January 13, 2025 • 43 mins
The killer strikes again. This time, he stalks a young college student. His methods improve, but not without some failure. He reconsiders his choices. But realizes it's too late. It's time to double down.
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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 (00:42):
We were trying to do our job as journalists, but
then we became part of the story, and I think
for a journalist, that's a terrible place to be as
part of the story. But there was no way to
get out of it. Because he enjoyed communicating with caketv
KTV was his favorite station. He had watched it since
(01:03):
he was a child. I have a postcard talking about
the communications which he wrote to Keke and it says.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
I write this letter to you for the sake of
the taxpayer as well as your time. Those three dudes
you have in custody are just talking to get publicity
for the Otero murders. They know nothing at all. I
did it by myself and with no one's help. Ps.
Since sex criminals do not change their mo or by nature,
(01:34):
cannot do so. I will not change mine. The code
words for me will be bind them, torture them, kill them,
b t K. They will be on the next victim.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Someone killed four members of the family.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Had you vanished from her home suddenly last weekend? Her
phone lines had been cut, her door left open.
Speaker 5 (02:06):
You see the victim playing there with plastic bags over
their heads, strangled. You could tell it was a plan scenario.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Well, police have said no more about the contents of
the letter. It does contain some sort of threat and
implies the killer may strike again.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
He's gonna play with these victims. 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 6 (02:31):
From My Heart podcasts and Tenderfoot TV, I'm Susan Peters
and this is Monster BTK. In episode one, we covered
the brutal and tragic murders of the Otero family. On
(02:52):
January fifteenth, nineteen seventy four, BTK broke into the Otero
home on Edgemore Drive in Wichita, can He tied up
the parents, Joseph and Julie before strangling them. Then he
strangled their young son Joey, and hanged their daughter Josephine.
(03:14):
It was btk's first murder, and it hadn't gone smoothly.
The killer made many mistakes. He hadn't known the parents
would be home. His only intended target was young Josephine.
He feared he would be caught, but the police were
seemingly not on his trail. In the months following the
(03:37):
Otero murders, Dennis Rader obsessed over his work. He reveled
in the success of not getting caught, and he realized
just how much he enjoyed the thrill of killing. He
started training for his next kill. In the book Confession
of a Serial Killer, Rader says he started to get
(03:59):
in shape and he was inspired once again by something
he saw on TV.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
I saw in a movie about a minotaur serial killer
toughening up the hands. I had a sports ball at home,
work in a vehicle to practice and exercise my hands.
Exercise with a handball helps blood circulation and to keep
the hands fit. There was excitement in trying something dangerous.
Then it happens, and afterward you wish it hadn't. It's
(04:30):
like playing in the quicksand there's fear and excitement, but
then you're stuck.
Speaker 6 (04:37):
Raider was hungry. He wanted to try again. He thought
he could get it right. Next time. Shall be started
to prowl for his next project.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
I believe in February or March the hunt began again.
I found it exciting to prowl a day or night.
It was very easy for me to spend a little
time after classes to prowl or day drive going to
classes worked well for me as a cover. I could
say I was at the library, or I could use
that time to prowl or stalk.
Speaker 6 (05:10):
After looking around the Wichita State campus for weeks, Raider
finally found his next target.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
So it was the day after classes or in between.
I spotted Bride arriving home with a friend, another female,
maybe a sister. She was at her mailbox. She fit
my fantasy profile, a co ed, dishwasher, blonde, small. I
saw her go in the house and I thought that's
a possibility.
Speaker 6 (05:40):
Her name was Catherine Bright. Raider eventually discovered that she
lived nearby, at thirty two seventeen East thirteenth Street, less
than two miles from the Otto home. He named her
project Lights out Here again are Raider's words.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
She became a true detective horror magazine hit Fantasy. Her
bedroom appeared to be in the center east. I was
planning on tying her up on the bed, either half
naked or totally. Then I would strangle her or suffocate her.
Her hands would be bound in front and tied to
her neck, like a true detective model I had seen.
(06:22):
I used to fantasize about women on the cover showing
terror in their eyes, bound hand up near her neck,
a man with a threatening knife overhead.
Speaker 6 (06:36):
Just seventy nine days after the Otero murders, Dennis Rader
approached Bright's.
Speaker 7 (06:42):
Home April four of nineteen seventy four. This was a
scene which isn't necessarily one that you would automatically assume
that it was connected to the ottos. My name is
Kevin O'Connor. I'm an assistant district attorney in Johnson County Now.
I was the deputy district attorney in witch Daw Sedgwick County,
(07:03):
Kansas during the Dennis Raider investigation. He was constantly trying
to trip the police up, so he was trying to
not connect it to the Otero's. Raider will break into
the house by smashing a window on the back, gaining entry.
He cleans up, and he waits.
Speaker 6 (07:25):
Raider's plan was to force his way into Bright's home
by acting as a Wichita State student needing a quiet
place to study. But, as Kevin O'Connor says, there was
just one problem.
Speaker 7 (07:39):
He is not anticipating that Catherine's brother, Kevin, will be
with her. Kevin Bright spent the night before with his
sister and there was snow, so he didn't go home.
Speaker 6 (07:50):
Raider panicked. He improvised a fake story about how he
was a criminal on the run.
Speaker 7 (07:57):
They will come back surprised by a and telling him
that he is on the run. He needs money in
a car, he needs a.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Little bit of food.
Speaker 7 (08:07):
He will tell them they have the time to control them,
that they're not going to be heard. This crime goes
to hell in a handbasket pretty quickly. He loses control
of the situation.
Speaker 6 (08:18):
Raider thought Catherine would be alone and easy to control.
For that reason, he brought no rope with him. He
had been planning to tie her up using pantyhose from
her dresser drawer. Pointing his gun at the siblings, he
marched them into the bedroom. In a rare CNN interview
(08:40):
from two thousand and five, Kevin Bright went into detail
about what happened next.
Speaker 8 (08:48):
And then he forced me to tie my sister up
in the front bedroom, and then he took me into
the other bedroom and tied me up and laid me
down on the floor on my stomaching nodded up stocking
and started strangling me, and I fought and broke loose
and jumped up on my feet. He pulled a gun
(09:11):
from his waistband, and I knew he was gonna shoot me,
and I grabbed hold of his hand and arm and
pushed it back into his stomach and got my hand
on the gun and the trigger pulled it twice, and
he didn't go off for some reason. He jerked it
away from me and shot me first time there, and
then I went to the ground, and anyway, he left
(09:33):
for a while.
Speaker 6 (09:35):
With Kevin Bright seemingly dead, Rader went back for Catherine,
who was tied up in the other room. He tried
to strangle her, but she fought back once again. Rader
was losing control of the situation. Meanwhile, Kevin Bright had
to listen as his sister was being strangled to death
(09:58):
in the other room.
Speaker 8 (10:00):
And then he came back and grabbed a hold of me,
and he started strangling me again, and I fought again.
He shot me in the second time. I played like
I was dead, and he left again. And then I
looked around the room to see if there was any
kind of weapon that I could use against him, and
there wasn't anything there, and I just decided to go
(10:21):
for help. And so I was about fifteen feet from
the front door, and I got up and I went
out the front door, and there's two guys across the street,
two men, and one of them taking me to the
hospital and the other one called the police.
Speaker 6 (10:37):
After Kevin escaped, Raider panicked. He started stabbing Catherine with
a knife over and over to make sure she was dead.
The police reports say she was stabbed eleven times. Here
are raiders words from confession of a serial killer.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
I had no intention of stabbing anyone. Happened because I
lost control. That created a mess of blood everywhere on
my hands, pants, shoes. I made a vow if I
ever again had to confront to kill, there would be
no knife. It was a total mess because I didn't
have control over it.
