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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: It could be a breakthrough in the BTK investigation in
Speaker 3: just a couple of hours, which you tall. Police are
Speaker 3: expected to release new information about the BTK case. Police
Speaker 3: took a person of interest.
Speaker 4: In for questioning.
Speaker 3: Cake News has learned police are expected to say that
Speaker 3: person is indeed a suspect in the BTK case.
Speaker 5: The day he was arrested, I was at the mall
Speaker 5: because it was in the morning before we went to
Speaker 5: work at two o'clock, and the boss called and said,
Speaker 5: you got to get into work right away. I said,
Speaker 5: why where Almost positive BTK was caught. I was standing
Speaker 5: in the middle of the mall. The mall started going
Speaker 5: round and round and round, and I thought, oh my god,
Speaker 5: I'm going to faint. I'm going to faint, and I
Speaker 5: started crying, and I sat down and put my head
Speaker 5: between my legs. That was over a news story. We've
Speaker 5: never done that before, but it involved us so much
Speaker 5: that we became part of the fear, part of the story,
Speaker 5: part of the extreme relief. When he was finally caught,
Speaker 5: I remember I started to cry, thinking to myself, the
Speaker 5: nightmare is over for Wichita.
Speaker 6: Someone killed four members of a family.
Speaker 7: Hedge vanished from her home suddenly last weekend. Her phone
Speaker 7: lines had been cut, her door left open.
Speaker 8: You see the victim playing there with plastic bags over
Speaker 8: their heads, strangled.
Speaker 9: You could tell there was a plan scenario.
Speaker 10: Well, police have said no more about the contents of
Speaker 10: the letter. It does contain some sort of threat and
Speaker 10: implies the killer may strike again.
Speaker 4: He's going to play with these victims.
Speaker 11: He'd get him to the point of death and then
Speaker 11: bring them back and then brings them back to the
Speaker 11: point of death.
Speaker 5: From My Heart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. I'm Susan Peters
Speaker 5: and this is Monster BTK. On February twenty fourth, two
Speaker 5: thousand and five, the Wichita Police Department, alongside the KBI
Speaker 5: and FBI, received the news they had been waiting for
Speaker 5: the DNA preserved from the nineteen seventy four Otero killings
Speaker 5: matched Dennis Rader. It was time to execute and arrest,
Speaker 5: and they were ready. Over the past week, the police
Speaker 5: had stalked Raider, marking every aspect of his daily routine.
Speaker 5: They tailored their arrest to his patterns, planning every single
Speaker 5: element down to the minute the arrest would occur. Raider
Speaker 5: would not get away this time. The police officers, investigators,
Speaker 5: and lawyers who had put in countless hours tracking down
Speaker 5: BTK over the last year, were brimming with tension. They
Speaker 5: went home to tell their families that tomorrow they may
Speaker 5: finally get their guy. Here's former Sedgwick County Deputy District
Speaker 5: Attorney Kevin O'Connor.
Speaker 9: When we did finally find and knew we were going
Speaker 9: to arrest Ennis Raider, it was the night before. All
Speaker 9: plans were made, all search warrants were prepared, the arrest
Speaker 9: team was identified, the plan of action was done. It
Speaker 9: was really very impressive, almost like an army maneuver type
Speaker 9: of planning. I mean they even have it down to
Speaker 9: who was going to put the cuffs on them, who
Speaker 9: was going to walk them back to the car that
Speaker 9: Kenny Landware was going to be in, and they said
Speaker 9: go home, you can tell your loved ones what you're doing,
Speaker 9: and that there's going to be arrest the next day.
Speaker 9: And I remember going home and telling my wife. I said,
Speaker 9: I have something to tell you, and she sat down
Speaker 9: and she started crying, and I go, what, why are
Speaker 9: you crying? And she goes, you're going to tell me
Speaker 9: you're having an affair, and I go, no, I go,
Speaker 9: We're going to arrest Betk tomorrow.
Speaker 5: On the morning of February twenty fifth, the arrest team
Speaker 5: slipped quietly into Park City.
Speaker 2: On that day.
Speaker 9: I remember it was radio silence, and it was time coordinated,
Speaker 9: so everybody moved at the same time so as not
Speaker 9: to tip him off, because we didn't know what access
Speaker 9: he had to police radio, police scanners. There was a
Speaker 9: concern about somebody who was able to commit crimes over
Speaker 9: a thirty year period, how savvy he might be and
Speaker 9: how aware he might be, and then knowing that he's
Speaker 9: on the other side of a wall from a police department,
Speaker 9: so we raided essentially Park City City Hall.
Speaker 5: The arrest was scheduled for twelve to fifteen PM, when
Speaker 5: Raider would make his way home from his Park City office,
Speaker 5: as he did every Friday. They spent all morning staging
Speaker 5: cops into their positions. Backing the arrest team were more
Speaker 5: than two hundred people, many of them assigned to simultaneous searches.
Speaker 9: We planned it that the search warrants would be executed
Speaker 9: at the same time, so as Dennis Raider was being arrested,
Speaker 9: these search warrants were then being executed. We didn't want
Speaker 9: to serve a search warrant at the Park City Library
Speaker 9: and Dennis Raider would be sitting at the Park City
Speaker 9: Police Department and become aware that the FBI and the
Speaker 9: Wichtap Police Department were serving a warrant at the Park
Speaker 9: City Library.
