January 13, 2025 • 46 mins
The killer has become BTK. But he must also maintain his facade as a normal family man. Can he reconcile his inner Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
New episodes of Monster BTK are released every Monday and
brought to you absolutely free. But if you want to
hear the whole season right now, it's available ad free
on iHeart True Crime Plus. For more information, check out
the show notes. Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
You're listening to Monster BTK, a production of iHeart Podcasts
and Tenderfoot TV. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
I graduated in May nineteen seventy nine, and it was
easy to slip back into the Christian world. The kids
were growing like weeds and ahead of the household was needed.
Paula needed to be home, so all responsibility landed on me.
I had no time to be away from home. Being
busy with the family kept the dark side at bay.
(01:02):
The next year, we got a pet dog, Patches, a
Britney Spaniel. I built a fence in the backyard and
I did a lot of gardening and enjoyed life with
my wife and two kids. The job with ADT gave
me opportunities to be out of town, staying in motel rooms,
so I would take the bondage items with me or
(01:23):
shop for new ones at the town where I was
doing a job. A second time, when Paula came home.
I was in full bondage in the hallway in a
slit with a rope. I tried to hide it in
the bathroom, but there was just too much of it
out to hide. She exploded into a fury. I cleaned
(01:44):
the mess up and told her I would leave. I
was so embarrassed and ashamed. I slept a day or
two in the living room. She was thinking about what
to do. We didn't talk, only small talk in front
of the kids. She finally told me that if she
ever caught me again, she would file for divorce and
I would have to leave the house for good. I understood.
(02:08):
I vowed I would never do this at home again.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Someone killed four members of a family.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
Had you vanished from her home suddenly last weekend? Her
phone lines had been cut, her door left open.
Speaker 6 (02:24):
You see the victim playing there with flashing bags over
their heads, strangled. You could tell it was a plan scenario.
Speaker 7 (02:32):
Well, police have said no more about the contents of
the letter.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
It does contain some sort of threat and implies the
killer may strike again.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
He's going to play with these victims.
Speaker 8 (02:42):
He'd get him to the point of death and then
bring them back and then brings them back to the
point of death.
Speaker 9 (02:49):
From My Heart podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. I'm Susan Peters
and this is Monster BTK. In nineteen seventy nine, sixty
three year old Anna Williams just barely escaped to becoming
(03:10):
btk's eighth victim. He had broken into her home and
waited for her, leaving in a huff when she didn't
arrive home at her normal time. Soon after, he sent
a nineteen line poem titled oh Anna, why didn't you
appear to both Williams and to Cake TV. Police wondered
(03:35):
why BTK had targeted Williams. She was, after all, older
than most of his other victims. They wondered if her
twenty four year old granddaughter had been his intended target.
Williams didn't stick around to find out.
Speaker 6 (03:53):
Well, Annie, she left Wichita, she moved, and again the
community still on high alert.
Speaker 9 (03:59):
If you will This is former Wichita Police Chief Richard Lemonnion.
He says that after the Williams attempt, the BTK trail
went dark. In May of nineteen seventy nine, Raider graduated
from Wichita State with a bachelor's degree in Administration of Justice.
(04:22):
This resulted in the loss of his cover story for
being out late in the evenings, another reason. He put
the monster to rest, but he started practicing bondage more often.
Eventually he was caught by his wife, which you heard
at the top of the episode. This incident was deeply
(04:43):
embarrassing to Raider. He assured Paula he would change, but
in reality, the only thing he changed was the location
of his self gratification. Here are his words from the
book Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
These incidents were perfect times to seek professional help. I know,
but I don't recall if Paula asked me to do
anything like this. Maybe she did, and I told her
I would work it out. But I thought if I
told someone about the other things I was doing in
order to really get help, they would be obligated to
tell the police.
Speaker 9 (05:21):
Nineteen eighty four marked ten years since the Otero killings,
and btk's five year absence hadn't put Leamonnion's feares to
bed like it had for other Witchitans.
Speaker 6 (05:34):
There was a sense of that was in our history.
It doesn't exist anymore, at least to the community. To me,
it was very real.
Speaker 9 (05:43):
So with special permission from city manager Jene Denton and
Al kirk A County Commissioner. Lamnion planned the most sophisticated
investigation in city history. The technological advancements of the nineteen
eighties re energized the investigation gation.
Speaker 6 (06:01):
In eighty four, we put together a special task force.
I handpicked a group of investigators to be a part
of that. I had senior detectives, I had new detectives.
I had patrol officers that were assigned, and that was
the only thing they were working on. The media found
out about it. We didn't tell them what was going on,
(06:21):
but they dubbed it ghostbusters. The idea was of this
group was number one to identify and arrest the guy.
Number two was to put together all the information we had,
computerize it as best we could, put all the files
in place. If he was dead, we knew that we
(06:42):
would find the trophies sometime or if he was still alive,
at some point he's going to come back. So we're
going to either catch the person or we're going to
put it together in such a way that when the
next thing happens, whoever the investigator is can just pick
it up and move forward. That was our plan.
Speaker 9 (07:04):
Promising young detectives like Kenny land Where were brought in
to give this case.
Speaker 6 (07:09):
There all we weren't done, We hadn't put everything together,
and I thought to myself, this is the type of
thing we need to do, get behind closed doors. We've
got computers, now, we've got DNA, we've got semen, we've
got everything else. And as a result of that, it
took several months, but it proved at least in our
(07:31):
mind that we knew the person we're looking for is local.
The reason we can't find him is he's one of us.
He goes to the same grocery store that we go to,
he goes to the same movies. He probably has a family,
he works here, and the reason we can't find him
is one of the people that lives in this door.
Speaker 9 (07:57):
The BTK task Force was made up of eight men,
Captain Gary Fulton, Lieutenant Al Stewart, and Officers Paul Dotson,
ed Nass, Mark Richardson, Jerry Harper, and Paul Holmes, along
with land Where. Throughout nineteen eighty four, the Ghostbusters would
(08:18):
search high and low for clues about the identity of BTK.
For the first month of their work with the task force.
They did nothing but read reports. They spent hundreds of
man hours re examining an index of previously eliminated suspects
put together by older detectives. They also spent weeks debating
(08:39):
whether or not to add the Catherine Bright files to
the BTK evidence. Yes, they eventually decided. In October of
nineteen eighty four, they brought in FBI criminal profilers.
Speaker 8 (08:53):
We call the Wichita police. Come on in here, guys,
and bring a tape recorders. We won't be able to
have time at the written profile, but we'll work with
you for day or two whatever takes to help you
people out.
Speaker 9 (09:06):
This is John Douglas, former FBI special agent.
Speaker 8 (09:11):
And then we did this kind of a mind bust,
me and three other profiles with the cops there going
around and evaluating, the analyzing the case things that they
should be doing. And I came up with the idea,
when you have an offender who starts to communicate, rather
communicate with a department, I want him to communicate with
(09:31):
a person affiliated with the investigation, and I want that
guy to be the focal point I called a super coop.
Speaker 9 (09:41):
In time, Kenny Landware would become that focal point. The
initial FBI profile, delivered in part by criminal profile or
Roy Hazelwood, provided cops with their first detailed impressions of BTK.
Here is an excerpt from the book bind Tour Kill.
Speaker 10 (10:02):
Hazelwood thought BTK practiced bondage in everyday life, that he
was a sexual sadist, a control freak, and could interact
with others only on a superficial level. You know him,
but you don't really know him. The profiler felt that
although BTK would do well at work, he wouldn't like
anyone telling him what to do. Hazelwood also thought BTK
(10:25):
collected bondage materials and read crime books and detective magazines.
Speaker 9 (10:31):
From then on, every time BTK Task Force member Paul
Holmes entered someone's home, he looked around for detective magazines.
When Raider's daughter Carrie made it to kindergarten, he decided
he was ready to kill again, but he was older.
Now he had more responsibilities and less time to prowl.
(10:54):
This time, he would pick a target closer to home again.
A snippet from Confession of a serial Killer.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Raider had noticed a neighbor, Marine Hedge, a fifty three
year old woman who lived just down the street and
often gave a friendly wave. She lived alone and was
just the right size.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
I thought about what her neck would look like with
a rope around it.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
It was time, Raider thought to re energize his secret identity.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
It had been a long time since the last time
Factor X exploded in my world and shattered someone else's.
Speaker 9 (11:36):
Targeting someone so close to home went against his code
for how to be a successful serial killer, but the
challenge excited him.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Breaking my own rules sort of gave me a rush.
I lived on the knife edge for a long time
with this, Following newspaper, TV or neighbor talk. By reading
other cases, I knew this was a high gamble. To me,
hedge took a lot of thinking and planning. This was
(12:08):
the first time I had decided to use the Boy
Scouts as my cover.
Speaker 9 (12:13):
The target day arrived April twenty sixth, nineteen eighty five,
Raider went to the Boy Scout camp, where he typically
helped set up He had become a leader when his
son Brian joined. He parked his car on the hill
by the roadside so that he could leave and come
back unnoticed.
