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Speaker 3: What happened first? You were home from school? About what
Speaker 3: time in the morning was it?
Speaker 4: Matt Jim Claudora Mom.
Speaker 3: See this is Steve Ralford who says one day, when
Speaker 3: he was just a little boy, his mom sent him
Speaker 3: to the store because she was sick.
Speaker 4: Excuse me, dealing driven street, get him kind of shoop,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 5: On the way back, got on the sidewalks Toppee shows
Speaker 5: me photograph.
Speaker 3: Dennis Raider showed you a photograph.
Speaker 5: Yes, ma'am, asked me, Did I know who it was?
Speaker 5: I said you no, say I herd look at it again,
Speaker 5: Take it, look at it again. Get back to him,
Speaker 5: you know. About fifteen minutes later, came knocking.
Speaker 4: On our door.
Speaker 5: Me and my brother writes to the door and opened it.
Speaker 3: When Steve answered the door, Dennis Raider was standing.
Speaker 4: There are your parent, comes my mama.
Speaker 6: She shick in bed and proceeded to come on in.
Speaker 6: He forced his way through, turned off TV, and at
Speaker 6: that time, my mama keeps out, what the hell's going
Speaker 6: on here? Reaches under his arm, got the gun. Tell
Speaker 6: those kids to sit on the couch.
Speaker 5: He put some toys and blanket made my mom put
Speaker 5: the toys and blankets and busting and tied the one
Speaker 5: door shut, puts us in there, shut us bed against
Speaker 5: the other door.
Speaker 3: Steve and his siblings were trapped in the bathroom helpless.
Speaker 5: There was a cracking the door. While I look out,
Speaker 5: I heard my mom pleading. When I looked out, she
Speaker 5: can't beating them fucking her mom's hands. She broke a
Speaker 5: fucking bottle in her hands and shit patched it back
Speaker 5: over her head, roped out around her neck, hog tied
Speaker 5: with tape. My brother he broke fucking windows out in
Speaker 5: the bathroom. However, for help, I think I scared him off.
Speaker 5: I broke through the fucking bathroom door.
Speaker 4: My mom was try down town the road. I couldn't.
Speaker 3: Steve ran outside and tried to find help. He went
Speaker 3: to the neighbor's house.
Speaker 5: I go aside go to my neighbors that big, big window,
Speaker 5: clean glass door, poun on it, broke it and come
Speaker 5: the door calling on a couple of mom's dead. I
Speaker 5: tried to given call him down. Hain't got time calling down.
Speaker 3: The neighbor called the police and went next door.
Speaker 4: He went down and kicked seem what I was talking about.
Speaker 4: I'm dead?
Speaker 3: Their mom surely was dead.
Speaker 7: Someone killed four members of a family.
Speaker 8: Had you vanished from her home last weekend? Her phone
Speaker 8: lines had been cut, her door left open.
Speaker 9: You see the victim play in there with plastic bags
Speaker 9: over their heads, strangled. You could tell it was a
Speaker 9: planned scenario.
Speaker 8: Well, police have said no more about the contents of
Speaker 8: the letter. It does contain some sort of threat and
Speaker 8: implies the killer may strike again.
Speaker 7: He's gonna play with these victims.
Speaker 10: He'd get him to the point of death and then
Speaker 10: bring them back and then brings them back to the
Speaker 10: point of death.
Speaker 3: From My Heart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. I'm Susan Peters
Speaker 3: and this is Monster BTK. The murder of Shirley Vyanne
Speaker 3: Ralford was one of the most unusual and tragic murders
Speaker 3: committed by BTK, and that's because She wasn't even the
Speaker 3: intended target. Vyanne was never supposed to interact with BTK
Speaker 3: that terrible day in nineteen seventy seven. It was just
Speaker 3: another unfortunate consequence of Dennis Raider's lunacy and poor planning.
Speaker 3: Vyanne was a young mother, just twenty four years old,
Speaker 3: who was spending her days raising her three children, Bud, Stephanie,
Speaker 3: and Steve.
Speaker 4: I'm in trouble at it in the corner.
Speaker 3: This is Steve Ralford, son of Shirley Vyanne. You heard
Speaker 3: him tell the harrowing story of witnessing his mother's murder
Speaker 3: at the top of the episode. He said his mom
Speaker 3: was strict, but that all of her children adored her.
Speaker 5: A gospel singer, Church mekays take share off for bag Giftea.
Speaker 3: When I talked to you years ago, you told me
Speaker 3: about a song your mama used to sing to you
Speaker 3: before you went.
Speaker 5: To bed, shout and teach, Loune Schatt and build cwn.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 3: Didn't she sing a song too about tears on the pillow?
Speaker 3: Or do you remember that song?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I probably sing it to you, but I'm not
Speaker 4: going to.
Speaker 3: Go ahead so we can hear the word will you
Speaker 3: want to just tell us some of the words?
Speaker 11: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Sure? What she sing to you? Chat? And she lou
Speaker 4: sad pillow cud big long cut, I do not have big.
Speaker 4: I don't remember all the words, but it.
Speaker 3: Was a country song.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 3: What'd she cook for dinner?
Speaker 4: What did you guys like? Efford?
Speaker 3: Do you remember any of that?
Speaker 5: I changed my favorite SKay O b asked she'd always
Speaker 5: feel Margie South.
Speaker 4: That's how.