Speaker 5: In addition to the arrest team, they had prepped the
Speaker 5: bomb unit, a computer seizure team, relief teams, and interview teams.
Speaker 5: While police prepared, they worried the news would leak to
Speaker 5: the media, jeopardizing the success of their arrest. Land where
Speaker 5: wanted Raider in police custody. The media frenzy began, but
Speaker 5: by nine am, the buzzing had already started.
Speaker 10: Now we've been hearing from sources that police are waiting
Speaker 10: for d and a results. If this is the man
Speaker 10: and they do get a match, it is going to
Speaker 10: be very tough for them to keep this quiet.
Speaker 5: They stealed their nerves and told themselves they would not
Speaker 5: fumble the most historic day of their careers. The arrest
Speaker 5: team lined up on a side street in Park City,
Speaker 5: two blocks from Raider's house. Officers Dan Hardy and Scott
Speaker 5: Moon were first in line and would be the ones
Speaker 5: to initially pull Raider over. Their fleet included four other
Speaker 5: vehicles and nine other men, including Dana Gouge, Kelly Otis,
Speaker 5: and Kenny Landware. Everyone wore body armor. They didn't know
Speaker 5: how Raider would react to his arrest and prepared for
Speaker 5: the worst. The minutes till go time ticked by. Finally,
Speaker 5: their radio switched on. He's on the move, a voice said.
Speaker 5: Over the next few moments, an officer in an unmarked
Speaker 5: car tailed Raider, reporting on his every turn. Raider was
Speaker 5: making his way home for lunch with his wife, Paula. Unsuspecting,
Speaker 5: he pulled past the line of cops lying in wait
Speaker 5: to arrest him. Officers Hardy and Moon let him pass
Speaker 5: before gunning the engine, pulling up behind Raider and flipping
Speaker 5: the flashing lights on the front of the car. Raider, ever,
Speaker 5: the obedient citizen pulled over. Immediately, the arrest team surrounded Raider,
Speaker 5: guns drawn and ordered him to the ground. Raider, for
Speaker 5: his part, remained calm and collected. He turned to the
Speaker 5: police and asked, with a straight face.
Speaker 4: Would you please call my wife? She was expecting me
Speaker 4: for lunch. I assume you know where I live.
Speaker 5: He slipped into the cold serial killer role he had
Speaker 5: crafted for himself over the last thirty years. Kevin O'Connor
Speaker 5: says as police handcuffed him, he played up the dramatics.
Speaker 9: When Rader got into the car after being arrested, they
Speaker 9: walked him back to a car that Kenny Landweer was
Speaker 9: in and they opened the door and he says, well, hello, mister.
Speaker 5: Landwere Later, in confession of a serial killer, Rader would say.
Speaker 4: I did what Son of Sam did.
Speaker 5: Rader often looked to the other serial killers of the
Speaker 5: time for inspiration. David Burkerwood's aka Son of Sam killed
Speaker 5: six people between nineteen seventy six and seventy seven in
Speaker 5: New York City. This is a clip from the Today
Speaker 5: Show on the Dave Berkowitz was arrested when he.
Speaker 12: Was arrested late last night in his apartment at Yunkers.
Speaker 4: New York.
Speaker 12: He told the officers, Okay, you've got me.
Speaker 5: Police carried Raider off and would in short order hold
Speaker 5: him for thirty six hours of questioning while WPD officers
Speaker 5: and FBI made the arrest. The prosecutors prepped the interview room.
Speaker 9: When they arrested him and brought him up to the
Speaker 9: Epic Center, there was a interview room that was prepared.
Speaker 9: It was an old copy room from this office, and
Speaker 9: I remember my boss, Nola Folston going in there and
Speaker 9: turning the table around till you could initially see the
Speaker 9: detective land wherein the guy from the FBI, Bob Morton,
Speaker 9: who started the initial interview, and then Raider on the
Speaker 9: other side. Well, Nola came in and switched it around
Speaker 9: where the camera would be on Dennis Rader, with the
Speaker 9: law enforcement officers with their backs to the camera.
Speaker 5: Folston was thinking ahead to the trial. Looking into Rayder's
Speaker 5: eyes as he was interrogated about his heinous crimes would
Speaker 5: have a greater impact on the jury and put a
Speaker 5: face to the previously faceless monster of Wichita's history. Just
Speaker 5: twenty minutes after Raider had been ordered to the ground
Speaker 5: Land where and Morton brought him into the interview room
Speaker 5: and handcuffed him to the table. They had planned to
Speaker 5: play up the good cop interview tactic the arresting officers
Speaker 5: had played the bad cops in the interrogation room. Land
Speaker 5: Where introduced Raider to Detective Dana Guage, who held a
Speaker 5: search warrant to collect Raider's DNA. They swabbed him and
Speaker 5: sent the test off to confirm what Carrie Rawson's DNA
Speaker 5: had proved just a day earlier. Two went to the
Speaker 5: County forensics lab and two to the KBI lab in Topeka.
Speaker 5: Rader agreed to talk, but he wouldn't make it easy
Speaker 5: for them. He never even questioned why he was being interviewed.
Speaker 5: To him, this was his fifteen minutes in the spotlight.