Speaker 6 (11:18):
Raider had to move quickly after stabbing Catherine.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Since Kevin could id me. It wouldn't make a difference
if she was dead. I was afraid the police would
catch me or stop me. On Holyoake, I recalled that
I ran so hard and fast that my lungs hurt
for a day or two. Afterward from breathing the cold air.
Speaker 6 (11:41):
Raider ran back to his car parked by the Wichita
State Campus. Catherine tried calling for help.
Speaker 7 (11:49):
She's able to get to the phone. It's a wall
unit and the phone will be.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Off the hook.
Speaker 7 (11:56):
That police report describing her and how that police officer
found her is heartbreaking as he describes her in trying
to breathe begging the police officer to help her.
Speaker 6 (12:09):
The police report states that Officer Dennis Landon arrived at
the Bright home at two eight pm. Here's an excerpt
read by a voice actor.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Officer Landon approached the address of twenty three seventeen East
thirteenth Street and knocked at the screen door. The front
door was open. After receiving no response, Officer Landon looked
in through the open door and saw a female lying
in a pool of blood. The young woman was found
clutching a telephone in her hand. She was asked what happened,
(12:42):
but was unable to respond. When asked if she was hurt,
she pulled up a blouse, exposing her abdomen. The young
woman said she did not know her attacker. She was
able to give her name before beginning to pass out.
Officer Raymond Fletcher arrived and assisted in attending to Bright.
Upon his arrival, Officer Fletcher noticed that Bright was covered
(13:04):
in blood. In addition to the pool of blood underneath
her waist, Bright had blood on her hands, in her hair,
and on her face. Officer Fletcher noted that she was
bleeding from her left nostril and her face was badly bruised.
Bright grabbed Officer Fletcher's arm and repeated, I can't breathe
(13:25):
help me.
Speaker 6 (13:27):
Both Kevin and Katherine were taken to Wesley Medical Center.
Kevin survived his gunshot wounds. However, his sister Catherine didn't
survive the attack. She died of her stab wounds just
a few hours later. Catherine was yet another innocent victim
(13:49):
of btk's malice. This one has always been difficult for
me to wrap my head around. Catherine was just a
college student looking forward to the next phase of her life.
To have that life cut short is a merciless injustice,
and for Kevin, the horror of remembering that dreadful day
(14:12):
was almost too much to bear. Even though he was
younger than his sister, he felt he should be the
protective brother, and when I was the first to interview
him thirty years later, the tears in his eyes were instant.
It still haunts him to this day that he could
not save his young sister's life. Last night, you and
(14:36):
your dad are talking, and thirty years later you're still
talking about what is Yeah, there's a reason for that.
Speaker 8 (14:46):
Yeah, because well, sister shouldn't die Hamon. I was pry
that she didn't suffer very much, you know, it was
last hours, I don't know. And this prayer for all
the families that you know they can have healing. God
knows every movement you're making and knows that you're going
to answer one day, and that he offers, you know,
(15:09):
he offers every one of us salvation.
Speaker 6 (15:14):
For Katherine Bright, it was a terrible and tragic end
to a budding life, but for Rader, it was just
the beginning. Following the murder of Katherine Bright, Rader planned
his next move. Project lights Out had been a disaster.
(15:40):
Dennis returned home and tried to resume his normal family life,
but he couldn't shake the paranoia that his mistakes would
cost him. Here again are his words from the book
Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
When I saw the news releases about Bright, I knew
Kevin was now a survivor and able to tell Catherine
had died. Kevin had described me. I was worried about Kevin.
He was Catherine's brother, I learned. I thought of maybe
trying to hit on Kevin at some point. I never
could come up with a perfect plan.
Speaker 6 (16:16):
On April twenty third, nineteen seventy four, just three weeks
after the attack on the Brites, police released a facial
composite of the suspect based on Kevin's description. This is
former Wichita Police Chief Richard Lamonian.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
All he could tell us it was a male, a
white male, but he could not describe the individual.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
He was very cooperative.
Speaker 5 (16:40):
We had professional psychiatrist psychologists work with him. But again,
I really think he gave us all the information he
had because I don't think he really had an opportunity
to even see what was going on.
Speaker 6 (16:57):
Raider, however, felt differently about Kevin's recollection.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
He did give a fairly good description of me, and
I thought the picture in the newspaper was uncomfortably close
to me. But no one ever came for me.
Speaker 6 (17:11):
According to Lemonion, police had a hard time connecting this
crime to the Otero murders. Both were so messy and strange.
The Bright killing was clearly so poorly planned that it
was tough to make heads or tails of.
Speaker 5 (17:29):
We assumed at that particular moment that that's probably just
boyfriend love triangle. Who knows what it is. But it
was interrupted, so it was not connected at the time
to the Otero murders. In those days, we probably had
a homicide rate forty forty five a year, so no
homicides were not unusual, and we would clear ninety percent
(17:52):
of them, so a homicide like this would not have
drawn a serial killer type mentality back to it.
Speaker 6 (18:00):
While police were struggling, Rader was relishing. In the chaos
and confusion.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
As I gathered the news clippings on Catherine Bright, I
taped a picture from a detective magazine to one of
my Heidi Hole folders, the one that showed the girl
with her hands in front, the way I had wanted
to do with Bright. I kept Bright's clippings inside and
even wrote a story I believe, possibly of a fantasy
of her. The months slipped away, and I was pretty
(18:27):
sure I wasn't going to be caught for a lineup.
Speaker 6 (18:32):
Rader had all sorts of these heidie holes in his home,
where he would keep tokens from his victims or store
his crew drawings and newspaper clippings. In July, six months
after the Otero murders, four people in their early twenties
(18:52):
were killed following a small dispute. It was the second
quadruple homicide that year. All of Wichita was shaken up.
Nineteen seventy four had thus far been a hard year
for violent crime. Police were scrambling to piece it all together.
Police finally got a breakthrough in the Otaro case. In
(19:13):
October of nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 5 (19:16):
We had arrested a couple of brothers named Seabring who
admitted that they had killed the Otos.
Speaker 6 (19:24):
Gary Seabring was arrested on charges for an unrelated sexual offense.
While being questioned, Seabrings started spewing about the Oto murders.
According to the book Inside the Mind of BTK by
John Douglas, Seabring would go on to tell police.
Speaker 9 (19:43):
If I was doing the Otos, this is how I
would have done it. It would have been with my
brother and we would have tied them all up, and
my buddy Thomas Myers would have been with us.
Speaker 6 (19:56):
This raised a few eyebrows, and the two brothers were
brought in his suspects in the Otero case.
Speaker 5 (20:04):
Of course, the news media picks upon it, and we've
arrested the Otaro murderers and all things like that.
Speaker 6 (20:12):
The people of which tah were ecstatic. They believed the
Otto murderer had been brought to justice. Seabring had a
criminal history involving the sexual assault of a minor. On
the surface, it seemed very plausible that he was the killer,
but police were skeptical of Sebring's knowledge of the case.
(20:33):
Investigators had Gary and his brother Ernest go through intense
psychological evaluations, and they determined both men were mentally unstable,
prone to lying and inventing false scenarios. Additionally, police Chief
Floyd Hannen determined that neither brother could be placed at
(20:55):
the scene of the Otero crime, and neither of them
fit the description the man who was seen leaving the
o'tara home. As for the friend, Thomas Myers, police had
trouble locating him at first, but after a week Myers
was brought into custody and also taken in for a
mental evaluation. Once again, the conclusion was clear. These men
(21:20):
were not responsible.
