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Speaker 2: and Tenderfoot TV. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3: We were trying to do our job as journalists, but
Speaker 3: then we became part of the story, and I think
Speaker 3: for a journalist, that's a terrible place to be as
Speaker 3: part of the story. But there was no way to
Speaker 3: get out of it. Because he enjoyed communicating with caketv
Speaker 3: KTV was his favorite station. He had watched it since
Speaker 3: he was a child. I have a postcard talking about
Speaker 3: the communications which he wrote to Keke and it says.
Speaker 1: I write this letter to you for the sake of
Speaker 1: the taxpayer as well as your time. Those three dudes
Speaker 1: you have in custody are just talking to get publicity
Speaker 1: for the Otero murders. They know nothing at all. I
Speaker 1: did it by myself and with no one's help. Ps.
Speaker 1: Since sex criminals do not change their mo or by nature,
Speaker 1: cannot do so. I will not change mine. The code
Speaker 1: words for me will be bind them, torture them, kill them,
Speaker 1: b t K. They will be on the next victim.
Speaker 3: Someone killed four members of the family.
Speaker 4: Had you vanished from her home suddenly last weekend? Her
Speaker 4: phone lines had been cut, her door left open.
Speaker 5: You see the victim playing there with plastic bags over
Speaker 5: their heads, strangled. You could tell it was a plan scenario.
Speaker 4: Well, police have said no more about the contents of
Speaker 4: the letter. It does contain some sort of threat and
Speaker 4: implies the killer may strike again.
Speaker 3: He's gonna play with these victims. He'd get him to
Speaker 3: the point of death and then bring them back and
Speaker 3: then brings them back to the point of death.
Speaker 6: From My Heart podcasts and Tenderfoot TV, I'm Susan Peters
Speaker 6: and this is Monster BTK. In episode one, we covered
Speaker 6: the brutal and tragic murders of the Otero family. On
Speaker 6: January fifteenth, nineteen seventy four, BTK broke into the Otero
Speaker 6: home on Edgemore Drive in Wichita, can He tied up
Speaker 6: the parents, Joseph and Julie before strangling them. Then he
Speaker 6: strangled their young son Joey, and hanged their daughter Josephine.
Speaker 6: It was btk's first murder, and it hadn't gone smoothly.
Speaker 6: The killer made many mistakes. He hadn't known the parents
Speaker 6: would be home. His only intended target was young Josephine.
Speaker 6: He feared he would be caught, but the police were
Speaker 6: seemingly not on his trail. In the months following the
Speaker 6: Otero murders, Dennis Rader obsessed over his work. He reveled
Speaker 6: in the success of not getting caught, and he realized
Speaker 6: just how much he enjoyed the thrill of killing. He
Speaker 6: started training for his next kill. In the book Confession
Speaker 6: of a Serial Killer, Rader says he started to get
Speaker 6: in shape and he was inspired once again by something
Speaker 6: he saw on TV.
Speaker 1: I saw in a movie about a minotaur serial killer
Speaker 1: toughening up the hands. I had a sports ball at home,
Speaker 1: work in a vehicle to practice and exercise my hands.
Speaker 1: Exercise with a handball helps blood circulation and to keep
Speaker 1: the hands fit. There was excitement in trying something dangerous.
Speaker 1: Then it happens, and afterward you wish it hadn't. It's
Speaker 1: like playing in the quicksand there's fear and excitement, but
Speaker 1: then you're stuck.
Speaker 6: Raider was hungry. He wanted to try again. He thought
Speaker 6: he could get it right. Next time. Shall be started
Speaker 6: to prowl for his next project.
Speaker 1: I believe in February or March the hunt began again.
Speaker 1: I found it exciting to prowl a day or night.
Speaker 1: It was very easy for me to spend a little
Speaker 1: time after classes to prowl or day drive going to
Speaker 1: classes worked well for me as a cover. I could
Speaker 1: say I was at the library, or I could use
Speaker 1: that time to prowl or stalk.
Speaker 6: After looking around the Wichita State campus for weeks, Raider
Speaker 6: finally found his next target.
Speaker 1: So it was the day after classes or in between.
Speaker 1: I spotted Bride arriving home with a friend, another female,
Speaker 1: maybe a sister. She was at her mailbox. She fit
Speaker 1: my fantasy profile, a co ed, dishwasher, blonde, small. I
Speaker 1: saw her go in the house and I thought that's
Speaker 1: a possibility.
Speaker 6: Her name was Catherine Bright. Raider eventually discovered that she
Speaker 6: lived nearby, at thirty two seventeen East thirteenth Street, less
Speaker 6: than two miles from the Otto home. He named her
Speaker 6: project Lights out Here again are Raider's words.
Speaker 1: She became a true detective horror magazine hit Fantasy. Her
Speaker 1: bedroom appeared to be in the center east. I was
Speaker 1: planning on tying her up on the bed, either half
Speaker 1: naked or totally. Then I would strangle her or suffocate her.