Speaker 7 (12:35):
In the end of April nineteen eighty five, I'm almost seven.
Speaker 11 (12:41):
My dad was.
Speaker 7 (12:43):
On a cub Scout camp out with my brother Brian
at Camp Tewakany. My dad feigns that he's like ill
or has a headache. He says he's going to his ted,
knowing my daddy probably even stuffed something in his sleeping bag.
Speaker 9 (12:57):
This is Dennis Raider's daughter Carrie.
Speaker 7 (12:59):
Raw and he then using the cub Scout camp out
for an alibi, he goes to a bowling alley, goes
and slashes some beer in his mouth and make it
seem like he was drinking. He leaves our family chavette
at the bowling alley and he takes a taxi out
to my neighbor. He gets out of the taxi and
(13:19):
he has a bowling bag with him that's maroon and white.
Speaker 5 (13:23):
That's like his hit kit.
Speaker 7 (13:25):
And he walks past my grandparents house and he goes
through Missus Hedges' backyard. Missus hedges house is built exactly
like my house and exactly like my grandparents' house, three
bedroom ranch.
Speaker 9 (13:39):
This meant he'd have no trouble figuring out the best
way to get into the home. He cut her phone line,
broke into the home, and then yet another one of
his plans hit a snag.
Speaker 7 (13:52):
He broke into her house, expecting her to be home
because her car was there, but she had gone with
this man. She's not, so he's disappointed and mad, so
he hides in her closet. Then they come home, and
now she's come home with a man. While he doesn't
want to have to deal with two people. It's messy,
and he's not there for the man. He's there for her.
So he's getting frustrated and he's hanging on in the
(14:14):
closet and he's like waiting forever for the man to leave.
He probably could have murdered both of them, he just
didn't want to because he's older at this point too.
Speaker 11 (14:22):
It's eighty five, so he's wet.
Speaker 7 (14:24):
He's forty at that point, and he hadn't murdered anybody
in my eight years. So he waits for her to
fall asleep, and he jumps into bed and starts strangling her.
Speaker 9 (14:35):
He manually suffocated Marine until she died. In his words,
he throttled her. What happened next is a departure from
btk's usual mo In a disturbing turn of events, Rayder
decided taking photos of Marine's body in her house wasn't enough.
(14:58):
He wanted to do something special.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Since I was in the sexual fantasy, I went ahead
and stripped her and tied her up. I put handcuffs on.
I put her on a blanket, and I went through
her purse. I needed the car key and took some
personal items in the house while I figured out how
I was going to get her out of there. Eventually,
I moved her to the trunk of the car. I
(15:26):
took the car over to christ Lutheran Church, where I
had stashed some items. I tied her up in different
positions and took pictures. I did not use the altar.
I was bad and disturbed, but I still had respect
for some items of God's house. Finally I had a
(15:46):
real bondage picture with a victim.
Speaker 9 (15:51):
Daylight was coming fast. He had to hide Marine's body
and make it back to the boy scout camp before
anyone noticed he was gone. He left her body in
a ditch on fifty third Street. Police wouldn't find her
until over a week later.
Speaker 5 (16:10):
The body was discovered here at fifty third Street North,
just east of Webb Road, a bit west of the
area that police had been searching all weekend for some
clue to the disappearance of fifty three year old Marine Hedge.
Hedge vanished from her home suddenly last weekend. Her phone
lines had been cut, her door left open, and police
have been picking up the pieces ever since. But Park
(16:31):
City Police Chief Ace van Way may have put the
final piece of the puzzle together when he and a
partner noticed what appeared to be a blouse hanging from
a tree limb and searched this area.
Speaker 9 (16:44):
Marine Hedge's murder was not connected to BTK at the time.
It had taken place outside of Wichita, and despite the
cut phone lines, didn't fit the usual BTKM.
Speaker 6 (16:56):
Keep in mind, this is a county case, different investigators,
different crime unit. However, we work very closely with him,
and even after discussion the fact that her body was
thrown out, if you will, at an intersection fifty third
and Web, we just did not see a connection with
it whatsoever.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
The body was nude and police say badly decomposed. A
pair of knotted pantyhose were found lying in the ditch
beside it, and the evergreen branches covering the body may
match pine needles found in the trunk of Marine Hatches
car but police say that's about all the evidence they
have to go on.
Speaker 9 (17:34):
Raider's big risk had panned out. No one suspected BTK
all eyes were on Marine's date as the prime suspect.
Psychologist Catherine Ramsland says Raider had to play it safe
after this.
Speaker 12 (17:49):
He enjoyed that kind of cat and mouse game to
a point. When he killed a woman in his own neighborhood,
he'd not make any communication at all because, first of all,
that violated his own rules don't kill close to home,
and second, he didn't want to bring the police, you know,
give them any sense that this is related to the
(18:10):
other murders, So that stopped his communications.
Speaker 9 (18:16):
Breaking his no killing close to home rule also had
ripple effects that impacted his family's sense of safety.
Speaker 7 (18:25):
Somehow. I know that missus Hedge she's been strangled. A
week or so later, I am running around at Christ
Lutheran after a church and I fall and I break
my arm. So I have a bone sticking out of
my arm. I'm bleeding and I'm screaming. Now I've had
this like pretty major injury for a kid. My dad
(18:45):
gets a cookie tray from the church kitchen and a
towel to secure my arm, and he puts me in
the back of our station wagon instead of calling an ambulance.
My mom's back there with me. He drives me a
few miles south of late I have to have surgery,
three pins put in my arm, and I'm in the.
Speaker 11 (19:04):
Hospital for five days.
Speaker 7 (19:06):
So my six year old self cemitted missus Hedge's murder
with my broken arm, and it was just like big
trauma ball and so literally I started having night terrors,
and the best we know, my night terrors started around
the time missus Hedge was murdered.
Speaker 9 (19:24):
Talking with Payne Lindsey in the Tenderfoot Studio, Carrie says
she thought her fear emboldened her father.
Speaker 13 (19:33):
As a six year old.
Speaker 7 (19:34):
Did you know that this was related to Henny's death? No,
I mean, there's no way I realized I had combined
like the trauma over my arm and the hospital and
Missus Hedge. He's quoted as saying, like, at that time,
when I started getting scared like that, that it worried
him that I was messed up basically from the murder
(19:55):
he had committed down the street. But it also empowered him.
It may feel empowered like he was terrifying me.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
So your dad was aware that you, like, even if
you weren't, your dad was aware that you were being
affected by hedges death.
Speaker 7 (20:12):
Yeah. He's quoted in twenty sixteen as saying he was
sure it was from there. I mean, I've talked to criminologists,
I've talked to detectives, talked to trauma therapists. Nobody knows
how to fix this night terra stuff, and nobody knows.
Why is it the bad guy in the room trying
and kill me? Do you feel like the bad guy
is your dad?
Speaker 13 (20:31):
Oh?
Speaker 11 (20:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (20:42):
In June of nineteen eighty five, nearly seventeen hundred miles
away from Wichita in San Francisco, California, a man named
Leonard Lake was connected to more than two dozen deaths
and disappearances.
Speaker 14 (20:55):
This tape, what you're hearing now is going to be
the lead end building, which hopefully will be the first
of a series of underground buildings. The main emphasis of
the building will be a cell. The purpose of that
cell and the main purpose hens of the building will
(21:17):
be the imprisonment.
Speaker 6 (21:20):
For the young lady, a remote cabin where cops say
some of the most gruesome serial killings in California, history
took place twelve.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
It was in big Dums.
Speaker 15 (21:29):
Three women, seven men, two babies.
Speaker 9 (21:34):
Raider was fascinated. He saw a lot of parallels between
himself and Lake. Here are his words from Confession of
a serial Killer.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
I had clippings about him and his partner in my
Heidi Hole folders, but killing babies was off my list.
After the oteros and by random chance with Vianne, I
decided that no young children would be involved in my hits.
Speaker 9 (21:59):
It wouldn't be long before Rader betrayed this newly formed rule.
Speaker 14 (22:05):
I can't imagine any woman.
Speaker 6 (22:08):
Harming her, not knowing her.
Speaker 5 (22:11):
She was a good person to know.
Speaker 11 (22:14):
And a good friend to have had.
Speaker 9 (22:17):
Vicky Wiggery was a young mother who lived at twenty
four oh four West thirteenth Street with her husband Bill
and children Brandon and Stephanie. Dennis Rader spotted her in
the fall of nineteen eighty six. As he spied on
her home, he would listen as she played the piano.
He thought she played beautifully and named her Project Piano. Ironically,
(22:44):
her neighbor was the head of the BTK Task Force,
Kenny landwere Vicky stayed at home with two year old
Brandon during the day, while Bill was off at work,
Rader decided this would be the best time to strike.
