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Dennis Rader

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File:DennisRaderArraignment.jpg
Pool video released March 1, 2005 of Rader's first appearance

Dennis Lynn Rader is an American serial killer, who murdered at least ten people in Sedgwick County, Kansas, United States, between 1974 and 1991. He was known as the BTK killer (or strangler), which stands for Bind, Torture, and Kill, which was his modus operandi. Letters were written soon after the killings to police and to local news outlets, boasting of the crimes and knowledge of details. After a long hiatus, these letters resumed in 2004.

On Friday, February 25, 2005, Rader, a city inspector, Cub Scout leader, and Lutheran church council president, was detained near his home in Park City, Kansas, and accused of the BTK killings. At a press conference the next morning, Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams flatly asserted, "the bottom line is that BTK has been arrested." Rader pled guilty to his crimes on June 27, 2005, giving a graphic, almost surreal account of his crimes in court. Using personal jargon such as "hit kit" for his killing equipment, Rader casually described his crimes as his "projects", and at one point compared murdering his victims to animals by saying he "put them down". He will be sentenced August 17, 2005.

Victims

Rader's victims include four members of one family (Joseph Otero, his wife Julie Otero, and two of their five children: Joseph Otero II and Josephine Otero); Kathryn Bright, Shirley Vian, Nancy Fox, and Vicki Wegerle. Two later murders, Marine Hedge and Delores Davis, were only recently affirmatively linked to the series. Police officials say Rader murdered at least ten people between 1974 and 1991 and may be responsible for others as well.

Semen found on or near the bodies of his victims appears to be the critical evidence linking Rader to the crimes. Rader also sent trophies to police in his letters, and others may have been discovered in his home. Other cold cases in Kansas were reopened [1] to see if Rader's DNA matched crime scenes, but Rader's confession was limited to the ten known victims.

Letters

Rader was particularly known for sending taunting letters to police and newspapers, often including biographical details and complex puzzles that suggested he was giving clues. He claimed to have been born in 1939 and to have grown up living near railroads. He also claimed that his father was killed in World War II, and that he was raised by his mother thereafter. Most of this appears now to have been deliberate misdirection. These letters stopped long before the 1991 murder, leading to speculation that BTK was incarcerated or dead.

Rader made headlines again in March 2004 when the Wichita Eagle newspaper received a letter from someone using the pseudonym Bill Thomas Killman. The writer claimed that he murdered Vicki Wegerle on September 16, 1986, and enclosed photographs of the crime scene and a photocopy of her driver's license, which had been stolen at the time of the crime. In December 2004, Wichita police received another package purportedly from the BTK killer. This time, the package was found discarded in Wichita's Murdock Park. It reportedly contains the driver's license of Nancy Fox, which was noted as stolen at the scene of crime, and other items which remain undisclosed to the public.

Most believe that the serial killer chose to resurface in 2004 as it was the thirtieth anniversary of his first killings in 1974. The inclusion of more accurate details in his new letters as well as at least one puzzle which appears to include his full name suggests to some that Rader was ready to be caught.

Biography

File:DennisRaderDL.jpg
Dennis Lynn Rader
Driver's License Photo From 2000

Dennis Lynn Rader was born in March 9, 1945, the first of four brothers. He grew up in Wichita and graduated from Riverview School and later Wichita Heights High School. Rader attended Kansas Wesleyan College in 1965–66 and then spent four years from 1966 to 1970 in the U.S. Air Force, including time in Texas, Alabama, Japan, Okinawa, South Korea, Greece and Turkey.

When he returned to the states, he moved to Park City, a suburb located seven miles north of Wichita. He worked for a time in the meat department of a supermarket in Park City. He married Paula née Dietz on May 22, 1971. He attended Butler County Community College in El Dorado, earning an Associate's Degree in Electronics in 1973. He enrolled at Wichita State University in the fall of 1973. There he graduated in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in Administration of Justice.

From 1972 to 1973, Rader worked as an assembler for the Coleman Company, a camping gear firm, as had two of BTK's early victims. From November 1974 until being fired in July 1988, Rader worked at a Wichita-based office of ADT Security Services, a company which sold and installed alarm system for commercial businesses during Rader's years there.information Administrator note He held several positions, including installation manager.

Rader was a census field operations supervisor for the Wichita area in 1989 for 3 months, prior to the 1990 federal census.

Rader had worked since 1991 as a supervisor of the Compliance Department at Park City, a two-employee, multi-functional department in charge of "animal control, housing problems, zoning, general permit enforcement and a variety of nuisance cases." In this position, neighbors recalled him as sometimes overzealous and extremely strict. On March 2, 2005, the Park City council terminated Rader's employment for failure to report to work or to call in.

Rader served on both the Sedgwick County's Board of Zoning Appeals and the Animal Control Advisory Board (appointed in 1996 and resigned in 1998). He was also a member of Christ Lutheran Church, a Lutheran congregation of about 200 people. He had been a member for about 30 years and had been elected president of the Congregation Council. He was also a Cub Scout leader.

Rader and his wife Paula are the parents of two adult children, Brian and Kerri. Both were born after Rader's murders started.

On July 27, 2005, Sedgwick County District Judge Eric Yost waived the usual 60-day waiting period and granted an immediate divorce for Paula Rader, agreeing that her mental health was in danger. Dennis Rader didn't contest the divorce, and the 34 year marriage was ended. Paula Rader said in her divorce petition that her mental and physical condition has been adversely affected by the marriage.