Speaker 3: While Shirley was raising her children, Dennis Rader was planning
Speaker 3: his next murder. It was nineteen seventy seven, and he
Speaker 3: hadn't killed since Catherine Bright in nineteen seventy four. According
Speaker 3: to the book Confession of a Serial Killer, he picked
Speaker 3: March of that year for his next murder because.
Speaker 11: It relates to threes. It was the third month. It
Speaker 11: was also spring break at WSU in work vacation.
Speaker 3: On March seventeenth, nineteen seventy seven, Saint Patrick's Day. Coincidentally,
Speaker 3: Rader left his house. Here's an excerpt from the book
Speaker 3: Buying Torture Kill, The Inside Story of BTK.
Speaker 12: His primary target this day lived at twelve oh seven
Speaker 12: South Greenswood. If that target didn't work out, just a
Speaker 12: block to the east at twelve forty three South Hydraulic.
Speaker 12: There was an alley behind that address, a place to hide,
Speaker 12: and if those targets didn't work out, he had another
Speaker 12: backup and yet another. He stopped multiple women, switching surveillance
Speaker 12: from one to another for weeks, taking notes, pondering escape routes.
Speaker 12: His not theirs.
Speaker 3: Raider's main target at this address was a woman named
Speaker 3: Cheryl Gilmore. He called her Project Blackout because he had
Speaker 3: spied on her for weeks prior, drinking heavily at nearby bars.
Speaker 3: Raider also discovered that Cheryl lived with two other women.
Speaker 3: If Cheryl wasn't home, surely one of them would be
Speaker 3: there instead. Here are Raiders' own words, quoted in the
Speaker 3: book Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 11: On that particular day, I drove to Dylan's and parked
Speaker 11: in the parking lot and watched this particular residence. And
Speaker 11: then I got out of the car and walked over
Speaker 11: to the door. I knocked, but nobody answered.
Speaker 3: No one was home. Raider got frustrated.
Speaker 11: I was all keyed up over not getting into that
Speaker 11: house on PJ. Green, So I drove and then parked
Speaker 11: and started going through the neighborhood. I had on my
Speaker 11: James Bond jacket, a tweed jacket, and nice shoes. I
Speaker 11: had enough projects I had been watching that if one
Speaker 11: didn't work out, I could just go to another. But
Speaker 11: while I was walking away from the intended house and
Speaker 11: down hydraulic, I saw a young boy coming back from Dylan's.
Speaker 11: I figured he had a mother in the house.
Speaker 3: That young boy was Steve Ralphord. His mother, Shirley, was
Speaker 3: sick with the flume. She had sent him on an
Speaker 3: errand to pick up some soup from the store. Dylan's
Speaker 3: raider approached Steve on his way back home.
Speaker 11: I had a picture in my wallet of my wife baby,
Speaker 11: so I used it to pretend I was looking for them.
Speaker 11: I asked if he had seen them. I knew he
Speaker 11: wouldn't know them. He told me he didn't, but I
Speaker 11: watched where he went.
Speaker 3: Next raider waited about fifteen minutes before approaching the door.
Speaker 3: Finally he knocked.
Speaker 11: This boy opened the door with his brother. I told
Speaker 11: them I was a private detective and showed them the picture.
Speaker 11: I carried a blue briefcase large enough for my hit kit,
Speaker 11: cord tape, plastic bags, a gun, but not too large
Speaker 11: to be noticed when I carried it on the street,
Speaker 11: like I was a salesman or a businessman.
Speaker 3: Steve was just a little boy, six years old. He
Speaker 3: didn't know better, and even if he was older and
Speaker 3: more prepared, he couldn't have predicted that this man was
Speaker 3: a murderer. After Steve opened the door, he didn't really
Speaker 3: respond to Raider's speech about being a detective. So Rader
Speaker 3: forced his way through the doorway and brandished a gun.
Speaker 3: Shirley heard the commotion from the other room and came
Speaker 3: out to see what was going on.
Speaker 11: I told her I had a problem with the sexual
Speaker 11: fantasies and I was going to tie her up. I
Speaker 11: pulled down the blinds and turned off the TV. I
Speaker 11: said I would tie up the kids first. I decided
Speaker 11: to put the kids in the bathroom and shut the door.
Speaker 11: We put toys and blankets in there for them. She
Speaker 11: told the kids to do whatever I said. I tied
Speaker 11: the door shut, but the kids were still yelling. She
Speaker 11: helped me to shove a bed against the door. Then
Speaker 11: I proceeded to tie her up.
Speaker 3: First, Rader used electrical tape to bind her hands and feet.
Speaker 3: Then he used cores and nylon stockings to tie up
Speaker 3: her ankles and wrists even tighter, and he placed her
Speaker 3: face down on the mattress. All the while, steven siblings
Speaker 3: were banging on the door and screaming. Raider threatened to
Speaker 3: shoot them, so they quieted down, and then Shirley Vyanne
Speaker 3: got sick and vomited on the floor.
Speaker 11: I think my being there had made her worse. She
Speaker 11: was partially tied when I got her a glass of
Speaker 11: water and comforted her a bit.
Speaker 3: After Rader finished tying up Shirley Vyanne, he pulled a
Speaker 3: plastic bag around her head and began to strangle her
Speaker 3: until she died.
Speaker 11: I used white plastic bags, garbage size that you could
Speaker 11: buy in a roll. I like the ones in a box,
Speaker 11: using plastic gloves, I folded them neatly and placed them
Speaker 11: in another bag. That bag would go with me in
Speaker 11: case it had fingerprints or material on it.