Speaker 5 (21:22):
The Seabring brothers were just pedophiles. It's what they were,
and they had other problems that they had. They weren't murders.
Speaker 6 (21:33):
Raiders saw the false confession on the news and he
was not happy about this development.
Speaker 5 (21:39):
Once the media picked up on it, and then they
started putting information out that we had a suspect in
custody for it, that's what prompted it all. He didn't
want someone else taking credit for his job.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Since I was in the mood of highness and attention
as the newspaper ran the story on the three men,
I added it to my Heidi Hole folder on the oteros.
I wanted credit, not someone else. I also wanted taxpayers
not to spend endless dollars on false leads.
Speaker 6 (22:12):
A few days after the Wichita Eagle published its story
about the Seabring brothers, Dennis Rader called the front desk
and asked to speak to Eagle columnist Don Granger. Here's
what Granger remembers hearing over the phone.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Listen and listen good. I'm only going to say this once.
There is a letter about the Oteo case in a
book in the public library.
Speaker 6 (22:40):
Granger was freaked out. He immediately called the Wichita Police.
He told them that the caller had the voice of
a timid Midwestern man, but he couldn't make out anything else.
Wichita PD Officer Bernie Drowaski went to the library that
very day. He discovered up a duel your letter stuped
(23:01):
into a book titled Applied Engineering Mechanics. The letter was
riddled with misspellings and grammatical errors. Here is what it said,
edited for clarity.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Those three dudes you have in custody are just talking
to get publicity. They know nothing at all. I did
it by myself, with no one's help. I'm sorry this
happened to the society. It's hard to control myself. You
probably call me psychotic with sexual perversion. Hang up. Where
this monster entered my brain? I will never know, but
(23:38):
it's here to stay. How does one cure himself? If
you ask for help that you've killed four people, they
will laugh or hit the panic button and call the cops.
I can't stop it, so the monster goes on and
hurt me as well as society. Society can be thankful
(23:59):
that they're ways for people like me to relieve myself
at times by day dreams of some victim being tortured
and being mine. It's a big, complicated game. My friend
of the monster play putting victims down, following them, checking
up on them, waiting in the dark, wading, wagdhing. The
(24:21):
pressure is great, and sometimes he run the game to
his liking. Maybe you can stop him. I can't. He
has already chosen his next victim or victims. I don't
know who they are yet. The next day, after I
read the paper, I will know, but it will be
too late. Good luck hunting.
Speaker 6 (24:45):
It was in this letter that the name BTK was born,
a three letter moniker that came to haunt which a
tall police.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yours truly guilty ps. Since sex criminals do not change
their mo or by nature, cannot do so, I will
not change mine. The code words for me will be
bind them, torture them, kill them, BTK. They will be
(25:18):
on the next victim.
Speaker 10 (25:21):
He considered himself to be among the elite serial killers,
and so he named himself BTK.
Speaker 6 (25:30):
This is Catherine Ramsland, the forensic psychologist who wrote a
book with and about Dennis Rader.
Speaker 10 (25:37):
He did not want to leave his name to chance
and get something stupid. He wanted a powerful name, and
it wasn't the only one. He gave them a few ideas,
but because he had created an image for the BTK
name as well, he stuck with that. He's one of
the few who told police and journalists, here's what you
(25:59):
should call me, and he enjoyed that. He enjoyed that
kind of cat and mouse game.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
By using BTK, torture, fantasy, writing, drawing, and what I
had planned to do. I wrote my own criminal epithet.
If cocked, those words would hang me.
Speaker 6 (26:19):
Carrie Rawson, Dennis Raider's daughter, talks about her father's lust
for notoriety.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
He feeds off the fair because he wanted to be
remembered and known for what he had done. And he
talks about Ted and California and he's talking about son
of Sam. Well, He's in a smaller media market, so
he wasn't getting the coverage that Bundy or Sam was.
He wanted to be known and he didn't like that
these guys were taking credit and making it sound one
(26:49):
way when he knew the truth. So he writes into
the Eagle. It puts in a library book in the
public library where him I used to hang out all
the time.
Speaker 6 (26:56):
Later on, Dennis Raider had the authority's attention. His plan
was working.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
So he literally it's like giving them evidence because he's
such a narcissist and he's enjoying that game.
Speaker 6 (27:14):
For Raider, the game was just getting started. The news
was settling on the police department. For the first time
in history, Wichita was dealing with a bona fide serial killer.
Speaker 5 (27:38):
In the first phase of this, I'm thinking to myself,
what kind of a screwball is this? The fact is
he's hurting people. He's actually killing innocent people in our community.
Our job is to put him away, get him off
the street. And as you read these things, this is
(27:58):
like a movie script. Kept it's not a movie. It's
real people are dying. How can we resolve this? This
is going to be a long process and it's going
to take a lot of help.
Speaker 6 (28:12):
Police were initially unsure about what to do with btk's letter.
They thought if they went public with it, the city
might go into a frenzy and then it might embolt
in BTK to kill again.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
None of us had ever dealt with this. We reached
out to departments that had dealt with serial killers. We
reached out to the FBI, getting advice suggestions as to
how we might proceed. We reached out to professionals here
in Wichita and in the region, psychologists, psychiatrists to get advice,
(28:48):
to get direction as to what they had done, what
worked best for them, and what we might do in
the future.
Speaker 6 (28:58):
It wasn't until a few days later that police came
up with a plan to respond to BTK. The response
came in the form of a personal ad in the
Wichita Eagle on October twenty seventh, calling on BTK to
reach out.
Speaker 11 (29:15):
BTK Help is available call six four six six three
one two one before ten pm.
Speaker 6 (29:26):
But the hotline never rang. On October thirty, First Eagle
columnist Don Granger ran his own article trying to get
btk's attention.
Speaker 12 (29:38):
For the past week, which Ada police have tried to
get in touch with a man who has important information
on the Otero murdered case, A man who needs help badly.
You may have noticed the classified ad that ran at
the top of our personal column Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday
and Tuesday. It read BTK help is available. There really
(30:05):
is a BTK. Police cannot say how they know, but
they are convinced BTK has information about the murder of
Joseph Vittero, his wife and two of his children. If
for any reason, BTK doesn't want to talk to police,
this newspaper's secret witness procedure is available. I will go further.
(30:32):
If BTK wants to call me at home, I can
be reached.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
Granger's phone never rang either. On December eleventh, Wichita Sun
reporter Kathy Hinkle published the BTK letter after getting her
hands on it from an unnamed source. Finally, the words
of this bizarre killer, we're out there for everyone to see.
(30:58):
Police Chief Lloyd Hannen had this to say, you know,
Wichita beaconn article about btk's letter going.
Speaker 12 (31:05):
Public, I think we've taken one hell of a risk
with the release of this letter.
Speaker 11 (31:10):
He might have to go out and commit this offense
again to prove he committed this offense.
Speaker 12 (31:15):
He's a sick man who needs help.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
When this hit the news and it started picking up.
The whole community is afraid. I personally even had a
sister in law who was a single female. She's an adult,
but she's single, and she came out and lived with us.
She would not stay at her own home.
Speaker 6 (31:38):
In fact, it was like this all across Wichita. People
were installing heavy locks on their doors, women stopped going
out alone. Everyone was scared.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
I mean, it was a scary time for the community
and of course the department. I mean, you're getting all
kinds of heat. What are they trying to do to
resolve this? And we're doing everything that we possibly can,
but it's a fear factor. How do you reconcile that
if you're afraid of something you perceive you're afraid of it.
