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Speaker 2: You're listening to Monster BTK, a production of iHeart Podcasts
Speaker 2: and Tenderfoot TV. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3: On June thirteenth, two thousand and four, a man was
Speaker 3: walking to work in a secluded part of Whichital. As
Speaker 3: he reached the intersection of First in Kansas, he noticed
Speaker 3: something odd, a plastic bag taped to the back of
Speaker 3: a stop sign. He opened it and found a letter
Speaker 3: inside with a label that read BTK Field Ground. It
Speaker 3: was a three page story written by BTK in the
Speaker 3: third person. Here is what it said.
Speaker 1: If a person happens to be out on one of
Speaker 1: these cold mornings in a certain part of Wichitah, that
Speaker 1: is the northeast part, on a particular morning in January,
Speaker 1: he might have noticed a man park his car in
Speaker 1: a store parking lot, pause briefly, then walk across the
Speaker 1: street and disappear among the houses and commercial buildings. If
Speaker 1: they had followed him, they would have noticed his head
Speaker 1: bent load the ground and wearing a heavy parka. If
Speaker 1: they would have looked closer, they would notice his eyes
Speaker 1: dark back and forth across the street, checking the house
Speaker 1: windows and door. As he nears a house on the corner,
Speaker 1: he quickly glanced around and jumped the wooded fence surrounding
Speaker 1: the house. He knew the family left the house at
Speaker 1: approximately eight forty five and would walk out to the
Speaker 1: car and leave for school, and in approximately seven minutes
Speaker 1: the lady Judy would return home. He had earlier in
Speaker 1: the week seen them leave for school. One day, he
Speaker 1: thought to himself, say, this may be it a perfect setup.
Speaker 1: A house on the corner, a garage set off from
Speaker 1: the house, a fenced yard, a large space from the
Speaker 1: nearby neighbor's house, especially the back door. It was a
Speaker 1: few days later that he stopped across the street and
Speaker 1: followed the family car to see where they went. That morning,
Speaker 1: she took the kids to school each and returned. A
Speaker 1: perfect setup. It was close to his fantasy of a
Speaker 1: victim all to himself, a person he could tie up, torture,
Speaker 1: and maybe.
Speaker 4: Kill, killed four members of a family.
Speaker 5: Had you vanished from her home, suddenly last weekend, her
Speaker 5: phone lines had been cut, her door left open.
Speaker 4: You see the victim playing there with plastic bags over
Speaker 4: their heads, strangled.
Speaker 6: You could tell it was a plan scenario.
Speaker 5: Well, police have said no more about the contents of
Speaker 5: the letter. It does contain some sort of threat and
Speaker 5: implies the killer may strike again.
Speaker 1: He's going to play with these victims.
Speaker 2: He'd get him to the point of death and then
Speaker 2: bring them.
Speaker 4: Back and then brings them back to the point of death.
Speaker 3: From My Heart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV, I'm Susan Peters
Speaker 3: and this is Monster BTK. It was June of two
Speaker 3: thousand and four and BTK was back. Starting in March
Speaker 3: of that year, BTK had begun to send letters to
Speaker 3: news outlets and police with haunting and threatening messages. At
Speaker 3: KKE TV, this was a massive by far the biggest
Speaker 3: story since btk's first murders in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 7: And Good Evening we have exclusive details a new communication
Speaker 7: that could be from the serial killer BTK. On June thirteenth,
Speaker 7: Whichita police recovered the letter which you heard about at
Speaker 7: the top of the episode. It was discovered by a
Speaker 7: man who was walking to work taped to the back
Speaker 7: of a stop sign. It was btk's third correspondent since
Speaker 7: his return and his longest letter to date. Previous letters
Speaker 7: had been short, vague packages sent to local news outlets,
Speaker 7: but this was different.
Speaker 3: It was a lengthy and detailed recounting of his first murder,
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventy four killing of the Otero family. He
Speaker 3: gave a detailed, first hand account of the event from
Speaker 3: thirty years earlier.
Speaker 1: About twenty minutes before nine, the door unlocked and the
Speaker 1: boy stepped outside. In just a flash, he ordered him
Speaker 1: back inside, confronting the family, armed with a pistol and knife,
Speaker 1: he told them that this was a stick up and
Speaker 1: not to be alarmed.
Speaker 3: This letter was handed over to Wichita PD. Police detective
Speaker 3: Kenny Landwaer quickly noticed that the letter was actually a photocopy,
Speaker 3: most likely of a journal entry about the murder written
Speaker 3: by BTK right after the killing in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 1: The family was preparing to leave. The kids were packing
Speaker 1: their lunches and they had to gather their coats by
Speaker 1: the table. The mother, Judy, asked what was going on
Speaker 1: and said they had no money or anything of value.