Speaker 1: Her hands would be bound in front and tied to
Speaker 1: her neck, like a true detective model I had seen.
Speaker 1: I used to fantasize about women on the cover showing
Speaker 1: terror in their eyes, bound hand up near her neck,
Speaker 1: a man with a threatening knife overhead.
Speaker 6: Just seventy nine days after the Otero murders, Dennis Rader
Speaker 6: approached Bright's.
Speaker 7: Home April four of nineteen seventy four. This was a
Speaker 7: scene which isn't necessarily one that you would automatically assume
Speaker 7: that it was connected to the ottos. My name is
Speaker 7: Kevin O'Connor. I'm an assistant district attorney in Johnson County Now.
Speaker 7: I was the deputy district attorney in witch Daw Sedgwick County,
Speaker 7: Kansas during the Dennis Raider investigation. He was constantly trying
Speaker 7: to trip the police up, so he was trying to
Speaker 7: not connect it to the Otero's. Raider will break into
Speaker 7: the house by smashing a window on the back, gaining entry.
Speaker 7: He cleans up, and he waits.
Speaker 6: Raider's plan was to force his way into Bright's home
Speaker 6: by acting as a Wichita State student needing a quiet
Speaker 6: place to study. But, as Kevin O'Connor says, there was
Speaker 6: just one problem.
Speaker 7: He is not anticipating that Catherine's brother, Kevin, will be
Speaker 7: with her. Kevin Bright spent the night before with his
Speaker 7: sister and there was snow, so he didn't go home.
Speaker 6: Raider panicked. He improvised a fake story about how he
Speaker 6: was a criminal on the run.
Speaker 7: They will come back surprised by a and telling him
Speaker 7: that he is on the run. He needs money in
Speaker 7: a car, he needs a.
Speaker 2: Little bit of food.
Speaker 7: He will tell them they have the time to control them,
Speaker 7: that they're not going to be heard. This crime goes
Speaker 7: to hell in a handbasket pretty quickly. He loses control
Speaker 7: of the situation.
Speaker 6: Raider thought Catherine would be alone and easy to control.
Speaker 6: For that reason, he brought no rope with him. He
Speaker 6: had been planning to tie her up using pantyhose from
Speaker 6: her dresser drawer. Pointing his gun at the siblings, he
Speaker 6: marched them into the bedroom. In a rare CNN interview
Speaker 6: from two thousand and five, Kevin Bright went into detail
Speaker 6: about what happened next.
Speaker 8: And then he forced me to tie my sister up
Speaker 8: in the front bedroom, and then he took me into
Speaker 8: the other bedroom and tied me up and laid me
Speaker 8: down on the floor on my stomaching nodded up stocking
Speaker 8: and started strangling me, and I fought and broke loose
Speaker 8: and jumped up on my feet. He pulled a gun
Speaker 8: from his waistband, and I knew he was gonna shoot me,
Speaker 8: and I grabbed hold of his hand and arm and
Speaker 8: pushed it back into his stomach and got my hand
Speaker 8: on the gun and the trigger pulled it twice, and
Speaker 8: he didn't go off for some reason. He jerked it
Speaker 8: away from me and shot me first time there, and
Speaker 8: then I went to the ground, and anyway, he left
Speaker 8: for a while.
Speaker 6: With Kevin Bright seemingly dead, Rader went back for Catherine,
Speaker 6: who was tied up in the other room. He tried
Speaker 6: to strangle her, but she fought back once again. Rader
Speaker 6: was losing control of the situation. Meanwhile, Kevin Bright had
Speaker 6: to listen as his sister was being strangled to death
Speaker 6: in the other room.
Speaker 8: And then he came back and grabbed a hold of me,
Speaker 8: and he started strangling me again, and I fought again.
Speaker 8: He shot me in the second time. I played like
Speaker 8: I was dead, and he left again. And then I
Speaker 8: looked around the room to see if there was any
Speaker 8: kind of weapon that I could use against him, and
Speaker 8: there wasn't anything there, and I just decided to go
Speaker 8: for help. And so I was about fifteen feet from
Speaker 8: the front door, and I got up and I went
Speaker 8: out the front door, and there's two guys across the street,
Speaker 8: two men, and one of them taking me to the
Speaker 8: hospital and the other one called the police.
Speaker 6: After Kevin escaped, Raider panicked. He started stabbing Catherine with
Speaker 6: a knife over and over to make sure she was dead.
Speaker 6: The police reports say she was stabbed eleven times. Here
Speaker 6: are raiders words from confession of a serial killer.
Speaker 1: I had no intention of stabbing anyone. Happened because I
Speaker 1: lost control. That created a mess of blood everywhere on
Speaker 1: my hands, pants, shoes. I made a vow if I
Speaker 1: ever again had to confront to kill, there would be
Speaker 1: no knife. It was a total mess because I didn't
Speaker 1: have control over it.
