Monster: BTK - Bright [3]

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

The killer strikes again. This time, he stalks a young college student. His methods improve, but not without some failure. He reconsiders his choices. But realizes it's too late. It's time to double down.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you're fascinated by the darker sides of humanity, join us every week on our podcast Serial Killers, where we go deep into notorious true crime cases. With significant research and careful analysis, we examine the psyche of a killer, their motives and targets, and law enforcement's pursuit to stop their spree. Follow Serial Killers wherever you get your podcasts and get new episodes every Monday. Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremorchi. And I'm Holly Fry. Together we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime. Each season, we explore a new theme from poisoners to art thieves.

We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures, from legal injustices to body snatching. And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story. Listen to Criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It was big news. I mean, white girl gets murdered, found in a cemetery, big, big news. A long investigation stalls until someone changes their story. I like saw what happened.

An arrest, trial, and conviction soon follow. He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free? Did you kill her? Listen to The Real Killer, Season 3, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, listeners. I'm Lauren Bright-Pacheco, host of the Murder on Songbird Road podcast, and I'm excited to share this riveting story with you. I'm also excited to tell you that you can now get access to all episodes of Murder on Songbird Road, 100% ad-free, and one week early through the iHeart True Crime Plus subscription, available exclusively on Apple podcasts. Plus you'll get access to other chart-topping true crime shows you love, like Betrayal,

The Girlfriends, Paper Ghosts, Murder Homes, Unrestorable, The Godmother, and more. So don't wait, head to Apple podcasts, search for iHeartTrueCrimePlus, and subscribe today. New episodes of Monster BTK are released every Monday and brought to you absolutely free. But if you want to hear the whole season right now, it's available ad free on iHeart True Crime Plus. For more information, check out the show notes.

Enjoy the episode. You're listening to Monster BTK, a production of iHeart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. Listener discretion is advised. We were trying to do our job as journalists, but then we became part of the story. And I think for a journalist, that's a terrible place to be, as part of the story. But there was no way to get out of it because he enjoyed communicating with Cake TV. Cake TV was his favorite station. He had watched it since he was a child.

I have a postcard talking about the communications which he wrote to Kagan and it says, I write this letter to you for the sake of the taxpayer as well as your time. Those three dudes you have in custody are just talking to get publicity for the Otero murders. They know nothing at all. I did it by myself and with no one's help. P.S. Since sex criminals do not change their M.O. or by nature cannot do so, I will not

change mine. The code words for me will be BIND THEM, TORTURE THEM, KILL THEM. B.T.K. They will be on the next victim. Someone killed four members of a family. Hedge vanished from her home suddenly last weekend. Her phone lines had been cut, her door left open. You see the victim playing there with plastic bags over their head strangled. You could tell there was a planned scenario. While police have said no more

about the contents of the letter, it does contain some sort of threat and implies the killer may strike again. He's gonna play with these victims. He'd get them to the point of death and then bring them back. And then'd get them to the point of death and then bring them back. And then brings them back to the point of death. From My Heart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV, I'm Susan brutal and tragic murders of the Otero family.

On January 15th, 1974, BTK broke into the Otero home on Edgemore Drive in Wichita, Kansas. He tied up the parents, Joseph and Julie, before strangling them. Then he strangled their young son, Joey, and hanged their daughter, Josephine. It was BTK's first murder, and it hadn't gone smoothly. The killer made many mistakes. He hadn't known the parents would be home. His only intended target was young Josephine.

He feared he would be caught, but the police were seemingly not on his trail. In the months following the Otero murders, Dennis Rader obsessed over his work. He reveled in the success of not getting caught, and he realized just how much he enjoyed the thrill of killing. He started training for his next kill. In the book, Confession of a Serial Killer, Raider says he started to get in shape, and he was inspired, once again, by something he saw on TV. fit. There was excitement in trying something dangerous. Then it happens and afterward you wish it hadn't. It's like playing in quicksand. There's fear and excitement. But then you're stuck.

