WEBVTT - El Dorado [10] 0:00:01.160 --> 0:00:05.840 You're listening to Monster BTK, a production of iHeart Podcasts 0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:10.040 and Tenderfoot TV. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:18.560 Now, what's my night terror? Somebody in my room on 0:00:18.640 --> 0:00:21.279 top of me in bed, trying to kill me? 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:23.600 Why is that? 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:25.119 Well? 0:00:25.200 --> 0:00:27.920 I mean I was scared. I was scared of the dark. 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:31.320 I was scared to go to the bathroom. This carried 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:32.840 over into college. 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:35.760 Why is that so? 0:00:35.800 --> 0:00:39.320 I've talked to detectives, talked to trauma therapists. Nobody knows 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:41.360 how to fix this night terror of stuff, and nobody 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:43.400 knows why is it the bad guy in the room 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:44.120 try and kill me? 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:50.320 Do you feel like the bad guy is your dad? 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:52.800 Yeah? 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:58.320 My dad planned these things, premeditated these things. Was he 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:04.160 practicing that murder in our house? Was he practicing Cornerherston closets? 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:10.000 You're wondering if that feeling you had was maybe him 0:01:10.160 --> 0:01:12.200 actually in your room in the closet. 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:15.120 Yeah, some sort of suppressed memory where I was scared 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:19.320 shitless from my dad. Who's to say he wasn't doing 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:23.400 something in my bedroom. I just would rather know, Like 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:25.720 for me, I need to know, because once I know 0:01:25.800 --> 0:01:28.720 that I can deal with it. You can divorce a spouse. 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:33.199 You can't divorce a father. You can't just divorce your dad. 0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:37.360 Did a part of you feel like you wanted to 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:39.000 make it better somehow. 0:01:39.560 --> 0:01:42.200 I wanted to help him, Like I'm mad at you 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:45.200 when one second and I'm worried you're cold and dealing 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:48.160 with this blanket and this cold sell like I love you, 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:50.040 I still love you. 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:50.840 Do you still love him? 0:01:50.880 --> 0:01:51.040 Oh? 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:54.360 Yeah, I mean I told him that, and the letters 0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:56.320 early on like I love you and I don't know 0:01:56.360 --> 0:01:59.120 what's wrong, and I don't know why you did this, 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:01.800 and I wrote it and I was like, I'm so sorry, 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:06.120 Like I'm so sorry. Something must have happened to you. 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:08.680 You're just thinking, something awful must have happened to you 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:12.400 to turn you into this, and I'm so sorry. You 0:02:12.440 --> 0:02:14.880 know that you're alone and that we're not with you. 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:22.120 Someone killed four members of a family. 0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:25.520 Hedge vanished from her home suddenly last weekend. Her phone 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:27.600 lines had been cut, her door left open. 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:31.160 You see the victim playing there with plastic bags over 0:02:31.200 --> 0:02:32.320 their heads, strangled. 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:35.320 You could tell it was a plan scenario. 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:38.040 Well, police have said no more about the contents of 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:40.880 the letter. It does contain some sort of threat and 0:02:40.960 --> 0:02:43.160 implies the killer may strike again. 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:46.280 He's gonna play with these victims. He'd get him to 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:49.920 the point of death and then bring them back and 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:51.720 then brings them back to the point of death. 0:02:53.400 --> 0:02:58.840 From My Heart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. I'm Susan Peters 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:10.960 and This is Monster BTK. On August eighteenth, two thousand 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:15.800 and five, Judge Gregory Waller sentenced Dennis Lynn Raider to 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:21.000 ten consecutive life terms. The sentence, a minimum of one 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:24.359 hundred and seventy five years without the chance for parole, 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:29.520 was the longest the judge could deliver. The next day, 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:33.959 August nineteenth, two thousand and five, Raider was taken from 0:03:33.960 --> 0:03:38.920 the courthouse to the Eldedo Correctional Facility in Butler County, Kansas, 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:44.400 just thirty miles from Wichita. Our news station covered the 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:48.880 caravan from departure to arrival, and we were on scene 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:54.720 for the last sighting of Dennis Raider outside prison walls. 