Speaker 6: Raider had to move quickly after stabbing Catherine.
Speaker 1: Since Kevin could id me. It wouldn't make a difference
Speaker 1: if she was dead. I was afraid the police would
Speaker 1: catch me or stop me. On Holyoake, I recalled that
Speaker 1: I ran so hard and fast that my lungs hurt
Speaker 1: for a day or two. Afterward from breathing the cold air.
Speaker 6: Raider ran back to his car parked by the Wichita
Speaker 6: State Campus. Catherine tried calling for help.
Speaker 7: She's able to get to the phone. It's a wall
Speaker 7: unit and the phone will be.
Speaker 2: Off the hook.
Speaker 7: That police report describing her and how that police officer
Speaker 7: found her is heartbreaking as he describes her in trying
Speaker 7: to breathe begging the police officer to help her.
Speaker 6: The police report states that Officer Dennis Landon arrived at
Speaker 6: the Bright home at two eight pm. Here's an excerpt
Speaker 6: read by a voice actor.
Speaker 2: Officer Landon approached the address of twenty three seventeen East
Speaker 2: thirteenth Street and knocked at the screen door. The front
Speaker 2: door was open. After receiving no response, Officer Landon looked
Speaker 2: in through the open door and saw a female lying
Speaker 2: in a pool of blood. The young woman was found
Speaker 2: clutching a telephone in her hand. She was asked what happened,
Speaker 2: but was unable to respond. When asked if she was hurt,
Speaker 2: she pulled up a blouse, exposing her abdomen. The young
Speaker 2: woman said she did not know her attacker. She was
Speaker 2: able to give her name before beginning to pass out.
Speaker 2: Officer Raymond Fletcher arrived and assisted in attending to Bright.
Speaker 2: Upon his arrival, Officer Fletcher noticed that Bright was covered
Speaker 2: in blood. In addition to the pool of blood underneath
Speaker 2: her waist, Bright had blood on her hands, in her hair,
Speaker 2: and on her face. Officer Fletcher noted that she was
Speaker 2: bleeding from her left nostril and her face was badly bruised.
Speaker 2: Bright grabbed Officer Fletcher's arm and repeated, I can't breathe
Speaker 2: help me.
Speaker 6: Both Kevin and Katherine were taken to Wesley Medical Center.
Speaker 6: Kevin survived his gunshot wounds. However, his sister Catherine didn't
Speaker 6: survive the attack. She died of her stab wounds just
Speaker 6: a few hours later. Catherine was yet another innocent victim
Speaker 6: of btk's malice. This one has always been difficult for
Speaker 6: me to wrap my head around. Catherine was just a
Speaker 6: college student looking forward to the next phase of her life.
Speaker 6: To have that life cut short is a merciless injustice,
Speaker 6: and for Kevin, the horror of remembering that dreadful day
Speaker 6: was almost too much to bear. Even though he was
Speaker 6: younger than his sister, he felt he should be the
Speaker 6: protective brother, and when I was the first to interview
Speaker 6: him thirty years later, the tears in his eyes were instant.
Speaker 6: It still haunts him to this day that he could
Speaker 6: not save his young sister's life. Last night, you and
Speaker 6: your dad are talking, and thirty years later you're still
Speaker 6: talking about what is Yeah, there's a reason for that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, because well, sister shouldn't die Hamon. I was pry
Speaker 8: that she didn't suffer very much, you know, it was
Speaker 8: last hours, I don't know. And this prayer for all
Speaker 8: the families that you know they can have healing. God
Speaker 8: knows every movement you're making and knows that you're going
Speaker 8: to answer one day, and that he offers, you know,
Speaker 8: he offers every one of us salvation.
Speaker 6: For Katherine Bright, it was a terrible and tragic end
Speaker 6: to a budding life, but for Rader, it was just
Speaker 6: the beginning. Following the murder of Katherine Bright, Rader planned
Speaker 6: his next move. Project lights Out had been a disaster.
Speaker 6: Dennis returned home and tried to resume his normal family life,
Speaker 6: but he couldn't shake the paranoia that his mistakes would
Speaker 6: cost him. Here again are his words from the book
Speaker 6: Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 1: When I saw the news releases about Bright, I knew
Speaker 1: Kevin was now a survivor and able to tell Catherine
Speaker 1: had died. Kevin had described me. I was worried about Kevin.
Speaker 1: He was Catherine's brother, I learned. I thought of maybe
Speaker 1: trying to hit on Kevin at some point. I never
Speaker 1: could come up with a perfect plan.
Speaker 6: On April twenty third, nineteen seventy four, just three weeks
Speaker 6: after the attack on the Brites, police released a facial
Speaker 6: composite of the suspect based on Kevin's description. This is
Speaker 6: former Wichita Police Chief Richard Lamonian.
