged last victim.

Loris E. Davis did die on January 19th, 1991. Mr. Raider, please tell me what you did here in Sedgwick County, Kansas on that day that makes you believe you're guilty. In that particular day, I had some commitments. I left those, went to one place, changed my clothes, went to another place, parked my car, finally made arrangements on my kit, my clothes,

and then walked to that residence. after spending some time at that residence, it was very cold at night. I had reservations about going in. I had cased the place before, and I really can figure out how to get in, and she was in the house, so I finally just selected a concrete block and threw it through the plate glass window in the east and came on in. So, yeah. Yeah, you can see he's a sick guy.

Yeah, he is. He is a sick guy. He doesn't, and you can, I think you can tell. he does not feel bad. Yeah, there's no remorse there. No emotion. No, no change in the level of his voice. He is, yeah, like we said, reciting it as if he's talking about a grocery list. And you can tell he's still trying to control the narrative even now that he's been caught because he's still writing his legacy in his mind. So after Dennis Raiders guilty plea, the case moved into the sentencing phase. The district attorney presented a PowerPoint filled with images pulled from Raiders Heidi holes, including photos of Raider posing in bondage and in various staged hanging positions. This was definitely a power move to humiliate Rader and it worked. He later told Dr. Ramsland, quote, it was very embarrassing. I just stared ahead and kept my head up. End quote.

I hope you're embarrassed because you know these pictures are now all over the internet, including in our own videos. So be embarrassed. Victim impact statements followed. They were obviously delivered by families who had waited decades for answers. Then when the judge gave Rader the chance to speak, every victim's family member walked out of the courtroom. Rader proceeded to deliver, yeah, they're like, we're not going to sit here and listen to this bullshit. Rader then proceeded to deliver a bizarre statement in which he thanked law enforcement, the DA, the judge, and even the families of his victims. When he finished, the judge sentenced him to 10 consecutive life sentences.

He was transferred to El Dorado Correctional Facility where he would spend 23 hours a day in segregation. Now, it was while he was incarcerated that Dennis Rader began to work with Dr. Ramsland on the book Confession of a serial killer. And he claimed his goal was to help. people understand serial killers and how their minds worked, and that the book was a way to repay his debt to the victim's families. He told the Wichita Eagle, quote, I can never replace their loved ones, my deeds too dark to understand. The book or movies, et cetera, is the only way to help them. And quote, yeah, so now he's like, yeah, it starts with a book and maybe we'll make some movies, you know, maybe we'll, you know, work on my legacy. I mean, me paying back

the families for everything I've taken from them. I don't buy that. I think Raider just wanted another platform. It's all self-serving. Yeah. Another opportunity to share every detail of his depravity and to craft the narrative that the black hat was to blame. Obviously, during the trial, he got to give everything in detail, but not everybody's going to have access to that. Not everybody's going to see that. With this book, you reach a wider audience. But there was no black hat, right? He wanted to say that he was a good man and he sometimes lost control. No, I don't believe that. This was Dennis Rader. He chose every single thing he did, which is why he was able to choose to stop killing for years, for years. He was able to make that choice.

Now, obviously, as is the case with these things, Raider cannot profit from the book financially due to a previous court settlement. A lot of the times you're not allowed to profit from the things like this that, you know, you're killing people. But yeah, he profited from it, though, in other ways, in the only ways that matter. What's money going to matter to him? He's in prison for the rest of his life. He profited from it in a way that that mattered to him, which was getting more attention, getting more eyes on him and building this legacy, being known, BTK, forever known. Hopefully after this series forever known as an absolute bumbling idiot who really wanted to be the Zodiac Killer,

but couldn't manage it if he tried. So in her 2016 book, Dr. Ramsland raised an important question. Does Dennis Rader have additional victims he hasn't admitted to? She asked Raider about this, and he told her there are no unknown victims. He said his goal was to kill 12 people since that number fit his fixation with threes. But he was never able to get an 11th or 12th victim. Now, Ramsland doesn't offer her own theory on additional victims in the book, but she does outline competing theories. She said some investigators believe Rader would never admit to any murders committed after 1994 because he could face the death penalty.