Speaker 3: The room became more chaotic when suddenly the phone rang.
Speaker 3: It startled Rader, and the kids started to scream and
Speaker 3: bang on the door once again. Rader decided it was
Speaker 3: time to go. He packed up his hit kit and
Speaker 3: left the house. He didn't realize the kids had escaped
Speaker 3: through the bathroom window and were running around the neighborhood
Speaker 3: yelling out for help.
Speaker 9: The kids were able to get out. They broke out
Speaker 9: the window and were able to escape. We worked with
Speaker 9: the children as best we could.
Speaker 3: This is former Wichita Police Chief Richard Lemonnion. He says
Speaker 3: the Wichita Police Department was called by a neighbor who
Speaker 3: found Steve and his siblings running around outside. When police arrived,
Speaker 3: they questioned the children, but it was tough to get
Speaker 3: much out of them.
Speaker 9: One of the children I think was six or eight,
Speaker 9: but he was intellectually challenged, and so we did work
Speaker 9: with him to try to get some ideas. We did
Speaker 9: get the fact that it was a white male. We
Speaker 9: knew also he had a bag, which stands to reason
Speaker 9: because he'd brings the tape, he brings the rope, he
Speaker 9: brings the guns, he brings everything he needs the bags.
Speaker 9: So we were able to establish that. We had specialists
Speaker 9: work with the children, but again that was to no avail.
Speaker 3: Lemunion says the kids were too stunned to formulate coherent recollections,
Speaker 3: which is understandable given their age and the situation. Still,
Speaker 3: it took investigators a while to figure out what happened,
Speaker 3: as Lemunion says, they discovered Vyanne's body, along with all
Speaker 3: of the rope tape and one of the bags that
Speaker 3: BTK left behind. They also found seamen at the crime
Speaker 3: scene where the killer supposedly masturbated. Police immediately noticed the
Speaker 3: similarities to previous BTK murders. Responding officer Raymond Fletcher was
Speaker 3: quoted as saying, it looks like the same thing as
Speaker 3: the O'to case. A few more officers reportedly also expressed
Speaker 3: their suspicions at the crime scene, but according to the
Speaker 3: book Buying Torture Kill, police were hesitant to officially connect
Speaker 3: the crimes.
Speaker 12: Supervisors told them to stop guessing and work the evidence.
Speaker 12: If BTK had killed Shirley Vyanne, it meant he was
Speaker 12: a serial killer, and the brass didn't want to leap
Speaker 12: to that conclusion or set off a panic.
Speaker 3: Le Monnion says he had a hunch that was the
Speaker 3: same person who killed the Otos, but ultimately he decided
Speaker 3: not to release an official statement connecting the murders. He
Speaker 3: didn't want to give BTK any incentive to kill again,
Speaker 3: and he didn't want to create a frenzy. He says
Speaker 3: his main objective following the Vane murder was to protect
Speaker 3: the people of Wichita from further tragedy.
Speaker 9: The big thing that weighs on you is the fact
Speaker 9: that this is going to happen again. You know what's
Speaker 9: going to happen again, and that's what frustrates you to
Speaker 9: the point that what else can I do to protect
Speaker 9: the community. It's not so much that I'm worried about
Speaker 9: my children, because I can protect them, but it's the
Speaker 9: other single moms. It's the other people that can't protect themselves.
Speaker 3: While investigators were busy in making sense of the Buyan murder,
Speaker 3: Steve Ralford's life had been turned upside down.
Speaker 11: After that.
Speaker 5: We went to Posha home and my grandparents. They had
Speaker 5: to have a bunch shit. They come gays from okah huh,
Speaker 5: and that's what in my fucking trouble. Well, he started
Speaker 5: guarded smoking, shooting dope with Data nine, bringing age of six.
Speaker 4: I ain't I don't know, camera rebellious. You can give
Speaker 4: shit about nothing or nobody.
Speaker 3: When you went to your grandparents' house after the Foster home,
Speaker 3: was there any kind of therapy or I.
Speaker 5: Mean they try to give me therapy. I've become remillions.
Speaker 5: Like I said, I thank her My brother and sister,
Speaker 5: they both and draw the yesesile of their life.
Speaker 3: Me.
Speaker 4: They said I was too fucking smart. What might be
Speaker 4: a smart?
Speaker 11: Ask me?
Speaker 4: I'm not smart.
Speaker 3: My heart breaks for Steve Ralford. Over the years, I've
Speaker 3: gotten to know this man well and watch him try
Speaker 3: over and over again to overcome the tragedy of his
Speaker 3: mother's death. Yes, it spiraled him out and sent him
Speaker 3: down a path of self destruction, but I've also watched
Speaker 3: him heal and come to terms with the events of
Speaker 3: his life. Steve has spent the last many years slowly
Speaker 3: pulling himself up, and I'm just happy that I've gotten
Speaker 3: to know him and to be alongside him in his
Speaker 3: journey to recovery.
Speaker 5: Nowadays, that family I had two kids, more about I
Speaker 5: can't do shit.
Speaker 4: And hard.
Speaker 3: The unfortunate reality is that Steve was just one of
Speaker 3: many people whose lives would be destroyed by BTK. Because
Speaker 3: Shirley Vanne was far from the last BTK victim. Only
Speaker 3: months later, this time BTK would strike again.
Speaker 13: Yeah, you will find a homicide forty three, Ny Fox,
Speaker 13: I'm sybody to address.