Speaker 5: Here's Catherine Ramsland.
Speaker 13: When they brought him in for interrogation, he did kind
Speaker 13: of play a game for a little ways. He didn't
Speaker 13: break down right away. He said, I'm just don't want
Speaker 13: to be I've been watching this all in the news.
Speaker 13: You know, I know the cases really well, but I
Speaker 13: really didn't do anything.
Speaker 5: Land Where asked why the oteros had been murdered.
Speaker 4: Well, if you take that murder and some of the others,
Speaker 4: I would say, you've got a serial killer loose.
Speaker 5: He asked Rader what he thought about BTK.
Speaker 4: The killer is like a lone wolf, kind of like
Speaker 4: a spy or something.
Speaker 5: Fed up Land Where and Morton backed Raider into a corner.
Speaker 13: They came back and said, well, we do have DNA
Speaker 13: from some of these scenes.
Speaker 5: Morton asked Rader what he thought would happen if his
Speaker 5: DNA matched btk's.
Speaker 4: I guess that might be it.
Speaker 13: Then he was shocked that they still had some preserved
Speaker 13: DNA from even back as far as the Otaro's when
Speaker 13: nobody even knew anything about DNA.
Speaker 5: Back then, the walls were closing in on Raider. Land
Speaker 5: where played his biggest hand. Here is an excerpt from
Speaker 5: the Wichita Eagle book bind Torture Kill, read by a
Speaker 5: voice actor.
Speaker 14: He pulled out a purple computer disc, land Where told
Speaker 14: Rader that this disc sent by BTK, appointed the cops
Speaker 14: to Raider's church and to him, could he explain that?
Speaker 5: Then Raider asked a few questions of his own.
Speaker 4: Would BTK get the death penalty? BTK has killed some
Speaker 4: kids and stuff? What would happen to btk's house, you guys,
Speaker 4: have got me? How can I get out of it?
Speaker 4: And finally, isn't any way you can get out of
Speaker 4: DNA right?
Speaker 5: Morton had had enough. He yelled at Raider, just tell
Speaker 5: us who you are.
Speaker 4: I'm BTK.
Speaker 13: Once he realized there was no getting out of this,
Speaker 13: he then admitted to all the murders and so, well,
Speaker 13: since you know about seven, i'll tell you that some others.
Speaker 10: For decades, it's been speculated BTK was responsible for more murders,
Speaker 10: two murders in particular, the nineteen ninety one murder of
Speaker 10: Dolores Davis and the nineteen eighty five murder of Marine Hedge.
Speaker 10: Both women were found strangled and bound in Sedgwick County.
Speaker 5: Land, where and Morton took a break. After three hours,
Speaker 5: they had secured a confession. While the two men were
Speaker 5: out of the room, Raider told KBI Special Agent in
Speaker 5: charge Larry Thomas.
Speaker 4: Well, you guys got the evidence. There's no way I
Speaker 4: can get out of it. I can't beat around the bush.
Speaker 4: Whether it's a day or two or a week, you're
Speaker 4: going to find it. So I might as well just
Speaker 4: fess up. They'll probably find things that I've even forgotten about.
Speaker 5: Raider would lead police to the evidence he had accumulated
Speaker 5: over the last thirty years. Drawing a map of his home,
Speaker 5: Rader pointed investigators to a stash of scrap books in
Speaker 5: the cupboard, his collection of slick ads in the closet,
Speaker 5: and his hit kit in another corner of the home.
Speaker 5: The attic contained his old detective magazines. The car held
Speaker 5: a shotgun and dolls like those mailed to the Wichitau Eagle.
Speaker 5: The important evidence, however, he kept in his office. Here
Speaker 5: again is an excerpt from bind Torture.
Speaker 14: Kill at Raiders City Hall office, they found what he
Speaker 14: called his mother load trophies in all his original writings.
Speaker 14: In the bottom drawer of a cream colored filing cabinet,
Speaker 14: they found seven three ring binders in more than twenty
Speaker 14: five hanging file folders, newspaper clippings about many of the killings,
Speaker 14: drawings depicting women bound at torture, machines of Raiders design,
Speaker 14: a copy of the police wanted poster for the OTO homicides,
Speaker 14: and computer discs that were labeled according to the chapters
Speaker 14: of btk's book.
Speaker 5: Descriptions of the mother Load fill five pages of the
Speaker 5: State of Kansas's Summary of Evidence. A document prepared by
Speaker 5: Kevin O'Connor that provides full accounts of Raider's crimes. It
Speaker 5: took investigators a month to digitally record all of the
Speaker 5: mother load. As evidence was collected from raiders, Park City
Speaker 5: Office police interviewed him in pairs for over thirty hours.
Speaker 5: The footage from these interviews filled seventeen DVDs, and in them,
Speaker 5: Raider describes in chilling, matter of fact detail, the cold
Speaker 5: blooded murder of ten people.
Speaker 9: In looking at the drawings he made of Nancy Fox,
Speaker 9: he will tell Detective Ralph that he's getting excited sexually
Speaker 9: just remembering. He will even mimic Josephine Josie o'tero because
Speaker 9: he killed her parents in front of her. He killed
Speaker 9: her little brother in front of her, and he will
Speaker 9: mimick her saying, don't hurt my mommy, don't hurt my mommy.