(32:11):
I can't give you enough reassurance that you're okay, because
you're not gonna believe it. The city actually came together,
I mean really did. Neighbor watching neighbor, everybody trying to
watch out for each other. What neighbor would come home
and call their other neighbor and say, hey, I'm home.
You know, I'm locking up. And we had a lot
of calls, suspicious character type calls, and of course the
(32:34):
beat officers are in tune with this. They're doing their
absolute best. They're stopping people. If you're in a neighborhood
and you're out somewhere, we don't know who you are,
you're gonna get stopped.
Speaker 6 (32:46):
Police were under a ton of pressure. They knew they
had to catch the sky and fast, and the fact
that he had communicated was a good thing, albeit terrifying.
The letter meant they had a avenue to finding him.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
The theory that we had was that if we can
communicate with him, he communicated with us. Obviously he's searching
for identification. He wants to be identified. The idea was
that if we can keep him communicating, because we know
he's fantasizing about what he's already done, and if we
(33:24):
can keep him occupied with that, perhaps there won't be
another victim.
Speaker 6 (33:31):
But Rader was starting to realize he had put himself
at serious risk. He saw the newspaper article where the
BTK letter went public, He saw the law enforcement were
actively pursuing him, and he got spooked. So at the
end of nineteen seventy four, he cut off all communication
(33:51):
and he decided to lay low. Here are his words
from Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
I acted normal when Paul was present. I watched the
news with interest, but not overly. I read the paper,
but I did not cut out the articles until later.
I also became overly defensive. I watched the road outside
and had a loaded gun ready. I made sure our
locked windows were secure, probably like everyone else in Wichita.
Speaker 6 (34:24):
In the summer of nineteen seventy five, with the BTK
paranoia still a buzz, Wichita police found a strange note
left at a crime scene. An elderly couple, John and
Emma Foster, were found stabbed to death in their home.
The mystery note left behind set off alarm bells. Police
(34:44):
Chief Floyd Hannon held a press conference just twenty four
hours later. The following excerpt comes from a Wichita Eagle
article dated July twenty ninth, nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 13 (34:57):
Hannin said that the note was left at the scene.
The police don't know who wrote it. He emphasized there
was no reason to believe there was any connection between
the notes writer and the person who wrote a letter
to the Eagle Beacons secret Witness program.
Speaker 6 (35:14):
In other words, this murder had nothing to do with BTK,
but it shows that everyone in Wichita was on edge
about the next BTK murder. They feared that any similar
incident might be his handiwork. Every new murder or sexual
assault was met with the question could this have been BTK?
(35:39):
But in truth Raider had started a new line of work,
becoming a father. His first child, a boy, was named
Brian Raider. But for Dennis, being a normal dad seemed impossible.
In his mind, existing just as an average family man
was unthinkable. He was different and he knew it, as
(36:03):
he himself admitted.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
I love to hunt, prowling the streets looking for fair game.
The cat and mouse game gave me an adrenaline rush
or hi.
Speaker 6 (36:16):
As he built one identity, the other started to fester underneath,
almost like juckal and Hyde. This was Dennis Raider, the
so called normal suburban dad versus BTK, the serial killer.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
BTK is really more just another mask, using that to
power into rage and anger and controlling that into murder,
than to release that because it makes him feel better
about who he is.
Speaker 6 (36:45):
Carrie Rawson, daughter of Dennis Raider, She says the two
versions of her dad are just sides up the same coin,
and one side comes out when it needs to, not like.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
A bipolar thing. He's always this, he's always Dennis Raider,
he's always Dad, he's always BTK, and then he just
cubes and flips to show you what he wants you
to see.
Speaker 6 (37:11):
Forensic psychologist Catherine Ramsland explains this phenomenon.
Speaker 10 (37:17):
That is that whole cubing thing. It's a way to
not be completely connected in your sense of morality. I
think each situation in which he found himself was real
to him, and he could easily live this double life
because the more intense, exciting experience was murdering people. But
(37:40):
he also had what he called social obligations family church,
he was president of his church, congregation, his job, he
had things that he had to look to as well,
and he took those seriously. I think from the outside
anybody might say, how seriously could that be, given how
he's really violating all of these things. I don't think
(38:04):
he thought of it as pretense at all. I think
he thought of it as that's what I need to
do for myself. That's my little secret. I enjoy it
when I can do it, Otherwise I do this other thing.
Speaker 6 (38:19):
In these early days of nineteen seventy seven, Rader was
still learning how to balance all of these conflicting emotions.
According to Carrie, he had trouble holding it all together.
Little things like chores and hobbies just weren't enough to
keep his mind off his fantasies.
Speaker 4 (38:40):
Later on we learn he was literally throwing himself into
stuff to distract him from murder. He needed to be
outside he could get uptid and angry and difficult and
controlling inside.
Speaker 6 (38:52):
While Rader was struggling with his identity crisis, the people
of Wichita were wondering what happened to be tk newly
appointed police chief. Richard Lemonion was one of them.
Speaker 5 (39:08):
In nineteen seventy six, I was appointed as police chief.
I was thirty six years old. I was the youngest
police chief in the history of the department on major
cases like this. Here, the investigators briefed me on everything
that we had, and then I had a much better
understanding of what evidence we did have, what was available
(39:29):
to us, and where they were in their investigation. And
at that particular time, they were pretty much at a
dead end. We hadn't heard from him for a long time,
and you know, their thinking is maybe he's gone, maybe
he's dead, maybe he's in prison. They literally had followed
every lead that they could humanly follow, and I remember
(39:51):
we were getting advice from the FBI and others that
if he was alive, he was still killing. If he
wasn't still killing, then he he was still fantasizing.
Speaker 6 (40:06):
It took him years, years of waiting, planning, thinking of
ways to do it better. But finally, in nineteen seventy seven,
three years since his last murder, someone caught his eye.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
She was completely random. There was actually someone across from
Dylan's who might have been the potential. It was called
Project green or Greenwood. I had met this girl, I
think at WSU. I knew where she lived.
Speaker 6 (40:38):
Dylan's was a nearby supermarket. He spotted her and followed
her home multiple times. He decided he was ready she
was the one. On March seventeenth, nineteen seventy seven, he
approached her door and something unexpected happened.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
I know, but nobody answered. While I was walking away
from the intended house, I saw a young boy coming
back from Dylan's. I figured he had a mother in
the house. I watched where he went, and then I
went to the door and knocked. The boy opened the
door with his brother.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
My name is Steve Ralford.
Speaker 5 (41:21):
I'm gonna be k K Shurbiv Danish writer Right my
mom knocking Kevin seven?
Speaker 6 (41:33):
Next time on Monster bet K, there's a.
Speaker 5 (41:37):
Crack any door whare look out him?
Speaker 1 (41:41):
A mom Pleton. She told the kids to do whatever
I said. I tied the door shut, but the kids
were still yelling.
Speaker 5 (41:49):
The big thing that weighs on you is the fact
that this is gonna happen again.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
He's going to determine whether or not you're gonna live, when.
Speaker 9 (41:56):
You're gonna die.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
He's gonna play with these victims. There's no manuel written
on how to react when you become part of the story.
Speaker 5 (42:06):
When we announced the fact that we did as serial killer,
we had a hundred tips.
Speaker 4 (42:11):
He's making your life uncomfortable. Night later we said it
was like walking on inkshells at times with him.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Oh Anna, why didn't you appear?
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Monster bt K 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
(42:51):
behalf of iHeart Podcasts include Matt Frederick and Trevor Young,
alongside producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk and supervising producer
Rima Ilkali. Marketing support by David Wasserman and Alison Wright
at iHeart Podcasts and Caroline or Agemma at Tenderfoot TV.