Speaker 9: Shirley was killed in March of seventy seven, and in
Speaker 9: December of seventy seven Nancy Fox. Nancy was killed.
Speaker 3: Raider had discovered Nancy Fox on another of his prowls
Speaker 3: through the streets of Wichita. He would drive around and
Speaker 3: scope out women that might make good targets. He was
Speaker 3: still reeling from the high of the Shirley Vyanne murder,
Speaker 3: and one day he discovered Nancy walking into her apartment
Speaker 3: at eight forty three South Pershing. She was coming home
Speaker 3: from her job at the nearby mall. Raiders spent weeks
Speaker 3: following her to and from work. He determined that she
Speaker 3: lived alone and would be the perfect project. On the
Speaker 3: evening of December eighth, nineteen seventy seven, Raider left home,
Speaker 3: telling his family that he'd be studying at the WSU library.
Speaker 3: Around nine pm, Raider left the library and parked two
Speaker 3: blocks down from Nancy's apartment building. He grabbed his hit
Speaker 3: kit and walked up to her door. Here are Raider's
Speaker 3: words from the book Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 11: I knocked first to see if anybody was home. I
Speaker 11: had studied her work routines and knew she arrived at
Speaker 11: a particular time. I just wanted to be sure. Nobody
Speaker 11: answered the door, so I looked around, went around to
Speaker 11: the back of the house and cut the phone lines.
Speaker 11: I cut the window, broke in and waited in the kitchen.
Speaker 3: Raider recalls seeing Christmas decorations throughout the apartment. She was
Speaker 3: very clean and tidy, something he liked about her. He
Speaker 3: waited and waited until finally.
Speaker 11: She came in. She was startled. She asked what I
Speaker 11: was doing there After, we confronted each other. I told
Speaker 11: her I traveled a lot. I meant no real harm.
Speaker 11: I had a sexual problem. I wanted sex. I would
Speaker 11: tie her up and take a picture. She took her
Speaker 11: park off. I believe it was white or cream colored.
Speaker 11: As she laid her park it down, I began to smoke.
Speaker 11: I sat on the couch and she sat on a
Speaker 11: chair on the west side of the living room. She
Speaker 11: was upset.
Speaker 3: According to Rader, Nancy said something to the effect of,
Speaker 3: let's get this over with so I can call the police.
Speaker 3: That was a mistake.
Speaker 11: She sealed her doom for sure when she told me
Speaker 11: she would contact the police. I wore no mask or
Speaker 11: anything to hide my face. I had to kill her.
Speaker 3: At this point, Rader says Nancy asked to go to
Speaker 3: the bathroom. He said yes, but instructed her to remove
Speaker 3: her clothes. After she returned, he handcuffed her, bound her
Speaker 3: feet at the ankles, and gagged her.
Speaker 11: I got on top of her, and then I reached over,
Speaker 11: took a belt, and then strangled her with it. That's
Speaker 11: all I needed with a victim in bondage. The act
Speaker 11: of strangling brought gratification quickly along with a victim struggling.
Speaker 4: This guy wanted to be in position.
Speaker 10: I was like, God, he's going to determine whether or
Speaker 10: not you're get to live when you got to die.
Speaker 10: He's going to play with these victims and torture these
Speaker 10: victims psychologically and physically.
Speaker 3: This is former FBI profiler John Douglas. He says that
Speaker 3: the murder of Nancy Fox was a prime example of
Speaker 3: Raider's peculiar mo because Raider didn't just strangle Nancy until
Speaker 3: you died.
Speaker 10: This guy wasn't killing him right away. He'd get him
Speaker 10: to the point of death and then bring them back,
Speaker 10: and then brings them back to the point of death.
Speaker 11: Fox passed out. I had her come back, and I
Speaker 11: whispered in her ear a little bit I told her
Speaker 11: I was BTK, I was a bad guy. This was
Speaker 11: the torture thing. You can visualize being tied up and
Speaker 11: knowing that something's going to happen to you and you
Speaker 11: can do nothing. That's my torture. What he was doing.
Speaker 10: It was very similar to some other cases we've seen,
Speaker 10: like this kind of torture where they'll strangle and you
Speaker 10: can see marks on the throat where there's kind of
Speaker 10: like skid marks.
Speaker 4: And what it is.
Speaker 10: It's they're using ligature strangulation and then the ligature will
Speaker 10: be released at the point where they're unconscious. They wait
Speaker 10: for them to regain conscious, and then they put it
Speaker 10: on their neck again, and so you see that there'd
Speaker 10: be several marks on the victim's throat. It's just for
Speaker 10: the sake of again playing God's part of the torture.
Speaker 3: The murder of Nancy Fox was also another example of
Speaker 3: Raider killing a woman in a sexual way without actually
Speaker 3: having sex with them. He once again chose to masturbate
Speaker 3: rather than engage in penetrate of sex, and for someone
Speaker 3: like John Douglas, this was telling.
Speaker 10: He was getting a sexual euphoria from the acts that
Speaker 10: he was doing and killing was part of that. Sexual
Speaker 10: penetration on.
Speaker 4: The victims was absent.
Speaker 10: He would stand over then and ejaculate onto the victims. Well,
Speaker 10: I would find out later on sexually penetrating or having
Speaker 10: sex with him, that would be like cheating on his wife.
Speaker 4: This is the thinking of these people.
Speaker 10: And I'd be cheating on my wife if I do that.
Speaker 10: But if I masturbated the scene, I mean that's okay.