So true. Valid. So true. But as she points out, he seemed genuinely surprised during his interrogation to learn the death penalty didn't apply to him. And he openly admitted that he planned to kill again in 2004, which would have put him in jeopardy. But no, come on, man. Let's not let Dennis Rader manipulate us. He seemed genuinely surprised. The dude walked around like the president of the church and a Boy Scout leader and a good husband and father for decades while he killed. killed people. I think he can act. I think he can pretend to be something he's not, including genuinely surprised. Yeah. And yeah, so he, he openly admitted to planning to kill again. You can't, you can't charge somebody with planning to kill again. You can give somebody the death penalty for planning to kill again. Yeah. So, no, I think, well, I think that there are other victims and the whole death penalty argument. I do too, but I do, I will tell you, I go back and forth because maybe this part of him that wants to die at this point, and he would admit to those murders just to speed up that process but it is a you know it kind of goes back I kind of go back and forth on it

because on one end he could admit to the other ones and quote unquote build his legacy and yet he chooses not to I don't know but I'm with you I do if if you made me like you had said earlier if you made me put my money where my mouth is I would say there's more I know man at this point honestly like was he genuinely surprised about the death penalty he trusted the police to tell him whether or not that floppy disc was going to, like... I definitely think he's genuinely surprised about the death penalty. That guy was not doing his research. Yeah, but he was paying attention to, like, how DNA and forensics were coming along,

so you don't think he would have paid attention to the whole death penalty, like, debate and question on the news? I don't know. I think that we'll never truly know because he could pretend to be an act however he wanted. So Dr. Ramsland also noted that none of Raiders journal entries contain unidentified victims, though she knows he's repeatedly bragged, that police never found all his hidey holes, and that he sometimes destroyed evidence. So ultimately, she leaves the question unresolved.

But she isn't the only one who's questioned whether Raider killed more than 10 people. We've been raising that possibility throughout this entire series. For years, though, these questions were mostly speculation until recently, actually, August 23, when Raider was suddenly named the prime suspect in two unsolved cases. 16-year-old Cynthia Cindy Kinney, who disappeared in Oklahoma and Shauna Garvey. who was murdered in Missouri in 1990. Now, since the 2023 announcement, DNA has identified Shauna's killer as someone else, Telfi Reeves, that cleared Raider, so we won't go into detail on that case.

But Cindy's case, that remains open. So Cindy disappeared from Osage, Oklahoma on June 23rd, 1976 after leaving a laundromat on Kakaya Street. Witnesses saw her get into a faded beige, 1965 or 1966, Plymouth Belvedere, with a man and two women all in their late teens or early 20s. She was never seen again. Her case eventually went cold. Now, in 2023, detectives revisiting Cindy's case began looking at Dennis Raider as a

possible suspect for several reasons. Osage is about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Wichita, making travel plausible. A bank across the street from the laundromat had recently installed an ADT system, and there was a Boy Scout museum nearby, though there's no evidence to prove that Dennis Raider ever went to either place. In addition to those possible ties, detectives also decoded more of Raiders' lengthy word puzzle from 2004, and they found several terms that tied directly to Cindy's case. So Cindy, Kinney, O'Sage, Laundromat, and Kekiah.

So those were the words that came out in his word puzzle, which is crazy. Now, could he just be trying to take credit for it like he's done before? I don't know, because that's a really long. time. If this happened in the 70s, which it was in 1976, that's a long time for Dennis Rader to hold back and then suddenly just place these clues in there, even though he had nothing to do with her death or her disappearance. So they also learned, police also learned, that Dennis Rader had a 1976 journal entry titled PJ Bad Wash Day, where he described a brunette target and wrote that he would, quote, watch the nearby laundromat for a possible

victim, end quote. So she left a laundromat on, I hope I'm saying this right, Cahakaya Street. I mean, I'm reading it with you and definitely not my strength. So I'm rolling with you. In Osage, Oklahoma, okay. And he wrote in his little word puzzles, Cindy, Kenny, O'Sage, laundromat and Cahacaya. I hope I'm saying that right, which that's kind of crazy. So what do you think? I don't know. I don't know. I guess I can. I can get to where you're going to talk about it again, but Kerry was involved with this, trying to help out. And I've heard not directly from Kerry, but I've heard some things from people connected to this whole ordeal. And I'll just say this. It doesn't look like he is

responsible for this one. And maybe some of the evidence connected to him, allegedly, wasn't as strong as it was as it was portrayed to people. So he intentionally put her identifying details. into his word puzzle to once again, like, mislead police? Listen, there could be a connection to it. I've just heard from some people that I trust that when Kerry reached out to work these cases and help out, they may have learned that some of the things that they thought were strong indicators that he was involved with it. Maybe weren't the case.

