Monster: BTK - Dennis Rader [8]

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

The true identity of BTK is finally revealed to the public. His name: Dennis Rader. Who is this man?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thursdays on City TV. In every great city, heinous crimes cast a dark shadow. Law and Order Toronto Criminal Intent. These crimes have a face, but in order to prove it, the evidence must be undeniable. The truth is not always obvious, but we won't stop until we find it. Because maybe we can make this city a little bit safer. I'm Detective Graf, this is Detective Bateman. Law and Order Toronto Criminal Intent.

All new Thursdays 10, 9c on CityTV or streaming on CityTV+. My name is Kyle Tequila, host of the shocking new true crime podcast, Crook County. I got recruited into the mob when I was 17 years old. People are dying. Is he doing this every night? Kenny was a Chicago firefighter who lived a secret double life as a mafia hitman. I had a wife and I had two children.

Nobody knew anything. He was a freaking crazy man. He was my father and I had no idea about any of this until now. Crook County is available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Believe me, if I started murdering people, there'd be none of you left. Charles Manson is one of True Crime's most notorious figures, a name synonymous with terror. But even after decades of coverage, is there still something we're missing? One officer summed up the murders when he said,

in all my years, I have never seen anything like this before. They were average American kids, and that's what was so shocking. And by writing the words pig at the scene of the crime, apparently the hippies were trying to throw the police off the track by blaming the murders on the Black Panthers, a group the hippies hated. And she said to me, well, you know who did it, don't you? And I said, no. And she says, you're looking at her.

I'm Celesia Stanton. Join me on my podcast, Truer Crime, for a two-episode deep dive where we'll examine the Manson murders through a fresh lens, uncovering details that have long gone unnoticed. Sometimes the most familiar stories are the ones that require the closest look. Listen to Truer Crime for free on the iHeartRadio app. Do you know about Jerry Lee Lewis wanting to murder Elvis or the hip hop star who cannibalized his roommate? What about the murders ACDC

was blamed for? Or the suspicious deaths of Brittany Murphy in River Phoenix? Or about Anthony Bourdain's wild lust for life and untimely demise? These stories and more are told in the award-winning Disgraceland podcast hosted by me, Jake Brennan, every Tuesday, where I dive deep into subjects from the dark side of music history and entertainment. So follow and listen to Disgraceland on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Monster BTK, a production of iHeart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. Listener discretion is advised. discretion is advised.

It could be a breakthrough in the BTK investigation in just a couple of hours, Wichita police are expected to release new information about the BTK case. Police took a person of interest in for questioning. Cake News has learned police are expected to say that person is indeed a suspect in the BTK case. That person is indeed a suspect in the BTK case. The day he was arrested, I was at the mall, because it was in the morning before we went to work at two o'clock, and the boss called and said, you got to get into work right away. I said, why? More almost positive BTK was caught. I was

standing in the middle of the mall. The mall started going round and round and round and I thought, oh my god I'm gonna faint. I'm gonna faint. And I started crying and I sat down and put my head between my legs. That was over a new story. We've never done that before, but it involved us so much that we became part of the fear, part of the story, part of the extreme relief when he was finally caught. I remember I started to cry, thinking to myself, the nightmare is over for Wichita.

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 victims laying there with plastic bags over their heads 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 implies the killer may strike again. He's going to play with these victims.

He'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 Peters, and this is Monster BTK. And this is Monster BTK. On February 24, 2005, the Wichita Police Department alongside the KBI and FBI received the news they had been waiting for. The DNA preserved from the 1974 Otero killings matched Dennis Rader. It was time to execute an arrest, and they were ready. Over the past week, the police had stalked Rader, marking every aspect of his daily routine.

They tailored their arrest to his patterns, planning every single element, down to the minute the arrest would occur. Raider would not get away this time. The police officers, investigators, and lawyers who had put in countless hours tracking down BTK over the last year were brimming with tension. They went home to tell their families that tomorrow they may finally get their guy. Here's former Sedgwick County Deputy District Attorney, Kevin O'Connor. When we did finally find and knew we were going to arrest Dennis Rader, it was the night before, all plans were made, all search warrants were prepared.

The arrest team was identified. The plan of action was done. It was really very impressive, almost like an army maneuver type of planning. I mean, they even have it down to who was going to put the cuffs on them, who was going to walk them back to the car that Kenny Landwehr was going to be in. And they said, go home. You can tell your loved ones what you're doing and that there's going to be arrest the next day. And I remember going home and telling my wife, I said, I have something to tell you. And she sat down and she started crying. And I go, what, why are you crying? And she goes, you're going to tell me you're having an affair.