Raider was hungry. He wanted to try again. He thought he could get it right next time. So he started to prowl for his next project. I believe in February or March the hunt began again. I found it exciting to prowl at day or night. It was very easy for me to spend a little time after classes to prowl or day drive. Going to classes worked well for me as a cover. I could say I was at the library or I could use that time to prowl or stalk. After looking around the Wichita State campus for weeks,

Rader finally found his next target. So it was the day after classes or in between. I spotted bride arriving home with a friend, another female, maybe a sister. She was at her mailbox. She fit my fantasy profile. A co-ed, dishwasher blonde, small. I saw her go in the house and I thought, that's a possibility. Her name was Catherine Bright. Raider eventually discovered that she lived nearby, at 3217 East 13th Street,

less than two miles from the Otero home. He named her Project Lights Out. Here again are Raider's words. She became a true detective horror magazine hit fantasy. Her bedroom appeared to be in the center east. I was planning on tying her up on the bed, either half naked or totally. Then I would strangle her or suffocate her. Her hands would be bound in front and tied to her neck, like a true detective model I had seen. I used to fantasize about women on the cover, showing terror in their eyes, bound hand up near her neck, a man with a threatening knife overhead.

Just 79 days after the Otero murders, Dennis Rader approached Bright's home. April 4 of 1974, this was a scene which isn't necessarily one that you would automatically assume that it was connected to the Oteros. My name is Kevin O'Connor. I'm an assistant district attorney in Johnson County now. I was the deputy district attorney in Wichita, Sedgwick County, Kansas, during the Dennis Raider investigation. He was constantly trying to trip the police up, so he was trying to not connect it to the Oteros.

Rader will break into the house by smashing a window on the back, gaining entry. He cleans up and he waits. Rader's plan was to force his way into Bright's home by acting as a Wichita State student needing a quiet place to study. But as Kevin O'Connor says, there was just one problem. He is not anticipating that Katherine's brother Kevin will be with her. Kevin Bright spent the night before with his sister and there was snow so he didn't go home. Raider panicked. He improvised a fake story

about how he was a criminal on the run. They come back surprised by a man telling him that he is on the run, he needs money and a car, he needs a little bit of food. He will tell them they have to tie him to control them, that they're not going to be hurt. This crime goes to hell in a hand basket pretty quickly. He loses control of the situation. Raider thought Catherine would be alone and easy to control. For that reason, he brought no rope with him. He had been planning to tie her up using pantyhose from her dresser drawer.

Pointing his gun at the siblings, he marched them into the bedroom. In a rare CNN interview from 2005, Kevin Bright went into detail about what happened next. And then he forced me to tie my sister up in the front bedroom. And then he took me into the other bedroom and tied me up and laid me down on the floor on my stomach. He had a stocking, knotted up stocking, and started strangling me. And I fought and broke loose and jumped up on my feet. He pulled a gun from his waistband, and I knew he was going to shoot me.

And I grabbed a hold of his hand and arm and pushed it back into his stomach and got my hand on the gun and the trigger and pulled it twice. And it didn't go off for some reason. He jerked it away from me and shot me first time there and then I went to the ground and anyway he left for a while. With Kevin Bright seemingly dead, Raider went back for Katherine, who was tied up in the

other room. He tried to strangle her but she fought back. Once again, Raider was losing control of the situation. Meanwhile, Kevin Bright had to listen as his sister was being strangled to death in the other room. Then he came back and grabbed a hold of me and he started strangling me again and I fought him again and he shot me the second time. I played like I was dead and he left again and then I looked around the room to see if there was any kind of weapon that I could use against him and there wasn't anything there and I just decided I'd go for help. So I was about 15 feet from the front door. And I got up and I went out the front

door and there's two guys across the street, two men. And one of them took me to the hospital and the other one called the police. After Kevin escaped, Raider panicked. He started stabbing Catherine with a knife over and over to make sure she was dead. The police reports say she was stabbed 11 times. Here are Raider's words from confession of a serial killer. I had no intention of stabbing anyone, but it happened because I lost control. That created a mess of blood everywhere on my hands, pants, shoes. I made a vow. If I ever again had to confront to kill, there would be no knife. It was a total

mess because I didn't have control over it. Raider had to move quickly after stabbing Catherine. Since Kevin could ID me, it wouldn't make a difference if she was dead. I was afraid the police would catch me or stop me on Holyoke. I recalled that I ran so hard and fast that my lungs hurt for a day or two afterward from breathing the cold air. Raider ran back to his car parked by the Wichita State Campus. Katherine tried calling for help.

