American Serial Killer Dennis Rader: Raiders of the Lost Files

BTK (Bind-Torture-Kill) hid in plain site for many years but was extremely chatty while he did so. In 2005, Dennis Rader was a Cub Scout Leader and President of the Congregational Council for the Christ Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas. Nobody could have guessed that he was also the vicious BTK Killer, a ghoul who had been responsible for ten gruesome murders committed over the seventeen year period up to January 1991.

It had all started in January 1974 with the Otero family, four members of which BTK had surprised at home and then bound, tortured and killed. Those lost were Joseph Otero, his wife Julie Otero, their youngest son, Joseph Jr, and their youngest daughter, Josephine. These slayings set the killer's modus operandi and he methodically hunted down and murdered a further six women, with three more narrowly escaping his clutches. Between the murder of Nancy Fox in December 1977 and that of Marine Hedge in April 1985, he took some time off to attend to family matters, however, and also had another break between killing Vicki Wegerle in September 1986 and Dolores Davis, his final victim, in January 1991.

BTK was not heard from again until 2004, the 30 year anniversary of the Otero killings. He was far from idle during these periods of supposed inactivity, however, and easily found other ways to amuse himself. He apparently felt that he was superior to the general rank and file of serial killers and, like Jack the Ripper, Peter Kurten and The Zodiac, he sent letters to the police, as well as to local newspapers and television stations. In these letters, he taunted those in charge of the investigation, offered them details about his crimes and also gave himself a name: the BTK Strangler. Unlike other killers who happily confess to crimes they are not responsible for, however, he took great pains to point out in writing that several crimes were being attributed to him that he had NOT committed. He also wrote poetry and sent the investigators word puzzles, an outline for a book on his life and crimes as well as memorabilia that had once belonged to his victims.

BTK should perhaps have stuck to red ink and parchment like The Ripper, though, and it was the metadata on the computer disk that he sent to the police during January 2005 that proved to be his undoing. Using forensic software, the police were able to determine from the information on the disk that the files stored thereon had been created by one 'Dennis' who was somehow linked to the local Lutheran Church. Rader's existence came to light after the police effected an internet search for 'Lutheran Church Wichita Dennis'. They then determined that Rader owned a black Jeep Cherokee, just like the BTK Killer. DNA evidence obtained from Rader's daughter then showed a familial link to the killer's DNA as obtained from the bodies of one of the murder victims, and Rader's fate was sealed.

Rader was arrested on February 25^th 2005, formally charged on February 28^th, and, after only a short time in custody, confessed publicly and in great detail, to all ten murders. He fancied himself an amateur psychologist and attributed his penchant for killing to 'Factor X', that unidentified aspect of his psyche that had driven him to murder.

On August 18^th 2005, he was sentenced to ten consecutive life sentences - he was ineligible for the death penalty as Kansas did not have one at the time the crimes were originally committed - and this means that he will be eligible for parole only in 2180. Perhaps he will spend his time in jail writing that book he threatened the newspapers with...

Sources:
Dennis Rader Wikipedia
Dennis Rader Biography Biography.com
BTK Archive The Wichita Eagle