And I go, no. I go, we're going to arrest BTK tomorrow. On the morning of February 25th, the arrest team slipped quietly into Park City. On that day, I remember it was radio silence and it was time coordinated. So everybody moved at the same time so as not to tip him off because we didn't know what access he had to police radio, police scanners.

There was a concern about somebody who was able to commit crimes over a 30 year period, how savvy he might be and how aware he might be. And then knowing that he's on the other side of a wall from a police department. So we raided essentially Park City City Hall. The arrest was scheduled for 12.15 p.m. when Raider would make his way home

from his Park City office as he did every Friday. They spent all morning staging cops into their assigned positions. Backing the arrest team were more than 200 people, many of them assigned to simultaneous searches. We planned it that the search warrants would be executed at the same time. So as Dennis Rader was being arrested, the search warrants would be executed at the same time. So as Dennis Rader was being arrested, these search warrants were then being executed. We didn't want to serve a search warrant at the Park City Library,

and Dennis Rader would be sitting at the Park City Police Department and become aware that the FBI and the Wichita Police Department were serving a warrant at the Park City Library. In addition to the arrest team, they had prepped the bomb unit, a computer seizure team, relief teams and interview teams. While police prepared, they worried the news would leak to the media, jeopardizing the success of their arrest. Landwehr wanted Raider in police custody before the media frenzy began.

But by 9 a.m., the buzzing had already started. Now we've been hearing from sources that police are waiting for DNA results. If this is the man and they do get a match, it is gonna be very tough for them to keep this quiet. They steeled their nerves and told themselves they would not fumble the most historic day of their careers. The arrest team lined up on a side street in Park City,

two blocks from Raider's house. Officers Dan Hardy and Scott Moon were first in line and would be the ones to initially pull Raider over. Their fleet included four other vehicles and nine other men including Dana Gouge, Kelly Otis and Kenny Landwehr. Everyone wore body armor. They didn't know how Raider would react to his arrest and prepared for the worst. The minutes till go time ticked by. Finally, their radio switched on.

He's on the move, a voice said. Over the next few moments, an officer in an unmarked car tailed Raider, reporting on his every turn. Raider was making his way home for lunch with his wife, Paula. Unsuspecting, he pulled past the line of cops, lying in wait to arrest him. Officers Hardy and Moon let him pass before gunning the engine, pulling up behind Raider and flipping the flashing lights on the front of the car. Raider, ever the obedient citizen, pulled over immediately.

The arrest team surrounded Raider, guns drawn, and ordered him to the ground. Raider, for his part, remained calm and collected. He turned to the police and asked with a straight face, Would you please call my wife? She was expecting me for lunch. I assume you know where I live. He slipped into the cold serial killer role he had crafted for himself over the last 30 years. Kevin O'Connor says as police handcuffed him, he played up the dramatics.

When Raider got into the car after being arrested, they walked him back to a car that Kenny Landwehr was in, and they opened the door and he says, well, hello, Mr. Landwehr. Later, in confession of a serial killer, Rader would say, I did what Son of Sam did. Rader often looked to the other serial killers of the time for inspiration.

David Berkowitz, aka Son of Sam, killed six people between 1976 and 77 in New York City. This is a clip from the Today Show on the day Berkowitz was arrested. When he was arrested late last night in his apartment in Yonkers, New York, he told the officers, okay, you've got me. Police carried Rader off and would in short order hold him for 36 hours of questioning.

While WPD officers and FBI made the arrest, the prosecutors prepped the interview room. When they arrested him and brought him up to the epic center, there was a interview room that was prepared. It was an old copy room from this office. And I remember my boss, Nola Folston, going in there and turning the table around so you could initially see the detective, Landwehr and the guy from the FBI, Bob Morton, who started the initial interview, and then Rader on the other side. Well, Nola came in and switched it around, where the camera would

be on Dennis Rader, with the law enforcement officers with their backs to the camera. Folsten was thinking ahead to the trial. Looking into Rader's eyes as he was interrogated about his heinous crimes would have a greater impact on the jury and put a face to the previously faceless monster of Wichita's history. Just 20 minutes after Rader had been ordered to the ground, Landwehr and Morton brought him into the interview room and handcuffed him to the table. They had planned to play up the good cop interview tactic. The arresting officers had played the bad cops. In the interrogation room, Landwehr introduced Rader to Detective Dana Gouge,

who held a search warrant to collect Rader's DNA. They swabbed him and sent the test off to confirm what Kerry Rosson's DNA had proved just a day earlier. Two went to the county forensics lab and two to the KBI lab in Topeka. Rader agreed to talk, but he wouldn't make it easy for them. He never even questioned why he was being interviewed. To him, this was his 15 minutes in the spotlight. Here's Catherine Ramsland. When they brought him in for interrogation, he did kind of play a game for a little ways. He didn't break down right away. He said, I'm just a wannabe.