She's able to get to the phone. It's a walled unit, and the phone will be off the hook. That police report describing her and how that police officer found her is heartbreaking, as he describes her in trying to breathe, begging the police officer to help her. The police report states that Officer Dennis Landon arrived at the Bright Home at 2.08 p.m. Here is an excerpt read by a voice actor. Officer Landon approached the address of 2317 East 13th Street and knocked at the screen

door. The front door was open. After receiving no response, Officer Landon looked in through the open door and saw a female lying in a pool of blood. The young woman was found clutching a telephone in her hand. She was asked what happened, but was unable to respond. When asked if she was hurt, she pulled up a blouse exposing her abdomen. The young woman said she did not know her attacker. She was able

to give her name before beginning to pass out. Officer Raymond Fletcher arrived and assisted in attending to Bright. Upon his arrival, Officer Fletcher noticed that Bright was covered in blood. In addition to the pool of blood underneath her waist, Bright had blood on her hands, in her hair, and on her face. Officer Fletcher noted that she was bleeding from her left nostril, and her face was badly bruised. Bright grabbed Officer Fletcher's arm and repeated, I can't breathe.

Help me. Both Kevin and Catherine were taken to Wesley Medical Center. Kevin survived his gunshot wounds, however his sister Catherine didn't survive the attack. She died of her stab wounds just a few hours later. Catherine was yet another innocent victim of BTK's malice. This one has always been difficult for me to wrap my head around. Catherine was just a college student looking forward to the next phase of her life. To have that life cut short is a merciless injustice. And for Kevin, the horror of remembering that dreadful day was almost too much to bear. Even though he was younger than his sister, he felt he should be the protective brother.

And when I was the first to interview him, 30 years later, the tears in his eyes were instant. It still haunts him to this day that he could not save his young sister's life. Last night, you and your dad are talking, and 30 years later, you're still talking about what ifs. Yeah. There's a reason for that. Yeah, because my sister should have died. I mean, I was praying that she didn't suffer very much, you know, those last hours, I don't

know. And just pray for all the families that, you know, they can have healing. God knows every movement you're making and knows that you're going to answer one day. And that he offers, you know, he offers every one of us salvation. For Katherine Bright, it was a terrible and tragic end to a budding life. But for Rader, it was just the beginning. Following the murder of Catherine Bright, Raider planned his next move. Our family legacy is this ranch. And I protect it with my life. Hosted by Bobby Bones, the official Yellowstone podcast

takes you deeper into the franchise that's captivated millions worldwide. Action! Explore untold behind-the-scenes stories, exclusive cast interviews, and in-depth discussions about the themes and legacy of Yellowstone. You know, the first stunt to settle this valley fight was all they knew. Whether you're a long-time fan or new to the ranch, Welcome to the Yellowstone.

Bobby Bones has everything you need to stay connected to the Yellowstone phenomenon. I look forward to it. Listen to the official Yellowstone podcast now on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go to work. If you're fascinated by the darker sides of humanity, join us every week on our podcast Serial Killers, where we go deep into notorious true crime cases. With significant research and careful analysis, we examine the psyche of a killer, their motives

and targets, and law enforcement's pursuit to stop their spree. Follow Serial Killers wherever you get your podcasts and get new episodes every Monday. Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Os Veloshen, one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical, but obsessively intrigued. And I'm Kara Price, the other new host, and I'm ready to adopt early and often. On Tech Stuff, we travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars, to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer

burning questions about technology. One of the kind of tricks for surviving Mars is to live there long enough so that people evolve into Martians. Like data is a very rough proxy for a complex reality. How is it possible that the world's new energy revolution can be based in this place where there's no electricity at night?