Speaker 3: The murder of Nancy Fox was all so yet another
Speaker 3: example of Raider trying to deceive the victim. Remember he
Speaker 3: told Nancy Fox some story that he was just passing through.
Speaker 3: He had told Steve Ralford he was a private detective
Speaker 3: for Douglas. This was also a good indicator of the
Speaker 3: type of killer that Raider was him.
Speaker 10: And another case is they'll come up with a story
Speaker 10: to control them, to make them settle down. Don't worry,
Speaker 10: I'm not going to hurt you. The story was he
Speaker 10: would go in there like he's escapee. He's committed a crime.
Speaker 10: I need your car, I need your food, and I'm
Speaker 10: not going to hurt you, and want some money. Then
Speaker 10: they will allow him. When you hear that, the emotion
Speaker 10: goes down and he starts binding him up and then
Speaker 10: decides to do the things he really wants to do
Speaker 10: with him, and that is to bind him up and
Speaker 10: kill him, kill him slowly.
Speaker 3: Clearly, the goal in each of these cases was twofold.
Speaker 3: One to the victim down and keep the situation under control.
Speaker 3: Two to fill a twisted sense of power by lulling
Speaker 3: the victim into a false sense of security. According to
Speaker 3: John Douglas, Raider's patterns should have been clear to the
Speaker 3: local investigators by this point, and in fact, Wichita PD
Speaker 3: could no longer ignore the fact that this was BTK.
Speaker 9: He left semen in a neglige beside her. She was
Speaker 9: laying face down on the bed, and he obviously took
Speaker 9: some pictures while he was in there, took a driver's license.
Speaker 3: This is retired Wichita Police Chief Richard Lemunion Again. He
Speaker 3: said he was shocked to find another BTK murder so soon,
Speaker 3: and this time his attitude changed about addressing the BTK
Speaker 3: problem publicly.
Speaker 9: It was after Nancy that I made the decision we
Speaker 9: need to do officially give him credit, stopping keeping from
Speaker 9: doing anything else.
Speaker 3: And police would get plenty of opportunities to do just
Speaker 3: that because BTK decided he wanted to communicate once again. First,
Speaker 3: not long after the murder, nine to one to one
Speaker 3: dispatch received a strange phone.
Speaker 13: Call, good if you will find a homicide forty three stop,
Speaker 13: I'm going what is your address?
Speaker 9: The dispatchers received a call indicating he said you will
Speaker 9: find a homicide and gave the address and her name.
Speaker 9: That's the communications that we got from him through the dispatch,
Speaker 9: which was obviously taped, so we tried to follow up
Speaker 9: on that.
Speaker 3: Le Monnion says the call came in just after a
Speaker 3: on the morning of December ninth. They immediately sent someone
Speaker 3: to investigate the source of the payphone call.
Speaker 9: The phone that he used was outside of a grocery
Speaker 9: store was on Central Street and there was a firefighter
Speaker 9: who was off duty, and then he had just walked
Speaker 9: out of there. The investigator went back about the time
Speaker 9: the call came and firefighter came up and said, yeah,
Speaker 9: I saw a guy, and he was able again to
Speaker 9: tell us about a white male. That's when it became
Speaker 9: so clear that this was a game they was playing,
Speaker 9: but he was using innocent people and he was killing
Speaker 9: them and he was going to kill again. We had
Speaker 9: to gear up. What else can we do, And that's
Speaker 9: the frustrating part. What else can we do?
Speaker 3: Using a public payphone and his own voice was a
Speaker 3: monumental risk, But BTK loved the thrill. He loved it
Speaker 3: so much, in fact, that he followed it up with
Speaker 3: another letter in January of nineteen seventy eight, once again
Speaker 3: addressed to the Wichita Eagle.
Speaker 9: Actually was a poem. He sent us a poem on
Speaker 9: Shirley Surely thy In sure you have seen.
Speaker 11: The poem Shirly locks, surely locks? Wilt thou be mine?
Speaker 11: Thou shalt not scream nor yet to feel the line,
Speaker 11: but lay on cushion and think of me and death
Speaker 11: and how it's going to be.
Speaker 3: For whatever reason, this poem flew under the radar. Perhaps
Speaker 3: the mail room team at The Eagle thought it was
Speaker 3: just some bizarre prank, and so it wasn't reported to
Speaker 3: police or connected to BTK, at least not yet.
Speaker 9: And then in February a letter from BTK was sent
Speaker 9: to Cake TV claiming responsibility for Surely and for Nancy.
Speaker 14: Good afternoon.
Speaker 15: This morning k T they was contacted by the person
Speaker 15: who police say they believe murdered four members of the
Speaker 15: Joseph Otero family in January of nineteen seventy four, executive
Speaker 15: producer Ron Lowan receive the letter. He's with us today
Speaker 15: to give us the information, ron Jack.
Speaker 16: The communication came in the form of a two page
Speaker 16: typewritten letter addressed to Kake Channel ten. It was signed
Speaker 16: with the initials BTK. BTK claims to have strangled a
Speaker 16: total of seven women, seven people, rather mostly women. He
Speaker 16: provided a list of his victims, beginning with the number five,
Speaker 16: where he wrote you guessed the.
Speaker 11: Victim and the motive.
Speaker 16: Then he listed Shirley Vyanne as his sixth victim and
Speaker 16: provided a paragraph of details concerning the murder, with many
Speaker 16: details known only to the police.