Speaker 5: All he could tell us it was a male, a
Speaker 5: white male, but he could not describe the individual.
Speaker 3: He was very cooperative.
Speaker 5: We had professional psychiatrist psychologists work with him. But again,
Speaker 5: I really think he gave us all the information he
Speaker 5: had because I don't think he really had an opportunity
Speaker 5: to even see what was going on.
Speaker 6: Raider, however, felt differently about Kevin's recollection.
Speaker 1: He did give a fairly good description of me, and
Speaker 1: I thought the picture in the newspaper was uncomfortably close
Speaker 1: to me. But no one ever came for me.
Speaker 6: According to Lemonion, police had a hard time connecting this
Speaker 6: crime to the Otero murders. Both were so messy and strange.
Speaker 6: The Bright killing was clearly so poorly planned that it
Speaker 6: was tough to make heads or tails of.
Speaker 5: We assumed at that particular moment that that's probably just
Speaker 5: boyfriend love triangle. Who knows what it is. But it
Speaker 5: was interrupted, so it was not connected at the time
Speaker 5: to the Otero murders. In those days, we probably had
Speaker 5: a homicide rate forty forty five a year, so no
Speaker 5: homicides were not unusual, and we would clear ninety percent
Speaker 5: of them, so a homicide like this would not have
Speaker 5: drawn a serial killer type mentality back to it.
Speaker 6: While police were struggling, Rader was relishing. In the chaos
Speaker 6: and confusion.
Speaker 1: As I gathered the news clippings on Catherine Bright, I
Speaker 1: taped a picture from a detective magazine to one of
Speaker 1: my Heidi Hole folders, the one that showed the girl
Speaker 1: with her hands in front, the way I had wanted
Speaker 1: to do with Bright. I kept Bright's clippings inside and
Speaker 1: even wrote a story I believe, possibly of a fantasy
Speaker 1: of her. The months slipped away, and I was pretty
Speaker 1: sure I wasn't going to be caught for a lineup.
Speaker 6: Rader had all sorts of these heidie holes in his home,
Speaker 6: where he would keep tokens from his victims or store
Speaker 6: his crew drawings and newspaper clippings. In July, six months
Speaker 6: after the Otero murders, four people in their early twenties
Speaker 6: were killed following a small dispute. It was the second
Speaker 6: quadruple homicide that year. All of Wichita was shaken up.
Speaker 6: Nineteen seventy four had thus far been a hard year
Speaker 6: for violent crime. Police were scrambling to piece it all together.
Speaker 6: Police finally got a breakthrough in the Otaro case. In
Speaker 6: October of nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 5: We had arrested a couple of brothers named Seabring who
Speaker 5: admitted that they had killed the Otos.
Speaker 6: Gary Seabring was arrested on charges for an unrelated sexual offense.
Speaker 6: While being questioned, Seabrings started spewing about the Oto murders.
Speaker 6: According to the book Inside the Mind of BTK by
Speaker 6: John Douglas, Seabring would go on to tell police.
Speaker 9: If I was doing the Otos, this is how I
Speaker 9: would have done it. It would have been with my
Speaker 9: brother and we would have tied them all up, and
Speaker 9: my buddy Thomas Myers would have been with us.
Speaker 6: This raised a few eyebrows, and the two brothers were
Speaker 6: brought in his suspects in the Otero case.
Speaker 5: Of course, the news media picks upon it, and we've
Speaker 5: arrested the Otaro murderers and all things like that.
Speaker 6: The people of which tah were ecstatic. They believed the
Speaker 6: Otto murderer had been brought to justice. Seabring had a
Speaker 6: criminal history involving the sexual assault of a minor. On
Speaker 6: the surface, it seemed very plausible that he was the killer,
Speaker 6: but police were skeptical of Sebring's knowledge of the case.
Speaker 6: Investigators had Gary and his brother Ernest go through intense
Speaker 6: psychological evaluations, and they determined both men were mentally unstable,
Speaker 6: prone to lying and inventing false scenarios. Additionally, police Chief
Speaker 6: Floyd Hannen determined that neither brother could be placed at
Speaker 6: the scene of the Otero crime, and neither of them
Speaker 6: fit the description the man who was seen leaving the
Speaker 6: o'tara home. As for the friend, Thomas Myers, police had
Speaker 6: trouble locating him at first, but after a week Myers
Speaker 6: was brought into custody and also taken in for a
Speaker 6: mental evaluation. Once again, the conclusion was clear. These men
Speaker 6: were not responsible.
Speaker 5: The Seabring brothers were just pedophiles. It's what they were,
Speaker 5: and they had other problems that they had. They weren't murders.
Speaker 6: Raiders saw the false confession on the news and he
Speaker 6: was not happy about this development.