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:58.480 He is getting out of car right now. He's in 0:03:58.560 --> 0:04:01.680 his orange jumpsuit. It looks as if his feet may 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:04.920 be shackled. He's walking in the prison right now. They 0:04:05.000 --> 0:04:07.960 knocked in the door and there he is there. He 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:09.400 is inside that's it. 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:16.240 Closure is difficult for the families of Raider's victims. It 0:04:16.320 --> 0:04:20.080 may never come. But on that day in August, at 0:04:20.080 --> 0:04:23.760 the very least, we reveled in the peace of mind 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:26.640 that came with the closing of his cell door. 0:04:27.960 --> 0:04:30.400 Unfortunately, through all of this and through the things that 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:33.679 he has done, everyone was willing to listen because everyone 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:36.159 wanted to hear from the man that committed these crimes. 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:39.320 Now I think everyone is sick of what he has 0:04:39.400 --> 0:04:39.799 to say. 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:44.200 The reason we know so much about Dennis Rader is 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:49.279 because of his narcissism, his intense desire for publicity. And 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:52.560 while US locals had had our fill, there were others 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:58.520 who saw immense academic potential in studying Raider's mind. 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:03.280 When this opportunity came up, I had just completed a 0:05:03.279 --> 0:05:07.200 book where I had looked back over the past century 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:11.400 of mental health experts who had taken extra time to 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:16.640 really learn about an extreme offender from the offender's point 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:19.479 of view. And I was in a prime position then 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:23.480 to do exactly the same thing. I had role models. 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:27.760 Throughout this season, we've heard the inside scoop on Rader 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:33.159 from forensic psychologist Catherine Ramsland in twenty ten, she began 0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:37.080 a professional relationship with him, which culminated in the book 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:41.719 Confession of a serial Killer. The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, 0:05:42.120 --> 0:05:44.080 the BTK serial Killer. 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:48.680 I did not approach Rader. What happened is when he 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:52.080 was arrested in two thousand and five, someone else had 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:54.719 approached him to write a book. She worked with him 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:59.240 for five years, corresponding thinking she was going to do this, 0:05:59.839 --> 0:06:04.119 and I saw her on Facebook and said, whatever happened 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:06.680 to your book? And she begged me to take it over. 0:06:07.360 --> 0:06:09.279 I had to go through a process of being vetted 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:12.720 by the victims' families and the attorney he had signed 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:16.279 his life rights over to them through this other writer. 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:20.040 That took some time, a couple of years, and in 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:24.120 the meantime I got to know Rader by playing chess. 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:29.240 We'd write some letters. He wanted me to solve some 0:06:29.400 --> 0:06:34.679 codes because he wanted to communicate with codes. So I 0:06:34.760 --> 0:06:38.720 began to just kind of follow his lead. He would 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:43.240 write very long, like twenty page letters, and embedded in 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:47.040 these letters would be these codes and their meaning, and 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:49.719 I had to try to figure it out. Also, he 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:52.840 wanted to communicate that way to keep the guards from 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:57.039 knowing what he was talking about. That's kind of the 0:06:57.120 --> 0:06:59.520 gatekeeper if you're not going to do the code thing 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:00.360 or not. 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:00.960 Going any further. 0:07:01.920 --> 0:07:05.640 And then as all the legal stuff got into place, 0:07:06.040 --> 0:07:09.520 we began to talk on the phone. The very first 0:07:09.840 --> 0:07:13.320 time I spoke to on the phone an hour earlier, 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:18.560 my father died, so it was very numbing, but at 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:22.480 the same time it was a good weight into him 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:26.440 because he remembered his father dying. I think it invited 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:30.640 some warmth and compassion from him. As our first time 0:07:30.680 --> 0:07:33.520 we're talking on the phone. 