He planned to pass himself off as a Southwestern Bell
repairman to gain access to her home. Here is another
(23:09):
excerpt from the book The Inside Story of BTK.
Speaker 10 (23:14):
Raider had modified a business card to look like a
phone company identification card. He had a yellow hard hat
provided by ADT. He had cut out a segment of
the cover of a Southwestern Bell repair manual and pasted
it on the hard hat, hoping to pass himself off
as a telephone repairman. The briefcase he would carry looked official,
(23:35):
but would contain his hit kit supplies.
Speaker 9 (23:40):
It was the morning of September sixteenth, nineteen eighty six.
Rader parked the security company van in the Indian Hills
Shopping Center parking lot, donned his costume and crossed the
street towards Vicki's house, but first to strengthen his cover,
he went the home of her elderly neighbors, who led
(24:02):
him in to check their phone lines.
Speaker 10 (24:06):
When he left the older couple's house, he walked to
the blond woman's door. He heard the piano. When he
knocked the music stopped.
Speaker 9 (24:15):
Vicky opened the door, and Rader led with the same
line he had used on the neighbors. She was weary
and asked whether it was really necessary for him to
come in. Wasn't the phone line in the backyard, Vicky asked.
Eventually she relented after pretending to test her telephone. He
(24:36):
dropped the act and told Vicki to go to the bedroom.
She cried out, what about my kid, she asked. My
husband is going to be home soon, she said. Rader
hoped not.
Speaker 10 (24:51):
He made her lie down on the waterbed. As she
cried and tried to argue, He tied her wrists and
ankles with leather shoelaces. Vicki began to pray out loud.
Suddenly she ched her hands, broke her bonds, and began
to fight. And then everything became noise and fear. Btk
hit Picky in the face again and again, then grabbed
(25:13):
at her throat, she thought, nicking him on the neck
with a fingernail. He tried to use his strangling rig
but couldn't get a grip. He saw a pair of
panty hose nearby that worked. Once he looped it around
her neck.
Speaker 6 (25:27):
He killed her and left the baby did not kill
the baby. The baby was just a toddler, a little
little bitty thing. The husband found her when he got home.
The crime scene was pretty much destroyed, if you will,
by the husband and by others trying to revive her
(25:48):
and things of that nature.
Speaker 9 (25:53):
When Bill Wiggerly arrived home on his lunch break, it
would take him forty five minutes before he discovered his
wife's body in their bedroom, and.
Speaker 13 (26:03):
By the time police got to Vicky Weggerly's house on
West Thirteenth, her heart had already stopped beating. She died
within fifteen minutes at Riverside Hospital. Her husband Bill supposedly
found Vicky with a noose around her neck. Their two
year old son, Brandon, was playing in another bedroom at
the time of the murder. And now, after hours of
interviewing family members and searching for evidence, police have a
(26:24):
few leads on who killed Vicky Weggerly.
Speaker 9 (26:29):
Per standard police procedure, Bill Weggery became the prime suspect
in his wife's murder. Unfortunately, as Richard Lemunien says, his
initial panic upon discovering his wife's body only made the
situation worse.
Speaker 6 (26:46):
The crime chain was really meshed up. I mean, here's
a husband. He comes to old Panny, here's his wife.
He's trying to do everything he can to shave her.
You can't visualize walking into a situation like that. And
when ems gets there, everyone else gets there. You got
a baby screaming. I mean, you're trying to do everything
(27:06):
you can. You're trying to get her to the hospital.
Speaker 9 (27:11):
Detectives were trying to move fast. The first few hours
in a homicide investigation are crucial. They grilled Bill. Was
he having an affair?
Speaker 16 (27:21):
Was she?
Speaker 9 (27:22):
What took him so long to find his wife's body.
They suggested a lie detector test, and he agreed. They
tested him twice. He failed both times. Years later, Wichita
police would come to the conclusion that lie detector tests
should never be given to a spouse. In the immediate
aftermath of the murder, It's likely Bill's distress led to
(27:46):
the two false positives. Raiders sent no communication about the
murder of Vicki Weggerly, and so yet another BTK murder
went unattributed to the serial killer. Richard Lemonnion said a
police had discussed the possibility.
Speaker 6 (28:03):
At first, it was questionable whether or not that was
a BTK case, A couple of investigators didn't think so,
A couple of other investigators did think so, and I
agreed with them. But we can't prove it one.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
Way or the other.
Speaker 6 (28:17):
There just won't any evidence like the other ones had
been in the past. And to keep in mind, it
had been a while now since we had had a
BTK quote murder credit. It's kind of unusual because my
brother lived like four doors down from that particular house
on thirteenth Street. What are the irony of that?
Speaker 9 (28:42):
By the year following the Weggerly murder, all the Ghostbusters
but Kenny Landweer had been reassigned. Then just before the
end of nineteen eighty seven, Landwear was assigned to the
homicide unit. While the BTK Task Force never truly disbanded,
the which atop police force and the greater Wichita community
(29:03):
moved on. BTK outlasted entire cop careers. Richard Lemunien retired
in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 6 (29:13):
I still remember some of the tragedies, you know that
I went to some of the homicide, the rape cases
and the bused children are pulling people out of rerection,
saying you remember those kind of things, And of course
you don't forget a BGK case at all.
Speaker 9 (29:31):
Throughout the rest of the nineteen eighties, Raider picked out
various projects, none of which panned out. He estimated to
Catherine Ramsland that more than thirty could have resulted in
murder victims. At the end of nineteen eighty seven, a
Wichita woman named Mary Fager came home to find her
(29:51):
husband and two daughters had been murdered. Here's an excerpt
from a January nineteen eighty eight news article.
Speaker 15 (30:00):
Bodies of Sherry and Kelly Faker were found in a
newly installed hot tub in the Solarium. Kelly, who was nude,
was drowned. Police were investigating the possibility she was sexually assaulted.
Lemnion said Sherry was found with her hands bound behind
her back with black electrical tape. She had been strangled
(30:23):
with an electrical cord and also drowned. Philip Fager was
shot twice in the back of the head.
Speaker 9 (30:32):
A few days after the murders, an envelope arrived at
the Faker's house. In it was a drawing of a
young girl bound and lying next to a tub. The
envelope also contained a poem entitled Oh God, he put
Kelly Sherry in the tub. Investigators guessed the letter had
come from BTK. They were right. Part of the letter reads.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Another one prowls of the deep abyss of lewd thoughts
and deeds.
Speaker 9 (31:04):
Raider didn't kill the Fager family. He was just a
fan of whoever had. In confession of a serial killer,
Raider said he mailed Missus Fager the letter as a
safe way to let a little bit of the monster out.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Compare it to a volcano. The molten lava couldn't find
the time, the hidden hours and time away from home
was simply not there, so it had to find a
different way to erupt.
Speaker 9 (31:36):
In the summer of nineteen eighty eight, Raider lost his
job with ADT. The pressure continued to build. Carrie says
he found other ways to let the pressure out. When
he had opportunities to go out of town, he would
relive his various hints.
Speaker 7 (31:54):
For him, it really wasn't about who he was murdering,
or even the murder or the fan fantasy of wanting it.
He said, it was always like this letown like now
they're dead. Now wept, but he could always replay it.
So he's known to like dress up and do this
bondage to re enact what he was doing to these people,
and most of the time that was enough for him.
(32:16):
When he was in the censes in the late eighties,
he would take his bondage stuff and he have polaroids
of himself dressed up in like full wing and clothes,
trying to recreate this visual image of his victims. He
called it motel parties.
Speaker 9 (32:32):
After getting a job as a census field supervisor in
nineteen eighty nine, he had another reason to travel, allowing
Raider to gratify himself away from the prying eyes of Paula.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
My first major motel party was in Elk City, Oklahoma.
I worked it there on off days in between trainings.
Before I was able to travel, I was limited on extravagance.
Usually it was in barns or such places, and I
had little time. As the trips increased and became more lavish,
(33:08):
the motel parties became a sex struck. I looked forward
to them a reward after a long day, a hot
date with a sex fantasy victim. For bondage. I used
all kinds of gadgets on me. I had my favorite
feminine clothes, the red braw from PJ. Bell the chemise
(33:30):
from PJ. Foxtail jewelry from Deflower, satin hose from PJ.
Prairie colored pantyhose from so many slips, panties, wigs, masks
of different types, much like the Buffalo bill from the
Silence of the Lambs, A good book and movie for
a motel party.
Speaker 9 (33:52):
While Raider was hiding out in motel rooms, serial killers
were gaining cultural prominence.
Speaker 17 (34:00):
Year old drifter with no record of violence, yet he's
accused of being one of California's most brutal killers. Richard
Ramirez was captured today. Police say he is the walk
in killer.
Speaker 13 (34:10):
Police removed boxes and boxes of body parts evidence of
what appears to be a psychopathic mass murder.
Speaker 17 (34:16):
Horrible truth to suburban contractor John Gacy's rambling statements to
police last week is becoming more and more evident with
each passing day.