Oz and I will cut through the noise to bring you the best conversations and deep dives that will help you understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know to survive the singularity. So join us. Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That was big news.

I mean, white girl gets murdered, found in a cemetery. Big, big news. When a young woman is murdered, a desperate search for answers takes investigators to some unexpected places. He believed it could be part of a satanic cult. I think there were many individuals present. I don't know who pulled the trigger. A long investigation stalls until someone

changes their story. I like saw what happened. An arrest, trial, and conviction soon follow. He just saw his body just kind of collapsing. Two decades later, a new team of lawyers says their client is innocent. He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free? Are you capable of murder? I definitely am not. Did you kill her? Listen to The Real Killer, season three on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Project Lights Out had been a disaster. Dennis returned home and tried to resume his normal family life, but he couldn't shake the paranoia that his mistakes would cost him. Here again are his words from the book, Confession of a Serial Killer. When I saw the news releases about Bright, I knew Kevin was now a survivor and able to tell. Catherine had died. Kevin had described me. I was worried about Kevin. He was Catherine's brother, I learned. I thought of maybe trying to hit on Kevin at some

point. I never could come up with a perfect plan. On April 23rd, 1974, just three weeks after the attack on the Brights, police released a facial composite of the suspect based on Kevin's description. This is former Wichita police chief Richard Lemonyan. All he could tell us was it was a male, a white male, but he could not describe the individual. He was very cooperative. We had professional psychiatrists, psychologists work with him. But again, I really think he gave us all the information he had, because I don't think he really had an opportunity to even see what was going on.

Rader, however, felt differently about Kevin's recollection. He did give a fairly good description of me, and I thought the picture in the newspaper was uncomfortably close to me. But no one ever came for me. According to Lemonyan, police had a hard time connecting this crime to the Otero murders. Both were so messy and strange. The bright killing was clearly so poorly planned that it was tough to make heads or tails of. We assumed at that particular moment that that's probably just boyfriend, love triangle,

who knows what it is, but it was interrupted. So it was not connected at the time to the Otero murders. In those days, we probably had a homicide rate 40, 45 a year. So no, homicides were not unusual, and we would clear 90% of them. So a homicide like this would not have drawn a serial killer type mentality back to it. While police were struggling, Raider was relishing in the chaos and confusion. As I gathered the news clippings on Catherine Bright, I taped a picture from a detective magazine to one of my hidey hole folders, the one that showed the girl with her hands

in front, the way I'd wanted to do with Bright. I kept Bright's clippings inside and even wrote a story, I believe, possibly of a fantasy of her. The months slipped away and I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be caught for a lineup. Raider had all sorts of these hidey holes in his home where he would keep tokens from his victims or store his crude drawings and newspaper clippings. In July, six months after the Otero murders, four people in their early 20s were killed following a small dispute. It was the second quadruple homicide that year. All of Wichita was shaken up.

1974 had thus far been a hard year for violent crime. Police were scrambling to piece it all together. Police finally got a breakthrough in the Otero case in October of 1974. We had arrested a couple of brothers named Sebring who admitted that they had killed the Oteros. Gary Sebring was arrested on charges for an unrelated sexual offense. While being questioned, Sebring started spewing about the Otero murders. According to the book, Inside the Mind of BTK by John Douglas, Sebring would go on to tell police,

If I was doing the Oteros, this is how I would have done it. It would have been with my brother, and we would have tied them all up, and my buddy Thomas Myers would have been with us. This raised a few eyebrows, and the two brothers were brought in as suspects in the Otero case. Of course, the news media picks up on it, and we've arrested the Otero murderers

and all things like that. The people of Wichita were ecstatic. They believed the Otero murderer had been brought to justice. Sebring had a criminal history involving the sexual assault of a minor. On the surface, it seemed very plausible that he was the killer. But police were skeptical of Sebring's knowledge of the case. Investigators had Gary and his brother, Ernest, go through intense psychological evaluations.