(43:11):
Additional research by Claudia Dafrico, 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 iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(43:35):
to your favorite shows. 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 (00:42):
We were trying to do our job as journalists, but
then we became part of the story, and I think
for a journalist, that's a terrible place to be as
part of the story. But there was no way to
get out of it. Because he enjoyed communicating with caketv
KTV was his favorite station. He had watched it since
(01:03):
he was a child. I have a postcard talking about
the communications which he wrote to Keke and it says.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
I write this letter to you for the sake of
the taxpayer as well as your time. Those three dudes
you have in custody are just talking to get publicity
for the Otero murders. They know nothing at all. I
did it by myself and with no one's help. Ps.
Since sex criminals do not change their mo or by nature,
(01:34):
cannot do so. I will not change mine. The code
words for me will be bind them, torture them, kill them,
b t K. They will be on the next victim.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Someone killed four members of the family.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Had you vanished from her home suddenly last weekend? Her
phone lines had been cut, her door left open.
Speaker 5 (02:06):
You see the victim playing there with plastic bags over
their heads, strangled. You could tell it was a plan scenario.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Well, police have said no more about the contents of
the letter. It does contain some sort of threat and
implies the killer may strike again.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
He's gonna play with these victims. 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 6 (02:31):
From My Heart podcasts and Tenderfoot TV, I'm Susan Peters
and this is Monster BTK. In episode one, we covered
the brutal and tragic murders of the Otero family. On
(02:52):
January fifteenth, nineteen seventy four, BTK broke into the Otero
home on Edgemore Drive in Wichita, can He tied up
the parents, Joseph and Julie before strangling them. Then he
strangled their young son Joey, and hanged their daughter Josephine.
(03:14):
It was btk's first murder, and it hadn't gone smoothly.
The killer made many mistakes. He hadn't known the parents
would be home. His only intended target was young Josephine.
He feared he would be caught, but the police were
seemingly not on his trail. In the months following the
(03:37):
Otero murders, Dennis Rader obsessed over his work. He reveled
in the success of not getting caught, and he realized
just how much he enjoyed the thrill of killing. He
started training for his next kill. In the book Confession
of a Serial Killer, Rader says he started to get
(03:59):
in shape and he was inspired once again by something
he saw on TV.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
I saw in a movie about a minotaur serial killer
toughening up the hands. I had a sports ball at home,
work in a vehicle to practice and exercise my hands.
Exercise with a handball helps blood circulation and to keep
the hands fit. There was excitement in trying something dangerous.
Then it happens, and afterward you wish it hadn't. It's
(04:30):
like playing in the quicksand there's fear and excitement, but
then you're stuck.
Speaker 6 (04:37):
Raider was hungry. He wanted to try again. He thought
he could get it right. Next time. Shall be started
to prowl for his next project.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
I believe in February or March the hunt began again.
I found it exciting to prowl a day or night.
It was very easy for me to spend a little
time after classes to prowl or day drive going to
classes worked well for me as a cover. I could
say I was at the library, or I could use
that time to prowl or stalk.
Speaker 6 (05:10):
After looking around the Wichita State campus for weeks, Raider
finally found his next target.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
So it was the day after classes or in between.
I spotted Bride arriving home with a friend, another female,
maybe a sister. She was at her mailbox. She fit
my fantasy profile, a co ed, dishwasher, blonde, small. I
saw her go in the house and I thought that's
a possibility.
Speaker 6 (05:40):
Her name was Catherine Bright. Raider eventually discovered that she
lived nearby, at thirty two seventeen East thirteenth Street, less
than two miles from the Otto home. He named her
project Lights out Here again are Raider's words.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
She became a true detective horror magazine hit Fantasy. Her
bedroom appeared to be in the center east. I was
planning on tying her up on the bed, either half
naked or totally. Then I would strangle her or suffocate her.
Her hands would be bound in front and tied to
her neck, like a true detective model I had seen.
(06:22):
I used to fantasize about women on the cover showing
terror in their eyes, bound hand up near her neck,
a man with a threatening knife overhead.
Speaker 6 (06:36):
Just seventy nine days after the Otero murders, Dennis Rader
approached Bright's.
Speaker 7 (06:42):
Home April four of nineteen seventy four. This was a
scene which isn't necessarily one that you would automatically assume
that it was connected to the ottos. My name is
Kevin O'Connor. I'm an assistant district attorney in Johnson County Now.
I was the deputy district attorney in witch Daw Sedgwick County,
(07:03):
Kansas during the Dennis Raider investigation. He was constantly trying
to trip the police up, so he was trying to
not connect it to the Otero's. Raider will break into
the house by smashing a window on the back, gaining entry.
He cleans up, and he waits.
Speaker 6 (07:25):
Raider's plan was to force his way into Bright's home
by acting as a Wichita State student needing a quiet
place to study. But, as Kevin O'Connor says, there was
just one problem.
Speaker 7 (07:39):
He is not anticipating that Catherine's brother, Kevin, will be
with her. Kevin Bright spent the night before with his
sister and there was snow, so he didn't go home.
Speaker 6 (07:50):
Raider panicked. He improvised a fake story about how he
was a criminal on the run.
Speaker 7 (07:57):
They will come back surprised by a and telling him
that he is on the run. He needs money in
a car, he needs a.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Little bit of food.
Speaker 7 (08:07):
He will tell them they have the time to control them,
that they're not going to be heard. This crime goes
to hell in a handbasket pretty quickly. He loses control
of the situation.
Speaker 6 (08:18):
Raider thought Catherine would be alone and easy to control.
For that reason, he brought no rope with him. He
had been planning to tie her up using pantyhose from
her dresser drawer. Pointing his gun at the siblings, he
marched them into the bedroom. In a rare CNN interview
(08:40):
from two thousand and five, Kevin Bright went into detail
about what happened next.
Speaker 8 (08:48):
And then he forced me to tie my sister up
in the front bedroom, and then he took me into
the other bedroom and tied me up and laid me
down on the floor on my stomaching nodded up stocking
and started strangling me, and I fought and broke loose
and jumped up on my feet. He pulled a gun
(09:11):
from his waistband, and I knew he was gonna shoot me,
and I grabbed hold of his hand and arm and
pushed it back into his stomach and got my hand
on the gun and the trigger pulled it twice, and
he didn't go off for some reason. He jerked it
away from me and shot me first time there, and
then I went to the ground, and anyway, he left
(09:33):
for a while.
Speaker 6 (09:35):
With Kevin Bright seemingly dead, Rader went back for Catherine,
who was tied up in the other room. He tried
to strangle her, but she fought back once again. Rader
was losing control of the situation. Meanwhile, Kevin Bright had
to listen as his sister was being strangled to death
(09:58):
in the other room.
Speaker 8 (10:00):
And then he came back and grabbed a hold of me,
and he started strangling me again, and I fought again.
He shot me in the second time. I played like
I was dead, and he left again. And then I
looked around the room to see if there was any
kind of weapon that I could use against him, and
there wasn't anything there, and I just decided to go
(10:21):
for help. And so I was about fifteen feet from
the front door, and I got up and I went
out the front door, and there's two guys across the street,
two men, and one of them taking me to the
hospital and the other one called the police.
Speaker 6 (10:37):
After Kevin escaped, Raider panicked. He started stabbing Catherine with
a knife over and over to make sure she was dead.
The police reports say she was stabbed eleven times. Here
are raiders words from confession of a serial killer.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
I had no intention of stabbing anyone. Happened because I
lost control. That created a mess of blood everywhere on
my hands, pants, shoes. I made a vow if I
ever again had to confront to kill, there would be
no knife. It was a total mess because I didn't
have control over it.