She also contended that the couple was incompatible and that he had failed to perform material marital duties and obligations - possibly due to his incarceration.

Arrest

File:Dennis Rader booking.jpg
Rader's mugshot, taken during booking at the Sedgwick County Jail at around 8 p.m. on February 27, 2005.

The BTK killer's last known communication with the media and police was a padded envelope which arrived at FOX affiliate KSAS-TV in Wichita on February 16. A purple, 1.44-megabyte Memorex computer disk was enclosed in the package, and police reportedly traced it to Rader after FBI analysis of deleted data on the disk. Also enclosed were a letter, a photocopy of the cover of a 1989 novel about a serial killer (Rules of Prey) and a gold-colored necklace with a large medallion. Once the computer disk was analyzed, police began surveillance of Rader.

Sometime during this period, police obtained a warrant for the medical records of Rader's daughter, Kerri. A tissue sample seized at this time was tested for DNA and provided a familial match with semen at an earlier BTK crime scene. This, along with other evidence gathered prior to and during the surveillance, gave police probable cause for an arrest.

Rader was stopped while driving near his home and taken into custody shortly after noon on February 25, 2005. Immediately, law enforcement officials—including a Wichita Police bomb unit truck, two SWAT trucks, and FBI and ATF agents—converged on Rader's residence near the intersection of I-135 and 61st Street North. Rader's home and vehicle were searched, and evidence—including computer equipment, a pair of black pantyhose retrieved from a shed, and a cylindrical container—was collected. The church he attended, his office at City Hall and the main branch of the Park City library were also searched that day. Officers were seen removing a computer from his City Hall office, but it is unclear if any evidence was found at these locations.

On February 26, 2005, The Wichita Police Department announced that they were holding Dennis Lynn Rader as the prime suspect in the BTK killings in a press conference. (transcript via the Wichita Eagle [2])

Rader was officially arrested on February 28, 2005.

Kansas reinstated the death penalty in 1994. The last known BTK killing was in 1991, making all known BTK murders ineligible for the death penalty. Even if later murders are linked to the BTK killer, it is unclear at this time whether the death penalty would come into play, as the Kansas Supreme Court declared the state's capital punishment law unconstitutional on December 17, 2004. The Sunday after his arrest, Associated Press reports cited an anonymous source that Rader had confessed to other killings in addition to the ones with which he was already connected. Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston called these reports "patently false." [3] On March 5, news sources claimed to have verified by multiple sources that Rader had confessed to the ten murders he is charged with, but no additional ones. [4]

On March 1, Rader was formally charged with ten counts of first degree murder (AP via the Wichita Eagle [5]). He made his first appearance via videoconference from jail. He was represented by a public defender. Bail was continued at $10 million.

On May 3, District Court Judge Gregory Waller entered not guilty pleas to the ten charges on Rader's behalf as Rader 'stood mute' at his arraignment.

On June 27, the scheduled trial date, Dennis Rader changed his plea to guilty. In a very calm manner he described, in detail, the killings. He made no apologies. (Rader's Pleas online in RealMedia format courtesy KWCH-TV [6].)

Sentencing has been set for August 17.

Some possible facts regarding the case

Physical and circumstantial facts that would have corroborated Rader as the BTK killer:

  • DNA analysis of BTK's semen and material taken from underneath the fingernails of victim Vicki Wegerle match the DNA profile of Dennis Rader.
  • Rader's grammar and writing style matches letters and poems received from BTK.
  • Rader was reportedly seen circulating frequently in the Home Depot parking lot near a BTK package drop site in early 2005.
  • ADT Security was located a few blocks from a payphone that the killer used to report a murder in 1977.
  • Rader had attended Wichita State University in the 1970s. The BTK killer used a photocopier on campus to copy one of his letters. A survivor of the attack on Bright reported that the killer had asked him if he had seen him at the university. A poem in one of the killer's letters was similar to a folk song taught by a professor on that campus in that time period.
  • Rader lived on the same street as Marine Hedge, just houses away. The BTK killer's other victims were in and around central Wichita.
  • The Coleman Company was located a few blocks from a payphone that the killer used to report a murder, and two of the victims (Julie Otero and Kathryn Bright) worked at Coleman during the same period that Rader worked there.
  • Rader and Joseph Otero, one of the first victims, both worked as Air Force mechanics.

Critics believe that Rader might have been identified years earlier had more of these links been followed and analyzed.

Notoriety and Profit

On July 22 2005, a controversy errupted on CNN's Nancy Grace over a poem that Dennis Rader had written that was passed on to someone who then sold it on an auction site that specializes in serial killer memorabilia. The poem was entitled "Black Friday", an ode to the day he was arrested. The poem expressed a point that Dennis Rader was not happy about being caught, with one of the verses proclaiming "The dark side of me has been exposed."

Notes

Template:AnbTwiddy, David. "BTK suspect's career in security probed." Associated Press. February 28, 2005. [7]

Template:AnbWilliams, Sarah T. "Camp novel crops up in the BTK case." Minneapolis Star-Tribune. March 3, 2005. [8]

Books

  • Davis, Jeffrey M. The Shadow of Evil: Where Is God in a Violent World? Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1996. (ISBN 0787219819) - Davis is the son of BTK victim Delores Davis.
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