I've been watching this all in the news. You know, I know the cases really well, but I really didn't do anything. Landwehr asked why the Oteros had been murdered. Well, if you take that murder and some of the others, I would say you've got a serial killer loose. He asked Raider what he thought about BTK. The killer is like a lone wolf, kind of like a spy or something.

Fed up, Landwehr and Morton backed Raider into a corner. They came back and said, well, we do have DNA from some of these scenes. Morton asked Raider what he thought would happen if his DNA matched BTK's. I guess that might be it then. He was shocked that they still had some preserved DNA from even back as far as the Oteros, when nobody even knew anything about DNA back then.

The walls were closing in on Rader. Landwehr played his biggest hand. Here is an excerpt from the Wichita Eagle book, Bind, Torture, Kill, read by a voice actor. He pulled out a purple computer disc. Landwehr told Rader that this disc, sent by BTK, had pointed the cops to Rader's church and to him. Could he explain that? Then Raider asked a few questions of his own. Would BTK get the death penalty?

BTK has killed some kids and stuff. What would happen to BTK's house? You guys have got me. How can I get out of it? And finally? Isn't any way you can get out of DNA, right? Morton had had enough. He yelled at Raider. Just tell us who you are.

I'm BTK. Once he realized there was no getting out of this, he then admitted to all the murders and said, well, since you know about seven, I'll tell you about some others. For decades, it's been speculated BTK was responsible for more murders, two murders in particular, the 1991 murder of Dolores Davis and the 1985 murder of Maureen Hedge. Both women were found strangled and bound in Sedgwick County. Landwehr and Morton took a break. After three hours, they had secured a confession.

While the two men were out of the room, Raider told KBI Special Agent in Charge Larry Thomas, Well, you guys got the evidence. There's no way I can get out of it. I can't beat around the bush. Whether it's a day or two or a week, you're going to find it. So I might as well just fess up. They'll probably find things that I've even forgotten about. Rader would lead police to the evidence he had accumulated over the last 30 years. Drawing a map of his home, Rader pointed investigators to a stash of scrapbooks in the cupboard, his collection of slick ads in the closet, and his hit kit in another corner of the home.

The attic contained his old detective magazines. The car held a shotgun and dolls like those mailed to the Wichita Eagle. The important evidence, however, he kept in his office. Here again is an excerpt from Bind Torture Kill. At Raiders City Hall office, they found what he called his mother load, trophies in all his original writings in the bottom drawer of a cream-colored filing cabinet.

They found seven three-ring binders and more than 25 hanging file folders, newspaper clippings about many of the killings, drawings depicting women bound to torture machines of Raiders' design, a copy of the police-wanted poster for the Otero homicides, and computer disks that were labeled according to the chapters of BTK's book. Descriptions of the mother load fill five pages of the state of Kansas's summary of evidence, a document prepared by Kevin O'Connor that provides full accounts of Raiders crimes. It took investigators a month to digitally record all of the mother load. As evidence was collected from Raider's Park City office,

police interviewed him in pairs for over 30 hours. The footage from these interviews filled 17 DVDs, and in them, Raider describes in chilling, matter-of-fact detail, the cold-blooded murder of 10 people. In looking at the drawings he made of Nancy Fox, he will tell Detective Ralph that he's getting excited sexually, just remembering.

He will even mimic Josephine, Josie Otero, because he killed her parents in front of her. He killed her little brother in front of her, and he will mimic her saying, don't hurt my mommy, don't hurt my mommy. It's amazing to me the restraint that the law enforcement officers had. He attempted to joke around with the interviewers.