Speaker 1: The boy was by his folk's side looking scared, and
Speaker 1: the girl Josephine was beginning to cry. All of them
Speaker 1: gathered in the hall. He told them their orders. He
Speaker 1: was wanted and needed the car money in food. Joe
Speaker 1: noticed his gun hand shake and told the family to
Speaker 1: settle down and all would be okay.
Speaker 3: The letter also included a graphic hand drawing titled the
Speaker 3: sexual Thrill is My Bill. It depicted a naked and
Speaker 3: tied up woman hanging by the neck from a rope.
Speaker 3: Why this letter, why recount the Otero story once again?
Speaker 3: And why did he leave it in a remote location?
Speaker 3: Raider would answer some of these questions years later in
Speaker 3: the book Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 1: I left the package at first in Kansas. This symbolic
Speaker 1: meaning was important to me. We live in a symbolic world.
Speaker 1: I didn't pick the spot just because it was handy.
Speaker 1: There was a purpose. The stop sign was stop and
Speaker 1: look people of Kansas. The poll was the male symbol.
Speaker 1: I picked the number three type date attached the package
Speaker 1: on June twelfth. The package was wrapped in plastic and
Speaker 1: duct tape, a symbol of bondage and staple items in
Speaker 1: a BTK hit kit. By posting it here, I figured
Speaker 1: an amateur would handle it before the police that would
Speaker 1: destroy key evidence.
Speaker 3: As we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, BTK
Speaker 3: labeled the letter as a quote field gram. Raider would
Speaker 3: later explain what this meant.
Speaker 1: The BTK field gram is like a telegram. It short
Speaker 1: has important news coding from Morse code in the cat
Speaker 1: and Mouse game. I envisioned the chapter of the first
Speaker 1: BTK hit, chapter one, being the oteros.
Speaker 3: So this was chapter one of the BTK autobiography that
Speaker 3: he had promised in a previous letter. If you remember
Speaker 3: from the last episode, one of btk's earlier packages included
Speaker 3: an outline for a thirteen chapter book about his deeds.
Speaker 3: Rader intended to share each chapter of his story one
Speaker 3: at a time, and this was just the beginning. Rader
Speaker 3: wanted to keep the momentum going, and so the pace
Speaker 3: of his letter started to pick up. The next one
Speaker 3: came only a month later. This time it was found
Speaker 3: somewhere that no one expected to find it.
Speaker 5: This is the strongest warning yet police have issued for
Speaker 5: widgetans to watch out and take extra precautions. After a
Speaker 5: letter was found at the Wichitaw Public Library early Saturday morning.
Speaker 3: This new package was discovered by a Wichita library employee
Speaker 3: on the morning of July seventeenth, two thousand and four.
Speaker 5: Speculation immediately went to BTK and another possible communication from
Speaker 5: the serial killer. Police now confirming they are turning the
Speaker 5: letter as such while they wait for the FBI to
Speaker 5: confirm whether the letter is in fact from BTK.
Speaker 3: At Cake, we didn't know the contents of this letter.
Speaker 3: Police had confiscated it before any journalists had a chance
Speaker 3: to see it, but investigators had it and they were
Speaker 3: shocked by what it said. In it, BTK claimed responsibility
Speaker 3: for a new victim. This letter was titled Jakie, and
Speaker 3: this time BTK says he met and killed a nineteen
Speaker 3: year old named Jake Allen. Just a few weeks earlier,
Speaker 3: a Jake Allen had been found dead near Wellington, Kansas,
Speaker 3: just outside of Wichita, but police hadn't determined the cause
Speaker 3: of death just yet. And then this new letter arrives,
Speaker 3: where BTK writes.
Speaker 1: I had to stop work on chapter two of the
Speaker 1: BTK story due to the death of j I was
Speaker 1: so excited about this incident that I had to tell
Speaker 1: the story.
Speaker 3: BTK goes on to say that he supposedly corresponded with
Speaker 3: Jake over email. According to the letter, the two men
Speaker 3: talked about explicit sexual desires.
Speaker 1: Jakie had fantasies about sexual masturbation in unusual ways with
Speaker 1: bondage and homosexual thrills.
Speaker 3: The letter implies that at some point BTK convinced Jake
Speaker 3: to meet him in person, and that BTK then murdered him.
Speaker 3: Also included in this library package were photos of a
Speaker 3: hooded figure in bondage and a crew drawing of a
Speaker 3: bound up mail. The BTK Task Force looked into the
Speaker 3: supposed connection to Jake Allen, but they found no evidence
Speaker 3: that BTK was actually involved, and in fact, it was
Speaker 3: eventually determined that Jake Allen had actually come headed suicide.