And they determined both men were mentally unstable, prone to lying and inventing false scenarios. Additionally, police chief Floyd Hannon determined that neither brother could be placed at the scene of the Otero crime, and neither of them fit the description of the man who was seen leaving the Otero home. As for the friend Thomas Myers, police had trouble locating him at first, but after a week, Myers was brought into custody and also taken in for a mental evaluation. Once again, the conclusion was clear. These men were not responsible. The Sebring brothers were just pedophiles, is what they were,

and they had other problems that they had. They weren't murderers. and they had other problems that they had. They weren't murders. Raider saw the false confession on the news, and he was not happy about this development. Once the media picked up on it, and then they started putting information out that we had a suspect in custody for it, that's what prompted it all.

He didn't want someone else taking credit for his job. Since I was in the mood of highness and attention as the newspaper ran the story on the three men, I added it to my hidey hole folder on the Oteros. I wanted credit, not someone else. I also wanted taxpayers not to spend endless dollars on false leads. A few days after the Wichita Eagle published its story about the Sebring brothers, Dennis Rader called the front desk and asked to speak to Eagle columnist Don Granger. Here's what Granger remembers hearing over the phone. Listen, and listen good.

I'm only going to say this once. There is a letter about the Otero case in a book in the public library. Granger was freaked out. He immediately called the Wichita police. He told them that the caller had the voice of a timid Midwestern man, but he couldn't make out anything else. Wichita PD officer Bernie Drowoski went to the library that very day. He discovered a peculiar letter, stuffed into a book, titled Applied Engineering Mechanics. The letter was riddled

with misspellings and grammatical errors. Here is what it said, edited for clarity. Those three dudes you have in custody are just talking to get publicity. They know nothing at all. I did it by myself with no one's help. I'm sorry this happened to the society. It's hard to control myself. You probably call me psychotic with sexual perversion hangup.

Where this monster enter my brain I will never know. But it's here to stay. How does one cure himself? If you ask for help that you've killed four people, they will laugh or hit the panic button and call the cops. I can't stop it. So the monster goes on. And hurt me as well as society. Society can be thankful that there are ways for people like me to relieve myself.

At times by day dreams of some victim being tortured and being mine. It's a big complicated game, my friend, of the monster play. Putting victims down, following them, checking up on them, waiting in the dark, waiting, waiting. The pressure is great. And sometimes, he'd run the game to his liking. Maybe you can stop him. I can't. He has already chosen his next victim or victims. I don't know who they are yet. The next day after I read the paper, I will know. But it will be too late. Good luck hunting. It was in this letter that the name BTK was born. A three-letter moniker that came to haunt Wichita police. Yours truly guilty. PS. Since sex criminals do not change their MO, or by nature cannot do so,

I will not change mine. The code words for me will be, find them, torture them, kill them, B-T-K. They will be on the next victim. He considered himself to be among the elite serial killers and so he named himself B-T-K. This is Katherine Ramsland, the forensic psychologist who wrote a book with and about Dennis Rader. He did not want to leave his name to chance and get something stupid. He wanted a powerful name and it wasn't the only one.

He gave them a few ideas, but because he had created an image for the BTK name as well, he stuck with that. He's one of the few who told police and journalists, here's what you should call me. And he enjoyed that. He enjoyed that kind of cat and mouse game. By using BTK, torture, fantasy writing, drawing, and what I had planned to do, I wrote my own criminal epithet. If caught, those words would hang me.

Carrie Rosson, Dennis Rader's daughter, talks about her father's lust for notoriety. He feeds off the fair because he wanted to be remembered and known for what he had done. And he talks about Ted in California and he's talking about Son of Sam. Well, he's in a smaller media market, so he wasn't getting the coverage that Bundy or Sam was. He wanted to be known and he didn't like that these guys were taking credit and making it sound one way when he knew the truth. So he writes into the eagle, it puts it in a library book in the public library where him and I used to hang

out all the time later on. Dennis Rader had the authorities attention. His plan was working. So he literally is like giving them evidence because he's such a narcissist and he's enjoying that game. For Raider, the into the Yellowstone universe. Our family legacy is this rich. And I protect it with my life.