Speaker 9: It's amazing to me the restraint that the law enforcement
Speaker 9: officers had.
Speaker 5: He attempted to joke around with the interviewers.
Speaker 9: Once he started talking, they couldn't shut him up. He
Speaker 9: became so comfortable that during a break in the interviewing,
Speaker 9: he had a cup of some kind of drink and
Speaker 9: the officer that came in to see if he wanted
Speaker 9: to go to the bathroom or something. Said well, we
Speaker 9: can put that drink for you in the refrigerator. He goes,
Speaker 9: you just put your name on it. So he wrote
Speaker 9: bt K on the cup.
Speaker 11: So that's who he really was.
Speaker 13: He wanted the notoriety. He does still kick himself over
Speaker 13: the mistakes he made with that floppy disk, but once
Speaker 13: caught okay, I'm just going to put it all out
Speaker 13: there because i want to be famous.
Speaker 5: The Wichita Police Department had kept the rumors at bay
Speaker 5: for as long as possible, but the commotion in Park
Speaker 5: City was heating up. Once Raider was in custody, they
Speaker 5: knew it wouldn't be long before the news reports began.
Speaker 12: As we've been telling you all day, they executed a
Speaker 12: search warrant in Park City at a home. There's a
Speaker 12: possible BTK suspect who is now in police custody. Police
Speaker 12: have now called a Saturday morning news conference for ten am.
Speaker 5: We were buzzing at Cake News. We followed each story
Speaker 5: that day with any updates we had. By the six
Speaker 5: pm newslaught, we were airing coverage from every critical location.
Speaker 5: The announcement would be broadcast worldwide. We waited with baited breath.
Speaker 5: In just fourteen hours, we would finally have our answer
Speaker 5: to a thirty year old question. The next day, Saturday,
Speaker 5: February twenty sixth, at ten am, Wichita Police gathered local,
Speaker 5: state and federal law enforcement, regular citizens, and family members
Speaker 5: of btk's victims into the City Council Auditorium. Local national
Speaker 5: and international reporters set up cameras. CNN and MSNBC carried
Speaker 5: the news conference live. The press conference lasted nearly an hour.
Speaker 5: In total, eight people spoke. It wasn't until Sheriff Gary Steed,
Speaker 5: sixth in the lineup of speakers, took the podium that
Speaker 5: any real details were revealed.
Speaker 15: I'm also pleased to announce today that we have brought
Speaker 15: closure to two cases, and that of the homicides of
Speaker 15: Marine Hedge and Dolores Davis Raiders.
Speaker 8: Name.
Speaker 5: What everyone had been hanging on the edge of their
Speaker 5: seats waiting for wasn't even spoken until the very end.
Speaker 11: Shortly afternoon. Yesterday afternoon, agents from the KBI, agents from
Speaker 11: the FBI, and members of the Wichitak Police Department arrested
Speaker 11: Dennis Raider, fifty nine, a white male in Park City, Kansas.
Speaker 5: We shared the news with Wichita and the world.
Speaker 4: The bottom line, BTK is arrested.
Speaker 5: A quarter century search for Wichita's worst serial killer is over.
Speaker 8: Good evening.
Speaker 5: It is a day that will go down in Wichita history.
Speaker 5: My coworkers and I exhaled the biggest news story of
Speaker 5: our collective careers was finally hitting its closing sequence. Over
Speaker 5: the twenty fifth and twenty sixth of February, the news
Speaker 5: of raiders arrests shattered its way through the Wichita community.
Speaker 5: Bob Smeiser, a member of Raider's church, Christ Lutheran, was
Speaker 5: among the first group of church members to find out.
Speaker 5: On the afternoon of the twenty fifth.
Speaker 6: Short of Alzheimer's I'll never Forget It.
Speaker 5: He had actually had plans with Rader for that weekend.
Speaker 6: We were playing a fishing trip. He can never go,
Speaker 6: but that year and five he said, yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 6: go with the guests. He thought he was home free.
Speaker 6: He thought I can just pop out and go, we
Speaker 6: can go to this fishing trip. I'm the president of
Speaker 6: the council now, and you know, and that would be
Speaker 6: a good thing for me, you know, to go.
Speaker 5: That fishing trip. Obviously, didn't happen.
Speaker 6: So I got a call. Couldn't have been one o'clock yet,
Speaker 6: I'll tell you. I said, Wellington at a communience store,
Speaker 6: putting gas in my vand and my wife called him
Speaker 6: and said, hey, Chan, just call something going on to church? Really,
Speaker 6: I said, Mike's there. The police are there and they've
Speaker 6: arrested Dnis. Sick to my stomach, not ready to accept
Speaker 6: it at this point, but sick to my stomach. So
Speaker 6: immediately started to call Mike, trying to get hold of
Speaker 6: my of course he's busy with the investigators. And finally
Speaker 6: get a hold of him and he said, I got
Speaker 6: to get out of here. I got him out of
Speaker 6: the church after they got done with the search, and
Speaker 6: he went home. Dennis actually asked for him, but they
Speaker 6: were not going it seems, so, you know. And once
Speaker 6: Thenis started talking about today, just like him talk Why
Speaker 6: wouldn't you.