Speaker 3: Hake received the letter on February ninth, nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 3: along with the poem we told you about in episode
Speaker 3: one called Oh Death to Nancy. It also included crude
Speaker 3: hand drawings of the Nancy Fox crime scene. The letter started, I.
Speaker 11: Find the newspaper not writing about the poem on vanne
Speaker 11: Unamusing a little paragraph would have been enough. I know
Speaker 11: it's not the news media's fault. The police chief he
Speaker 11: keeps things quiet and doesn't let the public know there's
Speaker 11: a psycho running around loose, strangling mostly women. There's seven
Speaker 11: in the ground. Who will be next?
Speaker 3: Later in the letter, he mentioned Nancy Fox by name.
Speaker 11: There is no help, no cure except death or being
Speaker 11: caught and put away. It's a terrible nightmare, but you see,
Speaker 11: I don't lose any sleep over it. After a thing
Speaker 11: like Fox, I come home and I go about life
Speaker 11: like anyone else.
Speaker 3: Then he brought up the matter of his own moniker.
Speaker 11: Before a murder or murderers, you will receive a copy
Speaker 11: of the initials BTK. You keep that copy, the original
Speaker 11: will show up someday on guess who You may not
Speaker 11: be the unlucky one. Ps. How about a name for me?
Speaker 11: It's time seven down and many more to go. I
Speaker 11: like the following. How about you? The BTK strangler, Wichita Strangler,
Speaker 11: poetic Strangler, bond age strangler, the Wichita Hangman, the Wichita Executioner,
Speaker 11: the Garat Phantom, the exphyxiator.
Speaker 7: It was a Saturday morning and the postcard had come
Speaker 7: into our mail room, and so the station manager and
Speaker 7: I took the postcard down to the Wichita Police Department
Speaker 7: and we gave it to the police, and we asked
Speaker 7: to talk to him about this because obviously something was up.
Speaker 3: This is KKE TV anchor Larry Hadiberg, and.
Speaker 7: So he went into a room with his chief detective,
Speaker 7: shut the door. After about a half hour, came out
Speaker 7: and he told us that he wanted to go on
Speaker 7: our air that night at about six o'clock in the
Speaker 7: evening and tell the people of Wichita that the serial
Speaker 7: killer was loose. We were shocked. Wow, this is incredible.
Speaker 9: I went to KTV with the idea that what we
Speaker 9: wanted him to do was communicate with us. And I
Speaker 9: have to tell you at that time we had great
Speaker 9: rapport with the reporters at KKTV, their higher ups, and
Speaker 9: with the newspaper. I mean that's the time and history
Speaker 9: when really we were partners. We had to have the media.
Speaker 9: This was his communication network. So we encouraged him to
Speaker 9: communicate until we could find out who this individual was.
Speaker 7: So obviously we went back to the television station, prepared
Speaker 7: the newscast and waited for the police chief to come
Speaker 7: and sure enough he shows up, goes on the air
Speaker 7: and says, we have a serial killer in Wichita. Here's
Speaker 7: what we know about him.
Speaker 16: But with us right now is Chief of Police Richard Lemoniam,
Speaker 16: who has been reviewing the letter since this afternoon, and
Speaker 16: I have a couple of questions, Chief, how can you
Speaker 16: be sure that the BTK letter is authentic.
Speaker 17: Or on After reviewing the contents of the letters? Absolutely
Speaker 17: no question that the only person who would have the
Speaker 17: type of information that was included in the letter would
Speaker 17: have to be the killer himself.
Speaker 16: Do you know what the initials BTK stand for?
Speaker 14: Is?
Speaker 17: It's our feeling that the initials that were placed there
Speaker 17: stand for buying, torture and kill. We have an individual
Speaker 17: who apparently has the uncontrollable desire to kill at times,
Speaker 17: he is not a rational person during that frame of mind.
Speaker 17: So I think an undo or a special awareness on
Speaker 17: the part of the citizens be alert call us when
Speaker 17: they have any type of information that they feel could
Speaker 17: be relevant, even if it seems at the time very insignificant,
Speaker 17: it might be just exactly.
Speaker 11: What we need.
Speaker 3: The race to catch BGK now included the media as
Speaker 3: purveyors of public information. They cooperated with police to try
Speaker 3: and find the now infamous killer.
Speaker 14: Last February, police Chief Richard Lemonnion ask KKE TV to
Speaker 14: run us second picture in one of our news reports
Speaker 14: psychologists were hoping BTK would unconsciously detect the subliminal message
Speaker 14: and follow its instructions. It's the same principle as splicing
Speaker 14: shots of popcorn into a movie to make the viewer hungry.
Speaker 14: Subliminal messages of all kinds are illegal, but Cake was
Speaker 14: given special permission by the.
Speaker 7: SEC to air the report. And here's what it looked like.
Speaker 9: That's the Catherine Bright murder that occurred in April of
Speaker 9: seventy four.
Speaker 14: When we slow the picture down electronically, you can see
Speaker 14: the subliminal message. The message shown here, still framed, urged
Speaker 14: BTK to call the chief.
Speaker 11: He did not.
Speaker 3: As a journalist, it's a tricky balance when working with
Speaker 3: the police. On the one hand, we have to be
Speaker 3: purely objective and remain independent from any agency authorities included.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, when police need your help to
Speaker 3: track down a killer, you feel a certain responsibility to
Speaker 3: help them.
Speaker 7: We had, for the most part, good relations with the
Speaker 7: police department, but in journalism you're always going to rub
Speaker 7: knuckles with them at some point, and we did.