Speaker 5: Once the media picked up on it, and then they
Speaker 5: started putting information out that we had a suspect in
Speaker 5: custody for it, that's what prompted it all. He didn't
Speaker 5: want someone else taking credit for his job.
Speaker 1: Since I was in the mood of highness and attention
Speaker 1: as the newspaper ran the story on the three men,
Speaker 1: I added it to my Heidi Hole folder on the oteros.
Speaker 1: I wanted credit, not someone else. I also wanted taxpayers
Speaker 1: not to spend endless dollars on false leads.
Speaker 6: A few days after the Wichita Eagle published its story
Speaker 6: about the Seabring brothers, Dennis Rader called the front desk
Speaker 6: and asked to speak to Eagle columnist Don Granger. Here's
Speaker 6: what Granger remembers hearing over the phone.
Speaker 1: Listen and listen good. I'm only going to say this once.
Speaker 1: There is a letter about the Oteo case in a
Speaker 1: book in the public library.
Speaker 6: Granger was freaked out. He immediately called the Wichita Police.
Speaker 6: He told them that the caller had the voice of
Speaker 6: a timid Midwestern man, but he couldn't make out anything else.
Speaker 6: Wichita PD Officer Bernie Drowaski went to the library that
Speaker 6: very day. He discovered up a duel your letter stuped
Speaker 6: into a book titled Applied Engineering Mechanics. The letter was
Speaker 6: riddled with misspellings and grammatical errors. Here is what it said,
Speaker 6: edited for clarity.
Speaker 1: Those three dudes you have in custody are just talking
Speaker 1: to get publicity. They know nothing at all. I did
Speaker 1: it by myself, with no one's help. I'm sorry this
Speaker 1: happened to the society. It's hard to control myself. You
Speaker 1: probably call me psychotic with sexual perversion. Hang up. Where
Speaker 1: this monster entered my brain? I will never know, but
Speaker 1: it's here to stay. How does one cure himself? If
Speaker 1: you ask for help that you've killed four people, they
Speaker 1: will laugh or hit the panic button and call the cops.
Speaker 1: I can't stop it, so the monster goes on and
Speaker 1: hurt me as well as society. Society can be thankful
Speaker 1: that they're ways for people like me to relieve myself
Speaker 1: at times by day dreams of some victim being tortured
Speaker 1: and being mine. It's a big, complicated game. My friend
Speaker 1: of the monster play putting victims down, following them, checking
Speaker 1: up on them, waiting in the dark, wading, wagdhing. The
Speaker 1: pressure is great, and sometimes he run the game to
Speaker 1: his liking. Maybe you can stop him. I can't. He
Speaker 1: has already chosen his next victim or victims. I don't
Speaker 1: know who they are yet. The next day, after I
Speaker 1: read the paper, I will know, but it will be
Speaker 1: too late. Good luck hunting.
Speaker 6: It was in this letter that the name BTK was born,
Speaker 6: a three letter moniker that came to haunt which a
Speaker 6: tall police.
Speaker 1: Yours truly guilty ps. Since sex criminals do not change
Speaker 1: their mo or by nature, cannot do so, I will
Speaker 1: not change mine. The code words for me will be
Speaker 1: bind them, torture them, kill them, BTK. They will be
Speaker 1: on the next victim.
Speaker 10: He considered himself to be among the elite serial killers,
Speaker 10: and so he named himself BTK.
Speaker 6: This is Catherine Ramsland, the forensic psychologist who wrote a
Speaker 6: book with and about Dennis Rader.
Speaker 10: He did not want to leave his name to chance
Speaker 10: and get something stupid. He wanted a powerful name, and
Speaker 10: it wasn't the only one. He gave them a few ideas,
Speaker 10: but because he had created an image for the BTK
Speaker 10: name as well, he stuck with that. He's one of
Speaker 10: the few who told police and journalists, here's what you
Speaker 10: should call me, and he enjoyed that. He enjoyed that
Speaker 10: kind of cat and mouse game.
Speaker 1: By using BTK, torture, fantasy, writing, drawing, and what I
Speaker 1: had planned to do. I wrote my own criminal epithet.
Speaker 1: If cocked, those words would hang me.
Speaker 6: Carrie Rawson, Dennis Raider's daughter, talks about her father's lust
Speaker 6: for notoriety.
Speaker 4: He feeds off the fair because he wanted to be
Speaker 4: remembered and known for what he had done. And he
Speaker 4: talks about Ted and California and he's talking about son
Speaker 4: of Sam. Well, He's in a smaller media market, so
Speaker 4: he wasn't getting the coverage that Bundy or Sam was.
Speaker 4: He wanted to be known and he didn't like that
Speaker 4: these guys were taking credit and making it sound one
Speaker 4: way when he knew the truth. So he writes into
Speaker 4: the Eagle. It puts in a library book in the
Speaker 4: public library where him I used to hang out all
Speaker 4: the time.