Speaker 5: The next morning, the day of the police news conference,
Speaker 5: Smiser rose early and had it back to Christ Lutheran Church.
Speaker 6: So Saturday morning and there there's five of us in there.
Speaker 6: I can't even begin to tell you how surreal it was.
Speaker 6: And we had to watch it from upstairs in that
Speaker 6: part of the building because the only place we had
Speaker 6: any TV reception. There isn't a lot to say, you know,
Speaker 6: Stunned is still the best description. When the chief came
Speaker 6: out and said we've caught BTK, denial was the first reaction.
Speaker 6: And in the midst of that, the media started knocking
Speaker 6: on the front door of the church. There was a
Speaker 6: bunch of them, and it wasn't just a few hours
Speaker 6: before national people were on.
Speaker 8: Top of us.
Speaker 5: Every news outlet was trying to get the story out.
Speaker 5: An unfortunate consequence of the race to be first is
Speaker 5: that it puts us at odds with those at the
Speaker 5: very center of these monumental news events.
Speaker 6: They had a council meeting. I was not on a council.
Speaker 6: That's why I was at the front door. They called
Speaker 6: us guards or something whatever, and we would try to
Speaker 6: be very nice to everybody. It was a little harder
Speaker 6: with some Another council broke up. One of the young
Speaker 6: ladies that was on the council. She won't talk to anybody.
Speaker 6: I get that. So I took her out the side
Speaker 6: door and put her in her car, and one of
Speaker 6: the guys from the Channel twelve came out and he
Speaker 6: said Are you protecting her from us? And I said, no,
Speaker 6: she just doesn't. She's said, I'm want to talk. At
Speaker 6: that time, there were twenty or thirty people out there
Speaker 6: and they tried everything. One of them brought a basket,
Speaker 6: you know, it was oranges and apples, and I'd like
Speaker 6: to get this Pastory Clark. I said, yeah, I suppose
Speaker 6: you would, but no, that's not happening to day. And
Speaker 6: there was a lot of that trying to get through
Speaker 6: the gatekeeper.
Speaker 5: The news was out to the world. With that came
Speaker 5: the NonStop media requests and all the confusion, anger and
Speaker 5: second guessing expected from discovering that a pillar of your
Speaker 5: community was built on a lie.
Speaker 6: I heard the chiefs say we've captured BTK. I don't
Speaker 6: have any evidence of why. He didn't say, you know,
Speaker 6: he's admitted to ten murders. So I was skeptical at
Speaker 6: that point. For people outside, or at least in that
Speaker 6: group and that church group, there was no belief that
Speaker 6: this was a real thing, especially the older people that
Speaker 6: people have been friends with, Dorothea, Dennis's mom and dad,
Speaker 6: and Paula's mom and dad, the people that you know
Speaker 6: had been our nucleus for years. Now they weren't ready
Speaker 6: at that point. I'm not sure that I one hundred percent.
Speaker 6: I mean, I was angry with the chief. People interviewed
Speaker 6: me outside the church on that Saturday, and I just said, listen,
Speaker 6: I don't know that that's true. My sons they were
Speaker 6: there that day that Sunday with all this media. The
Speaker 6: night before, we had finally let the kids watched and
Speaker 6: the picture came up Tennis and we said Tim was five,
Speaker 6: he was about to be six if we watch quiet,
Speaker 6: not asking any questions, and Tim sort of looked at
Speaker 6: me and said, Dad, he tricked, used, didn't me yes,
Speaker 6: And that's what he did.
Speaker 5: The news hit Raider's own family even harder. Carrie Rawson
Speaker 5: was a few states away at her home in Michigan
Speaker 5: when she was notified.
Speaker 7: February twenty fifth, two thousand and five. I was home
Speaker 7: and I see this strange car parked out underneath this window.
Speaker 7: It just it was out of place. I'm getting scared
Speaker 7: because my dad had instilled such a stranger danger fairing
Speaker 7: too me. They called my husband. I said, there's a
Speaker 7: strange car with a man sitting in it. He's not moving.
Speaker 7: I don't know what he's doing. I said, should I
Speaker 7: call the police, So, in irony, almost called the police
Speaker 7: on the FBI. I hear a knock on my door
Speaker 7: and then he said on the other side of the door,
Speaker 7: I'm with the FBI and I need to question you.
Speaker 7: He said he was looking for Harry Raider Rosson and
Speaker 7: he's like, is that you from Wichita, Kansas. I was
Speaker 7: starting to calm down because I was like, oh, it
Speaker 7: is the FBI. He's like, do you know about BTK?
Speaker 7: And he just drops it, your dad is BTK.
Speaker 5: In the studio with Payne Lindsay, she recounted the visceral
Speaker 5: feelings this news brocked.
Speaker 7: Everything just sears instant, like I can tell you where
Speaker 7: the chocolate cake was that I hadn't made.
Speaker 2: I can tell you the.
Speaker 7: Color in my purse, orm my keys were color of
Speaker 7: the kitchen towels instant. Did you ever think, no, he's not,
Speaker 7: You're full of shit? It like, well, I mean at
Speaker 7: that point, I've gone into physical shock. I'm shaking. I
Speaker 7: shook for four days. He's realizing right away I'm not okay.