Speaker 3: This is former Cake TV anchor Larry Hadiberg.
Speaker 4: Again.
Speaker 7: Anytime we got anything related to BTK, we turned it
Speaker 7: over immediately. We would get it, we would photograph it,
Speaker 7: we would call a PD and they would have it.
Speaker 7: So we turned everything, we had, everything we knew over
Speaker 7: to the police department because we wanted to cooperate. I mean,
Speaker 7: we're not standing in the way of catching anybody, and
Speaker 7: I think it's important for a local television station to
Speaker 7: be part of a solution. We tried to work with
Speaker 7: them and the FBI and anybody else and at the
Speaker 7: same time be professional journalists. There's no manual written on
Speaker 7: how when you become part of the story that you
Speaker 7: react to every given situation. You're really flying by the
Speaker 7: seat of your pants and trying to make the right,
Speaker 7: most honest decision at every point in time and hoping
Speaker 7: you're doing the right thing.
Speaker 3: Following that big news broadcast, a tip line was made public,
Speaker 3: and Richard Lemonian says it blew up almost immediately.
Speaker 9: When we announced the fact that we did as a
Speaker 9: serial killer. We had hundreds, literally hundreds of tips, and
Speaker 9: we put additional officers, additional detectives to run every one
Speaker 9: of those tips down.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, Dennis Rader was getting scared once again. The overwhelming
Speaker 3: attention spooked in so he decided to lay low and
Speaker 3: stop sending letters temporarily. Besides, he had other matters to
Speaker 3: worry about. His second child and only daughter, Carrie, was
Speaker 3: born in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 8: So I grew up in Wichita, Kansas. We lived in
Speaker 8: Park City. It's a small northern suburb of Wichita. It's
Speaker 8: about five thousand people. I lived nine houses down from
Speaker 8: my mom's parents, Eileen and Palmer dates.
Speaker 3: Carrie recently visited the Tenderfoot Studio to talk with Payne Lindsay.
Speaker 3: She says she has fond memories of growing up in Wichita. Obviously,
Speaker 3: she was unaware of the chaos of the time. She
Speaker 3: only knew her father, Dennis as a regular dad.
Speaker 8: By the time I was toddling, he would like take
Speaker 8: me out gardening. I was three or four. He was
Speaker 8: teaching me about all the plants, the vegetables, growing seasons, soil.
Speaker 8: Anything Dad was doing I wanted to do. He loved
Speaker 8: the outdoors, so he was cool and let me get muddy.
Speaker 8: He had this big, huge, like green gardening book and
Speaker 8: in the winter we would like do Burpy's Calloggs, so
Speaker 8: we would like pick out seeds and plan. He was
Speaker 8: obsessed with gardening when I was little.
Speaker 3: But Carrie also remembers peculiar things about Dennis from her childhood.
Speaker 3: For example, he would have these unpredictable bursts of rage
Speaker 3: and anger, and he could never sit still.
Speaker 8: My mom would always tell him when we were growing up,
Speaker 8: can't you just sit down for five minutes?
Speaker 15: You know?
Speaker 8: He always had to be busy, always active. He always
Speaker 8: had like the Wichita eagle out, like he was marking
Speaker 8: it with these markings or cutting things out of it,
Speaker 8: or he was always messing with something. Later on, he
Speaker 8: would have his stamps out. Saturday nights were sitting down
Speaker 8: to watch a movie. We're popping popcorn and having pop.
Speaker 8: Everyone else is just choosing a comfortable chair to watch
Speaker 8: a movie. And now he's setting up the card table
Speaker 8: to do something like he had to do something. He
Speaker 8: couldn't just like relax because he could be controlling and
Speaker 8: angry and verbally abusive at times. I learned early how
Speaker 8: to like get him to relax, which was hell well,
Speaker 8: like with my mom, she knew how to say, Dennis,
Speaker 8: just go outside to your garden. Why don't you take
Speaker 8: the dog for a walker, Why don't you go fishing
Speaker 8: this weekend?
Speaker 18: How did your mom know when to say that?
Speaker 8: Because he was tight and he was tense. His eyes
Speaker 8: would narrow and like he's about to yell, or he
Speaker 8: is yelling. He's making your life uncomfortable. Like later we
Speaker 8: said it was like walking on inkshells at times with him.
Speaker 3: Ironically, Carrie says Dennis was very protective over her and
Speaker 3: her mother. He was obsessed with safety, always worried that
Speaker 3: an intruder might break in and harm them.
Speaker 8: He had dead bolts on our front door and our
Speaker 8: back door.
Speaker 18: In the kitchen, and why was that.
Speaker 8: So he worked for eighty t so I feured he
Speaker 8: was security conscious because he knew about alarm systems. He
Speaker 8: knew about people breaking into homes. He was making home
Speaker 8: for more secure with alarm systems.
Speaker 18: But what do you think he was protecting you from
Speaker 18: bad guys?
Speaker 8: But literally, it's like he's so messed up. It was
Speaker 8: almost like he was protecting us from him. But it's
Speaker 8: because he knew how bad people could be. When I'm little,
Speaker 8: he's teaching me these things. So you're not supposed to
Speaker 8: be telling kids about like home invasions. He's telling me like, well,
Speaker 8: the kitchen door isn't that great? Because the windows too big,
Speaker 8: and somebody can just punch out the glass and then
Speaker 8: they can reach in. But if it's dead bolton and
Speaker 8: the key's not in, then they can't get in. They
Speaker 8: got to lake jam the door. More so, I'm learning
Speaker 8: this when I'm like little. It it's imprinting because it's
Speaker 8: over and over and over with this man. He's telling
Speaker 8: me when I'm little, don't open the door to strangers.