Speaker 18 (34:24):
Street The strangler case makes one fact vividly clear. People
can never totally protect themselves from unknown killers who choose
their victims at random, leaving behind virtually no clues and
even less understanding of their motives.
Speaker 9 (34:40):
Reader hated that so many other serial killers were getting
famous while BTK was not. He wondered if it was
time to strike again. At forty six years old, Dennis
(35:04):
Raider's urge to kill was as strong as ever. His
motel parties and bondage toys were no longer cutting it.
By nineteen ninety, over four years had passed since his
last successful hit. No one had connected BTK to a
murder since nineteen seventy seven. In the fall of nineteen ninety,
(35:28):
he spotted Delores Davis.
Speaker 16 (35:33):
Mom was a real giving person. She always was worried
about the underdog, as she always was concerned about the
other person. I honestly always put other people's needs ahead
of her own. My name is Jeff Davis and I'm
the son of Doloris Davis. Mom was a very sacrificing person.
(35:57):
She was a pretty optimistic person for the most part,
even during the hard times. She tried to be optimistic.
She's lived by Christian values and she tried to make
herself an example in that respect. And she was always
there for me and my system, even when I probably
didn't deserve it. And Steve was just the kind of
person that if you met her, you say, Jesus, really
(36:21):
nice ladies. If anybody didn't like my mom. I don't
know who it would have been. I mean, any stun
is going to be biased Forge's mother. Before she died,
we had a very very close relationship, and I'm so
glad that we were able to do that because as
the guys under circumstances where there was bad blood or something,
(36:45):
it would have been even more horrible than I already was.
Speaker 9 (36:51):
In nineteen ninety one, Dolores Davis was a single woman
living alone in Wichitama. Dolores and her husband split in
nineteen sixty one. Jeff went to live with his dad,
while his sister stayed in Wichital with their mom. Delores's
daughter graduated high school in the mid nineteen seventies, and
Dolores was then on her own.
Speaker 16 (37:12):
She drew up on a farm, so failways had a
farm mentality, and farmers don't lock their doors. I would
face seems probably a little more cautious because it was
with her, and she didn't have a dog, she'd have
any kind of alarm system.
Speaker 9 (37:30):
Like every other person in Wichital, Delores and her children
had heard about the BTK murders. Jeff at least feared
what could happen, but Dolores's habits didn't change much.
Speaker 16 (37:43):
Mom was always very independent and she pretty much face
could handle herself. Now I wanted her to get a dog,
and she was gonna get a dog, and she did
get one, and then the landlord made her give it up.
That I have a real problem with. Sure, he's been
pretty self sufficient too. I don't think they hit home
(38:04):
with them. I think it was an abtract concept that
most people in town realized something bad is going on
out there. I don't think anybody personalized. There was no
real reasons. They just thought of it as you know,
you have a three fatality car wreck. But I think
(38:24):
in my family we didn't stal need to make a
lot of things.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Huh.
Speaker 9 (38:31):
Reader had seen Davis not far from where he lived
in Park City. Carrie Rawson says he became obsessed with her.
Speaker 7 (38:40):
Now he had been stalking her. He was moonlighting at
Leeker's Grocery. Now, my grandma had worked there and my
dad had worked there in high school. My mom was
a bookkeeper there at some point. It's where we always
grocery shopped. Everybody knew our family. They were trying to
help my dad out with money, and they were having
him do security and install some cameras and stuff, you know,
just help him out. Well, that's where he got fixated
(39:02):
on Dolores.
Speaker 11 (39:03):
She was a widow.
Speaker 7 (39:04):
He's depressed, and so he decides to murder her.
Speaker 9 (39:09):
He set a target date for January of nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 7 (39:14):
He's forty six years old now, and he's depressed and
he's miserable because he doesn't have a job and we
don't have much money. And I'm in seventh grade. And
in December of ninety my mom falls ill. She had
asthma and she gets pneumonia, and so she's at Saint
Francis for like ten or twelve days. So he's like
sir stressed out, and I'm trying to manage my dad,
(39:36):
keep him calm and under control, and don't worry. Dad
and Mom will be okay and there'll be money. And
I'm scared and I'm worried about my dad. And then
mid January, I believe in ninety one, my brother's in
Boy Scouts now, and he goes up north to Newton
area with my brother on Trapper Rendezvous camp out. So
(39:58):
for the second time in six shares, he's using a
Boy Scout camp out as an alibi for.
Speaker 9 (40:04):
Murder again Raider's words from Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
I arrived early and got camp all set up. When
the others arrived, I fabricated a story that I had
to go back to town for something. I went to
my parents' house and dressed in my hit clothes in
the basement. I checked my hit list and drove to
the Baptist Church on East sixty first Street in Park City.
The Scout Troop had a place there where they store equipment,
(40:33):
so I had a cover story in case someone happened by.
I also had some Heidi holes there on Pancake Scout Day.
I had stayed there over night from morning set up
and did bondage in the basement Sunday school rooms. From there,
I walked directly to her place.
Speaker 9 (40:51):
Raider picked up a cinder block and threw it through
the window of her home. Delores ran out of her bedroom,
asking if he had her home with his car. He
tried to use his usual rousse to disarm her. When
Delores told him to leave, he informed her he was
carrying a club, a gun, and a knife.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
She said she was expecting someone. I could not believe
my luck in these places. I've always got someone coming.
Speaker 9 (41:23):
Raider then strangled Dolores with a pair of pantyhose.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
And that was it with her. I didn't take any
pictures because I thought, well, this guy is coming. I
don't want to be in this house. I need to
get out of here. I put her in the trunk.
That was not a smart move. The police could have
connected her to Hedge. I opened the garage door, backed out,
closed it and drove straight down hillside to fifty third
(41:50):
Street North, then west to Hydraulic, then south to the
k Dot Lakes.
Speaker 9 (41:57):
He left her body there in the bushes. He drove
her car to Christ Lutheran Church and disposed of some
items under the church's shed, before realizing he had misplaced
his gun. He drove back to Dolores's house, retrieved his
gun and a few souvenirs, including her jewelry box and
(42:18):
a thirty five millimeter camera. He couldn't stop thinking about
her body. Catherine Ramslin says he wanted to give his
biggest fantasy another try.
Speaker 12 (42:31):
With Deloris Davis. He wanted to do something different. He
wanted to take her body and take it to a barn,
which had been his fantasy for a very long time
and he'd never managed.
Speaker 11 (42:43):
To do it.
Speaker 12 (42:44):
It was a foggy, snowy night, so he got lost
and he had to finally just dump the body out
under a bridge.
Speaker 9 (42:53):
He left her body under the bridge at one hundred
and seventeenth Street North, then rushed to get back to
the Boy's Out camp, but Carrie says he still couldn't
let Dolores rest.
Speaker 7 (43:06):
Then he goes back to the camp out and he
keeps thinking about her and her body, and he can't
let it go, and he thinks that it was not
the best place. It's just not set staged right the
way he wants it, and he stages her with a
mask like probably one of the ones he was burying
in some of his bondage fantasies, because he doesn't like
(43:27):
that she's decaying right, like you'll hear these other guys
talk about this, like they don't like the way they
look after they're murdered or they're not alive. So he
puts a mask on her and then he finally has
to let her go. So now he's driving back and
he stops at a rest up because he's got to
change his clothes back into his boy scout outfit and
(43:48):
he gets caught by like a highway patrolman. He was
there changing his clothes and the highway patrolman was questioning
him and asking him what he was.
Speaker 9 (43:57):
Doing next time on Monster BTK.
Speaker 4 (44:06):
But my daughter came to me and said, Dad, you know,
Dennis showed up in our backyard of customers.
Speaker 12 (44:12):
He gave me a list of fifty five different projects
of women he had seen and stopped.
Speaker 7 (44:20):
You can't help himself. It's like an iceberg, right, like
you're only seeing the very tip of somebody with him,
He thought.
Speaker 4 (44:27):
You know, I'm the smartest guy in the room and
they're never going to catch me.
Speaker 7 (44:32):
My dad snaps and he just lunges out of his
chair at my brother. He starts strangling him from the front.
Speaker 14 (44:39):
Cops say, the case that was once cold may be
warm yet again.
Speaker 4 (44:44):
I just got this feelily, I want to know this guy.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
Monster BTK is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts.
The show is written by Nomes Griffin, Trevor Young, and
Jesse Funk. Our host is Susan Peters. Executive producers on
behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay
alongside supervising producer Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on behalf of
(45:21):
iHeart Podcasts include Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, alongside producers
Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk and supervising Producerrima Ilkali. Marketing
support by David Wasserman and Alison Wright at iHeart Podcasts
and Caroline Origemma at Tenderfoot TV. Auditional research by Claudia Dafrico,
(45:44):
original artwork by Kevin Mister Soul Harp, original music by
Makeup and Vanity Set. Special thanks to Orrin Rosenbaum and
the team at UTA and the Nord Group. For more
podcasts from iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(46:06):
Thanks for listening.