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:37.600 It feels jarring to hear ramseland talk about building compassion 0:07:37.760 --> 0:07:42.960 between herself and Raider, but developing this relationship was integral 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:45.120 to her ability to study him. 0:07:46.240 --> 0:07:48.360 The third way we got to know each other was 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:53.120 watching TV shows, which began to serve as metaphors for 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:58.400 his experience. He wanted me to watch Bates Motel and 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:02.200 The Americans, and I wanted him to watch The Walking Dead, 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:06.760 and so between those shows we would talk about the 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:12.320 characters in ways that demonstrated some of the things he 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:15.280 was trying to tell me, like with the Americans its 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:20.280 Soviet spies embedded in American culture and raising a family 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:24.200 and acting as if they're completely like everybody else, exactly 0:08:24.240 --> 0:08:26.920 as he was doing. And he even thought of himself 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:30.080 as a spy or Bates Motel, which is about the 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:34.360 making of a serial killer, so whenever something would happen 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:36.960 in one of the shows, he would use that to 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:38.480 talk about his experience. 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:44.199 Ramsland wrote about Rader before she began working on Confession. 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:48.400 For instance, she mentioned him in her book Inside the 0:08:48.440 --> 0:08:52.439 Minds of serial Killers, but her coverage never went into 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:53.520 this much depth. 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:58.320 Only when the opportunity came my way did I realize 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:01.280 what a unique opportunity it was, because he was not 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:06.360 like a typical serial killer. He was an outlier. I 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:09.600 get a lot of questions from mostly high school students, 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:12.640 asking what motivates a serial killer, and it's hard for me. 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:15.680 I just say it's not a criminal type. They each 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:19.880 have their own motivational spectrum, and you have to look 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:24.160 at the factors in their development to understand why they're 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:27.640 doing what they're doing, because it's different from one to another. 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:31.680 Even if you categorize them as sexually compelled serial killers, 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:35.079 there's still a lot of differences among them. I think 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:42.040 looking at the raw ingredients of any extreme offender's developmental 0:09:42.080 --> 0:09:46.760 trajectory helps us with trying to understand at what points 0:09:46.760 --> 0:09:50.800 in their life did something change, did a trigger to 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:55.320 violence become part of their perspective? What were some of 0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:59.840 the factors and elements involved. So RADA was an opportunity 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:04.000 as an outlier to the thinking of the FBI to 0:10:04.160 --> 0:10:07.120 find out what's going on here, what do we need 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:10.679 to know about this guy? 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:15.440 There were logistical challenges communicating with Radar in prison, As 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:19.319 Ramsland said earlier, their letters and phone calls were monitored. 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:24.079 I told him we need to have a coherent set 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:26.800 of codes if we're going to talk about some of 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:30.600 these things. And so I created the codes that we're 0:10:30.600 --> 0:10:33.040 going to use. And I used a cave metaphor because 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:35.880 he liked caves, and he had this whole thing about 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:39.600 three being a magical number. So everything I did, like 0:10:39.720 --> 0:10:44.880 three layers of soil, three types of plants, three types 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:47.920 of gardening tools, things like that. 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:52.520 In the introduction to the book, she describes figuring out 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:55.520 the code as one of the most complicated aspects of 0:10:55.559 --> 0:11:00.959 the project. What resulted is a symbolic alphabet with letters 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:05.320 A through W all representing different phrases. 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:10.000 A Bleeding Heart was going to be the victims so 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:14.800 B one, B two, BH three that was going to 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:17.640 connote whoever he was talking about. 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:22.560 Of her work with Rader, Ramsland says this type of 0:11:22.600 --> 0:11:26.640 research could be used to develop treatment programs for kids 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:29.960 who might be at risk of becoming one of these offenders, 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:33.880 and because of this potential, she emphasizes that its use 0:11:34.360 --> 0:11:37.240 is more that of a textbook than entertainment. 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:41.360 Is that a true crime book? It's a book where 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:45.840 Dennis Rader and I explore his life story together with 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:50.720 clinical tools. I call it a guided autobiography because he's 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:54.880 not just blathering on about himself without any structure. It's 0:11:54.920 --> 0:12:01.400 structured to benefit my field, criminology and law enforcement. 