Speaker 6: Later on, Dennis Raider had the authority's attention. His plan
Speaker 6: was working.
Speaker 4: So he literally it's like giving them evidence because he's
Speaker 4: such a narcissist and he's enjoying that game.
Speaker 6: For Raider, the game was just getting started. The news
Speaker 6: was settling on the police department. For the first time
Speaker 6: in history, Wichita was dealing with a bona fide serial killer.
Speaker 5: In the first phase of this, I'm thinking to myself,
Speaker 5: what kind of a screwball is this? The fact is
Speaker 5: he's hurting people. He's actually killing innocent people in our community.
Speaker 5: Our job is to put him away, get him off
Speaker 5: the street. And as you read these things, this is
Speaker 5: like a movie script. Kept it's not a movie. It's
Speaker 5: real people are dying. How can we resolve this? This
Speaker 5: is going to be a long process and it's going
Speaker 5: to take a lot of help.
Speaker 6: Police were initially unsure about what to do with btk's letter.
Speaker 6: They thought if they went public with it, the city
Speaker 6: might go into a frenzy and then it might embolt
Speaker 6: in BTK to kill again.
Speaker 5: None of us had ever dealt with this. We reached
Speaker 5: out to departments that had dealt with serial killers. We
Speaker 5: reached out to the FBI, getting advice suggestions as to
Speaker 5: how we might proceed. We reached out to professionals here
Speaker 5: in Wichita and in the region, psychologists, psychiatrists to get advice,
Speaker 5: to get direction as to what they had done, what
Speaker 5: worked best for them, and what we might do in
Speaker 5: the future.
Speaker 6: It wasn't until a few days later that police came
Speaker 6: up with a plan to respond to BTK. The response
Speaker 6: came in the form of a personal ad in the
Speaker 6: Wichita Eagle on October twenty seventh, calling on BTK to
Speaker 6: reach out.
Speaker 11: BTK Help is available call six four six six three
Speaker 11: one two one before ten pm.
Speaker 6: But the hotline never rang. On October thirty, First Eagle
Speaker 6: columnist Don Granger ran his own article trying to get
Speaker 6: btk's attention.
Speaker 12: For the past week, which Ada police have tried to
Speaker 12: get in touch with a man who has important information
Speaker 12: on the Otero murdered case, A man who needs help badly.
Speaker 12: You may have noticed the classified ad that ran at
Speaker 12: the top of our personal column Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday
Speaker 12: and Tuesday. It read BTK help is available. There really
Speaker 12: is a BTK. Police cannot say how they know, but
Speaker 12: they are convinced BTK has information about the murder of
Speaker 12: Joseph Vittero, his wife and two of his children. If
Speaker 12: for any reason, BTK doesn't want to talk to police,
Speaker 12: this newspaper's secret witness procedure is available. I will go further.
Speaker 12: If BTK wants to call me at home, I can
Speaker 12: be reached.
Speaker 6: Granger's phone never rang either. On December eleventh, Wichita Sun
Speaker 6: reporter Kathy Hinkle published the BTK letter after getting her
Speaker 6: hands on it from an unnamed source. Finally, the words
Speaker 6: of this bizarre killer, we're out there for everyone to see.
Speaker 6: Police Chief Lloyd Hannen had this to say, you know,
Speaker 6: Wichita beaconn article about btk's letter going.
Speaker 12: Public, I think we've taken one hell of a risk
Speaker 12: with the release of this letter.
Speaker 11: He might have to go out and commit this offense
Speaker 11: again to prove he committed this offense.
Speaker 12: He's a sick man who needs help.
Speaker 5: When this hit the news and it started picking up.
Speaker 5: The whole community is afraid. I personally even had a
Speaker 5: sister in law who was a single female. She's an adult,
Speaker 5: but she's single, and she came out and lived with us.
Speaker 5: She would not stay at her own home.
Speaker 6: In fact, it was like this all across Wichita. People
Speaker 6: were installing heavy locks on their doors, women stopped going
Speaker 6: out alone. Everyone was scared.
Speaker 5: I mean, it was a scary time for the community
Speaker 5: and of course the department. I mean, you're getting all
Speaker 5: kinds of heat. What are they trying to do to
Speaker 5: resolve this? And we're doing everything that we possibly can,
Speaker 5: but it's a fear factor. How do you reconcile that
Speaker 5: if you're afraid of something you perceive you're afraid of it.
Speaker 5: I can't give you enough reassurance that you're okay, because
Speaker 5: you're not gonna believe it. The city actually came together,
Speaker 5: I mean really did. Neighbor watching neighbor, everybody trying to
Speaker 5: watch out for each other. What neighbor would come home
Speaker 5: and call their other neighbor and say, hey, I'm home.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm locking up. And we had a lot
Speaker 5: of calls, suspicious character type calls, and of course the
Speaker 5: beat officers are in tune with this. They're doing their
Speaker 5: absolute best. They're stopping people. If you're in a neighborhood
Speaker 5: and you're out somewhere, we don't know who you are,
Speaker 5: you're gonna get stopped.