New episodes of Monster BTK are released every Monday and
brought to you absolutely free. But if you want to
hear the whole season right now, it's available ad free
on iHeart True Crime Plus. For more information, check out
the show notes. Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
You're listening to Monster BTK, a production of iHeart Podcasts
and Tenderfoot TV. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
I graduated in May nineteen seventy nine, and it was
easy to slip back into the Christian world. The kids
were growing like weeds and ahead of the household was needed.
Paula needed to be home, so all responsibility landed on me.
I had no time to be away from home. Being
busy with the family kept the dark side at bay.
(01:02):
The next year, we got a pet dog, Patches, a
Britney Spaniel. I built a fence in the backyard and
I did a lot of gardening and enjoyed life with
my wife and two kids. The job with ADT gave
me opportunities to be out of town, staying in motel rooms,
so I would take the bondage items with me or
(01:23):
shop for new ones at the town where I was
doing a job. A second time, when Paula came home.
I was in full bondage in the hallway in a
slit with a rope. I tried to hide it in
the bathroom, but there was just too much of it
out to hide. She exploded into a fury. I cleaned
(01:44):
the mess up and told her I would leave. I
was so embarrassed and ashamed. I slept a day or
two in the living room. She was thinking about what
to do. We didn't talk, only small talk in front
of the kids. She finally told me that if she
ever caught me again, she would file for divorce and
I would have to leave the house for good. I understood.
(02:08):
I vowed I would never do this at home again.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Someone killed four members of a family.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
Had you vanished from her home suddenly last weekend? Her
phone lines had been cut, her door left open.
Speaker 6 (02:24):
You see the victim playing there with flashing bags over
their heads, strangled. You could tell it was a plan scenario.
Speaker 7 (02:32):
Well, police have said no more about the contents of
the letter.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
It does contain some sort of threat and implies the
killer may strike again.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
He's going to play with these victims.
Speaker 8 (02:42):
He'd get him to the point of death and then
bring them back and then brings them back to the
point of death.
Speaker 9 (02:49):
From My Heart podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. I'm Susan Peters
and this is Monster BTK. In nineteen seventy nine, sixty
three year old Anna Williams just barely escaped to becoming
(03:10):
btk's eighth victim. He had broken into her home and
waited for her, leaving in a huff when she didn't
arrive home at her normal time. Soon after, he sent
a nineteen line poem titled oh Anna, why didn't you
appear to both Williams and to Cake TV. Police wondered
(03:35):
why BTK had targeted Williams. She was, after all, older
than most of his other victims. They wondered if her
twenty four year old granddaughter had been his intended target.
Williams didn't stick around to find out.
Speaker 6 (03:53):
Well, Annie, she left Wichita, she moved, and again the
community still on high alert.
Speaker 9 (03:59):
If you will This is former Wichita Police Chief Richard Lemonnion.
He says that after the Williams attempt, the BTK trail
went dark. In May of nineteen seventy nine, Raider graduated
from Wichita State with a bachelor's degree in Administration of Justice.
(04:22):
This resulted in the loss of his cover story for
being out late in the evenings, another reason. He put
the monster to rest, but he started practicing bondage more often.
Eventually he was caught by his wife, which you heard
at the top of the episode. This incident was deeply
(04:43):
embarrassing to Raider. He assured Paula he would change, but
in reality, the only thing he changed was the location
of his self gratification. Here are his words from the
book Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
These incidents were perfect times to seek professional help. I know,
but I don't recall if Paula asked me to do
anything like this. Maybe she did, and I told her
I would work it out. But I thought if I
told someone about the other things I was doing in
order to really get help, they would be obligated to
tell the police.
Speaker 9 (05:21):
Nineteen eighty four marked ten years since the Otero killings,
and btk's five year absence hadn't put Leamonnion's feares to
bed like it had for other Witchitans.
Speaker 6 (05:34):
There was a sense of that was in our history.
It doesn't exist anymore, at least to the community. To me,
it was very real.
Speaker 9 (05:43):
So with special permission from city manager Jene Denton and
Al kirk A County Commissioner. Lamnion planned the most sophisticated
investigation in city history. The technological advancements of the nineteen
eighties re energized the investigation gation.
Speaker 6 (06:01):
In eighty four, we put together a special task force.
I handpicked a group of investigators to be a part
of that. I had senior detectives, I had new detectives.
I had patrol officers that were assigned, and that was
the only thing they were working on. The media found
out about it. We didn't tell them what was going on,
(06:21):
but they dubbed it ghostbusters. The idea was of this
group was number one to identify and arrest the guy.
Number two was to put together all the information we had,
computerize it as best we could, put all the files
in place. If he was dead, we knew that we
(06:42):
would find the trophies sometime or if he was still alive,
at some point he's going to come back. So we're
going to either catch the person or we're going to
put it together in such a way that when the
next thing happens, whoever the investigator is can just pick
it up and move forward. That was our plan.
Speaker 9 (07:04):
Promising young detectives like Kenny land Where were brought in
to give this case.
Speaker 6 (07:09):
There all we weren't done, We hadn't put everything together,
and I thought to myself, this is the type of
thing we need to do, get behind closed doors. We've
got computers, now, we've got DNA, we've got semen, we've
got everything else. And as a result of that, it
took several months, but it proved at least in our
(07:31):
mind that we knew the person we're looking for is local.
The reason we can't find him is he's one of us.
He goes to the same grocery store that we go to,
he goes to the same movies. He probably has a family,
he works here, and the reason we can't find him
is one of the people that lives in this door.
Speaker 9 (07:57):
The BTK task Force was made up of eight men,
Captain Gary Fulton, Lieutenant Al Stewart, and Officers Paul Dotson,
ed Nass, Mark Richardson, Jerry Harper, and Paul Holmes, along
with land Where. Throughout nineteen eighty four, the Ghostbusters would
(08:18):
search high and low for clues about the identity of BTK.
For the first month of their work with the task force.
They did nothing but read reports. They spent hundreds of
man hours re examining an index of previously eliminated suspects
put together by older detectives. They also spent weeks debating
(08:39):
whether or not to add the Catherine Bright files to
the BTK evidence. Yes, they eventually decided. In October of
nineteen eighty four, they brought in FBI criminal profilers.
Speaker 8 (08:53):
We call the Wichita police. Come on in here, guys,
and bring a tape recorders. We won't be able to
have time at the written profile, but we'll work with
you for day or two whatever takes to help you
people out.
Speaker 9 (09:06):
This is John Douglas, former FBI special agent.
Speaker 8 (09:11):
And then we did this kind of a mind bust,
me and three other profiles with the cops there going
around and evaluating, the analyzing the case things that they
should be doing. And I came up with the idea,
when you have an offender who starts to communicate, rather
communicate with a department, I want him to communicate with
(09:31):
a person affiliated with the investigation, and I want that
guy to be the focal point I called a super coop.
Speaker 9 (09:41):
In time, Kenny Landware would become that focal point. The
initial FBI profile, delivered in part by criminal profile or
Roy Hazelwood, provided cops with their first detailed impressions of BTK.
Here is an excerpt from the book bind Tour Kill.
Speaker 10 (10:02):
Hazelwood thought BTK practiced bondage in everyday life, that he
was a sexual sadist, a control freak, and could interact
with others only on a superficial level. You know him,
but you don't really know him. The profiler felt that
although BTK would do well at work, he wouldn't like
anyone telling him what to do. Hazelwood also thought BTK
(10:25):
collected bondage materials and read crime books and detective magazines.
Speaker 9 (10:31):
From then on, every time BTK Task Force member Paul
Holmes entered someone's home, he looked around for detective magazines.
When Raider's daughter Carrie made it to kindergarten, he decided
he was ready to kill again, but he was older.
Now he had more responsibilities and less time to prowl.
(10:54):
This time, he would pick a target closer to home again.
A snippet from Confession of a serial Killer.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Raider had noticed a neighbor, Marine Hedge, a fifty three
year old woman who lived just down the street and
often gave a friendly wave. She lived alone and was
just the right size.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
I thought about what her neck would look like with
a rope around it.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
It was time, Raider thought to re energize his secret identity.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
It had been a long time since the last time
Factor X exploded in my world and shattered someone else's.
Speaker 9 (11:36):
Targeting someone so close to home went against his code
for how to be a successful serial killer, but the
challenge excited him.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Breaking my own rules sort of gave me a rush.
I lived on the knife edge for a long time
with this, Following newspaper, TV or neighbor talk. By reading
other cases, I knew this was a high gamble. To me,
hedge took a lot of thinking and planning. This was
(12:08):
the first time I had decided to use the Boy
Scouts as my cover.
Speaker 9 (12:13):
The target day arrived April twenty sixth, nineteen eighty five,
Raider went to the Boy Scout camp, where he typically
helped set up He had become a leader when his
son Brian joined. He parked his car on the hill
by the roadside so that he could leave and come
back unnoticed.