I'll let that story be told by someone else. But, yeah, I would agree with you that having these things in there, if it's exactly in these word puzzles, the way it's being described, too much of a coincidence. for me. If I'm looking at it and all of these words are in there, like you said, Cindy, Kendi, Osage, laundromat, and then that word specifically, the Kakai. Yeah, which is the straight. That's a very difficult word to just pull out of your ass. So, I mean, it's Cindy and her name's Cindy Kenny. Yeah, I mean, there you go. But it almost seems too, too overt to me. But if it's exactly the way it's been conveyed to us, I think he's probably somehow involved.

or did he learn about this case and start to put that out there as just another Jake, right, where he was trying to make it look like he may be connected to Cindy's, whatever happened to her, even though he really wasn't. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. It's either that. But once again, this is happening in 2005 that he's making this word search. She goes missing in 1976. Jake was a very recent case in his neck of the woods that he would see on TV.

I'm with you. How would he know about Cindy in Oklahoma? Yeah. I'm interested to see what happens, if anything, with the Oklahoma cases. Like I said, there's been rumblings to people that are in the field that I've heard from that had some involvement with this. Again, not Kerry. I have not spoke to her about it, but that maybe things were presented a certain way where they were like, oh, this is promising. And then when they got down there and actually broke down some of the evidence, it wasn't as strong as they thought. I hope I'm wrong. But that's what I heard. And again, it's all kind of in the rumor mill. of people in the, you know, the investigatory space. Well, detectives released this information about his potential tie to Cindy Kinney publicly. And then Dennis Raider's daughter, Carrie, reached out and offered a help with the investigation. Yeah, this is what I was referring. Yeah.

Yeah. After meeting with Osage detectives, she traveled with the team to visit Raider in prison. This is the first time she's seen him since his arrest. And Carrie said she asked him about Cindy and he spiraled into rambling explanations, but ultimately denied involvement. Oklahoma investigators interviewed him as well. Raider admitted he had fantasized about abducting a girl from a laundromat, but insisted he wasn't involved in Cindy's disappearance. So following that interview, Osage detectives searched the empty Park City lot where Raiders' house once stood. They found what they called items of interest, including at least

one trophy belonging to a known victim and bondage materials. Everything was sent for forensic testing, though it's unclear what those results revealed, if anything. Unfortunately, since 2024, there have been no major updates in Cindy's case or any of the other cases considered for possible ties to Dennis Raider. He's not been charged with any additional murders, and to this day, investigators are still trying to determine whether the 10 known victims represent the full count or whether Raider left more devastation behind.

Now, if the authorities announce any breakthroughs, you know we will make sure to keep you updated. But for now, that's everything we have. in this case, dudes in prison for the rest of his life. And I think that, I think it's possible he has more victims. But maybe not after 1991, but maybe before. Because remember, when he said the Otero case was his, the Otero murders was his biggest murder, you know, because of the multiple people. He didn't say it was his first.

You're right. And the wording can be key. Now, my takeaway is just thinking about the victims and their families and everybody. that has been affected by this case, including the communities that this occurred in and how it affected and uprooted everybody at that time, not knowing who they could trust. And the positive side is he's off the streets. He's no longer going to hurt anybody else, but there probably are a lot of unanswered questions and maybe cases and other victims that we haven't identified yet who are also

connected to Dennis Raider and may shed some light for the families that were affected. Maybe some of these victims haven't even been found yet. And so from everything that we've covered, the one thing that we have learned is that the unknown is almost worse than the knowing. And so giving these families, these answers before they leave this earth, I think is important. And that's why we have to keep fighting for them. It may not bring the victims home, but it's important to get those answers for the people that remain behind and spend every single day wondering what happened to their loved one. For me, like I say, every case that we cover where it's a case that's very prominent in the news has gotten a lot of coverage. I sometimes ask myself, why are we covering it if everything's already been covered by so many podcasts?