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:07.160 Reader's narcissism does make it difficult to discern his fiction 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:12.800 from reality, but Ramsland's professional background and the relationships she 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:16.160 built with him before starting the book allowed her to 0:12:16.200 --> 0:12:18.240 call him out on his lies. 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:24.480 I had the complete transcript of the police interrogation. I 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:28.160 had five years of correspondence from the other writer. I 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:31.640 had the whole DA's file. So yes, I know he's 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:33.840 going to play me if I can, but I have 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:38.839 the objective background. He's obviously going to be able to 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:41.880 talk more about what was really going on at the 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:45.120 crime scenes in ways that no investigator will ever be 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:49.000 able to do. But at the same time, he's narcissistic. 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:52.960 He does want publicity, he does want to be known 0:12:53.000 --> 0:12:54.679 in a certain way, and I have to keep that 0:12:54.720 --> 0:12:58.240 in mind as well. But that's okay because that's data 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:00.960 for me. I didn't care if he told the truth 0:13:01.000 --> 0:13:01.480 or he lied. 0:13:01.840 --> 0:13:02.880 All of that data. 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:07.000 There are more layers than just what a killer says, 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:09.920 So it's not really about asking that person a whole 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:13.560 bunch of questions. To get into who they are. You 0:13:13.720 --> 0:13:21.080 have to watch their behavior and the inconsistencies and the oddities. 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:26.320 For example, on a scene in The Americans, there was 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:30.200 a really brutal scene where they put a burning car 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:34.240 tire over the sky to get him to say something, 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:41.439 and Raita was furious, just furious if that was on TV, Like, Okay, 0:13:42.920 --> 0:13:46.400 you're a serial killer, You've done terrible things to people, 0:13:47.120 --> 0:13:50.720 and this is a fictional scenario. Why are you so angry? 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:54.240 When we started playing chess, he told me not to cheat. 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:59.440 Really in your whole scheme of morality, that's what matters 0:13:59.480 --> 0:14:01.640 to you. That I'm not cheating at a chess game. 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:05.760 To me, that's all very interesting behavior, because what is 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:08.040 he showing me about what matters to him? 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:13.640 On certain issues, Raider was more defensive than others. 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:17.080 If it was something in which he had no real 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:21.080 investment in how he wanted to present himself, then he'd 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:23.560 sort of laugh it off. Yeah, you caught me, or 0:14:23.600 --> 0:14:27.760 something like that. One time he was talking about how 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:30.520 much he loved his son. I said, well, you know, 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:35.160 you used your son's car during your cat and mouse game. 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:37.880 He was away in the navy, And I said, what 0:14:38.000 --> 0:14:41.520 did you think your son would feel like when you 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:44.640 were arrested and they found out his car was the 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:48.960 one on the surveillance video. His first response was, well, 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:51.280 I was never going to get caught. I never even 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:54.800 thought of that. Then he got upset with me because 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:57.880 I was questioning the narrative that he loved his son. 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:01.680 I was basically saying, saying, that's not a very loving 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:04.960 thing to do to your son. What you did to 0:15:05.160 --> 0:15:08.640 satisfy yourself is not a loving thing to do to 0:15:08.680 --> 0:15:12.720 the family you say you love. And he got angry, 0:15:13.360 --> 0:15:17.360 and his response was to write a very long letter 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:23.240 justifying everything I would tell you the members of his 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:28.760 family don't feel that loved because he destroyed them, destroyed them, 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:31.560 but he doesn't see it that way. He thinks they 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:35.000 should just get over it and reconnect with them. That's 0:15:35.040 --> 0:15:38.040 how he views it. But that's again that notion of 0:15:38.600 --> 0:15:43.800 a very shallow emotional processing of the world. He thinks 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:48.560 that what he's done does not have that much enormity 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:52.200 and shouldn't and that they're his family and they need 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:55.280 to forgive him and get back in a relationship with him. 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:57.280 That is how he thinks. 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:03.160 It's hard to imagine a world where anyone could forgive Raider. 