Speaker 3: So what was this all about? Just a prank raider
Speaker 3: would later admit that he was just toying with police.
Speaker 3: Here's what he said years later, we're counting the library package.
Speaker 1: I posted the Jaki letter under the cover story of
Speaker 1: Erin's on a Saturday morning. I handled the Jakie package
Speaker 1: with gloves. I saw the article about him in the
Speaker 1: Wichita Eagle. I meant no disrespect to his family. I
Speaker 1: only used him as a symbol to stir the pot.
Speaker 1: I used some male slick ads to draw off. With
Speaker 1: this letter, I let the police know that I was older,
Speaker 1: but perhaps smarter with age, even if they didn't know
Speaker 1: my age. At the age of fifty nine, I was
Speaker 1: pretty old for a serial killer to be on the prowl.
Speaker 3: Raider was pretty happy with himself. He thought he had
Speaker 3: thrown the police for a loop. At the very least,
Speaker 3: he made them suspect that he was still dangerous, that
Speaker 3: he might be able to kill again all these years later,
Speaker 3: and in fact, Raider was considering it throughout two thousand
Speaker 3: and four. While sending these letters. He was still prowling,
Speaker 3: planning to kill again, and he had his eyes on
Speaker 3: a new target, which he discovered while working his job
Speaker 3: with Wichita Animal Control. It was his first real project
Speaker 3: in fifteen years.
Speaker 1: My first attempt was October twenty second, two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: As I drove back and forth to the Wichita Animal
Speaker 1: shelter on North Hillside, I watched the address alone hydraulic.
Speaker 1: The houses were set back a little. The house had
Speaker 1: a female, a high school girl, and a male at
Speaker 1: one time, but he disappeared or left as the days passed.
Speaker 1: I would write in a log book the dates and
Speaker 1: times of her routines. She had a perfect pattern. She
Speaker 1: was a brunette, a bit heavy, medium height, in her
Speaker 1: thirties or forties. She worked at a machine shop on
Speaker 1: the corner of Hillside in thirty seventh, just north of
Speaker 1: the shelter, so easy for me to stalk.
Speaker 3: We don't know her real name, but Raider called her
Speaker 3: project board Water. After enough stalking, he finally picked a
Speaker 3: day in the fall of two thousand and four and
Speaker 3: made his move.
Speaker 1: On Friday, October twenty second. I packed up my hit kit,
Speaker 1: bike and gear I was going to use on her
Speaker 1: at the house, so I was ready. I drove by
Speaker 1: the house all pent up. I saw a crew working
Speaker 1: at the curb near her house. The unknown always and unknown,
Speaker 1: too many people around. I waited the time ran out.
Speaker 1: I was disappointed. I wasn't going to do the hit,
Speaker 1: but I thought I would try again in the spring
Speaker 1: when I had an excuse for fishing.
Speaker 3: It was a failed attempt. He got to buy the
Speaker 3: number of people surrounding our house, most of them apparently
Speaker 3: construction workers. But Raider wasn't done that day. He decided
Speaker 3: to do something else instead. Before going home, on October
Speaker 3: twenty second, he made a detour. He stopped off at
Speaker 3: the Omni Center in Wichita.
Speaker 8: A UPS worker comes and goes with nothing to say,
Speaker 8: not willing to talk about his colleague who's believed to
Speaker 8: have found a suspicious package in this dropbox on Friday,
Speaker 8: October twenty second, and this FedEx worker says, the employee
Speaker 8: who usually runs by here has to be taken off
Speaker 8: this stop because of what happened Friday night. This email
Speaker 8: is all police would release concerning the package, it says. Recently,
Speaker 8: the Wichita Police Department obtained another letter that could be
Speaker 8: connected to the BTK investigation. It comes on October twenty second,
Speaker 8: the thirtieth anniversary of his first communication with police concerning
Speaker 8: his string of killings.
Speaker 3: It was a big day for BTK. This new letter
Speaker 3: included information about his background and upbringing. This was chapter two,
Speaker 3: titled Dawn. It included his supposed birth year and told
Speaker 3: stories from his childhood. He admitted to being a peeping
Speaker 3: tom and even gave away that he had been in
Speaker 3: the Air Force. This very likely gave Raider a confidence
Speaker 3: boost his story was getting out there. But this new
Speaker 3: information also emboldened the police. They started looking for men
Speaker 3: matching his age and history, and very soon they found someone.