Speaker 6: Police were under a ton of pressure. They knew they
Speaker 6: had to catch the sky and fast, and the fact
Speaker 6: that he had communicated was a good thing, albeit terrifying.
Speaker 6: The letter meant they had a avenue to finding him.
Speaker 5: The theory that we had was that if we can
Speaker 5: communicate with him, he communicated with us. Obviously he's searching
Speaker 5: for identification. He wants to be identified. The idea was
Speaker 5: that if we can keep him communicating, because we know
Speaker 5: he's fantasizing about what he's already done, and if we
Speaker 5: can keep him occupied with that, perhaps there won't be
Speaker 5: another victim.
Speaker 6: But Rader was starting to realize he had put himself
Speaker 6: at serious risk. He saw the newspaper article where the
Speaker 6: BTK letter went public, He saw the law enforcement were
Speaker 6: actively pursuing him, and he got spooked. So at the
Speaker 6: end of nineteen seventy four, he cut off all communication
Speaker 6: and he decided to lay low. Here are his words
Speaker 6: from Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 1: I acted normal when Paul was present. I watched the
Speaker 1: news with interest, but not overly. I read the paper,
Speaker 1: but I did not cut out the articles until later.
Speaker 1: I also became overly defensive. I watched the road outside
Speaker 1: and had a loaded gun ready. I made sure our
Speaker 1: locked windows were secure, probably like everyone else in Wichita.
Speaker 6: In the summer of nineteen seventy five, with the BTK
Speaker 6: paranoia still a buzz, Wichita police found a strange note
Speaker 6: left at a crime scene. An elderly couple, John and
Speaker 6: Emma Foster, were found stabbed to death in their home.
Speaker 6: The mystery note left behind set off alarm bells. Police
Speaker 6: Chief Floyd Hannon held a press conference just twenty four
Speaker 6: hours later. The following excerpt comes from a Wichita Eagle
Speaker 6: article dated July twenty ninth, nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 13: Hannin said that the note was left at the scene.
Speaker 13: The police don't know who wrote it. He emphasized there
Speaker 13: was no reason to believe there was any connection between
Speaker 13: the notes writer and the person who wrote a letter
Speaker 13: to the Eagle Beacons secret Witness program.
Speaker 6: In other words, this murder had nothing to do with BTK,
Speaker 6: but it shows that everyone in Wichita was on edge
Speaker 6: about the next BTK murder. They feared that any similar
Speaker 6: incident might be his handiwork. Every new murder or sexual
Speaker 6: assault was met with the question could this have been BTK?
Speaker 6: But in truth Raider had started a new line of work,
Speaker 6: becoming a father. His first child, a boy, was named
Speaker 6: Brian Raider. But for Dennis, being a normal dad seemed impossible.
Speaker 6: In his mind, existing just as an average family man
Speaker 6: was unthinkable. He was different and he knew it, as
Speaker 6: he himself admitted.
Speaker 1: I love to hunt, prowling the streets looking for fair game.
Speaker 1: The cat and mouse game gave me an adrenaline rush
Speaker 1: or hi.
Speaker 6: As he built one identity, the other started to fester underneath,
Speaker 6: almost like juckal and Hyde. This was Dennis Raider, the
Speaker 6: so called normal suburban dad versus BTK, the serial killer.
Speaker 4: BTK is really more just another mask, using that to
Speaker 4: power into rage and anger and controlling that into murder,
Speaker 4: than to release that because it makes him feel better
Speaker 4: about who he is.
Speaker 6: Carrie Rawson, daughter of Dennis Raider, She says the two
Speaker 6: versions of her dad are just sides up the same coin,
Speaker 6: and one side comes out when it needs to, not like.
Speaker 4: A bipolar thing. He's always this, he's always Dennis Raider,
Speaker 4: he's always Dad, he's always BTK, and then he just
Speaker 4: cubes and flips to show you what he wants you
Speaker 4: to see.
Speaker 6: Forensic psychologist Catherine Ramsland explains this phenomenon.
Speaker 10: That is that whole cubing thing. It's a way to
Speaker 10: not be completely connected in your sense of morality. I
Speaker 10: think each situation in which he found himself was real
Speaker 10: to him, and he could easily live this double life
Speaker 10: because the more intense, exciting experience was murdering people. But
Speaker 10: he also had what he called social obligations family church,
Speaker 10: he was president of his church, congregation, his job, he
Speaker 10: had things that he had to look to as well,
Speaker 10: and he took those seriously. I think from the outside
Speaker 10: anybody might say, how seriously could that be, given how
Speaker 10: he's really violating all of these things. I don't think
Speaker 10: he thought of it as pretense at all. I think
Speaker 10: he thought of it as that's what I need to
Speaker 10: do for myself. That's my little secret. I enjoy it
Speaker 10: when I can do it, Otherwise I do this other thing.