Speaker 7 (12:35):
In the end of April nineteen eighty five, I'm almost seven.
Speaker 11 (12:41):
My dad was.
Speaker 7 (12:43):
On a cub Scout camp out with my brother Brian
at Camp Tewakany. My dad feigns that he's like ill
or has a headache. He says he's going to his ted,
knowing my daddy probably even stuffed something in his sleeping bag.
Speaker 9 (12:57):
This is Dennis Raider's daughter Carrie.
Speaker 7 (12:59):
Raw and he then using the cub Scout camp out
for an alibi, he goes to a bowling alley, goes
and slashes some beer in his mouth and make it
seem like he was drinking. He leaves our family chavette
at the bowling alley and he takes a taxi out
to my neighbor. He gets out of the taxi and
(13:19):
he has a bowling bag with him that's maroon and white.
Speaker 5 (13:23):
That's like his hit kit.
Speaker 7 (13:25):
And he walks past my grandparents house and he goes
through Missus Hedges' backyard. Missus hedges house is built exactly
like my house and exactly like my grandparents' house, three
bedroom ranch.
Speaker 9 (13:39):
This meant he'd have no trouble figuring out the best
way to get into the home. He cut her phone line,
broke into the home, and then yet another one of
his plans hit a snag.
Speaker 7 (13:52):
He broke into her house, expecting her to be home
because her car was there, but she had gone with
this man. She's not, so he's disappointed and mad, so
he hides in her closet. Then they come home, and
now she's come home with a man. While he doesn't
want to have to deal with two people. It's messy,
and he's not there for the man. He's there for her.
So he's getting frustrated and he's hanging on in the
(14:14):
closet and he's like waiting forever for the man to leave.
He probably could have murdered both of them, he just
didn't want to because he's older at this point too.
Speaker 11 (14:22):
It's eighty five, so he's wet.
Speaker 7 (14:24):
He's forty at that point, and he hadn't murdered anybody
in my eight years. So he waits for her to
fall asleep, and he jumps into bed and starts strangling her.
Speaker 9 (14:35):
He manually suffocated Marine until she died. In his words,
he throttled her. What happened next is a departure from
btk's usual mo In a disturbing turn of events, Rayder
decided taking photos of Marine's body in her house wasn't enough.
(14:58):
He wanted to do something special.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Since I was in the sexual fantasy, I went ahead
and stripped her and tied her up. I put handcuffs on.
I put her on a blanket, and I went through
her purse. I needed the car key and took some
personal items in the house while I figured out how
I was going to get her out of there. Eventually,
I moved her to the trunk of the car. I
(15:26):
took the car over to christ Lutheran Church, where I
had stashed some items. I tied her up in different
positions and took pictures. I did not use the altar.
I was bad and disturbed, but I still had respect
for some items of God's house. Finally I had a
(15:46):
real bondage picture with a victim.
Speaker 9 (15:51):
Daylight was coming fast. He had to hide Marine's body
and make it back to the boy scout camp before
anyone noticed he was gone. He left her body in
a ditch on fifty third Street. Police wouldn't find her
until over a week later.
Speaker 5 (16:10):
The body was discovered here at fifty third Street North,
just east of Webb Road, a bit west of the
area that police had been searching all weekend for some
clue to the disappearance of fifty three year old Marine Hedge.
Hedge vanished from her home suddenly last weekend. Her phone
lines had been cut, her door left open, and police
have been picking up the pieces ever since. But Park
(16:31):
City Police Chief Ace van Way may have put the
final piece of the puzzle together when he and a
partner noticed what appeared to be a blouse hanging from
a tree limb and searched this area.
Speaker 9 (16:44):
Marine Hedge's murder was not connected to BTK at the time.
It had taken place outside of Wichita, and despite the
cut phone lines, didn't fit the usual BTKM.
Speaker 6 (16:56):
Keep in mind, this is a county case, different investigators,
different crime unit. However, we work very closely with him,
and even after discussion the fact that her body was
thrown out, if you will, at an intersection fifty third
and Web, we just did not see a connection with
it whatsoever.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
The body was nude and police say badly decomposed. A
pair of knotted pantyhose were found lying in the ditch
beside it, and the evergreen branches covering the body may
match pine needles found in the trunk of Marine Hatches
car but police say that's about all the evidence they
have to go on.
Speaker 9 (17:34):
Raider's big risk had panned out. No one suspected BTK
all eyes were on Marine's date as the prime suspect.
Psychologist Catherine Ramsland says Raider had to play it safe
after this.
Speaker 12 (17:49):
He enjoyed that kind of cat and mouse game to
a point. When he killed a woman in his own neighborhood,
he'd not make any communication at all because, first of all,
that violated his own rules don't kill close to home,
and second, he didn't want to bring the police, you know,
give them any sense that this is related to the
(18:10):
other murders, So that stopped his communications.
Speaker 9 (18:16):
Breaking his no killing close to home rule also had
ripple effects that impacted his family's sense of safety.
Speaker 7 (18:25):
Somehow. I know that missus Hedge she's been strangled. A
week or so later, I am running around at Christ
Lutheran after a church and I fall and I break
my arm. So I have a bone sticking out of
my arm. I'm bleeding and I'm screaming. Now I've had
this like pretty major injury for a kid. My dad
(18:45):
gets a cookie tray from the church kitchen and a
towel to secure my arm, and he puts me in
the back of our station wagon instead of calling an ambulance.
My mom's back there with me. He drives me a
few miles south of late I have to have surgery,
three pins put in my arm, and I'm in the.
Speaker 11 (19:04):
Hospital for five days.
Speaker 7 (19:06):
So my six year old self cemitted missus Hedge's murder
with my broken arm, and it was just like big
trauma ball and so literally I started having night terrors,
and the best we know, my night terrors started around
the time missus Hedge was murdered.
Speaker 9 (19:24):
Talking with Payne Lindsey in the Tenderfoot Studio, Carrie says
she thought her fear emboldened her father.
Speaker 13 (19:33):
As a six year old.
Speaker 7 (19:34):
Did you know that this was related to Henny's death? No,
I mean, there's no way I realized I had combined
like the trauma over my arm and the hospital and
Missus Hedge. He's quoted as saying, like, at that time,
when I started getting scared like that, that it worried
him that I was messed up basically from the murder
(19:55):
he had committed down the street. But it also empowered him.
It may feel empowered like he was terrifying me.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
So your dad was aware that you, like, even if
you weren't, your dad was aware that you were being
affected by hedges death.
Speaker 7 (20:12):
Yeah. He's quoted in twenty sixteen as saying he was
sure it was from there. I mean, I've talked to criminologists,
I've talked to detectives, talked to trauma therapists. Nobody knows
how to fix this night terra stuff, and nobody knows.
Why is it the bad guy in the room trying
and kill me? Do you feel like the bad guy
is your dad?
Speaker 13 (20:31):
Oh?
Speaker 11 (20:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (20:42):
In June of nineteen eighty five, nearly seventeen hundred miles
away from Wichita in San Francisco, California, a man named
Leonard Lake was connected to more than two dozen deaths
and disappearances.
Speaker 14 (20:55):
This tape, what you're hearing now is going to be
the lead end building, which hopefully will be the first
of a series of underground buildings. The main emphasis of
the building will be a cell. The purpose of that
cell and the main purpose hens of the building will
(21:17):
be the imprisonment.
Speaker 6 (21:20):
For the young lady, a remote cabin where cops say
some of the most gruesome serial killings in California, history
took place twelve.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
It was in big Dums.
Speaker 15 (21:29):
Three women, seven men, two babies.
Speaker 9 (21:34):
Raider was fascinated. He saw a lot of parallels between
himself and Lake. Here are his words from Confession of
a serial Killer.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
I had clippings about him and his partner in my
Heidi Hole folders, but killing babies was off my list.
After the oteros and by random chance with Vianne, I
decided that no young children would be involved in my hits.
Speaker 9 (21:59):
It wouldn't be long before Rader betrayed this newly formed rule.
Speaker 14 (22:05):
I can't imagine any woman.
Speaker 6 (22:08):
Harming her, not knowing her.
Speaker 5 (22:11):
She was a good person to know.
Speaker 11 (22:14):
And a good friend to have had.
Speaker 9 (22:17):
Vicky Wiggery was a young mother who lived at twenty
four oh four West thirteenth Street with her husband Bill
and children Brandon and Stephanie. Dennis Rader spotted her in
the fall of nineteen eighty six. As he spied on
her home, he would listen as she played the piano.
He thought she played beautifully and named her Project Piano. Ironically,
(22:44):
her neighbor was the head of the BTK Task Force,
Kenny landwere Vicky stayed at home with two year old
Brandon during the day, while Bill was off at work,
Rader decided this would be the best time to strike.
He planned to pass himself off as a Southwestern Bell
repairman to gain access to her home. Here is another
(23:09):
excerpt from the book The Inside Story of BTK.