Speaker 3: On December one, two thousand and four, investigators honed in
Speaker 3: on a promising BTK suspect. All day, police staked out
Speaker 3: the house where the suspect lived. Then at around seven
Speaker 3: thirty pm, they raided the house guns drawn.
Speaker 9: I had thought what I heard were knocks on the door,
Speaker 9: like hard knocks, and I wasn't feeling well that day.
Speaker 9: I had already turned in for the night, and the
Speaker 9: next thing I knew there were people in my house,
Speaker 9: several plain clothes policemen and some uniform There were at
Speaker 9: least five nine milimeters pointing at me.
Speaker 3: The man they arrested was sixty four year old Roger Valadez.
Speaker 3: He was born in nineteen thirty nine, the year BTK
Speaker 3: had claimed was his birth year in the last letter,
Speaker 3: and he lived near railroad tracks, something BTK had also
Speaker 3: alluded to in the letter. I remember this night well.
Speaker 3: My news director and I had to spend the night
Speaker 3: in the newsroom just in case an announcement was made,
Speaker 3: so Cake could be the first to announce btk's arrest.
Speaker 3: They arrested Validez on some small charges misdemeanors like trespassing,
Speaker 3: our housing code violations. Police made a mess of his
Speaker 3: house and interrogated him for the next twenty four hours.
Speaker 9: They broke the storm door open, and they broke the
Speaker 9: wooden entry door to gain entry into my house, and
Speaker 9: there they were. They told me that I had given DNA.
Speaker 9: They held me down and they swabbed my cheek and
Speaker 9: they took it forciately.
Speaker 3: After the DNA swab, they waited for the results. But
Speaker 3: a few days later KSNTV announced that BTK had been
Speaker 3: caught and that his name was Roger Valadez. They had
Speaker 3: jumped the gun because soon the DNA results did come back.
Speaker 3: Roger was innocent and cleared of suspicion, but the damage
Speaker 3: on Roger's life was already done. He was supposedly branded
Speaker 3: a killer by some people in the community and struggled
Speaker 3: to regain his trust with local He later sued the
Speaker 3: TV station for one point one million dollars and one.
Speaker 9: My name was in My family's name was besmirched and
Speaker 9: damaged by the media in a negative way. I want
Speaker 9: this to come out and be known that there was
Speaker 9: a travesty of justice here.
Speaker 3: This false alarm was only a temporary distraction, because a
Speaker 3: few weeks later BTK would remind everyone that he was
Speaker 3: still out there. Here's former Wichita Deputy District Attorney Kevin O'Connor.
Speaker 6: Dennis Raider called a quick trip, told a kid that
Speaker 6: was working there that there was a package in a park,
Speaker 6: gave directions to it, but he gave the wrong directions
Speaker 6: and the police couldn't find it. There was a gentleman
Speaker 6: that was walking through the park about a week or
Speaker 6: so later that saw a package, picked it up, took
Speaker 6: it home.
Speaker 3: This discovery took place on December thirteenth, two thousand and
Speaker 3: four in Murdoch Park.
Speaker 2: He lived with his mother.
Speaker 6: They opened it up and it was a doll purported
Speaker 6: to be Nancy Fox and a description of the Nancy
Speaker 6: Fox murder.
Speaker 1: I spotted Nancy one day while cruising the area, found
Speaker 1: out her name by checking her mailbox, and tracked her
Speaker 1: to work up close. I visited the store where she worked,
Speaker 1: asking for.
Speaker 6: Some jewelry, and they did what all good citizens would
Speaker 6: do in this situation like this. They called KKE TV.
Speaker 6: And I'm being sarcastic because they didn't call the police
Speaker 6: like they probably should have. But they called kke TV
Speaker 6: and KTV reporter went out there, Janine Keasling, who's a
Speaker 6: friend of mine. Janine was the reporter on the street.
Speaker 5: Police have not confirmed this latest package was from the killer,
Speaker 5: but also inside was a note with what previous investigators
Speaker 5: say appears to be BTK signature. We've been asked not
Speaker 5: to show that.
Speaker 6: What ended up happening is is that they wanted to
Speaker 6: film police opening up the things, and the police, of
Speaker 6: course we're not going to let them do it. I
Speaker 6: think that created some animosity.
Speaker 3: I can remember about this time, tensions were rising between
Speaker 3: us in the newsroom and the police. All of us
Speaker 3: wanted to catch BTK, but there were some disagreements about
Speaker 3: what to make public and what to withhold. That would
Speaker 3: become an issue once more when BTK sent a slew
Speaker 3: of new letters toss at KTV.
Speaker 10: It appears BTK is communicating again. KKTV receiving another mysterious
Speaker 10: message today.