Speaker 7: I'm spinning, literally about to pass out, and I make
Speaker 7: it over to my couch. I asked the agent and
Speaker 7: I'm like, well, can I call my Grandma Eileen, my
Speaker 7: mom's mom that lives down the street from my parents,
Speaker 7: And he said, yeah, you can call her, but you
Speaker 7: can't tell her what's going on. So I called Grandma
Speaker 7: Eileen and I said Dad's been arrested. I'd left out BTK,
Speaker 7: but I said Dad's been arrested, and she says, oh shit,
Speaker 7: and she says, hold on, I'll call you back, and
Speaker 7: she walked out and down around the corner, looked past
Speaker 7: missus Hedge's house and saw all of the crime scene
Speaker 7: trucks and all of the police cars and FBI cars,
Speaker 7: bomb disposal truck, everything down at my parents' house. My
Speaker 7: grandma called me back, told us what was going on,
Speaker 7: and then I have found out later they were picked
Speaker 7: up not long after that and taken down to where
Speaker 7: my mom was, and other family were picked up and
Speaker 7: everyone was questioned.
Speaker 5: It is hard to imagine how any us would react
Speaker 5: in Carrie's situation. Understandably, it was very difficult to process.
Speaker 7: I was trying to alibi my dad. I thought I
Speaker 7: could sit there and prove right there, my dad's a
Speaker 7: really great guy. Well, see, they had arrested the wrong
Speaker 7: guy in December about four, my mom was being interviewed
Speaker 7: by which TAB police and maybe KBIFBI, I'm not sure.
Speaker 7: And she literally was saying, you got the wrong guy
Speaker 7: in December, and you got the wrong guy again. You
Speaker 7: know she was mad. I was mad too. You're just
Speaker 7: very defensive with this person that you love that's only good,
Speaker 7: and you're mad because you're like, you got the wrong guy.
Speaker 7: So I'm sitting there and now my husband's Homi sitting
Speaker 7: next to me. He's holding my hand where that I'm
Speaker 7: basically completely falling apart. He's trying to astorb this. I'm
Speaker 7: trying to alibi my dad. So I'm like, what are
Speaker 7: the dates of the murders? The investigator gave me some
Speaker 7: dates in the seventies, and I was like, I wasn't
Speaker 7: alive then, and then he said September of eighty six,
Speaker 7: and I said, I don't have memories of September of
Speaker 7: eighty six other than I started third grade. And then
Speaker 7: it hit. I remembered missus Hedge. My head sunk, and
Speaker 7: it was like something steered inside of me, in my guts,
Speaker 7: and I got really quiet, and it was like I
Speaker 7: knew that Dad was BTK and had murdered missus Hedge.
Speaker 7: I was Carrie and he was Dad, and then he
Speaker 7: was arrested, and all of a sudden he was BTK
Speaker 7: and I lost Carrie.
Speaker 5: Carrie also talked about the way the arrest affected her mother, Paula.
Speaker 7: Guy would spend a lot of time thinking about what
Speaker 7: did I want to ask my mom and how much
Speaker 7: can I push because she has a similar PTSD from
Speaker 7: when she was notified and picked up. Everybody patted it
Speaker 7: around my mom after the arrest. In John Douglas's book,
Speaker 7: Keith talks about he was trying to get an idea
Speaker 7: about my mom Paula, and he said the whole community
Speaker 7: early on still they were very protective of her. They
Speaker 7: they just surrounded her and took care of her, and
Speaker 7: nobody really wanted to push her. My mom had been
Speaker 7: gathlighted and conned by my father and thought he was
Speaker 7: one thing and Harry has always been this other thing.
Speaker 7: We are domestic abuse victims. I think my mom probably
Speaker 7: does hold some answers, but we don't really go there.
Speaker 7: My mom said it was like your dad died that day.
Speaker 7: That's how she's dealt with it.
Speaker 5: The news had broken Carrie and Paula's hearts. Raiders' murders
Speaker 5: had broken six families, and those families were still waiting
Speaker 5: on answers. Across the country, family members of Raiders victims
Speaker 5: were receiving once in a lifetime phone calls. Jeff Davis's mother,
Speaker 5: Dolores Davis, was murdered in January of nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 5: She was Dennis Raider's last victim. Jeff spent years wondering
Speaker 5: who his mother's killer was. Now his personal grief was
Speaker 5: becoming part of Wichita's history.
Speaker 8: I was writ in Memphis of that time, and I
Speaker 8: was out playing pool in my favorite place on Friday afternoon,
Speaker 8: and I got a call from the Sheriff's detjective and
Speaker 8: all instead was we got him, but it wasn't children
Speaker 8: the next morning, when Chief Williams of the police Department
Speaker 8: and now they had Captain BGK, that I realized mom
Speaker 8: was his victim and that he wasn't one of responsible.
Speaker 8: I never suspected. For whatever reason, I never connected him
Speaker 8: with it.
Speaker 4: I don't know why.
Speaker 8: It never crossed my mind. And literally I was ecstatic
Speaker 8: that they caught ing, and of course we lived, and
Speaker 8: all the painting had cost but it all happened so fast.
Speaker 8: Once they announced that, my phone started ringing, and literally
Speaker 8: he didn't quit ringing all day long.
Speaker 5: Again, the news media cut in.