Once he started talking, they couldn't shut him up. He became so comfortable that during a break in the interviewing, he had a cup of some kind of drink, and the officer that came in to see if he wanted to go to the bathroom or something said, well, we can put that drink for you in the refrigerator. He goes, you just put your name on it. So he wrote BTK in the refrigerator. He goes, you just put your name on it. So he wrote BTK on the cup. So that's who he really was. He wanted the notoriety. He does still kick himself over

the mistakes he made with that floppy disk, but once caught, okay, I'm just going to put it all out there because I want to be famous. The Wichita Police Department had kept the rumors at bay for as long as possible. But the commotion in Park City was heating up. Once Rader was in custody, they knew it wouldn't be long before the news reports began. As we've been telling you all day, they executed a search warrant in Park City at a home. There's a possible BTK suspect who is now in police custody. Police have now called a Saturday morning news conference for 10 a.m. We were buzzing at Cake News.

We followed each story that day with any updates we had. By the 6 p.m. news slot we were airing coverage from every critical location. The announcement would be broadcast worldwide. We waited with bated breath. In just 14 hours we would finally have our answer to a 30-year-old question. The truth is not always obvious, but we won't stop until we find it. Because maybe we can make this city a little bit safer. I'm Detective Graf, this is Detective Bateman. Law and Order Toronto Criminal Intent. All new Thursdays 10, 9c on CityTV or streaming on CityTV+. It takes one guy out there to say, who's that f***ing Kyle who thinks he can just get on a microphone

on a podcast and start publicizing this s***? From iHeart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV comes a new true crime podcast, Crook County. I got recruited into the mob when I was 17 years old. Meet Kenny, an enforcer for the legendary Chicago outfit. And that was my mission, to snuff the f*** life out of this guy. He lived a secret double life as a firefighter paramedic for the Chicago Fire Department. I had a wife and I had two children.

Nobody knew anything. People are dying. Is he doing this every night? Torn between two worlds. I'm covering up murders that these cops are doing. He was a freaking crazy man. We don't know who he is, really. He is my father.

And I had no idea about any of this until now. Welcome to Crook County. Series premiere, February 11th. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you want to know what it's like to hang out with MS-13 El Salvador? How the Russian mafia fought battles all over Brooklyn in the 1990s. Or what about that time I got lost in the Burmese jungle hunting the world's biggest meth lab?

Or why the Japanese Yakuza have all those crazy dragon tattoos? I'm Sean Williams. And I'm Danny Golds. And we're the hosts of the Underworld Podcast. We're journalists that have traveled all over reporting on dangerous people and places. And every week, we'll be bringing you a new story about organized crime from all over the world. We know this stuff because we've been there. We've seen it and we've got the near misses and embarrassing tales to go with it.

We'll mix in reporting with our own experiences in the field and we'll throw in some bad jokes while we're at it. The Underworld Podcast explores the criminal underworlds that affect all of our lives, whether we know it or not. Available 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 saw what could happen. 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 next day, Saturday, February 26th at 10 a.m., Wichita police gathered local, state, and federal law enforcement, regular citizens, and family members of BTK's victims into the City Council auditorium. Local, national, and international reporters set up cameras. CNN and MSNBC carried the news conference live. The press conference lasted nearly an hour. In total, eight people spoke. It

wasn't until Sheriff Gary Steed, sixth in the lineup of speakers, took the podium that any real details were revealed. I'm also pleased to announce today that we have brought closure to two cases and that are the homicides of Marine Hedge and Dolores Davis. Raider's name, what everyone had been hanging on the edge of their seats waiting for, wasn't even spoken until the very end. Surely afternoon, yesterday afternoon,

agents from the KBI, agents from the FBI, and members of the Wichita Police Department arrested Dennis Rader, 59 and a white male, in Park City, Kansas. We shared the news with Wichita and the world. The bottom line, BTK is arrested. A quarter century search for Wichita's worst serial killer is over. Good evening. It is a day that will go down in Wichita history. My coworkers and I exhaled. The biggest news story of our collective careers was finally hitting its closing sequence. Over the 25th and 26th of February, the news of Raider's arrest shattered its way through

the Wichita community. Bob Smyzer, a member of Raider's church, Christ Lutheran, was among the first group of church members to find out on the afternoon of the 25th. to find out on the afternoon of the 25th. Short of Alzheimer's, I'll never forget it. He had actually had plans with Radar for that weekend. We were planning a fishing trip. He can never go. But that year, it's about five, he said, yeah, I'm going to go with the guys. He thought he was home free. He thought, I can just pop out and go. We can go do this fishing trip.