Speaker 6 (11:18):
Raider had to move quickly after stabbing Catherine.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Since Kevin could id me. It wouldn't make a difference
if she was dead. I was afraid the police would
catch me or stop me. On Holyoake, I recalled that
I ran so hard and fast that my lungs hurt
for a day or two. Afterward from breathing the cold air.
Speaker 6 (11:41):
Raider ran back to his car parked by the Wichita
State Campus. Catherine tried calling for help.
Speaker 7 (11:49):
She's able to get to the phone. It's a wall
unit and the phone will be.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Off the hook.
Speaker 7 (11:56):
That police report describing her and how that police officer
found her is heartbreaking as he describes her in trying
to breathe begging the police officer to help her.
Speaker 6 (12:09):
The police report states that Officer Dennis Landon arrived at
the Bright home at two eight pm. Here's an excerpt
read by a voice actor.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Officer Landon approached the address of twenty three seventeen East
thirteenth Street and knocked at the screen door. The front
door was open. After receiving no response, Officer Landon looked
in through the open door and saw a female lying
in a pool of blood. The young woman was found
clutching a telephone in her hand. She was asked what happened,
(12:42):
but was unable to respond. When asked if she was hurt,
she pulled up a blouse, exposing her abdomen. The young
woman said she did not know her attacker. She was
able to give her name before beginning to pass out.
Officer Raymond Fletcher arrived and assisted in attending to Bright.
Upon his arrival, Officer Fletcher noticed that Bright was covered
(13:04):
in blood. In addition to the pool of blood underneath
her waist, Bright had blood on her hands, in her hair,
and on her face. Officer Fletcher noted that she was
bleeding from her left nostril and her face was badly bruised.
Bright grabbed Officer Fletcher's arm and repeated, I can't breathe
(13:25):
help me.
Speaker 6 (13:27):
Both Kevin and Katherine were taken to Wesley Medical Center.
Kevin survived his gunshot wounds. However, his sister Catherine didn't
survive the attack. She died of her stab wounds just
a few hours later. Catherine was yet another innocent victim
(13:49):
of btk's malice. This one has always been difficult for
me to wrap my head around. Catherine was just a
college student looking forward to the next phase of her life.
To have that life cut short is a merciless injustice,
and for Kevin, the horror of remembering that dreadful day
(14:12):
was almost too much to bear. Even though he was
younger than his sister, he felt he should be the
protective brother, and when I was the first to interview
him thirty years later, the tears in his eyes were instant.
It still haunts him to this day that he could
not save his young sister's life. Last night, you and
(14:36):
your dad are talking, and thirty years later you're still
talking about what is Yeah, there's a reason for that.
Speaker 8 (14:46):
Yeah, because well, sister shouldn't die Hamon. I was pry
that she didn't suffer very much, you know, it was
last hours, I don't know. And this prayer for all
the families that you know they can have healing. God
knows every movement you're making and knows that you're going
to answer one day, and that he offers, you know,
(15:09):
he offers every one of us salvation.
Speaker 6 (15:14):
For Katherine Bright, it was a terrible and tragic end
to a budding life, but for Rader, it was just
the beginning. Following the murder of Katherine Bright, Rader planned
his next move. Project lights Out had been a disaster.
(15:40):
Dennis returned home and tried to resume his normal family life,
but he couldn't shake the paranoia that his mistakes would
cost him. Here again are his words from the book
Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
When I saw the news releases about Bright, I knew
Kevin was now a survivor and able to tell Catherine
had died. Kevin had described me. I was worried about Kevin.
He was Catherine's brother, I learned. I thought of maybe
trying to hit on Kevin at some point. I never
could come up with a perfect plan.
Speaker 6 (16:16):
On April twenty third, nineteen seventy four, just three weeks
after the attack on the Brites, police released a facial
composite of the suspect based on Kevin's description. This is
former Wichita Police Chief Richard Lamonian.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
All he could tell us it was a male, a
white male, but he could not describe the individual.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
He was very cooperative.
Speaker 5 (16:40):
We had professional psychiatrist psychologists work with him. But again,
I really think he gave us all the information he
had because I don't think he really had an opportunity
to even see what was going on.
Speaker 6 (16:57):
Raider, however, felt differently about Kevin's recollection.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
He did give a fairly good description of me, and
I thought the picture in the newspaper was uncomfortably close
to me. But no one ever came for me.
Speaker 6 (17:11):
According to Lemonion, police had a hard time connecting this
crime to the Otero murders. Both were so messy and strange.
The Bright killing was clearly so poorly planned that it
was tough to make heads or tails of.
Speaker 5 (17:29):
We assumed at that particular moment that that's probably just
boyfriend love triangle. Who knows what it is. But it
was interrupted, so it was not connected at the time
to the Otero murders. In those days, we probably had
a homicide rate forty forty five a year, so no
homicides were not unusual, and we would clear ninety percent
(17:52):
of them, so a homicide like this would not have
drawn a serial killer type mentality back to it.
Speaker 6 (18:00):
While police were struggling, Rader was relishing. In the chaos
and confusion.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
As I gathered the news clippings on Catherine Bright, I
taped a picture from a detective magazine to one of
my Heidi Hole folders, the one that showed the girl
with her hands in front, the way I had wanted
to do with Bright. I kept Bright's clippings inside and
even wrote a story I believe, possibly of a fantasy
of her. The months slipped away, and I was pretty
(18:27):
sure I wasn't going to be caught for a lineup.
Speaker 6 (18:32):
Rader had all sorts of these heidie holes in his home,
where he would keep tokens from his victims or store
his crew drawings and newspaper clippings. In July, six months
after the Otero murders, four people in their early twenties
(18:52):
were killed following a small dispute. It was the second
quadruple homicide that year. All of Wichita was shaken up.
Nineteen seventy four had thus far been a hard year
for violent crime. Police were scrambling to piece it all together.
Police finally got a breakthrough in the Otaro case. In
(19:13):
October of nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 5 (19:16):
We had arrested a couple of brothers named Seabring who
admitted that they had killed the Otos.
Speaker 6 (19:24):
Gary Seabring was arrested on charges for an unrelated sexual offense.
While being questioned, Seabrings started spewing about the Oto murders.
According to the book Inside the Mind of BTK by
John Douglas, Seabring would go on to tell police.
Speaker 9 (19:43):
If I was doing the Otos, this is how I
would have done it. It would have been with my
brother and we would have tied them all up, and
my buddy Thomas Myers would have been with us.
Speaker 6 (19:56):
This raised a few eyebrows, and the two brothers were
brought in his suspects in the Otero case.
Speaker 5 (20:04):
Of course, the news media picks upon it, and we've
arrested the Otaro murderers and all things like that.
Speaker 6 (20:12):
The people of which tah were ecstatic. They believed the
Otto murderer had been brought to justice. Seabring had a
criminal history involving the sexual assault of a minor. On
the surface, it seemed very plausible that he was the killer,
but police were skeptical of Sebring's knowledge of the case.
(20:33):
Investigators had Gary and his brother Ernest go through intense
psychological evaluations, and they determined both men were mentally unstable,
prone to lying and inventing false scenarios. Additionally, police Chief
Floyd Hannen determined that neither brother could be placed at
(20:55):
the scene of the Otero crime, and neither of them
fit the description the man who was seen leaving the
o'tara home. As for the friend, Thomas Myers, police had
trouble locating him at first, but after a week Myers
was brought into custody and also taken in for a
mental evaluation. Once again, the conclusion was clear. These men
(21:20):
were not responsible.
Speaker 5 (21:22):
The Seabring brothers were just pedophiles. It's what they were,
and they had other problems that they had. They weren't murders.