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:06.800 I think for the average person, it's common to wonder 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:11.320 whether these types of violent offenders experience remorse, And when 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:14.680 I think back to his court appearances, I know that 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:16.080 Raider doesn't. 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:21.240 These days, when Raider looks back, he regrets, it's not 0:16:21.320 --> 0:16:26.120 the same as remorse. He regrets hurting his family, He 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:30.040 regrets that he's in prison, that he missed out on 0:16:30.120 --> 0:16:34.720 a lot of life. He sometimes thinks about religion, but 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:36.960 I think for the most part, he does not believe 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:39.720 that there's an afterlife, that he will have to face 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:44.240 some kind of judgment. The killer part is essentially well, 0:16:44.240 --> 0:16:47.480 how he identifies that, he embraces. 0:16:46.880 --> 0:17:04.360 That there is a thread that ties everyone together. Who 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:08.359 is still to this day interested in Dennis Rader. It 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:12.960 is the desire to understand why he did it and 0:17:13.040 --> 0:17:16.399 if we could stop something like this from happening again. 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:21.959 For Larry Hatteberg, his BTK days didn't end when we 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:24.000 covered the caravan to El Dodo. 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:27.520 I wrote to him in two thousand and five, and 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:29.760 I did get three or four letters back from him. 0:17:30.040 --> 0:17:33.080 When I got the first letter from Denis Rader, the 0:17:33.400 --> 0:17:37.640 postman stopped out front, came up to my door, rang 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:41.080 the doorbell, and he's holding the letter by the edges 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:44.159 like it's a horrible thing, and he said, I just 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:46.600 want to tell you I'm delivering this to you and 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:50.480 I hate every moment of this. That is an appropriate 0:17:50.520 --> 0:17:53.400 response to receiving a letter from Denis Raider. 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:58.520 In one of the letters, Rader had an eerie request 0:17:58.680 --> 0:17:59.320 for Larry. 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:04.399 He said, look, Larry, I love your show. We used 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:08.520 to watch Haddiberg's People all the time when I wasn't incarcerated. 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:11.840 In here, he said, I want to be on Hadiberg's People. 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:15.320 Haddeberg's People was the series that I did of great 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:18.200 people in the community. So I wrote him back and 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:22.240 I said, Dennis, the fact that you've killed ten people 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:26.480 tends to negate any of the good that you've done 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:30.280 in the community. And he didn't write me back after that. 0:18:31.720 --> 0:18:35.520 But in the last few years they've restarted their correspondence. 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:39.320 Larry's received letters from Rader as recently as the end 0:18:39.480 --> 0:18:40.680 of twenty twenty four. 0:18:42.080 --> 0:18:45.199 The reason I stay kind of involved in it, and 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:49.600 the reason I will occasionally write to BTK is that 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:54.000 we still to this day do not know what caused 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:59.439 BTK to become a murderer. And there are a million 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:03.560 teachers there with kids in their classroom, and they know 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:06.440 something is wrong with a child, but they don't know 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:08.360 what to do. They don't know how to do it. 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:12.760 So the question becomes, how do we identify these children 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:16.040 who are going to grow up to become a BTK. 0:19:16.800 --> 0:19:20.400 Until we have those answers, the BTK story will never 0:19:20.440 --> 0:19:22.960 be dead, even if he dies tomorrow, and that's why 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:23.879 I stay involved in it. 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:29.080 On the other side of things, there are those who've 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:32.760 decided it is better not to indulge their curiosity when 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:36.480 it comes to Denis Raider. Here's Bob Smiser, a member 0:19:36.520 --> 0:19:38.920 of Raider's former church, Christ Lutheran. 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:42.760 I really wanted to go see Dennis in prison, not 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:45.920 because of anything I could ask him, or anything because 0:19:45.960 --> 0:19:49.280 he'd lie to you, but to see who he is 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:55.120 strip that facade of Denis Raider facade. I think in 0:19:55.160 --> 0:19:58.960 prison you would have finally got to see him as 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:05.120 he really is, and that interested me. Ultimately decided against 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:07.000 it for a variety of reasons. 0:20:08.560 --> 0:20:10.640 Do you think you if you went to prison, could 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:14.960 you talk to him as Bobby an old friend. 