I'm the president of the council now. And, you know, and that would be a good thing for me to, you know, to go. That fishing trip obviously didn't happen. So I got a call. Couldn't have been one o'clock yet. I can tell you, I was at Wellington, at a convenience store, putting gas in my van.

And my wife called and said, hey, a change has called. Something going on at church. Really? I said, Mike's there, the police are there, and they've arrested Dennis. Sick to my stomach. Not ready to accept it at this point, but sick to my stomach.

So I immediately started to call Mai, trying to get a hold of Mai. Of course, he's busy with the investigators. And finally get a hold of him, and he said, I gotta get out of here. I got him out of the church after I got done with the search, and he went home. Dennis actually asked for him, but they were not going to let him see him. So, you know, once Dennis started talking to him, I'd just let him talk. Why wouldn't you? The next morning, the day of the police news conference,

Smeiser rose early and headed back to Christ Lutheran Church. So Saturday morning, I'm in there, there's five of us in there. I can't even begin to tell you how surreal it was. And we had to watch it from upstairs in that part of the building because the only place we had any TV reception. There isn't a lot to say. You know, stunned is still the best description.

When the chief came out and said, we've caught BTK, denial was the first reaction. And in the midst of that, the media started knocking on the front door of the church. There was a bunch of them. And it wasn't just a few hours before national people were on top of us. Every news outlet was trying to get the story out. An unfortunate consequence of the race to be first is that it puts us at odds with those at the very center of these monumental news events. We had a council meeting. I was not on the council. That's why I was at the front door. They called us guards or something, whatever.

And we would try to be very nice to everybody. It was a little harder with some than others. Council broke up. One of the young ladies that was on the council, she wouldn't talk to anybody, I get that. So I took her out the side door and put her in, it was in her car, and one of the guys from Channel 12 came up and he said,

are you protecting her from us? And I said, no, she just doesn't. She said, I want to talk. By that time, there were 20 or 30 people out there, and they tried everything. One of them brought a basket, you know, with oranges and apples, and I'd like to get this passed to Clark. I said, yeah, I suppose you would,

but no, that's not happening today. And there was a lot of that trying to get through the gatekeeper. The news was out to the world. With that came the nonstop media requests and all the confusion, anger, and second-guessing expected from discovering that a pillar of your community was built on a lie. I heard the chief say, we've captured BTK. I don't have any evidence of why. He didn't say, you know, he's admitted to 10 murders.

So I was skeptical. At that point for people outside, or at least in that group, in that church group, there was no belief that this was a real thing. Especially the older people. That people had been friends with Dorothea, Dennis' mom and dad, and Paula's mom and dad. The people that had been on Nucleus for years, they weren't ready at that point. I'm not sure that I 100%. I mean, I was angry with the chief. People interviewed me outside the church on that Saturday.

And I just said, listen, I don't know that that's true. My sons, they were there that day, that Sunday, with all this media. The night before we had finally let the kids watch TV. And the picture came up, Dennis, and we said, Tim was five, he was about to be six. We watched, quiet, not asking any questions. And Tim looked at me and he said, Dad, he tricked us, didn't he? Yes, son, that's what he did.

The news hit Raider's own family even harder. Carrie Rosson was a few states away at her home in Michigan when she was notified. February 25, 2005, I was home and I see this strange car parked out underneath this window. It just, it was out of place. I'm getting scared because my dad had instilled such a stranger danger fare into me. He called my husband. I said, there's a strange car with a man sitting in it.

He's not moving. I don't know what he's doing. I said, should's a strange car with a man sitting in it. He's not moving. I don't know what he's doing. I said, should I call the police? So in irony, I almost called the police on the FBI. I hear a knock on my door. And then he said on the other side of the door, I'm with the FBI and I need to question you. He said he was looking for Harry Rader-Rosson and he's like, is that you from Wichita, Kansas?

I was starting to calm down because I was like, oh, it is the FBI. He's like, do you know about BTK? And he just drops it. Your dad is BTK. In the studio with Payne Lindsay, she recounted the visceral feelings this news brought. Everything just sears.

Instant, like, I can tell you where the chocolate cake was that I had made. I can tell you the color of my purse, where my keys were, color of the kitchen towels. Instant. Did you ever think, no, he's not, you're full of shit? Like... Well, I mean, at that point, I've gone into physical shock.