Speaker 5: This one contains both a message to Cake and police
Speaker 5: on Janine Keasling, all the exclusive details coming up in
Speaker 5: a live report.
Speaker 3: The first of these was a letter received on January
Speaker 3: twenty fifth, two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: It said date week of January seventeen eight, two thousand
Speaker 1: and five, where between sixty ninth Street North and seventy
Speaker 1: seventh Street North on Seneca Street contents post toasties box,
Speaker 1: PJ Little Mix and doll, punt of KS, acronym list
Speaker 1: and jewelry.
Speaker 3: This time, the Cake news director sent reporters to the
Speaker 3: site to gather the package, which was in fact a
Speaker 3: post hosty cereal box. It contained a list of his
Speaker 3: favorite acronyms, including DBS for death by strangulation and DTPG
Speaker 3: for death to Pretty Girl. It also contained a naked
Speaker 3: barbie doll with a noose around its neck. Police thought
Speaker 3: PJ Littlemechs might be referring to the murder of twelve
Speaker 3: year old Josephinotaro, along with the other three members of
Speaker 3: her family, who were killed in nineteen seventy four. The
Speaker 3: Cake team brought the package back to the station and
Speaker 3: the news director wanted to use it as a bargaining
Speaker 3: ship with the police.
Speaker 6: And the police weren't having that, and it created some difficulties,
Speaker 6: and I even had to get on the phone and
Speaker 6: talk to KKETV saying this is a homicide investigation and
Speaker 6: we were going to get that information one way.
Speaker 2: Or the other.
Speaker 3: Even KKTV anchor Larry Hattiberg thought it was a bad
Speaker 3: idea to keep the new package hostage.
Speaker 4: We had one instance in which a news director started
Speaker 4: to withhold one of the postcards and try to trade
Speaker 4: it for an interview with the police chief. I was
Speaker 4: standing there when he said that I had encouraged him
Speaker 4: not to do that at any time. The police got
Speaker 4: very mad and he came within ten seconds of being
Speaker 4: arrested and hauled them to the jail.
Speaker 3: The situation did create some sourdness.
Speaker 6: So what Cake ended up doing is sending a film
Speaker 6: crew out to where the cereal box was. That created
Speaker 6: some hard feelings since they drove into a potential crime scene.
Speaker 4: They ran over some tracks in the gravel road with
Speaker 4: their car. That's a big no no, and it was
Speaker 4: because the two were a little bit inexperienced. Police are
Speaker 4: probably not happy about that and certainly let us know.
Speaker 6: That was a difficult time. But I also tried to
Speaker 6: take into account the pressure that the media had too,
Speaker 6: the need to be the first reporting. So it was understood,
Speaker 6: but it did create an animosity that hadn't been there before.
Speaker 6: Because I think if you go through this case, you
Speaker 6: see the media doing their best they can to help
Speaker 6: as much as they can and still be responsible journalists.
Speaker 3: My opinion on the matter is this, it was a
Speaker 3: very tricky time for all the media in which it all.
Speaker 3: I agree with Larry as a longtime news anchor, it
Speaker 3: was a very tough balancing app This on one hand,
Speaker 3: was the biggest story any of us would ever cover
Speaker 3: in our career. While we felt the drive to do
Speaker 3: it better than our competitors, we were also aware that
Speaker 3: at this point we were literally partnering with the police
Speaker 3: department to try and catch a killer. After this event,
Speaker 3: we all collectively decided to cut the in fighting. We
Speaker 3: all had a more important job to do and we
Speaker 3: didn't want BTK to win. The next time a BTK
Speaker 3: letter came through, we were all on the same page,
Speaker 3: and that next letter only came about a week later.
Speaker 10: Today's message is aily similar to a postcard Cake received
Speaker 10: last week. Keate Janine Keysling is live outside the Cake
Speaker 10: studios in northwest Wichita, Jenny Well Larry.
Speaker 5: For the second time in just more than a week,
Speaker 5: another possible communication from BTK arrives here at our studios.
Speaker 5: The communications are getting more frequent and a lot more
Speaker 5: personal which top police have asked us not to reveal
Speaker 5: certain information contained in the communications sent to Cake News.
Speaker 5: Investigators are concerned it could hamper the BTK investigation. To date,
Speaker 5: we have honored all of their requests.
Speaker 3: This letter, though, contained a troubling message from BTK, thanks to.
Speaker 1: The news team for their efforts. Sorry about Susan and
Speaker 1: Jeff's colds.