And the truth, for me, personally, I'm not speaking for you is I learn from them. There is something in it for me where I feel after listening to the case and kind of breaking it all down, I become a better detective. I learn about the M.O. of every single killer that we cover, their processes, their practices, what they did right, what they did wrong, how they chose their victims, and ultimately how they were apprehended. So just for an example, in this case, I did not know that it was ultimately Kerry's DNA that connected Dennis Rader to this crime. Now, I know they had a plethora of other evidence after the floppy disk, but it was kind of reversed from there, right? where everything that he had sent off to them, they were able to connect the dots from there. But it really was the nail in the coffin, if you will,

when Kerry's DNA matched the killer. And that's really what got him. So for me, that was fascinating. That's the big takeaway as I leave this case and learning going forward and how I can apply my own skills to cases in the future. So fascinating story, can't stand the guy, always think about Kerry.

And after covering it as deeply as we did, I have even more respect for Carrie and her ability to move forward and carry on and use the tragedy that she went through and the trauma that she experienced to at least attempt to help others. Like you had said at the end of this episode, Carrie voluntarily reached out to try to help them. There's no incentive for her. I know her. You know her. She's not doing this for the notoriety. If anything, she would like no one to know who she is.

And I remember we covered a case on crime feed where we were talking about serial. killers. I believe it was the Long Island serial killer. And she came in to give her insight. And you could just tell with certain people their why. And her why is simple. She just wants to help and prevent it from happening to others. So thinking about her, thinking about her family because they're victims as well. Yeah. I'm actually really happy we covered this because, you know, people are like, oh, everyone knows about BTK. Yeah. Like what I knew about him was that he was a serial killer kind of on the level of Zodiac. Like I knew he, he went a long time without getting caught. And I knew that he communicated with the police and kind of like dropped a little hints.

But now I'm glad that we went through it because now I know he's an idiot. Okay. So there's nothing there to be afraid of. There's nothing there to be like, oh, this is some, you know, bigger than life person who there's, he's just a loser, right? He was a grandiose, self-styled mastermind who in reality had a really deeply mediocre intellect. but had inflated what he thought was his intellect with delusional self-importance. And this is so common. Like the floppy disk mistake is the perfect example.

This was an ego-based mistake, not a technical one. He thought he was smarter than the police, number one, and he thought they wouldn't lie to him. He's like, can I communicate with you on the floppy and not be traced? Be honest. And he's like thinking, they're not going to lie to me because he saw himself as an equal partner in their game. He was delusional enough to think he was smart as smart or smarter than them. Like I said, an ego-based error. He genuinely didn't understand how digital metadata worked, but instead of researching it or just staying cautious,

he trusted his inflated belief that he was the puppet master and he was running things. And a lot of the time, people with narcissistic personality disorder overestimate their intelligence. And criminologists actually call this the illusion of superiority. So they overrate their IQ. They overrate their strategic ability. They assume others admire and respect them. They believe they're in control of every interaction because it's what they want. Like they're projecting.

They're convincing everyone else of this thing, but they're also convincing themselves that they're smart and capable and things like that. He wasn't. He was really just, I mean, he wasn't like technically stupid, but he wasn't super intelligent. And so you look at someone like this and you realize you got away with this stuff, not because of who you are, because of the landscape surrounding you at the time. And you hope that at this point, sitting in prison, being able to go over all of his mistakes, maybe there's a realization that hit him in some sort of ego death or narcissistic break of like, hey, I'm actually not smart. I'm actually not like this grand person who can control the spiritual realm and the universe is sending me signs to kill. I'm just not really that's smart of a guy and I got caught and it's my fault I got caught.

You know, he's not this boogeyman to be afraid of. He's just a broken, damaged man whose ego was too big for him to contain and he got caught. And I don't think that anybody like Dennis Rader would be able to get away with any of this now. And that's a reassuring thought, at least. Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. Guys, we appreciate you being with us through this entire series. Five episodes, probably over, what, 10, 12 hours at this point? It was a long one.

And I know for some of you, you know BTK, but I hope you left here after this series with some new insight on this case that we can apply to future cases, ones that are solved and unsolved. We're going to be back next week with a new case. It's going to be a shorter series, probably only one or two parts, because we're going to be off for Christmas. and we want to get this series done before the new year. So until then, everyone stay safe out there, and we'll see you soon.