I'm shaking. I shook for four days. He's realizing right away, I'm not okay. I'm spinning, literally about to pass out, and I make it over to my couch. I ask the agent, and I'm like, what can I call my grandma Eileen, my mom's mom that lives down the street from my parents? And he said, yeah, you can call her, but you can't tell her what's going on. So I called grandma Eileen, and I said,

dad's been arrested. I'd left out BTK, but I said, dad's been arrested. And she says, oh shit. And she says, hold on, I'll call you back. And she walked out and down around the corner, looked past Mrs. Hedge's house, and saw all of the crime scene trucks and all of the police cars and FBI cars,

bomb disposal truck, everything, down at my parents' house. My grandma called me back, told us what was going on, and then I found out later they were picked up not long after that and taken down to where my mom was, and other family were picked up, and everyone was questioned. It is hard to imagine how any of us would react in Carrie's situation. Understandably, it was very difficult to process.

I was trying to alibi my dad. I thought I could sit there and prove right there, my dad's a really great guy. Well, see, they had arrested the wrong guy in December of 2004. My mom was being interviewed by Wichita police and maybe KBI, FBI, I'm not sure. And she literally was saying, you got the wrong guy in December and you got the wrong guy again. You know, she was mad. I was mad too.

You're just very defensive with this person that you love that's only good. And you're mad because you're like, you got the wrong guy. So I'm sitting there, and now my husband's home. He's sitting next to me. He's holding my hand, aware that I'm basically completely falling apart. He's trying to absorb this. I'm trying to alibi my dad. So I'm like, what are the dates of the murders?

The investigator gave me some dates in the 70s, and I was like, I wasn't alive then. And then he says, September of 86. And I said, I don't have memories of September of 86 other than I started third grade. And then it hit. I remembered Mrs. Hetch. My head sunk, and it was like something seared

inside of me in my guts. And I got really quiet and it was like I knew that dad was BTK and had murdered Mrs. Hedge. I was Kerry and he was dad and then he was arrested and all of a sudden he was BTK and I lost Kerry. and I lost Carrie. Carrie also talked about the way the arrest affected her mother, Paula. I would spend a lot of time thinking about what did I want to ask my mom and how much can I push. Because she has a similar PTSD from when she was notified and picked up. Everybody patted around my mom after the arrest. In John Douglas's book, he talks about like he was trying to get an idea about my mom,

Paula, and he said the whole community early on, still, they were very protective of her. They just surrounded her and took care of her. Nobody really wanted to push her. My mom had been gaslighted and conned by my father and, you know, thought he was one thing and Carrie has always been this other thing. We are domestic abuse victims. I think my mom probably does hold some answers, but we don't really go there. My mom said it was like your dad died that day.

That's how she's dealt with it. The news had broken Carrie and Paula's hearts. Raiders murders had broken six families. And those families were still waiting on answers. and search. The truth is not always obvious, but we won't stop until we find it. Because maybe we can make this city a little bit safer. I'm Detective Graf, this is Detective Bateman. It takes one guy out there to say, who's that f***ing Kyle who thinks he can just get on a f***ing microphone on a podcast and start publicizing this s***? From iHeart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV comes a new true crime podcast, Crook County.

I got recruited into the mob when I was 17 years old. Meet Kenny, an enforcer for the legendary Chicago outfit. And that was my mission, to snuff the f*** life out of this guy. He lived a secret double life as a firefighter paramedic for the Chicago Fire Department. I had a wife and I had two children. Nobody knew anything. People are dying.

Is he doing this every night? Torn between two worlds. I'm covering up murders that these cops are doing. He was a freaking crazy man. We don't know who he is really. He is my father and I had no idea about any of this until now. Welcome to Crook County series premiere February 11th. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you want to know what it's like to hang out with MS-13 El Salvador? How the Russian mafia you get your podcasts. And we're the hosts of the Underworld Podcast. We're journalists that have traveled all over, reporting on dangerous people and places.

And every week, we'll be bringing you a new story about organized crime from all over the world. We know this stuff because we've been there. We've seen it, and we've got the near misses and embarrassing tales to go with it. We'll mix in reporting with our own experiences in the field, and we'll throw in some bad jokes while we're at it. The Underworld Podcast explores the criminal underworlds

that affect all of our lives, whether we know it or not. Available wherever you get your podcasts. There 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. Across the country, family members of Raiders victims were receiving once-in-a-lifetime phone calls. Jeff Davis' mother, Dolores Davis, was murdered in January of 1991. She was Dennis Rader's last victim. Jeff spent years wondering who his mother's killer was. Now his personal grief was becoming part of Wichita's history. I was living in Memphis at that time and I was out playing pool in my favorite place

on Friday afternoon. And I got a call from the sheriff's detective, and all he said was, we got him. But it wasn't until the next morning when Chief Williams of the police department announced that they had captured BTK, that I realized that Mom was his victim and that he was the one responsible. I never suspected for whatever reason. I never connected him with it. I don't know why. It never crossed my mind. Initially I was ecstatic that they caught him. And of course, we live it, and all the pain he had caused. But it all happened so fast.