0:20:15.960 --> 0:20:18.240 I don't know that we'd talk as old friends, but 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:22.160 we would talk about his mom and dad, those kind 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:27.520 of things. Those conversations would be fairly simple, they'd be 0:20:27.560 --> 0:20:31.679 fairly easy, and they'd be natural. If there's anything left 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:35.680 of the dentist raider facade or is he just BTK? 0:20:35.720 --> 0:20:37.119 One hundred percent of the time. 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:42.480 Bob poses a good question, is there anything left of 0:20:42.480 --> 0:20:46.320 the dentist Raider? For sad? This is something Carrie Rawson's 0:20:46.320 --> 0:20:49.520 been trying to figure out for the last two decades. 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:54.120 It took her years to sort through her complicated emotions 0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:56.520 after her father's arrest. 0:20:59.280 --> 0:21:01.399 For like the first nine and a half years. I 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:04.520 was totally shut down. I was hiding who I was. 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:08.280 I'm in like this megachurch outside Detroit, Michigan, where we 0:21:08.320 --> 0:21:11.480 moved in two thousand and three. I'm leading Bible study. 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:14.920 I'm in this mops group with young mothers of toddlers, 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:18.240 and I'm not telling people who I am. My picture 0:21:18.240 --> 0:21:20.399 had never been out there in connection with my dad. 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:23.840 I didn't have social media at the time. I had 0:21:23.840 --> 0:21:26.840 gone through the worst day of my life, the worst 0:21:26.840 --> 0:21:30.840 thing I could imagine. I'm a trauma survivor, an abuse survivor, 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:35.000 and I'm not telling anybody about this. The most I 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:37.880 would say, well, this bad thing happened to me. It's 0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:40.000 really hard to sit in Bible study on a Tuesday 0:21:40.040 --> 0:21:42.960 morning and the woman next to you is saying like 0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:45.359 her worst day of our life is a dishwasher broken 0:21:45.400 --> 0:21:48.040 or kitchen flooded, and I'm literally having to leave the 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:50.480 room and cry in the bathroom because how do you 0:21:50.520 --> 0:21:54.360 even drop dad into that. Like even with trusted friends 0:21:54.400 --> 0:21:57.359 of mine, I would try and they would tell me 0:21:57.720 --> 0:22:01.560 stop talking, you're giving me nightmares. I was so shut 0:22:01.600 --> 0:22:03.520 down those first nine and a half years because I 0:22:03.560 --> 0:22:06.679 was scared. I was scared of this man in their 0:22:06.760 --> 0:22:09.080 arrest photo. I was scared of what he had done. 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:12.119 I was even scared of other family members or some 0:22:12.280 --> 0:22:13.439 lacko coming after me. 0:22:15.119 --> 0:22:19.760 She learned to compartmentalize to separate the father she'd known 0:22:20.359 --> 0:22:22.840 from the killer she'd been introduced to. 0:22:25.440 --> 0:22:28.320 With my father, I have to put Dad in BTK. 0:22:29.000 --> 0:22:31.879 When I interviewed with doctor Phil, he was helpful. He 0:22:31.960 --> 0:22:34.840 did a timeline and he put photos of my normal 0:22:34.880 --> 0:22:38.640 life above the timeline, and then underneath he put crime 0:22:38.640 --> 0:22:41.360 scene photos and photos of my dad after the arresting 0:22:41.400 --> 0:22:45.200 things BTK things, And he said, stay above the line 0:22:45.200 --> 0:22:48.639 as much as you can, because that's safe and sane. 0:22:49.560 --> 0:22:52.280 When I was talking about unleashing all the BTK stuff, 0:22:52.480 --> 0:22:54.320 I didn't do it in a healthy way. I just 0:22:54.520 --> 0:22:56.960 pulled it all out. And so when I went back 0:22:56.960 --> 0:23:00.760 into therapy, she goes, okay. Now, for the first time, 0:23:00.800 --> 0:23:03.239 I got to go put it in order. So we 0:23:03.280 --> 0:23:06.560 took the Wichita Eagle book by Winslow and three other journalists, 0:23:06.600 --> 0:23:09.720 and I took it into trauma therapy for months. My 0:23:09.800 --> 0:23:13.719 paperback was like dogyard covered marked up in pen. I 0:23:13.760 --> 0:23:15.560 had to go line by line through that thing in 0:23:15.640 --> 0:23:18.720 therapy and I couldn't even do it in order. I 0:23:18.720 --> 0:23:22.119 couldn't handle the seventies, and so I started with hedge 0:23:22.119 --> 0:23:24.040 and I worked up through in the ninety one, and 0:23:24.080 --> 0:23:26.919 then I went back to the seventies. And so when 0:23:26.960 --> 0:23:30.719 I was done with therapy, Dad was strictly BTK to write, 0:23:30.840 --> 0:23:33.000 and I had to go back and then separate that 0:23:33.480 --> 0:23:35.919 and go back and find Dad and then find me. 0:23:37.480 --> 0:23:41.359 Once Carrie had found herself again, she realized her story 0:23:41.720 --> 0:23:44.800 might be able to help others, so she took a 0:23:44.920 --> 0:23:46.600 chance at sharing it. 0:23:48.000 --> 0:23:50.840 I started talking to the media in fourteen. I mean, 0:23:50.880 --> 0:23:53.520 it's rare to get somebody like me, a family member 0:23:53.560 --> 0:23:56.800 of these guys to talk. It sets off your PTSD. 0:23:57.640 --> 0:23:59.959 You know, there's shame in it too, because we've been 0:24:00.080 --> 0:24:02.320 beat up in the media. We've been beat up by 0:24:02.359 --> 0:24:06.439 people commenting and social media, some of us going to hiding, 0:24:06.600 --> 0:24:10.399 change our names. I thought the answer was to hide, 0:24:11.480 --> 0:24:15.280 but hiding meant tearing more insight. It's like when you 0:24:15.359 --> 0:24:18.240 band each a wound two tide. It's festering and rotting 0:24:18.320 --> 0:24:19.600 underneath because you're not letting it. 0:24:19.560 --> 0:24:20.320 Get air or light. 0:24:21.640 --> 0:24:25.119 When I started speaking up, I realized not only was 0:24:25.119 --> 0:24:27.680 it healing, me to talk about it. I was getting 0:24:27.680 --> 0:24:30.360 an inbox full of people saying I was reaching them 0:24:30.560 --> 0:24:34.120 because I was talking about something in forgiveness, or they 0:24:34.119 --> 0:24:37.199 were a soldier that had come home with PTSD and 0:24:37.240 --> 0:24:39.880 they had identified with me in my night terrors or 0:24:40.080 --> 0:24:44.919