Speaker 8: Question them, make them show you like they're badger. They're
Speaker 8: telling you they're a cop or a maintenance man. Check
Speaker 8: their uniform. He is obsessively trying to keep me safe.
Speaker 18: It seems like, at least from what I'm picking up,
Speaker 18: that you sort of look at your dad as two
Speaker 18: different people. So my question is this is kind of weird.
Speaker 18: But going back to being like a six year old
Speaker 18: hindsight looking back, do you feel like the BTK killer
Speaker 18: would have ever harmed you?
Speaker 13: I don't know.
Speaker 8: That's one of those big questions. Part of my ability
Speaker 8: to survive and do what I need to do now
Speaker 8: is to compartmentalize. So like with my father, I have
Speaker 8: to put Dad in BTK like day to day now,
Speaker 8: I don't think of my dad as BTK I can
Speaker 8: separate it, or I'm not really even thinking about my dad.
Speaker 8: I'm living my life as a mom and writer and
Speaker 8: whatever I'm doing right, My dad's my dad. He could
Speaker 8: be mean and mad, but most of the time ninety
Speaker 8: five percent of the time he's like my best friend.
Speaker 8: And my brother will say the same thing he was
Speaker 8: like his best friend.
Speaker 3: While Raider was raising his daughter, he was also planning
Speaker 3: yet another murder. By April of nineteen seventy nine, he
Speaker 3: was still taking classes at Wichita State, and he used
Speaker 3: this as an excuse to his family for late night absence.
Speaker 3: One night, he spotted a twenty four year old woman
Speaker 3: named Rebecca walking into a nearby house. A few nights later,
Speaker 3: Raider got to work after classes. On the night of
Speaker 3: April twenty eighth, Raider approached the home. Here again are
Speaker 3: his words from the book Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 11: I also cut the phone line in my trademark. I
Speaker 11: used tape on the window where I broke in, and
Speaker 11: perhaps a glass cutter, which I now carried in my kit.
Speaker 11: Since the house was dark when I came, I thought
Speaker 11: perhaps she was asleep. Further, I saw a car in
Speaker 11: the garage, so I tried a cat burglar approach, going
Speaker 11: through the basement window, but the house was empty.
Speaker 3: Raider waited and waited. What he didn't know at the
Speaker 3: time was that this was actually the home of sixty
Speaker 3: three year old Anna Williams. The young woman named Rebecca
Speaker 3: that he'd seen was her granddaughter. Williams was out square
Speaker 3: dancing on this night and wouldn't be home for quite
Speaker 3: a while. Raider busied himself by rumging through her drawers
Speaker 3: and stealing various articles of clothing. He claims he scribbled
Speaker 3: something on her bathroom mirror and lipstick, something to the
Speaker 3: effect of bt K was here, though this was never
Speaker 3: confirmed or included in the police report. He laid out
Speaker 3: all of his instruments of murder on the bed to prepare,
Speaker 3: and then he ran out of time. He had to
Speaker 3: get home before his wife became suspicious, so he packed
Speaker 3: up and left a failed attempt. Anna Williams returned home
Speaker 3: just after eleven pm to discover that someone had cut
Speaker 3: her phone line, stolen some jewelry and clothing, and broken
Speaker 3: a window. She called the police, who determined it was
Speaker 3: just a regular burglary, but weeks later, in June, she
Speaker 3: got a strange package in the mail. It included a
Speaker 3: crude drawing of a hogtied woman naked on a bed.
Speaker 3: The package also contained some of the stolen items from
Speaker 3: around her home, and scariest of all, it came with
Speaker 3: a handwritten letter.
Speaker 11: Twas a perfect plan of deviant pleasure, so bold on
Speaker 11: that spring night, my inner felling hot with propension of
Speaker 11: the new awakening season, warm, wet with interfere and rapture,
Speaker 11: my pleasure of entanglement like new vines at night, Oh Anna,
Speaker 11: why didn't you appear alone? Now? In another time span,
Speaker 11: I lay with sweetened rapture garments across most private thought,
Speaker 11: bed of spring, moist grass, clean before the sun enslaved
Speaker 11: with control. Alone Again, I trod in past memory of
Speaker 11: mirrors and ponder why for number eight was not?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 11: And why didn't you appear?
Speaker 3: Next time? On Monster BTK.
Speaker 8: He broke into her house, expecting her to be home
Speaker 8: because her car was there, But she had fond with
Speaker 8: this man. She's not home, so he hides in her closet.
Speaker 3: The body was discovered here at fifty third Street North,
Speaker 3: just east of Webb Road.
Speaker 9: Before she died, we had a very very close relationship.
Speaker 7: He killed a woman in his own neighborhood that violated
Speaker 7: his own rules don't kill close to home.
Speaker 9: If he was dead, we knew that we would find
Speaker 9: the trophies sometime, or if he was still alive at
Speaker 9: some point, he's going to come back.
Speaker 10: When you have an offender who starts to communicate, I
Speaker 10: want him to communicate with a person affiliated with the
Speaker 10: investigation I called to supercot.
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: Podcasts and Caroline or Agemma at Tenderfoot TV. Auditional research
Speaker 2: by Claude Africa. 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.