Speaker 10 (23:14):
Raider had modified a business card to look like a
phone company identification card. He had a yellow hard hat
provided by ADT. He had cut out a segment of
the cover of a Southwestern Bell repair manual and pasted
it on the hard hat, hoping to pass himself off
as a telephone repairman. The briefcase he would carry looked official,
(23:35):
but would contain his hit kit supplies.
Speaker 9 (23:40):
It was the morning of September sixteenth, nineteen eighty six.
Rader parked the security company van in the Indian Hills
Shopping Center parking lot, donned his costume and crossed the
street towards Vicki's house, but first to strengthen his cover,
he went the home of her elderly neighbors, who led
(24:02):
him in to check their phone lines.
Speaker 10 (24:06):
When he left the older couple's house, he walked to
the blond woman's door. He heard the piano. When he
knocked the music stopped.
Speaker 9 (24:15):
Vicky opened the door, and Rader led with the same
line he had used on the neighbors. She was weary
and asked whether it was really necessary for him to
come in. Wasn't the phone line in the backyard, Vicky asked.
Eventually she relented after pretending to test her telephone. He
(24:36):
dropped the act and told Vicki to go to the bedroom.
She cried out, what about my kid, she asked. My
husband is going to be home soon, she said. Rader
hoped not.
Speaker 10 (24:51):
He made her lie down on the waterbed. As she
cried and tried to argue, He tied her wrists and
ankles with leather shoelaces. Vicki began to pray out loud.
Suddenly she ched her hands, broke her bonds, and began
to fight. And then everything became noise and fear. Btk
hit Picky in the face again and again, then grabbed
(25:13):
at her throat, she thought, nicking him on the neck
with a fingernail. He tried to use his strangling rig
but couldn't get a grip. He saw a pair of
panty hose nearby that worked. Once he looped it around
her neck.
Speaker 6 (25:27):
He killed her and left the baby did not kill
the baby. The baby was just a toddler, a little
little bitty thing. The husband found her when he got home.
The crime scene was pretty much destroyed, if you will,
by the husband and by others trying to revive her
(25:48):
and things of that nature.
Speaker 9 (25:53):
When Bill Wiggerly arrived home on his lunch break, it
would take him forty five minutes before he discovered his
wife's body in their bedroom, and.
Speaker 13 (26:03):
By the time police got to Vicky Weggerly's house on
West Thirteenth, her heart had already stopped beating. She died
within fifteen minutes at Riverside Hospital. Her husband Bill supposedly
found Vicky with a noose around her neck. Their two
year old son, Brandon, was playing in another bedroom at
the time of the murder. And now, after hours of
interviewing family members and searching for evidence, police have a
(26:24):
few leads on who killed Vicky Weggerly.
Speaker 9 (26:29):
Per standard police procedure, Bill Weggery became the prime suspect
in his wife's murder. Unfortunately, as Richard Lemunien says, his
initial panic upon discovering his wife's body only made the
situation worse.
Speaker 6 (26:46):
The crime chain was really meshed up. I mean, here's
a husband. He comes to old Panny, here's his wife.
He's trying to do everything he can to shave her.
You can't visualize walking into a situation like that. And
when ems gets there, everyone else gets there. You got
a baby screaming. I mean, you're trying to do everything
(27:06):
you can. You're trying to get her to the hospital.
Speaker 9 (27:11):
Detectives were trying to move fast. The first few hours
in a homicide investigation are crucial. They grilled Bill. Was
he having an affair?
Speaker 16 (27:21):
Was she?
Speaker 9 (27:22):
What took him so long to find his wife's body.
They suggested a lie detector test, and he agreed. They
tested him twice. He failed both times. Years later, Wichita
police would come to the conclusion that lie detector tests
should never be given to a spouse. In the immediate
aftermath of the murder, It's likely Bill's distress led to
(27:46):
the two false positives. Raiders sent no communication about the
murder of Vicki Weggerly, and so yet another BTK murder
went unattributed to the serial killer. Richard Lemonnion said a
police had discussed the possibility.
Speaker 6 (28:03):
At first, it was questionable whether or not that was
a BTK case, A couple of investigators didn't think so,
A couple of other investigators did think so, and I
agreed with them. But we can't prove it one.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
Way or the other.
Speaker 6 (28:17):
There just won't any evidence like the other ones had
been in the past. And to keep in mind, it
had been a while now since we had had a
BTK quote murder credit. It's kind of unusual because my
brother lived like four doors down from that particular house
on thirteenth Street. What are the irony of that?
Speaker 9 (28:42):
By the year following the Weggerly murder, all the Ghostbusters
but Kenny Landweer had been reassigned. Then just before the
end of nineteen eighty seven, Landwear was assigned to the
homicide unit. While the BTK Task Force never truly disbanded,
the which atop police force and the greater Wichita community
(29:03):
moved on. BTK outlasted entire cop careers. Richard Lemunien retired
in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 6 (29:13):
I still remember some of the tragedies, you know that
I went to some of the homicide, the rape cases
and the bused children are pulling people out of rerection,
saying you remember those kind of things, And of course
you don't forget a BGK case at all.
Speaker 9 (29:31):
Throughout the rest of the nineteen eighties, Raider picked out
various projects, none of which panned out. He estimated to
Catherine Ramsland that more than thirty could have resulted in
murder victims. At the end of nineteen eighty seven, a
Wichita woman named Mary Fager came home to find her
(29:51):
husband and two daughters had been murdered. Here's an excerpt
from a January nineteen eighty eight news article.
Speaker 15 (30:00):
Bodies of Sherry and Kelly Faker were found in a
newly installed hot tub in the Solarium. Kelly, who was nude,
was drowned. Police were investigating the possibility she was sexually assaulted.
Lemnion said Sherry was found with her hands bound behind
her back with black electrical tape. She had been strangled
(30:23):
with an electrical cord and also drowned. Philip Fager was
shot twice in the back of the head.
Speaker 9 (30:32):
A few days after the murders, an envelope arrived at
the Faker's house. In it was a drawing of a
young girl bound and lying next to a tub. The
envelope also contained a poem entitled Oh God, he put
Kelly Sherry in the tub. Investigators guessed the letter had
come from BTK. They were right. Part of the letter reads.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Another one prowls of the deep abyss of lewd thoughts
and deeds.
Speaker 9 (31:04):
Raider didn't kill the Fager family. He was just a
fan of whoever had. In confession of a serial killer,
Raider said he mailed Missus Fager the letter as a
safe way to let a little bit of the monster out.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Compare it to a volcano. The molten lava couldn't find
the time, the hidden hours and time away from home
was simply not there, so it had to find a
different way to erupt.
Speaker 9 (31:36):
In the summer of nineteen eighty eight, Raider lost his
job with ADT. The pressure continued to build. Carrie says
he found other ways to let the pressure out. When
he had opportunities to go out of town, he would
relive his various hints.
Speaker 7 (31:54):
For him, it really wasn't about who he was murdering,
or even the murder or the fan fantasy of wanting it.
He said, it was always like this letown like now
they're dead. Now wept, but he could always replay it.
So he's known to like dress up and do this
bondage to re enact what he was doing to these people,
and most of the time that was enough for him.
(32:16):
When he was in the censes in the late eighties,
he would take his bondage stuff and he have polaroids
of himself dressed up in like full wing and clothes,
trying to recreate this visual image of his victims. He
called it motel parties.
Speaker 9 (32:32):
After getting a job as a census field supervisor in
nineteen eighty nine, he had another reason to travel, allowing
Raider to gratify himself away from the prying eyes of Paula.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
My first major motel party was in Elk City, Oklahoma.
I worked it there on off days in between trainings.
Before I was able to travel, I was limited on extravagance.
Usually it was in barns or such places, and I
had little time. As the trips increased and became more lavish,
(33:08):
the motel parties became a sex struck. I looked forward
to them a reward after a long day, a hot
date with a sex fantasy victim. For bondage. I used
all kinds of gadgets on me. I had my favorite
feminine clothes, the red braw from PJ. Bell the chemise
(33:30):
from PJ. Foxtail jewelry from Deflower, satin hose from PJ.
Prairie colored pantyhose from so many slips, panties, wigs, masks
of different types, much like the Buffalo bill from the
Silence of the Lambs, A good book and movie for
a motel party.
Speaker 9 (33:52):
While Raider was hiding out in motel rooms, serial killers
were gaining cultural prominence.
Speaker 17 (34:00):
Year old drifter with no record of violence, yet he's
accused of being one of California's most brutal killers. Richard
Ramirez was captured today. Police say he is the walk
in killer.
Speaker 13 (34:10):
Police removed boxes and boxes of body parts evidence of
what appears to be a psychopathic mass murder.
Speaker 17 (34:16):
Horrible truth to suburban contractor John Gacy's rambling statements to
police last week is becoming more and more evident with
each passing day.