Speaker 8: I couldn't take a call without another call cutting in
Speaker 8: because I was talking to news outlets everywhere across the country,
Speaker 8: and I was just overwhelmed. I remember going to bed
Speaker 8: that next night exhausted because everything just hit like a
Speaker 8: whole wind.
Speaker 4: It was just.
Speaker 8: A bizarre, kind of surrealistic situation. I'm still getting in
Speaker 8: my head, well, a little human cockroach. She looks like
Speaker 8: it took a while for an all to sink in it,
Speaker 8: So I'm trying to say it took a while to
Speaker 8: realize that it was him and that he was responsible
Speaker 8: for everybody, to include my mother. In spite of all
Speaker 8: the false alarms and the other speculations that had gone on,
Speaker 8: he was the one. There was no doubt about that
Speaker 8: at this point in time.
Speaker 5: I can't imagine how it felt to learn the identity
Speaker 5: of your mother's killer after fourteen years, to learn, along
Speaker 5: with the rest of the world, that it was the
Speaker 5: same man responsible for terrorizing your hometown since the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 5: Jeff had to make his way back home.
Speaker 8: I just started getting up and getting ready to get
Speaker 8: myself be where I could get back. It was so
Speaker 8: I could be a part of all that.
Speaker 5: In New Mexico, Charlie Taro was trying to start over
Speaker 5: after his time in prison. His two parents, Joseph and Julie,
Speaker 5: and his younger siblings Josie and Joey, were the very
Speaker 5: first victims of BTK. Their murders had forever changed the
Speaker 5: trajectory of the eldest Otero's siblings life.
Speaker 16: I was still in parole when he got caught. I
Speaker 16: was in Albuquerque. I was working demolition. It was like
Speaker 16: two weeks after I got out of prison. I was
Speaker 16: blessed with having somebody hire me. The day I got
Speaker 16: out of prison, I made a phone call. They hired
Speaker 16: me up the next day. I was in their yard
Speaker 16: one day and I was on my knees and I
Speaker 16: was pulling up all these bushes. They had like twenty
Speaker 16: little shrubs, and I was digging each one out, pullying.
Speaker 16: I was taking me a couple of minutes apiece, and
Speaker 16: the phone rings. I had my phone right here. I
Speaker 16: picked up as my sister and she goes they caught him.
Speaker 16: I'm said, are you serious, He goes says, Yep, they
Speaker 16: got him, and then bushes were flying ten feet over
Speaker 16: my head. I just started yanking him out of the
Speaker 16: ground and they were flying over my head, and it's
Speaker 16: like superhuman crazy stuff. That's how I found out.
Speaker 5: Similar to Jeff's reaction, Charlie was angry.
Speaker 16: Right then at that moment. I'm starting to plan my
Speaker 16: revenge now that they got him, how am I going
Speaker 16: to get.
Speaker 4: My hands on him?
Speaker 5: In Steve Ralford's case, I would be there when he
Speaker 5: first learned the identity of Dennis Rader. Steve Ralford had
Speaker 5: spent the last twenty eight years blaming himself for the
Speaker 5: murder of his mother, Shirley Vyanne. Raider gained access to
Speaker 5: Ryanne's home on the morning of March seventeenth, nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 5: after then five year old Steve opened the door, just
Speaker 5: a few weeks before police caught BTK. I found Steve
Speaker 5: and interviewed him for Cake TV. What would you do
Speaker 5: if you met him face to face?
Speaker 4: Oh God, he would suffer, Yes, me and me would suffer.
Speaker 5: Once BTK had been arrested, I called Steve right away. Okay,
Speaker 5: So the day he was caught you were in Las Vegas. Yeah,
Speaker 5: And I called you and I said it was about
Speaker 5: four weeks after I had interviewed you, so you were
Speaker 5: probably like, Wow, they caught him that quickly, but it
Speaker 5: had taken him a year. But I called you in
Speaker 5: Las Vegas and I said, Steve, I think they caught BTK,
Speaker 5: the man who murdered your mother. What'd you say to me?
Speaker 4: I don't really remember.
Speaker 15: I remember saying that fucking I'm going to ste him
Speaker 15: right down away for money.
Speaker 4: I'm here more.
Speaker 5: That's exactly what you said. My team and I made
Speaker 5: the decision to fly Steve back home to Wichita so
Speaker 5: he could be there when the news was confirmed. The
Speaker 5: following is a story we ran on Cake on February
Speaker 5: twenty sixth, two thousand and five.
Speaker 17: As Steve Ralford watches today's news briefing, the emotion comes immediately.
Speaker 17: This is not only Steve's first time back in Wichita
Speaker 17: since his mother's murder in nineteen seventy seven, but also
Speaker 17: for the first time we show Steve the picture of
Speaker 17: his mother's killer.
Speaker 5: All right, yeah, what are you feeling right now?
Speaker 4: Glen?
Speaker 8: It cuts the bitch the mom conressed in peace.
Speaker 5: Everyone in Wichita was grappling with what we'd learned. We
Speaker 5: blamed ourselves for allowing this monster to live among us
Speaker 5: for this long. We were leaved angry and confused. The
Speaker 5: police did their best to tie up the loose ends
Speaker 5: on this thirty year investigation neatly, and we the media
Speaker 5: worked diligently to put our personal emotions aside and report
Speaker 5: accurately on this story. But with the mounting pressure and
Speaker 5: heightened emotions, some things slipped through the cracks. What we
Speaker 5: weren't clear on were the circumstances surrounding how he had
Speaker 5: been caught. We went on what our sources shared with us,
Speaker 5: and in those early days, not all of it was accurate.