Speaker 6: In these early days of nineteen seventy seven, Rader was
Speaker 6: still learning how to balance all of these conflicting emotions.
Speaker 6: According to Carrie, he had trouble holding it all together.
Speaker 6: Little things like chores and hobbies just weren't enough to
Speaker 6: keep his mind off his fantasies.
Speaker 4: Later on we learn he was literally throwing himself into
Speaker 4: stuff to distract him from murder. He needed to be
Speaker 4: outside he could get uptid and angry and difficult and
Speaker 4: controlling inside.
Speaker 6: While Rader was struggling with his identity crisis, the people
Speaker 6: of Wichita were wondering what happened to be tk newly
Speaker 6: appointed police chief. Richard Lemonion was one of them.
Speaker 5: In nineteen seventy six, I was appointed as police chief.
Speaker 5: I was thirty six years old. I was the youngest
Speaker 5: police chief in the history of the department on major
Speaker 5: cases like this. Here, the investigators briefed me on everything
Speaker 5: that we had, and then I had a much better
Speaker 5: understanding of what evidence we did have, what was available
Speaker 5: to us, and where they were in their investigation. And
Speaker 5: at that particular time, they were pretty much at a
Speaker 5: dead end. We hadn't heard from him for a long time,
Speaker 5: and you know, their thinking is maybe he's gone, maybe
Speaker 5: he's dead, maybe he's in prison. They literally had followed
Speaker 5: every lead that they could humanly follow, and I remember
Speaker 5: we were getting advice from the FBI and others that
Speaker 5: if he was alive, he was still killing. If he
Speaker 5: wasn't still killing, then he he was still fantasizing.
Speaker 6: It took him years, years of waiting, planning, thinking of
Speaker 6: ways to do it better. But finally, in nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 6: three years since his last murder, someone caught his eye.
Speaker 1: She was completely random. There was actually someone across from
Speaker 1: Dylan's who might have been the potential. It was called
Speaker 1: Project green or Greenwood. I had met this girl, I
Speaker 1: think at WSU. I knew where she lived.
Speaker 6: Dylan's was a nearby supermarket. He spotted her and followed
Speaker 6: her home multiple times. He decided he was ready she
Speaker 6: was the one. On March seventeenth, nineteen seventy seven, he
Speaker 6: approached her door and something unexpected happened.
Speaker 1: I know, but nobody answered. While I was walking away
Speaker 1: from the intended house, I saw a young boy coming
Speaker 1: back from Dylan's. I figured he had a mother in
Speaker 1: the house. I watched where he went, and then I
Speaker 1: went to the door and knocked. The boy opened the
Speaker 1: door with his brother.
Speaker 3: My name is Steve Ralford.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna be k K Shurbiv Danish writer Right my
Speaker 5: mom knocking Kevin seven?
Speaker 6: Next time on Monster bet K, there's a.
Speaker 5: Crack any door whare look out him?
Speaker 1: A mom Pleton. She told the kids to do whatever
Speaker 1: I said. I tied the door shut, but the kids
Speaker 1: were still yelling.
Speaker 5: The big thing that weighs on you is the fact
Speaker 5: that this is gonna happen again.
Speaker 3: He's going to determine whether or not you're gonna live, when.
Speaker 9: You're gonna die.
Speaker 3: He's gonna play with these victims. There's no manuel written
Speaker 3: on how to react when you become part of the story.
Speaker 5: When we announced the fact that we did as serial killer,
Speaker 5: we had a hundred tips.
Speaker 4: He's making your life uncomfortable. Night later we said it
Speaker 4: was like walking on inkshells at times with him.
Speaker 1: Oh Anna, why didn't you appear?
Speaker 2: Monster bt K is a production of Tenderfoot TV and
Speaker 2: iHeart Podcasts. The show is written by Nomes Griffin, Trevor
Speaker 2: Young and Jesse Funk. Our host is Susan Peters. Executive
Speaker 2: producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and
Speaker 2: Payne Lindsay, alongside supervising producer Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on
Speaker 2: behalf of iHeart Podcasts include Matt Frederick and Trevor Young,
Speaker 2: alongside producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk and supervising producer
Speaker 2: Rima Ilkali. Marketing support by David Wasserman and Alison Wright
Speaker 2: at iHeart Podcasts and Caroline or Agemma at Tenderfoot TV.
Speaker 2: Additional research by Claudia Dafrico, original artwork by Kevin Mister
Speaker 2: Soul Harp, original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Special
Speaker 2: thanks to Orrin Rosenbaum and the team at UTA and
Speaker 2: the Nord Group. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV,
Speaker 2: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 2: to your favorite shows. Thanks for listening.