Speaker 18 (34:24):
Street The strangler case makes one fact vividly clear. People
can never totally protect themselves from unknown killers who choose
their victims at random, leaving behind virtually no clues and
even less understanding of their motives.
Speaker 9 (34:40):
Reader hated that so many other serial killers were getting
famous while BTK was not. He wondered if it was
time to strike again. At forty six years old, Dennis
(35:04):
Raider's urge to kill was as strong as ever. His
motel parties and bondage toys were no longer cutting it.
By nineteen ninety, over four years had passed since his
last successful hit. No one had connected BTK to a
murder since nineteen seventy seven. In the fall of nineteen ninety,
(35:28):
he spotted Delores Davis.
Speaker 16 (35:33):
Mom was a real giving person. She always was worried
about the underdog, as she always was concerned about the
other person. I honestly always put other people's needs ahead
of her own. My name is Jeff Davis and I'm
the son of Doloris Davis. Mom was a very sacrificing person.
(35:57):
She was a pretty optimistic person for the most part,
even during the hard times. She tried to be optimistic.
She's lived by Christian values and she tried to make
herself an example in that respect. And she was always
there for me and my system, even when I probably
didn't deserve it. And Steve was just the kind of
person that if you met her, you say, Jesus, really
(36:21):
nice ladies. If anybody didn't like my mom. I don't
know who it would have been. I mean, any stun
is going to be biased Forge's mother. Before she died,
we had a very very close relationship, and I'm so
glad that we were able to do that because as
the guys under circumstances where there was bad blood or something,
(36:45):
it would have been even more horrible than I already was.
Speaker 9 (36:51):
In nineteen ninety one, Dolores Davis was a single woman
living alone in Wichitama. Dolores and her husband split in
nineteen sixty one. Jeff went to live with his dad,
while his sister stayed in Wichital with their mom. Delores's
daughter graduated high school in the mid nineteen seventies, and
Dolores was then on her own.
Speaker 16 (37:12):
She drew up on a farm, so failways had a
farm mentality, and farmers don't lock their doors. I would
face seems probably a little more cautious because it was
with her, and she didn't have a dog, she'd have
any kind of alarm system.
Speaker 9 (37:30):
Like every other person in Wichital, Delores and her children
had heard about the BTK murders. Jeff at least feared
what could happen, but Dolores's habits didn't change much.
Speaker 16 (37:43):
Mom was always very independent and she pretty much face
could handle herself. Now I wanted her to get a dog,
and she was gonna get a dog, and she did
get one, and then the landlord made her give it up.
That I have a real problem with. Sure, he's been
pretty self sufficient too. I don't think they hit home
(38:04):
with them. I think it was an abtract concept that
most people in town realized something bad is going on
out there. I don't think anybody personalized. There was no
real reasons. They just thought of it as you know,
you have a three fatality car wreck. But I think
(38:24):
in my family we didn't stal need to make a
lot of things.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Huh.
Speaker 9 (38:31):
Reader had seen Davis not far from where he lived
in Park City. Carrie Rawson says he became obsessed with her.
Speaker 7 (38:40):
Now he had been stalking her. He was moonlighting at
Leeker's Grocery. Now, my grandma had worked there and my
dad had worked there in high school. My mom was
a bookkeeper there at some point. It's where we always
grocery shopped. Everybody knew our family. They were trying to
help my dad out with money, and they were having
him do security and install some cameras and stuff, you know,
just help him out. Well, that's where he got fixated
(39:02):
on Dolores.
Speaker 11 (39:03):
She was a widow.
Speaker 7 (39:04):
He's depressed, and so he decides to murder her.
Speaker 9 (39:09):
He set a target date for January of nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 7 (39:14):
He's forty six years old now, and he's depressed and
he's miserable because he doesn't have a job and we
don't have much money. And I'm in seventh grade. And
in December of ninety my mom falls ill. She had
asthma and she gets pneumonia, and so she's at Saint
Francis for like ten or twelve days. So he's like
sir stressed out, and I'm trying to manage my dad,
(39:36):
keep him calm and under control, and don't worry. Dad
and Mom will be okay and there'll be money. And
I'm scared and I'm worried about my dad. And then
mid January, I believe in ninety one, my brother's in
Boy Scouts now, and he goes up north to Newton
area with my brother on Trapper Rendezvous camp out. So
(39:58):
for the second time in six shares, he's using a
Boy Scout camp out as an alibi for.
Speaker 9 (40:04):
Murder again Raider's words from Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
I arrived early and got camp all set up. When
the others arrived, I fabricated a story that I had
to go back to town for something. I went to
my parents' house and dressed in my hit clothes in
the basement. I checked my hit list and drove to
the Baptist Church on East sixty first Street in Park City.
The Scout Troop had a place there where they store equipment,
(40:33):
so I had a cover story in case someone happened by.
I also had some Heidi holes there on Pancake Scout Day.
I had stayed there over night from morning set up
and did bondage in the basement Sunday school rooms. From there,
I walked directly to her place.
Speaker 9 (40:51):
Raider picked up a cinder block and threw it through
the window of her home. Delores ran out of her bedroom,
asking if he had her home with his car. He
tried to use his usual rousse to disarm her. When
Delores told him to leave, he informed her he was
carrying a club, a gun, and a knife.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
She said she was expecting someone. I could not believe
my luck in these places. I've always got someone coming.
Speaker 9 (41:23):
Raider then strangled Dolores with a pair of pantyhose.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
And that was it with her. I didn't take any
pictures because I thought, well, this guy is coming. I
don't want to be in this house. I need to
get out of here. I put her in the trunk.
That was not a smart move. The police could have
connected her to Hedge. I opened the garage door, backed out,
closed it and drove straight down hillside to fifty third
(41:50):
Street North, then west to Hydraulic, then south to the
k Dot Lakes.
Speaker 9 (41:57):
He left her body there in the bushes. He drove
her car to Christ Lutheran Church and disposed of some
items under the church's shed, before realizing he had misplaced
his gun. He drove back to Dolores's house, retrieved his
gun and a few souvenirs, including her jewelry box and
(42:18):
a thirty five millimeter camera. He couldn't stop thinking about
her body. Catherine Ramslin says he wanted to give his
biggest fantasy another try.
Speaker 12 (42:31):
With Deloris Davis. He wanted to do something different. He
wanted to take her body and take it to a barn,
which had been his fantasy for a very long time
and he'd never managed.
Speaker 11 (42:43):
To do it.
Speaker 12 (42:44):
It was a foggy, snowy night, so he got lost
and he had to finally just dump the body out
under a bridge.
Speaker 9 (42:53):
He left her body under the bridge at one hundred
and seventeenth Street North, then rushed to get back to
the Boy's Out camp, but Carrie says he still couldn't
let Dolores rest.
Speaker 7 (43:06):
Then he goes back to the camp out and he
keeps thinking about her and her body, and he can't
let it go, and he thinks that it was not
the best place. It's just not set staged right the
way he wants it, and he stages her with a
mask like probably one of the ones he was burying
in some of his bondage fantasies, because he doesn't like
(43:27):
that she's decaying right, like you'll hear these other guys
talk about this, like they don't like the way they
look after they're murdered or they're not alive. So he
puts a mask on her and then he finally has
to let her go. So now he's driving back and
he stops at a rest up because he's got to
change his clothes back into his boy scout outfit and
(43:48):
he gets caught by like a highway patrolman. He was
there changing his clothes and the highway patrolman was questioning
him and asking him what he was.
Speaker 9 (43:57):
Doing next time on Monster BTK.
Speaker 4 (44:06):
But my daughter came to me and said, Dad, you know,
Dennis showed up in our backyard of customers.
Speaker 12 (44:12):
He gave me a list of fifty five different projects
of women he had seen and stopped.
Speaker 7 (44:20):
You can't help himself. It's like an iceberg, right, like
you're only seeing the very tip of somebody with him,
He thought.
Speaker 4 (44:27):
You know, I'm the smartest guy in the room and
they're never going to catch me.
Speaker 7 (44:32):
My dad snaps and he just lunges out of his
chair at my brother. He starts strangling him from the front.
Speaker 14 (44:39):
Cops say, the case that was once cold may be
warm yet again.
Speaker 4 (44:44):
I just got this feelily, I want to know this guy.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
Monster BTK is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts.
The show is written by Nomes Griffin, Trevor Young, and
Jesse Funk. Our host is Susan Peters. Executive producers on
behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay
alongside supervising producer Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on behalf of
(45:21):
iHeart Podcasts include Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, alongside producers
Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk and supervising Producerrima Ilkali. Marketing
support by David Wasserman and Alison Wright at iHeart Podcasts
and Caroline Origemma at Tenderfoot TV. Auditional research by Claudia Dafrico,
(45:44):
original artwork by Kevin Mister Soul Harp, original music by
Makeup and Vanity Set. Special thanks to Orrin Rosenbaum and
the team at UTA and the Nord Group. For more
podcasts from iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(46:06):
Thanks for listening.
Host
Susan Peters
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.