Speaker 6 (21:33):
Raiders saw the false confession on the news and he
was not happy about this development.
Speaker 5 (21:39):
Once the media picked up on it, and then they
started putting information out that we had a suspect in
custody for it, that's what prompted it all. He didn't
want someone else taking credit for his job.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Since I was in the mood of highness and attention
as the newspaper ran the story on the three men,
I added it to my Heidi Hole folder on the oteros.
I wanted credit, not someone else. I also wanted taxpayers
not to spend endless dollars on false leads.
Speaker 6 (22:12):
A few days after the Wichita Eagle published its story
about the Seabring brothers, Dennis Rader called the front desk
and asked to speak to Eagle columnist Don Granger. Here's
what Granger remembers hearing over the phone.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Listen and listen good. I'm only going to say this once.
There is a letter about the Oteo case in a
book in the public library.
Speaker 6 (22:40):
Granger was freaked out. He immediately called the Wichita Police.
He told them that the caller had the voice of
a timid Midwestern man, but he couldn't make out anything else.
Wichita PD Officer Bernie Drowaski went to the library that
very day. He discovered up a duel your letter stuped
(23:01):
into a book titled Applied Engineering Mechanics. The letter was
riddled with misspellings and grammatical errors. Here is what it said,
edited for clarity.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Those three dudes you have in custody are just talking
to get publicity. They know nothing at all. I did
it by myself, with no one's help. I'm sorry this
happened to the society. It's hard to control myself. You
probably call me psychotic with sexual perversion. Hang up. Where
this monster entered my brain? I will never know, but
(23:38):
it's here to stay. How does one cure himself? If
you ask for help that you've killed four people, they
will laugh or hit the panic button and call the cops.
I can't stop it, so the monster goes on and
hurt me as well as society. Society can be thankful
(23:59):
that they're ways for people like me to relieve myself
at times by day dreams of some victim being tortured
and being mine. It's a big, complicated game. My friend
of the monster play putting victims down, following them, checking
up on them, waiting in the dark, wading, wagdhing. The
(24:21):
pressure is great, and sometimes he run the game to
his liking. Maybe you can stop him. I can't. He
has already chosen his next victim or victims. I don't
know who they are yet. The next day, after I
read the paper, I will know, but it will be
too late. Good luck hunting.
Speaker 6 (24:45):
It was in this letter that the name BTK was born,
a three letter moniker that came to haunt which a
tall police.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yours truly guilty ps. Since sex criminals do not change
their mo or by nature, cannot do so, I will
not change mine. The code words for me will be
bind them, torture them, kill them, BTK. They will be
(25:18):
on the next victim.
Speaker 10 (25:21):
He considered himself to be among the elite serial killers,
and so he named himself BTK.
Speaker 6 (25:30):
This is Catherine Ramsland, the forensic psychologist who wrote a
book with and about Dennis Rader.
Speaker 10 (25:37):
He did not want to leave his name to chance
and get something stupid. He wanted a powerful name, and
it wasn't the only one. He gave them a few ideas,
but because he had created an image for the BTK
name as well, he stuck with that. He's one of
the few who told police and journalists, here's what you
(25:59):
should call me, and he enjoyed that. He enjoyed that
kind of cat and mouse game.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
By using BTK, torture, fantasy, writing, drawing, and what I
had planned to do. I wrote my own criminal epithet.
If cocked, those words would hang me.
Speaker 6 (26:19):
Carrie Rawson, Dennis Raider's daughter, talks about her father's lust
for notoriety.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
He feeds off the fair because he wanted to be
remembered and known for what he had done. And he
talks about Ted and California and he's talking about son
of Sam. Well, He's in a smaller media market, so
he wasn't getting the coverage that Bundy or Sam was.
He wanted to be known and he didn't like that
these guys were taking credit and making it sound one
(26:49):
way when he knew the truth. So he writes into
the Eagle. It puts in a library book in the
public library where him I used to hang out all
the time.
Speaker 6 (26:56):
Later on, Dennis Raider had the authority's attention. His plan
was working.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
So he literally it's like giving them evidence because he's
such a narcissist and he's enjoying that game.
Speaker 6 (27:14):
For Raider, the game was just getting started. The news
was settling on the police department. For the first time
in history, Wichita was dealing with a bona fide serial killer.
Speaker 5 (27:38):
In the first phase of this, I'm thinking to myself,
what kind of a screwball is this? The fact is
he's hurting people. He's actually killing innocent people in our community.
Our job is to put him away, get him off
the street. And as you read these things, this is
(27:58):
like a movie script. Kept it's not a movie. It's
real people are dying. How can we resolve this? This
is going to be a long process and it's going
to take a lot of help.
Speaker 6 (28:12):
Police were initially unsure about what to do with btk's letter.
They thought if they went public with it, the city
might go into a frenzy and then it might embolt
in BTK to kill again.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
None of us had ever dealt with this. We reached
out to departments that had dealt with serial killers. We
reached out to the FBI, getting advice suggestions as to
how we might proceed. We reached out to professionals here
in Wichita and in the region, psychologists, psychiatrists to get advice,
(28:48):
to get direction as to what they had done, what
worked best for them, and what we might do in
the future.
Speaker 6 (28:58):
It wasn't until a few days later that police came
up with a plan to respond to BTK. The response
came in the form of a personal ad in the
Wichita Eagle on October twenty seventh, calling on BTK to
reach out.
Speaker 11 (29:15):
BTK Help is available call six four six six three
one two one before ten pm.
Speaker 6 (29:26):
But the hotline never rang. On October thirty, First Eagle
columnist Don Granger ran his own article trying to get
btk's attention.
Speaker 12 (29:38):
For the past week, which Ada police have tried to
get in touch with a man who has important information
on the Otero murdered case, A man who needs help badly.
You may have noticed the classified ad that ran at
the top of our personal column Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday
and Tuesday. It read BTK help is available. There really
(30:05):
is a BTK. Police cannot say how they know, but
they are convinced BTK has information about the murder of
Joseph Vittero, his wife and two of his children. If
for any reason, BTK doesn't want to talk to police,
this newspaper's secret witness procedure is available. I will go further.
(30:32):
If BTK wants to call me at home, I can
be reached.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
Granger's phone never rang either. On December eleventh, Wichita Sun
reporter Kathy Hinkle published the BTK letter after getting her
hands on it from an unnamed source. Finally, the words
of this bizarre killer, we're out there for everyone to see.
(30:58):
Police Chief Lloyd Hannen had this to say, you know,
Wichita beaconn article about btk's letter going.
Speaker 12 (31:05):
Public, I think we've taken one hell of a risk
with the release of this letter.
Speaker 11 (31:10):
He might have to go out and commit this offense
again to prove he committed this offense.
Speaker 12 (31:15):
He's a sick man who needs help.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
When this hit the news and it started picking up.
The whole community is afraid. I personally even had a
sister in law who was a single female. She's an adult,
but she's single, and she came out and lived with us.
She would not stay at her own home.
Speaker 6 (31:38):
In fact, it was like this all across Wichita. People
were installing heavy locks on their doors, women stopped going
out alone. Everyone was scared.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
I mean, it was a scary time for the community
and of course the department. I mean, you're getting all
kinds of heat. What are they trying to do to
resolve this? And we're doing everything that we possibly can,
but it's a fear factor. How do you reconcile that
if you're afraid of something you perceive you're afraid of it.
(32:11):
I can't give you enough reassurance that you're okay, because
you're not gonna believe it. The city actually came together,
I mean really did. Neighbor watching neighbor, everybody trying to
watch out for each other. What neighbor would come home
and call their other neighbor and say, hey, I'm home.