Speaker 3: As we told you about in episode one, Cake was
Speaker 3: btk's favorite news station, and this letter revealed that he
Speaker 3: knew about our colds, which my co anchor Jeff and
Speaker 3: I had briefly mentioned on the air just a few
Speaker 3: days prior. It was a chilling realization that BTK was
Speaker 3: watching us. From that day forward, I had to be hypervigilant,
Speaker 3: never leaving the station at night alone or engaging with
Speaker 3: any strangers who approached me. Unfortunately, that letter didn't provide
Speaker 3: any new leads for the police. However, the earlier letter
Speaker 3: that revealed the location of the toasties box had one
Speaker 3: more curious message to follow up on.
Speaker 1: It said, let me know somehow if you are Richita
Speaker 1: PD received this. Also let me know if you were
Speaker 1: PD received number seven at home depot Dropsite one eight
Speaker 1: five thanks.
Speaker 3: After seeing the reference to home Depot in btk's previous letter,
Speaker 3: police combed every home depot in the area. They posted
Speaker 3: notes in the employee breakrooms asking if anyone knew anything
Speaker 3: about a strange package. Finally, one employee responded. He said
Speaker 3: that some weeks earlier, in January, he noticed an odd
Speaker 3: cereal box sitting in the bed of his pickup truck.
Speaker 6: Didn't think anything of it. I don't know what rock
Speaker 6: the person was living under, but didn't really think anything
Speaker 6: of it and threw it away.
Speaker 3: This is Kevin O'Connor again.
Speaker 6: Well, it turns out that his roommate had not put
Speaker 6: the trash down, so they actually did recover it. Home
Speaker 6: depot was extremely cooperative and had very good cameras. We
Speaker 6: were able to see a car pull up next to
Speaker 6: this employee's car. One of the detective's detective Ralph, who
Speaker 6: knows a lot about cars, immediately identified it as a
Speaker 6: black cheap Cherokee. One of my duties then was to
Speaker 6: track down and go through or try to get a
Speaker 6: list of all the black jeep Cherokees in which Ta Kansas,
Speaker 6: and there's a lot of them.
Speaker 3: The letter in this home Depot Cereal box also had
Speaker 3: an interesting question written on it.
Speaker 1: Can I communicate with a floppy not be traced to
Speaker 1: a computer? Be honest?
Speaker 3: BTK was actually asking police if he could communicate with
Speaker 3: a floppy disc without being caught. So far, he had
Speaker 3: been communicating solely with paper. Maybe he thought it was
Speaker 3: too risky and that floppy discs would be safer. The
Speaker 3: letter continued.
Speaker 1: Under miscellaneous section four ninety four, rex it will be okay.
Speaker 1: Run it for a few days. In case I'm out
Speaker 1: of town. I will try a floppy for a test
Speaker 1: run sometime in the near future February or March.
Speaker 3: Let me translate. BTK was instructing police to post an
Speaker 3: ad in the miscellaneous section of the newspaper. If the
Speaker 3: ad had the message rex it will be okay, that
Speaker 3: would signal BTK the police had agreed to communicate via
Speaker 3: floppy disc. Of course, investigators jumped at the opportunity. On
Speaker 3: January twenty eighth, the police ran a classified ad in
Speaker 3: the Wichita Eagle. It used that phrase so BTK would
Speaker 3: know it was for him, and it asked him to
Speaker 3: contact the police at a specific PO box address. Raider
Speaker 3: thought he had them in his track. Little did he
Speaker 3: know he was about to fall into theirs. In the
Speaker 3: book Confession of a Serial Killer, author Catherine Ramslin describes
Speaker 3: Raider's mindset at this point.
Speaker 11: Rader trusted the police to tell him the truth. He
Speaker 11: had already questioned an officer, Randy Stone, about the security
Speaker 11: of email and learned that it can be traced. He
Speaker 11: thought that floppies were another matter, however.
Speaker 3: And on February sixteenth, police got their biggest break when
Speaker 3: Raider sent his final correspondence in the form of a
Speaker 3: floppy disc. It also came with postcards with instructiontions on
Speaker 3: how to keep communicating, but this time police wouldn't need them.
Speaker 6: This still gives me goosebumps because I was in the
Speaker 6: room along with the rest of the task force and
Speaker 6: police Officer Stone puts the disc into the computer. He
Speaker 6: goes into the computer language. It's just gibberish. I can't
Speaker 6: understand it, and embedded in there. As you go through
Speaker 6: the lines of meaningless symbols and letters, you see Dennis,
Speaker 6: and then a few lines later you see christ Lutheran
Speaker 6: Church and then Parksey Library.