Hosted by Bobby Bones, the official Yellowstone podcast takes you deeper into the franchise that's captivated millions worldwide. Action! Explore untold behind-the-scenes stories, exclusive cast interviews, and in-depth discussions about the themes and legacy of Yellowstone. You know the first studs to settle this valley fight was all they knew. Whether you're a longtime fan or new to the ranch, welcome to the Yellowstone. Bobby Bones has everything you need to stay connected to the Yellowstone phenomenon.

I look forward to it. Listen to the official Yellowstone podcast now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go to work. If you're fascinated by the darker sides of humanity, join us every week on our podcast Serial Killers, where we go deep into notorious true crime cases. With significant research and careful analysis, we examine the psyche of a killer,

their motives and targets, and law enforcement's pursuit to stop their spree. Follow Serial Killers wherever you get your podcasts and get new episodes every Monday. Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Osvalosian, one of the new hosts of the long-running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical but obsessively intrigued. And I'm Kara Price, the other new host. And I'm ready to adopt early and often. On Tech Stuff, we travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars

to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology. One of the kind of tricks for surviving Mars is to live there long enough so that people evolve into Martians. Like data is a very rough proxy for a complex reality. How is it possible that the world's new energy revolution can be based in this place where there's no electricity at night? Oz and I will cut through the noise to bring you the best conversations and deep dives that will help you understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know

to survive the singularity. So join us. Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It was big news. I mean, white girl gets murdered, found in a cemetery. Big, big news. When a young woman is murdered, a desperate search for answers takes investigators to some unexpected places. He believed it could be part of a satanic cult, I think there were many individuals present. I don't know who pulled the trigger.

a long investigation stalls until someone changes their story. I saw something that happened. An arrest, trial and conviction soon follow. He just saw his body just kind of collapsing. Two decades later, a new team of lawyers says their client is innocent. He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free?

Are you capable of murder? I definitely am not. Did you kill her? Listen to The Real Killer, Season 3, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The news was settling on the police department. For the first time in history, Wichita was dealing with a bona fide serial killer. In the first phase of this, I'm thinking to myself, what kind of a screwball is this? The fact is, he's hurting people.

He's actually killing innocent people in our community. Our job is to put him away, get him off the street. And as you read these things, this is like a movie script. It's kept, it's not a movie. It's real. People are dying. How can we resolve this? This is gonna be a long process, and it's gonna take a lot of help.

Police were initially unsure about what to do with BTK's letter. They thought if they went public with it, the city might go into a frenzy, and then it might embolden BTK to kill again. None of us had ever dealt with this. We reached out to departments that had dealt with serial killers. We reached out to the FBI, getting advice, suggestions as to how we might proceed. We reached out to professionals here in Wichita

and in the region, psychologists, psychiatrists, to get advice, to get direction as to what they had done, what worked best for them, and what we might do in the future. It wasn't until a few days later that police came up with a plan to respond to BTK. The response came in the form of a personal ad in the Wichita Eagle on October 27th, calling on BTK to reach out. calling on BTK to reach out.

But the hotline never rang. On October 31st, Eagle columnist Don Granger ran his own article trying to get BTK's attention. For the past week, Wichita police have tried to get in touch with a man who has important information on the Otero murder case. A man who needs help badly. You may have noticed the classified ad that ran at the top of our personal column Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. It read, BTK help is available. There really is a BTK. Police cannot say how they know, but they are convinced. BTK has information about the murder of Joseph Vitero, his wife and two of his children. If for any reason BTK doesn't want to talk to police,

this newspaper's secret witness procedure is available. I will go further. If BTK wants to call me at home, I can be reached." Granger's phone never rang either. On December 11th, Wichita Sun reporter Kathy Hinkle published the BTK letter after getting her hands on it from an unnamed source. Finally, the words of this bizarre killer were out there for everyone to see. Police Chief Floyd Hannan had this to say in a Wichita Beacon article about BTK's letter going public.

I think we've taken one hell of a risk with the release of this letter. He might have to go out and commit this offense again to prove he committed this offense. He's a sick man who needs help. When this hit the news and it started picking up, the whole community is afraid. I personally even had a sister-in-law who was a single female. She's an adult, but she's single, and she came out and lived with us. She would not stay at her own home. In fact, it was like this all across Wichita.