Once they announced that, my phone started ringing, and literally, it didn't quit ringing all day long. Again, the news media cut in. day long. Again, the news media cut in. I couldn't take a call without another call cutting in because I was talking to news outlets everywhere across the country. And I was just overwhelmed. I remember going to bed that next night exhausted because everything just hit like a whirlwind. It was just a bizarre, kind of surrealistic situation. I'm still getting in my head what a little human cockroach he looks like. It took a while for it all to sink in, is what I'm trying to say.

It took a while to realize that it was him and that he was responsible for everybody. To include my mother in spite of all the false alarms and other speculations that had gone on, he was the one. There was no doubt about that at this point in time. I can't imagine how it felt to learn the identity of your mother's killer after 14 years. identity of your mother's killer after 14 years. To learn, along with the rest of the world, that it was the same man responsible for terrorizing your hometown since the 1970s. Jeff had to make his way back home.

I just started gearing up and getting ready to get myself to where I could get back to which is Austin, so that I could be a part of all that. In New Mexico, Charlie Otero was trying to start over after his time in prison. His two parents, Joseph and Julie, and his younger siblings, Josie and Joey, were the very first victims of BTK. Their murders had forever changed the trajectory of the eldest Otero sibling's life. I was still in parole when he got caught.

I was in Albuquerque. I was working demolition. It was like two weeks after I got out of prison. I was blessed with having somebody hire me the day I got out of prison. I was blessed with having somebody hire me the day I got out of prison. I made a phone call, they hired me up the next day. I was in their yard one day and I was on my knees and I was pulling up all these bushes. They had like 20 little shrubs and I was digging each one out, pulling it out.

It was taking me a couple minutes apiece. And the phone rings, I had my phone right here, I picked it up, it up his my sister and she goes, they caught him. I'm saying, are you serious? He goes, yep, they got him. And then bushes were flying 10 feet over my head. I just started yanking them out of the ground and they were flying over my head and it's like superhuman crazy stuff. That's how I found out. Similar to Jeff's reaction, Charlie was angry. Right then, at that moment, I'm starting to plan my revenge.

Now that they got him, how am I going to get my hands on him? In Steve Relford's case, I would be there when he first learned the identity of Dennis Rader. Steve Relford had spent the last 28 years blaming himself for the murder of his mother, Shirley Vianne. Rader gained access to Vianne's home on the morning of March 17, 1977, after then five-year-old Steve opened the door. Just a few weeks before police caught BTK, I found Steve and interviewed him for Cake TV. What would you do if you met him face to face? Oh God.

He would suffer. Yes ma'am, he would suffer. Yes, me and me would suffer. Once BTK had been arrested, I called Steve right away. Okay, so the day he was caught, you were in Las Vegas. Yeah. And I called you and I said, it was about four weeks after I had interviewed you. So you were probably like, wow, they caught him that quickly, but it had taken him a year. But I called you in Las Vegas and I said, Steve, I think they caught BTK,

the man who murdered your mother. What'd you say to me? I don't really remember. I remember saying, fuck it, I'm going to see you right there with my FBI mole. That's exactly what you said. My team and I made the decision to fly Steve back home to Wichita so he could be there

when the news was confirmed. The following is a story we ran on cake on February 26, 2005. As Steve Relford watches today's news briefing, the emotion comes immediately. This is not only Steve's first time back in Wichita since his mother's murder in 1977, but also for the first time we show Steve the picture of his mother's killer. You all right? Yeah.

What are you feeling right now? Glad I caught the son of a bitch. And then my mom can rest in peace. Everyone in Wichita was grappling with what we'd learned. We blamed ourselves for allowing this monster to live among us for this long. We were relieved, angry, and confused. The police did their best to tie up the loose ends on this 30-year investigation neatly. And we, the media, work diligently to put our personal emotions aside

and report accurately on this story. But with the mounting pressure and heightened emotions, some things slipped through the cracks. What we weren't clear on were the circumstances surrounding how he had been caught. We went on what our sources shared with us, and in those early days, not all of it was accurate. We missed the mark on a crucial detail of the story. Sources tell us Raider's 26-year-old daughter, Carrie, went to police with suspicions her father was BTK. Sources say she gave a blood sample.