Speaker 3: Buried in the disc, which had only one file and
Speaker 3: it titled this is a test. Was metadata now for
Speaker 3: anyone who doesn't know. Metadata is like an invisible record
Speaker 3: of who accesses the data on the disc. And when
Speaker 3: an unbeknownst to Raider he had left his digital tracks
Speaker 3: on the floppy.
Speaker 6: Disc, somebody got on Google and just googled Christ Lutheran
Speaker 6: Church and up there in the corner I could still
Speaker 6: see it to this day is a picture of the
Speaker 6: president of the church, which is Dennis Raider. Right away,
Speaker 6: Kenny landwere sent out a couple of detectives I think
Speaker 6: it was Detective Ralph and Detective Schneider, Clinch Schneider, and
Speaker 6: they drove out to an address on Independent Street in
Speaker 6: Park City where Raider lived, and sure enough there was
Speaker 6: a black cherokee in the driveway that belonged to his son.
Speaker 6: Ralph and Schneider wanted to make an arrest right then
Speaker 6: and there. I remember listening to the phone call that
Speaker 6: Ralph and Schneider had with Land where I was standing
Speaker 6: right there, and they called and said there's a black
Speaker 6: cherokee in the driveway. And I'll never forget how cool
Speaker 6: Kenny Landware was. He said, Okay, come on back, and
Speaker 6: they weren't very happy about it. There are a lot
Speaker 6: of words that you can't say on TV. Again, I
Speaker 6: think it goes to Kenny how prepared he was for
Speaker 6: the situation. He wanted to make it a better case.
Speaker 6: At that time, there was a concern if that they
Speaker 6: went up and contacted Raider, it would spook him and
Speaker 6: he would get rid of evidence. So we went about
Speaker 6: preparing and stalking him. Learning about Dennis Rader.
Speaker 3: You can understand why Kenny Landweer wanted to wait. Without
Speaker 3: rock solid evidence, Raider might walk free. So they turned
Speaker 3: to DNA. If you remember, they had preserved samples of
Speaker 3: BTK seamen from the crime scenes all those years ago,
Speaker 3: and they have been testing it against people all across Wichita.
Speaker 3: Oddly enough, my co anker, Larry Hadiberg, was among those
Speaker 3: swabbed for DNA.
Speaker 4: I had two detectives who I knew, show up at
Speaker 4: the TV station and say, Larry, we need to take
Speaker 4: your DNA. Said, okay, why do you need my DNA?
Speaker 4: And they said, because we're getting hips to the BTK
Speaker 4: tip line that since you know so much about BTK,
Speaker 4: maybe you are BTK. And I said, well, I can
Speaker 4: assure you I'm not. And they said, we're pretty sure
Speaker 4: you're not. And what this is is just an elimination process.
Speaker 10: Now in the interest of full disclosure. As you know,
Speaker 10: the Wichita Police Department has swabbed over four thousand men
Speaker 10: to eliminate them as BTK suspects. Well, in the past
Speaker 10: forty eight hours, I too have been swabbed. I now
Speaker 10: joined the list of many journalists, police officials, and businessmen.
Speaker 1: Who have consented to the swab.
Speaker 10: But I will tell you it gives you a very
Speaker 10: odd feeling.
Speaker 4: I admit at the scenes I fit the age profile.
Speaker 4: Then I talk about it on TV, so people say, well,
Speaker 4: he must be BTK. I was not.
Speaker 3: But police weren't concerned about Larry or anyone else's DNA anymore.
Speaker 3: They only wanted the DNA of Dennis Raider. If they
Speaker 3: could match him to the DNA from BTK semen, it
Speaker 3: was checkmate, and they came up with a scheme involving
Speaker 3: Raider's daughter, Carrie Rawson.
Speaker 6: He had a daughter that had gone to school at
Speaker 6: Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. With her age and
Speaker 6: being in school, the investigator said she would have had
Speaker 6: a PAP smear while in college. And although there was
Speaker 6: some thought of like a TV show where we're going
Speaker 6: to go and maybe get a cup of coffee that
Speaker 6: he's drinking, or wait until he spits on the sidewalk,
Speaker 6: which is a very CSI TV show kind of stuff
Speaker 6: where you may or may not get DNA. What we
Speaker 6: figured is we could do reverse DNA. We realized the
Speaker 6: significance of that decision that we would be going into
Speaker 6: somebody's medical history, and I can't tell you that there
Speaker 6: was a lot of respect paid to the fact that
Speaker 6: we're getting somebody's medical history unknowingly. And so what we
Speaker 6: ended up doing rather than issuing a subpoena is we
Speaker 6: prepared something akin to a search warrant and brought to
Speaker 6: Judge Waller with a affidavid as to why we were
Speaker 6: seeking it.