People were installing heavy locks on their doors. Women stopped going out alone. Everyone was scared. I mean, it was a scary time for the community. And of course, the department, I mean mean you're getting all kinds of heat. What are they trying to do to resolve this? And we're doing everything that we possibly can, but it's a fear factor.

How do you reconcile that? If you're afraid of something, you perceive you're afraid of it, I can't give you enough reassurance that you're okay because you're not going to believe it. The city actually came together. I mean, it really did. Neighbor watching neighbor, everybody trying to watch out for each other. A neighbor would come home and call their other neighbor and say,

Hey, I'm home. You know, I'm locking up. And we got a lot of calls, suspicious character type calls. And of course, the beat officers are in tune with this. They're doing their absolute best. They're stopping people. If you're in the neighborhood and you're out somewhere, we don't know who you are, you're going to be stopped. Police were under a ton of pressure. They knew they had to catch this guy and fast. And the fact that he had communicated was a good thing, albeit terrifying. The letter meant they had a real avenue to finding him.

The theory that we had was that if we could communicate with him, he communicated with us. Obviously, he's searching for identification. He wants to be identified. The idea was that if we can keep him communicating, because we know he's fantasizing about what he's already done, and if we can keep him occupied with that, perhaps there won't be another victim. But Rader was starting to realize he had put himself at serious risk. He saw the newspaper article where the BTK letter went public. He saw that law enforcement were actively pursuing him. And he got spooked.

So at the end of 1974, he cut off all communication. And he decided to lay low. Here are his words from confession of a serial killer. I watched the road outside and had a loaded gun ready. I made sure our locked windows were secure, probably like everyone else in Wichita. In the summer of 1975, with the BTK paranoia still abuzz, Wichita police found a strange note left at a crime scene. An elderly couple, John and Emma Foster, were found stabbed to death in their home.

The mystery note left behind set off alarm bells. Police Chief Floyd Hannan held a press conference just 24 hours later. The following excerpt comes from a Wichita Eagle article dated July 29th, 1975. Hanan said that the note was left at the scene, but police don't know who wrote it. He emphasized there was no reason to believe there was any connection between the note's writer and the person who wrote a letter to the Eagle Beacon's secret witness program.

In other words, this murder had nothing to do with BTK. But it shows that everyone in Wichita was on edge about the next BTK murder. They feared that any similar incident might be his handiwork. Every new murder or sexual assault was met with the question, could this have been BTK? But in truth, Rader had started a new line of work, becoming a father. His first child, a boy, was named Brian Rader. But for Dennis, being a normal dad seemed impossible. In his mind, existing just as an average family man was unthinkable. He was different, and he knew it.

As he himself admitted, I love to hunt. Prowling the streets looking for fair game, the cat and mouse game gave me an adrenaline rush or high. As he built one identity, the other started to fester underneath. Almost like Jekyll and Hyde. This was Dennis Rader, the so-called normal suburban dad versus BTK, the serial killer. BTK is really more just another mask. Using that to power into rage and anger and controlling

that into murder than to release that because it makes him feel better about who he is. Carrie Rosson, daughter of Dennis Rader. She says the two versions of her dad are just sides of the same coin. And one side comes out when it needs to. Not like a bipolar thing. He's always this. He's always Dennis Rader. He's always dad. He's always BTK. And then he just cubes and flips to show you what he wants you to see. Forensic psychologist Catherine Ramslan

explains this phenomenon. That is that whole cubing thing. It's a way to not be completely connected in your sense of morality. I think each situation in which he found himself was real to him. And he could easily live this double life. Because the more intense, exciting experience was murdering people. But he also had what he called social obligations, family, church.

He was president of his church congregation. His job, he had things that he had to look to as well, and he took those seriously. I think from the outside anybody might say how seriously could that be given how he's really violating all of these things. I don't think he thought of it as pretense at all. I think he thought of it as that's what I need to do for myself. That's my little secret. I enjoy it when I can do it. Otherwise, I do this other thing."