Speaker 5: We missed the mark on a crucial detail of the story.
Speaker 10: Sources tell us Raiders. Twenty six year old daughter Carrie
Speaker 10: went to police with suspicions her father was BTK. Sources
Speaker 10: say she gave a blood sample. That sample, we're told,
Speaker 10: came back as a match.
Speaker 5: Eventually, we did clarify that while Carrie's DNA was key
Speaker 5: in his arrest, she herself did not turn her father in.
Speaker 5: I can understand how this mistake put Carrie in a
Speaker 5: very tough spot. This inaccurate detail about how her DNA
Speaker 5: was collected made its way to national news.
Speaker 7: Like a week later, seeing an embras in one news
Speaker 7: saying that I had turned in my dad and given
Speaker 7: a blood sample. We don't even have cable. I'm reading
Speaker 7: it over the internet. I'm like, I didn't turn in
Speaker 7: my dad and I didn't give blood. I gave a
Speaker 7: cheek swab. So my dad literally writes me, sometime in
Speaker 7: the spring, I heard you turn me in, and I knew,
Speaker 7: deep down in my heart it wasn't true.
Speaker 5: Carrie had mixed feelings about her interactions with the investigators.
Speaker 5: There was the trauma of her being initially notified, the
Speaker 5: shock and frustration that herd was used without her permission,
Speaker 5: But there was also the compassion she was shown the.
Speaker 7: Police like Clanderware and Otis, they all knew right away,
Speaker 7: as soon as they started talking to my family that
Speaker 7: we were all victims. And they said they knew right away.
Speaker 7: There was an eighth family and it was ours. There
Speaker 7: was the seven families from the seven murders. They had
Speaker 7: been working with some of these people for twenty or
Speaker 7: thirty years. They knew them well. They kept tabs on them.
Speaker 7: They helped them, kept them up to date on all
Speaker 7: the cases. They took care of these people, and all
Speaker 7: of a sudden, now they had an eighth family on
Speaker 7: their hands.
Speaker 5: In Park City, sightseers arrived at Raider's house on Independent Street.
Speaker 5: It became a spectacle. One person even attempted to remove
Speaker 5: the family's mailbox bearing his last name. While those who
Speaker 5: knew Raider intimately had turned away from the media, neighbors
Speaker 5: of Raiders were voicing their opinions of him on air.
Speaker 4: He's always been real nice.
Speaker 2: He's been a real property of.
Speaker 7: Every time I gotten to do the mail or get
Speaker 7: my other.
Speaker 4: Thing, he says.
Speaker 8: Hi.
Speaker 2: He was probably, in fact the friendliest they run.
Speaker 6: Home block too.
Speaker 8: Man.
Speaker 10: Well, nobody likes him around Park City's He's been accused
Speaker 10: to let people's dogs out to catch him, or my
Speaker 10: dad told.
Speaker 6: Him was just not to go down there because they
Speaker 6: were strange.
Speaker 5: The monster had finally been captured, and now the whole
Speaker 5: city and millions of onlookers waited to see if he
Speaker 5: would be put away forever. Here again is Kevin O'Connor.
Speaker 9: For me, it was a time where it's like, okay,
Speaker 9: now I got to go to work. We anticipated he
Speaker 9: would want a trial. So that year, between the time
Speaker 9: he started sending things in March of four to the
Speaker 9: time he was captured, I had been preparing along with
Speaker 9: the district attorney.
Speaker 2: We're preparing for trial.
Speaker 5: Nobody knew how Raider would plead, whether or not this
Speaker 5: case would go to trial. He would soon face ten
Speaker 5: first degree murder charges and would do something no one
Speaker 5: was expecting.
Speaker 12: All right, christ Raider, at this time, I want to
Speaker 12: ask how to plead to these ten counts?
Speaker 5: Next time? On Monster BTK.
Speaker 12: One Saturday morning, he called me and the operator said,
Speaker 12: I have a collect call from the Cedric County Detention Center.
Speaker 6: Will you accept the charges? And you go, wow, Yes,
Speaker 6: I will.
Speaker 9: I remember Judge Waller asking what kind of bond we wanted,
Speaker 9: and I think I said something to the effect of
Speaker 9: a I mean, Judge, I don't know ten kazillion million.
Speaker 9: I don't know if there is a number.
Speaker 12: A judge asked Dennis Rader to take him through all
Speaker 12: the killings in the courtroom live on.
Speaker 8: T my mouth pure an adult ray the police.
Speaker 7: They wanted everything my dad had done on record. Now
Speaker 7: were they trying to humiliate my dad on the stand?
Speaker 13: I Don't Know.
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 ilk Ali.
Speaker 2: Marketing support by David Wasserman and Alison Wright at iHeart
Speaker 2: Podsts and Caroline or Agemma at tenderfoot TV. Additional research
Speaker 2: by Claudia Dafrico, original artwork by Kevin Mister soul Harp,
Speaker 2: original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Special thanks to
Speaker 2: Orrin 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