Speaker 3: As Kevin says, Carrie had no idea what was going
Speaker 3: on or that police had been accessing her medical files
Speaker 3: and using her DNA to get to her father.
Speaker 12: They got a subpoena and they got a warrant without
Speaker 12: my knowledge, and they went to case date dug through
Speaker 12: all my health records and found out I had had
Speaker 12: PAF smears like in two thousand and two thousand and one,
Speaker 12: and there was the slide, and they take that to
Speaker 12: the KBI lab in Topeka, and some technicians able to
Speaker 12: extract that old DNA mine pretty brilliant from the slide.
Speaker 3: It would take some time to get the results back,
Speaker 3: so in the meantime, police followed Raider, memorized his routines,
Speaker 3: and learned everything about him.
Speaker 6: During that week, we found out where he worked, which
Speaker 6: was with Park City. He was an animal control officer
Speaker 6: with an office right next to the police department, like
Speaker 6: on the other side of the wall, and went about
Speaker 6: looking at how he did things. So we knew that
Speaker 6: Raider would leave the office before lunch. He would travel
Speaker 6: to his home in Park City, not far away, and
Speaker 6: so the plans were made. Search warrants were drawn in advance.
Speaker 6: We did search warrants for his home, his parents' home,
Speaker 6: the Park City Library. I remember being part listening and
Speaker 6: watching how they talked about who would be on the
Speaker 6: arrest team, how the arrest would go down, what they
Speaker 6: would do with him when he was arrested. I mean
Speaker 6: they even have it down to who was going to
Speaker 6: put the cuffs on him, who was going to walk
Speaker 6: him back to the car that Kenny Landwuare was going
Speaker 6: to be in. It was a fascinating night to be
Speaker 6: a part of I remember asking if I could go,
Speaker 6: and they reminded me I was not a police officer.
Speaker 6: That they liked me a lot, but I'm not a cop.
Speaker 6: I even offered to go in the trunk. I had
Speaker 6: to just listen to it from the command center there
Speaker 6: the epic center that had been set up, but the
Speaker 6: walls around the conference room were all about Dennis Raider
Speaker 6: and learning his history and for the lack of a
Speaker 6: better phrase, stalking him for about a week.
Speaker 3: Finally, on February twenty fifth, two thousand and five, after
Speaker 3: days of waiting and decades of police work, investigators got
Speaker 3: what they were looking for. The DNA results came back.
Speaker 6: It told us that the semen that was from the
Speaker 6: feet of Josie o'tero, the stain that was left in
Speaker 6: the bathrobe that was at Nancy Fox's head, and the
Speaker 6: fingernail from Vicky Waigerley all those three DNA samples by
Speaker 6: using reverse DNA told us that whoever left those samples
Speaker 6: was the father of Kerrie Raider, which meant Dennis Raider.
Speaker 6: And then that was the time to make an arrest.
Speaker 3: Next time on Monster BTK.
Speaker 6: On that day, I remember it was radio silence.
Speaker 1: When the chief came out and said we've caught BTK.
Speaker 1: Denial was the first reaction. One thing now said, My
Speaker 1: phone started ranging and literally literally didn't quit ranging all
Speaker 1: day on.
Speaker 12: I've gone into physical shock.
Speaker 3: I shook for four days.
Speaker 12: I'm spinning, literally about to pass out, and I make
Speaker 12: it over to my couch right.
Speaker 4: Then at that moment, I'm starting to plan my revenge
Speaker 4: now that they got him, how am I going to
Speaker 4: get my hands on him?
Speaker 11: Once he realized there was no getting out of this,
Speaker 11: he then admitted to all the murders and said, well,
Speaker 11: since you know about seven, I'll tell you event some others.
Speaker 2: Monster BTK is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: The show is written by Nomes Griffin, Trevor Young, and
Speaker 2: Jesse Funk. Our host is Susan Peters. Executive producers on
Speaker 2: Behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay,
Speaker 2: alongside supervising producer Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on Behalf of
Speaker 2: iHeart Podcasts include Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, alongside producers
Speaker 2: Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk and supervising producerrima Il Kali.
Speaker 2: Marketing support by David Wasserman and Alison Wright at iHeart
Speaker 2: Podcasts and Caroline Origemma at tenderfoot TV. Auditional research by
Speaker 2: Claudia Daffrico, original artwork by Kevin Mister Soul Harp, original
Speaker 2: music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Special thanks to Orrin
Speaker 2: Rosenbaum and the team at UTA and the Nord Group.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV, visit the
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 2: favorite shows. Thanks for listening.