That sample, we're told, came back as a match. Eventually, we did clarify that while Carrie's DNA was key in his arrest, she herself did not turn her father in. I can understand how this mistake put Carrie in a very tough spot. This inaccurate detail about how her DNA was collected made its way to national news.

It's like a week later, CNN breaks in one news saying that I had turned in my dad and given a blood sample. We don't even have cable. I'm reading it over the internet. I'm like, I didn't turn in my dad, and I didn't give blood. I gave a cheek swab. So my dad literally writes me sometime in the spring, I heard you turned me in,

and I knew deep down in my heart it wasn't true. Carrey had mixed feelings about her interactions with the investigators. There was the feelings about her interactions with the investigators. There was the trauma of her being initially notified, the shock and frustration that her DNA was used without her permission. But there was also the compassion she was shown. The police, like Landerware and Otis, they all knew right away

as soon as they started talking to my family that we were all victims. And they said they knew right away there was an eighth family and it was ours. There was the seven families from the seven murders. They had been working with some of these people for 20 or 30 years. They knew them well. They kept tabs on them. They helped them. Kept them up to date on all the cases. They took care of these people. And all of a sudden now they had an eighth family on their hands. In Park City, sightseers arrived at Raider's house on Independence Street.

It became a spectacle. One person even attempted to remove the family's mailbox, burying his last name. While those who knew Raider intimately had turned away from the media, neighbors of Raider's were voicing their opinions of him on air. He's always been real nice. He's been a real property. Every time I go out to do the mail or get my mail or anything, he says hi. He was probably in fact the friendliest neighbor on the whole block to me. Nobody likes him around Park City. He's been accused to let people's dogs out to catch him. Well, my dad told us just not to go down there because they were strange.

The monster had finally been captured. And now, the whole city and millions of onlookers waited to see if he would be put away forever. Here again is Kevin O'Connor. For me, it was a time where it's like, okay, now I got to go to work. We anticipated he would want a trial. So that year between the time he started sending things in March of 2004 to the time he was captured, I had been preparing along with the district attorney. We're preparing for trial.

Nobody knew how Rader would plead. Whether or not this case would go to trial, he would soon face 10 first-degree murder charges and would do something no one was expecting. Next time on Monster BTK. One Saturday morning, he called me, and the operator said, I have a collect call from the Sedgwick County Detention Center. Will you accept the charges?

And you go, wow, yes, I will. I remember Judge Waller asking what kind of bond we wanted, and I think I said something to the effect of it. I mean, Judge, I don't know, 10-cazillion-million? I don't know if there is a number. The judge asked Dennis Rader to take him through all the killings in the courtroom, live on TV. My emotion was pure unadulterated rage. The police, they wanted everything my dad had done on record.

Now, were they trying to humiliate my dad on the stand? I don't know. 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 Gnomes 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. you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks for listening. My name is Kyle Tequila, host of the shocking new true crime podcast, Crook County.

I got recruited into the mob when I was 17 years old. People are dying. Is he doing this every night? Kenny was a Chicago firefighter who lived a secret, double life as a mafia hit man. I had a wife and I had two children. Nobody knew anything. He was a freaking crazy man. Have you ever stopped to wonder just how close you've come to danger without even realizing it? Think about how many people you encounter every day, on the street, in the grocery store,

at the gym, never truly knowing who they are or what they're capable of. What if one of those seemingly ordinary people was hiding a dark secret. What if they had done something unthinkable or were planning to? The Minds of Madness is a weekly true crime podcast that dives deep into the criminal psyche, covering the most shocking and disturbing cases you've ever heard of from all around the world. Cases like a feral Goldilocks-style intruder who left a disgusting calling card before embarking on a reign of terror, leading to a nationwide manhunt,

or a seductive ex who used voodoo and manipulation to always get what she wanted. With gripping stories, insightful analysis, and unforgettable survivor's accounts, The Minds of Madness has everything you need to satisfy your darkest cravings. The Minds of Madness has everything you need to satisfy your darkest cravings. The Minds of Madness is available wherever you get your podcasts or visit mindsofmadnesspodcast.com

for more information. Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremorchi. 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. Nothing to 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 3 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.