In these early days of 1977, Rader was still learning how to balance all of these conflicting emotions. According to Carey, he had trouble holding it all together. Little things like chores and hobbies just weren't enough to keep his mind off his fantasies. Later on we learned he was literally throwing himself into stuff to distract him from murder. He needed to be outside. He could get like uptight and angry and difficult and controlling inside. While Rader was struggling with his identity crisis, the people of Wichita were wondering

what happened to BTK? Newly appointed police chief Richard Lemonyan was one of them. In 1976, I was appointed as police chief. I was 36 years old. I was the youngest police chief in the history of the department. On major cases like this here, the investigators briefed me on everything that we had and then I had a much better understanding of what evidence we did have, what was available to us, and where they were in their

investigation. And at that particular time they were pretty much at a dead end. We hadn't heard from him for a long time, and you know, their thinking is, maybe he's gone, maybe he's dead, maybe he's in prison. They literally had followed every lead that they could humanly follow. And I remember we were getting advice from the FBI and others that if he was alive, he was still killing. If he wasn't still killing, then he was still fantasizing. It took him years, years of waiting, planning, thinking of ways to do it better. But finally in 1977, three years since his last murder, someone caught his eye.

She was completely random. There was actually someone across from Dillons who might have been the potential. It was called Project Green or Greenwood. I had met this girl I think at WSU. Greenwood. I had met this girl, I think, at WSU. I knew where she lived. Dillon's was a nearby supermarket. He spotted her and followed her home multiple times. He decided he was ready. She was the one. On March 17, 1977, he approached her door and something unexpected happened. I knocked, but nobody answered. While I was walking away from the intended house, I saw a young boy coming back from Dylan's. I figured he had a mother in the house.

I watched where he went and then I went to the door and knocked. The boy opened the door with his brother. Next time on Monster BTK. There's a cracking door. I could look out. I could hear my mom pleading. She told the kids to do whatever I said. I tied the door shut, but the kids were still yelling. The big thing that weighs on you is the fact that this is going to happen again.

He's going to determine whether or not you're gonna live when you're gonna die. He's gonna play with these victims. There's no manual written on how to react when you become part of the story. When we announced the fact that we did have a serial killer, we had hundreds of tips. He's making your life uncomfortable.

Like later we said it was like walking on ink shells at times with him. Oh, Anna, why didn't you appear? Monster BTK is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart podcasts. The show is written by Gnomes Griffin, Trevor Young, and Jesse Funk. Our host is Susan Peters. Executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay, alongside supervising producer Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on behalf of iHeart Podcasts include Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, alongside producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk, and supervising producer Rima Ilkayali.

Marketing support by David Wasserman and Allison Wright at iHeart podcasts, and Caroline Orogema at Tenderfoot TV. Additional research by Claudia D'Africo. Original artwork by Kevin Mr. Soul Harp. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Special thanks to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA and the Nord Group. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks for listening. If you're fascinated by the darker sides of humanity, join us every week on our podcast Serial Killers, where we go deep into notorious true crime cases. With significant research and careful analysis, we examine the psyche of a killer, their motives and targets, and law enforcement's pursuit to stop their spree. Follow Serial Killers wherever you get your podcasts and get new episodes every Monday. Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremarchi.

And I'm Holly Frey. Together we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime. Each season we explore a new theme from poisoners to art thieves. We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures from legal injustices to body snatching. And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story. Listen to Criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It was big news. I mean, white girl gets murdered, found in a cemetery. Big, big news.

A long investigation stalls until someone changes their story. I like saw what they're gonna happen. An arrest, trial and conviction soon follow. He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free? Did you kill her? Listen to The Real Killer, season three,

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, listeners. I'm Lauren Bright-Pacheco, host of the Murder on Songbird Road podcast, and I'm excited to share this riveting story with you. I'm also excited to tell you that you can now get access to all episodes of Murder on Songbird Road, 100% ad-free, and one week early through the iHeart True Crime Plus subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Plus, you'll get access to other chart-topping true crime shows you love, like Betrayal, The Girlfriends, Paper Ghosts, Murder Homes, Unrestorable, The Godmother, and more.

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