You know, I'm locking up. And we had a lot
of calls, suspicious character type calls, and of course the
(32:34):
beat officers are in tune with this. They're doing their
absolute best. They're stopping people. If you're in a neighborhood
and you're out somewhere, we don't know who you are,
you're gonna get stopped.
Speaker 6 (32:46):
Police were under a ton of pressure. They knew they
had to catch the sky and fast, and the fact
that he had communicated was a good thing, albeit terrifying.
The letter meant they had a avenue to finding him.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
The theory that we had was that if we can
communicate with him, he communicated with us. Obviously he's searching
for identification. He wants to be identified. The idea was
that if we can keep him communicating, because we know
he's fantasizing about what he's already done, and if we
(33:24):
can keep him occupied with that, perhaps there won't be
another victim.
Speaker 6 (33:31):
But Rader was starting to realize he had put himself
at serious risk. He saw the newspaper article where the
BTK letter went public, He saw the law enforcement were
actively pursuing him, and he got spooked. So at the
end of nineteen seventy four, he cut off all communication
(33:51):
and he decided to lay low. Here are his words
from Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
I acted normal when Paul was present. I watched the
news with interest, but not overly. I read the paper,
but I did not cut out the articles until later.
I also became overly defensive. I watched the road outside
and had a loaded gun ready. I made sure our
locked windows were secure, probably like everyone else in Wichita.
Speaker 6 (34:24):
In the summer of nineteen seventy five, with the BTK
paranoia still a buzz, Wichita police found a strange note
left at a crime scene. An elderly couple, John and
Emma Foster, were found stabbed to death in their home.
The mystery note left behind set off alarm bells. Police
(34:44):
Chief Floyd Hannon held a press conference just twenty four
hours later. The following excerpt comes from a Wichita Eagle
article dated July twenty ninth, nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 13 (34:57):
Hannin said that the note was left at the scene.
The police don't know who wrote it. He emphasized there
was no reason to believe there was any connection between
the notes writer and the person who wrote a letter
to the Eagle Beacons secret Witness program.
Speaker 6 (35:14):
In other words, this murder had nothing to do with BTK,
but it shows that everyone in Wichita was on edge
about the next BTK murder. They feared that any similar
incident might be his handiwork. Every new murder or sexual
assault was met with the question could this have been BTK?
(35:39):
But in truth Raider had started a new line of work,
becoming a father. His first child, a boy, was named
Brian Raider. But for Dennis, being a normal dad seemed impossible.
In his mind, existing just as an average family man
was unthinkable. He was different and he knew it, as
(36:03):
he himself admitted.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
I love to hunt, prowling the streets looking for fair game.
The cat and mouse game gave me an adrenaline rush
or hi.
Speaker 6 (36:16):
As he built one identity, the other started to fester underneath,
almost like juckal and Hyde. This was Dennis Raider, the
so called normal suburban dad versus BTK, the serial killer.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
BTK is really more just another mask, using that to
power into rage and anger and controlling that into murder,
than to release that because it makes him feel better
about who he is.
Speaker 6 (36:45):
Carrie Rawson, daughter of Dennis Raider, She says the two
versions of her dad are just sides up the same coin,
and one side comes out when it needs to, not like.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
A bipolar thing. He's always this, he's always Dennis Raider,
he's always Dad, he's always BTK, and then he just
cubes and flips to show you what he wants you
to see.
Speaker 6 (37:11):
Forensic psychologist Catherine Ramsland explains this phenomenon.
Speaker 10 (37:17):
That is that whole cubing thing. It's a way to
not be completely connected in your sense of morality. I
think each situation in which he found himself was real
to him, and he could easily live this double life
because the more intense, exciting experience was murdering people. But
(37:40):
he also had what he called social obligations family church,
he was president of his church, congregation, his job, he
had things that he had to look to as well,
and he took those seriously. I think from the outside
anybody might say, how seriously could that be, given how
he's really violating all of these things. I don't think
(38:04):
he thought of it as pretense at all. I think
he thought of it as that's what I need to
do for myself. That's my little secret. I enjoy it
when I can do it, Otherwise I do this other thing.
Speaker 6 (38:19):
In these early days of nineteen seventy seven, Rader was
still learning how to balance all of these conflicting emotions.
According to Carrie, he had trouble holding it all together.
Little things like chores and hobbies just weren't enough to
keep his mind off his fantasies.
Speaker 4 (38:40):
Later on we learn he was literally throwing himself into
stuff to distract him from murder. He needed to be
outside he could get uptid and angry and difficult and
controlling inside.
Speaker 6 (38:52):
While Rader was struggling with his identity crisis, the people
of Wichita were wondering what happened to be tk newly
appointed police chief. Richard Lemonion was one of them.
Speaker 5 (39:08):
In nineteen seventy six, I was appointed as police chief.
I was thirty six years old. I was the youngest
police chief in the history of the department on major
cases like this. Here, the investigators briefed me on everything
that we had, and then I had a much better
understanding of what evidence we did have, what was available
(39:29):
to us, and where they were in their investigation. And
at that particular time, they were pretty much at a
dead end. We hadn't heard from him for a long time,
and you know, their thinking is maybe he's gone, maybe
he's dead, maybe he's in prison. They literally had followed
every lead that they could humanly follow, and I remember
(39:51):
we were getting advice from the FBI and others that
if he was alive, he was still killing. If he
wasn't still killing, then he he was still fantasizing.
Speaker 6 (40:06):
It took him years, years of waiting, planning, thinking of
ways to do it better. But finally, in nineteen seventy seven,
three years since his last murder, someone caught his eye.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
She was completely random. There was actually someone across from
Dylan's who might have been the potential. It was called
Project green or Greenwood. I had met this girl, I
think at WSU. I knew where she lived.
Speaker 6 (40:38):
Dylan's was a nearby supermarket. He spotted her and followed
her home multiple times. He decided he was ready she
was the one. On March seventeenth, nineteen seventy seven, he
approached her door and something unexpected happened.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
I know, but nobody answered. While I was walking away
from the intended house, I saw a young boy coming
back from Dylan's. I figured he had a mother in
the house. I watched where he went, and then I
went to the door and knocked. The boy opened the
door with his brother.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
My name is Steve Ralford.
Speaker 5 (41:21):
I'm gonna be k K Shurbiv Danish writer Right my
mom knocking Kevin seven?
Speaker 6 (41:33):
Next time on Monster bet K, there's a.
Speaker 5 (41:37):
Crack any door whare look out him?
Speaker 1 (41:41):
A mom Pleton. She told the kids to do whatever
I said. I tied the door shut, but the kids
were still yelling.
Speaker 5 (41:49):
The big thing that weighs on you is the fact
that this is gonna happen again.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
He's going to determine whether or not you're gonna live, when.
Speaker 9 (41:56):
You're gonna die.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
He's gonna play with these victims. There's no manuel written
on how to react when you become part of the story.
Speaker 5 (42:06):
When we announced the fact that we did as serial killer,
we had a hundred tips.
Speaker 4 (42:11):
He's making your life uncomfortable. Night later we said it
was like walking on inkshells at times with him.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Oh Anna, why didn't you appear?
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Monster bt K 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
(42:51):
behalf of iHeart Podcasts include Matt Frederick and Trevor Young,
alongside producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk and supervising producer
Rima Ilkali. Marketing support by David Wasserman and Alison Wright
at iHeart Podcasts and Caroline or Agemma at Tenderfoot TV.
(43:11):
Additional research by Claudia Dafrico, 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 iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(43:35):
to your favorite shows. Thanks for listening.
Host
Susan Peters
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